CHAPTER IX.

Effect of the Orders in Council on American trade, A.D. 1810—Complaints of the Americans against England—Policy of Napoleon towards neutrals—Non-intercourse Act—Secret terms with America—Partiality of the United States towards France—Contentions at home respecting the Orders in Council—Declaration of war with America—Motives of the Americans—England revokes her Orders in Council—Condemnation of the conduct of the United States—Impressment of American seamen—Fraudulent certificates—Incidents of the system—War with America—Necessity of relaxing the Navigation Laws during war—High duties on cotton—Great European Alliance—Napoleon returns to Paris—Germans advance to the Rhine—Treaty of Chaumont—The Allies enter Paris—End of the war by the Treaty of Paris, 1814—Napoleon’s escape from Elba—His landing in France and advance on Paris—British troops despatched to Belgium—Subsidies to European powers—Fouché—Last campaign of Napoleon and defeat at Waterloo—Reflections.

Although the Orders in Council asserted the purpose which England had in view at the time they were issued, these commercial retaliatory measures can only be justified on the ground of extreme necessity. Desperate measures on the part of the enemy were then met by measures as desperate on the part of Great Britain. She would, if she had dared, been glad to have dispensed with them, for though they thwarted the designs of Napoleon and impoverished his people, they injured her own commercial pursuits; while their effect on her relations with the United States of America was of the most irritating and unpleasant character. When they came into full force, the English export trade with that country, previously valued at twelve millions sterling per annum, ostensibly fell to five and a quarter millions, although the total aggregate exports experienced no such corresponding diminution, thereby proving that the Americans had absorbed, as the greatest maritime neutrals, the largest share of the carrying trade. But when the English Orders in Council, issued in consequence of Napoleon’s decrees, struck a blow at this trade, the Americans, seeing so lucrative a branch of their commerce withdrawn from their hands, set up an indignant appeal, and, though tamely acquiescing in Napoleon’s still harsher measures, declaimed furiously against the English government, when it exhibited a resolute determination to prevent the carrying trade of the world being taken from English shipowners.

The most important of the British Orders in Council, as we have seen, bore date 11th November, 1807, the Milan Decree following on the 17th of December of the same year; but the Americans, having been apprised of the intentions of the English government, adopted precautionary measures by imposing a general embargo from and after the 22nd of December, 1807.[289] Nothing can prove more conclusively how unpopular this step was among the shipowners of the United States than the fact that every vessel in the foreign trade which heard the intelligence kept out of their ports, preferring to run the risk of capture rather than lose their share of the enormous profits they were making in their neutral bottoms, by a clandestine trade with France and England. The American government clearly foresaw that the extreme measures adopted by both belligerents would annihilate their foreign carrying trade, and restore to England that power and its accompanying commercial advantages, which her maritime superiority had already conferred on her in the great contest in which she was engaged.

One of the objects of Napoleon by his decrees was evidently to prey upon the known susceptibility of the Americans, and to urge them, on the pretence of the independence of their flag, to resist the executive authority exercised by England, whether with regard to the right of neutrals, the right of search, or the impressment of American seamen, all fruitful sources of complaint on the part of the American government. Nor had he, indeed, unwilling listeners, for the Americans, in their diplomatic proceedings, exhibited an unequivocal tendency to favour Napoleon. Although statements were made in Parliament that the Americans would have joined England in the war against France if she would have consented to rescind the Orders in Council as regarded their shipping, all these allegations were unfortunately at variance with the truth, and were, in fact, only put forward by interested English merchants who could no longer avail themselves of American bottoms to carry on their trade. Finding their embargo inoperative, as American vessels preferred an adventurous commerce and large profits to a ruinous inaction, the United States government removed it; but as the European governments were inflexible in their policy, they immediately afterwards passed the Act of Non-Intercourse,[290] by which all commercial interchanges with France and England were prohibited; the result being the Rambouillet Decree, issued by Napoleon on the 23rd of March, 1810, which ordered that all American vessels and cargoes arriving in any of the ports of France or of countries occupied by French troops, should be seized and condemned.

