Their qualification is an income of 15,000 francs, a third to be entailed and descend with the title. The members of the Departmental Electoral Assemblies, having attended at three sittings, and demeaned themselves to the Emperor's satisfaction, might apply to the Arch-Chancellor of the Emperor to petition his Majesty that he would grant them the title of Baron also, hereditary upon the same conditions. The members of the Legion of Honour were to have the title of Knights, made hereditary, with a qualification of 3000 francs. All the entailed estates were to be unalienable. In case reasonable grounds should be assigned for alienating them, it was only to be permitted on condition that the estates should be replaced by others of the same size.

"The principal end of these pro visions," said the Arch-Chancellor, ; when he delivered these statutes to the Senate," has been to fix, in the projected institution, the rudiments of utility and permanence, to purify its source from corruption, and, by the establishment of Imperial titles, to eradicate the last roots of a tree which time has thrown far away, and which cannot flourish again under a Prince not less great in his intellect than his power." Thus it appears that one main object in creating this new nobility, was to supersede the old titles, which were still in use and still acknowledged by the people. It was thought necessary to insert an express prohibition against them in the statutes of this new order. "We prohibit all our subjects from assuming titles of dignity which we may not have granted them, and all our civil officers, notaries, and others, from giving such titles, enforcing, as far as is necessa

ry, all the laws made against those who violate this prohibition"

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The speech of the Arch-Chancellor alluded to another party in France whose opinions concerning government Buonaparte's measures are uniformly directed to suppress. "The general sentiment concerning the advantages of nobility," said he, was not doubtful. Were there any scruples yet to be resolved, I might appeal to the experience of ages, and to the language used by the greatest authors on political phi losophy, who have considered the existence and support of hereditary distinctions, as being in some measure essential to monarchical government. The privileges which such an institution establishes, the rank which it introduces, and the fame which it proposes, are the food of honour; and this honour is at the same time the basis of that government to which the power of national character has brought us back. Laws and establishments have, like plants, their soil and their season in which they are able to take deeper root. It is in France especially that all those springs may be called into action which are moved by the love of power."While Buonaparte thus artfully flattered the vanity of the French nation, he hinted at another part of his new project, which, however gratifying it may be to his own love of power, must ultimately be prejudicial to France. "Europe," said the Arch-Chancellor," is covered with our trophies, and will receive with respect names to which our sovereign has graciously been pleased to add new lustre. Great models will impose great duties upon future generations; and the exertion of power which this obligation will render necessary, will be

for France a never-failing stream of fame and prosperity. These considerations have induced the Emperor no longer to defer the benefits of an institution which unfolds all the dignity and greatness of his object."The titles which he conferred were

taken from the countries he had overrun, and the obligation imposed upon France was that of maintaining the same authority which he at that time possessed over places so remote as Ragusa and Abrantes.

their deputies to answer questions which he needed not have asked, or to lend their sanction to a conscription which, requiring no other sanction than that of his own merciless ⚫tyranny, sets all laws and all feelings at defiance. And though doubtless the Deputies indulged gratuitously in impious adulations, yet it was ap parent, that, in some of their blasphemies, they echoed the known pretensions of the adventurer whom they addressed. In their hall of meeting, they placed the Imperial Eagle over the Ark of the Covenant, and blended the cyphers of Napoleon and of Josephine with the unutterable name of God. This was only French flattery in Jewish costume. But when they applied to him the prophesies of Isaiah and Daniel, when they called him the "Lord's anointed Cyrus!" "The living image of the Divinity!" "The only mortal according to God's own heart, to whom he has entrusted the fate of nations, because he alone could govern them with wisdom,"--these things resembled the profane language of his infidel bishops, and of his own proclamations, too much to escape notice. And when they reminded him that "he had overcome, as conqueror, the ancient

land of the eternal pyramids, the scene of their ancestors' captivity; that he had appeared on the banks of the once sacred Jordan, and fought in the valley of Sechem, in the plains of Palestine,"*--such expressions appeared to indicate a project for re-settling them in the Holy Land, as part of his plans respecting Egypt. Nay, as he had successively imitated Hannibal, and Alexander, and Charlemagne, just as the chance of cir cumstances reminded him of each, was it improbable that Mahommed might be the next object of his imitation; that he might breathe in incense till he fancied himself divine; that adulation, and success, and vanity, utterly unchecked as they were, having destroyed all moral feeling and all conscience, should affect his intellect next; and that, from being the Cyrus of the Lord, he would take the hint which his own clergy had given him, and proclaim himself the temporal Messiah? Nothing was too impious for this man--nothing too frantic ;-and, alas! such was the degradation of Europe and of the world, England alone excepted, that scarcely any thing seemed to be impracticable for him.

In the Turkish empire,

In the rest of Asia,

1,000,000.

400,000.

1,600,000.

3,000,000.

Another speculation was, that, in Co-operation with the Russians, he would march an army through Persia to the Indies, and give a mortal blow, in Hindostan, to the prosperity and strength of England; for it was one of the preposterous notions of our times, that the power of England depended upon these foreign possessions the acquirements, as it were, of yesterday! An ominous present was said, by the French journalists, to have been sent him by the Persian sovereign,-two scymitars, one of which had belonged to Timur, the other to Nadir Shah.* The intrigues of his emissaries at the Persian court, and with the Mahrattas and Mahommedan powers in Hindostan, were supposed to render this project probable; and the various routes which his army might take, were anxiously traced upon the map, by those whose forethought had more of fear in it than of hope. But Buonaparte was now enacting the part of Charlemagne, and had not leisure, as yet, again to take up that of Alexander, which he had so long laid aside. He was, indeed, at this time, actually master of the whole continent of Europe, Sweden alone excepted, which was secured by its poverty, its iron climate, and its unimportance, more than by its strength, though strong enough to have resisted the world, had there been one heart and will among its inhabitants. It was not worth his while to conquer Sweden, and, therefore, by an obvious policy, he left Russia to fight his battles in that country, and waste her forces there, that the magnanimous Alexander, as it was now his

turn to becall him, might fall an easier victim whenever his turn was

come.

An attack upon Gibraltar had, at different times, been threatened. One great object of Buonaparte was to shut us out from the Mediterranean; we had lost our popularity in Egypt; we had given up Minorca at the peace, and abandoned our partizans there to the vengeance of their own government;--our blind subserviency to the court of Sicily, rendered his conquest of that island certain, whenever it suited him seriously to attempt it; were but Gibraltar taken, our ships would have no port between England and Malta; and Malta itself, infinitely important as it might be made by an enlightened and enterprising policy, would then become a useless and expensive possession. It was indeed an arduous attempt to besiege a fortress so celebrated for its strength; but the greater, therefore, would be the glory of conquering it: there were reports of which he could not be ignorant, that the place had been weakened by imprudent excavations; and the cost of lives at which it was to be purchased, would not enter into his calculations; that would fall upon the Spaniards and the poor German or Italian conscripts-while the fame, and the main advantages of the acquisition, would accrue to France. These speculations appeared more probable after his unprovoked seizure of Portugal: for, if Gibraltar were to be besieged, one of the preliminary steps would be to secure the port of Lisbon against us. Accordingly, when intelligence ar