by his Sicilian Majesty for the use of his marines and land forces, and a quarterly account thereof given to the British Government. A Treaty of Commerce was to be concluded as soon as possible. His Sicilian Majesty engaged not to make peace with France separate from England; and his Britannic Majesty, on his part, also engaged not to make peace, without comprehending and saving in it the interests of his Sicilian Majesty.

A short conversation took June 13. place in the House of Commons, when a grant of 300,0001. was moved for to enable the King to fulfill the engagements of this treaty. It was asked why this subsidy had been paid so long before it was communicated to Parliament, and why the fort of Molazzo was not to be put into our hands, as well as the two others, that being more directly in the line of the place, which an enemy from the opposite coast could soonest reach. Mr Canning replied, we were to have the controul over this likewise, but that the provision respecting the two was adopted with a view to the troops we could furnish. The delay in executing the treaty was explained, as having been occasioned by changes of administration, and by the necessity of sending and of altering one of the articles to which Mr Drummond had agreed, and which would have bound us to restore Naples to the King of Sicily at a peace. Mr Bankes thought the Treaty of Commerce ought to have accompanied this convention, and censured the practice of thus granting money, without having the matter laid regularly before parliament. It was admitted by the Treasury Bench, that the thing had not been done in

the most regular way, and the resolution was then agreed to without opposition.

Respectable as our force was in Sicily, the French obtained a signal advantage over us, by conquering the isle of Capri, a place strong in itself, and of great importance to the coasting trade of Naples. A fleet of 60 transports, convoyed by a frigate, a corvette, and 26 gun-boats, sailed from that city at three o'clock, on the morning of the 4th of October. General Lamarque had the command, and Prince Pignatelli under him. The preparations had been carried on with such secrecy, that the attack was altogether unexpected; after a rapid passage they effected their landing, and proceeded to storm the heights of Anacapri, which command the island and all its forts. This fort had been left to a Maltese regiment. These men, of whom four-fifths were married, would have been excellent soldiers on their own island, where they had originally been raised as two militia regiments, and officered by their own nobility. It was, however, thought proper to unite them into one large regiment, under English officers, contrary to their own entreaties, and to the judgment of Sir Alexander Ball; they were sent to serve where they had no interest at heart, and the consequence was, that, in the hour of trial, they laid down their arms. almost without resistance. The French thus possessed themselves of the heights, and shortly afterwards compelled the English garrison to surrender as prisoners of war, who were to be transported to England, and not serve until exchanged.,

Buonaparte, mean time, was steadily pursuing the plans of his restless

3

and insatiable ambition. His Jan. 23. first act was, by the Conser

vatory Senate, to call out 80,000 conscripts, born within the year 1789, and who, according to his own laws, always nugatory when they relate to the protection of the people, should have belonged to the conscription of the ensuing year. By a decree of the same date, the towns of Kehl, Wesel, Cassel, and Flushing, were united to the French empire. The kingdom of Etruria, which he himself had created for one of his puppet kings, was no longer May 21. to exist,-it was now incorporated as an inseparable indivisible portion of the French empire, and one usurpation was made a precedent for another. The same first principles, it was said, in consequence of which Genoa was incorporated with France, rather than with the kingdom of Italy, required this measure; and from Leghorn to Toulon, to Genoa, to Corsica, was not farther than to Milan. It is in vain that objections are made to the great extension of the empire: the communication by land, now that neither the Alos nor Appennines oppose us, is as easy from Leghorn to Paris, as from Paris to Nice. The port of Leghorn had given constant reasons of complaint to France. Appertaining to a territory governed by a weak prince, it had fallen under the influence of England, and become one of the principal inlets of her commerce. It became necessary for French troops occasionally to enter that city, and confiscate the English merchandize there. These violations of territory, said the official declaration, however necessary, are always disagreeable, and, since Leghorn cannot be under the influence of France and England

at the same time, it must become a part of France. Another reason assigned was, that Tuscany produced ships and sailors. The commerce of the Mediterranean, whatever might be the opposition of the tyrants of the sea, was necessarily to be subject to France, and, therefore, the whole coast of that sea must form a part of the French territority. "The sons of the Arno," said M. Semonville, speaking in the name of the commission of the senate, are invited to glory, the Emperor having decreed that Spezzia shall become a second Toulon. The arsenal, the docks, and forts, both on the sea and land side, are already marked out; and, before the end of the year, six ships of the line shall be put upon the stocks."

