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 honor 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, upon the supposition of its being 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 treaty between England and France, and, as it should seem, no advantage to counterbalance it. For so, any attack on those rights instantly pledges our character and national dignity to commence a war, however inexpedient it may happen to be, and however hopeless: while if a war be expedient, any attack on these countries by France furnishes a justifiable cause of war in its essential nature, and independently of all positive treaty. Seen in this light, the defects of the treaty of Amiens become its real merits. If the government of France made peace in the spirit of peace, then a friendly intercourse and the humanizing influences of commerce and reciprocal hospitality would gradually bring about in both countries the dispositions necessary for the calm discussion and sincere conclusion of a genuine, efficient, and comprehensive treaty. If the contrary proved the fact, the treaty of Amiens contained in itself the principles of its own dissolution. It was what it ought to be. If the First Consul had both meant and dealt fairly by us, the treaty would have led to a true settlement: but he acting as all prudent men expected that ne would act, it supplied just reasons for the commencement of war, and at its decease left us, as a legacy, blessings that assur edly far outweighed our losses by the peace. It left us popular enthusiasm, national unanimity, and simplicity of object; and removed one inconvenience which cleaved to the last war, by attaching to the right objects, and enlisting under their proper banners, the scorn and hatred of slavery, the passion for freedom

all the high thoughts and high feelings that connect us with the honored names of past ages; and inspire sentiments and lan guage, to which our Hampdens, Sidneys, and Russels, might lis ten without jealousy.

Ho

The late peace then was negotiated by the government, ratified by the legislature, and received by the nation, as an experiment,—as the only means of exhibiting such proof as would be satisfactory to the people in their then temper; whether Bonaparte devoting his ambition and activity to the re-establishment of trade, colonial tranquillity, and social morals, in France, would abstain from insulting, alarming and endangering the British empire. And these thanks at least were due to the First Consul that he did not long delay the proof. With more than papal insolence he issued edicts of anathema against us, and excommunicated us from all interference in the affairs of the continent. insulted us still more indecently by pertinacious demands respecting our constitutional laws and rights of hospitality; by the of ficial publication of Sebastiani's report; and by a direct personal outrage offered in the presence of all the foreign ministers to the king of England, in the person of his ambassador. He both insulted and alarmed us by a display of the most perfidious ambition in the subversion of the independence of Switzerland, in the avowal of designs against Egypt, Syria, and the Greek islands, and in the mission of military spies to Great Britain itself. And by forcibly maintaining a French army in Holland, he at once insulted, alarmed, and endangered us. What can render a war just-its expedience being pre-supposed-if insult, repeated alarm, and danger do not? And how can it be expedient for a rich, united, and powerful island-empire to remain in nominal peace and unresenting passiveness with an insolent neighbor, who has proved that to wage against it an unmitigated war of insult, alarm, and endangerment is both his temper and his system?

Many attempts were made by Mr. Fox to explain away the force of the greater number of the facts here enumerated: but the great fact, for which alone they have either force or meaning, the great ultimate fact, that Great Britain had been insulted. alarmed, and endangered by France, Mr. Fox himself expressly admitted. The opposers, however, of the present war concentre the strength of their cause in the following brief argument. Although we grant, say they, the grievances set forth in our mani

festo to be as notorious as they are asserted to be, yet inore notʊrious they can not be than that other fact which utterly annuls them as reasons for a war,-the fact, that ministers themselves regard them only as the pompous garnish of the dish. It stands on record, that Bonaparte might have purchased our silence forever, respecting these insults and injuries, by a mere acquiescence on his part in our retention of Malta. The whole treaty of Amiens is little more than a perplexed bond of compromise respecting Malta. On Malta we rested the peace for Malta we renewed the war. So say the opposers of the present war. As its advocate I do not deny the fact as stated by them; but I hope to achieve all, and more than all, the purposes of such denial, by an explanation of the fact. The difficulty then resolves itself into two questions: first, in what sense of the words can we be said to have gone to war for Malta alone? Secondly, wherein does the importance of Malta consist? The answer tc the second will be found in the notice of the life of Sir Alexander Ball, the liberator and political father of the Maltese, contained in a subsequent part of this work :* while the attempt to settle the first question, so as at the same time to elucidate the law of nations and its identity with the law of conscience, will occupy the remainder of the present essay.

I. IN WHAT SENSE CAN WE BE AFFIRMED TO HAVE RENEWED THE WAR FOR MALTA ALONE ?

war.

