Star. — London, England, 1818-07-18 00:00:00

• 1 1 I I 1 I I ' ' 1 i); 11 • t t! I i ki $ k 4, R. CANNING. The followirg is the Speech of Mr. Casten:a, delivered to the Elettnibi,of Liverpool, on his health being drank ; and to which Sir FRANCIS Himont , made such frequent allusion in his Lst Address to his Cunstituents at the Crownand Anchor: " Gentlemen, six years have elapsed since I was first placed in my present enviable situa.ion. Search the recorjs.of history, where shall we find six yews so fertile is events; and in events not only of 'such immense importance, but of such various character, at one time so awful and appalling, at another so full of encouragement and of glory ? We have, within this period of time, had war, peace—war again. and again a peace, which, I flatter myself, in now settling 'itself for a long duration. In many of those changes, Gentle,nea' as they were taking place, and with re spect to all of them, while they were yet in doubtful futurity, the opinions which I hold with you, and by holding which with you I am alone worthy to repre sent you, have been controverted by predictions, which, in prospect, it would have been presumptuous to dispute, but which, in retrospect, it is now pleasant to contemplate. When I first, in obedience to your call, presented myself before you, it was in that pe riod of a war, already of nearly twenty years duration,. in which the crisis of the fate of nations seemed to be arrived. It was at that period of the campaign, des. tined to be decisive of that war, in which the enemy appeared in his most gigantic dimensions, and had begun to run his most extravagant career. It would belittle disparagement to the stoutest heart to say, that it shrunk from the contemplation of a might so overwhelming? and it required perhaps as much cou rage as sagacity to derive 'from the ill-compounded materials of the colossus a hope or expectation of its fall. —We were, indeed, loudly told, at that time, that resistance was altogether hopeless; and you, Gentle men, were encouraged to believe, that if, by rejecting me, whoa: politics were supposed to be identified with the prosecution of the war, and by returning to Par liament as your Representatives those who then soli-, cited your suffrages in opposition to me, you would mark your disapprobation of the continuance of so hopeless a contest, you would, by this demonstration of the opinion of so considerable a part of the British Empire, infallibly produce a peace, a ith all its at tendant blessings. Against these fallacious but in— • viting assn: antes, with all the responsibility that be longed so the anticipation of brighter prospects in the midst of overwhelming gloom, and to the deniat,of associations familiar in the mouths and in the minds of men, I ventured to tell you, that peace was not in , your power, except through the road of victory ; and I ventured to tell you further, that peace, if sought through any other path, would not be lasting, and that come when it might, it would not come, in the first instance, with all the blessings of ordinary peace in its train., At the end of the period which has elapsed, compare what I then said to you widt what has ac tually taken place. If, at the time of which lam speaking in Ist% this great town had contributed its she towards forcing a change in the National Councils, by rejecting the man whose political exis ' tence was identities-I with the success of the war, and by choosing others in his room whose reputation de pended upon its failure ; and if, Gentlemen, you had ha.l the misfortune t•s succeed in forcing such a change; I ask you, whether you believe that England would have stood erect, as she has done, with her enemy prostrate at her feet, and with Europe saved .by her as.istance ?—(Shouts of " No, no, no!")- 131 e, Gentlemen, as if to defeat and discredit the professors of political prophecy, you have had also a trial of peace, not wholly corresponding with their anticipations. I told you in 1812, that nothing was easier than to draw flattering views of distant pros pects ; but that there were circumstances to be taken into account in the estimate of war and peace which baffled calculation. I told you, that the war (not the stir generally, as has falsely been itnpated, but the war) in which we were then engaged was, from its peculiar character, one in which, though the common characteristics of peace, such as tranquillity, and ab scence of bloodshed, and freedom from alarm, were necessarily