assertion itself senseless and nugatory. The principle of The Times was and is (if they have not retracted it) that we are never to make peace with Bonaparte at all, that is, though he would make peace with us, (otherwise the words have no meaning) and then comes the gloss of Vetus, which is, that we will not make peace with him, only because he will not make peace with us. Ridiculous!—Vetus asks, "Who has been the founder of this shocking creed—who the aggressor—who the unrelenting enemies of peace?" May we not answer—"The incessant war-faction of England?" Why would Vetus strip "these acknowledged saviours of Europe" of the praise which is so justly due to them, or degrade them from that proud eminence which they have maintained with so much persevering fortitude? We cannot withhold from these persons our sincere and conscientious thanks for all the benefits which this war has conferred on our country, on Europe, and the world. While France strove insidiously to ruin us by peace, these firm patriots have always been determined to save us by war—from "England's" greatest and most magnanimous politician, "down to the last desperate incendiary of The Times, who is only willing to conclude "a Regicide Peace" by celebrating "the condign and solemn punishment of Bonaparte!"[1]
Vetus says, that "eternal war is no expression of his, and that it is a deliberate falsehood in us who assert that he has used it, or that this country has no alternative between eternal war and eternal bondage." "It is not England," he says, "but France—not Vetus, but the French government—who has broached the
- ↑ Of the facility of realising this devout aspiration of the writer in The Times, we have no exact means of judging by his own statements, for he one day tells us that "there is nothing to hinder Lord Wellington from marching to Paris, and bringing the Usurper to the block," and the next endeavours to excite the panic fears of his readers, by telling them, in a tone of equal horror and dismay, "That the monster wields at will the force of forty millions of men." The assertions of these writers have no connection with the real state of things, but depend entirely on their variable passions, and the purpose they have in view.
