The situation of England in the year 1807 was more extraordinary than any that is exhibited in the history of former times. After a war, which with the short interval of the peace of Amiens had continued fifteen years, and at the commencement of which all Europe had been leagued with her against revolutionary France, her last reliance upon the continental governments had failed; most of her former allies were leagued against her, and it was manifest that the few states which still preserved a semblance of neutrality, would soon in like manner be compelled into a confederacy with France. The French army and the English navy, two more tremendous powers than old times had ever seen, were opposed to each other without the possibility of coming in conflict. Masters as the French were on the continent, all thoughts of attacking them by land were at an end, and neither they nor their allies dared show their flag upon the sea. England could not in any way lessen the power of France, neither could France subdue, nor in any way weaken England. The threat of invasion had been laid aside: it had been seriously intended by Buonaparte, but the spirit with which the English people flew to arms intimidated him, and his gun-boats were left to rot in the harbours where with so much cost and care they had been collected. Secured against any such evil by our fleets, and still more by our internal strength, we were carrying on the war equally without fear and without hope.

The state of our home politics was not less remarkable. For the first time Great Britain was under an administration without a name; its ostensible head the Duke of Portland never appeared in parliament, and was neither spoken of, nor thought of by the public. He deserves, however, an honourable memorial in British history, for having accepted office in a time of peculiar and extreme difficulty, and thereby enabled the King to form a ministry whose opinions were in unison with his own principles and feelings, and with the wishes and true interests of his people. The other ministers held their places less by their own strength than by the weakness of their opponents, for of all administrations, that to which they had succeeded had been the most unpopular. From their want of influence in the country, the powerful families being mostly with the opposition, it was thought that they depended too much upon the personal favour of the sovereign, and were more literally the King’s servants than is consistent with the spirit of the constitution. Their talents had not been put fairly to the proof, and the nation had not as yet learned to appreciate the cool clear judgement of Lord Hawkesbury, the finished oratory of Mr. Canning, and the activity and intrepidity of Mr. Percival, always ready and always right-minded. While Pitt and Fox were living, every man believed either in one or in the other; one party was perfectly satisfied that all the measures of the minister were right, and the other as confidently expected that notwithstanding the evil consequences of his mispolicy and his misfortunes, the country was to be saved as soon as their political redeemer came into power. From this comfortable state, wherein faith supplied the place of reason, they were disturbed by the death of both these leaders, neither of whom left a successor, but both exaggerated reputations. It became the general complaint that there was no man or set of men in whom the nation had any confidence. Some persons apprehended from this a dangerous indifference in the public toward parliament itself. Others hoped that as the people were weary of factious debates, parliament would no longer be made a theatre of faction, but that measures would be discussed with a view to the common weal, and no longer solely with reference to the party by which they were brought forward.

The opposition consisted of the most heterogeneous and discordant materials. The Grenville party had a just view of the dangers of the country, and a right feeling for its honour. They were sincerely attached to the monarchy, to the Church of England, and to the existing constitution of the state: therefore they steadily and manfully resisted the measures of pretended reform which were brought forward sometimes by mistaken, sometimes by designing men, as leading with sure tendency to a mob-government, and all its certain horrors. They knew also that hopeless as the war might seem, it was our safest position, and that peace could not be made without disgrace and imminent danger, so long as the continent of Europe was under the control of France. But while they thus entirely agreed with the government in the fundamental principles of its policy foreign and domestic, they opposed it in all the details of administration with a factious animosity, which seemed to show how deeply they resented their dismissal from power: and thus they lost with the nation much of that weight which they must otherwise have possessed by reason of their acknowledged ability, their constitutional principles, and their high personal character. Still, however, they were regarded with a certain degree of respect, which was not the case with the remains of Mr. Fox’s party. ♦The Foxites.♦ The Foxites, from the beginning of the war, through all its changes had uniformly taken part against their country; consistent in this and in nothing else, they had always sided with the enemy, pleading his cause, palliating his crimes, extolling his wisdom, magnifying his power, vilifying and accusing their own government, depreciating its resources, impeding its measures, insulting its allies, calling for disclosures which no government ought to make, and forcing them sometimes from the weakness and the mistaken liberality of their opponents. Buonaparte, as Washington had done before him, relied upon their zeal and virulence; and they by their speeches and writings served him more effectually upon the continent and in France itself, than all the manifestoes of his ministers, and the diatribes of his own press. In future ages it will be thought a strange and almost incredible anomaly in politics, that there should have existed in the legislature of any country a regular party, organised and acknowledged as such, whose business it was to obstruct the proceedings of government, and render it by every possible means contemptible and odious to the people; a party always in semi-alliance with the enemy, who in times of difficulty and danger prophesied nothing but failure, disgrace, and ruin; and whose systematic course of conduct, if it had been intended to bring about the fulfilment of their predictions, could not have been more exactly adapted to that object.

