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double that number in the course of one short month, if so tremendous a force was necessary to give stability to his throne, or even to extend his conquests. It is impossible at present to divine his intentions. Circumstances may justify the opinion, that he will insist upon making the Rhine the boundary of Fraace. If he should, it would be a wise policy in the allied powers not to oppose this. They have accused Napoleon of being unbounded in his ambition.

we had to encounter. Already we had made preparations for putting the scal upon the final subjugation of the Amerirican continent. Every friend of liberty stood aghast at the daring attempt. Every lover of his native land sighed, and his spirits sunk within him, when he contemplated the probability of its success. But, the charm of our invincibility has been broken; the talisman of our omnipotence, has been - dissipated; and Britain, proud Britain, has fallen from the summit of her great-Would it not be worth the trial, to give ness! A band of freemen, whose Govern him those limits which nature has so ment she threatened to overthrow, to clearly pointed out as belonging to the whom she arrogated the privilege of die- French Empire? Should be pass these, tating the law, rushed forward in defence without cause of provocation, he might of their rights. The country which had then be opposed as the common enemy been invaded, became the grave of the of mankind. To war against him, in his invaders. Even the ocean, on which she present favourable situation in order to had so long ridden triumphant, was des- prevent his obtaining that object, would tined to witness her defeat and her dis- be folly; but to draw the sword for the grace. Α reverse so unexpected, a purpose of reinstating the Bourbons, change so sudden and extraordinary, na- would be the extreme of madness.-In turally produced a correspondent feeling. the former case the chances are two to The nations of Europe, who were for- one against his opponents: In the latter merly awed by the splendour of our vic- they are ten to one. If we calculate on tories, now began to question our pre- the victories of Marquis Wellington, they tensions. They no longer regarded us as will he met by our defeats at Fort Erie invincible: they were indignant that they and New Oricans. If we speak of the should have so long yielded us the rank entry of the Allies into Paris, we shall which we possessed. This indignation, be told that treason no longer exists. at what they considered their own weak-in the French army; that Napoleon ness and folly, gave birth to feelings of never was defeated when the soldiers. hatred and contempt. The eagerness he led to battle were true to their with which we sought an opportunity to colours. Our naval and military glory enter into negociations with America, having been so greatly tarnished by the was no way calculated to counteract contest with America, and the fortunes this impression; and it only remained of Napoleon having so greatly improved, to complete the degradation, by finally it is lamentable to observe with what. making concessions to the foe we despi- eagerness our ministerial newspapers are, sed, which no other could expect or ex-endeavouring to involve this country in a act but one that had frustrated our designs, and driven us from the field.--At this critical moment, when our fame for deeds of arms has so fatally declined, the adversary, whom we had overthrown, and on whose re-appearance we never calcu-aware that the conclusions they then drew lated, stands again into view.-He comes as to the favourable effect this would arrayed with tenfold more terrors than at have upon France, now operate with any former period. If ever it was a double force against our taking up arms" matter of doubt that Napoleon possessed against her? The language of the Courier the hearts of the people of France, theat that time was particularly striking and reception which they have now given him must effectually remove it. Aheady he is said to have an army at his command of 50,000 veterans; and such is the atfachment and devotion to his person which pervades all France, that he might

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new war with France. Have these tools of corruption forgotten the arguments which they made use of, in the end of the year 1813, to dissuade the allies from giving peace to Europe? Are they not

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remarkable. In that journal of 25th December, it was said, By peace, "France will gain every thing. She "will regain at least 300,000 of her best

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troops, one half of her best officers, "and seamen sufficient to mau 50 sail of

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"the line. In six months after a peace, "France may have fifty sail of the line, "well manned, and an army of half a "million of men, commanded by a great military genius. One victory may again give him possession of Vienna." The event here anticipated has actually happened. Napoleon has regained, by the peace, all his best troops, the greatest part of his best officers, and all his seamen. He possesses more than fifty sail of the line, and he has at his command half a million of armed men. If then the allied powers should provoke him to hostilities, let them beware that one victory does not again give him "possession of Vienna."

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THE FARMERS.

H.

