PRICE OF BULLION per Ounce, in the London Market, during the Six
Months ending 30th June, 1813, being the average price of euch
Month.-N.B. Where there is no price mentioned, there has been none
of that sort of Bullion in the Market.

Sorts of Bullion. Jan

Number of BANK-
RUPTCIES as an-
nounced in the London
Gazette; from 17th
November,1812,to 18th
May, 1813.

Feb. March. April. May. June. £.s. d. £.s. d. £.s. d. £.s. d. £.s. d. £.s. d. 05 2 05 3 05 30 05 0 0 5 2 6 0 5 5 6 5 6 05 66 80 68

6-710 6
9 0 6 10 0 6 100 6 9

N. B. The MINT PRICE, per Ounce, of the Standard Gold and Silver Bullion is as follows: Standard Gold in Bars, £.3 17s. 10d. Standard Silver in Bars; 5s. 2d. The other sorts of Bullion, except the Portugal Gold Coin, are below Standard Value. The Prices in the above table is the Market Price in Bank of England Notes.

1018

Average Price during the Six Months 161⁄2

Number of CHRISTENINGS and BURIALS within the Bills of Mortality, from 22d Dec. 1812, to 22d June 1813.

591

To Jan. 26..
Feb. 23

581

March

...

593

4,9624,555 4,109

Total Christenings 1 0,2 8 0.
Children under two years of age

Total Burials .. 11,125

Average Prices of CORN, through all England and Wales, and of HAY, STRAW, and best FARNHAM HOPS, in Londou, from January to June, 1813, both Months inclusive.

5,318

8,664 2,461

COBBETT'S WEEKLY POLITICAL REGISTER

45

VOL. XXIII. No. 1 LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 2, 1813. [Price 1s.

During the two years that I was imprisoned in Newgate, for writing and publishing an article upon the flogging of certain English Militia-men, at Ely, in England, under the superintendence of German troops, and for which writing and publishing I, besides, paid your Royal Highness a fine of a thousand pounds, in behalf of your Royal Sire; during that time I endeavoured, in various ways, to expiate my offence, but in no way more strenuously than in trying to dissuade you from yielding to advice, which, as I thought, would, if followed, produce a war with the Americari States. That consequence, which I so much dreaded, and which I laboured with so much earnestness to prevent, has unhappily taken place; and, though it may be of no service; though my efforts may still be unavailing; nay, though I may receive abuse instead of thanks for my pains, I cannot refrain; the love I bear my own country, and the regard I shall ever bear a great part of the people of America, will not suffer me to refrain from making one more trial to convince your Royal Highness, that the path of peace is still fairly open with that country, and that pacific measures are the only measures which ought even now to be pursued.

In one of my Letters to your Royal Highness, I endeavoured to convince you, that it was to the base, the prostituted press, of England, that we were likely to owe this war; I pointed out to your Royal Highness the means resorted to by that press in order to deceive the people of England; and, I expressed my apprehensions, that those means would succeed. That press, that vile and infamous press, which is the great enemy of the liberties of Europe and America as well as of England, was incessant in its efforts to cause it to be believed, that, in no case, would the American Government dare to go to war. It

[2

asserted, that America would be totally. ruined by six months of war; that the people would not pay the taxes necessary to carry it on; that the President, for only barely talking of war, would be put out of his chair; that the "American Navy," as it was called by way of ridicule, would be "swept from the ocean in a month;" and, that, in short, a war with America was a thing for Englishmen to laugh at; à subject of jest and mockery.

This was the style and tone of the hireling press in London, and, with very few exceptions, the country prints followed the stupid and insolent example. Events have already shown how false all these assertions were; and now, as is its usual practice, this same corrupt press is pouring forth new falsehoods, with a view of urging on the war, and of reconciling the people to its calamitics.