suspended, yet the springs of enterprise were not cut off, nor fhe activity of commerce alto gether paralysed. Nor would tile restoration of peace necessarily and at once restott the state of things which so long and so extraordinary a war had interrup ted. And why, Gentlemen? Because I was desirous, as. was, I say, falsely imputed to me, of' dissociating the natural combinations of war and peace from their respective attributes? of holding out war as, for its own sake, desirable, and peace as, in itself, unlovely? i%lo, Gentlemen, but because I wished to represent to you things as they really were, or, at least, as in my own honest judgment I saw them ; because I wished • to dissipate the prejudices which were attempted to be raised against a war on the issue of which our na tional existence depended, by pressing inte the ser viea those common-place arguments against war, which, however abstractedly true, were not true as to the war in question ; and by holding out all those . common-place inducements to peace, which, though also nue in the abstract, could net have been true of 'any peace concluded on ignominious terms, and have not been found true of the first years of a peace sue• ceeding to a war of such unexampled effort and pro traction. That the war had had the effect of opening unusual channels at commercial enterprise: that it had given a new and extraordinary stimulus to com mercial activity and enterprise ; that the war had created—l do not say a wholesome—l de not say a substantial-1 do not say' a permanent—prosperity ; but that it had created .t prosperity peculiar to itself, • and which atoned, in some measure, for its evils, and' enabled the country, in some measure, to bear up a:ainst the difficulties incident to war ;—all these were matters of fact, which, as such I stated to yuu ; aad stated them a.; affording not motives, but conso lations—not inducements, to prolong, beyond neces sity, a war which might be safely terminated at will, -but reasons for bearing patiently evils to Which it was not in our passer to put an end. That this was a !breed and unnatural state of things, neither I nor dry man pretended to deny :—Lut whether we altine c-ti,ll enjoy a sound and natural repose, in the forced and unnatural state of Europe;—whether any peace which could be made by us while all Europe re mained under the controul of our enemy, would be a race worthy of the name,—this was a rpleaion which might fairly be mooted,—without depreciating t h..bi ess ings of peace, or denying the gem,* pre teraoseness of peace to war. Our adversaries repro wiled:et I bad Cv. I thttered myself) spclret tlx of the second commercial community in Ei leg .. 1 ser.ted the .car es uncompoiseted evil and volottry ' netsbbours; the anomaly oeght forthwith to be e* self-inZi‘tion : peaee t. as unquelified prosperity, and vetted; Mid, therefore,alse Mese of Commons must ' and when, if, unfortunately and c . asimMediately withtu our grasp. My business—the be tefornt4d. - Geatlemen, it cannot but have struck i r . d, businessof truthmewas to shew, that the war-mthough you as somewhat extraordinary, that, whereas, in lief I h a d separated myself en. , ,,,, 1 .. i. !o my ie, derfien, my hbject in political life has al w „ '' all warts full of evilm-had yet mitigations, and be- speaking of Foreign Sovereigns, our Reformers are s h o w l earn the groands of that , epmation. ....i. 1 sides, would not cease at our bidding m-that peace never very sparing of uncourtly epithets ; whereas, would not clime at our call, and, besides, that when in discussing the general principles of Government, rather to reconcile the nation m the l ot ,X h 1 1 4 1,.. ; kt among n a' ions) than to aggravate incuiebiaim it came, it would bring with it its privations. The they seldom omit an opportunity of discrediting and fallen to them (surely . a most blest nety 2 ..i w c •"7,.. i perfections—and to point out unaenary m e stimulus of the war withdrawn,. manufacturing in- deriding the privileged orders of society ; yet. when dustry would necessarily languish: the channels of they come to discuss the British Constitution, no- attaiaable excellencA - for their adTeme t i • If' I have done so—because, though I . 