CHAP. IV. Free Negroes in the Island of Jamaica.-Hunted by Blood-Hounds.—Motion, by Mr. Grey, in the House of Commons, for an Inquiry into the State of the Nation.-Negatived.-Farther Taxes.-For paying the Interest of an additional Loan.-Mortality among the Troops sent against the French West-India Islands.-Neglect and Distresses of the Troops.-Motion for Documents on these Subjects by Mr. Sheridan.-Debates thereon. -Mr. Sheridan's Motion agreed to.-Motion in the House of Peers, fur the Production of Papers respecting a Vote of Parliament, in 1783, recognizing the Necessity of certain Public Reforms.-Debates thereon.The Motion negatived.---Report of the Committee of Supply on the Resolution for granting a Subsidy to the King of Sardinia.-Conversation on that Subject.-Charges laid against Ministry by Mr. Grey, as Ground of Impeachment; and a Motion on that Subject.--Negatived.-Motions, in both Houses of Parliament, against the Continuation of the War.-Negatived.-Motion, by Mr. Wilberforce, for the Abolition of the SlaveTrade, on a certain Day.-Negatived.-The Session of Parliament closed by a Speech from the Throne. THE from them a hundred blood-hounds, with twenty men, expert in the training and conducting of them. With this supply, the military penetrated into the interior parts of the mountains and woody country, occupied by the maroons, and compelled them to surrender. They were transported to the British provinces in North America. HE hostilities against the free negroes, in the island of Jamaica, known by the denomination of maroons, had been carried on a long time without effect. The force employed against them amounted to five thousand men; but the difficulty of coming at their recesses, and frequently of discovering them, had frustrated the repeated attempts of this force, though it had omitted nothing that valour and perseverance could suggest: and yet, those maroons were but a handful of men, hardly consisting of six hundred bearing arms. The improbability of compelling them to submit, by the usual methods of fighting, induced the government of Jamaica, as stated in our last volume, to have recourse to the mode adopted by the Spaniards in similar cases. applied to the Spanish inhabitants litical expediency could justify of the island of Cuba, and obtained the adoption of such a measure. Though, as afterwards fully appeared in the subsequent session of parliament, the government of Jamaica had not incurred the guilt of either barbarity or breach of faith, yet an erroneous conviction, that the blood-hounds had been employed, not only to track out the maroons, but to tear and mangle them, excited a pretty geIt neral outcry. No degree of po Spanish no precedent or excuse for English men. Spanish cruelty, it was said, afforded inaccessible. In such circumstances our people could not be blamed for employing the necessary means to secure themselves, and to annoy so ferocious an enemy. The motion, therefore, he said, was not sufficiently grounded, to comply with it, without an accurate enquiry into particulars. The mere rumour, however, he acknowledged, had induced ministry to signify its disapprobation of such a measure to the government at Jamaica. General Macleod brought this subject into the house of commons, on the twenty-sixth of February, and complained of the disgrace attending such a measure. He was an swered, that it was a matter of necessity, and not of choice; that the maroons massacring, without mercy, every one that fell into their hands, they could be considered in no other light than murderers, and deserved extermination by any means that could be employed to that purpose. The general moved, however, on the twenty-first of March, for an address to the king, requesting he would direct the papers, concerning the maroon war, to be laid before the house. He grounded his motion on a letter from Jamaica,stating the facts above-mentioned: he described the maroons as a free people, proprietors of the country they inhabited. He mentioned it, as Customary among the Spaniards, in Cuba, to feed their blood-hounds on human flesh, in order to render them ferocious but could a British parliament, he said, connive at such atrocities, and encourage so inhuman a spirit in British officers and soldiers ? Mr. Dundas replied, that the maroons had commenced hostilities against our people, at Jamaica, without any reasonable provocation, and had exercised great barbarities in prosecuting them. It was their practice to sally forth from their fastnesses in the night, and to surprize the planters; multitudes of whom they massacred: after which, they retreated to the woods and mountains, the passes to which were On Mr. Dundas's assuring the general that dispatches of this tenor had been sent, he withdrew his motion not however till Mr. Sheridan expatiated on the subject, in answer to Mr. Barham, who had represented the maroons as rebels; but whom the former justified, in their resentment of the punishment inflicted upon one of their people, who ought, according to treaty, to have been delivered up to his countrymen, to be tried and punished by them for the misdemeanour of which he had been guilty. In the mean time, a report was