of a Treaty of Alliance, dated the 16th of August, 1814, as also on the convention concluded on the same day, terminated the objects of their mission, in the Sitting of the 6th of September, and having endeavoured, in various private conferences, to remove the difficulties which stood in the way of an absolute union, have attained this day, the 8th of September, an object so important to the safety and the welfare of the country at large: The Diet has in consequence decreed The Treaty of Alliance between the 19 cantons of Switzerland, of which the following is the tenor and effect, shall be signed and sealed as a true Federal Convention, in the forms heretofore used for the Acts of the Diet. Federal Compact. 1. The 19 Sovereign Cantons of Switzerland, viz. Zurich, Bern, Lucern, Uri, Schweits, Glaris, Unterwalden, Zug, Friburg, Sow leure, Basle, Schaffhausen, Ap penzel, St. Gall, Grisons, Argo via, Turgovia, Tessin, and Vaud, are united by the present treaty, for the preservation of their liberty and independence, and for their common safety against any attack from foreign Powers, as well as for the maintenance of order and public tranquillity in the interior. They reciprocally guarantee their constitutions, such as they have been accepted by the Chief Authorities of each canton, in conformity to the principles of the Treaty of Alliance. They reciprocally guarantee their territory. 2. For the maintenance of this guaranty, and the neutrality of Switzerland, there shall be raised among the men of each canton, fit to bear arms, a contingent upon the calculation of two in each hundred. The troops shall be furnished by the cantons as follows: Berne 4,184, Zurich 3,858, Vaud 2,964, St. Gall 2,630, Argovia 2,416, Grisons 2,000, Tessin 1,084, Lucerne, 1,784, Turgovia 1,670, Friburg 1,240, Appenzel 972, Soleure 904, Basle 816, Schweitz 602, Glaris 482, Schaffhausen 466, Unterwalden 282, Zug 250, Uri 236, making a total of 30,000 men. This proportion is fixed for one year, and shall be revised by the Diet in 1815, in order to its being corrected. 3. The cantons, in order to furnish the means for defraying the expenses of war and of the Confederation, shall contribute in the following proportions: - Bern 91,695 franes, Zurich 77,153, Vaud 59,273, St. Gall 39,481, Argovia 52,212, Grisons 12,000, Tessin 18,039, Lucerne 26,016, Turgovia 25,052, Friburg 13,591, Appenzel 9,728, Soleure 13,097, Basle 20,450, Schweitz 3,012, Glaris 4,823, Schaffhausen 9,327, Unterwalden 1,907, Zug 1,497, Uri 1,184,-making a total of 490,507 francs. These contributions are in like manner to continue in force for one Year, and the Diet shall decide anew, in 1815, on this subject, and on the appeals which each canton may find it expedient to make on the subject. A similar revision shall take place every 20 years, as well for the adjustment of the contributions as for the contingents of men. In order to meet the expenses of war, there shall be established besides, a Federal War Treasury, the funds of which shall accumulate until they amount to a double contingent in money. This military chest shall be exclusively applied to defray the expenses arising from the movements of federal troops; and, in case of emergency, one moiety of the charge shall be defrayed by the produce of a contingent in money according to the scale, and the other moiety paid out of the military chest. To supply this military chest, duties shall be imposed on all foreign goods introduced, not being articles of the first necessity: these duties to be levied by the frontier cantons, which will make returns to the Diet, according to the tariff and regulation to be fixed by the Diet, which will also take care of the appropriation of the money. 4. In case of danger, external or internal, each canton is entitled to claim the aid of the Confederates. When disturbances arise in any canton, notice must be sent to the chief place; and if the danger continues, the Diet, on the invitation of the Government of the canton, shall take the necessary measures. 5. All differences or claims between canton and canton, not provided for by the treaty of alliance, shall be decided by the Confederation. 6. There must not be concluded between separate cantons any alliance unfavourable to the general Confederation, or to the rights of other cantons. All recourse arms in disputes between canton and canton is prohibited. to 7. The Confederation does homage to the principle, according to which, having recognised the 19 cautons, there is no longer any subject in Switzerland; and thus the enjoyment of rights cannot any longer be the exclusive privilege of any particular class of the citizens of a canton. 