Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

CHAP. XV.

Disputes with America. Debates upon the Orders in Council. Excellent Speech of Mr Stephen. Effects of the Embargo upon the British Colonies and upon America itself. "Non-Intercourse Bill. Apparent Progress towards Conciliation. Arrangement concluded by the British Minister, Mr Erskine, in Opposition to his Instructions, and disavowed by his Cours. Mr Jackson sent out. Subsequent Disputes.

THOSE writers who look on to the improvement of society have indulged a belief, that the disputes of nations will one day be decided without reference to the sword. We have lived to see a more remarkable experiment upon this system than any that has been made in former times. The disputes between this country and America are not indeed concluded, nor is there any prospect of their termination; but there is as little prospect of their worsening into a state of war. Great Britain will continue to act with steadiness and forbearance, and though the American government has, by its conduct towards France and Spain, shewn itself capable of any act of meanness and injustice, it is too prudent to act offensively against a nation powerful enough to avenge itself.

When Parliament assembled, the orders in council and the embargo had been in force long enough to disprove all the predictions which had

the

been uttered of their ruinous effects. The opposition, however, would not confess that their expectations had been disappointed; and on the opening of the session Mr Tierney renewed these fallacious prophecies, and pronounced a panegyric upon conduct of the United States. All the evil which had arisen, and was yet to arise, he imputed to Mr Canning: "For the sake of a few pointed periods and well-turned sentences, that minister," he said, " had done all this incalculable mischief! He had wounded the mind of America to such a degree, that she had voluntarily sacrificed her commerce, deprived herself of her own trade by her own deliberate act, cut off all intercourse with England, and shut herself out of communication with the rest of the world; but by this act she would be enabled hereafter to chuse her own conditions. The activity of her citi zens would be directed to fresh pursuits; her maritime habits would be

5

diverted from peaceful commerce to predatory attacks on our ships, and then those Englishmen who now treated the power of America with contempt would alter their tone. It might suit the sentiments of Mr Canning to say, that we would never rescind our orders in council unless France revoked her decrees; that is, that while France was perverse we would be obstinate, even though it militated against our interest and against all rational policy; it might suit his feelings to say this, but would it be an answer to our starving manufacturers? Would he be able to satisfy them for their hardships, because he was afraid of making what he called concessions? Would this be an answer to those who complained of the price of bread, depending as it did upon the want of importation of flour?"

An address to the King, praying him to adopt without delay such measures as might best tend to the immediate re-establishment of a commercial intercourse with America, was moved in the Upper House by Lord Grenville, and in the Lower by Mr Whitbread. The former Feb. 17. declared it to be his firm belief, "that it was the object of ministers to force America into a war with this country. The profit resulting from their measures, in the form of duties levied under the orders in council up to the 5th of January, amounted to 31,000l. Such was the paltry issue! The injury was a diminution of commerce that might be estimated at 14,000,0001. An alarming diminution had taken place in many articles essential to our manufactures, cotton mills were stopped, and workmen thrown out of employ. The linen manufacturers

were threatened with ruin: 45 hogsheads of flax seed were annually required for sowing, and of these 35 must be procured from America; the price of this indispensable article, which used to be from 21. to 31. per quarter, had therefore risen from 221, to 241. It was now February, and if the necessary quantity was not procured before May, the consequences would be serious indeed. Still more alarming was the deficient supply of corn: it was notorious that we did not grow enough for our own consumption; the ports of the north were now shut against us; we could only look to America for an adequate importation, and it was needless to point out what would be the effect if that resource were cut off. I wish, however," said his lordship," to be distinctly understood upon one point: if the maritime rights and the maritime superiority of the country were really in question, then war in support of them would be just and legitimate, and every privation ought to be submitted to in such a cause; but for the war which his Majesty's ministers were endeavouring to provoke, there was neither ground nor pretence, and therefore it must needs be unnecessary and unjust. America had offered to suspend her embargo if we rescinded our orders in council. Here was a clear proposition, taking away the only ground upon which those orders stood."

