to the Elbe, then to the Ebro, after this to the Po, and from thence back again to the Elbe, and this not to check an invading enemy, but to make conquests which little profited the French nation! This must prove too much, at length, for a hired soldier how much more for conscripts, who did not live only to fight, but who were fathers of families, citizens, and proprietors ? But above all, it is to be wondered at, that a nation, like the French, should suffer themselves to be used as Charles used them. But the people no longer possessed any considerable share of influence. All depended on the great chieftains, who gave their willing suffrage for endless wars, by which they were always sure to win. They found the best opportunity, under such circumstances, to make themselves great and mighty at the expense of the freemen resident within the circle of their baronial courts; and when conquests were made, it was far more for their advantage than that of the monarchy. In the conquered provinces there was a necessity for dukes, vassal kings, and different high offices all this fell to their share. "I would not say this if we did not possess incontrovertible original documents of those times, which prove clearly to us that Charles's government was an unhappy one for the people, and that this great man, by his actions, labored to the direct subversion of his first principles. It was his first pretext to establish a greater equality among the members of his vast community, and to make all free and equal subjects under a common sovereign. And, from the necessity occasioned by continual war, the exact contrary took place. Nothing gives us a better notion of the interior state of the French monarchy, than the third capitular of the year 811.* All is full of complaint, the bishops and earls clamoring against the freeholders, and these in their turn against the bishops and earls. And, in truth, the freeholders had no small reason to be discontented and to resist, as far as they dared, even the imperial levies. A dependant must be content to follow his lord without further questioning: for he was paid for it. But a free citizen, who lived wholly on his own property, might reasonably object to suffer himself to be dragged about in all quarters of the world, at the fancies of his lord: especially as there was so much injustice intermixed. Those who gave up * Compare with this the four or five quarto volumes of the French Conscript Code. their properties entirely, or in part, of their own accord, were left undisturbed at home, while those, who refused to do this, were forced so often into service, that at length, becoming impoverished, they were compelled by want to give up, or dispose of, their free tenures to the bishops or earls.* "It almost surpasses belief to what a height, at length, the aversion to war rose in the French nation, from the multitude of the campaigns, and the grievances connected with them. The national vanity was now satiated by the frequency of victories : and the plunder which fell to the lot of individuals, made but a poor compensation for the losses and burthens sustained by their families at home. Some, in order to become exempt from military service, sought for menial employments in the establishments of the bishops, abbots, abbesses, and earls. Others made over their free property to become tenants at will of such lords, as from their age or other circumstances, they thought would be called to no further military services. Others even privately took away the life of their mothers, aunts, or other of their relatives, in order that no family residents might remain through whom their names might be known, and themselves traced; others voluntarily made slaves of themselves, in order thus to render themselves incapable of the military rank." When this extract was first published, namely, September 7, 1809, I prefixed the following sentence: This passage contains so much matter for political anticipation and well-grounded hope, that I feel no apprehension of the reader's being dissatisfied with its length." I trust, that I may now derive the same confidence from his genial exultation, as a Christian, and from his honest pride as a Briton, in the retrospect of its completion. In this belief I venture to conclude the essay with the following extract from a "Comparison of the French republic, under Bonaparte, with the Roman empire under the first Cæsars," published by me in the Morning Post, 21st September, 1802. If, then, there be no counterpoise of dissimilar circumstances, the prospect is gloomy indeed. The commencement of the public slavery in Rome, was in the most splendid era of human genius. Any unusually flourishing period of the arts and sci * It would require no great ingenuity to discover parallels, or at least equivalent hardships to these, in the treatment of, and regulations concerning, the reluctant conscripts. ences in any country, is, even to this day, called the Augustan age of that country. The Roman poets, the Roman historians, the Roman orators, rivalled those of Greece; in military tactics, in machinery, in all the conveniences of private life, the Romans greatly surpassed the Greeks. With few exceptions, all the emperors, even the worst of them, were, like Bonaparte,* the liberal encouragers of all great public works, and of every species of public merit not connected with the assertion of political freedom: O juvenes, circumspicit atque agitat vos, Materiamque sibi Ducis indulgentia quærit.