FRANCE experiences no such disadvantage. She will not let her troops be idle. If Toussaint should not find employment for them, she will send them to Louisiana: she will find work or make it. BUT England has increased too in military strength and spirit. Our democrats are silly enough to think that nation subject to a standing army; the truth is, a militia, an effective militia of the real people, constitutes the force of Great Britain: it is the nation that holds the sword. ADD to this, the vast increase of the British power in India.· ́ On the whole, we may hope, that Great Britain will be able to maintain the post of glory and danger, in which she is placed. She cannot defend herself, without making other nations secure; nor is it possible, that her fall should happen, without infinite peril, perhaps utter ruin, to the independence of all other powers. France was, formerly, emulous of commercial greatness; but the spirit, that Colbert awakened, and that seemed to balance the spirit of chivalry of the nation, is apparently quenched. France is more military and less commercial, than ever she was before; England, on the contrary, is more than ever commercial. The basis of her naval superiority is widened. Hence we may infer, that Britain will continue to beat France at sea. THIS review, also, serves to exhibit, in a proper light, the policy, if it be policy, of disarming the United States at a time. of unprecedented danger. While all Europe is sliding from its old foundations; while France is pouring myriads of black, white, and ring-streaked banditti into St. Domingo, and is ready to vomit them on our shores, we are boastfully consigning our little army to nothing, and our navy to the worms. It is in peace only that armies can be trained; it is in peace only that navies can be prepared, and a very long preparation is requisite. We have abolished revenue enough, that no poor man felt, the collection of which sent no son of laborious poverty supperless to bed, to build a fleet sufficient for our protection. Coaches, loaf sugar, and whiskey, are to go free, and our commerce to wear shackles! Nothing is easier than for the United States to provide thirty ships of the line and sixty frigates. Such a force would protect our rights; and for want of it, France alone has plundered us of more than such a fleet would have cost to build, and equip, and maintain during the late war. It is childish prattle, to inquire, what need have we of force? A nation that neglects its naval and military power, will not preserve its independence: weakness is subjugation. Si vis pacem, para bellum, is a maxim of good sense, but not of the democrats. To be without force or treasure, used to be deemed the course for a government to be without consideration; but, of late, it is deemed to be, though an evil, yet a less evil than another, that those, who are dismantling our government, like an old ship, that is to be broken up for the old iron, should be without popularity. How long shall men, whose views are merely party or personal, whose foresight scarcely reaches a week forward, be encouraged by our suffrages to work for our undoing! A system so selfish and so mean, that begins and ends with the individual interests of those who act for us, is too gross to be misunderstood, and too mischievous long to be tolerated. It appears probable, that the PEOPLE will clearly discern how they ought to vote, two years before they will have the opportunity. Federal truth has begun its awful progress, and it will prevail: its sun has set to rise again. POLITICAL REVIEW. N. I. First published in the Palladium, October, 1802. THE war of arms is at an end; the war of the custom-house is commenced between France and England. More than ever their policy relates to the concerns of other powers; and the consequences of their competition will shew, that the same act, which has given peace to themselves, has scattered the seeds of discord among their neighbours. To lessen the commerce of England, will lessen her power. Buonaparte will, therefore, try all the means that his policy can employ, to make his rival defenceless, before he forces her to be hostile. : It is not clear, that the people of England were willing any longer to prosecute the war; but it is now unquestionably clear, that it was their great ultimate interest to pursue it. Peace has brought with it no new resources; it has dried up those which spring up with a state of war: for war makes many of its own means. Peace divides the commerce, that war gave to her entire her enemies, who lately did not own a ship, are now England's competitors. Their business was to destroy; now it is to produce and to fabricate. They want less; they supply more. They diminish her means; and they recruit their own. England looks at the peace with mingled shame and dread; shame, because she is already degraded in the eyes of strangers, if not