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American councils. This hope, however, becomes every day somewhat weaker; the whole of their proceedings bear a warlike aspect; and neither in the government nor in the legislature does there appear any disposition to listen to proposals, which do not involve the abandonment of our essential rights. In this state of things, we can only look to Him who has the hearts of all men, as well as the course of events, in his hands, that he would so "order their unruly wills and affections," that the peace of the two countries may not be broken, nor the blood of their sons sacrificed in a contest, which must injure both, and can benefit neither.

A statement of the exports of the United States, for the year 1811, has been laid be fore Congress. This is an important document, especially at the present moment, and we will proceed to analyse it. The exports of domestic growth or manufacture are estimated at 45,294,043 dollars; and those of foreign growth at 16,022,790; the total being 61,316,833 dollars, or about 15 millions sterling. The amount of their manu factures exported, including, as we presume, pot-ashes, perhaps tar, pitch, maple-sugar, &c. is 2,376,000 dollars. The rest consists of fish, lumber, and the produce of agriculture, as flour, tobacco, cotton, rice, &c. The proportion of these exports, sent to different parts of the world, is as follows-first,

Now, it is to be observed, that the trade of America to the Baltic, to the Peninsula, and to all other countries, except France and Italy, is perfectly unshackled. The whole, therefore, of the large exports to those countries have probably reached their destination. With respect to the three mil lions of dollars, and this was the whole exported to France and Italy, it is impossible to say how much has been turned from its original destination, and brought into England, From the rate of insurance between America and France, which is about 40 per cent., we should suppose that the amount might be about a million of dollars, or 250,000l. sterling. This, therefore, is the loss of which America has to complain, during the last year, in consequence of our Orders in Council; and it is a loss voluntarily incurred. Had we chosen, however, to assert our undoubted right of excluding all commerce from the Baltic as well as from France, upwards of eight millions of American commerce would have been at once annihilated, for it would have been almost impossible to have traded at all with the Baltic in the face of our prohibitory decree; and the pressure would have been still more severe bad we extended the prohibition ta such parts of Spain as are under the controul of France, which we also might fairly have done. America, therefore, ought rather to be thankful for our forbearance, than to declaim against our rigour. The injury she has sustained was not intended by us. It has been incidental, and, what is more, self-in1,194,275 duced. She has been fairly warned to avoid France. She has contemned the warning; and she has consequently incurred loss. But to say that we have caused the loss; that we are pillagers, because we enforce decrees clearly and solemnly published, and standing on the most satisfactory grounds of belligerent right, is childish, and can impose only on those who wish to be deluded. As for the allega tion that Bonaparte has repealed his Berlin and Milan decrees, we ask for the document 24,039,038 to shew that he has done so. None has yet appeared.

Of Domestic Growth or Manufacture. Russia, Prussia, Sweden, and

Denmark

Spain and Portugal

France and Italy

...

5,055,885 18,266,466

20,308,211
2,469,255

Of Foreign Growth or Manufacture.

Great Britain...

All other countries

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5,340,117
5,772,572

1,712,537
1,573,314
1,624,220

8,395,952

2,906,812

Great Britain.

21,881,525

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eise of the royal authority will shortly expire, when I must make my arrangements for the future administration of the powers with which I am invested, I think it right to communicate those sentiments which I was withheld from expressing at an earlier period of the session, by my warmest desire, that the expect ed motion on the affairs of Ireland might undergo the deliberate discussion of Parliament, unmixed with any other consideration.

"I think it hardly necessary to call your recollection to the recent circumstances under which I assumed the authority delegated to me by Parliament. At a moment of unexampled difficulty and danger, I was called upon to make a selection of persons to whom I should entrust the functions of the executive government. My sense of duty to our Royal Father solely decided that choice; and every private feeling gave way to considerations which admitted of no doubt or hesitation. I trust I acted in that respect as the genuine representative of the august person whose functions I was appointed to discharge; and I have the satisfaction of knowing, that such was the opinion of persons, for whose judgment and honourable feelings I entertain the highest respect in various instances, as you well know. When the law of the last session left me at full liberty, I waved any personal gratification, in order that his Majesty might resume, on his restoration to health, every power and prerogative belonging to his crown. I certainly am the last person in the kingdom to whom it can be permitted to despair of our Royal Father's recovery. A new era is now arrived; and I cannot but reflect with satisfaction, on the events which have distinguished the short period of my restricted Regency. Instead of suffering in the loss of her possessions, by the gigantic force which has been employed against them, Great Britain has added most important acquisitions to her empire. The na

