was informed by Sir Francis that he would be ready to receive him on the next morning, which being viewed by the serjeant as implying that he would go peaceably to the Tower, he retired. Sir Francis, however, alleging the illegality of the war rant, refused to go unless constrained by actual force, which he was determined to resist. After taking the opinion of the attorney-general, the serjeant, accompanied by a number of police officers, and a detachment of troops, forced an entry into his house, and conveyed him to the Tower. As the escort which guarded the prisoner was on its return, a numerous mob attacked them with stones and brickbats, and some shots were fired, by which two or three lives were lost, and several wounded; the mob assembled round the house of Sir Francis also committed many outrages in the neighbourhood. On the tenth, a letter sent by Sir Francis to the speaker, after the receipt of his warrant, became a topic of debate, and a resolution was unanimously passed, declaring it a high and flagrant breach of the privileges of the house.

Sir Francis Burdett commenced actions against the speaker of the house of commons, for issuing the warrant for his arrest and imprisonment; against the serjeant at arms, for executing the warrant generally, and for breaking open the outer door of his house in its execution; and against earl Moira, the governor of the Tower, for illegal imprisonment; the object of Sir Francis being to ascertain, whether an appeal lay to a court of law, against proceedings of the house of commons act ing as accuser and judge, and affecting the liberty of the subject-if the punishment could be remitted by a court of law, the privilege claimed would be restricted if not destroyed; in all which he failed, the plea that the warrant being issued by the authority of the house of commons was a legal instrument, and that therefore the arrest and imprisonment were legal, being admitted. Thus the attempt to overthrow this branch of the privilege of parliament served to confirm it, and gave to the claims of the house of commons a solemn judicial recognition.

BULLION QUESTION-SUPPLIES, &c. HORNER, on the first of February, moved for a variety of returns respecting the present state of the circulating medium, and the trade in bullion, on the production of which a committee was ap pointed for the purpose of inquiry into the high price of bullion, and its effect on the value of the paper currency. The committee were of opinion, that the evils complained of were to be attributed to an excessive issue of bank of England paper; and it was stated in their report that "a general rise of all prices, a rise in the market price of gold, and a fall in the foreign exchanges, will be the effect of an undue quantity of circulating medium in a country which has adopted a currency not exportable to other countries, or convertible at will into a coin that is convertible." It was added, that no sufficient remedy for the present evil, or security for the future, could be pointed out, except the repeal of the law which suspended the cash pay. ments of the bank, to effect which the committee was aware that some difficulties must be encountered; but all hazards to the stability of the bank, and all injury to public credit might be ob viated, by restricting cash payments for two years from the present time, and by intrusting to the bank itself the charge of conducting and complet ing the operation.

On the sixteenth of May the budget was brought forward, and the supplies voted for the year amounted to fifty-two million one hundred and eighty-five thousand pounds, of which the proportion for Ireland was six million one hundred and six thousand pounds. The ways and means, without the imposition of any new taxes, were estimated at a surplus of one hundred and forty-one thousand two hundred and two pounds over the demand, including, however, a loan of eight million pounds, which was borrowed at the favourable ate of four pound four shillings and three-pence three farthings per cent. The foreign subsidies were four hundred thousand pounds for Sicily, and nine hundred and eighty thousand pounds for Portugal; and a vote of credit was passed for three million pounds. Perceval stated that the official value of the imports was nearly five million pounds more than in the most prosperous year of peace; that the exports of our

manufactures exceeded in amount those of 1892, by eight million pounds; and that though there was a diminution of nearly four million pounds in the exports of foreign goods, yet the average was highly favourable to the country. He added, that the orders of council had already reduced the receipts of the customs in France from two million five hundred thousand pounds, to five hundred thousand pounds, being a diminution of four-fifths of their whole amount.

