be put upon record; all their actions and motives truly represented; and their fame established, wherever the English language is spoken, or read, from the Ganges to the Thames. This has long been wanted to be done; England has greatly suffered; all Europe has greatly suffered, from the deceptions with respect to the American States, their government, and the character of their people; but, the success of that deception does, I trust, approach towards its end. --As for my own part, I shall think a year of my life well-employed in communicating to the world wholesome truths respecting them, and in opening the eyes of those Englishmen, who, for the sake of that freedom of which they erroneously think them the possessors and supporters, still view them with partiality. I know, that the American clan, of whom there are great numbers in England, will abuse me without measure; but, I have more of truth to assert than even their hearts can engender of falsehood. I shall pass by the abuse of all their underlings and hirelings, and, as I used to do. when amongst them, keep steadily on in the exposure of the principals. This little work, which starts into the new year with an extent of circulation greater than that of any former year, finds its way, first or last, into most of the countries and courts of the world; and so far as it goes, so far will the true character of the government, governors, and people of the American States be known. Botley, Dec. 31, 1807. COBBETT'S Parliamentary History OF ENGLAND, Which, in the compass of Sixteen Volumes, royal octavo, double columus, will contain a full and accurate Report of all the recorded Proceedings, and of all the Speeches, in both Houses of Parliament, from the earliest times to the year 1803, when the publication of "Cobbett's Parliamentary Debates" commenced. The THIRD VOLUME of the above Work is ready for delivery. It embraces the period from the Battle of Edge-hill, in October 1642, to the Meeting of the Parliament begun at Westminster, April the 25th, 1660, commonly called the CONVENTION, PARLIAMENT, which was sitting at the return of Charles the Second in the month of May following, and which voted his RESTORATION. As the Materials from which it has been compiled are drawn from the same sources as those of the preceding Volumes, it is almost unnecessary to say any thing by way of addition to what is therein stated: but, as the Editors of the Parliamentary or Constitutional History of England, in 24 volumes, 8vo: published in 1751, conclude their labours with the Restoration, it may be proper again to state, that that masterly performance has, thus far, been made the ground-work of the present undertaking. The many Narratives of Battles, Sieges, &c. with which the work just mentioned abounds, and which serve only as an incumbrance to the Reader, and a constantly intervening obstacle to his researches, have been purposely omitted; while, at the same time, every thing connected with the real Proceedings of Parliament, and that could, by possibility, be hereafter useful to the Historian or the Politician, has been most.cautiously retained. The Journals of both Houses, those great fountains of authentic information, have, in every instance, been carefully consulted and followed: Many Notes, illustrating, from the Historians of the Times, the Characters of the principal Members of both Houses, and explaining, where necessary, the business before them, have been introduced: And, to the whole is subjoined, by way of Appendix, a very scarce and curious Tract, published in the Year 1660, almost immediately after the Dissolution of the Long Parliament, entitled, "The MYSTERY OF THE GOOD OLD "CAUSE briefly unfolded, in a Catalogue of such Members of the late Long Parlia"ment, that held Places, both Civil and Military, contrary to the Self-Denying Ordi 66 nance: Together with the Sums of Money "and Lands which they divided amongst "themselves during their Sitting" **The magnitude of the Parliamentary History, the great labour and expence attending it, and the comparatively small number of copies, which, to avoid serious risk, it has been thought adviseable to print, render it necessary, thus early, to adopt precautions calculated to prevent any broken sets remaining on hand at the conclusion of the work. Subscribers are, therefore, particu larly requested to send in their Names to their respective Booksellers, as no Copies. will, on any account, be sold, but to the purchasers of the former Volumes.