SOUTHERN AFRICA. 213 
But if through the Cape the French can contrive to as- 
semble and victual a large armament in the Indian Seas, we 
must have an immense force to prevent such an armament 
from co-operating with a body of troops that may previously 
have been thrown into Egypt and Syria, a plan which they 
probably intended to have carried into effect,, had not the 
ambitious views of Buonaparte put us on our guard, and 
rendered the present war both just and necessary. Such a 
plan, by means of such a peace as the last, might easily be rea- 
lized long before any intelligence of it could reach India, or any 
force be sent out from England to counteract it, were Malta 
and the Cape of Good Hope accessible to the French ; but 
with the latter in our possession the attempt would be 
madness. 
"What the consequence might be of an attempt entirely by 
land, from Greece or Syria to India, is not quite so certain. 
If the emperor Paul had lived to carry into execution his 
wild but dangerous scheme, of assembling a large body of 
troops on the eastern borders of the Caspian Sea, to act in 
concert with the French, it is difficult to say where the mis- 
chief of their quixotism might have ended. The minds of 
men, intoxicated with power and maddened by ambition, are 
not to be measured by the same motives which commonly 
guide the actions of mankind. It is certain that neither 
Paul nor Buonaparte regarded the great waste of men that 
such a project would have occasioned. They must have 
known that by no precaution nor exertion could they have 
made sure of a constant supply of provisions for so vast a 
