300,000 of the youth of France, all Paris could think of nothing, but a painted sun with the name of Grétry in the centre !' But is not this tremendous police as efficacious for the punishment of crimes as for the detection of private feelings and opinions? The following fact will answer this inquiry. A monster who confounded all the ties of nature by an incestuous commerce so abominable that the law had not provided for its punishment, is detected;--for this enormity a penalty of' détention pendant six mois' is proposed, and approved! The poor wretches that dropped the Dutch pasquinade or sold the Italian caricature, would probably have expiated their crimes with their lives; but an offence, which dissolves, as the Editor remarks, the most sacred relations of society, is censured with six months detention. "Sblood,' (as Hamlet says) there's something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out.' Having seen that Buonaparte subjects his wife and brother, two of the least intriguing and most inoffensive beings in France, to the surveillance of the police, it is not surprising that the corre spondence of individuals through the post-office should be intercepted; but it is surprising that he should find time or appetite to read such trash as is collected for him from this source. The Duchess of Albufera writes to her husband, one of Buonaparte's own creatures: well,-her letter is opened; it contains nothing but her congratulations on the successes of the Marshal, which the Moniteur had before trumpetted; it is nevertheless sent to the Emperor ! M. Schreiber, a sub-spy to Marshal Soult, acquaints his Excellency, that the Prefect of the Gironde on one occasion when all the company were praising his Excellency, preserved the most profound and provoking silence, and took the first opportunity to change the conversation. M. Schreiber reports also, that Generals Clausel and Tirley criticise some of Marshal Soult's operations;the whole is stopped at the post-office and transmitted for the perusal of the master-critic and master-spy, the Emperor himself. We amuse ourselves with thinking how much this publication will fill up the chasms of French correspondence, and how delighted Messrs. Soult, Clausel, and Tirley must be to find so exact a record of their mutual sentiments. Of the private letters which have been collected, we need say but little: they all bear one character of intense anxiety for the safety of the friends of the writers in the army; deplorable pictures of the internal misery of the families of France, and the most ardent We shall select one or two prayers for the restoration of peace. specimens which shew the ignorance in which the dearest relations of even officers of high rank were kept concerning their fate. 'To Baron Larrey, Chief Surgeon to the Grand Army. Fontenai, 26th Sept. 'I live here always in suspense, but the news give me no hopes of seeing you this winter. I imagine, that, although better informed than myself, you are not, on that account, more happy. This is not living, my poor friend; this is dying. Where are you at present? I know not. We are all here in a state of painful suspense.' To the Baron Finot, Director-General of the Engineer Park. If, . . I must then give up the hope of seeing you so soon. however, there were winter quarters, would you send for me? I hope so. In fine, here are four couriers, and I have no accounts from you. I am absolutely ill with anxiety about it, especially in such a vile city as this, where so many idle stories are in circulation. . . . . I am tired of this life: one does not live; it may be called dying a thousand deaths daily. They tell me, from Paris, that a report. of peace is circulating there. Ah, if that should prove true, what happiness!' That these were the sentiments and this the tone of the universal French nation, even before the battle of Leipsic, there is abundant proof. What must its feelings now be, after the loss of 300,000 men, the invasion of her territory, the occupation of onefourth of the country by hostile armies. La paix, pour l'amour de Dieu, la paix!-is the only exclamation which has reached the ears of the English couriers in their way through France. Happy could France venture to speak out what France, with every rational being, must think, that Buonaparte and war are almost inseparably connected, and that the basis of true tranquillity and lasting peace would undoubtedly be the restoration of a legitimate government, and a recurrence to the ancient principles of civilised Europe! But though good sense and good feeling concur in this conclusion, yet if Russia, Prussia, Austria, the Germanic States, and Sweden, should resolve to make peace with Buonaparte, no one, we presume, would seriously propose that Great Britain should continue the war alone, for the avowed purpose of forcing on France a sovereign chosen in this country, like a Lord Mayor, by acclamation of the good citizens of London. Peace, under such circumstances, might not, perhaps, be popular, but it could not be unwise: and, in any case, it is some consolation to believe, as we gladly do, that its durability will depend, in no small degree, upon ourselves. We may enter into relations of peace with France, without abating one jot of our instinctive vigilance; and it would be degrading to our national character to doubt that we shall decline from the firmness which we VOL. X. NO. XX. I I have have hitherto manifested in action, or from the confident spirit which has actuated all our deliberations. Of the translation we can say little good. It is, as our readers will have perceived, a hasty performance. The words indeed are English, but the idiom is generally French; and in many passages we look in vain for the true import of the original terms. ART. XI. Inchiquen, the Jesuit's Letters, during a late Residence in the United States of America; being a Fragment of a Private Correspondence, accidentally discovered in Europe, containing a favourable View of the Manners, Literature, and State of Society, of the United States; and a Refutation of many of the Aspersions cast upon this Country, by former Residents and Tourists. By some Unknown Foreigner.New-York, 1810. ON N the 2d of November last, a Mr. Macon, deputy to the Congress of the United States, brought up a 'Report concerning the conduct which has been observed by the English during the War.' In this Report the British government, its naval and military officers, its seamen and soldiers, are indiscriminately accused of every thing that is base, cowardly, treacherous and inhuman; such as ill-treating American prisoners; violating flags of truce; pillaging and destroying private property; exciting the savages to murder their prisoners, and to commit outrages on their dead bodies; burning houses; profaning and