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tional faith has been preserved inviolable towards our allies; and if character is strength, as applied to a nation, the increased, and increasing reputation of his Majesty's arms, will shew to the nations of the Continent how much they may achieve when animated by a glorious spirit of resistance to a foreign yoke. In the critical situation of the war in the peninsula, I shall be most anxious to avoid any measure which can lead my allies to suppose that I mean to depart from the present system. Perseverance alone can achieve the great object in question; and I cannot withhold my approbation from those who have honourably distinguished themselves in support of it. I have no predilections to indulge,-no resentments to gratify,-no objects to attain but such as are common to the whole empire. If such is the leading principle of my conduct, and I can appeal to the past as evidence of what the future will be,-I flatter myself I shall meet with the support of Parliament, and of a candid and enlightened nation. Having made the communication of my sentiments in this new and extraordinary crisis of our affairs, I cannot conclude without expressing the gratification I should feel, if some of those persons with whom the early habits of my public life were formed, would strengthen my hands, and, constitute a part of my government. With such support, and aided by a vigorous and united administration, formed on the most liberal basis, I shall look with additional confidence to a prosperous issue of the most arduous contest in which Britain was ever engaged. You are authorised to communicate these sentiments to Lord Grey, who, I have no doubt, will make them known to Lord Grenville.

"I am always, my dearest Frederick, your ever affectionate brother, (Signed) GEORGE, P. R.

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"Carlton House, Feb. 13.

"P. S. I shall send a copy of this letter immediately to Mr. Perceval."

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"We beg leave most humbly to express to your Royal Highness our dutiful acknowledgments for the gracious and condescending manner in which you have had the goodness to communicate to us the letter of his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, or the subject of the arrangements to be now made for the future administration of the public affairs; and we take the liberty of availing ourselves of your gracious permission, to address to your Royal Highness in this form what has occurred to us in consequence of that communication. The Prince Regent, after expressing to your Royal Highness in that letter his sentiments on various public matters, has, in the concluding paragraph, condescended to intimate his wish that some of those persons with whom the early habits of his public life were formed, would strengthen his Royal Highness's hands, and constitute a part of his government; and his Royal Highness is pleased to add, that with such support, aided by a vigorous and united administration, formed on the most liberal basis, he would look with additional confidence to a prosperous issue of the most arduous contest in which Great Britain has ever been engaged. On the other parts of his Royal Highness's letter we do not presume to offer any observations; but in the concluding paragraph, in so far as we may venture to suppose ourselves included in the gracious wish which it expresses, we owe it, in obedience and duty to his Royal Highness, to explain ourselves with frankness and sincerity. We beg leave most earnestly to assure his Royal Highness, that no sacrifices, except those of honour and duty, could appear to us too great to be made, for the purpose of healing the divisions of our country, and uniting both its government and its people. All personal exclusion we entirely disclaim; we rest on public measures; and it is on this ground alone that we must

express, without reserve, the impossibility of our uniting with the present government. Our differences of opinion are too many and too important to admit of such an union. His Royal Highness will, we are confident, do us the justice to remember, that we have twice already acted on this impression; in 1809, on the proposition then made to us under his Majesty's authority; and last year, when his Royal Highness was pleased to require our advice respecting the formation of a new government. The reasons which we then humbly submitted to him are strengthened by the increasing dangers of the times; nor has there, down to this moment, appeared even any approximation towards such an agreement of opinion on the public interests as can alone form a basis for the honourable union of parties previously opposed to each other. Into the detail of those differences we are unwilling to enter; they embrace almost all the leading features of the present policy of the empire; but his Royal Highness has himself been pleased to advert to the late deliberations of Parliament on the affairs of Ireland. This is a subject, above all others, important in itself, and connected with the most pressing dangers. Far from concurring in the sentiments which his Majesty's ministers have on that occasion so recently expressed, we entertain opinions directly opposite: we are firmly persuaded of the necessity of a total change in the present system of that country, and of the immediate repeal of those civil disabilities under which so large a portion of his Majesty's subjects still labour on account of their religious opinions. To recommend to Parlia ment this repeal is the first advice which it would be our duty to offer to his Royal Highness, could we, even for the shortest time, make ourselves responsible for any farther delay in the prospect of a measure, without which we could entertain no hope of rendering ourselves useful to his Royal Highness, or to the

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To his R. H. the Duke of York.

We shall take the liberty of exercising our privilege, as Englishmen, of offering a few observations, both on the letter of the two noblemen, and on the proposition for a partial change of ministry, which his Royal Highness the Prince Regent has thought proper to convey to their Lordships, on the era of his assumption of the unrestricted prerogatives of the Crown.

That his Royal Highness has been prompted to take this step by a patriotic zeal for the common interests of the empire, and by a desire to extinguish that party spirit which has so long divided and weakened us, will, as we doubt not, be the persuasion of the people of England in general, and is certainly our sentiment. It is exactly that course to which any amiable prince, on ascending the throne, would naturally incline, and from which he could only be diverted by a knowledge either of some invincible animosity in the great competitors for power, or of some differences of judgment on the measures to be pursued, too serious and important to be compromised.

