The former, drunk over-night, lies in bed 'till noon; the latter rises with the lark. The former tricks out his daughters with forte pianos; the latter puts them to the churn or spinning wheel, the music of either of which is, by the bye, far better than that of the piano, because that of neither is nearly so loud. The dear corn farmer seldom goes to church; the cheapcorn farmer is always remarkably regular in his devotions, penury being, like pain, a great promoter of religion.———The sarcastic letter of my correspondent smacks strongly of the times. When horses are unruly, it is a saying, that the oats prick them. Dear corn seems to have a similar effect upon their masters. In wishing that wheat may be fifteen pounds a load, I, in fact, wish for the reformation and happiness of my correspondent; and, in whatever degree the converting of rice into bread shall tend to the lowering of the price of wheat, in that same degree, am I endeavouring to produce the accomplishment of this friendly wish.Thus far in amity; but, there are bounds to all things; there is a measure for endurance as well as for every thing else; and, if this gentleman meant to "pain my feel. "ings," he should be taught that that is a crime, and a crime, too, punishable by fine and imprisonment. He may know how to tackle crow-peck or couch grass; he may know how to cure the foot-rot in sheep, or to poison Hanover Rats; but, an ExOfficio Information, once well stuck upon him, would, I imagine, leave him very little disposition to indulge in sarcasms about the use of rice. If he will listen to reason it is well; but, if he will not, we will show him, that there is another way to answer him. WM. COBBETT. State Prison, Newgate, Friday, 17th January, 1812. AMERICAN STATES. Mr. Pinkney to Lord Wellesley. Great Cumberland-place, Jan. 14, 1811. (Concluded from p. 64.) it would fain induce you to acknowledge, but could not prevail upon itself to avow, I am not able to conjecture.-The frank and honourable character of the American Government justifies me in saying, that if it had meant to demand of Great Britain an abjuration of all such principles as the French Government may think fit to dis approve, it would not have put your lordship to the trouble of discovering that meaning by the aid of combinations and inferences discountenanced by the language of its minister, but would have told you so in explicit terms. What I have to request of your Lordship, therefore, is, that you will take our views and principles from our own mouths; and that neither the Berlin decree, nor any other act of any foreign State, may be made to speak for us what we have not spoken for ourselves.-The principles of blockade which the American Government professes, and upon the foundation of which it has repeatedly protested against the Order of May, 1806, and the other kindred innovations of these extrordinary times, have already been so clearly explained to your Lordship, in my letter of the 21st of September, that it is hardly possible to read that letter and misunderstand them. Recommended by the plainest considerations of universal equity, you will find them supported with a strength of argument and a weight of authority, of which they scarcely stand in need, in the papers which will accompany this letter, or were transmitted in that of September. I will not recapitulate what I cannot improve; but I must avail myself of this opportunity, to call your lordships attention a second time, in a particular manner, to one of the papers to which my letter of September refers. I allude to the copy of an official note, of the 12th of April, 1804, from Mr. Merry to Mr. Madison, respecting a pretended blockade of Martinique and Guadaloupe. No comment can add to the value of that manly and perspicuous exposition of the law of blockade, as made by England herself in maintenance of rules, which have been respected and upheld, in all seasons, and on all occasions, by the Government of the United States. I will leave it therefore to your Lordship's consideration, with only this remark, that, while that paper exists it would be superfluous to seek, in any French document, or the opinions of the American Government, and of the matter of it.→ The steady fidelity of the government of the United States to its opinions on that interesting subject is known to every body. The same principles which are found in the letter of Mr. Madison to Mr. Thornton, of the 27th of October 1803, already before you, were asserted in 1799, by the American Minister at this Court, in his correspodence with Lord Grenville, re in any manner, the blockade, unless on her approach towards such port, she shall have been previously warned not to enter it; that this view of the law, in itself perfectly correct, is peculiarly important to nations situated at a great distance from the belligerent parties, and, therefore, incapable of obtaining other than tardy information of the actual state of their ports: that whole coasts and countries shall not be declared (for they can never be more than declared) to be in a state of blockade, converted into the means of extinguishing the trade of neutral nations; and, lastly. that every blockade should be impartial in its operation, or, in other words, shall not open and shut for the convenience of the party that institutes it, and at the same time repel the commerce of the rest of the world, so as to become the odious instrument of an unjust monopoly, instead of a measure of honourable war. These principles are too moderate and just to furnish any motive to the British Government for hesitating to revoke its Orders in Council, and those analogous orders of blockade which the United States expect to be recalled. It can hardly be doubted that Great Britain will ultimately accede to them in their fullest extent; but if that be a sanguine calculation (as I trust it is not), it is still incontrovertible, that a disinclination at this moment to acknowledge them can suggest no rational inducement for declining to repeal at once what every principle disowns, and what must be repealed at last. specting the blockade of some of the ports of Holland; were sanctioned, in a letter of the 20th of September, 1800, from the Secretary of State of the United States to Mr. King, of which an extract is enclosed; were insisted upon in repeated instructions to Mr. Monroe, and the special mission of 1806; have been maintained by the United States against others, as well as against England, as will appear by the inclosed copy of instructions, dated the 21st of October 1801, from Mr. Secretary Madison to Mr. Charles Pinkney, then American Minister at Madrid; and finally were adhered to by the United States when belligerent, in the case of the block ade of Tripoli.-A few words will give a summary of those principles; and when recalled to your remembrance. I am not without hopes that the strong grounds of law and right on which they stand will be as apparent to your lordship as they are to me. It is by no means clear that it may not fairly be contended, on principle and early usage, that a maritime blockade is incomplete with regard to states at peace, unless the place which it would af fect is invested by land as well as by sea. The United States, however, have called for the recognition of no such rule. They appear to have contented themselves with urging in substance, that ports not actually blockaded by a present, adequate, stationary force, employed by the power which attacks them, shall not be considered as shut to neutral trade in articles not contraband of war; that, though it is-With regard to the rules of blockade usual for a belligerent to give notice to neutral nations when he intends to institute a blockade, it is possible that he may not act upon his intention at all, or that he may execute it insufficiently, or that he may discontinue his blockade, of which it is not customary to give any notice; that, consequently the presence of the blockading force is the natural criterion by which the neutral is enabled to ascertain the existence of the blockade at any given period. In like manner as the actual investment of a besieged place is the evidence by which we decide whether the siege, which may be commenced, raised, recommenced, and raised again, is continued or not; that, of course, a mere notification to a neutral minister shall not be relied upon, as affecting, with knowledge of the actual existence of the blockade, either his government or its citizens; that a vessel, cleared or bound to a blockaded port, shall not be considered as violating, which the French Government expects you to abandon, I do not take upon me to decide whether they are such as your Lordship supposes them to be or not. Your view of them may be correct, but it may also be erroneous; and it is wholly immaterial to the case between the United Siates and Great Britain, whether it be the one or the other.-As to such British blockades as the United States desire you to relinquish, you will not, I am sure, allege, that it is any reason for adhering to them, that France expects you to relin quish others. If our demands are suited to the measure of our own rights, and of your obligations as they respect those rights, you cannot think of founding a rejection of them upon ny imputed exor bitance in theories of the French Government, for which we are not responsible, and with which we have no concern. If, when you have done justice to the United States, your enemy should call upon you to go farther, what shall prevent you from be your orders-According to your mode refusing? Your free agency will in no re- of reasoning, the situation of neutral trade spect have been impaired. Your case will is hopeless indeed. Whether the Berlin De be better in truth, and in the opinion of cree exists or not, it is equally to justify your mankind and you will be, therefore, Orders in Council. You issued them before stronger in maintaining it; provided that, it was any thing but a shadow, and by doing in doing so, you resort only to legitimate so, gave to it all the substance it could ever means, and do not once more forget the claim. It is at this moment nothing. It rights of others, while you seek to vindi- is revoked, and has passed away, accordcate your own. Whether France will be ing to your own admission. You choose, satisfied with what you may do, is not to however, to look for its reappearance; be known by anticipation, and ought not and you make your own expectation equi to be a subject of enquiry.-So vague a valent to the decree itself. Compelled speculation has nothing to do with your to concede that there is no anti-neutral duties to nations at peace-and if it had, French edict in operation on the ocean, would annihilate them. It cannot serve you think it sufficient to say that there your interests; for it tends to lessen the will be such an edict you know not when; number of your friends, without tending and in the mean time you do all you can to your security against your enemies. to verify your own prediction, by giving You are required, therefore, to do right, to your enciny all the provocation in your and to leave the consequences to the fu- power to resume the decrees which he ture, when by doing right, you have every has abondoned.