union of talents, character, and courage, in every department of the State, only serve to eke out the disgraceful existence of the country for a few years, or, perhaps, a few months; and, if we are to be sacrificed, it is little matter by whom; the meaner the instrument, as far as we know, the better; it would be a poor consolation to see the name of Pitt, a name in which we have gloried, coupled with the final destruction of England. "To defend Gib“raltar," said Burke, "is worthy of the genius and the courage of an Elliot; to "deliver its keys to the enemy, is a task which "had better be performed by a drunken

"invalid."

We congratulate the ministers on the support which they are likely to receive from the hearty and united efforts of Messrs. Fox and Wilberforce, and Sir Francis Burdett. We could not listen to the long and painful endeavours of the former of these, to persuade the nation that we have nothing to prepare against but a rivalité in trade and commerce, without recollecting a most remarkable passage in the letter of our valuable correspondent SwENSKA, p. 132. "Buonaparte intends to amuse you with a rita"lity in trade and national improvement: if you believe him, you will not long be bis « rival in power"-To this we have nothing to add, except it be to remark, that the Jetter was published in London so long ago as the 7th of August.-Mr. Wilberforce reproves the country for putting its trust in talents and buman wisdom, instead of listening to the counsels of simple, common men, men In the middle class of society, a reproof, which it certainly does not merit.

Every thing that has transpired, during the last four or five days, tends more and more to convince us, that England is fast approaching to her final doom, and that she deserves no longer to escape the chastisement of Heaven. She has on her all the marks of a degenerate and falling nation. Since the 1st of October, 1801, how rapid has been her decline! We may be mistaken; we hope we are; but, with the consciousness that we stand in the presence of God, we do declare it to be our opinion, that, if the present course be pursued, a very short time will see this island in the possession of France.

66

Swiss Cantons.-This is as it should be, we are" too honest," the receivers of Trinidada and Ceylon are "too honest;" those who gave up Guiana, and who abandoned the Stadholder and the French Royalists, are truely too honest" for the Emperor of Germany to be connected with!-It is to be hoped, that the Ministers will take an early opportunity of laying before Parliament, the papers relative to the remonstrance which they made to Buonaparté, in behalf of the Swiss; and also those relative to the overtures made to the Emperor. Were we in their place, we should be very anxious to unload ourselves of the accumulation of disgrace, which has grown upon them since the last kind Parliament, by adopting their resolutions, had the goodness to take the burthen from their shoulders.

Just as this sheet was going to the press, we were informed of the arrival, in this country, of a number of those French commercial agents, of which we spoke some time ago. They are all understood to be experienced in military and naval matters, and are intended to reside in our several sea ports, naval as well as commercial. Our wise and courageous ministers were alarmed at the proposition of sending such persons as these to line our coasts, as it were; and they actually refused to receive them, which refusal formed one of the subjects of dispute between the two countries. In the mean time, one of them was sent to the island of Jersey, where the Governor refused to receive him; but, where he has nevertheless remained, and does still remain, setting the Governor and his government at defiance; and, we are informed, that ministers have not had the courage to order him to be removed.-Impunity begets hardihood; accordingly a whole swarm of these agents have since been sent to England, in defiance of the declared will of His Ma jesty's Government; they are now arrived, and are actually, at this moment, in London. One of them. at least, is, we understand, destined for Ireland ! ! !

Our next will contain a letter from MR. COB BETT to the HON. CHARLES JAMES FOX, relative to a misquotation which the latter made from the Political Register, and to divers other matters, particularly the "LIBERTY OF THE PRESS," of which Mr. Fox, till he breathed the all-regenerating air of ST CLOUD, was a constant defender. The next sheet will also contain a letter to MR. WM. WILBERFORCE, on his address to his honest honest Yorkshiremen, particularly those parts of the said address which relate to Parliamentary Honours, and Continental Connections.

Printed by Cox and Baylis, No. 75, Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields. Published by R. Bagshaw, Bow Street, Covent Garden, where all the former Numbers may be had.

VOL. 2. No. 22. ] [Price 10D CONTENTS-Picture of France, 705. Musical Concert, 709. Caractacus' Let. to Editor, 711. Mr. Cobbett's Let., to Fox, 714. Proc. in Parl. 720. Proc. to Helv. 722. Vienna, 724. Switz. 724. Brit. Power in india, 725. ̧ France, 727, Sum. Pol. 727, Germ. Ind. 727. Bavaria, 728. India, 730. Logwood, 732. C.Stahremberg, 736.

London, Saturday, 4th December, 1802.

