96] 



ANNUAL REGISTER, 1800. 



to the republic ; our principal allies 

 detached from the confederacy; some 

 of them connected in alliance with 

 the enemy ; and, what was worse 

 than all, schemes of extension and 

 aggrandisement avowed and acted 

 upon, which not only had not ex- 

 isted before the war, but which 

 the war had positively courted. If 

 Buonaparte found that his interest 

 was served by an arrangement 

 with England, the same interest 

 would lead him to continue it. If 

 sincerity in a foreign government 

 was a thing which could ever be 

 correctly estimated or acted upon, 

 as a basis for listening to, or reject- 

 ing peace, there was more reason 

 now than formerly for considering 

 that Buonaparte was sincere. Sur- 

 rounded with perils; at the head of 

 an untried government; menaced 

 by a great confederacy, of which 

 England was at the head ; compel- 

 led to press heavily on the resources 

 of an exhausted people, whose power 

 of renovating riches and prosperity 

 were suspended by war, it was his 

 interest undoubtedly to be at peace 

 with England. But though it was 

 thus his interest to negociate a peace, 

 it might be no less his interest to 

 accept it. Buonaparte, looking to 

 himself, and to his own power, 

 would make national sacrifices to 

 preserve tranquillity, and England 

 would thus acquire an additional 

 influence in the scale of Europe ; 

 because, no man in his senses, in 

 the circumstances of Buonaparte, 

 at that moment, having once re- 

 conciled, by wise policy, so mighty 

 a power as Great Britain, would 

 run the risk of oversetting his own 

 authority, by throwing her back 

 again into the war, without the 

 most unlooked-for provocations. 



If Buonaparte's government, 

 said Mr. Erskine, became established 

 and confirmed in its authority, it 

 was admitted, that after some un- 

 defined period of probation, we 

 were, in the end, to consent to 

 peace ; but was it certain that 

 France would then be as willing, 

 as at present, to be at peace with 

 us .'' Fatal experience has taught 

 us the contrary ; for, after every in- 

 terval, when peace had been repel- 

 led by us, we had seen France in a 

 more formidable aspect, and with a 

 more alienated spirit. If, on the 

 other hand, the government of Buo- 

 naparte gave way to an internal de- 

 mocratic revolution, additional dif- 

 ficulties presented themselves : mi- 

 nisters, upon their own principles, 

 must put that new government upon 

 a similar state of probation, and so 

 in injinitum any other establishment 

 which might succeed in a revolu- 

 tionary system. But what internal 

 revolution might be expected to 

 destroy Buonaparte's government 

 from within, if ever it should be 

 destroyed ? From whence could its 

 destruction possibly come, but from 

 the revulsion of democracy, over- 

 awed by armies, and chained down 

 by the complicated forms of thfe pre- 

 sent complex government ? In the 

 event of such a revolution, all our 

 panics would return upon us : the 

 terror of French principles would 

 again become predominant, and 

 war would be persisted inj'though 

 ruinous and hopeless, to prevent 

 the more dangerous contagion of 

 opinions to be engendered by a 

 peace. But was it Buonaparte we 

 objected to } Was it the man and 

 not the gove^-nment we mistrusted? 

 Were we to make war then tUl his 

 place was taken by some new con- 



