Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/80

 with English safety—void of the shadow of regard or indulgence to the pretensions and honour, otherwise the ambition and arrogance of Bonaparte, which, as compared with the relief of one day's hunger to the meanest peasant in this our native land, are baubles not worth a name!"—This is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable specimens we ever met with of that figure in rhetoric, designated by an excellent writer as "the figure of encroachment." Vetus, by a series of equations (certainly not mathematical ones) at length arrives at a construction of peace at which he is no longer alarmed; at the identical peace which he wants, and the only one he will admit,—a peace preposterous in its very terms, and in its nature impracticable,—a peace "void of the shadow of regard or indulgence to the pretensions and honour" of the enemy, which are to pass with them as well as with us, for so much "arrogance and ambition." This is the only peace consistent with English safety—this is the secure peace of Lord Castlereagh—the fair and honourable peace announced from the throne—the very peace which Lord Liverpool meant to describe when he startled Vetus by the doubtful expression of a peace "consistent with the honour, rights, and interests of France"—"of such a peace as we in her situation should be disposed to grant." To the mind of Vetus, which is indeed the very receptacle for contradictions "to knot and gender in," these two sorts of peace appear to be perfectly compatible, and the one a most happy explanation of the other, viz. a peace void of every shadow of regard to the rights and honour of a rival nation, and a peace consistent with those rights and that honour. If this is not "mere midsummer madness," we do not know what is. Or if any thing can surpass it ("for in this lowest deep of absurdity a lower deep still opens to receive us, gaping wide") it is the forlorn piece of sentimental mummery by which it is attempted to protract this endless war of proscription against the pretensions of France, under the mask of relieving the wants and distresses of