THE LETTERS OF VALENS, (Which originally appeared in the London Evening Post) WITH CORRECTIONS, EXPLANATORY NOTES, AND A PREFACE, By the AUTHOR.
LONDON: PRINTED FOR J. ALMON, OPPOSITE BURLINGTON-HOUSE, IN PICCADILLY. MDCCLXXVII.
ERRATUM.
In the first line of the note, at the bottom of the 73d page, instead of "
in
sort of agreement," read, "in
no
sort of agreement."
CONTENTS.
LETTER I.
TRIUMPHS
Page. 1
LETTER II.
Addresses
Page. 9
LETTER III.
Dignity
Page. 18
LETTER IV.
The Campaign
Page. 25
LETTER V.
Object of the War
Page. 32
LETTER VI.
The Plot
Page. 41
LETTER VII.
Tenure of Office
Page. 57
LETTER VIII.
House of Commons Shut.
Page. 70
LETTER IX.
American Independence
Page. 80
LETTER X.
Irish Independence
Page. 90
LETTER XI.
Criminal Intentions
Page. 102
LETTER XII.
The Gazette
Page. 117
LETTER XIII.
Shifting of Position
Page. 131
LETTER XIV.
Prospect from Success
Page. 147
PREFACE.
THESE Letters were not unfavourably received at their first appearance; but the operation of such transient publications is soon worn out; I venture, therefore, to lay them once more before the public. They were written whilst some of the measures which have brought on our present unexampled calamities were in agitation. These effects were then foreseen in their causes. It may be worth while to take a review of both. Perhaps a further consideration of the inevitable connection between such causes and such effects, may have a tendency at length to open, late as it is, the eyes of some wellmeaning, but mistaken supporters of that unfortunate system.
The great business of this time is the business of us all; ministers allow not only our concern in the question, but our competency to judge of it. By courting our favour, they have confessed our importance. Never was the public approbation of official measures solicited with such an importunate assiduity. Not satisfied with the labours of the press, the pulpit is taken into the service. We see the spirit of pride, ambition, and despotism domineering in the sanctuary of humility, long-suffering, and self-denial. War and blood come recommended from the oracles of peace and forgiveness. As our ministry equally employ the regular and the savage to fight their battles, so they use indiscriminately the orthodox divine, and the field preacher, to animate the unthinking multitude to their new Western crusade—a crusade far more wild than any of those fanatick expeditions, which in the gloom of obscure ages, were preached by monastick enthusiasm to Gothick ignorance—a crusade more adverse to the just rights, and far more repugnant to all the honest feelings of human nature.
These instruments of mischief, of all sorts and colours, have been employed not only to stimulate our worst passions, but by a perversion of those passions to increase their natural blackness and malignity. We are taught cruelty and arrogance towards our countrymen, meanness and submission to foreign nations. In this glorious work they are all employed, from the rich contractor, who consumes the public revenue, down to the poor exciseman who collects it. The influence of the crown, considerable in peace, in war is boundless. There is hardly any denomination of men who do not find some immediate advantage in war; all this advantage is dealt out by ministry, and is dealt out not as it may best serve the purposes of their war, but of their faction. The expence of every military corps they raise, is the means of retaining a large body of venal, and therefore most zealous, advocates in their cause. Their grand aim in all this circulation, is to persuade us that our sufferings are the result of our own desires, and not of their mismanagements.
Availing themselves of the hired loquacity of their agents, they assert, that the voice of the people is with them. Thus every Englishman seems called upon to admit or deny the fact, to confess or disclaim his being a party to the public ruin. How extensively this delusion and corruption may operate, I cannot determine; I trust that they have not yet prevailed over the major part of the kingdom. There are still
ears
not absolutely closed to all enquiry into our real situation, and the merits of that conduct which has plunged us into it. We are still in temper enough to examine, whether the policy which has alienated three millions of people, has been well calculated to conciliate the affections of men? whether the measures that have lost an empire, have been well adapted to enforce universal obedience?
The following letters agitate these questions. It seems to me to be a subject that cannot appear too often, or in too great a variety of shapes before the public tribunal. English good sense may be misled from passion, it may be surprised from inattention; but I hope this nation is not yet capable of deliberate nonsense, and cool absurdity.
The weak and violent measures that have been adopted, have, as we foresaw and foretold, induced all the English of America to cast off entirely the government of this country. The ministers have declared that it was always the intention of America to do so; and they have certainly taken care that they should want no sort of provocation to justify the carrying that intention into act. They have called for
"
unconditioned submission,
"
and they have been answered by
"
total independence.
"
How far good management may remedy the effects of bad, it is impossible to divine; but by a war to force unconditioned submission, no good can result to the English nation on either side of the water.
Whatever we may think of it, this war will decide on our own liberties, as well as on those of America.
If America be reduced to slavery by force of arms, the freedom of the conqueror will not long survive the liberty of the vanquished. It is not safe for a state which values itself upon its privileges, to contain within itself a large body of people, who have no privileges of their own to lose. They will always act with that politician who aims at introducing a scheme of
equality.
This equality will be much more easily compassed, as it will be much more naturally desired by the undertaker, by pulling down those above the level, than by raising those who are below it. When a Prince shall come, who wishes to have his subjects slaves, he will most certainly have all the slaves in his dominions of his Party. When the Roman empire was turned into a monarchy, the subject provinces which had been stripped of all their rights by the pride of Rome, were unanimously desirous of a Revolution, which sunk all distinction in a common servitude,
nec earum rerum statum, provinciae abnuerant, suspecto senatus populique imperio.
The ministerial writers and addressers have indeed lately hit upon a curious topic of declamation, which has furnished abundant matter of invective against their opponents, and of compliment (as they pretend) to the King. The King (say these gentlemen) with an unparalleled magnanimity of spirit, and an unequalled regard for the constitution,
"Above all Greek, above all Roman fame,"
Refuses the astonishing offer which the Colonies make him of becoming an absolute monarch, free from the controul of Parliament, over that extensive and growing part of the empire. According to these writers their very natural contest is thus circumstanced: We behold a Prince exhausting his Exchequer, spilling the blood of his best troops, and by his requisitions, fatiguing every ally he can purchase—and all, to prevent an unheard of sort of rape from his own subjects, who would compel him against his will, to accept an arbitrary authority over them. In this representation we see all the subjects in one part of his dominions united with a very large portion of them in another part, by every method of violence, of faction, of sedition, and of open rebellion, struggling to invest him with a boundless dominion over their lives, liberties, and fortunes! This is what the ministers are not ashamed to assert—and they have even been at the foolish pains and expence of circulating pamphlets to prove it.
The situation on the side of the subject is certainly new! the distress on the part of the Prince truly affecting!—It is by some such misrepresentation, undoubtedly, that the ministers delude and betray their Sovereign. This consideration entirely takes off all
real
blame from the sacred person to whom no blame can be imputed
constitutionally.
But whatever success they may meet in their deception, I am afraid that the gentlemen concerned in making this representation, are themselves perfectly well apprised of its fallacy. They will one day tell the King what Lord Sandwich publicly told the Duke of Grafton, that they deceived him on purpose to lead him on in their measures. For they must be tolerably sensible how ridiculous it is to suppose, that the Americans, whom they are so violently accusing of republicanism, should be shedding their best blood to establish an absolute monarchy. That they, who are charged with having always affected an entire independence of this crown, mean to give the King an unqualified authority over them, is surely rather a little paradoxical.
The reality of the fears of our Ministers,
"least the King should obtain a revenue independent of Parliament,"
appears from their continual complaint that the Colony assemblies make so very poor and precarious a provision for civil Government. It is in truth the frugality of these assemblies, which the Ministers hate, and not their prodigality, that they stand in dread of. They find it much more
constitutional
to deal with one compliant, than with twenty refractory assemblies.
They are in the right, it is a course infinitely more pleasant to those who govern. Parliament will, they know, be sufficiently liberal of money which is not theirs, since they find them so very moderate in its oeconomy of what is properly their own.
This serious ministerial dread of the King's enjoying a vast revenue independent of Parliament, appears also by their perfect composure in a danger of the same kind, but far more pressing, by being so much nearer home. Ireland has a pension list of 90,000l. a year, intirely at his Majesty's disposal; there are also offices there, intirely in his gift, to as large an amount; besides the extensive disposition of near a million of revenue wholly out of the inspection of the British Parliament.
It is surprising with what composure the ministerial magnanimity enables them to sleep with such a mine of power and influence under their pillow, and without the least controul. This revenue is already much larger than the most sanguine speculation could promise from American assemblies in an hundred years.
But the truth is this; leaving to the Americans the disposition of their own property can answer no ministerial purposes whatever, whether these assemblies make a more liberal, or a more reserved use of this power. For if the American assemblies should continue in their original uncivilized, churlish, savage purity, they will certainly grant no more of the substance of their constituents, than they are sure will be for the advantage of those who trust them with the disposal of it. In this case, there will be no additional pensions from America for Mr. Jenkinson, Lord Clare, or Mr. Ellis, and a long et caetera of Parliamentary and ministerial worthies. This is a serious loss, and a real subject of alarm to Ministers ruling on the principles that now actuate our public councils.
If on the contrary, the Crown should, by degrees, and by good management obtain an influence which might excite the American assemblies to greater generosity, the effect would be too remote, for the present possessors of power and favour to hope any sort of advantage from it. Corruption is not very long sighted. Selfishness does not consult succession. The interested of today, will not provide at their own expence for the profit of the self interested of future times. Such posterity, they know, have a comfortable inheritance in their own care of themselves; and the present generation will not forestall their industry. Besides the ministers may be rather apprehensive, considering the growing number of the American Representatives, that the labourers may devour the whole harvest, and leave little or no rent to be returned to the lawful Lords Paramount of Sine-cure and pension, in Great Britain.
These I imagine are the real apprehensions which arise from the idea of permitting the Americans to continue in the old practice of granting their own money; since this is the single instance in which we find our politicians under such panic and superstitious fears of the effect of Crown influence. In all other respects, they are true free thinkers; genuine, unaffected esprits forts.
Whatever their fears or hopes may be, they have got us into a war, for the charges of which in any event, their gain or their loss, the good or the ill success of their arms, will afford to poor England a very poor indemnity.
The ministers have indeed gone such lengths, that they think it impossible for us to look back. They say that we must now, without reflecting on the past, endeavour to give all manner of effect to the measures that are on
trial.
If any thing rational were on trial, it would indeed be wrong not to let it have a fair one; but the execution of an ill-concerted plan, is the very mischief of it; it turns speculative absurdity into practical; and beginning in ridicule, ends in misery. Every day that we postpone our remedy, it undoubtedly grows the more difficult; and the terms of peace will become less honourable.
But ill as our condition is, something yet remains to be done. We have lost authority by injudiciously attempting to obtain a great enlargement of it. We may try whether it may not still be possible to recover some substitute, at least in friendship and mutual interest, for what we have lost in power. But a protracted war will destroy even to the seeds of future friendship. I am sensible that much is expected from the vast army which German penury and English prodigality has enabled the ministry to employ. They who think that slaughtering, burning, and plundering, are the means of reconciling the minds of the people to our government, have but very poor ideas of any government at all. Although these cruel injuries may compel submission, they are not of power to cancel memory. The effect of terror is not lasting, but the impressions of hate and resentment are deeply inlaid in the hearts of men. The day may come when the affections of America will be looked for as something of value, and they are even now worth purchasing even though Hesse and Brunswick were to be defrauded of the largest part of the bloody glories they are to purchase by the slaughter of Englishmen—although fewer English scalps were to decorate the martial dwellings of the savage allies of our humane ministry.
If the following papers can tend ever so little to bring us to a knowledge of our true friends and true enemies, the sole end of the Author, who is no actor in this scene, on one side or the other, is fully answered.
VALENS.
LETTER I.
TRIUMPHS.
Saturday, September 23.
Mr. MILLER,
THE ministerial writers, in one of those paragraphs with which they enrich the public papers
Vide Public Advertiser.
are pleased, for the special entertainment of the good people of England, to tell them a curious piece of news. This intelligence is the more valuable, because according to Lord Bacon's expression, it comes home to our own business and bosoms.
These gentlemen kindly inform us,
"that in the annals of the world, there is not to be found so extraordinary a nation as our's."
"We place (it seems,) our chief pleasure in discontent, and by a retrograde propensity of thinking, are never
compleatly happy,
without being
compleatly miserable.
"
The Ministers have made a valuable discovery in the national character. It must be admitted to their honour, that none have ever more perfectly profited of their knowledge of mankind, or have laboured more successfully to give entire satisfaction to their country. By continuing the same benevolent efforts a little longer, there is no doubt but that they will perfectly attain their end. The people of England are at length in a fair way of being compleatly happy, and happy in their own mode.
Observers have been for some time at a loss to account for the conduct of Ministry. They were not able to enter into the causes of their supine neglects and untimely endeavours. They could not penetrate into the motives for their violent denunciations, and their feeble efforts; for their disinclination to peace, and their inability for war; for their irritating America to resistance, by the austerity of their laws; and encouraging that resistance, by the weakness of their military arangements. The whole is now explained. They were seeking for popularity; they were conforming themselves to our
retrograde propensities;
they were generously labouring for the felicity of a nation, which, as they have sagaciously discovered,
"can never be compleatly happy, till they are rendered compleatly miserable."
The benevolence of these good men even extends to their worst enemies. They tell us in the same paragraph,
"that the modern Patriots shudder at the probability of success in the management of public affairs, and brood with a savage delight over the hopes of a national calamity."
The modern Patriots are in truth as unreasonable as they are represented to be factious, if they do not gratefully acknowledge the incredible pains that Ministry has taken to please them. They have engaged us in a war, after such a Patriot's own heart. Envy and malignity would have bespoke it. In this war the object, the conduct, the probability of success, are all exactly alike.
We are struggling, it seems, to obtain a revenue by force, which that very force must for ever disable the Colonies from yielding. At the same time we are incurring expences, that no wealth in the subjugated Provinces, and no chearfulness in granting it, can ever defray.
The scene of the war is on the other side of the Atlantic ocean. There, we have no assistance, no alliance, not a single friend. Thither we are to transport the flower of the English youth, consigned to slaughter, disease, and famine. Every thing necessary to the support of war, or to the sustenance of life, even to the minutest articles of both, must be conveyed to the British troops from hence, at the expence of millions, and at the mercy of winds and seas. The supply of great armies, even in the midst of the most plentiful countries, and in the most commodious situations, is chargeable, difficult, and sometimes precarious. What a work then must the subsistance of an army be, (I mean an army sufficient to produce any effect,) in a country three thousand miles distant from home? In a country where the provision for a single day cannot be purchased? Every sinister incident, every unfavourable event, must be repaired, if it can at all be repaired, from the distance of 70 degrees of longitude; and the least delay or misfortune attending the supply, puts an end to the operations of an whole campaign.
Whilst the Ministerial operations are clogged with these difficulties, the Americans are training and
The wonderful march of Arnold, in our Gazette, par excellence I suppose, stiled
one
Arnold, is some proof of the justness of this reasoning.
hardening themselves to war. The continuance of the quarrel inures them to the state of things into which they are fallen. They are in the midst of their resources. With whatever vain hopes Ministers may flatter themselves or attempt to delude their country, we may be assured, that where recruits, provisions, wood and iron, are furnished by the country, the rest of the instruments of war are easily procured. No seaman will assert, that powder cannot be conveyed to the Colonies from abroad. No naturalist will affirm, that it cannot be made by them at home.
This is the true state of our affairs; this is the probability of success, which it seems is to glorify administration, and to make patriots shudder.
Provided
that no misfortune happens to the army in America;
provided
no foreign power interferes to assist the Provincials;
provided
that the foreign powers in whom we trust will certainly assist us:—With all these provisos, it is possible, that this nation may, for one season more,—just one more,—continue the expences of this desperate and ruinous contest.
In the mean time the ministerial writers may manufacture paragraphs to amuse the people of England; the Ministers may send out more porter to keep up the spirits of the disheartened troops at Boston; the yet remaining wealth of England may be squandered in various ways, for the purpose of hiding under lucrative contracts for war, the hasty declension of trade; they may buy, or beg, or cheat corporations into flattering addresses. All these are but poor and temporary devices, which may for a while veil from our eyes the real state of our affairs, but are not of power to avert or soften the smallest part of the impending calamity. Insensibility of danger, and security from it, are very different things.
The African trade has felt the blow already. The West-India trade staggers, and is doomed to fall the next. No trade can long stand the present unwise contest. The loss of the American commerce is a lasting evil; the substitute for it, in the flush which the Russian peace and the Spanish armament have caused, is contingent, casual, inadequate.
The ministerial Manifesto, from which I have quoted the above extraordinary passages, speaks of it as of a circumstance of astonishing absurdity,
"that an Englishman should look upon the TRIUMPH of the King's troops with regret."
Englishmen will tell Ministers what they think of such a triumph, when they have the fortune to see it. As yet that triumph has not been cause of joy or sorrow to any man alive.
Do these men mock at our distress? Do they really think that the precipitous retreat of the King's troops from Lexington, was a triumph? Do they think that the action at Bunker's-hill, where at the expence of more than half the number that fought, these troops purchased a small enlargement of their burial ground, was a triumph? Do they imagine that it is a triumph of these poor half-starved troops, to have suffered from the day of that action, as indeed they had long before, as close a blockade as any garrison can suffer in a place that is open to the sea?
If these be the triumphs of the King's forces, every public spirited, every humane and honest mind, beholds them with the deepest sorrow and regret. There is no man worthy of bearing the name of Englishman, who does not see with grief the miserable and disgraceful situation of the bravest troops, and the best commanders in the world. That man must be very indifferent to the glory of his country, who does not see and feel too, for the condition into which both have been brought, by the most unexampled imbecility and rashness; a condition which originating from plans laid in gross misinformation and fundamental error, no courage in the troops, and no skill in the commanders, can possibly improve.
Here, for the present, I am obliged to leave the troops and the
triumph.
Ticonderoga, Chambli, St. John's, Montreal, may be added to the list of these triumphs.
I now turn to the gentlemen who fight, under much more comfortable circumstances, the battles of the Ministry in England. It is not only in the paragraph I quote, that they presume to insult those who differ from them in politics, by charging them with a delight in the national calamities. It is the constant language of these writers. If any man has shewn a disposition to such an unnatural delight, whether he be a Minister or a Patriot, the community must think such men deserving of a severer censure, than any which the pens of such writers seem capable of inflicting.
There are some indeed, who, if they do not delight in the national distresses, seem at least not to entertain a proper horror of them. These are they, who, in all political disputes, are the constant favourers of violent measures; who are continually urging the people to war, and under the notion of meanness and pusillanimity, decrying every idea of peace and reconciliation.
These gentlemen may indeed feel some mortification, not from generous sympathy, but from disappointed pride, when the natural, however by them unexpected, issue of their measures, is strongly marked in circumstances of public calamity. But these gentlemen ought to take care how they mistake in others for exultation at the national misfortunes, those emotions of scorn and indignation, which all men of sensibility must discover at the infatuated councils from whence our public misfortunes are derived.
VALENS.
LETTER II.
ADDRESSES.
Saturday, September 30.
Mr. MILLER,
THE manner in which administration is employed, appears rather extraordinary in the present circumstances of the nation. That period, once so awful; that day of account, once so terrible to statesmen, the
meeting of Parliament,
is at hand. It might be imagined, that at such a time, Ministry were exceedingly busy in fabricating, for the satisfaction of the two Houses, what they have hitherto thought proper to withhold from the public,—some sort of apology for the total failure of all their projects.
It might be supposed they were continually occupied in a careful and detailed review of their former measures; that by such a review they might discover to what mistake in the plan, or to what weakness in the execution, we were to ascribe the present calamitous situation of our affairs. One would think they were, at length, bending their attention on some scheme for preventing, if possible, the final dismemberment of the empire. Instead of this, they are wholly occupied in
the manufacture of addresses.
