A nation (says he) which is powerful by land will always be. powerful by sea, whenever she possesses a long line of coast, and when those coasts and harbours are so situated as to promote a great system of navigation. The time of Ministerial faults and errors has happily passed away in France; and this Empire has every thing to hope for: it need no longer fear that the Administration will neglect the advantages which nature has bestowed on it, and which victory has secured to it for ever!

M. de Montesquieu, who, when in the wrong, commits only great errors, says in his sublime work "On the Grandeur and Decline of the Romans," that a fleet is the only thing which power and money cannot immediately create: he also says, that it would require the whole life of a great Prince to form a fleet capable of appearingbefore a nation which already possesses the empire of the seas. These, two opinions are fundamentally false the reign of Louis XIV. and even that of Louis XVI. have furnished proofs of the contrary.'—

:

The opinion declared by M. Montesquieu might appear to be well founded, sixty years ago, under the reign of kings of the third dynasty; but such an opinion would be absurd at the present day.— Providence did not allow M. de Moatesquieu to guess at HIM who was destined to create the French Empire, and to make it the first in the universe! The grand error of the English-that which is the cause of all the political blunders of their Government, and which perpetuates its blindness, is, that they can neither make allowance for the times, nor for the greatness of the French Empire. The Emperor Napoleon is not a mere King of France; he is the invincible child of Victory, and with his power has begun the real race of the Cæsars; that which will never end.'

The French Empire contains within itself, and possesses on its maritime frontiers and those of its natural allies, all the elements of a great naval power, and the richest means of navigation to which the ambition of a great State could aspire. Twelve hundred leagues of coast, the finest ports and safest harbours in Europe, military stations of the first order, docks in every direction, from the Baltic to the Dardanelles, military arsenals fit for the most extensive operations, naval stores and ammunition in abundance, navigable rivers which extend from north to south, from east to west, an excellent race of seamen in Holland, on the shores of the Baltic, in the Gulph of Gascony, in Britanny, in Provence, on the coasts of the Adriatic, and on all the European shores of the Mediterranean.’-

The docks of Amsterdam and Antwerp, of Brest, Rochefort and Toulon, of Ferrol, Lisbon, Cadiz, Carthagena, Genoa, Naples, Venice, Porto-Rico, &c. will in a few months be filled with ships, at the voice of the Emperor of the French. The squadrons which will issue from those ports will, by covering all the open seas of Europe, protect all people, and soon display their flags in the seas of America and India. On the day when the French flag shall appear in India, and join the Mahrattas, the British power will be destroyed! —

The Emperor Napoleon has declared, that the French Empire must have a feet: he wills that "it shall reconquer at once the rights of nations, the liberty of the seas, and a general peace," Who shall L 4 dare

dare to doubt of a success which is guaranteed by genius, power, and riches?

The Emperor Napoleon is lord of an empire, the resources of which are infinitely superior to those which could be obtained by Louis XIV. he has raised his subjects even to the height of his own glory he has changed the face of the political world, and covered Europe with his trophies. Is it difficult for a monarch who has created his age and his people, to create a fleet?'

The boasts and exaggerations of this political parasite are not likely to obtain much faith among our countrymen; but it unfortunately happens that the notion, which he affects to diffuse respecting the maritime resources of France, is very seriously entertained by a majority among ourselves, and constitutes our great terror at the idea of a state of peace. A few among us, however, make sufficient distinctions between the building of ships and the formation of seamen but many are apt to take up the idea that because the French have forests, carpenters, and landsmen, in abundance, they will, in the interval of peace, strain every nerve, and with success, in the creation of a navy. Such fears would be greatly lessened if they would consider that Bonaparte's means of obtaining seamen are much smaller than an inspection of the map appears at first sight to indicate. The whole extent of coast in the Mediterranean, whether French or Italian, should be kept almost out of the question; the navigation of that sea being so easy, as by no means to form seamen fitted to contend with those of the ocean. A similar remark applies, with some qualification, to the coasting-trade along the west of France; so that we must come as far north as Brest before we enter on the proper nursery of the enemy's marine. Hence to Dunkirk, all is favourable to M. de Montgaillard's argument and his master's schemes but, when we proceed farther, we arrive at a country famed indeed for able navigators, but not less famed, especially of late years, for hatred to the French. The inhabitants may be draughted into Bonaparte's vessels, but they are as little to be trusted on board of ship as the Italians at Figueras or the Piedmontese in St. Domingo. The war in Spain has taught France how little dependence is to be placed on unwil ling combatants; and that danger which is great on shore is not likely to be lessened at sea. If we carry our views to a more remote period, and calculate whether in the course of years England or France bids fair to multiply seamen in the more rapid ratio, we shall find the balance of probability altogether on our side. world in a great degree, munication, and by the

