when she must appear in public, and his royal highness must be present also. The time selected for this proceeding, she said, made it peculiarly galling: many illustrious strangers were already in England, including the heir of the house of Orange, who had announced himself as her future son-in-law; others were expected, of equal rank, to rejoice with his royal highness in the peace of Europe; her daughter would, for the first time, appear in the splendour and publicity becoming the approaching nuptials of the presumptive heiress of the empire; and, of all his majesty's subjects, she alone was prevented from appearing in her place to partake of the general joy, and deprived of the indulgence in those feelings of pride and affection permitted to every mother but her. Her royal Lighness also addressed a letter to the speaker, enclosing, for the information of the house of commons, the correspondence which had passed on this occasion. After the letters had been read, Methuen moved," that an humble address be presented to his royal highness the prince regent, to pray that he would be graciously pleased to acquaint the house by whose advice he was induced to form the fixed and unalterable determination never to meet her royal highness the princess of Wales, upon any occasion, either in public or private.'"Ministers contended that it was not within the province of the house to interfere in this case; and the debate, which was carried on with closed doors, terminated in Methuen's consenting to withdraw his motion, from a hope that the rigorous proceeding announced against the princess would not be acted upon at the approaching drawing. rooms. In this expectation the honourable gentleman was disappointed; but when the subject was again resumed on the twenty-third of June, Methuen dwelt more upon the necessity of increasing the establishment of the princess of Wales than on the indignity and injustice offered to her; on which lord Castlereagh observed that it was the first time parliament had been told that an increased provision for her royal highness was the object which her friends had in view. His lordship proceeded to state that he had no objection to submit to the house, on a future day, a proposal on this subject; and, in conclusion, adverted to a fact not before generally known, namely, that there was in existence au instrument dated in the year 1809, signed by the prince and princess of Wales, and approved by his majesty, and to which his signature, as well as that of a large proportion of the ministers of the time, was applied, which provided for a distinct establish ment for the princess, and admitted the fact of the separation. On the fourth of July lord Castlereagh proposed that such an increase should be made to the income of the princess as would enable her to maintain an establishment more suited to her situation in this country; and he thought the most desirable measure would be to raise it to that point to which it would be advanced in the event of the death of the prince-regent: his proposal therefore was, that the net annual sum of fifty thousand pounds should be granted to the princess of Wales, and that the five thousand pounds and seventeen thousand pounds per annum, which she at present enjoyed, should be withheld from the princeregent's income. This sum was, at her own request, reduced to thirty-five thousand pounds; and the princess shortly afterwards asked, and readily obtained, permission to make a tour to the Continent.

LORD COCHRANE.

PUBLIC attention was strongly excited during the session by a prosecution against lord Cochrane and seven others, for a conspiracy to create a fraudulent advance in the price of the public funds, by circulating false intelligence of the defeat and death of Buonaparte. The trick was carried into effect, with temporary success, on the eleventh of February; and the whole of the defendants being found guilty, the sentence passed on lord Cochrane was, that he pay a fine of five hundred pounds, be imprisoned twelve months, and stand once in the pillory! this part of the sentence was, however, remitted. On the fifth of July the house of commons expelled his lordship by a majority of one hundred and forty to forty-four: he, however, asserted his entire ignorance of the whole plot, that he was placed under disadvantages by the nature of the prosecution and the conduct of the judge, and the

electors of Westminster felt so confident of his in nocence, that they re-elected him not only without opposition, but in triumph. His name was also erased from among the knights of the Bath. FINANCE.

