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CONTRIBUTIONS FOR THE RELIEF OF THE MISSIONS OF THE UNITED BRETHREN.

The Rev. C. I. Latrobe, the Secretary, and Mr. Wollin, the Treasurer, of the Moravian Missions, have transmitted to us a3 paper, in which they mention, with gratitude, the receipt of a long list of Donations for the support of the Missions of the United Brethren among the Heathen; and they add," We feel ourselves the more excited to praise the Lord for inclining so many wellwishers to his cause on earth to come to our assistance: for, by the almost total ruin of the outward prosperity of the Brethren's Settlements on the Continent, their contributions have unavoidably fallen so short, that at the close of 1812 the deficiency in the general amount of the Missions had increased to 3973l. 14s. 2d. We therefore réturn to all and each of our generous benefactors, the most cordial thanks for the very considerable relief afforded unto us; the donations already received amounting to nearly 2000l. towards covering the abovementioned arrear. The effects of the devastations by the war continuing to be most severely felt, we humbly request a continuation of the help of such as regard the labour of the Brethren's Missionaries with favour."-We regret that our limits will not permit us to insert the long and respectable list of names transmitted to us by these gentlemen.

CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY.

On the 7th of January a meeting of this Society was held at Freemason's Hall, the Right Hon. Lord Gambier in the chair, for the purpose of addressing four Missionaries who were designated to stations in the East.

1st. The Rev. Thomas Norton and the Rev. W. Greenwood, who having been educated in the Society's Seminary, and admitted to Holy Orders, are now serving curacies. When their engagements are fulfilled, they will embark for the island of Ceylon, to act as Missionaries of the Society,

2d. The Rev. John Christian Schnarré, and the Rev. Charles Theophilus Ewald Rhenius, who having studied some years in the Missionary Seminary at Berlin, were ordained in that city by the Counsellor of the Consistory, the Rev. Jacobus Hecker; and having since passed about fifteen months in this country in preparation for their future labours, were appointed as Missionaries to Tranquebar.

Our readers are already apprized of the Benevolent and extensive plans of Dr. John,

and of the pecuniary aid rendered to them by the Calcutta Corresponding Committee of the Society. Messrs. Schnarré and Rhe nius having been destined by the Committee to enter into the fields of labour which he has presented in the peninsula of India, their attention was directed to the studies suitable to that destination, in the confi dence that the Court of Directors of the East-India Company would grant them their licence to proceed to India for the furtherance of plans so wisely conceived, and put in practice with so much benefit to the natives. This confidence was not dis appointed. The Court granted, with the utmost readiness, the request of the Com mittee; and these Missionaries are now on their passage to India, on board the Marquis of Huntly, Captain M'Leod,

On this occasion there were present 1300 or 1400 members and their friends.

The Secretary of the Society delivered the Instructions of the Committee to the Missionaries; and the Rev. William Dealtry, Rector of Clapham, in the unavoidable ab sence, through indisposition, of the Rev. Dr. Claudius Buchanan, delivered an Ad. dress to them, drawn up by Dr. Buchanau, at the request of the Committee *.

SCHOOLS IN ANTIGUA.

In consequence of the information con. tained in our Number for August last, and in other periodical publications,respecting the Schools in Antigua, for the religious education of black and coloured children, we are happy to announce that a sum of 116, has been collected. We trust that large additions will still be made to it.

SOCIETY FOR ENCOURAGEMENT OF FAITHFUL FEMALE SERVANTS,

NO. 71, HATTON GARDEN.

A general meeting of this Society, of which we gave an account, p. 333 of our last volume, will be held on Monday, the 29th of April, at the New London Tavern, Cheapside, at half-past six o'clock in the evening precisely; at which every gentleman who feels interested in the faithful service of female domestics, is earnestly re quested to attend. The success of this Society would certainly tend to increase our domestic repose and security, and therefore has a strong claim on the philanthropy and good sense of the public, and especially the female public. It is in the contem

See our Review of this Charge in our last Number.

plation of the Society to offer various kinds of assistance to good servants in distress, sickness, or age--and to send back to their friends in the country, those who are incapable

of continuing their services in London. They propose also to give FiveGuineas to a servant on her marriage, who has previously lived four years with a Subscriber, &c.

