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the transactions alluded to would occupy | a volume of this size; but a statement quite sufficient for our present purpose will lie in a short compass. At the close of the American war, in which the Dutch had suffered a great deal in their finances as well as in their colonial establishments and their maritime fame, the people, by their Representatives in the States, called for inquiry, for punishment of delinquents, and for a reform of what they deemed abuses. Their representative assemblies, generally speaking, was with them, and the Executive Government against them. Which side was right and which wrong we need not, at present, stop to inquire. Suffice it to say, that the people demanded what the government_refused.- -The dispute grew warm. Heats and animosities were engendered. At last, the Old King of Prussia, Frederick the Great, as he is called, who had an army, wrote a Letter to the Representatives of the people of Holland, in which he pretty broadly hinted to them that that army would be made use of, if they persevered.--They did persevere; and, at last (the Old King of Prussia being by this time dead) his successor sent a powerful army, such as it was impossible for the Dutch to resist; entered their territories; established camps; invested and took their fortresses; over spread the whole country; and filled with his hated Prussian Soldiers even the city of Amsterdam itself. The commander in chief of this undertaking was the late Duke of Brunswick, who with the same army, and under the same sovereign, afterwards invaded France! -Submission followed. The people and their Representatives were compelled to yield to the force of a foreign army. The most humiliating conditions were imposed upon the assemblies. All those men who had been most active and had had most weight in opposing the government, were marked out for degradation in proportion to that weight and activity; and thus were the seeds of never dying hatred against that government sown in their bosoms.- -France, who, as well as England and Prussia, had always endeavoured to preserve an interest in the councils of Holland, and who, perhaps, had, or thought she had, some reason to suspect the sincerity of the Dutch government, during the American war, favoured, as far as she was able, the popular side of the dispute; and England, on the other side, under the

councils of "the great statesman now no "more," made preparations for war against France, for the purpose of preventing her from holding Prussia in check; and thus England left the latter power at liberty to do that which she finally did in Holland; that is to say, compel the people, by military force, to submit to the will of the government. PAINE, in his "PROS"PECTS ON THE RUBICON," a passage from which I have taken for my motto, and which he published at the time we are now speaking of, pointed out to Mr. Pitt the consequences of this measure. In that work he foretold what soon afterwards came to pass; and he most strenuously advised our "great man" not to pursue the same track.- -One effect of the forced submission of the Dutch was, the emigration, in 1787, of many of the leading men amongst the patriots, to France, where a reluctance to reform was then brewing a revolution. Here the Dutch patriots found kindred spirits. It was combustible added to combustible; and, be it remarked in passing, the fate of the people of Holland, forced to degrading submission by foreign troops, served in no small degree, to put the French upon their guard, and to bring forth that body of national defenders, who have, at last, been moulded into the conquerors of Europe.--When the French revolutionary war began in 1793, it was quite natural that the Dutch government should be on the side of England and Prussia; and (whether right or wrong, for that is what we are not now discussing) it was not less natural, that the Dutch people should be on the side of those who were at war against England and Prussia, especially when the persons whose cause they espoused were also fighting against their own government, a sort of struggle in which the Dutch people had been so recently engaged.——Was it, therefore, at all surprizing, that, when the Duke of Brunswick was driven out of France the people of Holland expressed their joy in every way that they dared? Was it at all surprizing, that, when the French armies advanced, in a few months afterwards, to the invasion of Holland, they found fortresses fall at the first summons, which had formerly cost a regular siege of months? Was it surprizing that the invaders had merely a march to perform, and were, in fact, received as deliverers instead of being opposed as enemies? But, besides these reasons for not defending their country against the French,

