the skilful and vigorous execution of the concerted plan, this brave general had no alternative but either to sacrifice his gallant army without answering any purpose, or to surrender. On the latter of these he at last resolved, and on the 19th of October surrendered by an honourable capitulation. The army, consisting of between five and six thousand men, capitulated to general Washington; but such was the number of sick and wounded, that there were only three thousand eight hundred capable of bearing arms. The vessels in the harbour surrendered to count de Grasse. At length sir Henry Clinton set out from New York, to attempt to relieve lord Cornwallis. Two months after the departure of Washington, Rochambeau had left him at liberty to proceed to the relief of the distressed army. He brought with him seven thousand land forces, with a fleet which, now reinforced by admiral Digby, consisted of twenty-five ships of the line. He had previously informed lord Cornwallis, that the fleet might be expected to sail from New York on or about the 5th October; and afterwards, from the assurances given him by the admiral, that it might pass the bar by the 12th October, wind and weather permitting. Yet the fleet did not finally leave Sandy Hook till the 19th, the day on which lord Cornwallis surrendered. The troops were embarked, and the fleet put to sea; and it was with extreme mortification that, when it arrived off the coast of Virginia on the 24th of the month, they received such accounts of the unfortunate army as led them to believe that their fate was decided. They however lingered off the mouth of the Chesapeake, until the fact was placed beyond all dispute; and as the relief of lord Cornwallis and his army had been the sole object of the expedition, the admiral resolved to return to New York. The last letter written by lord Cornwallis to the commanderin-chief, acquainting him with the surrender of the forts York and Gloucester, and relating the causes that led to that event, with the motives which had

influenced his own conduct, produced a difference between them, which terminated in an appeal to the public. "Such was the fate of the gallant southern army and its brave commander, from whose skilful enterprise and well-earned reputation the most sanguine hopes were entertained, that the most valuable of the colonies would be recovered, and that the war with them would be brought to a successful termination. The experience which he had derived during his residence there, fully satisfied him that the information on which the minister and his adherent relied, respecting the friendly disposition of the Americans towards this country, was utterly unfounded; that every attempt to recover the country through the Americans themselves was chimerical, as much as every idea of reducing it by force. He was now convinced that the plan had been concerted upon mistaken principles, and he had himself fatally learned, that though he and the troops under his command had done their utmost, there was almost an equal deficiency of support and co-operation for its execution. The surrender at Yorktown was the concluding scene of offensive war with America. All the profuse expenditure of British wealth, all the mighty efforts of British power, all the splendid achievements of British valour, though guided by British talents and skill, proved ineffectual: the momentous exertions of a war so wasteful of blood and treasure were for ever lost."

Dr Franklin, still in Paris, was not inattentive to the necessity of keeping alive the public mind in Europe to the injuries of America. Recollecting the success of his "Prussian Edict," he printed, at a private press of his own, a fictitious "Supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle." This purported to contain a letter, dated Albany, March 7th, from a captain Gerrish, of the New England militia, which described eight large packages of SCALPS, said to have been intercepted by him in their passage from the Indian allies of Great Britain to that country. No. 1 contained forty-three scalps of American soldiers killed

in different battles, and sixty-two of farmers killed in their own houses. Nos. 2, 3, and 4, contained two hundred and ninety-seven scalps of farmers killed under various circumstances, and appearing by the hair to have been in the prime of life, there being but sixty-seven grey heads among them; Nos. 5, 6, and 7, scalps of women, boys and girls: No. 8, those of infants our author adorning the story of their several deaths with circumstances of horror, said to be designated by the various Indian marks upon them.

