you would find that you had only acquired the addition of minus. We are not so uncharitable as to judge of you by no better sample. Moreover we have no desire to diminish your means of defence against your enemy, with whom we have also a reckoning to settle if we can get you off our hands. But if you will be seven years in discussing the plan, and can produce no better, do not keep our poor fellows imprisoned all the time; nor cajole, nor humbug us, (to use a suitable phrase,) with a pretence, now for the first time set up, that we may exercise a right which you never before allowed to any nation on earth; to impress our seamen, whom we never impress any where, from on board your Merchant ships where they are never to be found. The only persons that the law allows the ships of a Belligerent nation to take out of neutral ships at sea, are military persons serving in the war. And were it otherwise, and were the rule which you now find it convenient to proffer, the universal rule, and applied in your own case, what would be your language? "Then take thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh; But, in the cutting it, if thou dost shed One drop of English blood; thy ship and goods Aye, and thy life is forfeit to the State.” Par. 40.—" Whilst this proposition, transmitted through the British Admi* ral, was pending in America, another communication, on the subject of an armistice, was unofficially made to the British Government in this country. The agent, from whom this proposition was received, acknowledged that he did not consider that he had any authority himself to sign an agreement on the part of his Government. It was obvious that any stipulations entered into, in consequence of this overture, would have been binding on the British Government, whilst the Government of the United States would have been free to refuse or accept them, according to the circumstances of the moment: this proposition was therefore necessarily declined." We don't much wonder at your declining a proposition in this form; though it would have been but civil in you to let the public know what it was.-Perhaps it was of a nature to which you might have committed yourselves without any disadvantage from the United States rejecting or accepting your terms. And at all events, as Mr. Foster and Mr. Baker will tell you that we don't stand should like to see a counter project sent hither. upon form, we Par. 41.-" After this exposition of the circumstances which preceded and which have followed the declaration of war by the United States, his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, acting in the name and on the behalf of his Majesty, feels himself called upon to declare the leading principles by which the conduct of Great Britain has been regulated in the transactions connected with these discussions. Par. 42. His Royal Highness can never acknowledge any blockade whatever to be illegal, which has been duly notified, and is supported by an adequate force, merely upon the ground of its extent, or because the ports or coasts blockaded are not at the same time invested by land. Par. 43.-"His Royal Highness can never admit that neutral trade with Great Britain can be constituted a public crime, the commission of which can expose the ships of any power whatever to be denationalized. Par. 44.-" His Royal Highness can never admit that Great Britain can be debarred of its right of just and necessary retaliation, through the fear of eventually affecting the interest of a neutral. Par. 45.-" His Royal Highness can never admit, that in the exercise of the undoubted and hitherto undisputed right of searching neutral merchant vessels in time of war, the impressment of British seamen, when found therein, can be deemed any violation of a neutral flag. Neither can he admit, that the taking such seamen from on board such vessels, can be considered by any neutral state as a hostile measure, or a justifiable cause of war. Par. 46.-" There is no right more clearly established than the right which a Sovereign has to the allegiance of his subjects, more especially in time of war. Their allegiance is no optional duty, which they can decline, and resume at pleasure. It is a call which they are bound to obey: it began with their birth, and can only terminate with their existence. Par. 47.-" If a similarity of language and manners may make the exercise of this right more liable to partial mistakes, and occasional abuse, when practised towards vessels of the United States, the same circumstances make it also a right, with the exercise of which, in regard to such vessels, it is more difficult to dispense. Par. 48.-" But if, to the practice of the United States, to harbour British scamen, be added their assumed right to transfer the allegiance of British sub. jects, and thus to cancel the jurisdiction of their legitimate Sovereign, by acts of naturalization and certificates of citizenship, which they pretend to be as valid out of their own territory as within it, it is obvious that to abandon this ancient right of Great Britain, and to admit these novel pretensions of the United States, would be to expose to danger the very foundation of our maritime strength. Par. 49.-" Without entering minutely into the other topics, which have been brought forward by the Government of the United States, it may be proper to remark, that whatever the Declaration of the United States may have asserted, Great Britain never did demand that they should force British manu factures into France; and she formally declared her willingness entirely to forego or modify, in concert with the United States, the system, by which a commercial intercourse with the enemy had been allowed under the protec tion of licenses, provided the United States would act towards her and towards France with real impartiality. Par. 50.-"The Government of America, if the differences between States are not interminable, has as little right to notice the affair of the Chesapeake. The aggression in this instance, on the part of a British officer, was acknow ledged, his conduct was disapproved, and a reparation was regularly tendered by Mr. Foster on the part of his Majesty, and accepted by the Government of the United States. Par. 51.-"It is not less unwarranted in its allusion to the mission of Mr. Henry; a mission undertaken without the authority or even knowledge of his Majesty's Government, and which Mr. Foster was authorised formally and officially to disavow. Par. 52.—“The charge of exciting the Indians to offensive measures against the United States is equally void of foundation. Before the war began, a policy the most opposite had been uniformly pursued, and proof of this was tendered by Mr. Foster to the American Government. Par. 53.-"Such are the causes of war which have been put forward by the Government of the United States. But the real origin of the present contest will be found in that spirit which has long unhappily actuated the Councils of the United States: their marked partiality in palliating and assisting the aggressive tyranny of France; their systematic endeavours to inflame their people against the defensive measures of Great Britain; their ungenerous conduct towards Spain, the intimate ally of Great Britain; and their unworthy desertion of the cause of other neutral nations. It is through the prevalence of such councils, that America has been associated in policy with France, and committed in war against Great Britain. Par. 54.