THE MARQUIS WELLESLEY

POLITICAL ESSAYS, &c.

‘And such other gambol faculties he hath, as shew a weak mind, and an able body.’

April 13, 1813.

The Marquis Wellesley’s opening speech on India affairs was chiefly remarkable for its length, and the manner in which it was delivered. This nobleman seems to have formed himself on those lines in Pope:—

‘All hail him victor in both gifts of song,Who sings so loudly, and who sings so long.’

‘All hail him victor in both gifts of song,

Who sings so loudly, and who sings so long.’

He aspires with infinite alacrity to the character of a great orator; and, if we were disposed to take the will for the deed, we should give him full credit for it. We confess, those of his speeches which we have heard, appear to us prodigies of physical prowess and intellectual imbecility. The ardour of his natural temperament, stimulating and irritating the ordinary faculties of his mind, the exuberance of his animal spirits, contending with the barrenness of his genius, produce a degree of dull vivacity, of pointed insignificance, and impotent energy, which is without any parallel but itself. It is curious, though somewhat painful, to see this lively little lord always in the full career of his subject, and never advancing a jot the nearer; seeming to utter volumes in every word, and yet saying nothing; retaining the same unabated vehemence of voice and action without any thing to excite it; still keeping alive the promise and the expectation of genius without once satisfying it—soaring into mediocrity with adventurous enthusiasm, harrowed up by some plain matter-of-fact, writhing with agony under a truism, and launching a common-place with all the fury of a thunderbolt![6]

MR. SOUTHEY, POET LAUREAT

Sept. 18, 1813.

The laurel is at length destined, unexpectedly, to circle the brows of this gentleman, where it will look almost like a civic crown. The patriot and the poet (two venerable names, which we should wish never to see disunited) is said to owe his intended elevation to the intercession of Mr. Croker, to whom, it will be recollected, he has dedicated his Life of Lord Nelson, with an appropriate motto in the title-page, from the poem of Ulm and Trafalgar. Mr. Croker having applied to the Regent in favour of his friend, the Prince is understood to have given his ready assent, observing, that Mr. Southey’s efforts in the Spanish cause alone, rendered him highly worthy of the situation. As Mr. Croker, however, was taking his leave, he was met by Lord Liverpool and the Marquis of Hertford, the latter of whom, as chamberlain, had, it seems, made an offer of the place to Mr. Walter Scott, who had signified his acceptance of it. Some little difficulty naturally arose on the occasion, but it was agreed that the two poets should settle the point of precedence between themselves. A friendly altercation, unlike that of the shepherds in Virgil, now took place between Mr. Scott and Mr. Southey, each waving his own pretensions, and giving the palm of victory to the other. But it was finally determined, that as Mr. Scott, though he would not allow himself to be the greatest, was at least the richest poet of the two, Mr. Southey, who had most need of this post of honour and of profit, should have it. So ends this important affair; and, without any ill-will to Mr. Southey, we should not have been disappointed if it had ended differently. Whatever may be the balance of poetical merit, Mr. Scott, we are quite sure, has always been a much better courtier than Mr. Southey; and we are of opinion that the honours of a Court can nowhere be so gracefully or deservedly bestowed as on its followers. His acceptance of this mark of court favour would not have broken in upon that uniformity of character, which we think no less beautiful and becoming in life than in a poem. But, perhaps, a passion for new faces extends to the intrigues of politics as well asof love; and a triumph over the scruples of delicacy enhances the value of the conquest in both cases. Tohave beenthe poet of the people, may not render Mr. Southey less a court favourite; and one of his old Sonnets to Liberty must give a peculiar zest to his new Birth-day Odes. His flaming patriotism will easily subside into the gentle glow of grateful loyalty; and the most extravagant of his plans of reform end in building castles in Spain!

Jan. 8, 1814.

Mr. Southey’s Ode has at length appeared—not as was announced, under the title of ‘Carmen Annuum,’ but under that of ‘Carmen Triumphale,for the Commencement of the Year 1814.’ We see no reason why the author might not have adopted the title of Horace’s Ode entire, and have called itCarmen Seculare, which would have been the best account he could give of it. We fear Mr. Southey will not form a splendid exception to the numberless instances which prove that there is something in the air of a court, not favourable to the genius of poetry. He has not deprived himself of the excuse made by one of his predecessors, of versatile memory, in extenuation of the degeneracy of his courtly lays,—‘That poets succeed best in fiction.’ The Ode is in the ballad style, peculiar to Mr. Southey and his poetical friends. It has something of the rustic simplicity of a country virgin on her first introduction at Duke’s Place, or of Pamela on the day of her marriage with Mr. B. Or rather it resembles afancybirth-day suit, a fashionable livery worn inside out, a prince’s feather with a sprig of the tree of liberty added to it,—the academy of compliments turned into quaint Pindarics,—is a sort of methodistical rhapsody, chaunted by a gentleman-usher, and exhibits the irregular vigour of Jacobin enthusiasm suffering strange emasculation under the hands of a finical lord-chamberlain. It is romantic without interest, and tame without elegance. It is exactly such an ode as we expected Mr. Southey to compose on this occasion. We say this from our respect for the talents and character of this eminent writer. He is the last man whom we should expect to see graceful in fetters, or from whom we should look for the soul of freedom within theliberties of a court!—The commencement of the Ode is as follows, and it continues throughout much as it begins:—

‘In happy hourdothhe receiveThe Laurel, meed of famous bards ofyore,Which Dryden and diviner Spenser wore,In happy hour, and well may he rejoice,Whose earliest taskmust beTo raise theexultanthymn forvictory,Andjoina nation’sjoywith harp and voice,Pouring the strain of triumph on the wind,Glory to God, his song—deliverance to mankind!Wake, lute and harp! &c. &c.’

