THE

Augustan Review.

N°. XX. FOR DECEMBER, 1816.

ART. I.

Public Affairs.

THE effect of the late extensive warfare in exhausting the resources of nations, is far more striking now than it was at any time while the war lasted. Men and money seem to have sunk together into their native earth; the cupidity of princes, if not quite satiated, is at least repressed; and nations, admonished by their wants, no longer pant for military glory. Nowhere in Europe is a redundant population to be found. Emigrations, it is true, still take place: but the emigrants are individuals seeking to escape from poverty and discontent; not colonies sent out for national purposes. As to finance, Governments, after expending, for many years, a great deal more than the maximum of their incomes, are now sitting down so loaded with debt, that the severest retrenchment and the strictest economy will be indispensably requisite for a period quite indefinite a retrenchment ill accommodated to the comforts of many persons in the inferior stations of life- an economy little suited to the habits of such as move in its higher walks.

No. XX.-VOL. III.-Aug. Rev.

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What number of men has each of the late belligerent powers lost since the year 1793? How much money has each expended during that period? A man not altogether satisfied with the present posture of affairs might get rid of these queries by answering, Almost all their men, and a vast deal more than all their money! for it is one of the peculiarities of money, that you can spend it whether you have it or not. One, however, who should be willing to go deliberately into the inquiry, would soon discover that all of neither of the two great sinews of war had by any means been sacrificed. What that country is which might be found to have made the smallest sacrifice, we do not say; we only observe, that its losses have been great enough, in a proportion equal, in all conscience, to its gains. Nor need we tell those who have been able to read plain English for a few years, that of all the losses which the war has occasioned, that of the French has been the heaviest; unless human life is to be estimated as we do the materials of war, and other dry goods. The post-obit price of a stout, upright, welltrained German, has usually been fixed at 30l.: that is, our King has usually had to pay 30l. to the Electors of Hanover, Hesse, and other continental Princes, for every man who could not stand muster at the close of a war the only period, by the way, at which the Germans can well be said to have enjoyed the unspeakable benefits of an habeas corpus. But as it is not with Germans so much as with the French that we now have to do, we advert to the latter, and observe that, from the alacrity with which the Jacobins entered into the ingenious schemes of their rulers for murdering, and massacring, and getting rid of their countrymen, as well as from the sang froid with which they used to march en masse upon an enemy's artillery, they must have rated human life at much less than the princes north of the Rhine ever did. It is highly probable, indeed, that under the republic they reckoned a man worth no more than about 157., which, to a regular dealer, must have appeared a

most alarming depreciation. Such dealer would, however, be happy in observing that matters did not very long remain in that discouraging state. The adventurer who has taught Europe to fight so well, having set a higher value on a devoted soldier's life than had been done by the villains whom he displaced, those whom he dragged to slaughter soon came to stand, in the general estimation, at full 201. a head. Multiplying, then, the number of men killed under the republic (vide, we know not which, the Moniteur or the Morning Post) by 15, and those disposed of by the emperor by 20, and adding the product of both to the amount of the financial expenditure, (for which see the budgets of almost every country on the continent,) we get a total of the costs of the late war as correct as most people can desire, at least as any body ought to expect.

Now is it not cheering to fancy how much this sum exceeds the supposed amount of all our costs? Yes, if a mere comparison could better our condition. But there are people who delight not in comparative, but in absolute views of things; and if they will be good enough to pursue this subject, if they will but reduce to pounds, shillings, and pence, the lives we have lost, and add their amount to that of the current coin we have spent, they will save us trouble, and be in a fair way of arriving at the truth. But it is plain that they must not multiply the total of men killed off, by numbers so low as 15 and 20; since, in point of fact, the value of one of our infantry, all descriptions employed abroad being taken into account, is not less than 407.; the value of one of our cavalry, all descriptions considered, not less than 801. We leave the calculation to those who may find a pleasure in going on with it, satisfied that events are just what they ought to be; i. e. that we, who had the most money, have spent the most; that the enemy, who had at their disposal the greater number of men, have sacrificed the greater number; at the same time that the money which they have expended (no matter how dishonestly they came by most of it) is to them fully

as great as that which we have expended is to us. In fine, that the enemy (most emphatically and justly so called) who, for their savage amusement, filled Pandora's box till it was ready to burst, and then exulted in having caused it to be opened in the presence of their unsuspecting neighbours, should have been made to pay unprecedentedly dear for all the mischief they actually did, and all they so sincerely intended to do.

After all, we do not think that any country on earth, the United States of America excepted, has reason to lament the general issue of the French revolution- sanguinary and expensive as it has been. The Americans could well have avoided taking up arms; but, willing to believe that our hands were full, they flattered themselves that they could take Canada. They accordingly became aggressors, and are now suffering for their folly. Other nations have received something in the way of compensation. Some, the Turks for instance, an increase of security to their territories, through the ambition of powerful neighbours being moderated, or their power balanced: others, every people, in short, from Lisbon to Stockholm, deliverance from oppression, the pleasing prospect of better laws, together with the well-founded hope of a generous, permanent freedom. The Americans, and they only, have nothing with which to console themselves, nothing on which recollection can feed, except the loss of some thousands of their citizens, of some millions of their dollars, together with the disgrace of having been forced to withdraw from the contest, without gaining the object for which they entered into it.

Even France, though twice conquered, has reason to be satisfied. If it be now, which it is, as free as England was 150 years ago, what may we not imagine will be the measure of its freedom and happiness 130 years hence? It has, at length, nothing to apprehend but the check that may be given to the progress of improvement, through the narrow views which its ministers are known to take of its constitutional interests; through

their continuing to legislate by ordonnances, instead of the charter; through their tyrannically restraining the liberty of the press; through their trusting to the officers of police, instead of the judges, for the correction of vice; and through their pusillanimously suffering the greater number of places of trust and honour to be held by the refuse and dregs of the revolution. Such men may be found capable even of attempting to persuade the King to restore to favour and authority the convicted regicides. If they do make the attempt and succeed, it will then only remain for them to prepare to attend his Majesty once more to Ghent; and for the good citizens of Paris, to receive Prince Blucher a third time within their walls, with his temper not a little ruffled, and all his country's wrongs again fresh in his recollection.

If France, on a view of the whole of its recent history, has sufficient reason to be satisfied, surely Great Britain, on an impartial survey of its transactions, can have no sufficient cause for regret. France, it is true, retires from the contest with a fair prospect of its ancient civil institutions being much improved; while England has no such prospect-its venerable constitution standing in need of no such improvement. But if England wants this prospective enjoyment, it has one of a retrospective kind, which is not inferior either in quality or degree that of recollecting that it has been able to counteract the evil generally intended by France, and to convert it into good for that same country in common with the rest of Europe. To have baffled all who either aimed a blow at its greatness from without, or sought to ruin its peace at home, was no mean achievement; and all ought to allow, that there was magnanimity in making mighty efforts to shake the yoke from the neck of a mortal enemy.

The pernicious principles recommended by the French libertines and atheists-the optimists and pessimists of the last century-who paved the way to the revolution; the revolution