destroying churches, through motives of avarice and vengeance; carrying off articles of value, and destroying all that could not gratify their insatiable cupidity;' violating women, &c. &c.; together with many other horrible and atrocious deeds, all asserted to have been committed by the example, under the sanction, and in the presence, of the officers commanding his Majesty's forces by sea and land; and the Report concludes with a resolution, that the President of the United States be requested to collect and lay before the House, during the continuation of the war, the proofs of all the infractions by the enemy of the laws of war in use among civilized nations.' From the character given of Mr. Madison* by his own countrymen, and apparently justified in some small degree (it must be owned) to a hasty or prejudiced observer, by sundry of the speeches and proclamations of that venerable chief magistrate, and from the shameless audacity which marks all the averments of this Report, we should not have been surprised if the framers of it, instead of confining their worthy * Quart. Rev. No. XV, Art. XIII, p. 193. president president to the humble task of collecting materials of hatred against Great Britain, had plainly spoken out, and directed him to invent so much of such materials as might be wanting to complete a case for so laudable a purpose. Much, however, may be understood that is not distinctly expressed. We will venture to say that candour itself cannot mistake the object and intention of the Committee, and that if they are disappointed in the fulfilment of that intention, it must be from their having mistaken, all this while,' the guileless nature of the personage upon whom they have imposed so odious an office. Two days after this Report was made to Congress, the Prince Regent, in his speech from the throne, was pleased to declare, I am at all times ready to enter into discussion with the government of the United States, for a conciliatory adjustment of the differences between the two countries, upon principles of perfect reciprocity, not inconsistent with the established maxims of public law, and with the maritime rights of the British empire.' Such a declaration is in itself something more than magnanimous : and what a contrast does it furnish to the proceedings of the government to which the olive branch is thus tendered! To refute the calumnies of that government would be no difficult task, and may perhaps be ours hereafter; unless indeed the sober and more enlightened part of Congress, consulting their own dignity, and having ascertained the documents collected for their use, to be forgeries, shall compel Mr. Macon to put his report into the fire. In the mean time the book, whose title we have prefixed to this article, having opportunely reached us from New York, has suggested to us that it might not be uninstructive or unamusing to inquire a little into the character of the people whom its government are thus inflaming into unextinguishable hatred against us, and whom we are so desirous of 'conciliating.' Such an inquiry will enable us at once to appreciate the probable chances of an accommodation, cordial and sincere, with our kindred on the other side of the Atlantic,' and to console us for the failure of our various attempts to effect it;-we mean of course, by the only consolation which such a case admits-the conviction that the failure is not owing to any fault or indisposition of ours. In this sketch, though we set out under the conduct of 'Inchiquen the Jesuit,' we do not, however, profess to take him for our only guide, nor to abide, in all cases, and quite implicitly by his authority. We shall avail ourselves of many partial and scattered hints towards a correct portrait of the United States' people, which are to be found in the works of their own artists, as well as of foreigners, who have preceded our jesuitical author. To which of these classes he belongs would have been immaterial, if he had not assumed a character opposite to the truth. We can conceive no motive for this disguise, professing, as he does, to give a favourable view of the manners, &c. of the United States.' But the truth, we understand to be, that although the stale conceit of picking up the manuscript on a bookseller's stall in Antwerp,' is resorted to in the preface, the Unknown Foreigner' is a well known American of the name of Ingersoll. In passing, we would just hint to him, that his summary mode of 'refuting the aspersions cast upon the country by former residents and tourists,' in a single note, and by a general attack upon almost every author who has gone before him, is no refutation at all; that though the newspapers of the United States may be the mere organs of faction, ribaldry, and sedition,' the majority of them are patronized by the government, and are its instruments; that though ours may be occasionally scurrilous and factious enough, yet some of them are by no means backward in vilifying their own government, and bestowing on that of the United States unmerited praise. Our Jesuit's unqualified abuse of other writers, but of Mr. Moore in particular, is as coarse, as we believe it to be unjust. We proceed to his book. Of Washington, he says, 'The sovereignty of his country was asserted by his energy, and secured by his moderation.' If by sovereignty' is here meant a firm and efficient executive authority, that he did not secure it, was the great error of Washington's government. The new constitution which, after a long discussion, was adopted in the United States, was far from being satisfactory to those who were principally concerned in framing it. They considered it merely as an experiment; they saw its defects; they perceived the seeds of destruction that were sown within it; but democracy and Franklin prevailed. Washington, and Hamilton, and Adams, saw and foretold the feuds and animosities that would spring up among families and friends, in consequence of the people chusing their king." They were aware too of the evil arising out of the anomaly of each state having its separate government and legislature, while all of them were required to merge their separate interests in the general mass for the good of the whole. These interests were of a nature so heterogeneous, that it was utterly impossible they should ever amalgamate; so discordaut, that it was apprehended a foreign or domestic war would at once dissolve the whole union; but it was hoped, at the same time, that by conferring gradually a little more power on the executive, and by consolidating the separate state authorities into one efficient government, a foundation might be laid for permanent tranquillity and prosperity. Washington was a man of firmness, of rigid virtue, and strict integrity; but finding himself unable, with the limited power given tq |