destine coadjutors-coadjutors so completely absorbed in advocating the rights of man, that they completely forget to inculcate those political and sacred duties, which every Briton, at so momentous a crisis, owes to a virtuous sovereign, in support of his crown and government, nay to secure the very existence of the British empire! We cannot but admire the sagacious versatility of a certain noble lord, who lately used the Canaille as the cat's paw to his wishes, which having attained, he now courts popularity from the respectable and thinking part of society, by scouting the present moment as wholly improper for petitioning for peace! What say the poor clothiers who were gulled into a belief that when his lordship came into parliament for the County, ale was to be at 2d. per pint, mutton and beef at 3d. per lb. wheat at 8s. per bushel, and every article of life in proportion; taxes eased, money plentiful, and trade prosperous beyond all former example, save in Tom Paine's time! It would, at least, be curious to hear of Wentworth house, for mere party purposes, becoming openly the advocate for a petition for peace with Buonaparte, particularly at this crisis.That noble house, which not long ago alone stood forward, bellowing out "Bellum Sempiternum !-war! eternal war !"--so long as the throne of France is sullied by the usurpation of the blood-thirsty tyrant! Having put my readers in full possession of all the circumstances connected with these pacific movements in the north of England, I shall resume the consideration of the expediency of a peace, from the point where we left off in our 19th (To be concluded in our next.) number. ATTACK ON MARQUIS WELLESLEY. When the reputation and services of a distinguished public character are assailed, it is a duty which every honest man owes to his country, to exert himself, as far as lays in his power, in the exposure of the calumniators. Upon the conviction of the propriety of such conduct, I have had the satisfaction of vindicating the administration of lord Wellesley in India against the wilful misrepresentations, distorted facts, and unprincipled intrigues of a knot of renegadees, who have striven to live in England by imposture and the circulation of lies. They had found here a ready market for the sale of their fabrications, not on account of their intrinsic value, but because Ori ental politics are little understood or attended to by the British public. Besides, it is in the nature of the uninformed, who live under a free government, to take a malignant delight in seeing the most illustrious and useful servants of the public, placed on a level with the most unworthy, and exhibited in every hateful deformity of shape which the malevolent spirit of low revenge, the baseness of ingratitude, and the profligate ingenuity of vice, can at any time devise to render pre-eminent virtue suspected or odious. This has been lord Wellesley's case, While the towering ambition of France was compelled by the superior policy and vigilance of this nobleman to fly scowling from the soil of India; while her perfidious native allies were overtaken by his lordship's vigour, and chastised for their treachery; when the British possessions in the East were connected, strengthened, and made invulnerable by sound military combinations and politic treaties; when peace was restored, and maintained in that quarter, while the ravages of war were extended to every other part of the world; when industry revived under the protection of the firm and equal dispensations of justice; when, in short, order supplanted the long reign of anarchy, and a foundation was. lail for the introduction of science and literature into Hindustan, agroupe of dissatisfied and mercenary scribblers, who had been ejected from India, whither they had quartered themselves in defiance of the laws, encouraged by the mortified self-sufficiency of Some of the sovereigns of Leadenhall Street, conspired to raise a clamour ago Ford Wellesley, spared no pains to render him unpopular in the estimation of his country, and even went so far as to call in question those brilliant transactions of his government, which had met with the unanimous and unqualified approbation of his majesty and both houses of parliament. To persons who have reflected upon the events of the last twenty years, it can excite no surprize, that a few active and enterprizing men, diligent in the dissemination of falsehood, and prompted by mercenary motives, should meet with a certain degree of success in their endeavours, after having incorporated themselves for the avowed purpose of keeping up a perpetual buz respecting Oriental delinquency, oppression, in the late county contest; the sound, the cry of peace which he wants for à principal ingredient in his fulminating, revolutionizing powder? The calamities of war furnish him another of no small importance; he would not, therefore, willingly see them dimi nished. Hence his continual delight in them, his never ceasing review, his great exaggerations, and loud proclamations of them to the world, and to the enemy; with a view, no doubt, to his co-operation, to encourage him to hold on, and, it possible, to increase them, or at any rate prolong their continuance. Mr. Mercury knows fell well that the clamour he recommends for peace will throw it inevitably to a distance, perplex and embarrass the government, and greatly increase the difficulties of its altainment.