Chapter V: Preface (4)

It seems, however, that the view we have taken (in common with all civilized nations) of this subject, is ‘a sucker from the poisonous root of universal benevolence’; and Vetus’s prejudices, coupling with that _strumpet_ Reason, beget in his mind a sort of ‘mongrel metaphysical enthusiasm,’ in which he sees visions, and has revelations of the general nature of man. He tells us, we are regular adepts in that school which, under the direction of the goddess, or the strumpet, Reason, (for with him they are both the same) trampled on all human sensibilities, and the charities of private life, to offer them up as a sacrifice to that _monstrous fiction_, their country, and then to that _more monstrous fiction_, their kind. This is the most curious defence of patriotism we ever met with, and a striking instance of the pains which this laborious reasoner takes to confute himself. Our country, according to this patriotic writer, is ‘a perfect Scrub,’ a kind of Sin and Death business, a contradiction, and a dire chimera, ‘confiscating and appropriating the individual duties, rights, and charities of mankind—ransacking the deepest recesses of the heart, and seizing as prizes to her sovereign will the royalties and wrecks of human nature.’ It is ‘a superfine theory, inconsistent with the order of Providence, and destructive of the nature of man, and which, by pretending to raise us far above the pitch of humanity, degrades us below the level of brutes.’ But then ‘there is a phrenzy still greater’ than this, which is the love of mankind. This is the consummation of enormity, and the triumph of the strumpet-goddess. Vetus has here fallen into a more desperate dilemma than any he has yet encountered in his perilous way. We present him with the choice of a pair of alternatives: either he must mean that the love of the republic, or our country, which he treats with such profound contempt and abhorrence, is only bad when it destroys the private and natural affections, or he must exclude at once every shadow of regard to the rights, liberties, and happiness of mankind, and then the same thing will follow of patriotism itself, which, as he says truly, is an emanation from the same impure source, human reason, and so to establish his favourite principle of _exclusive_ patriotism, he gets rid of it altogether. ‘The latter end of this writer’s reasoning always forgets the beginning.’ We will tell Vetus the hinge on which this whole controversy turns, and what is the radical error of the system of general philanthropy, which he has attempted to expose. It is, that it is an _exclusive_ system, and is therefore unfitted for the nature of man, who is a mixed being, made up of various principles, faculties, and feelings. All these are good in their place and degree, as well as the affections that spring from them—natural affection, patriotism, benevolence: it is only _exclusive_ selfishness, _exclusive_ patriotism, _exclusive_ philanthropy, that are inconsistent with the order of Providence, and destructive of the nature of man: Vetus in avoiding one extreme has fallen into another, for the extremes not only ‘of faction’ but of folly meet; though we should be loth to compare the splendid dreams of the philosophical enthusiast, who wished to raise man above the pitch of his common nature, to the groveling, sordid, shuffling paradoxes of Vetus, who would degrade him below the level of the brutes, and whose maxims are as repugnant to common sense, and the practical rules of life, as they are devoid of every thing elegant in imagination, or consistent in reasoning.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF VETUS

(CONCLUDED)

‘What do you read, my lord?—Words, words, words.
What is the matter?——_Nothing_.’

_Jan. 5, 1814._

We gave in our last article Vetus’s quaint denunciation of the principles of patriotism and philanthropy. It appears by this, that the same ‘jargon of metaphysics,’ and the same vapid rhetoric may be employed against both these sacred and inviolable feelings, by any one who is weak and vain enough to suppose that language was given us, not to communicate truth to others, but to impose falsehood on ourselves. Does Vetus mean to assert, that his _topics_ are fatal to all patriotism, as well as all philanthropy? Or (which is the alternative) that they are fatal to neither, properly understood,—that there is a true and a false patriotism, a true and a false philanthropy? What will ‘the acknowledged saviours of Europe, the magnanimous defenders of the commonwealth of nations, the liberators of Spain, the recreators of Portugal, the regenerators of Germany,’ say to Vetus’s exclusive patriotism? Or, we would ask, whether the abuse of reason, of which he complains in certain moderns, is a sufficient cause that we should explode it altogether? In the dialect of Don Quixote’s books of chivalry, must ‘the unreasonableness of their reason so unreason our reason,’ that we are to reject the faculty, both root and branch? Shall we impiously renounce the goddess, because she has been personated by a strumpet? Reason is the queen of the moral world, the soul of the universe, the lamp of human life, the pillar of society, the foundation of law, the beacon of nations, the golden chain, let down from heaven, which links all animated and all intelligent natures in one common system—and in the vain strife between fanatic innovation, and fanatic prejudice we are exhorted to dethrone this queen of the world, to blot out this light of the mind, to deface this fair column, to break in pieces this golden chain! We are to discard and throw from us, with loud taunts and bitter imprecations, that reason, which has been the lofty theme of the philosopher, the poet, the moralist, and the divine, whose name was not first named to be abused by the enthusiasts of the French revolution, or to be blasphemed by the madder enthusiasts, their opponents, but is coeval with, and inseparable from the nature and faculties of man,—is the image of his Maker stamped upon him at his birth, the understanding breathed into him with the breath of life, and in the participation of which alone he is raised above the brute creation, and his own physical nature!—Vetus labours hard to persuade us, that the goddess and the strumpet are really one person, equally ‘convertible to the same abandoned purposes;’ that reason and sophistry are the same thing. He may find his account in endeavouring to confound them; but his indifference betrays the hollowness of his claims to true reason, as the false mother was detected by her willingness to compromise her own pretensions, only to be revenged on her rival.

