PORTUGAL. THE WAR.Extract of Dispatches from Lord Viscount Talavera, Olveira de l'Hospital, March 21. 181). The enemy suffered much more in the affair of the 15th than I was aware of, when I addressed you on the 16th inst; the firing was not over till dark, and it appears that great numbers were drowned in attempting to ford the Ceira.-The enemy withdrew his rear-guard from that river in the course of the 16th, and we crossed it on the 17th and had our posts on the Sierra de Murcella; the enemy's army being in a strong position on the right of the Alva. They moved a part of their army on that night, but still maintained their position on the Alva, of which river they destroyed the bridges. We turned their left by the Sierra de Santa Quiteria with the 3d, 1st, and 5th divisions on the 18th, while the light division and the 6th manoeuvered in their front from the Sierra de Murcella; these movements induced the enemy to bring back to the Sierra de Moita the troops which bad marched the preceding night, at the same time that they received their corps from the Alva, and in the evening their whole army were assembled upon Moita, and the advanced posts of our right were near Arganil, those of our left across the Alva.-The enemy retired from the position of Moita in the night of the 18th, and have continued their retreat with the utmost rapidity ever since; and I imagine their rear-guard will be at Celorico this day. We assembled the army upon the Sierra de Moita on the 19th, and our advanced posts are this day beyond Pinhancos. The Militia under Colonels Wilson and Trant, are at Fornos. -We have taken great numbers of prisoners, and the enemy have continued to destroy their carriages and their cannon, and whatever would impede their progress.--As the great number of the prisoners taken on the 19th had been sent out on foraging parties towards the Mondego, and had been ordered to return to their position on the Alva, I conclude that the enemy had intended to remain in it for some days.--Soult has gone to Seville since the fall of Badajos; and it is reported, that about three thousand French troops had been seen on their march through Barcarota to the Southward. tenant-General Lord Viscount Wellington, K.B., by the Earl of Liverpool, dated Goveia, March 27.-London, 13th April 1811. When I found that the enemy retired with such celerity from Moita, I continued the pursuit of them with the cavalry, and the light division under Major-General Sir William Erskine only, supporting these troops with the 6th and 3rd divisions of infantry, and by the militia on the right of the Mondego; and I was induced to halt the remainder of the army till the supplies, which had been sent round from the Tagus to the Mondego, should arrive. This halt was the more desirable, as nothing could be found in the country; and every day's march increasing the distance from the magazines on the Tagus rendered the supply of the troops more difficult and precarious; and the further advance of the main body for a few days did not appear to be necessary. The cavalry and light troops continued to annoy the enemy's rear and to take prisoners; and the militia under Colonel Wilson had an affair with a detachment of the enemy, on the 22nd, not far from Celorico, in which they killed seven and wounded several, and took fifteen prisoners. The militia under General Silveira also took some prisoners on the 25th.The enemy retired his left, the 2nd corps, by Goveia through the mountains upon Guarda, and the remainder of the army by the high road upon Celorico. They have since moved more troops upon Guarda, which position they still hold in strength. Our advanced guard is in front of Celorico, towards Guarda, and at Alverca, and the 3rd division in the mountains, and occupying Porco Miserella and Prados. The allied troops will be collected in the neighbourhood of Celorico to-morrow.-General Ballasteros surprised General Remon on the 10th, at Palma, aud dispersed his detachment, and took from a five hundred prisoners.-General Bollsteros had since retired to Valverde, and I hear that General Zayas had been detached from Cadiz with six thousand men, including four hundred cavalry, to be disembarked at Huelva to join General Ballasteros.-P. S. Since writing the above, I have received the report of a gallant action of one of our patroles yesterday evening, between Alverca and Guarda, under the command of Lieutenant Perse of the 16th Light Dragoons, and Lieutenant Foster of the Royals, who at 951] tacked a detachment of the enemy's cavalry between Alverca and Guarda, and killed and wounded several of them, and took the Officer and 37 men prisoners.The enemy have withdrawn from Pinhel across the Coa. Foreign Office, April 12. Dispatches have this day heen received at this office from Charles Stuart, Esq. his Majesty's Minister at Lisbon, dated the 30th ult. stating that Sir William Beresford, having united the whole of his force in Portalegre on the 23rd of March, advanced on the 24th, and attacked the enemy with his cavalry on the 25th. They were compelled to abandon Campo the extent of 32,000 hectares *. 