the sacred oath which the Almighty had accepted, to live for the happiness and the glory of the French people; and in order to enter upon the accomplishment of that holy engagement, he collected, set down, and addressed to the king of England, the expression of all the generous, moderate, and, if I may so speak, the religious sentiments that can be conceived and professed by a noble soul: and indeed, that immortal dispatch will not rank among the less glorious monuments of the reign of his majesty; nor will it be the least certain of his titles to the gratitude and love of France; neither will it be the least secure pledge of the esteem of those wise philanthropists, who, in whatever light they may be represented by obscure and perverse men, by whom they are calumniated without being understood, still form so numerous a class in the bosom of enlightened Europe. But on this occasion may not the humanity of the monarch have deceived his wisdom? Could his reason have long continued to cherish the hopes suggested by his benevolence? Had he forgotton how, and upon what perfidious grounds, the most sacred compacts had been violated? Had he forgotten, that when the leopards were tearing the treaty of Amiens, no fiend of aggression had provoked their rage? Had he forgotten how, on the 8th March, it was stated to the parliament of England, that our ports and our arsenals, though then in a state of pacific silence and inactivity, were filled with armed vessels, and holding out, in the state of their equipment, a most menacing appearance?-No, tribunes; such recollections are not to be effaced; but since the æra that gave them birth, what happy changes

have taken place in the attitude of France, attacked, as she has been, by imprudent and unjust enemies!

Is it necessary, tribunes, that I solicit your attention to our internal situation, and to remind you of the strong pledge it holds out to you of security, strength, and well-grounded expectation? Were you not the first to interpret and express the national wish, ratified by the suffrages of five millions of citizens, and since the accomplishment of that wish, since the establishment of the Napoleon dynasty has for ever fixed the destinies of the French empire, was ever an empire more firmly founded? Never in any nation has the conspiring will and energies of the government and of the people created a mass of strength and power more imposing and more formidable! Never has any state advanced with more rapid strides towards prosperity and greatness! For these two years past, it is true, war with England has been declared, and no important occurrence has marked its progress; no decisive blow has been struck that can furnish any conjecture of its termination. But in our ports we have fleets; in our harbours armed flotillas.

Of the four chances to be got over in reaching a descent, since, after all, we must utter that formidable word, three of them have already decided in our favour. The ships are built; they are collected together; and ports have been prepared to receive them. The whole advantage of the war has therefore been in our favour; since, without having experienced any check in the face of a superior enemy, we have employed two years in assembling together immense means. The whole advantage of the war has been in our favour, since, in spite of the numerous Ss 3

ships

ships that cover the seas with the British flag, we have been able to provision and to place in a state of security our most important and most remote colonies.-Martinique, Guadaloupe, Cayenne, the cities of France, &c. &c. are furnished with every thing in abundance. Their garrisons have been more than tripled; all the stores and provisions intended for them have reached their destination. No reinforcement has failed to arrive at its intended place. A great expedition would fail before Martinique and the Isle of France. And while our colonial territory remains entire and sheltered from every fear, the dominions of the king of England, (Hanover), is entirely in our power. We have lost nothing of our possessions, and we occupy an important province of the enemy. -What advantage have the English acquired to compensate for those advantages? what has availed these masters of the seas, the immense superiority of their naval strength? They have lost 15 ships or frigates, that have either ran on shore, or have been dashed upon the rocks. They have squandered away immense treasures in cruizes dictated by fear, in terrupted by the power of the winds, and punished by storms and other mishaps. At home the English have seen the merchant forced from his counting-house, the manufacturer from his loom, and for want of muskets, compelled to consume the time destined for their commerce and their work, in handling clumsy and unavailing pikes, hastily forged, by the dread of an invasion. Under the pressure of that fear, ever present to their minds, the English government has had recourse to every possible means of defence; they have prepared inundations and batteries;

