them, namely, the condition by which he lives. It is very true there was a mixture of policy and prudence in this measure; but it was a great act of magnanimity notwithstanding, and it is not in Providence to turn such an act to your disadvantage. With respect to the other act, the mercy shown to his people, I have underrated it; the allies did not give liberty to France, they enabled her to give a constitution to herself, a better constitution than that which, with much laboriousness and circumspection, and deliberation, and procrastination, the philosopher fabricated, when the jacobins. trampled down the flimsy work, murdered the vain philosophers, drove out the crazy reformers, and remained masters of the field in the triumph of superior anarchy and confusion; better than that, I say, which the jacobin destroyed, better than that which he afterwards formed, with some method in his madness, and more madness in his method; with such a horror of power, that in his plan of a constitution, he left out a government, and with so many wheels, that every thing was in movement, and nothing in concert, so that the machine took fire from its own velocity; in the midst of death and mirth, with images emblematic of the public disorder, goddesses of reason turned fool, and of liberty turned fury at length the French found their advantages in adopting the sober and unaffected security of King, Lords, and Commons, on the idea of that form of government which your ancestors procured by their firmness, and maintained by their discretion. The people had attempted to give the French liberty, and failed; the wise men (so her philosophers called themselves) had attempted to give liberty to France, and had failed; it remained for the extraordinary destiny of the French, to receive their free constitution from kings. This constitution Buonaparte has destroyed, together with the treaty of Fontainbleau, and having broken both, desires your confidence; Russia confided, and was deceived; Austria confided, and was deceived. Have we forgotten the treaty of Luneville, and his abominable conduct to the Swiss? Spain and other nations of Europe confided, and all were deceived. During the whole of this time, he was charging on England the continuation of the war, while he was, with uniform and universal perfidy, breaking his own treaties of peace, for the purpose of renewing the war, to end it in what was worse than war itself, his conquest of Europe.

But now he repents and will be faithful! he says so, but he says the contrary also: "I protest against the validity of the treaty of Fontainbleau; it was not done with the consent of the people; I protest against every thing done in my absence; see my speech to the army and people; see the speech of my

council to me." The treaty of Paris was done in his absence; by that treaty were returned the French colonies and prisoners; thus he takes life and empire from the treaty of Fontainbleau, with an original design to set it aside, and he takes prisoners and colonies from the treaty of Paris, which he afterwards sets aside also; and musters an army by a singular fatality, in a great measure composed of troops who owe their enlargement, and of a chief who owes his life to the powers he fights by the resources of France, who owes to those powers her salvation; he gives a reason for this, " Nothing is good which was done without the consent of the people, (having been deposed by that people, and elected by the army in their defiance): with such sentiments, which go not so much against this or that particular treaty as against the principles of affiance, the question is, whether with a view to the security. of Europe, you will take the faith of Napoleon, or the army of the allies?

Gentlemen maintain, that we are not equal to the contest; that is to say, confederated Europe cannot fight France singlehanded; if that be your opinion you are conquered this moment; you are conquered in spirit: but that is not your opinion, nor was it the opinion of your ancestors; they thought and I hope transmitted the sentiment as your birth-right, that the armies of these islands could always fight, and fight with success their own numbers; see now the numbers you are to command; by this treaty you are to have in the field what may be reckoned not less than 600,000 men; besides that stipulated army you have at command, what may be reckoned as much more, I say you and the allies. The Emperor of Austria alone has an army of 500,000 men, of which 120,000 were sent to Italy to oppose Murat, who is now beaten; Austria is not then occupied by Murat; Prussia is not occupied by the Saxon, nor Russia by the Pole, at least not so occupied that they have not ample and redundant forces for this war; you have a general never surpassed, and allies in heart and confidence. See now Buonaparte's muster; he has lost his external dominions, and is reduced from a population of 100,000,000, to a population of 25,000,000; besides, he has lost the power of fascination, for though he may be called the subverter of kings, he has not proved to be the redresser of grievances. Switzerland has not forgotten; all Europe remembers the nature of his reformation, and that the best reform he introduced was worse than the worst government he subverted; as little can Spain or Prussia forget what was worse even than his reformations, the march of his armies. It was not an army, it was a military government in march, like

the Roman legions in Rome's worst time, Italica or Rapax, responsible to nothing, nor God, nor man; thus he has administered a cure to his partizans for any enthusiasm that might have been annexed to his name, and is now reduced to his resources at home; it is at home that he must feed his armies and find his strength, and at home he wants artillery, he wants cavalry; he has no money, he has no credit, he has no title; with respect to his actual numbers they are not ascertained, but it may be collected that they bear no proportion to those of the allies.

