VIEW OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS. FRANCE. THE French official papers have been chiefly filled, during the last month, with accounts of the vain parade and ceremonies which have taken place at the court of the new Emperor; or with details of the amiable condescension and affecting benevolence shewn by him and his imperial consort on different occasions. He is said to be now on a visit to the camps on the coast, with a view of hastening the preparations for the invasion of this country, and of superintending himself the embarkation of his troops. As yet there has bɛen no acknowledgment, on the part of either Russia, Austria, Denmark, or Sweden, of the new title by which Bonaparte has thought proper to dignify himself. Such sovereigns, however, as feel their power to be dependent on the will of France have deemed it adviseable to pursue a different course, and to employ, towards the new Emperor, the same ceremoniousness of etiquette, which is observed in the case of established governments. Rumours of continental confederacies have of late been very frequent. It has for several days been confidently asserted, that a treaty offensive and defensive had been entered into betweenGreat Britain and Russia, for the purpose of circumscribing the enormous power of France. No credit, however, appears to be due to these reports. Louis XVIII. is said to have quitted Warsaw, where he had resided for some' years, and at the request of the Emperor Alexander, who has assured him of his protection, to have removed into the territory of Russia. A very extraordinary paper has just appeared, authenticated by the signature of seven of the exiled nobles who are in the suite of Louis XVIII., containing a detailed account of an attempt made, as is al❤ ledged, by the emissaries of Bonaparte, to poison that unfortunate monarch and his faraily. The plot was discovered by the person who had been pitched upon to execute the atrocious deed. The Prussian governor, resident in Warsaw, shewed so evident an indisposition to take active steps for the apprehension and punishment of the conspirators, that the pture of Louis XVIII. from Warsate, was, probably, hastened by an apprehension of danger to himself and family by his continuance there. If the account be true, and it bears strong marks of truth, it will serve to crown the enormities which have already raised Bonaparte to so distinguished a place in the temple of infamy. CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 32. GERMANY. It appears that the violation of the inte grity of the German Empire is now brought fairly before the Diet of Ratisbon for their consideration. His Britannic Majesty, as Elector of Brunswick, and the city of Bremen voted that it should be referred, by the act of the Diet, to the Emperor of Russia, to take suitable measures for procuring a full and satisfactory explanstion on the subject. The King of Sweden, as Duke of Pomerania, has voted on the same side. But no opinion having been expressed by the other members of the Diet, it is to be feared that no ulterior measures will follow from these votes. Indeed Bonaparte seems inclined to pay lit tle regard to the feelings of the German Empire, or to the remonstrances of the Diet. He has made a fresh requisition from the Senate of Hamburgh to the amount of about £.250,000. About two-thirds of that sum are also demanded from Bremen, and one-third from Lubeck. These demands, it is affirmed, have not been complied with; in consequence of which Breinen is said to have been invested by a detachment of French troops, no person suffered to enter or depart from that city, and all supply of provisions stopped. It is even rumoured that the French had proceeded to levy the money in that place by military execution. Our government have so far mitigated the blockade of the Ebe and Weser, that the passage of small craft will henceforth be free. The most important occurrence which has taken place in that quarter of the world is the death of GENERAL HAMIL TON, who fell in a duel with Mr. ByRE, vice-president of the United States; Judge Pendleton being second to the former, and Mr. Vannes to the latter. It is said that Mr. Burr was favourable to the views of the French party, while General Hamilton, the early friend and constant associate of Washington, was in the habit of expressing a marked disapprobation of all who favoured the schemes of violence and aggrandizement which have distinguished the progress of the French Revolution. The circumstance which first gave rise to the dispute between them is said to have originated in the difference of their political opinions on the above points. After a detailed correspondence the law of honour was referred to, and the conse. quence was that General Hamilton fell in the field, and died soon after. Upon his death-bed he solemnly declared to the bishop of New York, who has published a short account of the interview, that he had ever disapproved of the practice of duelling as contrary