VOL. XXVII. No. 17.] LONDON, SATURDAY, APRIL 29, 1815. [Price 1s. 513] TO THE MERCHANTS OF ENGLAND, Amongst all the classes of the community there is not one, I believe, with the exception, perhaps, of the Borough-faction and their dependants, who are so eager for war against France, and who are so hostile to Parliamentary Reform, as the Merchants, by which word I mean, rich men in Trade of all kinds. To argue with the Borough-faction would be useless; but, though, I must confess, I have little hope of succeeding, I cannot refrain from making one effort, upon this particular occasion, to convince you that you are deceived, and that, in spite of all your un derstanding, you long have been, and still are, used as the tools of a crafty and corrupt faction in the supporting of a system injurious and degrading to your country at large, and to no part of the people more than to yourselves. [514 then, I again ask, are the pretences for war? The opinion you have been induced to entertain is this: that Napoleon will always seek occasions for using the forces of France against foreign nations; that he will still be a conqueror; that he will again force us to go to war. Admit this to be true. I let you beg the question; and, even then, what is your meaning? Why, that you will force him into war now, lest he should force us into war hereafter! But, what is all this talk about his ambitious projects; about his conquests; about his restless disposition? Suppose all you say to be true. Suppose him again to extend his sway from Cadiz to Hamburgh, from the Scheldt to the Po, why should you be alarmed? His power would not affect us. It would not endanger our safety. These Islands would benefit, if any thing, from such a change in the political power of Europe. But, the truth is, that every reasonable man must be convinced, that the changes, which have taken place in France, necessarily tend to the preservation of peace. Nay, it is acknowledged, or, ratlier, ostentatiously asserted, by the advocates for war, that Napoleon has not the means of contending against the Allies; that the people of France are opposed to his collecting a large army. Now, either this is true, or, it is false. If true, where is the danger to be apprehended from his restless disposition? If false, where is the hope of that speedy success against him which is so confidently talked of? As to the projected war with France, on what ground can it be justified? What cause is there for such war? France has not injured us. Our Regent explicitly, in an official way, I mean in his declaration subjoined to the Treaty of Vienna of the 25th March, disavows all intention, as he might have disavowed all right, to interfere in the domestic affairs of France. What, then, can be the cause of war? France has not injured us. France disavows all designs of foreign conquest. France declares her readiness, and, indeed, her resolution to abide by the treaty of Paris; yes, even that treaty which we and our allies, backed by enormous ar-year 1791, the aggression has boen on the mies, wrung from the Bourbons. The Emperor Napoleon, since his return to power, has neglected nothing to convince the world of his anxious desire to remain at peace. He has made overtures, in a regular way, to renew and preserve with us all the relationships of peace. What, It is as a disturber of the peace of Europe that the Borough-faction exclaim against him. I state as a fact, that, in every war with every nation, with whom the French have been at war, since the part of the enemies of France. I pledge myself to maintain this proposition against any one, at any time. But, at present, to speak of Napoleon's conduct; he has never let pass an occasion of restoring peace to Europe, from the date of his memorable Letter to our King in 1799 to the R and of the United Kingdom is not held by descent. The family now upon the throne can put forward no such claim. They are not the descendants of the elder branch of the Stuarts; but, and it is singular enough, Louis le Desiré is! Our king holds his crown in virtue of an act of Parliament, and solely in such virtue; and a very good holding it is, because it is really legiti present hour. A conqueror, indeed, he has been, and he has endeavoured to place his family ou half the thrones of Europe; but, still, his conquests were the fruits of his victories, and have invariably been followed by demonstrations of a desire to restore peace. The Allies have declared him out of the pale of civil relations." It was not thus that he acted, when in possession of the capitals of Austria and Prus-mate. Ours, therefore, is a legitimate sia, and when the Sovereigns of those sovereign; but, the Capets were never the countries owed their crowns to his cle- legitimate sovereigns of France. A title mency. He did, indeed, extend widely his dominions, but the extent was far within the compass of his power. In this last scene of the grand drama how does he appear? The Allies put him, as far as they are able, out of the pale of the law; the Bourbons set a price upon his head. He suffers the Bourbons to depart unmolest-law, in support of their hereditary claim. ed; those of them whom he takes in arms against him he pardons; and, in answer to the outrageous declaration of the Allies, levelled against his fame and his life, he writes to each of the allied Sovereigns, tendering him the olive branch, and inviting him to a rivalship in the arts of peace, and in the science of making the people happy and free. You call him an Usurper and Louis the legitimate sovereign. Words have