-Excellent patriot !" From this account it is clear, that the giants were raised by the Mercury, but that the Intelligencer, with the wand of Prospero, has not only made them vanish inte empty air, but has vindicated the character of the respectable and great majority of the West Riding community, from the imputation of incivism, which its contemporary was extremely anxious, by its industrious falsehoods, that they should be reproached with by the rest of their countrymen. Nevertheless, it is but too true, that a plan was hatched for the purpose of exciting a popular clamour against the continuance of the war, and although lord Milton, in the course of his visitation. rambles among the manufacturers of the different towns, has affected to disown the beastly cry, yet his sincerity seems to be doubted by their shrewd inhabitants; and I am the more disposed to incline to their sceptical mode of thinking, from the sym. pathetic echo with which the Morning Chronicle reverberated the article in the Leeds Mercury, For it was not satisfied with the insertion of that article, but in another column, it sagaciously asked "what we are fighting for? That the question of peace was provoked more with a view to harass, and render unpopular, the present administration, than from any real solicitude concerning the return of "its long-lost blessings," is a matter that can no longer admit of dispute; since we are in full possession of direct and collateral evidence to prove the fact. For, independently of the statements cited above, and the general indignation entertained, and publicly expressed, by a decided majority of the respectable manufacturers of Yorkshire, at the dirty and contemptible intrigues of these pretended numerous meetings, who so loudly vociferate for peace, they have already presented an effectual counterpoise to the clandestine project of the malevolent and the disaffected. Every loyal Yorkshireman is sensible of the mo tives which actuate these declaimers for peace, and a writer in the Leeds Intelligencer, has successfully shewn, in a spirited address to the clothiers, particularly the trustees of the cloth-halls, that the cloven-foot of party is visible at all these meetings, and that they are, in fact, anti-ministerial assemblages, under the pretext of petitioners for peace. The Talents," says he, "when in power, attempted to make a peace with the tyrant. But the terms which he insisted on from them were such as not even they would dare to accept of, in behalf of their sovereign and the British public. Accordingly, they professed, in words the most unequivocal and express, their inability to make a peace with him even then. But since then, the obstacles to a peace with him have unhappily multiplied.—I shall not, perhaps, exaggerate much if I should say a thousand fold. Can Mr. Mercury,* think you, expect that the very same men who professed their inability to make a beneficial peace with him then, are able to make such a peace with him n w? I will not do you the injury to suppose that you attribute to him any such an expectation. It appears then that he does not expect that the Talents, though again in place, would now be able to make a beneficial peace with the tyrant. As he probably does not expect, so assuredly nei ther does he wish, that the present ministers should now be able to make a beneficial peace with him; because such a peace with him, if they could make it, would be to them the surest pledge of continuance in power; from which it is the avowed aim of Mr. Mercury, by means of the clamour which he endeavours to raise for an immedi ate peace, to exclude them. But a beneficial peace with the tyrant, if made at all, must be made either by the Talents, or by the present ministers; there being no * By Mr. Mercury the writer means the paper of that name printed at Leeds, and which is notorious for its fawning hypocrisy, and supple attachment to the opposition-party. third party from whose efforts any thing of the kind can well be looked for, and he cannot expect that the former would, and cannot wish that the latter should, be able to make such a peace with him. Consequently, Mr. Mercury endeavours to raise a clamour for a peace, while yet he himself has neither the expectation that a peace, not utterly ruinous to us, can, nor the wish that it should, be made with the tyrant. Such is the patriotism of the man ! "Now will you not, gentlemen, spurn with indignation the idea, that such a canting hypocrite, so shallow and paltry a scribbler as Mr. Mercury, a fellow too proved to be, in disguise, one of your bitterest enemies, should think himself equal to the task of prevailing with you, by his false representations of the subject of a peace, to become the deluded instruments of your own ruin, merely that he, treacherous creature, may thereby promote the aggrandisement of himself, and of his treacherous faction? I cannot help feeling confident that you will. To join, as he would instigate. you to do, with his turbulent faction, in a clamour to government for a peace at this time with the tyrant, would be, so far as in you might lie, to become, for his benefit, the instruments of your own ruin. Should the clamour happen to prevail with government, and such a peace be patched up as I have above shewn to be the necessary consequence, at this crisis, then would both yourselves and the country be completely undone.. "Those who most cordially deprecate a peace at this time with the tyrant, both sympathise with you in your present difficulties, and are themselves, as well as you, severely sufferers by the calamities arising from the war. They deprecate a peace with him now, because they are fully convinced that such a peace would infalliably be pro-. ductive of more certain, more speedy, more irretrievable ruin, and therefore would, eventually, be worse to this country, than is even a proctracted war. This to them is a certainty: Our only chance, our only hope of safety, I am sorry to say so, is now in war. And it is evident that we have now no choice between a protracted war and certain destruction. To make a peace at this time with the tyrant, upon his own terms, and other we cannot now expect, would be but to expose ourselves by a dastardly submission, to all the tremendous consequences of an unsuccessful