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ARTICLE III . Recount of the State oj France ^ and its Government during the last three Years ; particularly as it has Relation to the Belgic Provinces , and the Treatment of the English . By Israel Worslty , detained as a Hostage . 12 mo . pp . 267 , Johnson , 5 s . 18 O 6 .
France engrosses the attention as well as the dominion of the world ; a power so mighty , an enemy so menacing , a British public especially is anxious to examine and study . This anxiety has become more earnest from the difficulty of gaining any intelligence of France that is not either fabricated by the cupiclity of booksellers , or tinctured with a party and revengeful sgirit ; we are happy , therefore , in taking up a work whose veracity , the character of the author enables us to rely on , whose statements are made from personal observation , and whose deductions are drawn by good sense .
Mr . Worsley was , with the rest of our countrymen who were in France at the beginning of the present war ^ made prisoner by an order of Buonaparte . The severity of this measure is not justified , Mr . W . tells us , even'b y Frenchmen ; Englishmen are perhaps equally unable to vindicate the act of their own government that provoked it , viz . " the capture of the French merchant ships without any declaration of war /'
Mr . W . had kept a school at Dunkirk from the beginning of the French Revolution , and naturally hoped that his long residence there would have protected him from the First Consul's decree ; he was deceived , and notwithstanding the respectable character which he bore in the neighbourhood of Dunkirk , and
the active interference of friends , was put under arrest by the " gens d ' armes , " the Janissaries of Buonaparte , and , after some delays , carried first to Mons , where he was imprisoned , and next to Verdun , " the receptacle of those Englismen who had the means of supporting themselves without the assistance of the government . "
€€ Verdun , " says Mr . W . " is an ill-built town , the houses small and low , and all the streets , except one ,, very narrow . In this are many good houses ,, and it has been distinguished by the name of Bond-street . The people are in general poor , or rather were so when the English first became their guests . No doubt they are now enriched , for
Frenchmen know how to make a great advantage of a small profit . Their extreme frugality and spare diet enable them to make a saving where one of our people would hardly procure the necessaries of life . They appeared to be honest , and did not discover any particular disposition to impose upon the English , who for the most part were unacquainted with the language and the value of the articles they had occasion to buy . This may not be , and probably has not been true of them all ;
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1806, page 100, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1721/page/44/
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