XXXVIII. offices of trufst under the crown. The opinion of CHAP. Henry Flood, abetted at first by fo few, gained ground with rapidity in the public mind, and seemed to receive confirmation from events. A caufe, removed by a writ of error from the king's bench of Ireland to that of Great-Britain, was retained and adjudged by lord Mansfield, the chief justice of the latter, fubfequently to the first of June 1782, a limit prescribed by the Irish parliament, beyond which no fuch causes were to be determined out of this kingdom. The encreasing discontents became alarming to government; and earl Temple, who, on a change of the British ministry, by the death of the marquis of Rockingham, fucceeded the duke of Portland in the viceroyalty, on the fifteenth of September 1782, was earnest for procuring fatif faction to the Irish. With a magnanimity becoming the great council of a great nation, all caufe of complaint on the subject was removed, by a bill introduced, and unanimously passed, on the twentyfecond of January 1783, in the British parliament, " for removing and preventing all doubts, which have arifen, or may arife, concerning the exclusive rights of the parliament and courts of Ireland in matters of legislation and judicature, and for preventing any writ of error, or appeal, from any of his Majesty's courts in that kingdom, from being received, heard, and adjudged, in any of his Majesty's courts in the kingdom of Great-Britain." The pecuniary fortunes of the two great rival pa triots CHAP. triots and orators, Flood and Grattan, in their XXXVIII exertions in favour of Irish emancipation, were very different. The latter, who carried the bufiness to a certain stage, and opposed its further pro. gress, received as a reward fifty thousand pounds: the former, by whose exertions it was brought to a confummation, was deprived of a place under go. vernment of three thousand five hundred pounds a year. CHAP. CHAP. ΧΧΧΙΧ. Reflexions on the American war Miscellaneous transactions-Knights of Saint Patrick-Abortive Scheme of a Genevan fettlement Proceedings of the volunteers-Defects of the national representation -Meeting of a new parliament-National convention -Mifcellaneous transactions-Outrages-Addresses -Congress-Commercial propofitions-Miscellaneous transactions-Rightboys-Wretchedness of the peafantry-Death of the duke of Rutland Change of manners by bis example-Reflexions on late hoursEnormous peculation detected by Buckingham-Offer of regency to the prince of Wales-Reinstatement of affairs-Fitzgibbon-Proceedings of the oppofitionists -Parliamentary transactions. on the Ame THE councils, by which the British cabinet had CHAP. been influenced to enter on a war with the British XXXIX. colonies in America, were hardly more impolitic Reflexions than those by which that war was conducted. Re-rican war. peated offers of conciliation, with augmented conceffions in each new propofal, were made, in the midst of hoftilites, to the revolted states; but never till it was too late; when the condition of affairs had become such as to cause them to be rejected; while CHAP. while many of the instruments, employed to fubdue XXXIX. the colonies, were more fitted to procure the hatred than the fubmiffion of the colonists to the British government. Tribes of savages, American Indians, useless in battle, butchered the unarmed in their tranfitory incurfions. The German mercenaries, too flow for American warfare, and regarding spoil as their primary object, marked every where their progress with merciless rapine. Even the British, the only effective troops employed on this lamentable occafion, were not so obfervant of falutary difcipline, but that in places, where they were at first received as friends by the inhabitants, they were afterwards oppofed and detested as enemies. Of the acts of devastation and massacre in this war the most atrocious recorded was committed at Wyoming, a new and most delightfully flourishing settlement of about a thousand families on the river Susquehanna, which was reduced completely to a defert by a body of Indians and American royalists, denominated tories, under two leaders named Butler and Brandt, who put to death all the inhabitants of every age and both sexes by various kinds of torture. The refentment of the Americans, fired by such atrocities, was so ably directed by the admirable George Washington, a leader not less cautious of affording advantages to the enemy than alert to seize opportunities in his own favour, that the independence of the revolted states was established by arms, and explicitly acknowleged by the British court in a final treaty of peace in the beginning of the year 1783. Conducted ed to its completion with a spirit of order glorious CHAP. to the character of the Americans, this revolution, XXXIX. when we except the expenses of the war, was ultimately advantageous even to Great-Britain; fince, rapidly augmented in wealth and population by an admirable system of government, these colonies afford a more gainful market than ever to British traders, without expenditure of British revenue for their defenfe. Their fubjugation might have involved the ruin of British liberty, together with their own impoverishment and decay. ous tranfacIre 1783. Of the American revolution the emancipation of Mifcellanethe Irish legiflature was a consequence, acquired by ous tran the exertions of the volunteer afsociations, exertions land. so far glorious, but, like all human affairs, liable to be carried beyond the limit which true policy would prescribe. If, after the attainment of their great object, these patriot bands had resigned their arms, when, on the conclusion of a general peace, they were no longer necessary, they would forever have stamped their past transactions with the feal of honour. But, mifled by designing or mistaken men, and influenced by the example of some very eminent persons in England, who afterwards proved recreant, they turned their attention to a new object, a reform of parliament, or a more equal representation of the people in the house of commons, an object indeed defirable, in Britain, but of extremely difficult adjustment, and doubtless in Ireland of problematical utility. After the commencement of a discussion on this fubject, two events occured of |