The National Register. — London, England, 1817-09-22 00:00:00

Oatitioali Utui POLITICAL DISQUISITION. Our tong, MONDAY, SE: :MBER 22 1817. blishments of industry, s•►lely founded on monopoly- When peace opened Europe to the trade of England, these establishments fell, because they could not stand the English competition." Was this beneficial im provement in English manufactures, and commerce, the result of the policy of the people, or of the Govern . ment ? or was the destruction of that colossal ty ranny which introduced the continental system, the policy of the people, or of the Government ? But in this confession of the decline of the German manu factures, M. Scheffer, in bitterness of sett], be trays the whole secret of his animosity. The British government, by its vigour, by his policy, which this wri ter tells us is opposed to that of the people, accom plished all this, and therefore the British Government is not to be forgiven. But what does the English Edi tor of M. Scheffer say to this confession, to this which ' give& the lie to all he himself has written on the sub ject of trade, from the signing of the treaty of Paris to the present hour? How often has he told us, that our manufactures were not vendible on the continent, that our excessive taxation had compelled our manu facturers to fix prices which precluded all competition with the foreign markets, and that we were fast sinking in the scabs of commercial nations ? M. Schafer, how ever will not admit this to be the fact, but he tells us that we are sinking in another way. "England," says he, " has lost all that liberty of which she was formerly so proud, and of which the Continent envied her the possession. She is no longer pointed out as the model of free countries." Thus between M. Scheffer and his English Editor, we are lost boat ways ! The English man deplores our ruined trade, and the German sighs over our departed liberty. The latter has, however, some faint hope that our liberty may be restored. " If," says he, as is to be hoped, the English Nation shall one day succeed in re-establishing its liberty, it can only he by one of the two following means. Either a wise prince will fortn a true judgment of his situa tion, anti see the necessity of calling the Party of Re form to the cabinet, or the people' * ! •." Here we may guess what fbllows, but it was too gross even for the columns of his English Editor, who. God knows, is not over squeamish about these matters. But we should like to know from M Schafer, ►vlto is the " Party of Ref►nu" that he conceives would grace the Cabinet ? We suppese the names of Burdett, Cochrane, Cart wright, and Hint, have reached him ; are these the " Party of Retbrin" that arc to restore our liberties ? Or, rather, at the head of a misguided populace, to accomplish what the significant asterisks * • • • de signate ? Our confined limits will not permit us to go far ther with M. Scheirer, nor indeed should we have trou bled ourselves with him at all, had he not been offici ously and 'ostentatiously brought forth for public admiration; but at parting, we will say a word in sin cerity to his Editor. Does he think ; that by acting as he has done in the instance of this penicio . us tract, he is rendering a service to his country, or to his own character? Are the people to be exalted only by degrad ing the government; and that at the expense of truth and of common decency ? Is he so blinded by that prejudice which disappointment has confirmed, and which has become with him a disease, that he cannot aisign these libels to their true origin ; anti take " sincere pleasure," not in propagating them by whatever "writers of eminence" they may be fabricated, but in rebutting charges which he knows to be fraught with lies, and the objects of which are to subject our in dustrious manufacturers and enterprising merchants to all the inconvenience which traffic experiences among a hostile people. • Six hundrad men are to t►o immediately added to that gallant and liighly serviceable corps, the 'loyal Mari►es. tion anb it a 1330. No. 50.1.