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French cavalry at Waterloo. It is no less uncertain whether or no this strange personage poisoned in Egypt an hospital-full of his own soldiers, and butchered in cold blood a garrison that had surrendered. But not to multiply instances; the battle of Borodino, which is represented as one of the greatest ever fought, is unequivocally claimed as a victory by both parties; nor is the question decided at this day: we have official accounts on both sides, circumstantially detailed, in the names of supposed respectable persons professing to have been present on the spot, yet totally irreconcilable. Both these accounts may be false; but since one of them must be false, that one (it is no matter which we suppose) proves incontrovertibly this important maxim; that it is possible for a narrative-however circumstantial-however steadily maintained-however public and however important the events it relates however grave the authority on which it is published-to be nevertheless an entire fabrication!

Many of the events which have been recorded were probably believed much the more readily and firmly, from the apparent caution and hesitation with which they were at first published,-the vehement contradiction in our papers of many pretended French accounts, and the abuse lavished on them for falsehood, exaggeration, and gasconade. But is it not possible,-is it not indeed perfectly natural,-that the publishers of known falsehood should assume this cautious demeanor, and this abhorrence of exaggeration, in order the more easily to gain credit? Is it not also very possible, that those who actually believed what they published, may have suspected mere exaggeration, in stories which were entire fictions? Many men have that sort of simplicity, that they think themselves quite secure against being deceived, provided they believe only part of the story they hear; when perhaps the whole is equally false. So that perhaps these simple-hearted editors, who were so vehement against lying bulletins, and so wary in announcing their great news, were in the condition of a clown, who thinks he has bought a great bargain of a Jew, because he has beat down the price perhaps from a guinea to a crown, for some article that is not really worth a groat.

With respect to the character of Buonaparte, the dissonance is if possible still greater: according to some, he was a wise, humane, magnanimous hero: others paint him as a monster of cruelty, meanness, and perfidy: some, even of those who are the most inveterate against him, speak very highly of his political and military ability; others place him on the very verge of insanity. But allowing that all this may be the coloring of party-prejudice, (which surely is allowing a great deal,) there is one point to which such a solution will hardly apply: if there be any thing that can be clearly ascer

tained in history, one would think it must be the personal courage of a military man; yet here we are as much at a loss as ever; at the very same times, and on the same occasions, he is described by different writers as a man of undaunted intrepidity, and as an absolute poltroon.

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What then are we to believe? if we are disposed to credit all that is told us, we must believe in the existence not only of one, but of two or three Buonapartes; if we admit nothing but what is well authenticated, we shall be compelled to doubt of the existence of any."

It appears then, that those on whose testimony the existence and actions of Buonaparte are generally believed, fail in all the most essential points on which the credibility of witnesses depends: first, we have no assurance that they have access to correct information; secondly, they have an apparent interest in propagating falsehood; and, thirdly, they palpably contradict each other in the most important points.

"Another circumstance which throws additional suspicion on these tales is, that the whig-party, as they are called,—the warm advocates for liberty, and opposers of the encroachments of monarchical power, have for some time past strenuously espoused the cause, and vindicated the character, of Buonaparte, who is represented by all as having been, if not a tyrant, at least an absolute despot. One of the most forward in this cause is a gentleman, who once stood foremost in holding up this very man to public execration,-who first published, and long maintained against popular incredulity, the accounts of his atrocities in Egypt. Now that such a course should be adopted, for party purposes, by those who are aware that the whole story is a fiction, and the hero of it imaginary, seems not very incredible; but if they believed in the real existence of this despot, I cannot conceive how they could so 'forsake their principles as to advocate his cause, and eulogise his character.

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After all, it may be expected that many who perceive the force of these objections, will yet be loth to think it possible that they and the public at large can have been so long and so greatly imposed on: and thus it is that the magnitude and boldness of a fraud become its best support: the millions who for so many ages have believed in Mahomet or Brahma, lean, as it were, on each other for support; and not having vigor of mind enough boldly to throw off vulgar prejudices, and dare be wiser than the multitude, persuade themselves that what so many have acknowleged, must be true.

"We entertain a suspicion concerning any matter of fact, when the witnesses contradict each other; when they are of a suspicious character; when they have an interest in what they affirm." Hume's Essay on Miracles, p. 172. 12mo.; p. 176. 8vo. 1767; p. 113. 8vo. 1817.

But I call on those who boast their philosophical freedom of thought, and would fain tread in the steps of Hume and other enquirers of the like exalted and speculative genius, to follow up fairly and fully their own principles, and throwing off the shackles of authority, to examine carefully the evidence of whatever is proposed to them, before they admit its truth. That even in this enlightened age, as it is called, a whole nation may be egregiously imposed on, even in matters which intimately concern them, may be proved (if it has not been already proved) by the following instance: it was stated in the newspapers, that, a month after the battle of Trafalgar, an English officer, who had been a prisoner of war, and was exchanged, returned to this country from France, and, beginning to condole with his countrymen on the terrible defeat they had sustained, was infinitely astonished to learn that the battle of Trafalgar was a splendid victory: he had been assured, he said, that in that battle the English had been totally defeated; and the French were fully and universally persuaded that such was the fact. Now if this report of the belief of the French nation was not true, the British public were completely imposed on; if it were true, then both nations were, at the same time, rejoicing in the event of the same battle, as a signal victory to themselves, and consequently one or other at least of these nations must have been the dupes of their Government; for if the battle was never fought at all, or was not decisive on either side, in that case both parties were deceived. This instance, I conceive, is absolutely demonstrative of the point in question.