‘In happy hourdothhe receive

The Laurel, meed of famous bards ofyore,

Which Dryden and diviner Spenser wore,

In happy hour, and well may he rejoice,

Whose earliest taskmust be

To raise theexultanthymn forvictory,

Andjoina nation’sjoywith harp and voice,

Pouring the strain of triumph on the wind,

Glory to God, his song—deliverance to mankind!

Wake, lute and harp! &c. &c.’

Mr. Southey has not exactly followed the suggestion of an ingenious friend, to begin his poem with the appropriate allusion,

‘Awake, my sack-but!’

The following rhymes are the lamest we observed. He says, speaking of the conflict between the Moors and Spaniards,

‘Age after age, from sire toson,The hallowed sword was handeddown;Nor did they from that warfare cease,And sheath that hallowed sword in peace,Until the work wasdone.’

‘Age after age, from sire toson,

The hallowed sword was handeddown;

Nor did they from that warfare cease,

And sheath that hallowed sword in peace,

Until the work wasdone.’

Indeed, if Mr. S. can do no better than this, in his drawing-room verses, he should get some contributor to the Lady’s Magazine to polish them for him.

We have turned over the Ode again, which extends to twenty pages, in the hope of finding some one vigorous or striking passage for selection, but in vain. The following is the most likely to please in a certain quarter:—

‘Open thy gates, O Hanover! displayThy loyal banners to the day!Receive thy old illustrious line once more!Beneath an upstart’s yoke oppress’d,Long has it been thy fortune to deploreThat line, whose fostering and paternal swaySo many an age thy grateful children blest.The yoke is broken now!—a mightier handHath dash’d—in pieces dash’d—the iron rod.To meet her princes, the delivered landPours her rejoicing multitudes abroad;The happy bells, from every town and tower,Roll their glad peals upon the joyful wind;And from all hearts and tongues, with one consent,The high thanksgiving strain is sent—Glory to God! Deliverance to mankind!’

‘Open thy gates, O Hanover! display

Thy loyal banners to the day!

Receive thy old illustrious line once more!

Beneath an upstart’s yoke oppress’d,

Long has it been thy fortune to deplore

That line, whose fostering and paternal sway

So many an age thy grateful children blest.

The yoke is broken now!—a mightier hand

Hath dash’d—in pieces dash’d—the iron rod.

To meet her princes, the delivered land

Pours her rejoicing multitudes abroad;

The happy bells, from every town and tower,

Roll their glad peals upon the joyful wind;

And from all hearts and tongues, with one consent,

The high thanksgiving strain is sent—

Glory to God! Deliverance to mankind!’

In various stanzas, Bonaparte is called an upstart, a ruffian, &c.We confess, we wish to see Mr. Southey, like Virgil, in his Georgics, ‘scatter his dung with a grace.’

We do not intend to quarrel with our Laureat’s poetical politics, but the conclusion is one which we did not anticipate from the author. We have always understood that the Muses were the daughters of Memory!

‘And France,restoredand shaking off her chain,Shall join the Avengers in the joyful strain—Glory to God! Deliverance for mankind!’

‘And France,restoredand shaking off her chain,

Shall join the Avengers in the joyful strain—

Glory to God! Deliverance for mankind!’

The poem has a few notes added to it, the object of which seems to be to criticise the political opinions of the Edinburgh Reviewers with respect to Spain, and to prove that the author is wiser after the event than they were before it, in which he has very nearly succeeded.

Mr. Southey announces a new volume of Inscriptions, which must furnish some curiousparallelisms.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING CHRONICLE

Jan. 27, 1814.

Sir, The method of taking this bird is somewhat singular, and is described in an old book in the following terms:

‘The Dottrel is a foolish bird of the crane species, very tall, awkward, and conceited. The Dottrel-catcher, when he has got near enough, turns his head round sideways, andmakes a legtowards him: the bird, seeing this, returns the civility, and makes the same sidelong movement. These advances are repeated with mutual satisfaction, till the man approaches near enough, and then the bird is taken.’

A poet-laureat or a treasury sophist is often taken much in the same way. Your Opposionist, Sir, was ever a truegull. From the general want of sympathy, he sets more store by it than it is worth; and for the smallest concession, is prevailed upon to give up every principle, and to surrender himself, bound hand and foot, the slave of a party, who get all they want of him, and then—‘Spunge, you are dry again!’