THE national income and expenditure were, on the thirteenth of June, brought under the consideration of the bouse of commons. The whole amount of the joint and separate charges for the service of the year were stated by the chancellor of the ex chequer at sixty-seven million five hundred and seventeen thousand four hundred and seventy. eight pounds for England; and for Ireland at eight million one hundred and seven thousand and ninetyfour pounds, making the total expense of the year seventy-five million six hundred and twenty-four thousand five hundred and seventy-two pounds. To meet the charges upon the public revenue, the taxes and the loans of the year for England would produce sixty-seven million seven hundred and eight thousand five hundred and forty-five pounds. The exports of the past year had very considerably exceeded those of the most flourishing year at any former period. The total amount of the loan for 1814 was twenty-four million pounds, being eighteen million five hundred thousand pounds for England, and five million five hundred thousand pounds for Ireland; and, from the terms upon which the loan had been negotiated, it might be calculated that the public would remain charged with the yearly interest upon it of four pounds twelve shillings and one penny per cent. At the close of this statement the usual resolutions were read and agreed to, after a remark from Ponsonby, that the public interest demanded that the property tax should not be collected after the fifth of April next. Appre hensions, however, were still entertained that the tax might be renewed; and the inconclusive replies given by government to the inquiries made on that subject excited a very deep and general alarma throughout the country, The first place which took measures to petition parliament against the renewal of the tax was the city of London; and the example of the metropolis was so generally followed, that the voice of the people, which, when distinctly and perseveringly raised, must always be heard, finally prevailed.

STATE OF IRELAND.

THE state of Ireland had, for some time, been such as to call for the adoption of additional meas ures for securing the public tranquillity; and on the eighth of July, Peel, chief secretary for Ireland, proposed the renewal of a measure which had received the sauction of parliament in 1807. The clause of the insurrection act, which it was now intended to revive, provided that, in case any part of the country should be disturbed, two justices of the peace should be empowered to summon an es traordinary sessions of the county, which should consist of seven magistrates; that the lord-liea tenant, in council, on receiving a report from the magistrates so assembled, stating that the ordinary law was inadequate to the preservation of the pub lic peace, should be empowered to issue a procia mation, commanding all resident within the same district to keep within their houses from sun-set to sun-rise; and that any persons detected out of their houses at the prohibited times, without being able to show good cause, should be liable to be transported for seven years. It was also required that the lord-lieutenant should order a special ses sion of the peace to be held, at which the persons offending against this law should be tried, and, if necessary, the trial by jury should, in these cases, be dispensed with. Other provisions sanctioned the employment of the military; enabled the magistrates to pay domiciliary visits; and to break open doors if denied admission. The bill was warmly discussed in its several stages, but it ultimately passed both branches of the legislature: and, at the close of the session, obtained the royal assent. Parliament was prorogued, on the thir tieth of July, by the prince-regent in person. TREATY WITH HOLLAND-CONGRESS OF

VIENNA.

It was agreed by treaty between Great Britain and Holland, that this country should retain the Cape of Good Hope, Demerara, Essequibo, and Berbice, but restore Batavia, Surinam, Curaroa,

and St. Eustatia. A negotiation was also entered into for uniting Great Britain and Holland more closely, by a marriage between the young prince of Orange and the princess Charlotte of Wales; but, from some cause with which the public has never been fully acquainted, though it does not appear that the prince was ever very acceptable to his intended consort, the treaty was not successful.

On the twenty-ninth of March the prince of the Netherlands opened the grand meeting of the notables of the country, to take into consideration the plan of the constitution, which was viewed and adopted with acclamation. Decrees were also passed for the establishment of the freedom of the press; the restoration of the Dutch language, which had fallen into disuse during the union of Holland with France; the relief of the inferior clergy; the solemn observance of the Sabbath, and other purposes. The Austrian Netherlands were conferred on the house of Orange, in the hope that so import ant an acquisition would render it capable of preserving its independence, and maintaining a rank among the sovereigns of Europe.