—V0t. X. ON THE LIBELS OF THE CONTINENTAL PRESS. WE have more than once taken occasion to advert to the system which has for some time prevailed in Ger many and the Netherlands, of heaping every species of abuse upon this country, and of holding us up to the world as a people to be at once hated and feared. While we saw this practice confined to a few proscribed French men, we were content to treat their tirades with the contempt and scorn which they deserved. The only cause of regret with us, was, that the copying of these libellous declamations seemed to afford peculiar pleasure to certain of our Journalists, who found in them much to admire, and nothing to condemn ; and more par ticularly to one of them, who for the last thirty years has maintained a conspicuous rank by the boldness of his attacks upon all constituted authority ; and whose writings, had their effects been commensurate with the efforts, would long ago have produced the same scenes of spoliation and blood amongst us that have been the endless theme of his praise, front the first act of aggression by revolutionary France, to the fatal hour that consigned the genius of Jacobin liberty to the barren ro.‘l: of St. Helena. We sometime ago con templated an abundant harvest of Continental abuse from an avowal made in the columns of the llornipg -Chronicle, that henceforth they would particularly att-nd to productions of the Continental Press, and give publicity to such articles as might from time to time appear calculated to set the people of Eu rope right as to our influence upon their affairs. This pledge the Morning Chroaicle has not been slow in redeeming. Through its columns the most libellous article which we have for a long time ‘Vitnessed, has this week met the public eye. It is entitled an "Essai sur Is l'olitique de la Nation Anglais," and is from the pen of a M. Scheffer, who has already been before the world as a political writer. For several reasons this produc tion deserves particular notice. The writer is not a Frenchman, but a German ; be affects to be minutely ' .acquainted with our laws, with cur political institu tions, with our party animosities and attachments ; and his doctrines are the more carefully to be guarded vgainst, because all the abuse and tidseltood which be utters, are uttered under the disguise of friend ship and sympathetic feeling for the "enslaved" and "miserable" British people, the great body of whom, he conceives, entertain opinions directly hostile to their Government, and his Editor in the Morning Chronicle, nobly supports him, by assuring us that," the great body of the people of England never approved of the measures of the Government," and " those writers of the continent who have any thing more th:la a transient popularity at heart, ought, therefore, to dis courage, by all possible means, an indiscriminate abuse of England, mil to teach the people that their hatred is exclusively duct° the English Gov:yam:at, as the sole - cense of their ealannlies." If d. Scheirer had said this, we would pardon him, because he, by-and-by, lets us into the secret of his cause of hatred to the Bri tish Government ; but such language from the pen of an English writer must subject him to the hatred and contempt of every good man, whatever may be his political bias. M. Scliefrer congratulates himself with great com placency °a the discovery he has made of separating the people from the Government. "We have," says he, " endeavoured in this work to consider the Eng lish nation in a new point of view—to prove that its policy is essentially oppos,l to that of its Government ;" and yet this egregious politician tells us in another place, that, " during the continuance of the continental system, there ha l grown ap, as well in Germ:uly as France and the Low C,uutries, c,lanufactµres, lsi tn.+ PRICE 90. FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE. FRANCE. Charnay who duped several people about Bourg and. Macon, in the pretended character of the Ex-F.:nperor has been sentenced to five years imprisonment, a fine of 50 francs, five years surveil/once, and the deprivation of his civil rights for 10 years. A dreadful Ere broke nut on the night of the 6th in , t. at the village of Beanquesne, Moult six leagues from Arnie's, which destroyed no less than forty-five houses. A great van tity of new wheat was unfortunately constmed. 'Flie Minister for the Interior has addr, seed a circular m the various Prefects ordering them to 'Timis an exited sta..