MR. COBBETT.-A letter, under the signature of Aristides, has, it seems, given offence to sundry of your Correspondents, who seem impressed with the idea of his being hostile to farmers in general, whereas the contrary is the case; for while deprecating the now pending Corn Bill, as an arbitrary, partial, and unjust measure, no man entertains more affection, respect, and, I may say, veneration for the plain, rough, honest true old English Farmer, than Aristides; neither does any one more ardently wish, or would more earnestly endeavour, (overwhelmed as the nation is with Lords, Baronets, Knights, and Nabobs,) the renovation and multiplication of the an cient British Yeomanry.-But monopoli zers of land, speculators and vile imitators of the luxuries of a court, cannot meet the approbation of a well wisher to his country; the more especially when, to enable themselves to continue such, they wish to put every mouth in that Comtry under tribute. Honest indignation in the cause of the poor, may then bé allowed to burst forth.

aristides agrees with the bulk, and better part of the nation, that Corruption pod Paxation have gone hand in hand for a Lamber of years; but wherefore good people of England do you now my mainst them?--You were in use to discourage, by all the means in those who sought to rid you pression; nay you lent your

willing aid to corruption to keep her lin her seat; and now, forsooth, you pout and whine like way-ward Children.-A person of no small abilities, yet espousing the canse of the Corn Bill, uses the following most excellent remark, which, as it suits the cause of the people much better than the one in the service of which it is enlisted, you will permit me here to quote. The writer says and says justly, that, Equal pro"tection is the right of all under a "free government. All must participate "in the benefits of society, otherwise "the bond of association loses its legiti"mate force, as in Asia, where a tyrannic "partiality makes favoured Casts, and

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treats others as if they were not "of the human species; or, to use the "words of the poet, Nature's bas

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tards not her sons.' Such favour "and affection may do in Asiatic go"veruments, but not in England ". If this argument be just, let the ministers explain upon what foundation they proceed with regard to the Corn Bill; for certainly the land-holders and farmers form but a comparatively small part of the community.The manufacturers exceed them greatly in number. Besides these, there is a multitude who belong to neither of the above classesYet all are to be oppressed, that the farmer may be enabled to pay a rackrent to the land-holder, and therefore the land-holder seated in power, most unfeelingly lays it on. Having, in the above quotation, mentioned Asia, give me leave, Mr Cobbett, to ask some little information as to a transaction mentioned to have happened there some years ago. I mean a monopoly of rice, said to have caused the death of several millions of persons, who may be presumed to have been neither land-holders nor farmers, but of nearly a similar description with our manufacturers and labouring poor. Perhaps the corn bill may be meant as an experiment (upon a sinaller scale) to take place here, according to an idea held by an author of the fashionable world, that there may at times be political wisdom in diminishing the population; and for that perhaps could be found no better expedient than the CORN BILL.

ARISTIDES.

Fablished by G. HOUSTON: No. 192. Strand; where all Communications addressed lo Editor are requested to be forwarded.

VOL. XXVII. No. 14.] LONDON, SATURDAY, APRIL 8, 1815.

4171

TO LOUIS.

ON THE REAL CAUSES OF HIS LATE
EXPULSION, AND ON THE FUTURE
PROSPECTS OF HIMSELF AND FA-

MILY.

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SIR,-While I feel, in common with most of my countrymen, compassion for you, under the present circumstances, I think it right to address you my thoughts on the real causes of your late expulsion from France, and on the prospeets which now present themselves to yourself and family. To do this I think myself the more fully entitled, as the advice, which offered you upon your restoration was not followed, and, as it now appears, the acting in opposition to that advice has furnished the grounds of numerous accusations against you and your Government. It appears to me very clear, that the House of Bourbon never can reign again in France. A war, in which all the rest of Europe, with the purse of England emptied into their hands, should league against France, might pro<duce great revolutions in that country; but, I am convinced, that it is wholly impossible for any combination of power, or of events, to make your House again for any length of time, the sovereigns of France. The reasons for this opinion will become apparent when I have described what I deem to have been the real causes of your late expulsion.

