tating incursions of their forefathers. This new display ought to have frozen Europe with terror, and made her seek, in her strongest precaution, the means of meeting this new danger: she ought to have shut her ports against the ambitious Prince who came to initiate himself in all the secrets of her arts, only, with them, to arm her against the hands of his ferocious and slavish people; and when Pultowa seemed only to have decided between Charles and Peter, Europe was conquered almost at the same moment with Sweden. Poland in stantly felt the effects of this aggrandizement of the Russian power. Placed on the borders of its territory, she felt its first as she has felt its last blows. Who can enumerate them from 1717, when she tried her first influence by tampering with the Polish army? From that era what moment has been exempt from her influence and her outrages? In the first instance she interfered with that liberty of choice which had always fixed the Sovereigns of our country, she practised against the rights, of which the Nation had always exhibited the keenest jealousy. In a short time our richest inheritances were the reward of the favourites of our Sovereigns; our children, dragged into her armies, were forced to shed the blood which none but Russians should have poured; our harvests were gathered for her soldiers; every new war saw the Russian standards floating over the plains of Poland; it was by trampling the Polish soil that the Russian power approached gradually the body of Europe, over which it aspired to have the sole dominion.If this crafty power ever united itself with Poland, it was to impose on her as in 1764, that fatal guarantee, which connected the integrity of our frontier with the perpetual existence of anarchy, to make of that anarchy an instrument of its ambition. The world know what their conduct has been since that fatal era. It is since that time that from division to division, Poland has at length totally disappeared, without guilt as without revenge. It is since that time that the Poles have heard with inward indignation the insulting language of the Repnins, of the Sivers, whom they have seen laying an audacious hand on the reins of Government. It is since that time that an hundred times the Russian soldier has been bathed in the blood of their countrymen, as a prelude to that day, for ever accursed, (do we require to have it brought to our memories?) when in the midst of the boastings of an absurd conqueror, Warsaw heard the cry of the population of Praga, which was at last extinguished in blood and flames. Men of Poland-for the time is come to make that name ring in your ears; a name which is your own, which you ought never to have given up, see here the detestable means by which Russia has arrived at the posses-sion of your finest provinces; see here the titles, the only titles, which she can assert over you. Force has chained you; force can break the chains which it has forged, What! can and they shall be broken. you doubt it when you look at what is passing on every side of you? Look! see if, of all that caused your ruin, a single feature remains! In the immense change which draws the world in its current, what do you find to remind you of the ancient dangers of your country? Instead of the jealousy of the great powers which nurtured in Europe an anarchy like that which tore your own bosom, a single spirit seems to animate the entire, your plains are covered with standards astonished at their new fraternity.' Instead of neighbours eager for your spoils and accomplices in your ruin, all have united their arms to your's-instead of those shadows of armies which the entire of your early territory once scarcely furnished, numerous legions springing up as if by enchantment, from a corner of the same soil, glittering in the splendour of recent victory, formed in the school of the greatest of all Captains, by the example of the greatest of all armies, threaten your spoilers with their sabres of steel, raised from the same soil from which themselves have risen, and burn to hear the hour of vengeance strike. Instead of the feeble help which France once gave to the necessities of Poland, she now gives her whole vigour. France and Poland have always been friends-love has always been returned by love. The first complete use which Poland made of her liberty of election was, to call a Prince of the blood of France to the Throne. It was to France that Casimir looked for consolation in his sufferings on the Polish throne, it was in France that Stanislaus realized the benevolent projects which he had destined for Poland. It is with nations as with men, the sympathies of interest form the most indissoluble bonds. But those ties were strongest between France and Poland. Those powers were necessary to each other. What do we say? Poland was necessary to Europe. She was necessary as a barrier against those hordes of half-refined barbarians who had always the strongest temptation to lay waste and to conquer the softer deprived so many confederations of the effects which they ought to have produced. Their experience