On the 1st of May, 1810, Congress passed a further Act, excluding British and French armed vessels from the waters of the United States, but providing that if either of these nations should modify its edicts by the 3rd of March, 1811, of which fact the President was to give notice by proclamation, and the other did not, within three months after, pursue a similar course, commercial intercourse with the first might be renewed, but not with the second. It, however, appears that while Napoleon was intriguing with the American minister in Paris to concert hostile anti-commercial measures against England, he had issued on the 5th of August, 1810, the Trianon Decree,[291] ordering the sale of all American vessels seized, and the proceeds to be paid into the treasury. In spite, however, of this perfidy, the United States came to an understanding with Napoleon, that they would, as he desired, “cause their flag to be respected,” that is, break with England, provided their vessels were released, and provision made for their enjoying the monopoly of the continental carrying trade.

Accordingly, on the 2nd of November, 1810, the President issued his proclamation declaring the French decrees revoked, thus renewing intercourse between the United States and France; and on the 10th of the same month another proclamation appeared, interdicting commercial intercourse with England.[292] These antagonistic demonstrations were accompanied with a vast amount of popular declamation against England, and as Napoleon was then rising to the height of his ambitious career, the people of the United States were, it is to be feared, ready to be his acquiescing instruments in assisting to rivet the chains of the nations of Europe, provided they were secured the monopoly of the carrying trade, to the displacement of English shipping. But whatever motives may have governed their conduct, whether mere commercial interest, or a more broad national policy, it is beyond controversy that in the negotiations and language held throughout there was a marked partiality towards France and her ruler, and a corresponding coldness and animosity against England. This disposition of the United States to display subserviency to the French emperor, and their hostile temper towards Great Britain, daily increased, but it was not until 1812 that the long smouldering ashes of suppressed enmity broke out into open hostilities.[293] In England the contentions which arose respecting the Orders in Council shook the commercial peace of the country. Every man espoused the side with which his own peculiar interests were interwoven, claiming, however, to be the infallible guide upon the subject to all his countrymen. Mr. Alexander Baring, the second son of Sir Francis Baring, who had passed many years in the United States, where he and his brother Henry had formed matrimonial alliances, published a pamphlet[294] which greatly favoured the American view of the subject, and exhibited a feeling of the greatest alarm lest “as past errors had brought us to the brink of a precipice, the next might throw us over it.”[295]

Although these Orders in Council were loudly condemned by the Whigs, who made them their leading stalking-horse, whereby to assail the ministry, the Tories and the government were inflexible, and chose rather to risk a rupture with the United States than to relax their policy. They were still of opinion that the infallible consequences of repealing these orders and of giving up the licence trade would be to open the ports of France, and to transfer to the United States the commerce of the world. This determination at last brought about the long pending rupture, but other reasons were not wanting to hasten this lamentable event.

The Americans, seeing the vast preparations made by Napoleon for the subjugation of Russia, had evidently calculated that he would succeed, and that, the continental system being established, they, holding a monopoly of the carrying trade, could, in league with France, humble England, their great maritime and commercial rival. Consequently their government declared war on the 18th of May, 1812, and General Hall immediately invaded Canada. But the English declaration of war was not issued until the 11th of October, 1812,[296] about the very moment when Napoleon commenced his fatal retreat from Moscow, which, however, was not then known. Mr. Barlow, the American minister at Paris, had been invited to proceed to Wilna in the rear of the Imperial army; and there can be no doubt that Napoleon, in the event of success, would have dictated the terms of the treaty with the United States which Mr. Barlow had hitherto in vain endeavoured to secure. Napoleon, as everybody knows, failed utterly in his Russian campaign, Barlow died in Poland, and the Americans found themselves at war with England on grounds which not one of their historians ever ventures to defend, and which their statesmen of to-day would heartily repudiate, if war on such shallow and selfish pretences was again attempted.

