and of the extreme urgency of the provision, and if such were the case that the dreaded stagnation would come upon us unforeseen and unmerited; I should from this moment sacrifice my sentiments and my principles to these considerations, and agree, that every thing should give way to public necessity. But as I know nothing of the secrets of the state, or why this measure is obtruded upon us with such precipitancy, I cannot consent to it as a consequence of the former contribution; and I must leave those to answer for the event, who, finding their interest in the different revolutions, have made engagements beyond what they are able to perform; who have suffered the public affairs to run on to such a hopeless state, and found it their interest that they should so continue. On this occasion I find myself also obliged to protest against the continued injustice, by which the inhabitants of the departments of Holland and Zealand, who contribute so considerable a part of every impost, are op pressed with respect to the collateral one; and against the deferring or withholding of an indemnification to the proprietors of East India Stock, who have now been kept so many years out of their property and their income. has caused the loss of much precious time, and a lamentable stagnation, with an almost irrecoverable loss of confidence, which has extended to several classes. The pressing demands of the great contractors for money, arise not so much from a most urgent necessity, (they and their money-lenders fare best at present) as from the consciousness that there is always a want of money, let ever so many contributions be raised. The petty contractors grow uneasy because they are not paid; they calculate upon the country's paying the highest price for every thing; they gain 30 per cent. and more; hoard their cash; and under pretence that the country does not pay them, they do not pay each other. On the other hand, the old monied men are dwindling away, and can scarcely support themselves; and do we not see, in our days, that some men who had nothing before the year 1795, have made rapid fortunes, and that those new acquirers excite by their wealth the envy of others!-One of the strongest marks of the oppression and misery to which the nation is reduced, especially by the contributions, is that we do not, as formerly, hear one complaining voice, but that the public energy is deadened and palsied by the fear of foreign force, and the artifice with which we are constantly threatened, is most evident. Every body sighs in secret, and many, as privately as possible, begin to provide for their own safety; whilst some persons who would otherwise have been as boisterous as ever, have been quieted by contracts, and opportunities have been afforded to others of speculating to advantage. If I were convinced of the reality of the necessity, Letter addressed to the executive Com mittee of Hanover, and published by Order of his Excellency the Marshall of the Empire, Bernadotte. Dated July 3d. 1805. Authentic reports announce, that the English government has commissioned several officers of the ci-devant Hanoverian army to recruit un lawfully lawfully for the English troops. In several instances the routes of the individuals which have been debauched have been traced, and the peasants who had given them lodgings, and served them as guides, have been discovered. It is my duty, gentlemen, to communicate this information to you, in order that you may announce to the inhabitants of the electorate, and principally to theHanoverian officers, sub-officers, and soldiers, that every individual suspected of being concerned in these recruitments will be arrested. I must also observe to you, that special commissions have been formed for the purpose of obtaining information relative to this subject, councils of war will also be established, to punish with death, conformably to our laws, all the accomplices of the English in these instances. As it appears that the agents of the English government cannot fulfil their mission, without being assisted by persons of rank, and principally by magistrates, or other persons in office, I have determined the punishment which shall be in flicted on those thus offending.Every person in office, or magistrate, who shall tolerate in his district foreigners, or other persons who recruit or debauch the soldiers, shall be arrested, imprisoned, and sent out of the country. Every inhabitant of the electorate, whatever may be his rank, who shall be suspected of taking any part, either directly or indirectly, in such recruitments, shall be delivered over to a military commission, and punished according to the French laws.-I charge you, gentlemen, to communicate this letter to the different authorities of the country, in order that those whom it concerns may be informed of it. These measures must prove to you, Under the present circumstances of affairs, when the movements of the house of Austria menace the continent with a new war, his im perial majesty the emperor of the French, king of Italy, judges it necessary to make known, in a frank and solemn declaration, the senti ments by which he is animated, in order to enable his cotemporaries and posterity to judge with a true knowledge of the case, in the event of the war taking place, who has been the aggressor-It is with this view, that the undersigned, chargé d'affaires of his imperial majesty, the emperor of the French, to the German diet, has received orders to present a faithful exposition of the principles by which his imperial majesty, the emperor, has been uniformly actuated in his conduct towards Austria.