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"of Providence is to be dispensed in the way "most consonant to our wishes. We ought "to be contented with the conviction, that "we have abundant means of providing for "our security in a seperate state and con"dition."* Now, whether this doctrine be merely derived from Dr. Whitfield; whether it descended from Mr. Addington to you, or from you to Mr. Addington, are questions which I shall not presume to determine; bat, it is a doctrine, to which I can never be induced to subscribe. It is, indeed, precisely that of the frail spouse, who justified herself upon the ground, that if her helpmate was born to such a "lot," it was not the fault of his wife. Suppose Ireland, for instance, were to become (which God forbid !) an addition to the territorial power of France; should we be silenced by an observation from the minister, that it was our lot? That Providence was the dispenser of the favour; and that "it was "not for us to say how such favours should "be dispensed?" I will not say that we should not; for after what we have seen, no degree of silent submission ought to astonish us. But, certainly, this way of defending the conduct of ministers is of modern invention. Time was when the conduct of such persous was judged of by the state of the country, and by its relative situation in the world. It was the custom, and the wise custom, to judge of the tree in this, as in other cases, by the fruit; and, if it bore not good fruit, to hew it down. It is not for a minister, particularly for a minister of twenty years standing, to lay the blame upon the times and the seasons, nor upon the people; for, in such a space of time, it is for a minister to form the minds of the people, and to give a proper direction to iheir pursuits. It is not for a minister, who, for twenty years, has had all the honours and revenues, all the rewards of every sort, and for every rank of life, at his absolute command; it is not for such a minister to complain of the "lot" of the nation, or to seek shelter under the decrees of Providence. No :

"The fault, good Casca, is not in our stars, "But in ourscives, that we are underlings." The land is the same, the air is the same, the people are the same in race and in size, that they were when you first became minister. We have so often been told about the earthquake, the volcana, the burning lava of the French revolution, that some

Speech of 14th May, 1802, on the Definitive Treaty of Peace with France. Register, Vol. II. P. 1356.

of us seem, at last, to have taken this figure of speech in its literal meaning, and to believe, that, in good sooth, our power has been crippled by some convulsion of nature. What else can have rendered us so self complacent amidst the daily and hourly demonstrations of our decline; amidst the insults of an enemy whom we formerly despised; amidst the cutting sarcasms, the audible hisses of the world? At what former period of our history were English ministers, the personal representatives of a King of England, hunted over the continent of Europe, driven out of state after state where they had sought refuge?" It is the lawless power of our enemy which occasions this." True; but when, till the administration of Mr. Pitt, could our enemy boast of such power? I could, and, were it of any use, I would, fill volumes upon volumes with declamation against the insolence and tyranny of France. "Insolent scoundrel as "long as you will, good Robin, but where

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were you when he thus vilified your master "and rifled his caskets?” That is the question. The insolence and injustice of the enemy no one denies; but, every one regrets that we have not the power to prevent or to punish them; and, that we have it not, what are we to blame but the mea sures of the minister; of the man who has bad the uninterrupted command of all the resources of the nation ever since the happy time that we had the power to prevent or to punish such insolence and injustice? Will it be pretended, that these rules of judging are not applicable to the measures of a innister, who has to contend with an enemy in a revolutionary state? Dangerous argument! Only admit it to be sound, and, in that very admission, you, in the name of national glory, call upon the people of every state, your own not excepted, to revolt! For, if a people, by overthrowing their government, and by placing themselves in a revolutionary state, necessarily become more formidable to all their enemies, and, of course, more secure against their attacks, is there but one, and is not that one an obvioes and unavoidable inference? But, the fact is not so. Revolutions do not necessarily render nations more formidable to their neigh bours; which has been amply proved by the revolutions of the last hundred years, during which timeseveral states have been nearly,and some entirely,conquered and enslaved,in con sequence of attempts to change the form or the powers of their respective governments. It would, indeed, be absurd to admit any such exception, as is here supposed, from the rule whereby to judge of the measures of a