great power, and these words have had great power; but the assertions are not true. An Usurper is one who seizes on authority unlawfully: a legitimate sovereign is one who holds his authority by law. Now, Napoleon was by law made Emperor of France, an office which never was by law taken from him. Louis has no legal, or legitimate, title to the throne of France. He is descended, in a right line, if you please, from Hugh Capet, who made himself king of France by force, who put the real heir to the throne to death, and who never was legally made king of France, any more than William the Norman was made king of England. The Bourbons, whose real name is Capet, held the throne by descent merely, and their descent was from an Usurper. At no time was any law passed to make any of their ancestors kings of France; no law was now made in behalf of the authority of Louis, who took to the crown as descending to him from Hugh Capet, and not as legally placed on his head by the people of France. What, then, becomes of all this talk about legitimae sovereigns? The throne of England. may be, and thousands of titles are, at once hereditary and legitimate, as in the case of private estates; but, then, there is law in support of the hereditary claim; and this is precisely the case with the claim of our kings: but, in the case of the Capets, there is no law, there never was a Then, as to the sort of government, which existed in France under the Bourbons, you have forgotten what it was, or, I am very sure, that you must hold the recollection of it in abhorrence. It is strange, that, in the long line of their ancestors, they dare ever appeal to the memory of but two: Saint Louis and Henry the Fourth. The former, a tool in the hands of the priests, exhausted the treasure and blood of his people in mad crusades against the Turks. The latter began his reign by abjuring the Protestant religion, in the support of which he had led hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen to slaughter. He called together the States of his kingdom, and, laying his hand upon his sword, told them to remember that in their deliberations. Not content with the terrible laws already in force to provide for the enjoyment of his favourite sport, he decreed, that every man, found lurking near the preserves of game, should be stripped and flogged round a bush 'till the blood ran down his back. This was in no remote times. This was in no barbarous age. It was at the time, when Elizabeth reigned with so much glory in England, when England relied for its defence on the arms of its people, when the sovereign prided herself in being guarded only by the citizens, when England extended her arm to the Continent, not to support ancient despots, not to extinguish the bursting flame of political and religious liberty, but to establish both these in aiding the Dutch against their cruel oppressors. The House of Bourbon, beginning with Henry the Fourth, has furnished France with five kings. Of the first we have spoken. The second, Louis XIII. was an oppressor and persecutor of his people from the beginning to the end of his reign. The third, Louis XIV. besides his wars of aggression and of conquest; besides his attempts to create civil war in England and to dethrone the Protestant family settled here by law; besides his thousands of acts of oppression on his people in general, signalized his reign by the most atrocious religious persecution. He caused thousands of his subjects to suffer the cruellest tortures on account of their religion, and finally he drove forth hundreds of thousands into foreign lands, whither they carried their arts, sciences, industry and virtue. The fourth, Louis XV. endeavoured to excite civil war in this country and to dethrone our lawful sovereign. He delegated his tyranny to his mistresses, who sold Letters de Cachet to the highest bidders, and who filled the prisons, in all parts of France, with the victims of state suspicion, or of private envy, jealousy, or revenge. The fifth, Louis XVI. who has been so much eulogized, abolished no cruel law, diminished no profligate expence, removed no odious badge, took off no oppressive burden, and, even after the meeting of the States General, objected for a long while, to the abolition of Letters de Cachet. But, as to what the government of the Bourbons was, even under Louis XVI. rely not upon my word; take the Account of Mr. ARTHUR YOUNG, Secretary to the Board of Agriculture, who spent three successive summers in France in collecting his facts, who wrote down his observations upon the spot, who visited every part of France, who had free access to the best sources of information, and who was, perhaps, for the nature of his pursuits, from his stock of general knowledge, and from the extent of his talents, as welí qualified for the task as any man living. Take the account of Mr. Young; gather (any one of you) your family around you; read to them this account of the degradation and sufferings of the people under the insults and cruelties of the Bourbon government; and, then, when your daughters have listened with streaming eyes and your sons with boiling indignation, then tell them, if you can, that you will chearfully spend a part of their fortunes in another attempt to re-establish the Bourbons. No: you cannot tell them this. For what, then, are you prepared to spend your money? For what, then, would you have war? You are afraid of Napoleon. Afraid that he will do what to you? You are not afraid that he will send his armies to England. How, then, is he to hurt you? The truth