862. BONAPARTE (N.), England and.
—To complete and universalize the desolation
of the globe, it has been the will of Providence
to raise up, at the same time, a tyrant
as unprincipled and as overwhelming, for
the ocean. Not in the poor maniac George,
but in his government and nation. Bonaparte
will die, and his tyrannies with him. But a
nation never dies. The English government,
and its piratical principles and practices, have
no fixed term of duration. Europe feels, and
is writhing under the scorpion whips of Bonaparte.
We are assailed by those of England.
The one continent thus placed under the gripe
of England, and the other of Bonaparte, each
has to grapple with the enemy immediately
pressing on itself. We must extinguish the
fire kindled in our own house, and leave to
our friends beyond the water that which is
consuming theirs.—
To Madame de Stael. Washington ed. vi, 115.
(M.
May. 1813)
