-The mi fluence, are still of the lowest orders; men | wherever I can find him or them, and though he should fly to the verge of nature, I will pursue him with increasing vengeance. So help me God, and bless me to keep this my oath inviolable."litary organization carried on by persons engaged in these societies has also proceeded to an alarming length; they assemble in large numbers, in general by night, upon heaths or commons, which are numerous and extensive in-some of the districts where the disturbances have been most serious; so assembled they take the usual military precautions of paroles and countersigns; then muster rolls are called over by numbers not by names; they are directed by leaders sometimes in disguise; they place sentries to give alarm at the approach of any persons whom they may suspect of meaning to interrupt or give information of their proceedings, and they disperse instantly at the firing of a gun, or other signal agreed upon, and so disperse as to avoid detection. They have in some instances used signals by rockets or blue lights, by which they communicate intelligence to their parties.They have procured a considerable quantity of arms, by the depredations which are daily and nightly continued; they have plundered many places of lead, for the purpose of making musket balls, and have made some seizures of gunpowder.Their progress in discipline appears from the representation before given of the two attacks upon the mills of Rawdon and Henbury; and the money, which has been in many instances obtained by contribution or plunder, answers the purpose of support, and may serve as an inducement to many persons to engage in these disturbances.- -The system of intimidation produced not only by the oaths and engagements before mentioned, or by threats of violence, but by the attack and destruction of houses and factories, by actual assassination in some instances, and attempts at assassination in others, under circumstances which have hitherto generally baffled all endeavours to discover and bring to justice the offenders, all tend to render these proceedings greatly alarming to the country. In many parts the quiet inhabitants consider themselves as enjoying protection only as far as the military force can extend its exertions, and look upon rest of the country where the disturbances take place as at the mercy of the rioters.The legal proceedings at Nottingham checked the disposition to disturbance in that quarter, but this effect did not extend to of desperate fortunes, who have taken advantage of the pressure of the moment, to work upon the inferior class, through the medium of the Associations in the manufacturing parts of the country. -The general persuasion of the persons engaged in these transactions appear, however, to be, that all the societies in the country are directed in their motions by a secret committee, and that this secret committee is therefore the great mover of the whole machine; and it is established by the various information to which the committee has before alluded, that societies are formed in different parts of the country; that these societies are governed by their respective secret committees; that delegates are continually dispatched from one place to another, for the purpose of concerting their plans; and that secret signs are arranged, by which the persons engaged in these conspiracies are known to each other. The form of the oath or engagement administered to those who are inlisted in these societies, also refers expressly to the existence of such secret committees.The object of this oath is to prevent discovery, by deterring through the fear of assassination those who take it from impeaching others, and by binding them to assassinate those by whom any of the persons engaged may be impeached. These oaths appear to have been administered to a considerable extent; copies of them have been obtained from various quarters, and though slightly differing in terms, they are so nearly the same, as to prove the systematic nature of the concert by which they are administered.The oath itself is of so atrocious a nature, that your committee have thought it right to insert the form, as it appears in one of those copies :- "I, A. B. of my own voluntary will, do declare and solemnly swear, that I never will reveal to any person or persons under the canopy of Heaven the names of the persons who compose this secret committee, their proceedings, meeting, places of abode, dress, features, connexions, or any thing else that might lead to a discovery of the same, either by word or deed, or sign, under the penalty of being sent out of the world by the first brother who shall meet me, and my name and character blotted out of existence, and never to be remembered but with contempt and abhorrence; and I further now do swear, that I will use my best endeavours to punish by death any traitor or traitors, should any rise up amongst us, the other parts of the country; and though the rogative over British subjects. British juproceedings under the special commissions risdiction is thus extended to neutral vessels since issued, and the convictions and execu- in a situation where no laws can operate tions at Lancaster and Chester appeared to but the law of nations and the laws of the make a considerable impression, they have country to which the vessels belong; and a been far from restoring peace and security self redress is assumed, which if British to the disturbed districts.