_Political state of England._—The new administration, despised by the country, was not the less powerful in parliament; its domestic proceedings were therefore characterised by all the corruption and tyranny of Mr. Pitt’s system, without his redeeming genius. The press was persecuted with malignant ferocity, and the government sought to corrupt all that it could not trample upon. Repeated successes had rendered the particular contest in the Peninsula popular with the ardent spirits of the nation, and war-prices passed for glory with the merchants, land-owners, and tradesmen; but as the price of food augmented faster than the price of labour, the poorer people suffered, they rejoiced, indeed, at their country’s triumphs because the sound of victory is always pleasing to warlike ears, but they were discontented. Meanwhile all thinking men, who were not biassed by factions, or dazzled by military splendour, perceived in the enormous expenses incurred to repress the democratic principle, and in the consequent transfer of property, the sure foundation of future reaction and revolution. The distresses of the working classes had already produced partial insurrections, and the nation at large was beginning to perceive that the governing powers, whether representative or executive, were rapacious usurpers of the people’s rights; a perception quickened by malignant prosecutions, by the insolent extravagance with which the public money was lavished on the family of Mr. Perceval, and by the general profusion at home, while lord Wellesley declared that the war languished for want of sustenance abroad. Napoleon’s continental system, although in the nature of a sumptuary law, which the desires of men will never suffer to exist long in vigour, was yet so efficient, that the British government was forced to encourage, and protect, illicit trading, to the great detriment of mercantile morality. The island of Heligoland was the chief point of deposit for this commerce, and either by trading energy, or by the connivance of continental governments, the emperor’s system was continually baffled; nevertheless its effects will not quickly pass away; it pressed sorely upon the manufacturers at the time, and by giving rise to rival establishments on the continent, has awakened in Germany a commercial spirit by no means favourable to England’s manufacturing superiority.