land. It was an enterprise which most,
exasperated a people, and least weakened
a government of any recorded in the an-
nals of war.

For every justifiable purpose of present

sometimes still more as connected with their fondest and proudest hopes of greatness to come. To put all these respectable feelings of a great people, sanctified by the illustrious name of Washington, on a level with half a dozen wooden sheds in the temporary seat of a provincial government, was an act of intolerable insolence, and implied as much contempt for the feelings of America as for the common sense of mankind.-[Sir James enlarged on a variety of subjects in which we have not been able to follow him.]-On the right of searching foreign ships for English seamen, he mentioned a remarkable instance of its ancient and general acknowledgment, which he had lately found in the Manuscript Memoirs of king James 2. That prince, being in Holland in 1657, was desirous of returning to France, and first proposed to go by sea, but renounced that intention from the hazard his Royal Highness would run, in case they met with any English man of war, whose custom it was to search any strange ships to see if they had any English seamen on board, and, if they should find any such, to take them out." Here was an instance of the exercise of this right a century and a half ago, the practice being then spoken of as familiar and acquiesced in by the ships of so great a nation as France. This passage, which had come to light thus accidentally, he considered as decisive evidence of the ancient and unresisted exertion of this important right.

warfare it was almost impotent. To every wise object of prospective policy it was hostile. It was an attack, not against the strength or the resources of a state, but against the national honour and public affections of a people. After 25 years of the fiercest warfare, in which every great capital of the European continent had been spared, he had almost said, respected by enemies, it was reserved for England to violate all that decent courtesy towards the seats of national diguity, which, in the midst of enmity, manifests the respect of nations for each other, by an expedition deliberately and principally directed against palaces of government, halls of legislation, tribunals of justice, repositories of the muniments of property, and of the records of history -objects among civilized nations exempted from the ravages of war, and secured, as far as possible, even from its accidental operation, because they contribute nothing to the means of hostility, but are consecrated to purposes of peace, and minister to the common and perpetual interest of all human society. It seemed to him an aggravation of this atrocious measure that ministers had attempted to justify the destruction of a distinguished capital, as a retaliation for some violences of inferior American officers, unauthorized and disavowed by their Government, against he knew not what village in Upper Canada. To make such retaliation just, there must always be clear proof of the outrage; in general also, sufficient evidence that the adverse government refused make due reparation for it, and at last some proportion of the punishment to the offence. Here there was very imperfect evidence of the outrage-no proof of re-tury, had been treated as French subjects. fusal to repair-and demonstration of the excessive and monstrous iniquity of what was falsely called retaliation. The value of a capital is not to be estimated by its houses, and warehouses, and shops. It consisted chiefly in what could be neither numbered nor weighed. It was not even by the elegance or grandeur of its monuments, that it was most dear to a generous people. They looked upon it with affection and pride as the seat of legislation, as the sanctuary of public justice, often as linked with the memory of past times,

The right of every state to the perpetual allegiance of its natural-born subjects, was an undisputed principle of public law. But it was one of those extreme rights which were peculiarly liable to degenerate into wrong, if the utmost caution and humanity did not regulate its exercise. Notwithstanding this right, Irish officers in the service of France, during all the war of the eighteenth cen

Notwithstanding this right, Louis 15 treated his natural-born subject, marshal Ligonier, as a prisoner of war, and a conversation between them is supposed to have had some share in producing the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. But never yet did a case arise in which the application of the principle was so difficult as in the relation between Britain and America;

* Manuscript Life of James II, in the Library of his royal highness the Prince Regent, p. 824.

nations of the same language, of similar manners, of almost the same laws, the one being a country of overflowing population, and the other of a boundless extent of vacant land to receive it: the two first maritime states in the world, the one habitually belligerent, under the necessity of manning her prodigious navy by very rigorous means; the other disposed to commerce and neutrality, alluring seamen by every temptation of emolument into her growing mercantile marine. Never was there such a dangerous conflict between the rigorous principle of natural allegiance, and the moral duty of contributing to the defence of a protecting government. To reconcile these jarring claims by general reasoning, or by abstract principles, was a vain attempt. To effect a compromise between them, would be an arduous task for the utmost caution, and the most conciliatory spirit. Yet it must be tried, unless we were willing that in every future war America should necessarily become our

enemy.

He proceeded to examine the causes of delay after the Congress was assembled at Ghent. These were all reducible to one, ➡a pretension set up by the British negociators, to guarantee what was called the independence of the savages whom we had armed, and to prohibit the Americans from purchases of land from them. The first remark on this pretension was, that it ought never to have been made, or never abandoned. If honour and humanity towards the Indians required it, our desertion of it is an indelible disgrace. It is abandoned. The general words of the Treaty are of no value, or amount to no more than the Americans were always ready to grant. Having been abandoned, it can have been made only as a philanthropic pretext for war.

