war without any dishonour to England; but, for this they cannot be blamed by those who are seeking for their places; because some of those very persons were amongst the men who adopted and adhered to the measures which produced the war; and, the rest of them have pledged themselves to prosecute it upon its present ground.

"conces

Mr. Canning and Lord Wellesley were, in succession, Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs while the dispute was maintained against the abolition of impressment of persons on board of American ships. Indeed, the former has expressed his disapprobation of the sions," as he calls them, made to America, in the repeal of our Orders in Council. Of course he cannot complain of the ministers for going to war; and Mr. Ponsonby, as the organ of the Whigs, distinctly declared, that, if America was not satisfied with that repeal, he would support the war against her.

Not, therefore, being able to find fault with the ministers for the war itself, they fall on upon them as to their manner of conducting it; and, as I think, I have shown, they do this without a shadow of justice.

We, Jacobins," blame all the three factions; some of them for causing the war, and others for pledging themselves to support it; nor have I the least hesitation to predict, that, day after day, will tend to convince all persons of impartiality, that we are right.

This war we owe entirely to the presumption inspired by our foolish and venal writers. The language of the late PERCEVAL, who talked of not wishing for the "destruction" of America, and who spoke of her as of a power depending on his will for her very existence; this language, which will long be remembered, was the general language of the press. We could not believe it possible, that a government, the whole of the officers of which, President and all, did not receive from the public so much money annually as one of our sinecure placemen; we could not conceive, that a government who did not get more money for itself, would be able to get money enough to carry on a war, more than sufficient to last our sloops for a few months. We have now found our mistake; and, indeed, the premises which we had in our eye should have led to a directly different conclusion; for, would not common sense have told us, that the less of the public money was taken by the officers of Government for their own use; the less of it that was devoured by placemen, and by others for no services rendered the public, the more there must be for the Government to employ in the public service? This would have been the rational conclusion; but, to reason thus, suited not those who had, and who have, the control over ninety-nine hundredth parts of the press of this country. They, therefore, represented America as a nation destitute of warlike means; when they should have made an estimate of her resources upon the grounds stated in my last Article.

The persons in high offices in America are badly paid; but (and the fact is worth great attention) those in low rank, or, no rank at all, are well paid. The former have very small salaries; their gains are much less than those of any considerable merchant or manufacturer, lawyer, or Physician; but the common soldier and sailor are paid at a very high rate; at such a rate as not to make him regret his change from civil life.

I should not say, perhaps, that the former are budly paid; because there is something in the honour of high office, which the common man does not enjoy; and, besides, there is something due from every man to his country; and, the greater that is his stake in the country, the less is

his right to draw from her purse. Mr. Madison does, I dare say, expend, as President, every shilling of the 6,000l. that, as President, he receives. And, why should he not? What claim would he have to the title of patriot, if he grudged to use his talents for his country; or, which is the same thing, if he refused to use them without being paid for their use? If such were his disposition, what claim would he have to the confidence of his fellow citizens? But, with the common soldier or sailor, or other inferior person employed by the Government, the case is wholly different. He has nothing but his labour for his inheritance; he possesses no part of the country; his time is his all; and, of course, he is paid for that time at as good rate as if he laboured for an individual. Those who speculate upon the resources of America should not overlook these important circumstances; but, hitherto, I am sorry to say, that we have almost wholly overlooked them.

I never shall forget the obstinacy of many persons with whom I am acquainted, as to the intention of the American Government to go to war. They persisted to the very last, that it was impossible. They called the declaration of the Congress bullying" they said it was "all smoke ;" and so, indeed, said the hired press, that vehicle of lies, that instrument of ill to England.

They have found some fire as well as smoke; they have found that the Republicans have something at their command besides words; and, when it is too late, I fear that they will find, that this is the most fatal war in which we have yet been engaged. One effect of it appears to me to be inevitable; and that is, the creation of a Navy in America.

Pray, good hired men, do not laugh at me; for I am quite serious when I say, that my fear is, that this war will lead to the creating of a formidable navy in America. The means are all in her hands, and her successful beginning will not fail to give activity to those means.