A striking illustration of the common treatment of political drudges has lately occurred in the instance of a celebrated writer, whose lucubrations are withheld from the public, because he hasdeclared against the project of restoring the Bourbons. As the court and city politicians have spoken out on this subject, permit me, Sir, to say a word in behalf of the country. I have no dislike whatever, private or public, to the Bourbons, except as they may be made the pretext for mischievous and impracticable schemes. At the same time I have not the slightest enthusiasm in their favour. I would not sacrifice the life or limb of a single individual to restore them. I have very nearly the same feelings towards them which Swift has expressed in his account of the ancient and venerable race of the Struldbruggs. It is true, they might in some respects present a direct contrast to Bonaparte. A tortoise placed on the throne of France would do the same thing. The literary sycophants of the day, Sir, are greatly enamoured (from some cause or other) with hereditary imbecility and native want of talent. They are angry, not without reason, that a Corsican upstart has made the princes of Europe look like wax-work figures, and given a shock to the still life of kings. They wish to punish this unpardonable presumption, by establishing an artificial balance ofweaknessthroughout Europe, and by reducing humanity to the level of thrones. We may perhaps in time improve this principle of ricketty admiration to Eastern perfection, where every changeling is held sacred, and that which is the disgrace of human intellect is hailed as the image of the Divinity!

It is said that in France the old royalists and the revolutionary republicans are agreed in the same point. Bonaparte is the point of union between these opposite extremes, the common object of their hate and fear. I can conceive this very possible from what I have observed among ourselves. He has certainly done a great deal to mortify the pride of birth in the one, and the vanity of personal talents in the others. This is a very sufficient ground of private pique and resentment, but not of national calamity or eternal war. I am, Sir, your humble servant,

EICONOCLASTES SATYRANE.

Dec. 6, 1813.

The following paragraph in a daily paper is equally worthy of notice for magnificence of expression and magnanimity of sentiment:—

‘When or under what circumstances the great Commander may think fit to carry his forces against the large military or commercial depôts of the south of France, we do not pretend to form conjectures.We are confident, that as nothing will disturb the calm and meditative prudence of his plans, so nothing will arrest the rapidity of their execution. We trust alike in his caution and in his resolution: but, perhaps, there may be in store for him a higher destination than the capture of a town or the reduction of a province. What if the army opposed to him should resolve to avenge the cause of humanity, and to exchange the bloody and brutal tyranny of a Bonaparte for the mild paternal sway of a Bourbon? Could a popular French general open to himself a more glorious career at the present moment, than that which Providence seemed to have destined to the virtuous Moreau? Or is it possible that any power now existing in France could stop such a general and such an army, supported by the unconquered Wellington and his formidable legions, if they were to resolve boldly to march to Paris, and bring the usurper to the block! Every disposable soldier in France is on the Adour, or on the Rhine. In the case we are supposing, there would be no enemy to encounter, unless the northern frontier were at once denuded of troops, and the road to Paris on that side laid open to the allies. This is no question of the attachment of the French nation to one dynasty or to another: it is a question of military enterprise, in the minds of military adventurers. The simple possibility, not to say the high moral probability, that in a moment of general defection, an army which has so much in its hands may run with the stream of popular feeling throughout Europe, is enough to make the tyrant tremble on his throne. Lord Wellington is doubtless prepared to take advantage of so desirable an occurrence, in case it should happen without his previous interference: but we wish him to interfere; we wish that he were authorised plainly and openly to offer his mighty co-operation to any body of men who would shake off the Tyrant’s yoke in France, as has been done in Italy, in Germany, and in Holland!’

This is a fair specimen of that kind of declamation which has for a long time swayed the affairs of Europe, and which, if the powers of Europe are wise by experience, will not influence them much longer. It is this spirit of treating the French people as of a different species from ourselves—as a monster or a non-entity—of disposing of their government at the will of every paragraph-monger—of arming our hatred against them by ridiculous menaces and incessant reproaches—of supposing that their power was either so tremendous as to threaten the existence of all nations, or so contemptible that we could crush it by a word,—it is this uniform system, practised by the incendiaries of the press, of inflaming our prejudices and irritating our passions, that has so often made us rushupon disaster, and submit to every extremity rather than forego the rancorous and headstrong desire of revenge.

The writer of the paragraph talks familiarly of marching to Paris, and bringing Bonaparte to the block. He seems to wonder at the delay which has already taken place. This is the very style of ancient Pistol, ‘Bid him prepare, for I will cut his throat.’ This high tone of impotent menace and premature triumph always ‘reverbs its own hollowness.’ It is the echo of fear. Instead of a proud repose on our own strength and courage, these writers only feel secure in the destruction of an adversary. The natural intoxication of success is heightened into a sort of delirium by the recollection of the panic into which they had been thrown.The Times’editor thinks that nothing can be so easy as for an army ‘to run with the stream of popular feeling’ from one end of Europe to the other. Strange that these persons, like desperate adventurers, are incorrigible to experience. They are always setting out on the same forlorn hope. The tide of fortune, while it sets in strong against us, they prove to be the most variable of all things; but it no sooner changes in our favour, than it straight

‘Flows on to the Propontic,And knows no ebb.’

‘Flows on to the Propontic,

And knows no ebb.’

To encourage themselves in the extravagance of their voluntary delusions, they are as prodigal of titles of honour as the college of heralds, and erect a standard of military fame, with all the authority, but not with the impartiality of history. Lord Wellington is ‘the great commander,’ and ‘the unconquered general,’ while ‘the little captain,’ and ‘the hero’ or ‘the deserter of Smorgonne,’ are the only qualifications of Bonaparte. If such are the true denominations and relative proportions of these two generals, then it is quite right to give to each of them the honour due;—if they are not, then it is quite wrong to stake the welfare of nations on a turn of expression—to put little equivocal scraps of paper into false scales, and decide the fate of Europe by nicknames. The scales in which Sir Humphrey Davy weighs the 500th part of a drachm, are not so slight nor insignificant as those in which his vilifiers,The Times, balance the destinies of the world.

