ica. What is your present situation there? We do not know the worst, but we know that in three campaigns we have done nothing, and suffered much. You may swell every expense, and strain every effort, accumulate every assistance, and extend your traffic to the shambles of every German despot; your attempts forever will be vain and impotent; doubly so indeed from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates to an incurable resentment the minds of your adversaries to overrun them with the mercenary sons of rapine and plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty. If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms-NEVER! NEVER! NEVER! But, my lords, who is the man, that in addition to the disgraces and mischiefs of war, has dared to authorize, and associate to our arms the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the savage-to call into civilized alliance the wild and inhuman inhabitant of the woods? -to delegate to the merciless Indian the defence of disputed rights, and to wage the horrors of his barbarous war against our brethren? My lords, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment. Familiarized to the horrid scenes of savage cruelty, our army can no longer boast of the noble and generous principles which dignify a soldier. No longer are their feelings awake to "the pride, pomp, and circumstance of GLORIOUS war;"—but the sense of honor is degraded into a vile spirit of plunder, and the systematic practice of murder. From the ancient connection between Great Britain and her colonies, both parties derived the most important advantage. While the shield of our protection was extended over America, she was the fountain of our wealth, the nerve of our strength, the basis of our power. It is not, my lords, a wild and lawless banditti whom we oppose; the resistance of America is the struggle of free and virtuous patriots. Let us then seize with eagerness the present moment of reconciliation. America has not yet finally given herself up to France; there yet remains a possibility of escape from the fatal effect of our delusions. In this complicated crisis of danger, weakness, and calamity, terrified and insulted by the neighboring powers, unable to act in America, or acting only to be destroyed, wHERE is the man

who will venture to flatter us with the hope of success from the perseverance in measures productive of these dire effects? WHO has the effrontery to attempt it? Where is that man? Let him, if he DARE, stand forward and show his face. You cannot conciliate America by your present measures: you cannot subdue her by your present or any measures. What then can you do? You cannot conquer, you cannot gain; but you can ADDRESS; you can lull the fears and anxieties of the moment into ignorance of the danger that should produce them. I did hope, instead of that false and empty pride, engendering high conceits and presumptuous imaginations, that ministers would have humbled themselves in their errors-would have confessed and retracted them, and by an active, though a late repentance, have endeavored to redeem them. But, my lords, since they have neither sagacity to foresee, nor justice nor humanity to shun those calamities—since not even bitter experience can make them feel, nor the imminent ruin of their country awaken them from their stupefaction, the guardian care of parliament must interpose. I shall therefore, my lords, propose to you an amendment to the address to his Majesty -To recommend an immediate cessation of hostilities, and the commencement of a treaty to restore peace and liberty to America, strength and happiness to England, security and permanent prosperity to both countries. This, my lords, is yet in your power; and let not the wisdom and justice of your lordships neglect the happy, and perhaps the only opportunity.

LORD CHATHAM ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF INDIANS AGAINST AMERICA.

I AM astonished, SHOCKED to hear such principles confessed: to hear them avowed in this house, or even in this country. My lords, I did not intend to have encroached again on your attention, but I cannot repress my indignation. I feel myself IMPELLED to speak. My lords, we are called upon as members of this house, as men, as Christians, to protest against such horrible barbarity"That God and Nature put into our hands!" What ideas of God

and Nature that noble lord may entertain, I know not; but I know that such detestable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity! What! to attribute the sacred sanction of God and Nature to the massacres of the Indian scalping-knife!— to the cannibal savages, torturing, murdering, devouring, drinking the blood of his mangled victims! Such notions shock every precept of morality, every feeling of humanity, every sentiment of honor. These abominable principles, and this more abominable avowal of them, demand the most decisive indignation. I call upon that reverend, and this most learned bench to vindicate the religion of their God, to support the justice of their country. I call upon the bishops to interpose the unsullied sanctity of their lawn: upon the judges to interpose the purity of their ermine, to save us from this pollution. I call upon the honor of your lordships to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country, to vindicate the national character, I invoke the genius of the constitution. From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of this noble lord frowns with indignation at the disgrace of his country.* In vain did he defend the liberty and establish the religion of Britain, against the tyranny of Rome, if these worse than popish cruelties and inquisitorial practices are endured among us. To send forth the merciless cannibal, thirsting for blood! against whom! Your protestant brethren!-to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name, by the aid and instrumentality of these horrible hell-hounds of war! Spain can no longer boast pre-eminence in barbarity. She armed herself with blood-hounds to extirpate the wretched natives of Mexico; but we, more ruthless, loose the dogs of war against our countrymen in America, endeared to us by every tie that should sanctify humanity. My lords, I solemnly call upon your lordships, and upon every order of men in the state, to stamp upon this infamous procedure the indelible stigma of the public