they have barricaded their ports, and fortified their coasts; they have contrived flying carriages to transport their troops, and put into requisition the carriages and horses of the three kingdoms; they have purchased the arming of the English nation at the price of disorganization, the derangement of its habits, and the counteraction of its manners. The traveller who, for these two years past, goes from Paris to London, and returns from London to Paris, is astonished to behold in the capital of the French empire profound peace and security established and maintained, and in the capital of England uncertainty and terror; the agitation that prevails at the head quarters of a threatened camp, defended by an incoherent, unorganized mass, novices in the trade of war, struck with the conviction of their own inability to make war against the veteran troops of Cæsar.-If we compare the state of opinion in some parts of the two countries, we shall behold in the eastern departments of France that were in a state of insurrection, enlightened prelates restoring peace to the public mind by reestablishing tranquillity in their conscience; vigilant prefects founding a new and wholesome administration, arresting, disarming, and punishing the remnant of those brigands who were cast upon our coasts, concealed in our cities, or wandering in our forests. In those countries where not long since British gold was employed to kindle up civil war, agriculture is re-established, tranquillity is mair tained, the taxes are raised withou constraint, paid with punctuality New cities are seen to rise; canals are dug; public roads are completed. The conscripts summoned to our armies, flock to them at the same call

which so lately excited them to a sacrilegious war, but which now only collects them to invoke the blessings of heaven in favour of the man that governs them. Nor do we see any extraordinary measures, any suspension of the ordinary protecting laws; no longer are there any dissensions between the Morbihan and the Côte d'Or, between La Vendee and the Meurthe-In the mean time, at the other side of the ocean, Ireland presents to us the spectacle of neverending conspiracies, instigated by oppression as constantly renewed; an army of soldiers restraining with difficulty an army of citizens, by the aid of those violent measures, of which the revolution scarcely furnishes an example; and to concentrate all in one word, we behold in that unfortunate country a war of religion, persecutions unknown at this moment in the bosom of Europe, that it is indignant to observe, the only spot upon the earth where the most sacred rights are unacknowledged, and where government arms itself against the uncontrollable power and the sacred freedom of conscience.-If, on the other hand, you draw a parallel between the finances of the two states, you will find on the opposite shore new expences accumulating upon the expences already immense; of a nation to whom a million and a half was yearly necessary in an ordinary war, and who, in the present war, stands in need, for the first time, of a levy in mass; of a levy that costs it hundreds of millions. It provides for that sum, it is true: but by goading the present, and by swallowing up the future, by resolving to fund its debt, instead of being extinguished by the operation of its sinking fund, swelled by the abuse of its only re

source, loans.-On our side, our numerous armies have been always the cause of our greatest expence; and their maintenance brings with it but an inconsiderable addition, that is not made to bear upon a foreign country.-The budget which will be shortly laid before you, will apprise you, that our territorial resources have provided for every thing; and that, instead of adding to our debt, during these two years of war, our sinking fund has begun efficaciously to operate for its extinction.-What France has done, she may continue to do for 30 years, and has only to ask of heaven that the sun may continue to shine, the rain to fall upon our fields, and the ground fecundize the seed deposited in it. Ten years more of war would make no addition to our debt; ten years more of war would add four milliards to the debt of England. Let her not forget, however, that if public credit be a powerful and formidable weapon, that the bow, too strongly bent, snaps in the hand that holds it, and leaves naked and defenceless the man that employs it.--England, it must be owned, has plundered without risk during the first months of hostilities, from our unprotected ships, forty or fifty millions (li vres) to the detriment of our commerce. But at Martinique, Guada loupe, the Isle of France, every day sees our privateers carry in English prizes; and already the balance inclines in our favour in the calculation of our finances as well as in the comparison with our glory.--I may therefore say, and say it confidently, that the advantage is on our side. France is invulnerable in all the points of her immense territory; she has nothing to apprehend in her advanced ports in the West and East Indies. Eng$94

land is every where vulnerable; and, without appearing to reach her, we have in reality inflicted wounds upon her, which may perhaps be attended with a progressive atony or violent convulsions. Our fleets at Brest, Toulon, and Rochefort have annexed to them armies, resolved to pass the ocean with them. Our flotillas are ready to depart with these proud sons of war, who know no impediments, because they have surmounted all that, before them, had astonished the most intrepid. Let us continue to keep on our coasts soldiers inhabiting camps instead of barracks, and become intrepid sailors as well as brave warriors. Let the people of England, in the mean time, arm, agitate, fatigue, exhaust, and discourage themselves. Let our resources and our revenues suffice for our expences, and let there be no want but that of some extraordinary resources which the richness of our country insure to us. In England, let the interest paid to loan-holders absorb, and exceed all possible means to pay those levics in mass, which exhaust the nation without defending it; let this state of things prolong itself, and let the English cabinet state the advantages that result from this situation, from which it derives equal danger and shame. Shall I speak to you of those secret expeditions with which the credulity of the English people is every three months abused, and which terminate only in ridiculous and fruitless attempts. Are they embarking some troops for the renewal of the garrison of Gibraltar, cut off by the pestilence; or do they wish to convey some troops to India, or some reinforcements to Ceylon, where England has had such losses; or do they prepare some millions of men