to the laws both of God and man, and never more than at the moment when he consented to meet his antagonist. He was led, however, he said, to accept the challenge, by this consideration, that his influence and usefulness in society would be completely destroyed were he known to have violated the law of honour by refusing it. He likewise declared his cordial forgiveness of all his enemies; and his firm persuasion, that it was only through the merits of his Redeemer he could hope for forgiveness. His repentance seemed to the bishop to be sincere, and he particularly expressed his abhorrence of the sinful step by which he had shortened his life. No death since that of Washington appears to have been so generally lamented by the Americans. His remains were followed to the grave by all the great civil and military authorities of New York; and his funeral oration was pronounced by the governor, Mr. Morris. General Hamilton has left behind him a wife and four sons. It is a very remarkable circumstance that one of his sons was killed on the same spot about two years ago, in the twenty first year of his age, in a duel with an intimate friend, who is said to have since died partly of grief on account of that event. These are the main particulars of this unhappy affair, as they are narrated in the American newspapers. On the perusal of them it is scarcely possible not to feel shocked at beholding the second magistrate of a great country, countenanced and assisted, in a flagrant and premeditated violation of the law, by one of the judges, What respect can the people, in general, be supposed to entertain for the laws, when they are thus deliberately violated by those whose paramount duty it is to cause them to be respected, and to punish those who disobey them? Suppose it possible, that the example which these gentlemen have given were to be generally followed; and that even the common people should think it right each to avenge his own quarrel in a similar manuer: with what propriety could Judge Pendleton condemn to death the man who had taken the life of his neighbour, or President Burr sign the warrant for his execution? Or with what propriety can a government, professing to be impartial in the administration of the laws, interpose its authority to punish such proceedings in the lower classes of the people, while they overlook similar crimes among the higher classes, and even decorate with the most splendid funereal honours the man who has given a sanction to such crimes, by the weight of his influence and example? We do not wish to reflect with severity on the conduct of the deceased. He him. self acknowledged it to be criminal, and professed to repent of it. Dubious and equivocal as a death-bed repentance must ever be, it is stil a matter of satisfaction to witness, in those who are standing on the border of the grave, any solici tude about their eternal state, and General Hamilton has, at least, borne à testimony to christianity which may be of use to the living. We think it right, however, to advert to the principle which General Hamilton avows to have influenced him to commit the crime which shortened his life. He knew duelling to be contrary to the law of God; but he concluded that his usefulness in soci ety would be destroyed if he did not violate this law. Here we have a striking illustration of the mischievous tendency of that principle of utility, which makes this world our end, and, constituting man the judge of expediency, pronounces no law of his Maker to be so rigid as not to bend to exceptions. What is now become of that usefulness in society, for which General Hamilton chose to sacrifice the claims of conscience and the favour of his God? Let us even look to the immediate misery which his rash act has occasioned -a wife bending under the anguish of a broken heart: children deprived of their natural protector, and left, perhaps, to languish in poverty—and we must be convinced of the miserable fatuity of those sophistical reasonings by which man would persuade himself that he is wiser than God. But our limits forbid us to enlarge on this interesting subject. We may resume it in some part of our next number. ST. DOMINGO. Of events on this interesting theatre we have no authentic information, and scarcely a single rumour, since the North American accounts noticed in our last number. On the 21st of this month dispatches from Jamaica were received by his Majesty's government, which were said to relate to the affairs of St. Domingo, but they have not been given to the public. The massacre of the French, therefore, still stands on the authority of the accounts we mentioned to have been received in July, and on the evidence of the proclamations there alluded to, which, supposing them to be genuine, clearly establish that melancholy fact. Upon a fuller examination of those in struments we see no reason to doubt their authenticity; for in avowing the crime in question, they contain some passages which the usual motives of misrepresentation, with