Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

Bouquet gave directions, that two companies of his troops, who had been pofted in the most advanced fituations, fhould fall within the circle; the troops on the right and left immediately opened their files, and filled up the vacant space, that they might feem to cover their retreat. Another company of light infantry, with one of grenadiers, were ordered to fupport the two first companies, who moved on the feigned retreat, and were intended to begin the real attack. The difpofitions were well made, and the plan executed without the least confufion.

The favages gave entirely into the fnare. The thin line of troops, which took poffeffion of the ground which the two companies of light foot had left, being brought in nearer to the center of the circle, the barbarians mistook those motions for a retreat, abandoned the woods which covered them, hurried headlong on, and advancing with the most daring intrepidity, galled the English troops with their heavy fire. But at the very moment, when certain of fuccefs, they thought themselves mafters of the camp, the two first companies made a fudden turn, and fallying out from a part of the hill, which could not be obferved; fell furioufly upon their right flank.

The favages, though they found themfelves difappointed and expofed, preferved their recollection, and refolutely returned the fire which they had received. Then it was the fuperiority of combined ftrength and difcipline appeared. On the fecond charge they could no longer fuftain the irrefiftible fhock of the regular troops, who rufhing upon them, killed many and put the rest to flight.

At the instant when the favages betook themselves to flight, the other two companies, which had been ordered to fupport the first, had placed themselves just in their front, and gave them their full fire. This accomplished their deThe four companies, now united, did not give them time to look behind them, but purfued the enemy, till they were totally dif perfed.

feat.

The other bodies of the favages attempted nothing. They were kept in awe during the engagement by the rest of the British troops, who were fo pofted as to be ready to fall on them upon the leaft motion. Having been wit

effes to the defeat of their companions, without any effort to fupport or affift them, they at length followed their example, and fled.

This judicious and fuccefsful manœuvre refcued the party from the most imminent danger. The victory fecured the field, and cleared all the adjacent woods. But ftill the march was fo difficult, and the army had fuffered fo much, and fo many horfes were loft, that before they were able to proceed they were reluctantly obliged to deftroy almoft their whole convoy of provifions, and confequently to give up one of the principal objects of their expedition Being lightened by this facrifice, they proceeded about two miles further, and encamped in a place called Buthy Run. After fuch fatigues on their part, and after the fevere correction they had given the favages in the preceding action, it was natural that they fhould expect to enjoy fome reft. But they had hardly fixed

their

their camp, when the favages were in ambufcade about them, and gave them another fire. Nothing could be more mortifying. However, the enemy did not perfevere in this new attack; and, except from a few feattered fhot, our troops fuffered no moleftation on the road, but arrived fafe at Fort Pitt, in four days from the action.

By this reinforcement that important poft was fecured, probably during the campaign. The ene my was weakened and disheartened by the loss of above fixty men which they had loft in the late engagements, befides a number that were wounded in the purfuit. This was reputed by the favages a confiderable lofs. Befides, fome of their braveft captains, and thofe who had moft diftinguifhed themfelves by their animofity to the English, fell upon this occafion; and in them no mean part of the fuel of 1 the war was confumed. The colonel who commanded, and all the officers, gained great honour by their firmness and prefence of mind, and the dexterity of their movements during the two encounters, and on the whole march. In thefe engagements we had fifty men killed. The wounded amounted to about fixty.

The Indians, thus checked by the timely reinforcements' which were thrown into Detroit, and Fort Pitt, were not difcouraged from further attempts. Niagara was a place equally worthy of their regard, and they endeavoured to diftrefs it by every method, which the meannefs of their skill in attacking fortified places would permit. They chiefly directed their atten

tember.

tion to the convoys. They hoped to tarve what they could not otherwife reduce. The vast distance of these forts from each other, and of all of them from the fettled countries, favoured their defign. For which reafon they carefully watched the convoys both by land and water. Near the carrying place of Niagara, they furrounded an escort, with very fuperior numbers, flew upwards of feventy of our fol- 14th of Sepdiers, and deftroyed the whole detachment. On the Lake Erie, with a croud of canoes, they attacked a fchooner, which conveyed provifions to the fort of Detroit; but here they were not fo fuccefeful. Though in this favage navy they had employed near 400 men, and had but a fingle veffel to engage, they were repulfed, after an hot engagement, with confiderable lofs. This veffel was to them as a fortification on the water; and they could not make their attacks with fo much advantage as upon the convoys by land.

