course they have taken, in regard to the execution of Ambrister and Arbuthnot, and the agreement between Spain and the United States for the transfer of the Floridas. It has been a system of exaggeration, not to say slander, designed to bring the ministry under the suspicion of pusillanimity and supineness, and to recommend the assailants to the nation as the truer Britons; the more spirited assertors and anxious guardians of her honour and interests. This accomplished, it was immaterial what feuds and ruinous strife, and what injustice to the United States, might follow, if their clamours raised a ferment among the British people, and thus forced the ministry to pursue to extremity an unattainable redress, and frustrate a fair and equitable arrangement. Remark the artificial tone and hyperbolical representation, so well, though not primarily calculated to produce discord and aversion between the two nations,―of leading members of the minority in both houses of parliament.

Mr. Tierney (House of Commons, May 19th, 1819).

"There was one foreign power to which he must direct the attention of the house, with the same view as he had mentioned France -he meant America;-she was out of the pale of confederation; with her we had a separate treaty of peace; towards her we had long cast an eye of jealousy, and it well became us to be prepared for the worst. Let the house consider only what had happened in the last three months. Two British subjects had been executed by an American commander. There might be circumstances warranting his conduct, and justifying, according to the law of nations, the approbation which his government had expressed; but he (Mr. Tierney) was old enough to remember the time when, had two British subjects been executed by a foreign state in time of peace, this country would not have put up with it quite so tamely. He knew the subject was a sore one, and he did not wish to press it farther. "While the noble lord opposite was at congress, two German princes could not have exchanged a few meadows without important expresses being despatched to him. But America owned no congress: because she was a long way off, ministers seemed to think that danger could not be near, and she was accordingly allowed to take up a position on a vast continent, as injurious as possible to the colonial returns of this country, putting them in imminent and undeniable jeopardy.

"Let the house and the country reflect then, if it was not the

duty of the government to do something to prepare the empire for possible mischiefs that might arise even from France and America."

Sir Robert Wilson (June 4th, 1819)" America aspired too much after her own aggrandizement. She had sent commissioners to South America to inspire hope and energy there. She had established a strong force in Texas, the province next to Mexico. America would next demand Cuba."

Mr. McDonald (4th June, 1819)" Such an aggrandizement of a powerful rival, as the acquisition of Florida, ought not to be passed over without a strict enquiry into the cause of this most extraordinary and unprecedented proceeding," &c.

And the Marquis of Lansdowne (in the House of Lords, May 11th, 1819)

"Of all the events that could happen at this time, there was not one which so deeply affected the commercial interests of Great Britain as the cession of the Floridas to the United States. The possession of those provinces would enable the Americans to annihilate the British trade in the West India seas; and give them an opportunity of connecting themselves with the black governments there in a manner that might prove essentially injurious to our interests. The cession should have been guarded against at the congress of Vienna. No one at Vienna conceived it necessary to make any provision that should have the effect of preventing the aggrandizement of the United States. Hitherto there was a balance on which this country used to rely for her security, and it was an essential part of this balance to prevent the Floridas from being ceded to the United States. The conduct of General Jackson in the execution of Ambrister and Arbuthnot was unparalleled in the history of civilized nations. If at the time when Copenhagen was taken by the British troops, Lord Cathcart, who then commanded them, found that several persons belonging to neutral countries had been engaged in the defence of the place, and ordered them to be executed, on pretence that they had no right to take up arms against Great Britain, would not that act have been a gross violation of the laws of nations."*

It may be doubted whether any measures which could have been taken at the Congress of Vienna to guard against the severance of Florida from Spain, would have proved effectual: but the idea of a concurrence of the members of that Congress in precautions against the aggrandizement of the United States for the security of

* The language of the ministerial journals, concerning General Jackson, bordered on the infuriate. Thus we read in the London Courier of March 25, 1819. "General Jackson has the most villanous look ever beheld; he is never seen to smile. The hero is worthy of the people, and the people of the hero."

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Great Britain! has something of the marvellous, besides implying an extraordinary sort of equity. We had not been called on to explain how our security might be affected by her aggrandizement in the West Indies; or how the balance on which we might have relied, was destroyed by "the positions" she had "taken up," all over the world; positions commanding every sea of commercial importance;-Heliogoland; Malta, in addition to Gibraltar; the Isle of France; the Island of Ceylon; the Prince of Wales' Island; New South Wales; the Cape of Good Hope. "Our noble station at the Cape of Good Hope, says a late London paper, "commands the commerce of the globe; it is the natural key to India; the bridle of America; the surface which we might people with hardy Englishmen is upwards of 100,000 square miles. Make the Cape a free port for the nations of Europe, and we banish North America from the Indian seas. The powers of the Continent may smile when they find Great Britain, while herself adding constantly new kingdoms to her dominions in the East, and grasping at every maritime station of consequence in the four quarters of the globe, exclaiming against American ambition and aggrandizement, because the United States had acquired a contiguous province, from which, if in foreign hands, they must be subject to the severest annoyance,-by fair negotiation, and with the relinquishment of large pecuniary claims, and well-founded pretensions to territory of much greater extent and intrinsic value.

