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Harris determined instantly to attack them, leaving about 50 men in the fort. He led 70 small arms and 20 pikemen to turn their left flank, hoping thus to make a diversion in favour of Pellew's party, which was ordered to advance as soon as this column should fire the first gun. His intention succeeded perfectly. The enemy drew off two of their field-pieces to oppose Harris, and broke their line for the same purpose. Both the British columns gave their vollies nearly at the same moment: a sharp fire was kept up for above five minutes as they were advancing; but when they were near enough to charge, the victory was at once decided: the governor was made prisoner, and the colours and guns taken. Captain Harris negociated as well as he fought. The sultan of Madura joined the conqueror; and when all the French and Dutch in the island had been made prisoners, and the British flag was hoisted in its three districts, he offered four thousand men to assist in attacking Sourabaya. Their aid was not needed. Admiral Stopford directed Harris, as soon as he joined him, to take the command of the troops, and march against Gissie: having driven the enemy from thence, he approached Sourabaya, and the capitulation of that place was on the point of being signed, when intelligence arrived that Jansens had yielded up the whole island, with all its dependencies. The overthrow of the Dutch empire in the East was thus completed, an empire founded by extraordinary enterprize, policy, and valour, but

maintained by a system at oncè so sordid and so cruel, that its history reflects disgrace rather than honour upon the Dutch name. Literature indeed is indebted to that empire, or rather to those Dutchmen who were led thither by something better than the desire of wealth or of power. Holland retains nothing of what was gained by the wisdom and courage of Koen, and Hulst, and Speelman, but the melancholy remembrance of what she has lost

from the cruelties at Amboyna, and the massacre of the Chinese, nothing but the everlasting infamy attending upon crimes too atrocious ever to be forgotten. But the writings of Nieuhoff, and Baldæus, and Valentyn, and Rumphius remain; and time, which destroys the work of the conqueror and of the statesman, will but increase their value. Unhappily our conquest cost us the life of one, who, had his days been prolonged, would probably have added more to our knowledge of eastern literature and antiquities than all his predecessors. I speak of Dr John Leyden, who, for the sake of increasing his stores of knowledge, accompanied Lord Minto upon this expedition, and fell a victim to the climate; and whose early death may be considered as a loss so great, so irreparable, (for generations may pass away before another be found, who, with the same industry, the same power of mind, and the same disinterested spirit, shall possess the same opportunities) that I will not refrain from expressing a wish that Java had remained in the hands of the enemy, so Leyden were alive.

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CHAP. VIII.

France. Progress of the Anti-Commercial System. Birth of the King of Rome. Exposition of the State of the French Empire. Council of Paris. Buonaparte's System of Education. Discussions upon Tyrannicide in the House of Commons. Buonaparte's View of the State of England. His Visit to the Coast. Affairs of Germany and the North.

WHEN Buonaparte's Conservative Senate was called upon to adopt the decree for annexing Holland, the Hanse Towns, and the Valais to the French territory, Comte de Semonville addressed them in one of those reports which from time to time appear, avowing the real principles and objects of his flagitious government. "Those times are passed," said the organ of the usurper, "when the conceptions of some statesmen gave authority, in the public opinion, to the system of balances, of guarantees, of counterpoise, of political equilibrium pompous illusions of cabinets of the second order, visions of imbecility, which all disappear before necessity, that power which regulates the duration and the mutual relation of empires. Holland, like the Hanse Towns, would remain the prey of uncertainty, of dangers, of revolutions, of oppressions of every kind, if the genius who decides the destinies of Europe, did not cover her with his invincible ægis. The emperor has resolved in his wisdom to incorporate them with the immense family of which he is the head. He himself perhaps, in obeying this grand resolution, obeys more than he is aware of, the law of necessity. If he commands the glory of times present, the events which preceded his coming command those of his reign;

that uninterrupted succession of causes and effects which forms the history of nations, and the destinies of their chief. That of Napoleon's was to reign and to conquer; victory belongs to him; war to his age."