‘What,’ it is asked with a certain air of profundity and mystery, ‘What if the army opposed to him [Lord Wellington] should resolve to exchange the bloody tyranny of Bonaparte for the paternal sway of a Bourbon!’

Why, if the French wish to shake off the galling yoke of a military Usurper, we say, let them do it in God’s name. Let them,whenever they please, imitate us in our recal of the Stuarts; and, whenever they please, in our banishment of them thirty years afterwards. But let them not, in the name of honour or of manhood, receive the royal boon of liberty at the point of the bayonet. It would be setting a bad precedent—it would be breaking in upon a great principle—it would be making a gap in the general feeling of national independence. For we are to observe, that this rational, popular, patriotic preference of the mild paternal sway of the Bourbons is to be enforced upon them by the powerful co-operation of the unconquered Wellington and his formidable legions. This is, in fact, returning to the original ground of the whole quarrel, and the question for them to consider, is whether all the evils and miseries which they may have endured in resisting these forcible appeals from foreign powers, are the strongest reasons why they should at length gratefully resign themselves to that tender concern for their sufferings, which so much persevering kindness, and disinterested preference of their interests to our own unequivocally proves. The impression produced by these formidable emissaries of mild paternity must, indeed, be only that of filial love and reverence. The constantroleof these same Bourbons, now recognized, now disowned by the surrounding states, now held up as bugbears to frighten, and now brought forward as decoys to allure them, for awhile kept entirely in the back-ground, and then again set over them like puppets, in every reverse of fortune, must excite, one would suppose, some very pleasant associations, and give them some little insight into the nature of the machinery which is played off against them. In other nations, at least, these sort oftentativeswould lead not to submission, but to indignation. It cannot be denied, however, that the French character has peculiar susceptibilities. France, like a modern coquet, may be fascinated once more by the courtly graces of discarded royalty; or, on the other hand, recollecting the malice and the impotence of which she was so long the victim, like Hellenore, entertained by the jolly satyrs, may wisely refuse to return to the cold and irksome embraces of the drivelling Malbecco. But our politician wishes all this not to be left to their own free will, but that we should interfere. We can easily believe it; ‘it was ever the fault of our English nation’ to wish to interfere with what did not concern them, for the very reason that they could interfere with comparative impunity. What is sport to them is death to others. The writer also draws a parallel, as if it were a feasible case, between Holland, Spain, and Germany throwing off a foreign yoke, and the French throwing off their own; in other words, submitting to a foreign one. We beg pardon of these acute discriminators. We know they have an answer. We leavethem in possession of the nice distinction—between a foreign yoke, and a yoke imposed by foreigners!

‘This,’ says the writer inThe Times, ‘is not a question of attachment to one dynasty or another, but a question of military enterprize between military adventurers.’ Does our speculator mean by this to confer the privileges of military adventurers,en plein droit, on the Emperor Alexander and the Crown Prince of Sweden? But whatever he means, it is clear that he is not consistent in what he says; for he has said just before, that the object of this so often repeated march to Paris is ‘to bring the Usurper to the block!’ Here, then, it is a question, not between contending generals, but between a usurper and a lawful monarch. So true it is that those who have most need of their assistance have the worst memories! ‘What,’ exclaims our enthusiast, ‘would there be to oppose such a general and such an army, aided by the unconquered Wellington,’ &c. First, ‘this is the very coinage of his brain.’ There’s no such general and no such army.

But granting the supposition to be true, the patriotic general, who should open to himself a glorious passage through the heart of his country, and attempt to make it the vassal of England, under the monstrous pretence of allegiance to his Sovereign, might perhaps meet the fate which Providence destined for the virtuous Moreau. Perhaps the French may think that as their affected loyalty could be only a cover for the most dastardly submission, so their hypocrisy and treachery to themselves might be justly retaliated upon them, by making the restoration of thrones a mask for the dismemberment of kingdoms. They may have acquired by experience some knowledge of that enlargement of view and boldness of nerve, which is inspired by the elevation of success. They may consider, that ‘when the wild and savage passions are set afloat, they are not so easily regulated’ according to the dictates of justice or generosity. Some of them may even go so far as to think that all the respect of the Emperor of Russia for the talents and virtues of Moreau might be insufficient to deter him from memorizing another Warsaw at Paris! Of this we are tolerably certain, that there are not wanting staunch friends of order and civilization in this country who would advise and applaud such a catastrophe ‘to the very echo,’ as a masterpiece of political justice, chauntTe Deumover the ruins, and very seriously invite the good people of France to join in the chorus! But we are not ‘the echo that shall applaud again.’ We shall not hail such a catastrophe, nor such a triumph. For out of the desolation would arise a poisoned stench that would choak almost the breath of life, and one low, creeping fog of universal despotism, that would confound the Easternand the Western world togetherin darkness that might be felt. We do not wish for this final consummation, because we do not wish the pulse of liberty to be quite destroyed, or that the mass of our common nature should become a lifeless corpse, unable to rouse itself against never-ending wrongs, or that the last spark of generous enthusiasm should be extinguished in that moral atheism, which defaces and mangles the image of God in man. We do not wish that liberty should ever have a deer’s heart given her, to live in constant fear of the fatal, inevitable venal pack behind her; but that she may still have the heart of a lioness, whose mighty roar keeps the hunters at bay, and whose whelps revenge their parent’s death!