8. The Diet, according to the provisions of the Treaty of Alliance, takes care of the affairs of the Confederation, confided to it by the sovereign states. The Diet is to consist of 19 Deputies, one from each canton, who shall vote according to their instructions; each canton to have a voice by its Deputy. The Diet declares war, concludes peace, makes alliances with foreign States; but in these important matters two-thirds of the voices are required to determinein all others an absolute majority. The Diet is also to decide on treaties of commerce. Treaties to furnish soldiers, or other minor engagements with foreign Powers, may be contracted by the cantons severally, but without infringing the general Confederation. All Envoys from the Confederation to be named by the Diet. Done at Zurich, the 8th September, 1814. In the name of the Diet-its President, Burgomaster of the canton of Zurich, A The Chancellor of the Confederation. REINHART. MOUSSON. WASHINGTON, SEPT. 8. By the President of the United States of America.-A Proclamation. declaration the insulting pretext that it is in retaliation for a wanton destruction committed by the army of the United States in Upper Canada, when it is notorious, that no destruction has been committed, which, notwithstanding the multiplied outrages previously committed by the enemy, was not unauthorized and promptly shown to be so; and that the United States have been as constant in their endeavours to reclaim the enemy from such outrages, by the contrast of their own example, as they have been ready to terminate, on reasonable conditions, the war itself. Whereas the enemy by a sudden incursion have succeeded in in vading the capital of the nation, defended at the moment by troops less numerous than their own, and almost entirely of the militia ; during their possession of which, though for a single day only, they wantonly destroyed the public edifices, having no relation in their structure to operations of war, nor used at the time for military annoyance; some of these edifices being also costly monuments of taste and of the arts, and others repositories of the public archives, not only precious to the nation, as the memorials of its origin and its early transactions, but interesting to all nations, as contributions to the general stock of historical inhibit a deliberate disregard of the struction and political science. And whereas advantage has been taken of the loss of a fort, more immediately guarding the neighbouring town of Alexandria, to place the town within the range of a naval force, too long and too much in the habit of abusing its superiority wherever it can be applied, to require, as the alternative of a general conflagration, an undisturbed plunder of private property, which has been executed in a manner peculiarly distressing to the inhabitants, who had inconsidertely cast themselves upon the justice and generosity of the victor. And whereas, it now appears, by a direct communication from the British Commander on the American station, to be his avowed purpose to employ the force under his direction, "in destroying and laying waste such towns and districts upon the coast as may be found assailable;" adding to this VOL. LVI. And whereas, these proceedings and declared purposes, which ex principles of humanity, and the rules of civilized warfare, and which must give to the existing war a character of extended devastation and barbarism, at the very moment of negociation for peace, invited by the enemy himself, leave no prospect of safety to any thing within the reach of his predatory and incendiary operations, but in manful and universal determination to chastise and expel the invader. Now, therefore, I, James Madison, President of the United States, do issue this my proclamation, exhorting all the good people thereof, to unite their hearts and hands in giving effect to the ample means possessed for that purpose. I enjoin it on all officers, civil and military, to exert themselves in executing the duties with which they are respectively charged. And more especially, I require the officers commanding the respective military districts, to be vigilant 2 G and alert in providing for the defence thereof; for the more ef fectual accomplishment of which, they are authorized to call to the defence of exposed and threatened places portions of the militia most convenient thereto, whether they be or be not parts of the quotas detached for the service of the United States under requisitions of the general government. On an occasion which appeals so forcibly to the proud feelings and patriotic devotion of the Ame rican people, none will forget what they owe to themselves, what they owe to their country, and the high destinies which await it; what to the glory acquired by their fathers, in establishing the independence which is now to be maintained by their sons, with the augmented strength and resources with which time and Heaven had blessed them. In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be fixed to these presents. Done at the city of Washington, the first day of September, in the year of our Lord 1814, and of the Independence of the