Ossa vides regum vacuis exhasta medullis.

Among the [...]attending the lives of Princes, must be reckoned the singular difficulties with which they have to struggle in acquiring a military reputation. A Duke of Cumberland, in order to become an Alexander, had to ride all the way to Culloden, and back again to London. Louis the Fourteenth was obliged to submit to the fatigue of being carried on board of a splendid barge, and rowed across the Rhine, about the same time that the French army crosed it; and all this for the simple privilege of being placed above the Macedonian in the temple of Fame, and of causing this atchievement to be celebrated, as more glorious than the passing of the Granicus; as may be seen on that modest monument in the Place vendome in Paris.

The Count d'Artois has purchased, at a still dearer rate, the fame of being styled "le digne rejeton du grand Henri,"and of being destined to command all the armies of Europe in re-establishing the Monarchy of France. This champion of Christendom set out at the age of twenty-five, and travelled by land with a princely equipage, from Paris to Gibralter; where he arrived just in time to see, at a convenient distance, Elliot's famous bonfire of the floating batteries. He then returned, covered with glory, by the way of Madrid; and arrived at Versailles, amidst the caresses of the court and the applauses of all Europe. The accomplishment of this arduous enterprise has deservedly placed him, in point of military fame, at the head of all the present branches of the illustrious house of Bourbon.

* Some of the author's friends in England, although they join with him in censuring the writings of Mr. Burke on the French Revolution, are of opinion that the picture here drawn of that writer is too highly coloured; or at least, that the censure is so severe as to lose the effect that it might otherwise produce. It is impossible to say what effect, and whether any, has or will be produced by this poem; but, out of respect to the opinion above stated, it may be proper to make some observations on the effect that has already followed from the writings of Mr. Burke. I speak not of what has taken place in England; where it is supposed that, contrary to his intentions and those of the government that set him at work, his malicious attack upon liberty has opened a discussion which cannot be closed until the whole system of despotism, which he meant to support, shall be overturned in that country. The present war with France is doubtless the last piece of delusion that a set of hereditary tyrants will ever be able to impose upon the people of England.

But this subject opens a field of contemplation far more serious and extensive on the continent of Europe; where if Mr. Burke can view without horror the immensity of the mischiefs he has done, he will show himself worthy of much higher attributes of wickedness than have yet been ascribed to him. It is a painful task to traverse such a wide scene of slaughter and desolation as now involves the nations of Europe, and then to lay it all to the charge of a single individual; especially when we consider that individual as having for a long time before, enjoyed the confidence of all good men, and having at last betrayed it from the worst and vilest motives; as he had established his previous reputation by speaking the language of liberty, and professing himself to be the friend of national felicity. But it is not from a transitory disgust at his detestible principles, it is from deliberate observation and mature conviction, that I state it as an historical fact, That the present war, with all its train of calamities, must be attributed almost exclusively to the pen of Mr. Burke.

There is a peculiar combination of circumstances which threw this[Page 26] power into his hands, and which ought to be duly considered, before we come to a decision on the subject. The people of England had enjoyed for several ages a much greater portion of liberty than any other people in Europe. This had raised them to a great degree of eminence in many respects. At the same time that it rendered them powerful as a nation, it made them sober, industrious and persevering, as individuals; it taught them to think and speak with a certain air of dignity, independence and precision, which was unknown in other countries. This circumstance could not fail to gain the admiration of foreigners and to excite a perpetual emulation among themselves. England has therefore produced more than her proportion of the illustrious men of modern times, especially in politics and legislation, as these affairs came within the reach of a larger class of men in that country than in any other.

In a nation where there is an enormous civil list at the disposal of the crown, and a constitutional spirit of liberty kept alive in the people we must necessarily expect to find two parties in the government. In such a case, as the king is sure to carry all the measures that he dares to propose, the party in favour of the people are called the opposition; and it being always a minority, it gives occasion for great exertion of talents, and is supposed to be the nurse of every public virtue. Such has been the composition of the English government ever since the last revolution. The opposition has been the school of great men; its principle disciples have been the apostles of liberty; and their exertions have made the British name respectable in every part of the world. Mr. Burke had been for many years at the head of this school; and from the brilliant talents he [...]covered in that conspicuous station, he rendered himself universally respected. His eloquence was of that flowery and figurative kind, which attracted great admiration in foreign countries; where it was viewed, for the most part, through the medium of a translation; so that he was considered, at least in every country out of England, as the ablest advocate of liberty that then existed in Europe. Even kings and tyrants,[Page 27] who hated the cause, could not withhold their veneration from the man.