2. Our Minister of the Interior shall distribute the 32,000 hectares among the departments of our empire, taking into consideration those departments where the culture of tobacco may be established, and those which, from the nature of the soil, may be more favourable to the culture of the beet-root, 3. Our Prefects shall take measures that the number of hectares allotted to their respective departments shall be in full cultivation this year, or next year at the latest.. A certain number of hectares shall be laid out in our Empire, in plantations of woad proper for the fabrication of indigo, and in proportion to the quantity necessary for our manufac Maior, with the loss of 600 men killed tures.-5. Our Minister of the Interior shall and wounded. On the 26th General Be- distribute the said number among the des resford's head-quarters were at Elvas.partments of the Empire, taking into parThe enemy had withdrawn their whole ticular consideration the departments beforce, excepting a weak picquet, to the yond the Alps, and those of the South, other side of the Guadiana.-The corps where this branch of cultivation formunder Marshal Soult has halted in the erly made great progress.-6. Our Preneighbourhood of Lierena.-General Bal-fects shall take measures, that the quanlasteros had returned to Gibraleon, on the 29th, where his force had been increased by the arrival of 6000 men under General Zayas. Marshal Bessieres arrived at Za mora on the 5th of March, with 7000 men. FRANCE. Decree relative to the making of Plant-woad.-25th March, 1811. Napoleon, Emperor of the French, &c. -Upon the report of the commission appointed to examine the means proper to naturalise on the continent of our empire, sugar, indigo, cotton, and divers other productions of the two Indies:-Upon the presentation made to us, of a considerable quantity of beet-root sugar, refined, crystallized, and possessing all the qualities and properties of cane sugar:-Upon the presentation also made to us at the Council of Commerce, of a great quantity of indigo extracted from the plantwoad, which our departments of the south produce in abundance, and which indigo has all the properties of the indigo of the two Indies:Having reason to expect that, by means of these two precious discoveries, our empire will shortly be relieved from an exportation of 100,000,000, hitherto necessary for supplying the consumption of sugar and indigo:-We have decreed, and decree as follows:-Art. 1. Plantations of beet-root, proper for the fabrication of sugar, shall be fed in our empire to tity of hectares, allotted to their departments, shall be in full cultivation next year, at the latest.-7. The Commission shall, before the 4th of May, fix upon the may APRIL 17, 1811.-Official Papers., [954 the sum necessary for the formation of the Britain. I had no idea that the remnant said establishments, which sum shall be of that system, productive of no conceivcharged upon the fund of one million, able advantage to England, and deservedly placed, in the budget of the year 1911, at odious for its theory and destructive effects the disposal of the said minister, for the to others, could survive the public declaencouragement of the manufacture of beet-ration of France that the edicts of Berlin root sugar, and woad indigo.-12. From the 1st of Jan. 1813, and upon the report to be made by our Minister of the Interior, the sugar and indigo of the two Indies shall be prohibited, and be considered as merchandize of English manufacture, or proceeding from English commerce.-13. Our Minister of the Interior is charged with the execution of the present decree. NAPOLEON. AMERICAN STATES.Mr. Pinckney to MY LORD, Instructed at In the and Milan were revoked. length, however, by your Lordship's continued silence, and alarmed for the property of my fellow-citizens, now more than ever exposed by an erroneous confidence to the ruinous operation of the Bri tish Orders, I was preparing to support my general representations by detailed remonstrance, when I received the honour of your note of the 4th instant. Lordship with a verbal communication, of conference which ensued, I troubled your which the following is nearly the substance. The doubts which appear to stand in the way of the recal of the British OrIn compliance with the request conders in Council (under which denominatained in your note of the 6th instant, I of a kindred principle and spirit) must retion I include certain orders of blockade proceed to recapitulate in this letter (with fer to the manner, or the terms, or the some variations, however), the statements practical effect of the alleged repeal of the and remarks which I had the honour to make in our conference of the 5th, redecrees of France.