705]--

PICTURE OF FRANCE IN 1801.

our commerce; the custom-house officers engage in this traffic. It is ascribed to the high, duties on foriegn merchandizę.-RHONE. We think that English goods should be prohibited;: and that the fancy works of Lyons should be, brought into fashion, both in France and abroad, by means of presents.-SEINE (inferieure), France, in order to acquire the rank among the commercial nations of Europe to which she is entitled by her, position, her industry, her force, and her riches, ought to establish an effectual act of navigation; to obtain from Spain the right of supplying South America with manufactures; and the privilege of importing Spanish wool, as a favoured nation; to form a commercial treaty with Russia, on a different plan from that of 1788, and with Denmark and Sweden; but, if possible, to avoid entering into a commercial treaty with Great Britain. SOMME. The English are our most formidable ri

The following extracts from a quarto volame, of 800 pages, recently published by CHAPTAL, the French Minister for the home department, under the title of "Analyse des Procés Verbaux des Conseils, sessoin de l'An IX," (1801), while it will enable our readers to form a correct idea of the miserable internal situation of the country, to which Britain, in that same fatal year, for the first time, bowed the knee in sign of submission, will also give them a prospect of the probable consequences of that base and disgraceful act.— We are confident, that no work (the "Bloody Buoy," and the "Cannibal's Progress," excepted) exhibits such a combination of misery and crimes, and we are not at all surprised, that Citizen Chaptal's book should have been suppressed; but the more we look at the horrid picture the more re-hospitals in this department are in a wretched, sentment we feel against the feeble, the timid, and selfish men, who laid the gloof England at the feet of France, and who, in that weak and wicked act, exposed our country to all the horrors which Lis shocking picture presents to our view.

LAND-TAX, in the department of the ESCAUT: This department in extent is a 230th-part of the Republic; it pays a 58th-part of the land-tax.MANCHE. The land-tax amounts to one-half of the net rent. ROER. In many of the communes the land-tax amounts to one half, or two thirds of the net rest.-SOANE (haute). In granting new leases, proprietors of land are obliged to lower their rent a 4th or a 5th below its amount in 1790.

AGRICULTURE.-SARRE. Agriculture is entirely neglected. For want of markets, farmers only sow as much as is necessary to provide for their families and their cattle.

SHEEP.-SEINE (inferiewe). The number of sheep i diminished one-third since 1799.

WOLVES.-AISNE. The number of wolves is greatly increased.-CANTAL.The increase of wolves very alarming.-LOVRET. Wolves have multiplied to an alarming extent. The damage they commit is incalculable.-VENDÉE. Wolves carry off the cattle, and attack them even in their stalls. COMMERCE.-FINISTERE. Foreign commerce i annihilated. Three fourths of our have been either captured or destroyed.-MANCHE. The only remains of our trade are a few fishing boats, and a few privateers.-MONT TONNAARL. Smuggling is become very injurious to

coasters

vals. Prohibit the introduction of their manufac- › tures; burn them in the market place; post up the names of those who sell them; and determine: what are English goods by judges selected from persons who are engaged in sinar manufactures.

HOSPITALS-BOUCHES DU RHONE. All the

state.-CREUSE. The state of the hospitals is
worse than it was last year: they will soon cease
to exist -GARD. The distress of the hospitals in
this department is general:
They require anuually .... Livres 230,479
Their revenues amount to...
They are in arrear
They have lost....
LANDES. The hospitals are threatened with total -
destruction: the sick can neither procure food

nor medicine.

98,838

213,951 1,861,769

FOUNDLINGS.-ALLIER. The nurses have five years wages due to them: they will, therefore, receive no more foundlings. Nine tenths of them are lost.-CANTAL. Extreme penury obliges this department to feed its foundlings with goat's milk. Seven-eighths die before they are one year old.-CHARENTE (inferieure). For want of pecuniary means the establishments have ceased for two years to send their foundlings to nurse. Of two hundred infants received into the hospital at Saintes one only has lived.-CREUSE. The foundlings perish in consequence of neglect. Twelve or fifteen are suckled by two nurses.-LANDES. Infants enter into the hospital to die there by thousands: there are no means of providing nurses.-PYRENEES (hautes). Between the year two and the year nine, 3066 infants were received into the hospital at Tarbes: there are only 124 alive.

SOLICITATIONS FOR RELIEF-GARD. The land-holders are ruined, and can no longer cu tivate their vineyards. An immense number of labourers are without bread, and reduced to desperation-NORD. The whole country exhors marks of warfare. The fields have been sting 4, the proprietors plundered, their houses bulut;

and yet the inexorable collectors of the revenue insists on receiving taxes from farms which have been wholly unproductive.

|

PORTS MANCHE. The works at Cherbourg have been neglected; and are therefore in a state of ruin.

BRIDGES BOUCHES DU RHONE. The bridges are in as had a state as the roads.