The emperor of Russia and the king of Prussia made their solemn entry into Vienna; and on the first of November the formal installation of the congress took place. The royal personages congregated on this occasion consisted of the emperors of Russia and Austria, and the kings of Prussia, Denmark, Wirtemberg, and Bavaria; with ambas sadors from England, Russia, Austria, Prussia, France, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Italy, and the minor states of Germany. One of the first acts of the congress was to recognise a new regal title annexed to the British crown, and to confirm to Hanover the rank of a kingdom, the title of elector being rendered unsuitable to present circumstances by the sixth article of the treaty of Paris, by which it was agreed "that the states of Ger

many should remain independent, and joined in a federal union." On this ground several of the powers concurring in the treaty had invited the prince-regent to renounce the ancient title, and to assume that of king, with some extension of territory, by which the arrangements required for the future welfare of Germany would be facilitated; particularly as all the ancient electors, and the duke of Wirtemberg, had already erected their states into kingdoms. A general diet assembled on the fifteenth of December, which was opened by the duke of Cambridge, and a constitution was agreed upon on the plan of a representative gov ernment.

In Italy the territories formerly possessed by the sovereign house of Sardinia were restored to Victor Emanuel; and, by a protocol signed in the congress of Vienna on the fourteenth of December, the territory forming, before the French revolutionary wars, the venerable republic of Genoa, was definitively united to the states of his Sardiñian majesty, contrary to the condition on which Genoa was occupied by a British force. The annexation of all the other districts in the north of Italy to the Austrian dominion followed almost as a matter of course. Lord William Bentinck had given the Genoese an assurance that their city would be restored to its former independence; but lord Castlereagh expressed the regret of himself and his brother ministers, that they had not been able to preserve its separate existence, without the risk of weakening the system adopted for Italy; and to this statenecessity the ancient republic was obliged to submit, as was that of its old rival, Venice, to the political arrangement which finally annexed it to Austria. Of all the sovereigns by right of French conquest, Murat, king of Naples, alone held his acquisi tions undisturbed,

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spirit appeared in other places. Marshal Ney, having issued a proclamation, dated the fourteenth of March, describing the Bourbons as unfit to reign, and recommending his troops to join the august Napoleon, went over to the invader at Lons le Saulnier. Secure in the support of the army, Buonaparte proceeded on his march, and entered Paris on the evening of the twentieth. On the following morning he showed himself at a window in a garden of the Thuilleries; and, about noon, he reviewed the troops on the Palace Carousel. Louis the eighteenth, accompanied by marshals Berthier and Macdonald, bad previously left Paris for Lisle, whether Monsieur and marshal Marmont were also retiring with a considerable force. One of the first measures of Buonaparte was to despatch Canlincourt to invite the archdutchess Maria Louisa to reunite her fortunes with his; and, for some time, the Parisians were amused with the expectation that their empress would return. The imperial carriages were ordered from St. Cloud to meet her and her son on their route from Vienna; their arrival was even announced; but neither the empress of France nor the king of Rome appeared. An attempt to kidnap the baby monarch proved also unsuccessful.

MEASURES OF ALLIED POWERS-STATE OF PARIS.

As soon as the intelligence of Buonaparte's irruption had reached Vienna, the allied powers issued a solemn manifesto, in which they declared, that, by thus breaking the convention which had established him in the island of Elba, Buonaparte had destroyed the only legal title on which his existence depended; that, by appearing again in France with projects of confusion and disorder, he had deprived himself of the protection of the law, and had manifested to the universe that there could be neither peace nor truce with him; that he had placed himself without the pale of civil and social relations; and that, as an enemy and disturber of the tranquillity of the world, he had rendered himself liable to public vengeance. The allies, at the same time, expressed their firm determination to maintain entire the treaty of Paris, and to employ all their means, and unite all their efforts, to prevent the peace of Europe from being again troubled. This declaration was followed by a new treaty, signed at Vienna on the twenty-fifth of March, by which the contracting parties solemuly engaged not to lay down their arms but in agreement with each other; nor until Buonaparte should be wholly and completely deprived of the power of exciting disturbances, and of renewing his attempts to obtain the supreme power in France.

