means, and what ought to be our motives, not only for frustrating their malicious intentions, but for inflicting just and memorable chastisement on their insolent and guilty heads. The grounds of the war are, by no means, as our enemies pretend, to be sought for in a desire entertained by his Majesty to keep the Island of Malta, contrary to the Treaty of Peace, or to leave unfulfilled any other part of his sacred engagements: they are to be sought for in the ambition of the First Consul of France, and in his imp'acable hatred of Britain, because, in the power and valour of Britain alone, he finds a check to that ambition, which aims at nothing shor of the conquest of the world. His Majesty, ever anxious to procure for his people prosperity and ease, eagerly seized the first opportunity that offered itself for the restoration of Peace; but not without remembering, at the same time, that their safety, for which it was his peculiar duty to provide, was not to be sacrificed to any other consideration. This peace he concluded with the most sincere desire, that it might be durable, and the conduct of France would be such as to authorize him to execute, with scrupulous punctuality, every one of the stipulations of the Treaty. But scarcely was that compact concluded, when he First Consul, at the very time that his Majesty was surrendering to Frace and Holland, the great and numerous conquests he had made from them during the war, began a new sort of hostility upon the weak and defenceless states on the Continent of Europe: Piedmont, a country equal to all Scotland, was added to France: Holland, which had, at the making of the Peace, been recognized as an independent nation, became, more than ever, the object of French rapacity and despotism; was com pelled to furnish ships and stores for French expeditions, and to feed and clothe French armies; the only use of which was to keep her in a state of slavish subjection, and to render her shores an object of serious alarm and real danger to Great Britain; Switzer. Jand was invaded by a French army, which compelled the people of that once free and happy country, to submit to a government framed at Paris, the members of which go vernment were chiefly composed of men, who had betrayed the liberties of their Country, and who were nominated by the Consul himself. Notwithstanding, however, all these and several other acts of aggression and tyranny, some of which were highly injurious to Great Britain, and were shameful violations of the Treaty of Peace, still his Majesty earnestly endeavoured to avoid a recurrence to arms; but the Consul, emboldened by our forbearance, and imputing to a dread of his power. that which he ought to have imputed solely to our desire to live at peace, manifested his perfidious intentions, again to take possession of Egypt, whence we had driven him in disgrace; again to open a road to our possessions in India, there to destroy one of the principal sources of our wealth and our greatness Not contented with thus preparing for our destruction from without, endeavouring to cut off our intercourse with the rest of the world, shutting, as far as he was able, all the ports of other countries against us; gradually destroying our navigation, commerce, and trade; hemming us up in our own island, and exposing our manufactuters, artizans, and labourers, to the danger of starving for want of employment; not contented with these malignant endeavours, and seeming to regard us as already within his grasp, he audaciously interfered in the management of our domestic concerns; required us to violate our laws by banishing those subjects of the French Monarch, who had fled hither for shelter from his unjust and tyrannical government; demanded of us the suppression of the Liberty of Speech and of the Press; and, in a word, clearly demonstrated his resolution not to leave us a moment's tranquillity, till we had surrendered our constitution, till we had laid all our liberties at his feet, and till, like the Dutch, the Italians, and the Swiss, we had submitted to be governed by Decrees sent us from France. Besides the motives of ambition, the desire to domineer over, and to trample upon all the rest of mankind, the First Consul has a reason, peculiar to himself, for wishing to reduce us to a state of poverty, weakness, submission, and silence; which reason will be at once evident when we consider the origin of his authority, and the nature of his government. Having succeeded, through a long course of perfidious and bloody deeds, in usurping the throne of his lawful Sovereign; having, under the name of Equality, established in his own person and family, a government the most pompous and expensive, while the people are pining with hunger, and in rags; having, with the word Liberty continually on his lips, erected a despotism the most oppressive, the most capricious, and the most cruel that the Almighty, in his wrath, ever suffered to exist; having, by such means, obtained such an end, he feared, that while there remained upon the earth, and especially within a few leagues of France, a people enjoying, under a mild and legitimate Sovereign, all the bles rear. In the long and black catalogue of French cruelties towards the people of other countries, those of the First Consul, and of the generals and soldiers immediately under his command, first present themselves to our attention. In 1796, Buonaparté, at the head of a numerous French army, invaded Italy, Heclaring to the people, that he came as their friend and their brother, to deliver them from taxes and slavery, and promising them safety for their persons, security for their property, respect for their laws, and reverence for their religion. They listened, they believed; they threw open their gates, they laid down their arms, they received the Gallic Serpent to their bosom, and fatal indeed were the effects of their credulity ! His reverence for their religion he displayed by giving up all their places of worship to indiscriminate plunder, and by