Tuscany from its hereditary possessor to a nominee of Napoleon's, Louis, son of the Duke of Parma; who having married a Spanish princess, Spain was to consider herself thereby compensated for the destruction of her fleets by those of Britain. The timid Ferdinand, King of Naples and Sicily, was glad to make peace shortly afterwards.

The Czar had been detached from the alliance by the politic courtesies of the First Consul, and the affront his eccentric ambition, as Grand Master of the Knights of St. John, had received by the retention of Malta by the English, to whom it surrendered after a blockade of two years. Consenting to the policy everywhere dictated by Bonaparte to his allies, he closed his ports to British commerce; and with a superfluity of zeal to serve his new friend- —or rather a cruelty congenial to his character-seized the British ships then in his rivers, and threatened their crews with the dreary deserts of Siberia. Under the inspiration of the same ever-vigilant genius, he was flattered into assuming the lead in that maritime confederacy of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Prussia, which, professing to assert the naval rights of neutral nations, in reality threatened England with greater dangers than she had yet encountered; for it attempted to cripple the right arm of her might, while it left her to confront alone the power she had insulted when unfriended, and whose ambition she had chafed into vindictiveness. Nor did she decline the contest-her spirit seemed to rise as she beheld the armed neutrality changing into hostile confederacy. Pitt had ceased to administer her affairs-from causes presently to be exhibited—but he still ruled in her councils; the Opposition pleading in vain for peace. Unscrupulous as well as undaunted, her great naval commander, Nelson, was despatched to deal destruction to the armament assembled beneath the "wild and stormy steep" of Elsinore. Prussia was obliged to relinquish Hanover, almost as soon as she had seized it; and the Danes compelled to restore Hamburgh to its ancient dignity of a Free City. The death of Paul-strangled by his nobles, after the manner of Russian sovereigns-completed the destruction of the northern league; for his son and successor, Alexander, instantly reversed the helm of imperial policy-changing, probably, thereby the issue of the war; and affecting, most seriously, the fortunes of England. Paul had plotted with Napoleon the invasion of India—a project dear to the ambition of both; the one was to pour a Cossack and Tartar horde down the Affghanistan defiles up which we have lately sent our adventurous troops-the other to have debarked in the Persian gulf, and retrodden the track of Alexander the Great. But the death of Paul, consentaneously with the expulsion of the French from Egypt, delivered England from that peril, and preserved to her the magnificent dominion to whose capabilities and obligations she is now but beginning to awake.

The war was wearing itself to a close, like a conflagration that has no more on which it can lay its tongue of flame. Now that the combatants were reduced to two, there remained no field on which they could contend. France and her maritime allies had lost their colonies and ships-England had no land forces that she could oppose to the victors of Marengo and Hohenlinden. The military ambition of the one, and the naval pride of the other, no longer demanded sustenance and excitement. Both could better afford to rest here than to continue a contest in which neither could hope to prevail. While our cruisers were seizing on every vessel that ventured forth into the British Channel or the German Ocean, and every port between the Texal and Calabria was blockaded, diplomatic messages were crossing each other; and, after several months' negotiation, preliminaries of a general peace were signed at London on the 1st of October, 1801. By these it was provided that Egypt be restored to the Porte, Malta to the Knights of Jerusalem, and the harbours of the Roman and Neapolitan States to their former sovereigns-that a compensation be provided for the House of Orange, and other dispossessed princes-and that the integrity of Portugal, which had been invaded by French and Spanish troops, as an old ally of England, be respected. Ceylon and Trinidad were ceded to Great Britain; who, on the other hand, consented to abandon in Asia, Pondicherry, Cochin, Negapatam, and the Spice Islands; in Africa, the Cape of Good Hope, Goree, and Senegal; in North America, St. Pierre, Miguelon, and Louisiana; in South America, Surinam, Demerara, Berbice, Essequibo. and Guiana; in the West Indies, part of St. Domingo, Martinique, Tobago, St. Lucie, Guadaloupe, and Curaços. The Seven Islands of the Adriatic were constituted a republic, and its independence guaranteed. Great was the joy manifested in both countries at the sight of returning peace. Paris vied with London, and the provinces of England responded to the departments of France, in expressions of delight. In our own country, there was an exception to the general rejoicing. Lord Grenville and Mr. Windham were the mouthpiece of a party who denounced the peace as disgraceful and disastrous. They complained, truly enough, that the original object of the war was farther than ever from accomplishment; and pointed, with indignation, to the extended boundary we permitted France to retain-to the belt of satellite republics that we left unbroken-above all, to the numerous colonies we consented to restore to France and her dependents. Pitt cast his ægis over the Ministry to whom he had resigned power; and the Whigs found themselves in the novel position of swelling the majority which he always commanded. The preliminaries were sanctioned by both parties, with the provision that Malta should be evacuated by the English forces within three months, and the King of Naples be invited to garrison it, as the property of the Order of St. John had been almost destroyed by