is, that you are told, that you have cause to fear, and you believe it, without any inquiry into the fact. You see, that his return to power suddenly turns Exchanges against you; that it lowers the value of funded property; that it deranges commercial affairs; that it produces distress and ruin. And why? Not because he has done any thing to produce such effects; but because his presence is an object of terror to those, whom you are willing to aid in the renewal of war. It is you, therefore, and not he, who have been the real cause of those evils on account of which you bear him such implacable resentment. To a similar cause; that is, to delusion, to credulity, to unfounded fears, to prejudice deeply implanted by the never-ceasing falshoods of a press; free only as the organ of a crafty and corrupt faction, and which has long closed up the eyes and ears of reason, of candour, and of justice. To this cause is also to be ascribed your hos tility to those, who are labouring to obtain a Reform in the Common's House of Parliament, and amongst whom, if you saw your real interests, you would be the most zealous and persevering. This is a subject, which will now force itself upon public attention. It must be discussed; in a few years it must be brought to issue; and, if it come upon you unawares and is imperfectly understood, the fault shall not be mine. For my part, It has long been a fashion amongst you, which you have had the complaisance to adopt at the instigation of a corrupt press, to call every friend of reform, every friend of freedom, a Jacobin, and to accuse him of French principles. though I wish the French people great prosperity and happiness, and wish to see them receive all the praise due to their matchless deeds in arms and to their progress in the sciences and arts, I am Englishman enough to deny them any share in the honour of having a claim to the Principles, to which I allude, and which you so incessantly censure. What are these principles? That governments were made for the people, and not the people for go- | vernments. That sovereigns reign legally only by virtue of the people's choice. That birth without merit ought not to command merit without birth. That all men ought to be equal in the eye of the law. That no man ought to be taxed or punished by any law to which he has not given his assent by himself or by his representative. That taxation and representation ought to go hand in hand. That every man ought to be judged by his peers, or equals.-That the press ought to be free. in their exile by the derision and the calumnies of men more interested than themselves in the success of their endeavours. And what are these endeavours? What are their objects? We are accused of endeavouring to create confusion in the country. Is the abolishing of scenes of drunkenness and riot; the putting an end to bribery, corruption, the basest venality, and the most barefaced perjury; the prevention of the sale and barter of seats; the insuring of the return to parliament of men in whom the people have confidence; the making of those men wholly indepenNow, I should be glad to know, how dent of the Crown and its ministers; the these came to be French principles. It is opening of the House to all men in exact sometimes said, that the French learnt proportion to their merit, their talents, them, or, as the expression is," imbibed" and their natural weight in society: are them in America. The Americans, to be these likely to create confusion? Would sure, have most wisely and virtuously acted the nation be plunged into confusion by upon these principles; but, the principles thirty or forty of you being placed in the are the growth of England. Ten thou- House instead of an equal number of those sand times as much has been written on men who borrow their qualifications? Do the subject in England as in all the rest of you think, that you are not as capable of the world put together. Our books are deciding upon laws as the present reprefull of these principles. You can read sentatives of the Boroughs are? Do you nothing: law, history, poetry, divinity, think, can you think, that the places and romance; nothing, without meeting with pensions enjoyed by these men, add to these principles. There is not a single your safety and prosperity? Do you think, political principle which you denominate that the sinecures of the late Marquis of French, which has not been sanctioned by Buckingham, of Lord Camden, of Lord the struggles of ten generations of Eng- Arden, of Lord Grenville, of the Roses, lishmen, the names of many of whom you and of hundreds of others, are necessary repeat with veneration, because, appa- to the protection of your property? Do rently, you forget the grounds of their you think, that the enormous charges of fame. To Tooke, Burdett, Cartwright, the Civil List, rising in amount every and a whole host of patriots of England, year, are necessary to the security of the Scotland and Ireland, imprisoned or ba- funds? Do you think it an honour to you nished, during the administration of Pitt, to be obliged to yield part of the fortunes you can give the name of Jacobins, and of your own children to support whole faaccuse them of French principles. Yet,milies of the penny-less children of the not one principle have they ever attempted to maintain that Hampden and Sydney did not seal with their blood. When that victim of a tyrannical court and a corrupt and bloody Judge, the galJant Sydney, was brought to the place of execution, the cheeks of the crowd were bathed in tears, and sobs and cries were