appointed pride and fallen ambition-acknowledged " that he had indeed been unfortunate, but that his intentions were ever just and upright; that he had originally been in a manner forced into an office which he would most willingly and gladly resign, could his refignation facilitate the obtaining that peace and reconciliation for which he had ever earnestly wished." The American minister also professed, in terms of humiliation, "that he should be ever ready to submit his conduct to the judgment of that house; hoping, nevertheless, that the house would suspend their cenfures relative to the late unhappy event, till an impartial investigation both of the plan and the execution of it had taken place,"

On the 5th of December (1777) lord Chatham, in consequence of the late intelligence from America, attended the house of peers, and moved, "that an address be presented to his majesty, to cause the proper officers to lay before the house copies of all orders and inftructions to general Burgoyne relative to the late expedition from Canada." Holding up a paper in view of the house, his lordship said, " that he had the king's speech in his hand, and a deep sense of the public calamity in his heart. That fpeech, he faid, contained a most unfaithful picture of the state of public affairs; it had a specious outfide, was full of hopes, while every thing within was full of danger. A system destructive of all faith and confidence had been introduced, his lordship affirmed, within the last fifteen years at St. James's, by which pliable men, not capable men, had been raised to the highest posts of government. A few obscure persons had obtained an afcendency, where no man should have a personal afcendency, and by the most infidious means the nation had been betrayed into a war of which they now reaped the bitter fruits. The SPIRIT OF DELUSION, his lordship faid, had gone forth; minifters had impofed on the people; parliament had been induced to sanctify the imposition; a visionary phantom of revenue had been conjured up for the basest of purposes,

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but it was now for ever vanished. His lordship faid, that the abilities of general Burgoyne were confeffed, his personal bravery not surpassed, his zeal in the service unqueftionable. He had experienced no pestilence, nor fuffered any of the accidents which sometimes supersede the wisest and most spirited exertions of human industry. What then is the cause of his misfortune? - Want of wisdom in our councils, want of ability in our ministers. His lordship faid, the plan of penetrating into the colonies from Canada was a most wild, uncombined, and mad project; and the mode of carrying on the war was the most bloody, barbarous, and ferocious recorded in the annals of hiftory. The arms of Britain had been fullied and tarnished by blending the scalping-knife and tomahawk with the sword and firelock. Such a mode of warfare was a contamination which all the waters of the Hudson and the Delawar would never wash away. It was impossible for America to forget or forgive so horrid an injury."

In the course of his speech he animadverted in the severest terms on the language recently held by a most reverend prelate, the archbishop of York, both in print and in that house. "The pernicious doctrines advanced by that prelate were, he said, the doctrines of Atterbury and Sacheverel. As a WHIG he abjured and detefted them; and he hoped he should yet fee the day when they would be deemed libellous, and treated as such." The motion being negatived, his lordship next moved an address to the king, " that all orders and treaties relative to the employment of the Indian savages be laid before the house."

Lord Gower rose, and, with all that acrimony by which his speeches were usually diftinguished, opposed and reprobated the motion, asserting, "that the noble lord had himself employed savages without fcruple in the operations of the last war." This charge lord Chatham positively and peremptorily denied, and challenged the minifters, if any such inftruction of his were to be found, to produce them.

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If at all employed, they had crept into the service from the occasional utility of their affistance in unexplored parts of the country. He said, " the late king George II. had too much regard for the military dignity of his people, and alfo too much HUMANITY, to agree to fuch a propo. fal had it been made to him, and he called upon lord Amherst to declare the truth." Lord Amherst, not able to evade this appeal, reluctantly owned that Indians had been employed on both fides-the French employed them first, he faid, and we followed their example; but that he had been authorized to take them into his majesty's fervice by instructions from the minifter, his lordship would not affirm. The motion was dismissed by the previous question.