The reporter then asserted, "that during three centuries, England, from jealousy and hatred of France, had continually excited war in France itself, Germany, Italy and Spain; that a total subversion was necessary to her projects, and she wished for a bloody revolution, because her own had been cruel, and because it struck with the same sword both the institutions and the industry of France, the people and the dynasty." Comte de Semonville hazarded nothing by the gross ignorance of our revolution, and the gross falsehood respecting his own, contained in this sentence: in France any assertion may be ventured by the government, because none can be contradicted; and France is not the only country where a large proportion of the people believe that what is not contradicted must be true. "At last," he continued, "after ten years of a glorious struggle, the most extraordinary genius which nature ever formed in her magnificence, collects in his triumphant hands the scattered fragments of the sceptre of Charlemagne. The injuries of France

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are avenged; frontiers compacted by moderation, and traced out by nature, are the trophies raised to the happiness of her people, to the tranquillity of Europe. Does the conqueror perceive from the height of his car nations united by ancient habits? he seeks out faithful princes, he creates for them common interests, he intrusts to them the destinies of those regenerated states of which he has declared himself the protector. But where all forms of government have been tried in vain ; where the aggregations are too small, or destitute of sufficient principles of adhesion to form masses; where localities would infallibly subject men and things to the direct action of avarice, of the attacks or intrigues of the eternal enemies of France, then the interest of the empire commands the union to the victorious nation of those portions of its conquests, to prevent their inevitable dissolution. Holland and the Hanse Towns being incapable of existing by themselves, ought they to belong to England or to France? This is the question; there is no third alternative. Our generation has succeeded to an inheritance of rivalry, always increasing by the importance of the interests and the augmented strength of the rival powers. It is no longer two armies who combat on the plains of Fontenoy; it is the empire of the seas which still resists that of the continent ; -a memorable, a terrible struggle, the catastrophe of which, now perhaps not far distant, will long occupy the attention of future generations. If England had not rejected the counsels and the offers of moderation, what dreadful consequences might she not have avoided! She would not have forced France to enrich herself by the ports and the arsenals of Holland; the Ems, the Weser, and the Elbe, would not have flowed under our dominion; and we should not have seen the first country of the Gauls washed by rivers united by an internal

navigation to seas which were unknown to them. Where still are the bounda ries of possibility? Let England answer it. Let her meditate on the past! Let her learn the future! France and Napoleon will never change!"

The obsequious senate decreed an address to the tyrant in reply. They told him that the depth and extent of his plans, the candour and generosity of his policy, and his care for the prosperity of his subjects, had never been more strongly manifested. They affirmed that the orders of the British council had not only rent in pieces the public law of Europe, but had also violated those natural laws, which are as old and as eternal (these were their words) as the globe. "Nature herself,” said they," has placed the seas beyond the dominion of man. He may pass over, but he cannot maintain possession of them; and to affect to rule an element which surrounds the habitable globe on every side, is nothing less than a daring attempt to hold the old and the new world in captivity, and to fix a disgraceful mark of slavery on all mankind." "Such," they continued, "is the sacrilegious attempt, against which your majesty unites all the efforts of your power. Justly indignant Europe applauds and seconds you. Already does this restless and turbulent government see all the nations of the continent leagued against her, and her vessels repelled from every port. It can only keep up its internal circulation but by a fictitious medium, or its foreign trade but by smuggling. The only allies which it has on earth are fanaticism and sedition. Persevere, sire, in the sacred war, undertaken for the honour of the French name, and the independence of nations. The day on which this war ends will be the era of the peace of the world. These measures will accelerate that era. Since your only enemies are to be found on the ocean, it is necessary for

you to

render yourself master of all the ports by which the ocean has communication with the interior provinces of your empire."

The language of the French government could not have been more explicit, if it had been intended to give the lie to its impudent apologists and infatuated coadjutors in England. Buonaparte had declared to this country, and to America, that the Berlin and Milan decrees were rescinded; Comte de Semonville now proclaimed, as the maxims for which France contended, that neutral ships should navigate free. ly from port to port, and on the coasts of nations at war; and that property belonging to the subjects of belligerant powers should be free on board neutral ships. Such, he said, were the declarations in which the Empress Catharine laid down the rights of all so vereigns, and the day was now arrived when powerful reprisals would compel England to return to justice. "The decrees of Berlin and Milan," said the Moniteur," are not arbitrary acts; they result from the nature of things; they can neither be changed, modified, nor suspended. Every flag which a feeble and pusillanimous nation suffers to be insulted and denationalized, can no longer be recognized as neutral: it becomes English. The Berlin and Milan decrees will for ever remain the fundamental law of France, because they arise from the nature of things.'

