Mr. Spankie think, that the humble tone, the tone of resignation," which he has taken; does he think, that this, or any thing like it, is likely to obtain us a mitigation of the evils of being conquered? Does he really think, that it would defer the period of our ruin, for the space of five years? For the space of five years it might; but for the space of ten years, it assuredly would not, and I am for obtaining a fair chance of security for those who are to come after us as well as for ourselves. When the enemy finds, that we are resolved upon pursuing such a system as I have recommended (and I hope he will find it), he will anticipate the consequences, and will lower his tone accordingly, but, our situation would be as dangerous as ever, if we were to suffer ourselves to be cajoled into a peace, without taking care to prevent him, during that peace, from augmenting his maritime force, or his maritime resources. In making a peace with him, we should set out by asserting, not only our possession of, but our right to, dominion over the seas; and, then we might ask him what he would be willing to give up as the price of our relaxing the exercise of this our right. If he were found ready to yield to a considerable extent, we might consent to do the same; because by his yielding all authority over the Elbe, Holland, and Spain, for instance, the necessity for our exercising our rights with so much rigour would cease to exist. In short, with this dominion, explicitly asserted, and resolutely maintained, in our hands, we have an object of exchange for all those of his conquests that render him a formidable neighbour, and without that dominion, so asserted and maintained, we have nothing to give up, for which he would concede us the most trifling point; nay, he is, or has been, prepared, to demand of us, the surrender of even those rights upon the seas, which all nations have heretofore exercised, and that, too, as the price, not of any surrender on his part, but as the price of peace, of mere peace, a peace that would give us no repose, that would not save us a shilling a year in the way of expence, and that would, in two years, enable him to send forth to battle a hundred ships of the line. Would it not be madness to sigh for such a peace? Would it not be treason in a minister of this country to listen for one moment to an overture for peace upon such a basis

I have before observed, and I repeat the observation, that, as to trade and commerce, though theyshould be diminishedī should, for reasons often given, feel littleregret, but that it does not appear to me pro

bable, that a system of warfare, such as I have described, would diminish them Napoleon's decrees can no more prevent the entrance of British goods into other countries than they can prevent the sun from shining. The goods will be seized as they have been for many years past; but, they will not be thrown into the sea, nor will they be sent upwards in flames and smoke. They will be sold after they are seized; somebody will use and pay for them; the cost of all the prohibitions and forfeitures will, as in the case of smuggled goods, fall upon the consumer; the seizures will be mere, acts of plunder, and another mode only of raising taxes upon the oppressed people, over whoi he shall be able to maintain his sway, without producing, upon a national scale, any injury at all to the merchant or the manufacturer. Let this system of warfare be tried for only two years, and you will see how completely all the notions of Adam Smith and his disciples are of mere counting house origin.

I have no doubt but this system would, at first, produce great disturbance in commercial affairs, accompanied with a loud outcry amongst the sons of traffic.. It would greatly annoy the jews and the jew-like christians of the Change; but, to their screamings the ministers must be deaf, or they will soon get into the track of the jew-ridden Pitt, and they will fall covered with the ruins and the curses of their country.

BUENOS AYRES.When this place was first taken, I expressed my sorrow at it, because I thought the capture, after having enriched a few greedy adventurers, would entail a heavy expence upon this country, without a possibility of adding, in the smallest degree, to our means of attacking or of resisting the enemy. When it was re-captured, therefore, I rejoiced, except at the loss of the soldiers and sailors, which were killed or taken. And now, when an attempt to take it again has failed, I have no hesitation at expressing my satisfaction at the event, but, at the same time, my sorrow for the loss and the sufferings of our army. I am pleased, that we have been thus, at once, prevented from doing a lasting injury, to our country.South America can be of no use to us. We are not over peopled. We have not too many men to enlist into the army and the navy. This colony of Buenos Ayres would have required ten thousand troops, at the very least, to be constantly stationed there; it would have required four or, five ships of the line together with frigates and smaller vessels, and in the whole, would have kept employed twenty thousaj d men. There would have been an endless tribe of