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his place; which this advocate has been so long accustomed to regard as a moral impossibility, that he does not take the troo ble to say one word thereupon, though it is evident that his reasoning can have no other basis. Sometimes, when I hear your partisans railing against Sir Francis Burdett, and insisting that his past conduct ought to operate as a total disqualification for the future, I observe, "all this may, in your "opinions, be very right, gentlemen; but if "it be, upon what principle do you now "extol Mr. Pitt, who offered a very high "situation to Mr. Tierney; that Mr. Tierney who was apparently far more intimate "with O'Connor than Sir Francis Burdett was; that Mr. Tierney who was the distinguished public advocate of O'Connor; "that Mr. Tierney whom you yourselves, "while yearly receiving a pension from Mr. "Pitt, represented in figure, and denominated "in words, (falsely and slanderously without " doubt) as "the lowest fiend of hell:” “Upon what principle is it, I say, that you now rail against Sir Francis Burdett, in "the very same breath that you extol the "minister, who has placed, or who has en "deavoured to place, a very important de"partment of the state in the hands of Mr. "Tierney?" To this question, Sir, the answer uniformly has been: "Why, can you blame Mr. Pitt for strengthening his ministry? He wished to have had the Gren"villes and the Windhams; but, if he could "not gain them, can you blame him for

minister of any country. Nor can we suffer the blame to be thrown upon the people, of whom such minister conducts the public affairs; notwithstanding an attempt of this kind was made by one of those writers, who took upon himself the arduous task of maintaining the consistency of your conduct in defending the peace of Amiens. "The "people", said he, "were to blame. They "would no longer support the war." To say nothing of the well-known falsehood of this particular assertion, there always occurs here a difficulty, which can never be well gotten over; for when we are told, that the minister would have done this thing or that thing, but, that the people would not enable him to do it; that they would not, in the necessary inanner or degree, second his efforts; when we are told this, we always ask, whether, in spite of this disposition in the people, the minister still kept his place, and, of course, had a majority in parliament? If we are answered in the affirmative, we reject, as downright nonsense, the notion of his measures being obstructed by the people; for, if we did not, we must necessarily conclude, that he held his place and preserved his majority by means that would merit an epithet very different indeed from either honourable or honest. The very possession of the place of prime ministerimplies that the possessor has power and influence sufficient to take any lawful measure, to the execution of which the resources of the nation are adequate. If, therefore, he fail to take the measures necessary for the safety and honour of the country, it must be for want of resources; or, for want of resolation or wisdom sufficient to induce him to exert, for proper purposes, the power and influence attached to the place which he fills; and, must not, by any means, be ascribed to untowardness on the part of the people. In truth, the persons who set up a defence upon this ground, have moved so long in the vortex of the minister, have so long leaned upon him for support, that no dea of his quitting his place seems ever to enter their minds. What the writer above alluded to meant, was, not that you had not power quite sufficient for the continuation of the war; but that you could not have continued the war much longer, without risking your place, and, which was, perhaps, of still greater weight with him, without risking lus place too; a thing not to be thought of any more than one would thick of the end of the world. "You did," he said, all that it was possible for a mini-ter to do." Tba is to say, all that it was possible for a minister to do without risking

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seeking the aid of others in support of his "government?" Thus, says Swift, in describing the perseverance of the fly: "drive "him from a bed of roses, and instantly be "skims away, and finishes his meal upon an "excrement!" It is obvious that these answerers have laid it down as a principle, that the first and greatest duty of a prime minister, is, to keep his place; that, to this consideration every other ought to give way; that, of whatever cannot be accomplished, without risking his place, the accomplishment is to be regarded as morally if not physically impossible; and that, as the principle applies to measures of prevention as well as to mea sures of enterprize, a minister, if charged, for instance, with the loss of Ireland, would, in his justification, only have to show, that he could not have preserved it, without the adoption of such measures as would have risked the loss of his place!

