dignity of his country, and the true interests of Europe, by the moderation of his demands upon vanquished France, insured to him then a tribute of applause, which at the close of his present mission will be due only to a stern and unbending exaction from that twice conquered nation, of solid and substantial security for their future good conduct under whatever government they may be, in return for the glorious expenditure of our blood and treasure. We need not recall to our readers, that upon the publication of the treaty of Paris, soon after his Lordship's return, the additional article on the slave trade was far from giving general satisfaction; the gross inconsistency of the sentiments of the French government with its intentions, which was evident on the face of the article, might reasonably disgust a sincere and honest people. Many persons of sound judgment and integrity thought, that by making ourselves a party to an agreement, that France should persevere in an acknowledged felony for five years, we were in no slight degree implicated in the crime; at least that we had widely departed from the high principle which belonged to a great people upon important points of political morality; and a still greater number were of opinion, that much more decisive success might have been commanded, as the condition of the gratuitous restoration of the conquered colonies to France." We have not time to enter into the full discussion of these questions, which is the less necessary, as there was scarcely a town, or even a respectable village in the kingdom, where they were not fully and publicly treated; and petitions for more operative and vigorous measures unanimously voted. It is a gratifying symptom of the moral force of our constitution, that the general and deliberate sentiments of the people, expressed unequivocally, and through the proper organs, will always command the compliance of the government. Accordingly we find, in the subsequent parts of the negotiations, a zeal and an earnestness truly admirable to carry the concessions beyond those made in the treaty of Paris. No inducement was withheld that delicate flattery could offer; no sacrifice declined which was thought likely to propitiate the colonial ambition of France; no threat abstained from of a nature to wring a reluctant consent to immediate abolition from the nations possessing colonies; no precautions omitted to consolidate the concessions made, and to accelerate the ultimate attainment of the object; and, (as the French Pamphlet before us testifies,) no pains were spared in opening the eyes of the parties to the atrocious wickedness of the traffic. But the pledge was gone from our hands, and power departed with it: of each how ever in their order. The Duke of Wellington was scarcely installed in the palace of the British Embassy at Paris, when he received a dispatch from Lord Castlereagh signifying the Prince Regent's commands, that his grace should take the earliest opportunity to call the attention of the French government to the important question of the slave trade; that he should press the immediate abolition by every argument in his power; and failing in this, that he should prevail upon the French government to confine the import of slaves to making good the deficiencies in the gangs for the existing plantations; to the exclusion of import for breaking up and cultivating fresh grounds. The Duke was further commanded to use his efforts to prevent the renewal of the trade on the coast of Africa north of the Line, which, during the war, had been freed from its debasing effects, and had in consequence, and under the auspices of the African Institution, "made a certain progress towards a social and civilizing system of commerce." measures were to be secured by solemn decrees of the French government, by strict regulations on the coast of Africa, and by the mutual right of visiting and seizing the ships of the two nations which might be found contravening the orders of their governments. It is added in this dispatch, "that your Grace may enter upon the discussion of this subject with the weight and solemnity with which the Prince Regent, the Parliament, and the British nation regard it, you will solicit a particular audience from His Most Christian Majesty, for the purpose of presenting the accompanying letter. You will support the earnest representations therein contained, with such arguments and facts as your Grace's knowledge of the public feeling, and of the state of the trade, may warrant you in laying before His Majesty; and you will feel yourself enabled to press the measure with the more earnestness from the sacrifices made in negotiating the peace, by the British Government, to what the King of France considered to be due to His own situation, under the extent of prejudice amongst His subjects against an immediate abolition." It is not often that even the formal correspondence of sovereigns is submitted to the public eye: for this reason, and because the letter is not only highly creditable to the feelings of the Royal Writer, but also a noble triumph of the influence of public opinion in affairs of state, we shall lay it at length before our readers. "Carlton House, August 5, 1814. "Sir, My Brother, and Cousin, "Your Majesty's long residence in this country has enabled You to appreciate the sentiments of the British nation on the subject of the Slave Trade. The King's Ambassador at Your Majesty's Court will lay before Your Majesty the successive and solemn appeals made to Me by both Houses of Parliament, and the assurances I have given them of unremitting endeavours to deliver Africa from the long train of sufferings inseparable from this inhuman traffic. However long rooted in the system of the world, Your Majesty's benevolent heart, I well know, recoils from the continuance of a trade, which checks all prospect of civilization and improvement in one great continent on the globe, and I entreat Your Majesty to employ your powerful endeavours to accelerate the moment of its universal extinction. The voice and example of Your Majesty will in itself be productive of the most decisive and happy consequences in behalf of these suffering people. "Anxious in all matters to concert My measures with Your Majesty for the common peace and happiness of mankind, I own it would afford Me the highest of all possible gratifications were We enabled together to efface this painful and disgusting stain, not only from the practice of our Own, but of all the other states with whom We are in friendly relations. "Entreating Your Majesty's favourable reception of the representations which the Duke of Wellington is instructed to lay before You on this, to Me, and to the nation, most interesting subject, "I am, &c. "my good Brother and Cousin, (Signed) His Most Christian Majesty." "G. P. R.". (P. 10.) Pending the answer to these dispatches, another marked "Se cret and Confidential" was sent to the Duke of