Rather than such an event should take place, if such an extremity were possible, we should even wish that a general and an army of our own, devoted byThe Timesto a far different service, might be empowered to make a firm stand against it: to stop the tide of barbarous despotism as they had already rolled back that of ungovernable ambition, and to say, Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further. Such an interference in such a cause would indeed give to Great Britain the character which she claims of being the Vindicator of the World. It would be to assume an attitude and a port indeed, loftier than she ever yet presented to the admiration of mankind; and would create a bulwark of strength round her, that would encircle her as with ‘impaling fire’!

Nov. 19, 1813.

This patriot and logician in a letter inThe Timesof Friday, labours to stifle the most distant hope of peace in its birth. He lays down certain general principles which must for ever render all attempts to restore it vain and abortive. With the watchword ofEternal war with Bonaparteblazoned on his forehead, in the piety of his pacific zeal, he challenges Bonaparte as the wanton, unprovoked, implacable enemy of the peace of mankind. We will also venture to lay down a maxim, which is—That from the moment that one party declares and acts upon the avowed principle that peace can never be made with an enemy, it renders war on the part of that enemy a matter of necessary self-defence, and holds out a plea for every excess of ambition or revenge. If we are to limit our hostility to others only with their destruction, we impose the adoption of the same principle on them as their only means of safety. There is no alternative. But this is probably the issue to which Vetus wishes to bring the question.This writer not only outlaws Bonaparte, but in a summary way, disfranchises the French nation at large of the right of making peace or war. ‘Who,’ he exclaims in wanton defiance of common sense, ‘are the French nation? To us a rank non-entity. We have only to do with Napoleon Bonaparte—with his rights, his interests, his honour. Who are to be the sole judges of his rights? We and our allies!’ Admirable politician!

The events which have lately taken place on the Continent, and the moderate and manly tone in which those events have been received by Ministers, have excited the utmost degree of uneasiness and alarm in the minds of certain persons, who redouble the eagerness of their cries for war. The cold blooded fury and mercenary malice of these panders to mischief, can only be appeased by the prospect of lasting desolation. They rave, foam at the mouth, and make frantic gestures at the name of peace. These high-priests of Moloch daily offer up to their grim idol the same nauseous banquet of abuse and lies. Round them ‘a cry of hell-hounds never ceasing bark,’ that with greedy appetite devour the offal. Every day they act over the same foul imposture, and repeat their monstrous masque. These mighty soothsayers look forward to another restoration of Europe after another twenty years of havoc and destruction. After urging her to the very edge of the precipice from which she has only just recovered, breathless and affrighted, they wish to goad her on once more to the same mad career. The storm is for the moment over-past, but they will not suffer the vessel of the state to enter the harbour, in the hope that they may still plunder the wreck, and prey upon the carcases. The serpent’s hiss, the assassin’s yell, the mowing and chattering of apes, drown the voice of peace; and Vetus, like the solemn owl, joins in the distance, and prolongs the dreary note of death!

Jan. 21, 1814.

The following passage, among others of the samecalibre, has lately appeared inThe Courier:—

‘The party call upon us to speak out. We thought it not very easy for any charge of not speaking out to be urged against us. However, we obey their call most willingly. “DoesThe Courier, they ask, mean to insinuate, that because the South of France is more inclined to favour their pretensions, the Bourbons ought to have frigates allotted them to traverse the Bay of Biscay, and join the standard of Lord Wellington?” To this wereply, yes; decisively yes!—We say we would have a Bourbon proceed to the South of France. We hope we have spoken out on this point. One more remains;—Would we “set up some new obstacle to the progress of the negociation that is on foot?”Yes, if we thought there was any negociation on foot with Bonaparte. But we trust there is not—we trust there never will be.’

And this at a time when it has been formally signified from the throne that there was no objection on the part of England to treat with the French Ruler; when Lord Liverpool has said publicly that no conditions of peace would be insisted on, which we, placed in the situation of France, should not think it reasonable to grant; when we, in concert with the Allies, have announced to France, that it is neither our intention nor our wish to interfere with their internal government, but to secure the independence and safety of the continent; and when Lord Castlereagh has gone from this country for the purpose, avowed and understood, of giving effect to that declaration, and of fixing the basis of a peace to be recognized by the common powers of Europe. To produce such a passage, at such a moment, required that union of impudence and folly which has no parallel elsewhere. From the quarter from which it comes, it could not surprize us; it is consistent; it is in keeping; it is of a piece with the rest. It is worthy of those harpies of the press, whose business is to scare away the approach of peace by their obscene and dissonant noises, and to tear asunder the olive-branch, whenever it is held out to us, with their well-practised beaks; who fill their hearts with malice, and their mouths with falsehood; who strive to soothe the dastard passion of their employers by inflaming those of the multitude; creatures that would sell the lives of millions for a nod of greatness, and make their country a by-word in history, to please some punk of quality.

