it had been: here, then, was the execution | language, and words, all and several the of this ministerial assurance: we will no parts and parcels of the American war he more prosecute the American war-we had transmitted by his last will and testawill drop that entirely-we have no farther ment to the right hon. gentleman, who intention of reducing the Americans to was his heir, successor, executor, and uniobedience by force; but-but-here is the versal legatee; not one scrap had he suffine ministerial distinction, and the new fered to go into other hands, but all had plan of delusion; but we must prosecute devolved on this new minister, and he still the French war which now rages in the spoke, lived, and acted in that House, as fields of America. Did not gentlemen heretofore, only he had gone into the perceive at what they aimed by this new shape of the right hon. gentleman. The argument? Surely they must see, that right hon. gentleman, before he had been under this pretext, every hostile and offen- many days, nay many hours among them sive operation that can be contrived for in his new capacity, had thought so meanthe distress and persecution of the people ly, or so ignorantly of the sense and digwill be continued, when they have no nity of parliament, as to believe that they longer the hope to subdue. would suffer this insult of going on with But how did the new minister discover the American war under a new name. that the war in America was to be consi-Though he was a new minister, he was an dered as a war with France? Had he dis-old member, and he ought to have known covered that the French and Americans and felt more respectfully and justly of had entered into an alliance, and that parliament. What! at this day, after a France had bound herself to support the seven years experience of the absurdity ndependence of the colonies? What proof and impracticability of the contest, to be had he of this fact? Or what intelligence told that we were to go on! Not one ragwhich justified him in saying, that by pro- ged nor tattered fragment of an excuse to secuting the American war, we fought cover the design; that, at least, if men gainst France? Instead of making there- were to be seduced, there might be the by a diversion against the enemy, we un- grace of delusion in the business; no cover, fortunately made a most material and in- no disguise-none but the miserable and jurious diversion against ourselves in fa- ridiculous stratagem of giving a new name vour of France; and she would continue to the old story. The cheat was too paltry that diversion as long as we pleased; to pass even upon parliament, much less for it cost us twenty thousand for every on the suffering and burthened people, thousand that it cost them. But under whom it was ultimately to affect. this new name of a French war the American contest was to be persevered in ; and from this new minister we were to receive exactly the old system. The right hon. gentleman had told the House exactly the story which he had told for five years. He had for a long time, in an inferior order of ministerial existence, crawled upon the leaves of the American system; but now, like the caterpillar, he had left the chrysalis state, his wings had broke from their foldings, and now expanded, he took his flight; but though his appearance was different, the creature was the same. Indeed, it might with truth be asserted, that the late secretary for the American department, though called up by a patent to the other House, was still to be found in effigy in his old seat. There he sat with all the plans of the American war thick upon him. The right hon. gentleman was the noble lord's universal legatee. On his political death he hath bequeathed to the right hon. gentleman all his plans, projects, and measures, nay, his ideas,

That he was right in asserting, that the right hon. gentleman was the universal legatee of the noble lord, was evident from this, he had succeeded to his hopes, to his intelligence, to his knowledge of our numerous friends in America, to his total ignorance of every thing that tended to peace. He had said, that he had great and good reason to believe, and to be persuaded that we had many and numerous friends in America. He did not know it, he had no personal knowledge of the fact; he had only good and substantial reasons to believe it. The fact was plain, the right hon. gentleman was already in possession of all the noble lord's refugees; 72,000l. worth of refugees had come to him as part of the inheritance. Oh! exclaimed Mr. Burke, that we could only come to the happy moment when ministers would be pleased charitably to forbear the name of our friends in America. It was our friends in America that had done us all the mischief. Every calamity of the war had arisen from our friends; and if

were made. The hon. gentleman read extracts of a letter from lord George Germain, now lord Sackville, to a gentleman in America, in which he recommended to him, in settling with such as might be inclined to return to their allegiance, to repress the republican spirit, and to adhere closely to the old constitutions. The ha gentleman said, that the moment of or ruin in America was the season of his hope. He had indulged expectations c success so ill-founded and fallacious, that in the very instant when he formed and retailed them, the serious plan for our destruction was formed, and beginning tob put in execution. The hon. gentleman, to shew this singular fact, read several extraca of letters from the late American secretar to sir Henry Clinton, and others of his

dated m

such were to be our friends, he wished to God that we might hear of them no more. When exhausted and famishing, had our friends assisted us? Had they brought us a single bullock, a single bushel of Indian corn? Had they assisted us in any one shape or way? No: they had drawn us in the north to Saratoga; and in the south to York-town. What did the right hon. gentleman mean by his holding out the delusion of more friends? Did he recollect, or did he think of the 10th article of the last capitulation? Or did he mean to make other 10th articles for the purpose of giving up what few friends we might still have left? The right hon. gentleman also had hopes of success. After all our calamities, after having found by experience, that when we had only America to oppose, we were unequal to the re-confidential correspondents, duction; now that we had fresh accessions of enemies, nay, that we had the most powerful in the universe to oppose, he had reason to entertain hopes. Miserable hopes! What had the American war produced? What but peerages and calamities? What but insults and titles? Was there any thing to give hope? O yes, we must not only have hope, but confidence in ministers. Confidence! could we have confidence in the men who still determined to prosecute this mad and impolitic war? It was impossible. Could we have confi'dence in this new minister, who seemed determined to tread in the footsteps of his predecessor? He had heard nothing of propositions of peace. He had found no traces of any thing like negociation for peace in his office: Oh! no. There was no reason to expect any thing of that sort in the office of his predecessor; or if there was, he dared to say that it lay hidden and concealed, unless the right hon. gentleman had taken the trouble to make parti-ments there," because there was a great cular inquiries of the principal people in the office, whether or not there were any papers in the place relating to propositions of peace. But it was not the temper of the noble lord to cherish any thing of But surely the new minister must know, that there had been propositions of peace made under an act of parliament, by the commissioners sent from this country; and for the purpose of shewing that the noble lord, who had lately gone up to the other House, after seeing those propositions made in the moment of his absurd hope, that is, in the very moment of actual distress, not only forgot, but expressly contradicted the offers that

