ebn CrIttntril.
A great county meeting took place at Hertford on Saturday, on the subject of the expedition against the citadel of Antwerp. The requisition was signed by two hundred and fifty names. The meeting was intended to be exclusively Conservative, but in the end it turned out to be all but exclusively Liberal. Mr. Nicholson, the Under Sheriff, in the absence of the High Sheriff from severe illness, took the chair. The preliminaries of the meeting having been arranged, the Earl Verulam, the Lord Lieutenant of the county, rose to propose an ad
dress to the King, deprecating the motives and purpose, of the expedition. His Lordship's brief address was limited in a great measure to a quotation from a speech of Earl Grey in 1791, in respect to the intended interference with Russia. Earl (then Mr.) Grey had said on that occasion, that the justifiable objects of interference with a foreign state were " 1. For redeeming a right forcibly withheld. 2. Providing for a future safety. 3. To resist a hostile aggression. With those reasons," said Lord Verulam, "I fully agree. Having now no right to redeem, no future safety to provide for, nor any hostile act of aggression to repel, I cannot absolve the reasons of the measure of war, except it be to cement a new friendship at the sacrifice of an old and unimpeachable one. If it be said there is any the least wish to embarrass Government, or to turn the Ministers out, it is not the ease, although I believe they have got the country into such a position that it will be but with the greatest difficulty it will be righted. This is not, nor will I treat it as a party: question. The particular object I have in view is that his Majesty and his Majesty's Ministers may be made acquainted with the feelings of the people without the pale of their own associates."
The address, moved by Lord Verulam, run in pretty nearly the same strain as the others that his Lordship's political friends have elsewhere proposed " That we are at present suffering under the burden of heavy taxation, which a state of hostilities cannot fail greatly to augment. That we shall always be ready to make any sacrifice in defence of your Majesty's crown and diguity, and of the liberties and honour of our country. That we feel, however, considerable alarm at the prospect of a war, which, as far as we are at present informed, does not appear to be undertaken for the purpose of redeeming a right forcibly withholden, or providing for future safetv, or of repelling an unjust attack, but calculated to oppress an old and failly2 ally, to whom we have not forgotten that we are mainly indebted for the inestimable blessings we have enjoyed under the government of your Majesty and your family. We beg further to submit, that the prosecution of this war is likely to prove ruinous to every interest in the nation. We, for the above reasons, humbly pray your Majesty, in the exercise of your prerogative of making peace and war, to listen to any conciliatoryproposition that has been, or may yet he offered, for the purpose of averting the grievous calamity of war, and to suspend for the present all hostile operations against Holland until the real feelings and wishes of the nation can be constitutionally and unequivocally declared."
• Considerable disturbance was excited at the termination of the Lord Lieutenant's speech, by a small knot of individuals, hired, as it was said, to interrupt the proceedings, and give the Under Sheriff an occasion to dissolve the meeting: it had not, however, that effect.
Tranquillity having been at length restored, Lord Deere rose to move an amendment. He denied the necessity of a county meeting within ten or twelve days of a general election, when the sentiments of the county could be more satisfactorily expressed on the question of war and on every other question. He moved as an amendment, that,
"At the present moment it is highly inexpedient, without a full knowledge of the facts and documents upon which his Majesty's Government have acted, to address his Majesty with the expressions of any opinion which might tend to affect the exercise of one of his most undoubted and important prerogatives." Sir John Sebright (the seconder of lord John Russell's motion for bringing in the Reform Bill) seconded Lord Deere's amendment. Mr. Grove Price, formerly member for Sandwich (Tricolor Price), spoke in favour of the original motion. He contended, that the only question was a toll of few or manyguilders ; which ought not to be put for a moment in competition with human blood. [The address; it will have been seen, deprecated the war, as it is called, because it would be injurious to commerce; of course oppressive tolls are not at all injurious to commerce.]
Mr. Ward, candidate for St. Alban's, denilal that there was as yet any war to call for such an address as that proposed by Lord Verulam. He hoped the county would extend to the Whigs that degree of confidence in respect to an undetermined question, that the Tories had so often asked and the Whigs so often allowed.
The Marquis of Salisbury spoke of a French Marshal enclosing 1,700 citizens in a church, and killing them all there. The affair of the Cloitre St. Mery was what we suppose he meant to allude to. The lesson he drew from the suppression of the riots consequent on the funeral of General Lamarque is curious " Such men cannot be our friends. They are the enemies to all rational liberty, and will aggrandize themselves at our expense. The battle of Waterloo is still rankling in their breast." The Marquis concluded—"A history of the commencement and progress of the present most unjustifiable war will show how totally indefensible it is. There are five negotiating parties,--three out of five refuse to join the other two in giving up the city of Antwerp to the Dutch; and the other two join to coerce the measure, and plead in excuse it is to preserve peace."
A show of hands was then taken on the address and the amendment ; when the latter was declared to be carried by an immense majority. A second resolution, proposed by Mr. .Augustus Smith of Ashley, expressing the undiminiahed confidence of the county in the conduct of Ministers, was also carried by acclamation ; after which the meeting separated.