Argument for the peace of Amiens. xxxi

law, that the end of their career is involved in the beginning, — the train once set in motion, they must be whirled on to a predestined goal, on a prepared way, -the iron-bound track of a necessity which themselves have created.

Who can say whether England did not lose more by the poverty and discontent produced by the war, before it appeared clearly necessary to the nation at large, than was gained by that preparedness and that proficiency in warfare, which an early entrance into the great European contest ensured? Though it be true that Napoleon was "sustained by continually advancing," and that "a revolutionary power has never yet maintained its ascendancy in any other way;" it does not follow that hostilities ought to have been commenced before these truths, which now appear in the shape of reflections and axioms on the historic page, had been exemplified in a train of overt actions. All that line of argument which serves to defend the pacification agreed to by our Government in March 1802, namely, that "the burdens of the war were certain and immediate, the advantages remote if not illusory," that " England lost none of her means of defence by delay," that it was "worth while to avoid the heavy responsibility of having compelled Napoleon to continue a contest which brought such unparalleled calamities on the civilized world, when it might have been sooner terminated," may perhaps be alleged in proof that the Morning Post shewed as discerning a patriotism in opposing the earlier war with France as in advocating the later one. These are mere suggestions on a subject upon which I can but guess darkly; they occurred to my mind in conjecturing how my Father may have differenced the earlier from the later stage of the war in his own mind, with respect to the policy of our interference.

xxxii Advantageous posture of England.

IT

SECTION IV.

His powers of Political Prophecy.

T has been pointed out by Mr. Dequincey that the sagacity of Coleridge, as applied to the signs of the times, is illustrated by the fact of his having distinctly foretold the restoration of the Bourbons, at a time when most people viewed such an event as the most romantic of visions. A gift of political prophecy consists in a clear intuition of the present and the nature of existing things. My Father gave fresh evidence of possessing that gift when, in the Morning Post, and again in The Friend, he insisted on the internal stability of the English constitution, and the difference of its condition, in this respect, from that of the continental kingdoms: when he declared that it had no need either of foreign war or measures of arbitrary severity at home, to preserve it from destructive change and convulsion. How clearly has this advantageous posture of our island been evidenced amid the recent revolutions of the European states! How will the middle of this century reflect, as it were in a magnifying and multiplying glass, to the eyes of a future age, its turbulent commencement together with the stormy conclusion of its predecessor! how will it at the same time mirror back the prophetic spirit which proclaimed, even in that period of suspense and uncertainty for the mere outward-looking mind, that our social frame was too firmly compacted by the interdependence of interests and reciprocation of benefits, too closely cemented by gradual reforms and nice adjustments, to be in danger of shock and dislocation, when tyrannies which had long resisted the calls of Reason and Justice were sinking for want of the support they ever lend to that

Moral superiority of England. xxxiii

state which has the wisdom to receive it at their hands. In those less happily constituted aristocracies, where the higher portions of society receive no accessions of strength from those below, the whole fabric begins to fall abroad, the former, like time-eaten beams and rafters, crumbling in pieces, the latter like the too solid heavy masonry, crushing around and over them in shapeless ruin!

"Ocean speaks" not "safety to his island child," with half such force as those depths of the moral sentiment which are at once purity and power. My Father saw that our house was founded on a rock, the rock of a moral superiority;

"Winds blow and waters roll
Strength to the brave, and power and deity,
Yet in themselves are nothing! One decree
Spake laws to them and said that by the soul
Only the nations shall be great and free!"

May we not feel and repeat these truths without losing humility in the sight of the Most High, or deepest awe of those all-seeing eyes which seek perfection? Not to ascribe the peaceful state of England, in this epoch of change, and her exemption from injurious commotions, to the cause I have indicated, is to betray want of faith in a moral Governor of the World. We need not scruple to assert our compurative merits, while we yet acknowledge the crimes of this nation in past ages, its errors and short comings in the present, and lend an attentive ear to the reproof of the poetic moralist :

"Oh England! Merry England,' styled of yore!

Where is thy mirth? Thy jocund laughter where?
The sweat of labour on the brow of care

Makes a mute answer-driven from every door!
The may-pole cheers the village green no more,

xxxiv England still "merry” in the best sense.

Nor harvest home, nor Christmas mummers rare.
The tired mechanic at his lecture sighs,
And of the learned, which, with all his lore,

Has leisure to be wise?"

66

Nay, but if not merry, yet comparatively at least, and more evidently and gloriously now than ever, happy England. Merriment is the mood of simple thriving childhood in the individual it accompanies cherry cheeks and chubby limbs, that swell upward like the juicy pear; and in nations a mirthful habit, of dancing round may-poles and running after morris dancers, belongs to a period when arts and sciences are in their infancy, and the sun of knowledge is but dawning. For the deepest feelings of love, joy, faith, reverence, admiration are all grave passions, and spite of our "ambition, envy, avarice, and pride,” “ the darlings of our hearts," those have yet a place in the large heart of this English nation. Perhaps merriment is scarce consistent with well being for a thoughtful people, while political Anarchy grasps with bloody hands the sceptre of sway in foreign parts, at home Famine pines on one side, and all around, as if some airy devil hovered in the sky," an atmospheric power, mysterious and terrific, holds aloft a life-destroying vapour, able to light up into a flame whatever material of miasma or malaria lurks in the receptacles of uncleanness, that cleaving curse of poverty, on the earth below.* Mirth can hardly consist with thoughtfulness and the wisdom of the heart on such conditions; and there are never wanting special calls for "solemn gloom," serious if not sad; beside the dark valley ever in prospect at the end of each individual

66

* Written during the prevalence of the cholera, which, it is feared, is but suspended, during the cold season.

Her misrule of Ireland acknowledged. xxxv

*

career. Yet England is comparatively blest because enlightened and awake to duty; and my Father's words have not been falsified, that there is "more public spirit, more true and active patriotism in Great Britain than exists elsewhere, or ever did exist, under any other form of government, in any country equally rich and populous."

Y

SECTION V.

His sentiments respecting Ireland.

ET far be it from me, as it was from the mind of my Father, to deny the sins of England! This thought brings me to another question, and a most important one, on which his opinions ever remained the same, and would, I doubt not, have been corroborated by the reflections which recent events would have suggested. I feel assured that whatever his precise views respecting Ireland's affairs in detail might now be, he would never, in contemplating the barbarism of the Irish poor- and the poor, nay what would elsewhere be the very poorest, in that afflicted spot of earth, constitute the mass of the population — have lost sight, or an indignant sense, of the long misgovernment of the sister isle by England, or have imagined that twenty or even fifty years of less unrighteous dealing can atone for centuries of grievous wrong; for "the outlawry of ages followed by laws

* Mr. Leigh Hunt observes that the word "merry" did not imply in former times, when the expression Merry England was first used," exclusively what it does now: but appears to have had a signification still more desirable, to have meant the best condition in which anything could be found, with cheerfulness for the result."