thing more to satisfy us, that, from a coasting trade such as I have described, the advantage to Napoleon is so great as to excite well-grounded alarm in the mind of every reflecting Englishman. It is from this copious source, that the Emperor of France has drawn those hundreds of thousands of seamen, with whom he has manned his fleets and squadrons for many years past, and which fleets and squadrons, though always hitherto defeated, and, in many instances, captured and destroyed, by the superior skill and valour of your Majesty's fleets, answer the terrible purpose of causing us to keep up a force by land as well as sea so immense, so disproportionate to our population and our pecuniary means, that the country is stripped of its youth and its vigour, the fields are left to be tilled by the decrepid, and the taxes are so general and so heavy, and the anticipations upon them so large, that hope, which alleviates all other burthens, here refuses her sustaining hand. Year after year, we not only see the taxes and the tax-gatherers increase; we not only feel their immediate pressure, but, we see mortgaged, deeper and deeper, the very seeds of property; we see taken from us, for the purposes of current expence, that which was held out to us as the sure pledge of permanent relief. Could we once be sure, that it was out of the power of Napoleon to send a fleet to sea, how different would be our situation! But, this assurance we can never have, sc long as he has the command of the seamen, necessarily employed in such a commerce. How often, within the last fifteen years, have we "annihilated" the navy of France; how often have we swept the ocean:" but, still France, in the midst of all this annihilation, finds the means of sending out fresh squadrons and fleets; and proves, beyond a doubt, that she possesses, in spite of all we have hitherto done, the means of forming a navy in a very short space of time. " The parliament has recently been told, in your Majesty's name, that the aid you are giving to the enemies of France, upon the continent of Europe, is given with a view of keeping Napoleon from our own shores. The expressions are somewhat different, but, this is the substance, this is the real meaning of the words. Does it not, then, become me, if I have it in my power, to prove to you, that this is not the way to keep the conqueror from the shores of England? That this is a waste of our means? That it has no other effect than that of augmenting at once our debts and our taxes, and of hastening the day, when the cries of the widow and the orphan shall proclaim, whether or not " a national "debt be a national blessing?" In what way, I should like to ask of your Majesty's servants, their subsidies to the enemies of France upon the continent are to keep Napoleon from our shores? Is it by giving him employment upon the continent? That, of course, must keep him from our shores for a while; but, the possi bility, at least, is, that, by all the means we can contrive, by all the wars we can excite, and by all the treasure we can squander, he cannot, for any long time, be thus employed; and, consequently, when he can no longer be so employed, we, upon the very principle on which this aid is given to his enemies, must be in imminent danger. Therefore, by our present line of politics, by our present system of defence, by our present explicit avowal, if Napoleon succeed in subduing all his enemies upon the continent, we have very little hope of being able to resist him. This, Sir, though neither very consoling nor very honourable to the country, is the conclusion to be drawn from the declarations as well as the acts of your Majesty's servants, who appear to have given up all hope of England being able, if left to herself, to provide even for her safety, leaving her honour totally out of the question. And this opinion is, indeed, very reasonable, upon the supposition, that the present is the only system of naval warfare that can be adopted. Upon the supposition, that we have it not in our power to prevent Napoleon from carrying on an uninterrupted exchange of products, the most valuable of all commerce, between all the countries from Naples to Marseilles, and from Bayonne to Hamburgh; that we are unable to prevent him from connecting all these countries, and consolidating them under his sway, by ties of convenience and of interest as well as by the power of his arms and of his civil and political establishments; that we are unable, with all our endless list of ships, to counteract the operations of signal posts, defended each by a couple of invalids; that, in spite of all we are able to do, France will teem with seamen, naval stores, and all the means of speedily creating a navy: Upon this supposition, it is, indeed, perfectly reasonable to conclude, that, when Napoleon has put down al! his enemies upon the conti nent, when he has removed the possibility | nothing, while the ever-fertile source of naval power exists unhurt in the dominions of France. In war, as well as in every thing else, those difficulties and dangers, of which we can foresee no end, are most powerful in subduing the mind; in producing weariness, disgust, relaxation of efforts, and fi nally, a disposition to give up the contest. And, I beseech your Majesty to consider, what prospect there is, or can be, of an end to our difficulties and dangers, while Napoleon possesses, undisturbed, the means of building and manning fleets of ships of war, though England, at the same time, maintains a navy at the expence of seventeen millions a year; what prospect there can be of peace and safety to England, while France, insensible of the calamities, and almost of the existence, of war, is able to impose upon your Majesty's subjects burthens such as were never before