66

The principle, that power constitutes right, upon which France has always acted, had never before been so openly proclaimed as in this declaration." It has been the policy," it said, "of European states to subdue the most distant countries, in order to obtain new commercial and maritime resources; why then were resources and acquisitions to be neglected which lay at hand? Tuscany, under the sway of its little princes, was governed without system and without vigour, and was perpetuallv infested by the Barbary pirates. But men were no longer to be governed in a capricious and fantastic manner; the time had passed away in which it was believed that people were made for kings, and not kings for people. Lands, pastures, and forests might become property, but no person could possess a kingdom as if it were a farm." The name of Etruria was dropt in this declaration, but it would not be the less remembered

that Buonaparte had disposed of this very kingdom, as if it were a farm, to the Prince of Parma, dispossessing its former lord, the best and most beloved of the princes of Italy; and that he was now ejecting his own tenant to take it into his own hands. A junta, with General Menou at its head (the Abdalla Menou of the Egyptian expedition), was appointed to govern these new departments of the Arno, the Mediterranean, and the Ombrona, as the states of Tuscany were now divided. They issued a proclamation in the true French style, which was placarded over the country. "Tuscans!" it said, "the Emperor and King has been pleased to confer upon you the honour of being adopted into the great family, and of uniting yourselves to the destiny of the Empire formed by his genius. Napoleon the Great adopts you as his children, and the French salute you by the name of brothers. You will now be happy. You will receive a code of laws, which, being the offspring of wisdom, and the experience of ages, secures the right of property and the stability of families. Your agriculture and industry will flourish. You will restore to Tuscany, the Athens of Italy, the native country of Dante, Galileo, and Michel Angelo, that splendour which the fine literature, fine arts and sciences of which it was the cradle in modern Europe, formerly conferred it. Already, not less than ourselves, you esteem, love, and admire our illustrious emperor. Tuscans! you are a good, a virtuous, and a loyal people. The Emperor knows and esteems you. Place your whole confidence in him. Let violent men of all parties become silent, and forego their absurd expectations. Let

upon

་

the brave, the wise, and the impartial unite, and, as in all other parts of France, possess one soul and heart. It is by such conduct that you will make yourselves worthy of being the children of Napoleon.' Such were the professions of men who came to subject the happiest people in Italy to the conscription laws! The prelates of Tuscany were called upon by the new governors to preach obedience to their flocks; and the archbishop of Florence circulated a pastoral letter, in which, after reprehending those as forgetful of the most sacred Christian duties, who had dared to take the liberty of censuring the government, he added, "the true Christian is the enemy of no man, much less of the Emperor; for he is aware that his Majesty holds his appointment from God, and that he must love and honour him, and offer up his prayers for his preservation."

The same decree incorporated the dukedoms of Parma and Placentia, under the title of the Department of the Taro. The Pope had long foreseen that his dominions would, in like manner, be usurped, and though he had been made by France, and had crowned the Corsican at Paris, yet, when the rights of the papacy were menaced, he Feb. 2. demeaned himself with a dignity which had not been looked for. "Unable," he said, "to conform to all the demands made on him by the French government, because they were contrary to his sacred duties, and to the dictates of his conscience, and being thus compelled to submit to the disastrous consequences which had been threatened,

yielding, in all humility of heart, to the inscrutable determinations of

the Most High, he placed his cause in the hands of the Almighty, and solemnly protested, in his own name, and in that of his successors, against any occupation whatever of his dominions; being desirous that the rights of the Holy Chair should remain, now and henceforward, uninjured and untouched." Soon after the publication of this protest, French troops were marched to Rome under pretext of freeing that city from the Neapolitans; they seized those cardinals who were attached to the Pope, and forcibly carried them from the palace of the Quirinal as prisoners; took possession of the post-offices, for the purpose of examining all correspondence; incorporated the Papal troops into their own army; and set guards upon all the printing-offices, that the Pope might not avail himself of the press. The appearance ofrespect towards the Pope himself, April 7. who was now a prisoner in his own palace, was not long observed. A French detachment burst through the gates at six in the morning, and arrested the Swiss guards, who would not consent to receive their orders in future from the French general. Against each of these acts the Pope continued to protest. "The violence," he said, "committed against the cardinals, who were natives of the kingdom of Naples, never would have been believed, if it had not been repeated against those who were born in the kingdom of Italy, and in the countries united with France. The Holy Father could not be ignorant that it was intended not only to deprive him of his temporal authority, but also to destroy the spiritual government of the Church of Rome, represented by the Sacred College, which is the Senate of the Sovereign