successive confiscations in the countries where it was held. The definitive treaty was signed at Amiens on the 27th March, 1802.

We gladly return from the track of armies and diplomatists to observe the one great event which our politicians found leisure to accomplish; namely, the union of Ireland with Great Britain. The proposal was mooted in both parliaments in the session of 1799. In the Irish Commons an address to the King in its favour was carried by only a majority of one; and in two subsequent divisions its friends and opponents alternately prevailed. In the British Parliament it at once took precedence of all other questions but that of war or peace. Pitt advocated it by arguments supplied in plenty by the late unhappy insurrection. To place Ireland under the same central power as England and Scotland would lessen her exposure to foreign inva sion, diminish the mischievous influence of demagogues, and lead to a fusion of the two races; it would facilitate-he added, in an under-tone of significance and promise-the relief of the Catholic population from the degrading and oppressive disabilities under which they still groaned. The project was warmly, even fiercely debated, the Whigs professing to see in it only an attempt to extend the influence of the Crown; but resolutions were finally adopted, by immense majorities, as the basis of the Union. There the matter rested till January 1800, when it was re-opened in the Irish Parliament by Lord Castlereagh-a name now emerging into prominence as that of Pitt's most able and unscrupulous coadjutor ; and not again to be lost sight of, till its possessor descends into an unblessed grave. Great excitement prevailed in Dublin and the provinces; the people saw in the absorption of the Parliament the complete subjugation of their country, instead of its elevation from the rank of a conquest into that of a nation. The Catholics had suffered too much in the recent rebellion to expect aught but insults from the hand of their chastisers. But the nature and effect of the means employed by the Minister and his subordinate during the recess were at once evident. The distribution of prospective peerages and lesser gifts proved the worthlessness and effected the extinction of the independent Irish Parliament, glorified in its last days by the patriotism and eloquence of Flood, Grattan, and Curran. The exact balance of parties was converted into an eager ministerial majority of forty-two. The two Houses joined in an address to the King, assuring him of their loyal readiness to accept the resolutions already presented to him by his British Lords and Commons as the terms of the Union. They were, the confirmation of the Protestant succession-the consolidation of the Parliaments; four Irish prelates to sit alternately in each session, and twenty-eight laic peers to be chosen for life; sixty-four county and thirty-six city and borough members to have seats in the Commons-the enjoyment of all commercial privileges in common-the puolic debt of each country to be charged upon its own resources-the

proportions of taxation to be fifteen parts for Great Britain and two for Ireland, for twenty years-and the maintenance of laws and courts of judicature on their then footing. The measure, thus affirmed, was re-presented to the British Parliament. The Whigs, under the leadership of Grey, Sheridan, and Tierney, renewed their resistance to it; Mr. Grey moving, in his special capacity of parliamentary reformer, that forty of the most decayed Irish boroughs be disfranchised, which amendment found only thirty-four supporters. In the month of June the Act of Union reached the final formality of legislation. The British Parliament was then prorogued, but met again, as usual, in November (the city of London, and other important bodies, had besought the King to convene it a month earlier on account of the distressing dearth). On the last day of the year the session closed, with the announcement from the throne that on the 22nd of January, 1801, the Imperial Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland would hold its first sitting. Whether the Union then consummated was for the mutual good of the nations in whose name it was contracted, the course of our history will demonstrate.

