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their reign, be crowned in the church of St. Peter at Rome. Palaces, it is further ordained, shall be prepared for the Pope at Paris, at Rome, and in different parts of the empire; and he shall have rural property assigned to him to the amount of two millions of livres in different parts of the empire: but the expenses of the sacred college, and of the Propaganda, are declared to be imperial. The most remarkable part of the decree is that which, after affirming that all foreign sovereignty is incompatible with the exercise of any spiritual authority within the empire, ordains, that "the popes shall at their elevation take an oath never to act contrary to the four propositions of the Gallican Church, adopted at an assembly of the clergy in 1682; and that these four propositions shall be common to all the catholic churches of the empire."

In order rightly to understand the import of this decree, it will be necessary to state what the four propositions are, which are thus revived and confirmed by the fiat of Bonaparte. They are as follows:

1. That neither St. Peter nor his successors have received from God any power to interfere, directly or indirectly, in what concerns the temporal interests of princes and sovereign states that kings and princes cannot

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be deposed by ecclesiastical authority; nor their subjects freed from the sacred obligation of fidelity and allegiance, by the power of the church and the bulls of the Roman pontif.

2. That the decrees of the Council of Constance, which maintain the authority of general councils as superior to that of the popes in spiritual matters, are approved and adopted by the Gallican Church.

3. That the rules, customs, institutions, and observances, which have been received in the Gallican Churchi, are to be preserved inviolable.

4. That the decisions of the pope in points of faith are not infallible, unless they be attended with the consent of the church.

It is not a little remarkable, that at the moment when Bonaparte is thus circumscrib ing the power of the pope, already much abridged by the concordat, which conceded, among other things, the sole appointment of bishops; the Roman catholics of England and Ireland should refuse to their king a negative even on the pope's appointment of their bishops, although the pope can now be considered in no other light than as the mes tropolitan of France,

VIEW OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS.

CONTINENTAL INTELLIGENCE. TRE important question, who is to be the new consort of Bonaparte, is at length decidd. The destined victim is the Archduchess Maria Louisa, eldest daughter of the Emperor of Austria, now in her nineteenth year. The contract has been signed by the parties concerned; and Berthier has proceeded to Vienna, in order to conduct the bride to Pa ris. He arrived at Vienna on the 4th inst. and was to leave it on the 15th, with the new empress. The marriage, for which the most splendid preparations are making, it was expected, would be celebrated on the 29th instant. How poor Josephine is employed, while Paris resounds with the notes of festive preparation, is not said. She ap pears to be as much forgotten as if she had Dever existed. Her humiliation, however, is not to be put in competition with that of the house of Austria, which may now be regard. ed as complete.

An imperial decree, lately issued by Bo naparte, and which professes to be for the "Relief of certain State Prisoners, France," furnishes a most striking illustra tion of the horrid despotism which he has succeeded in establishing in that country., It exhibits one of those tremendous inflictions of misery, the very recital of which makes one tremble it establishes cight bastiles,, or state prisons, in France: most of them in retired situations at a distance from the capi tal. The unhappy tenants of these prisons are never to be brought to trial, or heard in their justification; the original cause of their detention only being to be reviewed once a year by persons named by Bonaparte. The ob jects of this decree are: 1. Men who have at different epochs made an attempt on the safety of the state, whom state reasons prevent from being brought to trial. 3. Chiefs of bands in civil wars, who are similarly cir cumstanced. 3. Robbers of diligences, whom the courts cannot condemn, though certain

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of their guilt. 4. Men acquainted with state secrets, employed by the police in foreign, countries, and suspected of failing in fidelity, but whom it is unsafe to try. 5. Subjects of federative states, who cannot be tried because their crimes are either of a political nature, or were committed before the union with Frande-What a state must that of France be, when such a decree can be issued; and when to the ruthless oppression which marks it, mockery can be added-It is a decree, forsooth, for the relief of state prisoners! This decree, we presume, is one of the acts of grace which is to shed a lustre on Bonaparte's espousals!—O happy Britain! how does such a detail as this put to shame the discontent and disaffection of thy sons!

Bonaparte's expected journey to Spain has been put off in consequence of the arrangements for his nuptials. It does not, however, appear that his presence will be particularly wanted in that quarter. The present month, indeed, has announced no new occurrences in Spain, excepting that the French troops have seated themselves before Cadiz, and are evidently preparing to commence the siege. The garrison has been reinforced by some British and Portugueze troops, and it may possibly hold out for some months. There is, however, no reason to expect that any thing can arise to prevent its final fall.

The account in our last, that Ceuta had been taken possession of by our troops, was premature. The difficulties which prevent ed it, have, however, since been removed, and our troops are now reported to have been received within its walls.

