a remonstrance against a system which would doom any advocate of pure religion to imprisonment, or tortures, or death. Our politicians may say it was not within their province, not in their competence,' to take account of any such matters; but neither, therefore, was it permitted to be in their competence, with the whole vast means of this country at their disposal, to accomplish any part of the great political project. A most signal fatality has appeared to accompany every measure and movement; the results are before us; Spain is overwhelmed, and our armies, after months and months of ineffi. ciency and ostentation, are driven out under circumstances of the utmost affliction and mortification, and followed by the most bitter taunt that ever stung this nation, that "in spite of the English, the inquisition, the overgrown monkish establishments, and the oppressive privileges of the nobles, have ceased to exist in Spain." What a memorable fact it will be in the history of these times, that the enlightened nation, which had so long been the grand champion of protestantism, should have justly incurred this poignant and triumphant reproach from a conqueror,, who is himself a pretended papist! The wonder, however, will relate solely to the principles on which the enterprize was undertaken; there will be no wonder at the consequence: if one of the most emphatic petitions which good men could have concurred to address to Heaven, for the Spanish people, would have been, that such institutions might fall, and if the intimations of revelation combined with the recent and contemporary train of events, to give solemn signs that the papal institutions were in fact just ready to fall, -what was the result to be reasonably apprehended, when a protestant nation should undertake to exert its utmost force that, as connected with the other establishments of the unhappy people, these institutions might stand? Was it to be expected that out of pure favour to the English, as protestants, the Supreme Disposer would suspend his operations for destroying the popish domination?

We gladly believe there are times yet to come, when politicians will be aware that the question, what monarch or what dynasty is to rule any particular portion of the earth, is an cxceedingly trifling matter in the view of Him that governs it all, compared with the promotion or the repression of the cause of pure Christianity. How many more disastrous calculations and events are to enrich our history with melancholy instruction for their benefit, remains to be seen; and it is not difficult to imagine new occasions for practically trying, whether it is really a judicious principle in politics, for a Christian and protestant nation to lend its force and sanction formally to maintain and consolidate the most pernicious and cruel super

stitions of every country, where it has an absolute or an influential power. This point should be decided; and if all the experiments are to be made, on an assumption of the affirmative, it is not too much to anticipate that the series may be very short, and that the result may be recorded on the monumental ruins of a great empire.

Some readers may perhaps here alledge, that the martial despot that has been successful, is also a supporter of superstition; that he inserted in the new constitution for Spain, framed at Bayonne, an article expressing that no religion but popery should be legally tolerated, and that he carried this into effect in agreeing to the first article of capitulation, proposed by the inhabitants of Madrid. We may answer, first, it cannot reasonably surprise us, if the Divine Being should manifest a much severer indignation against the formal support of popish superstition, by a nation long eminent for zealous protestantism, than against even the same support by a nation long equally eminent for its zealous popery. Secondly, though Napoleon does pretend, and in some degree practise, an adherence to the Romish church, yet all Europe sees that he is, in effect, its enemy and destroyer; he treats some of its most sacred institutions with contempt, and for his own purposes is gradually abolishing the various organs of power that made it so formidable. As far, therefore, as an able, powerful, bad man, who does every thing from motives of selfish policy and ambition, may be a fit agent, under the divine government, for breaking up by degrees the dominion under which reason and conscience have so long been reduced to suffer, the present agitator of nations seems the right operator.

We have thus endeavoured to explain how we soon began to despair, on a religious ground, of a cause, for the success of which our anxiety, in a political reference, most warmly sympathised with that of our countrymen in general. We will now venture one or two brief observations on the political grounds of hope, afforded by the first stages of the grand move

ment.

That a nation in arms cannot be conquered, is perhaps a proposition, like many others that sound very well, of but little meaning. The thing cannot be realized; there never can be a nation in arms. Say that the men, capable of bearing arms, that is, not too young, nor too old, nor too unhealthy, are as much as a sixth part of the whole population; this will indeed give a most formidable list in such a country as Spain. But then how evident it is, that only a slender minority of this enrollment will ever come into action. A very large proportion of these competent men must be employed in preparing the furniture of war for those who actually take the field; a

large proportion of them must attend to the indispensable concerns of agriculture; millers, and numerous manufacturers and shopkeepers, must keep to their business, if the popula tion is to be regularly supplied with the most direct necessaries; many of the enumerated men must stay to take care of their sick, their aged, or their infant relatives: in a catholic country a number are under ecclesiastical restriction; a considerable number of men to write and print, are as necessary, in such a juncture, as men to fight; many must be employed in every district, in concerns of council and police; a number, in almost any imaginable war, will join the enemy, at any point where he has been signally successful. We will add only one other class, that is cowards, who positively will not fight at all, and whom it would require more than half of those that will fight, to attempt to hunt and capture and coerce into battle of these there naturally must be a very large number in every nation of Europe; and these, in addition to their ti midity, will generally be sceptical enough as to the necessity of the war itself; such concessions as they would have made, and as they think ought to have been made, rather than provoke so dreadful an extremity, would have averted it.

