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VOL. XII. No. 12.] LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1807. [PRICE 100,

"There hath been, within the compass of few years, much talk, and, God knows, too many ill* effects too, of Factions in this kingdom; and we have lived, in our days, to see the two great "Parties, of late known by the name of Whig and Tory, directly change their ground; and those, "who were formerly the Anti-Courtiers, become as pliant and obsequious, as ever they were who "had been the most found fault with on that score. But, we are humbly of opinion, that, at this "time of day, neither of those Parties have the game in their hands, as they have formerly fancied " themselves. But they who shall be so honest, and so wise, constantly to prefer the true "Laterest of England to that of any other country or people, preserve the Religion and the Laws, promote and protect the Trade of the Nation, thriftily and providently administer the public Treasure, AND STUDY TO MAINTAIN THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEAS, SO NATURALLY, SO AN66 CIENTLY, AND SO JUSTLY THE TRUE DEFENCE OF THIS KINGDOM; this Body, whomsoever "it shall be composed of, shall have the Weight of England on its side; and if there can be any "of another frame, they must, in the end, prove so, many miserable ROTTEN REEDS."- -Preface to Lord Clarendon's History, p. ix.

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SUMMARY OF POLITICS. DOMINION OF THE SEAS.The motto, which I have chosen for the present sheet, and which, with the exception of one sentence, then inapplicable to my subject, I took upon a former occasion, would seem to have been written for a moment exactly like the present. The nation has recently seen Whigs abandoning their principles and becoming even worse than the worst of those, whom they had, for so many years, been combating; it has become sick of both parties; all confidence in each, as a party, has been destroyed by the parties themselves; and, every where, the people are anxious to see arise another set of men, acting upon the principles described by the writer of the Preface to Lord Clarendon's History. But, of these principles, that of maintaining the Dominion of the Seas is, at this moment, of the most importance to tis; because, it is now evident to every man of common information, that, unless we maintain that dominion, we must, at no distant day, become the slaves of France. No answer has, any where, been given to what I have advanced upon the subject of this our maritime dominion. Those who appear to care not a straw for their own country more than for any other, or, indeed, who seem to love other countries much better than

their own, have bestowed, in a style truly worthy of advocates of America, some pretty decent abuse upon me; but, from long experience, I know that that abuse will do no injury, except to my opponents and their cause. I know, that, upon this subject, I have the people with me; and I fear. not the abuse of all the hirelings in the metropolis, from whatever hand their hire' may come.The reader will find two,

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letters, in the subsequent pages of this Number, one applauding me for what I have said upon the subject of maritime do. minion, the other of a different tendency, and both containing a copy of the general order, given to our sea commanders, to search neutral ships, without distinction, for British seamen.The writer of the last mentioned letter contends, that the order does not extend to national ships; but, I should be glad to hear him give better reasons for his opinion than the one which he has advanced, namely, that the neutral commander is to be required to pay the British seamen, so found, their wages, before they leave his ship; just as if sailors were not paid wages in ships of war, or "na"tional ships," as well as in merchant ships! The order contains no exception whatever. It fully authorizes, and, indeed, commands, our naval commanders, to search neutral ships of all descriptions, when they suspect them to have British seamen on board; and, though the Morning Chronicle so stoutly, and so eagerly, maintained, that Admiral Berkeley had no authority whatever to give the orders which he gave, it will be found that that officer, if it be attempted to censure him, will put his censors to shame, and will have the voice of all the sound part of the country with him. And here, let me observe, that Admiral Berkeley, who was on the side of the late ministry in parliament, was sent out to the American station by them, and, therefore, one would have supposed them likely not to have been the first to condemn his conduct. But, as I have before observed, the whole of the Whig party, or, the far greater part of them, at least, appear, in all disputes between this country and any other, to lare a