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"But what shall we say to the testimony of those many respectable persons who went to Plymouth on purpose, and saw Buonaparte with their own eyes? must they not trust their senses ?" I would not disparage either the eye-sight or the veracity of these gentlemen. I am ready to allow that they went to Plymouth for the purpose of seeing Buonaparte; nay more, that they actually rowed out into the harbour in a boat, and came, alongside of a man-of-war, on whose deck they saw a man in a cocked hat, who, they were told, was Buonaparte; this is the utmost point to which their testimony goes; how they ascertained that this man in the cocked hat had gone through all the marvellous and romantic adventures with which we have so long been amused, we are not tolds did they perceive in his physiognomy his true name and authentic history? Truly this evidence is such as country people give one for a story of apparitions; if you discover any signs of incredulity, they triumphantly show the very house which the ghost haunted, the identical dark corner where it used to vanish, and perhaps even the tombstone of the person whose death it foretold. Jack Cade's nobility was supported by the same irresistible kind of evidence:

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having asserted that the eldest son of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, was stolen by a beggar-woman," became a bricklayer when he came to age," and was the father of the supposed Jack Cade one of his companions confirms the story, by saying, "Sir, he made a chimney in my father's house, and the bricks are alive at this day to testify it; therefore deny it not."

Much of the same kind is the testimony of our brave countrymen, who are ready to produce the scars they received in fighting against this terrible Buonaparte. That they fought and were wounded, they may safely testify; and probably they no less firmly believe what they were told respecting the cause in which they fought; it would have been a high breach of discipline to doubt it; and they, I conceive, are men better skilled in handling a musket, than in sifting evidence, and detecting imposture; but I defy any one of them to come forward and declare, on his own knowlege, what was the cause in which he fought,under whose commands the opposed generals acted, and whether the person who issued those commands did really perform the mighty achievements we are told of.

Let those then who pretend to philosophical freedom of enquiry, who scorn to rest their opinions on popular belief, and to shelter themselves under the example of the unthinking multitude, consider carefully, each one for himself, what is the evidence proposed to himself in particular, for the existence of such a person as Napoleon Buonaparte: (I do not mean whether there ever was a person bearing that name, for that is a question of no consequence, but whether any such person ever performed all the wonderful things attributed to him ;) let him then weigh well the objections to that evidence, (of which I have given but a hasty and imperfect sketch,) and if he then finds it amount to any thing more than a probability, I have only to congratulate him on his easy faith.

But the same testimony which would have great weight in establishing a thing intrinsically probable, will lose part of this weight in proportion as the matter attested is improbable; and if adduced in support of any thing that is at variance with uniform experience,' will be rejected at once by all sound reasoners. Let us then consider what sort of a story it is that is proposed to our acceptance. How grossly contradictory are the reports of the different authorities, I have already remarked: but consider, by itself, the story told by any one of them; it carries an air of fiction and

That testimony itself derives all its force from experience, seems very certain. The first author we believe, who stated fairly the connexion between the evidence of testimony and the evidence of experience, was HUME, in his Essay on Miracles, a work abounding in maxims of great use in the conduct of life." Edinb. Review, Sept. 1814, p. 328.

romance on the very face of it; all the events are great, and splendid, and marvellous;' great armies, great victories, great frosts, great reverses, “hairbreadth 'scapes," empires subverted in a few days; every thing happening in defiance of political calculations, and in opposition to the experience of past times; every thing on that grand scale, so common in epic poetry, so rare in real life; and thus calculated to strike the imagination of the vulgar,—and to remind the sober-thinking few of the Arabian Nights. Every event too has that roundness and completeness which is so characteristic of fiction; nothing is done by halves; we have complete victories— total overthrows,entire subversion of empires,-perfect re-establishments of them,-crowded on us in rapid succession. Tọ enumerate the improbabilities of each of the several parts of this history, would fill volumes; but they are so fresh in every one's memory, that there is no need of such a detail: let any judicious Aman, not ignorant of history and of human nature, revolve them in his mind, and consider how far they are conformable to Experience,2 our best and only sure guide. In vain will he seek in history for something similar to this wonderful Buonaparte; "nought but himself can be his parallel."

Will the conquests of Alexander be compared with his? They were effected over a rabble of effeminate undisciplined barbarians; else his progress would hardly have been so rapid: witness his father Philip, who was much longer occupied in subduing the comparatively insignificant territory of the warlike and civilized Greeks, notwithstanding their being divided into numerous petty states, whose mutual jealousy enabled him to contend with them separately. But the Greeks had never made such progress in arts and arms as the great and powerful states of Europe, which Buonaparte is represented as so speedily overpowering. His empire has been compared to the Roman: mark the contrast; he gains in a few years that dominion, or at least control, over Germany, wealthy, civilized, and powerful, which the Romans in the plenitude of their power could not obtain, during a struggle of as many centuries, against the ignorant half-savages who then possessed it!

Another peculiar circumstance in the history of this extraordinary personage is, that when it is found convenient to represent him as

"Suppose, for instance, that the fact which the testimony endeavors to establish partakes of the extraordinary and the marvellous; in that case, the evidence resulting from the testimony receives a diminution, greater or less, in proportion as the fact is more or less unusual." Hume's Essay on Miracles, p. 173. 12mo.; p. 176. 8vo. 1767; p. 113. 8vo. 1817.

2 "The ultimate standard by which we determine all disputes that may arise is always derived from experience and observation." Hume's Essay on Miracles, p. 172. 12mo.; p. 175. 8vo. 1767 ; p. 112. 8vo, 1817.

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