It was my endeavour to show your Royal Highness the real state of the case. I said, that the people of America, though wisely averse from war, as the great source of taxation and loss of liberty, would, nevertheless, submit to its inconveniences rather than submit to the terms which it was recommended, in our hireling prints, to impose upon them. I begged your Royal Highness to disbelieve those, who said that the American Government dared not go to war, and that Mr. Madison would not be re-elected. I besought you to reflect upon the consequences of rushing into a war with that country, amongst which consequences I included the forming of a great Naval force on the other side of the Atlantic, and the not less fearful measure of manning a French Fleet with American Sailors. Our hired press affects to turn into jest a proposition said to have been made by the Presi dent for the building of twenty frigates. If he has made that proposition, however, and, if the war continue only a year, your Royal Highness will find that the twenty frigates are launched upon the ocean, The ignorant and saucy writers in London, who live up to their lips in luxury, and whose gains are not at all dependant upon the prosperity of the country; these men care

A

**not how the people suffer. Their object is none of whom are clad in rags; none of
to prolong the war, which suits the views whom are without meat upon their table
of all those with whom they are connected.daily; not one soul of whom would conde-
They assert whatever presents itself as like-scend to pull off his hat to any human
ly to promote this object, and, therefore, being. And this is the nation, a nation,
they take no pains to ascertain whether the too, descended from ourselves, that the
building of twenty frigates is, or is not, a hirelings of the London press represent as
matter of easy execution in America. If destitute of resources!
they did, they would find, that the Ameri-
cans have the Timber, the Iron, the Pitch,
the Hemp, all of the produce of their own
country; all in abundance; all, of course,
cheap; and, as to dock-yards, and other
places to build ships, inquiry would teach
these ignorant and insolent men, that, in
many cases, the Timber grows upon the
very spot where the ship is to be built, and
that to cut it down and convert it into a
ship is to do a great benefit to the owner of
the land.

Perhaps, Sir, the resources of America
are estimated according to the salaries which
their public functionaries, receive; and,
measured by this standard, our new enemy
must, indeed, appear wholly unable to
contend against us for a single day; for the
President, the Vice President, the Secreta-
ries of State, the Treasury, War, Navy,
and all their clerks; that is to say, the
whole of the Officers of the Executive Go-
[vernment, do not receive more than about
half the amount of Lord Arden's sinecure,
as stated in the report to the House of Com-
mons in 1808. Nay, the Apothecary to our
Army does, according to the same report,

as twice the amount of the Salary of the
President of the United States. Our Chief
Justice, in salary and emoluments, as stated
in the Reports laid before Parliament, re-
ceives annually a great deal more than Mr.
Madison, Mr. Monroe, Mr. Gallatin, and
the Secretaries of War and the Navy in
America, all put together. I shall, per-

And, then, as to the pecuniary means: to hear the language of our hirelings, one would imagine, that the people of America were all beggars; that the country contain-receive, in clear profits, annually, as much ed scarcely a man of property; that there were no such things as money, house goods, cattle, or manufactures. They must, indeed, confess that the country grows corn; but, somehow or other, they would have us believe, that there are, in America, no means; no resources. They cannot disguise from us the fact, that there are fine cities and towns; that there is a commer-haps, be told, that our public functionaries cial marine not far behind our own in point ought to receive more than those in Ameof magnitude; that the exports from the rica. That is a point which I shall leave country amount annually to more than half for others to dispute. I content myself as much as our exports, and that they con- with stating the facts; but, if I am told, sist of articles of first necessity; that the that we ought not to measure the salaries country contains all the articles of useful of our functionaries by the American standmanufactory, and that manufactures are ard, I must beg leave, in my turn, to promaking great progress; nay, that they have test against measuring the expenses of war arrived at great perfection; that the coun-in America by the standard of war expenses try is stocked with sheep, that great source in England. I must insist, too, that the of a nation's wealth, and that to so high a resources of a country are not to be measurdegree have these animals succeeded, thated by the standard of the salaries of its pubmany single proprietors have already flocks of more than a thousand head. These facts the hired press cannot disguise from us; or, at least, from those amongst us, who are not wilfully blind. Upon what ground, then, Sir, would they have us believe, that America is destitute of resources? The things which I have here spoken of, are things of which national riches consist: they form the means of making national exertions; of sending forth fleets and armies. And, we ought to bear in mind, that America, that this new enemy of ours, has a population of more than eight millions of souls; none of whom are paupers;

lic functionaries. I should take quite a
different standard for the measuring of the
resources of America. We know, that,
upon a population of len millions, in Great
Britain, a revenue of about eighty millions
of pounds is now annually raised; and
that, in these ten millions of people we in-
clude, at least, two millions of paupers.
Now, then, if they raise but a tenth part as
much upon the eight millions of Americans,
who have no paupers amongst them, their
eight millions will be four times as much
as was ever yet raised in the country in any
one year; and, it is, I think, not too much
to suppose, that an American will bear a