To common observers this seems to be an odd entertainment for men in their condition. If indeed addresses to Ministers could insure victories to armies; if railing at enemies could repair defeats; if flattery could cover disgraces; if servility could give plenty to famine, health to diseases, and cure to wounds, nothing could be more properly applied to the exigencies of Ministers, and to the necessities of those who have the misfortune to bear arms in their support. If addresses had this virtue, these courtly performances would certainly merit all the care and expence which has been so profusely lavished in obtaining them.
Although I think this proceeding of Ministry in many respects weak and trifling, yet I confess that nothing,
no not an address
exists in vain. The managers are able to perceive, among the first effects of this hopeful war (into which they have betrayed their country) an immense, an immediate increase of the public burthens. They see at length, and they see only, because they are forced to feel, that they have drawn up the sluices of an expence, which will not be in their power to let down at pleasure. They persevere in their measures, because they wish to continue in their places. They know that the measures, necessary to their opulence, must end in the beggary of their country. When the purse and patience of the people are exhausted by the accumulated charges of an unnatural and disgraceful war, it is then that the present manoeuvres are to take their effect. The Ministry will put the people in mind, that they suffer at their own
special request.
They will
point to their addresses,
and tell them
"TAXATION IS NO TYRANNY."
In one part of their project, there is no doubt the Ministry will succeed. They will get addresses enough. None have ever missed who have ever sought them. All the little agitators in boroughs will easily persuade men of much vanity, and no reflection, that their names to an address gives them a consequence at Court. The little, cunning, bustling politicians, in a corporation, think they may with great safety exert themselves to oblige a particular friend, that knows who and who are together, and that, when he pleases, may see those who see the King. If things go well, they may plead merit; if ill, they are lost in the crowd, and protected by their obscurity. One of these snug Machiavels will reason thus:—
"We are in for it. If the Minister chuses a war, he will go to war, whether we will or not. If the taxes go on, little places, and little jobs as well as great ones, will increase. We too, if we play our cards well, may come in for snacks; whilst the whole burthen of the war, without any alleviation, will fall on the grumblers."
The
little
politician at the Town Hall is not altogether mistaken. If his principal happens to think of him, after the purpose is served, he may be paid for his work; but the
little politician
at the Cockpit will find himself miserably deluded. When the national debt and national taxes begin to swell; when trade sinks under its oppressions; when Europe begins to be involved; and the civil becomes but an introduction to a general war, the Minister, whoever he is, will find that those who are willing to flatter, are not able to protect him. Those who are so ready to advise him to plunge his country into a war, will not be in a capacity to furnish him with the means of carrying on that war, nor with the expedient for extricating himself out of it.
I believe there are very few of these signers, or even of the original promoters of these addresses, who have once given themselves the trouble to enquire, whether this war, of which they are so enamoured, be absolutely necessary? To ask themselves, how it is to be supported? To consider, what end it is to answer, if successful? Or to reflect, if it be unsuccessful, what remedy is to be found in so dreadful a disaster?
One circumstance methinks ought to make these gentlemen who halloo, or who are hallooed to war, a little cautious how they dip their hands in blood. The Ministers have set out in their war with an avowed confession,
that they are not able to carry it on with the strength of this country.
They are at this instant suppliant at every Court in Europe. There is not a country in which want and servitude have turned the lives of the subject into an object of traffick to the Prince, in which Ministry are not mortgaging the revenue of England, and plighting the faith of future Parliaments. It is to HANOVERIAN, to HESSIAN, to RUSSIAN Arms, that England is to owe the recovery, and the preservation of our authority in America.
Such arms are, I admit, the natural instruments for the establishment of arbitrary power. But the addressers of such measures would do well to ask themselves, to whom that arbitrary power is to belong, if foreign force should prove successful? To those, by whom conquests are made, the benefits of conquests will belong. But I abhor the idea—Heaven forbid that slaves should ever become the masters of freemen; or that Russian ferocity should triumph over English valour in any part of the world.
The Ministry, though they are compleatly disgraced in their principles, for the attempt to terminate British disputes by foreign arms, may be further disgraced by their policy, by their failure in that enterprise. They have not yet been able to gratify their addressers with any certain assurance that they shall be permitted to transport over the Atlantic ocean 20,000 Calmucks and Cossacks, to lay waste with fire and sword the habitations of Englishmen, and to turn one of the fairest part of the British dominions into one of their Tartarian desarts.
They have not yet been able to succeed with regard to Russia, but some German Princes have condescended to furnish them with the means of ruining their country, by the mercenary aid of several regiments of Hessians, Brunswickers, Waldecks, and Dessaus.
Whoever advises others to war, ought not only to be persuaded that the war is just, but he ought to have a reasonable assurance, that those to whom he applies himself, are of ability to carry it on with success. Otherwise he is not only sacrificing the interest of his country, but he is disgracing and ruining the cause of justice itself. Of the ability of the Ministers for this great task, the addressers may have some private knowledge to which they trust. But I must say their friends in power have not yet been pleased to favour the public, whose approbation they court, with any means of doing their capacity the honour that perhaps it deserves. Nothing has succeeded with them, either in their civil provisions, or in their military arrangements.
They have made a great number of acts of parliament,
Boston Port Act. Massachusets Charter Act. Military Execution Act. Restraining fishery, (commonly called the Starvation) Act. The restraining intercourse Act, &c. &c.
which has left the state of government in a thousand times a worse condition than they found it. They followed their acts of parliament with above twenty of the best regiments in the service; with almost the whole of the marines; with such a strength of artillery and artillery companies, as were never employed when we made war with France in America. To give effect to this force, they have sent no less than four Generals. To the great land force, they have added a great naval power. The result of all these immense military arrangements has been, that the Ministers have
one
town in America—for their armies to starve and die in.—This is the faithful abstract of the first year's history, of our
new social war.
These are plain matters of fact. An honest man, who sees no more than I can see of the probability of success in the course which has been hitherto pursued, would therefore have his scruples about urging the same men to proceed in the same course, which has been hitherto so very unprosperous. Have these flatterers any ground for confidence, that the future proceedings of Ministers will be more fortunate than the past? If they have, it will be kind of them to open it a little to their expecting country. One circumstance of incapacity in these Ministers is clear beyond all dispute, they have known nothing of the difficulty of the business they were engaged in. As the difficulty was not known, it could not be provided for. In consequence of this ignorance of the real state of America, all the force that has hitherto been sent thither is lost. We have all to begin anew, as if nothing had been attempted. England, under their conduct, exhausted before she has acted, is obliged to rest all her hopes on the capricious alliance of a despotic Court, and the perilous assistance of barbarian mercenary forces.
It is for this assistance, and for these forces, that some deluded people are persuaded to address. Our misfortunes are aggravated by a mortisying mixture of the ridiculous. We have been brought it seems into this disgraceful situation of
foreign dependance,
in order to maintain the
honour and dignity of Great Britain.
Upon this topic of our
dignity,
I may say something hereafter. For the present, I would seriously recommend it to my countrymen, to consider (what never has been considered for them) the difficulties of their proceeding in the course they have begun, and at the same time the facility which appears for getting out of them.
The way before us, if we pursue the present course, grows every step more and more perplexed. The point at which we propose to rest, recedes further and further from our view. The way, if we change our route, is short and simple. The single condition of peace proposed by America is,
"
That we should put things on the footing they stood in
1762."
This is the proposition of the Congress; and this surely is no harsh, cruel, or humiliating injunction. We are desired to put ourselves, and our colonies, into that state, in which, from our happy union, we were the envy of the world. But the first terms proposed, are not the last conclusive ones; better may be obtained by
treaty;
all may be lost
by violence.
Have we then any rational ground of hope, that by an obstinate war unskilfully carried on, we shall be able to force from America more advantageous terms of peace, than she offers at this moment? Before any man sets his hand to an address, he ought to have a satisfactory answer to the question I have put. To abuse America, and to talk of dignity, is not an answer.
VALENS.
LETTER III.
DIGNITY.
Saturday, October 7.
Mr. MILLER,
IN this letter I intend to apply myself principally to those of my countrymen, who are commonly distinguished by the name of the
Tory Party.
There are many things in the doctrine and practice of that body, which I never could perfectly approve. A party whose distinguishing characteristic is a desire of exalting the prerogative of the Crown, ought never to take the lead in a government constituted like ours. But though I could not relish the doctrines of this political set, I did not of course condemn the intentions of all who held them. I did not, I confess, think the Tory party entirely well affected to the constitution. Their own favourite phrase,
"
The old constitution,
"
which was, and is continually in their mouths, seems to imply an invidious distinction; and to intimate a dislike to the constitution, as perfected, or if they please, new modelled at the Revolution. But whatever their opinions of the constitution might be, I thought them zealous, according to their ideas, for the interest and honour of their country. In all things which distinguish this island from any other nation, the exclusive and patriotic partiality of their affections has constantly broke out, and sometimes not in the most decent and orderly manner that could be wished.
It always appeared to me a circumstance rather singular, that they whose principles were so much of foreign growth, should far out go the Whigs themselves in the abhorrence of foreigners. The great blessing derived from the Revolution, could not make them forget that King William was a Dutchman. They did not readily forgive even the founders of the fortune and greatness of his present Majesty, that they were born in Hanover, and were supposed to entertain sentiments of partial regard to their native country.
In the principle of all this, though sometimes carried too far, and sometimes misapplied, there was something respectable. I remember perfectly well, that when the Hessian troops were brought hither in the last reign, this party complained very loudly. The imminent invasion of England at that time, did not reconcile them to the measure of committing any part, even of our most necessary defence, to foreign forces. Those foreign troops who were brought over for the purpose of quieting
the troubles in Scotland
(for I mean to speak gently) in the year 1745, did not meet from that party a more favourable reception. Their unaffected dread of the prevalence of the House of Stuart in that critical contest, could not make them permit a momentary departure from their ancient maxims. Their preservation from the greatest of all calamaties, a subjection to an irritated, a revengeful, a bigotted, even a foreign master, a master who founded his right upon the supposed nullity of every right in his subjects, could not excuse this obnoxious mode of safety.
It was in vain alledged in mitigation of that measure, that the national troops were engaged abroad, that we had no time to get together, and to discipline a body of English; that our foreign enemies had interfered, that some forces in the French service were actually in Scotland; and the arrival of more was daily apprehended. This was all urged to inattentive ears. The Tories still exclaimed, that the troops of our allies brought hither on that occasion were
foreigners;
and nothing but the consideration that a late capitulation had bound them not to be of any use, could induce the Tory party to bear the presence of such guests, with any reasonable patience.
Sudden emergencies may make the departure from the most wise and settled principles justifiable by the evident necessity of the case. But certainly, the general principle
of keeping foreign powers from interfering in national disputes,
is founded in the truest wisdom, and soundest policy. There is not only, no dignity, but no safety in a different conduct. I was therefore a good deal surprised, when I found so many of the Tories not only tolerating, but rejoicing in the attempts made by Ministers for engaging large bodies of foreigners to act in the
present civil war.
To what are we to attribute this extraordinary change, which that party has made in the only part of their sentiments, in which they were perfectly justifiable? Instead of murmurs, complaints, and remonstrances, we see the persons most warm in that cause, almost every where active, and bustling to procure addresses of compliment, in order to give the Ministers all kind of credit and support in their negociations for
foreign troops.
In all this I see no sort of attention to the honour of this country. The first principle of dignity is
independence.
A government in profound peace with all its neighbours, which is not able, without external assistance, to enforce obedience from its own subjects, is in effect annihilated. The powers on whom such a phantom of authority depends, are the true and real government. The other is only a vassal. If we cannot govern it but by the forces of Russia and Hanover, Hanover and Russia are not only the
Rulers of America,
but they are the
Masters of England.
There must be some extraordinary weakness in Administration, some disinclination to the service in the gross of the people, something unusually colourable in the resistance, that at the very
outset of the quarrel,
has disabled the strongest power in the world. Our Ministers stumble at the threshold; they are out of wind before they have run the first heat. The first year of this war in America, they implore foreign nations to bring them out of that struggle, which, a little while ago, they told us might be ended by a very few of the superfluous regiments, which a
prodigal peace establishment
wantonly kept up for parade and shew—Such is the dignity of England in the hands of its present trustees!
If we cannot end our own quarrels by our own wisdom, or our own power, they will never be ended. Foreigners very rarely, if ever, interfere with cordial purposes to the benefit of the party which calls them in. It will be their business, like lawyers, to prolong the suit, in order to exhaust the litigants.
Whilst the quarrel continues, foreign powers know that you must comply with every demand, and submit to every insult. The old enemies of the kingdom will be sure to fan the flames of dissention. The very best affected of the foreign Courts will make themselves necessary as long as they can. They will assist you just enough to
continue
the dispute, but not to end it; because that dispute, and their superiority, must have exactly the same duration.
Rather than consent to be thus at the mercy of foreigners, Dignity, if she would condescend to take common-sense into her councils, would think, that the cruel alternative proposed by the American Congress,
"of returning to the situation in which we stood in 1762,"
ought to be accepted. If English Dignity is to be compromised, I had rather settle amicably with America, than be obliged to too polite a submission to the House of Bourbon. I should consent rather to bear the Roughness of English Liberty, than subject myself to foreign Pride, and barbarian Insolence. I had rather shake Hancock and Adams by the hand, than cool my heels in the antichamber of Orloff and Potemkin.
I fear I ought to apologize for a sentiment so opposite to the notions adopted by the Minister, and all his friends. When the British flag was insulted by the Spaniards, in taking off the rudder from an English Man of War, our unimpassioned Minister saw with his eyes broad open all the dangers and horrors of a War. The condition of our finances made him tremble at the expences to be brought on, by a contest with Spain. No principle of dignity retarded the establishment of peace, on the
first
opening that
could
be found. But a free people, struggling for the preservation of the
principle,
on which our Constitution is founded, must not be heard. Their very petitions must not be received, until
they are at our feet.
The horrors of war more shocking as being a Civil war, and an expence far more destructive, as being
on both sides
out of the bowels of the British substance, is to be chearfully borne, rather than submit to the
Indignity
of a
Reconciliation
with our fellow Citizens.
VALENS.
LETTER IV.
THE CAMPAIGN.
Saturday, October 11.
Mr. MILLER,
THE proper answer to an address for war, is a tax. There can be no doubt, but that such an answer will be returned fairly and speedily, and without a shadow of equivocation. In this point at least, the Ministers are capable of giving perfect satisfaction to their admirers. To
exhaust the sinking fund,
—to
accumulate debt,
—to
raise the land tax,
—to put an
additional duty on malt,
and on
malt liquors,
—and
to revive the home excise upon cyder,
—these are things within the power of the most common financier. The ways of taking the public money, or of spending it when taken, are tolerably obvious. There is nothing required for these purposes, but patience on the part of the people. And Administration has had, for some time past, comfortable assurances, that the good people of England possess a sufficient share of that steady and useful, though not very shining virtue.
The Addressers, with an honest eagerness and anxiety, ask for war, and they offer their fortunes. They need be under no sort of uneasiness. The one will be given, and the other will be taken; and as far as I can discover from the courtly language of the Gazette, this is what is desired, and all that is desired, in the many dutiful and loyal addresses with which that instructive paper has lately swelled so much beyond its usual dimensions.
In former times, when the evil habits of faction had rendered men importunate and difficult, a little more than this would have been looked for. People would have been desirous of some account of the ends and purposes for which the public money had been expended; of the manner in which the war had been conducted; of the future prospect of success from the arrangements already made, or which were in apparent forwardness. If they received no satisfaction in these points, war would, in those times, have been thought very little more desirable than peace. Success, victory, glory, national reputation, national power, were the circumstances that formerly made war, and the train of war tolerable to a nation. The probability of a favourable event, and the beneficial consequences of victory, when attained, were always more or less in contemplation. At present the fashionable taste seems to be, for
efforts
without
vigour, expence
without
return, preparation
without
action,
and
war
without an
object.
I will not say, whether I have been well or ill employed; but abounding in leisure, as you will easily believe, I have read over all the public performances of the friends of Ministry. Not one, I imagine, has escaped me. The coffee house I frequent is well supplied with the papers. The papers are no less liberally supplied with political essays and paragraphs on the ministerial side of the question. At no time have Ministers more carefully attended to this mode of communication with the public; and they have spared no expence nor trouble to engage diligent and industrious writers in their cause.
One circumstance has struck me as very singular. In all the course of this extensive and various reading, I never once observed a letter, or even one single paragraph, so much as insinuating, that
"the war with America had been hitherto conducted with common sense."
If my recollection has failed me, some person of more retentive memory or more accurate observation will be so good as to supply my defects.
Notwithstanding this trifling omission, the Ministers, I must admit, have not been wholly wanting to themselves. They have carried on a notable war with the
Mile-End Assembly.
They have fought a very strenuous battle with
Mr. Mascall.
In my opinion, they have gained a compleat victory over him. They have laid
Mr. Joel
on his back.
Atkinson Bush
must be a bold man if he ventures to shew his face—For all these advantages, I give them full credit. But still the
proscribed Hancock
sits at the head of
The United Colonies;
and
Putnam the carpenter,
besieges and starves twelve thousand British troops with four of the best English Generals at their head.
This was written in October. Three winter months have not, we may believe, mended the situation of those gallant men wantonly made the victims of ministerial infatuation.
I have concealed nothing which has happened in favour of our great statesman. The above is a short but fair and impartial account of the advantages obtained, and the losses suffered by the ministerial arms of all sorts, at home and abroad, during the glorious campaign of 1775.
At what a price all this glory has been acquired we shall not immediately know, though our inquisitive Parliament is so shortly to meet. Some part of the burthen we shall feel very soon. But the whole charge certainly will not be then displayed; lest it should throw some damp on the spirit of addressing, which at present seems the grand resource of the nation. There will undoubtedly be a large and constant demand on this fund of national politeness; and it will as largely and constantly answer the drafts at sight. Whatever may become of others, there is no danger that
this Bank
should ever be obliged to stop payment.
The vein of addressing, in a situation like the present, is a phaenomenon rather unusual in the political world, though in the moral it is highly commendable. The compliments paid to defeat and misfortune, are the effect of true generosity. If the thing went no further, all might be well. But it grows serious when a compliment conveys a trust. To this hour the want of success was always deemed a presumption of the want of wisdom. It went beyond a
presumption,
if the ill success had attended upon great forces. Men grew out of humour, and became unwilling to commit their lives and fortunes to the care of those in whose hands they found that nothing prospered.
If they thought a war eligible, this became a strong motive against confiding to the unfortunate, in that precise situation, in which of all others Fortune has the greatest share. They would not say,
"we ought to go to war with America, therefore, make a complimentary address to those who have
lost
that country. We ought to use
force;
therefore support those under whose direction
power
has sunk into
impotence.
"
The period for these congratulatory addresses, and this solemn approbation of ministerial conduct is well chosen, and strongly marked. It surely deserves to be as much distinguished as an
Aera
in the Chronicles of Great Britain, as any event that has happened since the foundation of this monarchy. The Aera of THE EVACUATION OF BOSTON. The compliments arrive precisely in the great important moment when the British troops are compelled to quit the last British town in America. From this period we are, I suppose, to begin the reckoning of a new golden age of commerce, liberty, and empire.
VALENS.
LETTER V.
OBJECT OF THE WAR.
Saturday, October 24, 1775.
MR. MILLER.
I Remember Mr.
Hume
somewhere in his history observes, that amidst all the calamities of the great civil war between Charles the First and his people, the English enjoyed this singular good fortune, that
no foreign nation interfered in their quarrels.
Mr.
Hume
is in the right. The circumstance was fortunate; and I am afraid it will continue to be singular. The present melancholy civil war is of another kind, and is to be carried on, as it was begun, upon very different principles. It is a war in which, as
foreigners
have the sole interest, none but
foreigners
will finally decide. In the great civil war between Charles the First and the national Representative, both parties had in view such an object as usually passes for rational. Had Charles the First actually subdued his Parliament, he might possibly have levied taxes without the consent of those who were to pay them. He would then have been to England, what England claims to be to America, the sole virtual Representative of his people. Their consent would have been involved in his will. To resist would be to rebel. So far the politics of Charles the First and ours go on together; but there is a slight circumstance in which they differ.
