and to assure you, that his Majesty's government entertain a just sense of the liberality and generosity, with which his Catholic Majesty has been pleased to interpose his good offices, in favour of Captain Wright, and of the very obliging manner in which you and M. Gravina have complied with the request contained in my formier note to you upon this subject.As the French government has consented to liberate that officer from his present confinement, and to allow him to return to this country, I do not think proper to make any observations upon the contents of M. Talleyrand's note to Admiral Gravina. I have, therefore, to request that you, Sir, will be pleased to communicate, through M. de Gravina, to the French government, in consequence of the wish they have intimated, to know the place to which Captain Wright should be sent; that it is the desire of his Majesty's government, that he should be sent to Dover in a flag of truce; or, if there is any objection to that mode of liberating him, that he may be lowed to quit the territories of France, for the purpose of proceeding to Embden, or any other neutral port or place. I have the honour to be, kc. (Signed) HARROWBY.

BATAVIAN FLOTILLA.-Vice-Admiral Verhenit's detailed Report of the Engage ments of the 17th and 18th July, adiressed to his Majesty Napoleon 1. Emperor of the French and King of Haly. Dated Ambleteuse, July 26th, 1805.

(Concluded from p. 381)

These results of the combats, as obstinate as unequal, are all in our fayour, since we have not lost a single armed boat; and although the enemy had at least 900 cannon directed against us, and that we had only 180 on our 21 gun-boatsandour three praams, they were not able to stop us a single moment on our passage, nor even to deLange our order of battle. Although there were several boats much damaged, there was only one that quitted the line, and that only as she was about to sink. I ought again to do justice to the officers who commanded in this last affair, and I have the honour to Rame them here, in order to make them known to your Imperial and Royal Majesty ; they are, for the 3 praams, M. M. Coren, Mestdagh, and Cloupet; and for the 21 gun-boats, M. M. Van der Læf, Bolken, Metma, Schotman, Waardenburg, Ribbing, Van der Hart, Hinxt, Van der Pels, Reigig, Tuchs, Victor, Gerhards, Sels, Caspers, Lutkets, Van Berensten, Botel, Mortel, Olve, and Ossewade, jun. They all merit the greatest praise, as well for their promptitude in executing my orders, as their exactness in

answering my signals, and the valour with which they sustained the combats; so that one gun-boat fired 245 times with her battery of two 24lb. cannons. The officers of. the 11 gun-boats which were obliged to go into Calais, are M. M. Bezenier, Sail, Houlkoper, Reins, Van Ginkel, Berghuis, [Memeling, Dillie, De Visscher, Hemmes, and Hoogdaleen; they also merit my praise.— Without permitting myself to estimate the damage that may have been sustained by the enemy, every thing leads me to presume that they have suffered more than ourselves, if it be considered that the great bodies of their ships offer a point made more certain of being hit than our small vessels, so little ele vated above the surface of the water.-I ought to render the justice that is due to the two English Rear-Admirals who were engaged in the action; they made every effort to destroy us; their order of Lattle was well preserved, and some of their vessels shewed an audacity seldom to be met with; the obstinacy with which they fought us is worthy of having been cpposed to the united arms of your Imperial and Royal Majesty and the Batavian Republic.My good fortune in having on board the brave Marshal of the Empire, Davenot, has afforded me the highest satisfaction, since he was an eye-witness of the ardour with which the crews and garrisons rivalled each other; and I dare fatter myself that your Imperial and Royal Majesty will see in this affair a new proof of the ardour of all the Batavians for the glorious cause which they are called upon to support,

I commend myself to the high protestion of your Iraperial and Royal Majesty, and I have the honour to be, with the must_ profound respect, and the most inviolable devotion, Sire, your Imperial and Royal Majesty's most humble and most obedient servant, VERHEUIL, Vice-Admiral and Commander in Chief of the Batavian flotilla.