Under these impressions, their attention was called to the great event of the French revolution. It was a subject which they did not understand, a business in which they had no intention to interfere; as it was evidently no concern of theirs. But viewed as a speculative point, it is as natural for kings as for other persons to wait till they learn what great men have said, before they form their opinion. Mr. Burke did not suffer them to remain long in suspence; but, to enlighten their understandings and teach them how to judge, he came forward with his "Reflections on the Revolution in France;" where, in his quality of the political schoolmaster of his age, in his quality of the professed enemy of tyrants, the friend of the people, the most enlightened leader of the most enlightened nation in Europe, he tells them that this Revolution is an abominable usurpation of a gang of beggarly tyrants; that its principle is atheism and anarchy; that its instruments are murders, rapes, and plunders; that its object is to hunt down religion, overturn society, and deluge the world in blood. — Then, in the whining cant of state-piety, and in the cowardly insolence of personal safety, he calls upon the principal sovereigns of Europe to unite in a general confederation, to march into France, to interfere in the affairs of an independent power, to make war with the principles which he himself had long laboured to support, to overturn the noblest monument of human wisdom, and blast the fairest hopes of public happiness that the world had ever seen.

Copies of his book were sent in great profusion by the courts of London and Paris to the other courts of Europe; it was read by all men of letters, and by all men of state, with an avidity inspired by the celebrity of the author and the magnitude of the subject; and it produced an effect which, in other circumstances would have appeared almost miraculous; especially when we consider the intrinsic character of the work. M. de Calonne, about the same time, published a book of much more internal merit; a book in which falshood is[Page 28] clothed in a more decent covering; and in which there is more energy and argument, to excite the champions of despotism to begin the work of desolation. But Calonne wrote and appeared in his true character. It was known that he had been a robber in France, and was now an exile in England; and, while he herded with the English robbers at St. James's, he wrote to revenge himself upon the country whose justice he had escaped. His writings, therefore, had but little weight; perhaps as little as Mr. Burke's would have had, if his real object had been known.

But this illustrious hypocrite possessed every advantage for deception. He palmed himself upon the world as a volunteer in the general cause of philanthropy. Giving himself up to the frenzy of an unbridled imagination, he conceives himself writing tragedy, without being confined to the obvious laws of fiction; and taking advantage of the recency of the events, and of the ignorance of those who were to read his rhapsodies, he peoples France with assassins, for the sake of raising a hue-and-cry against its peaceable inhabitants; he paints ideal murders, that they may be avenged by the reality of a wide extended slaughter; he transforms the mildest and most generous people in Europe into a nation of monsters and atheists, "heaping mountains upon mountains, and waging war with heaven," that he may interest the consciences of one part of his readers, and cloak the hypocrisy of another, to induce them both to renounce the character of men, while they avenge the cause of God.

Such was the first picture of the French Revolution presented at once to the eyes of all the men who held the reins of government in the several states of Europe; and such was the authority of the author by whom it was presented, that we are not to be astonished at the effect. The emigrant princes, and the agents of the court of the Thu–leries, who were then besieging the anti-chambers of ministers in every country, found a new source of impudence in this extraordinary work. They found their own invented fictions confirmed in their fullest latitude, and a rich variety of superadded falshood, of which the[Page 29] most shameless sycophant of Louis or of Condé would hare blushed to have been the author. With this book in their hands it was easy to gain the ear of men already predisposed to listen to any project which might rivet the chains of their fellow creatures.

These arguments, detailed by proper agents, induced some of the principal sovereigns of Europe to agree to the treaty of Pilnitz; then the death of Leopold, as I have stated in the preface, unhappily removed the great obstacle to the execution of that treaty, and the war of Mr. Burke was let loose, with all the horrors he intended to excite. And what is the language proper to be used in describing the character of a man, who, in his situation, at his time of life, and for a pension of only fifteen hundred pounds a year, could sit down deliberately in his closet and call upon the powers of earth and hell to inflict such a weight of misery on the human race? When we see Alexander depopulating kingdoms and reducing great cities to ashes, we transport ourselves to the age in which he lived, when human slaughter was human glory; and we make some allowance for the ravings of ambition. If we contemplate the frightful cruelties of Cortez and Pizarro, we view their characters as a composition of avarice and fanaticism; we see them insatiable of wealth, and mad with the idea of extending the knowledge of their religion. But here is a man who calls himself a philosopher, not remarkable for his avarice, the delight and ornament of a numerous society of valuable friends, respected by all enlightened men as a friend of peace and a preacher of humanity, living in an age when military madness has lost its charms, and men begin to unite in searching the means of avoiding the horrors of war; this man, wearied with the happiness that surrounds him, and disgusted at the glory that awaits him, renounces all his friends, belies the doctrines of his former life, bewails that the military savageness of the fourteenth century is past away, and, to gratify his barbarous wishes to call it back, conjures up a war, in which at least two millions of his fellow creatures must be sacrificed to his unaccountable passion. Such is the condition of human nature, that the greatest crimes have usually[Page 30] gone unpunished. It appears to me, that history does not furnish a greater one than this of Mr. Burke; and yet all the consolation that we can draw from the detection, is to leave the man to his own reflections, and expose his conduct to the execration of posterity.