-Gentle men, resident in Ireland, wishing to bes come subscribers, will please to apply to Mr. Archer, of Dublin. advance, and the extraordinary temper you discover, at a crisis that to almost every other person is a subject of alarm and regret. You will excuse me, Sir, for thinking that whatever force there may be in your arguments, your triumph at the prospect of a change which you imagine must necessarily arise out of the present embarrassed state of commerce, is seasoned with an unbecoming degree of levity. When the clouds which are charged with sulphurous matter, burst forth in lightning and thunder; or, when the ground, labouring with confined combustibles, opens its bowels, and vents itself by an earthquake; although we are aware that beneficial consequences will follow these explosions of nature, neither the prospect, nor the event would inspire any one with laugh ter. And he who can " laugh heartily" at annihilated commerce, when he confesses it would produce a very great derangement of affairs in the community, and throw great numbers on the parishes, " wars more against nature" than he who in such a case attempts to find employ for the "ousted manufacturers, &c." by making roads, and canals, and works of public utility. You affect to believe that no mischief of any consequence would ensue, because if one or two hundred thousand do suffer, that is but a small proportion of 10 or 12 millions. And, as by your plan, that what one loses another saves or gains, you intimate that the sufferings will be only transferred; and no doubt you think it perfectly right that those who hitherto have had their enjoyments, should exchange circumstances with those in the community who have had their sufferings. If this could be effected as easily as one centinel can be substituted to replace the duties of another, I should be exactly of your opinion; but, as I am fully convinced that no great and sudden change can take place in a country, without an awful civil convulsion, I cannot look forward to such an event as inevitable, without a great degree of concern. That the country has great cause to complain of shameful prodigality in its government, I am not in the least disposed to question. But viewing war and not commerce (any other than it has been very improperly made the cause of war) as the cause of all the corruptions in government, and of all the burdens on the nation, as I shall soon attempt to show, I think you, Sir, stand chargeable with the fault of promoting a continuance of those evils, by recommending a system of domination and defiance, that must for ever operate as a cause of universal hostility to us. But what is most extraordinary in your system is, that while you reprobate the value of foreign commerce to the nation, you suppose it greatly advantageous, and indispensably necessary to maintain an immense naval force. Those who penetrate much below the surface of things, may be able to discover such necessity; but it certainly is a very general opinion, that the principal use of our maritime force is to maintain our foreign commerce, and that all our danger of invasion arises from our persisting in a monopoly ef it. If then, we are better without this commerce than with it, we might discharge a large portion of our seamen, which added to the ousted manufacturers might all be turned on the land, till by dint of labour we might almost convert stones into bread. The doctrine advanced by you and Mr. Spence, if it went no farther than to shew that England can do in cases of necessity without foreign commerce, would be very laudable; but, when you state an innocent and useful traffic to be the prime and necessary cause of our misfortunes, and recommend a system of defiance calculated to separate this country from the rest of the world, this is proceeding to an extreme of barbarity. You assert that the hemp and flax this country imports, it might grow. This for aught I know to the contrary may be true. Yet, when it is confessed that the country does not grow corn enough for its inhabitants, (although I should suppose that seven-eights of the tillable land is cultivated as well as it will admit, without an expence that the produce will not repay) I think it is very doubtful, whether we have land enough for all our present products, and hemp and flax besides. You assert, indeed, to my astonishment, that there are millions of acres in the West of England, that were formerly cultivated, now suffered to remain waste. I am at a loss to discover how you can perceive the traces of the plough which passed a century or two since over those mountains, now only traversed by hunters and hares. But, supposing it to be true, it can only be neglected because it does not pay the expence of cultivation; and as this is brought about on your own plan, by "letting things work their own way," it is no doubt as it ought to be. But you will tell me, that the reason why it will not pay for cultivation is, because we import corn, hemp, and flax, which if prohibited, would be so much wanted as to bring it to a price that would pay for producing it at home. All this may be true; but if in the natural way of letting things alone to work their way, a nation finds that it can make cloth, and hardware, &c. and exchange them for a small proportion of its corn, and all its hemp and flax, with greater cheapness, and more that general advantage than it can grow these artides, is it not better to be on friendly terms with these countries, than to shut ourselves out from a