FOREIGN OFFICIAL PAPERS. BATAVIAN LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY. Speech of the Grand Pensionary, Futger Jan Schimmelpenninck, at the Opening of the Legislative Assembly, on the 3d of September, 1005. From the Batavian Official Gazette.

HIGH AND MIGHTY LORDS,-I have considered it necessary to call you together out of the usual course of your raceting, to. propose some measures, the speedy adoption. of which appears to me to be of importance for the interest of the state.& m piler of. regalations, which have been drawn up in, purssance of taxes already decreed, Shall be laid before your bigh mighting, es for your deliberation. In fraiping these regulations,

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SUMMARY OF POLITICS. BOXING.Whether the enormously over-grown size of the metropolis has rendered indispensably necessary that anomaly in our administration of justice, that innovation upon the constitution, the establishment of POLICE MAGISTRATES, receiving a considerable salary, and removeable at the pleasure of the Crown, or, in fact, at that of the minister of the day; and, whether, supposing such necessity to exist, the commissions of those magistrates ought to have been so extended as to enable them to act as justices of the peace through the whole extent of the counties of Middlesex, Essex Kent and Surrey, and thereby putting into the hands of the minister the means of obtaining, in each of those counties, a decided preponderance as to all matters usually settled at the general Quarter Sessions, including, of course, the appointment to the county-offices and the selection of persons to be engaged in county-contracts: these are questions, which may, upon some future occasion, be thought worthy of the attention of parliament. But, whatever difference of opinion may exist as to the necessity of the establishment in question, or as to the propriety of so widely extending the sphere of its influence, ncne, one would think, can possibly exist as to the nature of that influence upon the execution of the law. It is not meant to make any insinuation, or to leave any impression, injurious to the character of the gentlemen, who have been selected to fill the offices of Police Magistrates. But, it cannot be denied, that the establishment has greatly tended, and indeed, must tend, to give to the execution of the law, as far as regards the common people, a sharpness, a severity, heretofore little known in England. Men in the constant habit of hunting through the labyrinths of kavery and thievery; of selecting the wiles of the strumpet and extracting the secrets of the assassin; of witnessing scenes in the last degree disgraceful to humanity, such men mast, in proportion to their zeal, become severe. They do not forget, that they ought to discriminate, bus, they do,

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and they naturally must, adopt, by degrees, a principle of discrimination,, which, though, in some respects, well suited to the metropolis, is certainly unsuited to the rest of the kingdom, over which, however, little by little, this their principle is extending; and, if we consider the weight they derive from their talents; from the constancy of their employment, and their consequent expcrience; from the professional all they have always at their command; from the regu larity, with which all their proceedings are conducted; from the mn mher and variety of their decisions; from the circumstances of their having been selected by, and of their acting inmediately under the eye of the government; from their being at the seat of fashion as well as of power; and, above all, from the publication, the wide diffusion, of the accounts of whatever they say or do in their offices, together with the praises (I will not call them puffs) so plenteously bestowed, on some of them at least, by the sages, to whom is committed the task of instructing the nation by the means of that powerful engine, the press: All these duly considered by us, we shall not be surprized, that their practice is very fast becoming the prac tice of the country-justices, some of whont, for want of gangs of pick-pockets and bevies of strumpets, on whom to inflict chastisement, have shown their zeal in applying the severity of the law to men boxing for a wager and to girls running for a smock; insomuch that all athletic and rustic sports, every exercise requiring great bodily exertion, and tending, under the name and the feeling of pastane, to strengthen the frame, and to produce hardihood and valour, scem to be doomed to extirpation, and that too, by the instrumentality of those very laws, under the mild spirit of which they have o long flourished and so long contributed to the forming and the preserving of that at once resolute and amiable character, for which the people of England have, ever been distinguished.These remarks I have regarded as not an unsuitable preliminary to a conclusion of the subject, began in page 193, and continued, in an extract from