The British army in Portugal is said to have advanced to ineet a large body of Fench troops which threatened the eastern frontier of that country. Their policy, however, we apprehend, will be to retire as we advance, in the hope of drawing us to a distance from our resources, and of being able to operate - on our flanks or rear. We cannot help looking with considerable apprehension to this gharter. We dread the sacrifice of any more of our gallant troops in a contest which must now be pronounced hopeless.

GREAT

GENERAL REFLECTIONS. DURING the last month the House of Commons has been occupied chiefly in the investigation of the circumstances attending the Walcheren expedition; and the decision on that important question, on which may depend the fate of the present ministry, is now on the point of being made-though not, perhaps, after less than three or four

Hanover has been finally annexed to the kingdom of Westphalia. The delay of this measure was thought to indicate a hope on the part of Bonaparte that Hanover might prove useful to him in negociating a peace with this country. Now that, by his close union with Austria, he has delivered himself from all fear of hostility in that quarter, he probably thinks that any reserve on this subject is no longer necessary.

The war in the Tyrol appears to be nearly extinguished. Hofer, the gallant leader of the Tyrolese, has been taken, and executed as a criminal; and doubtless this is not the only instance of severity which the relentless cruelty of their conqueror has led him to inflict.

AMERICA.

Nothing new has transpired with respect to the state of our relations with America, though the hope of an accommodation of her differences with this country gathers strength daily. The capture of Guadaloupe, which took place on the fifth of February, removes a considerable part of those differences,-that which related to trading to the colonies of the enemy: France has now no colony in the western world.

The conquest of Guadaloupe was effected without any considerable loss on our part. Four officers and forty-six men were killed; fifteen officers and two hundred and thirtyfour men wounded. The black troops appear to have behaved most gallantly. The num ber of prisoners taken amounts to about three thousand.

INDIA.

The disturbances among the officers of the Madras establishment, which threatened ruin to our Indian possessions, may now be considered as at an end. A general amnesty has been proclaimed to the army, with the exception of three officers-viz. LieutenantColonels John Bell and John Doveton, and Major Joseph Storey, who are to be tried by a court martial; and seventeen others, who have the option given them of either being tried or dismissed the service.

BRITAIN,

nights' debate on this one measure of the executive government. In the mean time many minor battles have been fought in pare liament; and in these the ministry have been more than once discomfited. They were beaten, as we before noticed, in the question respecting the names of the members who should form the Committee of Public Expenditure: they yielded on the

subject of the reversion bill; they have been obliged to bend on many questions of economy which have been urged upon them; and, above all, they have been worsted in the case both of an application to the King for papers erroneously supposed to have been laid before his Majesty by the Earl of Chatham, and of a subsequent vote of animadversion on the same nobleman; in consequence of which they have been deprived of their colleague, who has thought it his duty to tender his resignation. The previous vote for inquiry into the causes of the expedition to the Scheldt, though it was carried against ministers, is by no means clearly indicative of a subsequent vote of condemnation, inasmuch as many who may have been eager to inquire, may nevertheless, after investigation, be disposed to acquit; especially if the proposed condemnation should be a severe one. And some may incline to censure, who did not consent to inquire, at the time and in the manner first proposed, from an idea that inquiry would not fail to take place, though the particular motion then brought forward should be negatived.

The government have, on the other hand, been successful, and somewhat triumphant, on a few questions. The thanks proposed to Lord Wellington, and the pension allotted to him, have been consented to by a large majority; and the taking of thirty thousand Portuguese troops into English pay has also been agreed to. The subject of the canipaign in Spain has been postponed, as has likewise that of the abolition of sinecures.

We believe that no ministry has been so frequently beaten as the present, and yet kept its place, since the memorable days when the late Mr. Pitt withstood the rage of his combined enemies in parliament, and dared to exhibit the new spectacle of a minister raising up his head in spite of an op position phalanx supported by successive majorities in the House of Commons. The cases, however, are widely different :-Mr. Pitt had both the King and the people with him; and he meditated no very distant appeal of that king from his parliament to his people. In the present instauce, a dissolution would, we apprehend, be unfavourable to the administration; and yet, possibly, not very propitious to the more aristrocratic and embodied part of the opposition.