Vetus has, however, without knowing it, stumbled on an important truth, which is, that patriotism, in modern times, and in great states, is and must be the creature of reason and reflection, rather than the offspring of physical or local attachment. Our country is a complex abstract existence, known only to the understanding. It is an immense riddle, containing numberless modifications of reason and prejudice, of thought and passion. Patriotism is not, in a strict or exclusive sense, a natural or personal affection, but a law of our rational and moral nature, strengthened and determined by particular circumstances and associations, but not born of them, nor wholly nourished by them. It is not possible that we should have an individual attachment to sixteen millions of men, any more than to sixty millions. We cannot be attached, except rationally and ‘logically,’ to places we never saw, and people we never heard of. Is not the name of Englishman a general term, as well as that of man? How many varieties does it not combine within it? Are the opposite extremities of the globe our native place, because they are a part of that geographical and political denomination, our country? Does natural affection expand in circles of latitude and longitude? What personal or instinctive sympathy has the English peasant with the African slave-driver, or East India nabob? None but the most ‘drawling hypocritical’ sophist will say that there is any. These wretched bunglers in metaphysics would fain persuade us to discard all public principle, and all sense of abstract justice, as a violation of natural affection, and yet do not see that the love of our country is itself in the order of our general affections, except, indeed, that exclusive sort which consists in a mere negation of humanity and justice. The common notions of patriotism are, in fact, transmitted to us from the savage tribes, or from the states of Greece and Rome, where the fate and condition of all was the same, or where the country of the citizen was the town in which he was born. Where this is no longer the case, where our country is no longer contained within the narrow circle of the same walls, where we can no longer behold its glimmering horizon from the top of our native mountains—beyond these limits it is not a natural but an artificial idea, and our love of it either an habitual dictate of reason, or a cant term. It was said by an acute observer, and eloquent writer, that the love of mankind was nothing but the love of justice: the same might be said, with considerable truth, of the love of our country. It is little more than another name for the love of liberty, of independence, of peace and social happiness. We do not say, that other indirect and collateral circumstances do not go to the superstructure of this sentiment, (as language,[12] literature, manners, national customs,) but this is the broad and firm basis. All other patriotism, not founded on, or not consistent with truth, justice, and humanity, is a painted sepulchre, fair without, but full of ravening and all uncleanness within. ‘It leaves our passions afloat, and ends with abusing them to crime and misery.’ It is the watchword of faction, the base pander of avarice and pride, the ready tool in the hands of those who, having no sense of public duty, and disclaiming all pretensions to common humanity, sacrifice the lives of millions to the madness of one, and are eager to offer up their country a devoted victim at the shrine of power, as the miserable slave is yoked to the foul Eastern idol,[13] and crushed beneath its chariot wheels! Thus the hired scribbler of a profligate newspaper sits secure and self-satisfied at his desk—with a venomed word, or a lie that looks like truth, sends thousands of his countrymen to death,—receives his pay, and scribbles on, regardless of the dying and the dead!—And this is patriotism.

The _tempora mollia fandi_ do not belong to Vetus any more than to ourselves. He is, like us, but an uncouth courtier, a rough, sturdy, independent politician, who thinks and speaks for himself. He complains of ‘the soft nonsense whispered in the higher circles,’ and gossipped in _The Morning Post_, in favour of peace. Be it so, for once, that these soft whispers are fraught with ruin, dishonour, and slavery to this country. Yet, if the effeminate and dastard sound once floats through the air, borne on the downy wing of fashion—if it is whispered from the prince to the peer, and from lords to ladies, from ministers to their clerks, from their clerks to the treasury-prints, and from the knaves who write to the dupes who read—even the warning voice of Vetus will not be able to prevent the Syren sound from spreading in gentle murmurs, and ‘smoothing the raven down of discord, till it smiles.’ And will Vetus pretend such ignorance both of the court and of the country, as not to know, that whether the word is war or peace, the same effect will follow—that whether the breath of kings breathe ‘airs from heaven or blasts from hell,’ the same well-attuned system of undulating sounds will disperse them wide in eddying circles, and the same round of smiles and whispers and significant shrugs will be repeated, whether the country bleeds or starves, is enslaved within, or conquered without? All those who do not catch the soft whisper, and mimic the gracious smile, and join the magic circle, are no better than hypocrites, madmen, and traitors to _their country_! We know it well.