daily gaining ground, that the plans of ministry embraced such a multiplicity of objects, that new demands would shortly be made of means to carry them into execution. Their opponents thought it expedient, for that reason, to call the attention of the public to the situation of the national finances, in order that a just idea might be formed of the conduct of ministers in this essential department. On the tenth of March, this subject was brought into the house of commons, by Mr. Grey: who observed, that, in whatever circumstances the country might be placed, whether of war or of peace, the strictest economywas become more indispen sea. sible than ever. France would indubitably aim at the formation of a respectable marine, and so would every power that could in any degree maintain its consideration at Our incontestible superiority on the ocean rendered us an object of universal envy and dread; and these were cogent motives with all the Europeans to seek for our depression but they were no less urgent to induce this country to preserve that superiority, without which our internal security was evidently precarious; but, had we been sufficiently attentive to the means of preserving it? Had we not lavished, with scandalous profusion, immense sums, for which no adequate services had been performed? Seventy-seven millions had, in the course of the last three years, been added to the public debts; to pay the interest of which, taxes had been laid, amounting to two millions six hundred thousand pounds. The expences of former wars, however great, did not equal those of the present; and yet those wars were more extensive and important in their object than the present. In the contest that lost us America, ministerial profusion was notorious; the debt contracted did not, however, exceed sixty-three millions, notwithstanding the duration of that fatal quarrel was twice what this ' had now been; and we had all Europe to contend with. When the present war began, the minister engaged, in a solemn manner, to obviate, by every possible means, extraordinaries of all kinds; but how had he kept his word? notwithstanding the most liberal grants that ever minister had experienced, the extraordinaries of the navy amounted so thirteen millions seven hundred thousand pounds, while the commerce of this country had suffered more from the enemy than in any preceding quarrel; the extraordinaries of the army were nine millions. These were unconscionable expences, as, notwithstanding the advance of price in all articles of public or private demand, they had not risen to such a height as to justify the difference between the cost of the present and of former wars. The extraordinaries of the nine years war, from the revolution to the peace of Ryswick, in 1697, were twelve hundred thousand pounds. Those of eleven years war, in the reign of queen Anne, were two millions. They did not together amount to one-half of the extraordinaries of the present year : the cause of this increase of expence was not so much the difference of price in necessary articles, many of which continued the same in this respect as at that day, as the addition of unnecessary expences. The extraordinaries and the votes of credit, in 1778, 79, and so, were less by three millions two hundred thousand pounds than the present: in the ordinance, the extraordinaries arose to near three millions. These augmentations in the national expences were obviously unconstitutional, as they were made without parliamentary sanction. The total of the money thus expended was upwards of thirtyone millions; and together with that voted by the parliament amounted to sixty-six millions eight hundred thousand pounds. This immense sum had been expended in three years of an inglorious and ruinous war. Another unconstitutional proceeding, of a most alarming nature, was the erection of barracks. These were were justly, by judge Blackstone, styled inland fortresses, and were undeniably intended to separate the military from the civil classes, and to keep the latter in awe by means of the former. They had been erected too without consulting parliament, and had cost, since the year 1790, eleven hundred thousand pounds, and more was now demanded for their completion. Ministerial demands of loans from the bank were also become, of late, enormous, and entirely repugnant to the primitive motives of its institution, which were to assist the mercantile transactions of the kingdom, and to maintain its commercial credit but it bad, in many respects, degenerated into an engine of state; it was now near twelve millions in advance to government. Mr. Grey entered into other particulars, to shew the irregularity prevailing in the financial departments. He concluded by affirming, in consequence of farther details, that the national revenue fell short of the peace-establishment by two millions and a half, the latter being twentytwo millions, the former only nineteen millions five hundred thousand pounds. Thus we should be loaded with farther taxes to supply that deficiency, even were a peace to ensue. On these premises, he moved that the house should resolve itself into a committee, to enquire into the state of the nation. The