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commissioners; and, entering St. Domingo suddenly, they indiscriminately murdered men, women, and children, and set fire to the city; more than half of which was soon consumed.-Fortunately for Galbaud and his partisans, they had embarked on board their vessels in the harbour before the irruption of this savage army.

At this crisis the war assumed a different nature.-Many of the fugitive white people, taking refuge in St. Domingo, offered to throw themselves under the protection of his Britannic majesty; and requested that an armament might be sent to take possession of the island and receive the allegiance of the people.-Hostilities being commenced between Great Britain and France, an agent was dispatched from the English court, with orders to general Williamson, governor of Jamaica, to accept the proffered capitulation, and to send what troops he could spare to protect the British partisans.e

It soon, however, appeared that the representations of the fugitives respecting the general disposition of the St. Domingan proprietors, as it too frequently happens on such occasions, were the result, not of well-founded information, but of their own sanguine wishes.-The commissioners were, at this time, supported by 25,000 regulars, militia, and armed mulattoes. Moreover, on intelligence of the projected invasion, they adopted the desperate expedient of reinforcing themselves by a general emancipation of the slaves. This measure decided the fate of St. Domingo. Many of the negroes thought it advisable to attach themselves to their masters and share their fortunes. A few only were seen to join the standard of the commissioners. The remainder, computed to amount to above 100,000, escaping to their fastnesses among the woods and mountains, subsisted, like the wild caribbees of St. Vincents, on what they could get by hunting, and the plunder of the adjoining districts.

Such was the state of St. Domingo when colonel Whitelocke arrived with the first division of British troops, consisting only of 677 men, to receive the capitulation of the St. Domingans. -He received the allegiance of the inhabitants of St. Jeremie; and the garrison at the mole of St. Nicholas surrendered to him. But this small success was followed by a series of

unpropitious occurrences.

When he undertook an expedition for the reduction of the neighbouring fort of Tiburon, Duval, his partisan, who promised to reinforce him with 500 men, did not make his appearance; and he was, in consequence, obliged to retreat with the loss of twenty men. The autumnal rains, setting in, interrupted their operations. And the yellow fever made dreadful havock among the troops.-The destruction which surrounded the remainder was sufficient to appal the bravest men. Yet general Williamson, as the only mean to protect such of the inhabitants as had declared for Great Britain, dispatched a second division, amounting to about seven or eight hundred men, on this hopeless enterprise. And, on their arrival, at the close of the year, the inhabitants of the small towns of Jean Rabel, St. Marc, Arcahaye, Boucassin, and Leogane, swore allegiance to his Britannic majesty.‡'

1793

AMERICAN STATES.

THE only memorable event of this year was the re-election of Mr. Washington as president of the states. And none could be more conducive to their prosperity. He shewed himself worthy of the honour conferred on him by making their true interests the standard of his public actions.Influenced by this motive, he discarded all enmity towards the crown against which he had fought; and, steadily adhering to the British interests, with which, he was persuaded, those of the United States were intimately connected, he, by his vigilance and weight, foiled the arts by which the French minister, Genet, would have involved them in a war with that power.Under the auspices of his pacific councils, the Americans, by improving their lands and enlarging their commerce, added continually to their wealth, population, and subsistence, and consequently to their national strength and resources.

1793

GREAT BRITAIN.

1794.

1794

THE events of the late campaign and the occurrences of the late year in France were not calculated to diminish the dread or aversion which the firm adherents of the present systems of government felt towards the French revolutionists, and their agents who were industriously propagating their political and religious principles in every part of the world. On the contrary, the principle of fear, on which the power of the present French rulers was founded, whilst it struck terror into their opponents in France, served to heighten the abhorrence in which they were held by all men of temper and moderation. They not only had deposed their sovereign, and arraigned, condemned and executed him, but they had done it in open disregard of the regulations of their newly established constitution. The state was under the absolute ascendency of a savage monster whom all men of virtue and integrity detested; who, by the oppression practised by himself and his adherents, seemed to be destined to convince posterity that the most hateful tyranny is that which arises from the abuse of democratic principles. Yet, such was the ardent desire of change which at present dishonoured the cause of liberty in Great Britain, that its advocates were not ashamed to celebrate the successes of the French republicans. By this behaviour they furnished their antagonists, the opponents of every kind of reform, not only with the strongest arguments for a firm resistance to their wishes, but for such an use and even extension of the prerogative as would have been deemed unjustifiable under any other circumstances; and the necessity of adopting every expedient that was not incompatible with

