tion which they encountered. The same temper that then broke the connection between England and her colonies seems to be revived again, and to be now studiously busy in effecting the connection between America and France; and yet the success that crowned our policy at that time, should make us rather industrious to avoid, than ambitious of retracing its disasters. I well remember the arguments of that eventful period, and am struck with the similitude of many of the sentiments and opinions of the present day. The voice of an oppressed people was raised in America; of that voice administration was blindly and obstinately regardless; yet there were in this country, in this House, men whose nature revolted at oppression, who argued, deprecated, predicted, and implored; but the language of opposition was said to be inflammatory; they had provided the Americans with arguments; the principles which had gone forth from this House were said to have excited and inflamed the resistance, or rebellion, as it was then termed, of the Americans, Opposition had started principles which America anxiously took up; and but for their opinions and lessons, the people of America had been well disposed, dutiful, and submissive to the wishes of government. Every account of continued and increasing resistance was imputed to opposition. The Americans took their instinct of resistance, not from their charters, not from the spirit which animated your forefathers when they laid the foundation of your constitution, not from their condition as the colonists of a free people, not from their right of birth as the descendants of a British people, but from a faction in this House! A faction in this House was the cause of all the evils! This language is, under some circumstances, extremely natural, and not less contemptible. Even now, the obstinacy, as it is unjustly termed, of America, is, by some, imputed to language held in this House but we are not quietly to yield up our privilege of free discussion; we are not to be silent that the Americans may be kept ignorant of their rights (were there even such a possibility). On the least restraint of the perfect freedom of speech in this House, all debate would, from that moment, vanish; therefore, notwithstanding the imputations which had been cast on those who deprecated coercion, I will state what I conceive to be the just rights of America.

The greatest crime of which any man in this empire can be guilty, is to excite the people of America to an indisposition towards England; for the fate of America depends on that of England, as does that of England reciprocally on that of America; the interest of the one is the interest of the other; and, for happiness, the two countries are mutually dependant on each other. Indeed, so the right honour

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able secretary, (Mr. Canning,) in his letter to Mr. Pinkney, does, in effect, admit; and had that letter been, in other respects, as consistent with my views of the subject, most happy should I have been. The honourable gentleman has said, that he dreads war with America; and although, in the general tenor of his speech, I cannot conform to his ideas, in this dread he is certainly right; for war between England and America is the end of liberty. But if war between England and America be that formidable thing, let me hope, that in construing the dispatches and written transactions between England and America, the most honest construction will be put on that offer which has for its object the peace of both nations. It is attempted to be shown that America has acquiesced in the orders and decrees of France. Is it not plain to every man that America has resisted not only the Berlin decree, but every decree and order of France? When the orders of Buonaparte were announced, did not the American ambassador, General Armstrong, immediately remonstrate against so gross a violation of justice and the rights of neutrality? Did not that gentleman most spiritedly reiterate his remonstrance? Did he not receive for answer, that the Berlin decree did not affect the neutral trade; that it was not meant to affect the ancient connection between the United States and France? That answer, that the trade of America was not affected by that decree, has acquitted America of the charge of compliance, because, until September, that decree was not attempted to be executed against America. The American ambassador, immediately on receiving the account of the capture of the Horizon, again most forcibly remonstrated, and on the 22d of December, the embargo was laid on generally; thus is America completely acquitted of acquiescence in the Berlin decree. But the American embargo is said to have been laid on generally before an official communication could have been made to their government of your Orders in Council; the fact is, that the embargo was laid on in consequence of substantial, though not official information; which is the very obvious reason of the omission in the President's message of any notice of the British Orders in Council. There cannot be the smallest doubt that these Orders in Council were a considerable cause of forming that embargo, which is now continued solely by your perseverance in your Orders in Council. "Take off your Orders in Council, and we will take off the embargo." Did the correspondence with the American ministers go off on the principle, that if they would give more decisive communications, we were ready to adopt those measures? Is there any doubt of the sincerity of Ame

rica? Will the right honourable secretary, or the honourable gentleman, say, that America, in offering to take off her embargo on our rescinding our Orders in Council, did not mean to do so? What is then the existing cause of the embargo? Can any other be assigned but the Orders in Council, when you yourselves refuse to do that which, if done, would remove it?

