474

LIFE OF COLONEL MACERONI.

ducing it. What could be better than war to carry offsome hundreds of thousands a-year, and to keep an equalnumber in a state of “check” to their re-producing pro-pensities. War, therefore, war — war — war ! Victories,illuminations, intoxications, moral and physical,—prizes,prize-money, Spanish dollars, “ bank tokens,” paper notes,high prices, but high wages, fictitious wealth, false glory,the cant of self-defence, the fact of constant aggression, anational madness, a blind hatred to the real social science--to the real social axiom of the greatest happiness to thegreatest number ! Such was the state of Great Britain when its armies were unfortunately so fortunate in Spain ;when her ministers succeeded in persuading the EmperorAlexander to pick a new cause of quarrel with the Emperorof the French . I should much like to investigate andexpose the real nature of the last wars with France , begin-ning with the instigations and aids which cost the weakLouis XVI . his crown and life, ending with the Congressesof Vienna of 1814 and 1815, at which the British ministersthrew overboard, at one fell swoop, all the commercial andother advantages, which, for the previous twenty-eightyears, they had pretended to fight for at a cost of manyhundred millions of pounds sterling. But such scope isnot allowed me here. So I go on with Murat in the grandRussian campaign.

The Emperor Napoleon was, on the very onset, unfortu-nate in the loss of, at least, two months in commencingoperations. At this critical juncture France was menacedwith famine, occasioned partly by deficient crops, but more,I believe, by the speculations of capitalists, who, in thecircumscribed range of commercial operations, fell to buyingup all the grain in the French empire, and then selling it ata famine price. The precautions and the remedies adoptedby the French ministry increased the alarm, if not the evil.