heard in all directions; 66 Yet," exclaims the indignant historian, "not a hand was "raised to save him, or to carry a dagger "to the heart of his murderers!" If this historian had lived 'till our day, he would not only have seen the champions in the cause of freedom suffer without support and without compassion, but would have seen them followed to their dungeons or Aristocracy, which latter, after all, look upon your children as their inferiors? Do you think, that if this drain upon the fruit of your industry were stopped, such stoppage would have a tendency to create confusion? The truth is, that you see all these evils as plainly as I do. You wish them removed; but you have a sort of vague dread,that any change in the system would endanger your property. Your support of the system is the consequence of that timidity, which is natural to, and almost inseparable from, wealth. This is, however, a motive of action, which you are ashamed to acknowledge; and, therefore, putting a good face upon the matter, you join in the cry against Jacobins and Reformers, and openly espouse the cause of those whom in secret you hate. Now, suppose, that any one of you rich merchants had a cancer in the check, and, upon your proposing to send for á surgeon to endea, our to take it out, some one were to say: "Don't let any one 66 But, has it never occurred to you, that confusion may be produced, and much more terrible confusion, from the want of" meddle with it. You have been doing timely Reform? Has your timidity never 66 very well with this cancer. You have suggested this to you? It is many years grown rich as a prince while this cancer since Lord Chatham said, that, "if Re-"has been going on; therefore, the can. "form did not come from within, it would 66 cer has been the cause of your growing come from without with a vengeance."" rich; therefore, the cancer is a good Have you never thought, for a moment, on "thing; therefore, you ought to preserve the sort of confusion, which such a reform" the cancer." Suppose this were said to would produce? you, would you not spurn the ass from From a reform, such as the Constitu- your presence? Yet, would this surpass tion warrants us in demanding; from a in folly the belief, that rotten Boroughs, peaceable and legal reform, leaving Crown, Bribery, Corruption, Sinecures and wanPeers, and Church untouched in their se-ton Wars have caused commerce and agriveral prerogatives, privileges and posses- culture to flourish? sions, but giving to the people a real and free choice of their own House of Parliament; from such a reform no confusion could possibly arise; because the people, knowing that they had freely chosen their representatives, would necessarily have confidence in them, and would chearfully submit to all their decisions. But, from a reform, produced by the final bursting forth of the angry passions and long-harboured resentments, what is not to be feared? The friends of peace, of order, of the safety of property, are, therefore, those who endeavour to promote a timely reform; and the real enemies of these are those who resist that reform. If any thing could be wanted to shew the absurdity of such notions as these, you need only look at America. There, in the space of thirty years, a greater increase of population, a greater improvement in arts and sciences, a great increase of agricultural and commercial wealth, have taken place, than in any other country in the space of three centuries. There we have seen a commercial marine, not much less in magnitude than our own, rise up in the same short space of time. There we see a military marine, which is already become formidable even to England, and commanded and managed in a way to excite our envy. There we see rich merIt is often said, that the nation has be- chants and manufactures in prodigious come very great under the Borough-sys-numbers. There we see, not great and tem. That wonderful improvements have elegant cities enlarged and improved, but taken place in agriculture, in all the absolutely created. There we see new sciences and arts; that new roads, new roads, canals and bridges, and millions canals, new bridges have been made; that of acres of wilderness changed into cornmanufactures and commerce have flourish-fields. And, yet, there we see a governed; that wealth has increased; that mer- ment, purely representative from the botchants have grown enormously rich. tom to the top; there we see every man,. Shallow as this is, it has produced great paying a tax, having a voice in the chooseffect; and no wonder, when we consider, ing those who impose the taxes. There, that it has been trumpeted forth by nine- at the head of as great a number of peotenths of the press for the last thirty years.ple as Great Britain contains, we see a ̧ The nation has grown rich while the Borough-system has been going on; therefore, the Borough-system has been the cause of the nation's growing rich; therefore, the Borough-system is a good thing; therefore, we ought to support the Borough system, with all its notorious bribery, corruption, and perjury, the proofs of which are produced, in black and white, in such multitudes at every general election. President, chosen for four years, with a salary of less than six thousand pounds, not more than a sixth part of Lord Camden's sinecure. And, with this proof before you, are you still to be made to believe, that commercial prosperity is promoted by a Borough-system and by expensive government? Are you still to be made believe, that your property would be endangered by the putting an end to |