The same arguments were repeated in the House of Commons by Mr Whitbread. They Mar. 6. were most ably and completely refuted by Mr Stephen. "Three great subjects of discussion," said he, have been brought before us this session by this honourable gentleman and his friends; the con

vention of Cintra,-the conduct of the war in Spain, and the present question. In the first they called upon us to decide before the papers relating to it could possibly be read; in the second, before they were laid on the table; and now, when an ample body of evidence, taken at their own urgent request, has been a whole year in their hands, they think proper wholly to overlook all the information which it contains. At the instance of Mr Whitbread and his friends, we were patiently employed nearly ten weeks in examining witnesses on this subject; yet he has not cited a single passage from their testimony, nor once adverted to its general tendency and effect. Some times this party are so eager that they hunt before the hounds, at other times so tardy that the game has grown stale before they come up with it, and they then leave it on the ground. In both cases they take care to deliver their eloquence from the incumbrance of facts. If they collect such lumber at all, its use is only like that of ballast in a balloon,to be thrown away in their course, that their fancy may mount the more freely. The diminution of our trade is insisted upon by this party, and imputed to the orders in council. Here Mr Whitbread's neglect of the evidence is peculiarly strange and un'fortunate, for it lay directly in his way, and would have shewn him in the clearest manner the fallacy of his present arguments,

"The point to which the exami nations on this side of the House were ebiefly directed, was to fix the real effects which the Berlin decree had produced upon our trade before the counteraction of that decree by the orders in council of November 1807. This

was of fundamental importance; for before the effects of the retaliation or counteraction could be determined, it was necessary to ascertain what the effects of the hostile system had previously been. Upon this part of the case the witnesses on the part of the petitioners were prudently silent; and to supply this strange defect it seemed necessary to gentlemen on this side of the House to call witnesses in answer to the allegations on the part of the petitioners, and in support of the orders in council. The facts, indeed, to which they had to speak were notorious; but I was one of those who then thought, and experience has shewn with how much reason, that it was proper to establish them by positive evidence on the records of Parliament. Accordingly many gentlemen of the first commercial eminence were examined as to the state of our commerce with the continent immediately prior to the orders of council of November 1807. They unanimously declared, that from the month of August preceding, or at latest during the month of September, it was absolutely ruined and destroyed; and, with equal unanimity, they ascribed its ruin to the Berlin decree. They unanimously affirmed, that the ports of the continent were shut by the Berlin decree, not by the orders in council; that our trade to the continent was totally at a stand before those orders were issued; and that those orders had no effect at all upon that trade, for it was already gone. It was proved also, by the evidence of several eminent underwriters, that the premiums upon insurance to the continent were raised by the Berlin decree from 4 per cent. to 15, 20, and 30 guineas; that insurance to any considerable extent

could not be effeeted at any price; and that the business was finally put a stop to in consequence. These high rates of insurance were not the effect of the orders in council, they were given before those orders were enacted, and before any knowledge or suspicion existed that such a measure was in agitation. Even upon American ships, trading directly between their own country and this, and comparatively out of reach of the enemy as they appeared to be, the enormous advance of full 50 per cent. took place upon the former rates of

insurance."

This statement Mr Stephen proved by extracts from the evidence; the facts were plainly and unequivocally stated, uncontradicted, and from unquestionable authority. He then He then read a passage from the Edinburgh Review, in which, with that dogmatic tone of superior wisdom which infallibility alone could justify, and that characteristic and immoral rash ness of assertion which sets facts and evidence at defiance, it was asserted, that this very evidence made it appear that there had been no interruption of trade from this country to the continent before the date of our orders in council, and that the rate of insurance had remained precisely at its usual point till the orders in council raised it so high as to put an end to it altogether. Upon this gross misrepresentation the journalist affirmed, that the preamble of the orders in council, containing their justification, was fallacious in all points; that the Berlin decree was neither enforced nor submitted to till it was seconded and superseded by our effective and most injurious proclamations; and that we therefore were chargeable with the whole injustice and oppression which we had