Pontiff. He had seen, with horror and surprise, those principles and maxims which break the most sacred bands by which the cardinals are united to the Pope, preceded and followed as they had been by all the enormities to which the head of the church had been exposed. Examples of such enormities were only to be found in the time of the French republic. But to this indignity, and to all these outrages, he only opposed patience, and, during the time such treatment might continue, that meekness of which his Heavenly Father had left him an example. His long imprisonment, and the injustice which he had experienced, made him a spectacle to men and angels. He awaited with resignation, but with an unshaken firmness in his principles, all that violence could attempt against the head of the Catholic church, well assured that any humiliation he might receive would tend to the glory of religion at last." A few militia and guards had yet been left him, overlooked perhaps by the French commander. He ordered these to wear a new cockade, for the alledged purpose of showing the world, that he no longer recognised those troops as his own, who were under the command of the French:

-whatever were the motives for the order, its effects were prevented by the French commander, who adopted the same cockade for all the incorporated troops. Buonaparte, however, considered it as the intended signal of a union against him, and, as such, it was stigmatized, in the order of the day, which was published and posted in every quarter of Rome, and through the provinces. Such a signal it would probably have been, had there been any hope of

resisting his power; there is zeal enough in Italy, but the moment when that zeal might advantageously have been called into action was gone by.

To the repeated remonstrances of Pius VII. through Cardinal Caprara, an answer was returned by M. de Champagny." The Emperor," he was commanded to reply, "could not recognise the principle, that prelates are not the subjects of the sovereign, under whose authority they were born. The proposal, from which he never would depart was, that all Italy, Rome, Naples, and Milan should enter into an offensive and defensive treaty, for the purpose of removing commotions and hostilities from the peninsula. If the Holy Father accede to this proposal, every thing is settled: if he refuse it, he announces by such a determination that he wishes for no arrangement, no peace with the emperor, and that he is at war with him. The first consequence of war is conquest, and the result of conquest is change of government: for, if the Emperor is under the necessity of going to war with Rome, is he not also under the necessity of conquering it, of changing the government, of establishing another which shall make common cause against the common enemy with the kingdom of Naples? What other guarantee could he have for the tranquillity and security of Italy, if these two kingdoms were separated by a state, in which their enemies would be certain of meeting a cordial reception ?-These alterations, become necessary if the Holy Father persists in his refusal, will take away from him none of his spiritual rights. He will continue bishop of Rome, as his predecessors

were during the eight first ages, and under Charlemagne. It will, however, be a subject of grief to his Majesty, to see the work of genius, of political wisdom, and of understanding, destroyed by imprudence, obstinacy, and blindness."

The Pope, in one of his notes, announced the cessation of the powers of his legate at Paris. Buonaparte took advantage, in his reply, of the season at which this cessation took place. It was notified, said Mons. Champagny, against the ordinary forms and usages, at the eve of holy week, at a time when the court of Rome, if it were still animated by a true evangelical spirit, would feel it its duty to multiply spiritual succours, and to preach, by its example, union amongst the faithful. But, be it as it may, the Holy Father having withdrawn his powers from his eminence, the Emperor no longer acknowledges him as legate. The French church resumes the full in

tegrity of its doctrine. Its knowledge, its piety, will continue to preserve in France the Catholic religion, which the Emperor will always consider it his glory to defend, and cause to be respected.--Cardinal Caprara had also been instructed to demand his passports as ambassador. "His Majesty," said the French minister," sees with regret this formal demand of passports, which the practice of modern times regards as a real declaration of war. Rome is then at war with France, and in this state of affairs, his Majesty is obliged to issue the orders which the tranquillity of Italy renders necessary. The resolution to produce this rupture has been chosen by the court of Rome at a time when it believes that its arms are powerful enough to