If he had carried his point, his power would have led to profit. The kingdom which he would have reduced, lay under his eye; and all its concerns were within his grasp. By a common revenue establishment, and a moderate standing army, there was no doubt but that he might easily have drawn into his own coffers, as much of the property of his subjects as would have supported that establishment, and paid that army; and left a surplus besides, for the purposes of avarice, ambition, or dissipation. The nation had the same interest to defend, which the King had to attack. Here was a war that had an object. Prince and people strongly interested, they wanted no intervention of foreigners to decide their quarrel.
But if Charles the First had involved himself in all his difficulties, in order to tax, without their consent, a people who were 3000 miles by sea distant from him—if the people at that distance were scattered over a Wilderness, 1700 miles in length, and 500 in breadth—if their extended sea cost was pervious by a thousand havens, bays and creeks to every fraud, and every elusion of duties—if these duties, by the best collection, far from being able to support a vast standing army, a powerful navy, and numerous fortifications, would consessedly not suffice for the maintenance of a tenth part of a competent Revenue establishment—if such had been the attempts of Charles the First, nothing but the consideration of his insanity could have drawn the least degree of pity upon his misfortunes. The great subject of curiosity would be, how he came to find any abettors in so frantic an attempt. It would have been but natural for him to seek his instruments in every country but his own; as those people would be the most fit to fight his battles who were the least acquainted with his cause.
Charles, besides the obvious lucrative advantage which he possessed, had another apology for his arbitrary undertakings; and Mr. Hume is too skilful an advocate to let it pass. His people were far from liberal in their supplies. They frequently even refused any subsidy to his greatest wants. What an aggravation would it have been of his misconduct, if all the world had known, and if he himself had confessed on record, that the grants of his people had outgone his
requisitions,
and that their
supplies,
while voluntary, had far exceeded their
abilities?
Join then together the two suppositions which I have made, and let every candid man form a judgment on the wisdom of that sovereign power (call it King or Parliament, or by what name you please) which could wage a destructive war for an object of taxation impossible to be attained, in order to avoid having recourse to a quiet mode of application which had never failed.
It is in our power obstinately to shut our eyes to the genuine appearances of things. If we please, we may stop our ears against reason; or we may prevent the voice of truth from being heard, by the din of our own passionate talking. But still reason and truth will one way or other have their operation; and though not seen or heard, they will cause themselves to be felt. They are at this minute in full energy; and are now, though not so sensibly in the mode as in the effects, acting with irresistible power. While Parliament votes, and Corporations address, a general torpor and deadness have benumbed the whole community. The state is paralytic. We have nothing left alive, but that miserable and feeble voice, with which we sue for compassion to the enemies of our former greatness, and call upon foreign nations to obtain for us some sort of authority among our own people.
England feels she has no interest in this quarrel. The army cannot be recruited to any tolerable degree of strength, much less to a force adequate to the necessities of the present bloody service. It is because the yet uncorrupted body of the people of England are brave and generous, that they do not chuse to shed their blood in this quarrel. All the ink that has been, or ever can be shed in addresses, will not persuade them to join with
German vassals
and
Russian slaves,
in exterminating the little remnant of freedom which still continues to bless the world.
Unsupported by English arms, the Ministers fly to Scotland. The gallant and sagacious people of that country, worthy to be for ever, in sentiments as in government, one with England, have declined to employ their valour for the destruction of their sole asylum from despotism and opprssioen. They will not chuse to pass from praedial to military servitude. They will not suffer themselves to be turned into merchandize, for the profit of those men who are bartering for lucrative places and for regiments, the lives that are not yet sacrificed to their avarice as landlords.
The Author confesses himself somewhat mistaken with regard to the
Parliament
of Ireland, and the
people
of Scotland.
The Scotch are indeed going to America; but they are going as settlers, not as soldiers. An illegal order has been issued to compel them by force to continue in the house of bondage, and to keep them from tasting the fertility and freedom of America.
The application to Ireland has been as unsuccessful as it was indecent. Did they imagine that generous people to be such an herd of blunderers, as to spill their blood, in order to enable Ministers to tax, without their consent, all the countries subject to this crown? The Irish Roman Catholics feel as the Protestants do. They also know America as an Asylum. None but a very few vagabonds have been captivated by the half guinea liberality of the Earl of Kenmore, or the military rhetoric of Major Boyle Roche.
English, Scotch, Irish, failing; Canada, French and Popish, has been applied to as the last resource among British subjects. Canada, French and Popish, have refused. Laws have been suspended, and military despotism proclaimed in The Canadians have heard the sound of liberty.
The Ministry thus disowned, not in words but in practice by every old and every new subject of this empire, are obliged to go about begging at the door of every petty Court and every venal State of Germany. They have prostrated English dignity before Russian despotism. They are satisfied to sneak like servile Gentlemen Ushers before the
State
of the French Ambassador; while all Europe looks with derision at their aukward, second-hand airs, and their imitated grimaces of exotic complaisance. They stoop their stiff backs, to kiss the baffled hands of Spain. Our heroic Ministers tremble before
the fugitives from Algiers.
Sir Joseph Yorke, under their direction, is employed in a manner that is certainly odious to so liberal a mind as his; and, indeed, must be so to any man who has served his country in better times. He is alert and active, and watches day and night. But he watches, not the Councils, but the Ports of Holland. He is obliged to thrust his nose into the hatchway of every Dutch Dogger, and to rummage and cross examine every paltry Package. The Ambassador Extraordinary of England is sunk into an attentive Tidewaiter. But all this expence of honour has purchased scarce any sort of advantage. Their negociations and their searches have been as unsuccessful and as impotent as their arms. All they can as yet do, is to deliver over Gibraltar and Minorca to Hanoverians. But though they have failed in procuring other nations to destroy our Colonies, our Colonies may imitate their example in calling
It does not appear that the Colonies have as yet made any attempt to call in foreign succours. That humiliating glory has been left to the haughty superior. We hear that we have lately had some appearance of success in clearing the jails and hospitals of Germany, much to the relief of those countries, whatever it may be to ours. The Hessian and Brunswick reinforcements are for the greater part raw and new levies. A specimen of them, of about three hundred, has been lately exhibited on the shore of Kent. If this complication of misery and villainy can be manufactured into an army by the skill and authority of a German Prince, yet will Lord G. Germaine be quite positive that an adventurous ambitious General of that stamp with 16,000 men under his command, will indure the inconveniences of such a siege as our own troops have sustained? Would not, the just complaints that General Carleton makes of being left unprovided with the supplies he expected, arise to something worse than complaints from a foreign Prince? Might not such a man so treated, think himself justified to resent as well as complain? Is it impossible that he might quit the party, that did not support him in the manner stipulated? Is it impossible that a German Prince might find a territory as large and a revenue as great as what he left in Germany? These are hints, the consideration of these things may not be unworthy of the
wisest heads
among them.
in foreign aid; and as with a more decent excuse, so in all human probability with better success.
In this unparalelled state of distress and degradation of their country, the Ministers are not without their comforts. They hold their places; they enjoy their salaries; they receive their addresses. At present they are in high spirits. They are persuaded, that their pay and disgrace may be continued a
year
longer. They will again hold out delusive ideas of peace upon terms which they know are not admissible, trusting that the deceit of the session will hold out until the recess; as to the rest, they tell us that all is now perfectly right; that the Savages of the desart have undertaken the government of the British Colonies. They inform us that they intend to change their mode of making war. They have it seems, by some means or other, at length found out, that to be besieged is not the way to conquer. They propose to ravage what they are not capable of governing; and abandoning all idea of being conquerors and legislators, they are in hopes of becoming successful Pirates.
VALENS.
LETTER VI.
THE PLOT.
Thursday, November 2.
Mr. MILLER,
ON Monday the 23d of October, 1775, in the morning, Mr. Sayre, Banker, in Oxford Road, was seized by King's Messengers, upon an accusation of nothing less than an horrid and detestable enterprize against the
personal Liberty
of our Sovereign. In the evening of that day he was committed to the Tower, by a warrant for
treasonable practices.
On the 24th the London Gazette announced to the world, that he was committed for
High Treason.
On the 25th all his friends, and even his counsel, were refused admittance to him. On the 27th he was carried before Lord Mansfield;—and without the least hesitation, doubt, or delay, he was admitted to bail, upon
50l. for each of his two securities, and 500l. for himself.
This is an exact, though short chronological History of the
Banker's
Plot, one of the grand events, which, amidst the splendor of so many illustrious actions in peace and war, among so many laws wisely planned and firmly executed, will, in future times, distinguish the memorable period of the present administration. The nature of the offence for which Mr. Sayre was committed to the Tower, and guarded with such unusual strictness and severity, or the validity of the charge, or the legality or justice of the proceeding, will be estimated from the extraordinary bail, which has been accepted on the Habeas Corpus of this eminent State Criminal.
It is known, that no bail can be admitted to an accusation of High Treason, laid upon any tolerable ground. I do not mean exactly to limit the power of the Chief Justice of England on these occasions, but it is universally known, that such is the general nature of the offence. The security in the present case amounts (in effect) to no bail at all. The culprit himself, his partner, and his attorney, are the persons bound; and they are not all three bound in a sum amounting to more than a
thousand pound.
It is this
special
bail which forms at this moment the indissoluble texture of the triple cord of public security. It is at this price that the most desperate of traitors, if we believe the Minister, has purchased the means of escaping from the punishment of the past, or of ensuring the perpetration of his future crimes.
I believe there is no man under a serious charge of High Treason, who would not readily redeem his life at the price of one thousand pounds. There is no man daring enough to conceive such a Treason, to whom the fear of losing a thousand pounds would prove any restraint in his black designs. We all remember the clamour that was raised against Lord Mansfield, for admitting to bail, upon a sum nearly as considerable as this, a man who was accused of
stealing a few quires of paper.
No faction has as yet gone such lengths in this case; or been impudent enough to accuse that great Magistrate of illegality or partiality, in taking such bail for a person who stood charged with an attempt to
steal the King.
Attempts, which in private cases would be but misdemeanors, or sometimes no definite offence at all, change their nature in cases which relate to the King's person, and become crimes of the greatest magnitude, as they certainly are of the blackest die. Some time ago the depriving a few
Printers Devils
of their liberty, for a short time, was estimated at an higher sum than an attempt to take away the liberty of our Sovereign, and with it of course the liberty, as well as the happiness of all his people. It could not be, that Lord Mansfield, whose affection to his Majesty cannot be disputed, did not value his gracious Sovereign, benefactor, and friend, at more than one thousand pound. This estimation would fall below all precedents in similar cases, the value of money in different times and countries considered. It was not therefore the crime, but the charge and the process that were treated with such just contempt, by a firm, enlightened, and constitutional Chief Justice. Our guardian angel of the laws did but touch this diabolical plot with the spear of his pointed sagacity, when instantly it started up in its own proper shape, and moved the derision of the world.
Here we must commend the Chief Justice. No man ever spoke more constitutional language, or ever acted in a more constitutional manner. But when we have said this of Lord Mansfield, there end all the commendations that we can bestow upon the servants of the crown. It does not appear why they should at all have taken up Mr. Sayre, much less why they should have committed him
close prisoner
to the Tower, upon grounds, which at the very first view, a man of sense and knowledge perceived to be so contemptible. It does not appear upon what grounds a Minister of State chose to order so close and rigorous a confinement, for a matter which the head of the law considered as meriting in effect no confine ment at all.
The senses of our Ministers were so compleatly taken away (I suppose by the horror of so dreadful a plot) that they did not know for what particular matter it was, that they had chosen to commit this desperate and formidable conspirator. The warrant for
taking
Mr. Sayre is for
High Treason,
—the warrant for his
commitment
is for
Treasonable Practices;
—but when they come to inform the public of their proceedings, thro' the Gazette, they return to their old ground, and tell us they have committed him upon a charge of
High Treason.
What could be the reason of all this confusion, contradiction, and prevarication? Their excuse on this affair, as on the affairs of America, and indeed on most others, is their want of knowledge on the subject.
Candour calls on me to admit, that a Secretary of State who has, or assumes the power of acting as a Magistrate, is not therefore obliged, or supposed to have in himself any knowledge of
law
or of his own
duty
in that situation; or indeed any knowledge of those rules of
prudence,
with which men, who have no authority to support them in their errors, are obliged to regulate their conduct. What I lament in men of their excellent dispositions, and what they will join me in lamenting, is, that they have
no power.
The King's Privy Council was not able to cammand the attendance of any of the great Law Officers of the Crown. The Chief Justice
would
not be present. The Attorney General (no one suspects it was through fear) declined attendance. It is said, that Mr. Wedderburne was the law director on this occasion. But until Mr. Wedderburne avows this folly, it is not handsome, and I fear it might possibly be actionable to charge a gentleman of a learned profession with any share in so
unbookish
Vide Shakespear's Othello.
a proceeding.
One might have imagined that the master of the
Thief-takers,
whom (with that propriety which distinguishes all their conduct) they thought proper to assume as their assessor, and on whom the safety of the King and kingdom, and the execution of their most important laws, were rested in such a critical moment, he, one would imagine, might have acquired, in
his
extensive practices, a little more knowledge of business. But it is possible, that this great magistrate, like some other great men on great occasions, was called to Council only for form, to give the sanction of his important presence to this very grave proceeding. His advice was, most probably, not taken though his figure was exhibited. The Ministers very naturally meant to cover themselves by the name and authority of Sir John Fielding.
They wisely considered, that the eyes not only of England and America, but of all Europe, were upon them. They therefore chose to bestow upon this transaction a degree of public solemnity equal to its intrinsic value, To accomplish this intention, the Property-man of the Court Theartre had orders to fill a part in this splendid
spectacle
with our blind seer, the sage
Tiresias
of the British Nation. The whole
corps diplomatique
was infinitely edified. The foreign Ministers now look with admiration (an admiration for the first time wholly unmixed with envy) on the profound wisdom, astonishing resources, and incredible success of our Statesmen, in all their concerns, from the evacuation of Boston to the discharge of Mr. Sayre.
We are yet to see the second part of this business opened; and to behold Mr. Sayre in the character of a prosecutor, not a culprit; of an assailant, not a defender. We shall see him, like his brethren of Boston, besieging that Minister who had blocked up his shop. Here the case will be greatly altered; and such contemptible bail will not, I apprehend, be taken, in the action, which Mr. Sayre, will probably bring against the Secretary of State, for having seized and committed a man in trade upon such frivolous grounds, and by such an illegal method of proceeding. The King's Exchequer must support the credit of Mr. Sayre's Bank. There will be new reason to call upon this goodnatured Parliament to pay the debts of his Majesty's Civil List, incurred by the want of knowledge, precipitancy, and shallow politics of his Ministers.
This will now become a regular head, and settled charge in the account of the Treasurer of the Chamber:
 
l. s. d.
Blunders of his Majesty's Ministers,
 
It is no trivial sum which has hitherto filled up, or which will hereafter fill the above blank. The charge is certain and infallible, and must be provided for; though, like the Navy Debt and the extraordinaries of the army, it cannot be brought into estimate. There must be some unknown, but important and singular advantage to a nation in being governed by foolish Ministers, since people are content to pay so dearly for that benefit.
This sham plot appears at first view to have been a miserable and ludicrous affair from the beginning to the end. Yet, however conducted, I do not think it was wholly devoid of a
certain sort of policy
in the original scheme. It might answer a present purpose, and at a critical moment. Its operation lasted as long as political plots are necessary to hold. Like
Moor-Game
brought from the North, the
haut gout
and
fumette
recommend it for a day; the next it stinks.
The Ministers opened the session under a few small disadvantages. Among other items of charge, they were under some slight apprehensions that they might possibly be called to some account for the
loss of an empire.
They felt themselves in danger. They were obliged, like those they sent to other disagreeable services, to fortify themselves on the
Neck.
The addresses were their intrenchments; the plot was the mine; and thus well secured in front they did not fear the unpaid body of
Rifle-Men,
who were charged and ready to let fly at them.
The bringing down his Majesty to his Parliament under a
double
guard, and with a double proportion of the mob of constables
It is remarkable that Ministers, as if in scorn of their own plot, sent the King to his Parliament, with this extraordinary parade of guards
while the conspirator was safely locked up in the Tower;
but ever since he has been discharged and at
liberty
to make any attempts, the attendance on the King has been remarkably trifling.
and trading Justices, in order to guard that guard, was on the whole, a manoeuvre not ill calculated to inspire panic terrors, and rob the poor multitude of their little remaining stock of common sense.
The Ministry were sensible of the zeal and affection of the people to their Prince. They hoped that the danger of the state might be forgotten in the supposed danger of the Soverign. They hoped that our anxiety for his Majesty's safety might suspend our resentment for the loss of his empire; and that in this general dismay and confusion, nobody would enquire into the merits of that invaluable speech, which had escaped to the sanctuary of Parliament, through so many surrounding perils.
This ludicrous proceeding has a serious moral. Ministers ought not to trifle with the safety of their master. They ought not to presume to make that sacred object the play-thing of their paltry politics. They ought to be as far from encouraging a manifestly corrupt, or an evidently trivial charge, as from neglecting a grave and weighty information. The levity or low cunning which tempts them to such petty arts, have effects that may be fatal. They tend to lessen that horror which used to attend a charge of High Treason. By false alarms they prepare the way for real dangers. They encourage conspiracies by weakening the public belief in them. That man is not without a large share of the guilt of any future, wicked enterprize, who with sham plots and childish stories amuses the public credulity, always prone to believe too much or too little.
I trust that the spirit now rising in Parliament will animate honest men to an enquiry into the affair, without being diverted from their other important enquiries. They will know how Ministers come to sport with High Treason, whilst impeachments are hanging over their own heads. They will ask how they came to deceive into the support of their ruinous measures, men in the highest offices, and the most entitled to a faithful communication? They will ask why they betrayed private trust as well as public confidence? They will ask the Ministers, why, in the last year, they demanded an implicit reliance from their extensive knowledge, and this year argue their innocence from their ignorance? They will call for an account of the treasures, the arms, the commerce, the reputation, the dominion of their country, which have been foolishly squandered, feebly employed, wantonly sacrificed, shamefully tarnished, lamentably lost. When these questions receive the only answers they can receive, and these answers the only reply they deserve, then may there be some hopes of salvation for this country.
VALENS.
POSTCRIPT.
I really do not conceive an object more worthy of a manly and respectful compassion, than a great mind sacrificing its dearest interest and risking even total ruin upon a principle of dignity. But, before a man becomes a martyr to any opinion, he ought to be supposed to have some notion of the merits of the cause in which he gives so painful a proof of his sincerity. If we had not had ten years war with Mr. Wilkes, begun on the principles, and ended in the manner in which that ever memorable war was begun and ended, before our eyes, we might be at a loss to conceive what ideas of dignity our Ministers had conceived. I believe it is generally remembered, that that noble and successful struggle was made entirely for dignity. Our American war was also undertaken for dignity. All the world sees with what dignity it is conducted. All the world sees the dignity which was so uniformly sustained in the Tragi-comedy of
"Majesty preserved, or the Sayre Plot discovered."
The rule of the drama was there intirely well observed.
servetur ad imum
Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet,
never was known a proceeding so perfectly consistent with itself, and with every other proceeding of it's authors.
The court Gazette, at the opening of Parliament announces to all Europe a design of seizing the King in his capital, in the most frequented street of that capital, surrounded by his guards, and in the very act of his solemn meeting of his nobles and his people. Since the grand Gunpowder Treason we have not heard of a more desperate conspiracy. Does any man (out of the ministry) imagine that the personal honour of the King, that the glory of our nation, in a word, that British dignity was enhanced by this public avowal of so daring an attempt on the sacred person of a King, without using any means to punish the criminal, to guard against his farther attempts, or to prevent the terrible effects of such a glaring example of wickedness and impunity?
The reputation for courage and wisdom has hitherto been considered as the only source of dignity. If the danger from this conspiracy was contemptible, it was a poor display of courage to manifest so great an alarm upon it. If deep and serious, it shewed a deplorable want of wisdom in doing nothing whatever in consequence of it.
