the town was surrendered to the insurgents, the garrison remaining prisoners of war. The patriots of the river of Plate obtained by these means possession of an important sea-port, with a great quantity of arms and stores of every description.

In Chili, the contending parties, through the mediation of an English officer, agreed upon terms of pacification. By the first article, Chili, as an integral part of the Spanish monarchy, agrees to send deputies to the cortes, for the purpose of sanctioning the constitution which the latter have framed, acknowledging also the authority of Ferdinand VII. and that of the regency, with this proviso, "that the internal government of Chili be maintained in all its powers and privileges, and free trade with allied and neutral nations, especially with Great Britain, to whom Sp: in owes, under God, and next to her own valour and constancy, her political existence." The 2d article provides for the immediate cessation of hostilities, and the evacuation of Talca and the province of Conception by the troops of Luna, Valdivia, and Chiloe. Article 3d, stipulates the mutual restoration of prisoners, and an ample amnesty. By article 4th, mercantile relations with all the other parts of the Spanish monarchy shall continue with the same freedom and harmony as before the war. By article 5th, Chili engages to afford to Spain all that assistance which is compatible with the deteriorated state of her territory, in consequence of the war which has raged there. By article 11th, Chili gives three hostages to answer for the exact fulfilment of the treaty on her part; and the national army, on the other part, gives an equal number of hostages to answer for the

evacuation of Chili.

The 15th article is very honourable to Captain Hillyar of the British navy,

and is as follows:-" The contracting parties acknowledging that the suspension of hostilities, the restoration of peace, good harmony, and close friendship between the governments of Luna and Chili, are owing, in a great measure, to the efficacious endeavours of Commodore Don Santiago Hillyar, captain of his Britannic majesty's frigate the Phoebe, who offered his respectable mediation to the government of Chili, acquainting it with the sentiments of the Viceroy of Lima, and who has not hesitated to make sacrifices of every kind in order to be present at all the conferences which preceded this convention; we, therefore, return him our most expressive thanks as the mediator and principal instrument in this interesting work."

We cannot record this transaction without an ardent wish that other British officers had with similar success acted as mediators in this unhappy war. Whatever laurels Captain Hillyar may have gained, even in his profession, they cannot rival in value the bloodless honour which he acquired by healing the wounds of this distracted province, and promoting a pacification so honourable to himself and to his country.

The success of the insurgents at Monte Video was balanced by the loss of Venezuela and the Caraccas. This was the consequence of a severe battle, fought in the June 18. vallies of Azuaza, where the insurgents were routed with great slaughter. In consequence of this victory the royalists obtained possession of the Caraccas. The insurgent chiefs fled to the mountains, or escaped by sea, for the royalists gave no quarter either during or after the engagement. We have distorted and partial accounts of other battles in different parts of the new world, where the civil strife seems to be carried on with a sangui

nary fury, which reminds us of the bloodshed between the parties of Pizarro, Almagro, and other conquerors of South America, whose mutual battles, slaughters, and executions upon the scaffold, formed some atonement for the unprovoked miseries they had inflicted on the aboriginal inhabitants.

We turn, however, from these dubious and disjointed articles of intelligence, to events occurring in the northern part of the same continent, with which we are not only better acquainted, but unfortunately much more immediately connected.

their own, to whom they found themselves always and everywhere filling a second place. It seemed to these statesmen, that there was a full opportunity of feeding fat their ancient grudge while Britain had to contend with the gigantic force of Buonaparte, and all Europe armed to back him. Canada, a possession which, perhaps, in good policy, Britain ought not to have retained at the close of the former war, but which she could not now relinquish with honour, was a tempting bait for American ambition, and it was expected to fall an easy and unresist ing, perhaps a willing prey to the invader. In this hope the Americans had been woefully deceived by the event of the former campaigns, so honourable to Sir George Prevost and those who acted under him. Unfortunately, the British were equally disappointed in their expectations of displaying, in their contests with the republicans of the new world, the same naval superi ority which had driven from other seas all ships save their own. Each power struggled to maintain the honour they had unexpectedly acquired in the mode of warfare in which their rival had been deemed superior, and to recover that which they had lost in a department more immediately their own. The truth is, that in full confidence in their own resources and ignorance of those of the enemy, each nation seems to have formed an inaccurate and somewhat presumptuous view of the probable events of the

war.

