The Press.
London, England, 1856-01-12 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

The King says that for the last month he has been
mancenvring with 40,000 men against 100,000. Tell him
that it is his own fault ; and that it is the very thing of
which I complain. The bringing Marshal Soult is wrong;
it is against all rules ; it is open to every objection, and
has no advantage.

The next reproof was well deserved. With ex-
treme folly, Joseph announced the battle of
Talavera as a victory gained by the French.
The hawk's eye of Napoleon discerned the
truth. The letter of August 21, 1809, in which
he analysed the account sent to him, is a mas-
terpiece of keen perception and quick reason-
ing. To Clarke ho wrote --
In your letter to the King, hint that I disapprove his
order of the day; that it tells the soldiers that they are
conquerers; that this is ruin to the troops; that I am in
want of correct information ; that I wish to know the
number of killed and wounded iu each regiment, of guns
and standards taken, &c. Say that in Spain affairs are
undertaken without reflection or knowledge of war; and
.:hat on the day of action there is neither union, nor plan,
nor decision. Write to General Sebastiani that the King
has sent to me his report; that it is not the report of a
soldier describing to me what has been and what is ; that
it is full of nothing but fine speeches ; that I had rather
that he had told me his real opinions; and had given an
exact and faithful account of what happened. In short, I
have a right to be told the truth.

A few weeks subsequently General Clarke
was commissioned to chide the King more
severely :

I wish you to write to the King of Spain to impress
upon him that nothing can be more contrary to the rules
of war than to publish the strength of his army, either in
orders of the day, in proclamations, or in the newspapers;
that when he has occasion to speak of his strength, he
ought to render it formidable by exaggeration, doubling or
trebling his numbers; and that, on the other hand, when
he mentions the strength of the enemy, he should
diminish it by one-half or one-third ; that in war moral
force is everything ; that the King deviated from this prin-
ciple when he said that he had only 40,000 men. and the
insurgents 120,000; that to represent the French as few,
and the enemy as numerous, discourages us, and gives
confidence to them ; that it is publishing his weakness
throughout Spain. In short, to give moral force to the
enemy is to take it from oneself; for men naturally be-
lieve that in the long run the small force will be beaten by
the greater Constantly in my Italian cam•
paigns, when I had only a handful of men, I exaggerated
their numbers ; this saved my purpose without diminishing
my glory.

He adds immediately afterwards :

With paltry motives, petty vanities, and small passions,
nothing great has ever been done.

Strange that the being who could be so saga.
cious could also be so shortsighted. In tnose
words he has described his own career and his
own nature. What a satire upon his constant
falsehood—or, to use his own term, "exaggera-
tion"—upon his lust of conquest and disordered
mind, is that reproof of paltry motives, petty
vanities, and small passions. His frequent
repetition of the phrase, " in war moral force
" is everything," induces us to inquire what he
meant by " moral force." Not surely the
opinion that is intelligent, for that is not to
be won by lying; nor the opinion that is free,
for that is not to be dominated by the sword ;
nor the opinion that is just, for that is not to be
conciliated by arbitrary conquest, and by his
favorite burning and hanging system : the
" moral force" he meant must have been a
sort of blind confidence based upon utter
ignorance, or upon reports monstrously false.
This kind of "moral force," like his system,
was not calculated to stand. It broke down at
Dist Napoleon's words gained no credit.
Whether false or true, they were alike useless,
and became ridiculed and despised.

Greater mortification to Joseph was soon to
follow. Napoleon wrote to Berthier (April
17th, 1810) :

The King of Spain is to have no voice as to the confis•
cation and disposal of the British goods iu Andalusia. He
is only the commander of my army.
Even this was not enough. He appointed re-
ceivers for the six Governments of Spain, who
were ordered to pay all their collections to the
Imperial Receiver-General, and the south of
Spain was handed over to the government of
Soult. This last indignity was too much for
Joseph His remonstrance on the subject is
the best of his letters. In Andalusia alone,
he said, he hoped to find some resources :

To give the command of the troops to a general who
does not recognise my authority is to give him the admi-
nistration and government of the country. Et is to take
from me the only province in which I could hope to live;
it is to confine me to Madrid, which gives me only 800,000
francs per mouth, while my indispensable expenses
exceed four millions per month. lam here surrounded
by the ruins Of a great nation.