struggle, and of a total overthrow. Gentlemen, the time calls for resignation under the mighty hand of God, who, let us hope, will in his own good time send us relief and deliverance. Mean while I hope that you will continue steady in your loyalty, disregarding the suggestions of disaffected demagogues!" When we read in a provincial paper such sound and wholesome sentiments as the above, we should be hasty indeed, if we were to reproach a whole population with the folly and malignant principles of a few reprobates. It is a great consolation to those who reside at a distance from Yorkshire to know, that the conduct of the agents of despondency is watched with vigilance, and chastised with due severity. Indeed, the resolutions of these petitioners for peace have excited so much disgust among the sober part of the West Riding community, that even lord Milton has felt himself under the necessity of deprecating them; and though no great confidence seems to be placed in his lordship's professions, yet the declarations which have been extorted from him, evince his consciousness of the force of public opinion, and his dread of setting himself in opposition to it. On Tuesday, the 3d ult. says the Leeds Intelligencer, "lord Milton arrived at Huddersfield, and we are told, delivered the following speech to the manufacturers and others there assembled.* On Saturday, his lordship visited Halifax, where, of course, he would repeat the same lesson; and the third edition, we hear, is to be delivered at our cloth halls, on Tuesday.† These visits * I have only extracted that part of the oration which relates to our subject. This prediction was fully verified; for on the day specified, earl Fitzwilliam and ord Milton, father and son, made their appearance at the mixed-cloth hall, where the latter, in the spirit of a true apprentice who had learnt his lesson, and promised great things from small beginnings, Incœptis gravibus plerumque et magna professis, Assuitur pannus ; fter having mounted a waggon, placed in the area, addressed the assembled tyranny, and extravagance. In my mind, the success they experienced for the time, occasioned no astonishment whatever; for I am well acquainted with the discipline of the school, whence these immaculate pretenders to virtue have acquired their learning in casuistry. But I knew also, that it only required a correspondent degree of ala crity, in setting forth the truth in its proper light, in order to counteract their malevolent purposes. This was at length done; but not until the shafts of obloquy had been discharged throughout the country; so that the advocates of truth and justice had to encounter not only the falsehoods, which had been received as established facts, because they had not been disputed; but also to drive their antagonists from the holds wherein they had fastened themselves, before they could display the talents, probity, and useful services of lord Wellesley in the light they deserved. Notwithstanding these obstacles, truth was victorious. Men of impartial and discriminating minds investigated the administration of his lordship: One courageous writer produced a second, a second produced a third, and a third gave birth to more; till, at length, the cause began to assume a different appearance; and the public recognized in Lord Wellesley the defender of their best interests, and the preserver of their eastern em, pire. All this while, the House of Commons had been occupied in making inquiries into the merits of the charges alleged against his lordship; and though, from causes too obvious to be misunderstood, these enquiries were suspended from session to session, and from one parliament to another, during which the public were regaled with motions upon motions for fresh papers, no progress was made (except in the sentiments of the country) toward a final decision of the house. And this is the more remarkable, since it is notorious that, notwithstanding the persecution was managed by interested and busy agents, neither side of the house felt the least disposition to participate in their philanthropic zeal. When the Foxites were in power, they chewed the cud, and were silent. In no instance did they countenance the proceedings against his lordship; in many, they expressed themselves decidedly hostile to their conti nuance. Lord Grenville, and his personal adherents also, had uniformly appeared as the advocates of lord Wellesley; and even the flying squadron, with lord Sidmouth at its head, had adopted the same line of conduct: so that every party, and every person of weight in the House of Commons, were adverse to the proceedings. The merit of the persecution therefore rested with a faction of half a dozen patriots, who had no other means of making themselves heard or noticed, than by bawling unceasingly against eastern oppressions, which was the more greedily listened to at first, in proportion as the nature of the subject was less understood-somewhat like the mixed audience to whom a Carthusian friar was preaching in the Latin-tongue, who, though wholly ignorant of the matter or language delivered to them, never failed to exclaim, whenever the ranting orator paused to mop himself and to take breath, "Ah! how fine! what excellent doctrine! how he sweats!" The case, I insist, is exactly similar; otherwise, how shall we account for the stoical apathy with which the House of Commons has given ear for repeated sessions to a series of calumnies against the man over whose reputation it ought to have acted as a guardian, since his meritorious services had met with the most solemn expressions of its gratitude, and which are recorded on the journals of that house? Is it not most extraordinary and unprecedented, that after more than ten thousand pounds had been expended on printing and reprinting the documents which had been moved for, and which