66 was to be adversary, prudence and common sense dic-“ Everything in the United States," says tated the choice of an enemy, from whose James, in his Naval History, hostility we had nothing to dread. A war settled by a calculation of profit and loss. with France would equally have satisfied France had numerous allies, England our insulted honour, and, at the same time, scarcely any. France had no contiguous instead of annihilating, would have revived territory; England had the Canadas ready and extended our commerce."* But there to be marched into at a moment's notice. were countervailing considerations falling France had no commerce; England had in with, whilst, on the other hand, every richly-laden merchantmen traversing every cause of complaint against France was sea. England, therefore, it was against borne along and overwhelmed by the current whom the death-blows of America were to of the popular antipathy to Great Britain. be levelled."* These considerations, no the War-Report, did Mr. Randolph speak in all reclamation for the unparalleled outrages Congress : "insults and injuries" of the French government to give up our claim for plundered milThis war of conquest (he said), a war for the ac- lions, and asked what reparation or atonement quisition of territory and subjects, is to be a new they could expect to obtain in hours of future commentary on the doctrine that republics are dalliance, after they should have made a tender destitute of ambition-that they are addicted to of their persons to this great deflowerer of the peace, wedded to the happiness and safety of virginity of republics. We had by our own the great body of their people. But it seems wise (he would not say wise-acre) measures, so this is to be a holiday çampaign-there is to be increased the trade and wealth of Montreal and no expense of blood, or treasure, on our part Quebec, that at last we began to cast a wistful -Canada is to conquer herself-she is to be eye at Canada. Having done so much towards subdued by the principles of fraternity. The its improvement by the exercise of "our repeople of that country are first to be seduced strictive energies," we began to think the from their allegiance, and converted into trai- laborer worthy of his hire, and to put in claim tors, as preparatory to the making them good for our portion. Suppose it ours-are we any citizens. Although he must acknowledge that nearer to our point? As his minister said to some of our flaming patriots were thus manu- the king of Epirus, "may we not as well take factured, he did not think the process would our bottle of wine before as after this exploit ?" hold good with a whole community. It was a Go! march to Canada!-leave the broad bosom dangerous experiment. We were to succeed of the Chesapeake, and her hundred tributary in the French mode, by the system of frater-rivers-the whole line of sea-coast from Machias nization-all is French!--but how dreadfully to St. Mary's, unprotected:-You have taken it might be retorted on the southern and west- Quebec-have you conquered England? Will ern slaveholding states. He detested this you seek for the deep foundations of her power subornation of treason. No-if he must have in the frozen deserts of Labrador?" them, let them fall by the valor of our armas, by fair legitimate conquest; not become the victims of treacherous seduction. He was gratified to find gentlemen acknowledging the demoralizing and destructive consequences of the non-importation law-confessing the truth of all that its opponents foretold when it was enacted-and will you plunge yourselves in war, because you have passed a foolish and ruinous law, and are ashamed to repeal it? "But our good friend the French emperor stands in the way of its repeal," and as we cannot go too far in making sacrifices to him, who has given such demonstration of his love for the Americans, we must, in point of fact, become parties to his war. "Who can be so cruel as to refuse him this favour?"-His imagination shrunk from the miseries of such a connection. He called upon the house to reflect whether they were not about to abandon *Resolutions of the New York Delegates. * * * * * * * Mr. Randolph then proceeded to notice the unjust and illiberal imputation of British attachments, against certain characters in this country, sometimes insinuated in that house, but openly avowed out of it. Against whom were these charges brought? Against men who in the war of the revolution were in the council of the nation, or fighting the battles of your country. And by whom were they made? By run-aways chiefly from the British dominions, since the breaking out of the French troubles. He indignantly said—it is insufferable. It cannot be borne. It must and ought, with severity, to be put down in this house-and out of it to meet the lie direct. We have no fellow feeling for the suffering and oppressed Spaniards! Yet even them we do not reprobate. Strange! that we should have no objection to any other people or government, civilized or savage, in the whole 66 doubt, powerfully contributed to attract the work. The Government of the United explosion and the shock of war on Britain; States, and Mr. Madison's Administration but, allowing to these their undeniable in- more particularly, may not have had prefluence, we are perfectly satisfied, notwith- cisely a secret understanding with standing, that it was not merely the com- France:" but there are circumstances, on parison of advantages or risks; it was not that head, which-it must be owned-look solely the answer returned by the oracle of extremely suspicious. It is curious, at least, republican shrewdness to the question, to observe how exactly their proceedings con"Whether more were to be gained from a tributed to aid the policy of Napoleon Buonawar with Great Britain than with France?" parte. Their embargo, non-intercourse, and