† It is even so, at this present moment, in France. (Yet, both in France and in Rome, we have learned, that the most abject dispositions to slavery rapidly trod on the heels of the most outrageous fanaticism for an almost anarchical liberty.) Ruere in servitium consules, patres, eques: quanto quis illustrior, tanto magis falsi ac festinantes.‡ Peace and the coadunation of all the civilized provinces of the earth were the grand and plausible pretexts of Roman despotism: the degeneracy of the human. species itself, in all the nations so blended, was the melancholy effect. To-morrow, therefore, we shall endeavor to detect all those points and circumstances of dissimilarity, which, though * Imitators succeed better in copying the vices than the excellences of their archetypes. Where shall we find in the First Consul of France a counterpart to the generous and dreadless clemency of the first Cæsar? Acerbe loquentibus satis habuit pro concione denunciare, ne perseverarent. Aulique Cacina criminosissimo libro, et Pitholai carminibus maledicentissimis laceratam existimationem suam civili animo tulit.—(Sueton. I. 75.— Ed.) It deserves translation for English readers. "To those who spoke bitterly against him, he held it sufficient to signify publicly, that they should not persevere in the use of such language. His character had been mangled in a most libellous work of Aulus Cæcina, and he had been grossly lampooned in some verses by Pitholaus; but he bore both with the temper of a good citizen." For this part of the First Consul's character, if common report speaks the truth, we must seek a parallel in the dispositions of the third Cæsar, who dreaded the pen of a paragraph writer, hinting aught against his morals and measures, with as great anxiety, and with as vindictive feelings, as if it had been the dagger of an assassin lifted up against his life. From the third Cæsar, too, he adopted the abrogation of all popular elections. Juvenal. Sat. vii. 20.-Ed. they can not impeach the rectitude of the parallel, for the present, may yet render it probable, that as the same constitution of government has been built up in France with incomparably greater rapidity, so it may have an incomparably shorter duration. We are not conscious of any feelings of bitterness towards the First Consul; or, if any, only that venial prejudice, which naturally results from the having hoped proudly of an individual, and the having been miserably disappointed. But we will not voluntarily cease to think freely and speak openly. We owe grateful hearts, and uplifted hands of thanksgiving to the Divine Providence, that there is yet one European country-and that country our own-in which the actions of public men may be boldly analyzed, and the result publicly stated. And let the Chief Consul, who professes in all things to follow his fate, learn to submit to it, if he finds that it is still his fate to struggle with the spirit of English freedom, and the virtues which are the offspring of that spirit ;—if he finds, that the genius of Great Britain, which blew up his Egyptian navy into the air, and blighted his Syrian laurels, still follows him with a calm and dreadful eye; and in peace, equally as in war, still watches for that liberty, in which alone the genius of our isle lives, and moves, and has its being; and which being lost, all our commercial and naval greatness would instantly languish, like a flower, the root of which had been silently eaten away by a worm; and without which, in any country, the public festivals, and pompous merriments of a nation present no other spectacle to the eye of reason, than a mob of maniacs dancing in their fetters. ESSAY XIII. Must there be still some discord mix'd among Best with contention tun'd to notes of wrong? Truth lies entrapp'd where cunning finds no bar: And therefore would our glorious Alfred, who I RECUR to the dilemma stated in the eighth essay. How shall we solve this problem? Its solution is to be found in that spirit which, like the universal menstruum sought for by the old alchemists, can blend and harmonize the most discordant elements ;—it is to be found in the spirit of a rational freedom diffused and become national, in the consequent influence and control of public opinion, and in its most precious organ, the jury. It *Daniel. Epistle to Sir Thomas Egerton. The lines in italics are substituted by the author for the original, and there are a few other verbal alterations.Ed. |