it safe to concede emancipation to the negroes, and by so doing, to abandon to the mercy of Providence the property and the lives of the whites. That which England had done, all other nations were called upon to do, to the detriment of their navigation and of their colonial possessions. Because England (who is mistress of India, Australia, the Cape of Good Hope, the Isle of France, Canada, and some islands in the Mediterranean,) does not want St. Domingo and the Bermudas for the purpose of maintaining her fleets and her seamen, we were required to cast into the sea, without hesitation, Pondicherry, the Isle of Bourbon, Cayenne, Martinique, and Guadaloupe,―we who, apart from the soil of France, possess only those miserable points upon the whole surface of the globe. The Marquis of Londonderry and the Duke of Wellington, the enemies of liberty in their own country; Mr. Canning, the disciple of William Pitt and the opponent of Parliamentary reform; all those Tories who for thirty years had opposed the motions of Wilberforce, had now become enthusiastic for the liberation of the negroes, while in their hearts they cursed the liberty of the whites. White Englishmen had been sold for slaves in America so recently as the time of Cromwell. The secret of these contradictions is in the selfish interests and the mercantile spirit of England; this is what we must bear in mind if we do not choose to be duped by her ardent, though somewhat tardy, philanthropy:-philanthropy is the spurious coin of charity." We shall not stop to notice any of the singular errors in fact which are to be found in this passage, but shall only observe, that these observations are the preface to the publication of a memorial drawn up by our author in reply to that which was presented to the Congress by the Duke of Wellington, and the subjoined passage from the memorial will appear doubly striking if considered in connexion with the preceding observations. "A parliamentary motion, for ever honourable to its author, has finally been crowned with success; but for how many years was that motion baffled before it was allowed to become a law, though supported by one of the greatest ministers England has ever produced! During the protracted discussions of this question, public opinion had time to become matured and settled; and the mercantile interest, foreseeing the result, took their precautions. A number of negroes, exceeding the immediate necessities of the colonists, were transported into the English islands, and permanent generations of slaves were prepared to fill up the void left by casual servitude when it should come to be abolished." It may be said that as these observations were written in the year 1822, the writer might possibly have been sincere in the opinions and suspicions he was then recording; but they are published in the year 1838, and the publication is preceded by a comment, in which the imputation against England of bad faith in her mode of dealing with this question is deliberately repeated. The unprecedented sacrifices by which England has proved the sincerity of her zeal in the cause of negro emancipation were then well known to M. de Chateaubriand; what must we think of the honesty of a writer who, treating of a question like this, omits all notice of the twenty millions paid by England in compensation to the planters, and of the act of parliament by which she has completed her righteous work? Are the twenty millions of pounds sterling, by which the dictates of her philanthropy are reconciled with the nicest observance of the rights of property, to be designated as "la fausse monnaie de la charité"? Let M. de Chateaubriand compare the 208 millions of francs spent by his advice in the war against the liberties of Spain, with the 500 millions of francs paid by England for the abolition of slavery; even he may then blush at his illiberal and mean-spirited strictures on the conduct of a nation, whose motives he so wantonly attacks. In speaking of the project for the establishment of indedependent monarchies in South America, and placing the revolted colonies of Spain under the dominion of princes of the Bourbon race, M. de Chateaubriand uses language which is calculated to lead his readers to believe that the idea originated with him. "Our project," he says, "is well known," (he always writes in the first person plural, and the notre in this passage must be taken to mean, as it does throughout the work, mon,) "we wished to snatch them (the colonies) "from the influence of England, and to transform them into representative monarchies under the rule of princes of the "house of Bourbon;" and again, in language which appears a still stronger evidence of his intention, he says, 66 "History has but too completely fulfilled our predictions—in what con. dition are these colonies at the present day? An everlasting civil war, and a succession of tyrants governing under the permanent name of liberty. Urged by all these considerations, we were right then in thinking that in creating monarchies under the Bourbon sceptre, we were labouring as much for the happiness of these countries as for the aggrandizement of the family of St. Louis." But putting the intention of the writer of these sentences out of the question, it may be as well to remove all uncertainty as to the fact, by stating at once that M. de Chateaubriand was by no means the person with whom those projects originated; the designs of France in relation to this matter were the subject of discussion in the British Parliament so far back as the year 1820, just three years before M. de Chateaubriand obtained the portfolio of foreign affairs; and we have lately seen in the Times newspaper* (of the 27th of August in the present year) translations of the most important of the documents connected with this transaction, as they were transmitted to their Government by their envoys at Paris from the United Provinces of South America. In reasoning upon these projects, we find that our author, compelled by the nature of his subject to make frequent allusions to the policy of England, never for a moment abandons that tone of depreciation and gross misrepresentation which seems to have almost become habitual with him. He says that he was prepared to brave the indignation of England: "The emperor of Russia listened to us, and we might bid defiance "to the power of England; a war with her would have given 66 *The person in whose behalf these negotiations were carried on was the Prince of Lucca. The first of the documents published in the Times is dated Buenos Ayres, October 26, 1819. The French minister for foreign affairs is represented as having commenced his observations to the South American envoy by expressing the anxious wish of the French Ministry for the success of the revolt, and deploring the obstacles which prevented them from taking a decided, active, and open part in support of the insurgents. He then remarked that their success would mainly depend upon the form of government which they should select; for his part, he would recommend a constitutional monarchy. This point settled it would become necessary to look for a prince to place at the head of the new dynasty. He ought to be an European prince, whose connexions might command respect for the new state. A happy thought had struck him, and he would