Petitions from the catholics were presented to both houses, and gave rise to protracted discussions, but were rejected by considerable majorities. Several measures of reform experienced a similar fate. A bill, introduced by Bankes for rendering perpetual the act preventing the grant of offices in reversion, was rejected by the lords. Brand's motion for a committee to inquire into the state of the representation, and into the means of rendering it complete, was negatived by a great majority. Various alterations were proposed by Sir Samuel Romilly in the criminal code; and it was unanimously resolved, that the subject of penitentiary houses should be taken into consideration in the next session. Addresses were voted in both houses, on the motion of lord Holland and Brougham, beseeching his majesty to persevere in his endeavours to induce foreign nations to co-operate in the abolition of the slave trade. The latter, with great ability and eloquence, exposed the practices of certain persons, even in this country, who carried on that traffic in a clandestine manner, as the penalties were pecuniary and it was a mere commercial speculation, what risk might be run for a certain profit by an adventure in the slave trade and a resolution for taking into consideration, early in the next session, such measures as might tend to prevent those violations of the law, was unanimously adopted.

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The twelfth report of the commissioners of military inquiry disclosed a flagrant instance of public delinquency. It appeared that Joseph Hunt, a member of the house of commons, and late treasurer of the board of ordnance, had misapplied certain sums of public money to a considerable amount; and on the motion of Calcraft he was expelled the house. The defaulter had, on the plea of ill health, emigrated to Lisbon. On the twentyfirst of June parliament was prorogued.

CAPTURE OF AMBOYNA AND OTHER

ISLANDS.

THE Dutch settlement of Amboyna, with its dependencies, was carried by a coup de main in February, by an expedition under captain Tucker, who obtained a booty; and the chief of the spice islands, Banda, with its dependencies, surrendered unconditionally to captain Cole, of the Carolina frigate, who conducted the attack with uncommon gallantry and skill. The island of Bourbon, and the Mauritius, or Isle of France, having long afforded shelter to a large number of French privateers, which had captured East India shipping to an enor mous amount, expeditions were planned against them. The Isle of Bourbon was first attacked, for which purpose a large force was collected under lieutenant-colonel Keating and commodore Rowley, who were preparing for an assault on St. Dennis, the principal town, when a proposal from the governor for a capitulation was acceded to, and, two days afterwards, the whole island submitted. A body of troops from India and the Cape of Good Hope, amounting to about ten thousand, destined for the reduction of the Isle of France, under major-general John Abercrombie, effected a landing on the twenty-ninth of November; admiral Bertie commanded the naval force. On the second of December the troops prepared for attacking the forts; but on the day following, general de Caen, the French governor, capitulated, on condition that the troops should return to France without being considered as prisoners of war; by which the Isle of France, an immense quantity of stores and valuable merchandize, five large frigates, some smaller ships of war, and twenty-eight merchantmen, with two captured British East Indiamen, were surrendered to his majesty's arms.

In the West Indies, the island of Guadaloupe, the last that remained to the French in that part of the world, surrendered, on the fifth of February, to a combined naval and military force, under admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, and lieutenant-general

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Sir George Beckwith; in the Ionian Sea, the island of Santa Maura, the ancient Leucadia, was taken on the sixteenth of April, by an armament from Zante, under captain Eyre of the Magnificent, and brigadier-general Oswald, after a vigorous resistance; and in the Baltic sea, the island of Anholt was defended by captain Maurice and three hundred and eighty men, against a Danish force of nearly three thousand, which landed there on the twenty-third of March; but were repulsed, with the loss of four hundred and four taken, besides many killed and wounded.

MARRIAGE OF BUONAPARTE-ANNEXA:

TION OF HOLLAND TO FRANCE.

THE marriage of Buonaparte to the archdutchess Maria Louisa of Austria, to which his divorce from Josephine, in the close of 1809, was the prelude, took place early in this year. On the twentyseventh of February he announced to the senate that he had despatched his cousin, the prince of Neufchatel (Berthier), to demand for him the hand of the daughter of the emperor Francis, agreeably to a contract that had been made, and which is sup. posed to have been a secret article in the treaty of peace. The marriage took place at Vienna on the eleventh of March, the archduke Charles receiving the hand of his niece, as representative of his old antagonist; and on the thirteenth the new empress set off on her way to Paris, where the ceremony was repeated on her arrival, with every mark of imperial grandeur, on the first of April. The train of the bride was supported by four queens; and after the marriage was concluded, Buonaparte conducted her to St. Cloud, where, three days afterwards, they received the congratulations of the senate. It was at first conceived that the archdutchess was an unwilling, though resigned, victim to the preservation of her family; but it soon appeared that she was delighted with her conquest over the man who had conquered Europe, while Napoleon equally felicitated himself in a connection which seemed to secure the perpetuity of his new dynasty.

