sible that men, sitting in their capacities, before parliament and in the face of their country, would patiently endure such accusations if they could refute them, and shuffle off the inquiry for three months longer! What! the ministers of the Crown, the ministers of a great nation, ministers entrusted with all the affairs of government, would they, if they could help themselves, say, 'Three months hence the voluminous papers you require shall be ready for you; and when you have got them, you may then fish out for yourselves the information. you want?' Novel as their proceedings had been on various occasions during the present session, their present conduct exceeded all that had been before witnessed. But the best times of that House were gone by: they had lost those men who, trusting to their own eloquence, trusting to their own elevation of mind and character, their wisdom and integrity, would have dared their adversaries to the proof of accusations like the present; and not have sought to escape them by petty evasions. Such a scene, as was now beheld, would not have happened in their days, whose example and precepts the right hon. gentlemen opposite pretended to follow. He would not repeat the name of Pitt- they could not look up so high as that-but in the days even of Mr. Percival, had a charge of gross neglect in the execution of their duty, a criminal betraying of the interests of their country, been preferred against the administration, how different, how widely different, would have been the conduct on the opposite side! Any men, having the feelings of men, any statesmen, having the feelings that belong to their high condition, could not silently brook the imputations now cast upon the right hon. gentlemen opposite, without at least stating, in general terms, that the facts advanced were untrue, and the inferences unjust." The Chancellor of the Exchequer rose after Mr. Horner, and said, "that government was in possession of more than sufficient information to refute all the facts of the hon. and learned gentleman, but that he wished the justification of ministers to rest upon authentic documents, and not upon his bare assertions; and he would repeat, notwithstanding all that had fallen from the hon. and learned gentleman, that he was still willing, for the present, to rest the case upon that foundation." Mr. Wellesley Pole and Mr. Bathurst also rose on the part of ministers, defending their conduct in general terms, but resting their full justification upon the facts which the papers they would lay before the House would disclose. LETTER CCXXV. TO SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. My dear Sir James, Lincoln's Inn, 6th Dec. 1814. You may remember, the morning I saw you at Coppet, that Madame de Stael expressed a desire to see at full length a letter of Burke's, which was mentioned.* I have copied it out of Hardy's book; and will thank you to give it to Madame de Stael with my best respects. It was with much regret that I found myself compelled to pass through Paris, without having time to wait upon her at Clichy. Our short session of parliament has not been inactive on the part of Opposition: Tierney, in particular, made considerable exertions, and gave us three or four speeches of great ability and effect. While we were protesting Letter to the Earl of Charlemont, 9th August, 1789. See Hardy's "Life of Lord Charlemont," p. 321.- ED. against the monstrous proceedings of the robbers at Vienna, I never ceased to wish you had been in your place to enforce our remonstrances. With hat effect this expression of what I believe to be the public opinion of all England will be attended, rests with our minister; upon whom parliamentary control is not wholly without effect, as is shown in the publication he has made at Vienna of a treatise on the slave trade. A treatise by Castlereagh in favour of the abolition, who to the very last opposed the Bill of 1807 in the House! When you see M. Gallois or M. De Gérando, I beg you will give them my kindest respects; and believe me, my dear Sir James, Most truly yours, FRA. HORNER. LETTER CCXXV.* TO J. A. MURRAY, ESQ. My dear Murray, London, 10th Dec. 1814. I am coming down next week, and hope to see you on Friday. Thank you for all your kind cautions on the subject of cold and fatigue: I am sufficiently careful, I assure you. You have not given me any opinion upon my scheme of wheedling the people of Scotland into unanimous verdicts. I suppose you thought it not worth consideration, which I suspected myself. As to the American war, the historical truth I take to be, that we goaded that people into war, by our unjust extension to them, while neutrals, of all the unmitigated evils of maritime war; and still more by the insulting tone of our newspaper and government language; and that when the English nation came to its senses about the Orders in Council, and the minister was dead, who had insanely made it a point of honour to adhere to them, by that time the American Government believed that the continental system of Bonaparte had ruined the resources of this country, that he was to become lord of the ascendant, and that it was as well for them to be on the best terms with the winning side. What passed prior to the repeal of the Orders in Council may fairly be regarded now as matter of history only, and it is in that view of it that I consider the Americans as now aggressors in the war; the ground of complaint they had, we have relinquished; their pretensions against our maritime rights are matter of aggression. You ask me about the general feeling of London and England respecting the American war. I am convinced it is at present decidedly unpopular. The want of success, announced in so many repeated instances, had gradually weaned the public from their idle dreams of immediate subjugation; for that was the fancy, and, in this state of dissatisfaction, came that publication of the Ghent negotiations, which produced a great sensation. I have so little confidence in the steadiness or principle of the public sentiments, on matters of war, that if there were some signal successes won by our troops or our ships over the Americans, I should rather expect to hear again the old cry for chastisement, and all the old vulgar insolence. It is a sad misfortune to America, that they have not had for President of their republic, during this important epoch of their history, a man of a higher cast of talent and public sentiment than Madison; he has involved them without necessity in war, and has debased very much the tone, which a people destined obviously for such greatness, ought to maintain. Yours my dear Murray, affectionately, LETTER CCXXVI. FROM SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. My dear Horner, Paris, 12th Dec. 1814. On receiving your letter yesterday, my first thought was to request you to call on Lady Mackintosh, that she might read to you what I had written, when the spontaneous communications of the Duke of Wellington were fresh in my recollection. But on farther reflection, both on the unspeakable importance of the subject, and on the just authority of your opinion, I resolved to request an interview with him, which passed this morning, without any mention of your name. He behaved, as he has always done in his conversations with me on this matter, with considerable apparent frankness; and, whatever his original opinions might have been, he seemed to have a fair disposition to do his utmost in the discharge of his present trust. The first act done by this government, in consequence of discussions with the Duke of Wellington tending to limit the renewed trade, was a circular letter from the Minister of Marine to the Maritime Prefects, in the end of September, instructing them to grant no "autorisations" (I know no corresponding term in our English usages) to vessels fitted out for the slave trade, to the north of Cape Formoso. Several other communications, in the following month, to the Prefects and to the Armateurs of Nantes and Havre, convey the same direction, more or less forcibly, but with the expression of a wish, that the limitation should, for the present, not be much noised abroad. On the 5th of November, the Duke of Wellington laid before the Minister of Marine a set of regulations for insuring the observance of this limited prohibition; of which the principal were, provisions to declare |