The National Register.
London, England, 1808-12-25 00:00:00

DEC. 25.

as anac.—l have the honour to inform you that the Coaven- I
tion which was yesterday concluded„ has been ratified by his
Excellency Gen. Count Iluxbow vdea, and 1 shall Dow transmii
it to Gaunt Pgteullt in in order that the exchange of the Ratiti•
cation may be effected with regard to the Armistice in question,
I have his Excellenc'y's command to acquaint you, that 3lthow.b
he must destroy the conclusion of a formal Armisiice, yet he en-
gages his word of honour that he will not recommence hostile
operations against the Swedish army before the expiration of
f wirteen days after the Swedish army shall have taken np the po-
sition stipulated in the above Convention, in hopes that no ope-
ration, w ill be commeneed
In your part within the said time.
have the honour, Ike.
Brakestad, the 28-49 Nov. 1808. Y Cutrvr ItAmitesicr.

STATE PAVERS.

GREAT BRITAIN AND AMERICA.
LETTER FROM MR. CANNING TO MR. PINKNEY.
Foreign Office, Sept, $3, 11308.
The Undersigned, his Majesty's Principal Secretary of State
for Foreign Affairs, had the honour to receive the official letter
addressed to him by Mr. Pinkney, Minister Plenipotentiary of
the United States, respecting the Orders in Council, issued by his
Majesty on the Ith of January and 11th November lSOT.—lie
has laid that letter before the king, and he is commanded to
assure Mr. Pinkney that the answer to the proposal which Mr.
Pinknev was instructed to bring forward, has been deferred only
in the hope that the renewed application which was understood
to be recently made by the Government of the United States to
that of France, might, in the new state of things which has arisen
in Europe, have met with such a reception in France as would
have rendered the compliance of his Majesty with that proposal
consistent as lunch with his Majesty's own dignity, and with the
interests of his people, as it would have been with his Mgjesty's
disposition towards the United States. Unhappily there is now
no longer any reason to believe that such a hope is likely to he
realised; and the undersigned is therefore commanded to com-
municate to Mr. Pinkney the decision which, under the circum-
stances as they stand, his Majesty feels himself compelled, how-
ever unwillingly, to adopt.
The mitigated measure of retaliation annonnced by his Majesty
in the Order in Council of the 7th January, and the further ex-
tension of that measure (an extension in operation but not in
principle) by the Orders in Council of November, are founded
(as has been already repeatedly avowed by his Majesty) on the
" unquestionable right of his Majesty to retort upon the enemy
the evils of his own injustice;' and upon the consideration that
if third parties incidentally suffered by these retaliatory mea-
sures," they were to seek their redress from the Power by whore
original aggression that retaliation was occasioned,"
His Majesty sees nothing in the embargo laid on by the Presi-
dent of the United States of America, which varies this original
and simple state of the question.
If considered as a measure of impartial hostility against both
Belligerents, the embargo appears to his Majesty to have been
amuifestly unjust, as, according to every principle of justice,
that redress ought to have been first sought from the party ori-
ginating the wrong. And his Majesty cannot consent to buy off
that hostility which America ought not to haveextended to him,
at the expellee of a concession made not to America, but to France.
If, as it has more generally been represented by the Governs
meat of the United States, the embargo is only to be considered
as an innocent municipal regulation which affects none but the
United States themselves, and with which no foreign State has
any concern; viewed in this light, his Majesty does not conceive
that he has the right or the pretension to make any complaint of
it, and he has made none. But in this light there appears not
only no reciprocity, but no assignable relation between the re-
peal by the United States of a measure of voluntary selfsrestric-
time and the surrender by his hlAjesty Obis right of retaliation
against his enemies.
The Government of the United States is now to he informed
that the Berlin Decree of November2l, 1808, was the practical
commencement of an attempt not merely to check or Impair the
prosperity of Great Britaiq, but utterly to nonihilate her poli-
tith:t n h
ritlitrxtisties tenacte,
mthrough the rain of her commercial prosperity ;
have been attempt almost the Powers of the European Con-
tinent compelled, More or lea, to co-operate; and
ttlu. the American embargo, though most assuredly not intended
to that end (for America can hate no real interest in the subver-
tem of the British Power, and her Rulers arc too ertitables4ll