Denmark could not possibly listen without compromising its honour, and exposing itself to the resentment of France, but to the principle of which we were in honour bound to adhere. We did not want the ships; and, even if we had wanted them, it would be more politic, as well as more generous, to hold out this promise of restoring them. Nothing could be so likely to conciliate the Danes, and to bring back the Emperor of Russia to his natural connection with this country; and much was to be expected from the impression which a resolution of such magnanimity, justice, and consistency would make upon the continent. The bitter spirit of hostility in the court of Denmark was urged in opposition to this motion, and the weightier argument, that Russia and France had pledged themselves to obtain a restitution of these ships: pledging ourselves to restore them would, therefore, be yielding to these enemies, and confessing that we had acted unjustly in taking them. The motion was rejected. An opinion prevailed very generally, that Lord Sidmouth spoke the wishes of the crown upon this occasion; but the existing ministry held their power so entirely by the favour of the king, that it is not possible they could have undertaken any measure of importance without his full approbation. Weary as parliament and as the public were of this subject, it was not yet suffered to rest. Mr Sheridan made a motion on the 25th, Feb. 25. for copies or extracts of any correspondence which passed between his majesty's ministers and the Danish charge d'affaires, or his secretary, from the date of the capitulation of Copenhagen to their departure, together with the minutes of any verbal communications between the same; copies or extracts of all correspondence with the court of Stockholm relative to the retaining possession of the island of Zealand by a Swedish army, or in concert with his majesty's forces; and also copies of any correspondence which may have past between the courts of Copenhagen and Stockholm relating to the same, and communicated to his majesty's ministers residing at the court of Stockholm. He stated, on the authority of the Moniteur, that, at the very time when ministers were soliciting the Emperor of Russia to mediate between Great Britain and Denmark, they were threatening to despoil Denmark of Norway, and give it to Sweden; and that, after having evacuated Zealand, conformably to the capitulation, they had intended to co-operate with a Swedish garrison in again taking possession of it. The whole matter of the debate was comprest by Earl Temple into this single question, Was there or was there not any negociation with Sweden, or any foreign power, to occupy Zealand after our troops were bound to evacuate it, pursuant to the terms of the capitulation? No answer was made to this; but the motion was rejected upon the sound plea, that the correspondence of our ally the King of Sweden ought not to be made public. On the 3d of March, Earl Darnley moved an address in the Upper House, to condemn the attack upon Copenhagen as unjust, unnecessary, and impolitic. A counter resolution was proposed by Lord Elliot, and, of course, was carried. On the 21st, Mr Sharp also moved a vote of censure upon ministers for this expedition; he recapitulated the arguments which had been advanced to prove that it was unnecessary; and he dwelt more ably and eloquently than had been done before him, upon the consequences of injustice. The motion was rejected; and Mr Stuart Wortley proposed a resolution of thanks to ministers, which was past accordingly. The last discussion of the subject was upon a motion of Lord Folkestone's, similar to that which Lord Sidmouth had brought forward in the House of Lords, that the Danish fleet should eventually be restored. Upon these latter questions, the evangelical party delivered their opinion, which was in favour of the expedition. There have been few public measures upon which persons accustomed to think alike differed so widely as upon the expedition to Copenhagen; this could not have been the case if its necessity* had been so great as was asserted by the one side, or its injustice so monstrous as it was repre sented to be by the other. The oppo sition claimed a triumph, because ministers produced no evidence of the designs of France upon the northern fleets. Yet they who called for evidence must have known, that it ought not to be produced; nor can it be doubted that France would soon have demanded and obtained the Danish navy. Had it been ceded to our expedition without resistance, nothing would have been said in England of the injustice of the measure; it was the dreadful circumstance of bombarding a capital, surprized in time of peace, that startled us, and awakened feelings of horrort and indigna tion in a very considerable portion of the English people. They would never have called the cause in question if they had not been shocked at the consequences. Believing that evidence of the enemy's designs could not possibly