Reign of George III. (Continued.) page 8

In the back settlements, the British having withdrawn their frontier guards, and warned the well-affected to remove with their property, left the Indians to indulge their intense hatred of the American settlers, who had always treated them as wild beasts, or as they formerly treated their slaves. The Americans accuse the English of exciting the Indians to outrage; but on this head, it is only lamentably too true, that both sides in this unnatural war stimulated these savages against each other. The Creeks and Cherokees were soon on foot, invading Virginia and the Carolinas, burning, destroying, and scalping, in their usual

style; but the militia of those states succeeded in driving them back, and retaliating by laying waste their fields, burning their dwellings, and driving them into the woods.

Whilst these things were progressing, congress was steadily at work. They established articles of confederation and perpetual union between the several states. These articles were a supplement to and extension of the declaration of independence, and were sixteen in number: - 1st. That the thirteen states thus confederating should take the title of the United States. 2nd. That each and all were engaged in a reciprocal treaty of alliance and friendship for their common defence, and for their general advantage; obliging themselves to assist each other against all violence that might threaten all or any of them on account of religion, sovereignty, commerce, or under any other pretext whatever. 3rd. That each state reserved to itself alone the exclusive right of regulating its internal government. 4th. That no state in particular should either send or receive embassies, begin any negotiations, contract any engagements, form any alliances, or conclude any treaties with any king, prince, or power whatsoever, without the consent of the United States assembled in congress; that no person invested with any post in the United States should be allowed to accept any presents, emoluments, office, or title/ from any king, prince, or foreign power; and that neither the general congress, nor any state in particular, should ever confer any title of nobility. 5th. That none of the said states should have power to form alliances, or confederations, even amongst themselves, without the consent of the general congress. 6th. That no state should lay on any imposts, or establish any duties, which might affect treaties to be hereafter concluded by congress with foreign powers. 7th. That no state in particular should keep up ships of war, or land troops beyond the amount regulated by congress. 8th. That when any of the states raised troops for the common defence, the officers of the rank of colonel and under should be appointed by the legislature of the state, and the superior officers by congress. 9th. That all the expenses of the war, &c., should be paid out of a common treasury. Other clauses defined the functions and powers of congress, and the 14th offered to Canada admission to all the privileges of the other states, should she desire it; but that no other colony should be admitted without the formal consent of nine of the states composing the Union.

After thus settling the form and powers of the constitution, they voted eight million of dollars to be raised as a loan, and ordered a fresh issue of paper money. But, above all, they laboured to acquire aid from abroad, without which it was quite clear that they must yield to the superior military force of the mother country, and return to their obedience on humiliating terms. There was a depressing gloom over all the American states - an idea that the British power was too mighty to be coped with, and that the contest was approaching its close. Washington alone stood firm in his resolution, though a fugitive before the enemy. He declared that, let it come to the worst, he would only retire from post to post as he was compelled, and that at the last he would still maintain the war from beyond the Alleghany mountains. The only other firm party was the congress. They sent off emissaries to different powers on the continent of Europe, pointing out the fine opportunity of now humbling the proud heart of England, by helping to rend from her magnificent colonies. To France it was proposed by members of congress to offer all the advantages which England had ever enjoyed; the monopoly of their trade, and an alliance offensive and defensive, by which, in any future struggle with England, France would have the support of America. Such was the dread of again submitting in shame after so many taunts and so much high language, that these councillors would have run the states into tenfold more evils than those from which they had endeavoured to escape. The cooler heads, however, suggested that the most attractive thing to France would be to see England humbled, and that, if this would not move the French to help them, nothing would.

For this purpose, in addition to Silas Deane, who was already in Paris, Dr. Franklin and Arthur Lee were dispatched to that capital to obtain aid with all possible speed. These gentlemen set sail in the beginning of November, though in much apprehension of being intercepted by the English cruisers, but managed to reach Quiberon Bay in safety, and Paris before the end of the year.

