and labour. No sooner, however, had the invasion taken place, no sooner had the French become masters of the country, than they spread themselves over it like beasts of prey, devouring and destroying every thing before them. They spared neither cities nor towns, neither villages nor hamlets, nor solitary houses; from the church to the cell, from the castle to the cottage; no state of life, however lofty or however humble, escaped their rapacious assaults; no sanctity excited their veneration ; no grandeur their respect; no misery their forbearance or their pity. After having plundered the houses of the gentry, the clergy, and the tradesmen; after having pillaged the shops, warehouses, and manufactories, they proceeded to the farm-houses and cottages; they rifled the pockets and chests of the inhabitants, cut open their beds, tore up the floors of their rooms, dug up their cellars, searched the newly-made graves, and broke open the coffins in hopes of finding secreted treasure. They sometimes threatened people with immediate death, sometimes put them to the torture, sometimes lacerated and crippled them, in order to wring from them a discovery of their little pittance of ready money. The deepest and most apparent poverty was no protection against their rapacity; gray hairs and lisping infancy, the sick, the dying, women in childbed, were alike exposed to the most barbarous treatment, dragged from their beds, kicked, wounded, and frequently killed, under pretence that they were the keepers of concealed wealth. The teams and flocks, cattle of every kind, the marauders drove off, cut to pieces on the spot, or left in a state of mutilation; corn, hay, and straw, they wasted or burnt; they demolished the household furniture, destroyed the utensils of the dairies, the barns, and the stables; tore down the gates, levelled the fences. In many places they stripped the clothes from the backs of the people, set their liquor flowing in the cellar, burnt their provisions to ashes. The churches, whether Romish or Protestant, they rendered a scene of indiscriminate robbery, of sacrilege and blasphemy, too shocking to describe. Towards women of all ages and all conditions, they were guilty of brutality never before heard of: neither extreme youth nor extreme age; neither weakness nor deformity, nor the most loathsome disease; neither the pangs of labour, nor the agonies of death, could restrain them: cries, tears, supplications, were of no avail; and where fathers, husbands, or brothers interfered, murder seldom failed to close the horrible scene. To spread nakedness and hunger, to introduce misery and disease amongst all ranks, seems to have been their uniform desire; but the lower orders of the people, the artisans and the labourers, were the objects of their direst malignity; against them was directed the sharpest bayonets; for their bodies the choicest torment, for their minds the keenest anguish was reserved. From one end of the country to the other, we trace the merciless ruffians through a scene of conflagration and blood; frequently we see them butchering whole families, and retiring by the light of their blazing habitations; but amongst the poor alone do we find them deferring the murder of the parents, for the purpose of compelling them to hear their children shriek amidst the flames !

Such are the barbarities which have been inflicted on other nations. The recollection of them will never be effaced: the melancholy story will be handed down from generation to generation, to the everlasting infamy of the republicans of France, and as an awful warning to all those nations whom they may hereafter attempt to invade. We are one of those nations; we are the people whom they are now preparing to invade :

awful, indeed, is the warning, and, if we despise, tremendous will be the judgment. The same generals, the same commissaries, the same officers, the same soldiers, the very same rapacious and sanguinary host, that now hold Holland and Switzerland in chains, that desolated Egypt, Italy, and Germany, are at this moment preparing to make England, Ireland, and Scotland, the scenes of their atrocities. For some time past, they have had little opportunity to plunder: peace, for a while, suspended their devastations, and now, like gaunt and hungry wolves, they are looking towards the rich pastures of Britain; already we hear their threatening howl, and if, like sheep, we stand bleating for mercy, neither our innocence nor our timidity will save us from being torn to pieces and devoured. The robberies, the barbarities, the brutalities they have committed in other countries, though at the thought of them the heart sinks and the blood runs cold, will be mere trifles to what they will commit here, if we suffer them to triumph over us. The Swiss and the Suabians were never objects of their envy; they were never the rivals of Frenchmen, either on the land or on the sea; they had never disconcerted or checked their ambitious projects, never humbled their pride, never defeated either their armies or their fleets. We have been, and we have done all this: they have long entertained against us a hatred engendered by the mixture of envy and of fear; and they are now about to make a great and desperate effort to gratify this furious, this unquenchable, this deadly hatred. What, then, can we expect at their hands? What! but torments, even surpassing those which they have inflicted on other nations. They remained but three months in Germany; here they would remain for ever; there their extortions and their atrocities were, for want of time, confined to a part of the people; here they would be universal: no sort, no part, no particle of property would remain unseized; no man, woman, or child would escape violence of some kind or other. Such of our manufactories as are moveable they would transport to France, together with the most ingenious of the manufacturers, whose wives and children would be left to starve. Our ships would follow the same course, with all the commerce and commercial means of the kingdom. Having stripped us of every thing, even to the stoutest of our sons, and the most beautiful of our daughters, over all that remained they would establish and exercise a tyranny such as the world never before witnessed. All the estates, all the farms, all the mines, all the land and the houses, all the shops and magazines, all the remaining manufactories, and all the workshops, of every kind and description, from the greatest to the smallest; all these they would bring over Frenchmen to possess, making us their servants and their labourers. To prevent us from uniting and rising against them, they would crowd every town and village with their brutal soldiers, who would devour all the best part of the produce of the earth, leaving us not half a sufficiency of bread. They would, besides, introduce their own bloody laws, with additional severities; they would divide us into separate classes; hem us up in districts; cut off all communication between friends and relations, parents and children, which latter they would breed up in their own blasphemous principles; they would affix badges upon us, mark us in the cheek, shave our heads, split our ears, or clothe us in the habit of slaves !-And shall we submit to misery and degradation like this, rather than encounter the expenses of war; rather than meet the honourable dangers of military combat rather than make a generous use of the means which Providence has so