VIEW OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS.

WE stated in our last Number that Bonaparte having, by a rapid movement northward, brought a large force to bear on Blucher's army, had forced it to retire with considerable loss, but yet in unbroken order, to Chalons. The advance of the grand army under Swartzenberg, recalled Bonaparte to the neighbourhood of Paris, whence, after several engagements, he obliged the Allies to retire through Troyes on Bar sur Aube, which was the limit of their retreat. While Bonaparre was warmly engaged with this army on the Seine and the Aube, Blucher again advanced, and, defeating the corps opposed to him, appeared before Meaux, and menaced the capital. This movement compelled Bonaparte once more to intermit his offensive operationsagainst Swartzenberg,and, leaving a large body to watch his progress, he proceeded against Blucher. No sooner had he withdrawn a part of his force for this purpose than Swartzenberg moved forward, and, having severely beaten the corps opposed to him, re-possessed himself of Troyes. His head-quarters were established at this place on the 4th instant.

On the same day Bonaparte came into contact with the army of Blucher, at Soissons, whither he had retired from Meaux on the approach of Bonaparte in force, in order to effect a junction with the corps of Bulow and Winzingerode. The Allies were in possession of Soissons, and their army was posted in its rear. The whole of the 5th instant passed in a sanguinary conflict for the possession of the town. Night put an end to the contest, when the enemy with drew. On the following day it was discowered, that Bonaparte had made a movement with a view to turn the left of the Allies, and cut them off from Laon. This obliged Marshal Blucher to evacuate Soissons, and to take up a position at Laon, which he reached with his whole army, on the night of the 7th; his left wing, however, having sustained a severe attack, and suffered some loss, in its progress thither. On the 9th, Bonaparte attacked the army of Blucher with a very large force. The battle was maintained with great obstinacy throughout the whole of that and

the following day; but it ended in the compiete repulse of the enemy, with the loss of 38 pieces of cannon, upwards of 6000 prisoners, and a great quantity of ammunition and baggage. The enemy retreated to Soissons. On the 12th, a detachment of the allied army, under General St. Priest, took Rheims by storm, with 3000 prisoners. On the following day, the 13th, Bonaparte fell upon it with a large force and re-took it. This is the latest date to which we have any authentic accounts from this part of the theatre of action. At that time the army of Blucher had been for nearly fifty days constantly either marching or fighting; during which period only two days had elapsed, in which, exclusive of general actions, his advance or rear had not been engaged with the enemy.

A considerable force having been collected under Augereau at Lyons, it became necessary to detach a part of the grand army in this direction, in order to prevent his ope rating on the rear or left flank of the Allies. A battle is stated to have been fought at Ma. con about the 10th instant, in which the Allies were victorious.

From the 4th to the 13th instant, Swartzenberg had remained stationary at Troyes; and this state of inaction has been loudly complained of, as indicating, if not infidelity to the Allies, yet an alarming degree of lukewarmness to their cause. Independently, however, of the numberless reasons, scarcely admitting, perhaps, of explanation, which operate to retard the movements of a large army, it is obvious that had Swartzenberg advanced towards Paris, while the issue of the contest between Blucher and Bonaparte on his right, and between Bianchi and Augereau on his left, was still undecided; and had that issue proved disastrous, he wonld, by such an advance, have exposed his own army to imminent hazard, if not to inevitable ruin. His retreat might have been impossible. It becomes Bonaparte, in his present circumstances, to run all risks. This, however, is clearly not the policy of the Allies.