The two houses in a few days after this determined upon an adjournment to the 20th of January 1778, notwithstanding an animated resistance on the part of the oppofition, who demonftrated the impolicy at so critical a juncture of indulging in so long a recess. Lord Chatham on this occafion declared, "that it was with grief and astonishment he heard a propofal made of a nature so extraordinary at a crifis so urgent; when," said he, "my lords, I will be bold to say, events of a most alarming tendency, little expected or foreseen, will shortly happen. Ministers flatter themselves, whenever the worst comes, that they shall be able to shelter themselves behind the authority of parliament; but this, my lords, cannot be. They stand coMMITTED, and they must ABIDE the ISSUE. The DAY of RETRIBUTION is at hand, when the VENGEANCE of a much injured people will, I trust, FALL HEAVILY on the AUTHORS of their RUIN."

During the recefs, the spirits of the miniftry, which had funk to so low an ebb, seemed to revive; and the powerful faction of the Tories, which had of late years acquired such an afcendency under the patronage of the court, being if possible more than ever eager for the fubjugation of America, large offers were made from different places for raising

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raising new regiments to fupply the late heavy loss; and a determination was taken to profecute the war with redoubled force and vigor.

On an early day after the recefs, the house of commons, in consequence of a motion previously made by Mr. Fox, refolved itself into a committee on the state of the nation; and, in a most able and comprehenfive speech, Mr. Fox entered at great length into a retrospective view of the whole conduct of the present administration respecting America, including as well the measures which led to the war, as the manner in which it had been profecuted. He laid it down as an incontrovertible axiom, " that it was impoffible for any country to fall within so few years from the high pitch of power and glory which we had done, without some radical error in its government. The present calamitous state of the nation was evidently to be traced to the blind obstinacy and wretched incapacity of its minifters, who would not listen to any overtures of conciliation, who could not carry into effect any plan of coercion. He made it appear from the papers before them, that at a time when we were in immediate danger of encountering the whole force of the house of Bourbon, united with that of Ameriea, the army in England and Ireland had been so reduced and weakened by the continual drain of the war, as to fall several thousand men short of the usual peace establishment. To abandon the ministerial plan of conquest was therefore a matter not of choice but necessity, when the force employed in America was so much diminished in consequence of the late disastrous events, and when it was incapable of being reinforced without leaving this country absolutely without defence. Upon this ground Mr. Fox moved as a resolution of the committee, "that an address should be presented to his majesty, beseeching his majesty that no part of the national force in these kingdoms, or in the garrifons of Gibraltar or Minorca, should be fent to America." To the infinite surprise of the public, no debate ensued,

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nor was any reply whatever made to this speech; but the question being called for, the motion was rejected on a divifion by a majority of 256 to 165, the largest minority that had yet appeared in this parliament in opposition to the ministry.

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In a few days after this Mr. Burke moved for the papers relative to the employment of the Indians, and in a fpeech diftinguished by that characteristic glow and warmth of coloring, which in this instance did as much credit to the judgment as the imagination of the speaker, he reprobated the measure as replete with disgrace and infamy. Indian mode of making war," he said, " was so horrible as not only to shock the manners of all civilized nations, but far to exceed the ferocity of any other barbarians recorded in antient or modern history. Their chief glory consisted in the number of human scalps which they acquired, and their chief delight was in the practice of torturing, mangling, roafting, and devouring their captives. The attempt to prevent these enormities was wholly unavailing. Those Indians employed both by general Burgoyne and colonel St. Leger had indiscriminately murdered men, women, and children-friends and foes-armed or unarmed, without distinction. The horrid murder of Miss Macrae on the morning of her intended marriage with an officer of the king's troops, and the massacre in cold blood of the prifoners taken in an engagement near Fort Stanwix, were particularly instanced as proofs of the absolute impracticability of reftraining the barbarities of these savages." After a long debate Mr. Burke's motion was negatived by a majority of 223 to 137.

Various other motions made by Mr. Fox, colonel Barré, and Mr. Burke, in the committee of enquiry, being also rejected, the minister gave notice that he had digested a plan of conciliation, which he meant shortly to lay before the house. Accordingly, on the 17th of February 1778, lord North moved for leave to bring in-" 1. A bill for removing