also consonant to his own inclinations and made is proved by documents, attested by feelings. PRINCE GALLITZIN, Commander in Chief. Ukase to the Senate dated St. Petersburg, May 7, 1809. It is known to the whole world, with what firmness' the trade of neutrals has been protected by Russia, when the powers of Europe were at war; it is known with what valour she has guarded the interests of trading nations in the time of peace, against the events of war. Following up this invariable principle, also during the present rupture with Britain, we entertained the fullest hopes that the trade with friendly powers would not be carried on by forbidden means; but as experience during last season has proved to us, that the enemy has found it practicable, by means of neutral vessels, to supply himself with such produce as he stood in need of, and to gain strength by exchanging his own produce, we have at present been compelled to order two vessels to be seized. For these reasons, and to prevent various subterfuges and artifices, we have deemed it necessary to establish some rules, and hereby order, legal authority, at the place from which the vessel departed, and produced before the magistracy of said place; in this in stance the master is not to be considered guilty.-4. A pass is not to be considered valid, if it should appear that the vessel to which it is granted was not, at the very time it is dated, at one of the ports of the power by which it had been given.-5. If the supercargo or master, or more than one-third of the crew, of a neutral vessel, should be subjects of powers at war with us; or if such a vessel is not provided with a muster-roll of the crew, duly attested by the magistracy of such neutral ports from which the same departed, then both ship and cargo are to be seized, but the crew to be set at liberty.-6. If it should appear that the pass produced by the master has been counterfeited or altered, ship and cargo are to be seized for the benefit of government, and the master to be brought to trial, and to be dealt with as is prescribed by the laws for those who make false documents; the crew to be set at liberty.-7. If it should appear that a vessel is provided with double documents, with different 1. That all masters of neutral vessels, destinations, such a vessel and her cargo to be seized for the benefit of government. arriving at our ports, are to prove the property being neutral, by the following do- In case the master wishes to justify himcuments of the ship, viz. a pass, ship's reself, by having lost his documents, and gister, muster-roll, log-book, cocket, mani- cannot produce any proofs, his vessel to fest of the cargo, the charter-party, bills be detained, granting him time for procuof lading, certificates of origin, whether ring the same proportionate to the distance, the cargo, or part of the same, belonging if he wishes it; else, if the master cannot to the captain, and by the invoices of such wait so long, ship and cargo are immevessels as come from America or the In-diately to be sent off; but if at the expidies, or are bound there. In case, how-ration of the period fixed, the master does ever, the master is not provided with any one of the documents, the ship is to be sent out of our ports, and not to be permitted to discharge.-2. In case of neutral ships being partly loaded with merchandize which can be proved to be of the manufacture or produce of the enemy, the same to be stopped, the goods to be seized and sold by public auction, for the benefit of government; but, if more than half of the cargo consists of such goods, then not only the cargo, but also the ship is to be seized.-3. A pass granted the ship, by a neutral, friendly, or allied power, is not to be considered legal, as soon as it appears that the master has acted contrary to the same; or if the ship is na ned in the pass differently to what she is in the rest of her documents, unless the alteration not produce the needful proofs, ship and cargo are to be seized for the benefit of government.-8. No ship built by the enemy is to be considered neutral, unless amongst other documents, a duly attested document is found, proving the sale or transfer to have taken place, before the declaration of the war; else ship and cargo are to be seized for the benefit of govern ment.-9. If the owner or commander of a neutral vessel happen to be a native of a nation at war with us, and are provided with passes of a neutral power, in such a case the pass is not to serve as a clearance, as long as they cannot prove having become subjects and residents of such a power previous to the declaration of war; else, they are to be sent off, with their ships, not allowing them to take in return cargoes. LONDON:-Printed by T. C. HANSARD, Peterborough - Court, Fleet Street; Published by R. BAGSHAW, Brydges-Street, Covent - Garden :-Sold also by J. BUDD, Pall-Mall. VOL. XVI. No. 2.] LONDON, SATURDAY, JULY 15, 1809. 33] TO THE KING. On the Maritime War against France. SIR; [Price 18. [34 purposes of their respective stations, their time has, from the moment they entered those offices, been almost wholly engrossed by endeavours to defend themselves, and to annoy and degrade their own political enemies and your Majesty's late servants. As men may be blinded by too much light, so a people may be kept in error, may be deceived and ruined, by the means of the press, which, unperverted, is so well calculated to insure the constant triumph of truth; and, I have, for my part, no doubt, that, with all our parade of publicity, with all our ostentation of unreserve, there is, in the whole world, no people, who, in proportion to their magnitude, understand so little of their public affairs as is understood by the people of this kingdom. Were not this the case, Sir, it would be impossible, that the enemy should be in his present flourishing state, with respect