to repair the ravages of the yellow fever at Jamaica, to strengthen the garrisons of the English colonies, threatened by three or four thousand men, which Martinique and Guadaoupe can detach against them, When these ordinary measures are in preparation, the government suf fers it to be believed, that formi, dable armaments menaced France, How long and with how much mystery did they announce those ships loaded with stones, to choak up our ports, and those fireships so courageously, and at such a distance, launched against our flotillas. And in fact what other expedition could tempt the English? Would they wish a landing on our western coast, to try how our national guards alone, united with our peace garrisons, will receive them on their arrival, and cut off their return? Mas, ters of the sea for two years, their fleets have fatigued the Ocean and the Mediterranean, and their soldiers have not dared on any coast; on all our shores their vessels have thrown on them only brigands. In place of these vain phantoms of expedition, suppose, gentlemen, that the 25,000 men from Brest, the 6000 from Rochefort, the 12,000 from Toulon, and the 25,000 from the Texel, all, or even in part, reach Ireland, Jamaica, or India; or even suppose that those 200,000 men the boats of our flotillas can carry and pass over in one night, menaces and reach the opposite coast, on which their impatient courage keeps them for so long a time; suppose, what is still more simple, that the 50 frigates, the sixty ships of the line, of all rates, which two years have seen created, armed, and equipped, should get out in small squadrons, and inundate the seas, and dry up in every quarter

the

the channels of prosperity and life, by the aid of which England supports its monstrous existence. With only a part of these suppositions realized, you will see every where, and reason will see also, chances terrible, and without counterbalance, against England. It is therefore in the very consciousness of the strength of his people, and of his own power, that the emperor found an additional motive for speaking the language of peace. It is with so many plans of campaigns, the success of which is probable, almost to certainty, inasmuch as that which is void of all danger produces successes so real; it is with this vast and rapid glance, which embraces the whole extent of his resources, and all the means of drawing them forth, that his majesty has taken a step which would have been shameful to a nation that had a different chief-shameful for a warrior commanding another people. But could not this confidence of the issue of the war with England be disturbed by any uncertainty as to the state of the continental relations of France? If there were any danger of that, what could his majesty have hoped from a step taken under such circumstances? and the history of his life evinces that no man knew better how to seize the favourable moment. If a continental war were impending, Napoleon knew well that there was no other course than the terrible and necessary one of throwing away the scabbard of his so uniformly victorious sword, and to make glitter before the eyes of the world a new lance of Achilles far from debasing the just pride of his fortune, to propositions dictated by fear, and suggested by weakness, and which would have promised but humiliation as their result. Happily, gentlemen, in this

respect of our exterior relations on the continent, two years have produced assuring and honourable ameliorations. The taking possession of Hanover was necessary and indişpensable. The emperor willed, ordered, executed it. He did it to punish the perfidy of a rupture without declaration; he did it to secure to himself the means of compensation in a war, in which prudence may dread disadvantages, from which wisdom has preserved us; he did it to fetter the commercial relations of these dominators of the seas, who carry on commerce by war, and war by commerce. But this possession which, for the first time, carried and fixed our armies in the extremities of the north, might. have alarmed the powers most attached to our cause by their position, the most united to our fortune by their interests, the most faithful to our alliance by inclination. Difficulties did in fact arise, but the wisdom, the moderation, the confidence in the faith of the cabinet' of the Thuilleries, and its remoteness from every revolutionary and disorganising idea, dispelled all the clouds, and never have we had with Prussia relations better established, a correspondence more cordial, amity more intimate. On the other hand, if the changes that have been effected in the French government were called for by experience, pointed out by all men of sense, desired by the en. lightened friends of the country, willed by the entire nation, no one could hope to operate it by the creating of a kingly monarchy; and the imperial title might give rise to fears of discontent and coldness on the part of Austria. The discontent might become exasperated, and the coldness migl.t degenerate to resentment by means of the intrigues of

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