Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/75

 question is not about submitting to hard conditions, but about imposing them. Besides, "the aggravated and multiplied molestations, injuries, and insults, which these courts were doomed to suffer," might be accounted for from those which they had in vain attempted to inflict on France, and from their still more wretched complaisance in being made the tools of a court which was not continental.

"Then comes the peace of Amiens, our peace of Amiens—a peace born, educated, nourished, and matured in this very philanthropic spirit of gentleness and forgiveness. In the war which preceded the truce of which I am speaking, the French government involved us in considerably more than two hundred millions of debt." Vetus then proceeds to state that we made peace without any liquidation of this claim, without satisfaction, without a bond, (what else?) without a promise, without a single guinea!

"I will have ransom, most egregious ransom." Why was it ever heard of that one government paid the debts in which another had involved itself in making war upon it?

"The language of England," says our author, "was correctly what follows:—You, Monsieur, have loaded me with unspeakable distresses and embarrassments," (all this while, be it recollected, our affairs were going on most prosperously and gloriously in the cant of The Times) "you have robbed me of half my fortune, and reduced me to the brink of beggary," (the French by all accounts were in the gulph of bankruptcy) "you have torn away and made slaves of my friends and kindred," (indeed)

"you have dangerously wounded me, and murdered my beloved children, who armed to defend their parent."—This is too much, even for the dupes of England. Stick, Vetus, to your statistics, and do not make the pathetic ridiculous! Sophistry and affectation may confound common sense to a certain degree, but there is a point at which our feelings revolt against them.

We have already remarked on what Vetus says of Hanover; he probably will not wish us to go farther into it. Of Bonaparte he says, of course, that nothing short of unconditional submission