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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 775: FOREIGN ENLISTMENT ACT.
By Edward Farr
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About This Book

The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

FOREIGN ENLISTMENT ACT.

On the 13th of May, in consequence of complaints made by the Spanish ambassador that English officers were aiding the cause of independence in South America, the attorney-general brought in a bill for prohibiting the enlistment of British subjects into foreign service, and the equipment of vessels of war without licence. The first of these objects, he observed, had been in some measure provided for by the statutes of George the Second, by which it was an offence, amounting to felony, to enter the service of any foreign state. If neutrality were to be observed, however, it was important that the penalty should be extended to the act of serving unacknowledged as well as acknowledged powers; and part of his intention therefore was to amend those statutes, by introducing after the words, “king, prince, state, potentate,” the words, “colony or district, which do assume the powers of a government.” It was his wish, he said, to give to this country the right of preventing its subjects from breaking the neutrality towards acknowledged states, and those assuming the power of states; and upon a similar principle, he wished to prevent the fitting out of armed vessels, and also the fitting out or supplying other vessels with warlike stores in any of his majesty’s ports, These propositions met with stem opposition. Sir James Mackintosh warned the house, that, in whatever manner the motion might be worded and its real object concealed, the bill ought to be entitled,—“A bill for preventing British subjects from lending their assistance to the South American cause, or enlisting in the South American service.” The statutes of George the Second, he said, were not to have been laws of a general nature, applying to all times and circumstances; but, on the contrary, “intended merely for the temporary purpose of preventing the formation of Jacobite armies, organized in France and Spain against the peace and tranquillity of England.” He concluded by reprobating the measure as one which was virtually an enactment to repress the liberty of the South Americans, and to enable Spain to reimpose that yoke of tyranny which they were unable to bear, which they had nobly shaken off, and from which, he trusted in God, they would finally and for ever be enabled to extricate themselves. In reply, Lord Castlereagh argued that the proposed bill was necessary to prevent our giving offence to Spain, whom that house was too just and generous to oppress because she was weak, and her fortunes had declined. In the subsequent stages of the bill, ministers avowed that the measure had been suggested by the stipulations of a treaty with Spain in 1814, and by the representations which the ministers of Ferdinand VII. had considered themselves entitled by such stipulations to address to the British government. This admission excited severe remarks on Ferdinand’s character; but the bill was carried—in the commons by one hundred and ninety against one hundred and twenty-nine, and in the lords by one hundred against forty-nine. But though this bill was rigorous in its propositions, it was by no means rigorously enforced.