Chapter I (2)

Follies and schemes like these were discussed by the National Convention in the intervals between their acts of confiscation and blood; and to this intolerable tyranny the fanatics of liberty and equality designed to subject the people in the dearest and holiest relations of domestic life! But proscriptions and executions succeeded so rapidly, that the various projectors were swept off before their projects could be attempted in practice; till at length, when the remaining members of that nefarious assembly, after the death of Robespierre, had acquired some feeling of personal safety, the Normal Schools were established, in which the art of teaching was to be taught. ♦NORMAL SCHOOLS.♦ And now, it was proclaimed, the regeneration of the human mind would be effected; now, for the first time upon earth, Nature, Truth, Reason, and Philosophy would have their seminary! The most eminent men in talents and science were to be professors in this institution; from all parts of the republic the most promising subjects were to be selected by the constituted authorities, and sent to the metropolis as pupils: and when they should have completed the course of human knowledge, the disciples of these great masters, thoroughly imbued with the lessons which they had received, were to return to their respective places of abode, and repeat them throughout the land, which would thus, in its remotest parts, receive light from Paris, as from the focus of intellectual illumination. Fourteen hundred young men were in fact brought from the country; and, that nothing might be lost to mankind, the conferences in which universal instruction was to be communicated were minuted in short-hand. So notable a plan excited great enthusiasm in Paris; it soon excited as much ridicule: in the course of three months both pupils and professors discovered in how absurd a situation they were placed; it was acknowledged in the National Convention that the scheme had altogether failed; and thus ended what was properly called the organized quackery of the Normal Schools[8].

♦CONSEQUENCES OF THESE VISIONARY SCHEMES.♦

Meantime the irrecoverable years were passing on, and the rising generation was sacrificed to the crude theories and ridiculous experiments of sophists in power; men whose ignorance might deserve compassion, if their absurdity did not provoke indignation as well as contempt, and their presumptuous wickedness call for unmingled abhorrence. When the subject was renewed under the consular government, the frightful consequences had become too plain to be dissembled. A view of the moral and religious state of France was drawn up from official reports which were sent in from every department, and it was acknowledged that the children throughout the republic had been left to run wild in idleness during the whole preceding course of the revolution. ♦ANALYSE DES PRÒCES VÉRBAUX, QUOTED BY PORTALIS. L. GOLDSMITH, RECUEIL, T. I. P. 282.♦ “They are without the idea of a God,” said the Report, “without a notion of right and wrong. The barbarous manners which have thus arisen have produced a ferocious people, and we cannot but groan over the evils which threaten the present generation and the future.”

♦ATTACHMENT OF THE JACOBINES TO BUONAPARTE.♦

It suited the views of Buonaparte that his government should hold this language while he was negotiating the _Concordat_, for the sake of obtaining the papal sanction to his authority. Perhaps he was then hesitating whether to take the right hand way or the left; whether to build up again the ruined institutions of France, strengthen the throne on which he had resolved to take his seat by an alliance with the altar; and in restoring to the kingdom all that it was possible to restore while he retained the sovereignty to himself, engraft upon the new dynasty those principles which had given to the old its surest strength when it was strongest, and a splendour, of which no change of fortune could deprive it. Two parties would be equally opposed to this, the Jacobines and the Royalists. The latter it was impossible to conciliate: they would have stood by the crown even if it were hanging upon a bush; but their allegiance being founded upon principle and feeling, ... upon the sense of honour and of duty, ... would not follow the crown when it was transferred by violence and injustice from one head to another. He found the Jacobines more practicable. They indeed had many sympathies with Buonaparte: he favoured that irreligion to which they were fanatically attached, because it at once flattered their vanity and indulged their vices; his schemes of conquest offered a wide field for their ambition and their avarice: and what fitter agents could he desire than men who were troubled with no scruples of conscience or of honour; whom no turpitude could make ashamed; who shrunk from no crimes, and were shocked by no atrocities? Thus Buonaparte judged concerning them, and he reasoned rightly. The Jacobines both at home and abroad became his most devoted and obsequious adherents: they served him in England as partizans and advocates, denying or extenuating his crimes, justifying his measures, magnifying his power, and reviling his opponents; on the Continent they co-operated with him by secret or open treason, as occasion offered; in France they laid aside in his behalf that hatred to monarchy which they had not only professed but sworn, and swearing allegiance to a military despotism, gave that despotism their willing and zealous support.

♦A SYSTEM OF EDUCATION NECESSARY FOR HIS VIEWS.♦

Such persons were still a minority in France; but their activity, their arts, and their audacity supplied the want of numbers. It was essential to his views that a succession of such men should be provided, and that the French nation should by the sure process of education be moulded to his will, and made to receive the stamp of his iron institutions. Many of the clergy, when the proscription which had driven them from their country was removed, had opened schools on their return from exile, as the readiest means of obtaining a maintenance for themselves and of performing their Christian duties. Their success was incompatible with Buonaparte’s policy: he wanted not a moral and a religious[9], but a military people. After some preparatory attempts, all tending to the same object, the Imperial University was established; ... a name which, it was admitted, had altogether a different signification from what it bore under the old order of things. The legitimate principle was proclaimed, that the direction of public education belongs to the state; the intolerant one was deduced and put in practice, that therefore a monopoly of education should be vested in the new establishment.