Vetus in vain attempts to repel the charge which we brought against _The Times_, whose profession of eternal war with Bonaparte we said was incompatible with the possibility of his making peace with us, by asserting that this doctrine is ‘an audacious plagiarism, from the portfolio of the French Minister.’ We have not such near access to the portfolio of the French Government as this writer; but we have access to _The Times_, and there we find this audacious plagiarism written in large letters in almost every page. We say that wherever the doctrine is found (whoever invented or whoever adopted it), there is an insuperable bar to peace. If it is found on one side, that is the responsible side; if it is found on both, neither can reproach the other with the continuance of hostilities. This statement is plain and unanswerable. Does Vetus think to ‘thrust us from a level consideration by a confident brow, and the throng of words which come with such affected gravity from him’? He disclaims the doctrine for himself. Why then is he so eager to justify it in _The Times_? They are caught in the fact; they are taken with the _manner_; and Vetus would divert us from executing summary justice on them, by offering himself as security that they are only the receivers of the stolen goods; ‘the audacious plagiarists,’ instead of the atrocious inventors of this mischievous doctrine. Besides, the answer is a wretched evasion, and makes the assertion itself senseless and nugatory. The principle of _The Times_ was and is (if they have not retracted it) that we are never to make peace with Bonaparte at all, that is, though he would make peace with us, (otherwise the words have no meaning) and then comes the gloss of Vetus, which is, that we will not make peace with him, only because he will not make peace with us. Ridiculous!—Vetus asks, ‘Who has been the founder of this shocking creed—who the aggressor—who the unrelenting enemies of peace?’ May we not answer—‘The incessant war-faction of England’? Why would Vetus strip ‘these acknowledged saviours of Europe’ of the praise which is so justly due to them, or degrade them from that proud eminence which they have maintained with so much persevering fortitude? We cannot withhold from these persons our sincere conscientious thanks for all the benefits which this war has conferred on our country, on Europe, and the world. While France strove insidiously to ruin us by peace, these firm patriots have always been determined to save us by war—from ‘England’s greatest and most magnanimous politician,’ down to the last desperate incendiary of _The Times_, who is only willing to conclude ‘a Regicide Peace’ by celebrating ‘the condign and solemn punishment of Bonaparte!’[14]

Vetus says, that ‘eternal war is no expression of his, and that it is a deliberate falsehood in us who assert that he has used it, or that this country has no alternative between eternal war and eternal bondage.’ ‘It is not England,’ he says, ‘but France—not Vetus, but the French government—who has broached the creed, and one of the two countries must in the end destroy the other.’

If it is a falsehood, it is a deliberate one, for we do deliberately assert that he uses these words, and inculcates this doctrine incessantly. But instead of contradicting Vetus, it is better to let him contradict himself; no one else can do it so effectually. In his last letter but one he has these words:—‘It is, I conscientiously believe, a question, _which of these two countries shall destroy the other_. In that case my part is taken.—France must be ruined to save our native country from being ruined.—If this be perpetual war, I cannot help it.—Perpetual war has little terror, when perpetual bondage threatens us.’ Either the interpretation of this passage is that which we have given to it, or, as Vetus says, ‘the English language must be constructed anew.’

He now, indeed, mitigates the dread sentence he had passed upon us, by saying, not that we have no alternative but either war, or slavery, or _peace_. We are glad that Vetus has introduced this new clause in our favour into the codicil; it was not in the original will, or expressed in such faint characters, that we, with the rest of the public, missed the intended benefaction. Just in the same manner, that profound politician and humane writer, the author of the Essay on Population, found out that the only possible checks to excessive population, were vice and misery, which were, therefore, to be considered as the greatest blessings of mankind, and having gained a vast reputation by this singular discovery, he then recollected what every one knew before, that there was another check to this principle, viz. _moral restraint_, and that consequently vice and misery were not the greatest blessings of society.

We did not state it as an inconsistency in Vetus, that he held out _France_ as an object of terror, and yet recommended a negociation with Bonaparte, because his government tended to weaken France, but we did state it as a rank inconsistency in Vetus to hold up _Bonaparte_ as an object of peculiar terror to this country, and yet to represent his government as tottering on the brink of deplorable weakness and unavoidable ruin. Vetus could not meet the objection, and he has altered the terms.

Vetus concludes his letter with the following note:—

‘_The stupid impertinence_’ (charged on the attacks made upon him) ‘has no relation to _The Morning Chronicle_, with which I am disposed to part in peace. One feels a tolerance towards that paper, for the talents which once adorned it; and of the continuance of which I should rejoice to see more proof in its late attacks on Vetus. We have little common faith in politics, but we have, I trust, a common stake in the spirit and dignity of the press.’

We are obliged to Vetus for this amicable offer, of the sincerity of which we entertain no doubt. As to the talent shown in our attacks on him, we are ready to admit that it is little enough; but we at the same time think that if it had been greater, it would have been more than the occasion required. We have no enmity to Vetus, but to his extravagance, and if he will correct that, he will save us the trouble of correcting it for him. We are ready to believe that this writer has talents and acquirements which might be made useful to the public, if he would forego his mistaken pretensions to extraordinary wisdom and eloquence. The qualities of profound thought and splendid imagery are seldom found singly in the same person, and the union of both together is an undertaking much beyond the capacity of Vetus. And now we leave him to return to his indigestions with ‘what appetite he may.’[15]

