conciliation, and became the most powerful ally of the Americans. His motion was developed and explained with an uncommon force of reasoning and eloquence, and supported by solid arguments and learning; and although his speech was extremely long and not free from the defects of a mind which was unable to put any stay to the stream of its tropes and metaphors, it yet made the greatest impression upon all those who were not steeped in English prejudices and presumption. The impression was so great, that lord North, false, faithless and audacious as he was, saw that something must be done, and he therefore attempted to lead public opinion astray by bringing forward a cunning and hypocritical conciliatory motion of his own, which the Americans were naturally as little disposed to receive as the Trojans were to receive the wooden horse of the Greeks (donum, quod Danai ferebant). Burke, like many writers of our own times, was remarkable for having converted his speeches in parliament in favour of freedom into a book, which is regarded as one of the most masterly defences of democratic principles; but he also at a later period wrote a passionate book, which he had previously delivered as a declamation in parliament in favour of the feudal system and all its abuses, and which may in its turn be regarded as the gospel of the fanatics, feudalists and defenders of all traditionary and chartered usurpations. The book which Burke drew up as a speech in favour of a peaceable termination of the strife with the colonies and for avoiding the evils and horrors of a civil war, and which he delivered on the 22nd of March, is indisputably one of the best of his productions, although his attempts at conciliation were attended with no better success than those which had been previously made by lord Chatham, whilst the ministers on their part continued to bring forward one measure of severity after another against the colonies. First of all, the provinces of New England, which were already in rebellion, were excluded from the English fisheries, and then came the famous prohibitory bill, which included, and therefore repealed, all the previous acts, but which in itself was a declaration of war. This bill interdicted all intercourse with the thirteen united provinces, and declared all American ships, whether on the high seas or in harbours, to be liable to seizure as lawful prizes, and condemned the sailors taken on board their ships to be transferred to the English navy. Hostilities had already commenced in America, and Franklin at the

end of March returned home. He had partly himself sounded the public feeling as well as that of the respective governments in France and Spain, and partly caused such inquiries to be made by others, and knew that congress could not look with any confidence for foreign aid till they prepared the way by a declaration of independence; he therefore no sooner became a member of the American congress than he urgently pressed upon them the necessity of taking this step and proclaiming a republic. Before Franklin arrived in America, Fox once more brought forward a motion in parliament in favour of peace.

It might have been supposed that such men as Chatham, Burke, Camden, and others, had completely exhausted all the materials connected with the existing disputes between the colonies and the mother-country, but Fox's genius and vigour of mind opened up to him new topics on which he could enlarge. Early in the year 1775 he opened his career as a statesman and speaker of acknowledged talents and capacity, with a speech which was universally admired as classical, and in which he still endeavoured to ward off the calamities that were impending over the country, and which were being continually hastened by the oppressive and compulsory measures of the government. His talents as a speaker, his chaste and classical style, his freedom from all that mere profusion, bombast, metaphorical exaggeration and ostentation which oppressed Burke's auditors, were received and recognized with great joy, and the simplicity and modesty of the speaker formed a striking contrast to the conceit, self-complacency, and ostentation of Burke. The main point, however, had been long decided. The skirmish at Lexington, the capture of St. John's on Lake Champlain, of Forts Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and the bloody engagement of Bunker's Hill, as well as the resolutions and movements of the Americans, when they learned that parliament had treated all their representations and addresses with contempt, and received the king's letter, in which he refused to recognize their agents, left no longer any opening for or hopes of a peaceful termination. The king's speech delivered on the opening of parliament was publicly burnt in America, and the English flag was torn down and replaced by a national tricolor.

In the autumn of 1775, the Americans, now under the command of Washington, prosecuted their operations with vigour against Boston, in order to anticipate the arrival from England