-That the manner of specting the revocation of the French De- tish Government cannot be questioned; the proceeding is satisfactory to the Bricrees, as connected with a change of sys- since it is precisely that in which its own tem here on the subject of neutral rights. numerous orders for establishing, modify-Your Lordship need not be told, that I ing, or removing blockades and other mashould have been happy to offer at a much ritime obstructions, are usually proclaimed earlier moment every explanation in ny power on matters of such high concern to French repeal was officially notified on to neutral states and merchants.-The the rights and commerce of my country, the 5th of August to the Minister Pleniand the future character of its foreign rela- potentiary of the United States at Paris by tions, if I had been made to understand the French Minister of foreign affairs, as I that explanation was desired.-My written had the honour to inform your Lordship communications of August and November in my letter of the 25th of the same month, were concise, but they were not intended which not only gave the import, but (as to be insufficient. They furnished evi- the enclosed copy will shew) adopted the dence which I thought conclusive, and ab- words of General Armstrong's statement stained from laboured commentary, be- to me of the tenour and effect of that nocause I deemed it superfluous. taken up an opinion, which I abandoned tion of Gen. Armstrong was published in T had tice. On the 9th of August the notificareluctantly and late, that the British Go- the Moniteur, the official journal of the vernment would be eager to follow the example of France, in recalling, as it had vernment; and thus became a formal deFrench Government, as the act of that Goprofessed to do in promulgating, that extraordinary system of maritime annoyance, had an interest in the matter of it.-It claration and a public pledge to all who which in 1807 presented to neutral trade in almost all its directions the hopeless al- the numerous instances of analogous pracwould be a waste of time to particularize ternative of inactivity or confiscation; tices in England, by which this course is which considered it as a subject to be regulated, like the trade of the United King-pens to be before me, and may therefore countenanced; but a recent example hap doms, by the statutes of the British Par- be mentioned. liament, and undertook to bend and fashion it by every variety of expedient to all the purposes and even the caprices of Great dification, of the English blockade of the Government only through a circular noti-state two, the first depending upon Great fication to me, recited afterwards in the Britain, the last upon the United States; London Gazette) was declared to the Ame- and, as they are put in the disjunctive, it rican and other Governments in exactly would be extravagant to hold that the the same mode. I think it demonstrable non-performance of one of them is equithat the terms in which the French revo- valent to the non-performance of both. I cation was announced are just as free from shall take for granted, therefore, that the well founded objection as the manner. arguments against my construction of the Your Lordship's view of them is entirely Duke of Cadore's letter must be moulded unknown to me; but I am not ignorant into a new form. It must deal with two that there are those in this country, who, conditions, instead of one: and, considerprofessing to have examined them with ing them equally as conditions precedent, care, and having certainly examined them to be performed (disjunctively) before the with jealousy, maintain that the revocation day limited for the operative commenceon the 1st of November was made to de- ment of the French repeal, must maintain, pend, by the obvious meaning to those that, if neither of them should be perterms, upon a condition precedent, which formed before that day, the decrees were has not been fulfilled, namely, the revo- not to be revoked, and consequently that, - cation by Great Britain of her Orders in as neither of them has been so performed, Council, including such blockading orders the decrees are still in force.-If this byas France complains of as illegal.-If this pothesis of previous conditions, thus rewere even admitted to be so, I am yet to duced to the only shape it can assume, be learn upon what ground of justice the Bri- proved to be unsound, my construction is tish Government could decline to meet, at once established; since it is only upon by a similar act on its part, an advance, that hypothesis that any doubt can be thus made to it by its adversary in the face raised against the exact and perspicuous of the world, towards a co-operation in the assurances that the decrees were actually great work of restoring the liberty of the repealed, and that the repeal would be. ocean; so far at least as respects the Or- come effectual on the 1st of November. ders in Council of 1807 and 1809, and such This hypothesis is proved to be unsound blockades as resemble them. It is not ne- by the following considerations.-It has clearly no foundation in the phraseology of the paper, which does not contain a syllable to put any condition before the repeal. The repeal is represented as a step already taken, to have effect on a day specified. Certain consequences are, indeed, declared to be expected from this proceeding; but no day is given, either expressly or by inplication, within which they are to happen. It is not said "bien entendu que les Anglois auront revoque,' &c. but " que les Anglois revoqueront," &c. indefinitely as to time.