In England, the successes of the British arms had greatly encouraged the government. The parliament met on the 31st of October; and the king, in his speech, informed the two houses that the Americans had been driven out of Canada; that that colony remained firm and loyal; but that the Americans had now carried their madness and malignity to such a pitch, that they had formally thrown off the allegiance of England, and had declared the colonies independent states. He said this was a circumstance rather to be rejoiced at, as it left us in no perplexity as to the mode of dealing with them, and as it took totally away the arguments of those gentlemen at home who had hitherto defended them against all charges of such a design. He dwelt on the insulting manner in which the Americans had rejected all offers of conciliation, and appealed to the world whether the progress which the colonists had made in wealth and comfort under us were not the best proofs of the generous treatment they had always enjoyed under our administration. He added what could not be true, to his own knowledge, unless his ministers were blinder than all the world besides - that he was on terms of the fullest amity with all the continental powers, and that he had every reason for believing that the peace of Europe would continue to be preserved.

Now, what were the facts? It was well known that America had her agents all over the continent of Europe, soliciting, with the most anxious importunity, and by the most artful representations addressed to the particular passions and grudges of different courts against Great Britain, assistance in one way or another, either by gifts or loans of money, or by impeding the commerce of England, and by creating alarm for her own safety in Europe. Silas Deane had been in France and Italy the whole of the present year, omitting no art or exertion to rouse a hatred of England, and to procure aid, or promises of aid, in those quarters. Commissioners were now dispatched by congress to Vienna," Madrid, Berlin, and the grand duke of Tuscany. William Lee was the commissioner named to Vienna and Berlin; Ralph Izard to Tuscany; and Arthur Lee was ordered to leave Deane and Franklin in Paris, and go on to Spain. We shall presently hear more of the doings of Silas Deane. So successful was Franklin in Paris, that he obtained a gift of two millions of livres from the French king in aid of America, and the assurance that this should be annually augmented, as her finances allowed. The only stipulation for the present was profound secrecy. Franklin had also found the cause of America so popular, that many officers were anxious to engage in her service; and the enthusiastic young marquis La Fayette, notwithstanding the ill news from the United States, engaged to embark his life and fortune with Washington and his compatriots, and immediately hired a vessel to carry him over, where he arrived early in the spring, and became the bosom friend and great adviser of the brave commander-in-chief.

In both houses the addresses on the royal speech produced violent debates. In the commons, lord John Cavendish moved an amendment, in which he charged all the evils of this quarrel on the arbitrary and ill-formed measures of ministers, everyone of whose attempts at healing the breach, from their miserable and insufficient character, had only widened it; that the whole proceedings of ministers were calculated to break the spirit of a noble part of the population of the empire, instead of regulating it by just laws. This amendment was seconded by the marquis of Granby, and supported by the usual opposition. Wilkes, who was soon after this time elected chamberlain of the city, with three thousand pounds a-year, ridiculed the reliance of the king and his cabinet on the friendly assurances of France and Spain; and colonel Barre positively declared that we were menaced with an early war by both of these countries. Fox declared that it was manifestly the interest of France and Spain to see America independent; and the American patriots were lauded to the extreme, as everything that was noble, and the people as everything that was virtuous and simple-minded.

