do not submit to the Government, at least under our administration, this formidable enemy will take advantage of your insubordination, to conquer and enslave you:  pay your taxes cheerfully, or the tremendous Buonaparte will take all from you.”  Buonaparte, in short, was the burden of every song; his redoubted name was the charm which always succeeded in unloosing the purse-strings of the nation.  And let us not be too sure,[8] safe as we now think ourselves, that some occasion may not occur for again producing on the stage so useful a personage:  it is not merely to naughty children in the nursery that the threat of being “given to Buonaparte” has proved effectual.

It is surely probable, therefore, that, with an object substantially the same, all parties may have availed themselves of one common instrument.  It is not necessary to suppose that for this purpose they secretly entered into a formal agreement; though, by the way, there are reports afloat, that the editors of the Courier and Morning Chronicle hold amicable consultations as to the conduct of their public warfare:  I will not take upon me to say that this is incredible; but at any rate it is not necessary for the establishment of the probability I contend for.  Neither again would I imply that all newspaper editors are utterers of forged stories, “knowing them to be forged;” most likely the great majority of them publish what they find in other papers with the same simplicity that their readers peruse it; and therefore, it must be observed, are not at all more proper than their readers to be cited as authorities.

Still it will be said, that unless we suppose a regularly preconcerted plan, we must at least expect to find great discrepancies in the accounts published.  Though they might adopt the general outline of facts from one another, they would have to fill up the detail for themselves; and in this, therefore, we should meet with infinite and irreconcilable variety.

Now this is precisely the point I am tending to; for the fact exactly accords with the above supposition; the discordance and mutual contradictions of these witnesses being such as would alone throw a considerable shade of doubt over their testimony.  It is not in minute circumstances alone that the discrepancy appears, such as might be expected to appear in a narrative substantially true; but in very great and leading transactions, and such as are very intimately connected with the supposed hero.  For instance, it is by no means agreed whether Buonaparte led in person the celebrated charge over the bridge of Lodi, (for celebrated it certainly is, as well as the siege of Troy, whether either event ever really took place or no,) or was safe in the rear, while Augereau performed the exploit.  The same doubt hangs over the charge of the French cavalry at Waterloo.  The peasant Lacoste, who professed to have been Buonaparte’s guide on the day of battle, and who earned a fortune