The Quarterly Review Volume 72 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1843 Excerpt: ...only be responsible for all that exists within the radius of his own power. For instance, in the year 1805, when France was preparing to invade England, Napoleon could no more prevent the English from raising volunteer regiments, making pikes and muskets at Birmingham, gunpowder at Hounslow, and from casting shot and cannon at Woolwich, than King George III. could prevent the French people from obeying the conscription, or from making ball-cartridges at Paris. But out of the preparations for war, which at the period alluded to were carrying on on either side of the Channel, if there could be selected any one which above all the rest the opposite country had not the slightest power to influence, u 2 it it was the comparative secresy with which each government was enabled to veil its transactions from the knowledge of the other. And thus, if Napoleon had thought proper to keep his projected plan of attack concealed in his own breast, and if, by means of a police and gendarmerie of his own creation, he had been able to establish an embargo strong enough to stop up every crevice of communication, King George III. would have been no more to blame for the exercise of this power than Napoleon would have been to blame for the fogs which, proceeding from causes he had no power whatever to control, frequently concealed England from his view. In short, until the two nations came into open collision, to blame either government for the internal arrangements of the other, would be as absurd as to blame a nobleman who has a colt to run ai the next Derby for the care and attention daily bestowed throughout the country on all the colts with which his is about to contend. Now while the truth of this reasoning is before the mind, let us for a moment calmly apply it to Mr. Ali...