-For my part, my Lord, thing to gain, and nothing to lose. As to I know not what it is that the British the Orders in Council, which professed to Government requires, with a view to what be a reluctant departure from all ordinary it calls its safety and its honour, as an inrules, and to be justified only as a system ducement to rescind its Orders in Council, of retaliation for a pre-existing measure of It does not, I presume, imagine that such France, their foundation (such as it was) is a system will be suffered to ripen into law. gone the moment that measure is no longer It must intend to relinquish it sooner or in operation. But the Berlin Decree is later, as one of those violent experiments repealed; and even the Milan Decree, the for which time can do nothing, and to successor of your Orders in Council, is re- which submission will be hoped in vain. pealed also. Why is it, then, that your Yet, even after the professed foundation of Orders have outlived those edicts, and this mischievous system is taken away, that they are still to oppress and harrass as another and another is industriously probefore? Your Lordship answers this ques-cured for it; so that no man can tell at tion explicitly enough, but not satisfacto- what time, or under what circumstances, rily. You do not allege that the French it is likely to have an end. When reDecrees are not repealed; but you ima-alities cannot be found, possibilities supply gine that the repeal is not to remain in force, unless the British Government shall, in addition to the revocation of its Orders in Council, abandon its system of blockade. I am not conscious of having stated, as your Lordship seems to think, that this is so; and I believe, in fact, that it is other-tain have no existence now.-I do not wise. Even if it were admitted, however, mean to grant, for I do not think, that the the Orders in Council ought, nevertheless, edict of Berlin did at any time lend even to be revoked. Can the safety and ho- a colour of equity to the British Orders in nour of the British nation" demand, that Council with reference to the United these Orders shall continue to outrage the States; but it might reasonably have been public law of the world, and sport with the expected, that they who have so much undisputed rights of neutral commerce, relied upon it as a justification, would after the pretext which was at first in-have suffered it and them to sink together. vented for them is gone? But you are menaced with a revival of the French system, and consequently may again be furnished with the same pretext. Be it so; yet till, as the system and the pretext are at present at an end, so of course should their place; and that which was originally said to be retaliation for actual injury, becomes at last (if such a solecism can be endured or imagined) retaliation for apprehended injuries, which the future may or may not produce, but which it is cer How this is forbidden by your safety, or your honour, remains to be explained; and I am not willing to believe, that either the one or the other is inconsistent with the observance of substantial justice, and with the prosperity and rights of peaceful SPAIN. Marshal OFFICIAL PAPERS. Count Suchet's Account of the Battle and ........All these works were executed on a naked rock, with infinite difficulty. All the parapets of the trenches were formed of sacks of earth, and it was necessary to raise them seven or eight feet, in order to protect our soldiers from the enemy's works, which commanded the position.-These works do much credit to the conductor of the attack, Henry, and to the Engineer Officers under his orders.-We lost several sappers in the execution of works so difficult and so near the enemy, both by musketry and by the grenades and stones thrown by the Spaniards. On the 25th the artillery began firing from the new battery, at 70 toises distance from the work, and bombarded with success the tower of the out-work of St. Fernando.— In the morning, Gen. Blake advanced at the head of 30,000 men, to raise the siege; Marshal Suchet advanced to meet him, and gained a complete victory.-On the 26th, the breach was practicable for 20 men a-breast, and we were well established at the foot of it.-The Marshal summoned the garrison, which surrendered by capitulation.-The same day we entered the fortress, and became masters of a place which had so long braved the efforts of the Carthaginian General.-ROGNAT, General of Division of Engineers.-From Murviedro, Oct. 28, 1811. states. Although your Lordship has slightly remarked upon certain recent acts of the French Government, and has spoken in general terms of " the system of vio"lence and injustice now pursued by "France," as requiring " some precau"tions of defence on the part of Great "Britain." I do not perceive that you deduce any consequence from these ob servations, in favour of a perseverance in the Orders in Council. I am not my-which were brought from a great distance, self aware of any Edicts of France, which, now that the Berlin and Milan Decrees are repealed, affect the rights of neutral commerce on the seas: and you will your selves admit, that if any of the Acts of the French Government, resting on territorial sovereignty, have injured, or shall hereafter injure the United States, it is for them, and for them only, to seek redress. In like manner it is for Great Britain to determine what precautions of defence those measures of France, which you denominate unjust and violent, may render it expedient for her to adopt. The United States have only to insist that a sacrifice of their rights shall not be among the number of these precautions.-In replying to that passage in your letter, which adverts to the American Act of Non-Intercourse, it is only necessary to mention the Proclamation of the President of the United States, of the 2d of November last, and the Act of Congress, which my letter of the 21st of September communicated; and to add, that it is in the power of the British Government to prevent the NonIntercourse from being enforced against Great Britain.