and Commissioners, Collectors and Comptrollers and Receivers and Searchers and Quarter Masters and Commissaries and Paymasters and Auditors and agents of every sort and degree, both the pay and the plunder of all of whom must have come out of the property and the labour of the already bornedown people of this country; in short, the taking and the keeping of this colony would have added to the riches of a few relations of the corrupt men, and a few of the merchants, at home, and to the poverty and misery of the people in general. But, as an event of the war, in which we are engaged, we are to consider chiefly the force that the colony would have required; and, I believe, we shall not find that force much inferior, in point of magnitude, to the force, which the ballot is now intended to create. if this force had remained at home, then, there would have been no necessity for this terrible ballot. The twenty or thirty thousand men, who will be, by the ballot, drawn from productive labour, might have been suffered to remain at their homes and in their employment; and the numerous and endless miseries arising from this dreadful measure might all have been avoided -No man has, that I know of, attempted to shew, that the possession of Buenos Ayres would have been of any advantage to this country; except, indeed, Sir Home Popham, in his congratulatory letters to the traffick-men at the Change, and the knife grinders at Birmingham. To them aud to him the adventare might be advantageous; but, to the nation, who had to furnish twenty thousand men to defend the colony, and, perhaps, a million of pounds sterling a year to defray the expence of it, no advantage couid, as far as I can see, possibly arise.The troops

and the ships will now come home; aud, I should think, that the rage for colonial conquest will be a little abated. The mercantile interest and iofueuce is yet very powerful; but, the present state of things is such, that that interest and influence can no longer prevail without absolutely sinking the country. The ministers would fain listen to the 'Change still, but they cannot do it, without at once giving up the country, and then their places are gone. They love the jews very weil, but they love themselves better; and, I hope, they love their country better too. They have not, that I have heard, given way to the Corresponding Society, lately formed by the merchants and manufactuters at Liverpool; nor has that impudent combination proceeded, that I have observed, to execute their threas of appealing to the

government punished Admiral Berkeley; for, their proclamation stopped at nothing short of that. The 'Change has been the rule, of this country long enough; and, I, for iny part, am not at all displeased, that a state of things has arisen, when their sway must by one means or another be put an end to,

-The London prints devoted to the two factions respectively, instead of viewing this event as advantageous to the country, have, on both sides, taken it up for mere factious purposes, and, having, in good set mourning phrases, be. wailed the melancholy result of the expedi tion, they pitch on upon their opponent politicians, as being the cause of it. Amongst the articles of this sort, which have made their appearance, since the arrival of the news from Buenos Ayres, that which was published in the COURIER news-paper, of the 15th instant, is perhaps, the most reprehensible. The commanders are there openly blamed for the result of the attack, and the writer speaks as confidently upon the subject as if he himself had had the command of armies and the conducting of sieges all his life long. But, his greatest delight appears to be to triumph over General Craufurd, and, lest we should be at a loss to discover the source of his spite, he takes care to remind us, that the general was beaten by a " volunteer force". Yes, you slave of faction, so he was, but it was by volunteers vastly different from the troops of general Patty-Pan, of whom General Craufurd's division would ha e beaten a hundred thousand out of their entrenchments. What a scandalous perversion of teruis! " Volunteers", indeed! but not volunteers who fiee into the ranks to avoid the ballot; that is to say, to avoid the chance of being employed against the enemy, if he should happen to land in the country. As for General Craufurd, I know nothing the causes that led to his surrender; but, surely is was as likely to be owing to his eagerness as his backwardness; and, it is, unal have something like proof upon the subject, base in the extreme, to endeavour to excite a popular prejudice again t him, and that, too, merely because, when in parliament, he voted against those who now are ministers."

