The National Register. — London, England, 1812-08-02 00:00:00

THE NATIONAL REGISTER. proof iniglit ,vatiting of their corn. , .i •ly dispositions, arid no pr.:text left f , ,)r coon:in:mice of the practice, the British Government was !urinal!) assured cr the readiness of the United States to enter into arrangements, such es could not be rejected, if the recovery of the British subject. were the real and the sole object. The communica. non passed without effect. British cruisers have been in the practice also of violating the rights and the peace ()four coasts. They hover over and harass our entering and departing commerce. To the most insulting pretensions they have added lawless proceedings hi our very harbours, and have wane tinily spilt American blood within the sanctuary of our territorial ju... tisilicrion. The principles and rules enforced by that nation, whets , 1 neutral nation, against .armed vessels of belligerents hovering near her coasts, and disturbing her commerce i are well known. VVbers called on, nevertheless, by the United States to punish the greater of. fences committed by her own vessels, her Government has bestowed• on their commanders additional marks of honour and confidence. Under pretended blockades, withait the presence of an adequate force, and sornetimes without the practicability of applying one,_ our commerce has been plundered in every sea ; the gr e at sta pl es of our country have been cut eff from their legitimate markets.; and a de•ii structive blow aimed at our agricultural and tnaritim: interests, lit aggravation of these predatory Measures, they have been conskiered as in force from the dates of their notification; a retrospective effect being thus added, as has been done in other important cases, to thst unlawfulness of the course pursued : and to render the outrage more signal, these mock blockades have been reiterated and enforced in the face of official communications froin the British Government, de claring, as the true definition of a legal blockade, " that particular ports must be actually invested, and previous warning given to yes. sels bound to them not to enter." Not content with these occasional expedients for laying waste our neutral trade, the Cabinet of Great Britain resort. d, at length, to that sweeping system of blockades, u:lder the names of Orders in Council, which has been moulded and managed as might b es t su i t i ts po li tica l views, its commercial jealousies, or the avidity of British cruisers. To our remonstrances against the complicated and transcendent in. justice of this innovation, the first reply was, that the Orders were reluctantly adopted by G reat B ritain as a necessary retaliation on decrees of her enemy proclaiming a general blockade of the British Isles, at a time when the naval force of the enemy dared not to issue from his own ports. She was reminded without effect, that her own prior blockades, unsupported by an adequate naval force actually applied and continued, were a bar to this plea ; that executed edicts against millions of our property could not be retaliation on edicts confessedly impossible to be executed ; that retaliation, to be just, should tall on the party setting the guilty example, not on an innocent party, which was not even chargeable. with an acquiescence in it. When deprived of this fl imsy veil fora prohibition of our trade with Great Britain, her Cabinet, instead of a corresponding repeal, or at practical discontinuance of its Orders, formally avowed a determina— tion to persist in them against the United States, until the markets or. her enemy should be laid open to British products ; thus asserting an obligation on a neutral Power to require one belligerent to encou rage, by its internal regulations, the trade of another belligerent; con. tradicting her own practice towards all nations in peace as well as its war ; and betraying the insincerity of those professions which incul. rated a belief, that, having resorted to her Orders with regret, she was anxious to find an occasion tor putting an end to them. Abandoning still more all respect for the neutral rights of the United States, and for its own inconsistency, the British Government now demands as pre-requisites to a repeal of its Orders, as they re. late to the United States, that a formality should be observed in the repeal of the French Decrees no wise necessary to their termination, nor exemplified by British usage; and that the French repeal, besides including that portion of the Decrees which operates within a tern ritorial jurisdiction, as well as that which operates on the high seas against thecommert.e of the United States, should not be a signal spe. cial repeal in telation to the United States, but should be extended to whatever other neutral nations unconnected with them may be ef fected by those Decrees. And, as an additional insult, they are called on for a formal disa vowal of conditions and pretensions advanced by the French Govern ment, for which the United States are so tar from having been them.. selves responsible, that, in official explanations which have been pub. fished to the world, and in a correspondence of the American Minister at London with the British Minister tor Foreign Affairs, such a respon. sibility was explicitly and emphatically disclaimed. It has beCome, indeed, sufficiently certain that the commerce or the United States is to be sacrificed, not as interfering with the belli• gerent rights of Great Britain—not as supplying the wants of theft enemies, which she herself supplies—but as interfering with the mo nopoly which she covets for her own commerce and navigation. She carries on 4 war against the lawful commerce of a friend, that she may the better carry on a commerce with an enemy,—a commerce pol luted by the forgeries and perjuries which ate for the most part the only passports by which it can succeed. Anxious to make every experiment short of the last resort of in. dared nations, the United States have withheld from. Great Britain under successive modifications, the benefits of a free intercourse with their market, the loss of Which could Hot but outricislt thi RF9ll‘to AMERICA. WASHINGTON, juzeilB, 4 o'CLocK, P. M.