Page:Thoughts on a French invasion.pdf/2

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THOUGHTS

ON A

FRENCH INVASION.

============

THE menace of a French Invasion, which for- merly afforded a subject for ridicule, cannot now be treated in so light a manner. For some time, in- deed, the French have rested their hopes in the accu- mulation of our national debt, and loudly declared we should ultimately fall under the weight of our finances; they have affected to call us a nation of brokers, and compared the people of Britain to the inhabitants of Holland, who have sacrificed their very existence as a nation to the most sordid and the most mistaken notion of self-preservation.

In these hopes they trust no longer; they groan un- der the weight of our naval and colonial successes: they see the vast increase of the commerce of this nation and they cannot but attribute it in a great degree to the very means they make use of for their aggrandize- ment: they themselves are obliged to purchase here the luxuries and many of the necessaries of life; the wealth they have obtained by rapine, flows to this country by the channels of trade, and France contributes by the drains of its specie to the prevention of the catastrophe held out by its rulers as inevitable.

Convinced, at length, that Britain can never want money whilst carrying on the commerce of the world France now resolves to make a grand attempt. The Directory, the Legislators, and the Generals, of that country