Draper, failed from Madrass, destined against Luconia, the principal of the Philippine islands, of which the chief city is Manilla, whence two large ships are sent annually across the Pacific Ocean to Acapulco, on the coast of Mexico, laden with the spices, filks, and other precious products of India.

On the 23d of September 1762, the whole armament, having on board a land force, including Lascars, Sepoys, and other irregular troops, amounting to about two thousand five hundred men, anchored in the bay of Manilla, where they excited great and general alarm. After effecting a landing with little loss, the city was summoned to furrender; but the marquis de Villa Medina, the governor, returned a resolute refusal, The English were far from being in a condition to form a complete investment of the city, which was of great extent and strongly fortified. The quarter which the General determined to attack was defended by the bastions of St. Diego and St. Andrew, a ravelin, a wet fossé thirty yards in breadth, a covered way, and a glacis. At the beginning of October the weather grew very stormy and tempestuous; notwithstanding which the befiegers carried on their works with unintermitted ardor. A furious sally was on the 4th made from the town before day-break, in which the regular troops of the forts were reinforced by a strong body of the native Indians, armed only with bows and lances, who fought with astonishing perfeverance-advancing to the very muzzles of the English musquets, and with wild and savage ferocity biting the bayonets even in the agonies of death. They were finally repulsed with great loss; and the works being by this time much damaged, a resolution was taken to storm the town.

Though no offer of capitulation had been made, the garrison seemed ill prepared to sustain an affault, and the English penetrated into the very centre of the city with little opposition. The governor retiring into the citadel, the town was exposed for some hours to all the horrors of a general pillage. At length, the citadel being in no condition of defence, the marquis de Villa Medina, the archbishop of Manilla, and the officers of the garrison, surrendered themselves prisoners of war; at the same time proposing a capitulation to save the city from total destruction. After some difcuffion, a ransom of four millions of dollars was offered, and accepted. The port and citadel of Cavite, with the islands and fortresses depending on the government of Manilla, being included in the capitulation, the whole force of the English scarcely sufficed to garrifon their conquefts.

Intelligence being received of the expected arrival of an Acapulco ship, the admiral fent the Panther and Argo ships of war in quest of her, who fell in with the Santa Trinidada, bound for Mexico, pierced for fixty guns, with merchandise on board to the amount of three millions of dollars. This was not the only register-ship taken in the course of this war from the Spaniards the St. Hermione, from Lima to Cadiz, being captured by two British frigates cruising off Cape St. Vincent. Her cargo was estimated at one million sterling, being supposed the richest prize ever brought into the harbors of Britain.

Amongst the military and naval achievements of the present year, it may be proper tranfiently to notice the recovery of the town and fort of St. John, in the island of Newfoundland (fome months before surprised and furrendered to the French), by lord Colville and colonel Amherst, who, failing from the harbor of Halifax, by their spirited exertions anticipated the effect of an armament fitted out expressly for this purpose at Portsmouth.

It will now be proper to refume the long neglected narration of the civil and domeftic transactions of Great Britain. On the resignation of Mr. Pitt, the entire direction of affairs was vested in the earl of Bute, who enjoyed the favor, affection, and confidence of the fovereign, in a degree which

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no minister since the Earl of Clarendon in the zenith of his power had possessed. He had not, however, as yet attained the summit of his ambition. The duke of Newcaftle still held the high and pre-eminent office of first commiffioner of the treasury, but this post the FAVORITE now thought he might safely affuine. The duke of Newcastle, therefore, at the latter end of May 1762, the session of parliament being nearly clofed, received an intimation that his refignation was expected. His grace was informed, that the king purposed, in confideration of his past services, to grant him an ample and adequate pension. But the duke, whose generosity bordered upon negligence and profufion, nobly replied, " that if he could no longer be permitted to serve his country, he was at least determined not to be a burden to it."