—The Injunction of Secrecy was about an hour ago removed from the following Message and Act : MESSAGE OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTA TIVES OF THE UNITED STATES. I communicate to Congress certain documents, being a continuation of those heretofore laid before them, on the subject of our affairs with Great Britain. Without going beyond the renew4l, in 1803, of the war in which Great Britain is engaged, and omitting unrepaired wrongs of interior magnitude, the conduct of her Government presents a series of acts hostile to the United States as an independent and neutral nation. British cruisers have been in the continued practice of violating the American flag on the great highway of nations, and of seizing and carrying off persons sailing under it, not in the exercise of a belligerent right, tounded on the law of nations against' an enemy, but of a mu nicipal prerogative over British subjects. British jurisdiction is thus extended to neutral vessels in a situation where no laws can operate but the law of nations and the laws of the country to which the ves sels belong ; and a self-redress is assumed, which, it British subjects were wrongfully detained and alone concerned, is that substitution of force for a resort to the responsible Sovereign, which falls within the definition of war. Could the seizure of British subjects, in such cases, be regarded as within the exercise of a belligerent right, the acknow ledged laws of war, which forbid an article of captured property to be adjudged without a regular investigation before a competent tribunal, would imperiously demand the fairest trial, where the sacred rights of persons were at issue. In place of such trial, these rights are sub jected to the will of every petty commander. The practice, hen ce , i s so t ar f rom a ff ect i ng B r i t i s h su bj ects a l one, that under th e pretext of searching for these, thousands of American e nizens, under the s a fe-g ua rd o f public laws, and of their national flag, have been torn from their country, and from every thing dear to Ine,m•—have bee n d ragge d on b oar d s hi ps of war of a fore i gn nat i on, "!"(I exposed, under the severities of their discipline, to be exiled to their oppressors , distant and deadly climes, to risk their lives in the battles of ."2eir o ppressors, and to be the melancholy in s t rumen t s of t a king away those of their own brethren. Against this crying enormity, which Great Britain would be so p r ompt to avenge if committed against herself, the United States " 6 w vain exhausted remonstrances and expostulations ; and that l'"""'"' -- , • . - . • , 4 7 - •• , • • A UG. Q. FOREICiN INTELLIGENCE. FIRST RV , sitiN BULLETIN. Supplcment to the St P,tershurgh Gazette, June 21 (July 8), 1812. Head-grunters, 17th (29th) Jui.e. 1812. in the month of February the French troops crossed the }Jbe and o'h r ; and directed their march towards the Vistula. Front that titne brellled un::cr,idairle. I n t h e hope ut Maintaining peace, his Ma jesty look only sod' steps as were dictated by prudence and circuit'. , r etion, mid with this flew the troops were stationed without t,t! least ;we. ranee of hostility. This plan was the snore readily adopted from the experience of the former War having prayed, that the defensive is relcroble to an offensive system of warfare. By the end of April, the French troops were assemlded, notwithstanding which, warlike opera tions did not commence till thg 12th of June . ; a proof of the effect pro duced on the enemy by the measur-s adopted by us. The corps under the orders of Field-Marshals Ney, Oudinot, Mac donald, Prince Poniatowsky, and the guards, crossed the Niemen al most st the sante time, by Jurbura, Nowt)°, Ulna, and Mereey. As soon as intelligence of that had reached Isis Majesty, he ordered the troops to concentrate. The point of concentration was necessarily at some distance from the frontiers; pursuant to this disposition, all ad tan; ed corps fell back to occupy the positions allotted to diem. That movement being completed, the army this day stands thus :—The corifs of Count Wittgenstein is near Wilkomir ; ditto of General Bag goliutwudt, near Schiwrink, betwixt Wilkomer and Mina ; ditto el Generals Tutshkuw end Suwarrow, near Wilna the resert e, consisting of the guards, near Schwenzen; the army c f Prince Bagrathion is on its march from Slonin Wileika. The army of observation, com manded by General Tormassoff, is at Lutzk. These movements were recessary, in order to avoid a general engagement until Prince Bagiathion's approach. W'ilna therefore has been abandoned for a Operations have commenced, and have lasted five days ; but not one of our ditlerent corps has been attacked : thus the opening of the cam paigo has not produced any of those enterprises which characterised every previous one in which the Emperor Napoleon has been engaged. There have been some skirmishes, in which the Guard 'Cossacks have distinguished themselves. ..~-.-- - "6 " . 7 , 4w- ~--,,--