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binical malignity, and incesantly pour fourth a torrent of the vilest falsehoods, and most atrocious calumnies, against the whole body of those who occupy stations of authority; and thus teach men to "despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities;" and destroy in them all suitable ideas of subordination and of respect for their rulers and superiors. Under, the pretence of reforming abuses, and introducing some chimerical state of things, which, as all experience has shown, is wholly incompatible with human infirmity, they rail against the agents of government, and advance charges so as to bring into contempt the government itself. After all the awful warnings against such a conduct which the present age has furnished, they persist in teaching men to impute their greatest hardships to the faults of their governors; and thus fill them with discontent and murmurings, make them critics on every man's conduct but their own, and prepare them for faction and rebellion. If, therefore, to adopt a language which these reviewers know, the same dreadful consequences which followed this licentious abuse of the press in France, do not take place here, "it will not be owing to the want of efforts in those imps of darkness, anonymous writers" and Critical Reviewers.

Let not this inference be thought too strong. In times like the present of unexampled difficulty, when, not through the faults of our governors, but, as it is far more becoming in us to believe, through the just judgment of heaven for our own sins, we have so long been involved in war with a most gigantic and ferocious foe, who is infuriate for our destruction, and has already overwhelmed every other neighbouring nation; when, if angels were our governors they might frequently be in perplexity, or appear guilty of mistakes; and when, although still happy, superlatively happy, in comparison with the condition of every other people, our privations and burdens are necessarily very great; under such circumstances, is it possible to be more mischievously employed than this critic is? What could the "Father of lies" himself desire his most faithful agents to do more? How could they, under these circumstances, better promote his diabolical and mischievous purposes than by continually telling the people, as these critics do, that such is the corrupt state of our constitution, that "almost every act of the government” is “an infamous barter of moral principle for the wages of sin;" that it "does not reward the old and laborious servants of the people, but the profligate and unprincipled of every age and description, who are willing to truckle their patriotism for gold, and sell their conscience for a job:" that in the selection and appointment of its agents, "the influence of private and party views" outweighs all considerations of merit and qualification, and that "imbecility, vice, and folly, are the best passports to regard;" that "VICE, IGNORANCE, AND IMPORTUNITY

ARE REWARDED AND CARESSED, BECAUSE THEY ARE FOUND THE FITTEST INSTRUMENTS FOR DOING THE DIRTY WORK OF THEIR SUPERIORS: " that our foolish and wicked ministers, selected for such purposes and on account of such qualifications, have been guilty of crimes which were never yet exceeded in the annals of iniquity; and have prosecuted measures at once so impolitic and unjust, that they have

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not only brought upon us the most grievous sufferings at home, but have reduced us to the " extremity of disgrace," and rendered our country" the scorn, the hatred, and the bye-word of the world:" that our governors reckon "for little or nothing" either our comforts or our lives when compared with the qualifications of avarice or ambition; " that if these ends could be better answered by it, they would reward the suppression instead of the promulgation of any newly-discovered means for the preservation of our health and lives; and, that "no dog ever experienced from the most savage master such a complication of cruelties as the Irish," one very considerable part of his majesty's subjects, "have suffered from the English government:" that the war, with all its horrors and calamities, is unnecessarily and wantonly continued by "vultures who fatten on the carrion of it:" that the burdensome taxes which are exacted from us are "the wanton cruelties of inexperienced ignorance," and in many cases the forced offering of slaves," and "wring every equitable and compassionate heart;" and that this "oppressive taxation is in favour of profligate rapacity;" that these hard earnings of " oppressed labour and industry" are squandered away by the "votaries of dissipation, luxury, and profligacy;" by men who "proclaim with indecent folly their long and gormandising festivities:" &c. &c. &c. (see above.) Must not the industrious circulation* and constant repetition of such calumnies have the most pernicious effects? If the subjects of his Britannic majesty still cheerfully pay taxes and comply with the requisitions of government, if they have too much good sense and too much virtue to be excited by these representations to sedition and insurrection, certainly no thanks are due to their authors. O that all such spirits breathed the air of another country, to enjoy, at the fountain head, under the immediate smiles of Buonaparte, those blessings of which they are so enamoured!