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that it was not; but, it is impossible to blame the people of France for having believed that which every man in England believed, and especially when overt acts of a nature so striking, and so humiliating to France, accompanied this memorable declaration. You had ex

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pressed your resolution to owe your restoration solely to the people of France; and the people of France saw you escorted from the Prince Regent's palace to Dover by English Guards; they saw you conveyed across the Channel in an Fig dish ship commanded by an English Prince; they saw you received on French ground and conducted to Paris by Ger man and Prussian soldiers, subsidized by England: they saw Paris filled with those troops; they saw those troops remain there until Napoleon was landed on the rock of Elba, and until you had new-organized the army and the civil authorities of France; they, in short, saw you put upon the throne by foreign.ar mies, and they heard England, who had been the constant enemy of France under all her forms of Government, held up as entitled to all the merit of having accomplished this event.

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Was it likely; was it possible, that a nation like the French should not burn with desire to wipe away this broad, this staring stain on its character? To see the English regiments of horse traverse almost the whole of France, when they might have been embarked very nearly In the Proclamation to the French at the spot where the war had closed; people, which you issued in England in to see the studied sparade of English the early part of 1814, you said, that you "conquerors," as they were called, in the were resolved to owe your restoration streets of Paris; to be told, as they solely to the people of France. But, you were through our news-papers, that you were hardly arrived in France, when it had, at the request of our Government, was stated in the Moniteur and in the forcibly detained American armed ships English news-papers, that you had, under in the ports of France, and that you had, your own shand, declared to the Prince by special command, prevented FrenchRegent of England, that you owed your men from sailing to America, lest they Crown to him, and the substance, if not should enter into the service of that coun copies, of the letter, containing this de-try: to see and hear these things must claration, were published in these same have added greatly to the mortification papers. I do not pretend to say, that and resentment of the French people, bis was the fact, I would fain believe who, always remarkable for their love of

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vi

military glory, would under such circumstances, naturally be ready to burst forth against your authority upon the first fair occasion.

he ancient rules with regard to the Sunday; rules never, perhaps, very wise, and now hostile to the habits of the whole of the generation whom they were. Yet, if you had returned unaccom- to affect. This measure of itself was panied by the ancient Noblesse, and the sufficient to produce a shock. It would Clergy, things might possibly have settled naturally create a belief, that all was to down into something like content. But, be attempted to be restored, as far as loaded with a numerous class of persons, religion was concerned. Nine tenths of all on the tiptoe of expectation; all expect- the active men in France are, perhaps, ing employments and honours; all eager to no more Catholics than I am, having, be restored, as well as yourself, to power with their mothers' milk, imbibed a disand to wealth; and, all having, which like, and even a hatred, of that Church you had not, to contend with rivals for and its clergy. The effect of such meathat power and that wealth, and with sures must be to fill them with disconrivals, too, whom they found in posses- tent, alarm, and resentmentment; for sion; loaded with this almost numberless every man living soon hates whatever class, who, to say the truth, had claims makes him uneasy. If measures of this as fair as your own to a restoration, it kind, which I can allow to have been required wi Jom and energy that do not adopted by you from motives of real fall to the lot of mankind to prevent piety, were calculated to revive all the those heart-burnings which arose from apprehensions of religious persecution, this cause, and the effects of which we the re-burial of the late king and queen's now so clearly trace, not in speculation, remains marked out not a few of the but in decisive facts. A man bereft of greatest men in the country for regicides. power or profit, always becomes a bitter The funeral service upon that occasion; enemy of him who has displaced him. the annual humiliation appointed; the But if such changes become pretty gene- language of the noblesse, the clergy, the ral throughout a whole country: if a sert Royalist pamphleteers, the official jourof proscription be set on foot; and espe- nal, clearly showed, that there was, in cially if the grounds of that proscription the end, to be neither oblivion nor forbe such as almost every man in the com-giveness for what was called the " munity will naturally see level,in some de- der" of the late king and queen. And, gree, against him and even against his thus another list of proscription was prochildren; it is manifest that a convulsion mulgated, written in characters of blood. can be prevented by the bayonet alone. And, if the danger; if the suffering, extend itself to the military as well as to all other persons in power, who can expect that any thing short of a great, an overwhelming, foreign force, constantly present in the country, will be able to support the ruler on his throne?