It may be useful here to touch on the state of parties. It has been of late the fashion, in many quarters, to run down the present government as a set of men at once incapable, corrupt, profuse, and arbitrary; subservient to the humours of the court, and bigotted in religion. Charges thus violent

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and indiscriminate are obviously unjust, and in the eye of intelligent and dispassionate men, border on the ridiculous: but an orator at a Common Hall, or at a meeting of Westminster electors in the open street, in the same manner as in a Westminster forum, where a shilling paid at the door communicates a right both to hear, speak, and pronounce judgment, is not very measured in his philippics. A parliamentary opposi tionist occasionally rises to nearly the same measure of heat and those who put forth periodical papers, for the amusement of the middling and lower order of politicians, find their account in adopting the utmost violence of language; the profit of their work de pending on the pre-eminence of their power to interest by the satirical keenness and the surprising boldness of their publications, The ministers appear to us much like other men; except that, being ministers, and have ing been long accustomed to office, they are more disposed to defend whatsoever is and are less zealous for reform than almost any of their adversaries; that they are also somewhat deficient in their number of pecu liarly able individuals, and want the advan tage of an authoritative chief; that they have, moreover, been too sanguine in their estimate of our capabilities as a military power on the continent, and, in consequence of the scale of their operations, somewhat expensive; but, above all, that they have, unhappily, but ill understood the best manner of dealing with the feelings of a people wearied with taxation, prejudiced against their rulers by the ill success of a long war, liable to be inflamed and misled both by demagogues and oppositionists, and even to be alienated from the constitution under which they live by the disclosure of certain anomalies and faults in our political system. Who, that is acquainted with the present turn of sentiment of a large part of the community, would have believed, that, at a time when one outcry was raised against sinecures, another outcry against the measure of the expedition to Walcheren, and a third outcry against the shutting of the people out of the gallery of the House of Commons during the examination of evidence respecting the expedition, the ministry would have advised the grant of a considerable sinecure to the man who was the instrument of excluding the public from heating from the gallery the evidence against the expedition, and who had also been foremost in censuring those who presumed to call in question the conduct of the Duke of York, in the preceding session? Who would have thought, that, when he had become thus exposed to

popular dislike, he would have been sent to encounter the perils of re-election for a county? The event has been exactly as might have been expected.

The offer of a peerage to Lord Melville, in professed compensation for their refusal to admit him into office (the ministry at least have not denied this to be the case, when questioned upon it), is another proof that they do not well understand the art of ren dering the exercise of the prerogatives of the Crown agreeable to the minds of the people. The Edinburgh Review has lately repreented our regular opposition party as possessing a very small share indeed of the pubhe confidence; the more democratic body among us enjoying almost the whole affections of a large discontented part of our population; and the Reviewer suggests a new de gree of condescension, on the part of the old oppositionists, to the feelings and wishes of the multitude. There appear to us to be some truth, and not a little error, in the lucubrations of these distinguished journalists. It is true that those who formed the late administration are not very popular; but their upopularity arises, as we conceive, not so exclusively (as they represent it) from a want of sufficient condescension to the more extravagant wishes of our democratic body, but rather to a plain inconsistency between their professions before they came into office, and their subsequent conduct. They had pronounced the property tax to be unjust, oppressive, and unconstitutional; but they continued, and enlarged, it. They had censured the military as well as other measures of their adversaries; bat they were not happy in respect to their own military undertakings. They had talked much of the corruption of their predecessors, and of the necessity of greater purity in the administration of the finances; but the head of their administration held a sinecure, and one of their first bills was a bill to enable him to retain that sinecure together with the other emoluments of office. They compromised a question respecting our Governor General in India, against whom the strongest censure had been pronounced by one part of their body. They also compromised for a time the catholic question. They proceeded, so far as an ordinary observer could perceive, in many respects very much after the manner of their predecessors. In truth, they had, when out of office, represented themselves as differing far more widely from their rivals than was consistent with the plain and simple truth. The moral character of our oppositionists (we use the word moral in reference to their political morality) has therefore, as we cou

ceive, suffered: it has suffered by that trial of them which has been made.-Much, how ever, is to be said in apology for them. They had to conciliate the discordant mem-, bers of that administration which they forin ed; and it would not have been easy to form it on a sufficiently broad basis without admitting into it some variety of sentiment They had to prove to the more candid and persuadable part of the supporters of the an tecedent ministry, that they were not dan gerous innovators. They had to feel their way. They had to prepare the minds of the community at large for any more bald reform which they might meditate, by establishing, in the first place, a character for prudence and moderation. They had to serve a King advanced in years, and naturally fearful of change. They had to sustain the income of the country, and even to augment it; and they had to carry on a war necessarily expensive, and of which it was utterly impos sible to promise the termination. It should be added, that they undertook and executed many measures highly honourable to them: and among these, the abolition of the slave trade; an achievement which is of itself sufficient to disarm criticism, and which sheds over them a peculiar glory. In the event of their return to power they doubtless will shew that they have profited by their past experience. But, in our bumble judgment, it will not be wise in them to follow very obsequiously that advice which is given then by their Mentor in the north; namely, to turn their back both on the favourers of the old administration, for so we understand him, and to walk down a considerable flight of steps, in order to place themselves on the same level with our more vulgar and clamorous reformers; by the aid of the great mass of whom they are to sustain their power; leaving only the downright mad men among them to be unsatisfied. But rather, we would say, (and we mean that what we say should equally apply to the present ministers) let them try what the most unimpeachable integrity, the most wise and disinterested selection of their instruments, the most marked disinterestedness on their own part, the most exact consistency between their professions and their practice the most ingenuous frankness, the most pru dent (which, however, is not always the most severe) economy, as well as the most conciliating spirit to men who depart from them in each direction, will effect towards healing our unhappy dissensions, and mitigating the violence of our animosities.—As for ourselves, we by no means exclude political reform from our considerativa of whicä,

