The Reign of George III. (Continued.) page 5

But smoothly as this transaction had passed, there was a hurricane behind. The threatened extension of the measure to Scotland roused all the presbyterian bigotry of Scotland. The acrid essence of Geneva brought thither by Knox at once rose to the surface. The synod of Glasgow and other synods passed resolutions vowing to oppose to the utmost any interference with the Scottish act for the suppression of popery. Press and pulpit were speedily inflamed; associations were formed in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and most of the towns, for the defence of the protestant interest. All the old persecutions and insults of catholics were renewed; they could not safely appear in the streets, or remain safely in their houses. Not even those liberal enough to advocate the just rights of catholics were safe, at least from rude treatment. Dr. Robertson, the historian, was hooted, when he went abroad, as a favourer of the papists. There was as yet no more toleration in Scotland than if a William III. had never appeared in this country. From Scotland the intolerant leaven spread to England. It grew fiercer and fiercer, and in a while found a proper champion in the hot-headed lord George Gordon, whose exploits as the Coryphaeus of riot, and fire, and confusion, culminated two years later in the scenes of destruction and terror for ever memorable as the Gordon riots.

During this session lord Barrington was anxious to retire from his post of secretary at war. He had seen the whole American campaign carried on in direct defiance of the sensible course he had recommended, of securing the chief towns, blockading the ports, and taking care never to follow the Americans into the interior. He had requested lord North to allow him to resign his seat in the commons before the news of Burgoyne's surrender arrived. This was a crowning proof of the uselessness of his advice to government. Again, on the 21st of May lord Barrington desired lord North to give him the Chiltern Hundreds. As North, however, did not mention the matter to the king as he had promised, Barrington did it himself, and obtained permission to accept the Chiltern Hundreds, but not to quit his post as secretary at war till a suitable successor could be found.

All this time lord North was himself equally anxious to be quit of the onus of the conduct of the government, which had been so disastrous in his hands. He had been solicitous that Chatham should have taken his place; but now that Chatham was gone, it was impossible to see how a strong cabinet could be formed. There was no single man who could be pointed out as of sufficient strength in public opinion to head an administration. Burke stood high for eloquence, but no one gave him the credit for sufficient coolness and firmness to wield the powers of government at such a momentous crisis. The king instructed North to remain; and, in that good nature, which was his great characteristic, he still held office, having Thurlow appointed lord chancellor instead of lord Bathurst, but only to accumulate on his head more overwhelming disaster and disgrace.

If the affairs of England in America looked discouraging, those of America herself were far worse. The Newfoundland fishery and the trade to the West Indies, hitherto the main reliance of New England, had been broken up. Nine hundred trading vessels had fallen into the hands of the English, and such as they retained were of little value. The coasting trade was destroyed, and Boston and the other New England states, cut off from their usual supplies, were reduced to great distress, and this was augmented by the embargoes which the different states began to levy upon each other. To add to the suffering, congress went on issuing fresh shoals of paper money - the only mode they had of paying the expenses of the war; and already the liabilities of congress amounted to forty millions of dollars, and this was far from showing the extent of the expenses of the war. The individual states had made their own issues, and all were deeply in debt. The sum total of expenditure was not less than sixty-five millions of dollars.

This was the financial situation of the states at the opening of the year. Congress had recommended the imposition of taxes, but no attention had been paid to it; so in January, 1778, congress was compelled to have recourse to fresh issues of paper money. They authorised a further loan of ten millions, though the former loans were not yet half filled up. The empty treasury had to be replenished this month by a new issue of three millions in bills of credit. Two millions more were issued in February, two in March, six millions and a-half in April, five millions in May, and as many more in June, making in the first half of this year an addition of twenty-three millions and a-half to the already superabundant issue. The depreciation was proportionate, and besides the public distress which this produced - making every article of life appear monstrously dear - daily resignation of commissions took place in the army. Washington wrote to congress to inform them that since August last between two and three hundred officers had resigned their commissions, and that many more were with difficulty dissuaded from following their example. To put a stop to resignations and desertions, he recommended congress to offer to all officers who served to the end of the war half pay for life, and a suitable sum to every soldier. Congress was in the end, but with much difficulty, induced to offer every officer half pay for seven years if he served throughout the war, and to every soldier eighty dollars.

The sufferings of Washington's army in his camp at Valley Forge were terrible. By persevering entreaties, he prevailed on congress to send a commission to witness this distress with their own eyes. But this availed little. Congress was on the verge of insolvency, and the supplies came in slowly. This is his own account, addressed to one of his generals, on the 20th of March: - " By death and desertion we have lost a good many men since we came to this ground, and have encountered every species of hardship that cold, wet, hunger, and want of clothes were capable of producing. The soldiers have been for days together, two or three times, without provisions, and once six days without any of the meat kind. Could the poor horses tell their tale, it would be in a strain still more lamentable, as numbers have actually died from pure want."

What was more fatal to success, there was much caballing and rancour amongst the officers in the army, and especially against Washington. Gates, elated with his success in the north, did not hesitate to disparage Washington, and to aspire himself to the post of commander-in-chief. Washington had given offence to brigadier Thomas Conway, by representing to Richard Henry Lee, a leading member of congress, that he understood that congress was about to raise him to the rank of major-general; that this would be a just grievance to those over whose heads he would be promoted; that Conway's merits were chiefly in his own imagination; and that he himself could not hope to be of further use, if such insuperable difficulties were thrown in his way. This promotion was, however, made, and Conway became an active conspirator with others to supersede Washington, and to put Gates or Charles Lee, both Englishmen, in his place. This intrigue was called " Conway's Cabal."