-It is just enough to blame the Whig ministry for the whole of the expedition; because they ought not to have persevered in the manifestly mischievous project of Sig, Home Pophamand his selfish set; but, it is also just to assert, that, had it not been. for that set, there would have been none of, that waste of lives and of moncy, which. Buenos Ayresas cost us, That yet pleaded,

having acted under the immediate directions of Pitt; he, therefore, was the original cause of this loss of men and of money, and we may look upon this as a legacy lett by him to his injured and, by him, despised country.What, I wonder, will become of the appointment, made by the Whigs, of certain custom house officers at Buenos Ayres? They had given one man a place for life there! Some of the wives of these promoted gentlemen hed, it is said, he poken new carriages upon the strength of it. Suppose a wolf, just darting into a sheep fold, and caught in a trap, when he was expecting himself to have caught a lamb, and you have a pretty just emblem of the situation of these greedy expectants, who, observe, would have paid (if they ever paid at all) for their carringes and opera hoxes with money raised upon us, and not with money raised at Buenos Ayres. What they had got there they would have taken as lawful plunder, and they would have called upon us for their salaries.The effect, then, of this discomfiture at Buenos Ayres will be to do away the excuse for raising money upon us to give to these idle people; it will prevent some hundreds a year of our money from going into the pockets of mother Catalani and mother Storace; it will abridge, a little, the profits of the musicmeetings in the several counties, and, of course, the pleasure which our pions clergy must receive from seeing their Cathedrals occupied by hired singers, of a description which it is perfectly unnecessary here to give. More of this another time; but, at present, I cannot, for the life of me, perceive any class of persons, any trade, that will suffer more from this failure at Buenos Ayres than that of the singers; a trade which, I think, might be destroyed altogether without drawing a word of sorrow from any person of

"liberty of the seas," drank by the Impa rial Brothers at Tilsit, and echoed by the Russians and Americans, at Petersburgh, on the anniversary of American Independence, will now, doubtless, receive an explanation. Mr. Manro, the American minister in London, may now, without waiting for that “grave discussion," of which the Morning Chroni cle speaks, with so much impartiality, venture to send word to his government, that it must endeavour to live happily under British dominion of the seas, unti Napoleon shall, be pleased to relax a good deal in his exercise of dominion by land. But, to say the truth, no dispatches of this kind will be necessary : the American government will see, the mo-. ment this intelligence arrives, that we are not to be cajoled or bullied any longer by combinations of merchants and fund-holders; and, I must say this for the good citizens of that country, that, notwithstanding all their vehement language, they are, upon occasions like this, brought to listen to reason as soon as any citizens in all the world. In short, if our ministers are firm, if they only say, in a positive manner," we will uphold the "ancient rights and practices of England upon "the seas," from that moment the dispute with America is at an end.—Napoleon, my readers may be assured, will now talk in a less confilent strain about "a maritime peace." The Morning Chronicle, indeed, affects to see in this expression nothing more than “a

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peace with a maritime power;". but, I must think, that this is wilful blindness; for, it appears to me impossible that any body, except, perhaps, Mr. Whitbread and his Edinburgh Reviewers, should really be able to find out reasons, whereon to found an opinion, that Napoleon means, or has meant, any thing short of compelling us to make a positive surrender of all the rights upon the seas, which render our naval superiority of any use to us.---But, amidst this exultation, I must confess, that I am continually haunted with fears, that, by-and-by, all of a sudden, we shall find, that this vigour is a momentary flash, and that, at bottom, these ministers, like all the former, for many years past, will be ready to give up the rights of their country, if they should find it necessary to the preservation of their places. We shall have an overture from France to negociate; the offer will be calculated to give a hand e to the Whigs to clamour against eternal war;" the 'Change will, perhaps, be, by that time, ready to join them, and the synagogue to echo the cry; while dear, dear, dear Hanover will plead for peace in strains paternal. This I fear. Before this I fear, that all vigour will vanish like a dream;

2

DOMINION OF THE SEAS.