Pitt lost no

Nor have we to wait for the first indication of that result. time in the redemption of his pledge to the Catholics, either to procure their relief or to retire from office. The question appears to have been first mooted in the council on the King's speech The King not only refused to introduce it, but declared that he should consider any man his personal enemy who pressed it upon him. His conscience would not allow him to entertain the violation of his coronation oath he believed it to involve. To the expostulations of Dundas he is said to have replied, "Scotch metaphysics cannot destroy religious obligations." Pitt was not the man to persevere in a contest with obstinate bigotry—a contest alike undignified and hopeless. He made his resignation the alternative, and it was accepted, with many, and doubtless sincere, expressions of the royal regret. The harass of the affair brought on the King a return of his unhappy mental malady. For some weeks this was kept from the knowledge of the public, Pitt remaining in office until supplies were voted, and his protegé, Mr. Henry Addington then Speaker of the House of Commons-could form a Ministry. By that time the King had recovered; and Mr. Addington, the Duke of Portland, and Lord Hawkesbury, took the seats vacated by Pitt, Dundas, and Grenville; their staunch opposition to the slightest change in the direction of civil and religious liberty further ensured by the appointment of Sir J. Scott, under the title of Lord Eldon, to the woolsack.

It was not, however, the Catholic question alone which caused, in the seventeenth year of his administration, and at the height of his power, Mr. Fitt's retirement. There can be no doubt that his sagacious eye perceived what his pride would not permit him to acknowledge-the failure of the

war to accomplish the object he designed by it, and the necessity of a temporary peace to the chance of its ultimate success. Like other great men, perverted by the allurements of power from the path marked out by conviction, he was a Tory not in principle but in place. It was not because he either hated or feared the revolutionary spirit, but because he was committed to the service of a master who did both, that he engaged the country in a war with France-a war feebly conducted till his spirit was excited by the disgrace of defeat. Then he uttered his memorable speech, "Unless the monarchy of France is restored, the monarchy of England is lost for ever." As the tempest grew wilder and the storm stronger, his desire mounted into determination to struggle with and tame it. He kept the helm till the highest wave was ridden, and then resigned it to feebler hands. He foresaw, that though the northern maritime confederacy was dissolved, another might be formed, of greater strength; that then our commerce would be straitened, and with that our already strained finances fail; that on his own principles there could be no end to the conflict but in the ruin of one or both empires. He found a pretence, therefore, for his retirement, in a difference between him and the King which would procure him the sympathy of the worthiest of his opponents. To lesser men he would resign identification with a peace that would be patriotic and popular, whatever its defects; and with a policy of bigotry and injustice which would quickly become ignominious and untenable.

CHAPTER III.

THE PEACE ONLY AN ARMISTICE-THE RELATIVE CONDITION OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE-THE DESPOTISM AND AGGRESSIONS OF NAPOLEON-THEIR EFFECT ON THE PUBLIC MIND OF ENGLAND-THE RESUMPTION OF WAR-TRIAL OF PELTIER.

We have arrived at one of the unhappiest passages of our review-if, as the writer feels, the contemplation of the premature joy and delusive hopes of an unreal peace, be more painful than that of the fiercest passions or severest suffering which war can excite and inflict. Loud and universal was the gratification of both peoples at the cessation of the exhausting conflict in which their rulers had engaged them; and well it might, for when they had leisure to look around them, they found, partially at least, how much they had been plundered during these ten years. The relative strength of both countries, Mr. Pitt justly observed, was the same as at the commencement of the contest. France, notwithstanding the vast additions she made to her