While these changes were at work, producing hostility in every part of the country, the priesthood seem not to have been idle. i am not blaming them for their endeavours to bring back the people to their former sentiments. They might deem it their duty. But, as was to be expected, they proceeded with very little caution. The people, who had, in general, long set aside the old way of thinking along with the tythes and the convents, saw with great jealousy and alarm the crucifixes re-hoisted at every corner in the towns, and on the sides of the high-ways; and, as if you scorned to approach by degrees, you re-established

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But, if it had been possible for you to remain upon the throne amidst the hostility excited against you by all these causes, your power must have been destroyed, and yourself dethroned, by the attacks upon property, which were made in so open a manner. The notion which the presses in this country are so very anxious to inculate is, that your overthrow is to be attributed solely to the army, who, we are told, governs the people of France, and forces upon them whatever laws and government it pleases. We are told, in one column of these papers, that Napoleon is unable to collect a large army: that he has been compelled to lower his tone because he wants an army; that he has expressed his willingness to abide by the Treaty of Paris because he wants an army; that he has abolished the Slave Trade, which you would not abolish, because he wants an army; that he pays his court to the people and proImises them liberty of the press and free

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representative government because he wants an army and, strange to say, in the opposite column, we are very gravely assured,a sa matter of fact taken for granted, that it is the army and the army alone, who has brought him back toFrance, and put him upon your throne, against the will of thirty millions of people! It really seems, that delusion is never to .cease. It really seems, that, upon that subject, men are to continue in wilful blindness unto the end, unless their eyes be torn open by some dreadful convulsion or calamity.

the credulous part of the English nation that such a revolution could have taken place without the consent and approba tion, pay, against the will of thirty millions of people full of spirit and military notions?

It is notorious, that the eleven months of your reign was employed by the writers and haranguers of France to extol your government, and to traduce the government and character of Napoleon. It is notorious, that, while the press was free for men like Chateaubriand and Cretelle, whose employment was to blacken Napoleon and to applaud you, it was closed against those who dared to think of taking the other side. It is notorious that you established a Censorship after having pledged yourself to main'tain the Liberty of the Press. It is notorious that many persons were already in prison for long terms for what were deemed libels. Yet, with this most pow-. criul instrument in your hands, you were wholly unable, with the treasures of the country at your command, to gain over to you any part of the people in number sufficient to make their voice heard. Is it possible, then, for us to be made believe, that the people of France did not, from the bottom of their hearts prefer the government of Napoleon to that of the Bourbons? They talk to us of the army, of conspiracies,of fraternities, & I know not what; but, how could any, or all of these preventthe people France from falling upon Napoleon on his way to Paris, or at thegates of Paris?

Before your restoration, it was generally believed in England, that Napoleon's government was so oppressive, and that the people of France were so miserable under it, that they only wanted an opportunity to cast off his yoke and, to hoist the White Flag, We have been assured and we have very generally believed, that your reign was a paternal reign; that it was a continued series of benefits to the people of France; that you had restored them to morality, religion, liberty, peace, and happiness; that, in short, your government produced effects precisely the contrary of the effects produced by his government. Yet, at the end of eleven months, he comes back with only six hundred men, and, instead of finding a people armed to arrest his progress, he rides on, almost without a guard, to the gates of Paris, over a tract of 500 miles, through many populous and fortified towns, without seeing a single arm raised against him, and, indeed, amidst the shouts of a people, who hail him as a The truth is, that there needed neither Deliverer. While, on the other hand, armies nor conspirators nor fraternities to you, who are in possession of all the pow-overset your throne, the existence of ers and treasures of that great country; which was opposed to the feelings, the are supported by the two Chambers of habits, and to the immediate interest of the Legislature: are surrounded by hun- the present inhabitants of France, who, dreds of thousands of armed men, leave besides the grounds of discontent, resent your palace and quit the soil of France, ment, and alarm before stated, proceeded, without being able to discover a single in this instance, upon the further and individual to draw a sword or to speak still stronger ground, that their property, a word in your defence. Nay, the very their real property; that nearly the whole guard of hired foreigners: even the Swiss of the real property in France; that the soldiers, against surrounding your person preservation of all this, and of every part with whom the fate of your unfortunate of it, was incompatible with the reign of brother was not a sufficient warning; the House of Bourbon, however great the even these wretched men, who let them-wisdom and the virtues of the Princes of selves out to fight for hire, are quietly that House may be. I myself am of disbanded and banished out of the reach of popular resentment, by a decree of Napoleon published at Lyons. Can it be believed by any body on earth, except

the same opinion. I was of that opinion when I wrote the answer to your Proclamation of January 1814. It was not in reason, it was not in nature,

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