land was blighted as by locusts, had no longer the same exciting causes to call them into play. Of a settled country, secure in its recognized privileges, and having to defend those privileges rather than to struggle for their acquisition, the popular eloquence is for the most part of a sedater and more subdued description. Principles being too securely established to be called into doubt or exposed to jeopardy, the usual controversies turn upon questions which chiefly require accuracy of detail and justness of reasoning. Hence it was, that in the English House of Commons, the strong and vehement, though frequently disjointed and abrupt sententiousness of Mr. Grattan, had little effect beyond that of rareness and singularity.

It is honourable to the penetration of his understanding, that he was at variance with many of the Whig party in Parliament on the question of war with Bonaparte, after the violation of the treaty of Elba. It is gratifying also to observe one of the most powerful orators of modern times, his friend and countryman, Mr. Plunkett, fighting by his side upon this awful crisis of the fate of the civilized world. Having stated the real question to be, whether we should go to war, when our allies were assembled, or when they should be dispersed, Mr. Grattan thus proceeds in his speech on that occasion.

Sir, the French Government is war; it is a stratocracy, elective, aggressive, and predatory; her armies live to fight, and fight to live; their constitution is essentially war, and the object of that war, the conquest of Europe. What such a person as Bonaparte at the head of such a constitution will do, you may judge by what he has done. And first, he took possession of the greater part of Europe; he made his son King of Rome; he made his son-in-law Viceroy of Italy; he made his brother King of Holland; he made his brother-in-law King of Naples; he imprisoned the King of Spain; he banished the Regent of Portugal; and formed his plan to take possession of the Crown of England. England had checked his designs; her trident had stirred up his empire from its foundation. He complained of her tyranny at sea; but it was her power at sea which arrested his tyranny at land; the navy of England saved Europe. Knowing this, he knew the conquest of England became necessary for the accomplishment of the conquest of Europe, and the destruction of her marine, necessary for the conquest of England. Accordingly, besides raising an army of 60,000 men for the conquest of England, he applied himself to the destruction of her commerce, the foundation of her naval power. In pursuit of this object, and on his plan of a western empire, he conceived, and in part executed, the design of consigning to plunder and destruction the vast regions of Russia. He quits the genial clime of the temperate zone; he bursts through the narrow limits of an immense empire; he abandons comfort and security; and he hurries to the pole, to hazard them all, and with them the companions of his victories, and the fame and

fruits of his crimes and his talents, on the speculation of leaving in Europe throughout the whole of its extent, no one free or independent nation. To oppose this huge conception of mischief and despotism, the great potentate of the North, from his gloomy recesses, advances to defend against the voracity of ambition, the sterility of his empire. Ambition is omnivorous; it feasts on famine, and sheds tons of blood, that it may starve in ice, in order to commit a robbery or desolation. The power of the North, I say, joins another prince whom Bonaparte had deprived of almost the whole of his authority; the King of Prussia; and then another potentate whom Bonaparte had deprived of a principal part of his dominions, the Emperor of Austria. These three powers, physical causes, final justice, the influence of your victories in Spain and Portugal, and the spirit given to Europe by the achievements and renown of your great commander, together with the precipitation of his own ambition, combine to accomplish his destruction. Bonaparte is conquered; he who said, "I will be like the Most High, he who smote the nations with a continual stroke, this short-lived son of the morning, Lucifer, falls, and the earth is at rest; the phantom of royalty passes on to nothing, and the three Kings to the gates of Paris. There they stand the late victims of his ambition, and now the disposers of his destiny, and the masters of his empire. Without provocation he had gone to their countries with fire and sword; with the greatest provocation they come to his country with life and liberty. They do an act unparalleled in the annals of history, such as nor envy, nor time, nor malice, nor prejudice, nor ingratitude can efface; they give to himself life and royalty, and to his subjects liberty. This is greater than conquest! The present race must confess their virtues, and ages to come must crown their monuments, and place them above heroes and kings in glory everlasting.

