England, seizes upon the German domi- | nions of the latter the latter protests against this, and, by his Secretary of State, declares that he never will make peace without obtaining the restoration of these dominions: while this quarrel is going on, Napoleon marches against the king of Prussia, defeats him, drives him from his dominions, takes Hanover, the object in dispute, and bestows it on a third party; and, from the capital of the king of Prussia's dominions, issues a decree against England, avenging the cause of the king of Prussia! Napoleon, in this his first decree, declares England (who had, by this time, extended her blockade from the Elbe to the Port of Brest) in a state of Blockade, and prohibits all trade and all commercial communication with England. But, this Decree, which was little less practicable in all cases than our blockade, was Orders in Council from us; and these brought from the Emperor Napoleon the Decree issued at Milan, in December 1807. This ended the series of invasions of neutral rights; for, indeed, nothing more was now left to invade. Both parties called their measures retaliatory. Crib having taken a blow upon a third party in the way of retaliation on Belcher, Belcher takes another blow upon the same party in the way of retaliation on Crib. Both parties declared, that they were perfectly ready to repeal their Decrees; that they regretted exceedingly the necessity of adopting them; each explicitly promised, that, whenever the other gave up the new restrictions he would also give them up too. Napoleon said his measures had been forced upon him by us: we said our measures had been forced upon us by him. The Americans, who complained of both, were told by us, that we should always be ready to revoke our Orders if the enemy would revoke his Decrees. This was sa'ying very little, seeing that his Decrees had been issued in consequence of our Orders, and, of course, he was not to be expected to revoke first, especially as the Decrees themselves declare that their object is to cause our Orders to be revoked. declared to be retaliatory, and was to be repealed whenever England repealed her Orders in Council which had then been issued. Certainly this was not the beginning. We had begun, and that, too, under the administration of those who have since so loudly censured the Orders in Council; and, which must, I presume, be a subject of regret with your Royal High-monstrated so long in vain, and seeing no The American government, having reness, the state paper in which this begin- likelihood of obtaining redress by the ning was announced to the American gomeans of diplomatic entreaties, and yet vernment, came from the pen of Mr. Fox, who appears to have yielded implicitly to not wishing to plunge the country into a the principles of his new associates in war, resort to the measure of exclusion from politics. At any rate, this Decree of the their ports, giving to both parties an opporEmperor Napoleon was not the beginning this measure of demi-hostility. During tunity of preventing the execution even of of the open attacks upon neutral rights; the session of Congress in 1809-10, a law and, what is of still more importance, it was not Napoleon, but it was the king of and England continued in their violation was passed providing, that, if both France Prussia, who committed those acts of ag- of the rights of America till and after the gression in Hanover which produced our first of that series of measures, called the 1st day of November, 1810, the ships and Orders in Council, and which measures goods of both should be prohibited from have finally led to the exclusion of our entering the ports and waters of the Amegoods and our ships from the American rican States; that, if they both repealed their obnoxious Decrees and Orders, then ports. This is a fact of great importance the ships and goods of both were to have in the dispute, and especially if that dis- free admission; that if one party repealed pute should end in war. It will be right, and the other did not, then the ships and in that case, for us to bear in mind the goods of the repealing party were to be real grounds of the war; the true origin of it. And, endeavour to cast the blame admitted, and the ships and goods of the where we will, it will, at last, be found in non-repealing party were to be excluded. the aggression of the king of Prussia upon pealed: we have not, and, accordingly, Napoleon, the Americans say, has reour ships and goods are excluded, while those of France are admitted into the waters and ports of the United States. Hanover. The Berlin Deeree brought forth new This is one source of the present ill- for complaint or reproach. They have a blood against America, who is accused of right to like and to dislike whom they partiality to France; but, before this charge please. We, for instance, have a great can be established, we must show that the attachment to the court and government measures she has adopted are not the of Sicily and also to the courts and annatural and necessary result of an impar- cient governments of Spain and Portugal. tial measure; a measure in execution of We should not permit the American goan impartial law. If a pardon were ten- vernment or people to interfere with these dered to Belcher and Crib upon condition attachments of ours; and, I presume, it that they ceased to beat the parties as will, therefore, not be thought reasonable above supposed, and if Belcher persisted that we should arrogate to ourselves the while his enemy did not, the injured par-right of judging whom the American peoties could not fairly be accused of partiality | ple and government are to like. in pardoning Crib while they punished Belcher. The American Government and people may, however, without any crime, or, at least, without giving us any