NAVIGATION-SEINE (inferieure). A paviga tion act (like that of England or Sweden) is much wanted.

PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.-SCHOOLS.AISNE All the schools have been sold: few of the buildings remain. The children are left in a state of idleness and vagrancy; they have no ideas of a Supreme Being, and no notions of right or wrong. It is owing to this that our manners are harsh and barbarous, and that we are a lerocious people.-FORÊTS. Few persons in the coun try can sign their name.-GIRONDE. Our schools have too many holidays. The masters are oblig. ed to shut their schools on the Decades; and pa rents will keep holy the days which the Christian religion appropriates to rest. So that, instead of correcting the abuses arising from too many holi days, we have increased them.-Lys. Most of the schoolmasters in the primary schools have ob tained their situation by no other qualification than a readiness to take the oath which their predecessors had refused.-MARNE AND LOIRE. In all the little Communes there is no kind of school whatever.-MEUSE (inferieure). It is to be feared that in fifteen years not one person in a hun dred will be able to write. PAS DE CALAIS, Children are left in the most profound ignorance, and the most alarming profligacy. Vandalism has destroyed almost every building appropriated to the purposes of education.

PRISONS.—AVEYRON. None of the prisons are both wholesome and secure: most of them are neither the one nor the other. The dungeons of Ville Franche are so damp, that straw, placed there, rots immediately. No where are women separated from men, or the convicted from those who are simply detained.-BouCHES DU RHONE. The prisons of this department are in so unwholesome a state, that humanity is disgusted, and the public safety endangered. When the Rhone is high its waters filtre through the walls of the prison at Tarascon, and inundate its cells. No one comes out without a rheumatism for life. (We cannot do justice to the French expression—il n'en sort que des cadavres vhumatisés pour la vic-DOUBS. Contractors for supplying prisons, in order to in- | demnify themselves for bad bargains, reduce the quantity of clothing and food allowed to prisoners; who have never been so ill treated as they are at present. MANCHE. The prison at Mortain has no roof: the court yard of this prison is a complete common-sewer. The same may be said of the prison at St. Lo. The prison at Mount St. Michel is a wonderful piece of art: but, in its present state, it threatens to crush two hundred prisoners. Its lead and gutters have been carried off. The prison at Avranches is a subterraneous dungeon in which living victims are immured. MARNE. The prison is in such a state, that the prisoners are threatened with instant death by its fall they are, also, exposed to destruction from the mass of putrefaction which surrounds them. OISE. A dungeon ten feet square, five feet high, and sunk seven feet below the level of the ground, constitutes the prison at Breteuil. The innocent, the accused, and the convicted, are all heaped together, in this tomb, without distinction of age or sex. During the year nine, it has altogether received 2278 prisoners. (Quere, if the little town of Breteuil, in one year, received 2278 persons into its prison, what number may we reasonably suppose, to have been immured during the same period in all the prisons of the Republic? We advise those Middlesex jacobinical orators, who can read, to peruse the whole of this chapter on prisons, It will furnish them with many embellishments for their next descriptioned state of hospitals, the abandonment of infants, of what they denominate an English Bastile.)

MUSEUMS-ESCAUT. Nothing has afflicted the inhabitants of Belgium more sensibly than the loss of their pictures.

THEATRES, DEUX SEVRES, Young persons are grown extremely fond of theatrical declama, tion. May this taste accord with patriotism, with good morals, and with virtue !

POPULATION-CANTAL. The population of this department is evidently reduced. In the year 3 (1795) it amounted to 244,016 persons: in the year 8 it was only 220,304,-CHARENTE (inferieure). Its population is decreased from 420,000 persons (the amount in 1790) to 399,000. The causes of this difference are war-the witch,

the repeal of the law which allows fathers and GREAT ROADS.-LOIRE (infericure). The mothers to inherit from their children, the facility great roads are in a wretched stare. 7,000,000 of procuring divorces, and early marriages, which fivres (about £300,000) are required to repair are entered into through dread of military requisi them, or rather to make them anew.-RHONE. tion.-GIRONDE. It is said, that population is The roads in every direction, through France, are diminished considerably in all the Communes of impassable-VOSGES. The roads are so entirely this department, and that it is reduced one-tenth ruined, that the country people carry off the pav-in Bourdeaux. The causes (which ing stones to build houses or to form enclosures. (The Prefect of the department of "the Var," in his statistical account, lately published, says, that the roads are a muddy abyss which sometimes swallows up carriages, horses, and driveis).

