ELOQUENCE OF THE SENATE. Speech of Sir JAMES MACKINTOSH, on the Treaty of Peace with America, delivered in the British House of Commons, April 11th, 1815. Sir James Mackintosh said, that he rose after his hon. relation, partly to express the pride as well as pleasure with which he had listened to his arguments, though he was obliged to controvert their justice. He would begin by avowing, however unfashionable such principles had now become, his partiality to America, because she was not only bound to us by the ties of common origin, but by the closer fellowship of civil and religious liberty. The spirit of liberty had given us an American empire: the spirit of domination had robbed us it. Peace with America he considered as one of the greatest of national advantages; for of all separate objects of our foreign policy, he thought friendship with America was the second. The strength and security of Holland he allowed to be the first. He had at all times equally lamented and reprobated those vulgar prejudices, and that insolent language against the people of America, which had been of late so prevalent in this country, and which had reached so extravagant a height, that men, respectable in character as well as station, had spoken in this House of the deposition of Mr. Madison as a justifiable object of war, and had treated a gentleman of English extraction and education with a scurrility which they must now be the first to regret, for no better reason than that we happened to be at war with the great republic over which he presides. He did not, therefore, object so much to the treaty as to the address. He objected to it because the treaty was not concluded sooner, because the delay was unfavourable to its conditions, and, above all, because the negotiations were not conducted in the spirit most likely to render the peace permanent. The question before the house was twofold:Whether any unnecessary delay had occurred in the negotiation; and whether that delay was culpably imputable to his majesty's ministers? He should venture to assume, that the negotiation would have been better conducted if it had been commenced in April or May, and closed in July, than as it was from August to December. Every thing during the first period was favourable to Great-Britain. That government in France, which America might consider as the check on British power, had just been overthrown. The allies were closely united; they were in possession of the French territory. The renown of their success subdued and overawed the minds of of all men. It was the moment for England to prove her sincerity in disclaiming views of American aggrandizement. The cause of war was removed. Peace was in substance, if not in form, made with France. No maritime war existed. All questions respecting the right of impressment, or any other right of a maritime belligerent, were become matters of pure speculation. The subject in dispute was vanished. Cadit questio, “Shall we continue at war for a theoretical that government to terminate a principle of public law?" was the war which had no longer any oblanguage openly held by the Ame- ject, in which they could no longer rican negotiators on their arrival hope for aid or diversion, and in in London in April. To go still which their enemy was the ally of further back, he could not disco- all Europe. The battle of Leipzic, ver why ministers had rejected the passage of the Rhine, the octhe mediation of Russia. A media- | cupation of a third of France, the tor is a common friend, who counconqueror of Europe reduced to a sels both parties with a weight doubtful and perilous defence of proportioned to their belief in his his capital, were surely motives integrity, and their respect for his enough for putting an end to a power. But he is not an arbitrator contest about the laws of naval to whose decision they submit war, at a moment when all war their differences, and whose award was about to close. And how could is binding on them. Russia, at the the English ministers then know moment of the proposal, was the the instructions given by the Amemost hearty ally of England. No rican government? It is perfectly two states were ever joined by ridiculous to urge these instrucstronger bands of common inter- tions now, and to say, as his hon. est. Russia had, by the conven- friend (Mr. Grant) had in subtion of 1801, renounced the prin- stance said, that the ministers had ciples of the armed neutrality. prophesied truly by chance, and She had, indeed, renewed them were right, though they did not when she fell under the influence know it. Men cannot be justified of Napoleon. But as soon as she by instructions, of which they did was emancipated from that yoke, not know the existence at the moshe must have disclaimed all the ment of action. It was impossible doctrines that she was then forced to explain this delay from the conto profess. She must have support-vention with monsieur in April, ed our general maritime rights; and it would have required extraordinary disinterestedness for her, at that moment, to have been even impartial respecting the single right in dispute between America (from whom she had nothing to hope or to fear), and England, herrine of America, was to be remost effective and indispensable ally. Ages might elapse before such an opportunity of pledging Russia in favour of our maritime rights would again