just cause of complaint against them, like, and shew that they like, Napoleon better than Messrs. Perceval and Rose and Lords Liverpool and Wellesley. It may be bad taste in the American Government and people to entertain such a liking; it may be great stupidity and almost wilful blindness that prevent them from perceiving how much more the latter are the friends of freedom than the former. But, so long as the American Government does no act of partiality affecting us, we have no reason to complain: so that justice is done to a man in court, he has no reason to complain of the personal likings or dislikings of the judge or the jury. The people in America look at France and at the state of Europe in general with minds pretty free from prejudice. They are in no fear of the power of Napoleon. They have amongst them no persons whose interests are served by inflaming the hatred of the people against him. They reckon dynasties as nothing. They coolly compare the present with the former state of Europe; and, if they give the preference to the present state of things, it must be because they think there has been a change for the better. They may be deceived; but, it can be the interest of nobody to deceive them. Those who have the management of their public affairs may have a wrong bias; but they cannot communicate it to the people; for, they have no public money to expend upon a hireling press. The government and the people may all be deceived; but the deception cannot be the effect of any cheat practised upon either; it cannot be the work of bribery and corruption. If, therefore, the government and people of America do really entertain a partiality for Napoleon, we have, on that account, good ground for regret, but certainly none When we are told of the "partiality for "France," which is a charge continually preferred against the American government, we should ask what acts of partiality they have been guilty of, and that is the test by which we ought to try their conduct in the present instance. They have put their law in force; they have shut out our goods and our ships, while they.freely admit those of France; and this is called partiality, and is made the grounds of one of those charges, by the means of which, it appears to me, that the venal press in England is endeavouring to prepare the minds of the people for a war with the American States. But, to make out this charge, it must be shown, that the French have done nothing that we have not done in the way of repealing the injurious Decrees. Indeed, this is what is asserted; and, though a regular communication has been made to the American government by the French government, that the Berlin and Milan Decrees are revoked; though they are by the American Minister here asserted to be revoked, and no longer in operation; still it is asserted by some here, that they are not revoked. The American government, however, is satisfied that they are revoked, and it has, accordingly, put its exclusion law in force against us. To settle this point of fact the Americans have not been told what sort of evi dence we shall require. They present us the letter of the French minister for foreign affairs to the American minister at Paris, telling him, that the Decrees are revoked, and that the revocation is to go into effect on the 1st of November 1810. This we say is nothing at all, because it is clogged with this remark, "it being clearly under"stood that the English Orders in Council are "to be revoked at the same time." Certainly. This was to be naturally expected; and England had promised that it should be so. The Decrees have actually been revoked, without this condition being complied with on our part; but, if they had not, it was to be expected that the American Government would put their exclusion law in force against us at the time appointed; because we ought to have declared our intention at the same time and in the same manner that the French declared their intention. It was in the month of August 1810, that Mr. Pinckney, the American minister in London, communicated to our Foreign Secretary, lord Wellesley, that the French Decrees were revoked, and that the revocation was to take effect from the 1st day of the then ensuing November. The answer which Mr. Pinckney expected was, that the English Orders in Council were also revoked, and that the revocation would take effect from the 1st of November. That he had a right to expect this will clearly appear from the communications made to the American Government by our ministers in that country, who, in answer to the complaints of America upon this score, always declared, that the King their master was exceedingly grieved to be compelled to have recourse to such measures; that nothing could be farther from his heart or more repugnant to his feelings than a wish to injure or harrass the commerce of neutrals; that he had taken these odious measures in pure selfdefence; that it was his "earnest desire" (I quote one of these declarations) " to see "the commerce of the world restored to "that freedom, which is necessary for its prosperity, and his readiness to abandon "the system, which had been forced upon him, whenever the enemy should retruct "the principles which had rendered it neces "sary." When, therefore, Mr. Pinckney, who had this declaration before him, commonicated to Lord Wellesley the fact that the French Decrees were revoked, and that the revocation was to go into eflect on the 1st of November, he had a full right to expect an immediate revocation of our Orders in Council, and an assurance that such revocation should go into effect on the same day when the French revocation was to go into effect. But, instead of this he received for answer, that we would revoke our Orders, when the revocation of the French Decrees should have actually taken