Wellington, de siring him to "sound the sentiments" of the Prince of Benevento upon a measure which we shall presently find making a considerable figure at the conferences at Vienna; viz. that the Powers acting in concert for effectuating the abolition of the Slave Trade, should prohibit the importation, into their respective dominions, of colonial produce grown within the territories of powers refusing to enter into the proposed concert. It is well observed that this expedient seems perfectly fair and just to all parties, inasmuch as it would deprive the recusant states of the unjust advantage of profiting by the sacrifices and forbearance of others, who, from a sense of moral duty, forsake this species of commerce; and whilst it would thus take from them an unjust motive for augmenting their cultivation in counteraction of the general system, it would leave them perfectly in possession of their own market. It is impossible not to admit that negotiations thus conducted showed the British Government to be thoroughly in earnest in! what they had undertaken. Let us now turn to the impression which they appear to have made on the Government of France. Three weeks after the date of the Prince Regent's letter the Duke of Wellington was admitted to an audience by the King of France, to whom the letter was delivered. His Majesty, having perused its contents, said that he would undoubtedly perform his engagements as stipulated in the additional article of the Treaty of Paris, but that he must attend to the wishes and opinions of his own people; that opinions in France were by no means what they were in England on this subject; that many years had elapsed, and much discussion had taken place, and great pains had been taken by many individuals and by societies, before England became unanimous on the subject; and that it could not be expected that opinions in France should immediately agree upon it. His Majesty, however, promised to restrict the trade as much as possible, and particularly to prevent its revival upon that part of the coast of Africa where it had ceased during the war, an engagement which, as the sequel of the correspondence shows, His Majesty's ministers were extremely backward in making good, and in fact never did completely fulfil. Our ambassador, on the 26th August, 1814, presented a note containing a set of rules and regulations, which if adopted by the French Government would have been quite effectual for the purpose, and up to the 3d of December, when the negotiations upon this subject seem to have been transferred to Vienna, all that could be obtained from the French Government, after much pressing and repeated delays, was a set of inefficient regulations restraining the French slave traders from trafficking to any part of the coast of Africa between Cape Blanc and Cape Palma, whereas to fulfil the King's engagement it would have been ne cessary to prohibit all traffic north of Cape Formosa, which includes an additional extent of coast of near fifteen degrees of longitude in Upper Guinea, where much has been done towards ameliorating the condition of the natives. It cannot be asserted that the greatest efforts were not made to soften the French Go vernment upon these points. Our ambassador offered the cession either of a sum of money or of an island in the West Indies, to obtain from the French an immediate abolition of the Slave Trade, which were formally refused. In short, neither the King of France nor M. de Talleyrand thought that either the interests or the opinions of the French people would suffer them to make any further concession nor even to fulfil those engage ments for which His Majesty had personally passed his royal word in his conference with the Duke of Wellington. Now it is certainly curious to reflect that when Buonaparte landed in France in May, 1815, and was anxiously seeking to adopt such measures as would most recommend him to the goodwill of the people of France, or, in other words, as were most consonant with the public opinion in that country, one of his first decrees had for its object the total and immediate abolition of the slave trade, the very measure which the King and his Go vernment had been steadily resisting upon the plea of deference to that same public opinion. We happen also to know that Buonaparte in his retirement at Elba expressed himself to one of his distinguished visitors who endeavoured to sound him on the subject of the slave trade, in the following remarkable and characteristic words: "Je suis convaincu que ce brigandage la ne vaut rien pour la France." He certainly showed no squeamishness in the same conversation respecting any species of brigandage that was useful to France; but his clearness of view and decision of character at once showed him the truth-that a perseverance in the slave trade was a gratuitous nay self-destructive commission of wrong and robbery, and as such not to be tolerated in that great mart of profitable wrong and robbery, modern France. In opposition to these opinions we have stated what were the acts and sentiments of our "good Brother and Cousin," Louis XVIII, and his virtuous minister M. de Talleyrand, Prince of Benevento. His Majesty's words, however, were very different. They flowed very soft and mellifluous on this as on all other occasions; and when we reperused the following answer to the Prince Regent's letter after reading on to the results of the conferences at Paris, we could not help calling to mind a passage from a strong delineator of the modern French character; with a doubt however how far he is correct in wishing to confine the observation to those who had been corrupted by the demoralizing process of the revolution. "The French (he says) have in a great measure detached words from ideas and feelings; they can in consequence afford to be unusually profuse of the better sort of the first; and they experience as much internal satisfaction and pride when they profess a virtue as if they had practised one. In this way they are exempted from those great correctors and restrainers of human conduct, shame and remorse; for what they do is nothing in their own estimation,-what they say is every thing; and as they never speak as if they were perfidious, fickle, or rapacious, it follows that they may be, and we have seen that they have been, all these, without reducing their pretensions a jot, or standing an inch lower in their own estimation. When injustice is to be traced to false opinion, and barbarity to ignorance, we know where the remedy is to be found, on what ground hope must rest: but the world does not afford a more frightful spectacle than that of a people who repose their selfconfidence on high talking of virtue and honour and accom plishment, while their hearts give no response to their language; and their practice without alarming their consciences is immediately opposed to it." (Scott's Tour to Paris.) With this preface (which by the way may lead us to conclude |