whom I know, would have done. There | every such man must lay his account with may be others capable of the same exer- being calumniated; he must expect to be tions; and, let us hope, that England does the object of the bitterest and most percontain some other men able to undergo severing malice; and, unless he has made what he underwent; but, it falls to the up his mind to the enduring of this, he lot of no country to produce many such had better, at once, quit the field. One men. At any rate, he has proved himself of the weapons which corruption employs to be the man for you; he has done for against her adversaries is calumny, secret you what none of the milk-sop, miawling as well as open. It is truly surprising to orators at Sir Samuel Romilly's meetings see how many ways she has of annaping would have dared even to think of. They her foes, and the artifices to which she talk of freeing the city from the trammels stoops to arrive at her end. No sooner does of corruption; they talk of giving you a man become in any degree formidable to freedom of election; they talk of making a her, than she sets to work against him in stand for your rights. What stand all the relationships of life. In his prohave they made? What have you fession, his trade, his family; amongst his had from them but talk? They saw the friends, the companions of his sports, his enemy within your walls; they saw him neighbours, and his servants. She eyes offer himself for the choice of the people of him all round, she feels him all over, and, Bristol; they saw preparations making for if he has a vulnerable point, if he has a chairing him as your representative on the speck, however small, she is ready with first day of the election; and what did her stab. How many hundreds of men they do to rescue you from the disgrace of have been ruined by her without being seeing him triumph over you, while you hardly able to perceive, much less name, were silent? Nothing. They did, in the cause; and how many thousands, seefact, sell you to him upon the implied con- ing the fate of these hundreds, have withdition, that he, as far as he was able, drawn from the struggle, or have been should sell his followers to them when the deterred from taking part in it! time came. You have been saved from that Mr. Hunt's separation from his wife disgrace; you have had 14 days of your presented too fair a mark to be for a molives wherein to tell your enemies and the ment overlooked; but, it required the enemies of your country your minds; you canting crew, with a Mr. Charles Elton have had 14 days, during which corruption at their head, to give to this fact that detrembled under your bitter but just re-formity which it has been made to receive. proaches; you have had 14 days of political instruction and inquiry; you have had those who affect to listen to your voice 14 days before you, and in the hearing of that voice; there have been, in your city, 14 days of terror to the guilty part of it. This is a great deal, and for this you are indebted to Mr. Hunt and to him alone. Your own public virtues, your zeal, activity and courage, and your hatred of your country's enemies did, indeed, enable Mr. Hunt to make the stand; but, still there wanted such a man as Mr. Hunt; without such a man the stand could not have been made; without such a man you could not have had an opportunity of giving utterance to the hatred which you so justly feel against the supporters of that corruption, the consequences of which you so sorely feel.

Gentlemen, I wish to be clearly understood here. I do not think lightly of such matters. When a man separates from his wife there must always be ground for regret; it is a thing always to be lamented; and, if the fault, in this case, was on the side of Mr. Hunt, it is a fault, which, even in our admiration of his public conduct, we ought by no means to endeavour to palliate. But, Gentlemen, I do not and the public cannet, know what was the real cause of the separation of which so much has been said.

Mr. Hunt has, upon no occasion that I have heard of, attempted to justify his conduct, in this respect, by stating the reasons of the separation; but, I am sure that you are too just to conclude from that circumstance, that the fault was wholly his. It is impossible for the public to know the facts of such a case. They That a man, who was giving such an- cannot enter into a man's family affairs. noyance to the corrupt, should pass with- The tempers and humours of wives and of out being calumniated was not to be ex-husbands nobody but those wives and huspected. Every man, who attacks corruption, who makes war upon the vile herd that live upon the people's labour,

bands know. They are, in many cases, unknown even to domestic servants and to children; and, is it not, then, the height

Anti-jacobin to Dr. Jebb when the latter was very ill, "mend your own;" and I have heard it seriously objected to a gentleman that he signed a petition for a reform of parliament while there needed a reformation amongst his servants, one of whom had assisted to burden the parish; just as if he had on that account less right to ask for a full and fair representation of the people! After this, who need wonder if he were told not to talk against rotten boroughs while he himself had a rotten tooth, or endeavour to excite a clamour against corruption when his own flesh was every day liable to be corrupted to the bone?