been accustomed to charge against the enemy. "Thus, sir," said Mr Stephen, addressing the Speaker, "his Majesty's government is accused of open falsehood in a solemn act of state, and its conduct toward foreign powers arraigned of injustice and oppression; and this by a direct inversion of the uniform tenor of the evidence given at the bar of this house, as well as in opposition to public and notorious facts. The very grossness of such misrepresentation, sir, is calculated to assist its object. Men are accustomed to make great allowance for party-spirited relations of facts, and to expect that they will differ in some, nay in a wide degree, from the truth of the case; but they still expect some resemblance between the one and the other. The truth may not lie in the same parallel of latitude, or even in the same climate or zone, with the statement; but they suppose it to be at least in the same hemisphere. When, therefore, a representation is carried to the very antipodes of the truth, it often effectually deceives, in spite of a reasonable distrust of its authority. Our audacious and profligate enemy well understands this. His falsehoods, therefore, are generally as remote from reality as he can possibly make them. Our glorious victory of Trafalgar is a defeat, in which we lost sixteen sail of the line!-the gallant and high-born Palafox is an upstart and a coward!—and in the battle of Coruna our brave soldiers were defeated by a third of their numbers! His style, indeed, begins to be understood. Men look for the real fact in the reverse of his statements. But the English press is not yet accustomed to such utter contempt of truth. If we paint, it is commonly in imitation of nature, and not, like this

coarse daubing, in defiance of it. The bold fictions of which I speak, therefore, when found in English journals, are likely to be credited to a great and mischievous extent."

Mr Stephen proceeded to shew in what manner this system of misrepresentation, upon which the opposition and their journalists were proceeding, had already injured the country; for their falsehoods were believed in America. The government of that country, deceived by such statements, assumed as a fact that the French decrees had been totally inefficient against our commerce; the American people were duped in like manner, and the resentment, therefore, which they expressed against Great Britain was only natural. It is impossible, thus they might reasonably argue, that such statements would be made in England, if the trade in question had been materially injured, much more if it had been totally at a stand. But if the Americans had known the real fact, that we were driven to a too tardy retaliation by the actual downfal of our commerce, they could hardly have been so unreasonable as to condemn the necessary expedient to which we resorted in self-defence. "It is singular enough," he pursued, "as those orders are alleged to be destructive of our commerce, that the commercial members of this House should almost unanimously be their active supporters. They understand the subject in all its bearings; but to make it fully understood, a more enlarged view is necessary than is commonly taken of it either in America or England. It is a very inadequate statement of the mischiefs which would have resulted to our commerce by the enemy's plan, if unresisted, to say, that we must have finally lost

by it all our trade with the continent. That we had actually lost by a temporary acquiescence. But the same system would soon have driven us almost entirely out of the trade of the new world as well as that of the old; and even our commerce with the United States themselves must have been ruined by a state of things to which we submitted for the sake of amity with them.

"This is strictly demonstrable upon principles which every merchant will admit. Great part of our exports to America have been paid for by bills of exchange upon England, received by American merchants in payment for cargoes carried by them to the continent. The balance of trade between this country and America is largely against the latter, and she must pay that balance by the returns of the trade which she carries on with other countries, or not at all. It has been contended, that bills of exchange might be remitted from the continent, notwithstanding the most rigid execution of the Berlin decree ; but the fact is, that, under the circumstances in which the orders of council found our foreign trade, such bills would soon have ceased to exist. For they are the fruit as well as the medium of commerce; and when trade between two countries has for some time ceased to exist, there can no longer be any ordinary means of obtaining bills drawn from the one upon the other. They depend upon actual commerce, as the shadow upon the substance. Let it be supposed, then, that the blockade of the British islands is completely enforced in every part of the continent, and if is clear that American merchants, it they still wished to obtain bills there drawn on this country, in order to

« AnteriorContinuar »