were fewer dealings, and of course less occasion for the medium by which they were computed. There was no security in future profits, and of course no loans nor accommodation. There was no employment for capital, and of course neither the means nor the inducement to create or to continue it artificially. Prices thus fell from the third cause of the reduced quantity of money. Under this concurrence of circumstances, America has been suffering in a greater degree than ourselves, and affords a strong illustration of the actual causes of what we have seen amongst our own merchants, manufacturers, and farmers. If we have suffered, indeed, in a less degree from some of these causes, it is only because our state of society is more advanced, and that our capitalists are less dependent upon their income from year to year. The national wealth of England is composed of two descriptions, accumulated capital, and current income. The one may suffer in the vicissitudes of commerce, trade, and in the pecuniary value of produce in the markets; but the other fund is necessarily more permanent, and in a rich society will maintain a large consumption for many successive years. But in all new countries, like America, the national wealth consists in little more than in the annual income. For the time, the withdrawing of income is with them reduction to poverty.

This condition of America leads to another important conclusion, and to one more immediately bearing upon our foreign relations with her government. Of the whole actual revenue of the United States, about twenty-five million dollars, eighteen millions are raised by her customs. Óf so much importance to that government is the collection of her customs, or in other words, the continuance of her commerce. But it is unnecessary to observe, that an interest of this kind must bind her strongly to the maintenance of her pacific and friendly relations with England. It is impossible to imagine any event more injurious to the commerce of America and England than an interruption of these relations. It must be a war directly against the commerce of each other. America must at once lose three out of five parts of her national revenue, and whatever she retains of trade must disappear from the face of the ocean. England, on the other hand, would undoubtedly lose the supply of her best customer, and it is difficult to imagine any thing that she could gain.

The foreign relations of the two states have necessarily some respect towards these circumstances of their relative situation, as great commercial dealers. It would assuredly be as unjust, as it is mean, to impute the existing amity to these causes only. The governors of both proceed from a stock, with whom justice and generosity are always more than mere names, and who require no

proof of interest to retain them within the obligations of moral duty. But it is the nature of man, and indeed it is his duty, to give due weight to considerations of personal prudence. With every allowance for national generosity, the practical statesman will always see with pleasure this concurrence of interest and duty in neighbouring states. He has a He has a good reliance, who has to deal with good faith and honor. But he has a better, who has to deal with good faith and common interest.

As to any practical subjects which have recently arisen under the head of our foreign relations with America, three circumstances of principal importance have occurred since the war, in all of which has been manifested the amicable disposition of the two states towards each other. The convention of commerce, which was to expire in 1819, has been renewed for ten years, until the year 1828. The British government has opposed no obstacle to the cession of the Floridas: but, on the contrary, has co-operated with the American minister in removing difficulties, and in influencing the Spanish government to execute the articles of their treaty with the United States. The third circumstance regards the navigation acts of the two countries. It was not consistent with British policy to extend the admission of foreigners into our colonial trade. It would have interfered too much with the interests of our own merchants and shipping. But we did not wholly repel the solicitations of a friendly government on this head. By instituting, or at least continuing in peace, the special free port of the Bermudas, we enabled America to supply herself directly with British colonial produce, and thus saved her the expense of longer voyages, and larger freights. The American government was still dissatisfied, and in 1817, and 1818, passed her own navigation laws. We admitted her right to do so, and the friendly relations of the two governments remain uninterrupted. It may be allowed us to express a sincere hope, that the confidence and amicable intercourse of the two governments may long continue, and that the United States may rapidly recover that condition of foreign commerce, and internal trade and industry, which so long rendered them the large and liberal customers of the merchants and manufacturers of Great Britain. It will be time enough, a century hence, to think of contending interests. It is the absence of a friendly spirit to anticipate, amidst peace and good-will, the possible condition of rivalry and hostility. The sea is open to both nations, and assuredly there is no disposition in England to appropriate this highway of the world. America has a territory, and a new and virgin territory, almost as spacious as the face of the seas themselves. She is of the same stock, and has the same materials of greatness and future glory with Great Britain. Let her use the example we have set her, and run the same race.

Such is the question as regards the integrity of our foreign relations.

HOME DEPARTMENT.

THE province of the minister in this department is to maintain the general order and tranquillity of the kingdom, and to secure and superintend the due administration of the laws. In accomplishing this object, his Majesty's Secretary of State for the Home Department has to direct his most vigilant attention to whatever may menace the internal order of the country. It is his duty to

foresee and to prevent, as well as to encounter and suppress, all acts of turbulence and disorder. It is his further duty, in execution of the same object, to assist and uphold the local magistracy of the kingdom. He must employ the means of government, and apply the wisdom and learning of the law-officers attached to its public service, to explain difficult points of duty. He must call into action the power of government to maintain the administration of the law against a populace inflamed into seditious proceedings. In preserving the peace of the metropolis, as well as of other districts, he must superintend and regulate the police. Remembering always that he is the minister of a free government, and that every department of administration should have reference to the general character of the constitution, he should execute his duties with as little cost as possible to personal liberty. He should deserve the praise that the first of all historians gave to one of the first of all ministers. In rebus arduis severitate, sed non asperitate utens, rempublicam composuit; unde restituta reverentia legibus, judiciis auctoritas; et sacris, et moribus, et unocuique jus et honos. He should not apply the extraordinary means of the constitution to its ordinary perils. His weapons, and the use of them, should not exceed the call of the occasion. His first duty is to suppress the peril; his second, is to effect this purpose with as little cost as possible. In his apprehension of an extraordinary danger, he should not lose all apprehension of the certain violence to general principles by extraordinary means. He should remember the future in the present, and that the acts of ministers of good repute, and in times above all suspicion of sinister purposes, may become precedents for their successors, who, under a general resemblance of the occasion, may most perniciously extend the example.

