daring ambition of this second Alexander, who aimed at the conquest of the entire world. France had gained by the peace: like the spell of a magician, it immediately opened to her the obstructed passages to the West Indies, Africa, and Asia; to every region to which otherwise she could not have made her way. After a variety of argument in support of his former opinions, he concluded, by vindicating the fidelity of Austria in her engagements with this country.

The chancellor of the exchequer vindicated the conduct of administration from those charges of want of vigour and energy, which were so often brought against them. During the war, there was no want of vigour in conducting it with energy and success. There were some gentlemen who were in the habit of making exaggerated statements, and using language tending to war.Others, on the contrary, seemed to be ready to make any sacrifices for the maintenance of peace. Ministers would not follow the advice of either, but adopt a middle course, which should be at the same time firm and moderate.

Sir James Pulteney supported the conduct of the ministers.

Lord Hawkesbury, Mr. Canning, and Mr. Bragge, each made a few observations.

The chancellor of the exchequer, in reply to a question of Mr. Elliot's, said, the saving in consequence of peace, might be 25 millions sterling annually.

The report was then agreed to, and the address was presented to his majesty by the whole house, on the following day; when his majesty returned a most gracious answer,

Having thus given at considerable length, the debates which took place in both houses of parliament on the king's speech, and the consequent address; our readers will thereby have been enabled, to form a more perfect opinion, of what the sense of the imperial representation was upon public affairs at this crisis, than from any statement we could possibly pretend to give. With the exception of Mr. Pitt, all those characters to whom the public were taught to look up in the moment of danger and peril, for counsel and direction, had elaborately given their opinions; and a singular and unusual coincidence to the tenor of the proposed address, appeared for a moment to assimilate and unite the jarring elements, of which it was well known those assemblies were composed. But in fact, it was far otherwise. Never did party round and collect itself more strongly, or determine with more decision on the conduct it meant to pursue, than at this moment; and even in the assent, given by those who notoriously differed from administration, to the address, were the grounds and motives of the most determined opposition laid bare, and exposed to public view. In the speech from the throne, government, all at once dropping that tone of confidence in the good dispositions of the present ruler of France towards this country, to the surprize and dismay of a people, who had too eagerly depended on the assurances of Mr. Addington and his colleagues, that we were in possession of, and might enjoy in undisturbed tranquility, the " blessings of peace;" had announced the necessity of warlike preparation,

in a way not to be misunderstood, and which it was impossible (though cfert was spared for the purpose) to explain away or deny. In vain cid the supporters of the minister art, that this preparation was not meant to apply to any circumstances now actually existing; but rather to those, which might possiby exist hereafter: that, though To meant to disturb France in the controul and preponderance she had surped over the rest of the powers of Europe, yet it might contribute materially to prevent her farther encroachments. This reasoning, or rather sophistry, met with no credit or approbation, save from those who are always to be found in the ranks of the minister of the hour; or from those who thought peace preferable, Lader any circumstances of national race and dishonor, to a renewal of contest, doubtful and hazardous as it must prove in the event. To all others, it was evident that the ters themselves had taken alarm; that they were roused from supineness; and that they were anxious to tread back those , which a total want of politica experience, or the love of place had induced them to tae, perhaps to the utter destruc

and

power,

of the country they had been led upon to govern. Yet was the magnanimity wanting, fairly to come forward with an avowal of her errors. In the face of circumstances the most notorious, they persisted in defending their past erduct, and in maintaining the truth and consistency of their pacific predictions, at the very moment, when they called on the country for a war expence, and a war establishment!

Opposition to such apparent imbecility, began now however to appear in a quarter, the most alarming to the personal feelings of the minister, as well as to his prospects of continuance at the helm of public affairs. It was well known, that for his present power, as indeed for his very political existence, he was indebted to the recommendation and protection of Mr. Pitt. That great man had supported him on the abstract principles of the peace, as exhibited in the preliminary articles; nor did he desert him in carrying that measure through the more distressing details of the treaty of Amiens. In giving this support, he certainly carried his friendship to an extreme. Nor could any assistance, short of this powerful aid, have enabled Mr. Addington to urge measures, which revolted every principle of national feeling and national honor; and which the short period that had elapsed, from its consummation to the present meeting of parliament, had abundantly proved to be as hollow and fallacious, as it was disgraceful and dishonorable. But, however consistent it might be with the character of Mr. Addington and his colleagues in power, to defend those measures, which all experience and all policy had decided upon, as unwise and unsafe; yet from the late minister, a very different line of conduct was looked for, and not looked for in vain.--Was it possible for him, however he might have supported even the treaty of Amiens, such as it was, to behold with indifference, ❝ere the ink was dry with which it was signed, or the wax cold with which it was

sealed,"

sealed," its abuse and its violation? Could he witness without emotion the promulgation of secret treaties, by which territory upon territory were added to the republick:-the annexation of Piedmont; the siezure of Parma; the possession of Louisiana; the hard measure which our faithful but unfortunate allies of Sardinia and Orange had experienced from the despot, whose universal empire that treaty had gone so far towards establishing; the new modelling the empire of Germany in a manner at once the most arbitrary and unjust, in defiance of the constitution of the empire itself, and of the treaty of Westphalia, by which Great Britain guaranteed that constitution; the cruel and unmérited encroachments on Switzerland; in short, the assumption of all power and authority on the continent: while with respect to the British empire, the conduct of France was not less conspicuously overbearing and hostile: the sailing to the West Indies of an immense armament, even before peace was concluded; the most direct attacks upon our commercial spirit of adventure, and commercial security; the contemptuous tone of the French official papers, which sneeringly told all Europe, that "England should have the treaty of Amiens, and nothing but the treaty of Amiens;"+ the prodigious increase of her military and marine establishments, from the moment she had disgraced us in the eyes of all Europe, by formally limiting our political affairs to our immediate insular concerns, in all her public declarations, and by