be produced, and that those designs actually existed, and *No person has argued more vigorously upon this view of the question than Mr Cobbett." If," says he, "the Danes had been towards us as harmless in their future probable views, and in their past conduct, as they have been mischievous, still, if I had been minister, I would, if they had rejected the proposition made to them, have seized their fleet and arsenals; because, though ever so willing to resist the power of France, it was manifest that they wanted the ability; because, situated as they were with respect to our enemy, it was also manifest that they would have been made use of as instruments in his hands, for the purpose of ensuring our subjugation; and, because, having the power of my country committed to my hands, it is my duty so to employ that power, as to prevent every thing which manifestly tends to its subjugation, let who will suffer from my exertions. And this is no new morality. It is morality as old as the hills and the valleys. It is a morality which must be adopted: or we must confess, that there are certain political evils greater than that of seeing one's country conquered." A striking instance of the horror with which it was regarded, occurs in Ben. Flower's Political Review. After noticing, with that hearty hatred which he bears to the bishops and the saints, that they all voted in favour of the expedition, he concludes by saying, "It is, however, highly consolatory to reflect, that, let unprincipled statesmen, venal senates, and servile majorities, act and vote as they please, they cannot pluck the Almighty Ruler of nations from his throne, nor overturn the foundations of justice. The cause of injured Denmark is in his hands, who has declared," Vengeance is mine, I will repay." This worthy and right honest man, strangely wrong-headed as he is about the present war, must have been bitterly angry with his country, when he could derive any consolation from believing that the vengeance of God was about to overtake it! would have been successful, I never theless regard the expedition as disgraceful and detrimental to Great Britain, unjust because it was unnecessary, and impolitic in every point of view in which it is possible to consider it. We ought not to have hazarded such consequences for such a cause. What if the fleets of the North had been brought out against us-were they more formidable than those which we had so often defeated? Was there an English seaman whose heart would not have leaped for joy in sure and certain expectation of victory, if he had beheld them upon the seas? Less cost of treasure and of life would have been required to destroy the combination than was expended in preventing it; no blood would have been shed but in fair battle; there would have been no stain upon the humanity of England, conquest would have been glorious, and we should have rejoiced in our triumph. CHAP. IV. Questions connected with the Attack upon Copenhagen. Expedition to the Dardanelles. Earl St. Vincent's Mission to Lisbon. Military Co-operation on the Continent. Mr Whitbread's Motion on the Mediation of Russia and Austria. Orders in Council, and Commercial Licences. THE ministers, while they contrasted the success of their expedition to Copenhagen with the failure of their predecessors at Constantinople, justified its principle by that precedent, or rather recriminated upon them the charge of impolicy and injustice. They, on their part, challenged enquiry into this transaction; but the first motion upon this subject was brought forward in a hostile Feb.10. shape by Mr Taylor. Having, he said, at one time, been resident in Turkey, and conversant with the manners of the people and their political attachments, his attention was naturally engaged by the dispatches from his majesty's ambassador and commanders in the Dardanelles, and with every attention that he was able to give, he could neither discover why the armament went, nor why it came away. The British fleet appeared at the entrance of the Dardanelles on the 29th of January, 1807, while the British ambassador was still at Constantinople; the British fleet attacked the castles and forced its passage, burning a Turkish frigate: the British fleet remained twelve days before Constantinople, and then came back the same way without doing any thing farther. This situation was one in which no British officer would wish to remain, nor ought to be suffered to remain, without enquiry. He, therefore, moved for certain papers which would tend to show why our squadron went there, why it came away, and what it had done there. From the papers which were made public in consequence of this motion, it appeared that the counsels of the Porte were entirely under the influence of the French* ambassador Se *It is not a little curious, that the official note of this ambassador to the Reis Effendi, was said, in the House of Commons, by a ministerial member, to contain "much solid reason, and nothing exceptionable." That it contained nothing objectionable to a French ear, Mr Thomas Grenville said he did not doubt; but, that a member of the British Parliament should express himself in such a manner with respect to it, was a circumstance, he confessed, that "he could not have believed, had he not witnessed. The note was full of the violence and insolence which abounded in the numerous compositions of French diplomacy." The following extract will sufficiently prove the justice of Mr Grenville's remark:--"If, in these difficult circumstances, the Porte does not form a true estimate of her dangers and of her force, if she does not form the decision her interests require of her, I shall perhaps ere long have to lament her fate.