Twenty-four hours of clearance
from our cruisers would have seen a hundred thousand men landed on our
coast, throwing up entrenchments, and covering the landing of another
hundred thousand, coming close upon their heels. Who would have faced
them? A few good regiments, badly found, and perhaps worse led, and a
mob of militia and raw volunteers, the reward of whose courage would be
carnage.
But as a chip smells like the tree, and a hair like the dog it belongs
to, so Springhaven was a very fair sample of the England whereof (in its
own opinion) it formed a most important part. Contempt for the body of
a man leads rashly to an under-estimate of his mind; and one of the
greatest men that ever grew on earth--if greatness can be without
goodness--was held in low account because not of high inches, and
laughed at as "little Boney."
However, there were, as there always are, thousands of sensible
Englishmen then; and rogues had not yet made a wreck of grand
Institutions to scramble for what should wash up. Abuses existed, as
they always must; but the greatest abuse of all (the destruction of
every good usage) was undreamed of yet. And the right man was even now
approaching to the rescue, the greatest Prime-Minister of any age or
country.
Unwitting perhaps of the fine time afforded by the feeble delays of
Mr. Addington, and absorbed in the tissue of plot and counterplot
now thickening fast in Paris--the arch-plotter in all of them being
himself--the First Consul had slackened awhile his hot haste to set foot
upon the shore of England.
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