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THE

Augustan Review.

No. XVIII. FOR OCTOBER, 1816.

ART. I.

Public Affairs.

THE anticipations of success from Lord Exmouth's enterprise were, from the moment it was set on foot, given to the public in terms as turgid and boastful as any that ever marked the bad taste of the French sans culottes; and this, it will be allowed, is saying quite enough for their barbarism. But why should they have been so big and boastful, when there was reason to apprehend, that the enterprise would lead to scarce any thing positively useful to little more than the prevention, for a season longer or shorter, of insult and depredation? Even this, however, is a desirable issue; and it has been attained in a superior style. We have it on autho rity, that the operations of our gallant armament have been attended with a success memorable alike for its brilliancy and rapidity, and for the pure benevolence of the motives which gave birth to it. Through these operations, the naval irresistibility of England is again evinced; and partly through them, partly through the virtuous principle of the enter prise, the fair fame of our country is exalted in the opinion of mankind. But, while the national character is raised, the reputation which ministers had acquired for superior skill in the conduct of war has been attested and illustrated; and, in addition to the approbation of their country and of their own minds, they will have the pleasure of raising higher in the peerage" the man whom the king delighteth to honor;" and who, it is obvious enough, will not be surprised to find that the importance of his services is to be publicly acknowledged. Lord Rodney had some vanity, and so had Lord Nelson. No man has at any time, by sea or land, better performed the duty assigned him than Lord Exmouth No.XVIII-VOL.III.-Aug.Rev.

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has done. But other men have had more important duties assigned them: the field of Waterloo was a more interesting scene than the mole of Algiers; Napoleon a more formidable opponent than the discomfited Dey.

What does the treaty say? Does it oblige the unprovoked aggressor, now that he is vanquished in his own capital, to defray the expense of our armament? If it does not, our ultra economists may be expected to murmur sadly; nay, some very liberal-minded men among us may express something like dissatisfaction. Does it leave the enemy in no condition to act piratically, and to subject civilized nations, on a future day, to tribute or bondage? It leaves him in no condition to renew his piracies this year, or next-but there is no stipulation whatever against his doing so whenever he can find the means. Are the barbarians prohibited from sending armed vessels to sea? They may build, or they may buy, as fast as they can; they may accept of presents of ships, whenever the mutual enmities of Christian powers shall lead one of them to wish for co-operation against another; and whatever ships they at any time have, they will be at full liberty to send to sea. Are we, in order that we may conveniently watch their future movements,to garrison with British troops, to be wholly paid by them, one or more of their principal strong holds a post commanding their town, for instance, or the entrance to their harbour? A gua rantee like this seems highly requisite in any prospective view that can be taken either of the interests or of the personal safety of British subjects trading in the Mediterranean; and we wonder that the opportunity which had occurred was not embraced as a very favourable one for shewing the ground. lessness of the opinion so prevalent both in Europe and Ame rica, That the English can fight; but do not know how to treat.- -No such terms as those which we consider essential to the conservation of peace with the barbarians have been obtained. Nor could they, none of the kind having been desired: the admiral tells us, all his demands were granted. But why were his demands so moderate? His instructions justified him in being foolishly moderate: but they did not oblige him to be so. They told him what to ask: but they did not say, you shall desire no more, if you see it every way practicable to obtain more. His demands ought to have risen with his good fortune. Their doing so would have been magnanimous, as it regarded himself; it would have been gratifying not to Christendom solely, but to human nature. The expenditure of ammunition, the injury done to his

ships, and the fall of so many of his brave companions in arms, ought to have suggested to him, that the conditions admissible in the morning of the 27th of the month, were by no means so on the 28th; and that it was an unquestionable virtue to strip the enemy of every thing that could be made an instrument of mischief in his hands, or rendered useful to us as the champions of Christian nations. Merely chas tising the tyrant for past offences is like punishing a sailor for being intoxicated his shoulders ache to-day; but tomorrow they are well, and he again gets drunk. Lord Exmouth seems to have been in a prodigious hurry to settle matters and get away; ministers could not have dreamt of so easy a victory, or they would, doubtless, have furnished his lordship with ampler instructions. If we cannot, without trouble and anxiety, and the risk of a heavy expense, insure the peaceful conduct of the Barbary States, that which ought to have been the indispensable object of Lord Exmouth's expedition, will have to be sought for by some other commander.

