ESSAY VI.

Then we may thank ourselves,

Who spell-bound by the magic name of Peace
Dream golden dreams. Go, warlike Britain, go,
For the grey olive-branch change thy green laurels :
Hang up thy rusty helmet, that the bee

May have a hive, or spider find a loom!
Instead of doubling drum and thrilling fife
Be lull'd in lady's lap with amorous flutes.
But for Napoleon, know, he'll scorn this calm:
The ruddy planet at his birth bore sway,
Sanguine, a dust his humour, and wild fire

His ruling element. Rage, revenge, and cunning
Make up the temper of this captain's valor.

Adapted from an old Play.

Little prospective wisdom can that man obtain, who hurrying onward with the current, or rather torrent, of events, feels no interest in their importance, except as far as his curiosity is excited by their novelty; and to whom all

reflection and retrospect are wearisome. If ever there were a time when the formation of just public principles becomes a duty of private morality; when the principles of morality in general ought to be made bear on our public suffrages, and to affect every great national determination; when, in short, his COUNTRY should have a place by every Englishman's fire-side; and when the feelings and truths which give dignity to the fire-side and tranquillity to the death-bed, ought to be present and influencive in the cabinet and in the senate --that time is now with us. As an introduction to, and at the same time as a commentary on, the subject of international law, I have taken a review of the circumstances that led to the Treaty of Amiens, and the recommencement of the war, more especially with regard to the occupation of Malta.

In a rich commercial state, a war seldom fails to become unpopular by length of continuance. The first, or revolution war, which towards its close, had become just and necessary, perhaps beyond any former example, had yet causes of unpopularity peculiar to itself

Exhaustion is the natural consequence of excessive stimulation, in the feelings of nations equally as in those of individuals. Wearied out by overwhelming novelties; stunned, as it were, by a series of strange explosions; sick too of hope long delayed; and uncertain as to the real object and motive of the war, from the rapid change and general failure of its ostensible objects and motives; the public mind for many months preceding the signing of the preliminaries, had lost all its tone and elasticity. The consciousness of mutual errors and mutual disappointments, disposed the great majority of all parties to a spirit of diffidence and toleration, which, amiable as it may be in individuals, yet in a nation, and above all in an opulent and luxurious nation, is always too nearly akin to apathy and selfish indulgence. An unmanly impatience for peace became only not universal. After as long a resistance as the nature of our Constitution and national character permitted or even endured, the government applied at length the only remedy adequate to the greatness of the evil, a remedy which the magnitude of the evil justified, and

which nothing but an evil of that magnitude could justify. At a high price they purchased for us the name of peace, at a time when the views of France became daily more and more incompatible with our vital interests.

Con

sidering the peace as a mere truce of experiment, wise and temperate men regarded with complacency the Treaty of Amiens, for the very reasons that would have ensured the condemnation of any other treaty under any other circumstances. Its palpable deficiencies were its antidote: or rather they formed its very essence, and declared at first sight, what alone it was, or was meant to be. Any attempt at that time and in this treaty to have secured Italy, Holland, and the German Empire, would have been in the literal sense of the word, preposterous. The Nation would have withdrawn all faith in the pacific intentions of the ministers, if the negociation had been broken off on a plea of this kind: for it had taken for granted the extreme desirableness, nay, the necessity of a peace, and, this once admitted, there would, no doubt, have been an absurdity in continuing the war for objects which the

war furnished no means of realizing. If the First Consul had entered into stipulations with us respecting the Continent they would have been observed only as long as his interest from other causes might have dictated; they would have been signed with as much sincerity and observed with as much good faith as the article actually inserted in the treaty of Amiens, respecting the integrity of the Turkish empire. This article indeed was wisely insisted on by us, because it affected both our national honour, and the interests of our Indian empire immediately; and still more, perhaps, because this of all others was the most likely to furnish an early proof of the First Consul's real dispositions. But deeply interested in the fate of the Continent, as we are thought to be, it would nevertheless have been most idle to have abandoned a peace, supposing it at all desirable, on the ground that the French government had refused that which would have been of no value had it been granted.

Indeed there results one serious disadvantage from insisting on the rights and interests of Austria, the Empire, Switzerland, &c. in a