place. But there was another condition, that whenever "the repeal of the French Decrees shall " have actually taken place, and the com"merce of neutral nations shall have been "restored to the condition in which it stood previously to the promulgation of these De"crees," then the King will relinquish his present system. Here is a second con dition. We do not here content ourselves with the revocation of the Decrees; no, nor even with that revocation having actually gone into effect. We call for something more, and that something greater too than the thing for which we before contended. We here say, that, before we revoke our Orders, we will have the neutral commerce restored to its old footing; that is, that we will have the "Con"tinental System" abandoned by France, with which system the Americans have nothing to do, and with regard to which they can have no right to say a word, it being a series of measures of internal regulation, not trenching upon nor touching their maritime commerce. It is a matter wholly distinct from the other; it relates to the reception or exclusion of English goods in France and her dependencies; and, if we are to make America answerable for the conduct of France in that respect, it would follow that France would have a right to make her answerable for our conduct in excluding the goods of France from the ports of England. We had, it appears to me, no right to require any thing of America, previously to our revocation of the obnoxious Orders, than an official and authenticated declaration, that the French Decrees were revoked. And, what more could we ask for than was tendered to us, I am at a loss to conjecture. The French Go vernment officially informed the American Government that the Decrees were revoked, and that the revocation was to have effect on the 1st of November. This was officially communicated to us by the American Government through their accredited minister. We were, therefore, to give credit to the fact. But, no: we stop to see the 1st of November arrive. This was not the way to convince America of our readiness, our earnest desire, to see neutral commerce restored to freedom. The course to pursue, in order to give proof of such a disposition, was to revoke our Orders in Council, and to declare that the revocation would begin to be acted upon on the ist of November. This would have been keeping pace with the French; and, if we had found that the revocation did not go into operation in France on the 1st of November, we should have lost nothing by our revocation; for we might immedi ately have renewed our Orders in Council, and we should then have continued them in force, having clearly thrown all the blame upon the enemy. This line of conduct would, too, have been perfectly consonant with our professions to the American Government, to whom, in 1808, our minister had declared, that, in order to evince the security of our desire to remove the impediments to neutral commerce, we were willing to follow the example of France in the way of revo cation, or, to proceed step for step with her in the way of relaxation. Our minister, upon the occasion here alluded to, in communicating the several Orders in Council to the American Government, declared that the king felt great regret at "the necessity imposed upon him for such an "interference with neutral commerce, and " he assured the American Government, "that his Majesty would readily follow the "example, in case the Berlin Decree should "be rescinded; or, would proceed, pari passe with France, in relaxing the rigour of their measures." Agreeably to this declaration, we should, it clearly appears to me, have done exactly what France did in August 1810, and not evaded it by saying that we would revoke after ber revocation should have been actually put into operation; that is to say, that we would condescend to begin after France had ended. 66 " This is the view, may it please your Royal Highness, which clear and unclouded reason takes of this matter. This is the light in which it has been seen by the American government and by the people of that country, who, though they do not wish for war, will assuredly not censure those who manage their affairs for acting as they have done upon this occasion. The measure of exclusion adopted against us by America is too advantageous to France for the latter not to act upon the revocation of her Decrees; and, indeed, there appears now not to be the smallest doubt, that, as far as relates to America, (and she is in reality the only neutral), the Decrees are, in deed as well as in word, revoked. It is notorious that our Orders are not revoked; and, for my part, I am wholly at a loss to form an idea of the grounds upon which any complaint against America can be founded, as far as relates to this part of the dispute. In a future Letter, I shall submit to your Royal Highness some remarks relating to the affair of the Little Belt, and shall endeavour to lay before you the real state of that case, and the consequences which would naturally arise from a rupture with America, or from a prolongation of the present quarrel. I am, &c. &c. WM. COBBETT. State Prison, Newgate, Thursday, 29th August, 1811. SUMMARY OF POLITICS. TALAVERA'S WARS.The inactivity of the present campaign in Spain and Portugal is truly astonishing. I thought we were told, that, long before the month of September, the Peninsula would be scoured of the French as clean as our purse promises to be by supporting the war. Mr. Perceval went so far as to anticipate consequences of great import in other parts of Europe. It was not for him, he said, to say what effect our victories might produce upon the people of France themselves; but, he did not think it at all unreasonable to entertain the hope, that we might, in pursuing those victories, become, under Divine