264 
Arr. X. Political and Military Memoirs of Europe, from the Renewal of the War on 
the Continent in 1798, to the Peace of Amiens in 1802. 
8vo. 
SOMETIMES a war is undertaken, 
in the event of which great interests of 
mankind are at stake. Such was the 
war of Darius, the Mede, against the 
Greeks, which under Xerxes, his suc- 
cessor, was terminated so gloricusly for 
the eause of liberty. In that war pro- 
bably the Ionian cities, which were the 
regular subjects of Darius, took a sin- 
cere interest in the success of the Greeks. 
They might not avow it; they may not 
have betrayed the cause of their sove- 
reign: but they are likely to have felt 
that every asylum of liberty and inde- 
pendence would be lost to their genera- 
tion, if the Persians prevailed in the 
contest. Such again was the war of 
Gustavus Adolphus; a war as impor- 
tant to religious autonomy, as that of 
the Greeks to civil. Darius might have 
defended his invasion on the grounds of 
the anti¥acobins. The opponents of 
Gustavus Adolphus might have de- 
ferded their cause, on the grounds of 
the English court during the American 
war. ‘The Persian historians had, no 
doubt, such grounds to urge formerly ; 
and the imperial historians of Germany 
latterly: but the Fkiropean verdict, the 
judgment of the disinterested states, 
both in the ancient and in the modern 
world, has condemned the adherents of 
Darius, and the opponents of Gustavus 
Adolphus. The consequence is, that, 
with the flow of ages, the fame of these 
adherents and of these opponents is con- 
stantly diminishing. They are consi- 
dered either as ignorant of the true 
interests of the people, or as knowingly 
hostile to them; their failings are ad- 
vertized, their talents are questioned, in 
order to associate permanent praise with 
eventual utility, and to render true glory 
inseparable from virtue. 
The late revolution war of the French, 
or the antijacobin war of the contede- 
rated kings, was a struggle of this kind 
when it began: and the leaning of the 
neutral and disinterested nations to the 
French cause has continued so decisive, 
that scarcely any historians are to be 
met with, and those anonymous, who 
* Barras and Moulins, who were sound 
revolution. 
HISTORY, POLITICS, AND STATISTICS. , 
By T. E. Rircuiz. 3 vols. 
throw the interest on the side of the 
allies. Nor are the natural prejudices 
of country sufficient to restrain the 
Posselts and the Stephens from ° the 
avowal of an analogous sympathy. We 
are not therefore about to blame Mr. 
Ritchie for a turn of opinion somewhat 
Gallican; we think it, on the contrary, 
during this struggle for liberty, favour- 
able in a man of letters to the enduring 
interests of his reputation; yet we could 
wish that, from the moment of the ne- 
gotiation at Lille, every thing anti- 
British had been carefully avoided ; from 
that period the war on the part of the 
British ministers was only a struggle 
against French aggrandizement. ‘lhe 
alliance with Russia in 1798, is attacked 
with considerable coarseness of displea- 
sure (p. 37), a sort of mention, which 
only tends to prepare between two na- 
tions, well adapted for habitual friend- 
ship, an absurd spirit of angry ani- 
mosity. y 
In the second volume the usurpation 
of Bonaparte is narrated with a com- 
placence highly dangerous to the in- 
terests of liberty: we are not for in» 
voking, on such occasions, the poignard 
of Arena; but we would wish the voice 
of history to speak daggers to those 
generals, who, by the imstrumentality 
of anignorant force, suppress and stifle 
the infant feebleness of free, voluntary, 
and improving institutions. The inter- 
ference of Bonaparte was avowedly de- 
spotic, and despotic for the worst of 
ends; he declared himself an antijacobin, 
the instrument of a party confederated 
for the suppression of jiberal ideas. To 
*Sieyes, Barruel, and the other secret 
directors of the jesuitic interest, he owed 
the opportunity of elevation, and has 
kept the implied condition of his ascen- 
dancy, by faithfully restoring popery 
and.personal monarchy. It must have 
been mortifying to the leaders of the 
antijacobins of this country, not to have 
been consulted about the elevation of 
that man; because it shows that they 
were considered only as the instruments 
of a continental faction, which they 
catholics, had smoothed the way for this 
It was soon followed by the recall of the whole church and king party. A 
man of letters, who co-operated in the English Antijacobin Review, now manages an 
official publication for Bonaparte, on similar principles. 