11:111 A''. :, commerce forced open by the war having closed, thing can be more respectful than their language more splendidly popular systems of iimp-rm s ,' commercial enterprise must necessarily be checked, towards the Crown ; nothing more forbearing than 011.4.... might be devised than that which tt is oar lapn' -- 4 6 ..,,M til .4 till new channels were explored ; and the mere cessa- their alone the Aristocracy. With the Mese to devise one in which all the good qualiaet or tion of the . trade of war' itself, in all its various of Commons they take the freedom of fami to enjoy, it is, I believe in my entesei eem • • • s: - branches, must both discontinue the occupation of a liarity; upon it they pour out all the vials of their man nature should be brought more bneeeiml y . 4 --.., litx,,iid e population which it had created, and throw midi- wrath, and exhaust their denunciations of amend-.action—in which there should be as much ork ttonal crowds on occupations already overstocked. ment. Gentlemen, this though extraordinary, is not as much liberty—in which property (thecen s e re l : 4 Here were causes sufficient for the inevitable privm unintelligible. The Reformers are wise in their go tions and derangements of a. first year of mace, after neration. They know well enough—and have read just but not an overwhelming weight, i n i k . ti c h in ! any war,—but much more after a war of such extra- plainly enough in our own history--that the Piero- principle of society) should operate s o mi t h.. lo - th --. ordinary magnitude and extension. It required no gatives of the Crown, and the Privileges of the ductry should be so sure of its reward, i due ascendancy, and virtue of the g . 1 1 n : great sagacity to foresee these things: but, in those Peerage would be hut as dust in the balance against The theories of preternatural purity are f ounded tai 4 d m :, who did foresee them, it would have been, at least, a preponderating demo:racv. They mean demo- due notion of doing away with all these uter i:me a l dising,enuous to assert, or to suffer the assertions to cracy and nothing else. And, give them but a I louse go uncontroveited, that the war was our single and of Commons constructed on their own principles— held together. Property is to have no init e %- voluntary suffering ; and i nstant ace was not only at- the Peerege and the Throne may exist for a dam relations, of breaking all the ties by which sem i , „• lents no respect, virtue no honour among thsir m R " a. tainable, but would be an and perfect cure. but may be swept to earth by the first angry vote of bourhood : naked, abstract political rights aree r :m set up against the authorities of nature and of tease. .Such, Gentlemen, is the true account of that tempo- sueh a House of Commons. It is, therefore, utterly 'rary stagnation of commercial industry and enter- unnecessary for the Reformers to declare hostility to and the result of suffrages thus freed from el t i; prise which have been insidiously imputed to um the Crown—it is. therefore, utterly superfluous for ordinary influences which have operated upon anm , tinnal exhaustion; of the difficulty of providing em- them to make war against the Peerage. They know kind from the beginning of the world, is to lie de ploy ne it Int an exu'erant population (the harvest of that, let but their principles have full play, the erection of some untried system of politics, of vli t i l a long war) upon the sudden return of peace, and Crown and the Peerage would be to the Constitu it may be sufficient to say, that it could not Lie a before the world had yet righted itself after all , its tion which they assail, but as the baggage to the day, that, if it rose with the mists of the mortirp convulsions. Either our antagonists foresaw these army—and the destruction of them but as the glean immediate and orenecssary consequences of the discon- inc elthe battle—(Much cheering.) They know thet it would dissolve in the noontide sun. Genti ai M" tinuance of war, they did not. If they did foresee the battle is with the House of Commons, as at pre them, would it not have been fair to have shaded a sent constituted—and that that once overthrown, one ill consequeree cf these b r illi an t sc h emes, --" eTem little more carefully the bright prospects which they another popular Assembly constructed on their Prin . where they are the visions of unsound i tevin ., tici painted of the peace to come ? If not, would it not ciples--as the creature and depository of the people's rather than the suggestions of c r af t y mieiti f is, be fair in them to acknowledge, that they.had been power, and the unreasoning instrument of the peo- that they tend to dissatisfy the mi n d s o f t h e tick. too sanguine in their anticipation ? But, what