the calumniators of the negroes of St. Domingo, would have prevented the insertion of in a forgery: since they tend to account for, and extenuate, an act so shocking in itself as the alleged massacre, and so opposite, we may add, in its spirit to the former conduct of that unfortunate people. Those instruments also prove that the crime they avow was not the act of the negro populace, but of Dessalines their governer; who ostentatiously claims it as his own, glories in his superiority to the vulgar feelings which would have opposed such severity, and at the same time evidently labours to reconcile his followers to his sanguinary conduct, by insisting upon its justice and necessity. "Yes," says he, I have saved my country. I have avenged America. The avowal I make of it in the face of earth and heaven, constitutes my pride and my glory. Of what consequence to me is the opinion which contemporary and future generations will form of my conduct? I have performed my duty; I enjoy my own approbation; for me that is sufficient." Again, he says, "the terrible example I have just given, shews that sooner or later divine justice will unchain on earth some mighty minds above the weakness of the vulgar, for the destruction and terror of the wicked, &c." He also affects to contrast his own system with that of the mild and humane Toussaint, pretty plainly imputing to that great man weakness, at least, if not treachery, and warning his own successors against following the same conciliatory plan. In short, these papers do not more clearly attest the reality of the crime, than they exculpate the people at large from having willingly shared in the guilt. It appears further, upon a comparison of these with the former proclamations no ticed in our preceding numbers, that Dessalines had previously laboured in vain to make the people his instruments in this bloody transaction. In the month of Ja nuary he published a most inflammatory proclamation, stating truly, but vindictively, the enormous crimes of the French, and urging the people to vengeance. On the 20th of February he promulged another, less intemperate, and which nothing but his breach of the promised amnestyren dered objectionable, for it enjoined only judicial proceedings against the actors and accomplices in the inhuman massacres coolly perpetrated by the French; by which he asserted, that 60,000 of his innecent brethren had been drowned, suffocated, and otherwise put to death. Yet so strongly were the people, and that part of the army not under his own immediate command, disposed to mercy, that these proclamations, sufficient one would supe pose, with the memory of recent outrages, to have excited a popular massacre in any country upon earth, wholly failed to produce that effect; for, on the 9th of April, it was necessary for Dessalines to march a body of troops into Cape Francois, and ac complish in person his own sanguinary purpose there, as he had previously done at Port-au-Prince. Not only the last proclamation, but all the accounts we have seen, concur in representing the crime as having been every where perpetrated by the forces of that general, under his own personal orders and inspection. We think it material to invite the attention of our readers to these facts, because great pains are insidiously taken in the newspapers, not only to rob the people of St. Domingo at large of the praise which their extraordinary, clemeuéy deserved, but to represent them as uncommonly fe rocious and cruel, and to draw inferences from that gross aspersion hostile to the cause of the African race in general. As to Dessalines, we feel no disposition to palliate his misconduct. He seems clearly to be a revengeful and ferocious character; but let us be just in our judg ment even towards the most criminal. Tơ estimate his conduct fairly we must ad vert to some circumstances of great moment, which the eager expositors of his crime have not pointed out to the eye of the public. The negro government, let it be remembered, was far from being in a state of peace or security, and still farther from having reason to think itself in such a state. The French frigates and troops which had taken shelter at St. Jago de Cuba, were cutting off their supplies from without, and menacing them apparently with a new invasion from a coast within sight of their own. The same terrible and remorseless enemies still occupied, as they continued to do at the date of the last advices, the city of Saint Domingo, a very strong position on the Spanish part of the island, and well situated for the reception of reinforcements by sea. To dislodge them from this position Dessalines had not only a formidable march to make, but to subdue in his way the Spanish inhabitants, who, seduced by their priests, had withdrawn their promised obedience from him, as governor elect of the whole island, and esponsed the cause of the French, as is evident from a proclamation addressed to this people in the beginning of May. tion, and of a negotiator