beard of, and which, with the duration of war, must necessarily increase. To me, therefore, it appears evident, that unless our mode of warfare be changed; unless our immense means be made use of to annoy and distress the enemy, and ticularly to cut off his naval resources, we shall fail in this contest, which is not only for honour but for independence. par When one looks at the navy of England; at the quarter of a million of people whom, in various ways it employs; at the fifteen or seventeen millions of money (a fifth part, I believe, of the rental of the whole kingdom) that it annually costs; when one looks at this wonderful power, this mass of means, this focus of the fertility of our soil and of the industry, ingenuity, valour, and patriotism of the nation; when one contemplates all this, and reads the history of the war, for several years past, one cannot help being struck with the disparity between the means and the effect. For what purpose are all this preparation and all the sacrifices which it occasions? What does this immense navy accomplish? If, for many years past, all its prizes and all the mischief it has done to the enemy were estimated, they would not amount to enough to pay the expences of finding the navy in water. The navy is our defence, it may be said; but, that cannot be said, without acknowledging, that we are deficient either in the strength or the courage or the will to defend our country by land. As the means of mere defence, either the army or the navy must be considered as superfluous, or else we acknowledge ourselves to be inferior to our enemy in point of valour, or of disposition to defend our country. To consider the navy as the means of mere defence, is, in fact, to acknowledge, at once, that Napoleon has it always in his power to put us to an expence of seventeen millions a year, with-informed than the nation at large; for, to out any other expence on his part than that of the paper and ink, composing a paragraph in one of his Moniteurs. The navy should be made the means of attack, the means of annoyance, the means of distress through the empire of our enemy. Breaking or destroying of ships at sea, of colonies, will avail us The facts which I have stated, relative to the commerce carried on in the dominicus of Napoleon, are stated upon such authority, that I have no scruple in vouching for their truth. So minute, indeed, is my information, that I could have named times and places and other particulars, in confirmation of every fact, relative to this commerce, that I have stated in general terms. That such a commerce, so extensive, so beneficial to the parties concerned in it, forming so complete a chain of connection between the several countries whose means Napoleon must wish to unite and bring under his controul, so fertile in all the means of restoring or creating a vast naval power; that such a commerce existed I know that the people of England could not have supposed possible, and I verily believe, that your Majesty's servants were, in this respect, little better believe otherwise would be to suppose them guilty of a heinous offence against their master as well as against his people. To believe, that they knew of the exist ence of a commerce, carried on in the dominions of Napoleon, and employing, perhaps, two hundred thousand mariners; to believe that they knew of the existence HAL appeared, in any shape, the smallest-inclination. I beseech your Majesty to consider, that all those persons, in France and her new dominions, who are now from twenty to forty years of age; that is to say, all that part of the population, which, in times of disturbance, decide the fate of governments, have been reared up in their lives a thousand times over, rather than see their country return to the ancient order of things; and that, supposing principle and prejudice to have no weight, still self-interest, that all-powerful stimulus, will never sufler a nation consisting, in great part, of those who are styled usurp ers of the soil, to permit any thing which shall expose them to the chance, however small, of being ousted from their usurpations. I trust, therefore, that your Majesty will be induced to place no reliance upon any such events; and, of course, that you will be the more disposed to adopt such measures as shall tend to bring into fair operation the naval power of the country, and thereby to keep alive the hopes of your people. Hitherto there has always been some ground for hope, or the people have, at least, imagined such ground. But, if Austria should fall; and if, which would be the almost certain consequence, the Southern Peninsula should follow, where then, if the means of suddenly forming a navy be still suffered to exist in France, will be our ground of hope? The gloom of despair will pervade, and must pervade, the political horizon: to submission alone we can look for any alleviation of our burthens, and, though the thought will, at first, be accompanied with horror, to that submission we shall, in time, fashion our minds. of such a commerce while they were congratulating us upon the annihilation of the maritime power of France, would be to accuse them of hypocrisy unparalleled in the history of human depravity. Of this knowledge, therefore, I acquit them, and shall be well satisfied, if they now, though late, adopt measures calculated to remove from us that danger, which, if their pre-principles, which must make them hazard sent system be adhered to, can, as far as I can perceive, never terminate but in the subjugation of our country, and, of course, in the subversion of your Majesty's throne. In my next, I shall endeavour to shew, that the commerce of France may be destroyed, and, of course, that her vast means of creating a naval force, may be cut off. The real