proportion to what it will eventually become to England. If our interest were strong, the impotence of the power to be injured (it is said without any purpose of offence) opened every thing to our mercy. There was no restraint but in our own generosity and justice. But this restraint was sufficient. We remembered that if honesty be the best policy of individuals, who are but creatures of the day; still more so is it the best wisdom of those more durable moral persons, the xтýμara siç ȧsì, states and empires. Under these feelings the South Americans were left to fight alone. Under these feelings the gentlemen of the English Opposition have taunted, and the British manufacturers have supplicated in vain. The answer of his Majesty's ministers to the one has been, that the faith of treaties was with them something more than a word of course; and that the weakness of a friendly power only superadded a duty of generosity to a duty of justice. To the other party they answered, that a nation had other interests besides present gain; and that if commerce be a good thing, national honor is a better.

It was under these principles that the Foreign Enlistment Bill was passed, and that our officers and soldiers were prohibited from entering into the service of the insurgent subjects of a friendly state. In the treaty signed at Madrid in 1814, it was stipulated between the governments of Spain and Great Britain, that, in performance of the duties of friendly states towards each other, his Britannic Majesty should prohibit his subjects from furnishing arms to the insurgent colonies of South America. It was manifestly within the obligations of friendly states, and the acknowledged public law of Europe, that the one power should require this engagement, and that the other should accede to it; the South American colonies being at the time a component portion of the Spanish empire, and the demand of Spain being nothing more than a stipulation that we should not interfere in the war between her colonies and herself. As it was therefore a matter of course in the British Government to make this engagement, so it was a point of good faith to give it an effectual observance. The Foreign Enlistment Bill was but the execution of this article of the treaty of Madrid. The treaty was merely declaratory of a pre-existing duty, and neither the article nor its performance gave any thing to Spain to which she had not a previous and perfect right. Under the public law of Europe, our actual relations with Spain and South America afforded us only the choice of two courses-either that of giving positive aid to the mother-country, or of remaining in a perfect neutrality. As either of these courses was open to us, just views of our own policy decided the choice, and we adopted, as we had good right to adopt, the part of neutrality. So far

only we were at liberty to consult our own peculiar interests; for though the law of nations would admit us to afford positive aid to Spain, in the reduction of her colonies, the same law prohibited us, as contrary to the duty of friendly states, from giving any assistance to the colonies. Our conduct towards South America, from the peace to the present day, has been in conformity with these principles. With the strongest interest for assisting the colonies, in the face of the taunts of the Opposition, and against the clamors of our traders, his Majesty's ministers have steadily adhered to the obligations of public law, and to the faith of treaties. Nor have we satisfied ourselves with a merely apparent observance of this neutral conduct. We have acted throughout as becomes the direct and high-minded character of the country. We have sent no expedition to examine the respective strength of the two belligerent parties; we have held forth no encouragement to a persevering warfare by the expectation, that a certain degree of success only was wanting to ensure our recognition and co-operation. Our language to Spain has been-You have a right to require our neutrality, and therefore we engage for it; we have, indeed, a strong interest to decline such an engagement, but we have a manifest duty to make it. To the colonies we have said-We cannot aid you, but we will stand apart. To both we have fulfilled our duties and compact.

It is impossible upon this part of our subject, and with a view to events about closing as these observations are written, not to congratulate the country upon the full and unequivocal success of this part of our foreign policy; by which, with safe and unimpeached honor, and against the most urgent temptations, the course of human events has at length opened this commercial field to the full extent of our possible wishes. There can be no disposition in his Majesty's ministers and their friends to undervalue the importance of a temptation which so long solicited them in vain, and to which they only preferred the sincerity of our public faith, and the integrity of our national honor. They cannot see with indifference an acquisition to general commerce at once so vast in expanse, so various in climate, so fertile in all the materials of industry and manufacture; and in that stage, moreover, of social progress, which, above all others, qualifies it to become the largest customer of a manufacturing nation. They cannot be indifferent under the well-grounded conviction, that this new field will be peculiarly open to British trade and industry, and will at once add to the supply of our stock of raw materials, and to the abundant consumption of our manufactures. They cannot be insensible to the value of a dealer, whose exports to the mother-country, under all the disadvantages of a civil warfare amongst themselves, ex

ceeded fifteen millions; and whose imports were only of less extent under the system of an injudicious monopoly. But in the proportion in which they must feel this satisfaction under the present state of things, do they feel a just pride in the conscious remembrance, that a prize of such splendor, and always lying at their feet, never seduced them from the path of national honor; and that if they have at length attained it, they have attained it with generosity and good faith-Non cauponantes fidem, not acting the pedlar and freebooter, but as the representatives of a great state, and of a generous and sincere people, his Majesty's ministers have at once satisfied their own honor, and dignified the character of their country.

