right on the kingdom of Norway to the King of Sweden. In case his Danish Majesty shall refuse this offer, and shall have decided to remain in alliance with France, the two contracting parties engage to consider Denmark as their enemy. As it has been expressly stipulated that the engagement of his Swedish Majesty to operate with his troops in Germany in favour of the common cause, shall not take effect until after Norway shall have been acquired by Sweden, either by the cession of the King of Denmark, or in consequence of military operations, his Majesty the King of Sweden engages to transport his army into Germany, according to a plan of campaign to be agreed upon, as soon as the above object shall have been attained. His Britannic Majesty to be invited by both powers to accede to, and to guarantee the stipulations contained in the said treaty. By a subsequent convention, signed at Abo, the 30th of August, 1812, the Russian auxiliary force to be carried to thirty-five thousand men. Prussian Edict, concerning the Abolition of the so-called Continental System, and the Duties hereafter to be collected on Goods hereafter to be imported by Sea. We, Frederick William, by the Grace of God, King of Prussia, &c. having found cause to withdraw ourselves from the alliance with France, likewise deem it necessary herewith to declare, that all restraints under which commerce has hitherto suffered in our states, in consequence of the so-denominated Continental System, are abolished, and that the ships and goods of all friendly and neutral nations shall be freely permitted to enter in our harbours and territories, without any exception or difference. All French goods, either produce or manufactures, are, on the contrary, herewith totally prohibited, not only for use, but likewise to pass through our territories, or those occupied by our armies. The so-denominated continental impost is taken off, and exclusive of the consumption-excise to be especially paid on all foreign goods entered inwards by sea for home'consumption, there shall be levied the heretofore-established moderate impost and transit duty, as it was previous to the establishment of the continental impost in the year 1810; which duty shall be collected on the gross weight; but only continue so long as the increased expenses arising from the war, carrying on for the liberation of Germany, shall render it necessary. We give to our Privy-Councellor of State, and Chief of the Inward Customs Department, M. von Heydebreck, full and uncontroled power to make what further alterations he may see fit in the whole of the fore-mentioned temporary import duties, &c. and to put them in a fitter proportion; as likewise to reduce, or entirely take off, at his own judgment, the consumption-excise, on such articles where the collecting the full consumption-excise, together with the import-duty, would fall too heavy. on the home consumption. All our public officers whom this matter concerns have to pay due attention hereto. Given at Breslau, March 20, 1813. (Signed) FREDERICK WILLIAM. HARDENBERG. Paris, April 9.- Imperial Decree. Palace of the Thuilleries, March 25, 1813. Napoleon, Emperor of the French, We have decreed, and do decree as follows: &c. Art. 1. The Concordat, signed at Fontainbleau, which regulates the affairs of the church, and which was on the 13th of February, 1813, published as the law of the state, is obligatory upon our Archbishops, Bishops, and Chapters, who shall be bound to conform to it. 2. As soon as we shall have nominated to a vacant Bishoprick, and communicated such nomination to the Holy Father, in the forms prescribed by the Concordat, our Minister of Worship shall send an account of such nomination to the Metropolitan, and if the nomination be a Metropolitan, to the oldest Bishop of the ecclesiastical Province. 3. The persons whom we shall have nominated, shall appear before the Metropolitan, who will make the prescribed inquiries, and address the result of them to the Holy Father. 4. If the person nominated should be under any ecclesiastical exclusion, the Metropolitan will immediately inform us of it; and in the case where no reason for ecclesiastical exclusion exists, if the appointment is not made by the Pope, within six months from the notification of our nomination, ac cording to the 4th Article of the Concordat, the Metropolitan, assisted by the Bishops of the eccle siastical Province, shall be obliged to give the said appointment." 5. Our Imperial Courts shall take cognizance of all the affairs known under the name of appeals, as abuses, as well as of all those which may result from the nonexecution of the laws of the Concordat. 6. Our Grand Judge shall present a projét for a law, to be discussed in our council, to determine the proceedings and penalties applicable in these matters. 