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ESSAY X.

Then we may thank ourselves,

Who spell-bound by the magic name of peace
Dream golden dreams. Go, warlike Briton, go,
For the gray 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, adust, his humor, and wild fire
His ruling element. Rage, revenge, and cunning
Make up the temper of this captain's valor.

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 to 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 fireside; and when the feelings and truths which give dignity to the fireside and tranquillity to the death-bed, ought to be present and influential 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, 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. Considering the peace às a mere truce of experiment, wise and temperate men regarded with complacency the treaty of Amiens, for the very reasons that would have insured 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 negotiation 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 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 he would act, it supplied just reasons for the commencement of war, and at its decease left us, as a legacy, blessings that assuredly 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,

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

ment,

The late peace then was negotiated by the government, ratified by the legislature, and received by the nation, as an experi—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. He 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 more notorious they can not be than that other fact which utterly annuls them as reasons for a war,-the fact, that ministers themselves regàrd 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 to 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, namely, the destruction of her commerce and navy, would increase her means of continental conquests, by concentrating all 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 extension of the name, France, were facts which, we knew by ex

* See Essays 3, 4, 5, 6, of the third Landing Place.-Ed.

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