As it was not until the 11th of May, 1812, that Mr. Barlow received “FOR THE FIRST TIME”[297] a copy of the decree of the 28th of April, 1811, by which the Berlin and Milan Decrees were revoked, it is clear that this fact affords a complete justification for the course pursued by the English government; the United States choosing to rely and to insist upon the verbal assurances of Napoleon that the decrees were revoked, when at the very moment new seizures and confiscations were being made by his orders.[298] It was not until the 21st of May that the American minister in London produced a copy, or what purported to be a copy, of an instrument which professed to bear date the 28th of April, 1811. This decree, by which the American vessels were protected, recites “that whereas Congress has established a non-intercourse with England, and excluded her vessels, merchandise, and those of her colonies from entering the ports of the United States, therefore we decree,” etc. It is self-evident that the moment relations were renewed between the United States and England, Napoleon reserved to himself the right to take ulterior measures. But his object was now effected, war had been declared, and, as the French said triumphantly, “England had a new enemy.”

The English ministers, although they considered the document produced most unsatisfactory, decided on revoking the Orders in Council, conditional upon the Non-intercourse Act being also rescinded; but, the Americans having pre-determined on war, frustrated the pacific measures which had previously been taken by England. To crown the unwarrantable conduct of the American government, it afterwards was shown that when they proclaimed the declaration of war, and the extreme measure of issuing “letters of marque,” they were actually in possession of the report of the French Minister for Foreign Affairs of the 12th of March, 1812, promulgating anew the Berlin and Milan Decrees, as fundamental laws of the French empire, under the false pretext that their monstrous principles were found in the treaty of Utrecht, and were therefore binding upon all nations.[299] Indeed the whole intrigue seems to have been a masterpiece of perfidy, and their reasons for war were so untenable that the Americans, in their speeches and diatribes, were compelled to make the most of the English impressment system and the original blockade of 1806, which they denounced as a paper blockade, perhaps conscious that if they had made a treaty with Napoleon, the blockade of the French coasts might have proved a fresh obstacle to their monopolizing the whole trade of the continent, under the colour of a neutral flag.

An impartial perusal of all the documents relating to this rupture makes the inimical disposition of the government of the United States, their complete subserviency to the ruler of France, and their hostile temper against Great Britain conspicuous in every page of their official correspondence with the French government. England might well say that she looked for a different result. From their common origin, from their common interest, from their professed principles of freedom and independence, the United States was the last power in which Great Britain could have expected to find a willing instrument and abettor of French tyranny and despotism. The Americans, however, seem to have been blinded by a short-sighted view of European affairs, not anticipating that a few months would produce a complete revolution in the whole aspect of continental affairs, and that the power of Napoleon would in so short a period have passed away.

When the English Parliament re-assembled in February 1813, the House of Commons unanimously carried the address approving the war with the United States, on the ground of maintaining the maritime rights of Great Britain. The Americans had industriously circulated a report that the British had impressed fifteen thousand to twenty thousand American seamen. The absurdity of such a statement must be apparent to every reflecting person; the report, however, was not addressed to such parties, but to the demagogues of both countries, who alone desired war. By the Admiralty records it was plainly proved that out of one hundred and forty-five thousand seamen then employed in the British navy, the whole number who claimed to be American subjects, a claim, too, the justice of which rested upon their simple declaration, was but three thousand five hundred, and that out of every four individuals who claimed their discharge in right of being citizens of the United States, only one established his claim on any tolerable ground whatever. Supposing, however, one-half of the claimants to have had a rational ground for demanding their liberation, the whole number of Americans in the British navy could not have exceeded from sixteen to seventeen hundred, and it cannot be supposed that England should have involved herself in a new war with a view to retain the services of such an inconsiderable number of reluctant hands.

Indeed the fact cannot be questioned that the English government had invariably given directions to the officers of her navy not to press seamen, professing to be American born, who were found on board American vessels with certificates signed by the collector of customs of an American port, even though it was well known that these certificates were easily obtained in the United States, the American government making no effort to check their fraudulent emission. In the port of New York the system of obtaining false certificates had become so disgracefully open, that in one day, ludicrous as it may appear, an old woman was allowed by the collector to qualify a whole host of seamen by swearing she knew them to be American citizens; and when the clerk remonstrated against its impropriety, and appealed to the collector with regard to the credibility of the witness, he was told by his superior that it was no business of his, for that he only acted ministerially in the affair; so that this old woman continued during the entire day to receive her two dollars for every seaman who, through the oath administered to her, obtained his certificate.[300] The same system prevailed at Philadelphia; certificates were also frequently transferred from one individual to another, and became as much a matter of bargain and sale as any other description of chattel property; the most ridiculous part of the system being, that after a transfer of this description it was no unusual thing to see produced by a sailor of colour a certificate for his protection, in which he was described to be of “a fair complexion, light hair and blue eyes!”

