Page:Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Buonaparte 11th ed - Richard Whately (1874).djvu/31

 quered, and presented with the sovereignty of Elba (surely, by-the-by, some more probable way might have been found of disposing of him, till again wanted, than to place him thus on the very verge of his ancient dominions); thence he returns to France, where he is received with open arms, and enabled to lose a fifth great army, at Waterloo; yet so eager were these people to be a sixth time led to destruction, that it was found necessary to confine him in an island some thousand miles off, and to quarter foreign troops upon them, lest they make an insurrection in his favor! Does any one believe all this, and yet refuse to believe a miracle? Or, rather, what is this but a miracle? Is it not a violation of the laws of nature? for surely there are moral laws of nature as well as physical, which, though more liable to exceptions in this or that particular case, are no less true as general rules than the laws of matter, and therefore cannot be violated and contradicted beyond a certain point, without a miracle.