the months of January, February, ara March, last year, in which he informed him, that all was perfectly safe in France there was nothing to be expected from that quarter, and therefore he planned and suggested another expedition like that of general Burgoyne, to be performed by general Haldiman from Canada, just at the time when De Grasse sailed from Brest with the armament which captured the army of earl Cornwallis at York-town. In the month of February 1781, he knew nothing of the armament which sailed on the 7th of March. In the month of February he ordered a new expedition, that another army might suffer the disgrace of a surrender. He received all his American intelligence from France, and his French intelligence from America. He recommended to sir Henry Clinton, at a time when the exchanges of prisoners were stopt, to send the American prisoners to the West Indies, to recruit our regi

mortality reigned among them in that intemperate climate." This was the way which he laboured to regain the scattered affections of America. This was the way that he strove to conciliate their warring dispositions, and bring them to loyalty and peace. This was the plan and conduct of this war, from which he had retired with the distinguishing reward of a peerage,

The hon. gentleman said, it was no security to parliament that the estimates of the present year did not ask for a specific number of men in addition, to be sent to America for the purposes of the war Without forming new regiments, let them only fill up the present, and the force.

merely to support themselves. He de- | friends and inveterate enemies. Did this clared that he differed from those who language denote loyalty? Were these looked to parliament for the salvation of the numerous friends and warm advocates the nation; he had trusted to them too for this country, that ministers were so long; and the only salvation now lay in mighty tender of deserting? However, the people, whom he would join on the his lordship being necessitated, through first occasion. want of provisions and other circumstances, to march to Wilmington, he there found a number of Americans assembling, not for the purpose of arming, as would be falsely insinuated, but merely to see that gallant general, lord Cornwallis, who had so repeatedly beaten general Green: and as soon as this sight was over, and they paid their addresses to his lordsh they retired with as great expedition of the town as they made in coming in and he had it from very good authority, that lord Cornwallis could not, with every persuasion in his power, prevail on ever 100 men to arm themselves in his supper From this account of the disposition the Americans, must not every man, e dued with any degree of reason, see the impracticability of subduing America b force?-In the next place, if it was meai to be made a war of posts, our for were too numerous, a smaller number would answer the end as effectually, t the rest might be employed with vast vantage to the nation elsewhere; there fore, when he saw no such plan in agit tion, but on the contrary, that there wer more regiments and forces to be sent augment our armies, he must natura conclude the war was to be carried on a extensively as ever, nor was he the les convinced of this circumstance, from what an hon. gentleman said, that the estimates on the table proved incontestibly that the war was not to be carried on on so large a scale as heretofore. The estimates, in his opinion, could afford no certainty what ever of the designs of government, for, to pursue their favourite plan, they might send the army from Ireland, they might send the army from England, and there fore, without some direct confession of administration, that they do not intend continuing an offensive war in America, they were as perfectly at liberty to act now as they were at the first day. To shew the deceit and the inconsistency that m nisters had shewn in the whole course of this war, he would read a paper, written by the secretary (sir Grey Cooper) of the noble lord in the blue ribbon, and at ha express desire, in order to be shewn to the Congress. It mentioned, after stating several particulars of the power of this

Colonel Barré moved, that the petition from Bristol, lying on their table, might be read, which being complied with, he said, the many burdens and grievous oppressions which it was stated that great trading town laboured under, by this destructive and pernicious American war, were not peculiar to it; they were common to the whole kingdom; he was confident the city of London had similar sentiments with regard to the war, and the reason that their table was not loaded from all parts with petitions of the like nature with that just read, was, that the nation did not look up to parliament with that respect which they were formerly wont to do; they had fallen into contempt in the eyes of the public; and that, and that alone was the cause that complaints of the distresses, heavy burdens, and intolerable hardships which the nation endured, did not pour in from every quarter. An hon. gentleman had said, that this mode of addressing the crown was unprecedented. Good God! Sir, said he, the situation of our country is unprecedented; and is this a time, when the nation is verging on absolute ruin, to search for precedents to warrant us in those measures which may avert that destruction? From what has fallen from the new Secretary of State, he could plainly perceive that the same wretched argument and folly which had hitherto promoted and carried on the accursed war, still influenced the conduct of ministers; he said, we had many friends in America, and it would be cruel to abandon them to the merciless hands of the Congress. It was an entire delusion; we had no friends in America; and ministers had been duped into the idea of the contrary by the falshoods told them by refugees here. To their misinformation we might chiefly attribute our disasters in America. To contradict their lying reports to government, we needed only refer to lord Cornwallis's public letters. In them he told us, he met none of those many loyalists he was made to believe he should in North Carolina, a province in which he stood most in need of them; in his march throughout almost the whole province, he found them timid