♦IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY.♦

At the head of this University there was a Grand Master, for whom Buonaparte, indulging in such things his own taste as well as that of the French people, appointed a splendid costume; his civil-list was 150,000 francs, and he had the power of nominating to all the inferior appointments, ... an enormous influence, if it had been intended that he should be any thing more than the mere organ of the Emperor’s will. There were under him a chancellor, a treasurer, with salaries of 15,000 francs each; ten counsellors for life, twenty counsellors in ordinary, the former with salaries of 10, the latter of 6,000 francs; and thirty inspectors general, whose salary was 6,000 also, and whose travelling expenses were paid. Next in rank were the Rectors of Academies: this too was an old word with a new signification. There were to be as many Academies in the empire as there were courts of appeal. Each Rector had an establishment for his inferior jurisdiction analogous to that of the Grand Master; his salary was 6,000 francs, with 3,000 for his official expenses, and the additional emolument which he derived as Dean of the Faculties. He ranked with the Bishop of the diocese; and the rivalry which this pretension occasioned was in no degree mitigated by the spirit in which the Imperial University was founded and administered. The Faculties, or Schools of Theology, Jurisprudence, Medicine, Physical Sciences, and Literature, were under the Rector’s authority, as were the Lyceums, Colleges, _Institutions_, _Pensions_, and even the Primary Schools, which were not considered as beneath the cognizance of the University, although the government had taken care that even these should not be under the direction of the clergy, having committed them to the superintendence of a certain number of inhabitants, among whom the parochial priest had only a single voice. All seminaries, therefore, of every kind belonged to the University, and contributed in no small degree to its revenues. For it was not only required that every person who opened a _Pension_ or _Institution_ must be a graduate, but also that he must take out a brevet from the Grand Master, the price of which varied from 200 to 600 francs, and which was to be renewed at the same cost every ten years. Besides these decennial droits, a fourth part of the same sum was exacted annually; and a tax was levied upon the pupils of five per cent. upon what they paid to the master. It was the purpose of the government to discourage these schools, which, as being mostly in the hands of the clergy, were nowise congenial with the principles and views of Buonaparte: therefore they were thus heavily taxed; and lest they should be supported in spite of all discouragement, a decree was issued, declaring that the Lyceums might at any time fill up their numbers by taking from the nearest _Pensions_ or _Institutions_ as many pupils above the age of nine as would complete their complement. The precise effect of this iniquitous decree was, that exactly in proportion as any particular Lyceum was known to be ill conducted, and as parents were unwilling to entrust their children there, it became impossible for any better seminary to exist in its neighbourhood.

♦COMMUNAL COLLEGES.♦

There were two other kind of seminaries which it was in like manner the intention of the Imperial government to destroy by indirect means, ... the Communal Colleges and the Ecclesiastical Schools. More than four hundred of the former had been founded at the expense of their respective _communes_, as soon as any hope appeared that a settled order of things might be maintained in France. But because every thing far and near was regulated by the new despotism, the money which they levied upon themselves for this purpose went, like other imposts, to the capital: and was thrown into a common fund, from whence an allowance to each particular college was made, not according to its necessary expenditure, but according to the pleasure of the minister to whom the distribution was confided. Thus the design of starving the colleges, and rendering the _communes_ weary of a voluntary tax from which no benefit was derived, was in most cases easily effected; and where the inhabitants of a town, being more desirous of supporting such an establishment, supplied the deficiency of the fund by fresh subscriptions, the University interfered, to harass and disgust them by means contradictory in appearance, but tending to the same end. Being vested with authority over the Regents, it appointed and superseded them at pleasure, removing to the Lyceums those who had deserved the confidence of the neighbourhood, and supplying their place by incompetent and worthless adventurers; it forced upon the colleges professors of sciences which were not taught there, or it forbade them to pursue the same branches of education if they were teaching them with success. Very few of these establishments, and those only in the remotest provinces, escaped the effects of this insidious hostility. ♦ECCLESIASTICAL SCHOOLS.♦ The Ecclesiastical Schools had been instituted as seminaries for the priesthood by the Bishops, and were founded and supported by contributions. Some were placed in cities where they were under the Bishop’s immediate inspection, and became especial objects of his care; others were fixed in the country, that they might be removed from the corruption of great towns. The children of the poor who appeared by their talents and disposition to be fit subjects for the ministry, were educated there gratuitously; those of the wealthy for a moderate payment. The Romish clergy have always understood that where religious feeling exists, money is never wanting for religious purposes. Poor as Buonaparte had left the Gallican church, large buildings were now bought or erected for these seminaries, and furnished and supported with a liberality which manifested that in the provinces at least there was more religion than suited the wishes of the imperial government. Effectual means therefore were pursued for degrading and destroying them. It was decreed that not more than one should be allowed in a department, and that that one must be in a large town where there should be a Lyceum: all others were to be shut up within a fortnight after the promulgation of the law, and their property, moveable and immoveable, applied to the use of the University. The pupils were compelled to attend the Lyceums, and go through the same course of mathematical studies as if they had been designed for the army; they were not allowed to keep the church festivals as holidays, although they wore the habit of ecclesiastical students, and their masters were ranked below those of the meanest boarding-school. The object of the government in thus mortifying the teachers would be defeated by the wise policy of the Romish church, which has taught its ministers to regard every act of humiliation as adding to their stock of merits; the design of disgusting the students with their profession, by the contempt to which they were exposed in what were essentially military academies, and of unfitting them for their intended profession by an intercourse with military pupils, was likely to be more successful.

