cumstance rewards are usually divided between the prosecutor and all the witnesses; the police officer has only a small share; but this cirsometimes operates against his credit as a witness, and to the defeat of public justice. It seems desirable, therefore, that as as a public officer, he should be free from any such imputation, and that his services would be best rewarded by the magistrates, without depending on the conviction of the offender. The increasing expense of criminal prosecutions has been truly stated to be a great source of the impunity and increase of crimes; and it seems highly deserving attention, whether the expenses of prosecution to a limited extent, and in particular cases, which may be specified, might not with propriety be defrayed out of the parish rates, or some other general fund. Such a regulation would tend to an increased activity in the prevention and prosecution of offenders, and the great relief of individuals on whom these depredations are committed. The petitions from the licensed publicans, with regard to the stealing of pewter pots, have been referred to your committee; but it does not occur to them, that the interest of the petitioners can be so well guarded by any new act, as by regulations they can make among themselves. The committee add, that they cannot conclude, without mentioning the incongruity in the system for the government of the metropolis, owing to the magistrates of the city of London, in the centre of the metropolis, being unable to pursue, by their warrants, beyond the local limits of the city (pro perly so called), goods which may have been stolen within the limits of the city, and may have been removed beyond these limits. They conceive, that the warrant of the city magistrates should have operation, without being backed by any other magistrate, within a circle of five miles from the Royal Exchange; and that warrants, signed by county magistrates within five miles of the Royal Exchange, should operate within the local limits of the city, without being backed by the city magistrates. They are aware that there are many other points which may be considered as intimately connected with the subject of police, and to which they might have directed their attention; but as these subjects have been referred to other committees, they have conceived it to be their duty to confine their investigations and their observations to those leading principles of preventive superintendance and control, and to that system of provident vigilance, which, by watching assiduously over the interests of the community, may maintain, without interruption, its good order and security. Declaration on the Orders of Council. The government of France having by an official report, communicated by its minister for foreign affairs to the conservative senate on the 10th day of March last, removed all doubts as to the perseverance of that government in the assertion of principles, and in the maintenance of a system, not more hostile to the maritime rights and commercial commercial interests of the British empire, than inconsistent with the rights and independence of neutral nations; and having thereby plainly developed the inordinate pretensions which that system, as promulgated in the decrees of Berlin and Milan, was from the first designed to enforce; his royal highness the Prince Regent, acting in the name and on the behalf of his Majesty, deems it proper upon this formal and authentic republication of the principles of those decrees, thus publicly to declare his Royal Highness's determination still firm ly to resist the introduction and establishment of this arbitrary code, which the government of France openly avows its purpose to force upon the world, as the law of nations. At a subsequent period of the war, his Majesty, availing himself of the then situation of Europe, without abandoning the principle and object of the Orders in Coun cil of November, 1807, was induced to limit their operation, as materially to alleviate the restrictions thereby imposed upon neutral commerce. The Order in Council of April, 1809, was substituted in the room of those of November, 1807, and the retaliatory system of Great Britain acted no longer on every country in which the aggressive measures of the enemy were in force, but was confined in its operation France, and to the countries upon which the French yoke was most strictly imposed; and which had become virtually a part of the dominions of France. 