in her own; with dread, for France has gained new power, and shews her old ambition. He It is childish to say, that Mr. Pitt ought to have proceeded with the war, if he understood the position of things. understood it; but it is alleged, and, perhaps, it is true, that the British nation preferred present ease, which they expected, and have failed of realizing, by peace, to the glory, the burdens and the distant ultimate security of war. We Americans choose to say, and we are vain-glorious enough to believe, that the people are not counted for any thing any where, except in America. The truth is, the voice of the nation, when it conveys its wisdom or its deliberate mistakes, is more sure to penetrate audibly, and with effect, the recesses of St. James's, than those of Monticello. The British nation was weary of the war, and, therefore, it was ended. Peace will present an aspect of danger, which its courage will not be summoned to face. The only question is, whether, on viewing its formidable consequences, its policy will be able to surmount or elude them. A nice problem it is, America is infinitely interested in its favourable solution. WHEN We behold France with a power so vast, as to excite and enable her to undertake almost every thing, and a spirit still more romantick and vast, to prompt. her to achieve impossibilities, we are led to think of a new Roman empire, under which the civilized world is first to bleed, and then to sweat in chains. We again see Rome, after the first Punick war; and, alas! we see Europe without a Hannibal, unless we look for him in England's Nelson or Smith. The little states are nothing; they are slaves, paid by titles to freedom for hewing wood and drawing water. The king of Prussia, though powerful, is no Philip; he is only an Attalus or Eumenes, under France. Spain has nothing of an independent monarchy, but the name. As to Holland, Switzerland, and the Cisalpine or Italian republicks, they are republicks during pleasure; they are sovereign, as Deiotarus, or Ariarathes, or Prusias were, to tame them for subjection. They are new recruits for the French republick, committed first to the drill-serjeant, before they are turned into the ranks. They will be cudgelled, if they prove refractory. They will be made to obey, like slaves, and yet to say and to swear, on occasion, that they are sovereign and independent, as may best suit the ambitious policy of France. Old Rome was too cautious and too much in earnest in her plan, to make a conquered people her subjects at once. She gave them a king, or made a pretty, little, snug indepen dent republick for them, till every man was dead and gone, who was born and educated in independence: her bitter drugs were all given in honey. So it is with France. Europe has no longer any minor powers; they are swallowed up by France. Her establishment in Louisiana, which, though certain, is delayed only to choose the moment, when it will be most fatal to us, will convince even America, that distance is no protection: the plagues of Egypt will be in our bosoms, and in our porridge-pots. Our pity or our folly has made us weep or wonder at the events of Europe. We have had our spasms, when we saw distress and disease abroad; we are doomed by fate to scratch with a mortal leprosy of our own: Gehazi, by accepting bribes, is smitten with Naaman's pestilence. Our government has little force, and, since the deplorable fourth of March, 1801, less than ever, to defend Kentucky and Tennessee from the arms of France: soon or late they will fall victims to their arts. In spirit and policy we are Dutchmen : we are to lose our honour and our safety; and the economical statesmen, whom the wrath of heaven has placed at our head, will inquire what are they worth in shillings. Every penny of their folly will cost a pound. BUT, say Job's comforters, France is a republick, and, of course, a sister republick will not only find friendship, but security, in the aggrandizement of France. Miserable comforters are all these! Before this boasted revolution, Europe had many free republicks. Alas! they are no more. France, proclaiming war against palaces, has waged it against commonwealths. Switzerland, Holland, Geneva, Venice, Lucca, Genoa are gone, and the wretched Batavian, Helvètian, and Italian republicks, are but the faint images, the spectres, that haunt the sepulchres, where they rot. So far has France been from paying exclusive regard to republicks, that she has considered them, not as associates, but as victims. Venice she sold to the emperour. Holland she taxed openly for her own wants, till she drove her rich men into banishment. She "ransomed Dutch liberty," with a vengeance, "from the hands of the opulent :"-so far she took counsel from the Worcester Farmer; or he from her admired example. From Switzerland she drained her youth to be food for gun-powder. This is not all. But the king of |