The National Register. — London, England, 1815-10-15 00:00:00

THE NATIONAL REGISTER. " I shall be happy to present to his Majesty the results of your teal awl of your labortrs, it wil be a pleasing duty for me to fulfil ; • but if i perceive in your aduiinistra►ion slowness or indolence, if von do not exert in it your whole energies, I shall lay your couduct brtore the King, no consideration will prevent me. " Accept, M. Prefect, 6:e. es Minister, Secretary of State for tlic Interior, (Signed) VAUBLANC' DUTCH MAIL. TILL DUKE OF WELLINGTON TO LORD CASTLE. REAGH. PARIS. SEPI. 23. MY Loin.—There has been a good deal of discussion lately respecting the measures I have been obliged to adopt in order to obtain for the King of the Netherlands his Paintings and other things out of the Museum, and as these reports may reach the .ears of the Prince Regent, I communicate to you the following account of the whole affair, for his Royal Highness's information : Shortly after the arrival of the Sovereigns at Paris the Minister of the King of the Netherlands demanded the Pictures, &c. &c. belonging to his Sovereign, as did the Ministers of the other Sovereigns, and as I was informed could not obtain a satisfactory answer from the French Government. After several conversations with me upon the subject, he sent to your Lordship an official note, Ivhich was laid before the Ministers of the Allied Powers, assembled at a conference upon which the business was several times taken into consideration, in order to dis cover a means of doing justice to the claimants of the ob jects of Art in the Aluseum, without hurting the feelings of the King of France. In the mean time the Prussians had obtained from his Majesty, not only all . the pictures belonging to erussia Proper, but also those which belouged to the Prussian territory on the left bank of the . Rhine, and all those that were the property of his Prussian Majesty ; the affair now became urgent, and your Lordship wrote a rote of the --, in which the matter was fully treated. The Minister of the Xing of the Netherlands still hav ing no satisfactory answer front the Frencl► Government applied to me as Commander in Chief of the Army of the King of the Netherlands, end asked whether I had any objection to employ his Majesty's troops to obtain pos ses•ion of what was indubitably his Majesty's property. I laid this question also before the Ministers of the Allied ?Aonarelis ; and as no objection abras found, J. thought it Illy -duty W take the necessary step to obtain what was spoke in consequence to Prince Talleyrand, upon this subject, communicated to him what Lai pissed at -the conference, and the reasons I had for thinking that the King of the Netherlands had a right to the paintings, and requested him to lay the matter before the King, and to beg his Majesty to do me the favour to determine the ii inner is which I might .obtain the object of the King of the Netherlands in a way the !cast offensive to his Ala- jesty. Prince Talleyrand promised me an answer by the next evening; but as I did not receive it, I repaired to him in the night, had a second conference with him, in which he gave me to understaiul that the King would give no orders upon the subject, that I Inight do as I thought proper and negociate will* Mr. Denon, the Direc,. Lw of the Museum. In the =snips 1 iiiy 41d-ticaC,tinp ) Lickat,Acol. OCT. 15. Freentantle, to Mr. Denon, who told him that he had no orders to give up any paintings out of th© Gallery, and that he should suffer none to be taken away but by force. I then sent Colonel Freemantle to Prince Talleyrand, to acquaint him with this answer, and to inform him that the troops would go the next morning at o'clock, to take possession of the paintings belonging to the King a the Netherlands, and to declare, that if any thing un pleasant should arise from this measure, the King and not I were answerable fur it. Colonel Freemantle likewise informed Mr. Denon of the measure that iSa6 to be taken. It was, however, not necessary to send any troops, because a Prussian Guard constantly occupied the Gal.. lcry, and the pictures were taken away without any as-. sistance being required from any of the troops under my command, except a few, who assisted as labourers in the taking down and packing up. It has been alledged, that by having been the instill ment of carrying away from the Gallery, the pictures of the King of the Netherlands, I had been guilty of a breach of a treaty which I had myself made; and as there is no mention made of the Museum in the Treaty of the 25th of March, and as it seems now the Treaty spoken of is the Military convention of Paris, it is neces sary to show how this Convention is connected with the Museum. It is not now necessary to discuss the question, whether the Allies were or not at war with France; there is no doubt that their armies entered Paris under a Military Convention concluded with an officer of the Government, the Prefect of the Department of the Seine, and an Officer of the Army, who represented both Authorities at that moment present at Paris, and empowered by these 4utho, rities to negociate and conclude tier them. The article of thf Convention which is alledged to have been broken, is the 11th, which relates to the public property. I positively deny that this article has any reference whatever to the Gallery of Paintings. The French Commissioners introduced in the original project, an article to provide for the security of this spe cies of property ; but Prince Blachev could not consent, saying that there were in the Gallery paintings w hick had been Wien from Prussia, and which Louis XVIII. had promised to restore ; whieh, however, had never been done. 1 repeated this circumstance to the Froth I Commissioners, and they proposed to accept the article, with the exception of the Prussian picturcg, and to this proposal I answered, that I was there as the representa tive of the other nations in Europe, and that I must claim for other nations all that was corceded to the Prussiaoi. ; I added, that I had no instructions concerning the Mu seum, nor any grounds to form an opinion how the Sore. reigns would act ; that they would certainly urge that the King should fulfil his obligations and that I advised • the omission of the article entirely, and the reserving this affair for the decis,ipn of the Sovereigns when they should arrive. Thus stands the affair of the Museum in reference to the Treaty, The Convention of Paris is silent upon it, and a negotiation took place, which left the business to the decision of the Sovereigns, Supposing that the silence of the Treaty of Paris, of May, 1814 1 reSpecting ,thc Museum, had given the ~Fxach co-Terme* au jp4isput,thig claim tc) the pick. 1