Then, how does the country stand in point of right? Do you join with an unoffending neutral, and visit France with the consequences of her own insolence and injustice? No; but you join yourselves to France against that neutral. You have no right to controul neutral trade, except the neutral does not resist. If the neutral informs you that she will act in resistance to the decrees of Buonaparte, and will carry into execution even your own orders, and resist the insolence of France, you at once reduce your orders in council to a mere gross, outrageous act of oppression against an unoffending neutral; against the law of nations, and of the regulations and opinions of all civilized society. No nation can have a right, in consequence of the outrageous caprice of another nation, to prohibit neutral trade, with respect to neutrals who will not acquiesce in such order. The neutral, in this instance, so far from joining with the belligerent in carrying into execution his unjustifiable edicts, steps in between you. The principle of retaliation is a bad principle, and not founded in reason, justice, or the law of nations. According to this monstrous doctrine, were France to declare the lives or liberties of neutrals liable to forfeiture, by the principle of retaliation, you must tread in her footsteps of blood and outrage! making the measure of French wrong the rule of British right. It goes to the root of the law of nations; it goes to build up a system of wrong, retaliating wrong, and injustice combating injustice, which can only end in an undefined suspension of the dominion of right, taking as it were the laws of nations theoretically from God, but at the same time learning their practical application from the enemy. But what right have you to inflict that violation of humanity; to make by retaliation the measure of your law of nations dependent on the caprice of another? By retaliation you do but participate in the injustice. We, it seems, are to be bound by the laws of God, only so long as the enemy regards those laws! But I say it is a suspension of the principles of right and wrong, and that is the only principle on which you can now rest the question. The neutral says, "I will not only disobey the order of the enemy, but I will join you in inflicting on him the consequences of his rapacity, and disregard of the law of nations." No; replies the retaliating belligerent, we will inflict on you

an injury, against which you offer to guard us! and such is the blindness of our rage, or the infatuation of our pride, that we rashly inflict the same evils on our own country. England says to America, we will not receive your assistance; we will not accept your offers; go to France. Will not that, I say, terminate in a connection between America and France? You, in fact, send America to form an alliance; you affront her out of your arms into those of France; you forget, too, that character national character, is at once your shield and most powerful weapon. If it be asked, who now is the coadjutor of France in enforcing the Berlin decree? Is it not England; who, to the weakness of thus falling into the very snare spread for her by Buonaparte, has superadded the folly of throwing America into the arms of France? But, to all this, you say, we will fight France with her own weapons, as if her principles could be your weapons. We have fought too long, and too nobly, to begin now to fight away our national character against the well-practised iniquity of France. Let us fight in no cause we do not believe to be an honest one. But you are found unequal to contend with France in the policy of her iniquity, though you are ready blindly to follow her steps, which ever road she chooses to take.

On the principle of justice, the subject is as clear as light; let us consider it on the principle of policy, in what depends upon our commerce. We know our strength is our navy; we know our navy is identified with our commerce; and who will say our commerce is not improved by our intercourse with America? America is naturally your friend; she is your great western barrier, and little disposed or calculated to be your rival. You are connected; inseparably connected. Descended from the same ancestors, with every similitude of religion, language, laws, and customs; will you hesitate to acknowledge the identity? Injustice to the one must be injustice to the other. If there can be in existence what are monstrously termed natural enemies, it were charitable to hope that there are also natural friends. Such are the Americans; such ought they to be; and such I do believe they will yet be, if you treat them not with cruelty; if you cast them not off with scornful contempt. Will the honourable gentleman shelter himself by saying, that there is another part of the globe in which our commerce is suffering? Before those restrictions, I mean the year before the operation of the Orders in Council, your exports to America were more than twelve millions, your imports upwards of six. But, suppose the loss or diminution of our commerce to be, upon the honourable gentleman's own calculation, only one million three hundred thousand pounds, instead of six mil

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lions, is not that a great loss? It is most formidable. Look to our privations of the raw materials for some of our most important manufactures cotton and flax, articles without which Ireland cannot now exist. I foresee the difficulty. Ireland would bear this privation without a murmur, and defy the power of privation, to prevent war with America. But can you induce Ireland to endure that misery to support your punctilious orders in council? No; this is an injury of too violent a nature. You petulently give up America growing country, whose natural pursuit is agriculture; from which, by your privations, you divert her attention, and thus compel her to acquire the art and habit of manufacturing to supply her increasing population with some of the necessaries and comforts of human existence. The distance of time must have been remote, indeed, ere this effect could have been produced but for your Orders in Council! But that direction once given to a certain portion of American labour, its tendency will inevitably be that of increase in skill, and increase in the desire of that species of profit. Industry will produce increased facilities; and realized emoluments, that energy which, immeasurable as may be the apparent distance of the period, must ultimately terminate in independence, if not rivalry; and this by an infant power, who, until the lapse of centuries, had you but preserved her friendship, must have felt it her interest to promote your manufactures. Unassailable by the power of France, a strict, sincere, political connection with America, were to you most valuable. Consider well before you give up a growing country, adding abundantly to her population, increasing your wealth by the consumption of your manufactures; a country where the tyrant mace of Buonaparte was never raised. To give up such a country requires great countervailing benefits.

The adoption of so rash a measure does surely require some greater advantage than the exiguous receipt of 32,000Z., as the product of the contribution, under the certain levy of which France and all Europe were to feel the force of your maritime strength. Can you coerce the continent of Europe by withholding colonial produce? The idea is proved to be erroneous. What will be the effect of your attempt? Disappointment and defeat. You should by no means wean the European continent from luxury. If you once deprive the continent of ease, luxury, comfort, you make it an universal soldier. This will inevitably be the effect. Buonaparte will thrive, for you leave to him and the population of Europe no resource but that of war. The tendency of your orders in council is to martialize, to barbarize Europe. Where have