of the fourteenth of January, 1811, occurs to his mind. It is a document, however, that every teacher of statistics ought to put into the hands of his pupil.

It is grateful to see with all this, that the lofty mind of the noble Marquis is not inflexible. And his manners, we all know, are those of a perfect gentleman.-In the Times of the seventeenth ult. he is reported to have said, (on an India subject too where he is so paramount) that "though he had been anxious to extend the measure in question without delay; he now believed tha the sentiments which prevailed in other quarters, among persons with whom he had often differed, were a proper correction of his opinions."-This is really very pretty : one step further, in the acknowledgment that he had been chastised into conviction, (the pas chrétien,) would place the noble Marquis on the pinnacle of magnanimity.

There is another great man,-a very great man,-on whom the following sheets have not been sparing of animadversion. Yet the man is hardly to be found that has more strenuously defended Sir William Scott, than the author, according to the measure of his influence and ability.—If, therefore, he can defend him no longer, it is, because, against all the bias of prejudice, and all the pride of consistency, he finds the late decisions of the learned Judge, not less incompatible with his former doctrines, than with those of the original fountain of equity, that flows in the heart of man.-In this secession, the Author is countenanced by a very excellent discussion of the subject, in an unparallelled periodical publication, the Edinburgh Review, of February, 1812, No. XXXVIII. Although, in that critique, the writer has put a construction on the words of the learned Judge which he has since denied, and surely had right to deny, for No. II.

VOL. I.

2 I

no one can so well interpret his words as the speaker; yet their ambiguity has been sufficient to create a deal of very grave discussion in the court itself, on a subject of no less magnitude than whether the court is, or is not, bound by an order of the privy council, which it should find contravening the law of nations. Why should the court hesitate to pronounce boldly on this question at once?—it was incidentally, if not pointedly, before it in the case of the Fox; and we all know, that if an irrelevant point is raised in argument; to settle that point, is one of those valuable practices of the learned Judge, that give to his decisions the character of lectures on Maritime law, and create an useful addition to the catalogue of cases that may on a future day be referred to his authority.-Such pronunciation would not of necessity decide the question, whether the orders in council were of this description; though it is worthy of particular remark, that if the same indulgence of interpreting their own meaning were allowed to the adminis tration that issued the orders of May, 1806, and January, 1807; the pernicious effects of the subsequent orders would have found no excuse in those.-It is worthy of particular remark, and fairly to be inferred from the debates on the subject, that not a man of that administration, on whom the sin of the initiative has been artfully thrown, would have allowed of the condemnation of any one of those ships, or have admitted a Retorsio versus communem amicum, Qui injuriam non fecit, to Sanction a measure which, to be justified by the law of retaliation, should be exercised only against the perpetrator of the injury.

It is not intended, however, to bring any party question into discussion. The political sectary will look in vain in these pages for any personal com

mendation or reprobation on that account; or for the justification of any measure, not justifiable in itself. At the same time, it is far from the author's intention to reprehend with severity those errors in others, to which he has shown himself liable; and which are indeed to be found inscribed on the pedigree of every son of

Adam.

If an end could be put to the war with America, and the subjects of dispute between the two countries brought into discussion before an equitable tribunal; it would matter but little to what administration the nation was indebted for so great a benefit. True it is, that on all American concerns, the nation has to deplore the loss of the philanthropic statesman, who considered every blow struck at that country as recoiling on this; and it would be rather cynical, looking to this object, not to desire a participation in the national councils by the amiable Elève to whom he has left with his mantle a double portion of his good spirit. It never could have been the intention of either of these men to invade the rights of the United States. And, if the order of May, 1806, according to the latitude of its terms and the construction which the opposition, become Ministers, found it convenient to put upon it, may be literally pronounced illegal; we know, on the other hand, that it was neither intended, nor suffered, by those who issued it, to work any practical injury or invasion of the rights of neutrals. It is by no means a solecism, in the history of diplomacy, for a state to issue an order, on the spur of a sudden occasion, which it is easily induced on reflection or remonstrance to abandon. An order not unlike this, but much more extensive, and less equivocal in the invasion of neutral rights, was issued in the first year of William and Mary, in which the Dutch concurred, but it was found not to

conform with the law of nations, and was accordingly withdrawn. The order of the sixth of November, 1793, issued in the Pitt administration, and supposed to be chiefly the work of Dundas, was remonstrated against, as soon as it was known, by the Merchants of London in the American trade, as likely to produce a war with the United States. It was revoked on the eighth of January, 1794; and the mischief done in the mean time was afterwards repaired by a commission mutually appointed between this country and the United States.

That country must be miserably poor in honor, that cannot afford to acknowledge a fault; and if we look for a man or a minister free from error, we must seek him in another world. But if our pride did not blind us, we might see ample room for atonement, and consequent reconciliation.

The declaration of war on the part of the United States, was injudicious and most unfortunate. Unjust, we can hardly call it, when we consider what we should do with any nation that should impress our seamen, or take our ships under arbitrary orders, which we, in common with all the rest of the world, and which a preceding administration of their own, whose seats were hardly cold, denounced as illegal also. But while the piracies of France remained unatoned, the honor of the United States was shielded by the same consideration, which, so much to the dishonor of both the great belligerents, had shielded it before. It was still impossible to strike a blow at one without aiding the other; and it ought not to have been done. The provocation, it must be allowed however, was beyond all bearing. The orders in council were continued, without the most distant encouragement to hope for their being removed, long after the French edicts were withdrawn; and even

with a threat of retaliation against the pacific measures adopted by the United States to bring us to reason. The horrible and insupportable impressment of their seamen, in which the French never had a share, was continued by us alone.

Goaded to war, and obliged, if they embarked in it, to choose their enemy; there could be no doubt, on which, hostilities must fall in the first instance. But the remarkable abstinence from any connexion with France, and the continued injunctions of the President to avoid it, through all the scenes of prosperity and adversity which that power has encountered; the particularly good understanding that he has maintained with Russia, the enemy of that power; the immediate offer of an armistice to us, as soon as the sword was drawn, on terms that posterity will be astonished were not accepted; the policy of the government of the United States at this hour, of excepting from the pressure of the war those portions of our force that are employed against France, by allowing supplies to the Peninsula; all indicate that that government is seeking the redress of its grievances here, not only without the desire of aiding the enemy of England, but with the desire of annoying him. And the subjoined extract from the National Intelligencer, which is supposed by good judges to be from the pen of the President, will show to every man, who is willing to be informed, what may be expected to be opposed to the common enemy, in case of an honorable adjustment of the differences between this country and the United States.

As one of the points at issue, and the prominent point indeed, seems to be that which relates to the naturalised seamen ;-(a bagatelle in respect to the numbers of this description of persons that can be supposed to