after a long siege. Independent of troops of the line, your majesty saw, at the first signal, 150,000 national guards ready to march, and at their head the majors of your infantry, officers of the fifth battalions, and veteran officers; you found in their ranks a number of old soldiers. Numerous detachments of cavalry of the line were preceded by the gens-d'armerie of France. The English were not aware that this branch of force alone could, at a moment's notice, assemble at any given point 60 squadrons, composed of men that had seen sixteen years of service, all equally experienced, equally well disciplined, and armed as those brave cuirassiers, who, under your majesty's orders, have brought to so high a pitch the glory of the French eavalry. As if by enchantment, the dispositions prescribed by your majesty caused to appear, at the same instant, on the banks of the Scheldt, and at the rendezvous of the reserve at Lisle and Macstricht, four different armies, under the command of Marshal the Prince of Ponte Corvo, and Marshals the Dukes of Cornegliano, Valmy, and Istria. The sudden developement of such a force, and the national impulse which continued to multiply its numbers, struck the enemy with consternation. Their enterprize, calculated upon false data, completely failed. Europe has witnessed the realization of that which your majesty's penetration anticipated, when you pronounced that this expedition originated in ignorance and inexperience; and when, sparing of French blood, and directing that a plan merely defensive should be followed, you we are happy to find the English crowding into the marshes of Zealand; let them be merely kept in check, and their army wrote to me, 1809. will be speedily destroyed by the bad air, and the epidemic fevers of that country. Whilst our troops were distributed in comfortable cantonments in the environs of Antwerp, or stationed in that fortress, the English army, encamped in the midst of marshes, and destitute of water fit for drinking, lost upwards of one-third of its soldiers. But the facility which the English have of going by sea from one quarter to another, may lead us to expect that all that will have escaped the disasters of this expedition, will be sent to reinforce their army in Portugal. Sire, the various fields of battle in which your armies have distinguished themselves, are too remote from each other to admit of your marching, without inconvenience to the soldier, one of your armies, from one scene of action to the other; and your majesty, so highly satisfied with the zeal of the troops you command beyond the Danube, is anxious to spare them from the fatigues of the war in Spain. Besides, the French armies beyond the Pyrenees, now consist of 300 battalions and 150 squadrons. It is therefore sufficient, without sending any additional corps thither, to keep up at their full establishment those already there. Thirty thousand men, collected at Bayonne, afford the means of accomplishing this object, and of repulsing any force which the English may cause to advance. In this state of things, I conceived that it corresponded with your majesty's views to limit the levy, necessary at this moment, to the contingent indispensably requisite for replacing, in the battalions of the interior, the drafts which are daily made from them. The returns which will be laid before your majesty will inform you, that, of the conscription for the years 1806-7-8-9 and 10, there (U) still still remain more than 80,000, who, though ballotted, have not yet been called into actual service. This immense reinforcement might march against your enemies, should that measure be rendered necessary by any imminent danger to the state. I propose to your majesty to call out only 36,000, and to declare all those classes entirely free from any future call. By this means, your armies, Sire, will be maintained at their present respectable establishment, and a considerable number of your subjects will be definitively released from the conscription. Your majesty will have also at your disposal, the 25,000 men afforded by the class of 1811, upon whom I shall not propose to your majesty to make any call, unless events should disappoint your hopes and pacific intentions. Your majesty's armies are equally formidable from their numbers as from their courage. But who could advise France not to proportion her efforts to those of her enemies? In giving such advice, the result of the most imprudent security, it would be necessary to forget that Austria, very lately, had on foot 700,000 men; and that to create this gigantic force, that power did not hesitate to expose her population to almost total destruction, and to attack the very basis of her prosperity. We must equally forget, that England has taken part in the continental war, by landing, at the same moment, three different armies, on the coasts of Naples, Holland, and Portugal. The agitation of those who are jealous of France has been redoubled, because they are conscious that the present crisis has for ever fixed her greatness. Their efforts will be impotent, because France has been enabled to reach the highest pinnacle of success and of glory, without making any of those ruinous sacrifices which destroy her enemies. In fact, notwithstanding the successive calls, up to the present moment, made upon the different classes of conscripts, scarcely have one-fourth of those who composed them taken the field. In considering the situation of your majesty's armies and the results