The National Register. — London, England, 1812-03-08 00:00:00

I THE NATIONAL REGISTER. fd)ur ,Ting, Conniattion., anti tai33l. . . _ ant AND PUBLISHED AT NO.. 5, PICKETT-STREET, STRAND, NEAR TEMPLE BAR. SUNDAY, MARCH s, test in which we are eng,iged, and the wide-exteiideu fluence of the enemy had given birth, they sought for the root of the evils which we experienced, in our own land. The policy which had directed the conduct of our ad ministration, in opposing and counteracting the decrees of France, had been represented by a few party writers,' as one of the sources of our commercial distresses : the insin.: nation was adopted and enlarged into an actual head of accusation, and our Orders in Council were donounced as the obnoxious measure from which alone so many evils and perils sprung. How justly this opinion was formed, and on what untenable grounds it was supported, we shall endeavour to demonstrate in the following plain statement of the real effects which they have produced on our trade. It will then, we trust, be found that the losses which we have experienced are to be attributed to other causes, and that we could not relinquish our Orders, without sa. crificin the honour of the Country, and the real interests of the State. The Orders in Council have been in operation now four yearz, during which they have been two years guiltless of injury to trade, which, on the contrary, flourished beyond example pending these years ; proved in the first year at worst but indifierent ; and in the last year are said to haye been extremely prejudicial to commerce, and consequently in a great measure the cause of all the distresses of our mar nfacturing interests. Taking, however, the first yeat as deciday bad, we ;Ilan have one-half the time of their operation 'unfavourable, the other half prosperous in an unpralleled degree. 1.113 as the two prosper:ifs years succeedcd to one of the unfavourable years, unless some cause external to and independent c;f the Orders in Coun cil.. could be assigned for that unexampled pr , ,sperity, this circumstance in itself is enough to show, OA the Orders in Council, which did not impute the pregrea, commerc.; in the two intermediate years, cr.uld pot have been necessarily the source of the falling off of trade in the first and the last years. If the adversaries of the Orders in Council cannot trace the flourishing state of trade, during two ye:lrs of their operaLior t , to some extrinsicsource k they must admit, that they are not inimical to the interests of commerce. If, cn the oilier hand, the supporters of the Orders in Council can point out a separate an4';dis 7 tinct cause of the distresses that we at present feel, and may have existed in the first year,.they are authorized to Con. : tend, with confidence, that these distresSes have not arisen out of the operation of the Orders in Council. The enormous losses sustained by the failur,l. of the in cautious speculations to South America, were the specific cause in the former instance, and the seizure of BritiAl property in the ports of the Baltic by the French in the .... .1 - N° 219. 1 1 01 lIICAL DISQUI.SI lION. No. 205. ORDERS IN COUNCIL. When evils press upon us, it is natural, in order to re pel them, that we should endeavour to look into their causes. But, in such a case, it is impossible we should decide with impartiality. Our feelings blind our judg m.nt. Our imagination becomes our guide ; and trust ing to appearances, we do not dive deeper than the sur face, to ascertain whether our opinion be well or ill founded. A man stunned lip a blow from an unknown asailant, looks around him, and often selects as the of fender, the very person who would have yielded him pro tection. Such has been the conduct of the largest por tion of our community, respecting the Orders in Coun cil. Or. glancing around them, they descried nume rous symptoms of commercial distress. They beheld some of our manufacturing counties a prey to riot and disorder. They saw workmen seduced from their du:y, mid collected to destroy the property of those from whom they had hitherto received their bread. They perceived, 7.s in a time of seditious insurrection, the military neces .sanly called out, and yet unable by their presence to re strain the audacity of the rioters. Sedition, for it would be vain to call it by another name, become organized— opposition systematic. The frame4reakers elected chiefs, formed regulations, instituted punishments, and in all their operations moved with so much precaution and se• crccy, that, to this day, their retreats remain undisco- Vered, and their plans are too cautiously and too deeply laid to be frustrated. From the seat of the disturbances they cast their eyes on the proceedings of the Legislature, nd some laws were proposed to repress the popular ef !ervescence, and, by the force of terrifying example, to :4we the disturbers of the public peace into forbearance. They found that a crime hitherto punishable with trans portation only, would, in future, be visited with the utmost rigour of the law, and that death would be the dreadful penalty inflicted for frame breaking ; an offence certainly of the first magnitude, as it is an in frillement of one of the laws which form the foundation ad the se cur i ty of human society, the protection of in dividual property. These considerations heightened in the ir estimatio n , • both the criminality of the acts of vio lence of which the misguided workmen had been guilty, t and the dangers which were likely to accrue from them e o i the State. Alarmed at their contemplation, they wish co ascertain their causes, and adopted those as the tr ue reasons which they found pointed out by party spirit. P it ice nF •11r. to I ‘ ; hi 01 the mornentom Paler 9e.