- A great mili- subjects were wrongfully detained and tary force has been assembled; the Local alone concerned, is that substitution of Militia has been in many places called out, force for a resort to the responsible Soveand has done good service; the yeomanry reign, which falls within the definition of corps have been active and highly useful. war. Could the seizure of British subjects, Many of the magistrates have zealously ex- in such cases, be regarded as within the erted their powers, some of them at great exercise of a belligerent right, the acknowpersonal hazard. In many places great ledged laws of war, which forbid an ar numbers of special constables have been ticle of captured property to be adjudged, appointed from amongst the more respect- without a regular investigation before a able inhabitants, and the Watch and Ward competent tribunal, would imperiously deAct has been in some places put in force, mand the fairest trial, where the sacred though attempted without effect in others, rights of persons were at issue. In place or abandoned from circumstances already of such trial, these rights are subjected to stated. All these efforts have proved in- the will of every petty Commander. sufficient effectually to put down the spirit The practice, hence, is so far from affectof disturbance; and it is, therefore, the de- ing British subjects alone, that under the cided opinion of your Committee, that some pretext of searching for these, thousands of further measures should be immediately American citizens, under the safeguard of adopted by Parliament, for affording more public laws, and of their National flag, effectual protection to the lives and proper- have been torn from their country, and ties of His Majesty's subjects, and for sup- from every thing dear to them; have been pressing a system of turbulence and disorder dragged on board ships of war of a foreign which has already proved destructive of the nation, and exposed, under the severities tranquillity and highly injurious to the pro- of their discipline, to be exiled to the most perty and welfare of some of the most po-distant and deadly climes, to risk their pulous and important districts of the country, and which, unless effectually checked, may lead to consequences still more extensive and dangerous. OFFICIAL PAPERS. AMERICAN STATES.-Message of President Madison to the Congress, 1st June, 1812, relative to the dispute with England. lives in the battles of their oppressors, and to be the melancholy instruments of taking away those of their own brethren. Against this crying enormity, which Great Britain would be so prompt to avenge, if committed against herself, the United States have in vain exhausted remonstrances and expostulations. And that no proof might be wanting of their conciliatory dispositions, and no pretext left for continuance of the practice, the British GovernI communicate to Congress certain do- ment was formally assured of the readiness cuments, being a continuation of those of the United States to enter into arrangeheretofore laid before them, on the subject ments, such as could not be rejected, if of our affairs with Great Britain.- -With- the recovery of the British subjects were out going beyond the renewal, in 1803, of the real and the sole object. The commu the war in which Great Britain is engaged, nication passed without effect.-British and omitting unrepaired wrongs of inferior cruizers have been in the practice also of magnitude, the conduct of her Government violating the rights and the peace of our presents a series of acts hostile to the United coasts. They hover over and harass our States as an independent and neutral nation. entering and departing commerce. To the -British cruizers have been in the con- most insulting pretensions they have added tinued practice of violating the American lawless proceedings in our very harbours, flag on the great highway of Nations, and and have wantonly spilt American blood of seizing and carrying off persons sailing within the sanctuary of our territorial juunder it; not in the exercise of a bellige- risdiction. The principles and rules en ́rent right, founded on the law of nations forced by that nation, when a neutral against an enemy, but of a municipal pre-nation, against armed vessels of belligerents British products; thus asserting an obligation on a neutral power to require one belligerent to encourage, by its internal regulations, the trade of another belligerent, contradicting her own practice towards all nations in peace as well as in war; and be traying the insincerity of those professions, which inculcated a belief, that, having hovering near her coasts, and disturbing tical discontinuance of its orders, formally her commerce, are well known. When avowed a determination to persist in them called on, nevertheless, by the United against the United States, until the marStates, to punish the greater offences com-kets of her enemy should be laid open to mitted by her own vessels, her Government has bestowed on their commanders additional marks of honour and confidence.Under pretended blockades, without the presence of an adequate force, and sometimes without the practicability of applying one, our commerce has been plundered in every sea; the great staples of our country have been cut off from their legitimate mar-resorted to her orders with regret, she was kets; and a destructive blow aimed at our agricultural and maritime interests. In aggravation of these predatory measures, they have been considered as in force from the dates of their notification; a retrospective effect being thus added, as has been done in other important cases, to the un-relate to the United States, that a formality lawfulness of the course pursued.-And to render the outrage the more signal, these mock blockades have been reiterated and enforced in the face of official communications from the British Government, declaring, as the true definition of a legal blockade, "that particular ports must be actually invested, and previous warning given to vessels bound to them not to enter.' anxious to find an occasion for putting an end to them.