When Bonaparte states that the conditions of the treaty of Fontainbleau are not performed, he forgets one of them, namely, the condition by which he lives. It is very true, there was a mixture of policy and prudence in this measure; but it was a great act of magnanimity notwithstanding, and it is not in Providence to turn such an act to your disadvantage. With respect to the other act, the mercy shewn to his people, I have underrated it. The allies did not give liberty to France; they enabled her to give a constitution to herself; a better constitution than that which with much laboriousness, and circumspection, and deliberation, and procrastination, the philosopher fabricated, when the Jacobins trampled down the flimsy work, murdered the vain philosophers, drove out the crazy reformers, and remained masters of the field in triumph of superior anarchy and confusion ;-better than that, I say, which the Jacobin destroyed, better than that which he afterwards formed, with some method in his madness, and more madness in his method; with such a horror of power, that, in his plan of a constitution, he left out a government, and with so many wheels, that every thing was in movement, and nothing in concert, so that the machine took fire from its own velocity; in the midst of mirth and death, with imagés emblematic of the public disorder, goddesses of reason turned fool, and of

liberty turned fury. At length, the French found their advantages in adopting the sober and unaffected security of King, Lords, and Commons, on the idea of that form of government which your ancestors procured by their firmuess, and maintained by their discretion. The people had attempted to give the French liberty, and failed. The wise men (so her philosophers called themselves) had attempted to give liberty to France, and had failed. It remained for the extraordinary destiny of the French, to receive their free constitution from Kings. This constitution Bonaparte has destroyed, together with the treaty of Fontainbleau, and having broken both, desires your confidence. Russia confided, and was deceived. Austria confided, and was deceived. Have we forgotten the treaty of Luneville, and his abominable conduct to the Swiss? Spain and other nations of Europe confided, and were all deceived. During the whole of this time, he was charging on England the continuation of the war, while he was, with uniform and universal perfidy, breaking his own treaties of peace, for the purpose of renewing the war, to end it in what was worse than war itself,-his conquest of Europe.

Gentlemen speak of the Bourbon family. I have already said, we should not force the Bourbon upon France. But we owe it to departed (I would rather say to interrupted) greatness, to observe, that the house of Bourbon was not tyrannical. Under her, every thing, except the administration of the country, was open to animadversion; every subject was open to discussion, philosophical, ecclesiastical, and political, so that learning, and arts, and sciences, made progress. Even England consented to borrow not a little from the temperate meridian of that government. Her court stood controlled by opinion, limited by principles of honour, and softened by the influence of manners; and on the whole, there was an amenity in the condition of France, which rendered the French an amiable, an enlightened, a gallant, and accomplished race. Over this gallant race, you see imposed an oriental despotism. Their present court (Bonaparte's court) has gotten the idiom of the East, as well as her constitution; a fantastic and barbaric expression; an unreality, which leaves in the shade the modesty of truth, and states nothing as it is, and every thing as it is not. The attitude is affected, the taste is corrupted, and the intellect perverted. Do you wish to confirm this military tyranny in the heart of Europe? A tyranny founded on the triumph of the army over the principles of civil government, tending to universalize throughout Europe the domination of the sword, and to reduce to paper and parchment, Magna Charta, and all our civil constitutions. An experiment such as no country ever made, and no good country would ever permit; to relax the moral and religious influences, to set heaven and earth adrift from one another, and make God Almighty a tolerated alien in his own creation; an insurrectionary hope to every bad man in the community, and a frightful lesson of profit and power, vested in those who have pandered their allegiance from King to Emperor, and now found their pretensions to domination, on the merit of breaking their oaths and deposing their sovereign. Should VOL. XVIII. Ñ.S.

C

you do any thing so monstrous as to leave your allies in order to confirm such a system; should you forget your name, forget your ancestors, and the inheritance they have left you of morality and renown; should you astonish Europe by quitting your allies to render immortal such a composition, would not the nations exclaim, “You have very providently watched over our interests, and very generously have you contributed to our service, and do you falter now?" In vain have you stopped in your own person the flying fortunes of Europe; in vain have you taken the eagle of Napoleon, and snatched invincibility from his standard, if now, when confederated Europe is ready to march, you take the lead in the desertion, and preach the penitence of Bonaparte and the poverty of England!

