some of their literary friends to publish something in its defence. Besides, let us apply this doctrine to the case immediately before us. America is not entirely prepared to resist our power; or if she be, she is still desirous of rendering herself stronger. Suspend your operations, and you furnish her with the very means of rising in her demands, if not of totally disclaiming all dependance whatever on this country. This I look upon to be the fair, natural consequence of what has come recommended by the noble supporters of this motion. When I had the honour of being an instrument employed in restoring peace to Europe at Aix la Chapelle, in 1748, I own I acted in a very different manner from that now recommended. The first step I took, was to agree on certain preliminaries, previous to a suspension of arms. Those preliminaries were, that the Russians on our part, who were on their march to join us, should halt in the place that the earliest courier should be able to meet them. On the other hand, France was at the same instant obliged to disband thirty-seven thousand of her troops, a force supposed to be equal to out Russian auxiliaries. Again, we were to give up Louisburgh, and they to withdraw their troops from four of the frontier towns, which they had, in the course of the war, acquired by their arms. I remember a circumstance which happened then, not inapplicable to the attempt made this day; that was, to grant the suspension, and permit them to retain the frontier towns till an actual account of Louisburgh being delivered up was received. But I was too cautious, and by resisting the proposition in its first appearance, was fortunate enough to succeed, though the whole negotiation had like to have miscarried, for certain secret reasons which I am not permitted to disclose; and must have done so, if a peace had not, as it were, at length fallen from the clouds. The noble Earl, [of Shelburne,] who spoke early in the debate, has misinformed your Lordships, I will not say designedly, on three material points. He say’s, the River St. Laivrence is frozen up in October: I contend it is not; and that on the authority of one of the ablest navigators this country ever bred, Sir Francis Drake himself not ex-cepted,-the person I mean is Captain Cook, who passed four winters in Canada, and assures me that the River St. Lawrence is very seldom frozen up till the middle of December; and that the inconvenience of navigating that river and the neighbouring seas, previous to the time I have mentioned, does not arise from the setting in of the frost, but the heavy gales from the north and northwest, which are the monsoons of that part of the world, and set in early in the winter months. His Lordship is, I believe, equally mistaken as to the fact to which his reasoning on the above occasion was applied. Who informed his Lordship that the regiments alluded to were destined for Quebeck? I now assure him, they were not. As to the third allegation, that the army in America was to consist of seventy thousand men, and that twenty thousand of them were to be Russians, he thought he knew something of what was intended; but he could solemnly affirm, it was the first he had heard of either arrangement. He, however, saw no reason why the Russians should not be employed as auxiliaries now, as well as in the former war alluded to. If they were necessary then, they might be so now. The noble Duke who opened the debate talked much of the expense of the service, &c, and insisted that the very expense of carrying the twenty thousand Russians to America would amount to five hundred thousand pounds. He did not doubt it; but if they were to march by land, it would, be much more expensive. He should beg leave to obviate the force of one plausible objection, urged by the Lords in Opposition, relative to the difficulty of obtaining recruits. He could not answer for what might happen without his own department, but he believed the facts he was going to state applied equally to both services. Since the orders for augmenting the navy had been issued, they had seamen coming to enter themselves as fast as they could be well shipped; by the last accounts he received, they amounted to between twenty and twenty-one thousand; and he made no doubt of his being able to complete the whole of the establishment, which is twenty-eight thousand, without pressing; but he did not mean to be understood to bind himself to any such promise. The other part of the service, the marines, which was recruited in pretty much the same manner with the marching regiments, he had been equally successful in, the returns being on an average of eighty men per week, some one hundred and twenty, and the lowest, which was the last, forty-five. So far, then, from the vulgar report, that the people in general were averse to the service, he was sure nothing could be more erroneous: they languished for it, and, were it necessary, he could produce numerous applications for an appointment on the American station, arising purely from a zeal to be instrumental in reducing those unnatural, ungrateful, and traitorous resisters of the mild government of their most gracious Sovereign, and the constitutional rights and supremacy of the mother country.

The Earl of Shelburne said, that as to the general charge of misinformation imputed to him by the noble Earl, he thought his Lordship would be one of the last who would venture to touch on that ground.; because if he, and the noble Lords on the same side, were mistaken, it was the fault of the noble Earl, and his brethren in office, who compelled them to go to the other House to seek information, or pick it up wherever they could find it, by withholding from them every degree of Parliamentary communication whatever. That seventy thousand men were to be employed, was no idle, floating report: for it had originated with the First Lord of the Treasury in the other House; and as to the River St. Lawrence being not frozen up till the middle of December, he would not be certain whether his general information did not include early in the month of November; stating it on that ground, therefore, he was certain that the person from whom he had his information would yield to none in point of experience and judgment; it would of course rest with their Lordships to determine which of the two accounts was most to be depended on. His Lordship was severe on the noble Earl, for thrusting the negotiations of the peace of Aix la Chapelle into the debate. He imagined his Lordship’s modesty in one event, or his prudence in the other, would have prevented him. It was very tender ground to venture on, because, whatever opinion his Lordship and his admirers might entertain on that curious business, there were many odd kind of people at this day, and a great majority of the nation at the time of the concluding that famous treaty, who thought the delivering so many British Peers hostages to insure the faithful performance of a treaty, was at once a scandal to the nation, a violation of the dignity of the Peerage, and a fixed stigma on the proposers of such a measure, which nothing could ever wipe off. His Lordship returned to a short consideration of the question, replied to the representation of the noble Lord relative to the success that had been experienced in his Lordship’s department, in procuring seamen and marines, which he attributed solely to the decline; of our trade and commerce, that had driven so many seamen out of employment; and as combating the information of the noble Lord, that the officers of the navy were not languishing for the service, he referred to the advertisements from the Board of Admiralty, desiring the officers to furnish the Board with an account of their places of abode, and threatening, in case of refusal, to strike them off the list. On the whole, he said, that as the treaty of Aix la Chapelle, to borrow his Lordship’s words, fell, so must the peace of this country, on the present melancholy and alarming occasion, fall-from the clouds.

The Earl of Sandwich said, he should not observe on the word “scandalous “used by the noble Lord relative to the giving hostages, for the due performance of the treaty of Aix la Chapelle, for he perceived the noble Lord who had used that very improper expression was already sorry for it; and so little did that transaction deserve to have the epithet scandalous applied to it, that it was the action of his life from which he claimed the greatest merit; to which he begged leave to add, for further confirmation, that there was a noble Lord now present, [Lord Cathcart,] who had been one of the hostages, and whose conduct through his whole life, both publick and private, had, to every one’s knowledge, been so full of prudence and prosperity, that nothing would have prevailed upon him to have accepted a commission of that sort, without the strongest conviction that it was necessary to the essential interests of the nation, and consistent with her honour, as well as his own dignity as a Peer. As to the matter stated by the noble Lord, relative to the notices published by the Admiralty Board, they had no particular direction, but were merely drawn up in the usual office form; but, as well as he could recollect, his Lordship was mistaken