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Reign they in hell their kingdom-let us serve

In heav'n:

Yet chains in hell, not realms, must they expect."

Such are the Critical Reviewer's efforts on subjects connected with politics and government. Of an equally pernicious, if possible still worse, tendency are his exertions in respect to the church and religion. But that the painful and indignant feeling of your readers at present may have a respite, the exhibition of these shall be deferred to another opportunity. In the mean time, with the most cordial wishes for the success of your Antijacobin labours, I am, Sir, with due respect,

Your's,

DETECTOR.

*It will be some consolation to the friends of virtue and truth to know, that the circulation of such a publication is rapidly decreasing every month, and that although its existence may be lamented, the actual number of two or three hundred is not such as to create any serious alarm for its mischievous influence.

EDITOR.

REVIEWERS REVIEWED.

MONTHLY REVIEW, & VAUMALE ON FORTIFICATION.

Sir,

To the Editor of the Antijacobin Review.

Great Marlow, Bucks, Dec. 16th, 1808. I shall look upon it as a particular favour, if you will have the goodness to insert, as soon as convenient, in one of the numbers of your so-justly-admired Review, the following answer to the critical observations on my Aperçu général et raisonné sur la Fortification de Place, &c. given in the Appendix of the Monthly Review for September last. Did I know of a more respectable channel for conveying them to the British public, I would not have troubled you with the present application.

I shall not employ myself in combating the doubt expressed by my anonymous critic, in regard to my rank of captain in the royal corps of French engineers: the fact is sufficiently notorious, and so easy to be ascertained, that an insinuation to the contrary is rather malicious than injurious. I will only observe, that this corps having been designated by the appellation of national and imperial, under the revolutionary governments, I have prevented any ambiguity in regard to myself by using the word royal. I think even that the candid and judicious will see, in my solicitude to preserve this ancient denomination, the indication of a laudable attachment to the rights of my legitimate sovereign, and an allowable protest against the enterprises of usurpers.

I leave my critic to plume himself on the discovery that the repu tation of the French engineers is ill founded. If it will add to his satisfaction on this head, I will even declare that I have drawn all my assertions from our true masters of fortification; and that I could point out such distinctly in the writings of Vauban, Clairac, Cormontaigne, &c.; so that my ideas on this science are strictly conformable to those of the corps to which I esteem it an honour to belong.

It would be improper to praise my own style of writing; but, on such a subject as I have treated, perspicuity must be the principal merit; and I am justified in asserting, that many natives of England, as well as a number of my own countrymen, have proved that they perfectly comprehend my work, by favouring me with flattering approbation, as well as judicious remarks. Besides, I am not surprised that my critic should find my style totally unintelligible; for in his citations he shows himself so little acquainted with the French language, as to mistake the sense of the most obvious phrases: for example, after having read, P. 13 of the Preface "cette marche précieuse consiste à comparer perpétuellement, dans toute leur étendue, les moyens de l'attaque et les précautions de la défense," &c.he absurdly supposes that I make it consist in fixing the profils of the different works of fortification, before the plans are laid down.

It is at the commencement of Chap. IV. and consequently in terms far different from the expressions above cited, that I undertake to justify the method of beginning by the profils; and as the critic is pleased to declare this method contrary to common sense, I would simply ask him how he could otherwise make himself. understood by a person who should demand the reasons for which he was required to bend and turn in a fixed and singular manner the circuit of a fortification? - Apparently, indeed, the critic felt the embarrassment to which such a question would reduce him; and seems as if wishing to elude it, by pretending that I employ a number of pages uselessly, in demonstrating the necessity of bastions, investigating the dimensions proper for each part of the enceinte, and regulating its form. I may allow that such is the figure generally adopted; yet every engineer knows that this very configuration has been too warmly contested by some authors, and too variously modified by others, not to render it necessary to develope and demonstrate its principles. Besides, however simple these principles may appear after the examination into which I have entered, will my critic permit me to observe, that the systems of the Marquis of Montalembert prove that even merit and talents require those very explanations which he has so confidently declared idle? And is it not contrary to the rules of true science to justify its principles by the mere authority of general practice?