must not be lost upon us. We must impress on our Confederation a character of the strictest union,-we must make it a central point, round which to gather without confusion, or without requiring more than to know what is to be done when we have assembled. Then what force of man can stop the unanimous movement of a great people,—the forward spring of a people recovering its ancient existence, and which, to secure it more fully, forgets all its past sufferings, and offers itself to fly from sacrifices to sacrifices? Oh! happiest of days, day of triumph and rejoicing; before thee disappear all the days which ought to be blotted from our history, and the memory of man. Among all days, this day shall be renowned. The descendants of the Piasts and the Jagellons may yet bear the name before which the tyrants that oppressed them have grown pale. Now Sigismonds and new Sobieskis will arise; and the world shall learn, that to produce the fruit of all the nobler virtues, the soil of Poland has only to be tilled by the hands of freemen. And you, venerable citizen (the Count Czartoriski appointed Grand Marshal of the Diet), who for near a century of virtue have yielded to the wishes of your fellow-citizens to preside over the most surprising scene of their history, how tender and touching a lesson does the reward of your integrity this day offer; placed, if we may use the expression, at the two extremes of the life of your country, you will have assisted at the twilight of its first life, and the dawn of its second; you will have seen it sink into the tomb, and rise in the purity of resurrection. It is to accomplish the generous resolution for the liberty of Poland, that your Committee has the honour of presenting the Act of the following Confederation : climates of the South. Their attempts and the ardent love of their country suggested, invasions were becoming worthy of com-let us only avoid the dangers which have bined European policy to defeat. Within the last fifty years, Russia had deluged the South of Europe with her armies. The Turkish crescent was half broken; Frederick himself camot defend his capital. In those later times, Italy has received them with horror among her smiling plains, and in vain invoked a new Marius. Who could believe it, the cries of the Scythian Savage were heard round the tomb of the Mantuan Swan? In their daring imprudence, thousands of those slaves, mowed down by the sabres of Frenchmen, came to fatten with their blood the free soil of Switzerland. It required the arm of an Hero to stop at Austerlitz the progress of their battalions; at a still more recent time, the arm of the same Hero was required to throw them back into their native forests. Those dangers have at length taught the nature and the necessity of their remedy; and that Prince, whose calculations embrace the future with as much facility as the present—the founder of a vast empire-has not been wanting to give it solidity. He knows that there must be a barrier, eternal and impenetrable, against the invasions of ignorance and barbarism. He knows that there must be a frontier, which will separate policied nations from savage; that it must be fenced with iron and the sword. He knows that the people, placed in the advanced guard of Europe, must have all the strength adequate to secure its repose. Thus, if once all things conspired our ruin, all things now unite for our restoration. Poland shall exist at last. At last! she exists now, or rather she has never ceased to exist. What have the perfidy, the plots, the outrages under which she sunk, to do with her rights? Yes, we are Poland, and we are so by all the rights which we have from nature, from the laws of society, from our forefathers, from all those consecrated titles which the human race have established. Aud not we only, but those vast countries which look up to us for their liberation. Our country, like a fond parent, always holds open her arms for the return of her children, and all its Members have at all times the right to return to the family from which they were torn. Polanders, you shall not be long withheld from the joyful acclamation, that the kingdom of Poland, and the existence of the body of the Polish territory, is re-energetic exertions, that the eyes of the established. But to give this movement an irresistible force, let us interrogate the history of our ancestors,-let us inquire what -: Act of the General Confederation of Poland. We, the undersigned, composing the General Diet, assembled at Warsaw, feel the moment that in which every thing around excites our admiration, and pervades our hearts with ardent patriotism. We feel our nation called upon to make the most world are fixed upon us, and that posterity, in judging of our conduct, will either bless or execrate our memories. Being desirous of seriously contemplating our actual rela- An a Council General, which shall be assisted Francis Count Lubientski, Deputy of the district of Skamierz and Hebdow; Charles Skorkowski, Deputy of the city of Cracow; Cajetan Kozmian, Secretary of the General Confederation.