in the most solemn manner, that France has never, since the conclusion of the peace, ceased to discover a hostile mind, which, indeed, evidently appears from the papers laid before Parliament; but, you took special care not to divulge this fact to the people, till after the close of the elections. This was the motive of your conduct, and this motive now stands clearly exposed by your attempt to ascribe the peace to the people, by your acknowledgment, that the measure, which has proved so ruinous and disgraceful, was adopted for the sake of pleasing them, and not for purposes of public good, not for the happiness of the nation and honour of your Sovereign. To this conclusion, then, my lord, we are inevitably led either you were, in making such a peace as the peace of Amiens, influenced by the wishes of the people, or you were not: if the latter, your present plea, your justification grounded on a yielding to those wishes, is false; if the former, you stand self-accused of having sacrificed your trust for the sake of popularity, or of having participated in that vile, foolish and fruitless desire which you now ascribe exclusively to the people.

Such, my lord, is the matter, arising from rather a general view of the consequences of the Treaty of Amiens, and of the conduct and motives of yourself and your colleagues relative to that injurious and infamous compact. I shall hereafter endeavour to give to the several particular instances of culpability a more minute and methodical arrangement, in the form of articles of accusation, founded on the laws and usages of our country. In the mean-time, and before I come to my 2d head (which I am compelled to reserve for another letter), let me beseech your lordship not to place any reliance on the plea, that you could not KNOW that such would be the consequence of the treaty. The proof that you could have known it, is, that these consequences, all these consequences were foretold, repeatedly foretold to you, before you adopted the terms of the Definitive Treaty, long before you surrendered any one of our numerous conquests; and, if you ask me why you were to believe the persons who gave you this intimation, my answer is: because they were wiser than yourselves, a fact which is now proved, and which proof you must acknowledge, unless you choose to incur the imputation of premeditated guilt rather than the imputation of ignorance. Having deprived yourselves of the plea of necessity, you must now allow that you were grossly ignorant, or shamefully deceitful and perfidious; totally incapable of the trust, which you had the criminal temerity to assame, or more criminally guilty of a breach

of that trust. Remember well, my lord, that incapacity is no excuse for a ministry : the welfare of nations is not to be so trifled with: it is the effect of their measures, and that alone, which constitutes their merit, or their crime; which entitles them to reward, or subjects them to punishment. The whole means of the country are placed in their hands; it is for them to find integrity, zeal, and wisdom to make use of those means for the advantage of their Sovereign and his people, and not, after having appropriated thousands upon thousands of the public wealth to the use of themselves and their families, to plead want of knowledge in the exercise of those functions, by which alone they have been enabled to make such appropriations. But, in the present instance, this integrity, zeal, and wisdom, have been voluntarily tendered to them. Nothing has been wanting with respect either to person, place, time, or argument, to prevent the evils, which you have brought upon your country, and of which you have, step by step, and in the most ample detail, been duly forewarned by Members of the Parliament, speaking in their public capacity. With wilful perverseness, therefore, or with a crime of still blacker dye, you justly stand charged; and, this charge, my lord, I, for one, live in hopes of seeing preferred, at the bar of that august assembly, to the wisdom and justice of which Eugland has so often owed her salvation.I am, &c. &c.

WM. COBBETT. Duke Str. Westm. May 25, 1803.

MONSIEUR DE TINSEAU.

The public are well acquainted with the character and merit of this loyal gentleman and ingenious writer, who, some time ago, published, in London, an excellent work entitled, "The Empire of Germany, divided into

Departments, under the Prefecture of the "Elector of ** a translation of which work is inserted in Vol. II. of the Register. On another work of Mr. Tinseau, forming a sequel to that which we have just mentioned, and which work was also published and translated like the former, a French paper, entitled the CLEF DU CABINET, has made the following remarks, in reply to which we have below published a letter from Mr. Tinseau.