We are to understand from no less an authority than that ofThe Courier, that Lord Castlereagh is sent out professedly to make peace, but in reality to hinder it: and we learn from an authority equally respectable (The Times) that nothing can prevent the destruction of Bonaparte but this country’s untimely consenting to make peace with him. And yet we are told in the same breath, that the charge of eternal war which we bring against these writers, is the echo of the French war-faction, who, at the commencement of every series of hostilities, and at the conclusion of every treaty, have accused this country of a want of good faith and sincere disposition to peace. We are told, that if the French do not force Bonaparte to make peace now, which yet these writers are determined to prevent him from doing, ‘they are sunk beneath the worshippers of cats and onions.’These ‘knavish but keen’ politicians tell the French people in so many words—‘We will not make peace with your government, and yet, if it does not make peace with us, we will force what Government we please upon you.’ What effect this monstrous and palpable insult must have upon the French nation, will depend upon the degree of sense and spirit they have left among them. But with respect to ourselves, if the line of policy pointed out by these juggling fiends is really meant to be pursued, if a pretended proposal to treat for peace on certain grounds is only to be converted into an insidious ground of renewed war for other purposes, if this offensive and unmanly imposture is to be avowed and practised upon us in the face of day, then we know what will be the duty of Parliament and of the country. The wars, in which the Governments of Europe have been engaged, have not succeeded the worse when the people took an effective share in them. We should hope that the interference of the people will not be necessary to effect the restoration of peace.

It is curious to hear these systematic opponents of peace, (with infuriate and insensate looks scattering firebrands and death,) at the same time affecting the most tender concern for the miseries of war; or like that good-natured reconciler of differences,Iago, hypocritically shifting the blame from themselves—‘What, stab men in the dark!’ They ask with grave faces, withverygrave faces, ‘Who are the authors, the propagators, and practisers of this dreadful war system? who the aggressors? who the unrelenting persecutors of peace?’ War is their everlasting cry, ‘one note day and night;’ during war, during peace, during negociation, in success, in adversity; and yet they dare to tax others as thesoleauthors of the calamities which they would render eternal, sooner than abate one jot of their rancorous prejudices. One of these writers (the Editor ofThe Times) asserts with an air of great confidence, while he himself is hallooing as loud as he can among the indefatigable war-pack, that Bonaparte is the cause, thesole authorof all the calamities of Europe for the last fourteen years; and what is remarkable, he brings as a proof of this sweeping assertion, a state paper, written under the Pitt Administration ofpacific memory, deprecatingallconciliation with the French at the very period from which the writer dates the wanton, unprovoked aggressions of Bonaparte, and which paper he quotes at length, as an admirable description of the mode by which we are to avert the calamities of Europe for the next fourteen years, as we have done for the last. Better late than never. So industrious an inquirer need not despair of effectually averting our future miseries, and pacifying the world, if it is to be done by referring back to state papers of this description, or by resuming the principles of those good old anti-jacobintimes, or by finishing the war as it was begun. There would be no end of precedents and documents for prosecuting the war with vigour under every variety of circumstances, in order never to bring it to a conclusion. As a proof of the aggressions and implacable hatred of France, he might cite that monument of romantic and disinterested generosity ‘of heroic sentiment and manly enterprise,’ on the part of the Allies, the treaty of Pilnitz.[7]He might proceed to those pacific manifestations—Lord Hawkesbury’s march to Paris—theBellum internecinumof Mr. Windham, and his consistent phrenzy at the treaty of Amiens—Mr. Pitt’s abstract impossibility of maintaining the relations of peace and amity with the French Republic, or with the child and champion of Jacobinism—Mr. Burke’s Regicide Peace—the project of starving France in 1796—of hurling her down the gulph of bankruptcy in 1797—the coalitions of different periods in which England saved herself and Europefrom peaceby her energy, or her example—the contemptuous rejection of every offer of negociation in every situation, the unwearied prosecution of the war on the avowed principle that we were never to leave it off as long as we could carry it on, or get any one to carry it on for us, or till we had buried ourselves under the ruins of the civilized world (a prediction which we narrowly escaped verifying)—all these undeniable proofs and substantial demonstrations of our fond desires, our longings after peace, and of the determination of France to aggrandize herself by war and conquest, would, indeed, with the ingenious glosses of our well-meaning commentator form a very entertaining volume, and would at least teach us, if not what to follow, what we ought to shun, in our future advances to this first of earthly blessings, so long and studiously and systematically withheld from us—only to render its attainment more certain and more precious!

