Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/113

 and deviation from the right line in the descent of the crown, no more accounted for in Mr. Burke's Reflections, than the declination of atoms in Epicurus's philosophy? The restoration of the Bourbons in France will be the re-establishment of the principles of the Stuarts in this country.

Sept. 18, 1814. 1. the French people were so deeply implicated in the Slave Trade, as not even to know that it had been abolished by this country.

2. That the French press had been so long under the complete despotic control of Bonaparte, that the present government must despair of making any immediate impression on the independence of the political opinions, or the energetic firmness of the individual feelings of the people, lately consigned to their protection.

3. That such were their blind and rooted prejudices against the English, that we could only hope to convince them of our entire sincerity and disinterestedness in abolishing the Slave Trade ourselves, by lending a helping hand to its revival by others.

4. That if we consented to give up our colonial conquests to the French, on conditions dictated only by the general principles of humanity, this would be a proof that we intended to keep them in our own hands from the most base and mercenary motives.

5. That the French government simply wished to begin the Slave Trade again as the easiest way of leaving it off, that so they might combine the experiment of its gradual restoration with that of its gradual abolition, and, by giving the people an interest in it, more effectually wean their affections from it.