Upon the whole of this war, fo far as it has hitherto proceeded, we cannot help obferving, that the Indians feem to be animated with a more dark and daring spirit than at any former time. They feem to have concerted their meafures with ability, and to have chofen the times and places of their feveral attacks with skill; to have behaved themselves in those attacks with firmness and refòlution; to have fucceeded on some occafions, and to have had no deeifive lofs in any

Although this confideration is fufficient to fhew that it is not reafonable to defpife, and by no means

prudent

.

prudent to provoke the Indians; yet we have, I conceive, no very great ground to be apprehenfive, concerning the final event of this war. As the enemy has not been able to prevent our throwing fuccours into the places we poffefs in their country, they can never take them by any other means; and without taking them, it is impoffible that any fuccefs they may obtain in the field can be decifive, the fituation of thefe places is fo well adapted to distress their frontiers, and interrupt their communications. Befides, Sir William Johnson has been indefatigable in his negotiations with the Indians of the Six Nations, and will, probably be fuccessful. If he can fucceed, even fo far as to prevail on them to continue in their neutrality, we must derive great advantage from his endeavours. The whole weight of the war will then lie on the Ohio Indians and their confederates and undoubtedly they will not be able to bear it. The want of arms and ammunition, the supply of which can never be fo certain in time of war; the interruption from hunting, (their hunters and warriors being generally the fame, and not only a great part of their food, but their cloathing and their arms, entirely depending on this refource) and our power of destroying their little

harveft, if we exert ourselves properly; all thefe circumstances will never fuffer this war to be of any continuance. The great point will be to prevent its breaking out again. For this purpose plans of rigour never can have a good effect, nor can they ever be adopted by either an humane or a politic people. Habits of ill treatment to the Indians, muft incite them to a frequent renewal of hoftilities. This will keep alive at once their military and their favage fpirit. They will always be enemies, and barbarous enemies. Their extirpation will never be fo certain a confequence of thefe wars, as the retardment of the growth and profperity of our colonies, which muft be the inevitable refult of them. Whereas by kind and gentle treatment, the Indians will forget the ufe of arms, which they will no longer be forced to have recourfe to; their ferocity will be foftened; their favage way of life will be altered; their wants will be increafed; and our people mixing with them, firft by commerce, and (when the prudence of government fhall think it adviseable) by fettlement, they will gradually affimilate to the English, and, at length, add ufefully to the number of thofe, whom it is now their fole ftudy to destroy.

CHAP. VII.

Domestic affairs. Scheme of the Jupplies. Oppofition to them. Arguments against the lotteries, excife, &c. City of London addrefs. Proteft of the Lords. Arguments in favour of the excife. Various proceedings. Lord B. refigns. Right hon. G. G. fucceeds. Situation of the minority.

IN clofing our laft year's account of the internal ftate of Great

Britain, we obferved that the political diffentions, which firft arose

on

on the refignation of Mr. Pitt, and which became more violent on that of the duke of N. fhewed, at that time, no kind of healing fymptom. During the continuance of the feffion, the party in oppofition endeavoured, by every poffible means, to harrafs, fince it was evident that, for the prefent at leaft, they could not cafily fubvert, the adminiftration. The oppofition, which was made in both houses to any approbation of the peace, had been much more warm than effective, though it was a topic upon which, of all others, it was expected that they would chufe to difplay their utmost ftrength. They, however, appeared extremely weak upon it, and many perfons did then imagine, that no ferious defign was entertained by any body of people, of branding with difgrace a fyftem, upon which it was abfolutely neceffary that the nation fhould repofe itself for a long time, to which, therefore, it was proper the people fhould reconcile their minds, and which had a general merit, fufficient to difpofe them to acquiefce in the conditions of it. The spirit of the party was not, whatever their intentions might have been, exhaufted in this attempt. They lay in wait to fall upon the adminiftration in the moft critical time, and to wound them in the most effential part, the fupplies. Several circumstances favoured their defign. The bufinefs of impofitions is, in itfelf, unpopular; minds difcontented and fertile can very readily and very plaufibly forebode almost any ill confequence from an untried tax; and there is fcarce a public burthen, which may not, with feme appear ance, be traced, in fpeculation, to the ruin of fome branch of manuVOL. VI.