Ple's will—there would not only be no choice, but formed with the actual Constitution of their money surely is not f sir nor seasonable is, that no sooner d will go further for them in avowal, th o ugh not in To maintain that Constitution has been the u h v ary . WAS the peace, which they had so long clamoured intention, than they go further themselves) there would ins;object of my political life : and th e ma i ntenance for, obtained, than they .proceeded, with as much not be a pretence for the existence of any ether of it, in theie latter days, has. I h ave i nt . emma pathos as they had bestowed upon the evils of war, branch of the Constitution. Gentlemen , the wh o le me to ol,locuy and to hatred ;to th e h r ra d o f s . to deplore the sufferings of that moment which they fallacy lies in this—the Reformers reason from false w h o i x li eve e i t h er t h e i r own reputation for so %,( . 01,.. had predicted as one of unqualified happiness ! Then premises, and therefore are driven on their unhappy or their own means of success, to be comece:t ‘,i:,a their lamentations over languishing industry, adherents to f a lse a nd d ang erous conclusions. The a c h ang e i n th e p r e s e n t institutinas of tne camas. began and stinted c inunerce, and unemployed population, as if these evils were 11 , 1 the natural and necessary consequence' of unavoidably operating atuses ; as tf they were the creation of some malignant influence, which, whether in war or in peace, blighted the des tinies of the country. Is is intended to maintain this proposition. that, in order m produce the blessings with which peace ought to be accomp ini- the WV' ought to have been co elided with defeat, and the peace to have been a peace of humiliation? If so, I can understand the arguments and acknowledge the consistency of those w o prete id to have been disap pointed at the tardy re-appearance of the blessings which they promised ,is ; for undoubtedly the war was concluded with tiiumphs which must have de 'ranged all the anticipations which were founded on the basis of unconditional surrender and submission. But, Gentlemen, labouring as I do under the imputa tion of being a great lover of war, I am almost afried to say, thartheie are some things in the war which I regret. and some things in the peace which I like as little as even those privations of which we have been speaking, but which are happily in a course of daily diminution. The war divided the political parties of' , the country on one great question, which involved and absorbed all minor considerations. With war, party has not ceased: but our differences are of a sort more ignoble and more alarming. The line of demar cation during the war was resistance or nonresistance to a foreign enemy : the line of demarcation Row—is maintenance or subversion of our internal institutions. —Gentlemen, it does seem somewhat singular, and I conceive that the historian of future times will be at a loss to imagine how it should happen, that at this particular period, at the close of a war of such unexampled brilliancy, in which this count'' , had acted a part so much beyond its • physical strength and its apparent resources, there should arise a sect of philosophers in this country, who'begin to suspect something rotten in the British Constitution. The history of Europe for the last twenty-five years is something like this. A gigantic power went forth, animated with the spirit of evil, to overwhelm every community of the civilized world. Before this dreadful assstilment, Empires and Monarchs, and Republics bowed : some were crumbled into dust, and some bought their safety by compromise. In the midst of this widespread ruin, among tottering columns and falling edifices, one fabric alone stood erect and braved the storm ; and not only provided for its own internal security, but was enabled to send forth at every portal armed aids to whoever wanted support. On this edifice floated that Ensign (pointing to the English Ensign), a signal of rally- 1 ing to the combatant, and of shelter to the fallen.