The Foxites, before they were admitted into office, had pertinaciously insisted upon the practicability and ease of making peace; this opinion could not be maintained while they were in power, and their dismission was at this time so recent, that it could not as yet decently be resumed. Attempts, however, to raise a popular cry for peace were made by certain manufacturers whose trade was at a stand: they were assisted by many of those persons who in strict adherence to the phraseology as well as the principles of the puritans, call themselves religious professors, and by some other conscientious but inconsistent men, who while they admit that the necessity of war must be allowed in just cases, exclaim in all cases against the practice, setting their compassionate feelings in array against reason, and against the manlier virtues. ♦Superstition concerning Buonaparte.♦ A superstition concerning Buonaparte was mingled with this womanish sensibility. They who had not lost sight of his enormities doubted whether he were the Beast, whose number they contrived to discover in his name; ... or Antichrist himself. Others whom he had in some degree conciliated by his various aggressions upon the papal power, forgave him his crimes because the Whore of Babylon happened to be among those whom he had plundered: they rather imagined him to be the Man upon the White Horse. In this, however, they were all agreed, that Providence had appointed him for some great11 work: and it was an easy conclusion for those whose weak heads and warm imaginations looked no further, that it must be unavailing, if not impious, to oppose him.

This was a pitiable delusion: but more extraordinary was the weakness of those, who having been the friends of France at the commencement of the revolution, when they believed that the cause of liberty was implicated in her success, looked with complacency now upon the progress which oppression was making in the world, because France was the oppressor. They had turned their faces toward the east, in the morning, to worship the rising sun, and now when it was evening they were looking eastward still, obstinately affirming that still the sun was there. Time had passed on; circumstances were changed; nothing remained stationary except their understandings; and because they had been incapable of deriving wisdom from experience, they called themselves consistent; and because they were opposed in every thing to the views of their government, the hopes of their countrymen, and the honour and interest of their country, they arrogated to themselves the exclusive praise of patriotism! But the persons who from these various views and feelings united in calling for peace, were insignificant in number, and government had never at any time more certainly acted with the full concurrence of the nation, than in carrying on the war against Buonaparte.

Heavy burthens had been incurred during this long and arduous contest. At the commencement of the year 1807, the annual expenditure was not less than seventy-two millions, and the national debt amounted to six hundred and twenty-seven. But hitherto the prosperity of the country had kept pace with its exertions. The wheels of the machine seemed rather to move more freely than to be impeded by the weight which was laid upon them; and the war created means for supporting its enormous demands, by the enterprise which it called into action, and the money which it put in circulation. All the manufactures connected with the numerous branches of the naval and military service were in full activity. Agricultural industry also received an impulse such as had never before been experienced; for the English being excluded from the Baltic, and holding relations of doubtful amity with the United States of America, were fain to depend upon themselves for produce, and the emergency produced commensurate exertions throughout the kingdom. The country banks supplied a currency without which these exertions could not have been made; every where wastes were brought into cultivation; and the agricultural labourers being every where employed at high wages, contributed by their increased expenditure to extend the prosperity of which they partook.

