The Sun.
London, England, 1835-05-08 00:00:00

PRICE 7D.

THE DANISH CLAIMS.

(From the Westminster Review for April.)
The Tories are fond of accusing their opponents of de-
signs of spoliation and robbery ; or spiolation and wob-
bery' as some of them have been heard to pronounce it.
Here is an instance of Tory paternal government,
worthy to be classed with any of the most oppressive and
insulting acts of robbery ever committed by a Tudor or a
Stuart. Yet these are the men who affirm, that owing to
their excellent government—owing to their protection of
British commerce—owing to their equal maintenance of
the rights of all classes of British subjects—in a word
owing to their doing justice and fearing nothing,'—this
country experienced during their administration a degree
of prosperity and happiness never before enjoyed by man.
Now Look upon that picture and on this.
On Friday the 16th of May, 1834, Mr. Parker rose in
the House of Commons and made a statement of which the
following is the substance :
In the year 1807, the government of this country, for
reasons in which it is unnecessary here to enter, proposed
a secret expedition, and antecedent to its sailing, its desti-
nation being utterly unknown, placed all the shipping in
the river Thames under an embargo. At this time Na-
poleon, almost omnipotent over Europe, had succeeded in
excluding our commerce from all the ports, and our manu-
factures from all the markets of the Continent. In that
state of things Denmark, a neutral power, became the
entrepot for the belligerent parties, and an unusual degree of
prosperity fell to that State as the emporium of Baltic inter-
course. No Tess than 320 Danish vessels were in the river
at the time of this embargo ; and a Danish Minister was in
our capital at the time the expedition sailed. It is im-
portant too to add, that some portion of the cargoes of
these vessels was consigned for the specific purpose of dis-
charging debts due from Danish to British subjects. In
this position of affairs the expedition sailed under Admiral
Gambier, with sealed orders. Upon opening these in a
certain prescribed latitude, it was found that the expedition
was destined against Copenhagen. The British armament
fulfilled its mission. " Under Divine Providence,' Copen-
hagen was ' set on fire,' end by repeated discharges of ar-
tillery, kept in flames in different places,' the Danish fleet
taken, and all the objects of the expedition attained. In re-
taliation of so unheard-of an attack, the King of Denmark,
among other acts of reprisal, first sequestered and then con-
fiscated all British property in Denmark. And he so far
departed from the accustomed rules of civilized warfare, as
to seize and condemn " book debts" due from Danish to
British subjects. To enforce this confiscation, the Danish
Government commanded all its subjects both in Norway
and Denmark, under very heavy penalties, to pay all their
debts, on certain terms, into the exchequer ; and upon their
having done so, gave them an acquittance in full. The
currency too, of that kingdom, from the pressure of events,
became so depreciated that, incredible as it may appear,
payments of the substantial value of two per cent. were suf-
ficient for the nominal liquidation of the debts. The Da-
nish Minister left London, and war was declared. The
Danish vessels in the Thames were condemned and sold,
and became Admiralty droits. The sum of 1,200,0001. was
produced by this sale, And it would at first sight be
thought,' in the words of Mr. Parker, * that out of so vast
a sum some provision-would have been made for the parties
whose demands upon Danish traders had been cut away
from under them by their own Government. Measures ac-
cordingly were immediately taken, and a Committee of
claimants, with Sir Charles Price at their head, were in a
constant communication with the Treasury and the Board
of Trade for many years. They pleaded the suddenness of
the attack which provoked the Danish Crown ; the unpa-
ralleled nature of the confiscation ; and the ample means
at the disposal of the Treasury for indemnity." Merchants,
as Mr. Parker remarks, must no doubt run the risks of
war. But this was not a case of that kind. Here the
British merchant saw Denmark a neutral state on terms of
amity with his own Government, and a Danish Minister
in London. Nay there were actually cases, where an
Admiralty licence for the shipment of goods was
granted after Gambier's expedition had sailed. The
complete peculiarity of this caee, and what altogether
excludes it from the applicability of the usual reasoning
respecting commercial risks and calculations, is the very
fact of its involving so many large transactions, and by con-
sequence the ruin of so many respectable individuals. In
the course of the debate, Lord Sandon said with great force
and justice, " I have constituents connected with this ques-
tion, and I have lately seen one gentleman who was a very
great sufferer by the seizure on the part of the Danish
Government. He was once a man of great respectability
and wealth. His respectability he still retains, but he has
been reduced to a state of destitution, in consequence of
the loss of his property on that occasion." Mr. Sheppard
said, " I know parties in the county of Gloucester who de-
spatched a quantity of woollen goods to Denmark, which
were seized by that Government, as well as a quantity of
goods which they had there in store ; and no relief has ever
been afforded them. The parties were nearly ruined, and
have scarcely held up their heads since." Is it probable, or
possible, that so many respectable merchants were engaged
in transactions, which could justly subject them to the con-
tingency of a gamester's fate ?