In like manner the Crown Prince has been blamed for not having yet brought up his army to the scene of action in France. Let the difficulty, however, be considered of

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transporting, at this season of the year, a large army, with all its equipments, from Holstein and Sleswig to the banks of the Marne or the Seine, and it will appear that the blame is undeserved. It was the middle of January before his army was at li berty to move southward; and a considerable part of it has already joined the army of Blucher. The rest of it is, doubtless, advancing to the same point as rapidly as circumstances will permit. Who doubts, for example,the anxiety of LordWellington to come into active co-operation with the allied forces which are approaching Paris from the East? And yet we have had to lament, in his case, the existence of obstacles, chiefly arising from the weather and the state of the roads, which rendered an advance for several months impracticable. We cannot suppose that those obstacles were less formidable in the line of march which the Swedish army had to pursue, at the worst season of the year, from the shores of the Baltic to the interior of France, a distance of upwards of 500 miles.

While these things were passing in the North of France, Lord Wellington was acively occupied in the South. Between the 23d of February and the 2d of March, he had forced all the enemy's positions on the Adour, and had possessed himself of their magazines at Aire and Mont de Marsan. The loss of British and Portuguese occasioned by these operations, amounted to between 300 and 400 men killed, and 2400 wounded. The enemy's army appears to have been most severely beaten. They are represented as routed and dispersed, flying in the utmost confusion, throwing away their arms and deserting in great numbers, leaving the country strewed with their dead. A part of the allied army crossed the Adour below Bayonne, having been assisted in this operation by the boats of the blockading squadron, the crews of which had to encounter extraordinary peril as well as fatigue, from the violence of the surf, in effecting this service. By this part of the army Bayonne has been closely invested. The heavy rains which fell about the first of March had materially impeded the advance of the army, and Lord Wellington's headquarters were still at Aire on the 14th. The enemy's army had retired along the banks of the Adour towards Tarbes, in order to effect a junction with a corps of 10,000 men of Suchet's army, which was advancing from Catalonia. Sir Rowland Hill had gone in pursuit of it, and a part of his force had taken possession of Pau, the

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capital of Bearn. Marshal Beresford hnd been detached in the opposite direction, towards Bourdeaux; and on the 12th instant he took possession of that important city, the second in France, not only without resistance, but apparently to the universal joy of the inhabitants. The Marshal was met at a short distance from the town by the civil authorities and the great body of the population, who displaced the eagles and other badges of the present Usurpation, and spontaneously and universally substituted the Bourbon insignia, filling the air with shouts of "Vive Bourbon! Vivent les Anglois! Vive Louis Dixhuit!" This feeling is asserted to prevail in every part of Bearn and Gascony which our troops have yet traversed. The Duke d'Angouleme bas been received with enthusiasm by all ranlts. The same feeling is also said to have matifested itself in the rear of the Allies in Alsace, Franche Comptè, &c. where Monsieur has experienced the same gratifying reception.

In Catalonia, the Ba on d'Eroles,having got possession of Suchet's cipher, sent orders to the garrisons of Lerida, Mequinenza, and Monson, to evacuate these places, and mareh in the direction of Martorel. They were there surrounded, and forced to capitulate.

In Italy, Murat has commenced offensive operations against his former master. The Neapolitan troups have taken posses sion of Rome, Leghorn, &c. and have also driven a body of the Viceroy's troops from Reggio, near Parma.

The only disastrous enterprize of a military kind, which we have to record, is an attempt to carry Bergen-op-Zoom by storm, which was made by the British troops under Sir Thomas Graham, on the 8th instant, and which completely failed. Our loss was very severe. Upwards of 300 men were killed, and about 2000 prisoners remained in the hands of the enemy. An ex change of these has since been agreed on.