defiling them. with every species of sacrilege; his respect for their laws was evinced, not only by the abrogation of those laws, but by the arbitrary enforcement of an unconditional submission to the mandates of himself and his generals; the security which he promised to their property was exhibited in enormous contributions, in the seizure of all the public funds, as well as those of every charitable foundation, not excepting schools, hospitals, or any other resource for the support of the poor, the aged, and the helpless; and, as to the persons of the unfortunate people, he provided for their safety by laying the whole country under the severest military execution, by giving up the towns and villages to fire and sword, and by exposing the inhabitants to be pillaged and murdered by his rapacious and inhuman soldiers, whom he au thorised and even ordered to shoot every man that attempted to resist them, whatever might be the crimes in which they were engaged. This, however, is not sufficient to satisfy the Consul of France; it is not sufficient that we abstain, both by actions and by words, from exciting discontent amongst those who have the misfortune to be subjected to his sway; we must not afford them an example, we must not remain free, lest they should learn lessons of freedom; we must destroy our ancient and venerable monarchy, lest they should sigh for a lawful and merciful king; we must not be happy, lest they should covet happiness; we must not speak, lest our voice should disturb the peace of Buonaparté; we must not breathe, we must cease to exist, because our existence gives umbrage to a man, who, from the walls of Acre, fled, in shame and disgrace, before a handful of Britons. On his return from Italy, which he left in a state of beggary and irretrievable ruin, he prepared for the invasion of Egypt, a country which was at peace with France, and against the people, or the government of which, France had no cause of com Such being the grounds of the war, such the wishes and designs, such the preposterous and insolent pretensions of the enemy, it next behoves us to consider, what will be the consequence to ourselves, what will be our wretched lot, if that enemy should succeed in the invasion and subjugation of our country. Of what the French would, in such case, do here, we may form some judg-plaint; but the conquest of this country ment, from what they have done in all those countries, where the remissness of the government, together with the pusillanimity of the people, have given them the predominance. There is no country, into which they have been able to enter, where their footsteps have not been marked with blood; where they have spared either high or low, rich or poor, sex or age; where terror has not been ther forerunner, and where desolation and miery have not marched in their was necessary in order to open a road to the Indian possessions of Great-Britain. In pursuit of this object, Buonaparté invaded Egypt, where he repeated his promises to respect religion, property, and persons, and where, the more effectually to disguise his purposes, he issued a proclamation, declaring himself and his army to be trae Mahometans; and boasting of having made war upon the Christians, and destroyed their religion. One of his first deeds after this act of apostacy, was to massacre almost all the inhabitants of the populous city of Alexandria. "The people," says one of his generals, "betake themselves to their PROPHET, "and fill their mosques; but men and wo men, old and young, and even babes at "the breast, ALL are massacred!" Some time after this sanguinary transaction, Buonaparté, having made prisoners of three thousand eight hundred Turks, in the fortress of Jaffa, and wishing to relieve himself from the trouble and expense of guarding and supporting them, ordered them to be marched to an open place, where part of his army fired on them with musquetry and grape shot, stabbing and cutting to death the few who escaped the fire, while he himself looked on, and rejoiced at the horrid scene. Nor were his cruelties, while in Egypt, confined to those whom he called his enemies; for finding his hospitals at Jaffa crowded with sick soldiers, and desiring to disencumber himself of them, he ordered one of his physicians to destroy them by poison. The physician refused to obey; but an apothecary was found, willing to perpetrate the deed; opium was mixed with the food; and thus, five hundred and eighty Frenchmen perished by the order of the general, under whose flag they had fought; by the order of that very man, to whose despotic sway, the whole French nation now patiently submits! Let them so submit, but let us not think of such shameful, such degrading submission. Let us recollect, that this impious and ferocious invader was stopped in his career of rapine and blood, by a mere handful of Britons; and was finally nduced to desert his troops, and to flee from the land he had invaded, at the approach of that gallant British army, by which Egypt was delivered from the most odious and most destructive of all its plagues. This it is for us to recollect; and so recollecting, shame and disgrace upon our heads, if we do not resist, if we do not overcome, if we do not chastise this rapacious, this bloody minded tyrant, who has now marked out our country for subjugation, our fields for devastation, our houses for pillage; and who, in the insolence of his ambition, has held us forth to the world, as a meek, a feeble, and cowardly race, destined to grace his triumphal car, and to augment the number of his slaves. Not, however, to the deeds of Buonaparté alone, must our recollection be confined Not only Italy and Egypt, but HolJand, Switzerland, and Germany, and, indeed, almost every country in Europe have been the scenes of French rapine, insult, and cruelty. Holland, formerly the seat of freedom, commerce, industry, and affluence, presents at this moment, the sad spectacle of a country divided against itself, torn to pieces by factions, contending, not