The treaties recently entered into by his majesty with the Landgrave of Heffe, the duke of Brunswick, &c. for hiring large bodies of their troops for the American fervice, amounting to about eighteen thousand men, having been laid before the house, and a motion inade by the minifter for referring them to a committee of supply, a vehement debate ensued. "Great Britain, it was said, was now disgraced in the eyes of all Europe-She was to be impoverished, and what was still worse, degraded by an humiliating application to the petty princes of Germany for fuccors to enable her to fubdue her own subjects. Such also were the extravagant terms on which these troops were obtained, that the use of 18,000 mercenaries would not, taking in all contingencies, cost the nation less than one million and a half sterling. There were no limits to the extortion of these princely butchers, who fold their subjects like so many beasts for the flaughter. They were to have levy-money; they were to have a double subsidy; their corps were to be kept up complete; they were to be paid till the troops returned to their respective countries, and the subsidies were to be continued two years after the performance of the service." In answer to these objections, the ministers alleged, that the terms were more reasonable, confidering the distance and other disagreeable circumstances attending this novel service, than could be expected; that had they been still higher, neceffity would have justified compliance. It was intimated, that so great a force would be employed, that these troops would have little more to do than to shew themselves in America and return: that there was every reason to believe that the war would be terminated in a single campaign, in which case the terms would be found very advantageous: if indeed it should be protracted to a distant period, it was allowed that the expence would be enormous; but this was so improbable as to merit little confideration. The question was carried by the force of these reasonings in favor of the court, by a ma

jority of 242 to 88 voices. The same question was difcussed with equal warmth in the house of peers, in confequence of a motion of the duke of Richmond, for an address to the king, "That his majesty would be pleased to countermand the march of these troops;" and the duke of Cumberland, who had for fome time past, as well as the duke of Gloucester, voted in the minority, " lamented that Brunswickers, once the advocates of liberty in Europe, should now be sent to subjugate it in America." The division was in this house no less in favor of the ministers than in that of the commons; the numbers, on putting the question, being 100 to 32. On a demand unexpectedly made by the fecretary of war for the sum of 845,000l. for army extraordinaries, all the ardor of the opposition revived. They demonstrated, by a reference to the journals, that neither the glorious campaign of 1704, which saved the German empire, nor that of 1760, which was crowned by the conquest of Canada, had in any degree equalled the expence of the disgraceful campaign of the last year. Blenheim and Schellenburg were opposed to Lexington and Bunker's Hill; and the river Mystic ludicroufly contrasted with the Rhine and the Danube. The ministers, apparently overwhelmed with a torrent of wit, argument, and invective, relied on this occasion much more securely on the strength of their numbers than their cause, and the question on a division was carried by a majority of 180 to 57.

On the 14th of March, 1776, a very important motion was made by the duke of Grafton, "for an address to the king, that in order to prevent the farther effusion of blood, a proclamation might be issued, declaring, that if the colonies fhall present a petition to the commissioners appointed under the late act, setting forth what they confider to be their just rights and real grievances, that in such a cafe his majesty will confent to a suspension of arms; and that afsurance shall be given them, that their petition shall be received, confidered,

and

and answered." This motion was designed and wifely calculated to supply the palpable deficiency of the late commiffion, which empowered the commissioners merely to grant pardons on fubmiffion, holding out by these means a mere delusive show of peace, without furnishing the means indifpensable to its attainment. The noble mover observed, " that the adoption of the present motion, or of something equivalent to it, exclusive of the evident reasonableness of the thing, seemed to be rendered at this time absolutely necessary by two circumstances, to which his grace particularly called the attention of the house. The first was, the doctrine of UNCONDITIONAL SUBMISSION, so much insisted upon in the other house by the noble lordat the head of the American department. It was the object of the present motion to difarm the Americans of the rage and horror which this doctrine had excited in their minds; and to inculcate the idea that there were terms and conditions implying mutual conceffions, on which a fatisfactory and permanent accommodation might be founded, and their constitutional rights secured. The second circumstance to which the noble mover alluded, was the certain intelligence which his grace had himself received, that two French gentlemen, charged, as there was good reason to believe, with a commission of high and momentous import, had lately been introduced by general Washington to the congress, with whom conferences had been actually commenced. Thus a direct interference on the part of foreign powers in our civil contentions had undoubtedly taken place, and from a most dangerous and hoftile quarter. No time was therefore to be loft to counteract its effects, and upon the decision of the present moment the fate of the empire depended."

