look upon the birth of his child, without
the bitter consciousness that another victim was preparing for the general
sacrifice; nor could see the ripening form or intellect of those who were
given to him by Providence for the comfort and companionship of his
advancing years, without a conviction that they would be swept away from
him. He felt that he would be left unsheltered and alone; and that those
in whom his life was wrapt, and whom he would have gladly given his life
to save, were destined to perish by some German or Russian bayonet, and
make their last bed among the swamps of the Danube or the snows of Poland.

I am not now speaking from the natural abhorrence of the Briton for
tyranny alone. The proofs are before the eye of mankind. Within little
more than half the first year of the Polish campaign, three conscriptions,
of eighty thousand youths each, were demanded from France alone. Two
hundred and forty thousand living beings were torn from their parents,
and sent to perish in the field, the hospital, and on the march through
deserts where winter reigns in boundless supremacy!

Let the man of England rejoice that those terrible inflictions cannot be
laid on him, and be grateful to the freedom which protects the most
favoured nation of mankind. Arbitrary arrest and the conscription are the
two heads of the serpent--either would embitter the existence of the most
prosperous state of society; they both at this hour gnaw the vitals of the
continental states; they alienate the allegiance, and chill the
affections; even where they are mitigated by the character of the
sovereigns, they still remain the especial evils which the noblest
patriotism should apply all its efforts to extinguish, and the removal of
which it would be the most illustrious boon of princes to confer upon
their people.

But the ramparts of that empire of slavery and suffering were to be shaken
at last. The breach was to be made and stormed by England; Europe was to
be summoned to achieve its own deliverance; and England was to move at the
head of the proudest armament that ever marched to conquest for the
liberties of mankind.

She began by a thunder-clap. The peace with Russia had laid the Czar at
the mercy of France. Napoleon had intrigued to make him a confederate in
the league against mankind. But the generous nature of the Russian monarch
shrank from the conspiracy, and the secret articles of the treaty of
Tilsit were divulged to the Brit