d the
resistance which would have been opposed to his army, had it effected
the voyage in safety, by the spirit of the British people, and the great
natural difficulties of the country through which the invaders must have
marched. Nevertheless, it is not to be denied that, had the attempt been
made instantly on the rupture of the peace, the chances of success might
have been considerable--of success, temporary and short-lived indeed,
but still sufficient to inflict a terrible injury upon this country--to
bathe her soil in blood--to give her capital to the flames--and not
impossibly to shake some of her institutions. The enemy himself was, in
all likelihood, unprepared to make the attempt, until England had had
time to make adequate preparation for its encounter. It was otherwise
ordered of God's providence, than that the last bulwark of liberty
should have to sustain the shock of battle at its own gates.

The invasion of England was the great object of attention throughout
Europe during the autumn and winter of 1803. Early in the succeeding
year Paris itself became the theatre of a series of transactions which
for a time engrossed the public mind.

Even before Buonaparte proclaimed himself Consul for life, it appears
that, throughout a considerable part of the French army, strong symptoms
of jealousy had been excited by the rapidity of his advance to sovereign
power. After the monarchy of France was in effect re-established in him
and his dynasty, by the decrees of the 2nd and 4th of August, 1802, this
spirit of dissatisfaction showed itself much more openly; and ere long
it was generally believed that the republican party in the army looked
up to Moreau as their head, and awaited only some favourable opportunity
for rising in arms against Napoleon's tyranny. Moreau was known to have
treated both the Concordat and the Legion of Honour with undisguised
contempt; and Buonaparte's strictures on his conduct of the campaign of
1801 were not likely to have nourished feelings of personal goodwill in
the bosom of him whom all considered as second only to the Chief Consul
himself in military genius. It has already been intimated that the army
of the Rhine had been all along suspected of regarding Napoleon with
little favour. He had never been their general; neither they nor their
chiefs had partaken in the plunder of Italy, or in the glory of the
battles by which it was won. It was from their ranks that the unhappy
expedition u