Extract from the Clef du Cabinet of the 17th of May, 18Q3.- "It is well to "know, that this Mr. Tinseau is one of "the most incorrigible beings in existence. "He has been seen to figure, very actively, "in all the conspiracies against the French government; be is even regarded as the

દ

government, it is perfectly pitiful and "ridiculous to see Mr. Tinseau, in Eng

land, and the wedded Abbé Delille, in France, writing, the former, a manifesto "to rally an external war against his coun

66

try, and the latter, a plaintive poem, to "excite afresh internal dissentions. Mr. "Tinseau has, over the Abbé, the advan66 tage of being one of the most able engi"neers in Europe; but, with the mar"ried Abbé he amply participates in a fa"naticism, which has deprived him of all "sober judgment."

To the Editor of the Register.

SIR, Accused of a very serious fact by the Clef du Cabinet, I think myself called on to deny it in English, because the calumnies of that and other Consular Gazettes are constantly repeated as truths, in the Argus, and in Bell's Weekly Messenger, the latter of which is, I understand, the only English paper that has the honour to be permitted to circulate in France. If the author of the work in question really be pitiful, ridiculous, and fanatically mad, those who waste their time in attempting to refute him, will, I imagine find it difficult to persuade their readers, that they themselves are persons of sentiments very dignified, or of judgment very well matured; while, from their invectives, most people will be apt to conclude, that the author has truly exposed the views, the means, and the hidden decrepitude of the Consular government.

Hinc mihi prima mali labes; hinc semper Ulysses Criminibus terrere novis.

Asking pardon of the shade of Ulysses, for having compared him to Buonaparté, and throwing aside, with contempt, the abuse of the Clef du Cabinet, I come to the imputation of being the inventor of the expedition of the infernal machine, of that expedition

for which seventy of the jacobins, heretofore friends and brothers of the First Consul, have been sent to Madagascar, though, two months afterwards, several royalists were condemned and shot to death, as being the sole authors of the deed; of that expedition, in short, of which, it seems, I am, at last, the inventor.--It is not for me to pass judg ment on this deed; it is an affair which has passed in France, between Frenchmen and Frenchmen, and can only be estimated and tried by French maxims and French laws: but, I solemnly declare, upon my honour, that I never had, at any time, either directly or indirectly, any concern in the act, nor ever heard of it, except in the same way as the public in general: and I further declare, that I have never, in even the slightest degree, participated in the alarm of the sená. tors, the counsellors of state, prefects, spies, Mamelukes, &c. &c. as to the danger, to which was exposed a head so precious as that of the first, and, I hope, last, Consul of France moreover, I declare, that, if he had fallen, his fall would not have excited in me the least regret, all my pity having before been exhausted on the thousands of my countrymen slaughtered at Toulon, in 1793, and at Paris on the 13th Vendémiaire, or sent to a death, useless to their country, on the burning sands of Egypt, and pestiferous soil of St. Domingo. It is not my fault if Pygmalion and Cromwell changed beds every night, or that Lady Macbeth saw on her hands indelible stains of blood. In short, I have never assassinated myself nor caused assassination, and, accordingly, I have never dreamt in the night, nor thought in the day, that any one intended to assassinate -1 am, Mr. Editor, yours, &c. CHR. TINSEAU.

me.-

London, May 25, 1803.

DOMESTIC.

Whitehall, April 19-The King has been pleased to grant unto the Right Honourable Richard Earl of Cavan, Major-General of his Majesty's Forces, his Royal License and Permission that he may receive and wear the Badge of the Order of the Crescent, transmitted to his Lordship by the Grand Seignior :-And also to command, that his Majesty's concession and declaration, together with the relative documents, may be registered in his College of Arms.

By the King-A Proclamation, for encouraging Seamen and Landmen to enter themselves on board his Majesty's Ships of War.