doubtless of the most perfect right to jus tice and humanity, entitled like all other men to resist oppression, undisturbed, in regulating their internal concerns, or their ordinary quarrels with each other, rather to be considered as subjects of their own chiefs, than as directly amenable to the paramount authority of the territorial sovereign; they had still, in all treaties re specting America, been considered as vassals and dependents, bound by the stipulations of their superior state. However undefined this character might be, whatever doubt might be entertained of the ori ginal justice of such treaties, it was not now for Great Britain to deny the existence of rights which she had herself exercised, and which she had solemnly ceded to the United States; and once more, if the Indians were her independent allies, it was disgraceful in the highest degree to surrender them at last into the hands of the enemy. Never was a proposal in fact so inhuman made under pretence of philanthropy. The western frontier of North American cultivation is the part of the globe in which civilization is making the most rapid and extensive conquests on the wilderness. It is the point where the race of men is most progressive. To forbid the purchase of land from the savages, is to arrest the progress of mankind-it is to condemn one of the most favoured tracts of the earth to perpetual sterility, as the hunting-ground of a few thousand savages. More barbarous than the Norman tyrants, who afforested great tracts of arable land for their sport, we attempted to stipulate that a territory twice as great as the British Islands should be doomed to be an eternal desert! We laboured to prevent millions of millions of freemen, of Christians, of men of English race, from coming into existence. There never was such an attempt made by a state to secure its own dominion by desolation, to guard by deserts what they could not guard by strength. To perpetuate the English authority in two provinces, the larger part of North America was for ever to be a wilderness. The American ministers, by their resistance to so insolent and extravagant a demand, maintained the common cause of civilised men-and the English, who by advancing so monstrous a pretension protracted the miseries and the bloodshed of war, who had caused the sad defeat of New Orleans and the more dis

But, in truth, it was utterly untenable, and it must have been foreseen that it was to be abandoned. It amounted to a demand for the cession of the larger part of the territory of the United States, of that territory which is theirs by positive treaty with Great Britain. Over the whole of the American territory, even to the Pacific Ocean, the Crown of Great Britain formerly claimed the rights of sovereignty. By the Treaty of 1783 the United States succeeded to the rights of the British Crown. The Indian tribes, who hunted in various parts of that vast territory, became vassals of the United States as they had been vas-graceful victory of Washington, had ren. Bals of the King of Great Britain. Possessed dered themselves accountable to God and (VOL. XXX.) (2 M)

chargeable. The mediation of the emperor of Russia might, he thought, have been accepted without the surrender of any right.

Mr. Robinson supported the Address, and contended that no unnecessary delay had been occasioned by the the British commissioners. With respect to the attack on Washington, as that event took place in the month of August, and the first meeting of the commissioners was on the 8th of that month, the event would have equally taken place, if they had concluded the treaty the first day of their meeting. The House then divided:

For the Amendment......

Against it
Majority

..........

............

....

The Address was then agreed to.

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REPORT FROM THE COMMITTEE ON PARISH APPRENTICES.] The following Report was presented to the House :

REPORT.

The Committee appointed to examine

into the number and state of Parish Apprentices, bound into the country from the parishes within the Bills of Mortality, and to report the same, with their observations thereon, to the House-Have examined the matter to them referred, and agreed upon the following Report:

the necessity of limiting their inquiry to those points which were capable of being ascertained, conceived that the parishes, which are comprehended in the Bills of Mortality, would afford a tolerable criterion to enable a judgment to be formed, as to the comparative number of parish apprentices bound near home and at a distance, and as to the advantages or disadvantages resulting from the latter plan.

This was the more practicable, as by the Act passed in the 2d and 7th years of his present Majesty, some humane regulations were made in the management of parish apprentices in those parishes; and by the latter Act, in certain of those parishes, namely, the seventeen parishes without the walls of London, the twentythree in Middlesex and Surrey, being within the Bills of Mortality, and the liberty of the Tower of London, and the ten parishes within the city and liberty of Westminster, a list of poor children bound apprentices was directed to be delivered annually from each parish to the clerk of the company of Parish-clerks, to be bound up and deposited with that company. To those lists your committee have had access, an abstract having been made by the clerk of the Committee; and it appears from them that the whole number of apprentices bound, from the beginning of the year 1802 to the end of the year 1811, from these parishes, amounts to 5,815; being 3,446 males, and 2,369 females. Of these were bound to trades, watermen, the sea-service, and to household employment, 2,428 males, and 1,361 females, in all 3,789; fifteen of whom were bound under eight years of age, 493 between eight and eleven years, 483 between eleven and twelve, 1,656 between twelve and fourteen, and 1,102 between fourteen and eighteen. Though not immediately applicable to the subject of inquiry, it may not be altogether irrelevant to mention, that of this gross number of children amounting to 3,789, there were bound to the sea-service, to watermen, lightermen, and fishermen, 484; to household employments, 528; and to various trades and professions, 2,772: the remaining children amounting to 2,026, being 1,018 males, and 1,008 feIt would have been obviously an im- males, were bound to persons in the practicable task to have attempted to country; of these, 58 were under eight ascertain the number of parish appren-years of age, 1,008 between eight and tices bound, from various parts of Eng-eleven, 316 between eleven and twelve, land, to a distance from their parents; 435 between twelve and fourteen, and 207 and the committee being therefore under between fourteen and eighteen, besides

Your Committee have to observe, that the attention of Parliament has for some time been called to this subject, and that so long ago as the session of 1811, a bill was brought into the House, to amend the laws in respect to Parish Apprentices, and to make certain regulations, with the view of ameliorating their condition; but was withdrawn, in order that some information might be procured which was conceived to be wanting.

A committee was in consequence appointed, which set on foot an inquiry. This inquiry has since been prosecuted with as much perseverance as was required by a subject of so much importance to the happiness and well-being of a large class of the community, though hitherto but little made an object of the attention of Parliament.

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