-Abandoning still more all respect for the neutral rights of the United States, and for its own consistency, the British Government now demands as prerequisites to a repeal of its Orders, as they formal disavowal of conditions and pretensions advanced by the French Government, for which the United States are so far from having been themselves responsible, that, in official explanations, which have been published to the world, and in a correspondence of the American Minister at London with the British Minister for Foreign Affairs, such a responsibility was explicitly and emphatically disclaimed. should be observed in the repeal of the French decrees no wise necessary to their termination, nor exemplified by British usage; and that the French repeal, besides including that portion of the decrees which operates within a territorial jurisdiction as well as that which operates on the high seas against the commerce of the United "States, should not be a single special repeal -Not content with these occasional ex- in relation to the United States, but should pedients for laying waste our neutral trade, be extended to whatever other neutral nathe Cabinet of Great Britain resorted, at tions unconnected with them may be af length, to the sweeping system of block- fected by those decrees.And as an adades, under the name of Orders in Council,ditional insult, they are called on for a which has been moulded and managed as might best suit its political views, its commercial jealousies, or the avidity of British cruizers.To our remonstrances against the complicated and transcendent injustice of this innovation, the first reply was that the orders were reluctantly adopted by Great Britain as a necessary retaliation on decrees of her enemy proclaiming a general blockade of the British Isles, at a time when the naval force of that enemy dared not to issue from his ports. She was reminded without effect, that her own prior blockades, unsupported by an adequate naval force actually applied and continued, were a bar to this plea; that executed edicts against millions of our property could not be retaliation on edicts confessedly impossible to be executed; that retaliation, to be just, should fall on the party setting the guilty example, not on an innocent party, which was not even chargeable with an acquiescence in it.- When deprived of this flimsy veil for a prohibition of our trade with Great Britain, her Cabinet, instead of a corresponding repeal of a prac It has become indeed sufficiently cer tain that the commerce of the United States is to be sacrificed, not as interfering with belligerent rights of Great Britain, not as supplying the wants of their enemies, which she herself supplies, but as interfering with the monopoly which she covets for her own commerce and navigation. She carries on a war against the lawful commerce of a friend, that she may the better carry on a commerce with an enemy, a commerce polluted by the forgeries and perjuries which are for the most part the only passports by which it can succeed.--Anxious to make every experiment short of the last resort of injured nations, the United States have withheld from Great Britain, under | enabled the United States to demand from successive modifications, the benefits of a France the pledged repeal of her decrees ; free intercourse with their market, the loss either with success, in which case the way of which could not but outweigh the profits would have been opened for a general reaccruing from her restrictions of our com- peal of the belligerent edicts; or without merce with other nations. And to entitle success, in which case the United States those experiments to the more favourable would have been justified in turning their consideration, they were so framed as to measures exclusively against France. The enable her to place her adversary under the British Government would, however, neiexclusive operation of them. To these ap- ther rescind the blockade, nor declare its peals her government has been equally in non-existence, nor permit its non-existence Hexible, as if willing to make sacrifices of to be inferred and affirmed by the Amerievery sort, rather than yield to the claims can Plenipotentiary. On the contrary, by of justice, or renounce the errors of a false representing the blockade to be comprepride. Nay, so far were the attempts car- hended in the Orders in Council, the ried to overcome the attachment of the Bri- United States were compelled so to regard tish Cabinet to its unjust edicts, that it it in their subsequent proceedings. received every encouragement, within the There was a period when a favourable competency of the executive branch of our change in the policy of the British Cabinet government, to expect that a repeal of them was justly considered as established. The would be followed by a war between the Minister Plenipotentiary of his Britannic United States and France, unless the French Majesty here proposed an adjustment of the edicts should also be repealed. Even this differences more immediately endangering communication, although silencing for ever the harmony of the two countries. The the plea of a disposition in the United proposition was accepted with a promptiStates to acquiesce in those edicts, originally tude and cordiality corresponding with the the sole plea for them, received no attention. invariable professions of this Government. -If no other proof existed of a predeter- A foundation appeared to be laid for a sinmination of the British Government against cere and lasting reconciliation. The proa repeal of its Orders, it might be found in spect, however, quickly vanished. The the correspondence of the Minister Pleni- whole proceeding was disavowed by the potentiary of the United States at London British Government, without any explanaand the British Secretary for Foreign Af- tion which could at that time repress the fairs in 1810, on the question whether the belief, that the disavowal proceeded from a blockade of May 1806 was considered as in spirit of hostility to the commercial rights force or as not in force. It had been ascer- and prosperity of the United States. tained that the French Government, which it has since come into proof, that at the very urged this blockade as the ground of its de- moment when the public Minister was holdcree, was willing, in the event of its re- ing the language of friendship, and inspired moval, to repeal that decree; which being confidence in the sincerity of the negociation followed by alternate repeals of the other with which he was charged, a secret agent offensive edicts, might abolish the whole of his government was employed in insystem on both sides. This inviting oppor- trigues, having for their object a subversion tunity for accomplishing an object so im- of our Government, and a dismemberment portant to the United States, and professed of our happy union.In reviewing the so often to be the desire of both the bellige- conduct of