Star.
London, England, 1814-12-07 00:00:00

AMERICAN PAPERS.

[FROM Tint BOSTON RErr.r.Tirty.]
A FREE bUI CANDID DliCUs!ilON Or THE LATE

NEGUJA I lON.

It seems that the late coaterences at Ghent were
broken off on the ground that we will tvver admit a
discussion, or a provisional agreement on any tennis
wl:creof one of them shall claim the smallest cession
of territory.on our part, even if it be done tor the sake
of securing future tranquillity or adjusting bounda-
ries. This point must be cousldentd, before we enter
into the proposals of Great Britain ; because if this
principle is to be considered as settled, it is useless to
discuss the natine of the terms proposed by her. Is it
understood t:i.it we s.. II VeVCT treat on the footing
of reciprocity ? lie we not willing to do to Great
Britain what we should expect she would do to us?
Is it understood eiat our pride and our rights
are al..ne t.. be considered, and that both of them
• must be gratified, or war must be interminable ?
The doctline must amount to this : for when the
war was declared it was avowed in Congress, that its
end, it not its sole object, was the conquest of both
i the C inalas. - - - _

Ge9eral Hull's proclamation, sent to him from the
W.ir Department, avowed the designs of conquering
and holding those provinces. It promised protec-
tion, a better government to the British subjects ;
but threatened them with the most dreadful sufferings
it they should dare to be loyal and to defend their
own soil.

When peace was expected to be made two years
since, it was contended in many or most of the demo-
cratic papers, that our government should insist to
holding what we might have acquired.
Will it be now pretended, that if we bad taken
both the Canadas we should not even have demanded
to keep them ; when it was announced .that the mo-
tives to take them were, indemnity for British spolia-
tion% and security against the Indian tribes I
Were all these excuses false, and the reasons falla-
cious ? Have we expended one hundred millions,
lost twenty thousand men, wasted two campaigns,'
and kit tali- whole sea-coast to be plundered, merely
to m ike a parade or a conquest which we never meant
to claim at a peace ?
This would be a wicked mockery indeed. But it
is not so. every man knows, that if at the moment of
the meeting at Ghent, news had arrived there that
the American flag waved over the walls 'of Quebec,
that same news would have been accompanied•by
express instructions to our Commissioners 'to sign no
peace without the cession of the Canadas. -Even
many federalists would have approved such a de-
mand, and the nation at large would have suffered
no peace to be ratified by which those provinces were
restored.

Let any man lay his hand on his heart, and say
whether he can deny that this would have been the
case; nay, a treaty would have been rejected, if an
inch of Canada had been restored.
But a different course of things took place. Britain
holds two of our most important western forts, the
whole of the Province of Maine east of Penobscot
River, one or two islands in Long Island Sound, and
all those in the Chesapeake under her contirpul ; while
we hold about a mile square at Fort Erie only; and
then when Britain, instead of insisting upon what she
had conquered, merelT asked that we would net ex-
terminate the Indians, nor bur their lands, so as to
approach apd endanger her weaker provinces; and
because she asks and offers to discuss the question
whether she may not have a communication across
our unsettled wilderness from Halifax to Qaebec, it
is the must abominable and unheard of, pnjust and
insolent demand.
All that we gain by right of conquest is our's, and
mar be insisted bb. We can dismember the greatest
Empire in the world without insolence or injustice;

a nation like ours of seven millions only, can say to
one of sixteen millions, give us all your possessions in
our neighbourhood—we want them to round out oar
territory—want them to enable us w exterminate the

Indians.
But if that great hatiofl, after actually conquerint
large portions of our country, after giving them all
up, says 4, permit sue to ask security fi rmy subject;
by interpos;ng a neutral country between us—l fear
you—let us not be conterminous or immediate neigh-
bours—we may quarrel again, or rather you may in.
vade me unawares as you did before—and also be so
good as to let tyre take the most barren corner of the
very province 1 bave subdued, a perfect wilderness,
just co far as to make a road, which road will bring
all your back lands into market* and be as beneficiai
to you as to us."
11Great Britain says this, it is the height of in,o-
lence and irjustice. It is what a " conquering nation
alone could say to a conquered one."
Can any man read this in his closet without a zing
of conscience Is this our equality, and fairness, and

_
love of peace?-
But what was this war in its commencement ? An
unprov.,ked, unjust, offensive attack on a Ration then,
struggling with the most nwnstrons power in d 4.
world ?