ON THE LATE WAR

_April 3, 1814._

The systematic patrons of eternal war are always returning, when they dare, to the point from which they set out twenty years ago; the war with them has not yet lost its original character: they have long memories: they never lose sight of their objects and principles. We cannot but admire their candour as well as their consistency, and would wish to imitate it. It is deemed necessary by the everlasting war-faction to prove in their own justification, ‘that the march to Paris was not chimerical in 1793,’ by carrying it into effect now, and to blot France out of the map of Europe, three-and-twenty years after the event had been announced by that great prophet and politician, Mr. Burke. This splendid reverie is not yet accomplished. The triumph of the Pitt-school over the peace-faction is not yet complete; but we are put in complete possession of what is required to make it so. As the war with them was a war of extermination, so the peace, not to fix a lasting stigma on their school and principles, must be a peace of extermination. This is what we always said and thought of those principles and that school. This is their triumph, their _only_ triumph—the true crown of their hopes, the consummation of their utmost wishes, nothing short of which can satisfy their proud pretensions, or finish this just and necessary war, as it was begun. Otherwise, no peace for them; otherwise, they will have failed in both branches of that happy dilemma, hit upon by the beneficent genius of ‘the great statesman, now no more,’ the necessity of destroying France, or being ourselves destroyed in the attempt. If they succeed in neither experiment, all that they have done is surely lost labour. They have then a right to their revenge, ‘their pound of carrion-flesh’—‘’tis theirs, ’tis dearly bought, and they will have it.’ Be it so. But we shall let them feast alone: we are not _man-eaters_. We shall not join the barbarous yell of this worse than Thracian rout, nor figure in at the close of their dance of death, nor applaud the catastrophe of their twenty years’ tragedy. We did not approve it in its commencement or progress; nor will we hail its threatened conclusion. We have had, and we will have, no hand in the plot, the execution, the scene-shifting, or the decoration. We leave the full credit of it to the original authors; and, in spite of all the puffing of the Bayes’s of the Pitt-school, the only answer they will get from us is, ‘’Tis an indifferent piece of work: would ’twere done!’ Though the torch of _The Times_ blazes over Paris, ‘fierce as a comet’; though _The Sun_ sees the lilied banner of the Bourbons floating before Lord Wellington in the plains of Normandy; though _The Courier_ is setting out post-haste to break up the negociations at Chatillon; and _The Morning Herald_ sheds tears of joy over the fashionable virtues of the rising generation, and finds that we shall make better man-milliners, better lacqueys, and better courtiers than ever—we remain sceptical as to the success, and more than sceptical as to the necessity of this last cast of our political dicers, and desperate venture of our licenced dealers and chapmen in morality and massacre. In our opinion, lives enough have been thrown away to prove, that the survivors are only born to _bear fardels_. This is the moral of the piece, if it succeeds on the principles of the Pitt-school, and all short of that is mere gratuitous mischief. The war, conducted on those principles and for those purposes, ‘was not, and it cannot come to good.’ Its failure, or its success, must be fatal.

The war, as it was carried on from the first by the Pitt-school, and as they would now revive it, was not a national quarrel, but a question about a political principle. It had no more to do with France or England as geographical denominations, than the wars between the Guelphs and Gibelines. It was not a war of mercantile advantage, or a trial of strength between two countries, which must be decided by the turn of events, by the probable calculation of loss and profit, but a war against an opinion, which could, therefore, never cease, but with the extirpation of that opinion. Hence there could be neither safety, nor honour, nor justice, in any terms of peace with the French government, because, by the supposition, it was not with its power or its conduct, but with its existence, that we were at war. Hence the impossibility of maintaining the relations of peace and amity with France. Hence Mr. Burke’s regicide war. Hence the ridiculousness asserted by _The Courier_, of even attempting negociation with this hated power. Hence the various and contradictory aspects which the war assumed after its first outset, and all of which answered the purpose equally well, because there was another pivot on which the whole turned, the sheet-anchor which never loosed its hold, and which enabled ‘the pilot to weather the storm.’ It was not a temporary or local question of the boundaries, the possessions, or particular rights of rival states, but a question, in which all states are at all times equally interested, of the internal right of any people to choose its own form of government. Whether this was a just ground of war or not, is another question; but it was the true one—that which gave its character to the war, and accounts for all its consequences. It was a war of proscription against a great and powerful state, for having set the example of a people ridding itself of an odious and despicable tyranny. It was the question of the balance of power between kings and people; a question, compared with which the balance of power in Europe is petty and insignificant. That what we have here stated, are the real and paramount grounds of this bloody and inveterate contest in the minds of the war-faction is, what we apprehend they will not, in their present state of frenzy, deny. They are the only ones that always survive the shock of accident and the fluctuation of circumstances, and which are always recurred to when all others fail, and are constantly avowed in the face of day, whenever the least probability of success attends them. It has been declared again and again, month after month, and year after year, that no peace should be made with France till the last remaining effort had been tried to attain this object. We were to bury ourselves with our great war-minister, under the ruins of the civilized world, sooner than relax in our exertions, or recede from our object. No sacrifices were to be held too dear—no sufferings too great in the prosecution of this sacred cause. No other than the last extremity was to force peace from us. Nothing short of the complete subjugation of France was to satisfy us—nothing short of our own ruin was to drive us to despair. We were like wrestlers, struggling on the edge of a precipice, one (or both) of whom must be certain of destruction. Such were the mad, mischievous, and unprincipled terms, on which a pampered crew of sycophants have played away the welfare, the repose, the liberties, and happiness of mankind, and on which they would now urge us to stake our all again, to realize their favourite scheme of the march to Paris, and the annihilation of the French people.