— To an impartial observer—l will not say to an inha bitant of this little fortress—to an impartial observer in whatever part of the world, one should think some thins of this sort would have occurred. Here is a fabric constructed upon some principles not cemnann to others around it; principles which enabled it to stand erect while every thing . is prostrate or tottering around it. Jn the construction of this fabric there must be some curious felicity which the eye of the phisosopher would be well employed in investigating, and which its neighbours may profit by adopting._ This, I say, Gentlemen, would have been an obvious inference. Bat what shall we think of their under.' standings who draw an inference directly the reverse?' and who say to us— , lion have stood, when others , have fallen; when others have crouched, you have borne yourselves aloft ; you alone have resisted the power aO‘ich has shaken, and swallowed up half the civilized world. We like not this suspicious pecu liarity. There must be something wrong in your in ternal conformation!' With this unhappy curiosity, and in the spirit of this pet verse analysts, they pro ceed to dissect our Constitution. They lied, that, like our States, we have a Monarch ; that a Nobility, though not organised like ours, is common to all the great Empires of Europe.; but that our distinc tion lies in a popular assembly, which gives life and vigour, and strength to the whole frame of the Ge • vernment. Here, therefore, They find the seat of our ! disease. Our peccant part is, undoubtedly, the I House of Commons. Hence our presumptuoisswe., empties from what was the common lot of Altai& We have heard something of numbers in tl,t election ; and there is in numbers, I cede's, cidence which gratifies and pleases me. TF.e ber Three Ilundred was that of the majoi4 v: icl assured my return. It is the number, I an, info:T.-el, of those who are assembled here to greet me tl.i• ALT. The last time that I had heard the number Ti Hundred, in a way at all interesting to n,ysell, in an intimation publicly conveyed to me, that Fe cisely that number of heroes had bound then.sekes, by oath to each other, to assassinate me. Geatle. men, against my three hundred assassins I put ry three hundred friends, and I feel neither my life no. 7 popularity in danger."—(Raphirous and stiekorr cheering for sevcral minutes.) Constitution of this country is a Monarchy con• trolled by two Assemblies; the one hereditary, in dependent alike of the Crown and the People—the other elected by and for the People, but elected for the purpose of controuling and not administering the Government. The error of the Reformers, if 'error it can be called, is, that they argue as if the ..'Onstitution of this country was a democracy, inlaid (for ornament sakel with a Peerage, and stopped, by sufferance, with a Crown. If they say that for such a Constitution, that is, in effect, ler an uncoil lieuled democracy, the present House of Commons is not sufficiently popular, they are 1101 ; but such a - Cohstitution is not what we have or what we de sire. We are born under a Money-) y which it is our duty, as much as it is for.our ham Mess, to pre• serve; aei which there cannot be a eoubt, that the reforms which are recommended to us would destroy. : I lave the morn chy, Gentlemen, because, limited and controuled as. it is in our happy Constitution, I believe •it to be not only the safest depository of power, but the surest guardian of liberty. I love -the system of popular representation, Gentlemen— who can have more cause to value it highly than I feel at this moment—reflecting on the triumphs which it has earned for me, and addressing those who have been the means of achieving them? But of ptipular representation, I think we have enough for every purpose of jealous, steady, corrective effi cient controul, over the acts of that monarchical power which; for the safety and the peace of the The Paris Papers of Wednesday arrived thisforemes community-, is lodged in one sacred family, and de- On Tuesday mei-rive: , the Dke of WELLINCV i scendible fromsite to son. If any man tell me that the popular principle in the House of Commons is had a parting aui!izr.ce id T.:ie. Kist:, and the priec' 2 not strong enough for effective controul, nor diffused Members of the Royal Family, previous to le.r . ;; enough to insure sympathy with the people, I appeal Paris fur Cembray, where he has probably arrhel 4 to the whole course of the transactions of the last this time. war ;—I desire to have cited to me the instances in A Commission has been named for orgenizir, I which the House of Commons has failed either to express the matured and settled opinion of the na- defensive system for France, comp used of the folks don, or to convey it to the Crown. But I warn those ing Officers:—Lieutenant-General :A lmon. Pre who may undertake to make the citation, that they silent ; Lieutenant-Generals