The liberation of a number of Christian slaves is an important object; the promise, even of the Dey of Algiers, never to reduce another Christian to slavery, is of import ance; his humble apology is something; the restitution of the money extorted from unwarlike nations is also something; and the eclat of having effected the whole in a few hours, by the destruction of all his naval force and stores, is no ordinary consideration; still it will be contended that, though enough has been done for the glory of his Majesty's arms, enough has not been obtained for the safety of his Majesty's sea-faring subjects. The decisive blow having been struck, the gallant negotiator had but to express his wishes, in order to have them gratified: and he ought to have expressed them strongly-aware that if ever there was an occasion, on which mankind were unanimous as to the propriety of insisting on indemnity for the past, and security for the future, that occasion presented itself on the day immediately subsequent to the affair of Algiers.

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Every body knows, that the Turkish empire rests on an unstable basis; and we are of the number of those who imagine, that the period of its subversion is not very distant. The Holy Alliance, to be sure, might lead us to expect nothing but peace and goodwill among mankind for many years to come; yet, when we recollect how probable it is, that some very earthly considerations have been allowed to

mingle with the conditions of that alliance, and how difficult it must be for the Porte to avoid giving umbrage in the case of its African vassals, our expectation is a good deal weak. ened. Of this mysterious alliance we should omen worse than we do, did we not know, that Mr. Brougham, whose notions of the general policy of states is usually so erroneous, thinks very ill of it. It is true, that when he inveighed so bitterly against it in the House of Commons, he acknowledged himself to be totally unacquainted with its object and

nature.

All the accounts recently received from Paris, and all the portraits of the disloyal part of the French nation, drawn by their apologists in London, represent them as still wincing most piteously at the burdens put upon their guilty shoulders by their conquerors. We are told that every sous paid by them for the maintenance of foreign troops "is as a drop of their hearts' blood." This, however, is but a figure in expression; and, at any rate, it occasions no pain to us, except from its reminding us, that many thousands of our countrymen have had their hearts drained to the last drop, through the intolerable insolence and oppression of those atrocious characters. It seems to us, that it would have been very culpable in the allies to have permitted such men to enjoy all the fruits of the accumulated guilt of so many years;-not to have punished their vile egotism by prescrib ing to them a memorable moral lesson-not to have thoroughly mortified their ridiculous military pride-not, in fine, to have resolved to hold their faces close to the grindstone for years to come. After all, history will have to tell, how infinitely more severe was the destiny of those nations whom the French visited during the season of their fatal success, than their own now is. All the French, by the way, do not complain; and none but those whose grievances will be re dressed quite soon enough, ever mention the conduct of the allies as being, or having been, in any respect unnecessarily harsh. As for the faithful friends of the sovereign, they, no doubt, view with regret the temporary cloud which the presence of a foreign army spreads over the glory of their nation. But they well know that to be a less evil by far than the subversion of the throne, or the renewal of the war-both of which would ensue on its immediate dispersion. The French should call to mind whether, or not, they ever were moved to acts of forbearance through contemplation of the sufferings of those on whom they trampled; and they should con

sider whether it is not proper that they should feel, and that their posterity should read in the history of their own coun try, that when nations violate human laws, and dare to make a jest of Heaven, they cannot, even in this life, escape exemplary punishment.

We hear with satisfaction, that the French government perseveres in calling the instruments of the late revolution to a strict account; and that it proceeds on a principle a good deal like that of outlawry in England, to condemn the guilty whether present or absent. But it is not without indignation that we learn, that great numbers of our idle inconsiderate countrymen, are daily turning their backs on their native land-that they may squander in France as much as possible of that which her successive acts of aggression have left us. They do not, it is true, disgrace their own government by emulating the officious conduct of Sir Robert Wilson and his associates; but they spend money among strangers, the circulation of which among their countrymen, would be found highly beneficial at this extraordinary juncture. Why is there not a heavy export-duty on all rich men who abandon. their country without necessity? We would have them all put under the surveillance of the Custom-House. Government would find the measure very productive, and not more productive than popular. What between tours of the luxurious to France, and emigration of the laborious to America, the British sinews of war must by and by become feeble enough. Still no step is taken to check either the one or the other mischief.

Our intercourse with South-America has been checked, by the precarious state of affairs in that quarter. When it will be renewed is nearly as problematical, as under what species of government those regions will be when the renewal takes place. It will redound exceedingly to the praise of the British government, if it be found that it had, at all times, avoided doing what might serve to turn the scale in favour either of the Spanish monarchy, or of the insurgents. It was not requisite to attempt the one; to have aimed at the other might indeed have filled the coffers of some British and American merchants; but it would have been an instance of bad faith towards the Spanish crown, and of very doubtful policy as it regarded the permanent interests of the British nation.Is Ferdinand to continue to be the sovereign of the vast regions of which we speak? or is Joseph, whom the territories of Berg could not satisfy; for whom Naples and Sicily were

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