And what have we gained by these charming revolutionary allies, to support or propitiate whom, we made, during the days of our reform mania, so extraordinary a departure from our national faith, our national honour, and our national interests? Have we found our reward in the gratitude of Portugal, which, since it was subject ed by the successes of Admiral Napier to the democratic regime, has gone on accumulating duties to such an extent on our manufactures, that our exports to that state, which in 1821 amounted to £2,058.000, had sunk down in 1839 to £1,240,119 ?* Or in Spain, in which the insecurity of property and general misery, under the democratic regime and revolutionary government we have established, has been such, that our exports to that country, which in 1829 were £911,685, had sunk in 1839 to £291,532? Or

in France, our dearly beloved revolutionary ally France, to propitiate whom we broke through so many existing treaties, and departed so widely from established policy; and which now, upon the first appearance of a collision of interest in the Levant, conjures up again the revolutionary whirlwind of 1793, and raves about the Rhine, the Alps, and democratic propagandism,and loudly denounces the perfidious Albion and her execrable Foreign Minister as the eternal objects of French hostility? Is there one of our new revolutionary allies who either could or would, if our national independence or security was threatened, send a man, a gun, or a guinea to our support? What aid would we get from Leopold and the braves Belges? What from Portugal and its jealous antiEnglish democratic government? What from the blood-stained valleys of Navarre, or the traitor-enthralled Queen of Madrid? What from France, now loudly demanding letters of marque to prey on the commerce of their dearly beloved British allies? Truly we have brought our national faith and honour to a precious market, and sacrificed our vital national interests for a most grateful and deserving set of democratic supporters!

Has, then, the care of the Whig

Radicals of our domestic security compensated this monstrous and unparalleled breach of our plighted faith and neglect of our foreign interests; and have we a fleet and an army adequate to avert insult from our coasts, assert the long established supremacy of England upon the seas, and secure from danger and dismemberment our wide-spread colonial dominion?

The world knows how anxiously this subject has been agitated of late years. No one can be ignorant how loudly and emphatically the dangers of our position have been denounced, for a very long period-and with what confidence the Treasury journals have replied that the navy never was in so formidable a state, and that in a few weeks England could fit out a fleet which would blow their enemies from the face of the deep. Now that the hour of trial is approaching, and the reality of these boasts is to be put to the test of the cannon's mouth, we do not hear quite so loud a tone of confidence. Nothing is said now about the "pasteboard fleets" of the enemy. The design of sweeping the French steam privateers from the Channel, and the French ships of the line from the Mediterranean, is postponed sine die. But, in order that the responsibility of any disaster, public or private, which may occur, may rest on the proper shoulders, and the truth of the boasted efficiency of the British navy may be brought to the test, we here subjoin a statement drawn from accurate and authentic data, of the comparative strength of the fleet during the peace of 1792-the war of 1809-the peace of 1826-and the peace of 1838. The authorities on which each is founded, are given in the margin: we invite examination, and defy correction. The statement for 1792, is taken from the Return of 1st January 1793, which of course applies to the force existing at the close of the preceding year; and which was five weeks before the war broke out, which was declared on February 3, 1793; and three weeks before the occurrence of the event, viz. the execution of Louis XVI., (which rendered it necessary,) and which took place on the 21st January 1793.

expectants, not forgetting our courteous and well-informed opponent in the Colonial Magazine, who accused us of disingenuous dealing, in a former article on this subject, because we set down the return of the British navy on 1st January 1792, as a Peace Return, when he should have known that the war did not begin till 3d February 1793; and was brought on by the execution of Louis on January 21, 1793;

and that the establishment of 1792 had in no degree been augmented by any idea of a French contest.

From the following statement, which we transcribe from that able and wellinformed periodical, the United Service Gazette, it appears that the British naval force, diminutive as it was under Whig management in 1838, has now sunk to a still lower and almost inconceivable point of depression.

So that England, which, at the close of the war, had three times the number of ships of the line which France possessed, and, in 1826, more than double, has now hardly any superiority whatever, save that of which the folly of the government could not deprive her the skill of her seamen and the valour of her people.

But let not the French flatter themselves, that because a time-serving and unforeseeing democratic administration, which abandoned the first duties of government to procure for themselves that fleeting favour with the multitude which might secure to them its power, has reduced to this pitiable state of weakness the once magnificent and irresistible navy of England, that, therefore, the warlike resources of the nation have been in reality weakened, or its national spirit, if once fairly roused, is in any sensible degree impaired. The elements of warlike, and, above all, of naval strength, now exist in Great Britain to an extent never before witnessed in any nation upon earth. A commer cial navy of 2,800,000 tons; two hun.

The

dred thousand sailors in the merchant service; a fleet unequalled in the world of eight hundred steamers, which now prowl round the British shores, afford the means of speedily equipping a force, which would erelong sweep that of France from the seas. vast wealth and industry of the British empire, which has increased above a half since the battle of Waterloo, has given it the means of adding in a similar proportion to the revenue, enormous as it was, which was raised at the close of the late war.