Such being the fair and necessary deduction from the premises, by which the decline of a nation is imputed to the follies or the vices of the people, those who are not content with that deduction must again be referred t

"the decrees of Providence", and, those who are of opinion, that the effect must be sought for in sublunary causes, will, perhaps, be indulgent enough to give me an impartial hearing, while I endeavour to show, that the primary cause of our national degradation is the Paper-money System. But, this must be deferred till my next: in the mean time, I beg leave to recommend to your notice the motto of this letter, whence you will perceive, that some of my opinions, at least, are neither singular nor novel. I am, Sir, yours, &c

WM. COBBETT. Duke Strect, 15th Nov. 1804.

STATE OF IRELAND. LETTER III.

(For Letters 1. and II. see pp. 673, 711.) SIR, -The length of the quotations contained in my last letter prevented me from examining the emancipation of the Irish Catholicks, as it relates to the constitution, in the extent I had intended. I was only able to shew that the laws for disqualifying them from setting in Parliament were contrary to the principles of the Constitution, and founded on circumstances which no longer have existence. I shall now consider the subject more in detail, and shall be able, I hope, to prove, by examining the practical consequences of the emancipation, that the Catholick body would not have it in their power to prejudice our established Constitution.

That they are not inclined to do so is fully demonstrated by their declarations and loyal demeanour, and that even if they were inclined they are not competent, will appear. from the following statement: Let us first examine their numbers. In Ireland they are generally allowed to amount to three millions, seven individuals of whom are peers, and about seventy, according to the authority of Lord Petre, who possess sufficient property to qualify them to sit in Parliament (R-flections, p. 9). As any injury that can arise from admitting the Catholicks to sit in Parliament must be in consequence of the measures of Parliament, and those injurious measures must be in consequence of the power of the Catholick party, it requires no further illustration than the bare mention of the state of the Irish Catholicks in respect to property, to point out the absurdity of the apprehensions that are entertained concerning their complete emancipation. But it may be said that they will become an opulent body, and besides the English Catholicks must likewise be admitted. To the first objection it may be answered, that if so improbable a circumstance should ever occur as the whole re

presentation of Ireland, Peers and Commoners being composed of Catholicks, even then their force in Parliament would only amount to 100 Irish members in the House of Commons and 28 Irish Peers. Let it be granted that the English Catholicks are emancipated, and surely they ought not to be excluded, and we shall have a most satisfactory proof of the impossibility of this portion of His Majesty's Catholick subjects. being capable of forming a strong party in Parliament by referring to the same authority already quoted. "In the peerage list are

at present to be found no more than six of "that persuasion" (the Catholick) "and "amidst the bulk of the people, the number "of them possessing landed and monied "qualifications is so small comparatively "with their more opulent neighbours of the "established church, that they could scarce"ly reckon on seating half a dozen in the "House of Commons" (p. 11). If, therefore, these are added to the greatest possible Irish representation of Catholicks, the whole party in Parliament will amount to 106 members of the House of Commons and 34 Peers out of 655 members and 360 Peers which compose the House of Commons and Lords. How ridiculous, therefore, is the idea of the Catholicks of these realms being under any circumstance of sufficient authority to carry any measure in Parliament which could endanger the safety or impair the benefits of the constitution. Such apprehensions are futile in the extreme, and unworthy of the extensive information and improved notions of liberality of the present age. The truth is, that in respect to the representation of Ireland, the landed property and the borough property is so universally invested in the possession of the protestants, that protestant members must continue to be returned to Parliament, and as the Peerage is elective as to its right to sit in the House of Lords, it is not very probable that more than one or two of the Catholick Peers would ever be found among the 28 that compose the Peerage representation. On the whole, therefore, Mr. Cobbett, as the Catholicks both of England and Ireland, have solemnly and publicly declared, that they acknowledge no other authority in these realms in all matters touching the government thereof, except the King, Lords and Commons, as they have so long and so uniformly con lucted themselves with loyalty to the King and obedience to the laws, as the Constitution of these realms was formed and established by the nation, when a nation of Catholicks, and those laws excluding them from the Constitution were made in times of