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strong bias towards that other They liked Admiral Berkeley very well; but they liked America ouch better. Mr. Whitbread, it will be remembered, lost not a moment in agitating the subject in the House of ComInons The ministers having said, that they had no information upon the subject, he caught hold of the declaration, and expressed his happiness to hear, that the act, as represented, had received no authority fron the king's ministers. How eager he was! It might have been worth the while of a member of parliament to inquire a little to the orders given to our naval commanders, before he thus, by clear implication, accused an admiral of having done an unwarrantable act.---Lord Stanhope, too, in the House of Peers, actually propos ed to pass a resolution, declaring that England had no maritime rights which were not common to all nations. The peers put this aside by a vote for the order of the day,

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on the ground of its being improper to pess mere abstract propositions; but, in my opinion, they should have met the question, and given a direct negative to the proposition. This might have saved them some trouble, too; for they must negative this proposition, or some one similar t, it, in direct terms, if it be again brought forward.-The next session of parliament will, upon this account, he a very interesting one, for then these matters must be discussed. Then we shall see, who are for maintaining the sovereignty of the seas, and who are not; and, I have not the least hesitation in predicting, that the nation, I mean the people in general, of all tanks and degrees, will be on the side of those who are for maintaining that sovereignty. I fear, that the ministers, for the sake of Hanover, will be ready to give it up; but, my fears may, possibly, be groundless; and, if I should have to applaud the maintaining of our ancient maritime domiaion, and the restoration of that valuable honour, the honour of the flag, my applause will not be the less unqualified, or the less readily and heartily bestowed, because it will be bestowed upon Mr. Canning and Mr. Perceval and others, whose - principles and conduct, I have, in other cases, reprobated. I am for the men, be they wh they may, who will save the country, from the assaults of the enemy and from public robbers; but, first of all, from the assaults of the enemy, because, without that, all our efforts for effecting internal reformation are useless; and, as I am thoroughly convinced, as I think it alanost self-evident, that this country must

become an appendage of France, unless we assert our right of sea-dominion, and make peace upon that principle, whenever we do make peace; as this is my thorough conviction, I am for the men who are for mains taining that dominion Our power upon the waves enables us to dictate the terms, upon which the ships of all nations shall navigate. We may hold the key to the Baltic, the key to the Mediterranean, the key to India and to China. We have it in our power to make all countries which are under the dominion of France purchase their foreign commodities at a price ten times as great as that which they now pay. We have it in our power to cut off all communication between the several nations by sea. The Americans, who have succeeded the Dutch ju milking the cow while others are fighting for her horns, we shall, I hope, compel to render to us a good portion of each meal of milk. Not a sail should be hoisted, except by stealth, without paying us tribute. "This," some persons will tell us, "would "be to proclaim eternal war." But, my opinion is, that it is the only possible way of obtaining any thing worthy of the name of peace. The consequence of such a sys tem would be, that the nations of Europe, and especially the maritime nations, would be driven to a state of desperation that must produce internal troubles, in the course of a very few years; for, as to their hatred of us, and their hostility against us, we have, upon that score, nothing to apprehend, seeing that the whole of the power and resources which those states possess, are now actually employed against us. The consequence of those internal troubles would be the shaking of the power of France; for, it is impossible to keep the whole of a people in subjection, for any length of time, if they are reduced to a situation whereip they have nothing to lose; and, at the same time, the invasion of these islands by France will become a subject of ridicule instead of a subject of terror. -If we succeed, as we certainly shall, in capturing the Danish capital and fleet, what a fine figure Russia will make in the world! And, as to Frussia, her maritime towns may as well be without ports as with them.It is possible, that Mr. Spankie, the editor of the Morning Chronicle, may have formed in his own mind a system whereby we might obtain a safe peace without having recourse to this extraordinary exercise of our power; but, for my own part, after having thought as much about the matter as any man call, I am convinced that nothing short of this will give us even a chance of a safe peace. Does

Mr. Spankie think, that the bumble tone, the tone of "resignation," which he has taken; does he think, that, this, or any thing like it, is likely to obtain us a mitigation of the evils of being conquered? Does he really think, that it would defer the period of our ruin for the space of five years? For the space of five years it might; but for the space of ten years, it assuredly would not, and I am for obtaining a fair chance of security for those who are to come after us as well as for ourselves.When the enemy finds, that we are resolved upon pursuing such a system as I have recommended (and I hope he will find it), he will anticipate the consequences, and will lower his tone accordingly; but, our situation would be as dangerous as ever, if we were to suffer our selves to be cajoled into a peace, without taking care to prevent him, during that peace, from augmenting his maritime force, or his maritime resources. In making a peace with him; we should set out by asserting, not only our possession of, but our right to; dominion over the seas; and, then we might ask him what he would be willing to give up as the price of our relaxing the exercise of this our right. If he were found ready to yield to a considerable extent, we might consent to do the same; because by his yielding all authority over the Elbe, Holland, and Spain, for instance, the ne'cessity for our exercising our rights with so much rigour would cease to exist. In short, with this dominion, explicitly asserted, and resolutely maintained, in our hands, we have an object of exchange for all those of his conquests that render him a formidable neighbour, and withou: that dominion, so asserted and maintained, we have nothing to give up, for which he would concede us the most trifling point; nay, he is, or has been, prepared, to demand of us, the surrender of even those rights upon the seas, which all nations have heretofore exercised, and that, too, as the price, not of any surrender on his part, but as the price of peace, of mere peace, a peace that would give us no repose, that would not save us a shilling a year in the way of expence, and that would, in two years, enable him to send forth to battle a hundred ships of the Jine. Would it not be madness to sigh for such a peace? Would it not be treason in a minister of this country to listen for one. moment to an overture for peace upon such a basis?—I have before observed, and I repeat the observation, that, as to trade and commerce,though theyshould be diminished should, for reasons often given, feel littlere gret, but that it does not appear to me pro

bable, that a system of warfare, such as I have described, would diminish them. Napo leon's decrees can no more prevent the entranice of British goods into other countries than they can prevent the sun from shining The goods will be seized as they have been for many years past; but, they will not be thrown into the sea, nor will they be sent upwards in flames and smoke. They will be sold after they are seized; somebody will use and pay for them; the cost of all the prohibitions and forfeitures will, as in the case of smuggled goods, fall upon the consumer the seizures will be mere acts of plunder, and another mode only of raising taxes upon the oppressed people, over whom he shall be able to maintain his sway, without producing, upon a national scale, any injury at all to the merchant or the manufacturer. Let this system of warfare be tried for only two years, and you will see how completely all the notions of Adam Smith and his disciples are of mere counting house origin.

I have no doubt but this system would, at first, produce great disturbance in cómmercial affairs, accompanied with a loud outcry amongst the sous of traffic. It would greatly annoy the jews and the jew-like christians of the Change; but, to their screamings the ministers must be deaf, or they will soon get into the track of the jew ridden Pitt, and they will fall covered with the ruins and the curses of their country.

BUENOS AYRES.When this place was first taken, I expressed my sorrow at it, because I thought the capture, after having enriched a few greedy adventurers, would entail a heavy expence upon this country, without a possibility of adding, in the smallest degree, to our means of attacking or of resisting the enemy. When it was re-captored, therefore, I rejoiced, except at the loss of the soldiers and sailors, which were killed or taken. And now, when an attempt to take it again has failed, I have no hesitation at expressing my satisfaction at the event, but, at the same time, my sorrow for the loss and the sufferings of our army. I an pleased, that we have been thus, at once, prevented from doing a lasting injury to our country.- -South America cn be of no use to us. We are not over peopled. We have not too many men to enlist into the army and the navy. This colony of Buenos Ayres would have required ten thousand troops, at the very least, to be constantly stationed there; it would have required four or five ships of the line together with frigates and smaller vessels, and in the whole, would have kept employed twenty thousand men. There would have been an endless tribe of