The consequences of the Pitt project were inevitable. From the moment that the existence of France as a nation was declared to be incompatible with that of the surrounding states—that she was denounced as a nuisance which must be abated, and set up as a mark for the vengeance of the rest of the world, the struggle necessarily became convulsive, and the re-action terrible. Is it then a matter of wonder, that in this unnatural strife, France, proscribed, hunted down, put out of the pale of nations, endeavoured rather to reduce others to the last extremity than to be reduced to it herself? Or are we entitled to wreak that vengeance upon her which we could not at first execute, because the engine which we had prepared to crush her has recoiled with the greatest violence upon ourselves? It has been said that we less easily forgive the injuries we do or meditate against others, than those we receive from them. There are, we know, persons to whom the celebrated line of the historian is, at all times, applicable: _Odia in longum jaciens, quæ conderet, auctaque promeret_. We are not surprised to find that the good intentions of these persons towards France, though she did not submit to the original tender made to her of their kind interference and paternal care, have not spoiled by keeping. If Titus complained with so much bitterness, that he had lost a day to virtue, what must not some modern friends to mankind feel, when they reflect that they have lost so many years in the execution of their just and beneficent plans!—In spite of Mr. Southey’s reasoning in his _Carmen Triumphale_, about joining ‘the avengers of mankind,’ we conceive that the wheel has gone once round already, ‘full circle home,’ and that now it had better stand still.

But it may be said, do we mean to apply these remarks to Bonaparte? As far as relates to any merits of the war-faction. It was they who implicated him with the cause of the French people, as ‘the child and champion of Jacobinism.’ We cannot express our opinion better than in the words of Mr. Whitebread, ‘that England had made Bonaparte, and he had undone himself.’ He was the creature of the Pitt-school. Was the iron scourge which he has held over Europe put into his hands by the peace-party? Were the battles of Austerlitz and Jena—were the march to Vienna, the possession of Berlin, the invasion of Spain, the expedition to Russia, and the burning of Moscow, the consequences of the signing or of the breaking of the treaty of Amiens?

The author of the letters of Vetus, (who we suppose is silenced by _The Times_, for asserting that the Bourbons have no more a lawful right to the throne of France, at this moment, than the Stuarts had to the throne of England twenty years after the Revolution of 1688,) is of opinion, that this war is merely national, merely the old grudge between the two countries; and that the Bourbons, the Republic, and Bonaparte, are equally hostile to England, and we to them. In this, as in most things else, our opinion is the opposite of his. There is only one period of the history of the two countries, which, reversed, furnishes an exact counterpart to the present contest, both in its avowed principles and secret motives—we mean the war waged by Louis XIV. against this country and its allies, for nearly as long a period after the English Revolution. The difference in the results of these two revolutions has been this: that from the insular situation of this country, which enables us to do either right or wrong, nearly with impunity, and which makes our means of defence greater, and our means of offence proportionably less—that from this collateral cause, the internal struggle, in proportion to the danger, was less bloody in our own case, and the re-action of our efforts to defend ourselves from the imposition of a foreign yoke and of hereditary slavery, less violent and fatal to other states. All the differences have arisen from the character of the two nations, and from local and accidental circumstances: there was none in the abstract political principle. We gave them the example of their Revolution; we also gave them an example of ‘national fortitude’ in maintaining it. We—the people of England, (not an upstart jacobite faction in the Hanoverian line,) are proud of having imitators; and we think it not unlikely that the French, if forced upon it, may behave on this occasion as the English behaved, when an hereditary pretender came over to us, backed by the aid of foreign arms, to assert his lawful claim to the throne—that is, in other words, to be the natural proprietor of a whole people. We twice sent him back again with all his myrmidons; we would not be made a property of. We felt that in not doing so we should be traitors, not only to our country, but to our kind—the worst species of treason to our country. It is curious that the ‘deepest enmity which the French people have drawn down upon them by their early struggles in the same cause, should be shewn by that government who had long insulted the slavery of Europe by the loudness of its boasts of freedom.’ We do not know how it is, but so it has happened, that in the thirty years of war which have graced the annals of the present reign, there has been a considerable want of sympathy between the crown and the people, as if the quarrel were merely the cause of kings, in which the people had no concern. Has this circumstance arisen from any unpleasant sense of obligation, or consciousness of a little irregularity and deviation from the right line in the descent of the crown, no more accounted for in Mr. Burke’s Reflections, than the declination of atoms in Epicurus’s philosophy? The restoration of the Bourbons in France will be the re-establishment of the principles of the Stuarts in this country.[16]

PRINCE MAURICE’S PARROT

OR, FRENCH INSTRUCTIONS TO A BRITISH PLENIPOTENTIARY

_Sept. 18, 1814._

1. That the French people were so deeply implicated in the Slave trade, as not even to know that it had been abolished by this country.

2. That the French press had been so long under the complete despotic control of Bonaparte, that the present government must despair of making any immediate impression on the independence of the political opinions, or the energetic firmness of the individual feelings of the people, lately consigned to their protection.