To the other solid grounds of an indefinite prolongation of this war, religious, moral, political, commercial, constitutional, continental, Jacobinical, Revolutionary, Corsican, foreign or domestic—our apologist, in the true spirit of the Frenchpetit maitreinRoderic Random, has now added a ground of his own, of equal efficacy and validity with the former, viz. that we are to carry it on in the character of gentlemen and men of honour. We are to fight for the restoration of the Bourbons, sayThe Times, ‘that we may have gentlemen and men of honour to fight with.’ There is some prudence in this resolution; it goes on the old principle, that we are not to fight except with ourmatch. Don Quixote, after he had been soundlydrubbed by the Yanguesian carriers, recollected that he ought not to have engaged with plebeians. The writer whom we have here quoted, told us, some time ago, from a greater authority certainly than that ofThe Times, the true grounds of war, or ‘that we might spill our blood for our country, for our liberty, for our friends, for our kind;’ but we do not remember, among these legitimate sources of the waste of human blood, that we were to shed it for a punctilio. If war were to be decided by the breaking of white and black sticks among gentlemen-ushers, or even by the effusion of courtly phrases inThe CourierandThe Times, we should have no objection to this fastidious refinement; but we cannot consent to shed the best blood of Europe, nor that of ‘the meanest peasant in this our native land,’ in order that the delicate honour of the Carlton House Minority may not be stained, nor the purity of their moral taste perverted, by an intercourse with any but gentlemen and men of honour. And thou, Carl John, what hast thou to say to this new plea of the old school?—Or why, not being clad with the inherent right to ‘monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks,’—dost thou insult over the King of Denmark, menace Holstein, and seize upon Norway, and yet tellest thy little son, that the time is coming, when conquerors shall be no more?—The Times’editor scornfully rejects our practical opinion on the probability of restoring the Bourbons, because it seems we always reject every proposition that makes the continuance of war necessary. Be it so. But do not these persons also attach the highest degree of probability, or, when they are so inclined, moral certainty, to every thing that tends to make peace unattainable? It is true we did not, as they say, anticipate the reverses of the French Emperor before they happened. If we did not anticipate them before, it was because we had nothing in past experience to guide us to such a conclusion, except, indeed, the constant unverified predictions ofThe TimesandThe Courier. If these inspired writers had the slightest intimation of them one moment before they happened, we are willing to bow down to them, and they shall be our Gods. But of this we are sure, from all experience, that the way to render the fruits of those reverses uncertain, or to defeat them altogether, is the very mode of proceeding recommended by the ceaseless partizans of interminable hostilities. If the French are a nation of men—if they have the common faculties of memory, of understanding, and foresight; if they are, as they have been pronounced by one no ways favourable to them, ‘the most civilized, and with one exception, the most enlightened people in Europe,’ surely, if any thing can kindle in their minds ‘the flame of sacred vehemence, and move the verystones to mutiny,’ it is the letting loose upon them the mohawks of Europe, the Cossacks, with General Blucher’s manifesto in their hands. It is restoring to Bonaparte the very weapon which we had wrested from him, the mighty plea of the independence of nations; it is reclothing his power with those adamantine scales ‘which fear no discipline of human hands,’ the hearts and wills of a whole people, threatened with emasculation of their moral and physical powers, by half a dozen libellers of the human species, and a horde of barbarians scarcely human. Even the writer inThe Timesacknowledges that the Cossacks entering France as a sort of masters of the ceremonies to the Bourbons, is only better, and less likely to excite horror and dismay, than their entering it in their own rights and persons. It may be so. The bear bringing in the monkey on his back may be more inviting than the bear alone. But we should think that either portent must be fatal, that neither hieroglyphic will be favourably interpreted.

‘Those nauseous harlequins in farce may pass,But there goes more to a substantial ass;Our modern wits such monstrous fools have shewn,They seem not of Heaven’s making but their own.’—Dryden.

‘Those nauseous harlequins in farce may pass,

But there goes more to a substantial ass;

Our modern wits such monstrous fools have shewn,

They seem not of Heaven’s making but their own.’—Dryden.

Dec. 2, 1813.

There is a degree of shameless effrontery which disarms and baffles contempt by the shock which it gives to every feeling of moral rectitude or common decency; as there is a daring extravagance in absurdity which almost challenges our assent by confounding and setting at defiance every principle of human reasoning. The ribald paragraphs, which fill the columns of our daily papers, and disgrace the English language, afford too many examples of the former assertion; the Letters of Vetus are a striking instance of the latter.

It would have been some satisfaction to us, in the ungrateful task which we had imposed upon ourselves, if, in combating the conclusions of Vetus, we could have done justice to the ingenuity of his arguments, or the force of his illustrations. But his extreme dogmatism is as destitute of proofs, as it is violent in itself. His profound axioms are in general flat contradictions; and he scarcely makes a single statement in support of any propositionwhich does not subvert it. In the Parliamentary phrase, he constantlystultifieshimself. The glaring and almost deliberate incongruity of his conclusion is such as to imply a morbid defect of comprehension, a warped or overstrained understanding. Absorbed in an inveterate purpose, bent on expanding some vapid sophism into a cumbrous system, he is insensible to the most obvious consequences of things; and his reason is made the blind pander to his prejudices.

We are not converts to this author’s style, any more than to his reasoning. Indeed the defects of the one very much assist those of the other, and both have the same character. There is a perpetual effort to make something out of nothing, and to elevate a common-place into sublimity. The style of Vetus is not very different from that of Don Adriano de Armado; every word is as who should say, ‘I am Sir Oracle.’ Like the hero of Cervantes, haranguing the shepherds, he assaults the very vault of Heaven with the arrogance of his tone, and the loudness of his pretensions. Nothing can exceed the pompous quaintness, and laborious foolery of many of his letters. He unfolds the book of fate, assumes the prophet or historian, by virtue of alliteration and antithesis;—sustains the balance of power by well-poised periods, or crushes a people under a ponderous epithet. The set style of Vetus does not conform easily to the march of human affairs; and he is often forced to torture the sense to ‘hitch it’ in a metaphor. While he is marshalling his words, he neglects his arguments, which require all his attention to connect them together; and in his eagerness to give additional significance to his sentences, he loses his own meaning.