We have elsewhere discussed the impolicy and injustice of the measures of the American government in precipitating the nation into a war, for the sake of territorial conquest, through which they must necessarily lose the commerce of which they stood so much in need, in order at the utmost to acquire an extent of territory in addition to the wide and waste regions which they had

not yet been able to people and to cultivate. These reasons of policy had given way to the temptation of opportunity, and the supposed facility of accomplishing a splendid and popular conquest. But the military events of 1812 had disappointed these sanguine expectations. America, like an infant giant, had been found on the trial to possess nei ther breadth nor sinews in proportion to her size and appearance. Her territories, so boundless in extent, and so thinly peopled, offer every facility for defensive war; but a population, impatient alike of restraint and of taxation, living at a distance from, and almost independent of their government, are ill calculated to send forth armies for foreign conquest. Funds for paying regular armies cannot be easily collected from among them; and those who serve in person form a body of volunteers, brave, perhaps, and hardy, but as selfwilled and irregular as the ancient feudal militia. The general officers had been found deficient, not only in those rare and eminent qualifications necessary for the commander who must make irregular troops do the duty usually required from disciplined forces, but in the more ordinary qualities of conduct and even courage. The cam paign of 1811 had been disgraceful to their arms; and although their efforts in 181 had divided the success more equally, yet it was only by means of such extensive preparations as the finances of America could ill support, and which, after all, had frequently been baffled by the British with much inferior means. Taxation, the only mode of continuing these burthensome and expensive efforts to possess them. selves of a province which their empire so little needed, was a measure not only utterly odious to the citizens of the United States, but likely to be ineffectual, from the difficulty of enforcing the duties which might be imposed. The wisest became sensible that

they had rashly engaged in a doubtful contest, and it appeared difficult to say how their executive government could prosecute the war with success, or make peace with reputation.

On the part of Britain this unhappy war had also its loss and its dishonour. The capture of our vessels in single fight, by the American frigates, were events the more galling that they were totally unexpected, and, joined to a sense that the quarrel was unjustly forced upon us by the Americans, excited a strong feeling of irritation against that country. Even the mob in Palace-yard, when harangued on the subject of peace by their most popular orator, turned a deaf ear to his eloquence when he touched upon this topic. "War, active war with America!" was the cry which replied to his pacific exhortations, and there was through the whole kingdom a sense of animosity against that nation, as if the quarrel had been personal and peculiar to every Briton. But it was much more easy to long for revenge for wrongs and injuries sustained from a nation, whose injurious conduct was the more aggravating as they spoke the same language and sprung from the same ancestors with ourselves, than to devise effectual means for carrying on offensive measures against America. Her commerce was already annihilated, and her sailors only subsisted by privateering; she had no fleets to send to sea, and her solitary frigates continued with the same happy dexterity to escape from and return to the ports of her extended continent. At sea, then, our commercial interests were certain to suffer, and we could only hope for the occasional satisfaction of capturing an armed vessel, after she had done more damage by an hundred fold than her guns and timber were worth. On land the prospect was hardly more flatter. ing. Any extended plan of serious invasion, or conquest of any part of

the American states, was a measure obviously impolitic, even if it could have been judged practicable. On the other hand, descents upon the coast, the destruction of public property and stores, the burning of their sea-ports, and destruction of their shipping, were measures, indeed, fully within our power, and suited to the vindictive feelings of the moment, but which were more likely to exasperate than to subdue the enemy. America, in reference to her vast extent of territory, was like a huge leviathan, and we fishers, who, possessing no means to inflict a deep or vital wound, could only deal such stabs as might serve to rouse the unwieldy monster into rage and fury, without materially diminishing its vigour. The result of this reasoning is, that nations, having so little the means of maintaining active hostilities against each other, should have hastened to resume those pacific relations which had been so unadvisedly broken off. It has always, however, proved more easy for nations and individuals to plunge into difficulties, than to extricate themselves when engaged in them. Besides, the British, who had been dragged into the war with reluctance, were now flushed with the successful events on the European continent, and began to take a deeper and keener interest in the operations against America, while her rulers, on the other hand, could not even open negociations for peace without relinquishing every pretext for which they had undertaken the war.

The disasters of Buonaparte in Russia and Germany had, however, their effect upon the mind of Madison, his effectual, though not his avowed ally, and he sought a road out of the difficulties in which he was involved, by proposing a negociation for peace under the mediation of Russia. It can hardly be supposed that he made this proposal with any serious expectation