usurpers, and which neither the English nor Spaniards will contest; but of this cold region they have enough already, and their resolution was to get a better country. This was not to be had but by settling to the west of our plantations, on ground which has been hitherto supposed to belong to us.

termarriage, to an equality with themselves; and those nations, with which they have no such near intercourse, they gain over to their interest by honesty in their dealings. Our factors and traders, having no other purpose in view than immediate profit, use all the arts of an European counting-house, to defraud the simple hunter of his furs.

This design was not perhaps discovered as soon as it was formed, and was certainly not opposed as soon as it was discovered; we foolishly hoped, that their encroachments would stop, that they would be prevailed on by treaty and remonstrance, to give up what they had taken, or to put limits to themselves. We suffered them to establish one settlement after another, to pass boundary after boundary, and add fort to fort, till at last they grew strong enough to avow their designs, and defy us to obstruct them.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE TREATY Between his Britannic Majesty and Imperial Majesty of

all the Russias, signed at Moscow, Dec. 11, 1742; the Treaty between his Britannic Majesty and the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, signed June 19, 1755; and the Treaty between his Britannic Majesty and her Imperial Majesty of all the Russias, signed at St. Petersburgh, Sept. 19-30, 1755.

FROM THE LITERARY MAGAZine for july, 1756.

THESE are the treaties which for many months filled the senate with debates, and the kingdom with clamours; which were represented on one

It is unpleasing to represent our affairs to our own disadvantage: yet it is necessary to show the evils which we desire to be removed; and, therefore, some account may very properly be given of the measures which have given them their present superiority.

They are said to be supplied from France with better governors than our colonies have the fate to obtain from England. A French governor is seldom chosen for any other reason than his qualifications for his trust. To be a bankrupt at home, or to be so infamously vicious that he cannot be decently protected in his own country, seldom recommends any man to the government of a French colony. Their officers are commonly skilful either in war or commerce, and are taught to have no expectation of honour or preferment, but from the justice and vigour of their administration.

Their great security is the friendship of the natives, and to this advantage they have certainly an indubitable right; because it is the consequence of their virtue. It is ridiculous to imagine, that the friendship of nations, whether civil or barbarous, can be gained and kept but by kind treatment; and surely they who intrude, uncalled, upon the country of a distant people, ought to consider the natives as worthy of common kindness, and content themselves to rob without insulting them. The French, as has been already observed, admit the Indians, by in

and the most active care of the public welfare, and on the other as acts of the most contemptible folly and most flagrant corruption, as violations of the great trust of government, by which the wealth of Britain is sacrificed to private views, and to a particular province.

What honours our ministers and negotiators may expect to be paid to their wisdom, it is hard to determine, for the demands of vanity are not easily estimated. They should consider, before they call too loudly for encomiums, that they live in an age when the power of gold is no longer a secret, and in which no man finds much difficulty in making a bargain with money in his hand. To hire troops is very easy to those who are willing to pay their price. It appears therefore, that whatever has been done, was done by means which every man knows how to use, if fortune is kind enough to put them in his power. To arm the nations of the north in the cause of Britain, to bring down hosts against France from the polar circle, has indeed a sound of magnificence, which might induce a mind unacquainted with public affairs to imagine, that some effort of policy more than human had been exerted, by which distant nations were armed in our defence, and the influence of Britain was extended to the utmost limits of the world. But when this striking phenomenon of negotiation is more nearly inspected, it appears a bargain merely mercantile of one power that wanted troops more than money, with another that wanted money, and was burdened with troops; between whom their mutual wants made an easy contract, and who have no other friendship for each other, than reciprocal convenience happens to produce.

We shall therefore leave the praises of our

ministers to others, yet not without this acknowledgment, that if they have done little, they do not seem to boast of doing much; and that whether influenced by modesty or frugality, they have not wearied the public with mercenary panegyrists, but have been content with the concurrence of the parliament, and have not much solicited the applauses of the people.

In public as in private transactions, men more frequently deviate from the right for want of virtue than of wisdom; and those who declare themselves dissatisfied with these treaties, impute them not to folly, but corruption.

By these advocates for the independence of Britain, who, whether their arguments be just or not, seem to be most favourably heard by the people, it is alleged, that these treaties are expensive without advantage; that they waste the treasure which we want for our own defence, upon a foreign interest; and pour the gains of our commerce into the coffers of princes, whose enmity cannot hurt nor friendship help us; who set their subjects to sale like sheep or oxen, without any inquiry after the intentions of the buyer, and will withdraw the troops with which they have supplied us, whenever a higher bidder shall be found."