to his internal and other resources, while England possesses such means of cutting off those resources. When every eye in the nation, at the end of sixteen years of a war which has given rise to the Income Tax, which has caused a part of every man's estate to be alienated under the name of Redemption of Land-tax, which has banished guineas from the land and made Bank-notes a legal tender, which has seen the Habeas Corpus or Personal Safety Act for many years suspended, which has drained the kingdom of its youth and its vigour, leaving the next generation to be the offspring of decrepitude, deformity and imbecility, which has thus entailed upon the nation ugliness and weakness and disease, and which, while it has robbed the land of thousands upon thousands of the best of its labourers in order to convert them into defenders of Sicily and other foreign countries, has introduced thousands upon The general opinion, in this country, thousands of foreigners to defend this is, that France is in a miserable state; that same land; at such a time, when every the people are starving; and, that, as to comeye in the nation is anxiously fixed upon merce, there is no more of it going on in the great, and, in all probability, the last, the dominions of Napoleon, than upon any attempt, about to be made against the of the islets in the Thames about Windsor enemy, it appears to me, that it may be or Hampton Court. This, too, I conclude useful publicly to state certain facts, re- to be the opinion of your Majesty; belating to the mode of carrying on a war cause, as I before observed, your informaof such wearisome length and such deso- tion, as to such matters, must be derived. lating consequence; and that this state- from your servants, and those servants ment may, from its manner, lose none of prove, by their express declarations as its intrinsic importance, I, for the second well as by their conduct, that such is their time in my life, presume to address my-view of the situation of the empire of self directly to your Majesty, taking care, that in this instance, no keeper of official papers shall, as in a recent one, have it in his power to garble, or to suppress, any part of that which I write. France. As to whether the subjects of Napoleon like, or dislike, his government; or, whether they be better or worse off' now than they were under their former sovereigns; these are questions, which That your Majesty is not well informed we can discuss to no profit, because we as to the great and interesting matters, possess no facts whereon to reason; but, upon which I am addressing you, I, with- with regard to the commerce of France, out the smallest hesitation, conclude; and that sort of commerce which is the first, because the measures of your ser-only valuable one, I possess, from the best vants, through whom your information possible source, quite a sufficiency of facts must come, are, in no wise, calculated for to shew, that, upon that subject, at least, the real state of things; and, secondly, be- this has been the most deceived of nations, cause, supposing those servants to possess and your Majesty the most deceived of both talents and zeal sufficient for all the sovereigns. B The sort of commerce, to which I allude, is what we, in England, call the coasting trade; but, in the dominions of Napoleon, or countries under his sway, it is to be considered as something much more important than it is with us. There is no doubt, that the trade between London and the coal-mines is of a million times more value to England than all her foreign commerce put together. But, if we cast our eye over the map of Europe, we shall see, that the coasting trade of Napoleon embraces climates; and that a maritime communication between his several countries must be, not only of vast benefit to him, but in some cases, necessary to the existence of the people. Some of these countries must supply the others with corn. Without the oil and the wine and the silks and the cotton these countries might exist; but the southern countries could not, in many cases, possibly exist without the necessaries of life from the North; and of carrying on this commerce there are no means other than those of a maritime nature. The extent of this commerce, in the dominions of Napoleon, is scarcely to be credited by those, who are not acquainted with the facts. Along the coasts of Naples, Tuscany, Genoa and Piedmont; from the Southern Provinces of France and Marseilles, through Cette, and the grand canal of Louis XIV., to Bourdeaux, and thence along the Atlantic coasts of France, the whole of the coasts of Holland, and into the Elbe; in short, from the Baltic to the southern point of Italy, all the countries are connected by a chain of commercial intercourse as complete, perhaps, as ever existed in the world, and as advantageous as it is extensive. This commerce is, by your Majesty's servants, spoken of under the degrading appellation of "a mere cousting trade;" but, this is precisely that trade, which is really advantageous to a nation. If England were cut off from all communication with foreign nations, she would, in point of strength and of happiness, suffer nothing at all. But, cut off the communication between London and the coal-mines, and the inhabitants of London must perish or disperse. There are several branches of our coasting trade, of a degree of importance, not, indeed, approaching nearly to this; but, still of greater importance to us, than all our foreign commerce put together. If, for instance, only one year's interruption were to take place in the exchange of coals for timber between Cumberland on the one part, and Hampshire and Sussex on the other part, the woods of these latter counties must be burnt to keep the people from perishing, whereas by the exchange now going on, these woods are preserved, the people have fuel in plenty, and that