highness commanded, did not anfwer the expectation of the nation, it was because thefe expectations were rather too fanguine, confidering the vaft fwarms of men, and the formidable trains of artillery, the French could bring into a field at their own doors. As to the first part of the last war in Germany, the neglect, ftill fresh in every man's memory, with which his royal highness was treated, will more than account for the progrefs made by the French arms, as the pofitive orders it is now well known he received from England, will juftify his putting an end to it in the manner he did. If he retreated before a vaftly fuperior body of men, it was without any confiderable lofs; if he confented, that his troops fhould not fight, he did not, that they fhould lay down their arms; and to his keeping them thus entire and armed, muit be attributed in a great measure that fuccefs, which prince Ferdinand met with against the fame French army, when robbed of a D'Eftrees, and ruined by the neglect and avarice of a Richlieu. To fay any thing of his royal highness's behaviour during the rebellion would be wronging his glory, the enemy he had to deal with was fo much beneath him. His condescending to head the troops fent against them, is all the merit we can permit ourselves to attribute to him on that memorable occafion.

In a lefs heroic mind than that of his royal highnefs, the flight put upon him in the beginning of the German war, efpecially when contrafted with the favours afterwards fhowered on a foreign

prince in the fame circumftances; might have excited a difguft not very compatible with the glory and intereft, of the nation. But his royal highness had too great a foul to how his refentment, if it may be ftyled refentment, otherwife than by throwing up employments, which it was no longer confiftent with his honour to keep, and abfenting himself from councils, in which any oppofition, however well grounded, to the favourite meafures of the prince and people might have been conftrued into a diflike of the minifter. But, though he retired from public bufinefs, he fill on all occafions fhewed that anxiety for the public welfare, which had diftinguished the former part of his life. The joy expreffed by him at the news of every advantage gained by the British troops in Germany, plainly proved, that his country alone pof feffed all the affections of his heart.

In the arts of peace his royal highness was as amiable as he was great in thofe of war. Always ready to encourage fuch plans as promifed to be attended with any national advantage, he once purchafed, at a great difadvantage, a carpet manufactory, when on the point of being thrown up for want of encouragement from the public, left that very public fhould lofe the benefit of it. The greatest part of that large revenue fettled on him by his country as a reward for his fervices, he returned into her bofom, by conftantly employ ing a great number of hands in the adorning of Windfor park, the free accefs to which renders it as much, in fome fort, the property of the fubject as the monarch. In doing

this

this, too, he conducted himself in a manner that does great honour to his difcernment as well as his humanity; reviving the old English hofpitality, interfering

with the prefent fpirit of frugality which trade requires. He did not give the poor labourers employed in thefe works higher wages than they could get from others; that would have had a tendency to raise the price of labour on farmers and manufactarers; but he allowed them bread and beer daily, and, on ftated days, fuch other extraordinary refreshments, as they could not expect from any but the rich, and which the rich could very well afford to allow them.

To fay any thing of his royal highness's readiness to quit these agreeable fcenes of rural life, when called upon by the voice of his prince and the neceffities of his country, would be only repeating what we have but just now hazarded upon that fubject. We fhall, therefore, put an end to this faint fketch of one of the best princes England was ever blessed with, by wishing that fome abler hand would fill up the outlines; and by referring the readers, in the mean time, to our article of Characters, for a more minute detail of the other principal public tranfactions, by which his royal highnefs fo eminently distinguished himself.

tations.