Befides,

facture or commerce. though taxes were full as necessary at the conclufion, as during the continuance of the war, that neceffity was not, to every perfon, fo glaringly evident; nor were they, by any means, fo palatable, as when victory and plunder seemed to pay, in glory and profit, for every article of national expence. The advantages of the peace, though far more certain and folid, were lefs fudden aad lefs brilliant.

In thefe difpofitions the people were ready to fall into very ill humours, upon any plan of fupply which could be fuggefted. The adminiftration was very fenfible of this; and, therefore, determined to lay as few new taxes as the public fervice could poffibly admit. They were, perhaps, the more inclined to this referve in opening new refources, in order to fhew that the nation was not very abundant in them; and thereby to give an additional proof of the neceffity of the peace, and of the merit of thofe, who had made fo good an one in fuch exhaufted circumftances. Perhaps, too, in pursuing this method there was a defign of throwing a tacit reflection upon the expenfive manner in which the war had been carried on. After fuch a war, and oppreffed by fo heavy a debt, a miniftry could not wifh to ground its reputation upon a more folid bafis than that of a real national economy.

In purfuance of this plan the fupplies were to be raised: first, by taking 2.000,00cl. out of the finking fund; fecondly, by striking 1.800.000l. in exchequer bills; thirdly, by borrowing 2.800,ocol. on annuities; and laftly, by two lotteries, for 350,000l. each.

[D]

Το

[ocr errors]

To pay the interest on these loans, amounting, in the whole, to 7,300,000l. an additional duty of eight pounds a tun was laid upon all wines of the growth of France, and four pounds a tun upon all other wines.

So far as this duty went, the fcheme was perfectly unexceptionable; but another duty was added, concerning which very fober men might have had their doubts, and which gave to all the difcontented the faireft opportunity, which could be furnished, of raising a popular clamour, and inflaming the whole nation. A duty of four fhillings a hogfhead was laid upon cyder, to be paid by the maker, to be collected by the officers, and to be fubjected (with fome qualifications) to all the laws of excise*.

Those who led the oppofition differed in opinion with the treafury upon every particular in this plan. And, firit, they quarrelled with that dreadful new taxation, upon which almost the whole fcheme of fupply was founded. They held, for obvious reafons, and in direct contradiction to the advocates of the miniftry, that the nation was far from exhausted; that there were refources for carrying on the war at least two years longer, and much more towards clearing off incumbrances on the peace; that, as individuals abound in wealth, and as the public is loaded with fo immenfe a debt, it was in fuch circumftances the dictate of the wifeft and most enlarged policy to add as much as poffible, by bold and liberal grants, to the income of the nation; the

[ocr errors]

fand of payment will then be enlarged, and econony will have fomething upon which to operate. In any other method, frugality was mean and fordid in the practice, and would certainly prove trifling in the effect: that it might starve many useful parts of public fervice, but muft ever be found a frivolous and fallacious refource towards the difcharge of the public debt. To the lottery loan they objected the enormous profit which was allowed to the fubfcribers, exceeding that of former occafions, without any alteration in the ftate of public credit; two lotteries, for the first time, established in one year, without any urgent neceffity; and the incitement, which must thence arife to the pernicious spirit of gaming, which cannot be too much discountenanced in every ftate governed by wisdom, and a fober regard to the morals of the people. As to the money that was to be taken from the finking fund, they looked upon it as a kind of facrilege. They thought that fcarce any neceffity could, in our fituation, be pleaded in favour of a perverfion of this fund from its original purposes to the current fervice; that the appearance of tenderness for the people in this fcheme was altogether deceitful, when they were exonerated for a time, only to be burthened more heavily hereafter, and that their prefent cafe muft infallibly caufe their future weakness,

But it was on the topic of the cyder excife, (the only fund abfolutely new which was chofen) on which the clamour was most violent,

D:

*For a particular account of this act, fee the appendix to our Chronicle; and for a more minute account of thefe fupplies, fee cur article under that

title

especially

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »