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country; and to convince him of the fallacy of his reasonings, I think I have only to place him in the coach, which he supposes the coach-maker has made for the landowner, while I am permitted to drive one by his side, purchased by the merchant. The simple case will stand thus. While he rattles about town, and by the dash and elegance of his carriage, excites the curiosity of the stranger, who cries out,

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what a country for wealth and luxury." I have mine packed up, and sent abroad, and sold to the best purchaser, giving directions that the dollars it produced should be applied in the purchase of teas, wines, sugars, &c. to be returned to me as soon as possible. Upon their arrival, I find I can dispose of them to the land proprietor for 80 quarters of corn, leaving in my possession 20 quarters after paying 60, the original cost of the coach. Ten of these I apply for the support of my family, and with the other 10 quarters, I build a house, or apply them to some other of those objects which constitute what is esteemed national wealth. The coach-maker finds his capital encreased 20 quarters by his profits on the making of 2 coaches, 10 of which he plies in the same manner as the merchant, to the support of his family, and the other 10 in houses, or in furniture. Can it be said, that the savings of our labour, applied in houses, &c. are less objects of wealth to a country, than similar houses, &c. erected by the land proprietor, from the produce of his land exceeding his expenses? True it is, that the manufacturer, without commerce, cannot be said to have created any wealth to the community; since, although the house which he built is his own, it might have been built by the land owner, if he had been so economical as to make his old carriage last another year. But the same cannot be said of the merchant. He buys from the manufacturer what only cost to the country 50 quarters in making, he returns to the country 80 quarters, or what is the same thing, articles for which we should pay 80 quarters of grain to a foreigner. It is, therefore, evident that 30 quarters is gained to the country, deducting such a quantity of food as is necessary to support himself and the manufacturer, which are not included in the first cost of 50 quarters. -IV. The fact is, Mr. Cobbett, in a country without commerce, the only use that the manufacturer can be of is, to convert the surplus produce of the land, after feeding the persons employed in the growing thereof into articles of necessity or luxury; and if by the effects of his industry, he should be

able to get more into his possession than is requisite for his support, this has the same effect as if it remained in the hands of the land proprietor, as certainly the country would be neither ticher nor poorer, to whichever of the two it belonged; and, therefore, it appears that in a country where there is no foreign commerce, agriculture alone, is the source of wealth; and that any additional value which the manufacturer may give to corn by converting it into other commodities is merely of a relative nature; and cannot be said to make a country more wealthy.-V. It is evident that the country must be most wealthy (or in the road to the greatest wealth if newly cultivated) which in the smallest extent, and with the fewest hands employed in agriculture, produces the greatest quantity of grain. In such a country, when fostered by a liberal government, the number of manufactures is encréased, the mechanic arts arrive at the greatest state of perfection; and the surplus produce of the land, is seen to rise in the elegance and conveniency of our houses, furniture, and apparel, when every field is a garden, and every country seat a palace; and when the common people are well clothed and fed. But the relative value before mentioned, becomes real value the moment commerce is introduced, for, according to the example of the coach before mentioned, the 50 quarters of grain is converted into 80; or, in other words the merchant and manufacturer acquire a property which they would never have possessed, nor the country reaped the advantage of, had it not been for this transaction. Manufacturers, therefore, are, unquestionably, the means of wealth in a country where foreign commerce exists. It may be stated, as an objection to this argument, that the intrinsic value of the articles imported, and given in exchange to the land proprietor for his 80 quarters of grain, does not exceed the 50 quarters originally expended in making the machine, but there can be no foundation for such an objection when we see that we certainly should have paid 80 quarters to any foreigner who brought the same articles for sale; and further that the 30 quarters may be applied, as soon as it is received, in the buildings or ornaments which form the wealth of the country, without any one receiving the least injury from such application.-VI, Thus, Mr. Cobbett, it appears, that manufactures without commerce, cannot be said to constitute national wealth, but only to give the produce of agricultural industry a more permanent form-that foreign commerce promotes the wealth of a country

through its manufacturers and merchants, who reap a profit, and add to that stock, which has always been considered a proof of prosperity-VII. Ipurposely avoid mentioning the other advantages of commerce in the view of national security, from its affording employment for ships, and keeping up the necessary supplies for that navy, which is considered the safeguard of our independence and happiness. The security of nations, being different from their wealth, I shall not imitate Mr. Wroc in his patriotic conclusion, but reserve a word or two, with your permission, for some future opportunity, when I may furnish you with some reflections upon certain subjects, which you, yourself, have brought to the attention of the public. -Meanwhile, I remain, your constant reader, C.-Nov. 18, 1807.

IRISH TYTHES.

SIR-I have seldom seen so much calm mistatement, and so large a portion of bad logic as pervades the whole of your observations upon the article which you have quoted from the Morning Chronicle respecting county meetings in Ireland, in your Register of the 14th instant.-You say "I admire the patriotism which the sage of the Morn. ing Chronicle has discovered in the Irish Protestant gentlemen." Now the word patriotism, does not occur in the whole article, nor is the idea of it applied to the Irish Protestant gentlemen. If the words "liberality and good sense of the Protestant gentlemen of Ireland," were construed by you into patriotism, you were mistaken, these words were applied because the Irish Protestant gentlemen are with very few exceptions friends to the claims of the Catholics, and have adopted these Petitions for a Commutation of Tythes, as the most agreeable measure to the Catholics which there is a chance of pressing with success.-If" praise undeserved is satire in disguise," to attribute patriotism to the Irish Protestant gentlemen would be almost as good a joke as to talk of your suavity, Mr. Cobbett.-You next say, in the same strain of error, that these Irish Protestant gentlemen are endeavouring to take a part of the amount of the tythes out of the pockets of the parsons to put it in their own. How you, Mr. Cobbett, who are attentive to the meaning of words, could have made this charge, after having stated in the first sentence of your observations, that the article in the Morning Chronicle "announces to us the fact, that the Protestant gentlemen of Ireland, are for a commutation of tythes," and commutation in italics foo, I am at a loss to discover. For, i' the word commutation means any thing, it

means such a measure as will give the par sons the whole benefit of tythes, but in a less vexatious and exceptionable manner. If any thing is produced by the change, if by the removal of moral oppression, land will acquire an encrease of produce over and above the fair and customary profits of the farmer, it will and ought to belong to the landlord. It is not taken from the pocket of the parsons, because it never could have been raised under the system of tythes. You take from the parsons only their power of oppressing and you convert it into good substantial corn and hay.-So much for your mistatements, Mr. Cobbett, let us now examine your logic. You ask this. question: will the poor man who cultivates five acres of ground, yield less in tythes than he does now ?" and you answer it by saying, " that if he does give less to the parson, it is to me at least quite certain, that he will give more to the landowner or land jobber, so that this commutation, whatever may be the effect of it to the landowner and the parson, will, in no degree whatever, lighten the burdens of the potatoe planter." The fallacy of this reasoning, like that of your friend Pitt on the sinking fund, lies just beneath the surface. Let the landlord, year after year, value his rent after the crop of potatoes is grown as the parson does his tythes, and then your reasoning would be correct. But so long as it continues to be the practice of landlords, to settle with their tenants for the rent of land before they take possession, and (as is particularly the case in Ireland) to give such leases as leaves the tenants to the increased produce that may arise from an incerased industry; while the parsons value their tythes after the tenant has tilled, manured, and sown his land, and the crop is come to maturity; so long will the circumstances on which rent is calculated be so very different from those on which tythes are taken, that the tenant will always prefer and find his advantages in commuting tythes for rent.

"But, did I myself not propose to do something respecting the tythes in Ireland?' This ejaculation of yours is very explanatory. So, Mr. Cobbett, all your anger against the Irish Protestant gentlemen is excited by their presumption in recommending a simple commutation of tythes, in neglect of a favourite plan of your own.-I have now, Sir, said enough to put both your candour and your talents to the test-Your candour by giving you an opportunity of publishing this letter, and your talents, by making it no easy matter to answer it--AN IRISH PROTESTANT GENTLEMAN, Dublin, Νον. 20, 1907.

I MR. WILBERFORCE AND THE MOLUNGEES.

who may stray away from his companions. These are not the only evils to which the Molungees are exposed, their unhealthy and dangerous employment carries them to a distance from their families, where their provision, and even water, is supplied by a long carriage; from choice, therefore, a native will not engage as a salter, and this circumstance occasions a species of slavery to be established in this manufactory, which has yet received neither remedy nor alleviation.Whoever has once laboured at the salt works, is bound himself and bis posterity, ever after, to continue in that occupation. From the great mortality incident to their employment, the salters do not keep up their numbers, but the annual waste is continually supplied by unjustifiable artifices in procuring fresh recruits. Labourers are either decoyed to those works by false representa tions, or they are compelled on alleged proof of their profession to engage in them; this proof, it is said, frequently consists of per

SIR;From the volumes which have for years made their appearance on the subject of the slave trade, and the strenuous efforts made by the most conspicuous members of both houses of parliament, in favour of its abolition, it might have been supposed that the Negroes were the only aggrieved subjects under the British domination; or, that their wrongs were so much superior to those of others, as to silence every other complaint, and eclipse every other misery. 1 pass over the Irish peasantry for the present, certain Protestant gentlemen having in their great wisdom, discovered a panacea for all their sufferings, in the abolition of tithes. This single measure, unaided on the part of the Protestant country gentlemen, by any diminution in the price of land, which both the Protestant and Roman Catholic gentry seem to vie with one another in enhancing, is to work like a miracle to the comforts of the poor; immediately after the tithes are abolished, and the rent proportionably injured evidence, which is never difficult to

creased by these wonder-working landlords, the labourer is to be clothed in a supernatural suit of warm frieze, his children are to be inspired with the elements of religion and morality, and his hut, like the hovel of Baucis and Philemon, is to grow into a comfortable habitation. Such are the wonders to be performed by the Protestant country gentlemen; and so for the present I leave them in possession of their wands and their talismans, looking upon them to be the most accomplished conjurors, (since the lamented death of Doctor Katerfelto) that have ever astonished the world.-The sufferers to whom just now I wish to draw your attention are the Molungees (Salt Makers), employed by the Honourable East India Company, in the manufacture of salt, of which the Company have the monopoly. A large proportion of the salt made in Bengal is manufactured by these Hindoos, in deserts overflowed every tide by the sea; and the climate of these deserts is inimical to every constitution; all the complaints occasioned by heat and moisture, appear there in their most malignant form. Dysenteries at one season are particularly fatal; the unhappy victims of this disorder are avoided as infectious by their companions, and suffered to pine without receiving either that aid or consolation which compassion usually pays to the wretched; the progress of this disorder in such circumstances leads to certain death, if that event be not anticipated by the tigers and alligators, by which these dreary wastes are infested. The tigers accustomed to human blood, boldly attack the salters, while the alligators are always ready to assail each unfortunate individual

obtain, especially in India.Such is the situation of these miserable Hindoos, and yet the salt revenue is so considerable that the trade cannot be laid aside, nor can an article of living so necessary be abandoned; the annual sales by the Company amount to one million sterling; and the net revenue after deducting charges has been so considerable, that no adequate compensation to the Honourable Company for so important a sacrifice can easily be found. Hence," says Tennant, *"the unfortunate Molungees continue in the most wretched of all slavery "-Here, then, are a race of unfortunate wretches, whose fate compared to that of the Negroe slaves in the West Indies, sinks incalculably in the scale of human wretchedness. The employment of the Negro is by no means hostile to health, nor creative of disease; he is not liable to be devoured by beasts of prey, and when he is sick he has medical care and attendance. The climate that he serves in is superior to his own, and the manufacture of sugar in which he is chiefly engaged, furnishes him for three months of the year with food, the most nutritious and wholesome that the earth produces. I shall not draw a parallel be tween the situation of the Molungee and the Irish peasant. It is an easy, but might be deemed by the " jacobin and leveller" manufacturers, an invidious task; they are both certainly liable to the extremes of heat and moisture; the one in the fields at their labour, and the other during their repose in

*Indian Recreations, Vol. 2. page 330. See Biyan Edwards's account of Jamaica,

as to render it insensible to such misery as falls to the hard lot of the Molungees-I am, Sir, &c. MALB, Ireland, Nov.23d,1807,

PUBLIC PAPER.

RUSSIA AND ENGLAND.Declaration of
Russia against England. Done at St.
Petersburgh, October 26, 1807..

The higher the value in which the Emperor held the amity of his Britannic Majesty, the keener the regret he must feel at the complete alienation of that monarch. Twice has the Emperor taken up arms in cause in which the interests of England were most immediately concerned: but he has solicited to no purpose her co-operation to promote the accomplishment of her own objects. He did not require she should unite her forces with his: he was anxious only she would make a diversion in their favour. He was astonished that in the furtherance of her own cause she herself would make no exertion. On the contrary, she looked on a cold spectatrix of the sanguinary theatre of the war, which she had herself kindled, and sent a part of her troops to attack Buenos Ayres. Another portion of her army, which seemed to be destined to make a diversion in Italy, finally withdrew from Sicily where it was assembled. Hopes were entertained that they had taken that step, in order to throw themselves on the Neapolitan coast; but it was soon understood that they were employed in taking

their hovels, and the consequences are pret ty much the same, dysentery, ague, and consumption, and that anticipated old age produced by the causes already stated, superadded to bad food, smoke, filth, and despair, which changes as beautiful a race of people as ever originally came from the hands of the Creator, (particularly the females) into skinny, sallow, and withered invalids in the prime of their existence, when youth should give them spirits, and vigour, activity. join the name of Wilberforce especially with the Molungees, because he has already stood forth the champion of a much essl aggrieved class of human beings, and may therefore, be the more inclined to exert his talents and his influence in behalf of these wretched outcasts. Great praise is certainly due to him for his labours in behalf of the Negroes, though they will terminate in the loss to Great Britain of the West India colonies, while 3 doubt may still remain on, the minds of many, as it does on mine, whether the same good to Africa and a less evil to England might not have been produced by a new modelling of the colonial code and making the condition of the blacks so much more advantageous, by assimilating it as closely as possible in point of civil rights, to that of the British, that compulsion would have been no longer necessary, and the Africans would have emigrated to Jamaica from motives of self interest, as the Irish and Scotch do from the United Kingdoms to America,But the motive of the abolitionists was "fi-possession of Egypt.-But what most senat justitia, ruat cœlum ;" and such a senti ment is too apt to be accompanied with a degree of virtuous but imprudent enthusiasm that passes over remedies which to cooler and less expanded minds seem perfectly adequate. But it is no longer time to investigate those measures which led to the abolition of the Slave Trade-it has received the sanction of the legislature, and the fate of the Africans, as far as that measure and its consequences, reach, is decided-it is the cause of the Molungees which I now wish to advocate it is the misery of this miserable class that I wish investigated and redressed. Whether it will ever be discussed in Parliament remains to be seen at least it deserves discussion as well as any of the enormities attributed to Lord Wellesley, and throws as deep a stigma on the British Domination in India-it will at all events if you think it expedient to publish this letter in your Register, acquire in the course of the well deserved and extensive circulation that Register has obtained, a considerable share of publicity and this is all I want-for I will not think that the commercial gangrene has so completely rotted and mortified the British heart

sibly hurt the feelings of his Imperial Majesty was, to see that in violation of the faith and express stipulations of treaties, England was annoying the maritime trade of his subjects; and at what period was this proceeding adopted? when the blood of the Russians was flowing in the glorious battles which accumulated and directed against the armies of his Imperial Majesty, the whole of the military force of his Majesty the Emperor of the French, with whom England was, and still is, at war! When the two Emperors made peace, his Majesty, notwithstanding his just causes of displeasure at the conduct of England, did not however refrain from endeavouring to render her services. The Emperor stipulated in that very treaty that he should interpose his mediation between England and France; and he accordingly made an offer of that mediation to the King of Great Britain, apprising him that it was with a wish to obtain honourable conditions for him. But the British ministry, adhering no doubt to the plan that was to dissolve and break off all the ties between Russia and England, rejected that mediation, -The peace between Russia and France

was likely to bring about a general peace, but it was at this moment that England suddenly awoke from that apparent lethargy in which she had slumbered; but it was only to throw into the north fresh fire-brands, which were to rekindle, and have actually kindled, the flames of a war which she was desirous not to see extinguished Her fleets, her troops, appeared on the Danish Coasts, to execute an act of violence of which history so fruitful in examples, records no parallel A power distinguished for its peaceful and moderate conduct, and for a long and unexpected course of wise neutrality, and who sustained, amidst surrounding monarchies, a kind of moral dignity, finds itself treated as if it was engaged in secret plots, and was meditating the downfal of England: while the whole of these imputations were only meant to justify the sudden and entire spoliation of that power.-The Emperor, wounded in his dignity, wounded in the affection he feels for his people, wounded in his engagements with the courts of the North, by this act of violence committed in the Baltic, a close sea, the tranquillity of which has so long depended on the court of St. James's, and is reciprocally guaranteed by both powers, did not dissemble his resentment against England, and warned her that he should not remain indifferent to such a proceeding. His Majesty did not foresee, that while England, having successfully employed her forces, was on the point of seizing on her prey, she would offer a fresh outrage to Denmark, in which his Majesty was to bear a part.-New propositions, still more insidious than those made at first, were made to Denmark, which aimed at binding down to England that pow er thus subjugated, degraded, and applauding, as it were, every thing that had happened: Still less did the Emperor foresee that it would be proposed to him to guarantee that submission, and to promise that that act of violence should not he attended with any mischievous consequence to England:-The English ambassador seems to have imagined that he might venture to propose to the Minister of the Emperor, that his Imperial Majesty should undertake the apology and defence of a proceeding which his Majesty had so openly condemned. To this step on the part of the cabinet of St. James's, his Majesty has thought proper to pay only that attention which it deserved, and has deemed it high time to set limits to his moderation. The Prince Royal of Denmark endowed with a character full of nobleness and energy, and having been blessed by Providence with a soul as elevated as his rank,

had apprized the Emperor, that, justly enraged against what had recently happened at Copenhagen, he had not ratified the convention respecting it, and that he considered it as null and void-That Prince has just now acquainted his Majesty with the new propositions that have been made to him, and which are of a nature rather to provoke his resistance than to appease his resentment, for they tend to stampon his actions the seal of degradation, the impress of which they never will exhibit --The Emperor struck with the confidence which the Prince Royal placed in him, having moreover considered his own grounds of dissatisfaction with England, having attended to his engagements with the powers of the North, engagements entered into by the Empress Catherine, and by his late Imperial Majesty, both of glorious memory, has resolved upon fulfilling them.-His Imperial Majesty breaks off all comunication with England: he recalls his embassy from that court, and will not allow any ambassador from her to continue a. bis court. There shall henceforward exist no ultions between the two countries. The Eijerer declares that he abrogates for ever every art hitherto concluded between Great Britain and Russia, and particularly the convention concluded in 1801. He proclaims afew the principles of the armed netrality, that monument of the wisdom of the Empress Catherine, and binds himself never to recéde from that system-He calls upon England to give compleat satisfaction to his subjects, with respect to all the just claims they may set up, of ships and merchandises seized and detained, contrary to the express tenor of the treaties concluded during his own reign. The Emperor gives warning, that nothing shall be re-established between Russia and England, until the latter shall have given satisfaction to Denmark. The Emperor expects, that his Britannic Majesty, instead of permitting his Ministers to scatter fresh seeds of war, in compliance only with his own feelings, will be induced to conclude a peace with his Majesty the Emperor of the French, which would be extending, in a manner, to the whole world, the inestimable blessings of peace.-When the Emperor shall be satisfied upon all these points, and especially upon that of a peace between France and England, without which no part of Europe can expect to enjoy any real tranquillity, his Imperial Majesty will then willingly return to the relations of amity with Great Britain, which in the state of just resentment which the Emperor should feel. he has maintained, perhaps, too long.

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