In the house of lords the marquis of Rockingham moved a similar amendment, and ministers, in reply, reminded the opposition how long and warmly they had asserted that the Americans were not aiming at independence, and declared that matters never could have reached this length had not the colonists been encouraged by the indiscretion of the members of parliament. Both the amendments were rejected by large majorities. On the 16th of November lord John Cavendish produced the proclamation published in America by lord Howe. As it had not been published here in the Gazette, or in any home newspaper, he declared it must be a forgery. Lord North assured him that it was a genuine document, and had been duly published at New York. On this lord John Cavendish declared that it was an insult to parliament to send out commissioners with great power to the colonies without consulting it, and to leave it for the first time to discover the fact from a common newspaper; that ministers, when they had some measure to carry which would render parliament odious to all parts of the empire, brought the measure there and forced it through, letting all the odium fall on the head of parliament, but when they had some measure of mercy or conciliation to propose they kept all the merit of it to themselves. He condemned, moreover, the conciliatory measure as narrow and insufficient, and moved that a committee of parliament should be formed to revise all the acts of parliament by which his majesty's American subjects felt themselves aggrieved. Ministers replied by declaring that the Americans spurned, and would spurn, all our efforts at reconciliation; that the congress and a certain set of demagogues held the American people in the most odious thraldom; that liberty was become a mere name there, except to the domineering section; that the freedom of. the press and of 'speech was trampled upon; that the property of all citizens desirous of maintaining their connection with the mother country was maliciously usurped or destroyed, and the possessors of it crammed into prisons, which were dens of misery and disease. Lord John's motion was rejected by one hundred and nine votes to forty-seven.

Lord North now moved, in a committee of supply, for forty-five thousand seamen for the service of the following year; and in a warm debate, in which Mr. Luttrell made a severe charge of mal-administration at the admiralty, and of the most shameful corruptions and peculations in that department and in the commissariat, he called for the production of the necessary papers to enable him to substantiate these charges; in fact, the villanies practised in those departments could not be exceeded by even the astounding ones laid open in our own times. The abominable frauds, and embezzlements, and diabolical contracts for furnishing the army and navy with both arms, boots, and food, fell as usual with a frightful misery on our brave soldiers and sailors. Even Wedderburn, lord North's solicitor-general, was forced to confess that, as regarded our army in America, " the peculation in every profitable branch of the service is represented to be enormous, and, as usual, it is attended with a shocking neglect of every comfort to the troops. The hospitals are pest-houses, and the provisions served out are poison. Those that are to be bought are sold at the highest prices of a monopoly."

Yet the whole demand for sailors was carried, and the demand of inquiry as absolutely rejected. Parliament went on and voted three million two hundred and five thousand five hundred and five pounds for the expenses of the navy; four thousand pounds for Greenwich Hospital; five hundred thousand pounds for the discharge of the debts of the navy. For the army, including some new contracts with the German princes for men to serve in America, three million pounds. What was still more disgraceful was that, amid all these charges on the public purse, when, altogether, four millions were demanded for the navy, nearly as much for the army, when it was deemed necessary to impose a tax on male servants, a further stamp on deeds, an auction duty, and to add five millions to the funded debt, the king came again with a fresh demand for six hundred thousand pounds for debts on the civil list. It was pretended that extraordinary calls had been made on the royal purse by the suffering royalists in America; but it was notorious that the royal household continued in the same condition of reckless waste and extravagance as it was when the former half million was voted for the same purpose. The unfortunate king, simple and even parsimonious in his own habits, had no more power to see, or, if seeing, to crush the waste amongst his servants, and the gross impositions of his tradesmen, than he had over the management of his diplomatic servants, who had driven his transatlantic subjects to rebellion. Lord North, who was in the habit of letting out strange truths, confessed that there were persons connected with the royal household who kept thirty or more male servants! Yet the commons granted this sum; and, by way of preventing the king falling into fresh difficulties, added an additional one hundred thousand pounds a-year to the civil list. The matter, however, did not pass without a plain reminder to his majesty. The rough-spoken Sir Fletcher Norton, the speaker of the commons, when presenting this bill for the increase of the civil list to the king, as he was seated on his throne, surrounded by the chief officers of state, said, " Sir, in a time of public distress, full of difficulty and danger, under burdens almost too heavy to be borne, your faithful commons postponed all other business, and granted your majesty not only a large present supply, but a very great additional revenue - great beyond example - great beyond your majesty's highest wants! " Unfortunately, such reproofs were lost on such a mind as that of George III. Having passed these votes, parliament was prorogued on the 13th of December till the 21st of the following January.