SUMMARY OF POLITICS. HANOVER. The reader will, doubtless, recollect, that, last week, while the newspaper editors circulated intelligence of the French troops having been stopped on the confines of the electorate, in consequence of remonstrances on the part of Russia and Prussia, and while the same sort of delusive nonsense was found placarded up, à la bulletin, at the gossiping places of the small politicians, we were giving it as our opinion, that no such remonstrance had taken place, and that the French were, at that moment in possession of Hanover, which she would not only "plunder of its moveables, but would "confiscate all the public buildings, lands, "and other property, and would finally "sell the whole of it by auction." Sorry are we to perceive from GENERAL MORTIER's dispatches (1), that we were so very near the truth. Hanover is, as we before observed, a rich prize. The estates of the House of Brunswick-Lunenberg are immense; the population of the electorate amounts to nearly a million of souls, and its net annual revenue is about 10,000,000 of rixdollars; but the part of the prize which the French most esteem, that which they are most in want of, and which they have seized on with the greatest joy and avidity, is, the horses, of which the electorate contains from thirty to forty thousand, fit for military service. The proclamation of - The proclamation of General Mortier, which we inserted in our last (2), breathes a little of the revolutionary spirit, and the terms of the convention are worded so nearly like those made by the marauders of the Directory, that one would almost think Mortier had borrowed a specimen from the history of Buonaparte's Italian campaign. campaign. Upon reading these public papers, how sweet to the supporters of the ministers must be the recollection of their assertions, at the time of the peace, relative to the disposition of France. Lord Hawkesbury said the French Government had "publicly asked pardon of “God and man.” (3) ́All of them were full of praises of the reformation produced in France, and that very sapient personnage, Lord Castlereagh, stated, that so far were the people of that country from harbouring any wild schemes of subverting our government, that "they considered it

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as a model, and felt for us that deference and "respect which it was usual to entertain "under their ancient government.”!!!! (4) General Edward Mortier does, however, talk most fluently of liberating the people of Hanover from a government which (1) See present sheet, p. 899. (2) See p. 867. (3) See Reg. Vol. II. p. 1249. (4) Ibid, p. 1331.

tramples under foot "all the principles of "the rights of man," and the Moniteur contains a very elaborate dissertation, the object of which is to prove, that the Hanoverians "ought no longer to submit to their ty "rants." This is the old style certainly, and, as Mr. Windham predicted at the time of the treaty, though Buonaparté is the enemy of Jacobins in France, he is the partizan of Jacobins out of France. There is no possibility of being angry, however, with the consul or his general: they are labouring in their vocation; and, with respect to Russia and Prussia, what right have we to complain of their conduct, as to any part of Germany? What right have we to talk of the treaty of Luneville, we, who have declared, that this country had nothing at all to do with that treaty? No; we looked quietly on, and saw the empire of Germany new-parcelled out: we never even remonstrated on the subject: we had made peace, and that peace was not, we said, to be disturbed for the sake of the continent: our maxim was to "keep ourselves to ourselves" and, now, behold, now that, in spite of all our baseness, we are forced into war again; now we are calling to the powers of the continent to interfere in our behalf!

THE KING OF SARDINIA.-The charge against our ministers, relative to this unfortunate monarch, has been, we perceive, since our last, brought forward by the Moniteur with still more seriousness than before. What we quoted then was from certain notes on the English parliamentary debates; but we now refer to an answer to the declaration laid before parliament on the 18th of May, which answer is very full on every point of complaint, and particularly on that which relates to the King of Sardinia. This answer is a very important publication we shall examine it part by part, hereafter. In the mean time, we are sorry that the ministers use no means to contradict the statement respecting the King of Sardinia, which, if true, must sink this country to the lowest degree of infamy. Mr. Pitt, in defending the peace, said, "we ought to have restored the King "of Sardinia if we could, but that we "could not do it." The French say, that we might have done it, but that we would not, unless we could have done it without giving up Ceylon or Trinidada. And yet we have the conscience to look to the Continent for allies, and to Russia above all other powers, Russia who has always desired to see a pro vision made for the King of Sardinia!

GARBLED PAPERS.In our preceding sheets, p. 821 and 886, we mentioned some of the principal circumstances relative to the

VOL. III. No. 25.]

DEFENCE OF THE COUNTRY.

This being the topic which now engages the attention of all those, who have sense enough to perceive the danger to which their country is exposed, and who have, at the same time, a wish to preserve it, and courage to endeavour to accomplish that wish, we think it our duty to devote a considerable part of the present sheet to the speech delivered, on the subject, by MR. WINDHAM, whose counsel, if it had been followed before, would have prevented the evils with which we are now beset; and, if followed now, may yet prevent those evils from terminating in our subjugation.—The Speech which we are about to insert, was delivered in the House of Commons, on the 20th instant in disapprobation of the plan, proposed by the ministers, for raising 50,000 men, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, by way of ballot, or military conscription. The plan, as described by the Secretary at War, was as follows. A body of 50,000 men, to be called the Army of Reserve, to be immediately raised by ballot, according to the following quotas: the counties of England and Wales, 31,000, London and the Tower Hamlets, 3,000, Scotland, 6,000, Ireland, 10,000. Whether the conscripts were to be allowed to find substitutes, or were, in case of not serving themselves, to pay a fine to the government, does not appear to have been determined on. The term of service was four years, with an extension, as to place, to any part of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Islands of Jersey and Guernsey.-The officers, to be com missioned by the King, were to come from the half-pay list of the army, from amongst those who had quitted the service for want of promotion, from the Marines, from the East India Company's service,