In all these indefensible proceedings the Americans held that a British subject, who by a false oath converted himself into an American citizen, or who naturalised himself in the United States, in conformity with their laws, ceased to owe allegiance to the king of his native country, and was entitled to their protection; and, in support of this strange doctrine, whenever this view was impeached, the American envoy merely replied that he had no instructions on that point. In the parliamentary discussions which took place upon the subject, Mr. A. Baring, with all his Whig tendencies and strong American predilections, while affecting to believe that the Russian campaign and Napoleon’s intrigues had nothing to do with the declaration of war by the Americans, strongly maintained the English right of impressment, adding “that if there were sixteen hundred American seamen in our navy, there were more than sixteen thousand British seamen in the American navy;”[301] and he condemned ministers for not carrying on the war against the United States with greater vigour: at that moment, however, every effort was concentrated to strike down Napoleon.

The truth of Mr. Baring’s recommendations soon became too apparent. Although the Americans when they declared war had only four frigates fit for service, the Constitution not being then finished, they launched such a fleet of privateers that English merchant vessels were captured in large numbers; but it was only when two of their frigates were taken that the English were aroused to the necessity of meeting with greater force their new rivals on the ocean. It ought, however, to be remembered that in the well-known cases of the capture of the Guerriere, the Macedonian, and the Java, by the Constitution and the United States respectively, the odds were largely on the side of the Americans, especially in the weight of their armaments and size of their vessels. Moreover the American crews were generally one-third English, and, however much we may regret to have to admit the fact, certain it is that, on board the United States, there were men who had actually served under Lord Nelson on board the Victory at Trafalgar[302]. But it was not until the Shannon took the Chesapeake, in the presence, as is related, of a crowd of yachts which had come out from Boston to see the English frigate captured, that the British regained the supremacy they had so long held upon the ocean.[303]

During this unfortunate war many difficulties arose with respect of the importation of American cotton, as that necessary article of commerce, in spite of the English navigation laws, still in some mode found its way to her ports in neutral bottoms. Consequently there arose a complication, in which the cotton-spinners stood in direct antagonism with the interests of the shipowners. By the laws of war trade could not be carried on with America except by royal licence; the Act of the 43 George III., c. 153, only giving power to legalise importations. The general navigation laws of England prohibited importation except in their own ships, or in the ships of the places where the commodities imported grew. The Act of George III., therefore, conflicted with that of Charles II., and the shipowners viewed any relaxation of the provisions of the old navigation laws with the deepest alarm.

Thus, whenever a war with a maritime power supervened, the navigation laws were relaxed in favour of some paramount interests, such as, in the present case, that of the cotton-spinners, whose demands for raw cotton required to be supplied. Even in a state of war every nation must of necessity provide as far as possible for the supply and sale of those raw materials of produce, the manipulation of which tends in a great degree to employ the industry and promote the general prosperity of large classes of the community. England had been thus compelled to sacrifice, or evade by licences or otherwise, her Orders in Council, although every statesman who could exercise a disinterested judgment had a full conviction of their expediency under the circumstances in which she was then placed. In like manner the United States, a few years previously, had been compelled to sacrifice their system of embargoes, which was a favourite policy of the actual dominant party in America; and the Czar, in his incipient efforts, had been incited to resist Napoleon’s dictation as to what merchant vessels he should or should not admit into his ports, although this decision raised the question of the existence of national independence.