♦LYCEUMS.♦

It was through the Lyceums more than any other of his institutions that Buonaparte expected to perpetuate the new order of things: in these academies it was, that, by a system such as a Jesuit might have devised for the use of a Mamaluke Bey, he trained up the youth of France to become men after his own heart. It was laid down as a maxim by the government that all public education ought to be regulated upon the principles of military discipline, not on those of civil or ecclesiastical police. In the Lyceums, therefore, the pupils were distributed not in forms, or classes, but in companies, each having its serjeant and its corporal; and an officer-instructor, as he was called, taught the use of arms to all above twelve years of age, and drilled them in military manœuvres. He was present to superintend all their movements, which were so many evolutions, or marches. The punishments in use were arrest and imprisonment; and for their meals, their studies, their lessons, their sports, prayers, mass, going to bed, and getting up, signal was given by beat of drum. ♦FIRST CATECHISM.♦ The youth who were thus trained up in military habits had been taught, in their first catechism, that they owed to their Emperor Napoleon love, respect, obedience, fidelity, military services, and the contributions required for the preservation and defence of the empire, and of his throne: that God, who creates empires and disposes of them according to his will, had, by endowing Napoleon with a profusion of gifts as well in peace as in war, made him the minister of his power, and his image upon earth: to honour and serve the Emperor was therefore the same thing as to honour and serve God; and they who violated their duty towards him, would resist the order which God himself had established, and render themselves worthy of eternal damnation. The religious sanction which was thus given to his authority had its full effect in childhood, and when this feeling lost its influence, devotion to the Emperor had become a habit which every thing around them contributed to confirm and strengthen. There were 150 exhibitions, or burses, appointed for every Lyceum: twenty were of sufficient amount to cover the whole expense of the boys’ education and maintenance; the others were called half or three-quarter burses, and the relatives of those who obtained them made up the sum which was deficient. The money for these foundations was of course drawn from the public taxes: a third part was even raised by an extra and specific impost upon the respective _communes_. But in the eyes of the pupils every thing flowed from the Emperor himself: he was their immediate benefactor, as well as their future and sure patron; and they looked to him with gratitude and hope at an age when these generous feelings are the strongest. ♦SPECIAL MILITARY ACADEMIES.♦ Two hundred and fifty chosen youths were transferred every year to the special military academies, where they were supported by the state; and from whence the army was supplied with a succession of young men, thoroughly educated for their profession, and thoroughly attached to the Emperor Napoleon. Others were appointed to such civil offices as they seemed best qualified to fill, and they carried with them the same attachment to revolutionary principles, and to the person of Buonaparte. This was not all. Buonaparte, far-sighted when not blinded by vanity, or dazzled by ambition, made use of the Lyceums to assist in securing his conquests. ♦YOUTHS FROM THE CONQUERED COUNTRIES.♦ Two thousand four hundred youths, chosen from the foreign territories which had been annexed to France, were educated in these academies at the public expense. This measure, said Fourcroy (by whom the scheme of the University was framed), was so congenial with the times, that its advantages would be perceived by all who were capable of understanding the existing circumstances. The inhabitants, he said, who spake a language of their own, and were accustomed to their own institutions, must relinquish their old usages, and adopt those of their new country: they had not the means at home of giving their children the education, the manners, and the character, which were to identify them with the French. What more advantageous destiny could be prepared for them than that which the new system offered? and what more efficacious resource could be given to the government, which had nothing more at heart than to bind these new citizens to the French empire?... Bound to it, indeed, they would thus be; the youths by the effect of the education which they received; the parents because the children were hostages for their forced allegiance.

♦MORAL EFFECT OF THE LYCEUMS.♦

Thus was the scheme of the Lyceums well suited both to the foreign and domestic policy of Buonaparte. The tone of morals which prevailed in these academies is said to have been not less congenial to his purposes. If, indeed, in happier countries, and where the intention is that better principles should be carefully inculcated, schools still are places where good dispositions incur some danger of contamination, and where evil ones have their worst propensities nurtured, and forced as if in a hotbed, what was to be expected from a system of education planned and directed by men who had grown up during the revolution, or who had taken part in it, and gone through the course of its crimes, ... its agents, or its creatures? A thorough corruption, under the appearance of that regularity which military order produced; a cold irreligion, with which the youths went through the external practices of devotion as they went through the drill; a calculating spirit of insubordination, never breaking out but in concerted movements; speculating selfishness, premature ambition, ferocious manners; ... ♦GENIE DE LA REVOLUTION. T. 1. 392.♦ these were to be expected, and by these, it is said, the Lyceums were characterised.

