But persons entirely
unconnected with political affairs, among whom was Lord Beverley,
the father of eleven children, returning from Italy with his wife
and daughters, and a hundred other persons provided with French
passports, some of them repairing to different universities for
education, others to the South for the recovery of their health, all
travelling under the safeguard of laws recognised by all nations,
were arrested, and have been languishing for ten years in country
towns, leading the most miserable life that the imagination can
conceive. This scandalous act was productive of no advantage;
scarcely two thousand English, including very few military, became
the victims of this caprice of the tyrant, making a few poor
individuals suffer, to gratify his spleen against the invincible
nation to which they belong.
During the summer of 1803 began the great farce of the invasion of
England; flat-bottomed boats were ordered to be built from one end
of France to the other; they were even constructed in the forests on
the borders of the great roads. The French, who have in all things a
very strong rage for imitation, cut out deal upon deal, and heaped
phrase upon phrase: while in Picardy some erected a triumphal arch,
on which was inscribed, "the road to London," others wrote, "To
Bonaparte the Great. We request you will admit us on board the
vessel which will bear you to England, and with you the destiny and
the vengeance of the French people.
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