DESSOLEi, %new do not (as in fact they almost always do) substitute • e , ee LAJMAS, v ALUM GOILLEMINOT ! and MAVALILLtS; their own for the national opinion, and then com plain of its having been imperfectly echoed in the Marechal de Camp Dons de la 13:uneeie: 2 :- 1 House of Commons. If, on the other hand, it be Marechal de Camp Peter, Secretary. The ic..hr.. only meant to say, that the House of Commons is duals named are, with the etcept:en of Dessi its not the whole government of the country,--which if and Desist (-ze • . all power be not only for, but in the people, the s, altogether unknown to us; bat it e perhaps to be the last objection Co a defeesive t ee House of Commons ought to be, if the people were adequately represented—l answer, ' Thank Goo it mission of this kind, in the e y es of foreignei ~ tee . is not so—Gon forbid that it should ever aim at be- they know little Or r.nthinir, of the members compee7, coming so.' But they look far short of the ultimate it. The le•.! its . ..11enesiershave ma le themselves ki - ' ll effect of the doctrines of the present day who do not a btmd, there is the less reason to fear env thin - e r e see that their tendency is not to make a House of a ., 4 resent labours at home. Old horrid are Commons such as, in theory, it has always been de- ""'' r p fined—a third branch of the Legislature, but to ab- terate, and men who had spent their live is e.e. sorb the legislative and executive powers into one; tary adventure abroad—in invading, conquerim to create an immediate delegation of the whole au- and spoiling their neighbours, (such as a DAVOUst. thority of the people—to which, practically, nothing a Sower Or a MoRTIER) might has.: nt...+: Suisun: i of sin could, and, in reasoning, nothing ought to stand in • ister deviatioas from the merely d efen s ive att ' opposition. Gentlemen, it would be well if these • doctrines were the ebullitions of the moment, and ties entrusted to them , which there is ceer;;arativee ended with the occasions which naturally give them little reason to dread, from melt whose artf.)itioa as their freest play ; I mean with the season of popular soldiers has net yet led them to aspire to any greeter elections. But, unfortunately, disseminated as they d are among all ranks of the community, they are oing permaent and incalculable mischie How glory than that of being the honest and faille: de fenders of their own country. • lamentably is n experience lost on mankind ! r f or when, It was reported in some of the Jourmeh a fee .:.•-,-; in what age, in what country of the world, have ago, that a considerable reductien was ire:ll4 , l-f doctrines of this sort been reduced to practice, with out leading through anarchy to m ilit ar y d ee p ot i sm :'to take plate in the National Goers', but this is ace contevAteted, on official authotity. • The revolution of the seasons is not more certain ' than is this connection of events in the course of mo enotot more the Produce of' the French Customs is stated to ral nature. Gentlemen, to theories like these y o u have risen during the first fi ve months of this yae w wa ill ys d o o p m po e se th d the j y u se st w ic , m te em sin b t e e r I th h al v l eh ad h ave 11 e - It s a me sir per' more than it amounted to dinirg the ' of 1817—and an au ate:lntim of et honour to represent this community than when I was m illion s • is nfidest. least twelve on the whole ea to 1 uncertain how far my opinions on snch subjects might coincide with your's. For opposing th ese d i e ° . ! ami. ;pitted in this branch of the revenue. ries, Gentlemen, I have become an object of pe cu li ar i It is stated in two of the Journals, on tile ant cry obloquy : but !have borne that obloquy with the of the J . ournal de la Haute Garavne, that arise.; e. - consciousness of having discharged my duty ;—and sentences passedby the T••ileinal of Police a - bz• with the consolation, that the time was not far dig- louse in die month of June last, there Ices MC rr : • tent when I should come here among you (to whom .clout I owe an account of my public conduct), when Pub/ican for not having removed or covered up ie I should have an opportunity of hearing from you ; bush (sign) when the procession of the Fete DiN '• ,' THE EVENING smtt LONDON. SATURDAY, JULY 18, 1618. THE FUNDS. PRICE OF STOC.DS THIS DAY AT TWZLYIO . CLOCL: Reduced 7811—C0n5.771f,--for Opg. 79f , 31 per Cents. 881-4 per Cent. 9714 Navy 106 ij—lndia Bonds 94 ;6 prem. Omnium dis.—Exchequer Bills 19 21 F. F