Hlaid on the colonies, at

AD the ftamp duty been

once, and without any previous mention of it to them, they would, perhaps, have fubmitted to it, if not without grumbling, at least without that open oppofition, the confequences of which it may be more easy to guefs than fafe to expatiate on. The principal people amongst them would not then have had an opportunity of making the lower fort forefee in that act of the British legislature, when merely held out to them, much VOL. VIII.

greater evils, than they, probably, were liable to feel from it, when actually inflicted; much lefs would they have had time to animate each other against it to such a degree, that every news concerning it, that reached any one part of the wide extended Britifh dominions in America, almoft inftantaneously flew over the reft, like fire put to the well-laid trains of a vast but well-combined mine, exciting every where fuch heartburnings amongft all ranks, and fuch commotions in most of them, amongst [E]

the

the populace, as were fufficient to deftroy all differences in religious fentiments or forms of government, the beft fecurity the people of Great Britain can have for a ready fubmiffion, on the part of the people of the colonies, to their decrees; and the beft tie by which they can, at any rate, hope to keep them united, till they fhall think proper to adopt them as fellow fubjects, and bind them by the confiderations of common and equal in tereft, the strongest and most durable of all bands.

But, how generally foever the people of the colonies were indifpofed against this tax, it is to be prefumed, that they were not, all, equally fo; and, therefore, it was of no fmall confequence, what colony any interefting news of it firft reached. The example of paffivenefs, or even moderation, in one colony, might have been of fome fervice to induce the reft to fubmit quietly to it. But, unfortunately, the account of its having paffed into a law got first to New-England, that colony, the inhabitants of which confidered their ancestors, who had first fettled it, as the moft injured of all thofe Englishmen who had filed to America from civil or fpiritual perfecution in their native country; and fome of whofe progenitors, accordingly, had, fo early as the year 1642, fpirit enough to affert their independence, and the happiness of feeing the best title they could have to that independence, if not exprefsly owned, at least greatly countenanced by the vote of an English house of commons, that the plantations in New-England had fuc ceeded in their enterprife without any charge to the ftate, and were

likely to prove beneficial and commodious to the mother country.

Accordingly, the news of the ftamp-act having received the royal affent, no fooner reached that province, than the melancholy, which had taken poffeffion of evry countenance on their receiving the firft account of the vote for the propriety of laying it on having been refumed, and which had afterwards vifibly increafed on the arrival of that of its having paffed both houfes, turned to fury, and every where broke out into action. The fhips in the harbour hanged out their colours half maft high, in token of the deepest mourning; the bells rang muffled; the act itself was printed, with a death's head to it in the place where it is ufual to fix the ftamps, and cried publickly about the streets by the name of the "Folly of

66

England, and ruin of Ame"rica." Effays foon followed, not only against the expediency, but even the equity of it, in feveral news-papers, one of which bore the fignificative title of "The Conftitutional Courant, containing matters interefting to liberty, and nowife repugnant to loyalty, printed by Andrew Marvel, at the fign of the Bribe refufed, on Conftitution-Hill, North-America ;" and wore a ftill more fignificative headpiece; a fnake cut in pieces, with the initial letters of the names of the feveral colonies from NewEngland to South-Carolina, in. clufively, affixed to each piece, and above them the words JOIN or DIE. To these were added caricatures, pafquinades, puns, bonmots, and fuch vulgar fayings fitted to the occafion, as by being fhort could be more easily circulated and

retained,

retained, at the fame time that, by being extremely expreffive, they carried with them the weight of a great many arguments.

It were needlefs to dwell much upon the contents of thefe newspaper effays. Two things excepted, they faid little more than what we ourselves have already faid on the occafion, from the mouths of others at this fide of the water. But these were things of the moft ferious nature, and such as the moft defpotic tyrant might expect to fee remonftrated against by the moft abject vaffals. The firft was, that the perfon acting under this act had it in his power to bring an action, the cause of which had arifen at one extremity of the North American colonies, to the other, at almoft two thousand miles distance, without the trader's being entitled to recover damages, in cafe the judge certified that there was any probable caufe for the profecution. The fecond was, the judge's having an intereft in giving a decree in favour of the party fuing for the penalties of the act, by being allowed, by way of commiffion, a very large fhare in these penalties.

