tent the experiment may be carried and yet fail, has been exemplified in France: the horrors of the religious wars in that country exceed those of its revolution tenfold; and St Bartholomew's day should be marked as a Dies Nefastus for the admonition of mankind in every kalendar to the end of time. Now we know that the utmost length to which Lord Sidmouth would proceed would be that of a short imprisonment, or an easy fine inflicted upon the person who should obstinately persist in preaching after a licence had been refused. What would be the consequence? the first infliction of either would elevate the most ignorant enthusiast to the rank of a confessor among his fellow-sectarians. The fine would be readily paid, or if imprisonment were adopted, the prisons would soon be filled, for there is a state of mind (and of all states of mind it is the most contagious and the most seductive) in which men brave persecution; and the trade of contraband preaching would become so popular, so fascinating, and even so gainful, that where one fanatic now applies for a licence, ten would preach without one. We have said thus much because the plan of restricting licences has been thought advisable by many persons who have not considered the alternative to which government would necessarily be reduced by it, of becoming either contemptible by suffering its enactments to be set at defiance, or oppressive and odious by enforcing them. There is but one class of fanatics with whom the legislature ought to interfere, and that consists of those who affect to prophesy and to preach a new revelation. The founders of such sects are manifestly either madmen or impostors; if the former, bedlam is the fit place for them as an hospital,--if the

latter, it serves them properly for a prison. These moral diseases are so infectious, that, on the first symptom, the tainted person should be convey. ed to the pest house, lest the plague should spread. This course was pur. sued with Brothers, and its success was so complete that the precedent ought to have been followed. In such cases the bishops should interfere they would prevent a scandal from being brought on religion, and they would save many well-meaning but credulous persons from bringing ruin upon themselves and their families. The line of distinction is plain. We cannot prevent persons from praying as they please, nor preaching if they please, these must be lawful acts; but we are fully justified in prohibiting prophecy, and in treating those persons as madmen who pretend to an immediate intercourse with the Almighty.

Lord Sidmouth attributed the great increase of conventicles, and of the persons frequenting them, to a more general sense of religion, occasioned by the awful occurrences of the last twenty years, and to the increasing population of the country, while the number of churches and of the established clergy remained the same. "The most effectual check," he said, "to the progress of schism must be derived from an augmentation of the number of churches properly endowed, to which all persons should have access. Proprietary chapels would not answer the purpose, un less it were enacted, as he thought it ought to be, that no pew-rent should be taken for a certain proportion of the area of places of public worship to be consecrated in future."-The fitness of permitting a trade in places of public worship might well be questioned; nor was Lord Sidmouth

right in ascribing the increase of methodism to these insufficient causes, its causes lie deeper; they are to be found in its admirable organization, in the nature of its doctrines, and in the human heart.* His motion was carried without a dissenting yoice. The archbishop of Canterbury agreed with him, that our population, particularly in large towns, far exceeded the machinery by which the beneficial effects of our church establishment could be communicated. Earl Grosvenor affirmed, that such was the ignorance of persons who applied for licences, that, out of no large number,

seven or eight spelt the word gospel differently, and as many others made their mark instead of signing their names on paying their shillings for a licence under the act. The lord chancellor also expressed his approbation of Lord Sidmouth's intentions, and hoped something would be done to prevent those abuses which were practised under the toleration act, by which men took advantage of that liberat enactment to avoid that civil or mili tary service, which, he said, no conscientious or religious persons would seek by such means to evade. Here the subject rested for the present.

THE parliamentary proceedings of the year 1809 excited the public attention in a more than ordinary degree, and their history has therefore necessarily extended to an unusual length. Yet of the transactions of Parliament a small part only is capable of being thus recorded; the greater, and not the least important, portion occasions no discussion, and is hardly heard of even in the House itself, except by those persons by whom the actual business is performed. In the course of the session, the number of public acts that were passed amounted to 129; of local and personal ones, to 192; and of those which were not printed, to 112. The external history of the year is not less crowded with events. From the Baltic to the Euxine, and from the Scheldt to the Danube, almost every part of Europe was visited with war or revolution, or groaned under the heaviest yoke that ever ignorant and ferocious tyranny imposed upon mankind.

Early in the year, one of those events occurred, which, above all others, raise the exultation of the

English people. Our blockading squadron off Brest, under Admiral Lord Gambier, was driven from its station about the middle of February by the continued prevalence of tempestuous westerly winds. On the 23d they returned, and discovered that the enemy's fleet had escaped, Lord Gambier had no information when they got out, nor what course they had taken. He had therefore no alternative but that of obeying his orders, which expressly directed him upon such an event to detach the senior flag officer in pursuit, with such force as might be thought sufficient, and return himself to Cawsand Bay for farther instructions. Mor tifying as this was to the feelings of a brave man, nothing else could be done; he therefore placed the rest of the squadron under Sir J. Duckworth's command, and made sail with only his own ship, the Caledonia, for port. The immediate supposi tion was, that the French would make for Ferrol, and bring out the fleet which had been betrayed to them in that port. This it was too late to

prevent, and where to follow them then, whether their destination was the Mediterranean or the West Indies, or South America, could only be conjectured. Sir J. Duckworth sailed for Cadiz; there he remained long enough to ascertain that they were not bound to the Mediterranean, then ran for Madeira, where all the high hopes of his squadron were destroyed, by certain information that they had no chance of meeting the enemy, whom, if they could have met, they were so sure of defeating.

The squadron which had thus escaped out of port consisted of eight sail of the line and two frigates. They made first for L'Orient, to liberate the ships which were blockaded there. In this they so far succeeded, that Captain Tronde, according to the boast of the French official account, was able to run out with his squadron to fulfil the mission which the emperor had entrusted to him. Three frigates were to join them here; they could not get out that evening, and Admiral Willaumez could not wait for them, being in that state of hurry and alarm which is now become natural to a Frenchman at sea, from the constant expectation of failing in with an English force, and the certainty, in that case, of being defeated. On the night of the 23d, Admiral Stopford, who was at anchor with his squadron off the Chasseron light-house, saw the French ships to the eastward; he chased them till day-light, when they stood into the Pertuis d'Antioche. Having no doubt that this was the Brest squadron, he then dispatched the Naiad to inform Lord Gambier. The Naiad having got a few miles to the N. W., made signal for three sail appearing suspicious; they were the three frigates from L'Orient standing in for

the Sable d'Olonne. The admiral made chase, leaving two frigates to watch Willaumez; and seeing that they had anchored in a position which he thought attackable, stood in with the Defiance, the Amelia, the Donegal, and his own ship the Cæsar, and opened his fire in passing, as near as the depth would permit the two latter ships to go. The Defiance, drawing much less water, was judiciously anchored by Captain Hotham within half a mile of the enemy, from whence, aided by the other ships, he kept up so severe and well-directed a fire, that two of the French frigates cut their cables and ran ashore, and the third was soon driven ashore also. The ebb tide was now making in so fast, that our ships were obliged to stand out, leaving all the frigates ashore. The Defiance lost two men killed and 25 wounded, and all her masts were much injured; less loss than might have been expected, for the enemy had anchored under the protection of some strong batteries. One was killed, six wounded, on board the Donegal. The Casar suffered only in her bowsprit and rigging; the Amelia not at all. The French, in their official account, boasted of this action, affirming that they had beaten off a superior force of the English; they took care not to add, that their own ships had been driven aground and rendered unserviceable, and they also carefully omitted, that this passed almost within sight of a superior force of their own, which did not dare attempt to succour them. In fact, the chief object of Admiral Stopford in attacking them so near a superior force was to endeavour to draw that force out. Being disappointed in this, he returned at sunset to the Chasseron. The next day he was joined by reinforcements, making his squadron seven sail of the line and

five frigates. On the 26th the enemy weighed from Basque Roads, and proceeding to the Isle of Aix, anchored to join the Rochefort squadron. One of these ships, the Jean Bart, of 74 guns, grounded on the shoals near Isle Madame, called Les Palles, and was totally lost. The force of the enemy when thus united consisted of eleven sail of the line, three frigates, and the Calcutta.

The French ministers who planned this expedition expected to strike a blow against some of our small block. ading squadrons. They announced in the official journal that this was the object; that Willaumez had sailed by Buonaparte's command to attack the English who were blockading L'Orient and Isle d'Aix, and so to relieve those harbours. But the English, they added, having received intelligence of their approach, had escaped from Basque Roads. However, thus much had been effected, that Tronde had been able to run out from L'Orient, and that the Brest fleet had united itself with the Rochefort division in the roads of Isle d'Aix. At the time when this statement was published at Paris, Admiral Stopford, who had never been farther from his station than the place where he had driven the frigates ashore, was with an inferior force blockading these united squadrons.

Lord Gambier was joined by the Naiad before he reached Cawsand Bay. On the 3d of March he received orders to put to sea with five sail of the line, and any frigates and small vessels that might be ready, to form a junction with Rear Admiral Stopford, and then proceed in pursuit of the enemy, if they should have sailed from Basque Roads, which it was supposed would be the case, and which indeed they would have done

if they had not been intimidated by the trifling force that watched them. On the 7th his lordship arrived off Rochefort, and found the French still there, anchored in a situation which they thought perfectly secure, having spared no means to render it so.

Basque Roads lie between the main land, the Isle of Rhe, and the Isle of Oleron. The entrance from the Bay of Biscay between these two islands through the Pertuis d'Antioche is too wide to be defended by batteries; this roadstead, therefore, we now consider as ours, and our ships anchor in it with the same confidence as if it were upon our own shores. At the bottom of a bay on the east side stands Rochelle, a city whose melancholy history we have reason to remember with regret; for had this country, in former times, supported the Protestant cause with that vigour which it was as well her duty as her interest to have displayed, that part of France might at this day have been allied, and perhaps united with Great Britain. The entrance to the inner or Aix Road, to which the enemy had retired, lies between a long sand-shoal, called the Boyart, and the Isle of Aix, whose batteries were supposed to command the passage.

The navigation here is exceedingly difficult, because of the number of shoals on every side. Here is the mouth of the Charente defended by the Isle of Aix as by an outwork, by the batteries on the Isle of Oleron, by its own forts, and by Isle Madame, lying immediately in the mouth. A few leagues up the river is the strong town and important port of Rochefort. The enemy's ships were anchored in two lines, very near each other, in a direction due south from the fort on the Isle of Aix, and the ships in each line were not farther