About a fortnight after his return to Paris Buonaparte severally addressed letters to the allied sovereigns, stating that he had been restored by the unanimous wish of the French people, and that he was desirous of maintaining peace on the terms which had been settled with the Bourbons. The congress, to which these letters were generally referred, agreed that no answer should be returned to them; and, both at home and abroad, he found himself surrounded by difficulties of no ordinary kind. In several parts of France the royalists were in arms; and, however willing his military associates might be to support him in the absolute dominion he had possessed as emperor, the republican party, on which he was chiefly obliged to depend, would only receive him as the head of a popular government. The liberty of the press, which he reluctantly conceded, facilitated the cir culation of much that was obnoxious to him; and the interference of the police, on such occasions, was resented by the republicans as an infraction of the promised freedom. The declarations of the allied powers were also distributed throughout France, in the hope that, by making his danger more apparent, he would be compelled to surrender many sovereign prerogatives. His cabinet became the scene of vehement contention, and he was at length induced to conciliate the attachment of the council of state by a solemn promise to adhere to their advice in the formation of a new constitution. Having thus divided their strength and lulled their suspicion, he took advantage of their apathy, fled from the Thuilleries, seized the impregnable palace of Bourbon, and, surrounded by a body of his guard, he published the outline of

a new constitution of his own arrangement, under the singular title of " An additional Act;" the mode of promulgating which, without the sanction of any public body, was evidently dangerous to national freedom; aud neither the republicans nor the constitutionalists relished this anticipation of the solemn national compact, for which he had appointed the Champ de Mai. The royal charter, subsisting as a fundamental law, could not be innovated upon; but the additional act in some measure confirmed the mass of contradictory laws already prescribed by Buonaparte, and was liable to be modified, limited, and controlled by the old imperial decrees embodied in the constitutions to which this act was proffered as a supplement.

The assembly of the Champ de Mai was held on the first of June, various arrangements having been previously made to influence the votes; and after a declaration of the arch-chancellor, that the new constitution was accepted by an almost unanimous concurrence of votes, but unaccompanied by the slightest evidence of their validity, the emperor signed the additional act, to which he swore upon the evangelists to adhere. He then distributed his eagles to the troops of the line and the national guard, as they passed before him, and swore to defend their colours. The next point was to assemble the chambers, which took place on the Sunday following, when the representatives elected for their president Lanjuinais, an individual peculiarly obnoxious to Buonaparte; but, notwithstanding the chagrin occasioned by this circumstance, he complacently expedited all his civil affairs, such as the installation of his chambers of commons and of peers; informed them that his first duty called him to meet the formidable coalition of emperors and kings that threatened their independence, and that the army and himself would acquit themselves well; recommending to them the destinies of France, his own personal safety, and above all, the liberty of the press. When the ceremonials were completed, Buonaparte quitted Paris for the frontiers, where, by one of those rapid movements which have so frequently distinguished his career, he put his forces in motion upon the Sambre on the fifteenth of June.

MOVEMENTS OF FRENCH AND ALLIED FORCES BATTLE OF WATERLOO. THE close of the last year had left the whole fortified frontier of the Belgic provinces on the side of France occupied by strong garrisons, chiefly of English troops, or in the pay of England; and, since Buonaparte's return, continued reinforcements had been sent from this country, the whole of which were placed under the command of the duke of Wellington. In the latter part of May the Prussian army, under prince Blucher, had arrived in the neighbourhood of Namur, and frequent conferences took place between the two generals relative to co-operation. Buonaparte determined to attack them while the Russians and Austrians were too distant to afford succour, and on the fif teenth of June, at day-break, the Prussian out-posts on the Sambre were driven in; general Ziethen was compelled to retire from Charleroi through Fleurus, to unite himself with the main Prussian army, which lay in the vicinity of St. Amand and Ligny; and, towards evening, an advanced corps of Belgians was driven to the position of Les Quatre Bras.

