to the full execution of that repeal; and no motive can be imagined for a different course these considerations are alone conclusive. But further, it is known that American vessels, bound confessedly to England, have, before the 1st of November, been visited by French privateers, and suffered to pass, upon the foundation of the prospective repeal of the decree of Berlin, and the proximity of the day when it would become an actual one. If there are not even stronger facts to shew that the decree of Milan is also withdrawn, your lordship can be at no loss for the reason. It cannot be proved that an American vessel is practically held by France not to be denationalised by British violation, because your cruisers visit only to capture, and compel the vessel visited to terminate her voyage, not in France, but in England. You will not ask for the issue of an experiment which yourselves intercept, nor complain that you have not received evidence, which is not obtained because you have rendered it impossible. The vessel which formed the subject of my note of the 8th instant, and another, more recently seized as a prize, would, if they had been suffered, as they ought, to resume their voyages after having been stopped and examined by English cruizers, have furnished on that point unanswerable proof; and I have reason to know, that precise offers have been made to the British government to put a practical test to the disposition of France in this respect, and that those offers have been refused! Your cruizers, however, have not been able to visit all American vessels bound to France; and it is understood that such as have arrived have been received with friendship. I cannot quit this last question without entering my protest against the pretension of the British government to postpone the justice which it owes to my government and country, for the tardy investigation of consequences. I am not able to comprehend upon what the pretension rests, nor to what limits the investigation can be subjected. If it were even admitted that France was more emphatically bound to repeal her almost nominal decrees than Great Britain to repeal her substantial orders (which will not be admitted), what more can reasonably be required by the latter than has been done by the former? The decrees are officially declared by the government of France to be repealed; they were ineffectual, as a material prejudice to England, before the declararation, and must be ineffectual since.There is, therefore, nothing of substance in this dilatory inquiry, which if once begun, may be protracted without end, or at least till the hour for just and prudent decision has passed. But, if there were room to apprehend that the repealed decress might have some operation in case the orders in council were withdrawn, still, as there is no sudden and formidable peril to which Great Britain could be exposed by that operation, there can be no reason for declining to act at once upon the declaration of France, and to leave it to the future to try its sincerity, if that since rity be suspected. I have thus disclosed to your lordship with that frankness which the times demand, my views of a subject deeply interesting to our respective countries. The part which Great Britain may act on this occasion cannot fail to have important and lasting consequences, and I can only wish that they may be good. By giving up her orders in council, and the blockades to which my letter of the 21st of September relates, she has nothing to lose in character or strength. By adhering to them she will not only be unjust to others, but unjust to herself. I have the honour to be, with the highest consideration, my Lord, your Lordship's most obedient humble servant, WM. PINCKNEY. The Most Noble the Marquis Wellesley, &c. IRISH CATHOLICS. The letters from Dublin state that numerous aggregate protestant and catholic meetings are held on the catholic claims. "We see," (say these suppli cants)" with a mixed feeling of shame and sorrow, the political unity of a great people hazarded. We see Ireland, the most essential bulwark of the British name and glory, paralyzed in her exertions, degraded in her character, her valour checked by unworthy suspicions, her emulation depressed by servile and unwarrantable distinctions, her people divided without meaning, and her strength and integrity depreciated by imputations that at once she disclaims and detests." -Ten thousand signatures were made to the petitions in one Sunday at two catholic chapels. B. Flower, Printer, Harlow.j. PARLIAMENTARY PROCEEDINGS. Lord Sidmouth and the Protestant Dissenters. The long threatened attack of Lord Viscount SIDMOUTH on the religious rights of the different denominations of Protestant Dissenters has at last been made, and his lordship has met with the complete defeat he so justly merited; the motion for deferring for six months the second reading of the bill for violating the principles of the Toleration Act, and the act passed in the 19th year of the reign of his present Majesty, that is for rejecting the bill, having been agreed to by the Lords without a division. The circumstances attending this event will form a distinguished page in the British annals, and will be read with pleasure by every friend to the most sacred rights of man, of whatever church or sect he may profess himself a member. Lord Sidmouth has for these three years past, been sounding his "note of preparation," and session after session, motions, and amended motions have been put and carried for the purpose of acquiring information respecting the alarming increase of sectaries, and sectarian places of worship; his lordship has it is evident alarmed himself somewhat more than the occasion required; as he imagined every new licence was for a new place of worship, whereas considerable numbers of licences were merely for rooms or dwelling houses, which were no further used for the purpose of public worship after the congregations were provided with buildings more suitable and appropriate. Those of our readers who have the former volumes of the Political Review in their possession, will perceive we have not been unmindful of the various intimations of Lord Sidmouth on this subject. Firmly persuaded that the cause of religious liberty, is the cause of God, and of truth, we have on these different occasions examined the reasons or rather the pretences assigned for the proposed measure,* and have uniformly reprobated every attempt, or * See Pol. Rev. Vol. VII. p. xxxiii, &c. Vol. VIII. p. xix. threatened attempt to infringe even in the smallest degree, on the rights of a numerous and respectable body of his Majesty's subjects, whose devotion to the genuine constitution of their country, and whose loyal and peaceable demeanour have long demanded treatment of a very different nature,-such an enlargement of their hiberties as may place them in civil society on a footing with their brethren of the establishment, and restore to them what they have long been most unjustly deprived of,—the complete rights of citizenship, the full benefits of the constitution. The conduct of Lord Sidmouth in various instances, it must be confessed, served to show he was not altogether unqualified for the task he had undertaken. The uniform advocate of the Slave trade, or if his lordship prefers the term, the gradual abolitionist, who at the commencement of the glorious combat, proposed that the trade should be abolished in about ten years, and who at the expiration of that period, wished to defer the abolition a few years longer; the decided opponent of the catholic