Proceeding in his plans of encroachment, Buonaparte seized the seven Dutch provinces, which in 1806 he had formed into a kingdom, in favour of his brother Louis. From that period, indeed, they had been a dependency upon France; but in some things Louis had not shown himself sufficiently obsequious, especially in the restrictions upon commerce. On the first of July he resigned his nominal dignity in favour of his two sons, declaring his queen regent; and, in a farewell address to the legislative body, he stated the circumstances that had rendered it necessary for him to sign a treaty with his brother, the emperor, whereby he had been deprived of all authority. He advised them to receive the French with respect and cordiality; he expressed a warm affection for his late subjects; and, indeed, throughout his short reign, he always appeared as the friend of the people upon whom he had been arbitrarily imposed. It does not appear to have been the wish, and certainly was not the policy, of Buonaparte to deprive his brother of the regal state to which he had raised him, if he could have made him subservient to his ruling passion of ruining the commerce of Great Britain, or obtaining what he called a maritime peace, by the revocation of the English orders in council. With this view he had, towards the close of 1809, sent for Louis to Paris, and, after many conferences, Louis reported to his ministers that there could no longer be any independence or national existence for Holland, should the maritime war be continued; and as it was possible that the cabinet of London, rather than suffer its annexation to the French empire, might be induced to make peace with France, or to change its measures with respect to neutral commerce, he directed them to send to England some discreet man of business, to urge the advantages of the independence of Holland to that country. In conformity with this message, which could only be considered as coming from Napoleon himself, Mynbeer Peter Cæsar Labouchere arrived in London in February, and had several conferences with the marquis Wellesley, who told him, that while the Milan and Berlin decrees remained in force, it was not to be expected that we should relax our efforts for self-defence: the orders in council were not the cause, but the

consequence of those decrees; and even were the latter promised to be recalled, it would not be convenient for England to admit, in principle, that the British measures of reprisals should be dis continued as soon as the cause that provoked them should be removed. The negotiation having thus failed, the annexation was determined upon; the abdication of Louis in favour of his children was considered of no validity, not having been previously concerted with the emperor; and the seven provinces were merged in the French empire.

OTHER ANNEXATIONS-BURNING

DECREES.

OTHER annexations were those of the Valais, for the purpose of securing the passage of the Alps by the mountain of Simplon, through which a road had been making during the preceding ten years; and of the Hanse Towns, with the whole territory between the Elbe and the Ems. The electorate of Hanover, also, was annexed to the kingdon of Westphalia, and to all the dependent kingdoms the conscription laws were extended. In France itself the chains of despotic power were rivetted by a rigorous police, and restrictions on the liberty of the press. Decrees for seizing and burning English merchandise were carried into execution with great rigour in the Hanse towns, in France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Prussia, and Denmark; while the holding of any intercourse with Great Britain, or with British ships, was made felony in the captain of any vessel, who was accordingly liable to be punished with death; the owner of the ship was to be branded; and minor punishments were denounced against all who should be in the least concerned in this prohibited traffic, down to the meanest porter. The king of Prussia, dejected by the curtailment of his power, and by the death of his beautiful and high-spirited queen, viewed all these changes with apparent unconcern. In Italy the ecclesiastics, by their influence, still maintained the supremacy of the pope; and a greater concourse than ordinary of that order having been remarked at Rome, an ordinance was issued, that they should immediately repair to the usual places of their respective residences; and on symptoms of dissatisfaction being manifested in the ecclesiastical states, a French corps, twenty thousand strong, was collected in the vicinity of Rome, and the churches and other public buildings were converted into barracks for its accommodation.