3. That such were their blind and rooted prejudices against the English, that we could only hope to convince them of our entire sincerity and disinterestedness in abolishing the Slave Trade ourselves, by lending a helping hand to its revival by others.

4. That if we consented to give up our colonial conquests to the French, on conditions dictated only by the general principles of humanity, this would be a proof that we intended to keep them in our hands from the most base and mercenary motives.

5. That the French government simply wished to begin the Slave Trade again as the easiest way of leaving it off, that so they might combine the experiment of its gradual restoration with that of its gradual abolition, and, by giving the people an interest in it, more effectually wean their affections from it.

6. That it is highly honourable in us to have proposed, and in the French to have agreed to, the abolition of the Slave Trade, at the end of five years, though it would have been insulting in us to have proposed, and degrading in them to have submitted to, any stipulation on the subject.

7. That to rob and murder on the coast of Africa is among the internal rights of legislation and domestic privileges of every European and Christian state.

8. That we are not to teach the French people religion and morality at the point of the sword, though this is what we have been professing to teach them for the last two and twenty years.

9. That his most Christian Majesty Louis XVIII. is so fully impressed with the humane and benevolent sentiments of Great Britain and the allies in favour of the abolition of the Slave Trade, that he was ready to have plunged all Europe into a war for its continuance.

10. That we could not possibly make the abolition, (though the French government would certainly have made the revival) of the Slave Trade a _sine qua non_ in the treaty of peace, and that they would otherwise have gone to war to recover by force of arms what they can only owe to the credulity or complaisance of our negociators.

Lastly. That by consenting to the re-establishment of the Slave Trade in France, we were most effectually preparing the way for its abolition all over the world.

‘With so little a web as this will I ensnare so great a fly as _Cassio_!’—Such were the formidable barriers, the intricate lines of circumvallation, drawn by the French round the abolition of the Slave Trade, as strong as those which they threw up to defend their capital: yet we think, that after our political missionary had overleaped the one, he might have broken through the other. Where there is a will, there is a way. But there are some minds to which every flimsy pretext presents an insurmountable obstacle, where only the interests of justice and humanity are at stake. These persons are always impotent to save—powerful only to oppress and to betray. Their torpid faculties and amiable apathy are never roused but by the calculations of self-interest, or the thirst of revenge. The glossy sleekness of the panther’s skin does not blunt the sharpness of his fangs, and his fawning eye dooms his victim while it glitters. But to come to Lord Castlereagh. In the present instance, he appears to have been cajoled into acquiescence from his well-known indifference to the object. His speech contained nothing but a story of a cock and a bull, told by M. Talleyrand with great grace and gravity, assented to by his Lordship with equal affability and address, and repeated to the House of Commons with hesitating volubility and plausible negligence of manner. It is well to sacrifice to the graces; but it is too much to have sacrificed a whole continent to the graces of M. Talleyrand’s person, or the purity of his French accent. We can imagine how the scene took place. This question of Africa, being considered as an idle question, in which neither courts nor ministers were concerned, would be naturally left as a sort of _carte-blanche_ for all the flourishes of national _politesse_, as a kind of _no man’s ground_ for a trial of diplomatic skill and complaisance. So Lord Castlereagh, drawing on his gloves, hemmed once or twice, while the French minister carelessly took snuff: he then introduced the question with a smile, which was answered by a more gracious smile from M. Talleyrand: his Lordship then bowed, as if to bespeak attention; but the Prince of Benevento bowing still lower, prevented what he had to say; and the cries of Africa were lost amidst the nods and smile and shrugs of these demi-puppets. The Ex-bishop of Autun may in future hope to find a successful representative in the English Ambassador from Paris; for the noble secretary _mistified_ the house, as he had himself been _mistified_ by his highness of Benevento.—Count Fathom, after his defeat by the French abbé, practised in this his adopted country with great applause! We may take this opportunity of remarking, that we do not think his Lordship at all improved during his stay in France. He performs the arc of his oscillation from the treasury bench to the table, and from the table back again, in a second less time than he used to do. He commits dulness with greater vivacity, and flounders more briskly in an argument. He has enhanced the loose dangling slip-shod manner which so well accords with his person and understanding, into something positive and dogmatical; and is even grown tenacious of the immaculateness of his maiden treaty, which he will not have so much as suspected: In this alteration of tone we think him wrong. We have always looked upon Lord Castlereagh as an excellent taffeta lining to a court dress; but he should leave the buckram of office to his friend the secretary of the Admiralty.

WHETHER THE FRIENDS OF FREEDOM CAN ENTERTAIN ANY SANGUINE HOPES OF THE
FAVOURABLE RESULTS OF THE ENSUING CONGRESS?