-" And under what conduct on the part of France has the Government of the United States thus lent itself to the enemy? The contemptuous violation of the Commercial Treaty of the year 1800, between France and the United States; the treacherous seizure of all American vessels and cargoes in every harbour subject to the control of the French arms; the tyrannical principles of the Berlin and Milan Decrees, and the confiscations under them: the subsequent condemnations under the Rambouillet Decree, antedated or concealed, to render it the more effectual; the French commercial regulations, which render the traffic of the United States with France almost illusory; the burning of their merchant ships at sea, long after the alleged repeal of the French Decrees-all these acts of violence, on the part of France, produce from the Government of the United States, only such complaints as end in acquiescence and submission, or are accompanied by sugges tions for enabling France to give the semblance of a legal form to her usur. pations, by converting them into municipal regulations. Par. 55.-"This disposition of the Government of the United Statesthis complete subserviency to the Ruler of France-this hostile temper towards Great Britain-are evident in almost every page of the official correspondence of the American with the French Government. Par. 56.-" Against this course of conduct, the real cause of the present war, the Prince Regent solemnly protests. Whilst contending against France, in defence not only of the liberties of Great Britain, but of the world, his Royal Highness was intitled to look for a far different result. From their common origin—from their common interest-from their professed principles of freedom and independence, the United States were the last power in which Great Britain could have expected to find a willing instrument, and abettor of French tyranny. Par. 57. Disappointed in this his just expectation, the Prince Regent will still pursue the policy which the British Government has so long and invariably maintained, in repelling injustice, and in supporting the general rights of nations; and, under the favor of Providence, relying on the justice of his cause, and the tried loyalty and firmness of the British nation, His Koyal Highness confidently looks forward to a successful issue to the contest, in which he has thus been compelled most reluctantly to engage." We have thrown all this declamation together; not from the least desire to shrink from a critical investigation of it, paragraph by paragraph, but because it will be seen that much of it has no relation to us; much has already been answered: much is employed in the empty cry by which alone the English Nation can be duped into hostility with us, that we are associated with France, which we have shown to be without a shadow of evidence, and of which we challenge a single proof from that correspondence so vainly invoked, or from any other source.-Because our doctrine of Blockade iş neither that which France, or England chooses to set up, to answer shifting, and occasional purposes, but that which England has always asserted, till shifting and occasional purposes led her astray from the right path;-because our doctrine of retaliation confines it to the party committing the wrong; and considers it " trous," as Sir William Scott does or rather did, to suppose, that because one country has been guilty of an irregularity, every other country is let loose from the Law of Nations, and is at liberty to assume as much as it think fit." (1 Rob. 142.) We do not allow that your Officers have any excuse in the similarity of language and manners for seizing our seamen; they are easily distinguished. You naturalize a seaman after two years' service on board any ship: (6 Anne, c. 37.-13 Geo. II. c. 3.) we, after five years' residence like any other man. We neither entice nor harbour them, but take the few that fall in our way, as we do your manufactures, because they are offered at a fair price. 66 What the President has said of forcing your manufactures into France after they had become neutral property, is the fair inference of the words of Mr. Foster. On the subject of the Chesapeake, you are quite right that we ought to be silent; and considering the mistake that one of our own officers, of considerable reputation, has since made in East Florida, we are disposed to mutual forbearance. That the plot of Henry did not originate with you, we don't mean to dispute; that you knew and did not discourage it, we presume, will not be denied: to say that you did not promote and encourage it indeed, to a certain point and period, would be to deny your share in the correspondence; which you never have done, because, indeed, you cannot. And that you looked to unfavorable consequences to the Union from it, we strongly suspect ;-it is impossible to refer to the Debates in the House of Lords, at the time this plot was in operation, without perceiving that such effect was fondly anticipated. We believe that Spain is satisfied with the measures we have adopted in respect to our claim upon her; we are sure she ought to be;—we mean to adjust that claim with honor and liberality; and should have no objection if at Peace, to make you the referee in any matter of dis pute with her, which however we do not anticipate. We have, it is true, some very serious demands upon France, but they do not affect you, and are not of a nature with which you have any right to interfere. We have only to regret that we are not strong enough to fight you both; and hope that, after the alternations of ill treatment, that you have been running a race to inflict upon us, you will give us the opportunity of repelling the calumnies so liberally bestowed upon us, without a particle of foundation, by retiring from the field, that we may enter the lists with your enemy, POSTSCRIPT, which were SINCE the first impression of these sheets, written and sent to Press as soon as the answer of Lord Castlereagh to Mr. Baring appeared in the Chronicle of Tuesday last; and before they were ripe for the public eye; a debate on the subject of them has been held in Parliament, of which it may be useful to take a brief notice. Mr. Canning is reported to have said last night, that he did not impute to the Americans, that they were the friends of France. For this concession, after his manifold charges of manifest partiality, we are perhaps indebted to the previous assertion of Mr. Foster; but reverting soon to the enmity which he cannot conceal, he refers to the contest in which Russia has been since engaged, and of which America, at the time when War was resolved on, could not have had even a prospective view, as influencing her determination at that time; and he talks of America as leagued with the Oppressor of the world, with the Document before his eyes in which the American Executive, (five months already at War with us, and at a period when, according to all appearances, in America, success was attending, and likely to con |