the fact was, that the French army was accompanied by those very patriots, who, in consequence of the Prussian invasion and their subsequent degradation, had emigrated to France in 1787; who were so many conductors of the invaders; so many guides; some of whom had, indeed, considerable commands in the French army; and, if my memory does not deceive me, to the summons of one of these very men the first of the Dutch fortresses was surrendered. What a change! What complete retaliation! What sweet, but, oh! what dreadful revenge!—The bistorian of the Prussian invasion, and of the consequent submission of the Dutch people, observes, that, when the fine regiments of Prussian soldiers, in all their gay attire, with their streaming banners, and marching to the sound of airs of victory, entered the City of Amsterdam, the people seemed to shun the sight; and that even the women and children, naturally so full of curiosity and so fond of such sights, shut.up the windows, and sat brooding over their sorrow and their shame.Reader, do you not feel for these people? Consult your own heart, and, if it be not fashioned to degrading submission; if there be in it one drop of blood that warms to the cause of freedom, it will tell you, that the Dutch people never could forgive; and that the children of those mothers, who, on that day, shut themselves up in darkness to avoid the hateful sight of their invaders, would, when they became men and women, have the desire of revenge firmly implanted in their bosoms against those invaders, their employers and their abettors of every name and in every degree.Thus, then, we have before us here, the real cause of the conquest of Holland by France. It, perhaps, does not merit the name of conquest. The people, if they did not invite, admitted and received the French. They brought in the French against their government, as their government had brought in the Prussians against them. When the government reduced the people to submission, the people, as far as they were able, left the country and went to France; and when the people got the upper hand, the government went off to Prussia and to England. It may be said, perhaps, that the Dutch people were wrong in the origin of the dispute, and that the government was right in refusing to grant their requests of inquiries and reforms. But, at any rate, it is beyond all doubt, that a vast

majority of the people called for such reforms, else why call in foreign troops? There is no getting over this. The Dutch government had a native army; and, if it was necessary to call in a foreign one, it is proof complete that the nation was nearly unanimous against the government. There may, indeed, be persons, ready to declare, that the people of any country have no right, upon any occasion, to have any thing to say in the measures of their government, supposing every man of them to be of the same mind, and suppose the acts of the government to be ever so tyrannical. To such persons I have nothing to say; but, I may beg them, for their own sakes, not to let us hear from them any charges against the tyranny of Buonaparté; for, if the people under his sway have no right to complain of any thing, who has a right to complain for them?-This question, however, as to who was right and who wrong, in the original dispute between the government and the people of Holland, is of no sort of consequence as to the point now before us. The cause of the conquest of Holland by France was the previous invasion of Holland by the Prussian army; and. those, who now utter their invectives against Buonaparté because he holds Holland as a province of France, are in a sad dilemna, for, if they acknowledge, that the people of Holland were right in their struggle against their old government, then I ask them what Buonaparté has done, or what he possibly can do, more unjust or more cruel than what that old government was guilty of? And, if they, on the other hand, say, that the people were wrong; that it was for no good reason that they were hostile to their government, and that their receiving of the French with open arms arose from their own baseness, cowardice, disregard of country, and abominable and universal corruption, then I ask them, if it be possible to treat such a people too harshly, if it be possible to squeeze them or lash them too hard, and if all compassion for such a people be not, to say the best of it, a contemptible weakness. - -Let them choose.No, thank ye, they would rather not choose. They would, if it is the same to us, Father keep the dispute between the Dutch people and their government about peculations and inquiries and reforms quite out of sight and out of hearing. They would rather confine themselves to the present sufferings of Holland, as painted by themselves, and take it for

granted, that the good old government | well as amongst nations. Brothers will had nothing at all to do in producing not submit to brothers so readily as they them; and they would, besides, much ra- will to other persons; and who can want ther that we should never turn our minds particular instances to convince him, that towards any "wild speculations" as to what persons contending for an object of any the Dutch people might have possibly en- sort till they become thoroughly embit dured under a government protected by a tered towards each other, prefer giving Prussian army, and which our writers the whole to a third party, rather than would, probably, not have considered as forego the pleasure of obtaining vengeance any military despotism at all.--No. It upon their adversary in the contest.--It suits them best to amuse us; to draw our is precisely the same with nations, as the minds away from all views of the real cause history of the conquests of France have of the conquest of Holland and of the mise- clearly proved; and, when we are drawries they now paint to us as existing in that ing pictures of the miseries of the people Country; to divert our attention from this by whose countries have been conquered by invectives against Buonaparte, intended also France, we should not forget to place on to furnish the grounds of an inference as the other side, the ample revenge which to the consequences of his conquering us, they have obtained upon their former and thus to scare us and terrify us into a rulers. Now, though it may be too resistance of his attempts against our counmuch, still I will hope, that these remarks try.. -Shallow men! How little must and reflections, may go some little way tothey have profited from the experience of wards inducing our writers, when they are nations! How little must they know of upon the subject of French conquests, to human nature!--God forbid that we indulge less in invective against Buonashould stand in need of scaring and terrify-parté, who is merely the agent, and dwell ing into efforts for the defence of our coun try; for, if ever we do, the country will, assuredly, not be defended.When men feel terror, the thing uppermost in their mind is, how they shall propitiate him who is the cause of that terror, and not how they shall, by open hostility, resist him.