We have heard commonly enough, of late, of five or six hundred thousand warriors being ready to march, or even of a 'million of heroes panting to rush on the enemy, and resolved to conquer or perish;' the absurdity of such flourishes might be apparent, on a moment's reflection, which is enough to convince us that though we may talk of rising in a mass,' and of a nation in arms,' it is in fact but a comparatively small proportion of the inhabitants physically capable of act ing in arms, that can at any time, in any civilized country, be brought into military operation. Instead of the innumerable myriads, which many of us seemed to imagine would drive on like the moving sand of the Arabian desert, and absolutely overwhelm the first large French army that should venture to present its front in Spain; it was very doubtful whether the Spanish nation,, even if as generally inspired with patriotic ardour as it is possible for any nation to be, and carrying to its utmost practicable extent the principle of rising in a mass, could have met the invader with a force numerically equal to what he could without much difficulty bring, considering the immense number of his veterans at every moment in the posture of war, the authority and promptitude of his decrees of conscription, and the vast extent of populous territory over which those conscriptions operate. And as to the nature of this popular levy, it was to be considered what an uncouth element of armies it would continue to be for months, what a want there was of men of commanding military talents, to throw the rude

though brave masses into system, and at the same time how soon their quality, and the capacity of their leaders, were likely to be brought to the test by the unremitting assault of their rapid and pertinacious enemy. It was also to be inquired, where were arsenals and magazines? whence were half the requisite number of fire-arms to be obtained? for as to other arms there can be no greater folly than to talk of them. Possibly there are, in every country, a very small number of men so firm or so fierce that, without any other weapons than pikes, they would resolutely advance to the encounter with musketry and artillery; but as to the generality of the men that armies must be composed of, we think their defeat is infallible, whatever their numbers may be, if under no other protection than their pikes they are confronted with lines of fire-arms, For, setting aside the real difference of power between the two kinds of weapons, setting aside too the effect of manoeuvres, the influence of imagination will be great and fatal. To unpractised troops, at least, guns seem something more than mere weapons; both by those that hold them, and those that meet them, it is almost felt as if they had a kind of formidable efficacy in themselves, their operation is so totally different from any other instruments that can be wielded by human hands. The explosion, the flash, and the infliction of death, at a great distance, by a missile that cannot be seen or avoided, inspire in the possessor of the weapon a certain consciousness of being a much more powerful agent, than he could have been by an implement, which had no other force than just that which he could give it by the grasp and movement of his hand, and no effect at a distance. And this influence of imagination operates with double force on the man who is advancing against these fire-arms, while himself has only an inert piece of wood or iron; he will look with despondency and contempt on his pointed stick, while the lines in his front seem to be arrayed in thunder and lightening, while he is startling at the frequent hiss of bullets, and seeing his companions begin to fall.

But there would be no end of enumerating the disadvantages, under which the Spanish insurrection was to encounter such a tremendous invasion; and, even admitting that insurrection to be as general and as enthusiastic as it was represented, a sanguine expectation of its success was probably entertained by very few of our countrymen, after it was ascertained to the conviction of all that Bonaparte had nothing to fear on the side of Germany, though the earnest desire did sometimes⚫ assume the language of confident hope. Still, however, it was not the less certain, that a great and resolute nation might accomplish wonders, against the largest regular armies, and the most experienced commanders; as history was at hand to shew, by various examples and, eminently above all others,

A

that of the war of the French revolution. Certainly, indeed, there was an ominous difference, in point of genius and system, between the leaders of the war against Spain and the commanders who had invaded France; the highest genius, however, cannot work literally by magic; and if the French legions could have been commanded by even still greater talents than those actually at their head, it was evident they must receive a dreadful shock if they were to be fallen upon by seve ral hundred thousand men, impelled by the same enthusiasur of valour and obstinacy of perseverance which first confounded and finally routed the grand armies of Brunswick, Clairfait, and Saxe Cobourg: in the varieties of the conflict, besides, all the latent genius in the patriotic army would flame out, and declare whom nature had appointed, in contempt of all laws of rank, to the command. But then, there must be an adequate cause to inspire the popular levies with this heroic fury, which should persist to burn and to fight, in spite of all checks and disasters, in fortress and in field, whe ther the battalions were in order or confusion, whether they found themselves separated into small bodies, or thrown toge ther in a ponderous mass. And it might fairly be assumed, at the commencement of the Spanish revolution, that no less cause, no other cause, than that which had produced this grand effect in the French levy en masse, would now produce it in that of Spain. All know that the cause which operated thus on the revolutionary armies of France, was the passion for liberty, continually inflamed to a state of enthusiasm, by having the object most simply and conspicuously placed in view. The object was placed before them, if we may so express it, "full orb'd;" it was liberty, not in the partial sense merely of being freed from the power and interference of the foreign monarchs who had sent the armies they were combating, and whose design, they had little doubt, it was to divide France among them as a conquest, and its people as slaves; but in the animating sense, also, of being no longer the subjects of a despot at home. A general could circulate through his camp an address like the following:-"Brave citizens, soldiers of liberty! prepare for battle; to drive these legions of Austria and Prussia from your country, which is henceforth to be the land of freedom. Your ancestors, in such times as those of Lewis XIV, were sent to war on these very plains, at the mandate of a cruel tyrant, and his detestable minious; while they fought, with a forlorn and melancholy valour, their countrymen were all in chains, and a grand object for which they were to fight and bleed was, that their master might lose none of his power to keep them so. You, soldiers of liberty, are called to celebrate in arms the commencement of a new æra. By the