7. Our Minister of France and the Kingdom of Italy are charged with the execution of the 'present" decree, which shall be inserted in the Bulletin of the Laws. (Signed) By the Emperor, NAPOLEON. (Signed) by the Minister Secretary of State, Count DARU. Manifesto of the King of Denmark.-Dated Copenhagen, 23d April. The Swedish Court has found it expedient to recall its Charge d'Affaires, who was lately appointed to this Court. Our Chargé d'Affaires at the Swedish Court, returns in consequence from Stockholm. Notwithstanding that the common way of carrying on national concerns no longer exists between the respective Danish and Swedish Courts, ministerial communication by exchange of letters may still continue. The present changed situation between both Courts cannot but but draw the attention of their subjects... The King on his part has given no cause thereto. That his Majesty has refused to cede his kingdom of Norway, or a part thereof, for the offered compensation of giving places and lands that border on the Dukedom of Holstein, is a matter that all his subjects are already convinced of. His Majesty's dear love of the country is the guarantee, that their. Lord and King places too much confidence in the loyalty and attachment of his people to make him, under any circumstances whatever, resolve to exchange them away for strangers, on whose attachment his Majesty has no claim, when they do not of their own accord require his Majesty's protection. Accustomed to see his subjects' willingness to sacrifice their lives and welfare in a long continued defensive war, his Majesty is assured that a readiness to defend his State's independence, and its undivided preservation, will always be found in all Danes, Norwegians, and Holsteiners, in case the Sovereign's endeavours again to make peace should prove abortive; or a system of abuse force his Majesty to require of his dear subjects new efforts for their security and that of the throne. Manifesto of the Spanish Regency against the Archbishop of Nicea, the Pope's Nuncio in Spain, to the Prelates and Chapters of Spain, the Regency of the Kingdom. Upon taking into my hands the government of the kingdom, I find myself under the painful necessity of interfering with a subject equally delicate from its publicity and transcendant nature, as from the character of the persons who were concerned in it. The chapter of the cathedral of Cadiz, with their capitular vicar, and the ordinary and military vicars of this town, pretending the defence of religion, and a fear of acting against their own consciences, opposed themselves to the pub. lication in the parish churches, of the decree and manifesto of the Cortes, concerning the establishment of the Tribunals for the protection of the Faith, instead of the lately abolished inquisition. I, therefore, adopted the most energetic measures, in order that, whilst those decrees were duly enacted, Spain might be preserved from the convulsions which threatened her at that moment. To those measures, equally tending to maintain the dignity of the holy church and the tranquillity of the state, we owe the extinction of a flame which might have consumed the kingdom. But the circumstance of having desired from the chapter of this church, and from some others with whom I had been in correspondence, an authentic copy of their resolutions and other documents, that we might take such steps as the justice of the . the government, and the offended sovereignty of the nation called for, led to the discovery of a fact which greatly increased my sorrow, both on account of the character of its author, and the danger to which it had exposed the country. Among the documents that were laid before us, there appeared a letter from the most Kev. Peter Gravina, Archbishop of Nicea, and Nuncio of his Holiness for Spain, to the Dean and Chapter of the cathedral of Malaga, dated the 5th of March last, in which he exhorted them to delay, and even to oppose, the execution of his Majesty's decrees concerning the inquisition. The most Reverend Nuncio appeared, by his signature, to act in that instance only in his archiepiscopal character, notwithstanding that he was protesting against the injury which he supposed to have been done to the Holy See, in the abolition of the inquisition, and the decree for promulgating it in the parish churches. He also says, in his letter, that the bishops now resisident in this town, had it in contemplation to answer to government, that they could not put those decrees into practice until they had heard the opinion of their chapters, at the same time throwing a slur upon those bishops by the intimation, that this was intended as a mere pretext; after which he explicitly adds that they thus gained time to make all the proper remonstrances upon the matter. He further