*The tapestry of the House of Lords represents the defeat of the Spanish Armada, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, by Admiral Howard, an ancestor of Lord Suffolk-the Admiral is a conspicuous figure a the tapestry.

abhorrence. More particularly I call upon the holy prelates of our religion to do away this iniquity: let them perform a lustration to purify their country from this deep and deadly sin. My lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more, but my feelings and indignation were too strong to say less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor reposed my head upon my pillow, without giving this vent to my eternal abhorrence of such enormous and preposterous principles.

FOX ON THE ARRIVAL OF THE NEWS OF THE BATTLE OF GUILDFORD COURT-HOUSE.

I PROCEED next to the battle of Guildford, where the Gazette as serts, we had obtained a signal victory. This term, I doubt not, was used by Lord Cornwallis in a very proper sense; for he could only attend to the disproportion between the two armiès; in which point of view, no doubt, that a victory should be gained on our side was very astonishing, and highly honorable to the troops; but if the consequences of the action were to be regarded, then he must understand the word signal in a very different sense; and allow the victory to have been signalized, by drawing after it the same identical effects that might have been expected from a defeat. Had our army been vanquished, what course could they have taken? Certainly they would have abandoned the field of action, and flown for refuge to the sea-side: now these are precisely the measures we were obliged to adopt after the action at Guildford, the victorious army leaving the field, abandoning the future object of its expedition, and retiring to the fleet.. Another term used by Lord Cornwallis I must also take notice of: he called his army a little one; and well indeed might he give it tha. appellation, since his whole force did not amount at the utmost to three thousand men. I take that number merely to avoid a contradiction that might divert the current of debate into an improper channel; for I am credibly informed the army did not amount to one half the number; but taking it at three thousand,

den on what principle could ministers even justify confining the operations of this active and spirited general by so scanty a force? Little indeed the army was, compared to the enemy it combated, but still less if compared to the army estimates voted this session; for it appeared by them, that no less than eighty-three thousand men were employed in ́America, including a number in the West Indies; so that, in order to bring three thousand men into the field, the public were to pay for and provide eighty thousand. I do not mean absolutely to say, that so many were actually in the service, perhaps not a tenth part of them could be produced; but the account of them was to be seen on the table; and what lan guage could properly describe the fraudulent conduct of ministers in imposing so grievous a burden on the people without necessity I will take, however, if they please, the other alternative; I will suppose every man charged in the estimates to be really employed, and that it was necessary to keep eighty thousand on the defensive, that three thousand might be brought into the field: need there anything else be urged to prove the ruinous tendency of the American war? For Lord Cornwallis had stated as his opinion, that defensive measures would be certain ruin to our affairs; and yet we could not act offensively without keeping about a proportion of twenty-five to one in garrison; nor did this computation go far enough, as, besides the eighty-three thousand, our friends in America were to be reckoned nine tenths of the whole; instead of which, however, I am inclined to think a great part of the former number were necessarily employed to watch them, instead of their being anywise serviceable to our cause. From this I deduce the absurdity of attempting to contend with France in America: we had conquered that power in Germany last war, as it had been said: for my part, I rather entertain a different opinion, believing that both powers found that conflict so expensive, that they retired from it mutually exhausted, and saw it answered to them the end of a war nearer home, by sufficiently weakening each other; but would that equality of expense exist in the present case? Certainly not; for the ministry could not deny, that if we had a hundred thousand men in America, and France only twenty-five thousand, she could bring more troops into the field than