For the preservation of their rights, that they enjoy, any people will fight.

more upon the cause, or causes, of the events and consequences of which they are exhibiting pictures.

WM. COBBETT.

State Prison, Newgate,
Friday, 11th Jan. 1811.

COBBETT'S

But, the Dutch have shewn us, that when Parliamentary Debates:

HOLLAND.

OFFICIAL PAPERS.

-Proceedings of the Dutch Ministry with the English Government, relative to the preserving of the independ ance of Holland by the means of a Peace with France.-1810.-From No. I. to No. II.-Instructions given by the Dutch No. IV, Ministry to M. Labouchere, 1st Feb. 1810.

a people are deprived of what they deem to be their rights, they will not fight mereThe FIFTEENTH, SIXTEENTH, and SEVENly to avoid the chance of being still worse TEENTH Volumes, comprising the whole of off, still more degraded and insulted; and, the Debates and Proceedings in both notwithstanding all that we have heard Houses, during the Last Session of Parlia about the present state of Holland; not-ment, are now ready for delivery. withstanding all that we have heard of the misery of the people (and it is likely to be great enough) I must actually know the fact to believe, that those who shut up their windows to avoid the hateful sight of the Prussian soldiers, would, even now, if they had their free choice, change their new for their old government. -I heard a sentiment from General Craufurd, in one of his speeches in parliament, in 1803, purporting, that he would rather submit to the most fell tyranny that ever was conceived of native growth, that he would rather submit to an English Robespierre, than to the mildest sway in the world under a foreign conqueror.-The sentiment was, I dare say, sincere; but, it was not the sentiment of human nature, as all experience proves, amongst individuals as

(Concluded from p. 64.)

He will add, that, in case either a relaxation or a change of the above system shall be adopted, we may flatter ourselves, that besides the non-occupation of Holland, the war, as long as it may continue, will assume a new aspect, and much less dis astrous, than it has done for these three

The unfortunate situation of Holland has long excited sentiments of compassion in this country, which sentiments naturally increase with every aggravation of the misfortunes to which she is subject: but Holland has no right to expect that this country will sacrifice her interests and her honour.-The nature of the communication received fron M. Labouchere will hardly admit of the slightest observation respecting a general peace. It even does not call upon England to repeat those sentiments which her Government has so often expressed on this subject. It may, however, be remarked, that the French Government has not expressed the slightest symptom of a disposition to make peace, or to abate in the smallest degree those pretensions which have hitherto rendered ineffectual the inclination of the English Government to put an end to the war. The same observation is applicable to the war which the French Government carries on against trade, a war in which it has been the aggressor, and which it maintains with unceasing rancour. M. Labouchere is mistaken in the note delivered by him, when he asserts, that the English Orders in Council have given rise to the French Decrees against neutral navigation. The Orders in Council were not the motives, but the consequence of the French decrees. The French decrees are still in full force; there have been no measures taken for repealing them. It is not reasonable to expect, that we shall in the smallest degree relax the personal measures of protection which our safety requires, and which may defend us from the enemy's attacks, because he suffers in consequence of the measures he has adopted, and which he shews no inclination to depart from.

years; and that there will result a little more probability of an accommodation, inasmuch as then the Emperor of the French will have no motive to maintain the Decrees of Berlin and of Milan, which his Imperial Majesty has only adopted in consequence of the British Orders in Council of Nov. 1807.-If, however, the English Government, after having listened to these hints, raises difficulties about giving any definitive explanation, before being positively informed of the intentions of the French Government on the subject; it will be his duty to demand, that the English Government declare, whether it chooses to make its resolution to arrive at negociations for peace, or at least to make a change in the said Orders in Council depend on the above hints, and in particular on the evacuation of Holland by the French troops, and the re-establishment of every thing on the same footing as before the last invasion of Zealand by the English, adding such other conditions as the said Government may think it its duty to insist upon before, according to the proposed measures, for the purpose of having sure data before making known to it the intentions of the French government. -Whatever may be the answer of the English Government to his representations, provided it do not exclude all hope of attaining the object proposed, and that circumstances permit him, he will provisionally prolong his stay in London; and in the mean time he will transmit to the undersigned, as speedily as possible, and by the safest channel, a detailed recital of all his proceedings, of the answers which are made to him, and of every thing that concerns his mission. However, if, after having received an answer to the overtures made by him, he may find it necessary for the success of the cause, to convey it himself to the knowledge of his Majesty, he shall be at liberty to do so; but in that case, even though his Majesty The undersigned having received from may still be at Paris, he shall take his their Excellencies orders to proceed to journey by way of Holland, and shall by England with written instructions, preno means repair to France directly from scribing the means that he was to pursue England. In fine, the strictest secrecy is to communicate to the English Governrecommended to him in this whole affair, ment the situation of Holland, and to imas well as the greatest prudence and dis- part to it the means the most probable of cretion in the execution of the commission averting the fate which menaced that entrusted to him. country, proceeded to the Brill. He arVANDER HEIM.-J. H. MOLLERUs.rived there on the 2d of February, sailed