France trades with the rest of the we may say, chiefly,-by inland com Mediterranean; and her commerce

may thus be much extended without a correspondent augmentation, as has been shewn in a very able pamphlet*, of her maritime means. As Great Britain, on the other hand, trades with all the world by sea, the whole extension of commerce consequent on a state of peace is thrown into the scale of her naval preponderance.-The contrast in the manner of conducting the home-trade of the two countries is equally remarkable. Great Britain, being an island of which the length much exceeds the breadth, conveys her bulky commodities from one part of her territory to another by water, and will find her coasting-navy progressively increase with the diffusion of popu lation and industry along her shores. France, on the contrary, having the sea on one side only, and a territory nearly as wide as it is long, will carry on an augmented as she now does a limited commerce, by means of roads and inland canals. Such is the natural course of things: but it may be said by the advocates for war that Bonaparte puts all calculation at defiance, and will create a navy, under whatever obstacles, by dint of terror and compulsion. So also has he wished to conquer Spain by dint of terror and compulsion; yet we find him not more decisively advanced in his fourth campaign than in his first. He has there brought into action the whole energy of his empire, and made a complete experiment of what force can accomplish; the result of which, even it he obtained military possession of the country, would be to add an oppressive burden to France. Any experiments made by him in naval armaments, -his Boulogne flotilla, his grand West India expedition ending in the battle of Trafalgar, or his minor expedition to St. Domingo ending in the action of February 1805,- partake in a great degree of the precipitate and head-strong character of his Spanish warfare, and afford a remarkable proof that maritime operations are not his forte.

Of the great variety of topics discussed by M. de Montgaillard, one of those in which he appears to us least in error respects the vast extent of our taxation :

The taxes, the public debt, and the various wants of the British Government, require annually from each subject, the sacrifice of twofifths of his whole income. In fact, from every guinea which an Englishman obtains, no matter by what means, from 8s. to 8s. 6d. goes to the demands of the State, through the numerous taxes which press upon the produce of industry and the soil. Nay, as late as the administration of M. Neckar, it was generally admitted by the writers of both nations, that when an individual in France paid twenty sous in taxes, in England he paid four francs, The British Ministers

Mill's Commerce Defended, 2d Edition, p. 140.

prided

prided themselves on this pretended riches of the people of the United Kingdom; and they drew the inference, that each British subject possessed, by his industry, an income of 141. sterling; while each subject of France had no more than four pounds per annum.'In 1688, the national revenue did not exceed £4,900,000. In 1714, it had increased to £6,000,000. In 1773, it was £10,400,000.-In 1775, it had advanced to nearly £12,000,000.In 1786, the produce of all the taxes, imposts, export and import duties, &c. to the number of 217, produced £14,600,000. 1804, the total amount of the taxes and imposts, or duties, was stated by the Ministers to be £32,100,000. In 1806, the national revenue arising from the permanent taxes, the anticipated surplus of those taxes, the lottery, the duties on malt, and the war-taxes, was stated at the sum of £57,000,000. The war-taxes were taken, in the calculation, at between £16,000,000. and £17,000,000.

In

In 1809, the Ministers asserted that the national revenue, or the produce of all the taxes, might be estimated at £65,000,000. In this calculation are comprised the permanent taxes, at £41,000,000; and the war-taxes from £23,000,000. to £24,000,000.