It is a subject of much satisfaction, that the present state of the country renders it rather ungracious to revive the memory of its condition during the first years of the peace. Except for the purpose of rendering justice to his Majesty's ministers, more especially

to the noble lord who has presided over this department for the last nine years; and but for the purpose of recalling to general attention what difficulties they have encountered, and from what perils they have delivered the public peace, it would be more satisfactory to every lover of his country to pass over that period, and, under the present state of public tranquillity, to forget that the condition of the kingdom was not always so secure. It is a trite observation of moralists, that nothing is so soon forgotten as danger wholly surmounted. But it should not be entirely dismissed from the public mind, that in 1817, and the next following years, the state of public affairs required two or more Secret Committees of both Houses of Parliament, and that these Committees, composed of gentlemen of all parties, concurred in a Report, that a most alarming degree of seditious practice existed throughout the kingdom. It should not be wholly forgotten, that this Report was verified in practice by two or more audacious conspiracies, and, after some interval, by the discovery of a most murderous plot for assassinating all his Majesty's ministers. The atrocity of this plot was assuredly not extenuated by its folly. Nearly at the same point of time large assemblies of the misguided populace were convoked from week to week in the vicinity of our manufacturing towns, and were instructed, exhorted, and inflamed, by travelling incendiaries. It is as unnecessary, as it is unpleasing, to repeat circumstances now remembered as only having been escaped. But it is surely a want of feeling towards the difficulties of his Majesty's ministers, at that period, to forget their merits in their success. If the vessel of the state be now in port, surely some credit is due to those by whose labor she was worked through such a tempest. The danger was not under-rated at the time by a very large majority in parliament. We see what is the actual state of things under the operation of the ministerial measures then adopted. We see a condition of present safety, and of actual deliverance. It is against all fairness to refuse imputing the effects to a cause so directly bearing upon them. What might have been the effect of other measures is at least uncertain. What has been the effect of the actual conduct of administration, is before the eyes of all of us. It is not our purpose to occupy the reader with subjects repeatedly discussed in both houses of parliament. Suffice it to say, generally, under this head of maintaining the public tranquillity and peace of the kingdom, that the attention of his Majesty's Home Secretary was invariably directed to the three main points-of encountering seditious principles at their origin, of upholding the local magistracy of the kingdom, and of not putting to risk the authority of the laws by a too frequent resort to prosecutions.

Upon some points, forbearance is self-abandonment. It cannot be concealed, that in parts of the kingdom, and in some periods of this crisis, loose principles, to say nothing more, were spreading very far; and that the contagion was reaching that part of our judiciary system, which, in all countries where the noble institution of juries exists, can alone give effect to the laws. Some acquittals were at least extraordinary. Under such circumstances, it was a manifest line of prudence, to rely more upon the menace of law, than upon the execution of law. Restraint and prevention had not only more of lenity, but more of policy, than direct prosecution. This was the principle of the measures of that period. The most immediate object was to restrain those libellers, and to check that general circulation of their cheap seditious tracts, which were the first movers of the popular turbulence. It was a point of first importance to restrain them at once; to arrest the mischief in its origin; and the law officers of the crown entertained no doubt of the legality of putting them at once under bail. The question has since been set at rest. There is no longer any doubt, that the law contains in itself this efficient control against the continuance of a crime decidedly assailing the public peace. The subject of astonishment is that there could exist any doubt upon such a proposition. Is the discretion of a magistrate to be trusted to require bail for the peace, under the apprehension of the personal security of individuals; and is the same protection to be withholden from the greater interests of the public safety? But in the one instance you have an offence committed, and a demand of sureties made. And have you not the same in the other? In the latter, only, the magistrate represents the law, and takes the due security for the public. In both, the law trusts alike to his judgment and discretion. The oath of the party applying for bail, in private menaces or assaults, is only one of the circumstances for informing the discretion of the judge. In libel, he sees the alleged offence before him, and may reasonably infer the further peril against which he requires the security.

In conclusion of these precautions for maintaining the public peace, and for assisting, countenancing, and upholding the local magistracy of the disturbed districts, it may generally be observed, that the measures of Lord Sidmouth had all the same character and object. Quod metus ad omnes, &c. Their execution in practice corresponded with this moderation in purpose. They have all effected their object by prevention only. The business has been done by exciting the salutary apprehension of the seditious and turbulent. Assuredly, measures of such firmness were never executed with such moderation. The six acts, as they have been termed from their number, exist only as so many wholesome