pressing his approbation of the treaty, and giving his vote for the amendment.

The Master of the Rolls defended the treaty at considerable length.

Dr. Lawrence urged with great force several of the objections which had already been made.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer was not surprised at such a motion as the present, coming from that right honourable gentleman, who had before considered the peace itself as ruinous, and the preliminaries to have been the death-blow of the country. It would be of little avail to endeavour to justify the terms of the treaty, to him who inveighed against any treaty with the government of France. He condemned the mode in which this treaty had been attacked by piecemeal, but as it had been attacked in that manner, he found himself obliged to defend it in the same way. [He then went over the several articles of the treaty which had been objected to, and defended them nearly on the same principles which lord Hawkesbury had done]. He considered, however, that the fair way of considering the treaty was as an entire thing; and that the true question was, whether it was better to make such a peace, or continue the war. He never had attempted to paint in false colours the present peace; he never spoke of it in exulting language, nor called it a glorious peace, but he thought it such a peace as was better than a continuation of the war, and such as the country could sign with honour. He did not think any additional security for its permanence could be obtained by the war, and saw no reason why it might not be lasting. It was his most sincere 1

wish and prayer, that it might be lasting, but if it should be disturbed, the country would still feel the benefit of having its resources saved during the continuance of it. As long as the country was determined to provide for its own security, he thought it in no great danger of attack. It was now on a proud eminence, and, as he thought, might continue so, as long as it adhered to the principle of not invading the rights of others, nor suffering its own to be invaded. By a system of conciliation and firmness, he thought. the country might long enjoy its present preeminence. He could hardly wish its preeminence to be higher than it is, and he trusted it would never be lower. He concluded by again expressing the strong desire of all his majesty's ministers, that the peace should be long preserved, He supported the amendment of lord Hawkesbury.

Mr. Sheridan rose at about two o'clock in the morning, for the purpose of moving another amendment to the address, stating, "that the omissions of various opportunities of negotiating peace, and particularly the rejection of the overtures of the first consul in 1800, had led to such a state of affairs, as to justify the important sacrifices which his majesty had been advised to make." Mr. Sheridan's speech, which was a masterpiece of eloquence, and replete with sallies of wit, was principally directed against the conduct of his majesty's late ministers, whom he supposed to be now in secret coalition with the present. Instead of the security and the indemnity they had promised from the war, they had gotten the isles of Ceylon and Trinidad. They might call the one the island of security, and the

other

We

other the island of indemnity. had failed in every object for which they plunged this country in war. Instead of checking the aggrandizement of France, their conduct had raised it to such a height, as to endanger the existence of all the nations which surround it. France was now infinitely stronger and more formidable than at any period since the revolution, and he thought it was owing to the misconduct of the late ministers that it was so. Some of them had always appeared dreadfully alarmed at jacobinism, but fearless of every thing else. For his part, his fears and alarms had begun where theirs had ended. He saw the immense power of France now consolidated; all its continental enemies subdued, or won over to its interests; and he saw nothing to prevent the ruler of France from directing this mighty power entirely against Great Britain in another war, which he might soon provoke, or declare against us. All this dan ger he attributed to the misconduct of the late ministers, against whom he inveighed severely he also inveighed against the secret coalition which he supposed to exist between the present ministers and the exministers. They affected to be sepa

rate and distinct, but they were all still right honourable and honourable friends. This mysterious connection. had nothing manly in its principle, and he highly disapproved of it; otherwise he should feel strongly inclined to support the measures of the present administration.

Mr. Grey said, he was ready to give his unqualified support to the treaty, but could not vote for that part of the amendment, which implied an approbation of that war, which he had always considered unjust in its origin, calamitous in its conduct, and disgraceful in its termination.

Mr. William Smith, Mr. Whitbread, and Mr. Bouverie declared, that upon the same principle they could not vote for the amendment, although they approved of the conduct of ministers in making the peace.

Mr. Windham made a short reply to the leading objections to his address: he said, that although that address might be construed into a censure on ministers, that was by no means the intention or the object of it.

The house divided on Mr. Windham's address. Ayes 20; noes 276. Majority 256.

CHAP,

at considerable length on the highly interesting debate on the subject of the definitive treaty, we shalt now endeavour to lay before our readers some considerations and reflections which immediately belong to it, and endeavour to point out, with clearness and precision, wherein it differed from the spirit of all former treaties concluded by Great Britain; wherein it differed from the preliminary articles of peace, which should have formed its exact and precise basis; and finally consider whether it left England in possession of a tranquillity to which" its tone, its temper, and its terms," promised permanent stability, or whether it was to be considered as only conducive to an hollow and armed truce," of short and probably very limited duration.

It should seem, on a first glance at the provisions of the peace of Amiens, that Great Britain, after having maintained a contest unexampled in interest, length, and vigour, had retained by them, not.

began the war, but had retired from it with increase of military fame, and the acquisition of two certainly very valuable possessions, not only as with respect to their intrinsic value, but as adding great additional security to her former dominions, and likely to increase to a considerable degree her commerce and her resources.