In vain were the powers of reason and eloquence exhausted in support of this motion. The spirit of infatuation and delusion seemed to have attained to its acmé. The lords in adminiftration openly avowed and vindicated the doctrine of unconditional unconditional fubmiffion. They asserted, that the power of granting pardons with proper exceptions was competent to every just and requifite purpose; they asserted the impoffibility of an effectual resistance on the part of America; they declared their utter difregard and disbelief of any interference on the part of France, or any other foreign power, which, possessing colonies of its own, could never be so devoid of policy as to encourage the spirit of revolt in those of another nation;"-not in the least sensible that the whole tenor of their own conduct afforded the most striking proof how infinitely motives of pride, passion, and revenge predominate in the heart of man and the councils of princes, over those of reason, policy, and difcretion. After a debate, continued to a very late hour, the motion was rejected by 91 voices to 31; and from this moment all rational hope of conciliation vanished. What had been hitherto perfectly easy and feasible, now became, by a change of circumstances, desperate and hopeless; and on hearing the decision of this memorable day, it might with fatal prophetic certainty be pronounced, "TIME IS PAST,"

This was the last debate of importance in the present seffion, which was terminated May 23, 1776, by a speech, in which his majesty was graciously pleased to intimate "his hope, that his rebellious fubjects would still be awakened to a sense of their errors; at the fame time expreffing his confidence, that if due, i. e. unconditional, fubmiffion could not be obtained by a voluntary return to their duty, it would be effectuated by a full exertion of the great force entrusted to him." WAR, in its most hideous form, was now therefore waged, without any prospect or probability of accommodation. But though the minifterial majorities in both houses were so great, the nation at large might be confidered as much more equally divided upon this grand question. At the head of those who were zealous for the profecution of the war in

all its terrors, may be accounted the KING himself, who be.

ing most unfortunately and dreadfully misinformed and mifled in the whole of this business, conceived that the DIGNITY of his CROWN was best vindicated by those measures of coercion which could be carried into effect only by the de. vastation of his dominions and the slaughter of his subjects. The powerful remains of the once numerous and now favored faction of the tories, including a large proportion of the landed interest, recently combined by a strange political phænomenon with the veteran and faithful band of placemen, pensioners, and king's friends; and, in a word, all whose fortunes or expectancies depended on the smiles of the court, were to a man eager and ardent in their hopes and wishes to fee America prostrate at his majesty's feet. A great majority of the clergy of the established church also entered into the views of the court, to which they were now cordially reconciled, with a degree of political fervor, heightened, as to many of them, into inexpressible malevolence againft the colonies by the indelible taint of religious bigotry. The Ame ricans were perpetually branded by this class of men, as fa natics, hypocrites, puritans, or, in one word, as SECTARIES, a term which in the ears of an high-churchman of the genuine stamp, is far more hateful than that of infidel or atheist. The spirit of high-churchism, which is a compound essence exhaled from the ingredients of pride, ignorance, malice, prejudice and folly, has, during this reign, been in a regular and progressive state of increase; and as the fame causes which have operated still continue to operate, it is probable that until some violent convulfion is produced by a new Laudian or Sheldonian persecution, the tide will continue to flow in the same channel and direction. Exclufive of these different classes of men, it must also be acknowledged, that a confiderable number of refpectable persons, who valued themselves, however inconsistently, upon their attachment to whig principles, joined the party of the court, from a most erroneous idea, that the principles of whiggisminculcated the doctrine of the OMNIPOTENCE OF PARLIAMENT; not confidering,