their camp, when the favages were in ambuscade 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 scattered 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 enemy was weakened and disheartened by the lofs 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 diftinguished themfelves by their animofity to the English, fell upon this occafion; and in them no mean part of the fuel of 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 these 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 meanness of their skill in attacking fortified places would permit. They chiefly directed their atten

On the

tion to the convoys. They hoped to starve what they could not otherwife reduce. The vast distance of thefe forts from each other, and of all of them from the fetticd 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 efcort, with very fuperior numbers, flew upwards 14th of Sepof feventy of our foltember. diers, and destroyed the whole detachment. Lake Erie, with a croud of cances, they attacked a fchooner, which conveyed provifions to the fort of Detroit; but here they were not fo fuccessful. 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 fkill; to have behaved themfelves in those

attacks with firmnefs and refolution; to have fucceeded on fome occafions, and to have had no decifive 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 Johnfon 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 muft 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 fupply 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 these 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, first by commerce, and (when the prudence of government fhall think it advifeable) by fettlement, they will gradually affimilate to the English, and, at length, add usefully to the number of thofe, whom it is now their fole ftudy to destroy.

IN clofing our last year's account of the internal state of Great

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

on

Befides,

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 administration. 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 itfelf 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 fpirit 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 circumftances favoured their defign. The bufinefs of impofitions is, in itfelf, unpopular; minds difcontented and fertile can very readily and very plaufibly forebode almoft any ill confequence from an untried tax; and there is fearce a public burthen, which may not, with fome appearance, be traced, in fpeculation, to the ruin of fome branch of manu-z VOL. VI.

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 resources, 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 purfuing 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 so heavy a debt, a miniftry could not wifh to ground its reputation upon a more folid basis than that of a real national economy.

In purfuance of this plan the fupplies were to be raised: first, by taking 2.000,000l. out of the finking fund; fecondly, by ftriking 1.800,000l. in exchequer bills; thirdly, by borrowing 2.800,000l. on annuities ; and laftly, by two lotteries, for 350,000l. each. [D]

To

Το pay the intereft on thefe 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 scheme 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 raifing a popular clamour, and inflaming the whole nation. A duty of four fhillings a hoghead 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 excife*.

Those who led the oppofition differed in opinion with the treafury upon every particular in this plan. And, firft, they quarrelled with that dreadful new taxation, upon which almoft 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 exhaufted; 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

fund of payment will then be enlarged, and œconony 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 ftarve 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 subscribers, exceeding that of former occafions, without any alteration in the state of public credit; two lotteries, for the first time, eftablished in one year, without any urgent neceffity; and the incitement, which must thence arife to the pernicious fpirit of gaming, which cannot be too much difcountenanced 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 cause 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 moft violent,

title.

3

efpecially

efpecially without doors. Nobody can forget the clamour, which a scheme of a more extended excife raised in the year 1733. One of the ableft minifters for internal policy, that England ever had, was on the point of finking under it. Though time has made many particular converts, and thofe too of no mean rank, to this plan, or at leaft to the principles of it, the general odium has not yet worked off, and it remained one of the moft inflammatory topics, which could be held out to the public.

The oppofition contended, that this tax was, with regard to its object, partial and oppreffive; with regard to the means of collecting it, dangerous and unconftitutional; that it lays the whole burthen of expences incurred in the general defence of the kingdom, and in the protection of the national commerce, on a few particular counties, which in every other article of the public charge contribute at least their full fhare; they stated the difproportion of this tax to the natural original value of the commodity; that it was oppreffive to both farmers and landholders; and to thofe in a diminution of their rents, operating more feverely than the land tax, to thefe, becaufe, if they compounded, it is, in effect, an heavy capitation; if they do not, it is a fubjection to new, and unknown, and perplexed laws, and to tribunals of commiffioners appointed by the crown, and removeable at pleasure, and therefore arbitrary in their nature, and inconfiftent with the principles of liberty, which have hitherto diftinguished this nation from arbitrary governments.

Upon this last head endeavours

were used to raise apprehenfions of the deepest and most alarming nature. They fuggested that when new orders of men, (they meant country farmers) by fituation and profefion diftinct from traders, are rendered objects of the excife laws, the precedent is formidable not to commerce only, but to more important objects; and had a fatal tendency, which they trembled to think on.

They infinuated further, that the fmallnefs of the fum to be raised indicated, that the fupplying the wants of government could not be the only motive to fo extraordinary a mealure.

They lamented that things were now come to that melancholy pafs, that (befides what might be dreaded for the future) the houfes of all orders of people, of peers, gentlemen, freeholders, and farmers, were made liable to be entered and' fearched at pleafure; and this they deemed nothing lefs, to ufe the words of one of the first gracious acts of liberty paffed by our great deliverer, king William, repealing the hearth money, than "a badge of flavery."

This language was held in both houfes of parliament; it was held by the city of London, and ecchoed by most of the counties and corporations of the kingdom. The city of London, which had not been in a very good temper finee the late changes, and whofe ill temper has always a moft preva lent and extenfive influence, exerted itfelf beyond the efforts of the most violent periods to prevent this fcheme of excife from paffing into a law, They inftructed their reprefentatives in the moft preffing terms to oppofe it; they fuccef[D] 2

fively