Of course, such ambition was not consistent with the equality of
other nations for he determined that France should be the first. But
he manifested no disposition to destroy the prosperity of others;
he only wished to give such an impulse to humanity in France, by
the culture of mind, by purity of morals, by domestic industry, by
foreign commerce, by great national works, as to place France in
the advance upon the race course of greatness. In this race France
had but one antagonist--England. France had nearly forty millions
of inhabitants. The island of Great Britain contained but about
fifteen millions. But England, with her colonies, girdled the globe,
and, with her fleets, commanded all seas. "France," said Napoleon,
"must also have her colonies and her fleets." "If we permit that,"
the statesman of England rejoined, "we may become a secondary
power, and may thus be at the mercy of France." It was undeniably
so. Shall history be blind to such fatality as this? Is man, in the
hour of triumphant ambition, so moderate, that we can be willing
that he should attain power which places us at his mercy? England
was omnipotent upon the seas.
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