of presumption for the public to pretend to man being, not even his wife, to whisper any knowledge of the matter? a word to his disadvantage. "You talk But, be the facts of the case what they" of mending the constitution," said an may, I am quite sure, that as a candidate for a seat in parliament, they have nothing to do with the pretensions of Mr. Hunt, any more than they would have had to do with his claims to a title for having won valgar. There is a Mr. Walker, who, I think, is an Attorney at Bristol, who has written a pamphlet against Mr. Hunt, in which pamphlet he argues thus: Mr. Hunt has, by quitting his wife 'to live with another woman, broken his 'plighted vows to his own wife; a man 'who will break his promises in one case ' will break them in another case; and, 'therefore, as Mr. Hunt has broken his 'promises to his wife, he will break his 'promises to the people of Bristol.' These After this, Gentlemen, I trust that you are not Mr. Walker's words, but you have are not to be cheated by such wretched here his reasoning, and from it you may cant. With Mr. Hunt's family affairs you judge of the shifts to which Mr. Hunt's and I have nothing to do, any more than he adversaries are driven. As well might has with ours. We are to look to his conMr. Walker tell you that you will break duct as a public man, and, if he serve us any promise that you may make to your in that capacity he is entitled to our gratineighbours, because you have not wholly tude. Suppose, for instance, the plague renounced the Devil and all his works and were in Bristol, and the only physician, all the pomps and vanities of this wicked who had skill and courage to put a stop to world, as you, in your baptism, promised its ravages, was separated from his wife and vowed to do. If Mr. Walker's argu- and living with the wife of another man; ment were a good one, a man who lives in would you refuse his assistance? Would a state of separation from his wife ought to you fling his prescriptions into the kennel? be regarded as a man dead in law; or, Would the canting Messrs. Mills and Elton rather, as a man excommunicated by the and Walker exclaim, "no! we will have Pope. If his promises are good for nothing none of your aid; we will die rather when made to electors, they are good for " than be saved by you, who have broken nothing when made to any body else. He" your marriage vows!" Would they cannot, therefore, be a proper man for any body to deal with, or to have any communication with; and, in short, he ought to be put out of the world, as being a burden and a nuisance in it.

say this? No; but would crawl to him, would supplicate him, with tears in their eyes. And, yet, suffer me to say, Gentlemen, that such a physician in a plague would not be more necessary in There is something so absurd, so glar- Bristol than such a man as Mr. Hunt now ingly stupid, in this, that it is hardly worth is; and that the family affairs of a member while to attempt a further exposure of it, of parliament is no more a matter of conor I might ask the calumniating crew, who cern with his constituents than are the faaccuse Mr. Hunt of disloyally, whether mily affairs of a physician a matter of conthey are ready to push their reasoning and cern with his patients. When an imtheir rules up to peers and princes, and to portant service had been received from assert that they ought to be put out of either, it would be pleasanter for the bepower if they cease to live with their wives. nefited party to reflect that the party conThey would say, no; and that their doc-ferring the benefit was happy in his family; trine was intended to apply only to those who had the boldness to attack corruption. The man who does that is to be as pure as snow; he is to have no faults at all. He is to be a perfect Saint; nay, he is to be a great deal more, for he is to have no hu

but, if the case were otherwise, to suppose the benefit less real, or the party conferring it entitled to less gratitude, is something. too monstrously absurd to be entertained by any man of common sense.

The remainder of my subject I must re

serve for another Letter, and in the mean | dious; to make it out as being perfidious, while, I am, Gentlemen, your sincere it must be shewn that its object was to acfriend,

WM. COBBETT.

Botley, July 27, 1812.

SUMMARY OF POLITICE

complish something treacherous against us. If I make a proposition to a rebel to desert his associates, I am not guilty of perfidy; my proposition is not perfidious, though I am certainly calling upon him to do that which would be perfidious towards those

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Napoleon is free even from the imputation of tempting England to do a perfidious act. Mr. Sheridan says, that we could not agree to leave Joseph in possession of Spain without the "grossest perfidy to our allies, and "the most treacherous violation of all our

most solemn engagements." Now, in the first place, supposing this to be true, was it a reason for our refusing to negociate without demanding the giving up of this point as a preliminary? We might have negociated, and yet not have yielded this point. We might have offered to give up some of our own immense acquisitions in Asia, Africa, or America, in order to get Joseph out of Spain. But, really, we seem to have formed the design of taking all and giving up nothing.- However, this is nothing to the question; for what solemn engagements have we, what engagements can we have, with Ferdinand? It is for him, observe, and not for the people of Spain, that we are contending in this instance; for Ferdinand and his heirs; and, again I ask, what treaty, what compact, what engagement of any sort, we have, or can have, with him? Can our government show his name signed to any document? Have they ever had any communication with him? Is not his father alive; and does not his father protest against his claim to the throne of Spain? In fine, has not he, in as solemn a manner as he was able, made over to Napoleon all his claims to that throne? And, with all this before us, and seeing this same Ferdinand living as a sub

