How miserably, how
meanly, has he closed his inflated career! What a sample of the bathos
will his history present! He should have perished on the swords of his
enemies, under the walls of Paris.
[Illustration: page240]
But Bonaparte was a lion in the field only. In civil life, a
cold-blooded, calculating, unprincipled usurper, without a virtue; no
statesman, knowing nothing of commerce, political economy, or civil
government, and supplying ignorance by bold presumption. I had supposed
him a great man until his entrance into the Assembly _des Cinq Cens_,
eighteenth _Brumaire_ (an 8.) From that date, however, I set him down as
a great scoundrel only. To the wonders of his rise and fall, we may add
that of a Czar of Muscovy, dictating, in Paris, laws and limits to all
the successors of the Caesars, and holding even the balance in which the
fortunes of this new world are suspended. I own, that while I rejoice,
for the good of mankind, in the deliverance of Europe from the havoc
which would have never ceased while Bonaparte should have lived in
power, I see with anxiety the tyrant of the ocean remaining in vigor,
and even participating in the merit of crushing his brother tyrant.
While the world is thus turned upside down, on which side of it are
we? All the strong reasons, indeed, place us on the side of peace; the
interests of the continent, their friendly dispositions, and even the
interests of England.
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