I am not speaking of the honesty and justice of that measure toward the subject. Of this Ministers may hear at another season. I confine myself solely to the manner in which they consulted the
dignity
of their Sovereign, and his reputation amongst the other Crowned Heads of Europe. Instead of an Object of awe and respect, he is at best held out as an object of compassion; when with all his virtues he could not be preserved from such attempts; and with all the aid of his laws, and all the supplementary authority of his Parliament, he was not able to punish them.
Ministers have no way to save themselves from these imputations, but by admitting that they did not themselves believe one word of that plot, which they announced to the world with so much parade. Had they believed it, they would, they must, have brought it before Parliament. It was their duty so to do. That I confess is not so strong a proof that they would have done so. But it was their interest to have done it; and in the course of things, if they had known matter, that carried even a grave appearance, they certainly would have laid it before Parliament. But they have never opened their lips in either House upon the subject. Even their well trained majority was not to be trusted with disgracing themselves by the adoption of so foolish and so foul a scheme.
One
act of public disgrace is merely ministerial, and has not been communicated with Parliament.
If they have been silent in Parliament, have they opened their mouths in the Courts of Justice, were this daring attempt, (if it ever had birth,) ought to have been pursued to the death of the bold and bad contrivers? So far from pursuing Mr. Sayre in a Court of Justice, they were not to be provoked to a word of justification of their conduct, when Mr. Sayre brought them there by claiming his right of standing in his country like other innocent men, free from charge and free from bail.
These abortive plots tend to disgrace the Crown, the Law, and the Magistrates of England, with other states. They tend to render the King jealous of his people. In whatever light they are viewed, they are at once ridiculous and alarming.
But our worthy representatives have looked on with perfect indifference. To them the wisdom, or the folly; the reality, or the falsity of the plot; the danger of the King, or of the subject; the base neglect of the ministry in dropping, or the scandalous diligence in beginning, the prosecution; the honour of the national wisdom, or the national justice; these are matters in which they have no concern. This is an improvement in the fashionable
nonchalance
and inattention in modern good breeding. One would have imagined that common civility should have induced a Parliament, so versed in polite address, to make some enquiry how his Majesty had rested after such an attempt. The circumstance, of the attempt being made on a visit to them, might have called upon them for some sort of notice. But times as well as countries have their customs.
LETTER VII.
TENURE OF OFFICE.
Saturday, November 18, 1775.
MR. MILLER,
THE Duke of Grafton has been removed from the Office of Privy Seal. The mere removal of a Minister is a matter of little moment to the people. But the cause of his removal may be of the highest importance; as it is frequently the surest and strongest indication of the system of politics which predominates at Court.
The offence given by the Duke of Grafton is known to all the world. A person of the highest rank in the kingdom, in an office of the highest rank in the State, very lately first Minister of State, in great personal favour with his Majesty, closely connected by the strongest ties of affinity, inclination, and interest with a leading part of the administration, and a constant and powerful supporter of their measures.—This man, finding the British empire in America lost by the measures he had implicitly supported, at last presumes to desire some little information in this perilous state of our affairs. He is immediately dismissed from his employment, with every possible mark of displeasure and disgrace.
The favourers of Administration are now acquainted with the terms upon which they are to support government. A great deal of the support not only of well-wishers within doors but even of the Members of both Houses of Parliament, must be implicit. Many matters of detail undoubtedly cannot, some matters certainly ought not, to be communicated. The advantage of having men of great rank and interest in their country, in high station, is this, and perhaps this only: we suppose they have a spirit proportioned to their station; that they look for something else in office besides the salary; that they are entitled to information and explanation; that
they
at least are depositaries of the real secret. On this presumption, the support of such great persons becomes a pledge to the public, that the steps taken by the directing part of Ministry, are taken upon proper ground. When the people at large have reason to believe this to be the case, they are apt patiently to acquiesce in the ruling wisdom. Their confidence subsists unshaken, even among difficulties which embarass their affairs, and doubts that perplex their understanding.
It has been now, for the first time, thought proper to remove the veil that was drawn between the people and the government. We are now informed, that the support of the greatest men in the kingdom, and in the highest offices, is to be as blind and uninformed as that of Custom-House Officer, who by order of the Treasury votes at an election for a Nabob.
Ignorant credulity, passive submission, blind obedience, are the virtues which politicians have hitherto required, and sometimes found—in the mob. Until our happy days, these laudable dispositions have not been thought qualifications for the highest offices in a great empire. At present it is not enough to impose upon the people. The purpose for which one half of the Ministry subsists, is to impose upon the other half. By this happy invention it is, that a Ministry, composed of jarring principles and adverse opinions, is to be rendered unanimous.
A sort of frauds I admit have been often practised in matters of state. The public danger has been often represented much beyond the reality, in order that the fullest preparations might be made against it; because superfluous comprehends necessary exertion; and it is better to be a good deal beyond, than the least degree short of security. But this is the first time that real difficulties were concealed, in order that weak arrangements should be justified; or that feeble arrangements were avowedly chosen, in order to hide a danger of the first magnitude. In former times, whatever little artifices were used, were external. Till now, systematical, internal delusion, and mutual impositions of Ministers, have not been openly professed as maxims of government.
The House of Lords presented the other day a scene as instructive as it was singular. An altercation had arisen on the state of the navy. It was thought extraordinary last year, when the reduction of America by force was resolved on, that the naval establishment should be reduced from 20,000 to 18,000 seamen. It was then thought something unaccountable, that operations of violence should be commenced by a reduction of strength. At that time, however, the first Lord of the Admiralty, in the first assembly of the nation, solemnly declared, that that he
knew
the establishment, as then voted at 18,000 men, to be sufficient for all its purposes. This year, the same person, in the same office, in the same assembly, has declared, that he last year
knew
it to be
not
sufficient.
The species of courage and magnanimity which supports a man in such a declaration, excited no surprise. The character of that truly noble person is perfectly and universally understood. It was the
reason
he assigned for the last year's imposition, that struck every man who heard it. He was obliged (he said) to make that representation to the House, because if he had laid open the real extent and necessities of the service in which the naval power was to be employed, he
"should not have been supported by Lords in high office."
The reason assigned for this gross imposition, on the hereditary council of the Crown who agreed to that establishment, on the Commons who voted it, and on the nation which acquiesced in it, is in effect,
"that if the first Lord of the Admiralty had not deceived the public, he could not have been happy enough to deceive his colleagues."
To seduce us into a war, it must carry the appearance of peace. Our danger must be concealed, lest we should keep out of it, or prepare against it. A civil war is in itself so desirable to Ministers, that we must run into it without either knowledge or preparation. This pious and prudent war was to please, like virtue, for its own sake; and to be recommended, even by the miseries which were to attend it. We must resolve to cut the throats of the Americans, even though our own defeat, even though famine, blockade, loss of reputation, and loss of empire, should be the inevitable consequence. These disasters were to become the pledge of our perseverance in this glorious design. When we should have suffered enough of shame, and enough of damage, in the first feeble effort, it was presumed we should grow sufficiently irritated (not with our advisers but our enemies) to continue in those hostilities which, with information, we never could have commenced; that having been brought into difficulties by ignorance, we should plunge deeper by passion; that feeling we had suffered by weak exertions, we might be reconciled to the strongest; that disgusted with the ill effects of moderate expences, we might set all on one desperate cast, in the wild imagination that with a boundless charge we might either retrieve our error, or compleat our ruin. A timid and treacherous beginning; a bold and desperate progress; a conclusion to be apprehended in the silence of horror, not to be expressed in words!
Avowing this scheme, some of the Ministers have confessed, that they had been deceivers; most that they had been deceived. Those who are not content to be deceivers, or deceived any longer, are not any longer to be Ministers. This is now declared to be the tenure of British administration.
One would think, that country gentlemen had too much of plain honesty, and plain sense, after so public a manifestation of imposture, delusion, and ignorance, to act their part any longer in this tragical farce. Implicit confidence in confessed imposture, seems rather too much. Justice must be done to many of the country gentlemen. Steady supporters of government, they did not mean to be abettors of a faction. When they heard Ministers confess, that the facts were mistaken and the reasonings erroneous, on which the plans of government had been formed for several years past, they thought themselves obliged to look a little more carefully about them. The public misfortunes had taught them to presume less, and to examine more. They thought they had a right, after so many promises broken, and so many expectations disappointed, to demand more explicit information.
They observed, that the person called the Minister, on the first day of the session, was totally undecided concerning the part that he was to act. The second day they heard, or thought they heard him declare, that he would readily abandon taxation, repeal the obnoxious acts, and reduce things to the condition of 1763. A day or two after, they heard him explain himself to have meant nothing like it. The succeeding day he explained away his explanation. One day concession was to set all to rights; the next all depended on force. Sometimes a revenue was to be the true object of the war. Sometimes an American revenue was the wildest project in the world. Sometimes the Americans aimed at independency, and nothing less could satisfy them. Sometimes it was against nature, that they should suffer all the evils of war, rather than not accept of reasonable conditions. Sometimes concessions on our part were to precede an armistice; sometimes the submission of the rebels was to precede all treaty. No two men in office agreed among themselves on the same day; no man agreed with himself for two days together. The beginning of almost all their speeches, was at irreconcileable variance with the conclusion.
Last year a few garbled papers were laid before parliament, and a civil and military plan, such as they were. This year one part of the ministry confessing their bad information, and another their evil intentions, call for a much greater measure of confidence than ever. Instead of laying garbled, mutilated papers before the House, they produce none. The task-masters lessen the provender of their hacks, in proportion as they increase their labour.
Gentlemen call for the advices from America. They are refused. They demand the state of their troops in that quarter. It is denied them. The general outline of the ministerial plan is solicited. It is dangerous to divulge it. It is asked, whether they have any plan at all? Still no satisfaction. The public know nothing, except declarations of innocence, and acts of indemnity; Hanoverians brought in contrary to law, and Russian Auxiliaries never to be brought at all; troops that cannot be raised, and treaties that are never to be executed; powerful fleets and vast armies, of which there is nothing certain but the ruinous expence.
Such was the language and situation of the Ministers, and such the view of affairs, even previous to the late changes. Every thing called on country gentlemen to begin to think for themselves. But there is a further demand on their attention. American affairs are now taken out of the hands of Lord North. That noble Lord's Dartmouth, is removed, in order to mark, in the most distinct and public manner, the total cessation of Lord North's influence and direction in the American department.
A new Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord George Germaine, takes the lead in American business. At present, therefore, Lord North's declarations, retractations, modifications, explanations, and reservations, are wholly out of the question. His Lordship is now to fall back, and, at best, to act only a secondary part. Those who supported administration, as declaring a personal confidence in Lord North, have that ground of confidence taken from under them. If from a sort of hereditary party regard the Tories felt a respect for Lord North's family, I fear, whatever Lord George himself may do to please them, his family does not afford him that recommendation. What then is to be the foundation of implicit trust in the new Minister? All we know is, that he has always shewn a very rooted hostile disposition to America. His Parliamentary prop is Mr. Wedderburne; his private counsellor is Governor Hutchinson. This triumvirate composes the new American cabinet. Some country gentlemen may think it right to support these Ministers with as blind a confidence as that with which they supported Lord North and Lord Dartmouth, until the middle of last week. These new Ministers have been the under workmen of the late Premier. How they came to assume the lead and direction, is a matter of curious, rather than important speculation. But I see no reason for presuming, that those who have helped to cause these distractions, while they were in a subordinate capacity, will re-establish our affairs in a superior situation.
These affairs and times will sift and search the principles of men. Former majorities were very mixed bodies. Many good and quiet men supported Ministers from hatred of bustle and contention; from a suspicion that opposition was at bottom as interested as administration. At length measures speak a language not to be misunderstood. They speak no longer in arguments and conjectures, but in effects. Our American empire is lost; and we know in whose hands that calamity has happened. The Ministers are
caught with the Mainer,
as the Lawyers say. No majority can hide the principals or the abettors.
The true country gentleman will now be distinguished from the courtier in masquerade. The characteristic of a true country gentleman, is his care of the property of his constituents. He will not think that railing at rebellion is a reason for taxing his country, without any account of the past use of his supplies, or any security for their future proper and effectual employment. To tell him that the Americans are defective in their duty, will not be a reason for him to neglect his own, or to suffer Ministers to neglect theirs. He will never believe, that the way of suppressing or quieting rebellion in America, consists in encouraging deceit, negligence, or mismanagement at home. At a time like this, a true English country gentleman will distinguish himself by a constitutional suspicion, and a constant desire of account and information. On the contrary, the courtier in masquerade, like those that compound felony in the news-papers, and advertise for stolen goods, offers his money, and assures that
"
no questions will be asked.
"
It is true that this latter description of country gentlemen, not at all troubled with an impertinent, incommodious solicitude, and teizing curiosity, have received, bountifully and of free grace (for they called for none)
some
satisfaction from the Ministers for all the money they have voted. They were told, with due solemnity, with much pomp, and true oracular gravity, in both Houses of Parliament,
"That there is something in the nature and complexion of this country, which disposes it to be disgraced and beaten in the beginning of a war; that it has been always so; and that as we have begun the American war in our natural and habitual manner, we shall, as formerly, rise from contempt to honour, and from defeat to glory."
I do not mean to derogate, in the smallest degree, from any one particle of this satisfactory account of our past failure, and this solid ground of our future hopes. Let the facts and inferences remain for ever unimpeached. It would be cruel to nibble at the least crum of this comfort. It is indeed the only apology that has been so much as attempted, for Ministers and their supporters. It is the simple and sole account which gentlemen have to render to their constituents at the Christmas recess, of a
Land Tax
entailed on posterity at four shillings in the pound; and a
sinking fund,
alienated for ever from its original purposes, to an eternal but inadequate provision for the interest of growing debts, and aggravated establishments.
VALENS.
LETTER VIII.
HOUSE OF COMMONS SHUT.
Monday, November 30.
Mr. MILLER,
THE gallery of the House of Commons has for about three weeks been shut against strangers, for some reason far more weighty, I must suppose, than the mere accomodation of the few members, who, in this cold season, chuse to shiver on the half deserted benches, or to huddle themselves together, and blow their fingers about the Speaker's chair.
I am told, the Ministers complain, that their speeches are misrepresented; and this misrepresentation is assigned to the House as a justifiable cause for an utter exclusion of their constituents. With all the deference which I bear to the opinions of those gentlemen, I must think they are somewhat mistaken in this method of preventing misrepresentation. The House cannot hinder the members from gratifying the curiosity of their friends with accounts of what passes in the debates. The sentiments and opinions of Ministers, will very naturally be the first object of that curiosity. Passion and prejudice on the one side, and the ill conception of a drowsy and oblivious acquiescence on the other, will, not unnaturally, render the accounts fallacious or erroneous. Thus a material injury may be done to the language of the clearest speakers, and to the sentiments of the most accurate, close, and systematic thinkers. A numerous auditory is therefore the only security against the weak accounts of friends, and the malignant interpretation of enemies. Most men, who would not have their sense mistaken, wish to be their own interpreters; and those who complain that malicious reports are circulated to their disadvantage, cannot object to an opportunity of clearing themselves to the world; for I always take it as granted, that the strangers, as we are called, are not more to be suspected by Ministers of an ill disposition towards them, than many of those, whom it is not yet in their power to exclude.
This fear of misrepresentation being but a poor reason for turning a popular representative into a secret conclave, I rather suspect, that strangers are excluded, not because Ministers are misrepresented, but because they cannot be understood. I have sometimes the honour of being admitted, at a coffee house where the members take refreshment, to a conversation with some worthy gentlemen who always vote in the majority. It must be admitted in their favour, that if they are in the secret, they are perfectly worthy of the trust reposed in them; for they appear to be no more enlightened than myself, with regard to the objects which Ministers have in view, or with regard to their means of attaining any object whatever. In saying this, I would not insinuate a thing so much to their prejudice, as that their total want of information concerning the plans, arguments, and opinions of Ministers, make the least abatement in the zeal with which they support them.
Happily the House of Lords is more accessible. What can be the cause? Is it, that this House, being the great natural council of the Crown, must of course be less in the secret of affairs, than an assembly merely popular? Or is it, that not being accountable to the people at a general election, the Lords are more indifferent than our worthy representatives, about the discovery of their sentiments? Or must we suppose, that the great Ministers there are so much more clear and determinate in their ideas, than the involved Oracles of the House of Commons, that they are not more afraid of being misunderstood by two hundred than by twenty?
In that residence of well-bred, easy, popular manners, I had lately the happiness of hearing a noble and learned Peer, who possesses as great a share of clearness in explaining, as he does of power in guiding the public measures. From him I thought I should have received that satisfaction, which I had in vain sought in other places. I was, however, I must confess, perhaps to my shame, a little disappointed.
Lord Mansfield,
instead of opening new matter to us from his own abundant magazines of policy, thought proper to refer us to
Doctor Tucker,
whose pamphlet I had just bought for a shilling. Doctor Tucker is, it seems, the only person who has put the long agitated question of America on its proper bottom. Whatever many of us might have thought before, we dare no longer treat the projects of that worthy, political, and commercial divine, as visionary. They have received the sanction of the highest authority in the kingdom for station, wit, learning, and abilities. The great author of these projects, we are told, has hit
"upon the true alternative, either to make the Colonies submit, or totally to abandon them, and
then
treat with them for peace, as an independent country."
With great deference, the commercial Divine is in sort of agreement of opinion with this best of all possible Administrations. The Dean (and he is sworn never to be a Bishop,) is of opinion that the Colonies are positively prejedicial to this country, and the connection mischievous. The Dean therefore draws his conclusion fairly—
"Get rid of the Colonis."
—Allow his premises, and his conclusion is just what every man in his senses would draw. If, therefore, the grave Judge agrees with the Divine, he must allow the war to be the absurdest act that madmen ever imagined in their phrenzy, yea, perhaps the most expensive war that ever was undertaken, to insure an object that
is mischievous.
I should hardly have imagined, that a man of Lord Mansfield's real accuracy and penetration, could have been so wonderfully struck with this state of the important question, which now engages the attention of the world. The alternative proposed by the Doctor, under favour, seems not to be a true state of the question; for besides
absolute submission,
and
total separation
there, is in all internal disputes evidently a third method, I mean that of
reconciliation and compromise.
This is a method which, though it seems now out of fashion, has formerly been sometimes mentioned, when nations were involved in a Civil War.
Lord Mansfield in this fine speech, for such it was, strongly recommended a
coalition of parties.
The design is certainly laudable. But so long as he adheres to this favourite
alternative,
the execution, it should seem, cannot be without great difficulty. Whatever may become of this design, surely a great statesman ought to have larger views. Would it not be altogether as worthy of this great person's conciliatory and lenient talents, to bring about a coalition in
empire,
as in
party?
His Lordship valued himself on having brought about the famous coalition of parties in 1757, and he spoke with much complacency of his share in that memorable transaction. He then made his early essays of negotiation, in reconciling the
old
to the
young
politicians of that day; will he now stand forth, in the full maturiry of his wisdom, and reconcile the
Mother Country
to her
Colonies?
I imagine the difficulties in his way will not be greater, though the end will be still more glorious. He will not find England more fond of
power
than
the late Duke of Newcastle
—He will not find America more disposed to
independence
than
Mr. Pitt;
nor her spirit more lofty; nor her temper more punctilious. Lord Mansfield then brought England to unite against her
natural enemies;
let him now prevail on her to agree with her
natural friends.
He then brought the
Tories
to be good
servants
to a Whig government; let him now persuade them to become moderate
masters
to a
Whig
people.
If he can do these things, he may be assured that when he is
When Murray, long enough his country's pride,
Shall be no more than Tully or than Hyde.
POPE.