her conduct immediately subsequent to the treaty; by the encouragement and protection the Irish jacobinical emigrants and proscripts experienced at Paris; and finally by the establishment of an English newspaper in her metropolis, under the auspices of the government itself, and the direction of those traitors, whose avowed object was to keep alive the spirit of rebellion and discontent, among that unhappy class of people, against their native (perhaps in many cases too lenient) government? It was not, we repeat, possible for the great and comprehensive mind of Mr. Pitt to see unmoved, the conduct of those whom he had placed in power, so utterly disproportioned to the magnitude of the approaching evil: he could not approve of their weakening the force of the country, in an exact ratio with the increasing strength of a power, whose every step indicated unabated fierceness and hostility: he could not approve, under the formidable acquisition of strength to France, which had accrued to her, either by negociation or by violence, since the period of the cessation of hostilities, of the supineness of ministers, who looked on with apparent apathy at all that passed, without one exertion or solitary remonstrance,which might shew our sense of the conduct of our enemy, or might check his predatory ambition: under such circumstances he could not approve the surrender of those conquests one by one, which had been the hard-earned meed of British valour and enterprize, and the fruit of hi

vigorou

virus councils: he could not Witness, without bitter pangs, the approach of that enervating langr, which had already stolen upon the councils, and over the spirit of the people; nor without a seret determination, to rouse the atient energies of his country, and rescue her from that sleep of death which had already palsied her extenties, and threatened to sieze upon her vitals. Yet was he unwilling all at once to drive back to obscurity those whom he, and he ae, had raised into notice.— Anent habits, personal friendship, and perhaps that desire of preserving consistency, which must ever have its que weight with every public man, deterred him from appearing in the foremost ranks of opposition on the present occasion; but his support was no longer to be found: he did not appear, as he was wont, the prop and bulwark of the admiListration; and both its friends and its eneries, in his absence saw the Cats of future irresistible oppoS to its existence. Nor was this -that person who was supposed to be, more than any other individual, interior with his councils and determinations, in the most marked Faber disapproved of the conduct ministers, since the conclusion of the peace, and coincided with them in the address, only as it approved that state of preparation the spee h from the throne announced as necessary, and which initsed conveyed the severest censure on the disarming system purSe smee the treaty of Amiens. Many of those who were considered personally attached to the late mi

• Mr. Canning.

nister, in both houses of parliament, avowed the same sentiments; nor from the period of the discussion we allude to, was there thenceforward any cordiality or effectual co-operation looked for, from any quarter, between the late and present ministers.

The defalcation from the side of government, of those who originally supported the peace, did not include great strength of numbers-But their leader was himself a host-They might be considered as the converts of circumstances.-Not so the steady band of politicians, who, generalising their ideas, and arguing from the immutable nature of things, had early applied political science to the existing circumstances, at the periods of the preliminary and definitive treaties; had exposed their insufficiency and predicted their instability; who now come forward in formidable array, to take credit for their prescience; to re-urge that charge of incapacity and imbecility, the effects of which, often predicted by them, now began to be severely felt by the country; again to call for a complete change of measures and of men, as the only means of preserving what yet remained to Great Britain of consequence and independence. They shook the walls of the senate with their convincing and luminous eloquence; and their opinions, now confirmed to the conviction even of their enemies, became the standard and measure of those of the public. All the clamour which had been industriously raised and propagated against the views of those who were designated by the appellation

of

of "the new opposition," suddenly subsided. The sun of truth had chased away the mists and fogs, which the malignant spirit of party and prejudice had raised to obscure their conduct; and their real character, talents, wisdom, and virtue, appeared in all that brilliancy and purity, which belonged to the aggregate of that rare assemblage of statesmen, of whom it was composed. To this last description of oppositiont no great increase of number on the present occasion was discernible; but public opinion was with them, and a similarity of present views indicated an approximation towards Mr.Pitt and his friends; an union sufficiently powerful to overthrow any administration from whence they were excluded. In supporting the address, the " new opposition" only gave that part of it, which alluded to increase of force, their support, and this only as it was an earnest of more vigor

ous measures.

Having noticed two descriptions of persons sufficiently distinct to be so discriminated, there remains but one more to be arranged under its proper banners, namely, that of the "old opposition," of which Mr. Fox had been for so long a period, and still continued, the ostensible leader. This party, though "shorn of its beams," by the defection of Mr. Burke, and those who thought with him on the subject of the French revolution, was yet sufficiently formidable, by the talents of the individuals who composed it; by the great property of some of those who still steadily upheld its princi

ples and its cause; and by the influence it possessed over a portion of the community at large; to have given great cause of disquiet to government, had it thought proper to martial itself in array against the minister, at the opening of the session. On the present occasion, however, personal animosity to Mr. Pitt and his friends, or a blind attachment to the pacific system, seems to have biassed men in opposition to those lights which must have derived to them from their superior talents and great political experience. They were apparently disposed to give a warm support to Mr. Addington; yet, in preserving their own consistency they qualified their approbation on the present ministers, with so many severe rebukes and disquisitions on the conduct of the last, of whom those now in power formed a part; that the latter could not accept those compliments of their present conduct, at the expence of that which had been the uniform tenor of their early political life. was the approval of the address, by Mr.Fox and his friends, grounded on any other basis, save on that part of his majesty's speech,in which establishments were generally recommended, by which they supposed, such only were meant as were necessary for our security, and did not go to the extent of increasing our military establishments, which system they deprecated and disapproved of in the strongest degree. They persisted in their belief of the pacific "tone and temper" of the first consul; and assured

Nor

the

legislation,