ed the president, upon any just occasion given, to issue a warrant for enforcing the departure of any ambassa dor, minister, or other person, taking due precautions to avoid improper or unnecessary violence in executing such warrant.

The difference of the president's feelings towards Buonaparte and Eng. land was strongly marked in the man. ner in which he mentioned France, in that same speech wherein he spoke of our murderous aggressions. "With France," he said, "the other bellige rent, whose trespasses on their commercial rights had long been the subject of just remonstrance, the posture of their relations did not correspond with the measures taken on the part of the United States to effect a favourable change." The French Admiral Willaumez, indeed, had forcibly taken four French deserters out of an American ship,—the fact was related in the American newspapers, and yet it was not even complained of, nor once alluded to among the trespasses which were the subject of remonstrance. American subjects seized under the Berlin decree were starving in French prisons. General Armstrong, then ambassador at Paris, regretted that he could do nothing for them at present, and assured them that he would lose no opportunity of restoring them to their country. This was all the redress they could obtain from him, and their captivity and sufferings were never enumerated by their government among the trespasses which were the subject of remonstrance. The Americans at Paris were equally insensible to all outrages and acts of tyranny on the part of Buonaparte. Át their anniversary of the independence of the United States, a standard was carried, bearing this inscrip

tion, "Liberty of Navigation for Neutrals, or War with England;" and in the hall where they dined, France and America were represented as reposing together in the Temple of Peace, with England at their feet: the American ambassador and legation being present, and sanctioning these insults to Great Britain. The French government did not fail to profit by the disavowal of Mr Erskine's arrangement; they renewed their negociations with General Armstrong, urging him to accede to the system by which France was aiming to recover the liberty of the seas. But however desirous the more infatuated, or more corrupt, partizans of Buonaparte in the United States might be of instigating their country to hostilities against Great Britain, this was a measure too obviously ruinous to be ventured upon at present, even by the existing government, and there was yet a numerous party in the Northern States who understood their real interest. Resolutions were past by the legislature of Massachusetts, condemning the conduct of the executive general government with respect to Mr Jackson, showing that the object of France was, by instigating a war between England and America, to recover possession of Canada, and declaring their own persuasion that no just cause existed for a rupture with Great Britain; but that they deemed it their duty to use all the means in their power for allaying the existing irritations, and preparing the way for the restoration of a friendly intercourse between two nations, whose interests were in so many points essenially united.

The immediate object of France, in exciting America to hostilities with England, was clearly seen by the

New-Englanders, and they saw also that it was the design of that insatiable government, after it had used the United States as a means of recovering Canada, then to add the country of their allies to their empire. The views by which the American government could be bribed to a conduct so inconsistent with its own real interest, were not so apparent; but they began to develope themselves. Á minister was sent from Spain to America in the name of Ferdinand 7th., and the president refused to acknowledge him, saying, he could receive no minister from Spain while that country remained in its present

unsettled state. He assured him at the same time, that no minister would be received from Joseph Buonaparte, Had there been nothing more in this than the avowal that America, regardless of all other rights, waited to acknowledge the right of the strongest, it would have been sufficiently disgraceful to her rulers. The events of the ensuing year discovered that there was a secret understanding between her and France upon this point, and that while the president thus affected impartiality, he was, in fact, making arrangements for securing a part of the colonial spoils of Spain.

THE north of Europe presented but a mournful prospect at the beginning of the year. The people of Denmark, however strongly and indignantly they must have resented the attack upon Copenhagen, felt far more fear and hatred of their tyrannical allies than of the English, their unwilling enemies. The contrast between the Spanish and French troops who had been quartered upon them produced a striking effect. The Spaniards cheerfully paid for whatever they desired to have beyond the ordinary allowance, and never behaved arrogantly towards the men nor improperly towards the women; while the French, carrying their system of free quarters into whatever country was cursed with their presence, rioted at the expence of their hosts, and insulted the wives and daughters of the Danes before their eyes with gross indecency. The people, therefore, dreaded nothing so much as these allies, and they looked on with melancholy forebodings to the consequences of the unnatural connection between Denmark and France. But the temper of the court was altogether

different. Mortified that the plans which they had formed in concert with Buonaparte against this country had been frustrated, taking advantage too of the manner in which this had been done, to justify themselves, perhaps even to their own hearts, for the preposterous and ruinous policy in which they were involved, they pursued the war with a spirit of inveterate enmity that scrupled at no hostile act, however disgraceful. Hence Denmark was the first power to acknowledge the intruder Joseph as King of Spain, and even engaged in hostilities against Romana's army, and detained such of his troops in prison as could not effect their escape. Hence also the court entered eagerly into all the schemes of France for ruining our commerce. The king complained both to the French and Dutch governments, that vessels were in the practice of clearing from Russia, and passing the Sound under Dutch colours, though they were notoriously bound for England; and these governments, less scrupulous than the American ministry, because they were sincere in their intention

of cutting off the intercourse which they prohibited, required him to seize the ships so offending, and to imprison the crews. Our trade suffered a more serious annoyance from that kind of warfare which gun-boats and privateers carry on to such advantage in narrow seas. The Swedes wondered that we did not give some check to this, by taking possession of the islands of Bornholm and Ertholmen, nests from whence these enemies annoyed the Baltic more than from any other station, and which might have been made the rendezvous for all vessels bound to or from the ports in those seas. This would have been advisable; but the bolder and better policy would have been, to have once more attacked Copenhagen, and have added Zealand to the dominions of Great Britain.