states, that the chapter of the church sede vacante, had declined to execute the decree; upon which he exhorts the chapter of the church of Malaga to adopt the opinion of all the prelates (thus reckoning upon their disobedience,) and endeavours to per suade them, that by acting according to his advice, they would do an important service to religion, to the church, and to our most Holy Father, whose authority and rights he conceived to be vulnerated, without thereby favouring the episcopal power. It is also added, that he had thought it his duty to remonstrate in the name of his Holiness, opposing the execution of such decrees until the Pope had given his consent or approbation; or, in defect of the Pope, the same were done by a National Council; and he, finally, closed his letter with a promise of communicating to them, under the greatest secrecy, every circumstance, as it should take place, which might contribute to regulate their conduct for the future. Copies of letters have been also forwarded to me by the Reverend Bishop of Jaen, and the Chapter of Granada sede vacante, similar to the above-mentioned, and which, with the same object, and under the same date, were directed to them by the most Rev. Nuncio. From these it appears, that the said Nuncio, trampling on the first principles of international law, overlooking the boundaries of his public mission, and abusing the veneration in which this pious people hold the legates of the apostolic see, has endeavoured to promote and actually has promoted, under the cloak of religion, the disobedience of some very respectable prelates and ecclesiastical bodies to the decrees and orders of the the Sovereign Power. If the Most Rev: Nuncio had only intended to act as a legate of the Holy Father, and to avoid any expostulation to which he might conceive himself exposed for his silence on the present subject, nothing obstructed his way to me through the medium of the Secretary of State. I might overlook his avoiding this regular and official means of communication, when he remonstrated as he thought proper upon the matter, and should have attributed the informality of the conduct which he chose to adopt, to inadvertency, or rather to an excess of confidence. I should have only paid attention to his arguments, and, with the advice of the Supreme Congress, taken such resolutions as the defence of the Holy Church and the temporal good of the state, demanded with one voice from me. The justice of the national cause makes me feel quite confident that, had this been the case, I should have satisfactorily answered the note of the Most Reverend Nuncio, and that I should have been found equal to meet those vague and common-place arguments which the wisdom of the Most August Congress has already defeated. His uneasiness would have been calmed, when he should see that the abolition, of the Inquisition can, by no means, either endanger religion, or injure the rights of the Roman Pontiff; and that all the tears which he entertains, on that account, for the primacy of the Holy Father, and the supreme authority which he holds in the church, are most vain and ungrounded. His qualms would have been allayed, concerning the imVOL. LV. propriety which he seems to find in the circumst nce of declaring to the people, during the celebration of mass, that a tribunal which was established, and for three centuries protected by the Popes, is useless, injurions, and contrary to the laws of the kingdoin. In fine, he would have seen that the August Congress, in this purely political question, has acted in virtue of its sovereign authority, without injuring, in any way whatever, the rights of the Holy Father, or, much less, those of the Catholic church; so that they might, either now or in future, be in need of the rentoustrances of Nuncios or Councils. But the private letters which under the same date as the note were written by the most reverend Archbishop of Nicea, and the fact of his having mentioned therein that he forwarded a remonstrance to the Government upon the subject, are circumstances which clearly prove, that whilst he betrayed the secrecy which he himself recommended, he aimed not merely to avoid the charge of negligence in the fulfilment of his office, but rather to raise in the pious clergy of Spain, and by their means in the people at large, a distrust of the temporal authorities which he thus strove to decry; and to check their influence over a class of the State, the members of which, by reason of their conspicuous rank, ought to be true samples of subordination and obedience. This unlooked-for behaviour of the most reverend Nuncio bas compromised the honour of the National Congress, the security of the kingdom, the authority of the Episcopal Order, the true rights of the Roman Pontiff, and the respect 2 D which |