which brought the controversy to its deplor- non-importation acts were, in name, imparable issue. There were other motīves at tial, for they were avowedly directed against world. The great autocrat of all the Russias these troops for nothing. No nation can safely receives the homage of our high consideration. engage in a foreign war without being prepared The dey of Algiers and his divan of pirates are for it when they take the resolution. Are you very civil good sort of people, with whom we prepared? Your secretary at war has told find no difficulty in maintaining the relations of gentlemen that even blankets could not be peace and amity-"Turks, Jews and infidels," procured; and you saw a letter from him yesMelimeli, or the Little Turtle, barbarians and terday, which informed you that the small supsavages of every clime and color, are welcome plies for the Indians could not be had without to our arms. With chiefs of banditti, negro or a relaxation of your commercial restrictions. mulatto, we can treat and can trade. Name, Will you send your soldiers to Canada without however, but England, and all our antipathies blankets? Or do you calculate to take it by are up in arms against her. Against whom? the end of the summer, and return home to a Against those whose blood runs in our own more genial clime by the next winter! This veins; in common with whom we can claim would be well enough; but I think it will reShakspeare and Newton, and Chatham for our quire several compaigns to conquer Canada. countrymen whose form of government is the You will act absurdly if you expect the peofreest on earth, our own only excepted; from ple of that country to join you. Upper Cawhom every valuable principle of our own in-nada is inhabited by emigrants from the United stitutions has been borrowed-representation-- States. They will not come back to you; they jury trial-voting the supplies-writs of habeas will not, without reason, desert the government, corpus-our whole civil and criminal jurispru- to whom they have gone for protection. No, dence against our fellow Protestants identified sir, you must conquer it by force, not by sowin blood, in language, in religion with our-ing the seeds of sedition and treason among the selves." people. * * * Mr. Sheffey, too, of Virginia, spoke, with equally moral courage, the language of truth, and justice, and common sense: But, suppose you raise the men, what will Great Britain be doing in the mean time? Will she be asleep? You march to Canada: where will be your security at home? will you desert your own country; will you leave your cities to be sacrificed, plundered and sacked, for the sterile deserts of Canada, of Nova Scotia, and New-Brunswick, and all the frozen regions of the north? Sir, go to Canada, and you will soon have to recal your army to defend your southern soil; to rescue your people from rapine and destruction. You will have to employ your energies in protecting the south from British invasion. Sir, will the little force you leave at home, be able to oppose the power of British 74's? Look at Copenhagen. It is true, sir, as honourable gentlemen say, that I am secure beyond the Alleghany, after eastern states shall But as You have been told that you could raise volunteers to atchieve the possession of Canada. Where are these volunteers ? I have seen none of these patriotic men who were willing to go to Canada in the private rank; all of them want offices. You may raise a few miserable wretches for your army, who would disgrace the service, and only serve as unprincipled minions to their officers. Will your farmers' sons enlist in your army? They will not, sir. Look at the army of '98. It had twelve or fifteen regiments nominally. It was disbanded in eighteen months; when half the men had not been raised. Why, sir, you had more patriotism on paper have fallen. Liberty is there secure! then even than you have now; and yet you a member of this confederacy, I cannot consent could not raise half the forces for your army. to exchange my present situation for such a If you pass the bill, you will not raise twenty-state of things." five thousand men in three years. of the war may by that time vanish. * The object * * * * * * will be saddled with all the vast The nation "He knew gentlemen would stare at him, expenses of when he contended that they were going to both of the belligerents; but, in reality, they in the revolutionary Congress who set their were far from pressing equally on both; for, faces against concluding peace with Great whilst they scarcely molested France, with Britain on terms not sanctioned by France; her inconsiderable American commerce, and who, in strict consistency with their they inflicted an injury that was felt, on vehement French predilections, attempted a Great Britain, accustomed, as she had been, censure on Mr. Jay and Mr. Adams, because to find, before the enactment of those mea- they had negotiated a treaty of peace, withsures, a large and profitable market in the out the consent of the French Government, United States. In the manufacturing towns though that treaty was honourable and adof France no popular commotions were pro- vantageous to the United States. It is well voked by the commercial restrictions of the known that Washington laboured, in every United States: those restrictions were the possible way, even to the length of risking main agent in exciting the most alarming his popularity, to maintain and perpetuate riots in Manchester, Sheffield, and other friendly relations with Great Britain; but parts of England, where large numbers of Mr. Madison opposed his pacific mission to operatives found themselves cut off from the that country in 1794; and, about the same ordinary sources of employment and sub- time, whilst the revolutionary rulers of sistence. Little did France, in her mad France