Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/51

 more glorious career at the present moment, than that which Providence seemed to have destined to the virtuous Moreau? Or is it possible that any power now existing in France could stop such a general and such an army, supported by the unconquered Wellington and his formidable legions, if they were to resolve boldly to march to Paris, and bring the usurper to the block! Every disposable soldier in France is on the Adour, or on the Rhine. In the case we are supposing, there would be no enemy to encounter, unless the northern frontier were at once denuded of troops, and the road to Paris on that side laid open to the allies. This is no question of the attachment of the French nation to one dynasty or to another: it is a question of military enterprise, in the minds of military adventurers. The simple possibility, not to say the high moral probability, that in a moment of general defection, an army which has so much in its hands may run with the stream of popular feeling throughout Europe, is enough to make the Tyrant tremble on his throne. Lord Wellington is doubtless prepared to take advantage of so desirable an occurrence, in case it should happen without his previous interference: but we wish him to interfere; we wish that he were authorised plainly and openly to offer his mighty co-operation to any body of men who would shake off the Tyrant's yoke in France, as has been done in Italy, in Germany, and in Holland!"

This is a fair specimen of that kind of declamation which has for a long time swayed the affairs of Europe, and which, if the powers of Europe are wise by experience, will not influence them much longer. It is this spirit of treating the French people as of a different species from ourselves—as a monster or a non-entity—of disposing of their government at the will of every paragraph-monger—of arming our hatred against them by ridiculous menaces and incessant reproaches—of supposing that their power was either so tremendous as to threaten the existence of all nations, or so contemptible that we could crush it by a word,—it is this uniform system, practised by the incendiaries of the press, of inflaming our prejudices and irritating our passions, that has so often made