Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/87

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of England, I have beheld with almost unmingled joy the growth and accumulation of this savage despotism!" To be sure "while there appeared to some persons," [Vetus was not one of them] "a chance of his enslaving the Continent, and hurling the mass of subjugated nations against our shores—then, indeed, those who entertained such fears were justified in seeking his personal and political destruction. But once released from the terror of his arm, what genuine Englishman can fail to rejoice in the privilege of consigning Bonaparte and the French people, for better for worse, to the paradise of each other's embraces?" Vetus then proceeds to inveigh at great length against the persons and pretensions of the Bourbons. Leaving them to the mercy of this good-natured remembrancer, we shall only observe, that he decides the impolicy of restoring the Bourbons, by asking, whether their restoration would not be advantageous to France, and consequently (he infers very consistently with himself) injurious to this country. Looking forward but half a century, he sees France gradually regain under the old regime "her natural ascendancy over Great Britain, from which she falls, and must fall every hour more rapidly from the necessary operation of those principles on which the Corsican dynasty is founded." Nay, looking on farther than the expiration of the same half century, he sees "sloth, weakness, and poverty, worse than ever sprung from Turkish policy, proceeding from this odious, self-dissolving power, and a gulph of irretrievable destruction, already yawning for our eternal foe."

It is not long ago since Vetus drew an historical parallel between this country and Carthage, encouraging us to expect the same fate from France which Carthage received from Rome, and to act upon this fanciful comparison as a solid ground of wisdom. Now all at once "this mendicant in argument, this perfect juggler in politics," inverts the perspective, takes a prophetic view of the events of the next fifty years, and France is seen dwindling into another Turkey, which the genius of British freedom grinds to powder, and crushes beneath her feet! These