Never since the days of Oliver Cromwell had any name caused so much fear in England as did that of Napoleon Bonaparte. From 1802 until his first downfall, in 1814, a spirit of alarm and uneasiness pervaded all classes in Great Britain, from the King and his Ministers down to the most illiterate peasant. Those who were witnesses of, and participators in, this panic have now passed away, but the national pride which our victory over Napoleon at Waterloo excited in every Briton’s breast is as strong as ever, and will last till the crack of doom. In July, 1803, a little pamphlet, entitled _Important Considerations for the People of this Kingdom_, was published in London, and “sent to the officiating minister of every parish in England.” This pamphlet, which bears the Royal Arms of England, was an appeal from the Government to the Nation, and a diatribe against Napoleon. Mark the closing lines of this appeal: “Shall we, who are abundantly supplied with iron and steel, powder and lead—shall we, who have a fleet superior to the maritime force of all the world, and who are able to bring two millions of fighting men into the field—shall we yield up this dear and happy land, together with all the liberties and honours, to preserve which our fathers so often dyed the land and the sea with their blood?... No, we are not so miserably fallen; we cannot, in so short a space of time, have become so detestably degenerate; we have the strength and the will to repel the hostility, to chastise the insolence of the foe. Mighty, indeed, must be our efforts, but mighty also is the need.” The idea of a French invasion was slow in forcing its way into the minds of the uneducated classes in England. When they first heard of such a possibility they thought it of no more consequence than the invasion of Scotland by Charles Edward Stuart with a mere handful of Frenchmen at his back. They also thought less of the projected descent from having heard so much in 1797, and during the Rebellion in Ireland in 1798, of a French army coming to the relief of the National party in that kingdom:— “For the French are on the sea, Says the Shan Van Vaugh, And Ireland will soon be free, Says the Shan Van Vaugh.”