occur. But at least, why was not the congress opened in April? Will it be said, that the American ministers had not then received instructions adapted to the success of the allies, and the new state of Europe? But enough must have been known in America in January to dispose or the treaty of Paris in May, unless on the miserable policy of protracting war for the sake of striking a blow against America. The disgrace of the naval war, of balanced success between the British navy and the new-born ma deemed by protracted warfare, and by pouring our victorious armies upon the American continent. That opportunity, fatally for us, arose. If the congress had opened in June, it was impossible that we should have sent out orders for the attack on Washington. We should have been saved from that success, which he considered as a thousand times more disgraceful and disastrous than the worst defeat. This success he charged on the delay of the negotiation. It | American officers, unauthorised was a success which made our and disavowed by their govern naval power hateful and alarming to all Europe. It was a success which gave the hearts of the American people to every enemy who might rise against England. It was an enterprise which most exasperated a people, and least weakened a government, of any recorded in the annals of war. For every justifiable purpose of present warfare it was almost impotent. To every wise object of prospective policy it was hostile. It was an attack, not against the strength or the resources of a state, but against the national honour and public affections of a people. After twenty-five years of the fiercest warfare, in which every great capital of the European continent had been spared, he had almost said, respected by enemies, it was reserved for England to violate all that decent Courtesy towards the seats of national dignity, which, in the midst of enmity, manifests the respect of nations for each other, by an expedition deliberately and principally directed against palaces of government, halls of legislation, tribunals of justice, repositories of the muniments of property, and of the records of history-objects among civilized nations exempted from the ravages of war, and secured, as far as possible, even from its accidental operation, because they contribute nothing to the means of hostility, but are consecrated to purposes of peace, and minister to the common and perpetual interest of all human society. It seemed to him an aggravation of this atrocious measure, that ministers had attempted to justify the destruction of a distinguished capital, as a retaliation for some violences of inferior ment, against he knew not what village in Upper Canada. To make such retaliation just, there must always be clear proof of the outrage; in general also, sufficient evidence that the adverse government refused to make due reparation for it, and at last some proportion of the punishment to the offence. Here there was very imperfect evidence of the outrageno proof of refusal to repair-and demonstration of the excessive and monstrous iniquity of what was falsely called retaliation. The value of a capital is not to be estimated by its houses, and warehouses, and shops. It consisted chiefly in what could be neither numbered nor weighed. It was not even by the elegance or grandeur of its monuments, that it was most dear to a generous people. They looked upon it with affection and pride as the seat of legislation, as the sanctuary of public justice, often as linked with the memory of past times, sometimes still more as connected with their fondest and proudest hopes of greatness to come. To put all these respectable feelings of a great people, sanctified by the illustrious name of Washington, on a level with half a dozen wooden sheds in the temporary seat of a provincial government, was an act of intolerable insolence, and implied as much contempt for the feelings of America, as for the common sense of mankind. On the right of searching foreign ships for English seamen, he mentioned a remarkable instance of its ancient and general acknowledgment, which he had lately found in the manuscript memoirs of king James II. That prince, being in Holland in 1657, was desi rous of returning to France, and | first proposed to go by sea, but renounced that intention from "the hazard his royal highness would run, in case they met with any English man of war, whose custom it was to search any strange ships to see if they had any English seamen on board, and, if they should find any such, to take them out."* Here was an instance of the exercise of this right a century and a half ago, the practice being then spoken of as familiar, and acquiesced in by the ships of so great a nation as France. This passage, which had come to light thus accidentally, he considered as decisive evidence of the ancient and unresisted exertion of this importent right. The right of every state to the perpetual allegiance of its natural born subjects, was an undisputed principle of public law. But it was one of those extreme rights which were peculiarly liable to degenerate into wrong, if the utmost caution and humanity did not regulate its exercise. Notwithstanding this right, Irish officers in the service of France, during all the war of the eighteenth century, had been treated as French subjects. Notwithstanding this right, Louis XV. treated his