communication attended with manifest advantage; because we can and will be independent of foreign commerce. In what light, Sir, can we look upon those circumstances of different countries; that the productions of one country are so useful and desirable to another; but as a bond of union and friendship ordained by Providence? And for what reason should we haughtily dissolve this bond? It is undoubtedly proper every nation should be independent of all others for its chief necessaries; and so I believe it invariably is. And as hemp and flax are not necessary to our comfort, but to our power, our dependence on a foreign country for the article ought to teach us a use of that power consistent with the interests of the world. In what way it may be asked is commerce the cause of all the mis-ly obliged to borrow 12 millions to supply chiefs we deplore? Does it require the establishment of a foreign office, which we are told costs the country from two to three hundred thousand pounds a year? I see no such necessity. Does it require a secretary of state for the home department—a war secretary-a chancellor of the exchequer lords of the treasury-an host of revenue officers-120,000 seamen, with a train of national expence which has brought the debt of the nation to the amount of £540,000,000? No. Commerce requires scarcely any of this. But war requires the whole, or is at least a pretence for them. War has been the cause of the whole. War has been the cause of all our evils, while commerce is innocent of them all. Yet you who deprecate the evils of the country are for cherishing this destructive practice, and for banishing that intercourse which requires habits of peace and friendship to maintain; and to cultivate which, we must avoid those quarrels which are the sources of our grow ing evils The policy of this and of every country ought to be to supply a home consumption first; but when the fertility of the land, and the industry of its inhabitants afford them a superfluity, it is certainly adHantageons for them to dispose of this superduity to other countries, and receive produce or manufacture in exchange, such as they can use; therefore, if we send cloth and hardware would not have had existence without it. If liability to coasumption forms an objection to the value of any thing, our corn and beef are open to the objection. But, although foreiga commerce is useful to its natural extent, it does not follow that we are to fight all the world to monopolize it; and still less should we adopt this maxim if we are resolved to abandon it. The policy of this country has been as mad as that of rival coach proprietors, who sometimes will carry their passengers for one half what it costs them, because their neighbouring proprietor wishes to have a share of the run. A tradesman who should form an establishment of £1000 a year, to prosecute a trade that could not produce him more than £500 per annum, would be justly deemed a fool. Yet this has been the practice of this country. We have been carrying on war for the maintenance of commerce, while we are annual rits, coffee and tea, or inore perishable fruits, but as they ar exchangeable. It is only for this purpose they are made; and, therefore, the expences created over and above the an nual revenue, which is consequently a dead loss of 12 millions annually. I beg, Sir, you will reconsider the matter, and I entertain a hope that you will acknowledge that foreign commerce divested of war, and of chartered companies would be a benefit to the country. I will conclude this epistle with a remark on your illustration of the inutility of commerce, in the case of Mr. Nokes and the Timkin race. You observe, that if Mr. Nokes gains £10,000 a year by the Timkins in selling tea to them; if this article be prohibited Mr. Nokes's profits are gone, but the purchasers have their moneyto furnish both a revenue to government, and to spend among other people, and that none but Mr. Nokes would be a loser.Now, Sir, Mr. Spence has stated what to me appears very probable, and that is, that though a person may save the money usually lay it out in home manufacture; the consequence would therefore be, that having less occasion for expence he would be less careful to procure the income now considered necessary. And though you have confined your statement to a single tradesman, the supposition must be, that to gain £10,000 a year, £100,000 is expended, which would be lost by its being unnecessary to those with whom wealth originates. Besides, we must generally consider foreign produce as brought to this country in lieu of a superfluous quantity of British manufacture, whether it be done directly by barter, or through the medium of money; therefore, if any article of consumption be by the abolition of commerce kept out of the country, our own pro duce must be taken instead, whereby the general allowance must be reduced by so much as is excluded. Tea is not only a luxury, it is become the chief beverage of the poor; and frequently constitutes a part of every meal. An article in such universal use cannot be regarded as of trifling conse quence, and could not be excluded without increasing the sufferings of the poor. These remarks though hostile to your views, are submitted to you in perfect good will; if they are untenable, they will afford you means of confirming your doctrines to your readers; and if they lay just claim to truth and sound argument, I rely on your generosity to acknowledge the receipt of them.Remaining, Sir, yours.