were never refused, that the inquiry into lord Wellesley's conduct should remain precisely at the point where it stood four years ago? Is this justice? Is this the manner in which the grateful sentiments of the legislature are to be perpetrated? Or is it intended to revive the mild and equitable jurisprudence of the Ostracism, and to proscribe those who are most distinguished for the services which they have rendered to their country? These reflections have forced themselves upon my mind, from an article which appeared on Wednesday last, in the Morning Chronicle, and which I cannot suffer to escape without remark. The article opens with a lie: it states, "that the marquis of Wellesley takes credit to himself for the measure of the vigorous attack on our unsuspecting friends, the Danes." Whether his lordship were the adviser of that truly politic measure is not the point upon which I mean to animadvert; but I will undertake to pledge my veracity against the assertion in the Chronicle, that his lordship does not, nor ever did, take credit to himself for the measure. Lord Wellesley has, with the most commendable propriety, abstained from taking any part in political affairs, while his government in India has been under examination-a circumstance which the country may well regret, since its privation of the noble lord's talents, at this critical juncture, is a real national calamity. His lordship's present condition is that of a giant confined; and the day will come when this insidious and venomous Chronicle will be reluctantly compelled to see that whatever "smacks of lord Wellesley's Oriental policy," will be found to smack or smawk of sound British policy also. There is certainly no inconsistency in the objections which the Chronicle has raised against the Danish expedition: it has mooted the case, and we have answered it. But the ingenuity upon which it piques itself, in connecting lord Wellesley with the attack upon Copenhagen, was not so much on account of the abstract question itself, as for the sake of casting a malignant insinuation against his lordship's conduct, while governor-general of India. When, therefore, it ostensibly whines over our unsuspecting friends, the Danes," it comprehends, in the same chapter of lamentations, "our unsuspecting friends," Tippoo Sultaun, Omdut-ul-Omrah, Mahommed Alli, Scindiah, and Holkar. Then, in order to brand the two cases thus presumed to be analogous, under the same sweeping anathema, the Chronicle proceeds, after the smack about Oriental policy, to state, that "the more it becomes known, the more flagitious it appears. It is one of the acts which, in India, might have been trumpeted forth as a conquest of unparalleled magnitude, because there the press is in fetters; and an exaggerated detail of the spoil, addressed to the grovelling spirit of lucre, would not, and could not, have been contradicted." It is to this passage that I wish to draw the attention of my readers. It shall be analyzed with brevity, because I have already refuted, in former numbers, t the argu ments upon which the base insinuation is founded. I begin, therefore, with announcing, that this single passage is made up of one thundering LIE, two gross misrepresentations, one wilful suppression of the truth, one flagrant breach of the rules of justice, and one smack of party virulence. men. First, the thundering lie; so termed because it has been noised from one end of the kingdom to the other, without producing any effect. It is false, that the press in India is in fetters: the regulations published upon the conduct of the press, by lord Wellesley, had been, long before, the standing policy of the British government there; and the difference between the conduct of lord Wellesley and former governors consists in this-his lordship made that known which was before obscure and indefinite. The regulations that were adopted by his lordship in council, received the warm approbation of the court of directors; which would not have been the case, if any innovation had been introduced subversive of the established rights of EnglishLord Wellesley enacted nothing new; he imposed no fetters upon the press, for the press in India had always been under regulations, and newspaper proprietors had been frequently sent out of the country by lord Cornwallis, lord Teignmouth, and lord Buckinhamshire. The Chronicle will not pretend that the same arguments may be advanced in favour of a licentious press in India, as are used in this country; nor can the advantages of the press, in their received acceptation here, be applied with any propriety to a remote settlement, composed of not more than ten thousand Europeans, the greater part of whom consist of the servants of the company, and the residue, of persons who are either licensed to remain there, or who remain without permission. Of what benefit could be a press teeming with polemical disputes and libellous paragraphs, among so few people, who exercise, neither in their own persons, nor by representation, any political rights? In fact, those enlightened worthies, Messrs. Samuel and Macleane, could have told the Chronicle a very different story; for they could allege themselves, as instances, wherein the most licentious animadversions upon the government had been borne with, and for a considerable time suffered to pass with impunity. But I have dwelt sufficiently upon this topic in the 15th and 18th numbers of our last volume, to which I refer such of my readers as are desirous of entering thoroughly into the political motives which authorized a superintendance over the press in India. This superintendence is coeval with the establishment of our power in the east ;and it differs, in no degree, from the exercise of the same authority in all our colonial settlements. It is, therefore, a malicious falsehood that lord Wellesley imposed fetters |