GEORGE R.-Whereas it is our Royal Intention to give all due encouragement to all such scamen and landmen who shall voluntarily enter them. selves in our service, we have thought fit, by and with the advice of our Privy Council, to publish this our Royal Proclamation: and we do hereby promise and declare, that all such able seamen not above the age of fifty, nor under the age of twenty years, fit for our service, who shall on or before

port the ministers. Mr. Windham, Lord Grenville, and their friends, gave their hearty support to the address, because, as they explicitly declared, they did not regard it as pledging them, in the smallest degree, to approve of the conduct of the ministry, either as to the Treaty of Amiens, or their subsequent measures relative to France.On the Treaty of Peace, Messrs. Pitt and Fox, almost for the first time for twenty years past, spoke and voted on the same side. They are now again in opposition to each other; the unhappy nation is once more divided into Foxites and Pittites; all the numerous swarm of insignificant creatures, who have neither character nor name, are again ranging themselves on the side, again becoming the lacquay-like retainers, of one or the other of these rival orators, who, after each taking his turn of secession, are now returned to the political arena, to combat and compli ment each other, while the silly herd, in the galleries, astonished at their wondrous wisdom, seem to have totally forgotten, that the only measure of importance, in which this "Cicero" and this "Demosthenes" ever agreed, was that by which the interest, the power, and the honour of England were bartered for a peace of three hundred and eighty one days! Of Mr. Fox we had no hope; he has pursued precisely that line of conduct, which we thought, and we said, he would pursue; the man who rejoiced at the peace, because it was glorious to France, must naturally be opposed to a war which is necessary for the salvation of England. But, from Mr. Pitt we did expect an open and manly acknowledgment of his error; we did expect from him something more than an eloquent Phillippic on the character and views of our enemy, and an animated appeal to the patriotism and loyalty of the people. These were very proper; but we expected and wanted something more; something to encourage us to hope, that the sacrifices and exertions, for which he called, would not, as far as rested with him, again be rendered useless, again be thrown away, by another peace, such as that of which he last approved. Something of this sort we did hope for and expect from Mr. Pitt, and something of this sort we must hear from him, before we shall see any reasonable ground for his being again called to power. He did not, indeed, pledge himself to support the ministers as to their measures since the conclusion of the peace; on the contrary, be carefully distinguished those measures from the peace itself; but, it is supposed, by some, that he means not to be present, during the debates on this subject. We still hope, that this supposition is false;

we still hope he has too high a regard for his character; but, should this hope prove unfounded, we shall indeed despair of ever again seeing him act that great and highminded part, which is absolutely necessary in the statesman, who is to deliver this country from the dangers, with which it is now threatened. These common-place party manœuvres, this indulgence in adhering to family and personal connexion, are very ill suited to the times, and to the cause, in which the people are called on to make sacrifices, which they never before dreamt of. What is it to the King and his people, that Mr. Addington's father was the devoted creature of the father of Mr. Pitt; that the connexion and dependence has been handed down to the sons, who, by a judicious distribution of characters, by reciprocal affection, forbearance, and support, have contrived to keep the government in their hands, under a total change of measures and of principles? What is there in all this to satisfy the King, his Parliament, and his people? Is the juvenile attachment of Mr. Addington and Mr. Pitt to be placed in the balance against the happiness and honour of a nation? Is this the mighty cause that is to stifle all inquiry, to be a bar to all justice, to render nugatory that responsibility, which is the sole safeguard against ministerial incapacity and guilt? If so, what, in reality, is our political state? Neither more nor less than that of Oligarchy, and that, too, of the most odious kind. We may endeavour, as long as we please, to hide the shameful truth; but, if the power of the government, with all its attendant patronage and emolument, can be thus rendered a property, can be handed backward and forward, and alternately enjoyed by men who hold it in abeyance for each other; if this be so, our boasted freedom is a despicable farce, we are made for these men, and not they for us; if this be so, disguise the fact how we may, they are our masters and we are their slaves.--No; we repeat, that we, for our parts, are, by no means, content with a flaming speech for war, and with a call on us for sacrifices and exertions. These are good; the war is absolutely necessary, the very existence of every thing dear to us depends upon its success, and to obtain this success, great exertions and great sacrifices are required. But, before we were called on to make them, we wished for some assurance, that they would not again be employed to our injury, to our humiliation, and to the dishonour of our Sovereign. Mr. Addington, modest wellmeaning man! He, too, calls for "sacri"fices and exertions such as were nover be.