bigotry, and to meet dangers which no longer exist, and further, as it is utterly impossible that the Catholick body with the fullest enjoyment of constitutional franchises, could interrupt the enjoyment of them by others, it is palpably and most forcibly manifest that, so far as the preservation of the Constitution is in question, emancipation of the Catholicks is a measure of safety, of sound policy, and of pressing necessity.-I cannot quit the subject as considered in a constitutional point of view, without again adverting to the cir cumstance of the nation having been entirely composed of Catholicks when our liberties were first established. I believe no one will maintain that these liberties have been the offspring of the times subsequent to the reformation. No; those very Protestants who at this moment boast of the blessings of their constitution and of the spirit and patriotism of their forefathers, owe their superior rank among nations not only to Catholick Peers and Catholick Commoners, but also to Catholick Bishops. Those Bishops and those Barons who compelled King John to sign Magna Charta were of that very religion which is most insolently aspersed as inimical to liberty; and those Alfreds, Henries, and Edwards, whose reigns were conspicuous for the observance of the people's rights and the maintenance of their own authority, were themselves the subjects of the spiritual empire of the Pope. How ungrateful, then, is it, to continue laws which exclude the Catholicks from those franchises which they themselves acquired, and how absurd to mintain that the principles of their faith are inconsistent with the safety of a constitution of Government which originated, was established, and for many centuries preserved by them alone! But how preposterous is it that this ingratitude and this absurdity should proceed from the Protestant body, and that they should have contributed most to curtail our liberties and defeat the object of Magna Charta! It has frequently been argued, that the Catholic religion was alone calcu Jated for absolute monarchies. The history of our country proves the contrary, and the examination of the state of parties in the reigns succeeding the conquest will explain the chuses.The contention in those days was between the King and his Barons and Bishops; the one for absolute authority, the others for liberty. It is very evident that the Catholic religion gave the Clergy so much authy in those days, that they easily, with the to counteract the

Kings.

that the granting of Magna Charta was ac complished, and by the same control over the Monarch's conduct have the benefits of it so long been handed down to posterity. But let the power of the Catholic religion in temporal matters be ever so extensive, it is the perfection of our Constitution that it provides remedies against the abuse of power, whether originating in the King, the Clergy, the Peers, or the People.--Vain, indeed, would be the boasts concerning it, if such were not its principal characteristic; for, to what end are governments, and particularly free governments, formed, but for the purpose of keeping within bounds the effervescence of all authority that is inconsistent with the peace, the hap piness, and the liberties of society. In whatever point of view this important subject is contemplated, the exclusion of the Catholics is equally unjust, as the emanci pation of them under the existing circumstances of Ireland is indispensably necessary. It is most sincerely to he wished that the known liberality of the Prime Minister may be permitted to suggest to Parliament those measures, which he must be convinced from the bottom of his heart are well calculated to appease the passions and conciliate the affections of three millions of his Majesty's subjects. Every man of talents will support him, and every inhabitant of these realms who can fully appreciate the value of our bles sed Constitution will hail him as its protector, and the author of universal conciliation throughout these Kingdoms. Liverpool, Nov. 7, 1804.

Z.

SPANISH FRIGATES.-The following article is copied from the London papers, being a translation from the French official papr the Moniteur, of the 30th October, 1801, commenting on an article, which, it seems, appeared in "The Times" newspaper imme ately after the capture of the Spanish frigates.

This article of The Times is very evidently drawn up in the offices of the minis try. What a cold and disgusting irony! English ships of war were employed in attacking four Spanish frigates, at the very instant perhaps when the English minister at Madrid was paying court to the king of Spain, and when the Spanish minister was paying court to the king of England. The attack is made not only without a declaration of war, but while the diplomatic communications are carried on without interruption; and what evinces the suppression of all sense of shame is the circumstance, e precisely, according to the statements of the English

