Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/364

 articles absolutely requisite for them, and which, so far as we can divine the inscrutable ways of Providence, are produced for the general use and welfare of mankind. Indeed, the mind is impressed with a singular sensation on beholding a great conqueror, just reposing after one of his most signal victories, issuing decrees that would render almost every sea desolate, and prevent an interchange of commodities as necessary for the daily wants of his own people as for those of other nations.

In gaining his great victories, in adding state after state to his dominions, and in placing brother after brother on the throne of ancient kingdoms whose dynasties he had overthrown, Napoleon may for some mysterious purpose have been performing the part assigned to him by a Higher Power, and accomplishing the destinies of which, under Heaven, he was to be the instrument. But when he extended his ambition to the ocean, when he undertook to overwhelm the innocent peoples of many nations by his maritime decrees, he left the orbit in which evidently it had been his destiny to move for one on which his fleets had been invariably defeated, and where he himself was never seen except as a fugitive, and at last as a prisoner of war in the hands of the ancient rival of his country.