But with all these obvious principles patent to every legislator in both Houses of Parliament, it is the fact that a duty of TWOPENCE per pound was levied on the importation of COTTON WOOL if imported in British ships, and THREEPENCE per pound if imported in ships not British built. Such were the strange anomalies of protection and such the difficulties which all similar legislative measures must ever create in the necessary commercial intercourse between nations. England has, however, now happily corrected all this fallacious legislation, and consequently a population of wealth and national power has been created in the very centre of the kingdom unsurpassed for intelligence in any previously existing manufacturing community. The shipowners of the kingdom, instead of stopping up and checking the fountain of prosperity at its source, now suffer it to flow in its natural channels, and they find that their own interests, instead of being impaired by the change, have kept pace with the general prosperity enjoyed by other classes.

Turning now to the great wars which still raged in Europe, we may, by way of continuity, remind our readers that the consent of the King of Prussia having been reluctantly obtained, for he still inclined to Napoleon, the treaty of Kalitsch was signed on the 1st of March, 1813.[304] This treaty constituted the foundation of that grand Alliance which soon after accomplished the overthrow of Napoleon, and the deliverance of the European continent. The people of Prussia, to a man, had risen to arms to deliver their fatherland from the grasp of their French oppressor, and the king, though dreading the ire of Napoleon, who could easily have purchased his neutrality at the time, felt conscious that it was now a question of life and death for him, and no longer hesitated. The treaty, therefore, was signed, and Russia agreed never to lay down her arms until Prussia was reconstituted as she stood anterior to 1806. A proclamation was issued to all the German princes, announcing that the allies had no other object in view but to rescue Germany from the domination of France. Four days afterwards the Russian general proclaimed the dissolution of the Confederation of the Rhine, and the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin gave the first example of an adhesion to the new Alliance.

Napoleon, with Caulaincourt in the same vehicle, had reached Paris before the intelligence of his retreat from Moscow had become known. With his accustomed vigour he soon restored tranquillity and confidence in the capital, raised three hundred and fifty thousand men by a conscription voted by the obsequious Senate, and contrived to wring from the Pope a Concordat, wherein his Holiness yielded up the point for which he had lost the papal throne and suffered so long an exile. Confident in the moral and religious powers thus acquired by a reconciliation with the Church, Napoleon’s joy was intense. He put forth the whole strength of his varied resources to place his army upon the best footing. In the meantime, however, the forces under the Duke of Wellington were advancing; and while the storm gathered fast in Spain, outraged Germany was marshalling her forces to expel the invader from her confines. The decisive battle of Vittoria was fought on the 21st of June, 1813, and Pampeluña besieged in the latter end of July. The British army under Wellington entered France on the 8th of October, and Pampeluña surrendered on the 31st of the same month. England had also secretly opened negotiations with Austria, which, favoured by Wellington’s victories, were brought to a satisfactory conclusion; and, with the view of crushing her formidable enemy, she poured out her treasure like water. Portugal received from her a loan of two millions sterling; Sicily four hundred thousand; Spain, in money and stores, two millions; Sweden a million; Russia and Prussia three millions; Austria one million; besides warlike stores sent to Germany to the amount of two millions more. The war on the continent cost England this year, in subsidies or other contributions to foreign powers, ten million four hundred thousand pounds; and the total expenditure of England for 1813-14 amounted to the enormous sum of one hundred and eighteen millions; the sum paid for transports alone being 565,790l.

Napoleon quitted Paris to take the command of his army in April. The details of the battles of Lützen, Bautzen, and Hochkirche, which followed, are too well known to be here recounted. Austria, instigated by England, on the 15th of August declared war against France; but Napoleon seemed still favoured by fortune, as he repulsed the attack of the main army at Dresden on the 27th of that month; and it was only at the great battle of Leipsic, where Napoleon had concentrated his forces, when the Saxon and Würtemburg troops passed over from the French ranks and joined the Allies, that his army was completely routed. Then the conqueror of a hundred battles fell back upon the Rhine, breaking through the Bavarian army, which obstructed his passage, and soon afterwards returned to Paris once more utterly defeated.[305] The Germans now raised the thrilling and invigorating cry “To the Rhine!” and the Allies issued, on the 4th of December, their declaration from Frankfort, still offering peace, which Napoleon answered by raising another three hundred thousand men by conscription. The Allied armies crossed that far-famed river, while Schwartzenburg entered France through Switzerland.