-D.-Falmouth, Dec. 11, 1807. OFFICIAL PAPERS. PORTUGAL. Proclamation of the Prince Regent, dated at the Palace of Ajuda, Nov. 27, 1807; and issued just upon his embarkation for the Brazils. Having tried by all possible means to preserve the neutrality hitherto enjoyed by my faithful and beloved subjects, having exhausted my royal treasury, and made innumerable other sacrifices, even going to the extremity of shutting the ports of my dominions to the subjects of my ancient and royal ally, the King of Great Britain, thus exposing the commerce of my people to total ruin, and consequently suffering the greatest losses in the collection of my royal revenues of the crown, I find that troops of the Emperor of the French and King of Italy, to of my people (a matter which I am essentially bound to provide for); and having duly made all the reflections presented by the occasion, I have resolved to nominate as Governor and Regent of these Kingdoms during my absence, my truly and beloved cousin the Marquis de Abrantio Francisco da Cunha de Menezes, Lieutenant General of my Forces, the principal Castro (one of my Council, and a Regidor de Justica); Paetrode Mello Breyner, also of my Council, who will act as President of my Treasury, during the incapacity of Luis de Vasconcellos e San zi, (who is unable so to do at present on account of illness); Don Francisco de Nerocha, President of the Board of Conscience and Religious Orders; and in the absence of any of them, the Conde de Castro Mazim, (Grand Huntsman), whom I have nominated President of the Senate, with the assistance of the Secretaries thereof, the Conde de Sampaye, and in his absence Don Miguel Perrura Forfaz, and of my Attorney General Joas Antonio Salter de Mendenca, on account of the great confidence which I have in them, and of the experience which they possess in matters of government, being certain that my people and kingdom will be governed and directed in such a manner that my conscience shall be clear, and that this Regency will entirely fulfil its duty, so long as it shall please God that I should be absent from this capital, administering justice with impartiality, distributing rewards and punishments according to deserts. And these Regents will further take this as my pleasure, and fulfil my order in the form thus mentioned, and in conform whom I had united myself on the Continent,ity to the instructions signed by me, and ac in the hope of being no more disturbed, are actually marching into the interior of my kingdom, and are even on their way to this capital; and desiring to avoid the fatal consequences of a defence, which would be far more dangerous than profitable, serving only to create an effusion of blood, dreadful to humanity, and to inflame the animosity of the troops which have entered this kingdom, with the declaration and promise of not committing any the smallest hostility; and Knowing also, that they are most particularly destined against my royal person, and that my faithful subjects would be less alarmed were I absent from this kingdom, I have resolved for the benefit of my subjects, to retire with the Queen my mother, and all my royal family, to my dominions in America, there to establish myself in the City of Rio de Janeiro, untila general peace. And moreover, considering the importance of leaving the government of these kingdoms in that good order, which is for its advantage, and for that companying this decree, which they will communicate to the proper department. PORTUGUESE EMIGRATION. -The follow ing Letters were published in London, under the authority of Government, on the 19th of Dec. 1807. His Majesty's Ship Hibernia, off the Tagus, Nov. 29, 1807. Sir, I have the honour of announcing to you, that the Prince Regent of Portugal has effected the wise and magnanimous pur pose of retiring from a kingdom which he could no longer retain, except as the vassal of France; and that his Royal Highness and family, accompanied by most of his ships of war, and by a multitude of his faithful subjects and adherents, have this day departed from Lisbon, and are now on their way to the Brazils, under the escort of a British fleet. This grand and memora! le event is not to be attributed only to the sudden alarm excited by the appearance of a French army within the frontiers of Portugal. It has been the genuine result of the system of persevering confidence and moderation adopted by his Majesty towards that country; for the ultimate success of which I had in a manaer rendered myself responsible; and which, in obedience to your instructions, I had uniformly continued to support, even under appearances of the most discouraging nature. I had frequently and distinctly stated to the Cabinet of Lisbon, that in agreeing not to resent the exclusion of British commerce from the ports of Portugal, his Majesty had exhausted the means of forbearance; that in making that concession to the peculiar circumstances of the Prince Regent's situation, his Majesty had done all that friendship and the remembrance of ancient alliance could justly require; but that a single step beyond the line of modified hostility, thus most reluctantly consented to, must necessarily lead to the extremity of actual war.