A general expectation has been entertain ed (24h inst.)that the negociations carried on at Chatillon were about to issue in the signing of preliminaries of peace with Bo naparte. We believe that such an event would be regarded as a real calamity by nine-tenths of the population, not only England, but of the Continent. Should the expectation of a peace with Bonaparte be realized, we shall regard it merely as affording him a breathing time, during which be may recover his strength for fresh and better planned acts of aggression, which may fix his yoke far more firmly than before on the neck of Europe; and if we can suppe

such a peace to originate in the misguided lenity of Austria, it will only prove how short-sighted is her policy; for, doubtless, she will be the first victim of Bonaparte's ve ngeance. That he should rest satisfied with an abridgement of power and a sacri fice of territory, such as he must now submit to, is not to be conceived; and there can be no doubt that the resources of France in his hands may be made available to alinost any enterprize he may meditate. By the time that Russia has withdrawn within her own boundaries, and that the armies of the ot'ber Allies are reduced to their peace establishments, Bonaparte will be prepared to renew his aggressions. Peace will restore to him a veteran army of perhaps S00,000 men, now held as prisoners of war, or dispersed in garrisons which are at present cut off from communication with France. We know the power of his conscription, and the rapidity with which it has created immense masses of force. We can therefore see nothing to prevent Bonaparte from having armies on foot, in a very short time after peace with him shall have been signed, sufficient to enable him to execute his most daring projects. We confess, that we are slow to believe that the Allies will now expose themselves and the world to the fresh calamities which are so obviously involved in a peace with this man: and we feel more disposed to this view of the subject, since our Government has publicly recognized, and recorded with apparent exultation, the movement in favour of the Bourbons on the banks of the Garonne. Why mention this at all, in an account professing only to be an extract from Lord Wellington's dispatches, unless it were intended to espouse the Bourbon cause? On any other supposition, such a publication would be worse than useless. Its only effect would be to sharpen the vengeance of Bonaparte against the population who had been led to this rash and unadvised expression of their byalty. Indeed, we cannot regard the Gazette statement to which we are allud

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ing, in any other light than as the unfurling of the royal standard in France.

A singular scene is now acting in Holland. The Prince of Orange has published a new fundamental code for the government of that country, which he means to submit to an assembly of 600 persons, freely chosen by the different departments, in proportion to their population. The great objects proposed by this constitution, which is said to be contormed, as far as possible, to ancient institutions and usagés, are thus summarily stated. It is intended "that religion, as the fountain of all good, shall be honoured and maintained, and religious freedom disturbed by nothing of temporal concerns, but secured in the most ample manner; that the education of youth, and the spread of scientific knowledge, shall be attended to by the Government, and freed from all those vexatious regulations which oppress the genius and subdue the spirit; that personal freedom shall no longer be an empty name, and dependent on the caprices of a suspicious and crafty police; that an impartial administration of justice, guided by fixed principles, shall secure to every man his property; that commerce, agriculture, and ma nufactures shall be no longer obstructed, but have free course, like rich springs of public and private prosperity; that, therefore, no restraint shall be imposed on the domestic economy of the higher and lower classes of the state, but that they shall be conformable to the general laws and the general government; that the movements of the Govern ment shall not be palsied by too great a zeal for local interests, but rather receive from it an additional impulse; that the general laws, by means of an harmonious co-operation of the two principal branches of the Government, shall be founded on the true interests of the State; and that the finances and the arming of the people, the main pillars of the body politic, shall be placed in that central point, upon which the greatest and most invaluable privilege of every free people,-—their independence, may be firmly fixed."

GREAT BRITAIN.

THE Parliament met on the 1st inst. bat was immediately adjourned to the 21st, when it again met and proceeded to business. The basiness, however, has been almost entirely either of a private nature, or of mere ordinary Toptine.

We are happy to state that four French frigates, the Alcmene, Iphigenie, Sirius, and Clorinde, have been captured in the course of the month.

Sir William Garrow, the Attorney General, is appointed Chief Justice of Chester,

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

MERCATOR JUNIOR; CANTABRIGIENSIS; J. C.; THEOGNIS; SENEX; AN UNKNOWN INQUIRER; A FOREIGNER; APES; have been received, and are under consideration. PHILO-PATRIE, A. B.; AMICUS; R. S.; AN INQUIRER; T. S.; A COUNTRY VICAR; will appear.

