CHAPTER XI.

Lord Germain appointed Secretary of State for the American department. The price paid for his assistance.-His UnderSecretaries of State and Private Secretary, etc.-Commencement of hostilities with America.-The British Ministers engage German mercenaries to coerce the Americans.General Howe obliged to evacuate Boston.-Declaration of American Independence.-General Burgoyne and his army surrender prisoners of war.-The General denied a Courtmartial.—Mr. Temple Luttrell's attack on Lord Germain.— Mr. Fox denounces Lord Germain's mode of conducting the war.- Unpopularity of Ministers.-Sir Jeffery Amherst appointed Commander-in-chief.—France and Spain declare war against England.-Speech of George the Third to his Cabinet Ministers.-The surrender of Lord Cornwallis and his army to Washington. The effect of the intelligence on the King and his Ministers.--Quarrel amongst the Ministers. -Resignation of Lord Germain. Is created an English Peer.-Account of his Lordship's interview with his Majesty. -Further proofs of Lord Germain's identity with Junius.Resignation of Lord North.-Peace with America.-Remarks on Lord Germain's conduct while Secretary of State.

LORD GEORGE GERMAIN.

When Lord Chatham affirms that the authority of the British legislature is NOT SUPREME Over the colonies, in the same sense in which it is supreme over Great Britain, I listen to him with diffidence and respect; but without the smallest degree of conviction or assent.

Junius.

LORD GERMAIN having adopted all those opinions which were hostile to America, and supported Lord North's bills, for altering the government of Massachusett's bay, and shutting up the port of Boston, the ministry considered him so valuable an auxiliary, that it was resolved to secure his future services. An opportunity for carrying this design into execution soon presented itself, by the resignation of the Duke of Grafton, who being convinced of the hostile intentions of the cabinet against America, declared that his conscience forbade him supporting those measures in parliament, and therefore he resigned the privy seal, which was given to Lord Dartmouth; who was succeeded as secretary of state for the American department, on the 7th Sep-? tember 1775, by Lord Germain, and the conduct of the war against America was principally entrusted to his guidance.

The immediate price paid by the ministry for the accession of Lord Germain's talents to the government, appears to have been the place of Receiver-general of the

island of Jamaica, which by letters patent, dated 10th September 1776, was granted to Thomas Walley Partington, Esq., for the life of one of Lord Germain's sons; but his Lordship by his will, disposes of the place, and declares that his friend Partington only held it as his Lordship's trustee. Here we find the grant of a lucrative, if not an important public office, masked with all the tact and skill of Junius, and this is probably the first intimation given to the public, that the emoluments of the sinecure place of Receiver-general of the island of Jamaica have been received by Lord Germain and his nominee from 1776 to the present time. Lord Germain's own opinion of the propriety of a man of his rank and fortune, having anything to do with such a place, is pretty plainly indicated by the pains taken to mask and conceal the real party benefited by the transaction.

Upon receiving the appointment of Secretary of State, his Lordship continued as his under-secretaries Mr. De Grey and Mr. William Knox. The latter gentleman was one of Mr. Grenville's friends, and a very strenuous and persevering advocate for the British policy against America, and Mr. De Grey was the son of the Attorneygeneral who prosecuted Woodfall for publishing Junius's Letter to the King.

With the seals of the colonial department, Lord Germain held the office of First Lord of the Board of Trade, and in this department he appointed Mr. Richard Cumberland, the dramatist, Secretary to the Board. While the situation of his private and confidential secretary was held by Mr. D'OYLY; the same gentleman, be it remembered, who had been discharged from the War Office, by Lord Barrington (previously to the expulsion of Mr.

Francis from the same office), which first called forth the Letters written by Junius on Lord Barrington, under the signature of Veteran.

It has been said, that Lord Germain's adoption of Mr. Grenville's principles respecting America, was in a great degree influenced by a letter written by Sir Joseph Yates, one of the Judges of the King's Bench, to Christopher Griffiths, Esq., M.P. for Berks, relative to the dispute between Great Britain and her colonies; and we find Junius eulogizing the character of Mr. Justice Yates, in a note to his letter of November 14th, 1770, to Lord Mansfield.

To carry on the war with vigour against the Colonists, the British ministers engaged 16,000 German mercenaries to assist in their subjection: this not only exasperated the Americans to the highest degree, but was severely censured by many members of the opposition in parliament.

About the beginning of the year 1776, affairs began to take an unfavourable turn, General Howe being compelled by Washington to evacuate the town of Boston, on the 17th of March, and sail with the whole of his garrison, amounting to 7000 men, to Halifax, in Nova Scotia; and on the ever-memorable 4th of July 1776, the Congress voted their Declaration of Independence, by which act they for ever withdrew their allegiance from the king of England. Lord Germain now perceived that the war, which he flattered himself would have terminated favourably, began to assume an alarming aspect, still he, and his colleague Lord North, continued inexorably firm in their determination to support the King's private opinion, which was to prosecute the war to the last extremity.

Further disasters followed in the succeeding year, when General Burgoyne and nearly 6000 men were obliged to surrender prisoners of war by the Convention of Saratoga; and upon the General's arrival in England on his parole, he was refused admittance into the presence of his sovereign, denied the justice of a courtmartial on his conduct, and subjected to a series of ministerial persecutions.

? Mr. Vigners, having moved in parliament for an inquiry into the Convention of Saratoga, Mr. Temple Luttrell (a name held in utter abhorrence by Junius), drew a comparison between the conduct of the General and the War Minister. "In former times," he said, "it had been the custom of Britons to give praise and thanks to such of their officers and servants as exerted their strenuous and zealous efforts for the public weal, even if those efforts were not crowned with success; but now-a-days they bestowed praise only in proportion to the listlessness and inattention with which those servants performed their duty. The noble lord in the blue riband (Lord North) had recommended to his Sovereign a war minister (Lord George Germain), whose public incapacities for every vigorous exertion of mind, whose disgrace at the Court of George the Second was founded on the most decicive censure of a Court-martial, whose loss of the nation's confidence and his own character is on public record. What had the nation to expect from his councils? What plan of his, since he has been in office, dare he expose to the public eye, and say it has succeeded? Why then should we give him a partial acquittal, to the prejudice of a gallant officer (General Burgoyne), whose only crime has been avowedly that he was too zealous, too brave, too enterprising, too anxious for the