the Barons, were able

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LEPENN

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themselves, that the king of Spain cannot
furnish any real ground of complaint, or
that a declaration of war cannot result from
such an outrage. Three hundred men have
perished, and by whose hands? They were
not enemies who fought them, since not
only the British cabinet is not at war with
Spain, but even affects to maintain the re-
lations of peace with her. They were there-
fore assassins. The vessels, says the English
ministry, may be restored. The restitution
of the property is no doubt a necessary satis-
faction for the robbery committed; but
who will restore to three hundred unfortu-
nate families the fathers they have lost?-A
fact which exposes, in their proper light, the
meanness and ignominy of that cabinet, is
the circumstance that at the moment when
the orders were sent to the English cruizers.
to seize the Spanish vessels, and while these
orders were executing, the British ministry
were availing themselves of the intervention
of the Spanish ambassadors resident at Lon-
don and Paris, to extricate Captain Wright
from the fate he deserved, as the accomplice
of traitors, whom he landed on the coast of
France, for the purpose of assassinating the
emperor; and the letter written to that ef-
fect by Lord Harrowby to M. D'Anduagua,
was filled with the most energetic expres-
sions of attachment on the part of the Eng-
lish government to Spain. Poignards, in-
fernal machines, piracy, the violation of the
rights of neutrals, the breach of forms held
the most sacred among nations;-such are
the arts of that execrable cabinet? It consi-
ders every thing as fair game, if it can but
for an instant gratify, by plunder, the rapa-
city of its cruizers.-The emperor of the
French had consented to the neutrality of
Spain, although the violation of the treaty of
Amiens placed Spain under the obligation of
making a common cause with France. Eng-
land respected that neutrality as long as the
commerce of France and of Holland fur-
nished her cruizers with the means of plun-
der, but at present, when she has done all
the mischief she could, she resigns Spain to
their rapacity. But however torpid may be
the state into which Spain is sunk, such an
outrage is capable of awakening her altoge-
ther. She has still more than forty ships of
-war; her coasts abound in seamen, and the
sentiment of honour and of patriotism re
viving in the heart of the king of Spain, of
his ministers, and of the different orders.
which compose the nation, she will be able
to collect and arm them. These supple-
mentary means will materially co-operate
with our own in transporting our legions to
England, Ireland, and Scotland, And, if

history can ever attribute in part the destruction of England to this outrage, of a nature almost unheard of among European nations, no act of violence and avidity will have been followed by consequences more calamitous for a country.-The specie on board the Spanish frigates belonged almost entirely to the commercial interest of Cadiz; govern ment had no claim but to the smallest share of it. By an action equally destitute of honour and glory, the English cruizers will gain thirty millions of livres, but the trade of that country with Spain was equivalent to more than three hundred millions. The extention of its maritime force required by this new war will also cost more than one

hundred and fifty. Mr. Pitt is not limited in his calculations; he has not abandoned his outrageous system of politics. When he left his last official situation, his ministry had deranged all Europe, and other men and other measures became necessary for the reestablishment of the affairs of Great Britain.

-

He now returns to the same principles, and every one is called upon to express his indignation at this conduct as a man, although in his capacity of a Frenchman, it contributes to the advantage of our cause. We do not stand in need of the aid of Spain to pare the claws of the leopard; but forty sail of the line and a great number of ports shut against the English are of such importance, more particularly in the kind of war which we carry on, that for a long time the. astonishment of all has been excited by that generous system of politics, which did not allow France to make Spain a party against England!

PUBLIC PAPERS.

NOTES BETWEEN FRANCE AND RUSSIA,Note transmitted by the French Minister' for Foreign Relations to the Imperial Russian Chargé d'Affaires, dated May 16, 1804, and signed, CH. M. TALLEYRAND,

I have laid before the First Consul the note of the 22d April (see Reg. Vol VI. p. 29), which you did me the honour to trans mit to me. The First Consul observes with regret, that the influence of the enemies of France has prevailed in the Cabinet of St. Petersburgh, and that it now puts at hazard the good understanding which was established with so much pains, and which appeared to be so well confirmed by the happy effects which it has produced. His Majesty the Emperor of Germany, and his Majesty the King of Prussia, who undoubtedly are the two powers the most concerned in the fate of the German Empire, have understood, that the French government was sufficiently

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