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work of Dr. Bradsley, in page 371. If the reader has, with an ordinary degree of attention, perused the articles here referred to, he will have perceived, that much does not remain to be said in defence of the practice of boxing, especially after the statement of incontrovertible facts, for which the public are indebted to Dr. Bradsley.As to boxing, in general; as to boxing considered as a mode of terminating quarrels amongst the common people, Dr. Bradsley not only perfectly agrees with me, but he has, as the reader will have perceived, produced numerous and most apt and striking facts in support of his opinions. In short, he has clearly shewn, that, unless boxing is revived in those parts of England where it has most declined, cuttings and stabbings will, in a little time, become as prevalent in those parts as in any of the countries, whose manners, in this respect, we have been accustomed to regard with the greatest horror. The only question, therefore, that remains to be decided, is, how is the practice of boxing to be revived where it has declined, and, where it has not declined, to be cherished and preserved? The answer is, by making the practice respectable; and, it would be -odd indeed, if it were to acquire respectability in a way different from that in which respectability is obtained to every other practice and science. Dr. Bradsley simply says, without stating his reasons, that he would have no prize-fighting, none of those contests, in which men engage for gain. But, he seems not to have considered, that gain is not the sole object, which the combatants have in view; he seems not to have recollected, that gain, of some sort or other, mixes itself, and must mix itself. with all the motives that lead to eminence in any of the almost infinite pursuits of men. A desire to lessen the ills of human nature can scarcely be looked upon as the sole object of the physician's or the surgeon's studies: the divine, looking up to the mitre will hardly forget that its possession is accompanied with riches the lawyer may burn with a love of justice, but it will not be very eagerly contended, that he entirely overlooks the harvest of fees: the soldier and the sailor, I mean the officer, fights for his king and his country, for fame and glory, but does he not look forward to something in the nature of reward, to some prixe, to something which is, as a matter of course, accompanied with pecuniary acquisitions? What is the mode pursued, when we want to revive or preserve any art or science or pursuit? The giving of premiums, or prizes. Some-. times we give thein in the form of medals.

or of cups; but, these are not made of lead or tin; and the gold medal ever signifies a greater degree of merit than the silver one. Yet, we must not conclude, that gain, that mere lucre, is scarcely ever the principal object of the persons endeavouring to obtain any of those prizes. We must look upon the prize merely as the mark of merit ; and the contest will, then, fairly be considered as important in proportion to the value of the prize. But, indeed, so obviously useful are prizes for the purpose of reviving or keeping up, in its perfection, a practice like that of boxing, that Dr. Bradsley himself proposes the adoption of "prizes at wakes

and public amusements for the encourage"ment of those who excelled in sparring "with mufflers." With due deference, however, to this gentleman, I must say, that I think such a scheme would entirely fail of success. Sparring with mufflers is one thing, and boxing is another. These who learnt the former, would not, when they came to fight in consequence of a quar rel, think themselves bound by the laws ob served in their combats with mufflers.So right as Dr. Bradsley is as to the prin ciples, upon which the practice of boxing is founded, it is almost impossible, that, from his own mind, any sugges tion unfavourable to prize-fighting should have sprung. Men, even of great talents and, as to motives of interest, perfectly independent, are, hevertheless, frequently led toact upon the opinions of others; and, I cannot help thinking, that, to some cause of this kind, we ought to attribute the inconsistency which appears in this part of Dr. Bradsley's essay. He wishes to see boxing revived where it has declined, and preserved where it still exists in its former state; and, I think, the reader will be of opinion, that, if there is no boxing for prizes, there will be no other boxing, where the laws, the generous principles, of that combat will be observed. Why are horse-races established by law? Why are prizes given to the owners of winning horses? Not merely that there should be races, at such and such places, and that there should be gambling and pocketpicking and all manner of profligacy carried on for three or four days successively; but, that the breed of horses should be kept up; that there should always be some of the very best for racing, and, that there should always be a supply of good ones for general use. Men now pride themselves upon hav ing a good horse; upon his capacity of going swift; upon his having some blood in him; and all this with reference only to the races. The proof that the same observations are