the

the national rights and immunities to frustrate the designs of the democratic partisans was admitted even by the sincerest friends of liberty. Hence the passions of men became daily more heated. Each party charged its antagonists with acting contrary to the principles of the constitution and the national welfare: and the voice of faction was heard in the odious epithets which its rancorous spirit devised to brand each other.

Under these circumstances, the nation could not but wait with impatience the assembling of parliament, when they should be informed on what grounds the war was to be carried on, which was now the subject of every man's thoughts.-His majesty, after adverting in his address to the two houses,† to the events of the late campaign, which he represented as having been very advantageous to the confederates, and declaring his disposition to peace on terms which should be consistent with the essential interests of his people, and should provide for the permanent safety and independency of Europe, proceeds to say " that an attack had been made " on him and his allies, founded on principles which tend to destroy all property, to subvert the laws and religion of every civilized nation, and "to introduce universally that wild and destructive system of rapine, anarchy, and impiety, the effects of which, as they have been already "manifested in France, furnish a dreadful but useful lesson to the present age and posterity."

a

The matter of the speech was largely descanted on by the leading members in each house. The partisans of administration strenuously maintained the expediency of a vigorous prosecution of the war, till we should have it in our power to make peace with a fairer prospect of permanency than. could be done by a treaty with the present rulers of France. Their opponents, on the other hand, condemned the principles on which the war had been commenced, and on which it was carried on, as inconsistent with reason, good policy, and a proper regard to our true interests. Admitting that the principles of the prevailing party in France were bad and many of their actions detestable, these, they thought, did not justify the interference of the confederates in the internal affairs of that country, in whatever point of view it be considered. "To assert," said Mr. Fox, "that

" while

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1794

"while the jacobin system existed, no peace could take place with France, "was to pledge the nation for the performance of what dear-bought

66

experience had fully proved we could not accomplish. Never would the "efforts of the coalition eradicate the opinions now so tenaciously rooted "in France; they were sown before the revolution; they had produced it; "the French gloried in them. But it was not in these opinions that the "causes of the enormities perpetrated by the French were to be found: "the menaces and insults contained in the manifestoes and proclamations "issued against them by their enemies were the real causes of the rage and indignation that impelled the French to those excesses that had disgraced "the cause of freedom, and had done it the highest injury by enabling its "enemies to involve it in one common accusation against its perverters, "and to deceive the undiscerning into a suspicion of its real excellence. "But whatever guilt and disgrace the French had incurred by their atro"cious conduct, it was no valid reason for declining a negotiation with "them. The rulers of that country, whether monarchical or republican, ought to be considered in the same light respecting this country. France "had in the last century pursued the same ambitious system as in the present; yet our ancestors, however justly exasperated at her endeavours "to deprive them of their civil and religious rights, and their assisting a "deluded monarch in that attempt, did not, after they had expelled him "and abjured his family, carry their resentment so far as to refuse negotiating with the perfidious court that abetted him. By the same rule, prudence dictated a pacification with the present rulers of France, how"ever cruel and ambitious. Those evil qualities were, unhappily, too frequent among men to be urged as just impediments to a cessation of war. It was the duty of ministers to provide against them; not to plunge a nation into endless hostilities, on the pretence of extirpating those who "acted under their influence."-The sentiments of this statesman respecting the resources of France, the failure of which was one of the grounds on which the advocates of warlike measures founded their hopes of success, have, unfortunately, been since fully justified by the occurrences of the war. "The enthusiasm of liberty, though not, properly speaking, itself a re"source, conducts men by its native heat and light, to the discovery and "invention of resources. It excites every latent faculty of the soul: and

"the