Lectures

178.

CHAP. but the direct and immediate interposition of heaven.1 LXVIII. Yet, while no reasonable mind will probably doubt 1812. the agency of Supreme power in this awful event, it is Arnold, perhaps more consonant to our ideas of the Divine on History, administration, and more descriptive of the esta blished order of the universe, to behold in it the consequence of the fixed moral laws of our being, rather than any special outpouring of celestial wrath. It was the necessity of conquest to existence, which Napoleon throughout his whole career so brought strongly felt, and so often expressed, which was about this the real cause which precipitated him upon the

Steps which

punish

ment.

snows of Russsia; and we are not to regard the calamitous issue of the expedition as the punishment merely of his individual ambition, but as the inevitable result and just retribution of the innumerable crimes of the Revolution. The steps which brought about this consummation now stand revealed in imperishable light: the unbounded passions let loose during the first fervour of that convulsion, impelled the nation, when the French throne was overturned, into the career of foreign conquest; the armed multitude would not submit to the cost which their armies required; the maxim that war must maintain war, flowed from the impatience of taxation in the Parisian, as it had done in the Roman people; and the system was of necessity adopted of precipitating armies, without magazines or any other resources except warlike equipments, to seek for subsistence and victory in the heart of the enemy's territory. Thence the forced requisitions, the scourging contributions, the wasting of nations, the furnishing of armies, the exasperation of mankind. Nothing was wanting, in the end, but the constancy to resist the vehemence of the onset, for the spirit of universal

hostility was roused; and this was found in the CHAP. tenacity of Wellington at Torres Vedras, and the LXVIII. heroism of Alexander in Russia. The faithful 1812. trembled and sunk in silence, and almost doubted, in the long-continued triumph of wickedness, the reality of the Divine administration of the universe; but the laws of Providence were incessantly acting, and preparing in silence the renovation of the world.

APPENDIX.

CHAPTER LX.

Note A, p. 73.

TABLE showing the progressive Number of Commitments in England, Scotland, and Ireland, in the undermentioned Years.

It is impossible not to suspect that, since 1836, some change, to con-
ceal the fearful increase of Irish crime, has been made in the mode of
making up the returns.-See PORTER's Progress of the Nation, III.
178-227.

That the spread of the mere power of reading and writing by means
of education has no tendency to check this alarming progress, is clear
from the subjoined analysis of the state of education of criminals in
England and Scotland in the six last years, as obtained from the Parlia-
mentary returns.

-PORTER'S Progess of the Nation, III., 201, 214, 215, 232.

The following Table exhibits the Progress of Crime in relation to

2,253

126

669

18,111

9,220

554

42

2,834

695

5,651

8,735

7,152