Further, in adverting to some opinions of an author so celebrated as the Marquis of Montalembert, I have only been desirous to warn such of my readers as are novices in fortification against them; and for this reason I have contented myself with pointing out his principal errors. A true refutation of the perpendicular fortification, as he terms his system, has been given by a society of general officers, our directors, in a manner much more complete, especially much more military, than that so complacently produced by the critic This refutation forms a- considerable volume in quarto, with numerous and complicated plates: it is evident, therefore, that such a discussion would have been ridiculous in a simple apperçu; and yet the critic pretends to comprise it in a few pages of a periodical publication.

The general confusion which I am at first accused of, in treating of the different angles and sides composing.the outline of a fortification, is at last reduced to a single and trifling error, with regard to the angle flanquant. I have transferred to the angle formed by the flank and the curtain, this term, which is commonly applied to the angle formed by the two lines of defence, or the two branches of the tenaille. Now, to flank means to defend laterally; and the branches of the tenaille defend nothing in this manner; while the flanks of the bastion are expressly designed to defend thus the rest of the circuit. Hence it is evident, how much more correctly my definition applies to the intent of the angle defined, than that of the critic by whom it is censured; and my whole fault, if it may be so termed, is that of adhering rather to the nature of things than to a mere routine of words.

Le Blond was not an engineer, nor even a soldier; but I admit that he was well-informed, laborious, and generally as exact in

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observations as he was careful in his researches. Surely, then, my critic gives me a right to adduce the authority of Le Blond in mere geometrical questions and simple historical facts, since he cites him as a supreme judge in regard to the definitions of fortification, which certainly belong more to engineers than others. Now it is from the elements of Le Blond that I have drawn what I say in regard to the practices of Eirard, Marolois, the Chevalier de Ville, and the Count de Pagan, practices of which the critic does not contest the ground, though he indulges himself in some digressions not very appropriate to my subject. It is also Le Blond who has pointed out Errard as the most ancient known author, in French, on modern fortification; and I would not mention the latter in a different light, but the more the critic labours to point out earlier writers, the more he proves the proposition which was the sole reason of my mention of Errard, namely, that the necessity of giving bastions to the enceinte was naturally felt as soon as that of terrassing and widening the rampart, and indeed it was an infallible consequence of that necessity, in the same manner as that of widening the rampart was derived from the invention of gunpowder.

The critic remarks, that my profils are a little, and only a little, different from those of Vauban; and insinuates that I affect the merit of innovation in this respect, yet with the timidity of a scholar who gropes his way, and fears to lose himself as soon as he departs from the line traced by his master. Our engineer and critic is then ignorant, that since the death of Vauban, and particularly since the formation of his first system, the art of fortification has been the object of real melioration; and that the great man in question, having anticipated many improvements; pointed them out himself, in order to invite others to improve his ideas judiciously, instead of copying them servilely. Now, it is from the writings of the most able as well as the most celebrated of his disciples - that is, from the Memoirs of Cormontaigne—that I have drawn, with due confidence, the profils I have given, and the legitimate reasons for their variations from those of Vauban. To the eyes of the superficial observer, who merely looks at the drawing, such variation is not strongly marked; but it is an important one to him who appreciates the nature and intent of the rampart there designed.

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I will not dwell on the reproaches with which I am favoured by my critic for confining myself to regular fortification. I have indeed shown, in many places, particularly in page 202, the extreme importance and delicacy of irregular fortification: but to convey proper notions of that branch of the art, I must have entered into discussions inconsistent with the nature and avowed design of my work. Officers of the line, for whom I have particularly written, have neither time nor occasion to investigate the science of fortification, and, above all, the fortification of places; and therefore it was not necessary to present its particular modifications, but to develope the general principles which form the foundation of the art, and prove its invariable utility. Hence I have confined myself to a concise, simple, and, I hope, rational review of these principles; and I flatter myself, that the reader who may favour my treaties with his attention, will not deem his time mize

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