for the suffrages of the people, but for the favour of France; a country governed by the haughty mandates of a foreign power; awed by foreign arms; holding the remains of its wealth, together with the residue of its military and naval means, in constant readiness to be disposed of in the service of another nation, and that nation its ancient and implacable enemy, and now its inexorable oppressor. When the French armies entered the territories of Holland, their motto was, "War to the Palace, but peace to the Cottage." They came to deliver the people from their rulers, and from the burthens which those rulers imposed. The Dutch, like the Italians, lent an ear to these artful and perfidious declarations, believing that their cottages would be spared, and careless of the fate of the palace. But, alas ! they soon found, that French rapacity, like the hail and the thunder, fell alike on the thatched roof, and the gilded dome. The palaces once seized on, the cottages soon followed; while all those who were found in the intermediate space, the merchant, the manufacturer, the farmer, and the tradesman, were sunk in one common ruin; happy, if, by the loss of their property, they had the good fortune to preserve their lives. Buonaparté is, indeed, now, not only the sovereign of the country, not only does he exercise the powers of dominion, but he is, as to every practical effect, the master and the owner of all the property, and of all the people in Holland. These miserable beings possess nothing of their own; they can acquire nothing with the hope of enjoying, or bequeathing it; they can make no provision for the weakness of disease, the feebleness of old age, or the helplessness of infancy; they the mere political drudges of a hardhearted tyrant, who suffers them to live, only while their labours administer to his projects of ambition, and who, when his purposes demand it, puts an end at once to their toils and their existence. are, to Palaces" seemed useless and absurd. Yet did the French find a pretext for war with this poor and harmless race, and for invading and laying waste their territory. The Swiss, from their anxiety to preserve peace, consented to every sacrifice demanded of them by France: they exposed themselves to the hostility of other nations, by sending away the ambassadors of those nations; they broke off their connexion with some of their most powerful allies; they banished the loyal subjects of their ancient protector the King of France, men whom the ries of gratitude and the laws of hospitality bound them to cherish; and when they had thus exhausted the source of concession, when they could grant no more, because France could find nothing more to demand; when they had humbled themselves in the dust, and degraded the character of their country in the eyes of all Europe; when they had thus done and thus suffered, rather than see their country the scene of war, then did the French invade their territory; then did these restless disturbers of the world march an army into the heart of Switzerland, in order to compel the people to change the nature and the form of their government, and to commit it to the hands of traitors, who had been chosen by France, and by the assistance of whose treachery the French invasion had been effected. After having, by means of an armistice, joined to the most solemn promise of respect for persons and property, lulled the people into a state of imaginary security, the armistice was broken, and the French pushed on their forces, when those of the Swiss were dispersed. Resistance on the part of the latter, whose numbers did not amount to a tenth of those of their flagitious enemy, now became hopeless: and though the little army was brave, though the people were faithful and active, though the last battle was long, obstinate, and bloody; though the Swiss achieved wonders, and though the women fought by the sides of their husbands, inciting them to victory or death, all was in vain; hundreds and thousands perished by the sabres of the French, and while the earth was strewed with their dead bodies, and while the flames ascended from the once happy dwellings of this va liant and innocent people, the hard-earned and long-preserved liberties of Switzerland expired. Germany, which closes this awful lesson, was invaded by the French in 1796 and 1798. These, invasions were attended with crimes, too atrocious to be credited, were they not proved by indisputable evidence, and did they not accord with the general practice of the inhuman wretches by whom they were committed. In adverting to these detestable acts of oppression and cruelty, we must recollect, that they were perpetrated upon a people, who had made no resistance of any sort against the invaders, and who in every instance had entered into an agreement with the French Generals, to pay them great sums of money, in order to preserve their country from plunder.. In consequence of the ransom thus wrung from the people, the invaders declared, by public proclamation, that the persons and property of the inhabitants should be strictly respected; and that their rights, usages, laws, and religion should remain inviolate and undisturbed. On these assurances, thus solemnly made, the credulous people all implicitly relied, while some of the poorer classes regarded the French, not as enemies, but as their deliverers from taxes and labour. No sooner, however, had the invasion taken place, no sooner had the French become masters of the country, than they spread themselves over it like beasts of prey, devouring and destroying every thing before them. They spared neither cities nor towns, neither villages nor hamlets, nor solitary houses; from the church to the cell, from the castle to the cottage; no state of life, however lofty or however humble, escaped their rapacious assaults; no sanctity excited their veneration; no grandeur their respect; no misery their forbearance or their pity. After having plundered the houses of the gentry, the clergy, and the