causes of the inefficiency of our navy, in this respect, will be found to lie much deeper than is generally imagined, and where, I am sure, your Majesty does not suspect, because, supported as your Majesty would be by the unanimous voice of your people, you possess the power of removing for ever the most mischievous of those causes. The war upon the continent may prove very embarrassing to Napoleon; it may produce his overthrow: but it may produce exactly contrary effects; it may not only relieve him from all those embarrassments which he has hitherto experienced, but may end in the complete overthrow of every thing that calls itself our friend. This accomplished, as far as relates to the East, how quickly will the wings of revenge, united with those of ambition, bear him to the South! And, if he once obtain secure possession of the whole of the coasts of Portugal and Spain, what, if we persevere in our present mode of warfare, is to prevent him from sitting himself quietly down, and seeing us exhaust ourselves, wear ourselves out, torment ourselves with continual alarm, while his dominions have only to support a flotilla at Boulogne and an army Boulogne and an army of England, at an expence, perhaps, not greater than that which we are put to for the maintenance of the Local Militia? Where, then, should we look for an end of our danger? There never more, while that state of things lasted, could be peace, united with safety, for England. If this paper should (which I greatly doubt) reach the ear of your Majesty, I hope, that, by this concluding paragraph, I shall prevail upon you to distrust those, who flatter you with the prospect of seeing the people of France revolt against their Emperor, to do which there has not Such, sir, is my view of this subject. For the truth of my facts, I vouch with as much confidence as if they had come under my own eyes; and my reasoning upon them is, as I believe, correct. have sometimes been wrong in my opinions, but I have much oftener been right; and, in this instance, the greatest favour I would presume to ask from your Majesty would be, that your war-ministers, by sca and land, should be called upon to prove the erroneousness either of my premises or my conclusions. The sending out of 40,000 men, the selecting of proper persons to command them, the planning of operations for such an army; all this is of great consequence in itself, but it is nothing at all when compared to the object which I SUMMARY OF POLITICS. AUSTRIA.Upon what grounds I know not, but it is certain, that an opinion is generally prevalent, that the emperor of Austria is getting the upperhand of his brother of France. The news-papers appear to be so full of this notion, and so gay and lively and even witty, upon the occasion, that I have been earnestly endeavouring to find out some reason for believing their hopes and expectations to be built on solid foundations. After long and diligent inquiry, however, I can find no such foundations. I still see Napoleon at Vienna, and I know, that, if he were in London, the wretches, who now pretend to believe, that he is in a state of disgrace, would lose not a moment in hastening to swear allegiance to him, or, if required, to his horse. How men are to be found impudent enough to argue, that merely because he lies in the capital of the country a month without making any great advances, he must, therefore, be in a fair way of being defeated, is sufficiendy astonishiing; but, how any body, any six people in the world, can be found to believe them, to look upon such reasoning as sound, surpasses one's utmost notions of credulity. Were I, indeed, to hear of his having actually fallen back some score or two of leagues, I should begin to listen to hopes of his final defeat; but, while I see him still in the capital of the Austrian empire, with a part of his army pushing on into Hungary, must I not be a beast to believe; to persuade myself, or to suffer others to persuade me, that he is in a fair way of being defeated, and driven back in disgrace? My decided opinion is, that Napoleon, so far from being upon the eve of a defeat, is upon the eve of totally annihilating the authority of the House of Austria; and this opinion is founded upon the same reasoning, whereon, if Napoleon were in London with a conquering army, I should be of opinion that he was upon the eve of totally annihilating the authority of the House of Brunswick. He may be defeated: his present situation may be perilous; and the French fleet, when it comes out again, may beat the English fleet; but, as to likelihood, one is, at present, just as likely as the other. If indeed, the philosophers, who conduct the Morning Post and the Courier, could assure me, and convince me of the truth of their assurances, that Buonaparte's army was officered with pimps, buffoons, bastards, harlot's bullies and brothers, uncles and cousins; if, indeed, they could prove to me, that Buonaparté did not look upon brains as being necessary in the composition of a general, and was content to take any creature that was brought to him, provided it had a pair of eyes just to keep itself out of the fire, and a hole in its face wherein to put victuals and drink; if they could prove to me, that Napoleon did not see with his own eyes, but with the eyes of that many-headed monster, his Corps Legislatif, who, by their deeds, have proved themselves to be the most stupid as well as the most corrupt assembly that has ever been heard of in the civilized world; if, indeed, Buonaparte were once to fall into the practice of suffering the high stations in his army to be filled up with the booby sons and other relations of these fellows, or of their wives and their mistresses, or, which would be more likely, by the paramours of their wives and