"no more than Tully or than Hyde,"
the English on both sides of the great Ocean, pacified by his virtues, will to the latest posterity vie with each other in honours to his name. While
Tickel on the death of Addison.
the pealing organ, and the pausing choir accord with the lawn-rob'd Prelate who will mix the ashes of the patriot with the dust of Kings, America, who boasts no cathedrals, and has seen
as yet
no Kings, will, in her plain churches, erect Cenotaphs to his memory; and surely his indulgent shade, then purged from the dregs of all party sourness, will not disdain the simple hymns of a less ostentatious worship; but will look down with a gracious and benignant smile on the annual gratitude of an unpolished people, and the homely commemoration of an independent preacher.
The name of Murray, the pride of every alumnus of Westminster, has led me into this fanciful excursion among the tombs. But to return to the Lord Mansfield,
to his Lordship.
"so known, so honoured in the House of Lords,"
—and to Doctor Tucker.—The learned Lord, as well as I can discern, seems altogether to agree with the learned Divine, in his
state of the case;
and he no where contradicts his
general theory.
But their
consequent plan
differs as widely as pole from pole. The Divine is of opinion, that the possession of America is of no advantage to us, and therefore with a spirit becoming a Minister of the Gospel, as well as a good politician, he is for giving the Colonists (though not with the best grace in the world) that independency, which, according to him, they so much desire to obtain, and which, as he thinks, it will cost us little or nothing to bestow. His ground appears to me to be exceedingly bad; but if he can once establish it, he is far from reasoning ill. His conclusion flows directly and irresistibly from his premises.
The Bon Mot of the Bishop of Gloucester, concerning two Divines, is now rather trite. One of them, whom I shall not name, he said, made his religion a trade; the other, Dr. Tucker, (much to his credit in a commercial country) made trade his religion. Without venturing on so much freedom with the Dean, as his Bishop may be allowed to use, it is certain that next to religion he has applied to this subject with the most diligence, and with very great success. He would have applied with very little diligence to it, and with no success at all, if he did not know that first elemental principle in the criss cross row of commerce, which is—the imprudence of throwing good money after bad, and expending a capital without expectation of return.
Lord Mansfield did not, on that day, explain how it happens, that seeming at least entirely to agree with Dr. Tucker concerning the commercial importance of America, he is willing to exhaust mines of treasure, and to spill seas of blood, to reduce the Colonies to what he calls
submission,
and they term
slavery.
"To compel them to submit"
are words of no precise meaning. To what is it the Americans are to submit? To regulations of trade? If Lord Mansfield agrees with the Dean of Gloucester, these regulations, so far from being valuable, are in reality rather mischievous to ourselves. A war to compel
such
submission, may well be called
unnatural.
Is it to taxation they are to submit? If so, the end and the sole end of
taxation
being
revenue,
that is to say,
profit,
it is, like all other profit, a matter of calculation. If our present proceedings promise at any time to produce a profit commensurate to the blood, expence, and risque, or any profit at all, we then have an object. Whether we are likely to succeed in it, by the means we use, is another question; but ministry acting wisely or unwisely, do, in that case, pursue something.
I attended with all the diligence due to his great abilities, to Lord Mansfield on that his great day, and I must confess I received no more satisfaction from him on the probability of this revenue, than I had received from the House of Commons, whilst that House permitted their constituents to hear the reasons they assign for the burthens they impose.
The nation is not kindly treated. It is docile enough, but the masters refuse to teach. To make a war for
taxation,
without an estimate of
revenue,
is not rational. I say no worse of it. Lord Mansfield should have given this estimate. He has been Chancellor of the Exchequer, or a picture I have somewhere seen belies him. The present Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his business at least, does not seem to be more than a picture; a very faint representation of a great financier. With submission, an estimate of this sort would be of something more importance, and a little more to the point, than this learned Lord's History of American hereditary disaffection. The original sin of the Colonies,
independence,
which, however entertaining, (and every thing from him must be entertaining) was little to the purpose of that argument. But as he chose to dwell upon it, I am sure it answered some purpose; and therefore it derserves a great deal of consideration.
I propose to examine it carefully, if an obscure writer in a news-paper may venture to criticise on the elaborate performance of a person of so much dignity.
VALENS.
LETTER IX.
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE.
Saturday, December 9.
MR. MILLER,
OUR unhappy civil contest, notwithstanding the innumerable evils which it has produced, is attended with some advantage. The state of the provinces, lately our's, is come to be understood, even by Ministers. The utter impracticability of drawing a revenue from America is universally acknowledged. The point of taxation has been over and over again abandoned. It is, however, thought necessary to lengthen the duration, and to augment the rigours of a war begun upon the sole principle of taxation. Having first made war for that object, and that object being found impracticable, we must now provide an object for the war. Here is a demand for ingenuity, and Lord Mansfield steps forward.
The aim of the Colonies at absolute
independency,
is now made the ground of war; and lest the conduct of the present inhabitants should not furnish proof enough for the purpose, they are to be visited with the sins of their forefathers, from the third and fourth generation; and ancient history is to be suborned as the evidence of recent guilt. I really do not relish this method of digging up the bones of departed error, in order to render the fire of persecution more intense against present heterodoxy. I know and confess, that the people of New England were early in their
resistance
to King James. I do not pretend to defend them in
that
act of rebellion; or in that fondness for innovation, which, for any proof I can bring to the contrary, was their true motive for submission to the government of King William. That they did so resist and so submit, is a matter of fact indisputable. But whether the one is, or the other, or both equally are, to be alledged as valid proof of their former desire of
independence,
is more than I can presume to determine.
But something I will beg leave to say upon the whole of this method of historically criminating our provinces. I am very certain Lord Mansfield would not so much as hear of it in his
judicial
capacity; and on this subject, I must appeal from the politician to the magistrate.
In the first place, his Lordship would hardly think it fair to ransack the history of
one,
or at the utmost
two
provinces, and the Journals of one or two assemblies; and on account of every mutinous act, or peevish vote to be found in them, to conclude
twelve
more to be guilty, without citing one single act or vote of any of the twelve to prove the common charge in which they are
all
involved. But, according to the modern mode of proceeding, in the
evidence
we find Massachusetts Bay, in the
sentence
we find the colonies. This little
s,
slipped in as if by accident, forms the small, but venomed sting in the
tail,
that is to be mortal to two million of people. Such a loose method of crimination would do well enough in a news-paper paragraph of a ministerial writer, or in a dutiful and loyal address from a fifth
Such there are among the Addresses the Ministers alue themselves upon.
part of a Scotch borough; but it was hardly to be expected from the accuracy and precision of a great reasoner, or from the equity and impartiality of a conscientious Judge.
The colonies have been (until our late proceedings united them) unconnected and independent of each other. If the history of Massachusetts Bay, or Rhode Island, had been a tissue of rebellions, without one moment's peace or obedience, how are Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, the two Jerseys, the two Carolinas, or even Connecticut, or New Hampshire, answerable? It was enough to make these Colonies responsible for the acts of their own forefathers in a right line, and not to charge them with collateral delinquency, for the offences of the political progenitors of other people.
I am obliged, in the next place, to lament seriously, that Lord Mansfield, in reading the history of even
one,
(the worst if he please) of the colonies, in order from thence to infer the guilt of the
whole,
should not have been able to perceive any thing in all that history besides acts of resistance and revolt. I shall beg leave to remind his Lordship, that until this unfortunate period, that colony (Massachusetts Bay) certainly never did take up arms against the Crown. It certainly did make some provision for the support of his Majesty's government. It certainly did raise sums of money, and very large sums too, at several times, for the public service. It certainly did spill a great deal of such blood as it had to spill, in the quarrels of this country. The wealth of the colony was not equal to ours, nor their blood as noble as Lord Mansfield's. But there is an eye in which the widow's mite is not altogether disregarded, and in which the blood of the yeoman is not without an account.
This total omission of every act of duty, fidelity, or affection, in settling the account even of this colony, is so far from being judicially fair, that in the light of mere history, it must be blamed as defective. If I had observed that extraordinary omission any where but in a speech of Lord Mansfield, I should have taken it for one of the worst kinds of falshood,
"a suppression of truth."
But that omission being his, I am persuaded it arises from any thing sooner than an intention to deceive. I have heard that his Lordship, like other great lawyers in great practice, has frequently employed a brother of less fame, and less occupation at the Bar, in the capacity of, what the cant of Westminster-Hall calls,
"
a Case Hunter,
"
or
Searcher for Precedents.
This more laborious than intelligent instrument, mistaking Lord Mansfield's directions, and forgetting that his Lordship was a great parliamentary Judge, and not a retained advocate in a party cause, produced all the precedents which could be useful towards establishing the charge against the colonies, and according to his low idea of prudence, suppressed every thing which might make in their favour. I should recommend to his Lordship instantly to dismiss his present
Case Hunter,
and to take some other into his service who may be more capable of entering into his real views, and of sustaining the true dignity of his character.
In this plan of substituting hereditary disaffection as a ground for a war, in the room of taxation the original object of it, but now abandoned, I have mentioned two capital errors. The one, that the charge is general, and the proof partial. The other, that the evil actions are stated, and the good omitted. I must beg leave to add a third, of perhaps as much moment as the other two.—That these things are charged as
peculiar
crimes to the colonies; which if they are faults, are faults of human nature in their circumstances; and which, if we go on to consider as crimes, and as grounds of war or of punishment, we cannot possibly enjoy any peace now or hereafter. I will endeavour to explain myself. In countries pretending to any degree of freedom, struggles against exertions of power are not uncommon nor unnatural; and even claims of right on the part of the subject, sometimes better, sometimes worse grounded, are not to surprize us. I suppose our whole civil history is made up of such disputes. If men of a certain description were to be the judges, the people of England would be called to a severe account. Mr. Hume has passed judgement upon many of these claims, even those claims which are now sanctified by (what some statesmen think) the best of all arguments, Success. That great author considers what we now deem the rights of the people, to have been formerly invasions on the rights of the Sovereign; and the struggles relative to them, he pronounces to have been contests, in which the Crown acted only on the defensive.
It is no miracle if a colony, at such an immense distance, with ill defined rights, and under no trifling commercial restraints, should, at one time or other, pass some votes derogatory to the power of Parliament. Did Parliament itself at no time pass votes derogatory even to its own rights? Did Parliament never compliment the Crown with the most sacred rights of the people? On the other hand, did Parliament at no time shew a violent, disorderly, and factious spirit in any of her proceedings?
I believe, if Lord Mansfield sends his
Precedent Hunter
to the Journals of either, or both Houses, to select from such votes matter to ground an attack on the rights of the people of England, as having at some period factiously abused, or servilely betrayed them, he will be supplied with far more abundant, and far less questionable matter for the purpose, than in the Journals, not simply of the Massachusetts Assembly, but in all the Journals of that whole Continent. Yet if Parliament should by any accident happen to come to a dispute with the Crown, or (what is quite impossible) with the people, would it be fair to prove from these resolutions, a long premeditated scheme in that body, either to rob the Crown of its rights, or to establish an arbitrary power in the King?
This learned Lord will consider, on a re-hearing of this cause, that these assemblies are
not
permanent bodies. That for the greater part they have but a year's duration. That an Assembly in ill-humour with their Governor, will pass an angry resolution, which one in a better temper totally disregards; which is, in some time, entirely forgot; which is never acted upon, and never thought of by themselves, or by any body else; until some ingenious persons, being left destitute of any other pretext, choose to put together all these unconnected scraps, in order to make them an excuse for desolating the finest countries, and ruining the most flourishing commerce, by the cruel turpitude, and unprincipled vengeance of a piratical war.
That these kind of votes do not serve as regular principles to influence the conduct of men, we know by our examples at home. Several dormant votes and resolutions, which Lord Mansfield will neither act upon nor expunge, still remain on the Journals of that very House where he so justly sways with an unbounded authority. The Commons have deemed some of them highly derogatory to their rights. The Lords held them necessary to the rights of the subject, and to the preservation of the law of the land. I speak here of the resolutions in the case of Ashby and White on occasion of the Aylesbury election; yet though these votes still remain on the Journals of the House of Lords, who can accuse the House of Lords,
at this day,
of any attempt to support the rights of the subject, or to assert the law of the land—against the pretensions of the House of Commons? Chief Justice
Holt
sat on the very seat which Lord Mansfield now fills with so much more prudence.
Holt
countenanced those proceedings of the House of Lords; and indeed it was his irregular zeal for the law that first gave rise to them. But is it fair, from thence to suppose Lord Mansfield chargeable with these or any other irregular or blameable proceedings, or with the intemperate zeal of Chief Justice Holt?
For the present I submit these few observations to those gentlemen, who some time ago made war with so much eagerness to compel the Colonies to contribute to the support of empire. They were then at war for taxes never to be obtained; let them take care that they are not now at war against an
independency
that never has been attempted. They are on a business of blood;—let them be sure that the evidence is sufficient. They shall hear again upon this subject, which I take to be material to the public.
VALENS.
LETTER X.
IRISH INDEPENDENCE.
Tuesday, Sept. 6.
MR. MILLER,
LORD Mansfield has been lately left alone in the House of Lords.
"All the obliged have deserted, and all the vain."
He, who but a few days before, and with such decided authority, had passed a bloody sentence upon whole nations, has not been able to regulate the trial of one old woman
Alludes to the remarkable controversy between Lord Mansfield and Lord Lyttelton, on the mode of trying the Duchess of Kingston; the House adopted Lord Lyttelton's plan in preference to Lord Mansfield.
. His judicial conflict was with a boy; and he was baffled. These indications of some odd change, though they appear in slight matters, are warnings which a wise man will not disdain to take. They ought, in some measure, to abate the pride of power, and the confidence in favour. They ought to supple the heart, and to make it susceptible of the soft contagion of our nature. They ought to dispose it towards a favourable hearing of millions of people, lately flourishing, opulent, peaceful, and happy, but now doomed to be the harrassed and persecuted object of eternal piracy, rapine, and devastation.
If Lord Mansfield should be found thus softened towards an unfortunate, rejected branch of the English race, perhaps in some moments of humiliation so favourable to clemency, he might turn his eyes on the English stock itself. He might begin to suspect, that the sufferings of war cannot be confined to one side only; and that our own share of these calamities may be worthy of some consideration. He might feel the glory of burning the petty fishing town, Falmouth in New-England, balanced by the taking of
St. John
's; he might think the stealing by Lord
Dunmore,
of a dozen or two of little, honey-combed, iron ship guns from a deserted wharf in
Virginia,
of not quite so much importance as the loss of
Canada.
Though it is undoubtedly some comfort to insult the few Provincial Officers we take, by throwing them with common men into a gaol; and some triumph to hold the bold adventurer, Ethan Allen, in irons in a dungeon, in Cornwall; yet it may be thought not quite so pleasant on the other had, to have the corps of English Fuzileers prisoners of war by capitulation, in Connecticut, though under the tenderest treatment from a mild, humane, and generous conqueror. The famine of Boston (which will vie in history with that of Perusia
Perusina sames.
,) the waste of camp distempers, the slaughter at Bunker's-Hill, the dispersion of transports, the ocean covered with wrecks, our Hanoverian allies perishing on the coast of France, before the eyes of those whom they had lately helpt to defeat; the miserable ruin of the finances of this kingdom, and that backsliding, which after twelve years peace, has let us down into that condition of debt, in which we were left at the end of a war with half Europe—All these considerations may, at a calm hour, rise in an awful series before Lord Mansfield; and, forcing one natural sigh for the distresses of humanity, may dispose him to listen to an humble plea for peace. They may, perhaps, incline his ear to sober enquiry, whether even an imperfect authority is not more eligible than a compleat war? and whether, all things considered, the spoils of America will be, in reality, so much a better thing than its commerce?
Lord Mansfield's argument against the
present
Colonies, from the votes of
one
of them in time
past,
was examined in my last letter.
I shall now take this business in another point of view. For a while I will go along with his Lordship. He shall have granted to him not only all, but much more than he assumes. I will allow that the Journals, not of
one,
but of
all
the assemblies, are full of factious resolutions. Having for argument admitted this, I must beg leave to accompany my concession with a matter of
fact;
which, though it will not at all excuse such contumacy in the Americans, it may abate some degree of that astonishment and indignation, which it seems to excite in a veteran politician, who has breathed the air of seventy winters in our climate, of clear and unclouded virtue.
The Twelve United Colonies have twelve popular assemblies. The number of Members they contain may be as large, within a trifle, as the Parliament of Great Britain. They are probable about five hundred persons. Will his Lordship ask, what
douceurs
are distributed among the whole body of these Representatives; I do assure him, on the strictest enquiry, I do not find that the
twelve
American Parliaments, and the whole
five hundred
men who compose them, receive among them all one
fifth
part of the value of what is held by
one
single gentleman, whom I could name, in the House of Commons.
It is not that the soil of the plantations does not yield the constitutional staple of lucrative employments. But these employments are almost all, with much more propriety, bestowed in aid of a contracted English civil list, and as a support and security to the independence of a British Parliament. They are certainly better bestowed; for I have constantly observed, that all those gentlemen who hold American employments, have been the most zealous of all others against the insolent claims of the Colonists, and the most determined resisters of that factious and interested spirit, which dares unnaturally to insult so gracious and beneficent a government.
If we did not know to a certainty, that not a shilling is spent in England upon elections; and that the emoluments, so liberally distributed in Parliament, have no share in producing any part of that complaisance to government, which distinguishes our age, and puts to shame the stubborn spirit of our ancestors, we might, instead of being astonished at such instances of opposition, be rather surprised, how it has happened, that in popular assemblies so little managed, the opposition to government has not been greater, more frequent, more fierce, and more extensive. So much rich compost is laid upon the highly dressed, and productive soil of a British Parliament, and such attention is bestowed on its thorough cultivation, that these remote parts have been neglected, and suffered to shoot out all the wild weeds of a vigorous, but uncultivated nature. Except insulting reproaches, angry prorogations, sudden dissolutions, rejected petitions, with now and then a challenge
Vide Governor Hutchinson's famous speech.
to dispute on the origin of government, I can find nothing that has been practised to
"tame the genius of the stubborn plain,"
or to mollify the hereditary spirit of independency, that is charged upon the American Assemblies. Under such indolent neglect, and such churlish attentions, I could not positively answer for the mellowness and tractability even of a civilized British Parliament. I should not however conclude, from some sour humours in our Houses of Parliament, that a barren
independence
was the object of their wishes; but that, like pevish virgins, they longed for something else.
Opposition to the authority of acts of Parliament is not a thing new in the dependencies of this empire, nor confined to America. A denial of that authority in much greater extent, had once been very popular in Ireland.
Molineux,
one of their most celebrated authors, (a great natural philosopher like Doctor Franklin) a friend and a correspodent of Locke, wrote a book which is still in request. The object of this book is to prove, that England had no power to make
any laws whatever
to bind Ireland. The assertion is not limited to taxes; it is as broad and general as legislature itself on the largest plan. That book indeed was burnt by the hands of the common hangman
here;
but the doctrines gained so much ground
there,
that the Judges who admitted appeals to England were persecuted by the Irish Houses of Lords and Commons with the greatest rigour and asperity, and obliged to fly in a body to England.
In consequence of this a declaratory act was passed, asserting the supreme legislative authority of Great Britain. Nothing further was done. No troops were sent, or employed to enforce obedience. Time was given for the public ferment to subside. The appeal to the House of Lords in England, was left to find its own way by its own utility; and utility effected that which force could not have effected. The Irish suitors found an advantage in a judicature removed from local affections and local prejudices. At the same time the Irish Parliament was
soothed,
instead of being
bullied.
The leading interests were gained. The stubborn were softened, and the angry pacified. By degrees, as it was natural, the storm was blown over. The Irish Parliament kept its resolutions. England received its appeals. No harsh laws were passed for the purpose of a
test.
No
tax
was imposed for a
trial
of obedience. The question of the right remains to this day open for the declamation of any gentleman in the Irish or English Parliament, and is frequently used with great innocence, as the interest or whim of the orator on either side directs him.
