itary despotism in the room of her commercial policy. It would require no very profound or subtle disquisition, to prove that if Britain were destroyed, the aggregate of the whole world's wealth, industry, spirit, enterprise, intelligence, morality, religion, and every thing which conduces to human prosperity and happiness would be dreadfully diminished; because they derive material aid from the superior freedom, virtue, talents, and knowledge of the British nation under its present form of government. Foreign conquest would infallibly bring along with it slavery, vice, and ignorance, which would immediately dry up the springs and sources of agriculture, of manufactures, of commerce, and of every species of productive industry; would instantly palsy all the physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual energies of Britain, who is now the great central pivot, upon which all the labor that can have any tendency to meliorate the condition of human society in the whole world turns; and would thus convert the universal earth into one vast wilderness of death. This subject is treated at considerable length, and with great ability by M. Gentz, late Counsellor of war to the King of Prussia, in a work intituled "De l'etat de l' Europe avant et apres a la Revolution Française, pour servir de response a l'ecrit intitule,-De l'etat de la France a la fin de l' An 8." Fortunately for our direction on this subject, Buonaparte has not left it to conjecture, whether or not he designs to augment the industry and wealth of the world when he shall have subjugated it to his domination. For in the year 1808 to a petition of the Bourdeaux merchants praying for a relaxation of his Berlin, Milan and Bayonne decrees, lest they should totally destroy the little remnant of French commerce, he replied, "That it was the Emperor's will not to have any commerce, but to restore Europe to the condition of the fourth century." What that con dition was the reader may learn by perusing Mr. Gibbon's very elaborate and highly finished dissertation in the 3d vol. pp. 30—98, of his "History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The inveterate hostility of Buonaparte to commerce under any shape, is also proved with great force and spirit by Mr. Walsh in his " Letter," pp. 209, 219. Without now dwelling upon the inevitable result to these United States from the military visitation of Napoleon subsequent to his conquest of Britain, one of the minor evils immediately incident to this country from such an event would be the instantaneous cutting away of all supply of British manufactures. The ruin of Britain would be accompanied with the annihilation of her commerce and manufactures, and the United States have not now, neither can they have for many years to come a sufficient capital or a sufficiently reasonable rate of labor-wages to enable them to manufacture many even of the prime necessaries of life, such as woollen-clothing, a vast variety of articles in hardware, and many other commodities. Where then could they get a supply of these necessary articles? From the European continent? No, that is too much destroyed by the ravages of long continued warfare to be able for a long time to come, to supply even itself with manufactured goods. Add to which the continent of Europe never can become extensively employed in manufactures, because it has not a sufficient quantity of coal mines at command. It surely requires no argument to prove that a nation whose fuel grows above ground can never push its manufactures to any great extent. The immediate result then of the destruction of Britain to the United States would be, the depriving a large body of the American people of many of the necessaries and more of the conveniences of life. How much this would tend to breed discontent among our citizens and effectually diminish our population, it is needless to consider. But Britain is not yet fallen, nor is she about to fall, or even to bow her lofty head beneath the menaces or the allurements, the craft or the courage of her enemies. Of her industry and wealth, her public credit, and all the vast resources of her individual and collective property, occasion has been already taken to speak, and it only now remains to inquire briefly into the state of her population, as to number, capacity of intelligence, and courage to keep the common enemy of mankind at bay. The population of the British Isles returned to Parliament in 1801, in pursuance of the act 41 Geo. IIId, was for England and Wales, Scotland, Maritime and military population exclu sive of India and foreign corps, Total population, 10,710,000 1,500,000 3,800,000 500,000 16,510,000 of Of these the total effective males from the age nineteen to twenty-six were 845,000. The proportions of this population in Great Britain were one in twenty-seven males in the army and militia, one in twelve in the army, navy, and merchant-service. In the sea-ports 132 females to 100 males, in the manufacturing towns 113 females to 100 males. Total male population in Great Britain 5,450,292, of females 5,492,354, about 100 females to 99 males, the average mortality in the sexes being nearly equal, notwithstanding the long continuance of war. But this return very materially under-rates the population of Britain. The truth is that owing to the novelty and the difficulty of taking an exact census, the returns to Parliament were very defective. A belief had been industriously propagated by the British jacobins that an enumeration of the people was about to be made for the express purpose of levying a heavy poll-tax on all the inhabitants, and of drafting all the males capable of bearing arms into the militia or the regular troops. This belief or some other cause operated so powerfully as to induce almost every district in the kingdom to give in a much lower estimate than the actual amount of its population. At that time I had occasion to travel through many of the counties of England and of Scotland; and was peculiarly struck with the uniformly careless manner in which the assessors collected their account of the number of people within their respective districts. In Edinburgh and Glasgow it is common for several distinct families to live upon the separate flats or compartments under the same roof. An assessor would go to the door of the lowest flat and ask how many people lived in it? Whatever was the answer, down he wrote it without further inquiry. He then proceeded to ask who lived upon the second flat and how many there were in the family? The answer sometimes was, "I do not know;"-well how many do you guess? The guess was made at random, and forthwith written down as a correct return. A very judicious and respectable gentleman of the city of Edinburgh, asked several of his neighbors why they had given in some only half, others twothirds, and all of them less than the real amount of the whole number of their inmates? The reply invariably was, why they tell me that all the lads are to be taken away for soldiers. Throughout the country the same carelessness in taking the census prevailed. Mr. Newenham in his "Statistical and historical Inquiry into the progress and magnitude of the population of Ireland," states the people of that country to be nearly six instead of under four millions. And probably it would be nearer the truth to rate the population of Britain at about one-fourth more than the number given by the returns to Parliament in 1801; proportioning them thus: The great increase of population during the last twenty years might be inferred from the augmented means of subsistence and the improved condition of the people, arising from the extension of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce; so abundantly detailed in the preceding pages of this work. See the steady proportion which the population of every country bears to its means of subsistence and of comfort, explained by sir James Steuart in his “Political Economy," book 1st, chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21; and still more luminously and conclusively by Mr. Malthus in his "Essay on Population," throughout the whole of his first and second books. Mr. Malthus demonstrates that an increasing and efficient population does not depend merely upon the multitude of early marriages and the frequency of births; but chiefly upon the great proportion of children that are born being reared to manhood. Accordingly we are informed by Storch in his "Historico-Statistical Picture of the Russian Empire at the close of the 18th century," that the boors in Russia have generally from twelve to twenty children of one marriage; but of these seldom the fourth part arrives at maturity. This great mortality among the Russian children, occasioned no doubt by hardship and want on the part of the parents, very much astonished and troubled the Empress Catharine the Second, who complains of it bitterly in her " Instructions" to her dif ferent Ministers, and says, that there must be some fault, either in regard to nourishment, the manner of life or of education, by which this hope of the go |