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TO THE PRINCE REGENT: ON THE DISPUTE WITH THE AMERICAN STATES.

SIR,

Feeling, as the people of this kingdom do so severely, smarting, writhing, as we are, under the effects of the war with France, and considering how easily this war might, in 1793, have been avoided without either danger or dishonour to England; thus feeling and thus reflecting, it is natural for us, when threatened with a new war, to inquire betimes, what are the grounds of such war; whether it would be just; if just, whether it would be necessary; and, be the cause what it may, whether the consequences are likely to be good or evil.

If, Sir, the counsels of Mr. Fox had been listened to, in the years 1792 and 1793, the state of England, of Europe, and of the world, would have been very different indeed from what it now is. A war against opinions and principles would not have been waged; England, instead of becoming a party in that fatal and disgraceful war, would have been a mediatress between the conflicting parties, if, indeed, she had not wholly prevented the conflict. So many governments would not have been overthrown; such rivers of human blood would not have been shed; reformation might and would have been produced, because the state of things and the temper of men's minds demanded it; but no where need there have been de struction; all the states of Europe might have remained on their old foundations, and the Bourbons might at this day have been upon the Thrones of France and Spain. This kingdom, too, might and must have shared in the reformation; but, such reformation would have made no inroads upon rank or property; and the nation would have avoided all those measures of coercion, all those before unheard-of laws to which the contest gave rise; and those enormous expences, which, first producing Debt and tenfold Taxation, led by degrees to that pauperism and paper-money, which now form the two great and hideous features in the state of

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our internal affairs, and which no man, who really loves the country, can contemplate without the most serious apprehensions.

Such being the consequences of that war, or, rather, a part of these consequences, the far greater proportion of them being, in all probability, yet to come, it behoves those who have power to act to consider well, before they launch the country into a new war; and it is the right of every man to express, in the way which he may think most likely to be efficient, his opinions upon the subject. This right I am now about to exercise, and if I have chosen, as the vehicle, an address to your Royal Highness, it is because that respect, which inclination as well as duty dictate upon such an occasion, will not fail to make me dismiss from my mind all partiality and prejudice, and to offer nothing unsupported by fair reasoning and undeniable facts.

As to the grounds of the present dispute with the American States, they are some of them of very long standing. The conduct of this government relative to the war against those States was extremely unwise; but, its conduct since the war is, I am convinced, unparalleled in the annals of diplomatic folly. The moment that war was at an end, the people of the two countries, attached to each other by all the ties which imperious nature has provided, were ready to rush into a mutual embrace, and like children of the same common parent, whose harmony had been disturbed by a transient quarrel, to become even more affectionate towards each other than they had been before. Not so the governments. With them ambition and resentment had something to say. But, the American Government being, from the nature of its constitution, a thing of such transient possession, it would have been impossible for any set of men long to remain in power if they had been discovered to entertain a vindictive disposition towards England; that is to say, if the government of England had discovered no such disposition towards AmeK

rica. Unhappily such a disposition was but too plainly seen in the whole of the conduct of our government; and hence we have witnessed, from the end of the American war to this day, a dispute and an angry dispute too, upon some ground or other, constantly existing and in agitation between the two countries, to the great injury of them both, to the great injury of the cause of freedom, and to the great advantage of France as a nation, and to the cause of despotic sway all over the world. The war was at an end, but the quarrel seemed only to have begun: a seven years war, and an already eight and twenty years of quarrel!

It was full ten years before we condescended to send a Minister to reside in America, and when we did it, the object seemed to be only to recall, or to render more active, ancient animosities. A miserable dispute about old claims for debts due to English subjects on one side, and about negroes carried off at the peace on the other side, clouded and made gloomy the dawn of this new diplomatic intercourse. This dispute was kept alive 'till new claims for vessels unlawfully confiscated arose on the part of the American Government. The treaty of 1794, which provided for Commissioners to settle these claims would, it was hoped, produce harmony; but it is well known that it only widened the breach. At last, however, we patched up this matter we yielded, but it was without magnanimity: we gave our money, the nation was taxed to make up for the blunders of the cabinet; but we gave without the credit of generosity. In the meanwhile, the English creditors have remained, many of them until this day, unsatisfied, while a Board of Commissioners, who have been sitting either here or in America ever since the year 1794, or, at least, have been paid all that time, have swallowed up in expences to the nation, a great part of what would have sufficed to satisfy our own claimants without any application for money for that purpose to the American States. In the course of this part of the dispute there was much unfairness on the part of the American Government; and we might have been fully justified, strictly speak ing, in coming to a rupture upon that ground. But, we came to neither a rupture nor a reconciliation: we asserted our claims and then gave them up; but we took care to choose that manner of doing

it, which effectually took all merit from the thing.