This perhaps is true, but whether it be true or false is not worth inquiry. We did not expect to buy their friendship, but their troops; nor did we examine upon what principles we were supplied with assistance; it was sufficient that we wanted forces, and that they were willing to furnish them. Policy never pretended to make men wise and good; the utmost of her power is to make the best use of men such as they are, to lay hold on lucky hours, to watch the present wants and present interests of others, and make them subservient to her own convenience.

It is farther urged with great vehemence, that these troops of Russia and Hesse are not hired in defence of Britain; that we are engaged in a naval war for territories on a distant continent; and that these troops, though mercenaries, can never be auxiliaries; that they increase the burden of the war, without hastening its conclusion, or promoting its success; since they can neither be sent into America, the only part of the world where England can, on the present occasion, have any employment for land forces, nor be put into our ships, by which, and by which only, we are now to oppose and subdue our enemies.

Nature has stationed us in an island inaccessible but by sea; and we are now at war with an enemy, whose naval power is inferior to our own, and from whom therefore we are in no danger of invasion: to what purpose then are troops hired in such uncommon numbers? To what end do we procure strength which we cannot exert, and exhaust the nation with subsidies at a time when nothing is disputed, which the princes who receive our subsidies can defend? If we had purchased ships, and hired seamen, we had apparently increased our power, and made ourselves formidable to our enemies, and, if any increase of security be possible, had secured ourselves still better from invasions: but what can the regiments of Russia or of Hesse contribute to the defence of the coasts of England; or by what assistance can they repay us the sums which we have stipulated to pay for their costly friendship?

The king of Great Britain has indeed a territory

on the continent, of which the natives of this island scarcely knew the name till the present family was called to the throne, and yet know little more than that our king visits it from time to time. Yet for the defence of this country are these subsidies apparently paid, and these troops evidently levied. The riches of our nation are sent into distant countries, and the strength which should be employed in our own quarrel consequently impaired, for the sake of dominions, the interest of which has no connexion with ours, and which, by the act of succession, we took care to keep separate from the British kingdoms.

To this the advocates for the subsidies say, that unreasonable stipulations, whether in the act of settlement or any other contract, are in themselves void; and that if a country connected with England by subjection to the same sovereign, is endangered by an English quarrel, it must be defended by English force; and that we do not engage in a war for the sake of Hanover, but that Hanover is for our sake exposed to danger.

Those who brought in these foreign troops have still something further to say in their de fence, and of no honest plea is it our intention to defraud them. They grant that the terror of invasion may possibly be groundless, that the French may want the power or the courage to attack us in our own country; but they maintain, likewise, that an invasion is possible, that the armies of France are so numerous that she may hazard a large body on the ocean, without leaving herself exposed; that she is exasperated to the utmost degree of acrimony, and would be willing to do us mischief at her own peril. They allow that the invaders may be intercepted at sea, or that, if they land, they may be defeated by our native troops. But they say, and say justly, that danger is better avoided than encountered; that those ministers consult more the good of their country who prevent invasion, than repel it; and that if these auxiliaries have only saved us from the anxiety of expecting an enemy at our doors, or from the tumult and distress which an invasion, how soon soever repressed, would have produced, the public money is not spent in vain.

These arguments are admitted by some, and by others rejected. But even those that admit them, can admit them only as pleas of necessity; for they consider the reception of mercenaries into our country as the desperate remedy of desperate distress; and think with great reason, that all means of prevention should be tried to save us from any second need of such doubtful succours.

That we are able to defend our own country, that arn.s are most safely entrusted to our own hands, and that we have strength, and skill, and courage, equal to the best of the nations of the continent, is the opinion of every Englishman, who can think without prejudice, and speak without influence; and therefore it will not be easy to persuade the nation, a nation long renowned for valour, that it can need the help of foreigners to defend it from invasion. We have been long without the need of arms by our good fortune, and long without the use by our negligence; so long, that the practice and almost the name of our old trained-bands is forgotten. But the story of ancient times will tell us, that the trained-bands were once able to maintain the quiet and safety of their country; and reason without history will inform us, that those men are

are long habits of regularity, great exactness of discipline, and great confidence in the commander. Regularity may, in time, produce a kind of mechanical obedience to signals and commands, like that which the perverse Cartesians impute to animals; discipline may impress such an awe upon the mind, that any danger shall be less dreaded than the danger of punishment; and confidence in the wisdom or fortune of the general, may induce the soldiers to follow him blindly to the most dangerous enterprize.