SATURDAY,

It is most instructive to note in this "Cor.
respondence" how Napoleon's system was
crumbling when it seemed that he was at the
height of his power. His empire was to all
outward appearance most mighty and glorious
in 1810 ; yet even then its foundation, as
regarded his boasted conquests, was utterly
rotten. By command of Napoleon, Berthier
wrote to Joseph :

The Emperor, sire, is deeply grieved to hear that the
army which is laying siege to Cadiz is in a state of complete
destitution ; that their pay is nine months in arrear. This
state of things may be productive of serious misfortunes.
His Majesty can send to Spain no more than two millions
a month, which he has assigned to that employment,
because the money of France is exhausted—because, in the
present state of affairs in Spain, war must support war—
because all the resources in the country must be employed to
feed, pay, and clothe the troops which conquer it—because to
discipline and pay Spanish troops is to discipline and pay
one's enemies—because, lastly, soldiers must be paid
before civilians, and, above all, the French troops who
alone support your Majesty in Spain.
It was vain for Joseph to show that war
could not support war ; that he was destitute
of resources ; that his Government was con-
tinually sinking lower and lower: his remon-
strances were unheeded, and the elements of
mill were suffered to gather thickly round the
throne which Napoleon had exercised so
much treachery to seize, and spent so much
blood to maintain. In this " Correspondence"
we see how it is that conquered countries can
never be made to pay, and that empires
unduly extended by fraud or violence, and
upheld only by armed force, bear in them.
selves seeds of decay, which at any moment
may acquire irresistible force. The tale of
Spain is also that of Naples. The conquered
countries could not be made to support the
conquering armies, and became an intolerable
burden on French finances.

It is inexplicable why Napoleon, during the
three years that he paid such constant atten-
tion to the affairs of Spain, did not advance
himself to encounter Wellington. He rcecived
the accounts of the English successes with
rage and mortification, yet while they grew
he remained inactive in Paris. His invasion
of Russia was an enormous error, while Spain
was so insecure. Perhaps, had he gone thither
in person, his whole fortunes might have been
changed. His own campaign beyond the
Pyrenees had been triumphantly successful.
The editor writes ;
When he (Napoleon) entered Spain (in Nov., 1808), the
French armies had either capitulated to the English at
Cintra, or to the Spaniards at Baylen, or had retired beyond
the Ebro. When he left it, less than three months after-
wards, the English had been driven out of Spain, the
resistance of the Spaniards was confined to the defence of
a few towns and a guerilla war in the southern and
western provinces, and Joseph was again in Madrid.

Well is he characterised here, as " the most
" provident, the most accurate, and the most
" powinl of administrators, and the best
" obeyed of generals." Yet not all his autho-
rity and capacity could prevent enormous
abuses from creeping into every military de-
partment. Some curious examples are given
here. But we must break off. There is so
much valuable matter in these volumes that
we purpose returning to them, more especially
as there are points which may be advan-
tageously brought out in connection with the
controversies on military matters prevailing
at the present time.

Principles of Gover►►►nent; or, Meditations in
Exile. By William Smith O'Brien. Dublin :
Duffy.
THE political career of the author of this work
might suggest that his literary compositions
would partake of extravagance and political
sectarianism. The closing years of Mr.
O'Brien's public life were in marked contrast
with the moderation of his early course.
Utterly unsuited for the part of a tribune, he
plunged into the vortex of agitation, when his
high position and Protestant connections gave
his actions an importance which his want of ora-
torical faculty would have otherwise prevented
hint from gaining Brother to the present Lord
Inchiquin, Mr. O'Brien belonged to a family
of pure Milesian descent, of high Tory politics,
and of considerable landed influence. Much
of his personal notoriety resulted, therefore,
from the fact of "an aristocrat" condescend-
ing to work in concert with O'Connell, after he
had for years pursued a perfectly independent