But gentlemen presume that the French nation will rise in his favour as soon as we enter their country; we entered their country before and they did not rise in his favour; on the contrary they deposed him; the article of deposition is given at length; it is said we endeavour to impose a government on France; the French armies elect a conqueror for Europe, and our resistance to this conqueror is called imposing a government on France; if we put down this chief we relieve France as well as Europe from a foreign yoke, and this deliverance is called the imposition of a government on France. He, He! imposed a government on France; he imposed a foreign yoke on France; he took from the French their property by contribution; he took their children by conscription; he lost her, her empire, and, a thing almost unimaginable, he brought the enemy to the gates of Paris; we, on the contrary, formed a project, as appears from a paper of 1805, which preserved the integrity of the French empire; the allies, in 1814, not only preserved the integrity of the empire as it stood in 1792, but gave her her liberty, and they now afford her the only chance of redemption. Against these allies, will France now combine, and having received from them her empire as it stood before the war, with additions in consequence of their deposition of Buonaparte; and having gotten back her capital, her colonies, and her prisoners, will she break the treaty to which she owes them; rise up against the allies who gave them; break her oath of allegiance; destroy the constitution she has formed; depose the King she has chosen; rise up against her own deliverance, in support of contribution and conscription, to perpetuate her political damnation under the yoke of a stranger?

Gentlemen say, France has elected him; they have no grounds for so saying; he had been repulsed at Antibes, and he lost thirty men, he landed near Cannes the 1st of March, with 1100. With this force he proceeded to Grasse, Digne, Gap, and on the 7th he entered Grenoble; he there got from the desertion of regiments above 3000 men, and a park of artillery; with this additional force he proceeded to Lyons;

he left Lyons with about 7000 strong, and entered Paris on the 20th, with all the troops of the line that had been sent to oppose him; the following day he reviewed his troops, and nothing could equal the shouts of the army, except the silence of the people; this was in the strictest sense of the word, a military election. It was an act where the army deposed the civil government; it was the march of a military chief over a conquered people. The nation did not rise to resist Buonaparte or defend Louis, because the nation could not rise upon the army; her mind as well as her constitution was conquered; in fact, there was no nation; every thing was army, and every thing was conquest. France had passed through all the degrees of political probation, revolution, counterrevolution, wild democracy, intense despotism, outrageous anarchy, philosophy, vanity, and madness; and now she lay exhausted, for horse, foot, and dragoons, to exercise her power, to appoint her a master, captain or cornet who should put the brand of his name upon her government, calling it his dynasty, and under this stamp of dishonour pass her on to futurity.

Buonaparte, it seems, is to reconcile every thing by the gift of a free constitution. He took possession of Holland, he did not give her a free constitution; he took possession of Spain, he did not give her a free constitution; he took possession of Switzerland, whose independence he had guaranteed, he did not give her a free constitution; he took possession of Italy, he did not give her a free constitution; he took possession of France, he did not give her a free constitution; on the contrary, he destroyed the directorial constitution, he destroyed the consular constitution, and he destroyed the late constitution, formed on the plan of England! But now he is, with the assistance of the Jacobin, to give her liberty; that is, the man who can bear no freedom, unites to form a constitution with a body who can bear no government. In the mean time, while he professes liberty, he exercises despotic power, he annihilates the nobles, he banishes the deputies of the people, and he sequesters the property of the emigrants.

Now he is to give liberty!" I have seen his constitution, as exhibited in the newspaper; there are faults innumerable in the frame of it, and more in the manner of accepting it: it is to be passed by subscription without discussion, the troops are to send deputies, and the army is to preside. There is some cunning, however, in making the subscribers to the constitution renounce the House of Bourbon; they are to give their word for the deposition of the King, and take Napoleon's word for their own liberty; the offer imports nothing which can be relied on, except that he is afraid of

the allies. Disperse the alliance, and farewell to the liberty of France, and the safety of Europe.

Under this head of ability to combat Buonaparte, I think we should not despair.

With respect to the justice of the cause, we must observe, Buonaparte has broken the treaty of Fontainbleau; he confesses it; he declares he never considered himself as bound by it. If, then, that treaty is out of the way, he is as he was before it at war. As Emperor of the French, he has broken the treaty of Paris; that treaty was founded on his abdication; when he proposes to observe the treaty of Paris, he proposes what he cannot do, unless he abdicates.

The proposition that we should not interfere with the government of other nations is true, but true with qualifications; if the government of any other country contains an insurrectionary principle as France did, when she offered to aid the insurrections of her neighbours, your interference is warranted; if the government of another country contains the principle of universal empire, as France did, and promulgated, your interference is justifiable. Gentlemen may call this internal government, but I call this conspiracy; if the government of another country maintains a predatory army, such as Buonaparte's, with a view to hostility and conquest, your interference is just. He may call this internal government, but I call this a preparation for war. No doubt he will accompany this with offers of peace, but such offers of peace are nothing more than one of the arts of war, attended, most assuredly, by charging on you the odium of a long and protracted contest, and with much common place, and many good saws and sayings, of the miseries of bloodshed, and the savings and good husbandry of peace, and the comforts of a quiet life; but if you listen to this, you will be much deceived; not only deceived, but you will be beaten. Again, if the government of another country covers more ground in Europe, and destroys the balance of power, so as to threaten the independence of other nations, this is a cause of your interference. Such was the principle upon which we acted in the best times; such was the principle of the grand alliance; such the triple alliance; and such the quadruple; and by such principles has Europe not only been regulated but protected. If a foreign government does any of those acts I have mentioned, we have a cause of war; but if a foreign power does all of them; forms a conspiracy for universal empire; keeps up an army for that purpose; employs that army to overturn the balance of power; and attempts the conquest of Europe, attempts do I say, in a great degree achieves it, (for what else was Buonaparte's