10 From the time that the progressive injustice. and violence of the The United States of America French government made it im- remained nevertheless dissatisfied; posible for his Majesty any longer and their dissatisfaction has been to restrain the exercise of the rights greatly increased by an artifice too of war within their ordinary limits, successfully employed on the part without submitting to consequences of the enemy, who has pretended not less ruinous to the commerce that the decrees of Berlin and Miof his dominions, than derogatory lan were repealed, although the deto the rights of his crown, his cree affecting such repeal has neMajesty has endeavoured by a re- ver been promulgated; although stricted and moderate use of those the notification of such pretended rights of retaliation, which the repeal distinctly described it to be Berlin and Milan Decrees neces--dependant on conditions, in which sarily called into action, to reconcile neutral states to those measures, which the conduct of the enemy had rendered unavoidable; and which his Majesty has at all times professed his readiness to revoke, so soon as the Decrees of the enemy, which gave occasion to them, should be formally and unconditionally repealed, and the commerce of neutral nations restored to its accustomed course. the enemy knew Great Britain could never acquiesce; and although abundant evidence has since appeared of their subsequent execution. But the enemy has at length laid aside all dissimulation; he now publicly and solemnly declares, not only that those decrees still continue in force, but that they shall be rigidly executed until Great Britain shall comply with 22 additional additional conditions equally extravagant; and he further announces the penalties of those decrees to be in force against all nations, which shall suffer their flag to be, as it is termed in this new code, “denationalized." In addition to the disavowal of the blockade of May, 1806, and of the principles on which that blockade was established, and in addition to the repeal of the British Orders in Council, he demands an admission of the principles, that the goods of an enemy, carried under a neutral flag, shall be treated as neutral;—that neutral property under the flag of an enemy shall be treated as hostile ;-that arms and warlike stores alone (to the exclusion of ship-timber and other articles of naval equipment) shall be regarded as contraband of war ;and that no ports shall be considered as lawfully blockaded, except such as are invested and besieged, in the presumption of their being taken [en prevention d'etre pris], and into which a merchantship cannot enter without danger. --- By these and other demands, the enemy in fact requires, that Great Britain and all civilised nations shall renounce, at his arbitrary pleasure, the ordinary and indisputable rights of maritime war; that Great Britain, in particular, shall forego the advantages of her naval superiority, and allow the commercial property, as well as the produce and manufactures, of France and her confederates, to pass the ocean in security, whilst the subjects of Great Britain are to be in effect proscribed from all commercial intercourse with other nations; and the produce and manufactures of these realms are to be excluded from every country in. the world to which the arms or the influence of the enemy can extend. Such are the demands to which the British government is summoned to submit-to the abandonment of its most ancient, essential, and undoubted maritime rights. Such is the code by which France hopes, under cover of a neutral flag, to render her commerce unassailable by sea; whilst she proceeds to invade or to incorporate with her own dominions all states that hesitate to sacrifice their national interests at her command, and in abdication of their just rights, to adopt a code, by which they are required to exclude, under the mask of municipal regulation, whatever is British from their do minions. The pretext for these extravagant demands, is, that some of those principles were adopted by voluntary compact in the treaty of Utrecht; as if a treaty once existing between two particular countries, founded on special and reciprocal considerations, binding only on the contracting parties, and which in the last treaty of peace between the same powers, had not been revived, were to be regarded as declaratory of the public law of nations. It is needless for his Royal Highness to demonstrate the injustice of such pretensions. He might otherwise appeal to the practice of France herself, in this and in former wars, and to her own established codes of maritime law: it is sufficient that these new demands of the enemy form a wide departure from those conditions on which the alleged repeal of the French Decrees was ac cepted by America, and upon which alone alone, erroneously assuming that repeal to be complete, America has claimed a revocation of the British Orders in Council. His Royal Highness, upon a review of all these circumstances, feels persuaded, that so soon as this formal declaration, by the government of France, of its unabated adherence to the principles and provisions of the Berlin and Milan Decrees, shall be made known in America, the government of the United States, actuated not less by a sense of justice to Great Britain, than by what is due to its own dig nity, will be disposed to recal those measures of hostile exclusion, which, under a misconception of the real views and conduct of the French government, America has exclusively applied to the commerce and ships of war of Great Britain. To accelerate a result so advantageous to the true interests of both countries, and so conducive to the re-establishment of perfect friendship between them; and to give a decisive proof of his Royal Highness's disposition to perform the engagements of his Majesty's government, by revoking the Orders in Council, whenever