This point was hardly patched up, when another subject of dispute arose to that another and another and another have succeeded, the long-contested question relative to the impressment of American Seamen running through the whole. So that, at last, there has grown together a mass of disputes and of ill-blood, which threatens us with a new war, and which war threaten us with new burdens, and, still worse, which threaten the world with the extinguishment of some part, at least, of its remaining liberties. The points, however, more immediately at issue, are those relating to the present non-importation law and the affair between the American Frigate, President, and our sloop of war, the Little Belt. As to the former points in dispute the Americans were the complainants: they called for satisfaction, and, whether they ought to have obtained it or not, it is certain that they have not yet obtained it. Upon these two recent points, therefore, as being thought likely to lead to war, and as being so represented by those public prints which are known to be under the influence of persons in power, I shall now proceed most respectfully to offer to your Royal Highness such remarks as the occasion appears to me to demand.

The Non-importation Act, that is to say, the law which has been passed in America to prohibit the importation of any thing being the growth or manufacture of Great Britain or Ireland, and which law is now in force in America, must doubtless Le regarded as a measure of a hostile, though not of a warlike nature, because the same law does not apply to the enemy with whom we are at war; and, besides this commercial prohibition, our ships of war are shut out from the harbours, rivers, and waters of the United States, while our enemy's ships of war are permitted freely to enter and abide in them. These are distinctions of an unfriendly nature: they are, indeed, measures of hostility; but, then, I beg your Royal Highness to bear in mind, that they are acts of a much lower degree of hostility than were the acts of your Royal Father's ministers against France in the year 1792, though they, to this hour, contend, that that war was a war of aggression on the part of France; and, of course, their own doctrine, if now cited against this country, would be quite

enemy. It was contended by those who denied the right of search, that no belligerent had a right to search a neutral at sea in any case; and, that, if this point was given up, the goods of an enemy in a neutral ship ought not to be seized, for that the neutrality of the ship protected the goods. To this doctrine English writers and statesmen have never subscribed; they insisted, that we had a right to search neutral ships upon the high seas, and, if we found contraband articles or enemy's goods on board of them, to seize

That we have violated the rights of America as a neutral State, there can be no doubt. The fact is not denied; nor is it pretended, that the violation would not, in itself, be sufficient to justify any degree of hostility on the part of the offended .state. Indeed, to dispute these facts would be to shew a total disregard of truth; for, we have published, and, as far as in us lies, we have carried, and still carry into execution, an interdict against all trade on the part of America, except such as we choose to licence. We have said to her, that she shall not carry the produce of her soil and exchange it for the produce of the soil of France, Italy, or Holland. If we meet with one of her ships laden with the flour of Pennsylvania and owned by a Pennsylvanian merchant, bound to any port of the French Empire, we compel such ship to come into some one of our ports, and there to unlade and dispose of her cargo, or else, to pay duty upon it, before we permit her to proceed on her voyage. In short, we have issued and acted upon such edicts as establish an absolute controul and sovereignty over the ships of America, and all that part of the population and property of America that are employed in maritime commerce.

That the rights of America are herein

well as cargo lawful prize. But, no statesman, no lawyer, no writer ever pretended, that we had a right to seize in a neutral ship the goods of a neutral party. No one ever dreamt of setting up a right like this, which, in fact, is neither more nor less than making war upon the neutrals; because we do to them the very worst that we can do, short of wanton cruelty, of which the laws and usages of war do not allow.

In justification of the adoption of these our measures towards America, our go. vernment asserted, that France had begun the violation of the neutral rights of America, and that our measures were in the way of retaliation, and that the laws of war allowed of retaliation. It is a singular species of law, which, because a weak nation has been injured by one powerful nation, subjects it to be injured by another. If Belcher were to beat Mr. Perceval and Lord Liverpool in the street, Crib would not, for that reason, be justified in beating them too: this would, I presume, be deemed a new and most outrageous species of retaliation; and there is little doubt that the belligerent pugilists would soon be sent to a place where they would have leisure to study the laws of war. But, it is alledged by our government, that the Americans submitted to the Decrees of Napoleon; that they acquiesced in his violation of their rights; and that it was just in us to treat them in the same manner that he had treated them, because they had so submitted and acquiesced. The same rea