_Oct. 23, 1814._

An excellent article appeared in the EXAMINER of last week, giving a general outline of the views and principles which ought to actuate the allied powers at the approaching Congress, and of the leading arrangements with respect to the different subjects to be brought under consideration, which ought to follow from those principles. Cordially as we agree with this respectable writer in the several points which he has stated, we are, we confess, far from feeling any strong assurances that even any one of these points will be amicably adjusted. They are briefly these:—1. That Poland should be restored to her independence. 2. That the other powers of Europe should no longer co-operate with Sweden in the subjugation of Norway. 3. That the Slave Trade should be immediately and generally abolished. 4. That Saxony should not share a fate similar to that of Poland. 5. That Austria should relinquish her views of unjust aggrandisement in Italy. 6. and last, That some concessions should probably be made by England as to her exclusive claims to maritime supremacy, as far as those claims are found to be rather galling to the feelings of other nations, than essential to her own security. All of the objects here recommended are, we should imagine, every way practicable as well as desirable, if there were any thing like a hearty good-will to avail themselves of the present favourable situation of the world in those who have the power to decide its fate. Armed with sovereign authority, seconded by public opinion, with every obstacle removed from their dread of the overwhelming power of France, they have all the means at their disposal to rear a splendid, lofty, and lasting monument to justice, liberty, and humanity. Are the views then of the allied sovereigns solely directed to these objects? That is the simple question; and we are afraid it would be great presumption to answer it in the affirmative. It would be supposing that the late events have purified the hearts of princes and nations; that they have been taught wisdom by experience, and the love of justice from the sense of injury; that mutual confidence and good-will have succeeded to narrow prejudices and rankling jealousy; that the race of ambitious and unprincipled monarchs, of crafty politicians, and self-interested speculators is at an end; that the destructive rivalry between states has given way to liberal and enlightened views of general safety and advantage; and that the powers of Europe will in future unite with the same zeal and magnanimity for the common good, as when they were bound in a common cause against the common enemy. All this appears to us quite as Utopian as any other scheme which supposes that the human mind can change. Happy should we be, if instead of those magnificent and beneficial projects in which some persons seem still to indulge their imaginations as the results of this meeting, the whole should not turn out to be no better than a compromise of petty interests, of shallow policy, and flagrant injustice.

We forbore for a long time from saying any thing on this ungrateful subject: but our forbearance has not hitherto, at least, been rewarded. We shall therefore speak out plainly on the subject; as we should be sorry to be thought accomplices in a delusion, which can only end in disappointment. The professions of justice, moderation, and the love of liberty, made by the powers of Europe at the end of the last, and at the beginning of the present year, were certainly admirable: they were called for at the time, and were possibly sincere. But we are all of us apt to forego those good resolutions which are extorted from us by circumstances rather than from reason or habit, and to recant ‘vows made in pain as violent and void.’ Without meaning any indirect allusion to the person into whose mouth these words are put, we believe this, that princes are princes, and that men are men; and that to expect any great sacrifices of interest or passion from either in consequence of certain well-timed and well-sounding professions, drawn from them by necessity, when that necessity no longer exists, is to belie all our experience of human nature. We remember what modern courts and ministers were before the dreaded power of Bonaparte arose; and we conceive this to be the best and only ground to argue what they will be, now that that power has ceased. ‘Why so, being gone, they are themselves again.’ It appears to us, that some very romantic and extravagant expectations were entertained from the destruction of the tyranny of Bonaparte. It is true, his violence and ambition for a while suspended all other projects of the same kind. ‘The right divine of kings to govern wrong’ was wrested from the puny hands of its legitimate possessors, and strangely monopolized by one man. The regular professors of the regal art were set aside by the superior skill and prowess of an adventurer. They became in turn the tools, or the victims of the machinations of the maker and puller-down of kings. Instead of their customary employment of annoying their neighbours, or harassing their subjects, they had enough to do to defend their territories and their titles. The aggressions which they had securely meditated against the independence of nations, and their haughty contempt for the liberties of mankind, were retorted on their own heads. The poisoned chalice was returned to their own lips. They then first felt the sting of injustice, and the bitterness of scorn. They saw how weak and little they were in themselves. They were roused from the still life of courts, and forced to assume the rank of men. They appealed to their people to defend their thrones; they called on them to rally round the altar of their country; they invoked the name of liberty, and in that name they conquered. Plans of national aggrandisement or private revenge were forgotten in the intoxication of triumph, as they had been in the agony of despair. This sudden usurpation had so overpowered the imaginations of men, that they began to consider it as the only evil that had ever existed in the world, and that with it, all tyranny and ambition would cease. War was talked of as if it had been an invention of the modern Charlemagne, and the Golden age was to be restored with the Bourbons. But it is hard for the great and mighty to learn in the school of adversity: emperors and kings bow reluctantly to the yoke of necessity. When the panic is over, they will be glad to drink of the cup of oblivion. The false idols which had been set up to Liberty and Nature, to Genius and Fortune, are thrown down, and they have once more ‘all power given them upon earth.’ How they are likely to use it, whether for the benefit and happiness of mankind, or to gratify their own prejudices and passions, we have, in one or two instances, seen already. No one will in future look for ‘the milk of human kindness’ in the Crown Prince of Sweden, who is a monarch of the new school; nor for examples of romantic generosity and gratitude in Ferdinand of Spain, who is one of the old. A jackal or baboon, dandled in the paws of a royal Bengal tiger, may not be very formidable; but it would be idle to suppose, if they should providentially escape, that they would become tame, useful, domestic animals.