Governors and Secretaries and Law-officers and Commissioners, Collectors and Comptrollers and Receivers and Searchers and Quarter Masters and Commissaries and Paymasters and Auditors and agents of every sort and degree, both the pay and the plunder of all of whom must have come out of the property and the labour of the already bornedown people of this country; in short, the taking and the keeping of this colony would have added to the riches of a few relations of the corrupt men, and a few of the merchants, at home, and to the poverty and misery of the people in general. But, as an event of the war, in which we are engaged, we are to consider chiefly the force that the colony would have required; and, I believe, we shall not find that force much inferior, in point of magnitude, to the force, which the ballot is now intended to create. If this force bad remained at home, then, there would have been no necessity for this terrible ballot. The twenty or thirty thousand men, who will be, by the ballot, drawn from productive labour, might have been suffered to remain at their homes and in their employment; and the numerous and endless miseries arising from this dreadful measure might all have been avoided.No man has, that I know of, attempted to shew, that the possession of Buenos Ayres would have been of any advantage to this country; except, indeed, Sir Home Popham, in his congratulatory letters to the traffick-men at The Change, and the knife-grinders at Birmingham. To them and to him the adventure might be advantageous; but, to the nation, who had to furnish twenty thousand men to defend the colony, and, perhaps, a million of pounds sterling a year to defray the expence of it, no advantage could, as far as I can see, possibly arise.The troops and the ships will now come home; and, I should think, that the rage for colonial conquest will be a little abated. The mer'cantile interest and influence is yet very powerful; but, the present state of things is such, that that interest and influence can no longer prevail without absolutely sinking the country. The ministers would fain listen to the 'Change still, but they cannot do it, without at once giving up the country, and then their places are gone. They love the jews very well, but they love themselves better; and, I hope, they love their country better too. They have not, that I have heard, given way to the Corresponding Society, lately formed by the merchants and manufacturers at Liverpool; nor has that impudent combination proceeded, that I have observed, to execute their threats of appealing to the

people against the government, unless the government punished Admiral Berkeley; for, their proclamation stopped at nothing short of that. The 'Change has been the rule of this country long enough; and, I, for my part, am not at all displeased, that a state of things has arisen, when their sway must by one means or another be put an end to.

-The London prints devoted to the two factions respectively, instead of viewing this event as advantageous to the country, have, on both sides, taken it up for mere factious purposes, and, having, in good set mourning phrases, bewailed the melancholy result of the expedition, they pitch on upon their opponent politicians, as being the cause of it. Amongst the articles of this sort, which have made their appearance, since the arrival of the news from Buenos Ayres, that which was published in the COURIER news-paper, of the 15th instant, is perhaps, the most reprehensible. The commanders are there openly blamed for the result of the attack, and the writer speaks as confidently upon the subject as if he himself had had the command of armies and the conducting of sieges all his life long. But, his greatest delight appears to be to triumph over General Craufurd, and, lest we should be at a loss to discover the source of his spite, he takes care to remind us, that the general was beaten by a volunteer force". Yes, you slave of faction, so he was, but it was by vo Junteers vastly different from the troops of general Patty-Pan, of whom General Craufurd's division would har e beaten a hundred thousand out of their entrenchments.. What a scandalous perversion of terms!" Volun"teers", indeed! but not volunteers who flee into the ranks to avoid the ballot; thất is to say, to avoid the chance of being employed against the enemy, if he should happen to land in the country. As for General Craufurd, I know nothing of the causes that led to his surrender; but, surely it was as likely to be owing to his cagerness as his backwardness; and, it is, until have something like proof upon the subject, base in the extreme, to endeavour to excite a popular prejudice against him, and that, too, merely because, when in parliament, he voted against those who now are ministers.