♦SYSTEM OF INSPECTION.♦

The _Proviseurs_ (or masters), the censors, and the teachers in the Lyceums and Colleges (which latter were regarded as secondary schools), were bound to celibacy: the professors might marry, but in that case they were not allowed to lodge within the precincts, nor might any woman enter there. Every academy had one or two inspectors, whose business it was from time to time to visit all the Lyceums and inferior schools within their respective districts, and see that the rules of the University were strictly observed; and lest this examination should be carelessly or unfaithfully performed, there were from twenty to thirty general inspectors. The members of the University were bound each to inform the Grand Master and his officers of any thing contrary to the rules, which might occur within their knowledge: they were bound to obey him in whatever he might command for the Emperor’s service; and whosoever was expelled, or left the University without a letter of dismission, became thereby incapable of holding any civil employment. The pupils were not permitted to correspond with any persons except their parents, or persons acting for their parents; and all letters which they received or wrote passed through the hands of the censor.

♦UNIFORMITY OF EDUCATION.♦

The University was one of Buonaparte’s favourite plans: it well exemplifies his precipitate temper and his thorough despotism. In the edict which erected it, the Napoleonic dynasty was styled the conservator of the liberal ideas which the French constitutions had announced; ... that very edict was an act for enforcing uniformity of education throughout the empire! All persons who were previously employed in tuition were by this act incorporated as members of the University, without their consent, and bound to all its regulations: they were compelled to change the course of instruction to which they had been accustomed, and to follow a prescribed form, whether they approved it or not: they were subjected to the inquisitorial visits of the inspectors, and to the arbitrary power of the Grand Master: they were heavily taxed for the support of this system, and ultimately were to be sacrificed to it; for it was the declared intention of government gradually to diminish the number of their schools till they should all be shut up, for the purpose of multiplying the Lyceums. The insolent injustice of such a measure would produce disgust and consequent neglect in many instances, the suddenness of the change would occasion disorder and confusion in all; and the itinerant inspectors were less likely to amend what was amiss, than to act in a vexatious spirit of interference, or with corrupt connivance, according as the views and temper of the individual inclined him to the one abuse or to the other. Except the miserable schoolmasters who were pressed into the University, its other members were taken from such persons hanging loose upon society as had interest enough to obtain the better appointments, or were forlorn enough to accept the worst. Yet from some thousands of men, not prepared by previous habitudes and studies, not selected for the fitness of their acquirements, their talents, or their disposition to the course of life in which they were to be placed, but brought together by the drag-net of despotism, Buonaparte expected and demanded that singleness of purpose, that totality of interests, that subserviency of all the parts to the whole, that disciplined unanimity which had existed among the Jesuits, and was the perfection of their consummate system. But the great object of his policy was answered; the youth of France were brought up in military habits; they were taught from their earliest boyhood to look to him for patronage, and to consider their own advancement as connected with the prosperity and permanence of his empire: if the moral and religious part of their education was worse than neglected, it mattered not, or rather it accorded with his views and wishes; they were then fitter instruments for the work in which they were to be employed.

♦EFFECTS OF THE REVOLUTION UPON MORALS.♦

The revolution had seared the feelings and hardened the hearts of a light-minded people: this was the natural effect of its horrors and of the ruin which it had spread[10]. That immorality which a succession of vicious courts had encouraged by their example, was released by the revolution from all restraints of law and of external decorum. ♦FREQUENCY OF DIVORCES.♦ The religious sanction of marriage was destroyed, and the unbounded facility of divorce rendered the civil ceremony a mere form, which was no longer binding than till one of the parties might choose to throw off the engagement. ♦OBSCENE PUBLICATIONS.♦ The literature of France, always, to the disgrace of the nation, more licentious than that of any other country, became, under the perfect freedom of the press, obscene to a degree too loathsome for expression; the arts were prostituted to the same devilish purpose; and the line of distinction between vice and virtue, which can never be too strongly marked, was as completely effaced in general practice as in the theories of those sophists who have laboured to corrupt their fellow-creatures. Such things were beneath the consideration of a legislature which arrogated to itself the praise of philosophical liberality; or, rather, they accorded with the views of that foul philosophy, which, regarding man as a mere material machine, would degrade him to the condition of the beasts that perish. Gambling, also, which every government that regards the welfare of its subjects endeavours to check by salutary laws, was encouraged by authority in France. ♦GAMING-HOUSES ESTABLISHED BY GOVERNMENT.♦ Every week two or three lotteries were drawn, in which the poorest of the poor were tempted to engage, there being shares as low as sixpence. Nor must it be supposed that this measure was defended upon the specious ground that governments ought to regulate the vices which they cannot prevent, and therefore may allowably make them conducive to the advantage of the state. The French government legalized this vice in its fullest extent, took to itself a monopoly of the gaming-houses, farmed them at one time, and afterwards administered them by agents of its own. This profligate measure originated with the Directory, and was continued by Buonaparte: whatever tended to make men prodigal and desperate accorded with the spirit of his system, and under that system every thing tended to that effect.

