the peace of Tilsit left him undisputed master of the continent from the Elbe to the Adriatic, with Spain in vassalage, Denmark for his ally, and Russia moving like a puppet as he pulled the wires. That he aspired at universal empire was now scarcely disguised; it even seemed as if some drama of religious imposture was in preparation, and that he meant to enact the part of Mahomed as well as of Charlemagne. As in Egypt he had proclaimed that Destiny directed all his actions, and had decreed from the beginning of the world that after beating down the Cross he should come into that country to fulfil the task assigned him; so now he was addressed as the anointed Cyrus of the Lord-the living image of the Divinity-the mortal after God's own heart, to whom the fate of nations was entrusted ;-and in a catechism, which was to be the first thing taught throughout the French empire, it was inculcated in direct terms, that to honour and serve the Emperor was the same thing as to honour and serve God himself! Under these circumstances peace appeared more remote than ever. An attempt was made to obtain it under the motley administration of Lord Grenville and Mr. Fox, but even the Foxites while they were in power felt that peace was impossible. And on this occasion the opinion of the citizens of London was again manifested, as at the beginning of the war; for when the Lord Mayor communicated, on the Royal Exchange, the failure of the negociations, the persons who were present gave three cheers, expressing their preference of open war to an insidious peace, as any peace with Buonaparte must have been, and their approbation of the only course which was consistent with the safety and honour of the country. The usurpation of Portugal followed, and at the close of the year 1807, every state upon the continent had declared war against Great Britain, with the single exception of Sweden. The enemy was undisputed master of the land, but England retained the empire of the seas, and two mighty powers were thus opposed to each other which could not be brought in contact. There was no other hope at this time than what wise men derived from a conviction, that such a system of tyranny as that which Buonaparte had established could not possibly be permanent; but nothing like dismay was felt, nothing like despondency; the people were convinced that the continuance of the war was inevitable, and they knew that while it continued the country was safe. Things were in this state when Buonaparte kidnapped the royal family of Spain, and appointed his brother Joseph to reign in their stead. If error and guilt may be compared, the political blunder in this nefarious transaction was not inferior to the moral wickedness it gave us the most persevering nation in Europe for our ally, and it gave us also a fair field. From that time the war as sumed sumed a new character. They who were acquainted with the country which was now to become the scene of war, and the people with whom we were thus connected by no ordinary bond of alliance, but by inseparable interest as well as by the loftiest sympathy, felt a calm and settled assurance, that to whatever time the struggle might be prolonged it could only end in the full and entire deliverance of Spain. An impulse of the most generous, the most animating, the most inextinguishable hope was excited in every heart which was not withered by faction, or corrupted by a false and foul philosophy even to rottenness. There were such among us, but they were not numerous; and for a while the general and ebullient feeling with which all Britain overflowed imposed silence upon the lying lips. Even now it is delightful to look back upon that exhilarating time, when after so long and unmitigated a season, hope came upon us like the first breath of summer;— when we met with gladness in every countenance, congratulation in every voice, sympathy in every heart, and every man felt prouder than in all former times of the name of Englishman, of the part which his country had acted, and was still called upon to act. These very men who now tell us that the present distress is the effect of wars unjustly commenced and pertinaciously persisted in, when no rational object was to be obtained-these very men who tell us that the war was not popular, that it was the work of a corrupt Parliament and not of the people,-these very men belie themselves as well as their country. They knew that no object could be more rational than that for which the war was persisted in, no object more just, more necessary, more popular; they were not such idiots as to think otherwise, not such traitors to human nature, not such stocks or stones as to be unmoved: they partook the popular joy, the popular enthusiasm; they joined in the unanimous expression of public opinion, which called upon Government to assist the Spaniards with all the heart, and with all the soul, and with all the strength of England. It would be superfluous to retrace, however briefly, the course of the Peninsular war, fresh as it is in recollection, and recorded for everlasting remembrance, as the noblest portion of British history. During its progress we had indeed our 'battle critics' at home, who in their deliriums of dissatisfaction upon any advantage obtained by their country,' as Steele says of their predecessors in Marlborough's day, fought every action over again as the enemy's allies, represented our victories as defeats, and triumphantly proved that Lord Wellington was no general. And we had our wise men of the North, who came forward, like the son of Beor, to take up their prophecy in behalf of the Moabite; but the voice of the country country was in accord with its own honour and its duty; with its own dearest interests and with those of mankind. If the character of the enemy against whom we were contending had been any ways doubtful before the peace of Amiens, subsequent events had now cleared it from all ambiguity. Having touched upon the former part of Buonaparte's conduct, we will here complete the delineation; and for the benefit of those eminent patriots among us who look upon the Emperor Napoleon as the model of an enlightened prince, in as summary a manner as possible, enumerate some of the acts of this their beau idéal of a philosophical sovereign,-this Perfect Emperor of the British Liberales. It shall be no counterfeit likeness, nor heightened by any false colours; the man is depictured in his actions and in those of the government which was directed by his single will. There is no necessity for insisting upon the murder of Pichegru and of Captain Wright; faith depends in no little degree upon volition,-these things were done in a corner, and damning as the proofs are, the Liberales do not chuse to believe them. Letting therefore these counts of the indictment pass among other acts of supererogatory wickedness, we will enumerate only some of those deeds of individual cruelty and guilt which were committed in the face of the world, in open defiance of God and man, and which no person except an English mob-orator has ever dared either to deny or to defend :—the detention of the English travellers in France; the betrayal and imprisonment of Toussaint; the murder of the Duc d'Enghien; the murder of