It is in vain to tell us we have only paid off sixty or seventy millions of debt since the termination of the revolutionary contest. To our shame, and, as it will prove, our sorrow, we have not: but that was not by any means because we have not possessed the means of doing so, but because the undue ascendant of the popular party stamped, previous to 1830, the measures even of the Conservative administrations with that blind passion for present relief, and insensibility to future danger, which is the invariable characteristic of the masses of mankind-and because

the instalment of the Whig-Radical Government in power since that time, has put an entire stop to every measure except those calculated to please their democratic and unforeseeing supporters in the great towns, and among the Irish priesthood. Danger doubt less exists: disaster, public and private, will in all probability be incurred from this disgraceful state of things: misfortunes, both to individuals and the state, must be undergone: they are the price which the nation must pay for ten years of Whig- Radical government and reform mania. But let these misfortunes arise; let the British commerce be seriously cut up by hostile steam-privateers; let a defeat be received at sea, or an enemy's fleet appear off Portsmouth or the Nore, and it will be seen what an energy is still to be found in England, and what vast resources she possesses to avenge herself upon her enemies, and resume that rank which she formerly held, and is still entitled to hold in the scale of nations. Democratic ambition will not always be permitted to paralyze the state Whig-Radical parsimony will not permanently be suffered to starve down our fleet in order to spend its resources on domestic intrigue or use less commissions. The first cannonshot fired in real anger, will dispel the illusions of a quarter of a century; and, from the mists of Liberalism and the darkness of Romanism, the star of England will again appear, conquering and to conquer.

Whether this ultimum remedium is to be adopted, or the wisdom of LouisPhilippe and the Conservative few in France is to get the better of the insanity of the republican many, as yet remains in doubt. But, whatever the final result may be, important advantages have accrued, and will accrue, from the present crisis, which may perhaps, in their ultimate effect, overbalance all the perils with which it may be attended.

In the first place, they have completely unmasked the revolutionary party in France, and the hollowness of that reliance which the liberals among ourselves have so long placed upon their support and co-operation. Here a distinction is necessary. For the men of respectability in France, for the Conservative party there, who are now striving against the tempest with which they are surrounded to

preserve the peace of Europe, we have the most sincere regard; for many among them we entertain the very highest admiration. Nothing but the most consummate wisdom and firmness on the part of Louis-Philippe, could so long have preserved the peace of Europe, surrounded as he is by foreign distrust and domestic hatred. But as friends, not less of England than of the cause of peace and liberty throughout the globe, we rejoice that the ambition, recklessness, and infuriate passions of the revolutionists in that country, have now been placed in their true colours. They have strove even to embrue their hands in the blood of their sovereign, in order to let slip the dogs of war upon mankind. And what has France to complain of? That Europe, when she was invited to concur with her in the settlement of the Eastern question, proceeded apart from her when she refused to concur? Is this an insult? Did Russia or Prussia complain of the quadruple alliance which besieged Antwerp in 1832, and for six long years drenched the Peninsula with blood in order to establish liberal governments in those countries, not only without their concurrence, but against their strongest remonstrances? On what ground, then, can she complain because Russia and England have done to France what France and England had so recently before done to Russia? Yet on this wholly groundless pretext they are now singing the Marseillaise in the streets throughout all France, and fiercely demanding instant war with England, because she has done to them what they themselves, only a few years since, had done to all the other European powers.

In the next place, this crisis will ultimately prove of value, as it has placed in equally vivid light, on whose exertions in this country the peace of the world is really dependant, and on whose patriotism, if the hour of trial does arrive, England must depend for her salvation. Unanimity, unprecedented indeed on such a crisis, now prevails in Great Britain: but never was a juster observation than that made in that able and uncompromising journal, the Standard, that this unanimity is entirely owing to the noble and patriotic feelings with which the Conservative party is animated;

and that a very different and far more painful spectacle would have been presented if they had been in power, and the Whig-Radicals led the ranks of opposition. That the Conservatives would have been as anxious as Lord Palmerston, to avert the destruction of the Turkish empire, either by Russian protection or FrancoEgyptian hostility, can be doubted by no one who is acquainted with their conduct for the last half century; but what would have been the conduct of the Whig Radical party, if in opposition at such a crisis as the present ? Would they not have done as Mr Fox and the Radicals of 1793 did, at the commencement of the French Revolution? Would they not have joined with the Chartists and Papists, in a fierce denunciation of the Cabinet of Great Britain, and re-echoed, on this side of the Channel, the loud and menacing cry of the French Revolutionists? Would not such a division of opinion have given the greatest encouragement to the war party in France, and would they not have concluded, on reasonable grounds, that the period for avenging all the disasters of France upon Great Britain had now arrived, when discord so inveterate raged in the British isles. And if the blessing of peace is now preserved, is it not mainly, under Providence, to be ascribed to the dignified and patriotic conduct of the British Conservatives, who forgot their animosities when their country was at stake, and calm but yet resolute, pacific but yet firm, evinced to France and to the world, that while they valued its friendship, they neither feared its hostility nor forgot what they owed to their own country?

Lastly, the present crisis has placed in a clear point of view the enormous

peril, both to the interest of the individual and the safety of the State, which arises from pursuing that wretched system of subservience to the blind passion for economy which has so long paralyzed the naval and military strength of Great Britain. Vain were all former denunciations of danger-vain all attempts to waken the people of Great Britain to a sense of the imminent hazard to which they were in the end exposing themselves by a blind adherence to such a wretched and disgraceful system of policy. But when the danger assumes a practical form, and England, with only five-and-thirty ships of the line capable of being sent to sea to reinforce her twenty-two ships already there, charged with the defence of British interests over the whole globe, is found on the verge of hostility with France Egypt, and ultimately America, which would soon have in the Mediterranean double the number, the eyes of the most inconsiderate are opened, and even the Whig-Radical Government, in obedience to the tardily-awakened apprehensions of their democratic supporters, are taking some steps for the national defence. Providence in mercy sends various premonitory warnings before the stroke of death proves fatal to the individual; and nations not less than single individuals have many opportunities of amendment afforded them, before the final and irreversible sentence is pronounced. But let us beware in time: there are limits not less to the mercy of God than the forbearance of man; and the nation is doomed to final and unpitied ruin, which, disregarding its duties even when traced in the light of a sunbeam, persists in a course of reckless security and impenetrable infatuation.