To complete the demands for the public service, and supply all the expenditures of the State, in 1804, the Ministers stated that £58,000,000. were necessary. In 18c6, they demanded the sum of £72,000,000; and in 1899, they required £75,000,000.

Thus, in the space of less than forty years, the expenses of the State, or the total amount of the public wants, has increased from the sum of £12,600,000, which was all that was necessary in 1773, to that of £75,000,000, which was requisite in 1869!

In the space of sixty-four years, or from 1748 to 1809, the taxes and duties have increased in Britain from the sum of £7,400,000. to that of £65,000,000; and in the course of forty-two years, or from 1768 to 1810, the National Debt has risen in England from 153,000,000, to between 650 and £660,000,000!'

The author's picture of our mercantile disappointments with Spanish America, though exaggerated, has unfortunately too much foundation :

The events which have thrown open South America to the British fag, have deceived the avarice of the merchants, and imposed on the prudence of the Government. All the traders of the great manu. facturing towns have made great speculations: they have surfeited South America with their manufactured produce; the Spanish and Portuguese markets in the New World have been overloaded in such a degree as to present an extraordinary glut; these countries, the population of which is so thin, relatively to their extent; whose wants are limited, and always known, besides being restrained in many respects by climate, have used only a very small proportion of the articles, which have been imported: the unsold goods conse. quently remain in the stores; they have been subjected to a great de. preciation in price, while the merchants who have sent them out, have found themselves, as might readily be supposed, unable to sus tain their credit in the metropolis; many great failures have "thereby

taken place amongst the commercial, and the banking-houses of the United Kingdom; the merchants have been unable to pay the manu facturers, and they have been obliged to fail in their turn, or to dismiss a part, or the whole of their work-people, according to the better or worse state of their resources; thus their business has been reduced by one-half; thousands of artisans have been thrown out of bread; and the prices of manufactured goods have fallen three-fifths; in short, all classes of the people have been exposed to failures or bankruptcies of greater or less extent; gold and silver have daily become more scarce, and Bank-notes have experienced a depreciation hitherto unknown in England.'

Our animadversions on M. de Montgaillard have hitherto been chiefly pointed at wilful misrepresentations: but we may. find likewise much room for criticism on faults which can scarcely proceed from any source but ignorance. We have heard much of the superiority of northern husbandry, but this Frenchman is so unmerciful in his estimate as to assert (p. 26.). that Scotland grows scarcely one quarter of the quantity of corn necessary for its own consumption.' - The doctrine of a balance of trade, also, is still believed, and very seriously argued, (p. 36, 37.) by M. de Montgaillard.

He

In regard to loans, Sir Francis Baring has been the most frequent contractor in our day, and no man was more faithful; to the ranks of opposition; yet this author dwells with great. vehemence (page 51. 54.) on the influence which ministers study to acquire by the distribution of loans in the city. is not aware, therefore, that the plan of open contract has abolished in this, and many other departments, the former practice of favouring individuals at the public cost. Neither is he sufficiently acquainted with the nature of our unfunded debt, to distinguish it from our circulating medium. ExchequerBills, Navy-Bills, India-Bonds, and South-Sea-Stock, are all in his opinion (p. 67. and 72.) of the same nature as bank-notes. The value of these (he says) is immense, but the total amount,' he gravely adds, is a very great mystery. One cause of all this circulation is, that in London nobody keeps in his own house› any more money than is necessary for his current expences, but deposits his funds with his banker.' Such a custom we should have regarded as more likely to lessen than to increase the stock of circulating medium.-The greatest of all the author's errors, however, and that which perverts the whole reasoning of the book, is the notion that three-fourths of our revenue are dependent on the state of our foreign commerce. Calculating, from the materials afforded by the income-tax, that onefourth of that tax arises from our land and funds, and the other three-fourths from productive labour, M. de M. forthwith assumes that the latter must be subject to all the casualties at

tendant