-Every thing which that power has done contrary to the spirit and letter of treaties, the emperor has hitherto permitted. He has not complained of the immediate extension of territory on the right side of the Pave, against the acquisition of Lindau, against all the other acquisitions made by him in Suabia, and which, subsequently to the treaty of Luneville, have materially altered the relative situation of the neighbouring states in the interior of Germany; against those, in fine, which continue at the present moment the subject of negotiation with different princes, princes, to the perfect knowledge of all Germany; he has not complained of the debt of Venice not having been discharged, contrary to the spi rit and the letter of the treaties of Campo Formio and of Luneville; he has not complained of the denial of justice experienced at Vienna by his subjects of Milan and Mantua, none of whom, notwithstanding the formal stipulations, have been paid their demands; neither has he complained of the partiality with which Austria has recognised the right of blockade, which England so monstrously arrogates to herself; and when the neutrality of the Austrian flag was so often violated to the in jury of France, he was not provoked by this conduct of the court of Vienna to make any complaint; thus making a sacrifice to his love of peace, in preserving silence upon the subject. The emperor has evacuated Switzerland, rendered tranquil and happy by his act of mediation; he has not kept in Italy a greater number of troops than is indispensibly necessary to maintain the positions which they occupy to the extremity of the peninsula, in order to protect the commerce of the Levant; and to insure himself an object of compensation which may determine England to evacuate Malta, and Russia to evacuate Corfu; he has not upon the Rhine, and interior of his empire, any more troops than are indispensibly necessary to garrison the different places. Engaged entirely in the operations of a war which he has not provoked, which he sustains as much for the interests of Europe as for his own, and in which his principal end is the re-establishment of the equilibrium of commerce, and the equal right of all flags upon the sea, he has united VOL. XLVII. all his forces in the camps upon the borders of the ocean, iar distant from the Austrian frontiers; he has employed all the resources of his empire to construct fleets, to form his marine, to improve his ports; and it is at the same moment when he reposes with entire confidence upon the execution of treaties which have re-established the peace of the continent, that Austria rises from her state of repose, organises her forces upon the war establishment, sends an army into the states of Italy, establishes another equally considerable in the Tyrol; it is at this moment that she makes new levies of cavalry, that she forms magazines, that she strengthens her fortifications, that she terrifies by her preparations the people of Bavaria, of Suabia, and of Switzerland, and discovers an evident intention of making a diversion so obviously favourable to England, and more injuriously hostile towards France, than would be a direct campaign, and an open declaration of war. In these grave circumstances the emperor of the French has deemed it his duty to invite the court of Vienna to return to a proper sense of its true interests. All the expedients which an ardent love of peace could suggest have been resorted to with avidity, and several times renewed. The court of Vienna has made high professions of its respect for the treaties which exist, between it and France; but its military preparations have developed her intentions, at the same time that her decla rations have become more and more pacific. Austria has declared that she has no hostile intention against the states of his majesty the emperor of the French. Against whom, then, are her preparations T & directed? directed? Are they against the stood, since the conventions entered Swiss? Are they against Bavaria ? into in consequence of the treaty of Will they, in the end, be directed Luneville, that the Austrian armies against the German empire itself? could not pass the territories of His majesty the emperor of the Upper Austria, without committing French has charged the undersigned actual hostility? Was not Austria to make known, that he will consi- sensible at that period that France, der, as a formal declaration of war being then engaged in a foreign war, directed against himself, all aggres- having withdrawn her troops from sions which may be attempted Suabia, and having put a stop to the against the German Body, and espe- movements which it could make by cially against Bavaria. His majesty means of the corps of troops she had the emperor of the French will ne- in Switzerland, it was not just to op. ver separate the interests of his