Other circumstances, connected with the progress of society, and leading beyond all doubt to the most perilous crisis which society has ever yet undergone, conduced at this time mainly to the service of the state, and enabled the government to raise a revenue and support fleets and armies upon a scale which even in the last generation could not have been contemplated as possible. As the drunkard derives a pleasurable sensation, and an immediate excitement from strong liquors which by their sure effect are producing organic derangement, incurable disease, and death, so the manufacturing system contributed at this time to the national wealth and strength, while it was poisoning the vitals of the commonwealth. Carried as it now appeared to be by mechanical ingenuity and power to its utmost extent, it enabled our merchants to supply the world with manufactured goods, and at so low a price, that the most severe enactments, enforced by the most vigilant precautions, could not exclude them from the continental markets. In vain did Buonaparte shut the ports of Europe against the British flag, thinking that by destroying that part of our revenue which is derived from foreign trade, he should cut the sinews of our strength; in vain did the American government co-operate with him by its non-importation acts; British goods still found their way every where, and the books of the custom-house proved a continual increase in our exports; while the internal commerce of the country (nine-elevenths of the whole), and that with Ireland and our foreign possessions (a large proportion of the remaining parts), flourished beyond all former example. The manufacturing system supplied the war with men as well as means; the necessity for hands in agriculture also being greatly diminished by improved modes of labour, and by the use of agricultural machines, we were enabled without violence or difficulty to maintain in arms a force scarcely inferior in numbers to that of the enemy with all their fivefold superiority of population. And thus the country was prevented from feeling the evil of that forced population which the manufacturing system and the poor laws had produced, and of the prevailing custom of educating youths of the middle rank for stations higher than that in which they were born, or had means to support.

In resources therefore for maintaining war, the British government had never been so strong: and so far as Buonaparte reckoned upon our financial difficulties, and the want of men to resist him whenever and wherever he should bring his overwhelming force against us, he deceived himself, as much as when he supposed it possible to intimidate the British nation. But he reckoned also upon the weakness of our government, the aid which would be given him by a licentious press, and the progress of those insane opinions which lead to revolution and ruin. His councils were directed by a single will steadily to one end; and whatever he undertook was vigorously pursued, and with means proportioned to the object so as to render success certain, as far as depended upon well-concerted plans, adequate preparations, and military strength. But the constitution of a British cabinet, in which contrarious opinions are reconciled by concessions and compromises, seemed in time of war to insure vacillation and weakness. The whole conduct of the war had confirmed him in this judgement, which the history of all our wars since the days of Marlborough exemplifies. Every administration, this like the last, and the last like that before it, treading one after another in the same sheep-track of fatuity, proceeded without system, and with no other views than such as the chance and changes of the hour presented. Setting sail before the wind from whatever quarter it happened to blow, they steered a driftless course, though the shallows lay full before them. The same tardiness, the same indecision, the same half measures, the same waste of men and money in nugatory expeditions, had characterized them all. Moreover the government itself had been weakened by the concessions which faction, ever active and ever alert, had extorted from a series of feeble ministers during this long reign. At a time when discontent was at its height at the close of the American war, the House of Commons passed a resolution that the power of the Crown had increased, was increasing, and ought to be diminished; a resolution that carried with it its own refutation, being itself a decisive proof of the weakness of the government under which and against which it was passed. More than once had a ministry been forced upon the King in opposition to his own principles of policy, and his personal feelings. That which had happened might again happen; changes, always possible in a country which was governed so little by system, and so much by popular opinion, might again force the Whigs into power: ♦Hopes of Buonaparte.♦ and under their ascendancy Buonaparte might reasonably expect to conclude a peace. With all the ports of the continent at his command he could build ships in any number, but it was only during peace that sailors could be trained to man them; a few years of peace would suffice for this, and then he might meet us on the seas with a superiority of force which would give him the power of landing an army at any time upon our shores. For this reason and for this alone, he was sincerely desirous of making peace with England, being the surest means by which he could hope to bring about the overthrow of this hated and otherwise invulnerable enemy. But while the war continued that enemy could do him no farther hurt, he was at leisure to continue his system of aggrandizement; wherever there was no sea to intervene, there was nothing to withstand him. His projects even in the fullest extent of their ambition were thought feasible by the public, who throughout Europe were dazzled by his success: his power appeared irresistible; and his empire was supposed by all persons to be firmly established, except by those who having a firm reliance upon the moral order of the world, believed that the triumph of evil principles could only endure for a time, and that no system can be permanent which is founded upon irreligion, injustice, and violence.