the oppressor; the nobles are degraded; the wealthy are stripped of their property; and both rich and poor are alike the victims of a merciless conscription; all the sinews of industry are cut asunder; the hope of comfort and the love of life are for ever extinguished; all the laws and usages of olden times disappear beneath the weight of the Napoleon code; the ancient dynasties, white with the hoar of successive centuries, are overthrown; and all the institutions which have been from their earliest years endeared to the hearts of the people, all the institutions that are venerable for their antiquity, and consecrated in the best affections of human nature by the soft and shadowy light of age, valuable for their utility, rich in honorable splendor, magnificent in their origin, great and ennobling in their tendencies and aim, are all irretrievably destroyed. Indeed, it argues no very profound policy in Buonaparte, to endeavor to counteract the habits of more than a hundred millions of human beings by the capricious will of himself a single individual. Man is for the most part the creature of habit, whose guidance he follows in a thousand instances for one in which he obeys the dictates of reason. In the year 1789, the minister from the United States to France was in Alsace, and in company with some of the natives happened to say, "how, will you Frenchmen," &c. he was immediately interrupted by one of the principal men present, an Alsatian, who said eagerly, "We do not consider ourselves as Frenchmen; we are Germans." Now Alsace at that time had been annexed to the territory of France more than a hundred years, it being ceded to Louis the Fourteenth towards the close of the seventeenth century. When Peter the First of Russia issued an imperial decree ordering all his subjects to shave themselves, the commotion was so violent, and the resistance of the Russians to this infringement upon their long conti nued habits so determined, that the despotic Tzar, who exercised the uncontrolled power of life and death over his people, was obliged to recall his decree; because he found it easier and less dangerous to the safety of his throne to take off the heads than the beards of his Muscovites. Nor could that infatuated philosophist, Joseph the Second, emperor of Germany, induce his subjects in Austria, where his power was absolute, to bury their dead bodies in lime-pits, because it was contrary to their accustomed mode of interment. And during the revolutionary war of this country, notwithstanding the non-importation act of 1774, the American army was generally clothed in British cloth, which during the first years of the war was imported into the United States from Amsterdam; and afterwards from Gottenburgh, when the Dutch were reluctantly dragged into the war against England by the ascendancy of French influence in their national councils. Nay, a loan of money advanced by the French government to the United States for the express purpose of clothing the American army, was by the American minister in Holland laid out at Amsterdam in the purchase of English cloth; at which the government of France grievously complained; saying, that as they had advanced the money, of course they expected that it would have been laid out in the purchase of French, and not of British manufactures. The same circumstance took place as to a vast variety of other commodities which the habits of the American people induced them to purchase indirectly from Britain; in spite of the combined forces of the non-importation act and the war, which indeed raised the prices of imported articles to the American consumer to an average of from seventy to an hundred per cent. Whoever wishes to see the subject of habit in a people opposing the most obstinate resistance to the sudden introduction of change, most ably and satisfac torily handled, may consult Sir James Steuart's "Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy," &c. Book 1st, Chapter 2d, intituled " Of the Spirit of a People." In addition therefore to the internal checks which forebode the diminution of the formidable power of France, considerable reliance may also be placed upon the external drawbacks to her force; arising from the deadly hatred which is borne against her by all the nations whom she has vanquished, and whom she has so impoliticly insulted and oppressed; nainely, all the immense population that is spread over the rest of continental Europe; amounting to more than a hundred millions of souls. No one will venture to assert that France possesses the same permanent power and influence over the countries whom she has vanquished, as she exercises over her own ancient dominions. Sweden, Russia, Germany, Austria, Prussia, and Italy, whom she has humbled but not subdued, exceed her in the number of people and of soldiers. Their extreme humiliation has roused in their hearts every passion of pride, hatred, and desire of vengeance; terrible emotions which the rapacity and insolence of Buonaparte will fan into a fiercer flame. The difference of habits, manners, character, language and condition, oppose insuperable barriers to their union with, and incorporation into one and the same people with the French; all obeying one sovereign lord; notwithstanding the violence and the frequency of the changes in all their institutions, political and military, by which Napoleon endeavors to tear up by the roots all their attachment to ancient establishments; but by which in reality he only widens the resentment and deepens the execration, which rankle in the bosoms of the people of continental Europe against him, and against all the instruments and agents of his tyranny. Whoever wishes to consider the positive and relative strength of the different nations of Europe, may consult a very valuable work, published at Brunswick, in Germany, in the year 1806; and intituled "Statistic View of all the States of Europe, considered as to their extent, population, productions, commerce, finances, military constitution, and possessions in other parts of the globe," by G. Hassel. This author in his statistical survey divides Europe into four great parts. The first comprises middle Europe, or the Austrian empire, the Prussian monarchy, the empire of Germany, and the states of Ragusa and Pogliza; the second part, called northern and eastern Europe, contains Russia, Turkey in Europe, Sweden, Denmark, and the Ionian isles; the third, or western and southern Europe, includes France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Holland, and Switzerland; the fourth, called insular Europe, contains the British isles, Malta, and Sardinia. The last French census states the popu- Of the Confederation of the Rhine Of Holland Total 36,060,104 7,008,122 5,439,555 1,881,880 50,389,661 As a set-off to this formidable array of population directed by Buonaparte against Britain, we must take into account the wretched internal condition, and the disaffected state of all the countries, not excepting France, under the control of Napoleon. For an interesting and accurate account of the gloomy political, commercial, military, and naval condition of Holland, see pp. 81-95, of "An Answer to the Inquiry into the State of the Nation," &c. published in London, in 1806, and supposed to be written by one of the ablest British statesmen now living. And for the misery and exasperation of continental Europe generally, see " Literary Panorama," Vol. 4. pp. 26-27, and Vol. 6. p. 1247, from which the following observations are taken. Germany still continues in her long-experienced state of agitation; suffering under a violent change in its constitution and political body; at present unsettled; as to the future uncertain; indignant at the subjugation of every thing German to France, and French views; sinking under the closure of the continental ports; and hopeless of a revival of her manufactures, since the general substitution of British cotton goods for her hempen cloths. The north of Germany sufficiently manifested its hatred against the oppressor, by her frequent insurrections against the French, during the Austrian campaign of 1809; and by favoring the retreat of the duke of Brunswick Oels, at the head of only two thousand men, through a vast extent of hostile territory. The south of Germany also exhibited much of the same spirit which animated the Tyrolese; and pushed their incursions even into the rear of Buonaparte's army. Holland is fast verging to the state described by M. Talleyrand to Lord Lauderdale in 1806: "Holland is a nation which will soon have nothing but debts; and from which the total privation of all commerce will take away the possibility of paying them." Italy consists of three principal divisions; first, the north, or Etruria, whose sovereign has been dethroned, and her dominions incorporated with those of France; second, the states of the Church, whose pontifical head has been deprived of his sovereignty, and his territory annexed to the French empire; third, the kingdom of Naples, which is not worth the possession; because deprived of Sicily the crown is in a state of beggary; the people are too lazy to be roused, too superstitious to be reformed, too obstinate to be corrected, too suspicious to place confidence in French professions, and too vindictive |