That thus she had much improved her relative situation with respect to her enemies, whilst, to secure the permanency of peace, she had removed every cause of jealousy and dissatisfaction, by restoring to them a long list of the most valuable and important conquests.

To the statist and politician, however, who was guided by the maxims of a Burleigh, a Temple, and a Chatham; who believed it an established and indispensable princible that the security and general interests of Europe must be inviolably protected as the sole means of preserving the repose and safety of its individual states, and conse

quently

quently that the independence of Great Britain, depended upon that of the different continental powers, (those maxims, whose operations had won and secured to her the proud preeminence she possessed in the civilized world,) this celebrated and momentous treaty appeared in a far different point of view.

If, indeed, the politics of Great Britain were to become as insulated as her territory, if she were now only to be regarded as a separate power, totally independent on her continental neighbours, and an unconcerned spectator of all that hereafter might agitate them, (and this line of conduct the first consul seemed magisterially to point out for her, nor were there wanting at home some so besotted as to concede to this dictate,) then, indeed, and then only, might the terms of the peace be considered as safe and honourable but if, on the contrary, agreeably to the wisdom and experience of ages, she was yet to consider herself as forming a component part of the great community of Europe; if her fate was to be determined by the preservation or the extinction of the balance of power; if she must stand or fall with the continental powers; then, indeed, might she look forward with alarm and apprehension to the consequences of a peace, by which acquisitions so enormous, aggrandisement so gigantic, and power so uncontrolled, were secured to an insatiable, bitter, and unrelenting enemy.

The first point which strikes us in our proposed investigation of the treaty of Amiens, is the wide, nay almost entire deviation of it from the preliminary articles. It has VOL. XLIV.

been laid down by the greatest authorities that preliminaries should strictly define the terms of the treaty itself. The usage in every preceding treaty warranted this maxim, and the abandonment of it on the present occasion gave the most manifest advantages to our enemy, who was thus enabled to dispose of his hitherto blocked up fleets and armaments exactly as he could have wished, had they been superior in point of force, by the expedition of St. Domingo; and further, by seizing that interval, which he never could; under the circumstances which preceded the preliminaries, have attempted, to encroach on his unprotected neighbours, and to add the most important acquisitions to his empire both in Europe and America.

Nor did we require any concessions either to ourselves or our allies for those advantages so acquired, and which, in justice and in the spirit of self-preservation, we should have done; on the contrary, we fell instead of rising in our terms, and threw ourselves completely on the forbearance and generosity of the first consul, in the hope of his not taking future advantage of such manifest impolicy and weakness.

The provision in the definitive. treaty for the sale of the property of our enemies in the islands ceded to us, while none was made for British subjects under similar circumstances, was assuredly, on the face of it, inequitable, nor could it produce any other consequence save that of transferring to our enemies an acquired and growing capital to an immense amount, which had arisen from the spirit of enterprise, commercial resources, boundless activity, and, above all, confidence

in the protection and good faith of government, of the numerous English adventurers and settlers in the conquered colonies from France and her allies.

A similar spirit of injustice pervaded the article which related to prisoners of war; for, in the exchange, the Russian prisoners made in Holland by the French army were set off against the French prisoners taken by England!

The unprecedented and most extraordinary omission in the treaty of Amiens of all former treaties, which collectively formed the basis and the security of the political relations, the system of all commercial and territorial security, and the best protection of all constituted authority, throughout Europe, was most fatal in its principles, and threatened in its baneful operation the most destructive consequences to the civilized world. It was in effect surrendering to France the right which she has constantly assumed, since her revolutionary projects commenced, of destroying, wherever her power or her influence extended, all vestiges of received and acknowledged public law, and causing all nations to submit to those she has imposed in their stead, and which are founded upon those treaties, which she had since that period obtained, by force or fraud, from most of the powers of Europe. Independently of the surrender of the general principle, which at once reduces all former treaties, prior to that of Amiens, to useless lamber, this abrogation affected (inasmuch as it placed in a disputable point) many rights and privileges of Great Britain, of an honorary, commercial, and ter

ritorial nature; rights which Greg Britain had secured at the expense of her best blood and treasure, and which, at the conclusion of every former war, were guarded by all the jealous precision with which our greatest statesmen had conducted the negotiations for peace. To enumerate all that were thus abandoned by this fatal omission would far exceed our limits; but we shall instance, as sufficient for our purpose, the prescriptive rights of the British flag, the proud and glorious exercise of which formed the best security for our national importance; our right of restraining French commerce in India, the principle of which was established by the convention of 1787; the right of carrying on that most profitable branch of commerce, the gum trade, on the coast of Africa, which solely depended upon our former treaties with France; and the privilege of cutting logwood in the bay of Honduras.

In direct contradistinction to all established usage, the definitive treaty made no mention whatever of any commercial arrangement between England and any of the other contracting parties. In her recent treaties, concluded with Russia, with Portugal, and the Porte, France took care explicitly to put the rights of navigation and commerce on the most advantageous footing for herself; whilst that of Amiens passed over such subjects as of no importance: by which omission we virtually surrendered our trade with Spain, with Holland, with Portu gal, Tuscany, Genoa, in short, with every power under the control and influence of France; and which might have been preserved by an adherence to those principles of

negotiation