-11. The number requisite to form a deliberation, shall be five.-12. The Secretary-General shall have a deliberative voice.-13. All the administrative, judicial, and military authorities shall continue the exercise of their functions.-14. A deputation shall be sent to his Majesty the King of Saxony, Duke of Warsaw, to request of him to accede to the General Confederation of Poland.-15. A deputa tion shall also be sent to his Majesty the Emperor Napoleon, King of Italy, to present to him the Acts of the Confederation, and to beg of him to encircle the cradle of reviving Poland with his powerful protection.-16. The Confederation, in the face of Heaven and earth, in the name of all the Poles, comes under a solemn obligation to prosecute to the end, and by all the means in their power, the accomplishment of the great work which is this day commenced. the Duchy shall be convoked, and shall ad- under circumstances in which all its labours,' OFFICIAL PAPERS. AMERICAN STATES.--Correspondence on 1812. ceived an article in the public prints, stated to be extracted from an English news-paper, and purporting to be an official declaration of His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, that the Orders in Council will be, and are, made through a note, might have shared the fate of the rest. You will recollect, that it was at your own request that I acceded to the dispatch being communicated to the President; and that it was also at your instance, as being the only regular way in which the subject could come before the American Government, that I determined to write to you a note founded upon it. You were aware, at the latter end of last which I repeated to you through Mr. Graham, who called upon me the 30th ult. to ask me when I contemplated sending it to your office. The notice must have reached you, and been read, before any message could have been sent from the Executive to absolutely revoked, from the period when the Berlin and Milan Decrees shall, by some authentic act of the French Government, publicly promulgated, be expressly and unconditionally repealed. A considerable time has elapsed since, by order of my Government, I had the honour of urging to you the expediency of procuring such an authentic act from the French Government; and in all probability the above declaration may have been issued in the confident ex-week, that such was my determination, pectation, that the Government of the United States would have been able to produce it ere this.At all events, Sir, considering the important nature of the above-mentioned article, and the probability that I shall have soon to be the organ of some official communication to the Ame-Congress.I cannot, Sir, consider my rican Government in relation to it, I cannot but trust, that no measure will, meanwhile, be adopted by the Congress, which would defeat the endeavour of procuring a complete reconciliation between our two countries.- -Should any embarrassments arise in consequence of the declaration on the subject of the proposed revocation of the Orders in Council above alluded to resting at present upon a mere statement in the news-papers, it will no doubt occur to your recollection, that on the enactment of those Orders a measure was taken by Congress for the purpose of meeting them, when they were as yet known but through the public prints. I have the honour to be, &c. &c. A. J. FOSTER. note as liable to the charge of ambiguity, which you now impute to it. The abandonment of our most important maritime rights is more extensively than ever connected by France with a demand of the repeal of our Orders in Council; and while you are entirely silent as to how far America concurs with her on this point of vital interest to Great Britain, without even a prospect of a reply from you to our just complaints, as expressed in my note on the coincidence of the attitude taken by America with the hostile system of France, I cannot but be aware of the difficulties to which I should expose myself in entering into an explanation on any insulated passage in it. I might, perhaps, by continued silence on your part, never afterwards have an opportunity of making further ex Mr. Foster to Mr. Monroe. - Washington, planation; and you are well aware how June 4, 1812. Sir, I must rely upon your candour to feel for the embarrassment into which your note of this day has thrown me. Willing to comply with the request contained in it, I yet cannot but be sensible that in making any portion of a dispatch from His Majesty's Secretary of State to me the subject of a correspondence between us, I should not be justified to my own Government. I believe there is no example of a correspondence of such a nature, and I should be very loath to establish the precedent.When I had the honour to make the communication of Lord Castlereagh's dispatch to you in consequence of its being left to my own discretion to do so, I did it because I had reason to think, from the number of my letters which there remained unanswered at your office, such a communication, if frequently points taken unconnected with in Council will be revoked. I cannot, it is |