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-It is just enough to blame the Whig ministry for the whole of the expedition; because they ought not to have persevered in the manifestly mischievous project of Sir Hophan and his selfish set; but, it is also just to assert, that, had it not been for that set, there would have been none of that waste of lives and of money, which Buenos Ayres has cost ús. That set pleaded

"liberty of the seas," drank by the Impe-
rial Brothers at Tilsit, and echoed by the
Russians and Americans, at Petersburgh, on
the anniversary of American Independence,
will now, doubtless, receive an explanation.
Mr. Munro, the
American minister in Lon-
don, may now, without waiting for that” grave
discussion," of which the Morning Chroni
cle speaks, with so much impartiality, ven-
ture to send word to his government, that it
must endeavour to live happily under British
dominion of the seas, until Napoleon shall
be pleased to relax a good deal in his exercise
of dominion by land. But, to say the truth,
no dispatches of this kind will be necessary:
the American government will see, the mo-
ment this intelligence arrives, that we are
not to be cajoled or bullied, any longer by
combinations of merchants and fund-hold-
fo and
ers; and, I must say this for the good citi-

having acted under the immediate directions of Pitt; he, therefore, was the original cause of this loss of men and of money, and we may look upon this as a legacy left by him to his injured and, by him, despised country.What, I wonder, will become of the appointment, made by the Whigs, of certain custom-house officers at Buenos Ayres? They had given one man a place for life there! Some of the wives of these promoted gentlemen had, it is said, be poken new carriages upon the strength of it.. Suppose a wolf, just darting into a sheep, fold, and caught in a trap, when he was expecting himself to have caught a lamb, and you have a pretty just emblem of the situation of these greedy expectants, who, observe, would have paid (if they ever paid at all) for their carriages and opera boxes with money raised upon us, and not with money raised at Buenos Ayres. What theyzens of that country, that, notwithstanding had got there they would have taken as lawful plunder, and they would have called upon us for their salaries.The effect, then, of this discomfiture at Buenos Ayres will be to do away the excuse for raising money upon us to give to these idle people; it will prevent some hundreds á year of our money from going into the pockets of mother Catalani and mother Storace; it will abridge, a little, the profits of the musicmeetings in the several counties, and, of course, the pleasure which our pious clergy must receive from seeing their Cathedrals occupied by hired singers, of a description which it is perfectly unnecessary here to give. More of this another time; but, at present, I cannot, for the life of me, perceive any class of persons, any trade, that will suffer more from this failure at Buenos Ayres than that of the singers; a trade which, I think, might be destroyed altogether without draw ing a word of sorrow from any person of

common sense.

DANISH WAR.- -Since writing the first article of this sheet, the intelligence relating to the capture of the Danish fleet and capital has reached me. This is an event, which, though naturally to be expected, is well calculated to excite feelings of general joy. When the expedition was going out, I, like the French, laughed at it; but, I, like the French, thought it was bound to the Prussian territories, and had in view. "the deliver"ance of Europe," after the old Pitt fashion. This enterprize was really well conceived and well executed. It is, I hope, a mere beginning of what we ought long ago to have finished We shall now see what that famous deliverer of Europe, the Emperot Alexander will do. The toast of the

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all their vehement language, they are, upon occasions like this, brought to listen to reason as soon as any citizens in all the world. In short, if our ministers are firm, if they only say, in a positive manner, we will uphold the "ancient rights and practices of Eugiand upon "the seas," from that moment the dispute with America is at an end.-Napoleon, my readers may be assured, will now talk in a less coufident strain about "a maritime peace." The Morning Chronicle, indeed, affects to see in this expression nothing more than “ peace with a maritime power;" but, must think, that this is wilful blindness; for, it appears to me impossible that any body, except, perhaps, Mr. Whitbread and his Edinburgh Reviewers, should really be able to find out reasons, whereon to found an opinion, that Napoleon means, or has meant, any thing short of compelling us to make a positive surrender of all the rights upon the seas, which render our naval superiority of any use to us. But, amidst this exultation, I must confess, that I am continually haunted with fears, that, by-and-by, all of sudden, we shall find, that this vigour is a momentary flash, and that, at bottom, these ministers, like all the former, for many years. past, will be ready to give up the rights of their country, if they should find it necessary to the preservation of their places. We shall have an overture from France to negociate; the offer will be calculated to give a handle to the Whigs to clamour against "eternal war;" the Change will, perhaps, be, by that time, ready to join them, and the syna gogue to echo the cry; while dear, dear, dear Hanover will plead for peace in strains paternal. This I fear. Before this I fear, that all vigour will vanish like a dream;

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