♦ABOLITION OF PRIMOGENITURE.♦

Of all the previous measures of the revolutionists there was none which more entirely suited his views than the abolition of the law of primogeniture; that law, which perhaps, next to the institution of marriage, has produced more good, moral and political, than any other act of human legislation. The revolutionists were not mistaken when they believed that that structure of social order which it was their determination to destroy rested upon this basis; and they were too short-sighted to perceive that in breaking it up they were acting as pioneers to prepare the way for despotism. Buonaparte was thus enabled to surround himself with an aristocracy of his own making, who possessed no natural influence in the country, who represented none of its interests, who had no inheritance of honour to maintain and to bequeath, but were his mere creatures and dependents. In this respect the government of France under the Emperor Napoleon was assimilated to the barbarous despotisms of Persia and Turkey: and this was the direct consequence of a measure, which was intended to secure and perpetuate the triumph of liberty and equality! But it was not the only consequence: the evil extended throughout the whole middle class of society. The best motive whereby men are induced to labour for the accumulation of wealth, the motive by which a propensity, mean in itself, is exalted and refined, was removed when the hope of building up a family was taken away. Mansions would not be erected, and domains ornamented and improved, when, upon the death of the proprietor, the estates were to be divided. There no longer existed the same means for that liberal expenditure which called forth ingenuity, encouraged the arts, and afforded employment to useful industry in all its branches. Properties were broken down, which in former times enabled the father to set his younger children fairly forward in the world, and the heads of families to assist their relatives, ... from pride sometimes, if a kindlier principle were wanting. And as estates by this levelling act were divided into smaller and smaller portions at every descent, more adventurers were thrown upon the public with less parental aid. The political system of the revolutionists, like their godless philosophy, looked to the present alone, deriving no wisdom from the past, and having for the future neither care nor hope.

♦BARBARIZING EFFECTS OF THIS MEASURE.♦

The growth of that middle order was thus prevented in which the strength of civil society mainly consists; which is the most favourable to the developement of our intellectual faculties, and to the improvement of our moral nature; to knowledge, and contentment, and virtue; to public freedom, individual happiness, and general prosperity. No measure could more certainly tend to perpetuate barbarous institutions than one by which property was thus divided in every generation: and the state of things among the Huns and Tartars of old scarcely operated more exclusively to form a military people than all the circumstances of France under its military Emperor. The conscription was as indiscriminate as the plague, and less to be averted by any human means: it mattered not what might be the inclinations of the youth, nor what the wishes, principles, and feelings of the parents; he must take the chance of the lot, and as Buonaparte became more eager in his ambition and more prodigal in his expenditure of life, there was scarcely a chance of escaping from it. The chief object of education was to train up the boys in military habits and propensities; and the military was the only profession which offered any thing to their hopes. Commerce had been almost destroyed, less by the maritime war than by the tyranny of Buonaparte, who, in the vain desire of ruining Great Britain, cared not what injury he brought upon his own subjects and his dependent states. Few persons would engage in the study of the liberal professions, because it was not in their free choice to follow them. The official business of the state no longer offered, as in former times, a sure and honourable path to promotion and public esteem; it was reduced to the wretched art of doing whatever the Emperor required, supplying immediate wants by temporary shifts, enforcing oppressive edicts, defending acts of perfidy, inhumanity, and flagrant wrong, and promoting a system of despotism and delusion by all the aids of systematic falsehood. ♦DEGRADATION OF THE CHURCH.♦ And the Church was in a state of degradation as complete as that to which Julian would have reduced it; it had been stripped of its respectability as well as of its wealth. Buonaparte had hardly condescended to treat its re-establishment as any thing more than a mere matter of expediency: and when the Pope was brought to Paris for the purpose of crowning a man who had publicly professed himself an enemy to the Cross, the ceremonies of his reception were performed in a spirit of mockery which it was scarcely attempted to conceal. The Bishops of the new establishment, indeed, were not wanting in endeavours to deserve the Emperor’s favour; they uttered their maledictions against England, as Balaam would fain have done against the Israelites; and in strains of blasphemous adulation they addressed Buonaparte as one whom the Lord had brought out of the land of Egypt to be the man of his own right hand, the Cyrus whom God had chosen for the accomplishment of his inscrutable designs in regard to the nations of the earth, the Christ of providence, the lion of the tribe of Judah! But if this impious flattery gratified the tyrant to whom it was addressed, it contributed still farther to degrade the clerical character in public estimation. The constitutional clergy were regarded as little better than schismatics by those persons who retained a rooted attachment to the religion of their fathers: hence, in the interior, the churches were deserted by the devout as well as by the infidel; and they who were near enough the frontier went to partake of the ordinances and receive confirmation, from a foreign clergy, because they had no reverence for their own. Public opinion being so decidedly against the national priests, and their stipends precarious in all places, and at the best barely sufficient for a decent maintenance, it followed, as a natural consequence, that a supply of ministers for the service of the altar could not be found. Thus while the laws made every youth look to a military life as the probable allotment of destiny from which he could not escape, the circumstances of France were such as to take away all desire for any other profession.

