Upon the supposition that France will be completely crushed, and all fears of her retaliation for ever laid aside, it may be conjectured that some other nation will succeed to the hatreds and jealousies at present centered in her alone. Will another alliance be formed? will another congress be made the depositary of these united passions, and individual or national ambition again meet with its reward? If such suspicions, (unreasonable they must be of course), should be attached to England herself, so as to furnish a pretext for transferring the dread of the armies of France to her fleets; and reasonable guarantees should be required against her further interference, and the undue extension of her influence in continental affairs: the success of one general alliance might be a mighty incentive to a second effort, and the combined court of conscience might pass sentence upon our future intentions, as it did upon those of Napoleon and his armies. Whether England be that predominant power which, in all times, seems to have existed with more or less prominency in modern Europe, or whether some other state be placed on that bad eminence, the same application of a general alliance would, it may be presumed, be the corrective employed by the inventors or disciples of the new congress system; so that each of the states of Europe

might be successively proscribed, and successively ruined, and ourselves and our posterity ensured the perpetual recurrence of wars, with trifling intervals, upon that same magnificent scale which has already filled our cotemporaries with wonder and delight. The highways might again be covered with couriers, whole cabinets travel post, and monarchs themselves fly from court to court; crosses and ribbons be the common courtesies of correspondence, and the ordinary population of ball-rooms and saloons be nothing less than ministers and kings. This, the dignified repose, or royal relaxation, of the combined dominations, would only be indulged long enough to give a relish for the more serious occupations of their calling; then would the ready armies again begin to march from all the quarters of the earth, and, rushing upon the devoted offender, accomplish, amidst the shouts and groans of nations, the purpose of the grand European police. Lord Castlereagh or his brother, notwithstanding the refreshment necessary for his memory, on the trifling topics of our own history, may have placed before his eyes the imputed contrivance of Henry IV. between whose court of fifteen and the congress there is only one difference, namely, that the grand purpose of the one scheme was to prevent wars,

whereas the present union has commenced operations by a national massacre, and, as far as can be conjectured, has sown the seeds of perpetual quarrel and commotion in every country of Europe.

One of the indispensable ingredients of the present union, and of all other previous alliances, has been the money of England, the contribution of which, it appears, has been already so plentiful as to preclude the possibility of a continuance of this sort of support.

The other powers, it must be owned, have all been considerable gainers by the late successes. Whatever men they have lost can be supplied, and not one of them has failed to obtain an accession of population. It is not so with the money of England, which cannot be supplied, and the want of which must be more fatal to us than any other want; or even than that want would be to any other power whose credit is not commercial, and whose government is supported by the bayonet. The king of England cannot imitate the emperor of Austria, and reduce the bank paper to a fifth of its value, by an edict. The ministers and their parliamentary majority affect, doubtless, to consider that the battle of Waterloo has set the seal to their political reputation, and for ever silenced their opponents. So

far from the question being in the slightest degree altered, or the balance being at all inclined to their favour, by that victory and its consequences, their condemnation, by every impartial judge, appears only the more inevitable, and only the more apparent, since, with the accomplishment of their main design, even beyond their warmest wishes, they still leave the nation involved in difficulties apparently inextricable -damnantur votis.-What is the whole amount of our enormous fame? We have proved that English intrepidity is more than a match for French impetuosity; and that the Duke of Wellington employing the one, is superior to Napoleon disposing of the other quality, in a manner so decisive as to admit of no farther controversy. The first point hardly wanted confirmation, the second could not interest a sufficient number amongst us to make the question national. But beyond the glory gained by this general, who should be himself too great and generous a man to think that too high a price could not be paid for it, is there one single object obtained by these great military successes, or is England, in any one point, in a better position than she was three months previous to the victory? The warmest advocates of the war, crowned as they are with conquest, may be defied to show how

England could have been in a worse condition in any way, by keeping at peace with Napoleon, than she will be now that she has dethroned him in one battle, and conquered France. The friends of "the ancient social system" may here interpose, and declare no sacrifice of blood or treasure too great for the extinction of the revolutionary spirit; but these gentlemen must see, or they will see, that they have scotched the snake of jacobinism, not killed it. They may have the consolation of concluding, that they have blasted by one vast unnatural effort the best promise of rational freedom that the imperfection of hu manity could admit of being displayed in France, or any other country. But if this their triumph were lasting, are we to partake of their joy, or participate in their fatal success in a bad cause, so blindly as not to see and shudder at the ruin that stares us in the face? In the glare and crash of victory, our eyes and ears are shut against the suggestions of prudence. The magnificent titles, arbiters of Europe, preservers of thrones, masters of the seas, and disposers of the land, ring round our heads, and exert with us the power with which the universal charm enchants all bosoms, but mostly such as are formed of better clay. We have before us an example more complete than the fickleness of