The duke of Wellington, although he had used his best endeavours to gain immediate intelligence when Buonaparte joined his army, does not ap. pear to have been very early informed of that event, as, in consequence of the want of provisions, and especially of forage, he had found it necessary to disperse his army very much. The British head-quarters were at Brussels. As soon as the movements of the French were ascertained, the whole of the army was ordered to advance upon Les Quatre Bras, and, early in the morning, the prince of Orange reinforced the brigade which had been driven from thence, regained part of the ground, and commanded the communication with Blucher, who was posted on the heights between Brie and Sombref, awaiting the attack of the French, although the fourth corps under Bulow had not joined.

Except the corps of Ney, who was at Frasne opposed to the British at Les Quatre Bras, and of Grouchy, who was in the rear of Fleurus, Buona

parte attacked the Prussians with his whole force, bringing up not less than one hundred and ten thousand men against eighty thousand. About three in the afternoon he carried the village of St. Amand, after a vigorous resistance; and his next efforts were directed against Ligny, where the contest was maintained, with the utmost obstinacy, for five hours. About two hundred cannon from both sides were directed against this unfortunate village; and it took fire in many places at once. Sometimes the battle extended along the whole line. About five the Prussians, led by Blucher in person, recovered St. Amand, and regained the heights; and at this moment they might have profited greatly by their advantage if Bulow had arrived; but either the march of this corps had been miscalculated, or the nature and state of the roads had not been taken into the account. From the duke of Wellington he could receive no assistance; for as many of his troops as had come up were themselves perilously engaged with superior numbers. As evening advanced the situation of the Prussians became more hopeless; there were no tidings of Bulow; the British division conld with difficulty maintain its own position at Les Quatre Bras; and Blucher was at length obliged to retire upon Pilly, leaving behind him sixteen pieces of cannon, and a great number of killed and wounded. The retreat, however, was effected with such order that the French did not think it prudent to pursue him, and he formed again within a quarter of a league from the field of battle. The gallant marshal, in one of the charges of cavalry, nearly closed his long and illustrious life, his horse having fallen, mortally wounded, and himself being rode over by the French cuirassiers, who were repulsed and pursued by the Prussian cavalry before he was discovered and remounted.

Early in the afternoon of the same day, the sixteenth, marshal Ney, after skirmishing for a considerable time, commenced his grand attack on the British, at Les Quatre Bras, with about forty thousand men; and the position was maintained with the most signal intrepidity, by the prince of Orange, the duke of Brunswick, and Sir Thomas Picton, who completely defeated every attempt to get possession of it. In this action the French were not only superior in numbers, but were comparatively fresh, the allies having been marching from the preceding midnight. In pursuing a French division, which was repulsed early in the engagement, some British troops exposed themselves unawares to a body of cuirassiers, who, taking advantage of an inequality of ground, on which corn was growing as high as the shoulders of the tallest man, were posted in ambush; and the gallant forty-second regiment of Highlanders, in particular, suffered most severely. About three o'clock the duke of Wellington came on the field with the British guards. At this period the French had dispossessed the Belgian sharp-shooters from the Bois de Bossu, which enfiladed the British position. General Maitland, with the guards, was instantly ordered to recover this wood, and the service was speedily effected. In this obstinate conflict the British lost many excellent officers; and had particularly to deplore their gallant ally, the duke of Brunswick, who was killed by a musket ball.

Marshal Blucher, who found himself so much weakened by the battle of Ligny as to be under the necessity of continuing his retreat, concentrated his army near Wavre, about six leagues to the rear of his former position, and considerably farther disjoined from the line of the duke of Wellington's operations. His march was followed by Grouchy, whilst Buonaparte, with the rest of his army, made a movement to the left, to unite himself with Ney, and attack the English at Quatre Bras. Blucher's movement obliged the duke of Wellington to retire upon Genappe, and thence upon Waterloo. The retreat began towards noon on the seventeenth, and was well covered by the cavalry and horse artillery. A large body of French cavalry, headed by lancers, followed with some boldness, especially at Genappe, where the little river which runs through the town is crossed by a narrow bridge; but the pursuit was not vigorous, and between five and six in the afternoon the whole army reached the appointed ground.