La Fayette, astonished at these proceedings in patriots, wrote thus to Washington: "When I was in Europe I thought that here almost every man was a lover of liberty. You can conceive my astonishment when I saw that toryism was as apparently professed as whiggism itself. There are open dissensions in congress; parties who hate one another as much as the common enemy; men who, without knowing anything about war, undertake to judge you, and to make ridiculous comparisons. They are infatuated with Gates, without thinking of the difference of circumstances, and believe that attacking is the only thing necessary to conquer."

In Europe, war was about to break forth, in consequence of war in America. The emissaries of the states had done their best to embroil the whole of the old continent in this quarrel. They had tried the martial monarch of Prussia, who was especially embittered against England, but too shrewd to spend his strength in freeing America, whilst more profitable speculations lay at hand in the territories of Austria and Bavaria. The Emperor of Austria, Joseph H., was quite satisfied to remain quiet after a visit to his sister, Marie Antoinette, the queen of France. He found that kingdom - about to enter on war with England - in a state which filled him with deep alarm. It was overwhelmed with debt; the people were in a condition of deep misery; there was an uneasy and restless spirit abroad, ominous of coming storms, and a philosophy already in progress, which threatened the destruction of the very foundations of all monarchy. Louis XVI. was himself neither desirous of war nor by any means in a condition for it, but was borne forward by a rash ministry, and the hope of damaging England, towards a vortex which the Austrian monarch contemplated with awe.

France itself had hung aloof, till the defeat of Burgoyne had induced her to believe that the Americans were stronger than they were; and this favourable turn of feeling was artfully improved by Franklin, who pointed to the bills of conciliation now preparing by lord North, and assured the French ministers that, now or never, they must sign the treaty with America, or the Americans would accept the terms of England; all the promised advantages to France would be lost! That had decided them.

The American plenipotentiaries in Paris were in a state of as violent dissension amongst themselves as the members of their congress and of their army at home; but the influence of Franklin carried them through. In Paris the presence of the American philosopher and republican became a rage. As philosophers admired his science and discoveries, so the new lights in political philosophy admired him as an innovator on the old systems of government. If the French ministers had not been blinded by their vanity and their hatred of England, they might have discovered, in this homage done to the republican of the transatlantic world, the scarcely-concealed fire of those principles already kindled around them. The fashionable world found in the philosopher's old-fashioned exterior matter for admiration. His homely cut of coat, his old - fashioned wig, his very buckles, were regarded with enthusiasm. The sober author of " Poor Richard's Almanac," with all its thrifty maxims, was the lion of the gayest salons and of the court ladies; and this furore in his favour he well employed for his diplomatic ends.

Yet the court of France did not lack solemn warnings of the fatal path on which they were entering. The honest and far- sighted financier, Turgot, who had been employed by Louis XVI., as comptroller-general, to endeavour to bring the terribly disordered revenue of France into order, said, " I must remind you, sire, of these three words - 1 No bankruptcy, no augmentation of imposts, no loans.' To fulfil these three conditions, there is but one means - to reduce the expenditure below the receipt, and sufficiently below it to be able to economise, every year, twenty millions, in order to clear off the old debts. Without that, the first cannon fired will force the state to a bankruptcy." He assured the king, that all colonies, on arriving at a condition of maturity, would as naturally abandon the control of the mother country as children, arriving at majority, do the control of their parents; that the independence of America would, therefore, come of itself, without France ruining herself to accelerate the event; that, as to France wishing Spain to join in this attempt, Spain must remember her own colonies, for, by assisting to free the British colonies, she would assuredly assist to liberate her own.

This was a doctrine far before Turgot's own age. None of our ablest statesmen had caught a glimpse of it, except lord Coventry, who had declared in parliament, that it was not the possession of colonies, but their trade, which would enrich us. Neither Chatham nor Burke, however, saw so far as Turgot and Coventry; they were for giving the colonies self-taxation, but regarded their independence as synonymous with our commercial ruin. These doctrines now are happily universally recognised; but in France the voice of Turgot was despised; the first cannon was fired, and not merely bankruptcy, but revolution, came in inevitable sequence. All the old imposts, duties, and corvees, were continued, and even augmented, to raise fifty thousand men for the assistance of America and the invasion of England. An army was collected on the coasts of Normandy and Brittany; and the navy was put, with all activity, into a condition to outnumber that of England, and to retaliate for the losses and defeats of the last war. The system of grinding the unfortunate people was renewed in all its rigour, and the last touch was put to their endurance and their misery. At such a cost did France, already bankrupt, insure the independence of America, and to find no return of the mighty obligation when her own time came.

Before there was any declaration of war, the king of France, on the 18th of March, issued an order to seize all British ships in the ports of that kingdom; and, nine days afterwards, a similar order was issued by the English government as to all French ships in her harbours. The first act of hostility was perpetrated by admiral Keppel. He had been appointed first admiral on the earliest news of the treaty of France with America; and, being now in the channel with twenty ships of the line, he discovered two French frigates, " La Licorne" and " La Belle Poule " reconnoitering his fleet. Not troubling himself that there had been no declaration of war, Keppel ordered some of his vessels to give chase; and, on coming up with the Licorne, a gun was fired over her, to call her to surrender; and the Frenchman struck his colours, but not before he had poured a broadside into the America, commanded by lord Longford, and wounded four of his men. The Arethusa, in the meantime, had come up with the Belle Poule, and, after a desperate action, drove her in amongst the rocks, whilst the Arethusa herself was so disabled as to require towing back to the fleet. A schooner and a French frigate were soon after taken; and, finding on board these vessels papers stating that the fleet in Brest harbour consisted of thirty-two sail of the line, and ten or twelve frigates, Keppel returned to Portsmouth for reinforcements.