Great Britain towards the United rents, was made known to the British Go- States, our attention is necessarily drawn vernment. As that Government admits to the warfare just renewed by the savages that an actual application of an adequate on one of our extensive frontiers; a warfare force is necessary to the existence of a legal which is known to spare neither age nor sex, blockade; and it was notorious, that if and to be distinguished by features peculiarly such a force had ever been applied, its long shocking to humanity. It is difficult to acdiscontinuance had annulled. the blockade count for the activity and combinations in question, there could be no sufficient ob- which have for some time been developing jection on the part of Great Britain to a for- themselves among the tribes in constant inmal revocation of it; and no imaginable ob- tercourse with the British traders and garjection to a declaration of the fact that the risons, without connecting their hostility blockade did not exist. The declaration with that influence; and without recollectwould have been consistent with her avow-ing the authenticated examples of such ined principles of blockade, and would have (To be continued.) And 2231 66 As illustrated in the Prosecution and Punishment of WILLIAM COBBETT. [224 In order that my countrymen and that the two sureties in the sum of 1,000 pounds each; world may not be deceived, duped, and cheated that the whole of this sentence has been executed upon this subject, I, WILLIAM COBBETT, | upon me, that I have been imprisoned the two of Botley, in Hampshire, put upon record years, have paid the thousand pounds TO THE the following facts; to wit: That, on the 24th KING, and have given the bail, Timothy Brown June, 1809, the following article was pub- and Peter Walker, Esqrs. being my sureties; lished in a London news-paper, called the that the Attorney General was Sir Vicary Gibbs, COURIER:"The Mutiny amongst the LO- the Judge who sat at the trialLord Ellenborough, "CAL MILITIA, which broke out at Ely, was the four Judges who sat at passing sentence Eulen"fortunately suppressed on Wednesday by the borough, Grose, Le Blanc, and Bailey; and that "arrival of four squadrons of the GERMAN the jurors were, Thomas Rhodes of Hampstead "LEGION CAVALRY from Bury, under the Road, John Davis of Southampton Place, James "command of General Auckland. Five of the Ellis of Tottenham Court Road, John Richards "ringleaders were tried by a Court-Martial, and of Bayswater, Thomas Marsham of Baker Street, "sentenced to receive 500 lashes cach, part of which Robert Heathcote of High Street Marylebone, "punishment they received on Wednesday, and John Maud of York Place Marylebone, George a part was remitted. A stoppage for their knap- Baxter of Church Terrace Paneras, Thomas "sacks was the ground of the complaint that ex- Taylor of Red Lion Square, David Deane of St.. "cited this mutinous spirit, which occasioned John Street, William Palmer of Upper Street "the men to surround their officers, and demand Islington, Henry Favre of Pall Mall; that the "what they deemed their arrears. The first Prime Ministers during the time were Spencer "division of the German Legion halted yesterday Perceval, until he was shot by John Bellingham, "at Newmarket on their return to Bury."- and after that Robert B. Jenkinson, Earl of LiThat, on the 1st July, 1809, I published, in the verpool; that the prosecution and sentence took Political Register, an article censuring, in the place in the reign of King George the Third, and strongest terms, these proceedings; that, for so that, he having become insane during my impridoing, the Attorney General prosecuted, as sedi- sonment, the 1,000 pounds was paid to his son, tious libellers, and by Ex-Officio Information, the Prince Regent, in his behalf; that, during my me, and also my printer, my publisher, and one imprisonment, I wrote and published 364 Essays of the principal retailers of the Political Register; and Letters upon political subjects; that, during that I was brought to trial on the 15th June, the same time, I was visited by persons from 197 1810, and was, by a Special Jury, that is to say, cities and towns, many of them as a sort of depoby 12 men out of 48 appointed by the Master of ties from Societies or Clubs; that, at the expirathe Crown Office, found guilty; that, on the tion of my imprisonment, on the 9th of July, 1812, 20th of the same month, I was compelled to give a great dinner was given in London for the purbail for my appearance to receive judgment; pose of receiving me, at which dinner upwards of and that, as I came up from Botley (to which 600 persons were present, and at which Sir place I had returned to my family and my farm Francis Burdett presided; that dinners and other on the evening of the 15th), a Tipstaff went parties were held on the same occasion in many down from London in order to seize me, per- other places in England; that, on my way home, sonally; that, on the 9th of July, 1810, I, toge- I was received at Alton, the first town in Hampther with my printer, publisher, and the news-shire, with the ringing of the Church bells; that man, were brought into the Court of King's Bench to receive judgment; that the three former were sentenced to be imprisoned for some months in the King's Bench prison; that I was sentenced to be imprisoned for two years in Newgate, the great receptacle for malefactors, and the front of which is the scene of numerous hangings in the course of every year; that the part of the prison in which I was sentenced to be confined is sometimes inhabited by felons, that felons were actually in it at the time I entered it; that one man was taken out of it to be transported in about 48 hours after I was put into the same yard with him; and that it is the place of confinement for men guilty of unnatural crimes, of whom there are four in it at this time; that, besides this imprisonment, I was sentenced to pay a thousand pounds TO THE KING, and to give security for my good behaviour for seven years, myself in the sum of 3,000 pounds, and a respectable company met me and gave me a WM. COBBETT. Published by R. BAGSHAW, Brydges-Street, Covent-Garden. |