He also published, about this time, a popular defence of the proceedings of the celebrated Paul Jones, who had been described by sir Joseph Yorke to the States-General as a pirate of Scotland and a rebel-subject. This adventurer, holding a commodore's commission from the Congress, had been of essential service to America, in the extensive depredations he committed upon British commerce, and his occasional descents upon the coasts of England,

The negotiations had proceeded tardily, as we have seen, to the close of the year 1781. Great Britain, at the commencement of 1782, endeavoured to engage America in a separate treaty of peace; but to this Dr Franklin and his colleagues steadily objected; and here the whole business might have been for years suspended, but for a resolution carried by Opposition in the house of Commons-that the further prosecution of offensive war on the continent of North America was fatal to the interests of Great Britain :—a resolution accelerated doubtless by the late successes of the Americans. On March 4th, in reply to a favourable answer from his majesty, the house declared it would consider as enemies to his majesty and the country all who should attempt to advise the reducing of the revolted colonies to obedience by force. A fortnight afterwards, lord North declared in parlia ment that his administration was at an end.

Although the American plenipotentiaries in France were both jealous of the sincerity of a higher power,

that of ministers in Great Britain, events tending to. wards peace were now succeeding each other rapidly. The British ministers inquired, through Mr R. Penn, whether any person or persons in Europe were commissioned by Congress to treat of peace, whether they would receive an appointed commissioner for that purpose, and mention a place for meeting, &c. This application was forwarded by Mr Penn to J. Adams, esq., the American minister at the Hague, who referred the inquirer to Dr Franklin. Adams however had the true spirit of a British negotiator in him, when he said to Franklin, speaking of this application, "The only use of all this, I think, is to strike decisive strokes at New York and Charleston. There is no position so advantageous for negotiation, as when we have all our enemy's army prisoners."

The same year, in the month of June, Mr Jones, afterwards the celebrated sir William Jones, and his friend Mr Paradise, arrived in Paris, with the purpose of proceeding to America; a journey, the object of which was said to have been on the part of the former professional, but his real motives were supposed to have been more particularly connected with the pending negotiations. Mr Jay, at least, the American minister to the court of Spain, surmised this from some observations which fell from Mr Jones, and which led him to conclude that his object was to sound important persons in or connected with America, as to the possibility of yet negotiating a peace on terms short of an absolute acknowledgment of the independence of the colonies. This conjecture was confirmed by his having put into the hands of Dr Franklin the following piece

66 A FRAGMENT OF POLYBIUS.

"From his Treatise on the Athenian Government. "ATHENS had long been an object of universal admiration, and consequently of envy; her navy was invincible, her commerce extensive; Europe and Asia supplied her with wealth; of her citizens all were in

trepid, many virtuous, but some too much infected with principles unfavourable to freedom. Hence an oligarchy was in great measure established; crooked counsels were thought supreme wisdom; and the Athenians, having lost their true relish for their own freedom, began to attack that of their colonies and of the states which they had before protected! Their arrogant claims of unlimited dominion had compelled the Chians, Coans, Rhodians, and Lesbians, to join with nine other smaller communities in the social war, which they began with inconceivable ardour, and continued, surpassing all example, and almost surpassing belief. They were openly assisted by Mausolus, king of Caria, to whose metropolis the united islands had sent a philosopher named Eleuthereon, eminent for the deepest knowledge of nature, the most solid judgment, the most approved virtue, and most ardent zeal for general liberty. The war had been supported for three years with infinite exertions of valour on both sides, with deliberate firmness on the part of the allies, and with unabated violence on the part of the Athenians, who had nevertheless despatched commissioners to Rhodes with intent to propose terms of accommodation; but the states (perhaps too pertinaciously) refused to hear any proposal whatever, without a previous recognition of their total independence by the magistrates and people of ATHENS. It was not long after this, that an Athenian, who had been a pupil of Isæus together with Demosthenes, and begun to be known in his country as a pleader of causes, was led by some affairs of his clients to the capital of Caria. He was a man unauthorized, unemployed, unconnected; independent in his circumstances as much as in his principles; admitting no governor, under providence, but the laws; and no laws but those which justice and virtue had dictated, which wisdom approved, which his country had freely enacted. He had been known at Athens to the sage Eleuthereon; and their acquaintance being renewed, he sometimes took occasion in their conversations to lament the increasing calamities of war, and to