fuel, after having given comfort in that capacity, beconies a valuable manure for the land. One year's interruption of this exchange would do England more harm than would be done by the sinking of all foreign countries to the bottom of the sea. This is, however, only one instance out of hundreds which might be enumerated; and, without any thing more being said, it must, I think, be as clear as the sun at noon day, that, if the enemy were able to put a stop to our coasting trade, it might be at once asserted, that he had it in his power to reduce us to his own terms, be they what they might. Is it not, then, worth the while of your Majesty's servants; is it not worth the while of those, who are entrusted with the conducting of the war, to enquire what is the extent of the coasting trade of the French empire, and to inform themselves as to the means of destroying, or, at least, interrupting that trade? To attack, or to oppose, Napoleon in Spain, Naples, Sicily, Sweden, Denmark, Hanover, or in the East or West Indies, is what it would be for an enemy to attack us in Nova Scotia, Canada, or in any of our colonies, where, though a defeat might produce mortification, it would not seriously affect us, either in our comforts or in the sources of our national strength. We should regret the loss of Canada, perhaps, or of a West India island; but, the loss, like that of a child out of a numerous family, would not be felt in our affairs. We should still be as rich and as strong as before; but, cut off the means of sending corn and timber and iron and tin and coal along our coasts, from one part of the kingdom to the other, and the distress is instantly felt. In fact, the different parts of this kingdom can no more dispense with the coasting trade, than the farmer can dispense with the aid of the blacksmith and the wheelwright. This, it will, perhaps, be said, is not the case with the countries under the dominion of Napoleon. But, will it, then, be asserted, that those countries, though extending almost across the whole of the European continent, and including such a variety of climates, are, nevertheless, se circumstanced as to be able to exist, and | too late. One thing, indeed, has stagcontentedly too, without any commerce with each other; that is to say, without any exchange of natural productions, or of manufactures? The truth is, however, that the commerce between the several parts of this vast empire is so great, that convoys of eighty, a hundred, and even of two hundred sail, are frequently seen, and by your Majesty's fleets too, carrying on this trade in perfect security. These consist chiefly of Luggers, or Zebecks, of a light draught of water, from eighty to a hundred and twenty tons burthen, and are navigated by a proportionate number of seamen. There are employed in this commerce, from the river of Bourdeaux alone, thirty three thousand seamen and upwards. The coasts of the Mediterranean teem with this commerce. Its ports and bays swarm with vessels; and, at no time was the commerce so great between France and Italy on the one side, and be tween France and Holland and the North, on the other side, as it is at this moment, while your Majesty's servants are boasting, that they have a navy which scours the ocean, and that " England engrosses the "commerce of the world." While they amuse themselves and the nation with this empty vaunting, the commerce of France, and her vassal states, carried on almost within the reach of the naked eye of our admirals, far exceeds, in the means of contributing towards national strength, the commerce of England and of all her allies. The general persuasion here, is, that all the people, under the sway of France, are suffering from causes almost similar to those which affect the inhabitants of a besieged town; that the people of the North can get no wine or oil, and that those of the South can get no corn; that there are no materials to make goods of any sort, that all is decay and misery, and that, surely, the poor, beggared, pinched people must, surely, they must soon be pushed to desperation; must revolt, and must tear Napoleon and his government to morsels. This has been the expectation for years, in like manner as, for years before, Mr. Pitt and the foreign pensioner Sir Francis D' Ivernois kept alive the constant expectation, that France would become a bankrupt, and would then be, compelled to submit to her enemies. As the nation was deceived then, so it is deceived now; and so, I greatly fear, it will continue to be deceived, until a knowledge and a belief of the truth will come gered many of even the credulous part of the nation; and that is the fact of France being able still to renew her squadrons and her maritime expeditions. For, this astonishing power of creating a maritime force is altogether incompatible with the assertions of your Majesty's servants respecting the ruined state of the com merce of France. The commerce of France being "annihilated," we cannot help wondering that the ports of Brest and Rochefort should be continually sending forth their squadrons; we cannot help being surprized and somewhat vexed at seeing a squadron of ten or twelve sail of the line come out of the ports of France, in the space of a few months after we have been congratulated upon the destruction of the last of the enemy's ships. The fleet in Basque Roads is said, by the prints of your Majesty's servants, to have been worth several millions of pounds sterling, and that the Calcutta alone was worth six hundred thousand pounds, being full of military and naval stores. To have effected the destruction of the whole of this fleet would have been a subject of great joy; to have effected the destruction of part of it was a subject of joy; but, in our haste to express such joy, we forgot to ask, how all these stores came to be found in the port of Rochefort, so many years after we had "so completely annihilated the commerce of France," agreeably to the tenthousand-times-repeated assurances of your Majesty's servants. The fact is, that, not only from the Elbe and the Scheldt are the ports of France supplied, by the means of the coasting trade, with an abundance of naval stores, but also from that part of Spain lying near the Atlantic coast, whence they receive iron, pitch, tar, rosin and ship-timber, of various sorts, and in vast quantities, and at a rate much cheaper than some of these articles can possibly be brought to the arsenals at Portsmouth or Plymouth. If this be the case, and I scruple not to assert that it is the case, what are we doing? What is the use which your Majesty's servants are making of the immense means, which the industry and patience of your people put into their hands? If there be a commerce, such as I have described, carried on between the different parts of the dominions of Napoleon, of what use, as the means of keeping him in check, are the thousand ships of war, now employed? Of what use is it, if this commerce is to go on un . interrupted; of what use is it, that the sea is covered with your Majesty's ships, and that history will record the valour of your seamen? Of what avail is it, that we destroy French ships of war, while we leave, in full vigour, all the means of creating others to supply their place? If this be the way of making war, it must be clear to every one, that we can never have peace, without being exposed to imminent danger; for, it will require but a short space of time, for France to raise a navy equal, in numbers at least, to any that we can possess. The security of this extensive and most valuable commerce of the French dominions arises, in great part, from the use of land signals, or telegraphs, so constructed, placed, and managed as to keep the vessels upon the coast at all times correctly informed of what is passing upon the whole line of coast. From Flushing to Bayonne a report is exchanged four times a-day; at day-light, ten o'clock in the forenoon, two o'clock, and just before sunset. So that, at Flushing, they know, four times during the day, what is passing at sea, within sight of the highest hill in the neighbourhood of Bayonne, and, of course, they are informed of what is passing near all the intermediate parts of the coast. The same system is established along the coast of the Mediterranean, from the Gulph of Spezzia to Rosas. The coasting vessels, thus instructed how to move; thus kept constantly in a state of perfect knowledge as to the situation of our fleets or cruizers, and able to sail in safety, carry on their trade in as much security as if those ships were not in existence; and this only, as I shall hereafter prove to your Majesty, from causes which prevent the necessary exertions from being made, and which causes may instantly and easily be removed. The advantages to the nations (for they are many), which carry on this commerce, are not greater than they are to Napoleon himself, in his views of conquest and dominion. From this commerce, notwithstanding our opinions to the contrary, he derives no small part of his revenue, through the means of a stamp-tax, imposed upon every article exported or imported; and hence he is able to dispense with direct taxes, which are always odious, and which are, indeed, those which have uniformly ended in exciting the feelings and producing the acts, under which so many governments have perished. This is a great point. By the means of this commerce, he disguises from his people the burdens which they bear. It is, indeed, a gross imposition to tell a people, that commerce pays taxes, the fact being, that those taxes still fall upon the people themselves; but, as your Majesty must have observed, it is an imposition, it is a fraud, it is an act of duplicity and knavery, the success of which in other countries warrants the belief that it must be greatly useful to your Majesty's implacable and powerful enemy. Very much, then, are your Majesty's servants deceived, when they suppose, that the Emperor Napoleon has no Custom-house, whereat to collect duties. His scale, indeed, may not be so noble as to afford him Counts and Dukes for receivers; he may not have Marquises for collectors, Barons for wharfingers, and Knights of the Eagle for wine-tasters; but, I am of opinion, that his Customhouse yields him a much greater clear revenue than is derived from any similar establishment in the world, and that it affords him the means of drawing upon other sources of taxation with so sparing a hand, that his people, especially within the ancient boundaries of France, have reason to congratulate themselves upon the comparative lightness of their burthens. A great many of your Majesty's subjects, including some in high stations, have, at different times, expressed their astonishment, and, indeed, their vexation, that the people of France should be s0 slow in rebelling against their Emperor, with whom your Majesty made a treaty of peace and "amity" only about seven or eight years go; but, if they had been informed of the facts here stated, relative to the commerce of France, and especially relative to the revenue yielded by that commerce, together with the relief thereby given to all the other sources of taxation, itself not appearing as a tax; if they had been duly informed of these facts, and had been possessed of but a very moderate portion of that sort of knowledge, which enables men to trace popular discontents to their real causes, they never would have entertained a hope of seeing a rebellion in France. But, great as are the financial advan tages of this commerce, Napoleon derives from it the still greater advantage attending such a nursery of seamen. It has been most clearly proved, over and over again, that, for our navy, the nursery is our coast ing trade. There requires, therefore, no |