the French Decrees shall be actually and unconditionally repealed; his Royal Highness the Prince Regent has been this day pleased, in the name and on the behalf of his Majesty, and by and with the advice of his Majesty's Privy Council, to order and declare ; "That if at any time hereafter the Berlin and Milan Decrees shall, by some authentic act of the French government, publicly promulgated, be expressly and unconditionally repealed, then, and from thenceforth, the Order in Council of the 7th day of January, 1807, and the Order in Council of the 26th day of April, 1809, shall, without any further order, be, and the same bereby are declared from thence forth,, to be wholly and absolutely revoked; and further, that the full benefit of this order shall be extended to any ship or vessel capa tured subsequent to such authentic act of repeal of the French Decrees, although antecedent to such repeal, such ship or vessel shall have commenced, and shall be in the prose cution of a voyage, which, under the said Orders in Council, or one of them, would have subjected her to capture and condemnation; and the claimant of any ship or cargo which shall be captured at any time subsequent to such authentic act of repeal by the French government, shall, without any further order or declaration on the part of his Majesty's government on this subject, be at liberty to give in evidence in the High Court of Admiralty, or any Court of Vice-Admiralty, before which such ship or vessel, or its cargo, shall be brought for adjudication, that such repeal by the French government had been by such authentic act promulgated prior to such capture; and upon proof thereof, the voyage shall be deemed and taken to have been as lawful as if the said Orders in Council had never been made; saving nevertheless to the captors such protection and indemnity as they may be equitably entitled to, in the judgment of the said court, by reason of their ignorance or uncertainty as to the repeal of the French Decrees, or of the recognition of such repeal by his Majesty's government, at the time of such capture. "His Royal Highness, however, deems deems it proper to declare, that, should the repeal of the French Decrees, thus anticipated and provided for, afterwards prove to have been illusory on the part of the enemy; and should the restrictions thereof be still practically enforced, or revived by the enemy, Great Britain will be obliged, however reluctantly, after reasonable notice to Neutral Powers, to have recourse to such measures of retaliation as may then appear to be just and necessary." Westminster, April 21, 1812. The Catholic Petition.-To his Royal Highness the Prince Regent. The humble Petition of his MaMajesty's Roman Catholick subjects of Ireland, sheweth, That we humbly approach your Royal Highness, as the guardian of the honour and interests of this great empire, and presume respectfully to submit to your royal consideration, our peculiar condition under the penal laws now in force against us. The generous and elevated character which the people of Ireland have long been taught to attach to the name of your Royal Highness, has impressed us with the pleasing confidence, that the glorious work of effectually relieving the Roman Catholics of these realms from their numerous sufferings, has been reserved for your gracious and happy interposition in our favour. We have publicly and solemnly taken every oath of fidelity and allegiance, which the jealous caution of the legislature has, from time to time, imposed as tests of our political and moral principles; and al though we are still set apart (how wounding to every sentiment of honour!) as if unworthy of credit in these our sworn declarations, we can appeal confidently to the sacrifices which we and our forefathers have long made, and which we still make (rather than violate conscience by taking oaths of a spiritual import contrary to our belief) as decisive proofs of our profound reverence for the sacred obligation of an oath. By those awful tests we have bound ourselves, in the presence of the All-seeing Deity, whom all. classes of Christians adore," To be faithful, and bear true allegiance to our most gracious sovereign Lord King George the Third, and him to defend to the utmost of our power against all conspiracies and attempts whatsoever against his per, son, crown, or dignity: to use our utmost endeavours to disclose and make known to his Majesty, and his heirs, all treasons and traitorous conspiracies which may be formed against him or them; and faithfully to maintain, support, and defend, to the utmost of our power, the succession to the crown in his Majesty's family, against all persons whomsoever-That by those oaths, we have renounced and abjured obedience and allegiance unto any other person claiming or pretending a right to the crown of this realm -That we have rejected, as unchristian and impious to believe, the detestable doctrine, that it is lawful, in any ways, to injure any person or persons whomsoever, under pretence of their being heretics And also that unchristian and impious principle, that no faith is to be kept with heretics-that it is no article of our faith; and we re nounce, |