The struggles and guerilla warfare which followed are too familiar to every reader of history to require recapitulation. Even after the battle of La Rothière Napoleon might have concluded terms of peace if he had chosen to make concessions. Before the final blow he haughtily said that he was nearer Munich than the Allies were to Paris; and to renounce even the frontier of the Rhine after so much bloodshed was worse than death to him. To the last he struggled against Lord Castlereagh’s influence, whose presence in the Allied camp was worth a host of generals in circumventing his intrigues. England had already concluded a treaty with Joachim Murat of Naples, and Soult had been once more defeated by Wellington at Orthes (Feb. 27, 1814), on French ground, when on the 1st of March the treaty of Chaumont was agreed on by the Allied powers. By this celebrated diplomatic instrument it was stipulated that in the event of Napoleon refusing the terms which had been offered to him—viz., the reduction of France to the limits of the old monarchy, as they stood prior to the Revolution, the four Allied powers, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and England should each maintain one hundred and fifty thousand men in the field; and that England should pay an annual subsidy of five millions sterling, to be equally divided between the three continental powers, besides maintaining her own contingent complete from her own resources. Such were the prodigious efforts made to put the crowning act to all her previous efforts to accomplish the utter destruction of the common enemy.

The Allies now made rapid advances upon Paris; on the 1st of April their victorious armies entered the capital of France; and on the 10th of April the dynasty of the Bourbons was restored by a decree of the Senate. The battle of Toulouse, fought after the events in Paris,[306] terminated the brilliant campaign carried on by the Duke of Wellington; and, after one of the most sanguinary wars ever waged in history, the pacification of Europe was for a time restored, Napoleon being assigned to the island of Elba, where he was allowed to retire with a liberal and independent revenue.

These acts were confirmed by the treaty of Paris, 30th of May, 1814; and in a short time after Denmark made peace, having been compelled to cede the kingdom of Norway to Sweden. It may be added, though the facts must be familiar to most of our readers, that by the treaty of Paris France was reduced to the limits of 1792; Belgium was united to Holland, and constituted the kingdom of the Netherlands; Savoy and Piedmont were restored to the King of Sardinia; Tuscany to its former grand-duke, Ferdinand III.; and Lombardy was given to Austria.

But no sooner had the powers assembled at Vienna to settle the delineations of territory which had been so grievously disturbed by Napoleon, than difficulties met them at every stage. The Bourbons at Paris were beset with claims quite impossible to be conceded. Insolvency, consequent upon Napoleon’s wars, stared them in the face. Russia demanded the whole grand-duchy of Warsaw as the reward of her sacrifices, and adduced abundant arguments to support her claims. Prussia wished to be reinstated in all respects, statistical, financial, and geographical, as she stood at the commencement of the war in 1806, with such additions as might be practicable according to the treaty of Kalitsch. Accordingly, besides various provinces on the left bank of the Rhine, she claimed the whole of Saxony, while Prussia and Russia, by friendly concessions, were united in their demands.

France, Austria, and England opposed these sweeping annexations of the northern nations; and Alexander, annoyed that England and Austria should resist his pretensions, was even more fiercely indignant that Talleyrand, representing France, should “with black ingratitude” hesitate to grant what he asked. To support these pretensions Alexander kept up an army of two hundred and eighty thousand men in Lithuania and Poland, and published an address announcing his intention to restore to the Poles their lost nationality; Prussia had reorganised her army ready for action; Austria maintained her forces on a war footing; and British troops in great number were sent over to Belgium; till a million of armed men, in the midst of a congress assembled for the general pacification of the world, were retained under their banners ready for mutual slaughter. When, however, the political reasons which prompted France, Austria, and England to form a secret arrangement to carry out the treaty of Paris somehow transpired, the views of the northern powers were materially modified; but while their rulers were still discussing the fresh territorial arrangements to be determined upon, the news suddenly reached Vienna that Napoleon had quitted the island of Elba, and had again entered France. This thunderbolt dispelled at once the numerous jealousies which had been fast gathering during the winter. All minor differences were forgotten, and, at the first meeting of the plenipotentiaries, a declaration was drawn up and signed in the name of all the Powers, which in the most rigid terms proscribed Napoleon as a public enemy, and expressed their determination to employ their whole forces to prevent Europe from being again plunged into revolutionary confusion.

