tion of that monarchy, and of the hereditary succession to your throne in our fourth dynasty.

France and posterity will find it, under all circumstances, faithful to this sacred duty; and all its members will ever be ready to perish in defence of this palladium of the national safety and prosperity.

In the commencement of our ancient dynasties, Sire, we find, on more than one occasion, the monarch directing that a solemn oath should, by anticipation, bind the French of every rank to the heir to the throne; and sometimes, when the age of the young prince permitted, a crown was placed upon his head, as the emblem of his future authority, and the symbol of the perpetuity of the govern

ment.

The affection that the whole nation entertains for the King of Rome, proves, Sire, both the attachment of the French to the blood of your Majesty, and that internal sentiment which encourages every citizen, and which shows him, in that august infant, the security of his family, the safeguard of his property, and an invincible obstacle to the intestine divisions, those civil commotions, and those political disorders, which are the greatest scourges that can afflict nations.

Sire, your Majesty has planted the French eagles upon the towers of Moscow. The enemy was unable to put a stop to your success and to counteract your projects, otherwise than by resorting to the terrific resources of despotic governments; by creating deserts upon the whole of his frontiers; by carrying conflagrations into his provinces; and by delivering to the flames his capital, the centre of his riches, and the product of so many ages.

They little knew your Majesty's heart, who thus renewed the barbarous tactics of their savage ancestors. Your Majesty would have willingly renounced trophies that were to cost so much blood, and so many miseries to humanity.

The hasty arrival that we witness, from all the departments of the empire, to join your Majesty's standard, of the numerous soldiers called upon by the senatus consultum of September last, is an example of what your Majesty may expect from the zeal, the patriotism, and the warlike ardor of the French, to snatch from the influence of our enemies the different parts of the Continent, and to conquer an honorable and solid peace.

May your Imperial and Royal Majesty, Sire, accept the tribute of acknowledgments of the love and inviolable fidelity of the senate, and of the French people.

THE EMPEROR'S ANSWER.

SENATORS, What you tell me is very agreeable to me. I have at heart the glory and the power of France. My first wishes are for every thing that can perpetuate interior tranquillity, and forever secure my people from the lacerations of factions and the horrors of anarchy. It is upon those enemies of the welfare of nations, that I have founded, with the consent and love of the French, this throne, to which are henceforth attached the destinies of the country.

Timid and cowardly soldiers lose the independence of nations; but pusillanimous magistrates destroy the empire of the laws, the rights of the throne, and social order itself.

The noblest death would be that of a soldier who perishes in the field of

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honor, if the death of a magistrate, perishing in the defence of the sovereign, of the throne, and of the laws, were not still more glorious.

When I undertook the regeneration of France, I asked of Providence a determinate number of years. We can destroy in a moment; but we cannot rebuild without the assistance of time. What a state most wants is courageous magistrates.

Our fathers had for a rallying word, The king is dead; long live the king! These few words contain the principal advantages of monarchy. I believe that I have well studied the disposition that my people have exhibited during the different ages. I have reflected upon what has taken place in the different epochs of our history. I shall continue to do so.

The war that I am carrying on against Russia is a political war. I have made it without animosity. I wished to spare her the calamities that she has inflicted upon herself. I might have armed the greater part of her population against herself, by proclaiming liberty to the slaves. A great number of villages requested me to do so; but, knowing the debasement of that numerous class of the Russian people, I refused to take that measure, which would have devoted many families to death, and to the most horrible torments. My army has suffered losses, but it is owing to the premature inclemency of the season.

I accept of the sentiments that you express to me.

B.

(Page 322.)

3 March, 1813.

The contents of the foregoing volume are summarily comprehended in a few sentences in the following

COMMENT

by Napoleon, Emperor of France:

"On the twentieth of December, 1812, the council of state were conducted into the imperial presence, and presented by His Serene Highness, the Prince ArchChancellor of the empire (Cambacères.)

"His Excellency, Count de Fermon, Minister of State, President of the Section of Finance, made an address. To which the Emperor made the following

answer:

"It is to ideology, to that obscure metaphysics, which, searching with subtlety after first causes, wishes to found upon them the legislation of nations, instead of adapting the laws to the knowledge of the human heart and to the lessons of history, that we are to attribute all the calamities that our beloved France has experienced. Those errors necessarily produced the government of the men of blood. Indeed, who proclaimed the principle of insurrection as a duty? Who flattered the people, by proclaiming for them a sovereignty which they were incapable of exercising? Who destroyed the sanctity and the respect to the laws, by making them to depend, not upon the sacred principles of justice, upon

the nature of things, and upon civil justice, but only upon the will of an assembly of men, composed of men strangers to the knowledge of the civil, criminal, administrative, political, and military laws?

"When we are called to regenerate a state, we must act upon opposite principles. History paints the human heart. It is in history that we are to seek for the advantages and disadvantages of different systems of law. These are the principles of which the council of state of a great empire ought never to lose sight. It ought to add to them a courage equal to every emergency, and like the Presidents Harlay and Molé, be ready to perish in defence of the sovereign, the throne, and the laws."

COMMENT ON THE COMMENT.

Napoleon! Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur. This book is a prophecy of your empire, before your name was heard!

The political and literary world are much indebted for the invention of the new word IDEOLOGY.

Our English words, Idiocy or Idiotism, express not the force or meaning of it. It is presumed its proper definition is the science of Idiocy. And a very profound, abstruse, and mysterious science it is. You must descend deeper than the divers in the Dunciad to make any discoveries, and after all you will find no bottom. It is the bathos, the theory, the art, the skill of diving and sinking in government. It was taught in the school of folly; but alas! Franklin, Turgot, Rochefoucauld, and Condorcet, under Tom Paine, were the great masters of that academy!

It may be modestly suggested to the Emperor, to coin another word in his new mint, in conformity or analogy with Ideology, and call every constitution of government in France, from 1789 to 1799, an IDEOCRACY.

QUINCY, 6 December, 1814.

THIS volume was yesterday returned from Mr. C., who has had it almost a year. The events in Europe, since 3 March, 1813, are remarkable. Napoleon is now in Elba, and Talleyrand at Vienna! Let us read Candide, and Zadig, and Rasselas, and see if there is any thing extravagant in them.

Have not philosophers been as honest, and as mad, as popes, Jesuits, priests, emperors, kings, heroes, conquerors? Has the Inquisition been more cruel than Robespierre, or Marat, or Napoleon?

Man ought to "drop into himself."

The Inquisition is now revived, and the order of the Jesuits is restored. Sic transit gloria philosophia. Even Gibbon was for restoring the Inquisition! Philosophy is now as distracted as it was in Alexandria during the siege of Jerusalem! And where is our New England bound? To Hartford Convention! Vide Rasselas, Candide, Zadig, Jenni, Scarmentado, Micromegas, &c.

"Ridendo dicere verum

Quid vetat?"

J. A.