tradesmen; after having pillaged the shops, warehouses, and manufactories, they proceeded to the farm houses, and cottages; they rifled the pockets and chests of the inhabitants, cut open their beds, tore up the floors of their rooms, dug up their cellars, searched the newly made graves, and broke open the coffins in hopes of finding secreted treasure. They sometimes threatened people with immediate death, sometimes put them to the torture, sometimes lacerated and crippled them, in order to wring from them a discovery of their little pittance of ready money. The deepest and most apparent poverty was no protection against their rapacity; grey hairs and lisping infancy; the sick, the dying, women in child-bed, were alike exposed to the most barbarous treatment; dragged from their beds, kicked, wounded, and frequently killed, under pretence that they were the keepers of concealed wealth. The teams and flocks, cattle of every kind, the marau ders drove off, cut to pieces on the spot, or left in a state of mutilation; corn, hay, and straw, they wasted or burnt; they demolished the household furniture, destroyed the utensils of the dairies, the barns, and the stables; tore down the gates, levelled the fences. In many places they stripped the clothes from the backs of the people, set their liquor flowing in the cellar, burnt their provisions to ashes. The churches, whether Romish or Protestant, they rendered a scene of indiscriminate robbery, of sacrilege and blasphemy, too shocking to describe. Towards women of all ages and all conditions, they were guilty of brutality never before heard of: neither extreme youth nor extreme age; neither weakness nor deformity; nor the most loathsome disease; neither the pangs of labour, nor the agonies of death could restrain them; cries, tears, supplications were of no avail; and where fathers, husbands, or brothers interfered, murder seldom failed to close the horrible scene. To spread nakedness and hunger, to introduce misery and disease amongst all ranks, seems to have been their uniform desire; but the lower orders of the people, the artizans and the labourers, were the objects of their direst malignity; against them was directed the sharpest bayonets; for their bodies the choicest torment, for their minds the keenest anguish was reserved; from one end of the country to the other, we trace the merciless ruffians through a scene of conflagration and blood; frequently we see them butchering whole families, and retiring by the light of their blazing habitations; but amongst the poor alone, do we find them deferring the murder of the parents for the purpose of compelling them to hear their children shriek amidst the flames ! Such are the barbarities which have been inflicted on other nations. The recollection of them will never be effaced; the melancholy story will be handed down from generation to generation, to the everlasting infamy of the republicans of France, and as an awful warning to all those nations whom they may hereafter attempt to invade. We are one of those nations; we are the people whom they are now preparing to invade: awful, indeed, is the warning, and, if we despise it, tremendous will be the judgment. The same generals, the same commissaries, the same officers, the same soldiers, the very same rapacious and sanguinary host, that now hold Holland and Switzerland in chains, that desolated Egypt, Italy, and Germany, are, at this moment, preparing to make England, Ireland, like and Scotland, the scenes of their atrocities. For some time past, they have had little opportunity to plunder: peace, for a while, suspended their devastations, and now, gaunt and hungry wolves, they are looking towards the rich pastures of Britain: already we hear their threatening howl; and if, like sheep, we stand bleating for mercy, neither our innocence nor our timidity will save us from being torn to pieces and devoured. The robberies, the barbarities, the brutalities they have committed in other countries, though, at the thought of them, the heart sinks and the blood runs cold, will be mere trifles to what they will commit here, if we suffer them to triumph over us. The Swiss and the Suabians were never objects of their envy; they were never` the rivals of Frenchmen, either on the land or on the sea; they had never disconcerted or checked their ambitious projects, never humbled their pride, never defeated either their armies or their fleets. We have been, and we have done all this: they have long entertained against us a hatred engendered by the mixture of envy and of fear; and they are now about to make a great and desperate effort to gratify this furious, this unquenchable, this deadly haired. What, then, can we expect at their hands? What but torments, even surpassing those which they have inflicted on other nations. They remained but three months in Germany; here they would remain for ever; there, their extortions and their atrocities were, for want of time, confined to a part of the people; here they would be universal: no sort, no part, no particle of property would remain unseized; no man, woman or child would escape violence of some kind or other. Such of our manufactories as are moveable, they would transport to France, together with the most ingenious of the manufacturers, whose wives and children would be left to starve. Our ships would follow the same course, with all the commerce and commercial means of the kingdom. Having stripped us of every thing, even to the stoutest of our sons, and the most beautiful of our daughters, over all that remained they would establish and exercise a tyranny, such as the world never before witnessed. All the estates, all the farms, all the mines, all the land and the houses, all the shops and magazines, all the remaining manufactories, and all the workshops, of every kind and description, from the greatest to the smallest; all these they would bring over Frenchmen to possess ; making us their servants and their labourers. To prevent us from uniting and rising |