We shall proceed to the task we at first proposed, viz. that of supplying marginal notes to the voluminous effusions of Vetus, and shall continue our comments as often as he furnishes us with the text.

We agree with the sentiment with which he commences his last Letter, that it is ‘particularly desirable to follow up the question of peace’ at the present crisis, but not with the reason which he assigns for his extreme anxiety to enter upon the question, ‘because this is just the moment to dread the entertainment of a pacific overture.’ We can readily believe that at no other moment than when he dreads its approach, would Vetus ever breathe a syllable on the subject of peace, and then only to avert it. Whenever ‘a spurious and mawkish beneficence’ gives an alarm of peace, the dogs of war stand ready on the slip to hunt it down.

‘I have stated to you’ (To the Editor of the Times) ‘as the only legitimate basis of a treaty, if not on the part of the continental Allies, at least for England herself, thatshe should conquer all she can, and keep all she conquers. This is not by way of retaliation,however just, upon so obdurate and rapacious an enemy—but as an indispensable condition of her own safety and existence.’

That which is here said to be theonlylegitimate basis of a treaty is one, which if admitted and acted upon, would make it impossible that any treaty should ever be formed. It is a basis, not of lasting peace, but of endless war. To call that the basis of a treaty which precludes the possibility of any concession or compensation, of every consideration either of the right or power of each party to retain its actual acquisitions, is one of those misnomers which the gravity of Vetus’s manner makes his readers overlook. After the imposing and guarded exordium which ushers in the definition of our only legitimate basis of a treaty, we are not prepared to expect Vetus’s burlesque solution of the difficulty—‘that we are not to treat at all.’ The human mind is naturally credulous of sounding professions, and reluctantly admits the existence of what is very common, and common for that reason—pompous nonsense. It seems, however, that this basis of a treaty is to apply only to one of the contracting powers, namely, England, it is equivocal as to the Allies, and with respect to France, it is, we suppose, meant to be altogether null. For in a former letter, after asking, ‘Who are to be the judges of his (Bonaparte’s) rights?’ he answers emphatically, ‘We and our Allies!’ Bobadil did not come up to this exquisite pacificator of the world! To make common sense of Vetus’s axiom with reference to any state whatever, ‘that it should keep all it conquers,’ it seems necessary to add this trifling condition, ‘if it can.’ And with respect to Great Britain in particular, if from her peculiar situation she has the power to keep all she conquers without being amenable to any other tribunal than her own will, this very circumstance proves that the exercise of that power is notnecessary to her safety and existence. Again, if England has an interest of her own, quite independent on and separate from that of the continent, what has she to do with continental Allies? If her interests may be and are interwoven with those of the rest of Europe, is it too much to expect from her a common sacrifice to the common cause? We quarrel with France on continental grounds; we strip her of her colonies to support the quarrel; and yet we refuse to restore any part of them, in order to secure peace. If so, we are only ostensible parties in the contest, and in reality robbers.

‘The first policy of a wise people is to make rival nations afraid to disturb them, to impress their enemies with aterrific sense,’ (how magnificent is this epic mode of expression) ‘that to attack them is to suffer not only transient defeats, but deep, grievous, andirrecoverable losses; and to hold in abhorrence any peace which shall not be a living record oftheir own superiority, and a monument worthy of those warriors, through whose noble blood it was obtained.’

If the losses sustained in war were to be irrecoverable, it is easy to foresee that the seat of empires would be very soon changed in almost all cases whatever. But Vetus here, as is customary with him when it tends to enforce the hyperbolical effect of his style, assumes as a broad ground of national wisdom, a physical impossibility. It is not in the nature of things that the losses of rival States should be irrecoverable. Vetus would do better to decree at once that the possessions of nations areunassailableas well asirrecoverable, which would prevent war altogether. But still more preposterous is the madness or malice of the assertion, that no peace can be made by a wise nation, which is not a living record oftheir own superiority. ‘This is the key-stone which makes up the arch’ of Vetus’s indestructible war-system. Can it have escaped even the short-sighted logic of this writer, that to make superiority an indispensable condition of a wise peace is to proscribe peace altogether, because certainly this superiority cannot belong at the same time to both parties, and yet we conceive that the consent of both parties is necessary to a peace? Any other peace, we are told, than that which is at all times impracticable between rival states, ought not only never to be made, but it ought to be held in abhorrence, we ought to shudder at its approach as the last of evils, and throw it to an immeasurable distance from us. This is indeed closing up the avenues to peace, and shutting the gates of mercy on mankind, in a most consummate and scientific manner. Our philosophic rhetorician appears also to forget, in that high tone in which he speaks of themonuments raised by the noble blood of warriors, that these sort of monuments are cemented by the blood of others as well as by our own, and tell the survivors a double story. His heated imagination seems to have been worked up into a literal belief of his own assertion, that the French nation are a rank non-entity; or he supposes that there is some celestial ichor in our veins, which we alone shed for our country, while other nations neither bleed nor suffer from war, nor have a right to profit by peace. This may be very well in poetry, or on thestage, but it will not pass current in diplomacy. Vetus, indeed, strains hard to reconcile inconsistencies, and to found the laws of nations on the sentiments of exclusive patriotism. But we should think that the common rules of peace and war, which necessarily involve the rights, interests, and feelings of different nations, cannot be dictated by the heroic caprices of a few hair-brained egotists, on either side of the question.

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