> went of the number of prisoners in confinement in their de partments, up to the Ist of September, with a specification of the offence of each criminal. These returns are in future to be transmitted every three months. An Ordinance of the King dated the 12th inst. runs follows— " Having accepted the resignation which has been tea. tiered to us by our cousin, the Marshal Duke of nitre, we have nominated, and do hereby notiiinate our cousin the Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, Minister Secretary of State of the War department." Count Mole, Peer of France, is appointed Minister Se.. cretary of State for the department of Mt.sine. M. Pichou, Judge of Requests, is charged with a mission to the French Antilles ; and will immediately set out for them, accompanied by Lientenant-General Henzelot, who has re. emit ly been appointed Governor of Martinique. On the 14th instant, the Court of Assizes acquitted an English officer of the name of Orlando Lock iers, (Locker, vac suppose) accused of forgery. This stranger is at Paris. where, being without money, he gave his tailor a bill of ex. change for 30 livres, or 700 francs, on Mr. Scppings, inspec tor of the Navy at London. Mr. Soppings's purported ac ceptallee was discovered to be a forged one ; but it appeared On investigation that Mr. Lockiers had relied on his brother in-law's honouring the bill. Having by other means intim. nified the plaintiff in this case, Mr. Lockiers was acquitted, GERMANY. The " Austrian observer," of Sept. 5, has another article relative to the pretended protest of of the Ex-Empress Maria Louisa, in answer to The Antigallican Monitor," of the Intlt of August, la Welt rails oil " The Contler" to declare by whom its Editor is authorised to declare the protest a for gery ; " Without being answerable for the entire anthentirity of this protest, 'The Anti-gsllieuie assures us that he knows for certain, that the Archduchess Maria Louisa did deposit a protest in the Wails of a confidential mail at Pails, in the stmeaer if 1814, and another to the Congress at Vienna iii 1815. 'The Anti-gallican' addoe•es as woofs o the truth of those assertions, two authorities that are doubt less infallible, being articles from the correspondence of ' The A titi•gallieate ef the 19th of Felit nary, mid the 13ril of April,lBlsl Notwithstanding so rtsvctable uu authority, we again declare, and positively, with the addi. lion, that we are authorised to make this declaration, not only that the p.etended Protest of the 19th of February - is a Ma- ItriallS invention of some Corypimits of the party, which thinks every means good that con mislead the public mind, but, also, that the At cluluelless Maria Louisa did never de. liver any protest, either in the year 1814 at Paris, or in the year Ibls at Vienna." DENMARK AND SWEDEN. - The last aceottuts from Copenhagen and Stockholm are by no means satisfictory. The West India trade of Drinnark has proved most unprofitable, and the exchange has been ma te' ially affected by the results. In Sweden the pi ()Teel ofa productive harvest has been &midget by several necks bad weather, and the population will again, as in former years, b. compelled to hoport conaiderable quantities of foreign corn fur subsistence. This will be the more severely felt, es their means of obtaining snppli..s must be straitened in pro portion to the injurious operation of the late prohibitory regulations so rigidly entbreed by the shallow policy of Ber nadotte. The health of the King of Sweden, it is said, becomes daily more I:mei:lions, and his increasing weakness to obliges him to tale less share in this gwicerns of Govern ment. SWITZERLAND. Letters frcm Lausanne state, that the ever non ing of the Rhine has desolated the entire tract of countr'y from Ra;nata to the Lake of Constance. This river, don Mg the night he. t wren the 27th and 2Stli of Aognst, rose &those all its bacs, and destroying the greater part, cashed at 01141, into the piains, and 'Anneal one of the &nest harvests in the memory of man. Several tarts of Werdenhurg and the Rhintlial arc star verged. The v,lleys from the middle to near Remaly,: form an immense lake ; and boats are eritplii ed in eat mg away various kinds of proterty. Commissiunees of GoAremnant have re7aired to the Rhinthal, and all the communes vie wall each other in assisting the sufferers. SOUTH AMERICA. Extract of a letter from an officer or the Fire-brand (lately from Vera Criv), doted Maize, July : - It seems the pa triots no longer annoy the royalists beta een the city of Alex• iro and Vela Cruz. 'File last convoy, a hiilt at rived on the Lith of June, consisting of 3000 111111(1, atilt six millions of hard money, was only guarded by fifty nun. Thi s l oo k s l ik e a' want of force on the part of the patriots. They have ruined the 1 . 111/I!llerce, thrown the country a center back, and rendered every foreisii and domestic product exorbi tantly di ar. They have done more—they bitvc broken the spirit of the people, and rendered them indifferent as to is ha t Go‘i•ronieeit they may come under." At ‘11.14R V ARMY OF PERU.—Bulletin No. 21 gives a narrative of proceedings front May Ist. to the 11th. A petty . .44 r=2•i 1 - A0 -VA