"fore made;" he who, a twelvemonth ago, made a peace of economy, a peace "husband our resources against another "day of trial," and who, upon the strength, and by the means, of that peace, in which he has surrendered our power into the hands of our enemy, has taken to himself and his family thousands upon thousands of the public wealth; this is the man who now demands sacrifices hitherto unheard-of, in order to carry on a war to cure the defects of that very peace! And, shall we be thus treated, shall we be led along from folly to folly, from evil to evil, without making any inquiry, without obtaining any redress, without any assurance or any hope, that the dangers we are called on to resist and remove will not be augmented a hundred fold by another treaty of Downing Street and of Amiens? If we are asked what we want, our answer is ready: "indemnity for "the past and security for the future:" indemnity, by an inquiry, into the conduct of those who have produced the necessity for such great and hitherto unheard-of sacrifices; a solemn, legal inquiry, and a just, a strictly just decision, according to the laws and usages of the realm. The best security for the future would be, first of all the removal from power of those persons, every one of those persons, who were concerned in advising the peace. This is a preliminary step; and, till it is taken, not a shilling more should be voted by the Parliament. The next thing that naturally presents it self, is, to give the power into the hands of those, who disapproved of the peace, who had the wisdom to perceive, and the uprightness, public-spirit and loyalty, to warn the nation against the consequences which bave now come to pass. On this point, however, we would not be very tenacious: provided the makers of the peace of Amiens were completely excluded, and that men acting upon the principles of Lord Grenville and Mr. Windham were to assume the reins of government, the mere circumstance of persons would be of little weight with any body but those who are actuated by some foolish or sinister motive, who are vain of wearing the livery of a great man, or who are seeking a market for their adulation and their influence, and, of such persons, in the approaching times, the opinion and the exertions will be found to be of very little value.

tion in our state relative to France, it is perfectly useless to take them up; and, this alteration is not to be effected by a war merely for Malta, or for any other place or thing, the obtaining of which shall appear to redound only to our own advantage. With respect to ourselves, too, men of information, indeed, know, that war is become necessary in order to save the monarchy from destruction; the financier knows, that publie credit, that "credit, capital, and confidence," which were to be our rock of defence, must have perished by a continuation of the peace; the merchant and ship-owner rejoice at the war as a means of restoring trade and navigation; but, as the matter now stands, the mass of the people, the husbandmen and the hard-labouring artizans, who, when the day of trial arrives, will be found to be the bones and sinews of the country; they will not, without further and fuller explanation, ever believe, that they are called on to go to war for any thing but the Island of Malta, and that Island they will never estimate by any other standard than the number of its inhabitants and the produce of its soil.-Some object, therefore, some great and definite object, which shall fill the minds and engage the hearts of the people, and, at the same time, command the good wishes of all the virtuous and gallant part of mankind; some such object as this, and nothing short of such an object, will, in our opinions, ever lead us to a successful termination of the present

contest,

POSTSCRIPT.

The readers of the Register will, I trust, hear, with great satisfaction, that the prosecution of the ingenious, the zealous, and loyal MR. PELTIER, has been dropped. The Term has passed, without his being called up to receive judgment, and, of course, he is discharged. Some persons will, probably imagine, that the rupture between the two countries has produced this pleasing result of an affair which must have given great pain to all honourable men; but, though in declaring my opinion to the contrary, I must necessarily take some little merit to myself, I do sincerely believe, that, unless the Attorney General had, in the interval between the trial and the expiration of the Term, been convinced, that the prosecution was not founded in the spirit of the law of the land, he would, notwithstanding the change. of circumstances, have demanded punishment; for I am persuaded, that, whatever motives might influence the ministers, the case being once in his hands, justice would never have been made to bend to political considerations. In fact, I am myself fully convinced, that the doctrine which I laid