indeed, the moral reform, for which we prin cipally contend, often touches-but we own that we have little hope from the mere infusion of a greater portion of democracy into our political constitution; nor have we by any means a high opinion of either the pri "vate or political virtue of our most noisy and violent declaimers against the political wick edness of all our governments. We appreciate their worth, at a lower rate than that either of our present oppositionists, or of the partisans of our present government. The very eagerness of these reformers often hur Ties them into crooked and corrupt means of obtaining their end, and urges them to a severity towards their opponents inconsistent with the received principles of equity and Justice. Of all the tyrannies exercised in France, none was greater than that which was directed against the persons whom the patriots denominated the liberticides; and the crime of liberticidism, how little soever defined, became of itself sufficient to ensure the heaviest condemnation. There is a sort of reign of terror affected by some of our present patriots without doors, of which we ought to watch the dawn; and the lover of true liberty will be eager to guard his countrymen on this subject. On the other hand, it must be admitted that the very party of which we now speak has rendered some service, by the vigour with which it has attacked certain existing evils; that it has the singular merit of no stall degree of indepen dence; that it operates as a powerful check on the conduct of every government: and it may be added, that there are probably among its leading members, some men of no sinister views, and some who may be recalled, as we trust may also a large portion of its body, to sentiments of greater moderation.—"May it please God to send down his heavenly wisdom from above, to direct and guide our senators in all their consultations; that, having his fear always before their eyes, and laying aside all private interests, prejudices, and partial affections, the result of all their councils may be to the glory of his blessed name; the maintenance of true religion and justice; the safety, honour, and happiness of the

We noticed in a former number a deviation of Colonel Wardle from the course proper in a prosecutor; which may be ascribed, perhaps, to his great eagerness for his object, Sir F. Burdett expended an immense sum in his first Middlesex contest, opened houses, &c. &c.; and then turned out his competitor for opening a house at a far less expence, he having been reluctantly led to take this essure by the conduct of Sir Francis.

King; the public wealth, peace, and tranquillity of the realm; and the uniting and knitting together of the hearts of all persons and estates within the same, in true Christian love and charity one towards another."

On the subject of the Walcheren expedi tion we do not venture to give any very exact opinion. Be the judgment of parlia ment what it may, the debates will serve to enlighten the public mind, far more fully than the voluminous papers of evidence which have been printed; and we reserve, therefore, till after the debate, our more particular observations. It is already plain, however, that the measure was undertaken without the sanction of military authority, and that it failed not through any fault in the conmander. It appears to us that it was not very likely to succeed, even in the event of the most fa

vourable wind and weather. The information of ministers respecting the state of Antwerp, and the means which might be resorted to for its protection, seems to have been remarkably erroneous and defective. The inadequate degree of attention paid to the wants of the soldiers, reflects on our medical advisers: and the long retention of the island, under the melancholy circumstances which arose, has not yet been accounted for by any adequate political considerations. But we have still to hear the ministers in their own defence. The division will doubtless be a near one: whether a small majority in fa vour of the court will issue in the mainte nance of the present administration, is a question on which we will not presume to deliver judgment.

The discussions on the Scheldt expedition have been interrupted by a new subject, which excites a still greater interest. Mr. Yorke having excluded strangers from the gallery, Mr. J. Gale Jones reflected on the House, in a paper, of which the object was to publish the decisions of a debating society, which met in a room profitably employed by him for that purpose; and the House, in vin dication of its privileges, sent Mr. Jones to prison; pursuing in this respect a course by no means unusual. The right of thus im prisoning had not before been brought into any question. Sir Francis Burdett hereupon moved for the release of Mr. Jones, and went the length of denying in his speech the right of the House to commit Mr. Jones to prison. The House decided, by a very great majority, against the motion of Sir Francis, and the general right to commit was asserted by some even of the very few who voted with the Hon. Bart. Sir Francis then up

* Prayer used in the British Parliament

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