Maritime commerce was indeed fainting in France, but her internal and continental traffic was robust; her manufactures were rapidly improving; her debt was small; her financial operations conducted on a prudent plan, and with exact economy. The supplies were all raised within the year without any very great pressure of taxation, and from a sound metallic currency; thus there seemed to be no reasonable doubt, that any war undertaken by Napoleon might be by him brought to a favourable termination. On the other hand, England, omnipotent at sea, was little regarded as a military power. Her enormous debt was yearly increasing in an accelerated ratio; and this necessary consequence of anticipating the resources of the country, and dealing in a factitious currency, was fast eating into the vital strength of the state; for although the merchants and great manufacturers were thriving from the accidental circumstances of the times, the labourers were suffering and degenerating in character; pauperism and its sure attendant crime were spreading over the land, and the population was fast splitting into distinct classes,--the one rich and arbitrary, the other poor and discontented: the former composed of those who profited, the latter of those who suffered by the war. Of Ireland it is unnecessary to speak; her wrongs and her misery, peculiar and unparalleled, are too well known, and too little regarded, to call for remark. This general comparative statement, so favourable to France, would however be a false criterion of the relative strength of the belligerents, with regard to the approaching struggle in the Peninsula. A cause manifestly unjust is a heavy weight upon the operations of a general: it reconciles men to desertion--it sanctifies want of zeal--is a pretext for cowardice--renders hardships more irksome, dangers more obnoxious, and glory less satisfactory to the mind of the soldier. Now the invasion of the Peninsula, whatever might have been its real original, was an act of violence on the part of Napoleon repugnant to the feelings of mankind. The French armies were burthened with a sense of its iniquity, the British troops exhilarated by a contrary sentiment. All the continental nations had smarted under the sword of Napoleon, but, with the exception of Prussia, none were crushed; a common feeling of humiliation, the hope of revenge, and the ready subsidies of England, were bonds of union among their governments stronger than the most solemn treaties. France could only calculate on their fears, England was secure in their self-love.