were ferociously plunging through immolation of her best and bravest to the their dreadful career of massacre and confisphantom of military glory, appreciate or cation, Mr. Madison, at that frightful epoch heed the loss of an extinguished commerce; of human calamity, stepped forward in whilst Britain, dependent on her commerce Congress to commence that warfare against for the means of protracted resistance, felt British commerce, which he afterwards the wound, her Parliament besieged with the petitions of suffering millions; her towns distracted with violent mobs; and the bankruptcies of her merchants year by year increasing. Mr. Jefferson's and Mr. Madison's measures were certainly impartial, in name; far from impartial, in effect. In regard to Mr. Madison's personal feelings, there is nothing to make it improbable, but much to the contrary, that they were identical with those of Mr. Jefferson, to whose school in politics he belonged, whose Secretary of State he had been, and whose influence was exerted for his election to the Presidency. Mr. Madison was one of that party waged with so much determination,-introduring resolutions which, it is worth remarking, were the same in character with Buonaparte's continental system. We have styled that continental system, as embodied in the Berlin and Milan Decrees, a commercial excommunication of Great Britain,-a view which the American merchants did, in a body, take of Buonaparte's enormous pretensions; but Mr. Madison represented acts, which virtually excluded Great Britain from the pale of civilized nations, and were dovised with the avowed purpose of destroying her, as mere "municipal regulations." And, though the ships of his own nation, if detected in the “infamous guilt” of trading with, or through England, were by the Milan Decree, declared to be denationwar against Great Britain, while she was strug-alized, and were, in fact, confiscated, with gling for the liberties of the world. But this their cargoes, there was queralousness, it is had great weight on his mind. She was the only power that stemmed the torrent of universal despotism. He had little experience in the human heart, who believed that there would remain any security for us after the maritime dominion, as well as the dominion of the land should be consecrated in the hands of the great Napoleon. These conquerors had always been the same. When they had subdued the world. they sat down and shed tears because they could find no other world to conquer. Our victory over Great Britain would be our defeat." true, in his communications with the French Government, but there was nothing that sounded of war. Our convictions, however, of the more than sympathy, of the cooperation of Mr. Madison with France,―are founded chiefly on his secret manoeuvering in connection with the blockade of 1806. The history of the thing is curious; and, though it may not weigh with all of our readers as it has done with us, we fancy that those to whom it may be new, will be, sufficiently examined this curious case, they equally with ourselves, interested in it. We may attach what force they think is due to give it, therefore, below, as we find it in the the only observation we intend to add to this London Quarterly Review, of September, head, viz., that Mr. Madison-it has been 1812; composed of extracts from the New asserted-sent out a copy of his war message England Farme's pamphlet previously to France, in the Wasp; and that this is not noticed by us, together with the Reviewer's the only circumstance which affords reason observations.* When our readers have for believing that France for some time be quished to an enemy, whom she cannot attack upon the continent on equal terms, the only weapons which God and her own valour had *What shall we say if it appear that this first aggression of 1806, which is now represented as the immediate cause of the Berlin Decree, was, for the first time, suggested by Mr. Madi-placed within her power." son, in 1806, (through General Armstrong to The next step was to transmit this project Buonaparte,) as a justifiable cause of the French for swindling Great Britain out of her maritime decree?-that this blockade of 1806, which was rights to Mr. Pinckney, the American minister approved by Mr. Munroe,-was not objected in London, who accordingly demanded of Lord against by Mr. Jefferson in 1808,-was not even Wellesley whether Great Britain considered mentioned by Mr. Madison in the arrangement any, and if any, what blockades of the French made with Mr. Erskine in 1809-but that this coast, of a date anterior to the Berlin Decree, great and atrocious injury done to France and in force?' Lord Wellesley briefly answered, America, forgotten, neglected, and not once ad- that the blockade of May, 1806, was compreverted to in four years' negociation,-was hended in the Order of Council of January, brought forward, for the first time, to make a 1807, which was yet in force.' A month afterprincipal figure in 1810, for the express pur-wards, 7th March, 1810, Mr. Pinckney again pose, as it would seem, of throwing in the way invincible obstacles to any adjustment with Great Britain? Let us hear the farmers' on the subject. "The first notice of it, as far as we can find, is in a letter from General Armstrong to Mr. Smith, our secretary of state, of January 28th, 1810, in which he details a conversation which he had held with Count Champagny, the French minister. In that letter Mr. Armstrong refers to a letter of December 1st, 1809, from Mr. Smith to himself, which has never been published, in which he is directed to demand of France-Whether, if Great Britain revoked her blockades of a date anterior to the decree commonly called the Berlin Decree, His Majesty the Emperor would consent to revoke that decree ?" To which the Emperor, falling into the views of our government, and