United States the 39th. JAS. MADISON. By the President, JAS. MONROE, Sec. of State: Spanish Royal Ordinance. Don Ferdinand VII. by the Grace of God, King of Castile, Leon, Arragon, &c. to those of my Council, to the Presidents and Regents of my Audiences, the Corregidors, Intendants, Governors and Mayors, of all the cities and towns of my kingdoms, know ye; That by a Decree of the General Extraordinary Cortes, of the 6th August, 1811, all jurisdietional seignories of whatever class or condition were incorporated with the nation; that all payments both real and personal, which owed their origin to a jurisdictional title, were abolished, with the exception of such as proceeded from free contract in the exercise of the right of property, the territorial and manorial seigniories remaining in the class of other rights of property; abolishing also the privileges called exclusive, privative, or prohibitive, such as those of the chase, fishing, ovens, and mills. In this state of things representations have been made to me by various grandees of Spain, and titulars of Castile, jurisdictional lords of townships in Arragon, Valencia, and other provinces, complaining of the rob beries which they have suffered and do suffer, under pretence of the said decree, in the enjoyment of the rights and payments which it reserved to them, demanding res titution, and some of them, praying a declaration of the nullity of the decree. The said memorials have been referred to my Council of State, and to the law officers of the Crown; and observing the de licacy and circumspection with which the latter have abstained from pronouncing as to the nullity of the decree, until they had col tected all the materials for forming ajudgmenton that interestingpoint, my Council has also abstained from entering into an examination of it until the said law officers deliver their opinion. With regard to the claim made by the said ja risdictional Lords of restoration to the rights of which they have been arbitrarily despoiled by the towns in their respective seignories, though preserved to them by the decree of the Cortes, my Couneil accedes to the recommendation of my law officers, that the justice of the said claims be admitted, and the proper remedies to prevent such abuses be provided without delay: therefore it is my royal resolution, in conformity with the advice of my Council, to order, that the said jurisdictional Lords be immediately replaced in the enjoyment of all the rents, emoluments, payments, and rights belonging to their territorial and manorial seigniory, and in that of all the other rights which they enjoyed prior to the 6th of August, 1811, and which they do not de rive their origin from jurisdiction and exclusive privileges; without prejudice to what I may hereafter resolve, with the advice of my Council, as to the nullity, continuance, or revocation of the said decree of the Cortes, abolishing seigniories. 1 THE KING. Given at the Palace, Sept. 15, 1814. Message of the President of the United States of America. Washington, Sept. 20. Fellow Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives Notwithstanding the early day which had been fixed for your session of the present year, I was induced to call you together still sooner, as well that any inadequacy in the existing provisions for the wants of the treasury might be supplied, as that no delay might happen in providing for the result of the negociation on foot with Great Britain, whether it should require arrangements adapted to a return of peace, or further and inore effective provisions for pros secuting the war. The result is not yet known: if on one hand the repeal of the Orders in Council, and the general pacification of Europe, which withdrew the occasion on which impressments from American vessels were practised, suggest expectations that peace and amity may be established, we are compelled on the other hand, by the refusal of the British Government to accept the offered mediation of the Emperor of Russia, by the delays in giving effect to its own proposals of a direct negociation, and, above all, by the principles and manner in which the war is now avowedly carried on, to infer that a strict hostility is indulged more violent than ever against the rights and prosperity of this country. This increased violence is best explained by two important circumstances, that the great contest in Europe for an equilibrium guaranteeing all its States against the ambition of any has been closed without any check on the overbearing power of Great Britain on the ocean, and that it has left in her hands disposable armoury, with which, forgetting the difficulties of a remote war against a free people, and yielding to the intoxication of success with the example of a great victim to it before her eyes, she cherishes hopes of still farther aggrandizing a power already formidable in its abuses to the tranquillity of the |