rous 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. 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 century, had been treated as French subjects. Notwithstanding this right, Louis XV. 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; nations of the same language, of similar man Manuscript Life of James II in the library of his royal highness the prince regent, p. 824. ners, 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 negotiators, 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. ver 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 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 vassals of the king of Great Britain. Possessed, doubtless, of the most perfect right to justice and humanity; entitled, like all other men, to resist | freemen, of Christians, of men 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 respecting 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 enter tained of the original 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. Ne VOL. I. 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 disgraceful victory of Washington, had rendered themselves accountable to God and their country for all the accumulation of evils which marked the last months of an unfortunate and unnatural U war. For these reasons, he heartily concurred in the amendment of his right hon. friend. it was theirs and not ours; but we had only that one consolation. It was a war in which little glory could be acquired by success, in which success itself must be mix-b ed with feelings which would embitter any glory that could be derived from it, and in which the smallest defeat would be attended with a disgrace infinitely dispro portionate to the highest advan tages that could be expected from such a contest. Engaged in such a war, what was the plain and clear course and policy to be pursued by the government of this country? To be ready to seize every opportunity to put an end to it,-not to omit even the smallest occasion of bringing about an amicable discussion to allay that feeling of irritation in which the war had origi Sir James Mackintosh having been accused of sacrificing justice and humanity to his sanguine views of progressive civilization, observed, in explanation, that if in the year 1600, any European powers at war with England, under pretence of humanity for the Indians, and of the injustice which they always suffered from Europeans, had compelled us to promise by treaty that we should make no purchases of land from these Indians, the whole of North America would at this day have contained fifty thousand cannibals, instead of ten millions of British freemen, who may be numbered among the most intelligent, the most moral, the bravest, and the most hap-nated. Even supposing the war py of the human race. Sentence of desolation and barbarism would have been passed on a considerable portion of the globe. Our ministers, in this proposal, had tried to doom to the same fate all that yet remained to be reclaimed. Speech of Marquis WELLESLEY, respecting the Negotiation for Peace with America, pronounced in the British House of Lords, April 13, 1815. Marquis Wellesley rose, pursuant to notice, to lay before their lordships the grounds of his motion relative to the manner in which the late negotiation with America had been conducted.. The war with America he had considered as almost one of the most calamitous events that could befall this country; and when that event did unhappily take place, we had at least one consolation, that the aggression which led to had been attended with the greatest success on our part, he could not conceive one object which Great Britain could have, except that of putting an end to it. Fatally deluded as ministers had been by the appearance of affairs in Europe, which induced them to' change the ground which they had originally taken, and to rest upon a point which had never before been brought into the discussion-for that such was the delusion under which they acted, he was convinced-the question now came to be, what was the course which our ministers ought to have taken? They ought not to have been deluded by the fatal error that their success against one power ought to be turned against another-by the fatal error, that instead of immediately and magnanimously making use of that success as the means of bringing about an amicable adjustment of differences with America, they ought to consider it as a ground of rising in their demands and urg- | their naval exertions on the lakes, about which we had heard so much. This was the view in which our ministers ought to have considered the subject. The great fundamental principle on which they should have acted, was to turn America from this fatal policy, as adverse to the real interests of America as to those of this country; and to neglect no opportunity of bringing the fatal contest into which we had been unfortunately driven, to an amicable conclusion. He assured the noble earl (Liverpool) it would give him great satisfaction if he could approve of the manner in which the ministers had carried on the war, or the principles upon which they appeared to have conducted the negotiation. It was not on this day that he need argue, that peace, merely as such, could not be considered as a subject or ground of solid satisfaction. It was the situation in which peace ought to place us, that formed the only solid ground of satisfaction. This principle had been amply recognized and acted upon by this country with respect to other quarters. Peace-mere peace-had been offered, but rejected by their lordships and