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The American government and people are as little likely "to demand the Island of Cuba," as they are “to connect themselves with the black governments of the West Indies." They want no slave islands; and to instigate the blacks of Hayti to foment and protect insurrection in the British islands (for this must be meant by the Marquis of Lansdowne) is an atrocity of which they must ever be incapable, though Great Britain, in her next war with us, should repeat the example which she has heretofore given, of exciting the negroes of the southern states to supplant and butcher their masters. The case

which the British Peer selected to illustrate the justness of his sentence upon general Jackson, is every way an unfortunate one for the purpose. His lordship and all his colleagues of the Opposition had denounced the attack upon Copenhagen as a heinous aggression; to be paralleled in treachery and outrage, only by Bonaparte's invasion of Spain. What parity of reason, then, in the supposed case of lord Cathcart putting to death the strangers whom he might have found assisting in the defence of the capital of a civilized power, a member of the European christian commonwealth, so unexpectedly and iniquitously attacked; and that of the American general pursuing a savage horde into an adjacent territory, from which it had issued to desolate the American frontier, and there executing two European adventurers, proved to be its instigators and accomplices? As the Danes did not follow the practice of massacreing their prisoners, the strangers who might have identified themselves with them, would not, when seized, have been subject to the punishment of death by retaliation, as were the allies of the Seminoles, even under the Eur>pean law of nations. If the custom of Europe be determinative of that law in any particular, it may be confidently invoked in favour of the execution of Arbuthnot and Ambrister, on the supposition that they were actually leagued with the Indians, as the British ministry have admitted; for, during the great wars of the Germans and Poles against the Turks, death was the immediate lot of the European christian found acting on the side of the infidels. So, there has never been the least hesitation in the Mediterranean waters and territories, about despatching at once the renegade, no matter of what christian country, taken in arms on board a Barbary corsair, or in a predatory descent upon the coast.

I find it difficult to reconcile the full knowledge which the Marquis of Lansdowne must possess of the history of the British empire in India, and in Ireland, with his declaration, that the conduct of the American gene al was unparalleled in the history of civilized nations." This deVOL. I.-C*

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claration, I deem the more remarkable, as it was only two months before (March 3, 1819,) that, on the occasion of the vote of thanks moved to Lord Hastings and the British generals in India, the Marquis of Lansdowne made, in the House of Lords, the following statement, including, as will be seen, a case of at least as criminal an aspect as that of the American general.

The Marquis of Lansdowne said: "He felt it his duty to observe, that there appeared on the face of the papers before their lordships, a transaction which could not be passed over in silence-a transaction which must be made the subject of some expression of censure, if thanks were to be generally voted to the whole army of India. The transaction to which he alluded, was the execution of the Killedar of the fort of Talneir. It appeared, that after a vigorous resistance made by the fort, this commander had come out and surrendered. The garrison left in the fort, however, resisted. The fort was then attacked by the British army, and taken; and the whole of the garrison was put to the sword. However much he might regret such a proceeding, he did not make it the subject of complaint. Perhaps, under the circumstances of the case, it was unavoidable; but what must be their lordship's opinion of the transaction that followed. The Killedar, who had remained in the possession of the British commander, was deliberately put to death. It was impossible to leave this horrible circumstance out of view in any vote of thanks which their lordships should give. The despatch of Sir Thomas Hislop states, that whether the Killedar was accessory to the treachery of the garrison or not, he was justly punished with death on account of his rebellion in the first instance. There was no ground for concluding that this unfortunate commander had any concert with the garrison in their treachery; but, according to every rule of European war, some proof of that concert ought to have been exhibited, before the right of punishing him was assumed. As to the assertion, that he was guilty of rebellion in holding out after his master had submitted and concluded a treaty of peace, that was an offence over which a Britsh authority could have no legal cognizance. He was accountable for his rebellion to Holkar only. But how was he to know that he was in rebellion? How was he apprised of the conclusion of the treaty? He had no information of it but through the report of the British army. Would their lordships say that upon information received from an enemy the commander of a fortress was bound to surrender, or even to discontinue hostilities, and that he was liable to the punishment of death if he refused? If, indeed, he had been a party to the treachery of the garrison, he might have been, for that act, liable to punishment, after an inquiry before a regular military tri