of the troops which had been bought by lord North's ministry from the German princes. In October of this year the English government recalled Gage, and Howe, who succeeded to the command, was completely shut up in Boston on the land side, and having received no provisions or supplies by sea during the severity of winter, he resolved in March to evacuate the city, which was threatened by an assault from the Americans. As Howe left behind him the chief part of his materials of war, and as he was suffered to embark his troops without annoyance on the part of the Americans, it has been generally supposed that there had been some secret agreement between Washington and the English general on the subject. Howe had no sooner sailed from Boston than the city was occupied by the American general; Howe landed at Halifax in Nova Scotia, and there awaited the reinforcements which had been promised from England. The expedition which the congress projected and partially carried into execution under Montgomery and other generals against Canada, was frustrated at the same time as the English parliament, on the motion of the government, voted large sums for the payment of mercenary troops to be employed in the American war. The English are said to have first entertained the idea of taking 30,000 Russians into their pay; it would appear, however, as if neither the English government nor the Russians could have been serious in this project. Besides, they had the Germans much nearer at hand, who at that time exclusively performed all their deadly military services for the Dutch in Batavia, at the Cape, and in the morasses of the Low Countries, in return for money, which flowed into the pockets of their princes, just in the same manner as the negroes did and do the work in the American plantations. Applications were therefore made to all the German princes who dealt in soldiers, and, to the great joy of their officers, 20,000 faithful subjects were purchased from them, who were forthwith sent to America. In this trade Frederick Augustus of AnhaltZerbst was on many grounds the most excusable, and the landgrave of Hesse-Cassel and the margrave of Anspach the most guilty. The landgrave actually impressed the greatest number of the peasants, and delivered them like wares; and the margrave not only imitated but outdid his example, for he put manacles upon many of the refractory who were unwilling to go. Waldeck, notwithstanding its diminutive territory, willingly delivered to the

English on this occasion what it had previously sold to the Dutch. Regiments were also hired from Brunswick, and George III. as elector of Hanover contributed five battalions, which the English were to send from the fortress of Gibraltar, where they were then in garrison. The king's nearest relations, the Jukes of Gloucester and Cumberland, were filled with indignation at this trade in human flesh with Brunswick and Hanover, and the duke of Cumberland gave vent to his feelings in parliament against this system of kidnapping on the part of the German princes: " he lamented," he said, "that Brunswickers, once the advocates of liberty in Europe, should now be sent to subjugate it in America." Frederick the Great also spoke with open contempt of this scandalous trade carried on by his neighbouring princes. He said, as is well known, that "it was quite reasonable he should collect a cattle-tax upon these soldiers of the princes as they passed through his territory, because they were sold like cattle."

§ III.

FRANCE TILL 1777.

We shall only advert to the last years of the reign of Louis XV. in this place so far as is necessary to show that the kingdom was merely kept together by soldiers and police, and that all the internal bonds of cohesion were entirely relaxed. We must necessarily come back occasionally to the time previous to and during the continuance of the seven years' war, in order to show that the government was really worse circumstanced with the pretensions of the parliament than it would have been with an assembly of the estates of the kingdom prudently called together. The government and parliament, however, were both equally opposed to the growing necessities and claims of the age and of the people. We shall only touch upon the secret history of the court, its ministers and mistresses, which d'Angerville has treated at great length in his history of the private life of Louis XV., Duclos in his Memoirs, and innumerable others, among whom Lacretelle has presented the chief incidents of the time, in a form attractive enough to his readers, in as far as it is suitable to our object, and unavoidably connected with the history

of a state and a people among whom the court had become the

state.

Towards the close of the seven years' war, Pompadour had become quite indispensable to the king, partly as a panderer to his pleasures, and partly as a confidante to whom he could safely entrust the management of affairs; and since the time in which Charles III. had exchanged Naples for Spain, Russia, Austria and Spain were well-pleased to see the whole management in her hands, and therefore gave her their countenance and support. Cardinal Bernis was indebted to Pompadour for the whole of his distinction in life, and therefore devoted to her will, but he became at last alive to the destiny of his country, and was obliged to withdraw, when he no longer wished to see France playing the part which she had hitherto played. Choiseul succeeded him as minister in France, and afterwards gained some importance in Europe in consequence of his intimate connexion with king Charles III. of Spain, although he was only a creature of Pompadour, and ruled the kingdom wholly in subjection to her will. She had, moreover, gained no inconsiderable tact in the administration of the affairs of the country in late years, but disgraced herself and the king by the means which she adopted, till her death in March 1764, of maintaining herself in the favour of the king and in her residence in the palace. The seriousness of history will not suffer us to take further notice of these means, and it is indeed unnecessary, because they are too well known through a variety of channels.

In the affair of the jesuits Pompadour made common cause with the parliament, the philosophers and the minister, and in spite of the superstition of the whole royal family, she was able to suppress an order in France in one year which maintained itself for ten years longer throughout the other states of Europe. She was in this affair the ally of Choiseul, and Louis XV. stood somewhat in the same relation in reference to religion with Choiseul, who belonged to the school of Voltaire, in which George III. stood to the greater part of his ministers, and especially to the earl of Sandwich. Although George III. had not, like Louis XV., to atone for the grossest sins of a licentious life by faith and prayer, he nevertheless sought to attach salvation exclusively to the rigid, formal orthodoxy of the Anglican church, as Louis XV. did to hearing masses, processions, and invocation of the saints. Louis' wife and his father-in-law honoured the