Palm; the murder of Hofer. These were the individual deeds of Buonaparte, his own peculiar acts, the cold and cowardly crimes of a heart incapable in its very nature of magnanimity, and malignant upon settled system. The tyranny of his home government extended to every thing. His merciless conscription placed all the youth of France at his disposal, and so largely did he draw upon this fund, and so lavishly did he squander it, that great as the population of France is, it was at length unable to answer the demand, and support his enormous expenditure of blood. The system of education was determined by law, and conducted upon the explicit maxim that all public education ought to be regulated on the principle of military discipline. The plan was framed partly in imitation of the Jesuits, partly of the Mamelukes; and as no person was permitted to act as tutor to another, except upon this plan of instruction, the study of Greek, the mother-tongue of liberty, was so far proscribed throughout France, that no person could acquire it by any other means than self-tuition. Every servant in Paris was registered, that the police might have a spy in every house. The number of printers was limited; only four newspapers in the capital were per permitted to touch on political events, and no newspaper or writing of any kind could be published without the inspection and approbation of the government.* To complete the tyranny, as the Bastile had been demolished at the beginning of the Revolution, Buonaparte appointed eight Bastiles in different parts of France, for the reception of persons whom it was convenient to hold in durance, and not convenient to bring to trial. Such was the system of government established in France by the Perfect Emperor of the Ultra-Whigs and Extra-Reformers. The foreign policy of Buonaparte united falsehood, treachery, frantic pride, and remorseless barbarity. Witness the noyades at St. Domingo; witness the commandant at † Cerigo, who in his official correspondence with his superior, informed him that being inconvenienced with about 600 Albanian refugees, he had disembarassed himself of them by poisoning their wells. Witness Holland, impoverished, deceived, oppressed, and finally usurped! Witness Germany, partitioned and re-partitioned, plundered, ravaged, and insulted, her children forced into the service of their enemy, and sacrificed by myriads to his insatiable lust of conquest! Witness Prussia, her wrongs, her long sufferings, her holy hatred, her glorious resurrection and revenge! Witness the black tragedy of the Tyrol! Witness Portugal, where, when the French entered professedly in peace and without the slightest opposition, they exacted a contribution, the amount of which was equal to a poll-tax of a guinea and a half per head, upon the whole population; and where, when they left it, they committed crimes and cruelties of so hellish a character, that it might almost be deemed criminal to recite them. Witness Spain! A certain great authority, indeed, to whose predictions we have before alluded, has said that the hatred of the name of a Frenchman in Spain has been such as the reality would by no means justify;' and that' the detestation of the French government had, among the inferior orders, been carried to a pitch wholly unauthorized by its proceedings towards them.' The treacherous seizure of their fortresses, the kidnapping of their royal family, to whom, whatever might be the merits of that family, the Spaniards were devotedly attached, and the usurpation of their throne and their country, might in the judgment of ordinary men be thought to authorize a considerable degree of detestation for the government by which such acts had been committed: so it should appear at first sight-to politicians gifted with the faculty of second sight, it may Incredible as the fact may appear, for its absurdity as well as the perverse disposi tion which it discovers, proposals were circulated in 1813 for reprinting the French Moniteur in London, because the English press was nearly in the same state of degradation as the press of Russia, and because important facts were often suppressed, coloured, and distorted in the English papers!'-Thus it is that faction makes men fools. The evidence for this atrocious fact may be seen in our Third Volume, p. 204. appear appear differently. But if to these wrongs we add the details of this struggle so inexpiably and ineffaceably disgraceful for France, practised as these advocates may be in the defence of bad causes, this would not be found one of those cases which can be tolerably plastered over with light cost of rough-cast rhetoric.' Let us not, however, lacerate the feelings of the reader with particularizing the horrors of that most atrocious warfare,-suffice it to mention as public, notorious, undeniable and official acts, the wholesale murders committed by the military tribunal at Madrid, under that General Grouchy whom the friends of liberty are now honouring with public dinners in America; the cruelties of Marshal Ney in Gallicia; the forepurposed massacres of Marshal Suchet; the decree of Marshal Soult for putting to death all persons who should be taken in arms against the intrusive government; and the decree of General Kellerman by which, after all horses of a certain standard were seized for the use of the French, the owners of those which were left, as being below the standard, or as being mares pregnant for more than three months, were ordered to put out the left eye of their beasts, or render them by other proper means unfit for military ser vice!-Such was the system carried on in foreign countries by the Perfect Emperor of the Ultra Whigs, and Extra Reformers. That any man should raise his voice in behalf of such a tyranny and such a tyrant is wonderful,-that any Englishman should do so is monstrous. The distinctions between right and wrong are broad and legible, and all men who have sufficient use of reason to be moral and accountable beings, are enabled by God to read them. But society has its idiots as well as nature: and the poor natural of the village workhouse who excites the mockery of brutal boys is less pitiable, in the eyes of thoughtful humanity, than be who, drunk with faction and inflamed with discontent, renders himself a fool at heart. It was against the tyrant by whom these infernal measures were enjoined, and against the atrocious army by which they were enforced in full rigour, that our war was waged, not against the French people. We and our allies fought, as the Common Council truly expressed it in their address to the Emperor of Russia, 'not to subdue but to deliver a misguided people;' and our efforts were crowned (to use the language of the same address) by the deliverance of the afflicted nations of Europe from the most galling oppression and unprecedented tyranny that ever visited the human race.' Who does not remember the universal joy which the overthrow of that tyranny produced? The sense of the country cannot be more faithfully expressed than it was by the same Common Council of London in their address to the Prince Regent. 'We cannot, Royal Sir,' said they, upon such an occasion, but look back with the highest admiration at the firmness, the wisdom, and the energy |