bounteously placed in our hands? The sun, in his whole course round the globe, shines not on a spot so blessed as this great, and now united Kingdom. Gay and productive fields and gardens, lofty and extensive woods, innumerable flocks and herds, rich and inexhaustible mines, a mild and wholesome climate, giving health, activity, and vigour to fourteen millions of people and shall we, who are thus favoured and endowed; shall we, who are abundantly supplied with iron and steel, powder and lead; shall we, who have a fleet superior to the maritime force of all the world, and who are able to bring two millions of fighting men into the field; shall we yield up this dear and happy land, together with all the liberties and honours, to preserve which our fathers so often dyed the land and the sea with their blood; shall we thus at once dishonour their graves, and stamp disgrace and infamy on the brows of our children; and shall we, too, make this base and dastardly surrender to an enemy whom, within these twelve years, our countrymen have defeated in every quarter of the world? No; we are not so miserably fallen; we cannot, in so short a space of time, have become so detestably degenerate; we have the strength and the will to repel the hostility, to chastise the insolence of the foe. Mighty, indeed, must be our efforts, but mighty also is the meed. Singly engaged against the tyrants of the earth, Britain now attracts the eyes and the hearts of mankind; groaning nations look to her for deliverance; justice, liberty, and religion are inscribed on her banners; her success will be hailed with the shouts of the universe, while tears of admiration and gratitude will bedew the heads of her sons who fall in the glorious contest.

BANK RESTRICTION BILL.*

THE motion which has been made in Parliament for the continuation of the restriction on the payment in specie by the Bank of England, naturally leads one back to what took place upon the bringing forward of a similar proposition last year. In no subject can the people be more deeply interested. Next after the military means of the country, the pecuniary are to be considered, and particularly that branch of those means which includes the banking system. -Every bank note contains a promise from the drawer to the bearer, that the drawer will, upon sight, pay to the bearer the sum mentioned on the said note; and that this payment is to be made in gold or silver is clearly understood, otherwise the promise would, in fact, be no promise at all. This being the case, the bank restriction acts produce and sanction a continual breach of promise on the part of the bank towards the holders of its notes, or, in other words, its creditors. Nor do those acts stop here. They make bank notes a legal tender, so far, at least, as to prevent arrests; and thus they render every creditor of the bank a sort of privileged person. To give to the effect of such acts the name of restriction, as applied to the demands

The first act for "restraining" the Bank was passed in 1797, and it was continued till 1819.-ED.