-The notion of conditions precedent is, therefore, to say the least of it, perfectly gratuitous; but it is also absurd. It drives us to the conclusion, that a palpable and notorious impossibility was intended to be prescribed as a condition, in a paper which they, who think it was meant to deceive, must admit was meant to be plausible.-It was a palpable and notorious impossibility that the United States should, before the 1st of November, execute any condition, no matter what the nature of it, the performance of which was to follow the ascertained failure of a condition, to be executed by Great Britain, at any time before the same 1st of November. That the act cessary, however, to take this view of the APRIL 17, ISI 1.-Official Papers. 1959 the decrees as it found them up to the 1st of November; and, consequently, up to that day it could not, for any thing contained in that letter, be said that the rights of American commerce were no longer infringed by them. elamation, that they would cease to violate those rights, might parhap; be wound. A prospective prooperation, either in favour of France, or to but it could scarcely have any substantial it be admitted, however, that all physical the prejudice of England, until the epoch to which it had looked had arrived.Lt. and legal obstacles to the issuing, beferz the first of November, of a proclamation, to take effect immediately, were out of the way. How would such a proceeding United States would, before the 1st of Nofulfil of itself the expectation that the spected by the English," in the mode pointed out by the letter, namely, by the enforcement of the Non-intercourse Law? The proclamation would work no direct land. or immediate consequence against Eng expected from the United States was to be consequent upon the failure of the other is apparent. It is also apparent that upon any interpretation, which would make the act of Great Britain a condition precedent to the French repeal, consequently precedent to the 1st of November (when the repeal was, if ever, to take effect), that condition could not be said to have failed before the whole period, from the 5th of August to the 1st of November, had elapsed. But if Great Britain had the whole time within which to elect the course which she would pursue, what opportunity would be left to the United States (equally bound, upon this idea of conditions precedent, to act their part within the same period) to become ac quainted with that election, and to decide upon and take their own course in conse-vember, "cause their rights to be requence; to say nothing of the transmission of such intelligence of it to Europe as would be indispensable to the efficacy of the conditional revocation?-This general view would alone be sufficient to discredit. the arbitrary construction under consideration: but it will be more completely exposed by an explanation of the nature of the act, which the letter professes to expect from the United States, in case Great Britain should omit to revoke. This Act is the revival of the Non-InterCourse Law against England; France remaining exempt from it, as well as from the provisions of the subsequent law, commonly called the Non-Intercourse Act. Now, it is too plain upon the face of the last mentioned law (to which the letter expressly refers) to escape the most negli-vember, have remained in the same congent and unskilful observer, that this revival could not by any industry or chance be accomplished before the time fixed for the cessation of the French decrees, or even for a considerable time afterwards; it certainly cannot be allowable to assume, that the revival was required by the letter (whatever was the object of the writer or his Government) to precede the cessation. And if this was not required, it is incontrovertible that the cessation would by the term of the letter, take place on the appointed day, whether any of the events disjunctively specified had intervened or not. The first step towards the revival of the non-intercourse against England would be the proclamation of the President, that France had so revoked or modified her edicts, that they ceased to violate the neutral commerce of the United States. But the letter of Mons. Champagny left Three months from its date must pass away before the Non-intercourse Law could revive against her; and when it did so, the revival would not be the effect of herence of England to her obnoxious sys tem. Thus, even if a proclamation, effecthe proclamation, but of the continued adPresident on the day when the French detual from its date, had been issued by the the American Minister at Paris, the interclaration of repeal came to the hands of Great Britain would, on the 1st of 'Nocourse between the United States and As all this was well understood by the between America and England, by the |