CROSS ROADS. MAINE AND LOIRE. The roads are so execrable, that some Communes, for several months, have no intercourse with each other. Men and cattle are swallowed up.-NORD. The cross roads in this department are so bad that they may be fairly said not to exist.

are common

to all France) are a destructive war by sea and land, emigration, proscription, famine, corruption of morals, the ruin of manufactures and of commerce, the want of labourers, and excessive fatigue,

REMARKS ON GOVERNMENT.-OISE. The council observes with regret, that their labours and their efforts are useless. Their last session has produced no improvement. Their requests and their informations have not been attended to. CANALS.-YONNE. The canal of Burgundy attend They ascribe these evils to the war; and they

has already cost sixteen millions (above £600,000) which will be all thrown away, if the completion of this canal is not speedily attended to.

to the internal concerns of the republic. REGISTERS.-ARRIEGE. Not only negligence, ignorance, and inattention to duty, but wilful

Mr. HOBHOUSE.

Come, that's enough-once more, my friend!
ALL.

Let us join, while join we may,
While at Bath, Pitt keeps away.
Rats, when puss is absent, play:
PITT may come, if we delay.

Full Piece by the Treasury Band.

TO THE EDITOR.

ticity of Daniel's Prophecies, and found
them uniformly harmonious, could explore
no better means of relieving himself from
the pressing difficulty than by a gratuitous
affirmation that they were published after.
the transactions which, as he said, they af-
fected to foretell; truly, Sir, so accurate
have you and Mr. Burke been in your anti-
cipations of what was to happen in this ter-
rible convulsion of society, before it did
actually happen, that we cannot reasonably
censure another age if it look upon you
both as no more than historians or annalists.
But be that as it may: if an unexampled
combination of moral depravity, inflicted by
the righteous judgment of offended heaven
upon a degenerate nation, had not deafened
our ears against the most solemn proofs,
appeals, and admonitions, you, Sir, would
have roused again the antient energies of
our valiant country, which the opiates of
her present unskilful and dangerous physi-
cians have now plunged in so deep uncon-
scious a lethargy, as, I much fear, is a pre-
lude to that leaden sleep of death from
which she will awake no more. You would
have stimulated her, while still flushed with
health, to resist in time the ambition of the
Corsican, which no compromise short of
her destruction can satiate, and whose root-
ed enmity the grave only can extinguish.
Et si fata Deum, si mens non læva fuisset,
Impuleris ferro Argolicas fœdare latebras.

MR. EDITOR, I live in the country, and my time is chiefly spent in retirement and study but I am a very attentive observer of every event in this important and critical period. Among the various productions of the present day your Register is the most popular, and I read it with pleasure and with instruction. The spirit of a real Briton animates every passage, the ardour of a loyal patriot for the welfare of his country glows in every sentiment, and the most profound knowledge of its political relations is conspicuous in every number of your publication. Is it then, Sir, extraordinary that it should be read with eagerness by every class of society? You alone, unawed by that dastard spirit of submission to a man, who is aiming to grasp the sceptre of the globe; that dastard spirit which, origi nating in the present timid ministry, and abetted, by those worthy Citizens Messrs. Fox and Burdett, enervates the courage, and depresses the vigour of this once glorious, but now falling, nation; you alone have I mean this letter as an introduction; and, stood in the gap of destruction, you have if you deem it worthy of a place in your called upon us, you have warned us, you Register, I shall be happy to maintain an have painted in the most expressive colours occasional correspondence. In that case my the dreadful perils which surround us on next will consist of cursory remarks on the every side; without, an implacable foe; and tergiversations of that political weather-cock, within, domestic and pernicious traitors; that Vicar of Bray in all changes of men and your ideas are conveyed in a bold and and measures-MR. HERIOT, as they are free style, a masculine eloquence well suit- prominently exhibited in his two'stupid and ed to the conceptions of your fearless and heavy prints, the Sun and True Briton: sagacious mind. Sir, your fatal predictions of short, but, I hope, striking observations from the moment of signing the prelimi- on the nature of that extraordinary bargain naries to this day were, alas! but too well which MR. FREELING, Secretary to the grounded in truth; part of them have been General Post Office, attempted to drive literally fulfilled, and the rest are in a with you; against whose proposal your upcourse of evident accomplishment. The right mind, impelled by the noblest motive, prognostications of Mr. Burke on the pro- to your eternal honour indignantly revolted: gressive evils of the French revolution, then and in order last, but in consequences far in its infancy, have been so exactly answer more important and interesting, a copious ed by subsequent facts, that posterity will examination of some very novel positions be tempted to regard them as historical re- in the late speeches of Mr. Charles Fox, as cords collected long after the events. The they are given to the public in the Morning same may be predicted of your own writ- Post. The first person, if we consider him ings. It Porphyry, having industriously intrinsically as to his natural talents, or to collated the testimonies of prophane histo his acquired knowledge, is of a character so rians, casual designed to the authen- neutralized, or, to speak with more logical