round the universe all the inhabitants of
the British Islands, and to re-people them with nations less
evil-disposed and less corrupted. Portalis observed that it was more
easy to conceive than to execute such a vast plan. It would not be an
undertaking of five, of ten, nor of twenty years, to transplant these
nations; that misfortunes and proscription would not only inspire courage
and obstinacy, but desperation.

"No people," continued he, "are more attached to their customs and
countries than islanders in general; and though British subjects are the
greatest travellers, and found everywhere, they all suppose their country
the best, and always wish to return to it and finish their days amidst
their native fogs and smoke. Neither the Saxons, nor the Danes, nor
Norman conquerors transplanted them, but, after reducing them,
incorporated themselves by marriages among the vanquished, and in some
few generations were but one people. It is asserted by all persons who
have lately visited Great Britain, that, though the civilization of the
lower classes is much behind that of the same description in France, the
higher orders, the rich and the fashionable, are, with regard to their,
manners, more French than English, and might easily be cajoled into
obedience and subjection to the sovereignty of a nation whose customs, by
free choice, they have adopted in preference to their own, and whose
language forms a necessary part of their education, and, indeed, of the
education of almost every class in the British Empire. The universality
of the French language is the best ally France has in assisting her to
conquer a universal dominion. He wished, therefore, that when we were in
a situation to dictate in England, instead of proscribing Englishmen we
should proscribe the English language, and advance and reward, in
preference, all those parents whose children were sent to be educated in
France, and all those families who voluntarily adopted in their houses
and societies exclusively the French language."

Murat was afraid that if France did not transplant the most stubborn
Britons, and settle among them French colonies, when once their military
and commercial navy was annihilated, they would turn pirates, and,
perhaps, within half a century, lay all other nations as much under
contribution by their piracies as they now do by their industry; and
that, like the pirates on the coast of Barbary, the instant they had no
connections w