In Ireland it was not only in votes and resolutions of Parliament, that the authority of Great Britain has met with opposition. The resistance to the trade laws by tumultuous violence, has been frequent and often successful. Wool was and is carried off in great quantities; and great mobs have frequently destroyed imported goods in one of the principal cities of that kingdom; while other mobs intimidated officers from preventing an export of prohibited manufactures in the other. It is not long since the exportation of live cattle to England was prevented by violence; a violence at which the Magistrates of Ireland thought proper to wink. Parliament thought proper to wink, in its turn, at that violence and that neglect.
But if Parliament, on hearing of these disorders, had directed the offending Irish ports to be blocked up, until the King should think proper to open them: If, on the neglect of Magistrates (full as chargeable on Ireland as America) an Act of Parliament had violently subverted the corporate rights of their cities: If, on the votes of the Irish Parliament, derogatory to the authority of the supreme legislature, they had violently changed the constitution of the secondary Parliament: If they had refused all peace to Ireland, until the banished Judges had re-assumed their function, and until full compensation was made to them for their losses,—there is no doubt that war alone would have settled our controversy with Ireland, as it must, if we persevere in the present measure, settle our controversy with America.
To this hour the degree of subordination which Ireland owns, is altogether unascertained. Ministers complain that America, in denying our right to tax, has not stated clearly the submission which she admits to be due to the authority of Parliament. But has Ireland ever recognized half so much as America does in her letter to the people of England? Is it true, that in the mean time she is quiet, dutiful, and obedient; and she is so, because this recognition never was required? Her late most extraordinary complaisance to the Clerk of the Pells, and to the Vice Treasurers, those
profitable
servants
Charles Jenkinson, Esq; Henry Flood, Esq; Lord Clare, and Welbore Ellis, Esq; by a late vote of the Irish Parliament, have 3500l. a year each, over and above their expences. The first for life.
of the public, shews that, in spite of her Journals, and the petulance of her progenitors, she can prove as subservient as can be wished to the convenience of administration.
Ireland gives largely to all public services; and what is infinitely more important, to all private jobbs.—Why? Because it is she that
gives,
and not we that
take.
Administration has lately furnished a signal proof of their own opinion of the wisdom of enforcing all the rights of the supreme legislature. It was but the other day (the beginning of this session) that government applied to the Irish Parliament for liberal grants, in order to supply very large deficiencies. One would suppose, from the doctrines of Lord Mansfield and his colleagues, concerning America, that the Minister in the Irish House of Commons, in order to succeed, must have opened his Budget by an high assertion of the rights of the English Parliament to tax Ireland; and that he had concluded by desiring them, on the plan of Lord North's
conciliatory
motion, to furnish such a contingent to the support of empire as Parliament here should think proper. The proceeding of that successful Minister was the direct reverse. Instead of getting the Irish House of Commons to acknowledge this right, he
himself
in effect disclaimed it. He even denied, that the English Ministry ever had asserted it; and he described the speeches on that subject in the English House of Commons (though made by men in the greatest offices)
"as nothing more than the rash language of inconsiderate individuals."
Our correspondent seems to allude to Mr. Rigby and Mr. Charles Jenkinson, who asserted in the English House of Commons the right of the English Parliament to tax Ireland, which assertion of theirs Sir John Blaquiere treated as Valens represents it.—Vide the speeches in Almon's Register.
Having very wisely disclaimed authority, the Irish Minister succeeded by intreaty. If he had held the language there, which English Ministers held to the English Colonies, the Parliament of that kingdom would hardly have been persuaded to lend their troops in order to subdue Ireland in America. The only dependent part of the empire which is at peace, is at peace by Ministry's
disclaiming,
not by
enforcing
our right.—The only revenue which is obtained, is obtained where the power of imposing is renounced. So different, so very different, is unsubstantial theory from sound practice!
I flatter myself I have shewn, that the opposition to the extent of parliamentary powers has not been confined to America. I have shewn, that the denial in Ireland was of a
larger
entent than that in America; and therefore a denial of a
less
extent (confined to the right to tax) could be no proof of a formed design of independency, on the part of the Colonies, if denial in a
larger
extent cannot convict Ireland of the same offence. I have shewn that the Parliament of Ireland never made any formal acknowledgement of the power of this legislature to bind that kingdom; that the power of England there arose from our not pushing every point; and that the astonishing obsequiousness of Ireland at this hour, is owing to our not having made use of any one of those methods of asserting authority, which have been recommended and used in America. All this forms at least a presumption against the utility of such methods.
I hope indulgence a little longer in this humble plea to Lord Mansfield, on the trial of America, for
misprision of independence.
If in the end (what I will not imagine) the Judge should give a harsh charge, the Jury of the public may possibly prove as refractory to the authority of Lord Mansfield, as the House of Peers has been on a late occasion; and though he directs them to convict, they may still with some remains of English firmness, bring in the prisoner Not Guilty.
VALENS.
LETTER XI.
CRIMINAL INTENTIONS.
Thursday, Nov. 2.
MR. MILLER,
IT seems to be in the natural course of things, that men are very rarely brought to a sense of guilt or folly, but through the medium of suffering. We are obliged to the Ministry for having placed us in this school of wholesome discipline.
The misconduct of the present war will by degrees lead the nation into a disposition to enquire into the justice of it. Never was a war more open to an impartial examination of its merits. No Glare of false glory in the execution of our American measures, has hidden the defects, or gilded over the errors of the original plan. We have only to pray, that our instruction may not come too late for our amendment.
I cannot easily quit the opinion, that however bitterly we may quarrel, there is still such a bottom of good nature, generosity, and good sense, both in the European and American part of the English nation, as will at length incline the one to hold out unequivocal, solid,
honest
terms of accommodation, and induce the other to meet those terms (though late and ungracious in the offer) with a cordial and dutiful acquiescence.
"The Americans are at war," (says Lord Mansfield, the great assertor of the plan of hostility) "they are acting on the
offensive
—whether we were
right or wrong,
we must proceed—we must add violence to violence, rigour to rigour—we are not to discriminate the innocent from the guilty—if we do not kill them, they will kill us."
It is really singular that a man in the cool decline of life, bred through the whole course of it in a profession of peace, a Civil Magistrate, a Judge, covered to the chin with judicial purple, and bloodless unspotted ermins, should be distinguished above all others, for a character of hazard and desperateness in his counsels. Lord Mansfield's politics always stand upon a precipice. When he acted with others, in advising the late coercive measures, he alone was under no delusion. His eyes were broad open to the consequences. Knowing that those measures led inevitably to Civil War, he used the fatal expression and auspice of Caesar, when he stood on the execrated brink of that stream, the crossing of which brought ruin on his country. He told the House of Lords in plain words, that
"they had now passed the
Rubicon.
"
This Year he exhorts them to push on that Civil War, in a manner scarcely different from the precedent of Caesar's
—Dum tela micant non vos pietatis Imago
Ulla, nec adversa conspecti Fronte parentes
Commoveant; vultus gladio turbate verendos.
Sive quis infefto cognata in pectora ferro
Ibit, seu nullum violabit vulnere pignus
Ignoti jugulum tanquam scelus imputet hostis.
speech before the battle of Pharsalia. But we are not yet hardened by this inflammatory eloquence into such black and decided enmity, as to unfit us for a temperate examination of his cause and arguments.
"Kill them, or they will kill us!"
—Alas! my good Lord, Englishmen cannot chearfully accept this alternative, which you are so good to offer, until we are thoroughly convinced, that to kill them is not mortally to wound ourselves.
This military adage,
"Kill them, or they will kill us,"
is as proper in the field of battle, as it is misplaced and dangerous in council. When men have the bayonet to each other's breast, there is no time for reasoning. But men deliberating at their ease, are not in that desperate situation. It is not therefore necessary that they should be animated with these desperate sentiments. The business of the Statesman, and that of the General, ought never to be confounded. It is the Province of the latter to consider only how War is to be
made.
It is the duty of the former sometimes to consider how war is to be
ended.
Reconciliation, treaty, negociation, and concession enter into the plan of the Statesman, though not in the operations of the General. If Lord Mansfield's sentiments should prevail as maxims of policy, it would follow, that when men, upon whatever grounds, are driven to draw their swords, there must be no peace until one party or the other is exterminated.
That learned Lord rests much on the
offensive war
undertaken by the Americans, in (what is called) the Invasion of Canada. This he adduces as a proof of their design of independency. If war had been as much Lord Mansfield's study, as it seems to be his inclination, he must have perceived, that it never was, nor ever could be confined to strict defence. The very idea is full of absurdity. When war is once begun, the manner of conducting it, will be such as bids the fairest for success. It concludes nothing concerning the original motive for hostility, nor concerning the propriety or impropriety of making peace.
These Things stand upon grounds totally different; the desire of independency, like every other motive to war, must be judged of by the proceedings previous to that event.
For instance, I can conceive a case, in which
Scotland
might take up arms, Scotland might defend the terms of the treaty of union, even against the unlimitable authority of Parliament, which that treaty, by
"a preposterous parade of civil arrangements,"
certainly does
affect
to limit. I can conceive in argument, that acts of parliament might pass to exclude the sixteen Peers of Scotland from their seats in the House of Lords—or to alter the present happy establishment of the Church of Scotland—or to change her laws for those of England—or on the plea of her increase of trade and wealth, to raise the proportion of their land-tax. I can conceive too the
possibility,
that many Murrays, many Humes, many Campbells, many Stuarts, many Wedderburnes, many Dundasses, and many Elliotts, might take up arms in favour of those limitations of the power of Parliament, which the act of Union
affects
to establish; and not contenting themselves with defending
Sterling,
and blocking up
Edinburgh,
they might enter
England,
and lay siege to
Berwick,
or penetrate to
Newcastle.
But I should not therefore infer, that our Northern Kinsmen, who thus took up arms, were aiming at an
independency,
which would deprive so many of them of the well-earned emoluments, which are the consequence of their connection with England.
If such a case were to happen, I venture to assure Lord Mansfield, that I, and many Englishmen of far other consequence, would hear him plead in favour of peace, and for
those
rebels in 1776, with as much approbation, as we felt when he pleaded for justice against
other
rebels in 1746. If any Lord, heated with faction, or intoxicated with Court favour, should then tell him in debate, that Englishmen were not to look at the justice of the cause—that we must not distinguish the innocent from the guilty—that his countrymen had acted on the offensive—that if we did not kill them, they would kill us!—we might pardon such a Lord his prejudice, from our indulgence to his zeal; but we could never be brought to approve of his temper, or to adopt his opinions.
If another Lord at the expence of his candour and judgement, should chuse to display his knowledge in history, and recapitulate all the ravages of the Scotch from the earliest times; their natural adherence to our natural enemy, France; their fierce struggles for independency, notwithstanding the well-proved rights of our ancient Kings—If a third (for such a load of calumny would be too great for the shoulders of any two ordinary orators) should carry down the story to the present day; if he should state the design of a separate settlement of their crown in favour of the Pretender, from which their Chiefs were brought off with so much difficulty, and at so great an expence; if this odious remembrancer should then revive the memory of the two rebellions since the act of Union, for the purpose of destroying that union, all this might sound plausible to some prejudiced ears; but I think in well disposed minds, it would excite the strongest indignation. I should rejoice to hear the thunder of that eloquence which Lord Mansfield would certainly hurl at the unfeeling sophistry of this unjust, invidious, and plausible kind of argument against peace. He would have the hearts and applauses of all true Englishmen. True Englishmen would not fear that Scotland would be made ungovernable by our lenity; they would readily trust to the fraternal affection of our Scotch brethren for a restoration of lasting peace; and with it, the rich Commerce of that country, and the service and society of those few of its natives, who might not think fit to repass the Tweed, to enjoy at home the sweets of that liberty which their valour had purchased for their country.
In this manner I should reason on a Scotch rebellion growing from such a principle. I mean a rebellion for preserving themselves in a state of freedom; not a rebellion for the purpose of reducing themselves and us to a common slavery. I cannot avoid applying the same reasonings to America. I would endeavour to make peace with both on the
avowed
ground of the war; and I persuade myself, that whatever the language of a few North-Britons about the Court, or expecting to get about the Court, may be, the body of the Scotch nation think and argue as I do.
I have no right to endeavour at discovering by divination the secret motives of any man's conduct; whilst the ostensible are such as may fairly influence an honest and a reasonable man. To support in argument, that independency was the original object of American resistance, we must assume, or prove, that they had no colourable complaint or grievance. Lord Mansfield has too much honour and good sense to assert, that there was nothing colourable or plausible in their objection to their being taxed, in their circumstances and situation, without their consent. The practice on our side may, for aught I know, be reconciled to principles of strict formal
law;
but we all know it can never be reconciled to any principles of
liberty.
The Question is then, whether an attempt to govern them contrary to the principles of liberty, could be a real cause of quarrel, or was so idle and frivolous, as to oblige us to search for some other ground of their conduct.
Whatever the first cause was, or whatever disorders arose from it, the Americans did not go to extremities upon
that.
It is some proof of their not having premeditated a scheme of independency, that they waited for several other grievances before they took up arms.
Boston lost its port, and the Colony of Massachusett's Bay forfeited its Charter—justly says Lord Mansfield, but certainly without charge, evidence or hearing. Men consider the right of being heard, as of some import in justice; if it be not, Lord Mansfield's office must become a finecure. Among other human frailties, men have a natural love for their local constitutions and particular privileges. We must allow that (however merited) the loss of a favourite form of Government will be considered and felt as a very great hardship. Nations have thought an arbitrary and compulsory change, even of habits, to be grievous. A form of government changed, is a matter of somewhat more consequence than the compulsory deprivation of a flapped hat at Madrid, or being stripped of the plaid, and forced into breeches in the
The reader need scarce be told, that in the year 1766 the attempt to oblige the Spaniards by force to leave off a slouched hat that was in use among them, created such a disturbance among the people of Madrid, as obliged the King to fly from his capital, and made it necessary for him to send his Favourite out of the kingdom, who has never returned since. Much less do we suppose it necessary to inform the reader, that the permission of quitting his breeches, and resuming his plaid, is at this moment held out as a bribe to allure the Highlanders into the new levies against America.
Highlands.
The bringing the persons of the Americans to trial in England, by a revival and extension of a Statute of Henry the VIIIth; and the sending them by an original act of George the IIId, to England, to look for justice on any soldier or Custom-House Officer who should commit murder on their relation,—these have also something of the air of a grievance. I shall say nothing of the Act for preventing their Fishery, or of that for prohibiting all intercourse between Colony and Colony,—all these have surely so much the air of hardships (I mean to those who suffer under them) that I should be much less surprised to find a people at length provoked to independency by such acts, than I am to hear them accused of originally scheming that independency because they resisted them. Men are not always ready to humble themselves even before their Creator, and to acknowledge his punishments for tokens of loving-kindness. With men they are more inclined to dispute; and the arguments which perfectly satisfy those who are in haste to inflict punishment, are not quite so convincing to those who are to suffer it.
All those laws (which look severe even in cold reading) preceded the commencement of hostilities, offesinve or defensive. It is not true, that a desire of free subjection is in nature the same thing with a scheme of independence; and we may suppose men earnest to preserve privileges, without rejecting government.
The Colonies, like others who have engaged in wars with their Sovereign, had therefore their grievance. But there the likeness stops; for there are perhaps no instances on record of a people in such a situation, who have persevered with such a pertinacious humility, in repeating their supplications for redress. There are few or no instances of men in arms against the ordinary Authority, who have so long confined their applications solely to their own sovereign. Scarce any, where they have religiously avoided all caballing and tampering with foreign Powers. None where they have so nobly paid their debts to the commerce of that power, with which they were at war. Whatever power we have of subsisting without them, or of acting against them, is owing in a great measure to their desire of avoiding a final rupture with us. Men aiming at independency could never have acted in this manner.
Why, in common sense, should we be more irritated against the Colonist than against other nations? or why should we use other rules to prevent pacification, than we use towards a foreign power? I should be glad to know whether this mode of reasoning concerning old delinquency, or modern ill design, was adopted at the late treaty of Paris? Did the late Duke of Bedford's instructions oblige him to a discussion of the motives of France and Spain for half a century back? I don't find that our Court has received any satisfaction on that head. If the zeal and industry of Sir John Dalrymple, or Mr. Macpherson have made any discovery in this curious mode of negotiation, they will favour the world with a new quarto volume for the information of future Statesmen. In the mean time, I must think, that I do Justice to the late Duke of Bedford (a Man of sense, and a good practical man of business) in supposing that he troubled himself with no idle enquiries that could obstruct the work of pacification. I do not hear that Lord Mansfield has ever accused that Duke of a neglect duty.
But we must not treat with Rebels! What history is it that supplies us with this maxim? Lord Mansfield will allow, that the war against Charles the First was a rebellion; Lord Clarendon, I believe, stiles it by pre-eminence the
great rebellion,
—does the history of that time supply us with no treaty between Charles the First and the people in arms against him? Go to earlier times. How was the contest between Stephen and Henry? Stephen was considered as an usurper, and perhaps he was so. He treated Henry's partizans as rebels; but these harsh names of Rebel and Usurper never prevented negotiation. Treaty and battle went on, as it were, hand in hand; and at last the contest ended in a compromise.
The short and violent rebellion of Wat Tyler, short as it was, yet afforded time for treating, and that too by the King in person. Does the Scotch History supply no instances of treaties between the rebellious Lords and their Kings? All histories are full of them. Government often finds it safer to treat with her subjects, and to yield too, than to risk the uncertain event of arms.
But in all wars foreign or civil, in all disputes public or private, it is utterly impossible to terminate a controversy while one of the litigant parties chuses to assume a sort of supernatural talent of discovering the motives of mens actions; and loftily tells his adversary,
"I dont value your offers and professions. I know you mean what you dont say; and I will not treat with you on the avowed and apparent cause of the quarrel, until my curiosity is satisfied upon the ground of a suspicion which I am resolved to entertain."
I am persuaded that this learned Lord would not argue so inconclusively, or waste his breath upon a point not in issue, if the real object of Ministry was to terminate the dispute. What his Lordship's object is, I who take the liberty of complaining of his faculty of divination, and who am, by no means, provided with the endless line of his sagacity in fathoming the motives of men, do not at all know,—and certainly dare not guess. But the effect of the conduct of his friends in pertinaciously continuing and weakly conducting a war without an object, will inevitably operate to the dismemberment of the British Empire.
VALENS.
LETTER XII.
THE GAZETTE.
Thursday, June 9, 1776.
MR. MILLER,
IN my paper of the 20th of January last, I compleated, to the best of my power, the little plan I had originally formed. I had proposed to take a view of the policy of the American war; its objects; its conduct; and the motives for engaging in it. When this was done, being no politician by profession, I laid down my pen. I resume it for a moment, in order to make a few remarks upon the manner in which the Ministry have handled their's. I have formerly endeavoured to do justice to their merit as Statesmen; I am now to consider their skill as writers.
As all men have their virtues a little balanced by some failings, it is surely a good-natured part not to dwell upon the qualities they are deficient in, but rather to fix our attention on those points of their character, in which they evidently excell. I should think it the cruellest thing in the world to dwell upon Lord George Germain's conduct of the civil war; but I am happy to join with the world in applauding his Lordship's dexterous management of the Gazette.
Whilst under his auspices, and animated by his example, our commanders, by happily
shifting
of their position, by taking the resolution of
evacuating
towns, and by effecting
retreats
without loss, are (though quite in a new way) conquering Provinces abroad; his Lordship is employed, according to the soundest principles of the best critics, in recording their great exploits at home.
Livy has been censured as diffuse; Sallust, Thucydides, and Tacitus, have been criticized for an affected brevity, bordering on the obscure. These general remarks savour of pedantry, and meer literary cant. To judge of the faults or excellence of the diffuse, or the concise, of the perspicuous, or the obscure styles, we must consider well the nature of the subject, and the design of the author. No universal rule can be laid down. Some things cannot be displayed too amply, and too minutely to the public curiosity. Others had better be just touched upon. Some should shine in a glare of light; others should be cast modestly into the shade. Some ought to be proclaimed by the sound of trumpet; others there are, in which silence is the real eloquence.
If you would know how well Lord George Germain has employed all these styles (and this no style) you must consider the end and purpose for which (besides fame and immortality) a Secretary of State condescends to become an author.