Thefe proceedings were followed by fuch others, as might naturally be expected from them. By the time the act itself, as printed at the king's printing-houfe, reached the colonies, the populace were every where exafperared againft it, to fuch a degree, that they treated it with all that contempt and indignation, which could be expreffed by public authority against the most offenfive libel of a private perfon. It was publickly burnt by them, in feveral places, along with the effigies of thofe, who were fup

pofed to have had any hand in bringing it about, at the fame time that it was voted in fome meetings of perfons in higher rank, that thanks fhould be given to general Conway and Colonel Barré, two gentlemen whom they confidered as the moft ftrenuous oppofers of it in the British house of commons; that their fpeeches against it, and their pictures, fhould be requested; their pictures to be huug up in their places of meeting; and their fpeeches to be inferted in the books deftined to record their principal tranfactions,

Upon the arrival of the news of this difcontent in England, feveral mafters of fhips refused to take any ftamps on board for the colonies; and it foon appeared that their precaution was well founded; for fuch as ventured to take them had great reafon to repent it on their arrival at their destined ports, where, to fave their veffels from fire, and their perfons from the gallows, they most of them were obliged to furrender their execrated cargoes into the hands of the enraged multitude, to be treated in the fame ignominious manner in which the act itself had been treated; and the rest to take fhelter under fuch of the king's fhips as happened to be at hand to protect them.

Those gentlemen who came from England with commiffions to act as diftributors of the flamps, fared ftill worse. Many of them were made to renounce, now and for ever, publickly and upon oath, all manner of concern in them; others thought proper to return from whence they came; whilft fome, who were fuf

pected of obstinately perfifting, as it was termed, in endeavouring to enflave their country, or of having fpoken too freely concerning the behaviour of the people on this occafion, had their houfes burnt to the ground, and their most valuable effects plundered or deftroyed. Even thofe, who had been named without their folicitation or knowledge, or were obliged to fuperintend the diftribution of the ftamped paper, in virtue of the offices they already filled, (governors and chief juftices, who had been moft unaccountably prefed into this odious fervice, not excepted), were treated in the fame manner, and one much worse. The populace, fufpecting him of having written to England in difrefpectful terms concerning their proceedings, furrounded his houfe, and obliged him, in fpite of tears and prayers, to deliver up the copies of his letters, and thereby turn evidence against himself. Nay, fhips bring. ing ftamped mercantile or customhoufe papers, merely in their own defence, from fuch of the colonies as had thought proper to fubmit to the ftamp-act, were forced to part with them to be fuck up in derifion in coffee-houfes and taverns, and then publickly committed to the flames.

Many of the better fort of people gradually mixed with the populace in thefe tumults: and one of them was not afraid to fet the act openly at defiance, by advertifing, under his hand, that thofe, whole bufnefs it was to enforce it, might fave themselves the trouble of calling upon him for that purpofe; for that he was refolved to pay no taxes, but what were laid by his reprefentatives. The pro

vincial affemblies themselves not only declined giving the governors any advice concerning their behaviour on this critical occafion, but, convinced how little the wifeft heads muft avail without able hands to execute what they have projected, though they disavowed these riotous proceedings, and even bid rewards for apprehending the rioters, especially on a chief justice being fo plundered by them as to be obliged to appear on the feat of juftice, without thofe enfigns of office fo wifely calculated to procure refpect to authority, yet could not be brought to condemn them further than decency required; and abfolutely refufed, when exhorted to it by the governors, to make any compenfation to the injured parties; much lefs could they be brought to ftrengthen the hands of the executive powers fo far as to prevent any future commotions; which, as levelled entirely at the ftamp-act, and as having no particular leaders, whofe ignorance and brutality might be attended with worfe confequences than what they wished to avoid, they did not, it feems, think proper to confider as objects of military refraint. And, indeed, it does not appear, that a fingle fword was drawn, or a fingle muket fired, on the occafion; though fome perfons, very early, thought it no improper caution privately to fpike up the cannon belonging to the forts and fhip yards, left any ufe fhould be made of them on either fide.

This behaviour of the general affemblies was openly approved, if not encouraged, by affemblies of the freeholders and principal inhabitants of fome places, who directed their reprefentatives not to agree to

any