No. III.-Translation of a Note of a Verbal Communication from Marquis Wellesley o M. Labouchere, 12th February, 1810,

No. IV.-Report of Proceedings by M. La

bouchere, London, 12th February, 1810.

from thence on the following day, and landed at Yarmouth on the 5th, in the evening, from whence he proceeded for London, where he arrived on the after

deavoured to convince the Minister, that in this particular instance, the general interest, well understood, and the lasting prosperity of every commercial state, imperiously required, that the crisis in which Holland was, should not be looked at with indifference; on the contrary, that they should co-operate to divert the storm. He even confined himself only to the demand of a conditional declaration; but the result which he transmits is the only one he could obtain. His general observation, and the information he was able to obtain, lead to the following conclusions:-That the main question of peace or war engages little of the public attention; that they are recon- . ciled by habit to the continuance of the war, and that its consequences, far from being felt at present, are rather favourable to private interest.-That the system of commercial restrictions its inherent in the present Ministry, and for the same reason is condemned by the Opposition; that it is therefore likely that for the present these restrictions will be enforced, in a greater or lesser degree, as well against America as other Powers.-That the English Ministry look upon a firm adherence to this system as the most effectual means of seriously affecting the resources of France, and of opposing her system of influence on the Continent; and that all attempts on the part of hostile nations to make them think otherwise, will only produce a contrary effect. That it must not, however, be in

moon of the 6th. On the morning of the 7th, he requested an audience of marquis Wellesley, Minister of the Foreign Department, which was given him at halfpast five the same evening. After having communicated to his Excellency the substance of his instructions, and fully discussed the main point, he took his leave of this Minister, with an assurance on the part of the latter, that he would lay his communications before the council, and acquaint him with their determination. Having received no message from his Excellency until the 11th, the Undersigned wrote a few lines to his Excellency, requesting him to give him some idea of the disposition of the English Government. He received in answer an invitation for nine the same evening, when he receiv. ed the unsigned official communication, a Copy of which is annexed.-In this new conference a conversation took place respecting the probability, under any circumstances, that these overtures, whatever the decision of the English Government might be, would produce any sentiments of approximation on the part of France; and above all the inconsistency on the part of England, to admit the principle, that having once resolved on reprisals, as the Minister called them, the latter should of necessity cease with the causes that produced them.-It appears that the English Ministry attach very great weight and consequence to these same Orders in Council, which were the imme-ferred, that a settled resolution has been diate object of the proceeding of the Government of Holland, and which, whether France agreed or not, the English Administration were persuaded afforded the most effectual means of enfeebling the resources of France. In fact these measures appeared to form the principal grounds of the system upon which the Government rested their principles and conduct, and it seemed that so long as the war lasted, it was only from a change of Ministers, that other measures and views might be expected.-The Minister also considered that, while, on one side, it was extremely uncertain whether any declaration or concession on his part would produce any alteration for the better, it would, on the other, be impossible to depend on their permanency; and that, in all cases, every proceeding which appeared incompatible with his honour and dignity, would on that very account be rejected, although it should appear to square with his interest.--The undersigned en

taken to reject all proposals for peace; that probably they imagine it is the means of more speedily inducing France to seriously consider of some mode of approximation; that, probably, if the latter shewed any inclination of this kind, they would afford many facilities; but rather than this should rest upon a conviction, that at this instant the French Government had no serious thoughts of peace which could be accommodated to the principles avowed by the English Government, and that she is solely occupied in prosecuting her plans upon Spain and Portugal, which disposition would always be a serious obstacle to the success of any negotiations which might be commenced. That under all the considerations of the time, those which relate to Holland, were only of a secondary and very remote interest, and that the conviction of the impossibility that any Convention respecting that country could ever, under the influence of France, offer any chance of security to England, unless it

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