FRENCH OVERTURES FOR PEACE (continued from page 110).- Since I wrote the article here referred to, there has taken place a debate in the House of Commons, upon the subject of the French overtures. Mr. Sheridan made, on the 21st of July, a motion for the production of the correspondence, relating to that subject, which motion seems to have been made for the purpose of attacking Napoleon, or, at least, for that of answering the publications in the Moniteur. The debate is of importance in many respects, and especially as having pretty clearly developed what are the notions of the court upon the subject of peace with France, Mr. Sheridan being well known to be now merely a courtier, a courtier and nothing else.- -I said, in my last, that the proposition of France was fair and frank, and, the circumstances considered, moderate. Mr. Sheridan has described it as perfidious, insidious, and insulting. We see with very different eyes, then; and, therefore, let the reader judge between us. To enable him to judge rightly, he must first have the proposition distinctly before him. It was this: "that "the crown of Spain should be guaranteed to Joseph, and Spain governed by a na "tional constitution of her Cortes, the "French armies being withdrawn; that Portugal should be guaranteed to the "House of Braganza, our troops being "withdrawn; that Sicily should be gua"ranteed to the king, and evacuated by us; and that, with respect to other ob"jects of discussion, they should be nego-ject in France, shall we continue this war, "ciated upon this basis, that each power "should retain that of which the other had 46 not been able to deprive it by war." Such, reader, was the overture made by France; and do you see in it any thing perfidious, insidious, or insulting? It is as plain in its meaning as words can make it. There is no possibility of misun-as perfidious, because it wanted to ensnare derstanding it; and, therefore, it cannot us into the appearance of doing what it with propriety be called perfidious. Mr. never meant we should do. It was as easy Sheridan says it is perfidious, because it in- to assert this as it was to assert any thing vites us to do that which would be a breach else; and as easy to assert any thing else of faith towards, our ally; but, if it really as this. When Cardinal Wolsey fell into does this, it cannot for that be called perfi-disgrace, his enemies, not content with

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which is daily sinking hundreds to the poorhouse, on account of engagements with Ferdinand? Shall we call a proposition to treat for peace perfidious, because it contemplates the exclusion of this man from the throne of Spain?—We are told by Mr. Sheridan that it was insidious as well

Mr. Sheridan, was really addressed to Russia and not to us; it was not, he says, meant for us at all. It was a mere sham overture. It was a proposition to England nominally for the purpose of having something to show to the Czar, in order to induce him to believe that France was ready,' if he did not come to her terms, to make "great and many sacrifices to England;" and yet, this same proposition is, in almost the same breath, called too grossly insulting to be entertained for a single moment!

charges for which there were grounds, invented others for which there were none; and, ridiculous as was the charge of the Cardinal's having endangered the life of the king by whispering in his ear when the former had the venereal disease, it was not more ridiculous than is this charge against the Emperor Napoleon. Where is Mr. Sheridan's proof. where are his arguments. to show, that the French wished us to appear to do that which they never meant we should do? He observes, that Napoleon was engaged in a negociation with Russia, -Mr. Sheridan, who is what is called and finding her unbending, he sends his an Old Stager, ought to have perceived the proposition to us on the 17th of April; dilemma, which he was framing for himand, on the 25th of the same month, he self in his eagerness to accumulate accusacommunicates it to the Russian government, tions on the head of Napoleon. Either the before he could get our answer, which he proposition was insulting to us, or it was did not send to the Russian government, not: if it was not, it has not been truly and which he did not intend to send. described; if it was, then it was not calHence Mr. Sheridan concludes, that the culated to make the Russians believe that proposition to England was a mere trick to France was ready to make sacrifices to us. induce Russia to give way by making her In one of the two respects Mr. Sheridan's believe, that England would certainly ac- assertions cannot be true.If it really cept of the proposed terms, and leave was the intention of France to use the proRussia to shift for herself.- This, in position merely as the means of scaring the part, might be the object as to the time of Russian Czar into her terms, she would, as making the offer to us; but, it could hardly I before observed, have set no bounds to her be the sole object of the proposition; be- liberality towards us, it being as easy to recause, if it had, the proposition would have tract much as little; but, indeed, the whole been such as it would have been impossible of the proposition seems to me to carry in it for even our ministers to reject.- Mark, an air of sincerity; and, I am very sure, however, the contradiction here: it is, on that nothing has been advanced by Mr. the one hand, asserted, that the proposition Sheridan, or by any one else, in this dewas a mere trick for the purpose of fright- bate, to prove the contrary. I can see ening Russia; that it was solely intended for powerful reasons for a desire for peace on the purpose of making her believe, that the part of Napoleon. He has established France was upon the eve of peace with his empire; he can wish little in the way England; that, in sending a copy of the of territory and nothing in the way of glory proposition to the Russian minister, to give as a soldier. He has now to complete his him a list of all the great and many sa- renown by giving peace, and plenty, and "crifices France was willing to make to in-happiness to his vast dominions. There "duce England to a peace," the object was to induce him to come to the terms of France. This is possible; but, it is strange indeed, and almost impossible, that the proposition to us should, at the same time, be "insulting;" for, if it were insulting, how can any man believe that it was sent to the Russian minister with a view of terrifying him at the prospect of a separate peace between France and England? Both qualities the proposition could not contain: it could not be, at one and the same time, grossly insulting to England, and calculated for the purpose of making Russia believe that Napoleon was ready to make "great " and many sacrifices" to obtain peace with England. Either by itself might be true; but both could not. The proposition, says

