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78*]  ANNUAL REGISTER For the YEAR 1772.  [*79         

sent purposes of the ruling faction; as such a scheme must have comprehended a considerable number
of those persons, and could not fail of being brought to light in the course of this enquiry.

The grand commission, carried on a process against the Queen, as well as the favourites, and the Attorney General Uldahl, was appointed to act as her advocate. It is reported, that the senate and the 
privy council, had at first intended to proceed to the utmost extremities, and even to strike at her life: but that some apprehension of the resentment of another court put a stop to their violence. This indeed seems very probable, as moderation is not one of the qualities that are to be expected in a faction, which is either struggling for power, or newly arrived at it; when independent of their own passions, acts of resentment, and appearances even of fury, are necessary to keep up that fever in the people, which is requisite in the people, which is requisite for their purposes.

As no authorized nor authentic account has been published, either of the charges made against the Queen, or of the nature of her defence, we cannot presume to enter upon that subject, on the foundation of vague or suspicious reports. The following questions are said to have occasioned great
debates among the commissioners, whether the Queen, as a sovereign, could be legally tried by her sub-
jects? And whether, as a foreign princess, she was amenable to the laws of Denmark?

Whatever the original designs of the court might have been, his Britannic Majesty seems, in some degree, to have concurred in, and probably influenced, their final determinations with respect to that
unfortunate princess, by his sending a small squadron of ships to convoy her to Germany, and appointing the city of Zell, in his electoral dominions, for the place of her future residence. Commodore M Birde having arrived in the sound with three English frigates, the Queen, attended by the
Count de Halstein and his lady, and the Lord Chamberlain Raben, all of her late household, together with Lady Mostyn, and the British minister, embarked for Stade, where she was received with great honours, and May 30th. several of the Hanoverian nobility of both sexes were waiting to attend her. The Queen has since formed a small court, and is as agreeably circumstanced, as the nature of her situation will admit. 

It has, perhaps, been too hastily, and too generally received an opinion with the most eminent writers, and from them too carelessly received by the world, that the northern nations have at all times, and without exception, been passionate admirers of liberty, and tenacious to an extreme of their rights. A little attention will shew, that this opinion ought to be received with many restrictions. Sweden and Denmark, have within little more than a century, given absolute demonstrations to the contrary; and the vast nation of the Russes, who overspread to great a part of the north, have at all times, so long as their name has been known, or their acts remembered by history, been incapable of any other than a despotic form of government. And

not- 

notwithstanding the contempt in which we hold the eastern nations, and the slavish disposition we attribute to them, it may be found, if we make a due allowance for the figurative stile and manner of the orientals, that the official papers, public acts, and speeches, at the courts of Petersburg, Copenhagen, and Stockholm, are in as unmanly a strain of servility and adulation, as those of the most despotic of the Asiatic governments. 

The war which the Danes carried on with the Algerines, is terminated by a peace, as little to their advantage, as that was to their glory. They consented to pay that piratical slate, 50,000 Algerine sequins, which amount to near 25,000 pounds sterling, besides a large quantity of military and naval
stores.

It undoubtedly will be a matter of astonishment to future ages, that at a time when the navel force and commerce of Europe, are arrived at an extent of greatness, unknown in any other period, of part of the world, so many powerful states, who are watchful of every opportunity of advantage to go to war
with each other, should submit to the ignominy of paying a shameful tribute, to the paltry nests of 
pirates, who rather infest than inhabit the Barbary coasts. 

The fate of the French parliaments seems to be finally decided, and the few remains of public liberty that were preserved in those illustrious bodies, are now no more. The people laughed and pasquinaded, and were sent to the Bastile, and so the affaie passed off. 

The stand made by the princes of blood in behalf of their county, and in opposition to the arbitrary power of the crown, did them great honour; but opposition cannot be long-lived in a country, where honours, emoluments, and even security, are wholly derived from the King, and the national vanity has made personal weight and importance, to center solely in him. The princes accordingly became tired of a fruitless opposition, and the King, who seemed greatly distressed by it, accepted with infinite pleasure the overtures they made for an accommodation. In a word, if we seriously consider the mode of supporting great standing armies, which becomes daily more prevalent, it will appear evidently, that nothing less than a convulsion, that will shake the globe to its center, can ever restore the European nations to that liberty, by which they were once so much distinguished. The western world, has the seat of freedom, until another, more wester, was discovered; and that other will probably be its asylum, when it is hunted down in every other part. Happy it is, that the worst of time. may have one refuge still left for humanity. 

Such have been, in general, the public transactions in Europe during the year of which we treat. The great scarcity of provisions which has been so deplorably felt in many parts of it during a succession of years, has still continues; and the destresses of the poor were in many places intolerable. in 
Norway, and several of the Swedish provinces, their calamities were so great that they were reduced to 
the sad necessity, of eating bread which was principally composed of ground bark, with a scanty proportion of meal. That other 

dreadful

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