♦STATE OF EUROPE.♦

At the head of a nation whose whole activity and talents were thus directed to war as the only pursuit, Buonaparte had realised those schemes of ambition which Louis XIV. had been prevented from accomplishing by Marlborough’s consummate abilities as a statesman and a general. He had effected all, and more than all that Louis had designed. The Austrian Netherlands, and all the German states as far as the Rhine, were annexed to France, and the European powers who were most injured and endangered by this usurpation acquiesced in it with hopeless submission. Beyond the Rhine the French were in possession of many strong places, which gave them access into the heart of Germany. Buonaparte was King of Italy, as well as Emperor of France. One of his brothers had been made King of Holland, a second King of Naples, and a third King of Westphalia, all in immediate dependence upon him as the head and founder of the Napoleonic dynasty. The Holy German Empire, ... the Empire, as by a prouder and exclusive title it claimed to be called, ... that venerable and mighty body of which the complicated confusion had hitherto, so it was boasted, been divinely preserved, was dissolved by the defection of its members, and the abdication of its chief. The secondary, and all the inferior powers of which it had been composed, had contracted under the name of the Confederation of the Rhine, federatively and individually an alliance with the Emperor Napoleon, offensive and defensive, whereby they were virtually rendered so many feuds of France: the force which they were to bring into the field was determined; and to enable them to raise their respective contingents, the conscription was introduced into these states, as the accompanying curse of French alliance. This Confederacy was extended from Bavaria and the frontiers of Switzerland, to the banks of the Elbe. Switzerland acknowledged Buonaparte as its protector, and continued in peace, with something of the appearance, but little of the reality of independence, till it should suit his purpose to assume the sovereignty without disguise. Prussia, beaten, humbled and dismembered, seemed to exist only by his sufferance. Austria, after three struggles against revolutionary France, each more lamentably misconducted and more disastrous than the last, divorced from the empire, despoiled of the Netherlands, the Brisgaw, the Frickthal, the Vorarlberg, the Tyrol, and all its Italian territories, had no other consolation in the ignominious peace to which it had been forced than that of seeing the house of Brandenburg soon afterwards reduced to a state of greater humiliation. Denmark was in alliance with France, the government rather than the nation co-operating heartily with Buonaparte. Sweden, with an insane king, and a discontented people, maintained against him a war which was little more than nominal. Russia, the only country which seemed secure in its distance, its strength, and the unanimity of its inhabitants, ... the only continental state to which the rest of Europe might have looked as to a conservative power, ... Russia appeared to be dazzled by Buonaparte’s glory, duped by his insidious talents, and blindly subservient to his ambition. Spain was entirely subject to his control, its troops and its treasures were more at the disposal of the French government than of its own. Portugal had hitherto been suffered to remain neutral, because Buonaparte from time to time extorted large sums from the Court as the price of its neutrality, and because the produce of the Spanish mines found their way safely through the British cruisers, under the Portugueze flag. England alone perseveringly opposed the projects of this ambitious conqueror, and prevented the possibility of his accomplishing that scheme of universal dominion, which had it not been for her interference he believed to be within his reach.

♦STATE OF ENGLAND.♦

The situation of England in the year 1807 was more extraordinary than any that is exhibited in the history of former times. After a war, which with the short interval of the peace of Amiens had continued fifteen years, and at the commencement of which all Europe had been leagued with her against revolutionary France, her last reliance upon the continental governments had failed; most of her former allies were leagued against her, and it was manifest that the few states which still preserved a semblance of neutrality, would soon in like manner be compelled into a confederacy with France. The French army and the English navy, two more tremendous powers than old times had ever seen, were opposed to each other without the possibility of coming in conflict. Masters as the French were on the continent, all thoughts of attacking them by land were at an end, and neither they nor their allies dared show their flag upon the sea. England could not in any way lessen the power of France, neither could France subdue, nor in any way weaken England. The threat of invasion had been laid aside: it had been seriously intended by Buonaparte, but the spirit with which the English people flew to arms intimidated him, and his gun-boats were left to rot in the harbours where with so much cost and care they had been collected. Secured against any such evil by our fleets, and still more by our internal strength, we were carrying on the war equally without fear and without hope.

♦DUKE OF PORTLAND’S ADMINISTRATION.♦

The state of our home politics was not less remarkable. For the first time Great Britain was under an administration without a name; its ostensible head the Duke of Portland never appeared in parliament, and was neither spoken of, nor thought of by the public. He deserves, however, an honourable memorial in British history, for having accepted office in a time of peculiar and extreme difficulty, and thereby enabled the King to form a ministry whose opinions were in unison with his own principles and feelings, and with the wishes and true interests of his people. The other ministers held their places less by their own strength than by the weakness of their opponents, for of all administrations, that to which they had succeeded had been the most unpopular. From their want of influence in the country, the powerful families being mostly with the opposition, it was thought that they depended too much upon the personal favour of the sovereign, and were more literally the King’s servants than is consistent with the spirit of the constitution. Their talents had not been put fairly to the proof, and the nation had not as yet learned to appreciate the cool clear judgement of Lord Hawkesbury, the finished oratory of Mr. Canning, and the activity and intrepidity of Mr. Percival, always ready and always right-minded. While Pitt and Fox were living, every man believed either in one or in the other; one party was perfectly satisfied that all the measures of the minister were right, and the other as confidently expected that notwithstanding the evil consequences of his mispolicy and his misfortunes, the country was to be saved as soon as their political redeemer came into power. From this comfortable state, wherein faith supplied the place of reason, they were disturbed by the death of both these leaders, neither of whom left a successor, but both exaggerated reputations. It became the general complaint that there was no man or set of men in whom the nation had any confidence. Some persons apprehended from this a dangerous indifference in the public toward parliament itself. Others hoped that as the people were weary of factious debates, parliament would no longer be made a theatre of faction, but that measures would be discussed with a view to the common weal, and no longer solely with reference to the party by which they were brought forward.