claims, and the declared enemy of parliamentary reform, has not underservedly been selected by some statesman, perhaps, behind the curtain, to feel the public pulse on the subject of an abridged toleration. Lord Redesdale, one of the most distinguished opponents of the catholic rights, in a conversation on Lord Sidmouth's bill informed the house, that he had, about five years since, drawn up a bill of a nature somewhat similar, but for reasons which he could not now explain, had not presented it to the house. It is a pity his lordship did not inform us what those reasons were. The result proved that he left the arduous, as it has happily proved, the too arduous task of infringing the toleration acts, to his more courageous friend, Lord Sidmouth. As the bill is now lost,-lost we trust for ever, it is not necessary to enter minutely into its enactments. In the resolutions drawn up by the different bodies of dissenters, assembled on the important business, amongst whom were to be found on so honourable an occasion several members of the friends of toleration in the established church, (which resolutions appear in our present number) the obnoxious provisions are more particularly pointed out, and concisely but plainly proved to be utterly inconsistent with the principles of the Toleration Act, and the acknowledged rights of the dissenters. We shall therefore only in general remark-That the rejected bill, would in various cases have disqualified those who are now qualified by law; that it would in others have been attended with much trouble, and expence; that it would have deprived many of the dissenting ministers of the privilege they now enjoy of exemption from civil offices, and from serving in the old, and in the local militia, and of course subject them to military disci pline; and that much of the power of electing dissenting ministers, instead of resting, as at present, wholly in the people who hear and who pay them, would have been transferred to his Majesty's justices of the peace, who were to determine whether the persons signing the certificates required to enable the minister to procure a licence, were substantial and reputable householders. Many of the justices it is well known are the clergy of the established church, and not a few of the Reverends, together with many of their worshipful lay brethren, are pretty rank tories in both religion and politics. Should the horrid reign of terror which was the characteristic feature of the administration of the "great man now no more," the anniversary of whose birth, those wise-acres who are interested in the support of war and corruption, are about celebrating, should that reign of terror, ever return, and no man be accounted by a bench of torified justices," a reputable householder," unless he goes all lengths in support of the minister of the day, it is not very difficult to conceive the havoc such a power of judging must make on the purity of principle, on the virtue and the independence of dissenting ministers, and the tendency it must have to promote a time-serving spirit of servility amongst dissenters, both ministers and people. It is an admirable feature of the present acts of toleration, that not an atom of power is allowed to the civil magistrate to judge of the qualifications of those applying for li ses; that he has, in the execution of his office, "nothing to do with the laws but to obey them." By those laws any man on taking an oath of fidelity to the King, of abjuration of popery, and making a declaration of his being a protestant dissenter, and a christian, and of his belief in the Old and New Testament, has a right to the required licence, and it is at the peril of the magistrate to refuse it. These provisions would by the new act have been rendered nugatory; and every thing respecting the characters of those who signed the certificate of a minister, or a candidate for the ministry, must have depended on the opinion of the magistrate. The question is not whether magistrates in general might not have wisely and with moderation have exercised the power: the arbitrary or improper exertion of it in a single instance, yea the very allowance of such an exercise would have subverted the foundation principle of the Toleration act passed at the glorious Revolution. Amidst all the reproofs and sarcasms so plentifully bestowed on Lord Sidmouth, by his noble friends in the house, by various writers in the public prints, and by almost every social circle in which this important subject has been discussed, we confess we cannot repress that compassion we feel rising in our bosom for his lordship when contemplating the late unsupported and unbefriended situation in which he had so unfortunately placed himself; and when we farther consider the immense pains his lordship must have taken in acquiring information, respecting the increase of dissenters, and the various defects of dissenting ministers, and his ardent endeavours for their reformation ;—that his head must have been filled, and his brains tortured with the subject for years past, we cannot but lament that so much valuable labour should be totally lost. Hoping that this may not be the case, but that "good may be brought out of “evil,” and that his lordship's zealous, although mistaken endeavours for the advancement of religion, and (to borrow the language of Lord Morton)" to make it more respectable in the eyes of the "world," may, in spite of a recent discomfiture, yet turn to some good account, we shall refer to the reasons assigned by his lordship for his past conduct, which, if he seriously and impartially revolves in his own mind, will operate with tenfold force to prove the necessity of reform in his favourite and beloved established church. Due reflection may incline his lordship to pursue the more useful, profitable, and, we hope successful course suggested to him by Lord Stanhope, that of " seriously setting about the reformation of affairs in the church of England, before he again dabbles in those of the "dissenters." Lord Sidmouth in all the speeches he has made on this subject affects to be much impressed with the importance of the ministerial office, and to deprecate the intrusion of ignorant and immoral persons. Now, if his lordship will but carefully examine the state of his own church, he will find abundant reason to deplore the unfitness of many of the clergy for their stations, in both these respects; and what cannot sufficiently be deplored, that the very frame and constitution of the church tolerates and sanctions this awful abuse. How many of the young and thoughtless, are, without any regard to their capacity for study, their knowledge of divine truth, without serious impressions of the importance of the work, apprenticed to the church: to use the language of a modern clergyman,— com"mencing in those corrupting seminaries our public schools, ad"vancing in our grievously neglected universities, where amidst all "the circle of the sciences who ever thought of learning the know"ledge of a crucified Jesus, an idea that would be generally "scouted, entering into the ministry often ignorant of science, but "especially of the doctrines of Christ which they profess to teach, "subscribing articles which they have hardly read, never considered, "and generally disbelieve." Yes; it is at our universities that the moral sense of a young man is sure to be vitiated. The great champion for ecclesiastical prevarication and perjury, Dr. Paley, informs us, that "member of colleges in the universities, and of other ancient foundations, are required to swear to the observance |