The position which the duke of Wellington occupied was in front of the village and farm of Mont St. Jean, about a mile and a half in advance of the little town of Waterloo. The rain, which

was heavy throughout the night, began to abate about nine in the morning, when Buonaparte, whose head-quarters were then at Planchenois, a farm some little distance in the rear of the French line, and about fifteen miles from Brussels, put his army in motion. His position was on a ridge im mediately opposite to that of the British, at a distance varying from a thousand to twelve or thirteen hundred yards; the right on the heights in front of Planchenois; the centre at a little country tavern and farm, famous from that day in history for its ap propriate name of La Belle Alliance; the left leaning on the road to Brussels from Nivelles. The cuirassiers were in reserve behind, and the impe rial guards upon the heights. Grouchy and Vandamme had been detached towards Wavre against the Prussians; and the sixth corps, under count Lo bau, with a body of cavalry, was in the rear of the right, ready to oppose a Prussian corps, which,” says an official French account, " appeared to have escaped marshal Grouchy, and to threaten to fall upon our right flank." Thinking to bear down the British army by dint of numbers, he brought against their force, comprising altogether about seventyfive thousand, of which the British did not exceed thirty-three thousand, three corps of infantry, and almost all his cavalry, amounting, with artillery, to one hundred and ten thousand men, forty thou sand more being in reserve, or awaiting the Prus sians on the right.

The two points of the greatest importance in the British position were the farm of Hougoumont, with its wood and garden in front of the right, and that of La Haye Sainte, in front of the left; and, about ten o'clock, Soult and Ney attacked the former with their usual impetuosity. This point the duke of Wellington had strengthened as much as possible during the night; and so severe was the contest, that, within half an hour, fifteen hundred men were slain in an orchard not exceeding four acres in extent. Great efforts were made by the assailants, who surrounded the house on three sides, and burnt a great part of it to the ground; but it was defended with the utmost gallantry to the last. The assault upon Hougoumont was accompanied by a heavy fire from more than two hundred pieces of artillery upon the whole British line; and, under cover of this fire, repeated attacks had been made, one of which was so serious, and made with such numbers, that it required all the skill of the British commander to post his troops, and all the courage and discipline of his soldiers to withstand the assailants. In this attack Sir Thomas Picton was mortally wounded, by a musket ball in the head, and Sir William Ponsonby was slain by the Polish lancers.

On the left of the centre the enemy obtained a temporary success. Some light troops of the Ger man legion had been stationed in the farm of La Haye Sainte; the French succeeded in occupying the communication between them and the army; and, when all the ammunition of the besieged was expended, they carried the farm house, and bayo neted the Hanoverians stationed to defend it. From this position they were never driven, till the grand advance of the British in the evening. The battle continued with the most desperate intrepidity on both sides, Buonaparte continually bringing for. ward his troops in considerable masses, which the British and their allies repulsed. The duke of Wellington was every where, and never were his exertions more needful; sometimes he was rallying broken infantry, and sometimes placing himself within the squares. No man, indeed, ever had more confidence in his troops, and no troops ever more amply returned the confidence which they so well deserved. On this day both men and leaders were put to the proof: none of their former fields of glory, many as they had seen together, had been so stubbornly contested, or so dearly wou. The carnage, owing partly to the confined extent of the ground, and the consequent intermixture of the contending forces, was such as the British army had never before experienced; but it would have been still greater, had not the ground been soaked with rain, in consequence of which the balls seldom rose after they touched it, and the shells frequently buried themselves in the mud.

Buonaparte, about seven in the evening, made a last and desperate effort to force the left of the British centre near La Haye Sainte. The attack was led by marshal Ney with eagerness and preci