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The thanks of both houses were unanimously воок voted to the volunteer corps throughout the kingdom, for their patriotic exertions; and a 1779. six months money bill passed the commons, in order to prevent a sudden prorogation.

Before we investigate the consequences of this new and alarming spirit, it may be proper to notice a farther occasion of misunderstanding between the courts of London and the Hague, from an encounter which took place in the course of the present summer between sir Richard Pearson of the Serapis man of war, accompanied by the Scarborough frigate, having under their convoy the trade from the Baltic, and captain Paul Jones, an adventurer of desperate fortune and desperate courage, who was commander of a small American squadron, which had for some time past infested the British seas. After a very fierce and bloody action, both the Serapis and Scarborough, the convoy being first secured, were compelled to strike their colors, and were carried by the captors to the Texel. On this a very strong memorial was presented to the States General by sir Joseph Yorke, who urged in the most pressing terms, "that those ships and their crews may be stopped and delivered up, which the pirate Paul Jones, who is a rebel subject and a criminal of the state, has taken.” But their high mightinesses answered, they will in no respect whatever pretend to judge

" that

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BOOK of the legality or illegality of the actions of those who have on the open seas taken any vessels which do not belong to this country, and bring them into any ports of the republic; and that they are not authorized to pass judgment either on those prizes, or on the person of Paul Jones." This was an answer hard of digestion to the English court, and which indeed clearly indicated the partiality of the republic to the cause of America; but the quarrel between the two countries, though evidently growing more and more serious, was not yet sufficiently matured for an actual rupture.

Very early intelligence of the war with France having been sent by express over-land to India, the factories of Chandernagore, Carical, and Masulipatam, were taken possession of without difficulty. The city of Pondicherry was invested by the troops of the company and of the government, commanded by sir Hector Monro, in the autumn of the present year; and, after a gallant resistance by M. de Bellecombe, the governor, it surrendered to the arms of his Britannic majesty. On the other hand, the settlement of Senegal, and the British forts in the river Gambia, were captured by a French squadron under M. de Lauzun.

1

BOOK been offered; so that the whole amount arose to

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the precise and full complement of one hundred. The only circumstance really important and interesting in this singular manifesto is the discovery that the mediation of Spain had been offered and accepted by Great Britain and France soon after the commencement of hostilities, and that a negociation between these two courts had been actually carried on for the space of eight months.

On the 14th of September, immediately subsequent to the arrival of the count d'Almadovar in London, lord Weymouth declared to his excellency, that the king of England most sincerely desired to terminate the present war by the mediation of his catholic majesty. In consequence of which, the king of Spain, after much discussion, proposed a general truce for a term of years, in order to allow time for the final accommodation of differences. In his ultimatum of the 3d of April, 1778, he offered the city of Madrid for the holding of a general congress for this purpose, to which the colonies should be admitted to send commissioners, and in the mean time to be treated as an independent power; and that a general disarming should take place within one month in Europe, and four months in America; his catholic majesty offering at the same time his guarantee of the definitive treaty.

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The manifesto states, "That the court of Lon-BOOK don objected to recognizing the independency of America during the continuance of the truce; 1778. and it forcibly urges, as a thing very extraordinary, and even ridiculous, that the minister, lord North, had, notwithstanding this objection, proposed in the English house of commons that the congress should be treated with as the plenipotentiaries of independent states on the very proviso suggested by Spain, that this concession should not be understood to preclude the subse quent possible relinquishment of that independency. The convention of Saratoga, the cartel settled for the exchange of prisoners, the nomination of commissioners to supplicate the Americans for peace at their own doors, are, it is asserted, real and unequivocal acknowledgments of the independency of America. The English nation itself is appealed to by his catholic majesty: ' whether these acts are more consonant with the dignity of the British crown, than would be the granting, at the intercession of his catholic majesty, a suspension of hostilities for the adjustment of differences, and the treating them in this interval as independent states. Nevertheless the English court positively refused, as the manifesto proceeds to affirm, its assent to the propositions contained in this ultimatum; declaring, moreover, that France should not interfere in