hasten to communicate it to the envoy; who so desirable, in every respect, as the Prince of Lucca? he was lately the heir to the kingdom of Etruria, and was descended by the maternal line from the august dynasty of the Bourbons; the Emperors of Austria and Russia were his friends; the King of Spain could not be displeased at seeing his nephew occupying the throne of those provinces which had belonged to his dominion; and an arrangement might be made by which Spain might hope to obtain considerable advantages for the trade of the Peninsula; and, finally, this arrangement would be highly gratifying to the King of France, and his most Christian majesty would solicit for the Prince of Lucca a marriage with a princess of Brazil, on the express condition of the evacuation of the Banda Oriental. These propositions were addressed to Don Jose Valentin Gomez by the French minister in Paris, and were by him duly communicated to his Government, the United Provinces of South America. The consent of England to the proposed arrangement was cavalierly disposed of in the usual summary manner: 66 England could not offer any just or reasonable ground for resisting it." ' us no alarm; we should have been glad to wither her Waterloo "laurels." A very amiable disposition, no doubt, on the part of M. de Chateaubriand, considering that he was at that moment the servant of a monarch who had been twice restored to his throne by the exertions of England, and by her profuse expenditure of the blood with which those laurels were sprinkled. But something still more curious remains. In a short history of the insurrection of the Spanish colonies, he tells us that England would have interfered long before the period * Upon other occasions M. de Chateaubriand uses similar language in speaking of the chances of a war between France and England. He takes care to tell us that the exertions made by the French ministers at the congress to secure the neutrality of England in the quarrel between France and Spain, did not appear to him so necessary as they seemed to his colleagues. “We were bound to consider that England might place herself in active opposition to us in the affairs of Spain. The only way to parry this blow, was to present to her a compact union of the allied powers, and to let her see that a war with France would be for her a possible war with the whole continent, a certain war with Russia. The value of this precaution was not however estimated very highly by me; for I am of opinion that in the case of hostilities between France and England, success would not be so very difficult, if the war was conducted on a new plan, and we did not take fright at the necessity of a few sacrifices which we should be called upon to make; but in the present case it doubtless was prudent to prevent a rupture, and to keep Mr. Canning in check by holding out to him the possibility of a general conflagration." But we doubt whether M. de Chateaubriand is quite in earnest in this pleasant manner of treating the question of a war with England. Three years after the close of this Spanish war, it fell to the lot of Mr. Canning to describe, in a memorable speech, the position occupied by England in relation to the powers of the continent, and the nature of the war which they would have had to wage with her if she had been goaded into the strife. Our readers will recollect the fine passage in which he compares the situation of England, amidst the struggle of opinions that agitated the different countries of Europe, to that of the ruler of the winds: "Celsa sedet Eolus arce, Sceptra tenens; mollitque animos et temperat iras; This speech is noticed at some length by M. de Chateaubriand; and it is curious to contrast the plaintive and reproachful tone in which he comments upon it with his vauntings of the facility with which he could wither the laurels of Waterloo. We give only the concluding observations: "France, when we were ministers, had very different pretensions. On the field of battle she would have sought to rally round her standard, not the disturbers of national peace, but men faithful to honour and to their country, the friends of public liberty and of order. If ever we had been compelled to combat England herself, we should not have sought to excite upon her soil, in the midst of her hearths and of the sacred ashes of her ancestors, the passions of the millions who are discontented with her government; we should not have lighted ourselves to victory by the flames of civil war; a victory not purchased by our own blood we should have deemed unworthy of A grateful world will continue to thank the country of Bacon, Shakspeare, Milton, Newton, Byron and Canning for the instruction which we owe to them. The English nation has conferred too much honour on humanity for any enemies to attempt her destruction by means of troubles excited in her own bosom." us. to which he is referring, but that she was restrained by certain considerations. "England could not openly attack the "Spanish colonies, because the king of Spain, a prisoner in "France, had become her ally; she even passed Acts of Par"liament to prevent the subjects of His Britannic Majesty "from giving any assistance to the Americans; but never"theless six or seven thousand Englishmen enlisted to sup"port the insurrection in Columbia." Upon this singular statement it is only necessary to remark, that the beloved Ferdinand was released from his captivity by Bonaparte in the year 1814, and that the foreign enlistment bill was passed in the year 1819, upon complaint made by the Spanish ambassador of the number of British subjects who were embarking in the service of the new republics. The future historian, for whose labours M. de Chateaubriand informs us that he intends his work to furnish materials, will find some difficulty in persuading himself that such passages as this, of contemporary history too, could have been penned by a statesman who occupied during an eventful period the post of foreign minister to the crown of France. We do not find in these volumes much that relates to the personal character of the Duke of Wellington, but there is in one of the earlier chapters a passage from which we may infer that our author does not entertain a very high opinion of His Grace's political talents: "The Duke of Wellington had done to legitimacy the injury of forcing the services of Fouché upon the crown, and had committed against the nation the crime of winning the battle of Waterloo. With the exception of five or six men of genius, all great captains have been but sorry creatures (des pauvres gens). No renown is more brilliant than the renown of arms, or less deserves the glory which is shed around it. It was in vain to caress the successor of Marlborough in order to draw him aside from the policy of his country; it was all lost time. Sa Gráce, pour se désennuyer de nous, cherchait à Vérone quelque des Ursins qui pút écrire à la marge de nos dépéches interceptées: POUR MARIÉE-NON." In this passage there is one observation with which we are well disposed to agree. We have ever thought of martial glory much as our author thinks, and we are convinced that military talents are very far from holding the highest rank among intellectual endowments; but we are quite unable to understand how the fact that the caresses of M. de Chateau |