Reign of George III. (Continued.) page 18

It is certain that Chatham would not have tolerated the presence of Franklin and Deane in Paris for a single day; they must have quitted France, or France would have been instantly compelled to throw off the mask. At this time, when neither the news of Howe's success in the south or Burgoyne's fall in the north had arrived, Chatham seemed to see in prophetic vision the disasters of the latter general. " The desperate state of our army," he said, " is, in part, known. No man thinks more highly of our troops than I do. I love and honour the English troops. I know that they can achieve anything but impossibilities; and I know that the conquest of English America is an impossibility. You cannot - I venture to say it - you cannot conquer America! You may swell every expense and every effort still more extravagantly; pile and accumulate every assistance that you can buy or borrow; traffic and barter with every little, pitiful German prince that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign prince; your efforts are for ever vain and impotent - doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates to an incurable resentment the minds of your enemies, 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 would never lay down my arms - never - never - never! "

On the subject of employing Indians in the war against the Americans, willing to forget that he had done the same thing in Canada, he burst forth most indignantly: " But, my lords, who is the man that, in addition to these disgraces and mischiefs of our army, has dared to authorise and associate to our arms the scalping-knife and tomahawk of the savage? to call into civilised alliance the wild and inhuman savage of the woods? to delegate to the merciless Indian the defence of disputed rights, and to wage the horrors of this barbarous war against our brethren? My lord, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment: unless done away, it will be a stain on the national character - it is a violation of the constitution; I believe it is against the law. It is not the least of our national misfortunes, that the strength and character of our army are thus impaired; infected with the mercenary spirit of robbery and rapine - familiarised to the horrid scenes of savage cruelty, it can no longer boast of the noble and generous principles which dignify a soldier! "

He then proceeded to give the Americans credit still for a natural leaning towards this country; believed that they might be drawn from their alliance with France; and recommended, by his amendment, an immediate cessation of arms, and a treaty betwixt the countries, by which he fondly hoped that America would yet be retained in affectionate dependence. It is difficult to imagine, on reading the latter portions of this speech, that Chatham, buried in the country, could of late have been paying much attention to the real aspect of affairs in America. To have ceased our warfare now, would have produced in the Americans only the highest mood of insolent triumph, in which no treaty would have been listened to: all who heard him knew that too well. Lord Sandwich declared that lord Chatham's speech, stripped of its rhetoric, was of little worth; declared himself as anxious for conciliation as the noble earl, if he could see his way to it with any hope of reciprocity, or of anything but insult and degradation. Nearly all condemned the employment of Indians, and adhered to Chatham's own fancy, that we ought to retain the right of regulating the American trade. But the earl of Suffolk, by an unlucky expression, called up Chatham again, and produced a splendid burst of eloquence, which we may give at length, as nearly the last blaze of that wonderful intellect which had so long thundered and lightened within the walls of parliament. Suffolk, one of the secretaries of state, defended the employment of the Indians, saying we were perfectly justified in using all " the means God and nature put into our hands." On this, Chatham started up, exclaiming: -

"My lords, I am astonished - shocked, to hear such principles confessed - to hear them avowed in this house, or in this country - principles equally unconstitutional, inhuman, and unchristian! My lords, I did not intend to trespass again on your attention, but I cannot repress my indignation; I feel myself impelled by every duty. My lords, we are called upon, as members of this house, as men - as Christian men, to protest against such notions, standing near the throne, and polluting the ears of majesty. That God and nature put into our hands! I know not what idea that lord may entertain of God and nature; but I know that such abominable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity. What! attribute the sacred sanction of God and nature to the massacres of the Indian scalping-knife, to the cannibal savage, tearing, murdering, roasting, and eating - literally, my lords, eating - the mangled victims of his barbarous battles? Such horrible notions shock every principle of religion - divine and natural, and every generous feeling of humanity; and, my lords, they shock every sentiment of honour; they shock me as a lover of honourable war, and a detester of murderous barbarity. These abominable principles, and this more abominable avowal of them, demand most decisive indignation. I call upon that right reverend bench, those holy ministers of the gospel, and pious pastors of the Church, I conjure them to join in the holy work, and to vindicate the religion of their God; I appeal to the wisdom and the law of this learned bench to defend and support the justice of their country; I call upon the bishops to interpose the unsullied sanctity of their lawn; upon the learned judges to interpose the purity of their ermine, to save us from this pollution. 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 he led your victorious fleets against the boasted armada of Spain; in vain he defended and established the honour, the liberties, the religion, the Protestant religion of his country, against the arbitrary cruelties of popery and the inquisition, if these more than popish cruelties and inquisitorial practices are let loose amongst us, to turn forth into our settlements, amongst our ancient connections, friends, and relations, the merciless cannibal, thirsting for the blood of man, woman, and child - to send forth the infidel savage - against whom? Against your Protestant brethren; to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name with these horrible hell-hounds of savage war! Spain armed herself with blood-hounds to extirpate the wretched natives of America, and we improve on the inhuman example of even Spanish cruelty; we turn loose these savage hell-hounds against our brethren and countrymen in America, of the same language, laws, liberties, and religion - endeared to us by every tie that should sanctify humanity! My lords, this awful subject, so important to our honour, our constitution, and our religion, demands the most solemn and effectual inquiry; and I again call upon your lordships and the united powers of the state, to examine it thoroughly and decisively, and to stamp upon it an indelible stigma of the public abhorrence; and I again implore our holy prelates to do away with these iniquities from amongst us - let them perform a lustration; let them purify this house and this country from this sin! My lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my feelings and my indignation were too strong to have said less; I could not have slept this night in my bed, or have reposed my head upon my pillow, without giving vent to my eternal abhorrence of such preposterous and enormous principles."