The escape of Napoleon from Elba, his landing, his addresses to the soldiers and to the people, the defection of Labedoyère, his triumphant advance by Lyons to Paris, the treason of Ney and flight of the Bourbons to Ghent as the imperial adventurer approached the capital, are all well-remembered events. They succeeded each other with astonishing and bewildering rapidity. On the 21st of March Napoleon found himself once more in the palace of the Tuileries, with the whole army of France enthusiastic in his favour. The efforts made at a counter-revolution by the Bourbons in the provinces signally failed, and Napoleon, with fortune at his back, seemed to have seized once more permanently the imperial sceptre.

But England again stood like a lion in his path. On the 6th of April the Prince Regent announced formally to the House of Commons the events which had occurred. War was approved unanimously by the Lords, and only thirty-seven members could be found to vote against it in the Commons. The nation to a man put forth its concentrated strength. An enormous sudden demand took place for transports to carry over troops and munitions of war to Flanders, which it was intuitively seen must be the battle-ground whereon the future peace of Europe was to be decided. The House of Commons provided the sinews of war with unbounded liberality. The property-tax, producing 15,000,000l., was renewed. Subsidies were voted to the extent of 11,000,000l. to Austria, Russia, Prussia, Hanover, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Italy, and the Netherlands; and all Europe in a few weeks bristled with bayonets. Napoleon sought to obtain popularity by conceding a constitution; but no reflecting man had much confidence in these paper declarations. Caulaincourt tried in vain to open negotiations for peace; but his couriers were stopped on the frontiers. It was intimated to him that the Allied Sovereigns would not swerve from their resolutions: “all Europe had declared war against Bonaparte.” The Emperor Alexander was especially moved, and said that “Europe requires an example.” Murat, at the head of an army of fifty thousand Neapolitans, made a diversion in favour of Napoleon by marching to the Po; but they fled like a flock of sheep before the Austrians. Treason now lurked in the councils of Napoleon. Fouché was detected in a correspondence with Metternich. Napoleon threatened to hang him, but did not dare. As Carnot wisely said, the Republicans only permitted Napoleon to reign because they thought him more favourable to their views than the Bourbons; so Napoleon dissembled, under the necessity of keeping both in power. Each predominant power in succession had been fully conscious of the innate treachery of Fouché, but each was compelled to employ him.

Leaving a council to direct affairs in Paris, Napoleon left that city to commence his last campaign, which ended in his final overthrow at Waterloo on the 18th of June, 1815.

Every impartial reader of history can hardly fail to see that though the maritime decrees of Napoleon on the one hand, and the English Orders in Council on the other, had nothing to do with the origin of the lamentable wars which so long shook Europe to its base, they were the means, in a great measure, of their prolongation, and were the origin, in an essential manner, of the war between England and the United States of America. Attempts on the part of governments to deprive nations of what is necessary for their existence must ever produce the most serious consequences. Besides, it is alike vain and presumptuous for weak man to interpose obstacles in the way of securing to large masses of the people articles absolutely requisite for them, and which, so far as we can divine the inscrutable ways of Providence, are produced for the general use and welfare of mankind. Indeed, the mind is impressed with a singular sensation on beholding a great conqueror, just reposing after one of his most signal victories, issuing decrees that would render almost every sea desolate, and prevent an interchange of commodities as necessary for the daily wants of his own people as for those of other nations.

In gaining his great victories, in adding state after state to his dominions, and in placing brother after brother on the throne of ancient kingdoms whose dynasties he had overthrown, Napoleon may for some mysterious purpose have been performing the part assigned to him by a Higher Power, and accomplishing the destinies of which, under Heaven, he was to be the instrument. But when he extended his ambition to the ocean, when he undertook to overwhelm the innocent peoples of many nations by his maritime decrees, he left the orbit in which evidently it had been his destiny to move for one on which his fleets had been invariably defeated, and where he himself was never seen except as a fugitive, and at last as a prisoner of war in the hands of the ancient rival of his country.