foreseeing the snare which would be laid for Great Britain, insomuch as, if she consented to repeal said orders, it would be an admission that she had been the aggressor upon neutral commerce, and further, it would be an admission that she had no right to exert her only force, her maritime power, for the coercion of her enemy, replied "That the ONLY condition required for the revocation of the decree of Berlin, will be a previous revocation by Great Britain of her blockades of France, or ports of France, of a date anterior to the aforesaid decree." asked whether the order of May, 1806, was merged in that of January, 1807?' to which Lord Wellesley replied that it was comprehended under the more extensive orders of January, 1807.' Mr. Pinckney, though not quite satisfied with Lord Wellesley's answers, wrote to General Armstrong, that the inference from them was, that the blockade of May, 1806, is virtually at an end, being merged and comprehended in an Order of Council issued after the date of the Berlin Decree.' This inference, however, did not suit any of the intriguing parties; and General Armstrong does not seem to have thought it necessary to ruffle the repose of his Imperial Majesty, by submitting the point to M. Champagny; at least nothing farther appears till the extraordinary letter of the Duc de Cadore, in which the Berlin and Milan Decrees are premised to be repealed, provided Great Britain will repeal her orders, and renounce her principles of blockade which she wishes to establish:'-' terms,' says the Farmer, which every man will perceive might be construed to amount to the surrender of all her maritime rights.' "That there was a secret understanding between our cabinet and that of France, that Great Britain should be required to annul her blockades of a date anterior to the Berlin De"So far the plot went on prosperously; and cree, and that this suggestion first came from if Great Britain had fallen into the project, it our cabinet, will appear from the two followwould have been made the pretext for prevent- ing extracts of letters from our secretary Smith, ing any future blockades of even single ports to Mr. Pinckney; the one is dated in July, of France, in which armaments for her destruc- 1810, in which he says, "you will let it be tion, or the destruction of her commerce, distinctly understood that the repeal must should be formed; and she would have relin-necessarily include an annulment of the blockade fore knew that war would be declared, whilst by Great Britain, five days aftert Congress Great Britain, the other belligerent, said to had signed and sealed the warrant for the be impartially treated, never suspected such unnatural strife. a thing, even at the moment of repealing her Orders in Council: for, although it evinced strange insensibility to the lowering portents of the future, that the possibility of a war with the United States, arising from those Orders, was never once alluded to by those members of the British Parliament who spoke against them in the debate of June, 1812; still, that very insensibility to transatlantic presages shows, in the strongest manner, how little the catastrophe of war* with the United States was anticipated June 16th, brought the matter for final decision before the House of Commons. He began his speech with observing, that the question, though of unexampled interest, was one of little intricacy. Its points were few in number, and involved in no obscurity or doubt. At a distance, indeed, there appeared a great mass of details, and the eight or nine hundred folios of evidence, together with the papers and petitions with which the table was covered, might cause the did not doubt in a short time to convince his subjects to appear vast and complicated: yet he hearers that there has seldom been one of a public nature brought before that house through which the path was shorter, or led to a more obvious decision. of May, 1806; this is the explanation which will be given by our minister at Paris to the French government, in case it shall then be reThe hon. gentleman then took a general quired." It seems it had not then BEEN requir-survey of the severe distress which was now ed by France. "That this was a concerted thing is apparent, from another clause of the same letter, in which Mr. Smith says, that "should Great Britain not withdraw all her previous partial blockades, it is probable that France will draw Great Britain and the United States to issue on the legality of such blockades (that is, all partial blockades) by acceding to the act in Congress, on condition that the repeal of the blockade shall accompany that of the Orders in Council. "Within one month after these despatches arrived in France, Buonaparte did bring us to issue with Great Britain on this very point; and yet Mr. Madison was no prophet, because it was he who first suggested the thought to Armstrong, and Armstrong to the ingenious cabinet "In conformity to your suggestions, in your letter of December 1st, 1809," (says General Armstrong to Mr. Smith,) "I demanded whether, if Great Britain revoked her decrees of a date anterior to the Berlin decree, his Majesty would consent to revoke of St. Cloud. that decree." After this clear exposition, we think that no reasonable being can entertain any doubts of Mr. Madison's intrigues with France. pressing upon so many thousands of our indus- motion: Не * Whilst this political ferment was agitating the different parties of candidates for ministerial power, the examinations in reference to the effects of the Orders in Council upon the commercial and manufacturing interests in the kingdom were going on with little interruption in both houses of parliament. A vast mass of evidence the 23rd June; the Declaration of War passed being at length collected, Mr. Brougham, on on the 18th. The debate in Parliament took place on |