The King of Prussia has recovered the sword of the Great Frederick, his humane, religious, moral, and unambitious predecessor, only, as it appears, to unsheath it against the King of Saxony, his old companion in arms. The Emperor of Austria seems eager to catch at the iron crown of Italy, which has just fallen from the brows of his son-in-law. The King of France, _our_ King of France, Louis the Desired, and who by the ‘all hail hereafter,’ is to receive the addition of Louis the Wise, has improved his reflections during a twenty years’ exile, into a humane and amiable sanction of the renewal of the Slave Trade for five years only. His Holiness the Pope, happy to have escaped from the clutches of the arch-tyrant and impostor, employs his leisure hours in restoring the order of the Jesuits, and persecuting the Freemasons. Ferdinand, the grateful and the enlightened, who has passed through the same discipline of humanity with the same effect, shuts up the doors of the Cortes, (as it is scandalously asserted, at the instigation of Lord Wellington), and throws open those of the Inquisition. At all this, the romantic admirers of patriot kings, who fondly imagined that the hatred of the oppressor was the same thing as the hatred of oppression, (among these we presume we may reckon the poet-laureat,) hang their heads, and live in hope of better times. To us it is all natural, and in order. From this grand gaol-delivery of princes and potentates, we could expect nothing else than a recurrence to their old habits and favourite principles. These observations have not been hastily or gratuitously obtruded: they have been provoked by a succession of disgusting and profligate acts of inconsistency and treachery, unredeemed by a single effort of heroic virtue or generous enthusiasm. Almost every principle, almost every profession, almost every obligation, has been broken. If any proof is wanting, look at Norway, look at Italy, look at Spain, look at the Inquisition, look at the Slave Trade. The mask of liberty has been taken off by most of the principal performers; the whining cant of humanity is no longer heard in _The Courier_ and _The Times_. What then remains for us to build a hope upon, but the Whig principles of the Prince Regent, inherited from his ancestors, and the good nature of the Emperor of Russia, the merit of which is entirely his own? Of the former of these personages, our opinion is so well known, that we need not repeat it here. Again, of the good intentions of the last-mentioned sovereign, we declare that we have as full a persuasion. We believe him to be docile to instruction, inquisitive after knowledge, and inclined to good. But it has been said by those who have better means of information than ourselves, that he is too open to the suggestions of those about him; that, like other learners, he thinks the newest opinion the best, and that his real good-nature and want of duplicity render him not sufficiently proof against the selfish or sinister designs of others. He has certainly a character for disinterestedness and magnanimity to support in history: but history is a glass in which few minds fashion themselves. If in his late conduct there was any additional impulse given to the natural simplicity of his character, it probably arose from an obvious desire to furnish a contrast to the character of Bonaparte, and also to redeem the Russian character, hitherto almost another name for barbarity and ferociousness, in the eyes of civilized Europe. In this point of view, we should not despair that something may be attempted, at least with respect to Poland, by the present autocrat of all the Russias, to blot out certain stains on the reputation of his grand-mother, the Empress Catherine.

With regard to Norway, the only hope of the suspension of its fate seems to arise out of a very natural, if not laudable jealousy and distaste, which have been conceived by some of the old-standing sovereigns of Europe against the latest occupier and most forward pretender to thrones. An adventurer who has made a fortune by gaining a prize in the lottery, or by laying _qui tam_ informations against his accomplices, cannot expect to be admitted, on an equality, into the company of persons of regular character and family estates. The Emperor of Austria, in particular, may have additional motives of dislike to Bernadotte, connected with late events; and we agree with the _Examiner_, that he may, in the end, ‘have to regret the length to which he was hurried against a man, who was the key-stone of all the new power which had been built on the ruin of thrones.’

As to any immediate adjustment of the maritime rights of this country, on general principles, satisfactory to all parties, we see no reason to expect it. We think the following paragraph justifies us in this opinion. ‘We are told,’ says the _Morning Chronicle_, ‘that on the day when the capture of the city of Washington, and the demolition of its public buildings reached Paris, the Duke of Wellington had a ball: not one public ambassador of the potentates of Europe, our good allies, presented himself to congratulate his grace on the event.’ We here see, on one side, the most absurd expectations of disinterested sympathy with our national feelings, and as little disposition to enter into them on the other. It is strange that the above paragraph should have found its way into a paper which makes an almost exclusive profession of liberal and comprehensive views.

Nor can we indulge in any serious expectations of ‘the immediate and general abolition of the Slave Trade.’ Africa has little to hope from ‘the prevailing gentle arts’ of Lord Castlereagh. However sturdy he may be in asserting our maritime rights, he will, we imagine, go to sleep over those of humanity, and waking from his _doux sommeil_, find that the dexterous prince of political jugglers has picked his pocket of his African petitions, if, indeed, he chuses to carry the credentials of his own disgrace about with him. There are two obstacles to the success of this measure. In the first place, France has received such forcible lessons from this country on the old virtues of patriotism and loyalty, that she must feel particularly unwilling to be dictated to on the new doctrines of liberality and humanity. Secondly, the abolition of the Slave Trade, on our part, was itself the act of Mr. Fox’s administration—an administration which we should suppose there is no very strong inclination to relieve from any part of the contempt or obloquy which it has been the fashion to pour upon it, by extending the benefit of its measures, or recommending the adoption of its principles.