impossible to equip a fleet in time.* It is the militia of the Roman republic, the military system of all great nations, advanced to a degree of incredible perfection, by the mighty master, who now, from the throne of the Bourbons, wields the sceptre of Europe. If you can procure a copy of Polybius in America, I beg you to read the fragment of the seventh book, which has been handed down to us: where you will see that the Roman plan was severer and less certain than the French. Every citizen, before he attained to forty-six years of age, was com. pelled to serve ten years in the cavalry, or sixteen on foot. In times of danger, and we know how often the temple of Janus was shut, the period of service was protracted to twenty years. No citizen could aspire to the civil magistracy till he had served ten campaigns. Once a year the whole country was assembled for consular inspection. No excuses were accepted for non-attendance. No pretext of accident or illness; nothing less than absolute, unquestionable impracticability, was listened to. Every individual was sworn; and when the selections were made, a most rigid discipline went into immediate operation. The severest corporal punishments, bastinado and decimation, were inflicted for offences. No hospital for invalids, no half pay, no pensions

* I am myself clearly convinced, and I believe every man who knows any thing of the English navy will acknowledge, that without impressing, it is impossible to equip a respectable fleet within the time in which armaments are usually wanted.-Lord Chatham's Speech on the Relations with Spain, 2d November, 1770.

awaited the wounded and worn out; but barren honours, short-lived ovations, and allotments of lands in foreign conquests. Should then the French complain of their service? Is there any thing in the conscription so rigorous, so lasting, so ungrateful?

.

But if by comparison with the similar regulations of ancient and of modern powers, we see reasons for admiring the conscription, what must be our sentiments of admiration and gratitude, when we behold its effects! If your countryman, the boding Burke, could see in France, before the revolution, so much to awe and command his transcendant imagination,*

* Indeed when I consider the face of the kingdom of France; the multitude and opulence of her cities; the useful magnificence of her spacious high roads and bridges; the opportunity of her artificial canals and navigations opening the conveniences of maritime communication through a solid continent of so immense an extent; when I turn my eyes to the stupendous works of her ports and harbours, and to her whole naval apparatus, whether for war or trade; when I bring before my view the number of her fortifications, constructed with so bold and masterly a skill, and made and maintained at so prodigious a charge, presenting an armed front and impenetrable barrier to her enemies on every side; when I recollect how very small a part of that extensive region is without cultivation, and to what complete perfection the culture of many of the best productions of the earth have been brought in France; when I reflect on the excellence of her manufactures and fabrics, second to none but ours, and in some particulars not second; when I contemplate the grand foundations of charity, public and private; when I survey the state of all the arts that beautify and polish life; when I reckon the men she has bred for extending her fame in war, her able statesmen, the multitude of her profound lawyers and theologians, her philosophers, her critics, her historians

what would have been his reflections, had he lived to see those harvests from the ashes of desolation he foresaw those astonishing internal improvements and blessings, which, no less than his unparalleled victories, are the glories of that incomparable being, to whose guidance the destinies of the French empire have since been committed by an omniscient Providence-under whose rapid genius the conscription works like the elements at the nod of cloudcompelling Jove-and the lightning of his counsel has executed its commission, ere the thunder of his command can report its progress.

Who are those Frenchmen that hope to resuscitate the decayed and withered trunk of the house of Bourbon whose few remaining branches are now scattered before the winds? Units among the millions that have consigned that worn out stock to obscurity, whose reliance is in the aid of the deadly, prescriptive, inveterate foes, both of the Bourbons and of Francethe English nation. What are the motives of English hostility to the new French dynasty? Their instinctive hatred of France, sharpened by the dire spirit of impotent revenge, mixed up with the gall of defeat and disaster. Do they pretend to be fighting the battles of the house of Bourbon? They, who have grown up in hatred and abhorrence against that family; they, who since their own Harry V. overran the north of France, since their own Charles II.

and antiquaries, her poets and her orators, sacred and profane, I behold in all this something which awes and commands the imagination, &c.-Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, p. 177.

was the stipendiary, and their own William III, the personal antagonist of Louis XIV. have waged one continued current of hostilities, sometimes breaking out in solemn war, and at others no less active in diplomatic stratagem, against the well being, the very existence of the French nation. Let us not be deceived by a subjugation of natural hate and a pretence of alliance, so monstrous, unreal, and unnatural. It is not now eight years since one of the ablest and most liberal of English statesmen, distinguished among his countrymen for his want of British antipathy toward the French, delivered, in the face of the nation, a celebrated speech, in which this passage occurs: "As an Englishman, and actuated by English feelings, I surely cannot wish for the restoration of the house of Bourbon to the throne of France, I hope that I am not a man to bear heavily on any unfortunate family. I feel for their situation; I respect their distresses: but as a friend of England, I cannot wish for their restoration to the power which they abused. It was not to be expected that the French, when once engaged in foreign wars, should not endeavour to spread destruction around them, and to form plans of aggrandizement and plunder on every side. Men bred in the school of the house of Bourbon could not be expected to act otherwise. They could not have lived so long under their ancient masters, without imbibing the restless ambition, the perfidy, and the insatiable spirit of that race. They have imitated the practice of their great prototype; and through their whole career of mischief and crimes, have done no more than servilely trace the

steps of their own Louis XIV. If they have overrun countries and ravaged them, they have done it upon Bourbon principles; if they have ruined and dethroned sovereigns, it is entirely after the Bourbon manner; if they have even fraternized with the people of foreign countries, and pretended to make their cause their own, they have only faithfully followed the Bourbon example. The whole history of the last century is little more than an account of the wars, and the calamities arising from the restless ambition, the intrigues, and the perfidy of the house of Bourbon."*

This is the testimony of an honest enemy, of a great English statesman, who has since been prime minister of Great Britain, and who is now no more.

Let us not, therefore, deceive ourselves, nor mistake the day, or the instrument of retribution. Let not our reverence for the pageants, before which we have been accustomed to bow the knee, be startled at the amazing fact in the history of our times, that the hereditary crowns of Europe are filled with foolish heads, and that the only one on which wisdom and valour, the legitimate attributes of royalty, now shed their influence, was raised from the dust on the point of a triumphant sabré. Let all Frenchmen remember the treaty of Pilnitz, and let not their enemies repine under the reaction of that accursed league. When from embarrassment and bankruptcy we

*Mr. Fox.

Speech delivered 3d February, 1800, on a inotion for an address to the throne, approving of the answers returned to the communications from France, relative to a negotiation for peace.