-The Prince Regent, however, suffered himself for a moment to forget that, in the present state of Europe, no country could be permitted to be an enemy to England with impunity, and that however much his Majesty might be disposed to make allowance for the deficiency of the means possessed by Portugal of resistance to the power of France, neither his own dignity, nor the interests of his people, would permit his Majesty to accept that excuse for a compliance with the full extent of her unprincipled demands. On the 8th inst. H. R. H. was induced to sign an order for the detention of the few British subjects, and of the inconsiderable portion of British property which yet remained at Lisbon. On the publication of this order I caused the arms of England to be removed from the gates of my residence, demanded my passports, presented a final remonstrance against the recent conduct of the Court of Lisbon, and proceeded to the squadron commanded by Sir Sidney Smith, which arrived off the coast of Portugal some days after I had received my passports, and which I joined on the 17th instant.-1 immediately suggested to Sir Sidney Smith the expediency of establishing the most rigorous blockade at the mouth of the Tagus; and I had the high satisfaction of afterwards finding, that I bad thus anticipated the intentions of his Majesty; your dispatches, which I received by the messenger Sylvester on the 23d, directing me to authorise that measure, in case the Portuguese government should pass the bounds which his Majesty had thought fit to set to his forbearance, aud attempt to take any farther step injurious to the honour or interests of G. Britain. Those dispatches were drawn up under the idea that I was still resident at Lisbon, and though I did not receive them until I had actually taken my departure from that court, stili, upon a careful consideration of the tenor of your instructions, I thought that it would be right to act as if that case had not occurred. I resolved, therefore, to proceed forthwith to ascertain the effect produced by the blockade of Lisbon, and to propose to the Portuguese government, as the only condition upon which that blockade could cease, the alternative (stated by you) either of surrendering the fleet to his Majesty, or of immediately employing it to remove the Prince Regent and his family to the Brazils. I. took upon myself this responsibility in renewing negociations after my public functions had actually ceased, convinced that, although it was the fixed determination of his Majesty not to suffer the fleet of Portugal to fall into the possession of his enemies, still his Majesty's first object continued to be the application of that fleet to the original purpose, of saving the Royal Family of Braganza from the tyranny of France. -- I accordingly requested an audience of the Prince Regent, together with due assurances of protection and security; and upon receiving his Royal Highness's answer, I proceeded to Lisbon on the 27th, in his Majesty's ship Confiance, bearing a flag of truce. I had immediately most interesting communications with the Court of Lisbon, the particelars of which shall be fully detailed in a future dispatch. It suffices to mention in this place, that the Prince Regent wisely directed all his apprehensions to a French army, and all his hopes to an English fleet; that he received the most explicit assurances from me that his Majesty would generously overlook those acts of unwilling and momentary hostility to which H. R. .'s consent had been extorted; and that I promised to H. R. H., on the faith of my Sovereign, that the British squadron before the Tagus should be employed to protect his retreat from Lisbon, and his voyage to the Brazils. ---A decree. was published yesterday, in which the Prince Regent announced his intention of retiring to the City of Rio de Janeiro until the conclusion of a general peace, and of appointing a regency to transact the administration of government at Lisbon during H. R. H's ab. sence from Europe.-This morning the Por. tuguese fleet left the Tagns. I had the ho. nour to accompany the Prince in his passage over the Bar. The flect consisted of 8 sail of the line, 4 large frigates, several armed brigs, sloops, and coryettes, and a number of Brazil ships, amounting, I believe, to about |