If we had known or could reasonably have believed, that the views of France were and would continue to be friendly or negative toward Great Britain, neither the subversion of the independence of Switzerland, nor the maintenance of a French army in Holland, would have furnished any prudent ground for For the only way by which we could have injured France, ramely, the destruction of her commerce and navy, would increase her means of continental conquests, by concentrating al the resources and energies of the French empire in her military powers: while the losses and miseries which the French people would suffer in consequence, and their magnitude, compared with any advantages that might accrue to them from the exten. sion of the name, France, were facts which, we knew by ex

* See Essays 3, 4, 5, 6, of the third Landing Płace.—Ed.

perience, would weigh as nothing with the existing government Its attacks on the independence of its continental neighbors be came motives to us for the recommencement of hostility, only as far as they gave proofs of a hostile intention toward ourselves, and facilitated the realizing of such intention. If any events had taken place, increasing the means of injuring this country, even though these events furnished no moral ground of complaint against France (such for instance, might be the great extension of her population and revenue, from freedom and a wise government), much more, if they were the fruits of iniquitous ambition, and therefore in themselves involved the probability of a hostile intention to us-then, I say, every after occurrence would become important, and both a just and expedient ground of war, in proportion, not to the importance of the thing in itself, but to the quantity of evident proof afforded by it to a hostile design in the government, by whose power our interests are en dangered. If by demanding the immediate evacuation of Malta, when he had himself destroyed the security of its actual independence on his promise of preserving which our pacific promises rested as on their sole foundation-and this too, after he had openly avowed such designs on Egypt, as not only in the opinion of our ministers, but in his own opinion, made it of the greatest importance to this country, that Malta should not be under French influence;-if by this conduct the First Consul exhibited a decisive proof of his intention to violate our rights and to undermine our national interests; then all his preceding actions on the continent became proofs likewise of the same intention; and any one* of these aggressions involved the meaning

* A hundred cases might be imagined which would place this assertion in its true light. Suppose, for instance, a country, according to the laws of which a parent might not disinherit a son without having first convicted him of some one of sundry crimes enumerated in a specific statute. Caius, by a series of vicious actions, has so nearly convinced his father of his utter worthlessness, that the father resolves, on the next provocation, to use the very first opportunity of legally disinheriting this son. The provocation occurs, and in itself furnishes this opportunity, and Caius is disinherited, though for an action much less glaring and intolerable than most of his preceding delinquencies had been. The advocates of Caius complain that he should be thus punished for a comparative trifle, so many worse misde meanors having been passed over. The father replies: "This, his last ac tion, is not the cause of the disinheritance; but the means of disinheriting

of the whole. Which of them was to determine us to war would be decided by other and prudential considerations. Had the First Consul acquiesced in our detention of Malta, he would thereby have furnished such proof of pacific intentions, as would have led to further hopes, would have lessened our alarm from his former acts of ambition, and relatively to us have altered in some degree their nature.

It should never be forgotten, that a parliament or national council is essentially different from a court of justice, alike in its objects and its duties. In the latter, the juror lays aside his private knowledge and his private connections, and judges exclusively according to the evidence adduced in the court: in the former, the senator acts upon his own internal convictions, and oftentimes upon private information, which it would be imprudent or criminal to disclose. Though his ostensible reason ought to be a true and just one, it is by no means necessary that it should be his sole or even his chief reason. In a court of justice, the juror attends to the character and general intentions of the accused party, exclusively, as adding to the probability of his having or not having committed the one particular action then in question. The senator, on the contrary, when he is to determine on the conduct of a foreign power, attends to particular actions, chiefly in proof of character and existing intentions. Now there were many and very powerful reasons why, though appealing to the former actions of Bonaparte, as confirmations of his hostile spirit and alarming ambition, we should nevertheless make Malta the direct object and final determinant of the Had we gone to war avowedly for the independence of Holland and Switzerland, we should have furnished Bonaparte with a colorable pretext for annexing both countries immediately to the French empire, which, if he should do (as if his power

war.

*

him. I punished him by it, rather than for it. In truth, it was not for any of his actions that I have thus punished him, but for his vices; that is, not so much for the injuries which I have suffered, as for the dispositions which these actions evinced: for the insolent and alarming intentions of which they are proofs. Now of this habitual temper, of these dangerous purposes, his last action is as true and complete a manifestation as any or all of his preceding offences; and it therefore may and must be taken aɛ their common representative."

* The greater part of this essay was written in the year 1804, in Malta at the request of Sir Alexander Ball.