and, if all these sources were insufficient, as if this multifarious and motley groupe were not enough so, the remaining vacancies were proposed to be filled up by persons who served as officers in Volunteer Yeomanry Corps in Ireland, during the late rebellion, to which were to be added, if necessary, the officers of the Recruiting Staff, at the head of whom is GENERAL GRAEME, a person that the Secretary at War described as being "himself a

best," a circumstance at which, we trust, the na

tion must have heard with the most lively joy.Such were the out-lines of the plan, to which Mr. Windham made the objections that will be found in his speech. It will be perceived, too, that he did not object to this plan without proposing another instead of it; and, it only remains for the public and the Parliament to determine, which is the best.

SIR, The Honourable Gentleman has introduced this measure in a manner perfectly suitable to the solemnity of the occasion, and to the impression which such an occasion was likely to produce on his mind. I wish the measure itself had been equally suitable to the manner of its introduction, or to the circumstances out of which it has arisen. But, alas! it has fallen miserably short both of the occasion and of the expectation which I had allowed myself to form of it. Instead of helping us out of our difficulties it serves only to confirm a most material part of them, and for the rest, to give us but very imperfect and inadequate assistance. This grand measure of which so much expectation has been raised, turns out, at last, to be nothing more than a mere addition to the militia, with all the evils incident to that system, perverted and misapplied as it has been for a period of several years past. In addition to 70,000 men raised or raising according to that system upon the population of Great-Britain, and of 18,000 so raised in Ireland, we are now to have 10,000 more for Ireland and 40,000 for Great Britain, making in the whole the number of 138,000, of which 18,000 (the original militia in Ireland), are to be raised by bounty in the first instance, and the rest to be raised by ballot, with the privilege of 1 exemption from personal service, on the condition of finding a substitute. Does any man dream after this, that it is possible for Great Britain to have an army? The hope is utterly childish. The recruiting of the British army has, as every body knows, long stood still. An army not recruited must, by degrees, waste away. In spite of all the hopes, which some may indulge of transferring men hereafter by new bounties from

the force thus raised to the regular army,a most uncertain and ineligible method,the army must unavoidably stand still for the present, and one may venture to say, under the influence of such a system is not likely to be again put in motion.

This, therefore, is my great, leading, and fundamental objection to this measure, that it destroys all hope, now and hereafter, of a force truly regular,-that it completely cuts up the army. This it effects, not so much by the raising of so many men,—a measure which at the present moment I am not prepared to object to; but, by admitting the principle of substitution. That a compulsory levy cannot be made without a power of commutation of some sort or other, I am ready to allow. The grievance would be utterly intolerable. But I hoped, as the hon. gent. knows, that another mode might have been adopted, namely, that of commutation of service for a fixed fine; which tine should be paid not into the hands of the corps for the purpose of being laid out in providing a substitute, with all the effect which such an additional demand must have in raising the rate of the bounty, but should be paid to government, to be employed by them in any way they should think proper, or, if you choose to give i an appropriation, for the providing a recruit for the army. The great point is to abolish the present competition, under which it is impossible that the army can stand; and with this view, my meaning would cer tainly be, not merely to abolish this competition so far as it would arise from the body now proposed to be raised, but universally for the whole of the militia, old or new. There should be no recruiting but for the army. The militia, and every force raised by ballot should consist of nothing but the balloted men, so far as they would go. To insure the service of them, as far as I could, or as far as they were of a description to make their service desirable, I would impose a fine, greater or less, as might ultimately be thought right; but I would sooner leave the service incomplete, than, in order to complete it, introduce that fatal principle of substitution; wrong in a constitutional view if that were now worth attending to, but far more wrong and perfectly fatal from the effect which it must have of destroying all possibility of recruiting the army.

That it is the Militia system, extended as it has been of late years and changed, as it is, in its nature and character, that has eat out the army, nobody can reasonably doubt. What is there in the condition of this country that should make it incapable of having

