The National Register.
London, England, 1817-09-22 00:00:00

ON THE LIBELS OF THE CONTINENTAL PRESS.

WE have more than once taken occasion to advert to
the system which has for some time prevailed in Ger-
many and the Netherlands, of heaping every species of
abuse upon this country, and of holding us up to the
world as a people to be at once hated and feared. While
we saw this practice confined to a few proscribed French-
men, we were content to treat their tirades with the
contempt and scorn which they deserved. The only
cause of regret with us, was, that the copying of these
libellous declamations seemed to afford peculiar pleasure
to certain of our Journalists, who found in them much
to admire, and nothing to condemn ; and more par-
ticularly to one of them, who for the last thirty years
has maintained a conspicuous rank by the boldness of
his attacks upon all constituted authority ; and whose
writings, had their effects been commensurate with
the efforts, would long ago have produced the same
scenes of spoliation and blood amongst us that have
been the endless theme of his praise, front the first
act of aggression by revolutionary France, to the fatal
hour that consigned the genius of Jacobin liberty to the
barren ro.‘l: of St. Helena.

We sometime ago con templated an abundant harvest of
Continental abuse from an avowal made in the columns
of the llornipg -Chronicle, that henceforth they would
particularly att-nd to productions of the Continental
Press, and give publicity to such articles as might from
time to time appear calculated to set the people of Eu-
rope right as to our influence upon their affairs. This
pledge the Morning Chroaicle has not been slow in
redeeming. Through its columns the most libellous
article which we have for a long time ‘Vitnessed, has
this week met the public eye. It is entitled an "Essai sur
Is l'olitique de la Nation Anglais," and is from the pen
of a M. Scheffer, who has already been before the world
as a political writer. For several reasons this produc-
tion deserves particular notice. The writer is not a
Frenchman, but a German ; be affects to be minutely '
.acquainted with our laws, with cur political institu-
tions, with our party animosities and attachments ; and
his doctrines are the more carefully to be guarded
vgainst, because all the abuse and tidseltood which
be utters, are uttered under the disguise of friend-
ship and sympathetic feeling for the "enslaved" and
"miserable" British people, the great body of whom,
he conceives, entertain opinions directly hostile to
their Government, and his Editor in the Morning
Chronicle, nobly supports him, by assuring us that," the
great body of the people of England never approved
of the measures of the Government," and " those
writers of the continent who have any thing more th:la
a transient popularity at heart, ought, therefore, to dis-
courage, by all possible means, an indiscriminate abuse
of England, mil to teach the people that their hatred
is exclusively duct° the English Gov:yam:at, as the sole
-cense of their ealannlies." If d. Scheirer had said
this, we would pardon him, because he, by-and-by, lets
us into the secret of his cause of hatred to the Bri-
tish Government ; but such language from the pen of
an English writer must subject him to the hatred and
contempt of every good man, whatever may be his
political bias.

M. Scliefrer congratulates himself with great com-
placency °a the discovery he has made of separating
the people from the Government. "We have," says
he, " endeavoured in this work to consider the Eng-
lish nation in a new point of view—to prove that its
policy is essentially oppos,l to that of its Government ;"
and yet this egregious politician tells us in another
place, that, " during the continuance of the continental
system, there ha l grown ap, as well in Germ:uly as
France and the Low C,uutries, c,lanufactµres,