The world at large is not aware of the real object of our war in America. The sole drift and end of all our operations there, has hitherto been, neither more nor less, than to dispose of the sums of money that have been raised here. These have been vast; and the dispersion of them has not been so perfectly easy, as the common run of people might imagine. But, by the aid of our kind and disinterested friends, (the London contractors, and the German Princes) the thing may be done. The facility however, of the expenditure, may not always facilitate the supply. A great Statesman, like other ingenious artists, must tickle the ear, whilst he extracts the purse. The mob out of doors love a little good news, though it be at their own cost. A victory is worth a million; and a good bonfire compensates a tax. The wise Minister (like the industrious ant) forecasts the winter, and prepares the mind for the ways and means of the session, by the intelligence with which he entertains us during the recess. In the execution of this plan, he strictly follows the great masters of antiquity.
The polite critic of the Court of Augustus, Horace, was intended by that great Emperor (not so happy in obtaining obedience to his commands as our Sovereign) for the office of
Ab Epistolis.
Secretary of State. Whilst that business was in agitation, he wrote those excellent rules for Gazettes, which have been unaccountably mistaken for the rules of dramatic poetry. A gross error! for what has a Secretary of State to do with
writing
tragedies? Or how can we imagine that Horace, after commanding a Roman legion, and distinguishing himself in war, should condescend to undertake the direction of the opera? The Gazette is the proper business of his department. Besides the observations on style that I have just made, and which I confess I borrowed from this great judge, he makes several others of moment. He advises his Gazette writer to mix his falshood with some truth,
ita mentitur
(says he)
ut veris falsa remiscet.
And he gives his reason, and a very solid one,
Primo ne medium, medio ne discrepat imum.
He recommends it to them to put off, and to bring on matters, as may best suit political purposes.
Ut uunc dicat jam nunc debentia dici,
Pleraque differat, et presens in tempus omittat.
But if facts prove so very untractable, as by no art of mixture or procrastination, to be made pleasant, why then he thinks they are to be totally omitted.
—Quae
Desperat tractata nitescere posse, relinquit.
To exemplify in the most satisfactory manner his Lordship's skill in conducting his Gazette upon these rules, the reader may remember the ample account we had of the exploits of Lord Dunmore. Not one captive piece was omitted of those miserable old cannon, which, until they were to
"open their mouths, and shew forth his praise,"
had slept and rusted in neglect on the wharfs of Virginia. All the pompous display of Livy and Clarendon, were employed to decorate the triumph of this favourite General. After this great and decisive advantage obtained by Lord Dunmore (as far as we could discover from the Gazette) we had nothing to do, but to take possession of a disarmed Province. The gratitude of the nation was equal to the services of the General. His Lordship was immortalized in the Gazette. He was adopted into the sacred sixteen, levees, assemblies, coffeehouses, all agreed (and they were certainly right) that if every Governor had acted with the spirit of Lord Dunmore, we must have established our dominion in all the other Provinces, as perfectly as we had done in Virginia
His Lordship had the honour of being the first Governor who thought it necessary to quit his government, and take refuge on board his Majesty's fleet. His Lordship at length abandoned to the mercy of their masters the wretched 62 negroes, that remained alive out of the 1500, whom his promises and proclamations had engaged to join the ministerial part, and with a few people in a starved condition, fled his province.
.
In the midst of all the joy that arose from such important victories as Lord Dunmore's, so amply displayed, an odd sort of an account arrived. A very brave officer, as brave and as intelligent an officer as any in the King's service, Major Fordyce, with a detachment of our best grenadiers, was sent by this heroic Commander Lord Dunmore, upon a well-planned expedition, to which there were but two small objections. One, that it was perfectly impracticable; the other, that if it did succeed, it could be of no kind of use. Accordingly Major Fordyce was killed. The party was defeated; all the grenadiers slain or made prisoners—What said the lately communicative Gazette? Not a syllable. The Secretary of State had wasted his stock of eloquence in his Panegyric on Lord Dunmore. He had nothing left for the funeral oration of Fordyce. He was as silent as the grave in which that gallant officer and his brave soldiers were laid. And where was the necessity for much discourse? The man was dead; and what did it signify to put ourselves into an ill humour about what we could not possibly help.
This Virginian history is an instance of the diffused stile of the Gazette, contrasted with the opposite extreme of excellence,—the expressive and eloquent silence. The instances of a less violent, but equally judicious contrast, are frequent, and happily mixed in. I will endeavour to recall them to the reader's memory. Without such a retrospect it will not be easy to enter into the true spirit of this exquisite politico-literary performance, which is now the sole source of authentic intelligence, and the only vehicle of our summer's delight and information.
Vide Gazette, December 23.
When the forts of St. John and Chamblé were taken by the Provincials, and upwards of 500 regular troops made prisoners, there was a demand for the compact, close, laconic, style. The Gazette did not altogether omit these events; but with a wonderful energy and brevity, related them in much fewer lines than the shortest article of the capitulation, by which those unhappy troops had surrendered prisoners of war. Of cannon and stores, not one word. These were left to the imagination of the reader. All accounts of the taking of cannon, in the explicit stile, belonged, exclusively, to Lord Dunmore.
We may remember too, that when Arnold made the astonishing march, which will for ever immortalize his name, the Gazette was not absolutely silent. It gave to merit
one honest line;
and in the laconic brevity of Lord George Germain,
"
one
Arnold appeared at Point Levi
Vide Gazette, December 23.
."
Of the taking of Montreal, which place with the whole strength of England and America conjoined, had formerly given glory and Peerage to Lord Amherst—on the part of the Gazette SILENCE;—Col. Prescot, his ships, his soldiers, his stores taken afterwards—SILENCE.
This uniformity of silence, however prudent, and even chastly eloquent, might seem rather dull, and at length begin to disgust. People might learn an ugly habit of looking elsewhere for intelligence. In this distress an event happened, which justified the drawing up the floodgate, and letting out all that flow of eloquence which had been so long dammed in.
Montgomery,
an obscure man, of whom we had heard
nothing
before
from authority,
was killed at Quebec, and his troops repulsed. But unfortunately, even on this fairest of all occasions, we were again sadly at a loss. This happy opportunity was in danger of being wholly thrown away. The question arose, where is the authority for this good news? The conquering General was too closely blocked up, to send a messenger of the decisive victory he had obtained. To take intelligence from the Philadelphia news papers, and to put at the foot of the account,
"
Charles Thompson,
"
(not our
Sir
Charles) and
"
by order of the Congress,
"
was too much. In effect, it was to register a rebellious libel among the consecrated records of office. This was hard undoubtedly.
The difficulty staggered the American Secretary of State. In an hurry a council is called. The Attorney General, in his firm, sturdy, direct way, objected to the measure, He relied on it, that such a step might teach people to put some trust in rebellious publications; and would, besides, totally take away the best, and sometimes only excuse we had for our prudent reserve on most of our defeats, viz. that we had them only from the narrative of the rebels. This had some weight. But Mr. Weddurburne, whose
forte
is dexterity and refinement, observed, that the Congress, as they are a raw, new government, and to that time unacquainted with disgraces, had not learned the art of glossing a misfortune, but had delivered
"a plain round, unvarnished tale"
of their defeat. This advantage is not to be missed. Here (said Mr. Wedderburne) we may dilate at the expence of an enemy. The narrative, as far as it goes, is their own; and our imagination is at liberty to add full enough on this foundation. We cloath ourselves with the spoils of the enemy. We may dress ourselves
"
à la Congrèss.
"
—Danaum
que
insignia nobis
Aptemus, dolus an virtus quis in hoste requirit?
Lord George carried it for his friend the Solicitor's opinion. The Philadelphia Congress Gazette supplied the materials for our's; and here, (but at their expence) we expatiated again. The stunted Gazette once more shot out into a full luxuriance of narrative.
This mode, however, of borrowing an enemy's account is too ticklish to be adopted as a regular practice. Then came in the great delicate point in all human affairs,
"to know when to leave off."
For, unluckily those exotic Congress News-papers began to shoot out some things that would not bear transplanting, and were not at all adapted to flourish in the soil of the London Gazette. The taking, for instance, of Brigadier General Macdonald in North Carolina—the killing Colonel Macleod—the defeat of 1500 of our Highland troops, and the disarming of the whole party;—although all undeniably true—was not proper stuff for a London Gazette.—The expedition of General Schuyler into the Indian country, although equally certain—the capitulation of Sir John Johnson—the making him a prisoner on parole—the submission and laying down their arms by 600 of our loyal subjects (Scots and Tories) and the compelling some of our natural allies, the humane Savages of the Five Nations, to lay down the hatchet—these accounts, one sees at first sight, could by no art be made fitting for the Gazette. Of these, therefore, nothing was said.
The end of writing is
et prodesse et delectare.
In a paper where the profit of Ministers, and the delight of the people, were to be the great objects, it would be a piece of downright absurdity to mention such things as cannot possibly tell to the advantage of the one of the parties, or afford any sort of satisfaction to either of them.
Mr. Miller, I find it impossible to do justice to the merits of Ministers, as Historians of their own exploits, in a single paper. The subject grows upon me, as the matter rises in dignity, and importance. Reserving therefore the inimitable beauties of the Boston narrative to another time, I shall for the present satisfy myself with remarking, that the naval part of the war, though probably it comes from another quarter, is related on the same principle, and with no less perfection than that, which is carried on upon the
Terra firma.
One of our men of war returns home rather in a shabby condition. But what does she come home for? In reality to bring the news of her own escape from the Americans. Since our affairs are in that pleasant situation, that retreats are
happy shiftings of position,
and, that escapes are to take rank as victories, it becomes necessary to display this eminent advantage at full length; and it is accordingly related at large in the true technical style, and with all the elegant perspicuity of the nautical dialect. The Gazette, so lately on the reserve, here becomes prodigal of information. We have, on the escape of the Glasgow (for the first time) an account of Commodore Hopkins's squadron; the number of vessels; the number of guns; the number of men; an account as exact as if we were furnished with it from the Navy Office of Philadelphia. The state of the British Navy was refused on the motion of a Marine officer in Parliament, last session. Amends are now made by a precise detail (given gratis) of one of the American Fleets. We have the satisfaction to find that this navy is in shoal water, (but safe enough) in New England. In the late war, the escape of one of our stout frigates, built and furnished for war, from a little squadron, consisting of a decayed merchantman, with a sloop and schooner or two, hastily and ill fitted into privateers, would scarce have deserved a long laboured account in the Gazette. But things are altered; Mr. Pitt
was,
Lord George Germaine
is,
Secretary of State.
In this last piece we are furnished at one and the same time with a curious example of the various excellencies of the full display, and of the judicious reserve. The Gazette, which knows so minutely every gun in Hopkins's fleet, and its weight of metal, says nothing at all of this fellow's carrying his convoy, and the military stores with which he was heavily laden, safely to the place of their destination: Nor does it know, that he had taken a transport and tender in his Majesty's service. It even omits a piece of good fortune of the Glasgow, whose shot in the very first broadside damaged Hopkins's rudder in such a manner, that his ship lay for two hours incapable of pursuit or fight.
To compleat this account of the American Regatta, made for our special amusement; by the same use of light and shade in the narrative, we are informed that a great number of ships and
vessels
have been taken. By this judicious choice of terms, the number is as effectually swelled by the seizure of a cock boat, as by the taking of the largest ship that ever sailed in the Virginia trade.
As to captures made on the part of the Americans, we might conclude from the prudent silence of the Gazette, that there were absolutely none. If it were not for an impertinent tell-tale in the city, called Lloyd's List, (who, in all good policy ought to be silenced) we should never have guessed that above FIFTY transport ships had been taken by the Americans;
The number has since been very much increased, the Portugal trade has suffered not a little, and the Newfoundland trade has not escaped; these rebellious privateers take our ships upon our own coast.
the ships themselves, exclusive of the cargoes, of as much value at least as the whole of the prizes taken from the Americans.
In a word, whether by land or sea, we are scarcely intitled from
authority
to believe, that one misfortune has happened in the whole war. All is Glory, Success, and Victory. Yet Thirteen Provinces are lost.
VALENS.
LETTER XIII.
SHIFTING OF POSITION.
Thursday, July 11, 1776.
MR. MILLER,
THE emission of authorised news-papers is an homage paid by the most despotic powers to public opinion. By the sending abroad Gazettes, they tacitly, but fully admit two very material points. First. the right of the people to be informed of the state of national affairs. Secondly, the influence of popular judgement on their own fortune. They know it would be an enterprise too desperate, to think of keeping the people wholly in the dark.
We are apt to entertain rather too mean an opinion of the spirit and understanding of our neighbours. There is not a nation in Europe so servilely passive, as to abandon all concern about its own welfare; and to give a credit absolutely unlimited to its administration. It is true, that the people under despotic governments, have it not in their power to take a
legal
vengeance on those who abuse their trust, or to remove those who shew themselves unequal to it. This is the grand defect of their scheme of government. But nature sometimes supplies the place of law, and their illegal sensibility frequently takes a severe vengeance on those, who confiding in the weakness and imperfection of the constitution of their country, presume to act in violation of the spirit of all laws. Even when such a people are not able to punish an unskilful state actor, their voice is generally sufficient to explode, and hiss him from the public stage.
We have seen not long ago, that the same King of Spain, who with an high hand protected, promoted, honoured, and rewarded Don Francisco Bucarelli, although he was impeached of high crimes and misdemeanors, even from the throne of Great Britain itself, was obliged to dismiss and banish the Marquis of Squillace, his Favourite and Prime Minister, to appease the discontents of the people of Madrid. The same King was but the other day obliged, on account of the displeasure of his subjects, to dismiss and remove from Court the Condé O'Reilly, a Minister and a General high in his favour, upon his failure in an enterprize against Algiers.
The King of France, on the discontent of a part of his people, and the ill success of some financial projects, dismissed, Monsieur Turgot, as he had raised that Minister, to gratify the opinion of his subjects.
Ministers in other countries finding themselves obliged to humble their pride before their necessities, do not venture to keep all information from the people. On the contrary, they affect to supply them with it very liberally, and very honestly. Possessed of the only source of authentic intelligence, they indeed gloss and varnish, but never attempt grosly to misrepresent, much less wholly to conceal. Even at Constantinople, the Minister stands in awe of public opinion. Not having a press there, the government keeps in its pay a set of walking Gazettes (somewhat like our Court runners) who mount on a stool in Coffee-houses, and entertain their grave turban'd hearers with an account of the designs of the Court of Petersburgh, or the progress of the rebellion in Egypt.
As a nation declining from greatness is the most mean, and a people sinking from freedom are the most eminently servile, our Ministers think this is a fit season for an experiment, to find out the
maximum
of human patience, submission, and passive-obedience. Their proceedings in the Gazette, with regard to the late war in New-England, shew what progress they have made in that experiment.
From the begining of our present troubles, our hopes and fears were all engaged at Boston. This was the heart and vital spring of all disorder. It was not so much the metropolis of America, as the head-quarters of rebellion. Boston accordingly became the object of all our civil regulations for several sessions, and of all our military operations for two years together. Our eyes were never a moment turned from it. Expectation panted on every Western breeze—when the Gazette suddenly announced to a longing and anxious people, that General Howe had
taken a resolution
to evacuate Boston, and was actually on his way to Halifax. Habituated as we are to every thing extraordinary, the easy brevity of this account did excite some degree of surprise. There was nothing in it which could give you the least idea of war, or warlike operations. It was delivered with as easy and careless an air, as if the story was nothing more than that a corps had changed their country quarters; just as if General Howe's regiment had shifted their quarters from Boston in Lincolnshire, to Halifax in Yorkshire. And this is all the satisfaction that the nation has ever yet received for six millions expended, and the last town in thirteen Provinces lost.
Lord George Germain's experiment on the temper of the people of England was made, and it answered. This proud and jealous nation bore that treatment with a patience, that would have shamed the hired credulity of contented cuckoldom. Those who would have imposed Ovid's Metamorphoses for articles of faith, never presumed so much upon the weakness of the human understanding. A more perfect passive-obedience was never preached by interested priests, for the practice of the credulous laity. A Turk, blinded with the smoke of tobacco, and dozed with opium, would have pushed his live Gazette from his stool, and kicked him out of the Coffee-house, if he had dared to give this account of the evacuation of Ockzakow or Bender. Even the foreign Gazettes, skilled and practised as they are in the trade and mystery of intelligence, stood in astonishment at the bold push of their dear brother of Whitehall; and publicly avowed their amazement at this new political phaenomenon.
Vide Hague Gazette.
That noble and venerable body, in which a Minister of State
The Earl of Sandwich, the First Lord of the Admiralty.
lately boasted that he had concealed from them, and from his own colleagues, the true state of their affairs, lest they should be slow in entering into a civil war, they of course desired to know nothing. They looked on the proceedings of their Minister, as on the feats of Mr. Breslaw, in which a knowledge of the slight would only spoil their pleasure in the deception. Both Houses are coolly and deliberately acting their part in this great work. Declaring themselves totally indifferent about every part of public duty, and even destitute of common human feelings, they are preparing to make their country as indifferent about the existence of Parliament itself. Several worthy and diligent Members already shew themselves heartily tired of parliamentary attendance. They imagine, that with
their
talents they might
get
as much under any other form of government as under this, with an attendance less fatiguing, and a far lighter expence. They think a Minister's levee room, has as wholesome an air as St. Stephen's chapel; and that the domestics of a Court Favourite, are a cheaper object of bribery, and full as worthy an object of adulation, as the scot and lot of a venal borough. Perhaps they may be in the right.
On occasion of this real
Gazette Extraordinary,
the Earl of Suffolk, one of his Majesty's principal Secretaries of State, discovered some marks of good breeding; though he does not come quite up to all the graces which Lord Chesterfield requires as qualifications to office. He has, I suppose, some remains of complaisance to that minority, in which he made so flaming a protest against his present associates. In condescension to the weakness of the Lords in opposition, he submitted to tell them the reason why he told them nothing. He lamented in the most pathetic strains to his noble audience, the necessity he was under of not producing any part of General Howe's letter; for (he said) "the account of the retreat was so mixed with matters that went before, and operations which were to follow after (very improper to be publicly known) that he could not possibly disentangle them; and that thus he was disabled from doing justice to the incomparable merits of the General, who had made so happy
"
a shifting of position.
"
Every thing has its place, and in the House of Lords
this
gave satisfaction. We the rabble below the bar, however, thought it odd; that what had passed
before
General Howe's retreat should be concealed from us, since it could never have been concealed from the enemy. Perhaps what went
before,
might be the cause of the retreat that followed
after.
If indeed this preceding cause should consist in some batteries too fierce to be borne, and too strong to be forced, this I admit was a good reason for concealment. We ought not to know that the rebels have any cannon since Lord Dunmore seized all their artillery; or that they know how to erect batteries, or that they have courage to defend them.
The other part of the reason for concealing the account of General Howe's retreat, I must beg leave to observe, is not quite so honourable to the clearness of head of that General, or demonstrates so fully as one could wish, the calm situation of one who makes an undisturbed retreat. So perplexed and involved (if we believe Lord Suffolk) was General Howe's account, that the Secretary of State's office, in full practice of garbling papers for the diversion of Parliament, was not able to unravel the complicated texture of the commentaries of our American Caesar, or to give one particular of his proceedings for several months to the hour of his departure, without disclosing all the secrets of the coming campaign.
With all due deference to my Lord Suffolk, I do not believe so ill of the abilities either of General Howe, or of his Lordship. I can never believe the alledged confusion of General Howe's ideas, to be the real reason for concealing from us every single circumstance of his precipitate dereliction of the precious purchase of millions. His Lordship told the Peers, that this confusion disabled him from doing justice to General Howe's merits. Under favour there was no question of that General's merits. We are very sure that
He
did his duty, and that He gave an account of it naturally and clearly. This concealment was never for his sake, or the sake of his operations. But for whatever purpose this account of Lord Suffolk's was given, it could answer no rational end. If we could believe this account, the friends of the war would be obliged to entertain but gloomy hopes of its future success. Partial as they are to the authors of civil contention, they must condemn the Minister for committing the fortune of their pious quarrel into such hands. To admit their plea in the justification of their Gazette, is to find a verdict against the wisdom of their Cabinet.