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What distress these decrees might bring upon France, what privations, what ruin upon the countries which groaned under the yoke of his continental system, the Corsican heeded not; England he believed to be the only bar in his way to universal dominion, and the tyrant, who for this object had sacrificed his hopes of heaven, was not likely to be checked in his progress by any consideration of others. The struggle with England," said he to some merchants assembled in a Council of Commerce, "is distressing,

I know it; but the issue cannot be doubtful. My resources are real: they are from territorial revenues; and those of my enemy rest only on credit, and are of course as illusory as the feeble basis of commercial operations, on which they are founded. I have now in my coffers 200 millions ;-200 millions," he repeated, stamping with his feet, "which shall be better employed than in purchasing sugar, and cof fee, and cocoa; they shall serve to sap the power of those who have these only for the representatives of power. I am not ignorant that in pursuing my system with vigour many fortunes will be ruined; but they will be those only who have been imprudent enough to make speculations beyond their means, or have chosen to become the bankers and agents of England. If I was King of Bourdeaux, or of Marseilles, or indeed of Holland, I should act probably as others have done; but I am at the head of a great empire and of a numerous population, and it is not for me to sacrifice the general good to serve a few towns. All Europe has been too long tributary to England; her monopoly ought to be destroyed, and it shall be by me. If I were only Louis XIV. she might yet a long while contemn the force of France; but I have far greater means than the greatest of the French kings, and all shall be employed to effect her fall." In this speech Buonaparte first suffered it openly to appear Russia was no longer the dupe of his policy, nor the subservient tool of his ambition. "I," said he, "am, and always will be, the master of the Baltic. The Emperor of Russia has not indeed as yet caused my decrees to be observed in his ports; but ere six months be past he will, or I declare war against him. Since Tilsit, what prevented my march to Petersburgh? What I did not do, I can do yet."

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Whatever resistance the tyrant might find in Sweden and in Russia, the one

power relying upon its strength, the other upon its situation, the degraded race over which he ruled continued to lick the hand that scourged them. His Councils of Manufacture present ed addressess to him on his wisdom and goodness in burning British goods: The Consultation Chamber of Commerce and Manufacture at St Quentin placed at the foot of his throne the expression of their gratitude for the "magnanimous thought and paternal benevolence which dictated the burning decree." "Amidst the immense interests and the cares of the whole world," they said, "it belonged only to the hero who governed them to conceive and execute this measure with rapidity so wonderful." It was pitiable, meantime, to read of the shifts to which the people of the continent were driven by this magnanimous thought of their ruler! Peas, beans, and lupens were tried for coffee: the astragalus bæticus was cultivated in great quantities in Moravia for the same purpose." The leaves of the horn-beam were dried for tea, and scented with the roots of the Florence iris. One experimentalist transmitted to the minister of the interior samples of sugar which he had extracted from raisins; another extracted it from the undried grape; a third from chesnuts. At Brest it was discovered that the palm sea-weed, when well dried, contains sugar as well as marine salt, which did not indeed chrystallize like that of the cane, but which had nearly as pleasant a flavour, and had moreover the advantage of being perfectly white: Hopes were held out to the French that a mode might be found of separating this sugar from the salt without much expence! Some chemists made a syrup from maize to serve as a substitute;-at Rennes an apple syrup was prepared for the same purpose. Genuine sugar sold in Holland at four shillings per pound. Knavery, as well as science, was so busily

employed in devising substitutes for coffee, tea, and sugar, that it was deemed necessary, both at Vienna and Berlin, to subject all these inventions to a rigorous examination and superintendence, lest the health of the people should be sacrificed. For indigo, woad was used, which had been disused in. Europe, because indigo was found to be greatly preferable. Even for so common an article as ink, ingredients were wanting; and when a German apothecary devised means of making it without galls and gum-arabic, it was announced as a happy discovery. No sooner did any experiment seem to promise success, than Buonaparte, with that true characteristic of despotism which leaves nothing toitself, but thinks to produce every thing by edicts, ordered that a certain quantity of ground should be appropriated to the cultivation of beet for sugar, and of woad for indigo; that this ground should be in full cultivation by the ensuing year at latest; that the minister of the interior should apportion to each department the quantity of land thus to be laid out; and that the prefects should see to the full execution of the edict. These things were boasted of in the annual exposition of the state of the empire, as if they were the effects of a flourishing science, and advancing civilization, not of an ignorant and ferocious tyranny, seeking by every means to rebarbarize mankind. "The discovery of the needle," it was said, "produced a revolution in commerce; the use of honey then gave way to that of sugar; the use of woad to that of indigo. The progress of chemistry is operating at this moment a revolution in an inverse direction; it has arrived at the extraction of sugar from the grape, the maple, and the beet-root. Woad, which had enriched Languedoc, and part of Italy, but which was unable, in the infancy of art, to support the competition with indigo, resumes

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