em- pose to such marks of confidence pire from those of the princes of precautions truly aggressive? The Germany who are attached to him. circumstances being the same at preAny injury which they may sustain, sent on the part of France, why are any dangers by which they may be the measures of Austria so different? menaced, can never be indifferent to Why does she keep sixty battalions him, or foreign from his lively so- in the Tyrol and Suabia, whilst the licitude. Persuaded that the princes forces of France are collected at a and states of the German empire are distance for an expedition against penetrated with the same sentiments, England? There exists no difthe undersigned, in the name of the ference at this moment between the emperor of the French, invites the Swiss republic and the German emdiet to unite with him in pressing, pire; no difference between Bavaby every consideration of justice ria and Austria; and, if any creand reason, the emperor of Austria dit is to be given to the declarations not to expose for any longer period of the court of Vienna, there exists the present generation to incalcu- none between it and France. For lable calamities, to spare the blood what unknown objects, then, has of a multitude of men, doomed to the court of Vienna assembled so perish the victims of a war, the ob- many troops? It can have but one ject of which is foreign to Germany, plausible object, that is, to keep which, at the moment of its break- France in a state of indecision, to ing out, is every where the subject place her in a state of inactivity; of enquiry and doubt, and whose and, in a word, to arrest her proreal motives cannot be avowed.gress on the eve of a decisive ef The alarms of the continent will not fort. But this object can only be be allayed, until the emperor of attained for a time. France has Austria, yielding to the just and been deceived; she is no longer pressing representations of Germany, so. She has been obliged to deshall cease his hostile preparations, fer her enterprises; she still deshall not keep in Suabia and in the fers them; she waits the effect of Tyrol more troops than are neces- these remonstrances; she waits the sary for garrisoning the places, and effect of the representations of the shall replace his army on the peace Germanic diet. But, when every establishment. Was it not under- effort shall be fruitlessly made to bring Austria to the adoption, either of a sincere peace, or of an undisguised and open hostility, his majesty the emperor of the French will fulfil all the duties imposed on him by his dignity and his power: he will direct his efforts to every quarter in which France shall be menaced. Providence has bestowed on him sufficient strength to contend against England with one hand, and with the other to defend the honour of his standards, and the rights of his allies. Should the Diet adopt the course which the undersigned has orders to point out to it; should it succeed in representing to the view of the emperor of Austria, the real situation in which these movements, made perhaps without reflection, ordered perhaps without any hostile intention, and solely in consequence of foreign influence, have placed the continent; should it succeed in persuading this sove reign, individually humane and just, that he has no enemies, that his frontiers are not threatened, that France has twice had it in her power to deprive him for ever of one half of his hereditary states, if she had extended her wishes beyond what had been established at Campo Formio and Luneville; that, by his dispositions, which even before they are fully developed, affect France even in the centre of her action, he interferes without advantage to his states, and without honour to his policy, in a quarrel which is foreign to him, the diet will have deserved well of Germany, of Switzerland, of Italy, of France, of all Europe, with the exception of a single nation, the enemy of the general tranquillity, and which has founded its prosperity on the hope and the design, ardently and perseveringly The declaration which the French chargé d'allaires was ordered to communicate to the diet at Ratis bon, has been laid before his Roman and Austrian Imperial Majesty. According to this declaration, the states of the German empire might be induced to imagine, that the armaments and acts of violence of the French emperor in Italy, have given Austria no cause for a counter-arming; that France, not Austria, wishes the restoration of a general peace, to attain which restoration, was the object of the intended inva sion of England, which Austria now endeavours to interrupt, to prevent the attainment of this object. With this declaration is connected the threat of an attack on the German empire, if Austria does not imme diately disarm at the order of the French emperor. Called upon by such a declaration made to the German diet, his majesty finds it incumbent upon him to lay before his co-estates of the empire, such documents as may shew the true causes and views which have compelled him to arm. They will thence perceive that Austria offered its mediation for the restoration of peace and tranquillity, which France refused; that France wishes not peace; for that situation is not Tt2 peace, |