or the rights of the noteholders and their creditors, would be proper enough; but as applied to the payments of the Bank, it is an instance of most cruel and insulting irony towards the public. There are, nevertheless, persons who not only defend the annual repetition of this measure, but who insist on its being a good, instead of an evil, and who accuse of factiousness, and even of disaffection to the state, all those who profess to be of a different opinion. The man who, by such means, is deterred from freely uttering his sentiments, must indeed be extremely pusillanimous; yet it may not be amiss for him to be armed with the acknowledgments, made last year, by the Minister who has now proposed the act of continuation : It is," said he, "with the utmost reluctance that I "submit this proposition to the House, but the reasons which suggested "it were too strong, and the necessity too urgent to be resisted. That necessity will, I hope, soon disappear; and notwithstanding the opinions "which have gone abroad, I anxiously and impatiently look forward to "the day, which I trust is not far removed, when the bank will be at liberty to resume its payments in specie." In another stage of the bill, he said, "The storm which has agitated the commercial and political "world, has not as yet subsided; but I trust it will be soon laid in peace, "and that the favourable moment is not far distant when more auspicious prospects will be opened." In a still more advanced stage, he said, "I look forward to the commencement of the next session of Parliament "for the gratification of the wishes of the House to take off the restric"tion." Who will now say, that Mr. Addington is either short-sighted or insincere? It was on the eleventh of February, only twenty-five days previous to the war-message, that he made this last declaration of his hopes. The former declarations were made on the seventh of the same month; so that only twenty-nine days before the message was sent by the King to the Parliament, calling upon the nation to arm for war, his Minister was telling that same Parliament that he trusted the "storm which had so long agitated the commercial and political world, would soon be laid in peace!" And yet he has the conscience to blame people for insisting that he was either a dupe or a deceiver, and his partisans have the assurance to say, that any man who ever expected the peace to be durable was "Nature's fool, and not Mr. Addington's !"- But, to return to the subject more immediately before us, it will be remembered that Mr. Tierney wished for an inquiry previous to the renewal of the act; so did Mr. Fox and Mr. Banks. In the House of Lords, there was much discussion upon the subject; some excellent remarks from Lords Moira and King, the latter of whom has since offered his opinions more at large and more accurately, in the shape of a pamphlet. The bill did, however, pass without any division in either house; but with a very general hope, that it never would be again renewed. That hope has now proved to have been not less fallacious than any other of the hopes, which the people have been weak enough to build upon the promises and estimates of this shallow and vapouring Minister.-There are, as was before observed, many persons who believe, or affect to believe, that the restriction, for which the proposed law will provide, can have no unfavourable effect in the community; nay, some of them, having observed that a pound note buys as much bread as twenty silver shillings, and feeling that the latter are more weighty and incommodious in the pocket than the former is, have no scruple to tell you, in the words of an advertisement which, some time ago, one frequently met with in the newspapers, that

"guineas are an encumbrance." These gentlemen are not very deeply read in the science of political economy, or they would most assuredly have discovered that, though twenty shillings in paper did hitherto, generally, buy as much bread as twenty shillings in silver, twenty shillings in silver will not now buy nearly so much bread as twenty shillings in silver used to buy before any restriction was imposed upon the Bank; they would have discovered that this rise in the prices, which is another name for depreciation in the value of currency, and which always increases with the increase of currency, has, since the restriction was first imposed, increased much faster than at any former period of our history; and they would further have discovered, that this joint depreciation of gold and silver as well as notes, cannot surpass a certain boundary, without creating a rivalship between the metals and the paper, which rivalship must end in the paper's sinking to a discount, always the forerunner, more or less distant, of its total extinction, and consequently of the ruin, or at least material injury, of all those who are so unfortunate as to possess it to any considerable amount. These discoveries, though not made by the persons alluded to, much less by the public at large, do nevertheless exist, and produce their effect on the minds of the mass of the people, who, without saying, and without knowing why, are at this moment, and have been for some months past, hoarding all the gold and silver which they can, by any means, collect, and which their necessities do not compel them to part with. This fact was stated, in the House of Commons, on the 30th instant, and was accompanied with remarks, which serve most happily to illustrate the tendency of the restriction acts. Mr. Jekyll wished, he said, to direct the attention of the House to the lamentable state to which the country was reduced for want of circulating specie. "The shameful practice," said he, "of hoarding up cash has been car"ried to such an excessive pitch, that it is with great difficulty that specie can be procured for the common purposes of life. I am sorry to "observe the prevalence of this ungenerous feeling, at a crisis which " calls for every possible exertion; and I am assured, from the respecta"ble authority of a principal banking-house, that, if the practice be not "put a stop to, bankers will, in a short time, not be able to procure specie for the fractional parts of change. I have seen too, in a newspaper of the morning, some resolutions of a respectable corporation, "calculated to meet the evil, and recommending the acceptance of dol"lars at a certain rate, and of French crowns and half-crowns in change." To which Mr. Addington replied, that "the evil complained of but too certainly existed; and he assured the honourable gentleman that it had "been under the consideration of the Privy Council. He admitted that "the honourable gentleman had commented justly on the baseness of "such a practice, at such a crisis."-As to the point of "baseness," that might be left to be adjusted by Mr. Addington and the "generous public," whom, about a year ago, he boasted that he had the honour to serve; but while the people are thus censured for hoarding, it may, one would think, be permitted to ask, why the Bank, which is declared by this same Minister to be " perfectly able to pay in specie," which has not created notes to a penny in amount beyond its capital," and as to the credit of which there is not the slightest suspicion;" while such reprobation is bestowed on the hoardings of the people, it may surely be permitted to ask,

* Portsmouth,