The British Press; or, Morning Literary Advertiser.
London, England, 1806-12-13 00:00:00

this .usgoeistios, akeisay advanced. and ors the
ii int of being terminated.
Al "In the Meier written to his Excellenet Mr ' .
the Ist of April, by his Excellency the Ft 1
nietee for Foreign ..A4faies.. that Minitel._ nr •
litiounces; that His Majesty the Emperor and Kit k'
• opted entirely the principle laid down in the di
- . arch of his Excellency Mr. Fox, of the 260, t.
March, and presented as the basis of the Neve.
tion, ' that the proposed peace ought to be hone..
able for the two Courts, and fur their respetei.,
Allies.'
" In his letter attic td of Jane, to his Excellence '
Mr. Fox, his Excellerty the Minister of Foreig•
Affairs went still farther. He proposed, in the mint
of His Majesty the Emperor and King, to establis
for bases two fundamental principles . the fir-t take',
from the letter of Mr. Fox, of the 26th of March.
to wit, ' that the two States should have for their
ohjea, that the peace should be honourable for them
and for their respeftive Allies, at the same time that
the peace should be of such a nature, as to secure,
as far as they could, the future repose of Europe.'
The second principle was, ' a recognition in layout
of both powers, of the right of interference and gua-
rantee, both for continental and maritime affairs.'
" Such were the bases adopted by the British
Government, and agreed to by it. It never could
have come into the. contemplation of His Majesty
the Emperor and King,' to tyke for the basis of the
negociation the sits poutdeirs. Ifsuch bad been his
iJeas, he would have kept Moravia, a part of Hun-
gary, Styria, Cat niola, Croatia, the whole of Aus-
tria, •as well as its capital ; Trieste and Fiume, and
the shores surrounding them, would be now under
his power, as well as Genoa and Venice. However,
Osnahrirgh, and all the mouths of the great rivers
in the North of Germany, would be tuhje& to his
Empire; and certainly then His Majesty might,
without any difficulty, leave the Cape, Surinam,
Tobago, St. Lucie, Pondicherry, Ice. in the hands
of His Britannic Majesty.
" As to Sicily, oven upon that hypothesis, His
Majesty the Emperor and King would not have left
it to his enemies ; but His Majesty would have
thought only that the conquest of that island ought
to have preceded the opening of_the negoriations ;
and while Prussia and Russia have guaranteed and
recognised the changes which have taken plate in
the kingdom of the Two Sicili-s, was it to be pre-
sumed, that England could have been able to p: event
the conquest of Sicily, which is only separated from
the Continent by a canal of less than 2900 t, rises ?
" Supposing even that the Cape and Sui inem,
and other Dutch possessions, could be detached de
finitively from the kingdom of Holland, is it not
certain, that its incorpo-ation with the French Em-
pire would have been the necessary consequet ett of
the Tomcat of England to restee to it its c0i,....es ?
What means would there be, in eta, to preserve a
nation which had nothing hut debts, and from which
the entire abience of commerce would remove every
' means of payment ? Whatever their Excellencies the
Plenipotentiaries of Ills Bsitaanic Majesty may al-
lege, it is impossible that they should not be con-
vinced, that it is a thing extremely different for
Great Britain to see the Terri, and the mouths of
the Rhine and Meuse, subjeet to the French custom-
house laws, aid to see them subject to those of the
Dutch. -thus then, without the restitution of its
colonies, Holland would, of necessity, become a
province of the French Empire; for, in accepting
the crown of Holland, Prince Louis formally sle-
dared his intention of renouncing it, if the Dutch
colonies should not be festered et the general peace.
" Let Hanover, moreover, become a province of
France; let Trieste. Fiume, and their tenitoriee,
become in like manner provinces of the kingdom of
Italy : and let Great Britain keep.in compensation
the Cape, Surinam, Malta, Pondicherry, &cc. France
will consent to it ; and the great principle of oti
.Itossidetis shall be applied in its whole extent, both
at present and for the future.
" Let the new Minister Plenipotentiary of His
Britannic Majesty find in the history of the world,
a segociation concluded between two great na-
tions, on the principle of uti pealidirtis. Let him
examine whether the rsti poisidttis does not rather
belong to an armistice than to a peace ? It is im-
possible not to say, that in proposing to France the
siti posiiiair, especially in the present circumstances,
they must have formed a strange idea of the cha-
rafter of the Emperor Napoleon; and that they
must have supposed him reduced to a singular de-
gree of humiliation and distress.
" But, in demanding the sill iiessidetit, his Excel-
lency the Earl of Laude: dale, Plenipotentiary of
his Britannic Majesty. without having any regard
to the principle which he advances, wishes, neverthe-
less, to change the entire destiny of a Continental
nation, which furnished to England 25,000 men,
and which suppliei her with a part of those means
which she displayed in the seven years war, and
even in the war of the French Revolution, against
the armies of the North. Thus, then, they wish
the tell mssinfitis to deprive France of all her com-
merce and establishments, and to ruin her Allies ;
but tile), wish to violate the principle of the as: pos.
:dais, to oblige France to renounce its engage-
ments ; to break its treaties; and, in short, to dis-
solve
its whole Continental system. Is nut this to '
propose a peace a thousand times mare disastrous
than the longest war, and conditions capable of excit-
ing the indignation of every Fienchrr.an ? What I
shall France have conquered all the Powers hired by
England, during the continuance of the three coa-
litions, to see imposed upon it conditions as unjust
as they are dishonourable, in spite at the modera-
tion and generosity that she his shewn.
" His Excellency Mr. Fox has himself proposed,
, that the peace should be honourable for the two
Courts, and ior their respeetive Allied.' His Ma-
jesty the Emperor and King cannot regard the peace
as honourable, if by one of the conditions of it he
is to lose a single sithjeft ; and however small nag
be ti.e importance of the Colony el Tobao, it is
sufficient that it was a past of the French Empire,
when His Majesty took the reins of Government, to
I prevent His i•lej-sty from ever signior *treaty, in
which shall be contained the alienatidn of that Co-
lony, or of any other which belongs to him in the
saris, seta seer. NO reasonable Englishman could
Oyer Batter himself to the contrary ; and in his pre-
sent situation, His Majesty would lest, if he con-
sented to it, the esteem of every brave and generous
man,. evep wens his enemies.
•' 1 he Undeseigneil is charged .to &slam, that His