Reign of George III. (Continued.) page 20

When Burgoyne surrendered, he should have been prepared for this despicable conduct on the part of congress, for it was precisely what it had done before when general Arnold made an exchange of prisoners with general Carle- ton in Canada in the preceding year. "Arnold," says their own historian, Hildreth, " who commanded at Montreal, signed a cartel of exchange, by which it was agreed to release as many prisoners in the hands of the Americans. But congress refused to ratify this agreement, and this refusal presently became a serious obstacle in the way of any regular exchange of prisoners."

The shameful length to which congress carried this dishonourable shuffling astonished Europe. They insisted that Great Britain should give a formal ratification of the convention before they gave up the troops, though they allowed Burgoyne and a few of his officers to go home. The British commissioners, who had arrived with full powers to settle any affair, offered immediately such ratification; but this did not arrest the slippery chicane of congress. It declared that it would not be satisfied without ratification directly from the highest authority at home. In short, congress, in open violation of the convention, detained the British troops for several years prisoners of war. Lord Mahon, recording these circumstances with every feeling of disgust which arises in honourable minds at such exhibitions, says: - " It has been usual to consider the events of Saratoga as fraught only with humiliation to England, and with glory to America; yet, should these pages chance to be perused by any man, neither a subject of the former nor a citizen of the latter state, I would request that man to pause, and to ask himself the question, to which of these countries he would rather have belonged - to the one whose soldiers were then repulsed and compelled to lay down their arms, or to that, then victorious, whose statesmen deliberately and wilfully, with their eyes open to the consequences, broke the plighted faith on which, and on which alone, that surrender was made? "

Such was the state of affairs, both in America and England, at the end of the year 1777.