But notwithstanding the complete peculiarity and ex-
treme hardship of the case, it raised no sentiments of justice,
awakened no feelings of compassion, in the breasts of his
Majesty's Tory Ministers. The Danish claimants had in
their veins none of the " patent" blood that circulated in
the Upper House, and could command no votes in the
Lower, and the Tory party had been too long used to
plunder and to power, to make any concessions to justice or
humanity. What was it to the reckless prodigal " which
had devoured his living with harlots," in the midst of his
riotous debauchery, that a set of miserable merchants were
wasted by penury and overwhelmed with affliction, because
he was feasting and rioting on their goods?
However, as a cat may be seen to play with and torture
a mouse before giving it the coup de grace, his Majesty's
ministers told the Danish claimants to wait till a definite
treaty of peace was concluded. The claimants were given
to understand, that some provision would be made for their
benefit in such a treaty. It was moreover intimated to
them, that the large sum, now become droits, should such
diplomatic endeavours be unavailing, would provide sources
from whence they might have eventual indemnity. Thus
the unfortunate claimants were kept out of their property
(which, it may here be mentioned, parenthetically, was di-
vided among the members of the Royal family, for the per-
sonal use an expenditure of the said Royal persons), till
the year 1814, when they beheld the final discomfiture of
all their hopes, as far as diplomacy was concerned, by the
article of the Treaty of Kiel. The 11th article of that
treaty provided, " that all sequestered property, not already
confiscated, should be restored." But the book-debts in
question, as well as other property, had been confiscated.
They were exempted, therefore, by the express words of
this article ; and our just and merciful Tory Government,
so far from performing its engagements with the claimants,
by making any stipulations for their indemnity, utterly and
finally cut them off from a shadow of hope.
" In 1817," continued Mr. Parker, " Mr. Vansittart, now
Lord Bexley, came down with a petitirn to the House, to
which the assent of the crown had been given, but said that he
should not take it into consideration immediately; and from
the ratification of the treaty of Kiel, frequent application was
made by the claimants to the Treasury : indeed I may appeal
to the right honourable predecessors of the noble Lord, and
the noble Lord himself, to say wlr-Aber their importunity has
not amounted to every conceivable definition of what lawyers
call continual claim ;' in short, whether their visitations to
Downing-street have not been much more frequent than agree-
able. After the presentation of the above-mentioned petition
by Lord Bexley, recourse was again bad to negotiation, and
Mr. Canning endeavoured, through the medium of Lord Blom-
field, our Ambassador at Stockholm, with which Court we
were in close amity, to do something for the claimants—so
far, at least, as Norway (which country, as the House knows,
was ceded by Denmark to Sweden) was concerned. He could
prevail, however, only so far as as to induce the Sivedish
crown to pay out of its Exchequer such sums, as in the mode
mentioned in the early part of my observations, I have de-
scribed to have been paid in ; and this concession was limited
to those who were carrying on trading intercourse with Eng-
land."

It appears from the above, what a vast quantity of
pains the Tory Ministers took to avoid doing what was
just. It was in conformity with their good old Tory
tactics, their received parliamentary logic, to endeavour
to distract their opponent's attention, and keep the real
point in dispute as much as possible out of sight. A man
of average understanding and honesty would have seen
at once, that the way to get rid of a troublesome credi-
tor was to pay him his money and have done with him.
But this was far too straight-forward a way of going to work
for your Machiavellian Tory tactician. His first best way
was to shuffle off or bully off paying the money at all ; his
second-best, to try to get somebody else to make sham-
payment of it. And then lie would swear, or vow to God,
his usual resource upon such occasions, that such sham-
payment was as truly catholic and real, as Lord Peter's
loaf of bread was roast-beef and plum-pudding.
The truth is that the Tories quite shut out all sense of
the chances and changes of this unstable world, and
imagined, as they perhaps do at this hour, that their empire