to Quebeck had been happily driven back into Mil-ford-Haven. Had they proceeded in their voyage they never could have reached their destination, but would probably have fallen a sacrifice to the rigour of the climate, and a tempestuous season. Had it been necessary to send troops, they ought not to have been embarked at a season which rendered it impossible for the transports to reach St. Lawrence whilst that river was navigable. The noble Lord at the head of the Admiralty had not been bred to the sea, consequently his negative availed little against the testimonies of many gentlemen in the Marine Department, who all concurred in declaring, “that the River St. Lawrence was rendered innavigable by the latter end of October, or the beginning of November.”

With respect to the twenty thousand Russians, his Lordship addressed the Ministers in the following terms: There are Powers in Europe who will not suffer such a body of Russians to be transported to America. I speak from information. The Ministers know what I mean. Some Power has already interfered to stop the success of the Russian negotiation. As for expecting neutrality from France, Administration know that their conduct towards France hath not been such as to entitle them to acquiescence from that quarter. The Landgrave of Hesse hath few men to spare. He passed the summer at Paris, which did not seem as if he was inclined to negotiate with us for a subsidy. The Elector of Hanover may have more men to spare than we have hitherto been taught to imagine.

But hiring foreign troops is not the only censurable measure. Such scandalous jobs have prevailed, as, on repetition, would put common honesty to the blush. Scarcely a single day has passed wherein I have not received several letters-some from private soldiers, others from officers-all of which have unfolded scenes of singular iniquity. The complaints against the fraudulent practices of the contractors and others who serve the army, are universal.

Nor are jobs barely sanctified: when they arise not naturally out of the business, an occasion is devised which will give rise to them. A most chimerical design was sometime since on the tapis. It was proposed to send light-horse to America. I had the curiosity to inquire into the origin of so absurd a plan, and I was told there was a precedent for the measure; though I was not informed who found the precedent, yet I very well knew of what profession he was. I was referred to Lord Oxford’s Letter to Queen Anne. In that curious piece the noble Lord ascribes his misfortunes to a job of this nature. The sum of twenty thousand pounds was charged in an account for an ideal project of this kind. Lord Oxford exclaimed against the measure, but he was overruled by the Lord Chancellor, who roundly asserted, “that no Government was worth serving that would not let them make those advantages, and get such jobs.” How far the last four years of Queen Anne’s reign bear an exact resemblance to the present era, must be left to the determination of the impartial historian.

The noble Lord then called the attention of the House to a few matters of fact, which he said ought to prevail with Ministry to discontinue their hostile measures, and conciliate while conciliation was left to their option. The army which was sent last year, and which, it was then vainly boasted, would look the Americans into submission, had not been able to look them in the face.

Attempts had been made to inlist Irish Roman Catho-licks; Ministry knew those attempts had proved unsuccessful. The Canadians had been excited to take a part in the quarrel; they had wisely declined to interfere in the business. Ministers knew this to be undeniably true. The Indians had been tampered with. A trial of skill had been made to let the savages, in the back settlements, loose on the Provincial subjects of Great Britain. Barbarous as was the measure, and cowardly as was the attempt, it had failed of the wished-for success. Savage Indians were not quite so callous to the feelings of humanity as British Ministers. Equally fruitless had all attempts to divide the Colonies hitherto proved. America felt her strength only in proportion to her union, and the little paltry policy to multiply jealousies and create divisions, by guarding the Colonists against insidiousness, had strengthened instead of weakened the great cement of union. Whilst thus defeated on the continent, at home Administration had found themselves incapable of raising the number of men required. Recruits had not offered with alacrity; officers had not made voI|Tn-tary tenders of their services; they, in general, disrelished the business. Such reluctance in those who are to be instrumental in carrying on the measures, ought to operate with Ministers; but if, under all those disadvantages, war was still to be pursued, in his opinion the catastrophe would be dreadful; “the cord with America once broken, there was an end of all hold of the funds.” The scheme of separating from America, letting trade take its own course, was a wild and dangerous doctrine. He thought that ingenious speculations touching the inutility of custom-houses and regulations of trade had better be left to our rivals. Our business was to adhere to practical rules which time and experience had established. We were not in a state to make experiments. The trade of America is mortgaged to our stockholders. It would be dishonest to touch it. The Ministers ought to know this; and tremble at whatever hazarded the loss of our American commerce.

His Lordship repeated, that if it was just to tax America, it was equally so to tax Ireland. That the latter was a much fitter object of taxation than the former; for if any position could be infallible, it was, that a Colony could not be an object of revenue while it consumed our manufactures. This was the case of America, and not of Ireland.The quota, from the latter was not adequate to its abilities, though the proportion was unequally distributed; the rich were spared, and the poor overburdened. The application of what was raised so much to the oppression of the people, his Lordship thought would make a becoming subject of Parliamentary inquiry and correction. He declared that he had lived long enough to know that he should eventually gain more by the prevalence of general justice than any private emolument could possibly compensate: and concluded with saying, that if Ministers still persisted in measures which could neither ’ be justified on the principles of policy or of liberty, he could only quote an old adage, which he was sorry their conduct verified: “Quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat.”

Lord Lyttelton said, whatever insinuations might have been thrown out by the noble Duke who opened the debate, he should never be prevented from performing his duty. He was always of opinion, and should ever continue so, that it was rebellion in any part of the British empire to resist the supreme legislative authority of this country; and the Ministers who had stood up, and exerted themselves so ably in support of it, had acted with perfect wisdom, and oh the soundest principles of the Constitution; that he was so well convinced of the truth, indeed of the irresistible evidences, of what he now advanced, that he could not attribute the opposition given to the just claims of the supreme power of the State, by several noble Lord;; in Opposition, to anything but a professed design to surrender the rights of the British Parliament, and transfer them to America. His Lordship animadverted on the evidence given that day at their bar, which he should not hesitate to call a partial evidence; for, \Vith all the caution with which Mr. Penn guarded his expressions, he nevertheless betrayed, throughout the whole of his examination, the strongest indications of the grossest prejudice. He could even contradict him himself upon a most respectable authority, a gentleman of his acquaintance, who possessed ten thousand acres of land in the Province of New-England alone, and who assured him that the people of that Province were full of a levelling, republican spirit, which would never be rooted out till they felt and were compelled to bow under the full force and weight of constitutional Government, to which it was notorious they were so averse; that through the same channel he learned they were no less hostile against monarchical Government than against the rights of the British Parliament. While in the prosecution of this inquiry, he learned, what had been often asserted by his Majesty’s Ministers, that numbers, suffering under the tyranny and rebellious force of a faction, and the terrours of personal injuries or attacks on their property, had been compelled to unite in measures which their souls abhorred; for when he had proposed to this gentleman to be examined at their Lordships’ bar, he earnestly entreated to be excused; for the consequence of such an examination, as soon as an account of it reached New-England, would be the total destruction of his property, and proscription of his person. This, among many other reasons, was one why he was induced to believe that Mr. Penn’s evidence was partial; but, supposing it had

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