A navy, a military marine, in America, is, to me, a most formidable object. Twenty frigates only would cause an expense to us of millions a year, unless we resolved to yield the West India Islands at once.

I would not advise our Government to look upon the rearing of an American Navy as something necessarily distant. America has swelled her population from about two to about eight millions in the space of less than 30 years. Another ten years may see her population amount to twenty millions. From not being permitted "to make a hob-nail," she has risen to be an exporter of numerous useful manufactures. I state it as an undeniable fact, that she is now able to supply herself with all the articles necessary to man, even in polished life. And, if this be so, why should she not be able to rear a Navy, having already nearly as great a mercantile marine as our own.

Whether it will be for her happiness that she should do this is another question; but, that she will do it I think is most likely; because, in the mass composing every society of men, there is generally a sufficient number on the side of power and glory to decide the nation in favour of the love of those captivating objects.

This war, therefore, if not speedily put an end to, will, in my opinion, not fail to make America a manufacturing nation, as far as her own wants call for, and to make her also a naval nation; and will thus, at one stroke, deprive us of our best customer for goods, and give us upon the seas a rival who will be daily growing in strength as well as in experience.

In my preface to the republication of Mr. Chancellor Livingstone's Treatise on Merino Sheep, I showed how necessarily it would follow from the introduction of flock-keeping in America, that she would become independent of us to woollens. Nevertheless, and in spite of all the facts which have, from time to time, been published relative to the manufacturing of cloths in that country, there are still men to treat with ridicule, aye, even with ridicule, the idea of America being able to make her own coats and blankets. I remember, that, while I was in Newgate for two years, for writing about the flogging of the Local Militia, at the Town of Ely, in England, under the superintendence of German Troops, there came a gentleman, who was, I believe, a dealer in wool, to ask my opinion relative to the future commerce with America. After having spent about a quarter of an hour in a detail of facts, which, in my mind, contained proof unquestionable, that the woollen trade with America was for ever at an end, he began a sentence upon the surprising increase of the manufactures in America, which he concluded in words to this effect: I dare say, that, in less than half a century, we shall not ship a bale of cloth to that country." This put me in mind of the effect that the Botley Parson's sermons used to have upon me; and I lost no time in changing the subject of conversation.

I am not one of those who shall regret this independence of America, which I do not think will prove any injury to England in the end; but I could have wished the change to have been less abrupt, and effected without war, and without the animosities and the sufferings inseparable from war. To me it appears as absurd as it is unnatural, that the American farmer should not have his coat untaxed at the Custom-house in England. I can see no sense and no reason in it. Nor do I see why the people of England, or any portion of them, should make coats or knives, or any thing else for the use of other countries, except merely in such quantities as may be necessary to exchange for wine and oil, and some few other things which really are useful to man. The use of commerce is to effect an exchange of the products of one climate for those of another; but governments have turned it into the means of taxation, and, in many cases, that appears to be its only object. An exchange of English coals for French wine, the former at 30s. a chaldron at Paris, and the latter at 6d. a bottle in London; that would, indeed, be a commerce to be contemplated with pleasure. But a commerce, carried on under a code of prohibitions and penalties, such as those now every where in existence, is not to be desired. It is an instrument of taxation, and an endless source of war, and it is nothing more.

Those, however, who are of a different opinion, may look upon the war with America as one of the surest means of destroying, or, at least, diminishing for ever, the best branch of what they admire; but, while I blame the ministers for the war, I must say, that the merchants and manufacturers (I mean the powerful ones) have no right to blame them. The ministers, in their measures towards America, have done no more than pursue that same system, of which those merchants and manufacturers have a thousand times, and in the strongest terms, expressed their approbation. At the outset of this long and destructive war, who stood forward so readily in support of it as this class of persons? The warwhoop has invariably originated with them. They indulged the selfish hope of seeing themselves in possession of all the trade and all the riches of the world. The English newspapers contain a record of their

love of war, of war against any body, so long as it promised gain to them. They have, over and over again, called the war which began in an invasion of France by the Duke of Brunswick, "a just and necessary war;" but, of late, they appear to have been taught by their poor-books and the list of Bankrupts, that the war is not quite so "necessary," however "just" they may still think it. They have, I repeat it, no right to complain against the ministers, who have not deviated from the system of Pitt and Grenville, and who, with regard to America, are only acting upon the very same principles, and pursuing the very same objects, that have been acted upon and pursued from the year 1792 to the present day; and the manufacturers are tasting, as is most meet, of the fruit of the tree of their own planting and protecting.