are divers circumstances that must now incline him to peace; and all his acts show, that he has set his heart upon doing for his empire that which he cannot do for it in war.- -He is not, and need not be, afraid of peace. He is not afraid of a depopulation of his empire on account of the pressure of taxation; he is not afraid of any sudden attack on the part of any enemy; he would not, in peace, be compelled to support immense establishments. Indeed, I can see many solid reasons for his now wishing for peace, and very few, if any, for his wishing to continue the war; and, not one word was said, during the debate, in the way of proof of the contrary.The reasons for his having made his overture at this time have, as Mr. Sheridan told the House,

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"pour by signing – degrading peace”.

Now, reader, is this an answer to the reasons of Napoleon? Do you find any thing here to convince you that the proposition was insidious? Does Napoleon (supposing the words to be his) talk about his "beloved. "England?" And, is it not very true, that we are suffering very greatly from the war? Napoleon does not talk of his sympathy for us; he does not pretend that he is animated by any feeling of that sort towards us; but, he says, and very reasonably says, that he was in hopes, that our sufferings would induce our government to listen to the voice of peace; and, did Mr. Sheridan imagine, that this was to be answered by a poor dull jest?As to the people of this country being well aware of the wild ambition to which the war and their sufferings on account of it are to be traced, I believe that the far greater part of the people of England think that they are to be traced to the want of a disposition in our own government to treat for peace; and, if this be their opinion, I am quite sure, that Mr. Sheridan has said nothing to remove it. "Put them," says he," to the

been stated by himself in these words:" we were ripe for slavery; but it was im"Seeing himself thus constrained to aban- possible! He referred to his Honour"don every hope from Russia, his Majesty," able Friend, who had spoke but the lan"before he should commence this contest 66 guage of every man in the country, when " in which so much blood was to be shed," he said that he should rather see the em"felt it to be his duty to address himself "pire fall in the contest, perish in honour"to the English Government; the distress "able ruin-than sink into a miserable "felt by England, the agitations to which" existence, after having survived her he "she is a prey, and the changes which "have taken place in her Government, de"cided his Majesty to take this course." --And what could be more natural? What could be more reasonable? What more frank than this statement of reasons? Really men must have their minds most monstrously perverted before they look upon language like this as insidious. What is the answer of Mr. Sheridan to this? What does he say to prove that this is false and hypocritical? Nothing at all. He comes out with a set of clap-trap phrases, such as he has often made use of, but such as are, I am persuaded, not so likely to succeed as formerly. "So," says he, "the Buonaparte's imperial sympathies for the "distress of his beloved England, his con"trite pity for the agitations to which she 66 was a prey, were the moving impulses that finally swayed his gentle spirit to so"licit peace. (A laugh!)-But this was "too much too much even for the cha"ritable credulity of his Hon. Friend. "And so far was he (Mr. Sheridan) from "admitting those agitations to exist in this country, either to the extent or in the spi"rit so insidiously implied in the passage" alternative of privation or being conquer"just read, that he believed that if ever "there was a period since the commence"ment of the war, in which we might and "ought to make one bold struggle, it was "the present; because, however severe the pressure of the times might have been "felt, the people of this country were well "aware of the wild ambition to which they 46 were to be traced, and the implacable hostility by which that ambition was in"furiated.-/Hear, hear!-Put to them "the alternative of privation or conquest, " and would a second thought stay the indignant decision of one freeman through"out the empire?—(Hear, hear!)-Indeed, were it possible for him to regret "the repeal that had lately taken place, "he would regret it if it had the effect of so libelling the national character as to induce a belief that that repeal had been "conceded, in order to make men willing "to resist a foreign yoke.(Hear!)-If "temporary privations were to make us indifferent to conquest, or independence,

"ed." No, but put to them the alternative of privation or a peace on moderate terms; or, at least, a peace on the basis now offered by France. Why put to the people the other alternative? What reason is there for it? Does Napoleon propose to conquer England; or does he propose the surrender of its independence? Does he talk of any such thing? No: but, on the contrary, he proposes to treat upon the basis, that all that we have conquered we shall consider as our own for ever, and, the reader well knows how great have been our boastings as to those conquests. He says, "keep all that you have conquered;" and Mr. Sheridan construes him to say to us, give up England itself to me." And then he tells us, that we are ripe for slavery if we can balance between temporary privations and loss of independence.

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This is the sort of statement and of reasoning (if it be worthy of the name), by which England has been led on, step by step, to her present state. The people