sent from that island, left no reasonable hope of the protection, and scarcely any of the amnity of this country. We had seized and canied away, their means of defence. We had refused in negotiating for their trade to make arms and gunpowder articles of sup ply by our merchants; and the treaty had been broken off for that cause. We were too jealous of them to provide them, in exchange for their produce, with those necessary means of repelling a common che my, au enemy bent on their total destruction. Whatever political reasons there might be for such conduct on the part of Great Britain, (we must intreat our newspaper politicians to, forgive the remark), it was not, as a hundred paragraphs have strange But a still nearer danger, and, at the same time, an extreme provocation appears to have arisen. A plot was formed, or supposed to have been formed, at Jeremie, in which the French inhabitants, notwithstanding the mercy recently shewed them, were engaged. Shall I again," says Dessalines," recall to your memory the plots lately framed at Jeremie, the terrible explosion which was to be the result, notwithstanding the generous pardon granted to these incorrigible beings at the ex-ly assumed without contradiction, an pulsion of the French army?" Of the reality of such plots the proclamation may be deemed questionable evidence; but that they were at least credibly imputed, and generally believed by the people, if not by the general himself, may be reasonably presumed from this appeal to the knowledge of the public. Nor is there any thing inoredible in the fact itself, when we consider the situation of affairs, and the character of the supposed conspirators, After their behaviour to the generous Toussaint, by whom they had been brought back from exile, protected and restored to their estates, there is no favourable presumption due to the planters of this island against a charge of perfidy and ingratitude. This was not all. A report was propagated that a French armainent had arrived at the city of St. Domingo, as may be, seen by the above-mentioned proclamation to the Spaniards. Dessalines, indeed, affects to discredit this rumour; but his lauguage and his measures shew, that he really apprehended an immediate invasion from Europe. "Let them, come, these hoinicidal cohorts, &c." He speaks with boldness, but he avows a desigu of abandoning the sea coast, and retreating into the interior; and we know by report that he had actually dismantled the towns on the land side, aud raised forts on the mountains. Dessalines, let it be considered, must have known more than any politician in Europe, to be sure that the war between this country and France would continue even to the present period. It is certain that the French commanders, in his neighbourhood, boped for a speedy accommodation, and their obstinately remaining at Cuba, and Spanish St. Domingo, was strong evidence that they expected soon to be enabled to renew the war with their sable enemies in a more effectual way. In addition to all these grounds of alarm we are sorry to remark, that the conduct of our commanders on the Jamaica sta unreasonable ground of disagreement on the part of the negro chief. It might, indeed, be unsafe for Jamaica that the uegroes of St. Domingo should have ammuuition and arms; but it was much less safe for the negroes of St. Domingo to dispense with being supplied with those articles by the purchasers of their sugar and coffee, Having no, marine, military or commercial, they could only derive those essential imports from foreigners; and uo foreigner could be expected to bring them but such as came to profit by the purchase of their produce. To treat for their trade, and to refuse these important articles of barter was to ask them to abide, unarmed, the leisure and opportunity of France to resume effectually the work of their extermination. Instead of exclaiming with our West Indian paragraph makers at the rejection of such a treaty, we respect the good sense of the late administration too much to believe that it was ever seriously proposed by them. But thus much is certain, that overtures tending to an amicable intercourse with this country had, a short time subsequent to the expulsion of Rochambeau, failed of success; and that Dessalines, therefore, at the critical period, to which these remarks apply, had no room to reckon upon our protection or friendship. In the neighbouring Spanish government he saw nothing but hostility. It must have seemed, therefore, like a general conspiracy, internal and external, against himself and his unfortunate brethren; to which all of the European race were open or sceret parties. In vain had France trampled upon every moral principle in her atrocious conduct towards them, and outraged every feeling of humanity. In vain had her insolence provoked a new maritime war, and thereby suspended her barbarous project in St. Domingo, Neither fear nor hatred of this unprincipled power could so far dissolve that bond of interest, by which the