Islands, the Cape, Sardinia, Sicily, Spain, Greece, and from France, indirectly, by a thousand channels. South America furnishes her with skins, and North America with timber. She gets iron and copper from India and Peru and her own mines, and when she shall have drained her bogs in Ireland, on which she is industriously employed, she will get the raw materials of linen and thread in all abundance. She can well bear the privation of Russian tallow, owing to her substituting train-oil cleansed of its offensive stench and purified, and also by the use of inflam mable gas. She extracts tar and pitch from stone coal, procures glue from fishes, and makes her own isinglass to fine her liquors. She also prepares her own silks so as to compete with those from India and China, as she does with her staple, the woollens: What she loses by shutting the ports of continental Europe in respect to the exportation of her own produce is but little, in comparison to the increased de mand for British wares in the East-Indies and North and South America. The industry, commerce, state, revenue, and credit of England has of late years suffered no depression, but on the contrary have all risen still higher, and good faith, choice of condition, and happy domestic ease, reign in all classes of her people. Whence she can maintain herself even in the present state of things at least fifty years, if not to a far more distant period. How great then must be the alarming evil which continental Europe has to suffer, whose ports are closed, and whose ships, the prey of pirates, are of no use for the exchange of its commodities, which is indispensable for the existence of its inhabitants in various directions, where transport by land-carriage is impracticable? While we (in Ger many) can export and import nothing, France and Italy subsist by the sale of their wines, oil, silks, &c. Holland by exports of corn, flax, wood, iron, and tallow, while the excess of the wares of Germany ac2

cumulates in its magazines, wasting and deteriorating, without any power of exchanging them for articles of indispensable necessity. In the mean time we have no desire to cultivate our lands, and the spirit of industry is suffered to evaporate.

“Another source of the sufferings of continental Europe, is the seizing the merchandise with which England furnishes her, and the want of which gives a death-blow to a great portion of its industry, for instance, raw-cotton and cotton-yarn, coloring materials, medicinal drugs, which cannot be replaced by articles of the same sort imported from America. These lets and hindrances not only injure a variety of trades and industrious branches of every denomination of people, but superinduce a fatal influence on every part of continental Europe, to the confusion, disturbance and dissolution of the whole country. The constraint, the examination, the impost which must be paid even on licensed goods, with the tremendous rate of postage, make continental communications, whether literary or of the nature of private correspondence, not only dangerous and uncertain, but entirely impracticable. Further, beyond and above all this, from the total inactivity of our sea-faring people, and the utter impossibility of going to exercise their calling, they become disused to their element and unfit for their trade, by which we are deprived of our natural seminary for seamen, and prevented from manning our merchant-vessels or war-ships, which should compete and cope with foreign nations, so that England will be always certain of maintaining her superiority on the ocean. Is there any one who is not already persuaded of the influence of an unfettered commerce on the happiness of civil society? Let him consider the effect of these operations, and he will soon see that all the sources of our wealth and prosperity have been dried up. No one believes that the merchant is the only sufferer, but every individual

also who depends on trade for his subsistence, every one whose capital is engaged in it, every one who has devoted his industry and labor to the exercise of it, renters, manufacturers, brokers, tradesmen and their servants, commissioners of every sort, seamen, pilots, packers, knot-men, and laborers of all kinds, who in all countries are a numerous class of people, are all deprived of their daily bread, even all those whose labor the rich need, and they who make clothes, shoes, furniture, &c. soon perceive that they are at a stand for want of work, and feel an unusual oppression. This misery must soon become general and encroach on all ranks; it is already extended to the husbandman and the vine dresser, to whom no one comes with money in his hand to purchase the product of his farm or of his vineyard. Can it then be surprising that no one has the courage to sow or plant, that the fields are uncultivated, and the vine-hills useless and unproductive? The European continent can no longer bear these lets and hindrances in the common course of civil life, and much less can the people support imposts, taxes and fresh contributions, where all the channels of receipt are shut up. It was a wise remark of Prince Eugene of Savoy, that no one complained of an extravagant tax, provided it was well distributed and spread thin and wide over the whole country, "and when," said he, "I lay on a general impost, I always leave a free passage for trade, which ought never to be impeded." The destruction of commerce is the fruitful source of a train of miseries and failures without number, which Europe piteously laments from one end of the continent to the other, and to so great an extent, that even the countries. where the war-whoop has never resounded, feel their shock, and lie in ruins under their oppression.

"The consequence is, that every one who has it in his power, emigrates to England or to America; and as many as have not the means of expatriating and

running away from a falling house, die of grief and disappointment. There is still another and a greater evil, I mean the corruption of morals occasioned by the blockading system, and the dearth of truth and faith which grows out of poverty and wretchedness, and makes a rapid and tremendous progress. The people who hitherto looked on their superiors as a kind of second Providence watching over their welfare, subjected themselves to their control, while it was manifest that their happiness was the object and design of the governors. But the new order of things, which defends the means of the subject in order to obtain the disposal of it, cannot be seen but with terror and astonishment. Impositions too heavy to be borne must produce evasion. How many are there who, forced by necessity and desperation, will become cheats and thieves, and have recourse to unlawful means of procuring the support of life, by which the legitimate possessor will be defrauded of his property. To say nothing of the false oaths and villainy of collectors. Hence the commodity which can be had at any rate, will be in the hands of those only, who will retail it out to the necessitous at enormous prices, and starve the honest dealer by monopoly."

As a contrast to this condition of the people of Continental Europe, we may place that of the British, as borne testimony to by M. Labouchere, who in the month of Feb. 1810, was sent by Buonaparte to London,to solicit the British government to rescind their Orders in Council, on condition that Holland should not be annexed to France. In giving an account of the ill success of his negotiation with the British government, who refused to take off their Orders in Council, merely because they severely crippled France, M. Labouchere says that in England,

the principal question of peace or war occupies but imperfectly the public mind; habit reconciles it ta

the continuance of the war, whose consequences, far from being felt at present, are favorable to the interest of individuals. The system of commercial restrictions is inherent in the present ministry, and for that reason is the object of criticism to the opposition. The English Ministry considers a firm adherence to this system, as the best means of seriously affecting the resources of France, and of combating her system of influence upon Continental Europe; and all attempts on the part of nations in hostility to the English government to bring it back to other ideas, will probably produce only a contrary effect."

But notwithstanding all the facts which can be adduced to prove, that the national prosperity of Britain is unimpaired by the anti-commercial system of Buonaparte and of his vassals, it is confidently asserted by many in these United States, and the pamphlet of Mr. Huskisson, called "The Question concerning the depreciation of our currency stated and examined," published 23d Oct. 1810, is triumphantly referred to, as proving that Britain is now actually bankrupted in consequence of the decrees of Buonaparte, which have produced a balance of trade and the course of foreign exchange against her; whence she has been drained of all her gold and silver, and a universal failure has taken place amongst her merchants and manufacturers; together with an enormous discount on the Bank of England notes. An abundance of extracts from Mr. Huskisson's most masterly performance, which shall presently be submitted to the reader, will shew how correctly, and with what fidelity these anti-Anglican, Gallo-American politicians peruse and quote books.

Let it be granted that the course of foreign exchange is against Britain, and that she imports much more than she exports; it does not therefore follow that she is ruined. For if she sends out gold to pur chase naval stores or raw materials for her manufac