mistresses; if I could be assured, that he had exchanged the Dukes of Rivoli, Dantzick, Abrantes, and the rest of his generals, for an equal number of besotted animals, one half of whose life has been spent over the bottle and the other half in bed; if I could be convinced, that his army was under the command of known, proven, notorious fools, and peculators, many of whom united the two characters in the same person, and who, on account of their ideocy, had a suba tern peculator sent with them to take care of their pillage; if, in short, I could be convinced, that, all of a sudden, the character of Napoleon's army was totally changed, and, that, instead, of exciting fear in the enemies of France, it was become formidable only to France herself; if any thing like this, which goes almost beyond the bounds of imagination, could be proved to me to exist, then, indeed, I should begin to expect, in good earnest, to see Napoleon retreat in disgrace, and though pursued like a hare, bragging that his pursuer was afraid to face him, and, when caught, at last, and beaten to a mummy, I should expect to see him, by an impious inockery of religion, singing Te Deum for the victo- | ry he had gained. But, not being able to perceive any such change in the French army; seeing no proof, that the interest and honour of the French nation are likely to be sacrificed to the interests of any hungry individual or greedy family; seeing no proof that the war against Austria has been fomented and kept up for the purpose of providing for the relations of the Corps Legislatif or for those of any body else; not being able to perceive any change of this sort, and particularly not seeing the smallest symptom of the poisonous influence of that most corrupt assembly, the Corps Legislatif, I really do not, and cannot, see that there are any good grounds for believing, that the French army will, in the present case, be compelled to get off in disgrace, and that they will go skulking back to France, slipping in by half-dozens at a time, as the philosophers of the Morning Post seem to expect they will. OFFICIAL PAPERS. AMERICA. Washington, May 22.-EXTRA SESSION.This day both Houses of Congress assembled in their respective chambers. In Senate twenty-one Members attended. In the Lower House, at the first call, 120 Members appeared.-General Varnum is re-elected Speaker.- PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE. At twelve o'clock, the President of the United States communicated, by Mr. Graham, the following Message to both Ilouses of Congress:- Washington City, May 23. Fellow Citizens of the Senate, and of the House of Representatives;-On this first occasion of meeting you, it af fords me much satisfaction, to be able to communicate the commencement of a favourable change in our foreign relations; the critical state of which induced a Session of Congress at this period.---In consequence of the provisions of the Act interdicting commercial intercourse with Great Britain and France, our Ministers at London and Paris were, without delay, instructed to let it be understood by the French and British Governments, that the authority vested in the executive, to renew commercial intercourse with their respective nations, would be exercised in the case specified by that act.-Soon after these instructions were dispatched, it was found that the British Government, anticipating, from early proceedings of Congress at their last Session, the state of our laws, which has had the effect of placing the two belligerent Powers on a footing of equal restrictions, and relying on the conciliatory disposition of the United States, bad transmitted to their Legation here provisional instructions, not only to offer satisfaction for the attack on the frigate Chesapeak, and to make known the determination of his britannic Majesty, to send an Envoy Extraordinary with powers to conclude a treaty on all points between the two countries; but moreover, to signify his willingness, in the mean time, to withdraw his Orders in Council, in the persuasion that the intercourse with Great Britain would be renewed on the part of the United States. These steps of the British Government led to the correspondence and the proclamation now laid before you; by virtue of which, the commerce between the two countries will be renewable after the 10th day of June next. -Whilst I take pleasure in doing justice to the counsels of his Britannic Majesty, which, no longer adhering to the policy which made an abandonment by France, of her Decrees, a pre-requisite to a levocation of the British Orders, have substituted the amicable course which has issued thus happily; I cannot do less than refer to the proposal heretofore made on the part of the United States, embracing a like restoration of the suspended commerce, as a proof of the spirit of accommodation which has at no time been intermitted, and to the result which now calls for our congratulations as corroborating the principles by which the public councils have been guided during a period of the most trying embarrassments. The discontinuance of the British Orders as they respect the United States, having been thus arranged, a communication of the event has been forwarded, in one of our public vessels, to our Minister Plenipotentiary at Paris, with instructions to avail himself of the important addition thereby made, to the considerations which press on the justice of the French Government a revocation of its Decrees, or such a modification of them, as they shall cease to violate the neutral commerce of the United States.--The revision of our commercial laws, proper to adapt them to the arrangement which has taken place with Great Britain, will doubtless engage the early attention of Congress. It will be worthy, at the same time, of |