of the English expeditions, can we, without a degree of satisfaction, behold England, in imitation of Austria, making efforts disproportionate to her means, and the wants of her navy? What can she expect from this contest upon land, and man to man, with France, that shall not redound to her own injury and disgrace? Sire, the French people will have to thank your majesty for the inexpressible advantage and glory of a peace, conquered without maritime expeditions, from an enemy who, by his situation, thought himself free from all attack. Every serious attempt upon the Continent, on the part of the English, is a step towards a general peace. The English ministers, who preceded the members of the present government, a more able set of men than the latter, were well convinced of this truth, and took good care not to commit themselves in an unequal contest. It did not escape their observation, that, to carry on a long war, it was necessary that it should press lightly upon the people who had to support it. Within the last twelve months, the war has cost England more blood than she had previously shed from the period when she broke the peace of Amiens committed in the battles of Spain and Portugal, whence her duty and her interest forbid her to reeede, she will see those countries become the tomb of her bravest warriors. Sorrow for their loss will at length produce in the minds of the the English people a well-founded abhorrence of those cruel men, whose ambition and frantic hatred dared to pronounce the expression of eternal war. It will excite in that people the wish for a general peace, which every man of good sense may predict to be near at hand, if the English persist in a continental contest. I am with respect, &c. The Minister at war, MR. CANNING'S STATEMENT. To the Earl Camden, &c. &c. My Lord, Gloucester Lodge, Nov. 14, 1809. I had written to your lordship immediately after the publication of your lordship's statement; but I delayed sending my letter, in the hope of being able previously to submit it to the perusal of the Duke of Portland. In this hope I have been disappointed by that fatal event, which has deprived this country of one of its most upright and disinterested patriots; the king, of one of his most faithful, devoted, and affectionate subjects; and the world, of one of the most blameless and most noble-minded of men. Thus situated, I have thought it right to revise what I had written, and scrupulously to expunge every reference to the authority of the Duke of Portland, which would now stand upon my sole testimony; retaining such only as are supported, either by written documents, which I shall be happy to communicate to your lordship; or by facts which ace well known to your lordship, or to your colleagues, and in which, for the most part, your lordship is yourself concerned. Neither, however, can I content myself with this precaution, but must protest, at the same time, in the most earnest manner, against any possible misconstruction, by which any thing in the following letter can be strained to a meaning unfavourable to the motives which actuated the Duke of Portland's conduct. It is impossible, indeed, not to regret the policy, however well intentioned, which dictated the reserve practised towards Lord Castlereagh, in the beginning of this transaction; or that practised towards myself in its conclusion. It is to be regretted, that the Duke of Portland should have imposed, and that your lordship should have accepted, the condition, in the first communications between you. is also to be regretted, that I should not have learnt in July, that your lordship was not then party to the assurances then given to me on behalf of Lord Castlereagh's friends in general; and that another member of the cabinet, comprehended in that description, had, as I have since heard, refused to concur in them. It Had I been made acquainted with these circumstances, I should then have resigned; and my resignation would, at that time, have taken place without inconvenience or or embarrassment, and without stirring those questions (no way connected with the causes of my retirement), or subjecting me to those misinterpretations of my conduct and motives, which have been produced by the coincidence of my resignation with that of the Duke of Portland. But, however this reserve may be to be regretted, it is impossible to attribute the adoption of it, on the part of the Duke of Portland, to any other motives than to that gentleness of nature which (U 2) emi eminently distinguished him; and which led him to endeavour, above all things, to prevent political differences from growing into personal dissentions; and to aim at executing whatever arrangement might be expedient for improving or strengthening the administration, with the concurrence, if possible, of all its existing members. And no man who knows the affectionate respect and attachment which the manly and generous qualities of the Duke of Portland's mind was calculated to command, and which I invariably bore to him, will suspect me of being willing to establish my own vindication, at the expence of the slightest disrespect to his memory, or prejudice to his fame. I have the honour to be, my lord, To the Earl Camden. My Lord, The statement, which has been published in the newspapers, in your lordship's name, has decided a question on which I had before been hesitating, as to the necessity of an authentic detail of the transactions, so far as I am concerned in them, or am acquainted