As to her poverty, you must not consider the money you spend in your defence, but the fortune you would lose if you were not defended ; and further, you must recollect you will pay less to an immediate war, than to a peace with a war establishment, and a war to follow it. Recollect further, that whatever be your resources, they must outlast those of all your enemies; and further, that your empire cannot be saved by a calculation. Besides, your wealth is only a part of your situation. The name you have established, the deeds you have achieved, and the part you have sustained, preclude you from a second place among nations; and when you cease to be the first, you are nothing.'

From the sentences which we have printed in Italics, it will be seen that we are not insensible to the licentious taste of Mr. Grattan's style of eloquence. But as the whole passage exhibits in a tolerably limited compass more of its excellencies, as well as more of its defects, than any other of his orations, we have not forborne to transcribe it. We have only to remark further on the character of Mr. Grattan's oratory, that it seemed as if his imagination in the later years of his life, had thrown off every restraint and incumbrance. He rises into mysticism and extravagance, and reminds us, (so frequently do the aberrations of the human intellect resemble each other,) when he talks of heaven and earth being set adrift from one ' another,' and making God Almighty a tolerated alien in ⚫ his own creation,' of one of the impious flights of the Della Crusca school of poetry, in which the poet makes

the Creator blush to see,

How horrible his works can be.'

Mr. Grattan, in the last hour of his eventful life, was constans sibi. With his expiring accents, he uttered his ardent desires for the liberty and welfare of his country. The Editor of these volumes has preserved a paper, dictated a short time before his death, containing a patriotic prayer for the indissoluble connexion of Great Britain and Ireland, but breathing a strenuous protest against the wild theories of democracy,-universal suffrage, and annual parliaments. I have just breath,' he

says,

to enter my protest against both.' Then follow his sentiments concerning the civil and political disabilities of the Roman Catholics, briefly but energetically expressed. These resolutions,' he adds, contain my sentiments. This is my ⚫ testamentary disposition; and I die with a love of liberty in my heart, and this declaration in favour of my country in my hand.'

Art. II. A Voyage of Discovery into the South Sea and Beering's Straits, for the Purpose of exploring a North-East Passage, undertaken in the Years 1815-1818, at the Expense of his Highness the Chancellor of the Empire, Count Romanzoff, in the Ship Rurick, under the Command of the Lieutenant in the Russian Imperial Navy, Otto von Kotzebue. Illustrated with numerous Plates and Maps. 3 Vols. 8vo. pp. 1240. London. 1821.

TH

HESE volumes comprise, besides a copious Introduction, Lieut. Kotzebue's Journal of his Voyage, occupying about half the work; an Analysis of the Islands discovered by the Rurick in the great ocean; a series of Miscellaneous Remarks, and Opinions by the Naturalist who accompanied the Expedition, Adelbert Von Chamisso; and an Appendix, consisting of various contributions illustrative of the Geography and Natural History of the Islands visited by the Expedition. Although the voyage failed to accomplish the immediate object of the enterprise, and has not very materially extended our knowledge of the geography and hydrography of the Polar Regions, the information collected during the voyage, is both curious and valuable. Lieutenant Kotzebue has rendered an important service, by verifying in some instances the observations of former navigators, and correcting them in others. He has discovered several new islands in the South Seas, and has made us acquainted with the true position of more belonging to the same archipelago, respecting which his claims to be considered as the first discoverer may be questioned; and he has thrown much light on the formation of the coral rocks of which they consist. The volumes contain also a variety of interesting, details, relating to the manners and customs of the Islanders.

The enterprise confided to Lieutenant Kotzebue, originated in the public spirit and munificence of an exalted individual, and was undertaken purely for the purpose of scientific discovery. The merit of suggesting the voyage, as well as of bearing the whole expense of it, belongs to Count Romanzoff. The Rurick sailed from Plymouth, in October, 1815. On the 28th, they cast anchor off Santa Cruz. After encountering several heavy storms, in doubling Cape Horn, they succeeded, on the 1st of February, in passing the latitude of Cape Vittoria, and on the 11th entered Conception Bay. Here the