Botley, 7th January, 1813.

WM. COBBETT.

AMERICAN STATES.

(Political Register, January, 1813.)

My two last Articles were devoted principally to the task of endeavouring to convince the Prince Regent and the public, that it was neither dangerous nor dishonourable to yield to the terms upon which we might have had, and may yet have, peace with America: and, to my great mortification, though, I must confess, not much to my surprise, I now see, from the contents of the last Gazette, wherein is His Royal Highness's “Declaration," that all my endeavours have been of no avail, and that war, long, expensive and sanguinary war, will now take place with an enemy, who, above all others, is capable of inflicting deep wounds upon this already-crippled, or, at least, exhausted nation.

From the first publication of the Letters which passed between Lord Wellesley and Mr. Pinckney, soon after the French had announced their intention to repeal the Berlin and Milan Decrees; from the very day of that publication, which took place soon after I was imprisoned in Newgate for two years (with a fine to THE KING, which I have since paid, of a thousand pounds) for having written and published upon the subject of flogging certain English militia-men, at the town of Ely, in England, who had been first reduced to submission by German Troops; from the very day of that publication I began to fear the present sad result of the dispute which had then assumed a new and more serious character than it had ever before worn. With that fear in my mind, I bent all my feeble powers towards preventing such result. I have failed: opinions and counsels the direct opposite of mine have prevailed; and time will show who was right and who wrong.

Upon former occasions the real grounds of war have, but too often, been lost sight of in the multitude and confusion of subsequent events; the Government has had the address to enlist the passions of men on its side, and the voice of reason has been stifled.

But, here, as I was from the first resolved it should be, there is a clear,

a distinct, an undisguisable ground before our eyes; we know well what we are at war for: we know, and must bear in mind, that we are at war for the purpose of enforcing our practice of stopping American vessels upon the high seas, and taking out of them all such persons as our naval officers may deem to be British seamen. This is now become the clearly defined subject of the war with America.

The "DECLARATION," does not contain any new matter: it is a summary of what our Ministers have before alleged and asserted in their correspondence with the American Government and its divers agents. But, there are some few passages of it which require to be particularly noticed. The question relating to the Orders in Council has been before so amply discussed, in my several Letters and articles upon the subject, that I will not encumber my present remarks with any thing relating thereunto; but, will confine myself to what relates to the impressment of persons out of American ships on the high seas.

Upon this point the "DECLARATION" says:

"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.-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.— "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 "the 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."

The doctrine of allegiance, as here laid down, I admit, with some exceptions; but, as to the right of impressing British seamen, on the high seas, out of neutral ships, I deny it to be founded on any principle or maxim laid down by any writer on public law. Indeed, the "DEclaraTION" does not say that it is: it says, that the right of SEARCHING neutral vessels in time of war is "undoubted and has hitherto been undisputed." This is not correct; for, not only has even this right been doubted, not only are there two opinions about it in the books on public law, but the writers on public law are, for the most part, against the said right as we practise it, and they contend, that we have no right to seize enemy's goods on board of merchant ships which are neutral. Nay, the contest has given rise to military resistance on the part of our now-ally, Russia, Denmark, and Sweden; and, what is still more, Great Britain ceased, upon their threats, to exercise this, even this, right of seizing enemy's goods on board of neutral ships of war.

But, this right; this right of SEARCHING neutral ships; what has it to do with the impressment of persons on board of such ships? That is what the Americans object to, and are at war against. They are not at war against our right of search, even in our own interpretation of that right. What they object to is, the stopping of their vessels on the high seas, and taking people out of them by force; a practice which, I repeat it, is sanctioned by no principle or maxim of any writer on public law, nor by any usage heretofore known in the world,