natural-born subject, marshal Ligonier, as a prisoner of war, and a conversation between them is supposed to have had some share in producing the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. But never yet did a case arise in which the application of the principle was so difficult as in the relation between Britain and America; nations of the same language, of similar man * Manuscript Life of James II in the library of his royal highness the prince regent, p. 824. ners, of almost the same laws, the one being a country of overflowing population, and the other of a boundless extent of vacant land to receive it: the two first maritime states in the world, the one habitually belligerent, under the necessity of manning her prodigious navy by very rigorous means; the other disposed to commerce and neutrality, alluring seamen by every temptation of emolument into her growing mercantile marine. Never was there such a dan. gerous conflict between the rigorous principle of natural allegiance, and the moral duty of contributing to the defence of a protecting government. To reconcile these jarring claims by general reasoning, or by abstract principles, was a vain attempt. To effect a compromise between them, would be an arduous task for the utmost caution, and the most conciliatory spirit. Yet it must be tried, unless we were willing that in every future war America should necessarily become our enemy. He proceeded to examine the causes of delay after the congress was assembled at Ghent. These were all reducible to one,-a pretension set up by the British negotiators, to guarantee what was called the independence of the savages whom we had armed, and to prohibit the Americans from purchases of land from them. The first remark on this pretension was, that it ought never to have been made, or never abandoned. If honour and humanity towards the Indians required it, our desertion of it is an indelible disgrace. It is abandoned. The general words of the treaty are of no value, or amount to no more than the Americans were always ready to grant. Having been abandoned, it can have been made only as a philanthropic pretext for war. But, in truth, it was utterly untenable, and it must have been foreseen that it was to be abandoned. It amounted to a demand for the cession of the larger part of the territory of the United States, of that territory which is theirs by positive treaty with Great Britain. Over the whole of the American territory, even to the Pacific Ocean, the crown of Great Britain formerly claimed the rights of sovereignty. By the treaty of 1783, the United States succeeded to the rights of the British crown. The Indian tribes, who hunted in various parts of that vast territory, became vassals of the United States, as they had been vassals of the king of Great Britain. Possessed, doubtless, of the most perfect right to justice and humanity; entitled, like all other men, to resist | oppression; undisturbed, in regulating their internal concerns, or their ordinary quarrels with each other; rather to be considered as subjects of their own chiefs, than as directly amenable to the paramount authority of the territorial sovereign; they had still, in all treaties respecting America, been considered as vassals and dependents, bound by the stipulations of their superior state. However undefined this character might be; whatever doubt might be entertained of the original justice of such treaties, it was not now for Great Britain to deny the existence of rights which she had herself exercised, and which she had solemnly ceded to the United States; and, once more, if the Indians were her independent allies, it was disgraceful in the highest degree to surrender them at last into the hands of the enemy. Ne VOL. I. ver was a proposal, in fact, so inhuman made under pretence of philanthropy. The western fron-' tier of North American cultivation is the part of the globe in which civilization is making the most rapid and extensive conquests on the wilderness. It is the' point where the race of men is most progressive. To forbid the purchase of land from the savages, is to arrest the progress of mankind-it is to condemn one of the most favoured tracts of the earth to perpetual sterility, as the hunting ground of a few thousand savages. More barbarous than the Norman tyrants, who afforested great tracts of arable land for their sport, we attempted to stipulate that a territory twice as great as the British islands should be doomed to be an eternal desert! We laboured to prevent millions of millions of freemen, of Christians, of men of English race, from coming into existence. There never was such an attempt made by a state to secure its own dominion by desolation, to guard by deserts what they could not guard by strength. To perpetuate the English authority in two provinces, the larger part, of North America was for ever to be a wilderness. The American ministers, by their resistance to so insolent and extravagant a demand, maintained the common cause of civilised men-and the English, who by advancing so monstrous a pretension, protracted the miseries and the bloodshed of war; who had caused the sad defeat of New Orleans, and the more disgraceful victory of Washington, had rendered themselves accountable to God and their country for all the accumulation of evils which marked the last months of an unfortunate and unnatural U |