Individual hostility is happily, as we believe, disavowed by men of all parties among us. Who, indeed, that knows any thing of Mr. Perceval, could refuse, on personal grounds, to sit with him in the same cabinet? That the other obstacle to union, nevertheless, exists, might surely have been surmised by his

Royal Highness, and is now made abundantly manifest by the very decisive language of the letter of the Lords Grey and Grenville. Whether the Prince Regent himself exactly anticipated the answer which they have given, we do not presume to say. We confess, however, that we ourselves are not surprised at it. The Catholic subject presented an obstacle to union, which was very obvious. There is a passage in the Prince Regent's letter which seems a little to imply, that the Parliament had already disposed of this subject; whereas even the temporary settlement of that question is not likely to be admitted by the chiefs of opposition, some of whom carefully distinguished the vote recently given, from the vote soon again to be called for. The Catholics are about to petition; and it is, therefore, held by our oppotionists that the question is suspended. The late vote, they insist, turned principally on the propriety of the measures lately taken by the Government to put down the convention, and did not at all decide the main question. Some, who then voted with Government (in particular, Lord Wellesley in the House of Lords, and Mr. Canning in the House of Commons), professed an intention of soon favouring the Catholic claims. Could it then be supposed, that, while this important point of national policy was waiting for a more complete and a separate discussion, the leaders in the intended contest should meet together as friends in the same cabinet. The moment seems, in this respect, to have been remarkably unpropitious to an union of parties. We do not enter into the other grounds of dif ference between Mr. Perceval and the Lords Grey and Grenville, because the two Lords have themselves abstained from doing it. We cannot, however, help observing, that his Royal Highness the Prince Regent must, in consequence of his former political familiarity with their Lordships, have been fully sen

sible of the nature and extent of those differences; so that his Royal Highness seems to have expected a greater deviation in them from the doctrines which they had held, as well, indeed, as publicly proclaimed, than is common with men who lead the parties of this country. On the whole, we are disposed to refer to an amiable facility in his Royal Highness, in accommodating himself to the politics of Mr. Perceval, that expectation which his letter implies of his finding the same facility in the stubborn breasts of the two noblemen whom he indirectly addresses; and if there be any fault in the letter, it consists in the seeming simplicity with which it assumes that the coalition it recommends can be effected. It is an offer which, under all the circumstances, it is but too plain was unlikely to be accepted; and it has had, as we fear, the unfortunate effect of widening the distance between the contending bodies; for the Lords Grey and Grenville having now been led to make a formal declaration of the existing differences, have natarally employed some strength of expression in describing them. The two parties have once more unfurled their respective banners, and are now summoning their wavering and scattered followers. The war in Parliament will be renewed with vigour; and the country, far from reaping the benefit of that union of parties, so patriotically desired by bis Royal Highness, will only be torn by new political hostility.

We shall offer one further observation, which, indeed, we also suggested to our readers about twelve months ago, when the former letter of his Royal Highness attracted our attention. His Royal Highness then professed, as he has also on the present occasion, to be governed in the choice of his political servants principally, if not exclusively, by a regard to the supposed wishes of his Royal father. We then foresaw the danger which is now still more manifest of some appearance of incon

sistency arising, in the event of his continuing long to exercise the royal functions. When is it, we would ask, that his Royal Highness is to use his own judgment? It is not, it seems, when he exercises a restricted regency. Is he, then, to act for himself when the regency is unrestricted? Even then, he may plead no less his filial reverence. It is only, therefore, when he shall be crowned King of England. Many years may elapse during which he shall have exercised the whole of the Royal Prerogative; and by this time connections may have been formed, and a direction given to public affairs, under his own auspices, which it may be impossible to change.

The Marquis Wellesley has resigned the seals of the foreign office, and it is believed that some other changes of a partial nature are to take place; but the successor of his Lordship has not as yet been announced.

PARLIAMENTARY PROCEEDINGS.

1. The Catholic question has undergone a discussion in both Houses of Parliament,

which was produced by a motion for a committee to consider the state of Ireland. The motion was negatived by large majorities; but expressly, in the case of many persons composing that majority, not because they were disinclined to an extension of the pri vileges of the Catholics, but because an assent to the present motion would imply, that Government had been to blame in the mea

sures which it had taken to defeat the attempt to form a Catholic convention in Dub

lin. The Catholic question is likely to undergo fresh discussions.

2. A bill has been brought in for ascer taining the population of Ireland.

3. The House of Commons has called for a return of all places of worship, throughout the kingdom, with the number of persons they are capable of containing; and also of the number of dissenting places of worship, in parishes whose population ex

ceeds one thousand.

4. The bill to prevent granting places in reversion was renewed by Mr. Bankes, but

was thrown out in the House of Commons

by a majority of one. This decision has

caused considerable dissatisfaction.

5. On the subject of America, we must

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