Our relations next in order are those with the two governments of France and the Netherlands. It might be sufficient as respects our existing relations with these states, to observe, that they are in perfect concordance with the spirit of the general treaties, and with the maintenance of the best interests of each country respectively. Our intercourse with them, so far as any events since the withdrawing of the armies have led into any, has been that of the most unreserved amity and confidence. It is manifest that in this part of our subject we are treading upon tender ground. Doubtless our advice, under circumstances in which the French government, from their persuasion of our longer experience in the affairs of a mixed constitution, have solicited it, has been given with equal sincerity and good-will. Doubtless, our authority itself has not been refused, where the fermenting ill-spirit during the first years of the peace required the indirect control of the expression of our continuing amity in this tone. But, on the other hand, we have cautiously abstained from any language or conduct, by which we might seem to arrogate the right of interference in the internal affairs of France. With still more delicacy have we abstained from assuming any tone of national superiority, and from employing our actual influence in procuring, or even in soliciting any commercial regulations, which, in the existing spirit of the French people, might increase the difficulties of the king's government. We have never forgotten, that, under some circumstances, and in dealing with natures as generous as truly royal, to ask, is to have, however the concession might embarrass the princely giver, and whatever might be the true character of the gift. But considering that the best interest of England is in the maintenance of tranquillity, and in the permanent return of religion, morals, and good government, to a kingdom so situated as France, we have passed by all single and more peculiar objects, in pursuit of the secure attainment and confirmation of the general end. The language of our foreign relations to France has been and is-Let us see you settled and happy,; let us see you occupy

your due state in the system of Europe; and we will then, on equal terms, renew with you the race of glory and national wealth.

One of the measures arising from this spirit was the Alien Act, by which we at once performed a duty towards the French government, and exercised an act of immediate prudence towards our public peace at home. His Majesty's ministers retained in their minds, that the former leaders of the Whigs themselves, Lord Fitzwilliam, Mr. Windham, and other names of equal repute, had always entertained a strong apprehension of too free a communication with France; and, during the revolutionary war, had always anticipated, as one of the most dreaded effects of peace, an unrestrained intercourse between the bad men of France and the comparative innocence of the English and Irish Reformers. His Majesty's ministers coincided with his Lordship and other Whigs, still living, in this apprehension. They could not reconcile it to themselves to superadd the lectures of M. Constant to the orations of Mr. Hunt; nor to surrender the innocence of Mr. Cobbett, the moral and religious purity of Mr. Hobhouse, and the truth, the fixed principles, and generous warmth of Sir Robert Wilson, to any possible association with men like Fouché. Though they knew the distinction between laws and manners, between crimes and vices, between acts and opinions, and were aware that it did not belong to governments to make laws against errors and false teachers, they still felt it a duty to guard against the corruption of youth. As regarded France, these considerations were further strengthened by the relative state of the two countries. They could not reconcile it with their sense of duty towards a friendly power to permit a depôt of plots and plotters to be established at Dover. Under all these circumstances, his Majesty's ministers conceded to the best precedents and to the best times, and recommended the Alien Act. The parliament coincided in feeling and opinion with the ministers, and the act was passed with a large majority in both Houses.

As regards our relations with the Netherlands, they are too obvious to require remark. It is sufficient to say, that the amity and confidence of the two governments continue to gather strength with their progress. The completion of the fortresses is, in fact, the completion of the due securities for the permanence of the new general system. It cannot have escaped public observation, that in Holland, as in France, there is not that warm popular feeling towards the government and people of Great Britain, to which we are assuredly most justly entitled by our long constancy in the common cause of Europe. In Holland, as in France, there exists a vulgar opinion, that the true motive of our persevering courage and conduct is to be sought in our commercial spirit; and

that our government is still seeking to advance our commerce and manufactures at the expense of all other nations. However false and ungenerous may be such an opinion, it is to be lamented that it still exists. Under these circumstances, his Majesty's ministers have considered it to be a first object of policy, to avoid every kind of conduct which might cherish and increase these unfriendly suspicions. Under the same circumstances, they have declined to solicit for any commercial treaty, or to negociate for any of those facilities (for they can amount to nothing more) which would cost more to the Dutch government than they would be worth to the trade and commerce of the English. But when this observation is made, it is necessary to qualify it by the assertion, that it is very difficult to conceive the possibility of any commercial treaty between England and the Netherlands: there wants indeed all subject-matter for such a treaty. The people of the two states are in direct rivalry with each other. The Dutch and Netherlanders manufacture almost every thing for their own consumption: they have no raw material with which to supply us, nor can we, on the other hand, supply them. They receive their colonial produce from their own planters; they grow their own wool; they import their own cotton; in a word, they exist so nearly in the same stage of commerce and manufactures with ourselves, and grow, work up, and deal so exactly in the same articles, that there is a total want of all subject-matter of exchange between us. The large extent and various climate of France affords her some staples of her own produce, her wines and brandies, for example, upon which to found a commercial exchange; and it is certainly not impossible, but that at some more convenient period the wines of France might be admitted into England, upon the condition of the equivalent admission into France of British cutlery and hardware. But, as regards Holland and the Netherlands, it is almost impossible to discover the materials for any commercial treaty. One article alone with which we supply them, cotton-yarn, was so little satisfactory to our manufacturers of piece-goods, that, in the year 1817, a strong petition was presented to parliament against its exportation; and it required the utmost efforts of his Majesty's ministers to convince the petitioners of the folly of their demand. One observation, indeed, encounters us universally with regard to these commercial treaties. When we look collectively to the petitions of our several manufacturers, and the arguments of their advocates for new commercial treaties, and for opening a more enlarged sphere of foreign trade, they amount to nothing more than to the expression of their wishes, that all foreign markets should be opened to British commodities, whilst the British market should most religiously con