an army in some degree, at least, proportionate to its population? or prevent its having now what it has had in all former times? That the Militia system, as carried on of late would and must prevent this, is perfectly obvious. I want to know what ground there is for concluding that there are any other causes, if these were removed, which must equally produce the same effect? When we say, therefore, that we can get no men for the army, the answer is that we have never fairly tried. Let the expe riment be bona fiae made. Abolish the com→ petition and in order to meet the effects of the change thus produced, begin now, what the H. G. says must be begun some time or other, and put your army on that new footing, which, without being necessary for its improvement; for I know not what improvement it wants; may be necessary to maintain its numbers. The first of these measures, as it has always appeared to me, is to change the condition of service from life to term of years; -- a measure on which, if I cannot say, that military men are unanimous, I may safely say, that they are near ly so, and to which I certainly have never heard any objection that could at all be set in competition with the advantages to be expected from it. Its advantages indeed, if they really exist, are of that sort which must take place of every other consideration. The first merit of a book, says a great critick, is to make itself read. The first merit in the constitution of an army is to provide that it should continue an army. Let the army, therefore, at this moment, and not at any time of future peace, and with a view to wars that may then be future, be put upon that footing, in which, in conjunction with other changes, it may hope to be recruited as it has heretofore been, and may release us from this dreadful and unheard-of state of being engaged in a war, without an offensive and disposeable force. With all the disadvantage which the very memory of the bounties heretofore given, will not fail to produce even when the bounties themselves, to this inordinate amount, shall be given no longer, I should not despair of seeing our army gradually restored, and the service again go on, as it did in all former times.

It is in conformity to these views that my judgment must be regulated upon the present measure. As a levy of so many men on the principle of ballot I may submit to it, government declaring it to be necessary, bes cause the urgency of the case seems to leave me no option, and hardly time to consider the question. But as a ballot including the further principles of substitution, I must

formally protest against it: because it tends to produce effects, which no consideration of present advantage could, perhaps, justify the incurring: but which, likewise, in my opinion, render the measure perfectly illcalculated to meet even the present danger. I may accept the ballot for the sake of the immediate force which it will produce, however disadvantageous I may think it in various other respects: but I must at least endeavour to disarm it of its chief mischief, by recommending that the terms of exemption from service should be a fixed fine, as I would, for the same reason, ex end that principle to every other part of the Militia.

:

But here I must make my formal complaint of the government, which by its neglect, its delays, its total want of all foresight and precaution, has brought us to a state in which no pressure that is presented to us, can be fairly judged of. We are in straits in which we have no room to turn ourselves. The danger presses upon us so immediately, that we have not time to consider what is best we must take up with what is first presented to us. Why has this measure been delayed to the present time? Why has it only now been discovered that a force of the sort now proposed would finally become necessary, and why, if such necessity was foreseen, has the time and manner of raising it only now been submitted to this House? Above all, why was the country reduced to its present defenceless state, immediately upon the signature of the Treaty of Amiens, in spite of what must have been obvious, one should have thought, to every common observer, of what the ministers now tell us, they themselves saw; namely, that the peace which they had made was no peace: but was open, at every moment, to such a rupture as that which has now happened. In this state did they think it right to dismantle our fleets, to reduce considerably our army, to discharge troops, which, in six weeks after, they wished to have back, or which if they did not wish to have back, as the H. G's gestares would seem to indicate, it is only a new proof how little they understood the real nature of their situation. All this was done for the miserable purpose of deluding the people with a false idea of the blessings, as they were called, of peace, and of the money they were to save by thus parting with all the means of safety.

Leaving these reflexions for the present, though I trust never forgetting them, let us return to the consideration of the measure immediately before us: and this, perhaps, we cannot properly judge of without taking into our view the larger principles on which measures of this sort must depend.

We are in a new and unprecedented state of things, in which new dangers exist, and new modes of resistance must be resorted to if we would hope not to be overcome by them. If we proceed in the old beaten course, if we think that what saved us heretofore must be sufficient to save us now, our destruction is inevitable.

The great desideratum which we have to make good, the great problem which we have to propose to ourselves, is to find the means by which that natural force, which, in this as in all similar instances, is on the side of those attacked, may be so applied as to overcome the superior advantages of another kind which may be found on the side of the enemy. If the enemy could bring with him an army not more considerable than that which we should have to oppose him, great as the object is at stake, much as I should advise that even in that case no precautions should be omitted, yet such is my confidence in the excellence of British troops, such are the proofs which they have given of their capacity to contend with and to overcome upon any thing like equal terms the troops with whom they would have to deal, that even without those subsidiary aids, which yet it would not be right to neglect, I should feel perfectly at ease about the event.

But we are to calculate upon the supposition, a supposition far from inconsistent with the probability of the fact, that the enemy may be able to land an army in this country greater either than the whole of our regular force, or at least than that part of it which could immediately be collected to oppose them. The question then is, how shall this deficiency be supplied?- And here we have, as the foundation of our hopes, this leading fact, that in the case of every in vaded country, but certainly of every invaded island, the physical force is always on the side of the invaded.-No country probably, was ever invaded by a force superior in number, to the portion of the inhabitants of that country capable of bearing arms. It certainly will not happen to us to be so. Were the enemy to find the means of putting on shore in different parts, a body of a hundred thousand men, a supposition not likely, but by no means to be rejected as impossible, the population of this very town. would yield a force that ought to make no difficulty of contending with them.-There is no question therefore of the sufficiency of physical force: but, though we are abundanily satisfied of this truth, to a degree indeed that leads us often into a childish and boastful confidence, let us not overlook another truth, not less important and certain, that in the conduct of human affairs it is