We are unable to give PHILANTHROPIST the information he solicits.

We are greatly obliged to A. E. for his communications.

We have no immediate prospect of being able to review a work mentioned by a CONSTANT READER.

Our readers will recollect that, in our Number for January, we inserted a letter, signed T.. containing a request for information as to the ground on which it was asserted, in the preface to the Report of the Trial of the Luddites at York, that "religious fanaticism” had raised the evil" to its height.” And this request seemed to be made simply because, on reading the Report itself, there did not appear any evidence to substantiate the allegation. We must confess that, ignorant as we ourselves were of the facts, except as they appeared on the face of the Report, we were far from seeing any thing improper in the paper of T. His object, indeed, we are well assured, was merely to ascertain the truth in a point which, it must be allowed, was of some importance. We have therefore been greatly surprized at the offence which the insertion of his letter has occasioned, and the unreasonable surmises respecting both his motives and our own to which it has given birth. We had not the most distant conception, and we are well persuaded neither had the writer, that the inquiry could have excited the displeasure of a single reader of our work. We certainly were not aware, at the time we inserted it, of the interminable and angry discussion to which it was 1kely to lead; otherwise we should, on that ground, have excluded it. All we shall now say upon it is, that so contradictory, and therefore so perplexing, are the statements we have received on the subject; and so little likely, under all the circumstances of the case, is the inquiry to lead to any satisfactory result; that we are disposed to adopt the determination of pursuing it no further.

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We can assure H. T. it is with real concern that we have been drawn into a controversy with him on the subject of Quakerism. We had not the slightest intention of pursuing it beyond our Review of the Life of Penn, until the unjust charge of a disposition to traduce and misrepresent" the Quakers made it our duty to do so. — H. T. has mistaken our object in having recourse to the Journal of George Fox for an exposition of Quaker sentiments: we referred to it, as being the most authentic exposition of ⚫them, acknowledged to be so by Quakers themselves, and therefore, as we conceived, a fair and unexceptionable subject of reference.-We can also assure H. T. that we have no dislike to George Fox personally on the contrary, we admire his honest zeal (however misguided we may sometimes deem it), his heroic constancy, his unshiken fortitude, his devotedness to what he conceived the work of the Lord, and his ardent desire to save souls: we admire and would gladly emulate these qualities in that extraordinary man. But why should we not be allowed to point out those glaring defects in him which have been, as it were, canonized by his Biographer and his followers?-We are not blind to the practical evils existing in the Church of England; nor have we been backward in fitting up our voice against them. H. T. will find, it he examines our work, that there is no point which has occupied more of our attention than the unscriptural views and lax conduct of some of the Clergy. We have been far from wishing to conceal or palliate them. Indeed, we have been more intent on exposing such evils, with a view to their cure, and from a conviction that reform is the best expedient for strengthening the Church which can be adopted, than we have been on exposing all the defects of all the sectaries put together. At the same time, H. T. must be sensible that there are many things in the constitution and practice of the Church of England which he would regard as evil, but which we should be disposed to uphold as good. To the system of tithes, in itself considered, indeed, we are far from partial; and yet, under all the circumstances under which it now exists, we do not understand on what defensible ground its payment can be resisted by those who have made purchases of property knowing it to be subject to this burden.-To conclude, we can truly assure H. 1. that we are not conscious of harbouring one unfriendly feeling either towards himself, or any other Quaker ancient or modern.

We have received from the Author of the "Tour to Alet," a very long comment on our Review of that work. Not only its length, but the tone of irritation which pervades it, would be a bar to its insertion, especially as the Author required it to be inserted verbatim as written, or not at all. We prefer the latter alternative, and have returned the paper. We are extremely concerned to find that the Review in question has given such ̧

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