-The undersigned has received the most positive orders from his Majesty the Emperor of the French, King of Italy, to declare to the Sublime Porte, that not only the principles of friendship, but those of the strictest neu bastiani. By the regulations concerning Moldavia and Wallachia, which were agreed upon with Russia in the year 1802, the term of the continuance of the Hospodars in their governments was fixed for seven years. If, the regulation stated, they are not guilty of any open offences, they shall not be displaced before that term is expired; if they do commit any offence during that time, the Sublime Porte will inform the minister of Russia of the circumstance; and if, after due examination is made into the affair on both sides, it shall appear that the Hospodar "has really committed an offence, in that case only his deposition shall be allowed." Both these Hospodars were now displaced at the instigation of the French ambassador, without any appeal to Russia, or any accusation being made trality, require that the Bosphorus should be shut against all Russian ships of war, as well as against every other vessel of that nation, bringing troops, ammunition, or provisions; and that the said passage cannot be opened to them without committing an act of hostility against France, and without giving his Majesty, Napoleon the Great, a right of passage over the territories of the Ottoman empire, in order to combat with the Russian army on the banks of the Dniester.--Any renewal or continuation of alliance with the enemies of France, such as England and Russia, would be not only a manifest violation of the neutrality, but an accession on the part of the Sublime Porte to the war which those powers wage against France, and his majesty would see himself compelled to take measures conformable to his interests and his dignity. The Sublime Porte cannot maintain her relations with two missions from Naples, and his Majesty the Emperor of the French cannot suffer his august brother, Napoleon Joseph, King of Naples and the two Sicilies, to meet with difficulties here which he does not experience from any power in amity with France.--His Majesty, the Emperor, has a large army in Dalmatia: this army is collected for the defence of the Ottoman empire, unless an equivocal conduct, on the part of the Porte, and a condescension towards Russia and England, which might again throw her into their power, should compel his Majesty, the Emperor of the French, to bring forward his formidable forces for a purpose totally opposite to that which he had in view.-His majesty has ordered the undersigned to state to the Sublime Porte, in the most friendly, though energetic manner, these demands, for the purpose of obtaining an answer in writing; and, it is expected that this answer shall be positive and categorical.---No further delay can be allowed; and his majesty has no doubt that the Sublime Porte will give him the assurances he desires, and which are so much in unison with the interests of the Ottoman empire.---The undersigned has no wish to make a vain display of the formidable forces of the great Napoleon; his friends know how to estimate their importance; his enemies have felt their power. -The genius of his august master is well known; his determinations are wise and prompt, his personal attachment to his highness is sincere. He only seeks the independence, the integrity, and the glory of Turkey. He desires nothing. He asks nothing. What inducements to an union with him! At the same time what reason to apprehend the loss of his good-will by adopting a timid, uncertain, or inimical line of conduct! Under these circumstances, the answer of the Sublime Porte will regulate the conduct of my august master. Let not the threats of the enemies of France impose upon the Sublime Porte; they have been vanquished, and they will ever be so. The great Napoleon will employ all his resources for the glory of his highness, Selim III. his friend; and his resources are immense, his genius is still greater. This note is of sufficient importance to be submitted to the profound wis dom of his majesty, the emperor, Selim III: and your excellency is requested to take the earliest opportunity of laying it before him. The undersigned &c. Ho BACE SEBASTIANI.' |