The opposition consisted of the most heterogeneous and discordant materials. The Grenville party had a just view of the dangers of the country, and a right feeling for its honour. They were sincerely attached to the monarchy, to the Church of England, and to the existing constitution of the state: therefore they steadily and manfully resisted the measures of pretended reform which were brought forward sometimes by mistaken, sometimes by designing men, as leading with sure tendency to a mob-government, and all its certain horrors. They knew also that hopeless as the war might seem, it was our safest position, and that peace could not be made without disgrace and imminent danger, so long as the continent of Europe was under the control of France. But while they thus entirely agreed with the government in the fundamental principles of its policy foreign and domestic, they opposed it in all the details of administration with a factious animosity, which seemed to show how deeply they resented their dismissal from power: and thus they lost with the nation much of that weight which they must otherwise have possessed by reason of their acknowledged ability, their constitutional principles, and their high personal character. Still, however, they were regarded with a certain degree of respect, which was not the case with the remains of Mr. Fox’s party. ♦THE FOXITES.♦ The Foxites, from the beginning of the war, through all its changes had uniformly taken part against their country; consistent in this and in nothing else, they had always sided with the enemy, pleading his cause, palliating his crimes, extolling his wisdom, magnifying his power, vilifying and accusing their own government, depreciating its resources, impeding its measures, insulting its allies, calling for disclosures which no government ought to make, and forcing them sometimes from the weakness and the mistaken liberality of their opponents. Buonaparte, as Washington had done before him, relied upon their zeal and virulence; and they by their speeches and writings served him more effectually upon the continent and in France itself, than all the manifestoes of his ministers, and the diatribes of his own press. In future ages it will be thought a strange and almost incredible anomaly in politics, that there should have existed in the legislature of any country a regular party, organised and acknowledged as such, whose business it was to obstruct the proceedings of government, and render it by every possible means contemptible and odious to the people; a party always in semi-alliance with the enemy, who in times of difficulty and danger prophesied nothing but failure, disgrace, and ruin; and whose systematic course of conduct, if it had been intended to bring about the fulfilment of their predictions, could not have been more exactly adapted to that object.

♦ATTEMPTS TO RAISE A CRY FOR PEACE.♦

The Foxites, before they were admitted into office, had pertinaciously insisted upon the practicability and ease of making peace; this opinion could not be maintained while they were in power, and their dismission was at this time so recent, that it could not as yet decently be resumed. Attempts, however, to raise a popular cry for peace were made by certain manufacturers whose trade was at a stand: they were assisted by many of those persons who in strict adherence to the phraseology as well as the principles of the puritans, call themselves religious professors, and by some other conscientious but inconsistent men, who while they admit that the necessity of war must be allowed in just cases, exclaim in all cases against the practice, setting their compassionate feelings in array against reason, and against the manlier virtues. ♦SUPERSTITION CONCERNING BUONAPARTE.♦ A superstition concerning Buonaparte was mingled with this womanish sensibility. They who had not lost sight of his enormities doubted whether he were the Beast, whose number they contrived to discover in his name; ... or Antichrist himself. Others whom he had in some degree conciliated by his various aggressions upon the papal power, forgave him his crimes because the Whore of Babylon happened to be among those whom he had plundered: they rather imagined him to be the Man upon the White Horse. In this, however, they were all agreed, that Providence had appointed him for some great[11] work: and it was an easy conclusion for those whose weak heads and warm imaginations looked no further, that it must be unavailing, if not impious, to oppose him.

♦ADMIRERS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.♦

This was a pitiable delusion: but more extraordinary was the weakness of those, who having been the friends of France at the commencement of the revolution, when they believed that the cause of liberty was implicated in her success, looked with complacency now upon the progress which oppression was making in the world, because France was the oppressor. They had turned their faces toward the east, in the morning, to worship the rising sun, and now when it was evening they were looking eastward still, obstinately affirming that still the sun was there. Time had passed on; circumstances were changed; nothing remained stationary except their understandings; and because they had been incapable of deriving wisdom from experience, they called themselves consistent; and because they were opposed in every thing to the views of their government, the hopes of their countrymen, and the honour and interest of their country, they arrogated to themselves the exclusive praise of patriotism! But the persons who from these various views and feelings united in calling for peace, were insignificant in number, and government had never at any time more certainly acted with the full concurrence of the nation, than in carrying on the war against Buonaparte.