the nation. It was not, therefore, the mere circumstance that peace had been concludedit was not the mere words or aspect of the treaty that ought to decide their lordships to approve of it, if it could be shown from information and documents indisputable, that the peace had been concluded under circumstances in which neither honour nor security had been provided for. ing undue pretensions. The only use of the greatest success in the case of America, would be to enforce such demands as were fair and moderate. Nothing could be more erroneous than that policy which would turn America from views of internal improvement, of commerce, of civilization, and from that line of pursuits which enabled us, with respect to that country, to give full scope to those great principles of political economy by which the intercourse of the world would be most beneficially regulated. It was the clear and manifest interest of both parties to cultivate that amicable connection resting on these solid principles which rendered the mutual advantage so important. The effect of war was to turn them from these views of peace and internal improvement, to views of a far different and less beneficial nature. A state of war would naturally lead that rising community to look to the formation of a great military, and even a naval power, to be turned against the parent from which that community issued. After a long continued war, peace would leave us in a condition, with respect to that country, very different from that in which we before stood; for if America did become a great military power, she would mix herself with the disputes and arrangements of all the civilized world, and this country would find a rival springing up in that people which had issued from its bosom. The pursuits of commerce and peace, and internal improvement, might be then but secondary concerns; and the great object would be to cultivate and establish a great military and naval power to act even on our frontiers, as they had in fact done by In discussing this question, their lordships had to consider what had been done to bring the war to a termination. It would be recollected, that soon after the war broke out, two propositions were made for an armistice, and a discussion of the points in dispute in the mean time. He did not blame ministers for their conduct on that occasion, being perhaps of opinion, that the carrying on negotiations for peace during an armistice, was generally an imprudent course of proceeding; but he only wished to call their lordships' attention to this fact, that at that time there was no expression of the slightest desire to alter the grounds of dispute; and that with respect to the impressment of seamen, a wish was expressed to come to a full and fair discussion, in order, if possible, to form some amicable arrangement on that difficult and arduous subject. The next point to be considered in the view of the question which he had stated, was the proposed mediation of Russia, and he had never yet been able to discover why that mediation had not been accepted. Their lordships were aware that the business of a mediator was merely to bring the parties together for the purpose of amicable discussion. The business of an arbitrator was no doubt different, and perhaps with respect to our maritime rights, the emperor of Russia might not have been the most proper arbitrator, supposing we had been disposed to admit of any arbitration on that head; for, essential as these rights were to this country, yet they were not, perhaps, more popular with some nations in Europe, than they were on the other side of the Atlantic. But the emperor of Russia's mediation was not accepted. Yet at last, in a question about territory, in which the dignity and honour of a country might be as much involved as in any question whatever, the emperor of Russia, though not accepted as a mediator, was to be the arbitrator. With respect to the emperor of Russia, however, there was no character existing at the present day, no character recorded in history, which more commanded his respect, his admiration, and, as far as the expression might be used as to the sovereign of another country, his affection, than that great monarch: but he rather imagined that the mediation was refused, because at that moment a notion had arisen some where, that as America had been the aggressor, the contest ought not to be brought to a close without some measure of revenge, without some punishment for her indiscretion-than which a more unwise and destructive sentiment could not be conceived. After the refusal of the mediation of the emperor of Russia, a proposal was made for a direct negotiation. To that proposal, he had no objection; it was in every respect proper, if it was right to have rejected the offer in the first instance. But after this proposal was accepted, what was done? The American commissioners arrived at Gottenburgh, from whence they proceeded to Ghent, two months before our commissioners were sent to meet them. He would allow that, in ordinary cases, this would be a matter of little importance; but in the teeth of a war, and of a war so conducted, who could undertake to calculate the consequences that might ensue? It had been said that the transaction at Washington could not have been prevented, even if peace had been made on the first day the commissioners met; but might it not have been prevented if they had met before? He would now call the attention of the house to the state of Europe at that time. A series of glorious successes had attended the arms of his majesty and of the allies. |