What may be done by discipline and regularity, may be seen in the troops of the Russian empress, and Prussian monarch. We find that they may be broken without confusion, and repulsed without flight.

But the English troops have none of these requisites in an eminent degree. Regularity is by no means part of their character; they are rarely exercised, and therefore show very little dexterity in their evolutions as bodies of men, or in the manual use of their weapons as individuals; they neither are thought by others, nor by themselves more active or exact than their enemies, and therefore derive none of their courage from such imaginary superiority.

The manner in which they are dispersed in quarters over the country during times of peace, naturally produces laxity of discipline: they are very little in sight of their officers; and, when they are not engaged in the slight duty of the guard, are suffered to live every man his own

way.

The equality of English privileges, the impartiality of our laws, the freedom of our tenures, and the prosperity of our trade, dispose us very little to reverence of superiors. It is not to any great esteem of the officers that the English soldier is indebted for his spirit in the hour of battle; for perhaps it does not often happen that he thinks much better of his leader than of himself. The French Count, who has lately published the Art of War, remarks how much soldiers are animated, when they see all their dangers shared by those who were born to be their masters, and whom they consider as beings of a different rank. The Englishman despises such motives of courage; he was born without a master; and looks not on any man, however dignified by lace or titles, as deriving from nature any claims to his respect, or inheriting any qualities superior to his own.

There are some, perhaps, who would imagine that every Englishman fights better than the subjects of absolute governments, because he has more to defend. But what has the English more than the French soldier? Property they are both commonly without. Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving; and this choice is, I suppose, equally allowed in every country. The English soldier seldom has his head very full of the constitution; nor has there been, for more than a century, any war that put the property or liberty of a single Englishman in danger.

Whence then is the courage of the English vulgar? It proceeeds, in my opinion, from that dissolution of dependence,, which obliges every man to regard his own character. While every man is fed by his own hands, he has no need of any servile arts; he may always have wages for his labour; and is no less necessary to his em

ployer, than his employer is to him. While he looks for no protection from others, he is naturally roused to be his own protector; and having nothing to abate his esteem of himself, he consequently aspires to the esteem of others. Thus every man that crowds our streets is a man of honour, disdainful of obligation, impatient of reproach, and desirous of extending his reputation among those of his own rank; and as courage is in most frequent use, the fame of courage is most eagerly pursued. From this neglect of subordination I do not deny that some inconveniences may from time to time proceed: the power of the law does not always sufficiently supply the want of reverence, or maintain the proper distinction between different ranks; but good and evil will grow up in this world to gether; and they who complain in peace of the insolence of the populace, inust remember, that their insolence in peace is bravery in war.

THE FALSE ALARM. 1770.

ONE of the chief advantages derived by the present generation from the improvement and diffusion of philosophy, is deliverance from unnecessary terror, and exemption from false alarms. The unusual appearances, whether regular or accidental, which once spread consternation over ages of ignorance, are now the recreations of inquisitive security. The sun is no more lamented when it is eclipsed, than when it sets; and meteors play their coruscations without prognostic or prediction.

The advancement of political knowledge may be expected to produce in time the like effects. Causeless discontent and seditious violence will grow less frequent and less formidable, as the science of government is better ascertained, by Niligent study of the theory of man.

It is not, indeed, to be expected, that physical and political truth should meet with equal acceptance, or gain ground upon the world with equal facility. The notions of the naturalist find mankind in a state of neutrality, or at worst have nothing to encounter but prejudice and vanity; prejudice without malignity, and vanity without interest. But the politician's improvements are opposed by every passion that can exclude conviction or suppress it; by ambition, by avarice, by hope, and by terror, by public faction, and private animosity.

It is evident, whatever be the cause, that this nation, with all its renown for speculation and for learning, has yet made little proficiency in civil wisdom. We are still so much unacquainted with our own state, and so unskilful in the pursuit of happiness, that we shudder without danger, complain without grievances, and suffer our quiet to be disturbed, and our commerce to be interrupted, by an opposition to the Government, raised only by interest, and supported only by clamour, which yet has so far prevailed upon ignorance and timidity, that many favour it as reasonable, and many dread it as powerful.

What is urged by those who have been so industrious to spread suspicion, and incite fury, from one end of the kingdom to the other, may be known by perusing the papers which have been at once presented as petitions to the king,