Providence, the deliverers of Europe. Verily Viscount Talavera does not appear to be making any very hasty strides towards such deliverance. He has, it appears, moved again of late; but, to what point or for what purpose we are as yet uninformed, his dispatches, or that part of them that we are permitted to see, being as brief and as dry as the endorsement of an Attorney's bill. The French armies that were approaching him, at whose approach he raised the siege of Badajoz after his attempts to enter the breach, and before whom he retired to Elvas and Portalegre; those armies are, our venal writers tell us, dispersed; Talavera, they say, has beat them again. Why, then, does he not resume the siege of Badajoz, which those armies made him abandon? That would be a proof of the French armies being unable to face him; but, all that I can see in his present conduct is a proof of his consciousness of an inability to meet the French in the field. This, perhaps, is no fault of his: he is not to be blamed for wanting either numbers or species of troops fit to meet the wing the war in the Peninsula with ad"vantage to the people themselves, it is by placing a generous confidence in the hands of the power that has come to "their assistance.-We trust the same lan"guage will be spoken to the Govern"ment and the Cortez of Spain, as well as "fectly agree with the opinion of Cap"tain Pasley, that if we are to fight the "battles of our allies, we ought to be in"trusted with the means of drawing forth "all the resources of the countries we de" fend.-A temporary Regency to be es"tablished in every country where British "Armies are to fight for the deliverance "thereof, is the only means of effecting "that unanimity of exertions which is "necessary to success; and when it is seen what frivolous divisions prevail "among the leaders, and what oppressions "keep down and stifle all ardour in the "people, it is manifest that unless our "Government is as imbecile and as be"sotted as those of Palermo and of Cadiz "themselves, we must arouse from our "own squeamish inaction, and exert a clear, "an honourable, but a commanding in"fluence in the Governments which we assist." enemy: but those are greatly to blame, who represent him as being able to meet the enemy, and, at the same time," praise him for not meeting that enemy.But, if what the public prints now state be true, we are about to see a new sort of exertions made in the Peninsula. We are, it seem, to take a more commanding tone, and," to the Court of Sicily; for we most perwith whom, do you suppose? Why, with our allies! With our allies to be sure, with whom should we take a commanding tone? As to the enemy, he does not care a straw for our resolute tone. In the field he sends his Polish Lancers to answer us; and in his news-papers he challenges us to pay our Bank Notes in gold and silver. But, let us hear this curious scheme for taking a more commanding tone with our allies, poor fellows!- -"It is not true that "Lord Viscount Wellington is on his re"turn to England in consequence of indis" position. On the contrary, we have "reason to believe, from the information "we have received, that he is destined to "fill a more important situation, and dis"charge more extensive duties in the "Peninsula than ever. There is a rumour "that our Cabinet has at length deter"mined to take a more commanding and "decisive tone with our Allies than they "have hitherto done, and without which they perceive, that the war may be pro"tracted from year to year without the "least advancement under the languor, « disinclination, or treachery, of the leading "Councils of the two Kingdoms.-To meet "the enemy with adequate energy, it is "incumbent on our allies really to draw "forth all their resources, and to act with "one mind. To do this they must agree "to invest Lord Wellington with proper "authority to arouse and exert the faculties "of the people, who are all well disposed, " and desire only to have their own griev"ances redressed, the hope of a benignant « Government established, and leaders whom "they can trust.We have heard that re"monstrances on this subject have been " at length attended with success, in Por"tugal; and that Lord Wellington will "no longer have to complain of the dilatory "and evasive conduct of the Government, "for the power to call forth the energies "of the people will be put into his own "hands. As trustee for the Prince Regent, "surely England, that fights his battles, "may be trusted with the means of mak"ing these battles successful; and we "have no hesitation in saying, that if any thing can give us a chance of terminat -This is from the Morning Chronicle; but the hint about the indisposition of Lord Talavera was first thrown out in the Times, a print, which is, for very sufficient reasons no doubt, become totally devoted to the Wellesleys. This was an ugly hint;. and it has not been contradicted. It resembled one of those numerous little paragraphs that are published in the course of the year for the purpose of feeling the public pulse. But, no, my reader, we shall not, we surely shall not, see a Wellesley come home under such circumstances! Oh, no! The Times must have wronged him in the hint. It was a false rumour to be sure. What! taken ill under such circumstances! It is a standing order in most armies, that no man shall have a bowel complaint on the day of battle. Many persons would regret Lord Talavera's illness upon this occasion; but, few, I believe, so sincerely as I should. Sir Vicary Gibbs will suppose, perhaps, that my regret would arise from the loss of my chance of the Portuguese prize for writing the History of Talavera's Wars * * I find, that I undervalued this prize, when I before spoke of it. I supposed the 50,000 Reals to be worth 150 Guineas; but, by consulting the UNIVERSAL |