That nation, now freed from all its other encrnici,
at perfect liberty to punish the injustice Aerd mean.
ness of our cabinet, find;ng us exhausted by the war,
our public credit gone, our financiers at their wit's
end to get a dollar, the payment of the interest pn our
public debt suspended, Congress attacking those ma-
mitaetures which they professed to favour, running
thcit binds into evin-y man's pocket to feel if they can
seize any cash, and opening every pantry door lo
End objecti of taxation—that nation finding us in this
condition, offers to restore all she has taken, and
merely asks security against our future injustice ; dis-
claims all wish of gaining territory, alleges her kart
of our future power, 'sod proves the sincerity of both
by the very nature of the propositions she makes,
which are simply to remove us to a distance from
her, and we call this insolence and injustice. We,
too, gracious iII:WEN, who two years since, in a mo-
ment of exultation, finding our enemy occupied
abroad, and weak in our ciuntry, threatened and
boasted that we would rub 11.. r of all her American
territories !
11 c(nrid not con c'entinusly appiml to HEAVEI4
b.. 101-! (~r the justice et our sau.e, what shall we now
say to a Goo 4,1 mercy, when our enemy offers to
stay ti.e destroying arm, and to sheath the bloody
sword, and only demands security and protction for
the Indian tribes, on whose plundered hinds this na-
tit):: now sith,ists?
Substantially this is the only proposition made...
The other were subjects of discu,sitavonly, and might
have been modified' to our acceptance. But no, we
will ni4 discuss, not even try to agree.
What,' then, are we to do ? Figtit.• Till then'
Till we have humbled Britain. So we ptinalw..d to
do-t4ree years ago.. We hive only lust. five or six
millions of acres, one hundred millions of dollars,
end twenty thousand lives. Shall we do better
If ISiltain with 6000 troops on our seaboard has
called out .100,000 militia, taken our capital, anti
two great counties of Massachusetts, what may she
be expected to do, when she has 20,000 troops to be
directed. by sea to any one point ? Will she be less
disposed to ask for security after she has taken Loui-
siana, or New York ? Yet she certainly can do either
with such a twee as she can „:•tid. No man doubts
we can defend our country, but not from ravage, and
devastation, and immense expense and lasting injury.
And after we are thus exhausted, is it probable our
enemy will give us better terms than those we now
reject.?
All that Britain insists upon is, that she will protect
these Indians. She does it because she is bound to
them as her Allies. She does it for the nobler reason
which Heaven must approve, that by removing her
borders from our's, our peace, that peace which
ought to subsist between all christian nations, will be
more durable. Is this the reason we reject it? Yes,
I fear it is the real reason.
We come now to a most important question. Is
.there any just reasoti to believe that Great Britain
intended to insist on any other article than peace with
the Indians, and security for their possessions, so that
they might be a permanent barrier to secure the Ca.
nadian provinces ?
In the first conference the British opened some
subjects of discussion ; one of them only, the Indian
territory and peace, they declared a sine qua non or
indispensable. Without that, they would make no
peace. This in common sense was declaring that the
others were not indispensable. If they had after-
wards, without a change of circumstances, brought
forward either of the others as indispensable condi-
tions, it would have been deemed unfair or perfidious.
Our Ministers adroitly, with a view to create
doubts, asked them whether any of the other articles
were also intended as a sine qua non ?
If the British were instructed to make them such,
there was no reason why they should not avow it.—
They had before done so, frankly, when asked whet
11441,04 Indian peace and Indian boundary were both
koilltih They answered—Yes.
'Big if they had replied to the other question, that
they were not, it would have been committing them.
selirbi to our Ministers, and giving up the questions:
for as soon as our isegociators should know that they
were not instructed to insist upon them, they would
have refused to discuss them.
The British Ministers warily took the only course
left to them. They answered, when you have replied
to our proposed sine qua non, it will be time enough
to talk of another. " We have been," say they,
?Gs suf4ciently explicit," and so they were. They stated
;four subjects, of which one only they declared to be
a sine qua non.
In confirmation of this, in the last letter of the
British Ministers, after they received their new in-
structions, they refer to the Indian peace and bowl•
dary only as a sine qua non.
The other points must, therefore, be consider./
only as subjects offered fur discussion, to be modified
or wholly conceded, according as our Ministers might
press other claims and demands.
With this view of the subject, which lam pet•
suaded is correct, it is almost unnecessary to discuss
the other propositions. It is wholly uncertain whe"
ther every one of them would not have been gion
up. It is probable they would have been modified in
such a way as to meet our views, interests, feelings,
and honour.