♦INCREASED EXPENDITURE, ACTIVITY, AND WEALTH.♦

Heavy burthens had been incurred during this long and arduous contest. At the commencement of the year 1807, the annual expenditure was not less than seventy-two millions, and the national debt amounted to six hundred and twenty-seven. But hitherto the prosperity of the country had kept pace with its exertions. The wheels of the machine seemed rather to move more freely than to be impeded by the weight which was laid upon them; and the war created means for supporting its enormous demands, by the enterprise which it called into action, and the money which it put in circulation. All the manufactures connected with the numerous branches of the naval and military service were in full activity. Agricultural industry also received an impulse such as had never before been experienced; for the English being excluded from the Baltic, and holding relations of doubtful amity with the United States of America, were fain to depend upon themselves for produce, and the emergency produced commensurate exertions throughout the kingdom. The country banks supplied a currency without which these exertions could not have been made; every where wastes were brought into cultivation; and the agricultural labourers being every where employed at high wages, contributed by their increased expenditure to extend the prosperity of which they partook.

♦MANUFACTURING SYSTEM.♦

Other circumstances, connected with the progress of society, and leading beyond all doubt to the most perilous crisis which society has ever yet undergone, conduced at this time mainly to the service of the state, and enabled the government to raise a revenue and support fleets and armies upon a scale which even in the last generation could not have been contemplated as possible. As the drunkard derives a pleasurable sensation, and an immediate excitement from strong liquors which by their sure effect are producing organic derangement, incurable disease, and death, so the manufacturing system contributed at this time to the national wealth and strength, while it was poisoning the vitals of the commonwealth. Carried as it now appeared to be by mechanical ingenuity and power to its utmost extent, it enabled our merchants to supply the world with manufactured goods, and at so low a price, that the most severe enactments, enforced by the most vigilant precautions, could not exclude them from the continental markets. In vain did Buonaparte shut the ports of Europe against the British flag, thinking that by destroying that part of our revenue which is derived from foreign trade, he should cut the sinews of our strength; in vain did the American government co-operate with him by its non-importation acts; British goods still found their way every where, and the books of the custom-house proved a continual increase in our exports; while the internal commerce of the country (nine-elevenths of the whole), and that with Ireland and our foreign possessions (a large proportion of the remaining parts), flourished beyond all former example. The manufacturing system supplied the war with men as well as means; the necessity for hands in agriculture also being greatly diminished by improved modes of labour, and by the use of agricultural machines, we were enabled without violence or difficulty to maintain in arms a force scarcely inferior in numbers to that of the enemy with all their fivefold superiority of population. And thus the country was prevented from feeling the evil of that forced population which the manufacturing system and the poor laws had produced, and of the prevailing custom of educating youths of the middle rank for stations higher than that in which they were born, or had means to support.

♦WEAKNESS OF THE GOVERNMENT.♦

In resources therefore for maintaining war, the British government had never been so strong: and so far as Buonaparte reckoned upon our financial difficulties, and the want of men to resist him whenever and wherever he should bring his overwhelming force against us, he deceived himself, as much as when he supposed it possible to intimidate the British nation. But he reckoned also upon the weakness of our government, the aid which would be given him by a licentious press, and the progress of those insane opinions which lead to revolution and ruin. His councils were directed by a single will steadily to one end; and whatever he undertook was vigorously pursued, and with means proportioned to the object so as to render success certain, as far as depended upon well-concerted plans, adequate preparations, and military strength. But the constitution of a British cabinet, in which contrarious opinions are reconciled by concessions and compromises, seemed in time of war to insure vacillation and weakness. The whole conduct of the war had confirmed him in this judgement, which the history of all our wars since the days of Marlborough exemplifies. Every administration, this like the last, and the last like that before it, treading one after another in the same sheep-track of fatuity, proceeded without system, and with no other views than such as the chance and changes of the hour presented. Setting sail before the wind from whatever quarter it happened to blow, they steered a driftless course, though the shallows lay full before them. The same tardiness, the same indecision, the same half measures, the same waste of men and money in nugatory expeditions, had characterized them all. Moreover the government itself had been weakened by the concessions which faction, ever active and ever alert, had extorted from a series of feeble ministers during this long reign. At a time when discontent was at its height at the close of the American war, the House of Commons passed a resolution that the power of the Crown had increased, was increasing, and ought to be diminished; a resolution that carried with it its own refutation, being itself a decisive proof of the weakness of the government under which and against which it was passed. More than once had a ministry been forced upon the King in opposition to his own principles of policy, and his personal feelings. That which had happened might again happen; changes, always possible in a country which was governed so little by system, and so much by popular opinion, might again force the Whigs into power: ♦HOPES OF BUONAPARTE.♦ and under their ascendancy Buonaparte might reasonably expect to conclude a peace. With all the ports of the continent at his command he could build ships in any number, but it was only during peace that sailors could be trained to man them; a few years of peace would suffice for this, and then he might meet us on the seas with a superiority of force which would give him the power of landing an army at any time upon our shores. For this reason and for this alone, he was sincerely desirous of making peace with England, being the surest means by which he could hope to bring about the overthrow of this hated and otherwise invulnerable enemy. But while the war continued that enemy could do him no farther hurt, he was at leisure to continue his system of aggrandizement; wherever there was no sea to intervene, there was nothing to withstand him. His projects even in the fullest extent of their ambition were thought feasible by the public, who throughout Europe were dazzled by his success: his power appeared irresistible; and his empire was supposed by all persons to be firmly established, except by those who having a firm reliance upon the moral order of the world, believed that the triumph of evil principles could only endure for a time, and that no system can be permanent which is founded upon irreligion, injustice, and violence.