Mr,

course. That he was sincere in his purposes
is now as generally acknowledged as that he
was rash in his designs, and inconsiderate as
to his means. He was the dupe of 'dema-
gogues, the plaything of mobs, and the sport
of a Celtic democracy, wild, vain, and unpfucti
cal in its ambition, and volatile in Its
superficial passions. To be the thief of such
a population was a mission for which Mr.
O'Brien was never adapted. He had not the
charm of brilliant eloquence, nor had he any
of the wit or humour indigenous to the Irish
soil. Neither had he the practical talents re-
quired for organisation : his intellect was
speculative, his knowledge was derived from
books, not from observation, and his general
views of life were those of an accomplished
country gentleman, neither tamely con-
ventional nor daringly original, It was
said of him once that, "Whatever were
" Mr. O'Brien's follies in public, he was a
" very good man upon paper." His parlia
inentary speeches were not listened to with
attention, but they Sometimes read well in the
journals; and his letters in the newspapers,
without the inflation of Irish rhetoric, were
smooth and logical comoositions.
These two volumes on " The Principles of
Government" corroborate those traits of cha-
racter. There is nothing trivial, fanciful, or
absurd in their contents. They exhibit sus-
tained calmness of mind and a reasonableness
of view upon all questions. The Irish subject
is not intruded in the text, and there are
only one or two cursory allusions to it. Some
of our readers will be surprised when we tell
them that many of the opinions of these vo-
lumes may be safely accepted by the gentry of
England.
The work, it appears, was begun during the
author's " exile' in Australia, and was com-
posed without reference to books. Hence all
the questions are discussed from the point of
view suggested by " the general principle."
At a certain time, when a political public is
dominated too much by routine, we do not
object to politicians leaning strongly upon
`principles." But there is an imposing and
seductive use of the word " principles " against
which we should guard. Scotch professors
have a knack at serving up comiiithiplaces dig-
guised in quasi philosophical language, and
beggarly truisms are sent forth to flaunt in the
flowing robes of the academy. It would,
doubtless, be a rank heresy in morals to doubt
that there are real principles hi politics. The
biography of statesmen, like the history of
nations. records that there are certain
immu-
table rules which cannot be violated. But we
apprehend that the fundamental principles of
Government can be stated in a small space;
and in a country like England, where freedom
exists as a grand social fact, legalised by law
and hallowed by national traditions, the solu-
tion of all the great questions will turn more
upon practical than on abstract considerations.
Sound general views of law or medicine will
not alone make an efficient barrister or physi-
cian: there must be closeness and specialty of
knowledge. The lawyers have a maxim which
may also be applied to a mere speculative
politician,—" Duhius versatur in generalibus."
Unless there be decided originality of thought,
works of mere " principles " in polities rarely
contain aught that is practically useful. Blue
Books have crushed the race of system-
mongers.
In the first of these volumes Mr. Smith
O'Brien treats of an immense variety of sub-
jects. He devotes his opening chapters to the
origin of Government, and propounds his
main views on it in the following way :
We should never forget that theoretical ideas must be
modified according to circumstances, in their application
and that a form of government which is admirably adapted
to the genius and requirements of one people, may be
wholly unsuitable for another. Peculiarities of national
character, traditional ideas, feelings, and habits, as well as
local circumstances of various kinds, must be taken into
account in moulding the political institutions of each
country. A constitution which produces the happiest re•
sults amongst a community of Americans would lead to
nothing but confusion if conferred upon an Asiatic popula-
tion accustomed to despotic rule. A charter—a paper
constitution—however perfectly devised, never gave, nor
ever car, give, liberty to a people who are indisposed to
exercise self government.
Time, country, race, are the media through
which political abstractions have to pass ; and
at au early stage of the social process, a