No sooner had that Gazette notified to us that General Howe had
taken this resolution,
than we were entertained with verbal comments upon it, more curious than the original text. The Ministry assumed a face of joy equal to that which would have attended the most decisive victory. As soon as Boston was evacuated, Boston at once changed its nature. It no longer stood under the same parallel of latitude. It then became the worst chosen spot on the whole continent for the operations of war. We were too happy in getting rid of it. The Americans were anew charged with cowardice for letting us escape. The Lords publicly congratulated each other on having shaken off so intolerable a yoke.
In this exultation they forgot one trifling circumstance, which somewhat regards their credit for the present; and may perhaps a little affect their safety on some future day of account. Suppose a spirit of enquiry should arise, and it should be asked, who were they who brought his Majesty's army into a place from whence it was a triumph to escape? If Boston was not a spot worth holding for its own sake, or for its convenience for other operations, why did the troops continue there for near two years? Why were they reinforced day after day, and regiment after regiment, for the defence of that place, until they amounted to upwards of 12,000 men? Why were four Generals sent to command them? Why was the Ordnance Office emptied to defend Boston? Why was the sinking fund swallowed up, only by its military
extraordinaries,
which amounted to upwards of 850,000l.? Why were 60,000 ton of transports employed in that service? Why was this nation almost starved to feed that town? Why was a fleet commanded by a succession of British Admirals, and at an incredible expence stationed in its harbour? Why was so much brave blood shed at Bunker's-Hill to prevent its being insulted? Every shilling spent at Boston is a peculation of public money; every life lost there is a cruel murder, if Boston was not a place worth preserving. To exhaust yourself in defence of an object that is not worth having, or not to take sufficient means of defending an object of real value, are both of them crimes. If there be any difference, the first crime is the worst; as it is worse wholly to mistake the end, than to miscalculate the means. It is, however, for this capital blunder, that the Ministers claim the applauses of their country. According to this rule, the merit of our Generals is to escape from the place where the providence of our Ministers had stationed them; no hopes are entertained by themselves of the war, if all its plans are not wholly reversed in the execution.
Such is the case on their own representation, which is worse than the most malignant adversary could have stated it. But as they are poor in counsel, the Court must not record the plea. General Howe did not abandon Boston, because it was a place ill fitted, and never went to Halifax, because it was a place well fitted for a center of military operations. The Ministers of the Gazette suppose we know nothing of American geography, when we are told that in order to direct his operations on the
middle
colonies, General Howe fled to the very extremity of the
northern.
It is neither more nor less than to tell us, that a General in London, who intended to attack Dover Castle, would find it his best way thither to march his troops from hence to Edinburgh.
I was at first at a loss to know how the Ministry could give into this apparently insolent and unfeeling discourse. How they could think to glory in their shame, and to defend themselves by the very circumstances which aggravate their offence. But on putting things together, it may be accounted for. It was to prepare the minds of the people for the events which in spite of any favour of fortune, must inevitably follow from the course they have pursued. They have told the public that Boston was worth nothing, because they were not able to keep it, and had no hopes of recovering it. If they find that the nation can be persuaded to make violent efforts, on a supposition of the value of the object, and then to take comfort on their failure, from a consideration of its insignificance, all they wish is effected. They have already, by many speeches and publications concerning the Colonies, been preparing the public for the loss of the whole. They are already spreading with infinite diligence, an opinion that extensive empire is mischievous, and that the vast acquisitions in the east and west corrupt our minds, and weaken our industry.
This is the consolation they hoard up for us against the day of our bitter distress, when we shall have undone ourselves in an attempt to ruin our countrymen. Stripped of her dependencies, the nakedness of England is to be covered with the tattered cloak of a compelled, beggarly, Cynic philosophy. The loss of glory and dominion are to be compensated by dull, common-place observations on the instability of empire, and the emptiness of all human honours. Our Ministers of State are preparing themselves to become ministers of the church, and to preach patience and resignation to a tractable auditory, reduced at length to a real Christian humility, and to a true poverty of purse and of spirit, by the salutary operation of their councils.
Hitherto they have done every thing to bring us to the state for which they are preparing us. But if the events of war should belye their plans; and if the bravery of General Heister and his Hessian troops, should recover what British valour (under the direction of our Ministers) could not keep, it is then that in their success the mischief and weakness of their plans will appear in full lustre. The sunshine of fortune will only display, in a glare of light, the inanity of the object for which the Ministry and their German troops are contending.
The Colonies, in all the submission of disaster and defeat, will prove full as unfruitful of the revenue for which we are at war, and which alone can pay for that war, as the same colonies in all the heighth and insolence of successful resistance. Then it will appear that the Ministry and their runners were not idly employed when they told us the Colonies are of no advantage to this country. This will be the event when Lord George Sackville's Gazette shall have satiated us with the pompous narrative of the victories obtained by the troops of the Duke of Brunswick (disciplined by Prince Ferdinand) over the miserable English on the other side of the water.
Until that glorious day, announced with such singular propriety, arrives, when the Gazette shall flow in as copious streams as the Weser or the Elbe, its scanty current continues to be directed so as to fructify the proper plants, and to starve the rest. In my last paper I remarked on the manner in which the Secretary's Office communicates and witholds intelligence. They profit of my praises; and so encouraged, they persevere religiously in the plan, for which I had commended them.
In the Gazette of the 29th of last month, Lord George copies the best of examples, himself. In the last war the captures of merchant ships was never the food of the Gazette. But now a Secretary of State serves up an account of the taking of 26 ships and
vessels
of the rebels, exactly on the principles I stated in my last letter; but not a word of the transport loaded with arms and ammunition that these rebels have taken.
His Lordship has, on the same principles, carefully avoided all mention of the arrival of Sir Peter Parker and Lord Cornwallis at Cape Fear; although he has certainly received an account of that event; and although it might be thought that the public would feel some degree of anxiety concerning the fate of so great a fleet and army, which had been considered as lost. The production of the
credit
side of the account of
captures,
with the total silence on the important expedition of Sir Peter Parker and Lord Cornwallies, shews, that the Minister considers the whole people of this once great country as the mercenary inhabitants of some little sea port, some nest of fishermen, smugglers, and pirates, such as Dunkirk, St. Sebastian, the Isle of Providence, or any other dirty hole at home or abroad, where they are in high spirits on hearing of the arrival of some miserable plunder, but are totally indifferent to all the great and important operations of war. It must give the Minister heart-felt pleasure if they should find that the spirit of the late act for animating the exertions of the navy by the holding out the plunder of their fellow citizens, is grown as diffusive as they could wish, that the whole nation feel in the same way. If this should be the case, one act of theirs has not been made in vain.
VALENS.
LETTER XIV.
PROSPECT from SUCCESS.
Tuesday, Nov. 5, 1776.
MR. MILLER,
IT is now the third winter since the commencement of the present natural and auspicious war against our Colonies. It is, I think, so long since General Gage was sent to Boston with a fleet and army, together with a heavy train of artillery, formed of the well-tempered metal of those sound Acts of Parliament, which were to batter down all resistance to the authority of British Government. For the greatest part of that period our expences were continually on the increase, and our hopes continually on the wane. At length news arrives, as unexpected as it is satisfactory;—that 25,000 Hessian and British troops, with the aid of a squadron of men of war, had surprised 7000 Provincials out of their intrenchments, turned their flanks, and thrown them into confusion; on which their lines are abandoned, and the city of New-York left exposed and untenable.
This news arrives in the very nick of time, as if it had been bespoke. It is done to a turn. It came just at the meeting of Parliament. Without it Ministry had been sadly at a loss. Without this victory, the expulsion from Boston, the repulse at Charles-Town, and the petty defeats in almost every creek and harbour of North-America, together with the capture of so many valuable merchantmen in the seas of the West-Indies, and even of Europe, would have furnished more suitable matter for an impeachment of Ministers, than a speech from the throne.
I have heard, that as this news did not arrive early in the season, the speech, as first prepared, was (as in reason, it ought) written in a very different style from the present. The expressions were at least as gracious to the English subject here; and the epithets not nearly so high seasoned with regard to those on the other side of the great water. There was not a word of treason in it. It expressed, according to report,
some
disposition to concede and reconcile, of which this speech shews no signs at all. But on the whole, it was as fine a performance in the tender and pathetic style, as the present is in the grand and lofty. It is a pity we are not favoured with the first sketch; for Ministers, like poets,
—Lose half the praise they would have got,
Were it but known what they discrectly blot.
Victory has deprived us for ever of that fine composition. It has, however, made full amends. This victory, and the effect of it, is most happily and ably described in the present (not evasive and hypocritical) but clear and ingenuous, as well as most gracious, humane, and merciful oration.
"The success in that province (says the speech) has been so
important,
as to give
the strongest hopes
of the
most decisive good consequences.
"
I suppose the royal and noble authors of this finished performance, are so intent on enforcing the laws of the land, that they quite forget those of grammar; and are so eager about breaking stubborn heads, that in their hurry they mistake Priscian for Yankee. I therefore make no remarks on the construction of this sentence. I am carried away by the higher beauties of the performance. I am sensible that it was fashioned on the principles of the sciences now in the greatest estimation. Writers have done much for gardening. Gardening again has paid its tribute to literary composition. This rural science even Kings do not disdain to cultivate. One of the leading principles in this modish gardening, is, as Pope expresses it,
"Decently to hide."
All must not come upon us at once. We are to be on the very edge of the skulking
haha,
and ready to tumble into it, before we are to be put on our guard. This the rules of the art require; and the principle is transplanted into the speech. Had that speech bluntly and plainly told us, that the action was decisive, the terms would be well enough understood; that is, decisive of the fortune of war; but then (observe the judgment) the main point would be lost. For we should immediately begin to think of enjoying the revenue of the conquered country, and of some sort of oeconomy in regard to our own. On the other hand, had the Ministry, who are equally communicative through their goodness, and reserved through their wisdom, held out no hopes at all of an end to that business, this nation would hardly be persuaded to go on this journey with her usual alacrity. But here we have a new phrase to express a new situation.—What
"
an hope of decisive good consequences
"
means, I do not perfectly understand; though the words are brave words, and certainly very pleasing; because hope, decision, and good consequences, are always agreeable sounds to well-tuned ears, let them be placed or connected in what manner they may. What the good consequences are—when they will probably happen—from whence they are to arise—or how far they are to extend, we know not. All this lies wrapt in clouds and darkness.
But for this obscurity we are soon made ample amends, and the whole is cleared up in the next sentence. We lost sight of the building in the mazes of the serpentine walk; but we catch it again in a very agreeable manner; it breaks in upon us with double effect.
"But notwithstanding this
fair prospect,
(says the speech) we must at all events prepare for
another
campaign."
Thus the riddle of the
"
decisive good consequences
"
is solved. It signifies neither more nor less than this; that we are in an happy train of spending twenty millions this year in addition to the fifteen millions which we spent in the last. I heartily congratulate the Ministry and my country on those
strong hopes,
and those
decisive good consequences.
If defeat entitled us to spend fifteen millions, it is certainly reasonable that victory, as it is more worth, should be more expensive. This is indeed at length distinctly promised, though in terms rather unusual;
"
This important consideration
will necessarily be followed with
great expence.
"
—With submission, I fear, that all the
great expence
incurred and likely to be incurred, has arisen from
want
consideration.
The next paragraph of the speech is full of hopes too. It has likewise its windings and mazes.
"The assurances of amity from the several Courts of Europe"
are not (it seems) now for the first time given,—but his Majesty
"
continues
to receive them."
You would naturally expect, in consequence of this uniformity of faithful assurances, that his Majesty's mind still rested in the same perfect repose it has hitherto enjoyed on that soft cushion of state from the beginning of these troubles. From these assurances, nobody living, I am persuaded, could expect the conclusion, which comes on you like a stroke of thunder,
"
that it is expedient in the
present situation of affairs,
that we should be in a respectable
state of defence at home."
It seems then, that the effect of
royal
assurances (I mean from abroad) is to lessen confidence in the direct ratio of their continuance. When I read this, I was immediately put in mind of the good old adage
"Multa levant promissa fidem,"
Which I never saw so thoroughly exemplified before.
In this part of the speech we discover a second point, perfectly worthy the congratulations which our gracious Sovereign has condescended to make to his obedient people; namely,—that we are likely to have a Spanish and French war to enliven the dull uniformity of our civil dissentions."
Such an event we were told last year was absolutely impossible; and what is very remarkable, it was expressly said to be impossible,
then,
for the very reasons given for apprehending it in the speech of this year; that is, from the tendency of the success of America to unsettle the
system of Europe.
If I perfectly understand the expression in the speech, it means, that the success of the Americans would encourage the colonies of other nations, to rebel. Our rulers therefore (last year) concluded it impossible that those nations should give them encouragement. Be this as it may, we know that the impossibility of last year on the principles assigned in the speech of this year, has already cost to our constitution two illegal embargoes; to our credit an heavy fall of stock; and to our finances it will be immediately followed by an augmentation of
Only 17,000 for the present.
20,000 seamen; a call of the militia; an increase of the standing army. These are some of the
decisive good consequences
of "
continuing to receive assurances of
amity from the several foreign Courts; and of a favourite and popular civil war; in which possibility and impossibility, hope and fear, loss or gain, victory and defeat, all alike, as rays from every part of a vast circumference, tend to a common centre, meeting in this one point—Public Bankruptcy.
I believe that those who have addressed so dutifully, and prayed so charitably for the blessing of an American war, hardly insisted on this European war into the bargain; even with all its
decisive good consequences.
But a gracious and bountiful Ministry always gives heaped measure. Perhaps the addressers, though they so chearfully voted lives and fortunes, did not absolutely insist upon giving near a million sterling of their trading property, in order to nurse to maturity the infant naval power of the Colonies; though
after
the loss, the captures have, I admit, given the Admiralty an opportunity of displaying its vigilance and
soresight
in providing convoys. Another advantage, not within the stipulation, and which is given to the addressers of free grace and bounty, is the rise of insurance on the trade! which amounts to a prodigious sum; and is therefore, to all intents and purposes, a
tax
to that amount on the commercial property of England.
I do not know whether the slaughters that have been made and suffered in many parts of America; and the burthens which have been imposed, or are in a course of being imposed at home, are sufficient to satisfy us. I remember it was the language of last year, in excuse for not offering terms to North America, that we could not make peace with dignity until we had given our colonies some heavy blow. Is not this blow of New-York heavy enough for our dignity? We have already sacrificed many millions of our own treasure, a good many lives of the
insular English,
and at one stroke about 3000 of the
Continental English
to that fierce Court-God, Dignity. Is the season not yet arrived when we are to give some attention to that humble, houshold God,
Self-Interest?
But we are,
"at all events, to prepare for
another
campaign."
We do not quite forget, that when 50,000 regular troops, and an hundred ships of force, and such an artillery as never was employed in any foreign war, were sent last year to America, all this vast power and expence was said to be employed in order to prevent hostilities from being drawn out into length, and to finish the war in
another
campaign. But that
second another
is, we see, to produce
a third another;
and thus, as our poet says,
"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow
"Creeps on his petty pace from day to day,
"To the last syllable of recorded time,
"And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
"The way to dusty death."
And thus shall we war on, till after irreparable injuries done and received, we shall, from mere weariness and fatigue, fall back to the miserable, vexatious, and precarious state of peace without reconciliation.
I will suppose America
laid at Lord North's feet,
and reduced to Lord George Germaine's
"
unconditioned submission,
"
yet without the formal establishment of liberty to satisfy and content, or the formal establishment of slavery in its instrument a mercenary army, to awe and terrify, do you seriously, my countrymen, Whigs or Tories, as you may be, do you seriously expect a continuance of obedience?
There has been a great victory at Long Island. Many English were butchered by the Hessians after they had laid down their arms. This, it seems, was proper, and was justified by the law of arms, and shews that a rabble of freemen are not to trifle with Hessian spirit and resentment. Col. Balfour has brought an account of the taking of the uninhabited walls of New York, which were snatched, half burnt, from the fire. Has he brought any account of any thing like a movement towards a general submission in all the Colonies? or even in any one of them? Very far from it. The Hessians must, justifiably, slaughter more men in cold blood; your people must abandon, and in despair burn more of their towns; there must be more mutual rapine of the property of English on English: Thus we must go on—For what? To establish a standing army in America for our ruin, in order to furnish Commissions to the younger Adelphi of antient decayed Northern Families. It can be for nothing else; for I do not believe that any one man living has the folly to imagine that all the taxes to be drawn from America for a century together, will even pay for the repair of New York, so as to fit it, for its only purpose, a barrack for General Heister's and General Howe's army.
The case in short is this. Our war for taxation, in America, has not yet, and never will produce a revenue.
America is not taxed
—but
England is.
America is impoverished, undone if you please, but England is not enriched. The Colonies have now avowed independence. I have ever said, and I think shewn in my former letters, that it was in no sort their original intention in this contest; but that they would infallibly be driven to it by the measures of violence hotly and obstinately pursued, and by the rejection with the same intemperate pertinacity, of every means of reconciliation. But one phrase serves for all reasons.
"They have avowed independency."
They have so; and is it because America has avowed independency, that England must be ruined? can we be quite certain that the offer of terms of liberty, which will cost us nothing, will not draw them from that independency; when we are sure, that offers of slavery, which have cost us millions, have driven them to it?
It would, in my opinion, be wise to seize this first moment of success to do proudly, what long since we ought to have done wisely—To repeal the obnoxious acts—To put things on the footing they stood on in 1763—To unite this country, and to give a justification to your friends in America, for adhering to the free and reasonable dependence of that country on this—This salutary and wholesome end, is not to be effected by evasion and chicane.
"
Means of conciliation,
"
Which makes such a figure in the speech.
one of the new invented phrases, that aims to convey a sense which facts will not support. It would convey to the reader, that terms and conditions of reconciliation have been rejected by the Americans. It is a truth now universally notorious, that no terms have been offered to them. Lord George Germaine at the end of last session, positively and justly declared, that the commission neither had, nor could have powers of giving other terms of peace; except those of pardon on the laying down their arms. It carried simply the power of accepting
"unconditioned submission."
In the dialect of ministers, this is
means of conciliation;
in the language of common sense, it is a declaration of an eternal war. But, to make peace, terms and conditions must be held out; and to satisfy our grand idea of dignity, they ought to be held now, in this first moment of success. For can we affirm, that war, however successful, is not liable to reverses of fortune? No man can say where a spark may arise from the apparently extinguished fire of revolt and insurrection.
In the beginning of these troubles, the majority in both Houses have not been ashamed to vote the rebellion in America, as confined to one spot; when the very same distemper, whatever it was, raged over the whole continent. This was done to instigate a civil war; why should they be ashamed of a similar finesse to restore domestic peace, at a time too when we are threatened with the hostility of foreign powers? Let them now vote, that all America is subdued, and to a people conquered, graciously bestow
"the blessings of peace and the security of liberty."
The success, real or pretended, may, if they please, be made the preamble to the act of repeal and settlement.
If war be not exempt from mutability, even in this hitherto single handed war with our Colonies alone, what will be the consequences of an unfavourable turn in a war with France and Spain united? I would not therefore put my
whole
trust in war, so as to neglect every thing else; lest, agreeably to the ministerial prognostic,) tho' I am far from presuming to adopt the lofty tone of the epithets so becoming them, but so little becoming me,)
"if their treason be suffered to take root, much mischief
must
grow from it, to the safety of the loyal Colonies—to the commerce of these kingdoms;—and indeed to the present system of all Europe."
May treason (since this revolt must be so) never take root from the continuance of tyranny!—This is my prayer. My Lords the Bishops will hardly find a better, in their form for the fast.
You will not be farther troubled on these American affairs by your humble servant, and his country's true, disinterested, and uninfluenced friend.
VALENS.
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