The hatred to what were called French principles was at this period in full activity. The privileged classes of every country hated Napoleon, because his genius had given stability to the institutions that grew out of the revolution, because his victories had baffled their calculations, and shaken their hold of power. As the chief of revolutionary France he was constrained to continue his career until the final accomplishment of her destiny, and this necessity, overlooked by the great bulk of mankind, afforded plausible ground for imputing insatiable ambition to the French government and to the French nation, of which ample use was made. Rapacity, insolence, injustice, cruelty, even cowardice, were said to be inseparable from the character of a Frenchman; and, as if such vices were nowhere else to be found, it was more than insinuated that all the enemies of France were inherently virtuous and disinterested. Unhappily history is but a record of crimes, and it is not wonderful that the arrogance of men, buoyed up by a spring-tide of military glory, should, as well among allies, as among vanquished enemies, have produced sufficient disgust to ensure a ready belief in any accusation, however false and absurd. Napoleon was the contriver and the sole support of a political system that required time and victory to consolidate; he was the connecting link between the new interests of mankind and what of the old were left in a state of vigour; he held them together strongly, but he was no favourite with either, and consequently in danger from both. His power, unsanctified by time, depended not less upon delicate management than upon vigorous exercise; he had to fix the foundations of, as well as to defend, an empire, and he may be said to have been rather peremptory than despotic. There were points of administration with which he durst not meddle even wisely, much less arbitrarily; customs, prejudices, and the dregs of the revolutionary licence interfered with his policy, and rendered it complicated and difficult. It was not so with his inveterate adversaries; the delusion of parliamentary representation enabled the English government safely to exercise an unlimited power over the persons and the property of the nation, and through the influence of an active and corrupt press they exercised nearly the same power over the public mind. The vast commerce of England, penetrating by a thousand channels (open or secret) as it were into every house on the face of the globe, supplied unequalled sources of intelligence. The spirit of traffic, which seldom acknowledges the ties of country, was universally on the side of Great Britain, and those twin curses, paper-money and public credit, so truly described as “strength in the beginning but weakness in the end,” were recklessly used by statesmen whose policy regarded not the interests of posterity. Such were the adventitious causes of England’s power; and her natural, legitimate resources were many and great.