-Upon the coucluding paragraph of your letter I will barely observe, that I am not in possession, of any document which you are likely to consider as authentic, shewing that the French decrees are "absolutely revoked upon the "single condition of the revocation of the "British Orders in Council;" but that the information which I have lately received from the American Legation at Paris confirms what I have already stated, and, I think, proved to your Lordship, that those Decrees are repealed, and have ceased to have any effect. I will now trespass on you no farther than to suggest, that it would have given me sincere pleasure to be enabled to say as much of the British Orders in Council, and of the blockades from which it is impossible to distinguish them. . I have the honour to be, with great respect and consideration, my Lord, your Lordship's most obedient humble servant,-(Signed)-W. PINKNEY. PORTUGAL. THE WAR.-Gazette Extraor- A detachment of the army of the North which had crossed the Tormes with a view to plunder the country between that river and the Veltes, have returned to their cantonments without deriving much advantage from this expe dition. I have directed General Hill to endeavour to force Gerard's division of the 5th corps to retire from Caceres, as, in that position, they distress for provisions the troops under the Conde de Penne Villamur, and General Murillo, belonging to Gen. Castanos. Lieutenant-General Hill was to move from his cantonments on this expedition on the 22d.-By the acCounts which I have received from Cadiz Extraordinary.—Downing Street, December 1, 1811. Captain Hill, Aide-de-Camp to Lieute. nant-General Hill, arrived this day at the Earl of Liverpool's Office, with a dispatch, addressed to his Lordship by General Viscount Wellington, dated Frenada, 6th of November, 1811, of which the following is an extract:— to the 16th instant, I learn that Marshal | PORTUGAL.-THE WAR.-London Gazette Suchet had entered the kingdom of Valencia, from Tortosa, with twenty thousand men, and had advanced as far as Murviedroe; he made three attempts to obtain possession of the fort of Sagunto, near that town, by escalade, on the 29th of last merth, in all which he was repulsed with considerable loss, and left behind him his ladders. He was still at Murviedro on the 4th instant. In the mean time General Blake had thrown himself into Valencia. All the strong holds of Valencia were occupied, and the greatest efforts were making to bring a large force into that kingdom, in order to annoy the enemy's communications with his rear. The utmost confidence appears by the accounts to be placed in General Blake; and the people of Valencia appear determined to co-operate in resistance to the enemy.There has been no movement in the north since I last addressed your Lordship. Freneda, Oct. 30. The detachment of the army of the North, which was at Ledesma, moved from thence towards Salamanca on the 28th instant.-Excepting that movement, the troops of the Armies of the North and of Portugal have made none since I addressed you last. The last report I received from General Hill was dated at Malpertida de Caceres, on the 26th. General Gerard retired from Caceres on that morning. By the last accounts which I have received from Cadiz, of the 18th, it appears that General Ballasteros had retired under the guns of Gibraltar; and that the French were at St. Roque, and had taken possession of Algesiras.-I have received no further accounts from Valencia.-It appears from all the accounts which I have received, that the Guerillas are increasing in numbers and boldness throughout the Peninsula One party under Temprano, lately retook at the very gates of Talavera, Lieutenant Col. Grant of the Portuguese service, who had been taken in the beginning of September in Upper Estremadura, while employed in observation of the enemy's movements. Both the Empecinado and Mina were very successful against some of the enemy's posts and detachments, when their armies were lately collected for the relief of Ciudad Rodrigo; and Longa was likewise very successful in the neighbourhood of Victoria, in the middle and towards the latter end of September. I informed your Lordship, in my dispatches of the 23d and 30th of October, of the orders which I had given to Lieutenant-General Hill to move into Estrema. dura with the troops under his command, and with his progress to the 26th of October-He marched on the 27th by Aldea del Cano to Alcuesca; and on the 28th, in the morning, surprized the enemy's troops under General Girard at Arroyo del Molino, and dispersed the division of infantry and cavalry which had been employed under the command of that General, taking General Brune, the Duc d'Aremberg, and about 1,300 prisoners, three pieces of cannon, &c. and having killed many in the action with the enemy, and in the subsequent pursuit. General Girard escaped, wounded; and by all ac counts which I have received, General Dubrocoskie was killed.-I beg to refer your Lordship for the details of Lieutenant-General Hill's operations to the 30th of October, to his dispatch to me of that date from Merida, a copy of which I enclose. I have frequently had the plea sure to report to your Lordship the zeal and ability with which Lieutenant-Gen. Hill had carried into execution the operations entrusted to his charge; and I have great satisfaction in repeating my commendations of him, and of the brave troops under his command, upon the sent occasion, in which the ability of the General, and the gallantry and discipline of the officers and troops, have been conspicuous.-1 send with General Hill's dispatch a plan of the ground and of the operations on the 28th of October, by Captain Hill, the General's brother and Aide-de-camp, who attended him in the action, and will be able to give your Lordship any farther details which you may require. I beg leave to recommend him to your protection. pre Merida, Oct. 30th, 1811. My Lord-In pursuance of the instructions which I received from your Lordship, I put a portion of the troops un |