ABSTRACT
Since the unsuccessful issue of the negotiations for peace with France in the year 1806, a series of events, equally unexpected and important, has awakened this country to a more lively sense of its situation, and brought on a new crisis of public opinion. The experience of another year of warfare has been added to those which preceded it, and has shewn not only the futility of all attempts on our part to overturn or diminish the power of France, but the high probability that all such attempts will still continue to produce effects directly the reverse of those intended. In fact, it is only since the rupture of that negotiation, that the operation of the war is become more directly injurious to the commercial interests of this country. Until that period, an intercourse subsisted between Great Britain and the Continent, sufficient to carry off our manufactures, and to give employment to our traders; but the unhappy contests between France and the northern powers, and above all our late attack upon Denmark, have afforded our enemies an opportunity of excluding us from every port in Europe, and have placed the key of the continent in the hands of Bonaparte. These circumstances, added to the threatening aspect of public affairs, have at length excited the dormant feelings of the people; and a suspicion, not wholly groundless, begins to prevail, that if they sleep much longer they may awake only to their destruction. Subjects of the greatest importance to their interests begin to be again discussed. Hitherto indeed we have contended with our enemies for prizes of great value. States and empires have been the objects of dispute; and, as far as we have been interested in them, have been lust. But we have as yet struggled only for the possessions of our allies. At the present moment we are called upon for a higher stake. If the war is to be continued, it is now no longer matter of exaggeration to assert, that the sovereign of these realms is to contend for his crown; the people for their liberties and rights; for the soil in which their forefathers lie intomb’d. Against this stake, what is the prize we can hope to obtain from the enemy? The bare honour of having defended ourselves with success; for in any hopes of our being able lo make an impression on the dominions of France, the wildest advocates of the war will now scarcely indulge themselves. Thus we follow up a losing game. Holland, Switzerland, Germany, Sardinia, Italy, Prussia, Turkey, Denmark, and Russia, are not only lost to us, as allies, but have thrown their weight into the opposite scale. With the assistance of these powers we have been completely disappointed in all our views. Is it then advisable that we should play the last desperate game, and exhibit ourselves to the world as the last object of contest, with an adversary against whom we have been so far from obtaining any substantial advantages, that the utmost efforts we have been able to make, have hitherto only served to open to him an opportunity for still greater success?