positions of Mr. Grey were controverted by Mr. Jenkinson, who maintained, that the commercial situation of Great Britain, notwithstanding the weight of so great a war, was more prosperous than at any antecedent periods. The average of exports, during the three last years of peace, the most flourish ing ever known in this country, was twenty-two millions five hundred and eighty-five thousand pounds; and the same average for the last three years of war was twenty-four millions four hundred and fifty-three thousand. The advantage in the borrowing of money, at present, was one and a half per cent. greater than during the American war. At the close of the war in 1748 the national debt was eighty millions, in 1762 one hundred and forty: but had the present system of appropriating a million annually to the extinétion of that debt, been fortunately adopted at the first of these periods, that heavy load would now have been totally thrown off the nation. The expenditure of this war was, doubtless, immense; but the exertions, to which it was applied, were of no less magnitude. Never was the energy of this country so astonishingly displayed, nor its resources so wonderfully proved: our fleets and armies were in a far superior condition, both as to numbers and equipment, to those maintained in the American war. It was unfair to complain of increasing expences. The augmentation of price in all the articles of life and social intercourse, added of consequence, the same proportion of increase in military expences; nor ought the subsidies to our allies to be reputed extravagant, considering their utility to the common cause, by enabling these to act much inore effectually against the foe, than if they were left to their sole exertions. The pressures of the enemy shewed bow wisely the treasures of this country had been employed in strengthening the power of his continental adversaries, while our successes at sea had reduced him to the lowest state state of debility he had ever experienced on that element: it was, therefore,neither just nor prudent to represent this country as distressed, and its ministers as unworthy of confidence, and incapable of discharging their duty. They had shewn themselves adequate to the various tasks imposed on them by the arduous contingencies of the war, and had not merited the aspersions so repeatedly cast upon them. There had been a time when far greater stretches of ministerial power were beheld without complaint. In the reigns of George I. and II. such was the implicit trust of the times in their integrity, that millions had passed through their hands for secret services, of which an explanation was not required. Hence it appears, that the vigilance of parliament in former days, however exalted above that of the present, was, in truth, not to be compared with that anxious and groundless jealousy with which the opponents to ministry watched over all its proceedings, in order to discover how they could render them suspicious to the public. On these grounds, he considered the motion as illfounded, and deserving no support from those who viewed the conduct of ministers impartially, and with a determination to listen without prejudice to what they allege in their defence, as well as to the imputations and surmises laid to their charge. Mr. Curwen, Mr. Robinson, and Mr. Martin, supported the motion; Mr. Steele opposed it, and stated the extraordinaries to be much lower than represented by Mr. Grey. The expence of the barracks had not, he affirmed, exceeded six hundred and ten thousand pounds, and one hundred and fifty thousand would suffice to complete them: but Mr. Grey insisted on the accuracy of his own statements, and particularly reprobated the misapplication of the money appropriated by parliament to specific purposes; a practice, he observed, so unconstitutional, that it had been condemned, in terms of the greatest severity, even so long ago as the reign of queen Anne, on so slight an occasion as the applying of six thousand pounds to the use of the army, instead of the navy, for which it had been intended. His motion, however, was negatived by another for the order of the day, which was carried by two hundred and seven votes, against forty-five. The plans formed by ministry were so extensive, and the determination, to carry them into the speediest execution, founded upon so sanguine a hope of success, that the supplies already granted not appearing sufficient, parliament. was again resorted to for the raising an additional supply, and the sanction of another loan. A circumstance so new and extraordinary excited universal astonishment: two budgets and two loans in the same session, to use the common phrase, were a novelty, in the political system of this country, of an alarming nature, and which the maxims of good economy did not appear to warrant in the difficult position in which it now stood. Mr. Pitt was duly sensible of the repugnance to so unprecedented a measure. After apologising for the necessity that compelled him to adopt it, and expressing his confidence that the resources of the country would render it much lighter on trial than it seemed in the apprehension of many, he proceeded to |