the Low Countries. No step can be taken, not even a curate appointed, by the bishop, or by the general council, without the approbation of Buonaparte. Since the Concordat the salaries of the priests have been regularly in arrears, and often not paid at all. The present servants of the altar are for the most part starving; many of them go through a whole service for twenty pence; and some of them for nothing. The Editors of the L. P. add, that the number of foundlings in France is a sure gage of the low state of morals there; and no increase of physical strength to the nation; as the proportion of deaths exceeds that of those who live to maturity. Money in the Netherlands commands an exhorbitant interest, sometimes one per cent a month; seldom less than ten per cent per annum. The scarcity of the circulating medium is such as not to afford sufficient encouragement for the mechanic to finish his work. In the northern and southern provinces of France money bears an interest of from ten to twelve per cent; while the Bank of France offers money at four per cent in Paris. There is either a fallacy in this offer, or no intercourse between the capital and the country, or both. Under these circumstances, what export-trade, which implies a credit to adventurers, can the departments of France maintain?

Is it likely that such a state of society can long continue; can the iron girdle of military despotism alone long bind together a vast community which has lost in the dissolution of all religious and moral ties, the only great and lasting cements of human society? And although the military ascendancy of France now holds nearly the whole continent of Europe in the chains of bondage, can it prevent that reaction upon itself which must arise from the present irreligious and immoral condition of continental Europe; all the nations of which, perhaps, ere long will be destined to run the same career of revolutionary

warfare, upon which Spain and Portugal have already entered? France has hitherto been the great instrument in the hand of Divine Providence to inflict vengeance and punishment, not only on her own apostacy and iniquity, but also on the iniquity and apostacy of the rest of the European continent. And her system of conscription; her destruction of all productive industry; her cutting away her own internal resources; peculiarly fit her for experiencing much more extensive calamity than she has ever yet suffered; when the day of retribution shall arrive.

It is intended now, not so much to inquire into the present actual and apparent power of France, as to examine into the means which Europe possesses of counteracting, if not of destroying that power. The reader, therefore, is merely referred to a few of the best writers who have recently spread out, in the darkest and most terrible coloring, the power and the resources of the Great Nation. The formidable position of France is depicted in terms of the most animated eloquence in " An Inquiry into the State of the Nation at the commencement of the present adminis tration," published in London in 1805, pp. 34--117158. This pamphlet is reputed to be the joint production of the late right honorable Charles Fox, and the present honorable Henry Brougham, M. P. Neither Mr. Fox nor Mr. Brougham can with justice be accused of under-rating the means of destruction which Buonaparte is supposed to possess, In the 13th volume of the Edinburgh Review, pp. 427--462, the conscription-system of France is fully explained and illustrated; together with such a picture of her miserable and profligate internal condition, as could scarcely be sketched by a resident in Britain. Indeed, it is generally believed here, that this review was written by Mr. Walsh of Baltimore, to whose "Letter on the genius and disposition of the French government," reference has been so often made, and is now again

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made, to pp. 179--186, for a very striking display of the power and misery of the Gallic empire.

Mr. Walsh concludes that the victorious career of France, whether Buonaparte lives or dies, will only be stopped by the permanent subjugation of the whole of continental Europe; which being done, every effort is to be made to reconcile all parties (in France) to the indefatigable prosecution of a war that is to terminate only in the ruin of England. They employ the parallel of Rome and Carthage; not as a rhetorical comparison, but as an encouraging and a certain analogy.

But the parallel between ancient Rome and France, and between Carthage and Britain, however gratifying it might be to the vanity of the Great Nation, is by no means correct. For the French have neither the steady valor of the Roman soldiers, nor is France now so powerful relatively to the rest of the world as Rome was just before Carthage fell. And still less correctly does the parallel hold between Carthage and Britain. For Carthage was merely a sordid gatherer of pelf, without civilization or learning; a peddling, trading country, without military talents or courage; cowardly, fraudulent, cruel; worsted in perpetual conflicts, even with the petty island of Sicily. Nay, so intrinsically weak and spiritless was she as to yield, with all her maritime and commercial experience, to the first rude naval armaments fitted out by the Romans. Duillius, the Roman consul, gained a naval victory over the Carthaginian fleet, with a body of mere landsmen, stowed in awkward, clumsily constructed vessels. The ships of war were rowed alongside the vessels of their antagonists, and being held firmly together by the grappling-irons, the men on each side fought hand to hand, and the valor of the Roman soldiers, of course, prevailed over the mercenary troops of Carthage.

Add to this the comparatively small extent and

scanty population of Carthage, which was also most perniciously weakened in all her national resources, offensive and defensive, by the democracy of her government; whence she was so constantly torn by party factions as to be unable to afford any of her own citizens to serve as soldiers in the infantry. She therefore hired strangers to fight her battles. Her cavalry indeed, consisting of the Numidian horse, and not made up of hired strangers, was so superior as uniformly to beat the Romans when engaged in an open champaign country. These troops, after the conquest of Carthage, were incorporated into the Roman cavalry. It was no very great wonder then, that Rome, having no other enemy to contend with, and being mistress of nearly all Europe, should be able to vanquish Carthage; whose fleet was ineffectual; whose population was scanty, factious, and cowardly; and, above all, whose government was democratic; it being absolutely impossible, in the nature of things, that a democracy can be either lasting, or powerful, or free.

The reader will do well, in considering the present question of the probability of Britain being subjugated by France, to consult the "Financial and Political Facts of the eighteenth and present century," &c. by Mr. M'Arthur, 4th edition, pp. 178--207, in which are contained many very important and most conclusive facts and observations as to the positive and relative power of Britain being far superior to that of France in all that constitutes the efficiency and the permanence of a nation's exertions to uphold the prosperity and strength of its own people, and to defeat all the assaults of a foreign enemy.

Political preponderance is given to Britain by her geographical position; her insular situation; her nicely poised and free government; the virtue, intelligence, courage, and wisdom of her people; her undisputed naval ascendancy; her extensive and still

widening commerce; her almost numberless internal conveniences, in canals, bridges, turnpike roads, all facilitating the intercourse, commercial and political, between all the parts of her home dominions; her military prowess, shown to be superior to that of her antagonist, by the recent exploits of her armies in Egypt, in Sicily, in Spain, and in Portugal; her accumulation of wealth, public and private, exceeding the aggregate property of all the rest of Europe; and the habitual industry of her people, whether employed in manual, mechanical, agricultural, commercial, manufacturing, or purely intellectual pursuits. But these subjects will receive a more distinct and minute consideration hereafter. ́

So much for the parallel between Britain and Carthage. It is natural, however, that Buonaparte should anxiously seek the destruction of the British empire, as the only barrier to his scheme of universal domination. Craving after power is the instinct of every strong mind; and nothing but the most invincible necessity can check its constant progress towards dominion. Perhaps Napoleon is not in reality more base, cruel, and fraudulent than were Robes pierre, Marat, or the members of the Executive Di rectory; but having more talent and a greater physical force at his command, he is an object of more extensive terror and alarm, and cannot in all human probability be prevented from laying the whole world waste in blood, but by the determined and effectual resistance of Britain.

Nor are the ambitious views of France of a recent date. The yearning after universal domination is as much the characteristic of the French people, as manly sentiments of freedom and of national independence are characteristic of the inhabitants of Britain. Buonaparte merely avails himself of this passion for military conquests inherent in the French, for the personal aggrandizement of himself and of his family.