In Sweden the influence of France was strengthened by an event which may be ranked among the most extraordinary occurrences of the year. The duke of Sudermania, who, it will be recollected, had been called to the throne in 1809 by the name of Charles the Thirteenth, being at an advanced age, and without children, had deemed it neces sary that a successor to the throne should be nominated; and the states had accordingly elected Christian Augustus, prince of Augustenberg, a subject of Denmark, who repaired to Stockholm in January, 1810, and took the oath of fidelity to the Swedish monarch. On the twenty-ninth of May, while reviewing some regiments of cavalry, he was suddenly taken ill, and falling from his horse, soon expired. His death was attributed to poison; and on the twentieth of June, when bis funeral procession was passing through the streets of Stockholm, the populace rose upon count Fersen, in the presence of a regiment of guards, and barbarously murdered him. On the fifteenth of August the states were assembled at Orebro, for the election of another successor to the throne. The candidates were, the eldest son of the deposed Gustavus the fourth; the prince of Holstein, elder brother of the deceased prince of Augustenberg; the king of Denmark: and the French marshal Bernadotte, prince of Ponte Corvo, a soldier of fortune, who had married into Buonaparte's family. The election took place on the twenty-first of August, when the latter was unanimously chosen crown-prince of Sweden, and an ambassador was despatched to Paris, to an nounce the decision to the emperor and to the prince elect, On his arrival in Sweden, Bernadotte, who had acquired great wealth, and was liberal in the employment of it, endeavoured by every possible means to ingratiate himself with the nation, and to acquire its confidence; he professed to change his religion, and to adopt the Lutheran tenets of the Swedish church; and on the fast of

November he was installed, in the presence of the assembled diet, when he addressed the states in a judicious speech.

Shortly afterwards, the Swedish government, at the requisition of Buonaparte, declared its adher ence to his continental system, prohibited all intercourse with the British dominions, and interdicted the importation of colonial produce. The Danes were also active in fitting out frigates and gun-boats for annoying the trade of Great Britain in the Baltic : but although they had considerable success, they could not prevent the English from taking possession of the island of Anholt, in the Cattegat, as a depositary for prohibited merchandise.

ATTEMPT ON SICILY.

In the beginning of July, Joachim Murat, the newly created king of Naples, had collected a power ful armament on the coast of Calabria, consisting of thirty seven thousand troops, two hundred and eight gun-boats, and seven hundred boats of other descriptions, for the invasion of Sicily. The British commander, Sir John Stuart, made the best prepa rations in his power for resisting the threatened attack, by disposing all his troops, about fifteen thousand in number, along the shore, and guarding the whole coast by batteries and gun-boats. The Neapolitan army was encamped on the heights above the castle of Sylla, and the gun-boats and small craft lay at anchor, under cover of heavy batteries, which continually threw shot and shells into the British quarters in Sicily. Daily skirmishes took place between the Sicilian flotilla, prepared by Sir John Stuart, and that of king Joachim. Generally speaking, this was rather productive of a superb spectacle, than of any serious injury to ei ther side; though in the course of repeated attacks upon the Neapolitan flotilla, great numbers of the vessels were destroyed, taken, or dispersed. On the eighteenth of September, a debarkation of about three thousand five hundred men, Neapolitans and Corsicans, was effected near the Faro; but not be ing properly supported, nine hundred of them were taken prisoners by major-general Campbell, and the rest were driven for shelter into their gun-boats. This repulse was followed, on the third of October, by a singular proclamation from Joachim, which declared the expedition to Sicily to be adjourned; the object of the emperor having been answered in the proof he had obtained that the enemy's flotillas could not obstruct the passage; and that Sicily might be conquered whenever it should be seriously attempted.

In the Russian cabinet French influence also predominated, and Alexander, for whose quarrel England engaged in war with Turkey, made war himself against that power for consenting to a peace with England. In 1809 the Russian troops invaded Bulgaria, and obtained several advantages; and in 1810 several sanguinary battles were fought, but none were decisive. There was an unusual demonstration of vigour on the part of the Ottomans; for though closely pressed by the Russians, and the war in Servia was greatly to the advantage of the insurgents there, they nevertheless sent troops into Syria against the powerful sect of the Wechabites, or Waughabites, the avowed enemies of Islamisin.These Wechabites also betook themselves to piracy, which occasioned an armament to be sent against them in April, into the Persian gulf, by the British government at Bombay.