colonising uratives of Europe were confederated against the African race, as to make the foes of France the friends of her sable eneinies. That Dessalines reasoned thus can scarcely be doubted; and when we add this to the former considerations, it cannot be matter of surprise that the suspicion and resentment he felt towards bis French He saw inmates were fatally infamed. in every white face the badge of deadly and inevitable eumity. He expected speedily to have again to contend, not only for power and freedom, but for life itself: for extermination, let it be always remembered, was the horrible object of the war which the French government, in despair of restoring slavery, had coolly and systematically pursued; and to which upon a new invasion it would doubtless recur, He prepared, therefore, for a desperate 'conflict. But he knew by fatal experience the perfidious arts of his enemies, and the dangerous credulity of his followers. He wished, therefore, to shut for ever the door against the renewal of a treacherous conciliation; and the crime in question, while it gratified his vengeance, appeared to him the most effectual mean for that purpose. Such apparently were the motives of this massacre. They cannot excuse so horrible a measure; but they sufficiently account for it, without imputing to the negro character, even in the breast of Dessalines, a greater degree of depravity than has often been found among the revolutionary leaders of Europe." It appeared by the last accounts that this general was niarching against Spanish St. Domingo. We think doubts may be entertained of his success. His recent crime must have inspired the Spaniards with horror, and they are not like the French an enemy inferior from the inflaence of the climate. They are chiefly negroes, or a mixture of the African race, of whom there were, by the best accounts, at the time of Toussaint's conquest of their country, 110,000 free persons and 15,000 slaves. The latter are in so mild a species of slavery as to be strongly attached to their masters, and both have always been from national prejudice Their inimical to the French negroes. country also presents 'great obstacles to the advance of even an, African enemy, BRITISH WEST INDIES. A very general sickness prevails through. out our islands in this quarter. At JAMAICA, a great mortality is said to have taken place among the white inhabitants, by which, at this critical moment, the comparative extent of black population is of course much increased. And yet the planters of Jamaica are very indignant that the British parliament should interfere to prevent the enlargement of this fearful disproportion. To what can we attribute such egregious folly, but to judicial infatuation, quem Deus vult' perdere, &c.; for we are unwilling to suppose that they hug the murderous slave trade to their bosoms for its own sake. In the LEEWARD ISLANDS the same It is mortality is stated to prevail. a very remarkable circumstance, that the sickness and mortality are almost exclu, sively confined to Europeans. The crews of the ships of war on the West Indian station, and even of the merchantmen, have suffered considerably. At TRINIDAR immense damage has lately been sustained by a fire which extended itself over pearly half the cultivated part of the island. GREAT BRITAIN. PARLIAMENTARY PROCEEDINGS. On the 31st of July the session closed with a most gracions speech from the throne, in which his Majesty applauded the zeal and assiduity with which both Houses had applied themselves to various great objects of public concern, and particularly to the national defence; and recommended to thein to inculcate on the minds of all classes of his subjects the necessity, at the present crisis, of 'unremitted exertions. The preparations," observed his Majesty, "which the enemy has long been forming, for the declared purpose of invading this kingdom, are daily augmented, and the attempt appears to have been delayed only with the view of procuring additional means for carrying it into execu tion. "Relying on the skill, valour, and discipline of my naval and military force, aided by the voluntary zeal and native courage of my people, I look with confi dence to the issue of this great conflict, and I doubt not that it will terminate, under the blessing of Providence, not only in repelling the danger of the moment, but in establishing, in the eyes of foreign nations, the security of this country, on a basis never to be shaken. "In addition to this first and great object, I entertain the animating hope, that the benefit to be derived from our successful exertions will not be confined within ourselves but that by their example and their consequences, they may lead to the re-establishment of such a system in Eu rope as may rescue it from the precarious 'state to which it is reduced, and may finally raise an effectual barrier against the unbounded schemes of aggrandizement and ambition, which threaten every independent nation that yet remains on the continent." |