. Jenner for the promulgation of
his valuable discovery of vaccine inoculation; to Mr. Greathead for his
invention of the life-boat; and to Dr. Carmichael Smith for a discovery
of nitrous fumigation, for preventing the progress of infectious
disorders. Parliament was prorogued on the 28th of June by the king in
person, who congratulated the country on the peace and prosperity it was
enjoying; and on the next day it was dissolved by proclamation.

PREPARATIONS FOR HOSTILITY.

Peace had scarcely been proclaimed when the note of war was again heard
in the distance; when a little cloud in the horizon betokened the rising
of another furious storm. In the month of December the French government
had sent a naval force, under General Le Clerc, for the purpose of
recovering St. Domingo and Guadaloupe from the revolted negroes; and the
English government sent Admiral Mitchell with seven sail of the line to
watch his motions. But England had more cogent reasons for displeasure
in the following year. At that time the interference and intrigues of
the first consul were manifested in various parts of Europe. Thus, in
the month of March, he presided over a meeting at which a treaty was
signed with the Cisalpine republic, preparatory to his assuming the iron
crown, in imitation of Charlemagne; and he not only procured the cession
of Louisiana, but the duchy of Parma, from Spain. Disputes likewise
having arisen respecting the formation of a new constitution in
Switzerland, and the mediation of the first consul being solicited, the
diet was dissolved by his troops, the Swiss patriots were arrested, and
the independence of the country annihilated by the power on which it
relied for protection. In the course of the year, moreover, Piedmont was
turned into a provincial appendage to France; and in October the Spanish
king, at the suggestion of the French government, annexed all the
property of the Maltese knights in his dominion to his royal domains,
by which act the treaty of Amiens was to a certain degree violated. All
these events were indications of a future rupture; and another grand
provocative to the rupture was the fierce and systematic hostility
displayed by Napoleon against the commerce of Great Britain. Instead
of being allowed, through the return of peace, to flow into its old
channels, it was still more impeded in France and in the countries where
the French held sway than it had been during the war. Every month, or
week,