with them, to which that statement refers. For that purpose, I think a direct address to your lordship more decorous, both towards your lordship and for myself, than an anonymous paragraph in a newspaper. It is with the most painful reluctance that I recur to a subject, which, so far as it concerns Lord Castlereagh and myself, had been settled in a manner which is usually, I believe, considered as final. Discussions of the cause of dispute more commonly precede, than follow, the extreme appeal, to which Lord Castlereagh resorted: and when, after mature consideration, his lordship determined to resort to that appeal in the first instance, I should have thought that such a choice deliberatively made, would have been felt by his friends to be equally conclusive upon them as upon himself. But your lordship needs not to be informed, how assiduously my character has been assailed by writers in the newspapers, espousing Lord Castlereagh's quarrel, and supposed (I trust, most injuriously) to be his lordship's parti cular friends. The perversions and misrepresentations of anonymous writers, however, would not have extorted from me any reply. But to them succeeded the publication of Lord Castlereagh's letter to me, Sept. 19th. I entirely disbelieve that Lord Castlereagh, and I distinctly deny that I myself, had any knowledge of this publication. But, by what means it matters not, the latter is now be fore the world; and though the course originally chosen by Lord Castlereagh precluded me offering any explanation to him, the course which has since been adopted on his behalf (though undoubtedly without his privity) might perhaps have been considered as rendering such an expla nation due to myself. It is, however, only since your lordship's publication, that I have felt it to be indispensably necessary. The statement on my behalf, which has also found its way, without my consent, and against my wish, into the public papers, was written under a sense of delicacy and restraint as to the particulars of the transaction itself, which must always continue to prevail in great degree; but from which until Wednesday, the 11th of October, the the day on which I gave up the seals, I had not an opportunity of soliciting any dispensation. Of the indulgence which I then most humbly solicited, I trust I shall be able to avail myself sufficiently for my own vindication, without losing sight of those considerations of duty and propriety, by which the use of such an indulgence must necessarily be regulated and confined. It is stated in Lord Castlereagh's letter, "That I had demanded and procured from the Duke of Portland, before the rising of parliament, a promise for Lord Castlereagh's removal from the war department; that, by this promise, Lord Castlereagh's situation, as a minister of the crown, was made dependant on my pleasure; andthat this promise I afterwards thought myself entitled to enforce. That after, and notwithstanding this virtual supersession of Lord Castlereagh in his office, I allowed him to originate and conduct the expedition to the Scheldt. And that during this whole period, I knew that the agitation and the decision of the question for his removal were concealed from him, and was party to this concealment." Lord Castlereagh, indeed, admits, that he has no right, as a public man, to resent my demanding, upon public grounds, his removal from his office, or even from the administration, as a condition of my continuing a member of the government. But contends, that a proposition "justifiable in itself," ought not to have been "executed in an unjustifiable manner," and he makes me responsible for the manner in which the "head of the administration," and some members of the government, supposed to be his (Lord Castlereagh's) friends," executed the proposition which he attributed to me. He is ready to acknowledge, indeed, "that I pressed for a disclosure, at the same time that I pressed for a decision; and that the disclosure was resisted by the Duke of Portland and his (Lord Castlereagh's,) supposed friends." But, in this circumstance, Lord Castlereagh professes not to see any justification of what he conceives to have been my conduct towards him: because, by acquiescing in the advice or intreaties of his "supposed friends," I admitted “ an authority" on their part, which I must have known them not to possess," because "by pressing for disclosure," I shewed my own sense of the "unfairness" of concealment; and because, with that sense, i ought" (as he conceives me not to have done) " to have availed myself of the of the same alternative, namely, my own resignation, to enforce disclosure, which I did to enforce decision." Without offering a single word in the way of argument, I shall, by a distinct detail of facts, in the order of their date, substantiate my contradiction of these charges. I shall only premise, Ist. That I had (as is admitted by Lord Castlereaghi) an unquestionable right to require, on public grounds, a change in the war department, considering, at the same time, the alternative of my own resignation. 2dly. What no man at all acquainted with the course of public business will dispute, that the regular, effectual, and straight forward course for bringing that alternative to issue, was to state it directly to the "head of the administration," the king's chief minister, to be laid by that minister before the king. I proceed to the detail of facts. April 2d.-I addressed a letter to the Duke of Portland, containing a repre |