This was the last great display of Chatham, for, though we shall meet with him in the house once again, it was only to give way to his failing strength; and indeed, when we strictly analyse this celebrated outburst of indignation, though it stands a vehement utterance of a virtuous and humane feeling, it contains little more than the one grand idea, that the practice was inhuman and unchristian. There is a voluminous amount of sounding epithets, which being stripped away, with all their repetitions, leave the real matter within a small compass. The lawyers, the bishops, the peers at large, are arrayed in all possible forms and figures of speech to produce effect. The constitution plays a great part; but it would puzzle the acutest lawyer to discover what cognisance the constitution took of savages. These savages are exaggerated into cannibals; and protestantism, and inquisitions, and armadas are summoned to play parts at which they must have been astonished; the whole phalanx of words and images having only to express this simple idea, that it was detestable to employ savages. We think little of the fact that Chatham had employed them himself. In his heyday of statesmanship and victory, he might have thought little about the subordinate part of the Indians following Wolfe as a set-off to the Indians of Montcalm, but since then they had shown themselves monstrously cruel; the burning houses, the scalped and murdered Americans, and the innocent blood of Miss Macrea, made their names terrible in Europe, and it became Chatham all the more for having once sanctioned their use, to stamp it, with almost his last breath, with its proper abhorrence.

Affairs had now assumed such an aspect that the different sections of the opposition saw the necessity of coalescing more, and attending zealously; but still they were divided as to the means to be pursued. A great meeting was held on the 27th of November at the marquis of Rockingham's, to decide on a plan of action. It was concluded to move for a committee on the state of the nation, and Chatham being applied to, advised that the very next day notice should be given that such a motion should be made on Tuesday next, the 2nd of December. The motion was made, the committee granted, and in it the duke of Richmond moved for the production of the returns of the army and navy in America and Ireland. He expressed great alarm as to the safety of our fortresses of Gibraltar and Minorca under the reduced condition of our army and navy at home, and the present disposition of France and Spain. In this debate Charles Fox was very severe on lord George Germaine, whom he compared to Dr. Sangrado, the whole of the time during which he had been at the head of American affairs having been distinguished by a constant shedding of blood, by scalping, murdering, and destroying in our American settlements. Governor Pownall added that it was utterly ridiculous to be now considering what we had to do. We had nothing to do but to acknowledge the independence of the United States; that the Americans would never return to their former allegiance; that our sovereignty was abolished, our navigation act annihilated, and that all talk and schemes for anything else were now mere waste of time. Whilst lord North was refusing to produce the necessary papers, the lords consented to this measure; and at this very moment came news which startlingly confirmed the words of governor Pownall.

That night, before the house closed, there ran a whisper through it, which carried through every frame that heard it a shock as of electricity. It was the news of Burgoyne's surrender. It came yet but as a rumour, having been carried to Ticonderoga by a few deserters, and thence transmitted to Quebec; but it was a rumour bearing such an ominous air of truth as made all dumb with surprise. The next day colonel Barre rose with a very solemn air, and called upon lord George Germaine to tell the house, on his word of honour, what had become of Burgoyne and his army. He knew that lord George had been the chief planner of the Burgoyne expedition, and he declared that the author of such a scheme was responsible for all the loss and dishonour which it had occasioned. Lord George, haughty and irascible as he was, could only implore the house to suspend its judgment till official intelligence arrived. Fox, Burke, and others were most severe on the disastrous management of ministers. On the 5th Chatham was in his place in the house of lords, and moved for the production of the instructions to Burgoyne, supported by the duke of Richmond, the marquis of Rockingham, lord Shelburne, and many others. In his speech he prognosticated the most gloomy condition of things; the ruin of all our manufactures, and the loss of our commerce. The motion was rejected by forty to nineteen. In the course of the debate Chatham had included all instructions for the employment of Indians, upon which lord Gower retorted the charge, that Chatham himself had formerly issued such instructions. Chatham resented the imputation vehemently, but lord Gower offered to produce the proofs of it from the journals of the house, and lord Amherst, the general employed by Chatham, being called on, was compelled to confess that such was the case. When Bute heard of this he exclaimed, " Did Pitt really deny it? Why, I have letters of his still by me singing Io Poeans over the advantages we gained through our Indian allies."

At length came from Canada a duplicate of Burgoyne's dispatch from Albany, and, later still, lord Petersham, with the first draft, arrived from New York. The government made haste to adjourn the house till after the Christmas recess, in order to afford themselves time to consider their mode of proceeding under such adverse circumstances. They passed, but only after violent opposition, votes for sixty thousand seamen, and fifty thousand troops for America alone. It was moved that the house should adjourn to the 20th of January. Burke proposed, as an amendment, that the adjournment should be only for one week instead of six. In the house of lords, Chatham as violently opposed so long an adjournment, declaring that, in such-an interval, the total ruin of the nation might be accomplished by the miserable ministers who had so egregiously deluded the king, and had, by their folly and incompetence, lost a magnificent army of ten thousand men. He praised the valour, magnanimity, and gentleness of the Americans - the latter of these qualities, as it soon appeared, a little too prematurely - and seemed to take a pleasure in portraying the cruelty and profligacy of the royal troops, or rather of those ministers who had furnished them with instructions. The adjournment, notwithstanding, was carried.