DIFFERENCES WITH THE UNITED STATES

-STATE OF SPANISH AMERICA.

THE differences between Great Britain and the united states of America still remained unadjusted; and the American minister in London demanded the recall of Jackson the British ambassador, which was accordingly ordered, but without any mark of censure on his conduct. In August, Buonaparte, availing himself of an act passed by congress for the conditional repeal of the non-intercourse act, declared, that the Berlin and Milan decrees should cease to operate on the first of November; and the American president issued a proclamation on the second of November discontinuing all restrictions in relation to France and her dependencies, order. ing, at the same time, that if Great Britain did not revoke her edicts by the second of February, the interdict should be enforced against her.

Such was the unpromising state of the differences between Great Britain and America at the close of

the year 1810, when a commencement was made of those civil dissentions in Spanish America, which afterwards produced so much bloodshed. The manner in which these colonies were governed by the mother country had long been a subject of much discontent; but such was their attachment to the general cause of Spain, that the French usurpations excited an ardent zeal in its defence, and the colonists readily submitted to the provisional govern ments of Old Spain, and sent liberal contributions for their support. The bad success, however, of the measures adopted by the central junta and the regency, led them to consider of the means whereby they might secure themselves from a French yoke; at the same time that they might, by their own efforts, redress the grievances under which they la boured. This spirit first manifested itself in the province of Caraccas, where the magistrates were deposed, and a provisional junta was formed for carrying on the government upon the principle of fraternization and unity with the mother country. Similar revolutions took place almost simultaneously in other provinces; and on the nineteeth of April, Caraccas, Cumana, Barina, Margarita, Barcelona, Merida, and Truxillo, formed a union, under the name of the American confederacy of Venezuela. The principal leaders in this revolution, while they looked forward to ultimate independence, conceal ed their intentions at first under a profession of warm attachment to Old Spain, and swore allegiance to Ferdinand the seventh, whom they doubtless be lieved to be for ever lost to them: but they did not recognise the authority of the regency at Cadiz, which they affirmed the central junta had no right to appoint without first assembling the cortes. The revolutionists were declared traitors, and their ports placed under blockade till they should acknowledge the regency as the legitimate representatives of Ferdinand the seventh; at the same time the promise of an amnesty was held out for what bad passed, on condition of future obedience. Two parties now appeared to divide Spanish America; the loy alists, who submitted to the regency, and the inde. pendents, who insisted upon governing themselves. King Joseph also endeavoured to form a third; but he met with very different success, so general was the aversion to the French usurpation, though the dissentions of the other two parties had fer mented into the flames of civil war. The janta of Caraccas, desirous of knowing what might be expected from Great Britain in this novel conjunc ture, entered into a correspondence with the British governor of Curaçoa, who did not hesitate to admit it, though he felt it incumbent upon him to send to his government for instructions. In reply to his application to the ministry, the earl of Liverpool, on the twenty-ninth of June, wrote a letter, the substance of which was, that under the obligations of justice and good faith, his majesty must discour age every attempt to separate the Spanish provinces in America from the mother country: yet if Spain should be condemned to submit to the yoke of the common enemy, his majesty would think it his duty to afford every kind of assistance to those provinces in rendering them independent of Frencie Spain, and to open in them an asylum to such Spa niards as should disdain to submit to their oppres sors, where they might preserve the remains of the monarchy for their lawful sovereign, should he ever recover his liberty. A copy of this letter be ing communicated to the regency, was published in all the Spanish newspapers, as a public declaration of the system on which the British government intended to act with respect to the South American colonies.

A strong suspicion was entertained by the independents in Paraguay, that there might be a secret negotiation for enforcing the pretensions of the princess of Brazil to the whole country between the Porana and La Plata, in exchange for the islands of Madeira and St. Catherine: this apprehension arose from the appearance, in the month of March, of a Portuguese army, ten thousand strong, on the frontiers of the Spanish colonies; but it was quieted by a letter from lord Strangford, the Britishe minister at the court of Brazil, to the Buenos Ayres junta, in which any such intention was disas vowed.

KING'S MALADY-REGENCY.

His majesty, in consequence, as was supposed, of deep affliction from the sufferings of his young