SIR,The impartiality for which you are so justly praised, will, I hope, induce you to insert in your Register, a few obser vations in opposition to the doctrine which you maintain on the important subject of our naval superiority. The grand principle on which you and those who have followed you on the same subject, maintain the right of this country in the power which it assumes over neutral flags at sea is, "that force alone confers right in affairs wherein nations are concerned." This proposition I never can accede to, and do contend that occupancy or first possession confers right. The Omnipotent Being, when he created the world, gave to man dominion over the sea and earth, and endowed him with reason to see good from evil, and to do justice and avoid injustice. That reason shews that it is just for man to enjoy those gifts, or that portion of them which he can first seize on, and that it is unjust and contrary to the will of the All Benevolent Donor to molest him in that enjoyment. This dictate of reason is written in characters as legible as that which shews the injustice of depriving another of the gift of life, and would have pointed out to Cain the injustice of depriving his brother Abel of his flocks, or other possessions which he had acquired, as well as of his life. It is on this foundation that all separate and exclusive enjoyments of property is erected; for, on what other ground can it be supported, that one man should be intitled solely to possess this or that portion of land, than that he derived it from the first man who had the good fortune to gain possession of it? It this argument stood in need of elucidation, the laws relative to real property in this kingdom would furnish one wherein it will be found, that cases might and frequently did occur, of real occupancy in lands, before it was put an end to by a late act of parliament. When an estate was granted to one man for the life of another, or in our law jargon, when a man was seized of an estate, pur autre vie, end died during the life of cestui que vie, the principles and rules of our system of real property, would not suffer this estate to go to the heir. What then was to become of it? the granter of the estate was not intitled to it; for the period during which he had granted it away (namely, the life of the cestui que vie) was not at an end. And there being no owner, it of course was in the same situation it was before it became the exclusive property of an individual or individuals; namely, in common, and the first person who entered on the property and took possession of it was entitled to the enjoyment; and it would have

been unjust if another more powerful had entered and turned him out by force. It was the occupancy or first possession which conferred the right, and the force of one stronger than himself could not have deprived him of it. It might, indeed, have taken away the possession of the land, but that would not have deprived the first occupant of the right, and transferred it to the ejector, It would have been a manifest act of injus tice, not because it is prohibited by act of parliament, or by the common law of the land, to be collated in Coke or any writer on the subject; but, that it is disso nant to that common feeling of right which all rational beings possess. And on that account the law of England would have granted redress, by re-establishing the first occupant in the possession of the property. This estate by occupancy is destroyed, as I stated before, by act of parliament, which enables the owner of the estate pur autre vie, to dis pose of it by his will, and in default of such disposition, confers it on the executors or administrators to be disposed of as the personal estate. A case of ancient occupancy may be found in the scriptures, where our forefathers, it will be seen, occupied a portion of land as long and no longer than it afforded pasturage to their flocks. When that was exhausted they removed to some other convenient spot; but we no where find that they were ever expelled by a stronger power than themselves, or that they were molested in the peaceable enjoyment, An instance of occupancy at this day occurs at the Theatres, where the person who first takes possession of a seat acquires a right to it; and if he is deprived of it by force, he is deprived of it unjustly, and the law will punish him for the assault. Another modern instance of occupancy is this, when a fisherman is exercising his profession on any part of the sea, he by taking possession acquires a temporary exclusive right in that place, and if he is deprived of it by force, the person who so deprives him does not acquire a right, but he acquires a possession by wrong. Other instances occur to me, such as ships acquiring a right to our docks and rivers, to the particular spots where they first take possession; but I vill enlarge no further on this part of the subject. Does not all this prove that all those gifts which were designed in common for all mankind, become the right of those who first take possession or occupancy of them? And, consequently, that those vessels which are on the sea acquire a temporary right to that part of it which they occupy, and that it is unjust to deprive them or molest them in the enjoyment of it? With re