The dismission of this nobleman, who had been ever diftinguished for the zeal and fidelity of his attachment to the house of Hanover, and who had impaired his fortune and devoted his life to the support of that cause in which he had been from his early youth engaged, excited extreme indignation in the breasts of the whole whig party, amongst whom his steadiness, affability and disinterestedness made him, notwithstanding the mediocrity of his talents, exceedingly popular. It was thought a complication of levity and ingratitude thus to discard an old and faithful fervant, who in the course of nature could not be expected long to trouble any competitor; and it discovered such an impatience in the new minister to engrofs an absolute monopoly of power, as gave countenance to fufpicions of deep and dangerous designs. The duke, who had been treated with a flattering degree of perfonal attention, or at least with a respectful decorum and civility, so long as his name was deemed necessary by the projectors of the new system, appeared himfelf highly to resent the rude and compulsive mode of his difmiffion; and he hefitated not again to connect himself with Mr. Pitt, for many years his alternate rival and affociate;

fociate; with whom he had never indeed entered into any very cordial alliance, but their mutual animosity against the earl of Bute now formed a new bond of amity and concord between them.

The duke of Devonshire, soon after the removal of the duke of Newcastle, unable to brook the marked and contemptuous neglect which he experienced, resigned indignantly his office of lord chamberlain, and was by the king's own hand struck out of the lift of the privy council. The earl of Hardwicke retired in disgust; and the duke of Grafton, lord Ravensworth, and lord Afhburnham, with several other noblemen of high distinction, now ranged themselves on the fide of the oppofition. Lord Anfon was succeeded at this period in the admiralty by the earl of Halifax, recently returned from the government of Ireland, in which he was succeeded by the duke of Northumberland; and Mr George Grenville was advanced to the fecretaryship vacated by the earl of Bute. But in a short time this order of things was reversed: Lord Halifax took the feals, and Mr. Grenville was placed at the head of the admiralty. No political conflict however could take place before the ensuing winter, and the summer months paffed over in angry and ineffectual discontent.

On the 12th of August *, a day aufpicious to the house of Brunswic, as the æra of its acceffion to the throne of Great Britain-auspicious also to the kingdom at large, whilft the principles of liberty civil and religious, on which that acceffion was founded, continue to be the rule of their government-the nation was gladdened by the birth of a prince of Wales, whose aim, whose study, and whose pride may it be to establish, extend, and improve that free and happy conftitution of which he is the hereditary guardian and defender !

The first and greatest object of the new minifter, now honored, by a flattering afsociation with the duke of York

first prince of the blood, with the order of the garter, after his open assumption of the office and authority of premier, was the restoration of peace-a laudable and noble design, but attended with very confiderable difficulty. The majority of the nation, elated or rather intoxicated with success, were eager for the continuance of the war, in the fanguine hope of new victories. Already grafping in their golden dreams the treasures of Mexico and Peru, they appeared wholly regardless of the immense sums annually added to the national debt, and of the oppreffive taxes necessarily impofed for difcharging the interest of the fucceffive loansnot reflecting that every rational purpose of the war had been long fince obtained, and that additional conquests were in fact only additional incumbrances.

Exclufive of this prevailing and popular folly, the premier had given extreme disgust by the general tenor of his conduct, proud, artful, and selfish; and by the indecent and precipitate measures which he adopted to expel all the members of the late administration from their posts, and to intrude himself and his partisans into all the efficient and responsible offices of government.

A powerful party, composed of men the most distinguished for rank, influence, and ability, was now formed in oppofition to the minifter; and this oppofition was openly countenanced by the duke of Cumberland, uncle to the king, who had never connected himself with the tory or country party in oppofition to the court in the late reign, and who had imbibed the whig principles and prejudices in their full extent. Upon whatever terms the peace might be concluded, it was not to be imagined that fatisfaction could be given to the political antagonists of the minifter, who would not fail to represent it as inadequate to the successes of the war, if not inconsistent with the intereft, and disgraceful to the reputation, of England.

These confiderations did not however deter the minifter from causing secret intimations to be given, that the revival

of