The Danish ministry, extending its hostility to Sweden as well as England, affected to make preparations for invading that country. Surgeons were called upon to give in their names, and hold themselves in readiness to accompany the expedition; and it was rumoured that the king would take the command in person. In Denmark it was reported that the threatened invasion greatly alarmed the Swedes; so much so, that on the coast of Scania their troops spent the night in the open air, notwithstanding the severity of

the season.

It was said also, that measures were taken for the defence of Stockholm, the winter having set in so rigorously that the court of Sweden apprehended it might be practicable for their assailants to march across the Gulph of Bothnia. The Russians, in fact, did cross the ice from Abo, and take possession of the isles of Aland, where they fortified themselves, meaning to retain

these islands as dependencies upon Swedish Finland, now, so Alexander foolishly supposed, irrevocably annexed to Russia. Buxhovden collected ice-boats, as if he designed to transport troops from thence to Sweden, the distance to the nearest coast being little more than thirty miles. These things, the Danes were assured, had so alarmed Gustavus, who had experienced the inutility of his alliance with England, that in his despair he was about to go to Petersburgh, either thinking it possible to produce some change in the mind of the czar by personal conference, or meaning to throw himself upon his generosity.

There was more truth in the reports circulated at Copenhagen, that the French party was becoming formi dable in Sweden, and that Gustavus himself was in danger. The King of Denmark did not scruple to foment the treasonable spirit which was beginning to manifest itself; balloons with proclamations exciting the Swedes to revolt, and join the continental powers against Great Britain, were launched from the Danish shore; some of them fell near Helsingburg, and were carried by the peasantry who found them to the magistrates. The Swedish peasantry, indeed, were uncorrupted; but they were hopeless, and their sufferings at this time were such that any thing which promised change seemed to offer alleviation. The season was severer than any within remembrance; it set in early in November, and in the middle of March the whole surface of the country, land, lakes, rivers, and the sea itself, were still covered with ice and snow. The last crop had failed, and, to aggravate the evil, the herrings, which of late years had arrived in decreasing numbers, during the last entirely

forsook the coast. Diseases, the effect of hardships, excessive fatigue, and insufficient food, broke out in the army, and in the fleet: in such cases we have had lamentable proof how little can be effected by medical science, even in the most advanced state to which it has yet attain ed; but in Sweden both skill and medicines were wanting. A third of the soldiers and sailors, it is supposed, were carried off, and of the survivors half were lingering in the hospitals. Pestilence was not confined to the military part of the population; it appeared at Carlscrona and on the borders of Lapland. Poor diet, and that scantily supplied, was the cause: the deaths were fifty a-day, and thousands were thus swept off.

Dearth and pestilence were thus wasting the people. Finland had formerly been the granary of the northern provinces, and this province, the most fertile and the most pros. perous of the whole kingdom, was lost. From thence and from Pomerania, which also was lost, Stockholm and most of the other sea-ports used to receive provisions and fuel; the capital, therefore, severely felt the effects of the war. The merchants remembered their gains while the kingdom remained neutral, and, forgetting that France had destroyed all neutral trade by her tyrannical decrees, imputed their losses to the war alone, and ascribed all the sufferings of Sweden to her alliance with England. Among the higher orders there prevailed that baneful attachment to the language and manners of France, which has contributed so greatly to the overthrow of the continent. The government, too, was ill compacted: the long struggle between the crown and the nobles left a rankling spirit in the aristocra

cy, which had produced the murder of Gustavus III., and was working evil against his son. In many respects the king resembled the best of his progenitors; his private life was unimpeachable; his high sense of honour was manifested in the resolution with which he alone, of all the continental sovereigns, rejected the offers and defied the power of the Corsican tyrant. No prince would ever have been more popular in ordinary times. His zeal for the improvement of the kingdom and of the people was unwearied: if any person, how humble soever in rank, distinguished himself above his neighbours, whether by making drains, embankments, or enclosures; by improving his agriculture or his breed of cattle; by being the foremost to have his children vaccinated, or to send them to school; even if a peasant set the example of building his house with stone, and roofing it with slate, the provincial magistrates were instructed to inform the king of such a man's deserts, and he was sure to be rewarded, as an incitement to others to pursue the same course. But there was in him that family disease which had manifested itself in Christina and in Charles XII.; and though the general tenor of his conduct was not only blameless, but even wise, every error which he committed, and every sally of anger to which he gave way, was attributed to this cause, That the disease existed is beyond a doubt; his conduct toward Sir John Moore proved it but too plainly; and another proof was displayed at the beginning of the year, when he laid an embargo upon British ships, and shortly after took it off again, for reasons which at the time could neither be conjectured in this country nor in Sweden. But his very virtues were torn