nies, and confine its authority sacredly to war, trade, disputes between colony and colony, the post-office, and the unappropriated public lands.

In the separate colonies, he urged that all the youth should be liberally educated, and all men be required to keep arms and to be trained to their use. A country having a constitution founded on these principles, diffusing knowledge among the people, and inspiring them with the conscious dignity becoming free men, would, "when compared with the regions of monarchical or aristocratical domination, seem an Arcadia or an Elysium."

CHAPTER XXII.

BRITAIN SEEKS FOREIGN AID.

1775-1776.

COULD the king have employed none but British troops, the war by land against the colonies must have been of short duration. Sir Joseph Yorke, the British ambassador at the Hague, proposed the transfer of a brigade from the service of the Netherlands to that of his sovereign. The young stadholder made reply directly to his cousin, the king of England, declining the request. King George renewed his solicitation. In 1599, the Low Countries pledged to Queen Elizabeth as security for a loan three important fortresses, which she garrisoned with her own troops; in 1616 the Dutch discharged the debt, and the garrisons were withdrawn from the cautionary towns, except an English and a Scottish brigade which passed into the service of the United Provinces. William III. recalled the English brigade, and in 1749 the privilege of recruiting in Scotland was withdrawn from the other, so that its rank and file, consisting of more than twenty-one hundred men, were of all nations, though its officers were still Scotchmen by birth or descent. In favor of the loan of these troops, it was urged that the officers already owed allegiance to the British king; that common interests connected the two countries; that the present occasion offered to the prince of Orange "the unique advantage and particular honor" of strengthening the bonds of close friendship which had been "more or less enfeebled" by the neutrality of the United Provinces during the last French war.

In the states general Zealand and Utrecht consented; the

province of Holland objected that a commercial state should never but from necessity become involved in any quarrel. Baron van der Capellen tot den Pol, one of the nobles of Overyssel, reasoned in this wise: Furnishing the troops would be a departure from the true policy of the strictest neutrality; the country has fruitlessly sacrificed her prosperity to advance the greatness of England; she has shed rivers of blood under pretence of establishing a balance of power, and has only strengthened an empire which is now assuming a more dreadful monarchy over the seas than ever had been known; she will find herself, as formerly, engaged in a baleful war with France, her most powerful neighbor and her natural ally in the defence of the liberty of commerce; a rupture between Britain and France will bring advantage to the navigation of the republic if she would but maintain her neutrality; in the war of succession which gave to Britain the key to the Mediterranean, she had nothing for her share but the total waste of her forces and her treasure; she has religiously observed her treaties, and yet England denies her the stipulated safety of merchandise in free bottoms, and searches and arbitrarily confiscates her ships. Besides, janizaries rather than the troops of a free state should be hired to subdue the colonists. Why should a nation of men, who have borne the title of rebels and freed themselves from oppression by their swords, employ their troops in crushing the Americans, who yet are worthy of the esteem of the whole world as defending with moderation and with intrepidity the rights which God and not the British legislature has given them as men!

These ideas, once set in motion, were sure to win the day; but the states of Overyssel suppressed all explicit declarations against England; and the states general disguised their refusal under the form of a consent to lend the brigade, on the condition that it never should be used out of Europe.

During the tardy course of the discussion Britain had obtained supplies of men from Germany. The electors and landgraves and reigning dukes of that empire were so accustomed to hire out their troops for their personal profit, that German troops had been engaged in every great contest which raged from Poland to Lisbon, from the North

Sea to Naples, and were sometimes arrayed in the same battle on opposite sides.

So soon as it became known that the king of England desired recruits from Germany, crowds of adventurers volunteered their aid. He had scruples about accepting their offers, saying: "The giving commissions to German officers to get men, in plain English, amounts to making me a kidnapper, which I cannot think a very honorable occupation;" but he continued a contract with a Hanoverian lieutenant-colonel for raising four thousand recruits in Germany, granting for the purpose the use of his electoral dominions and the "indispensably necessary assistance and support of his field marshal."

A larger bounty, higher wages, and the undefined prospect of spoils in the "El Dorado" of America, attracted vagabond veterans to the British standard. The German diet had forbidden enlistments by foreign powers in any part of Germany; the court of Vienna wrote to the free cities and several of the states of the empire, that "Great Britain had no more connection with the empire than Russia or Spain, neither of which powers was permitted to recruit within its limits," and ordered its ministers to obstruct the recruiting officers in the British service; yet the king's contractor was very soon ready with an instalment of a hundred and fifty men, and promised rapid success when the enterprise should get a little better into train. The prince bishop of Liége and the elector of Cologne consented to shut their eyes to the presence of English agents, who had recruiting stations in Neuwied and at Frankfort. The undertaking was prohibited by the law of nations and of the empire; the British ministers therefore instructed their diplomatic representative at the small courts to give all possible aid to the execution of the service, but not to implicate their government. In this way foreign levies were obtained to fill up British regiments.

The British ministry openly sought to engage subsidiary troops in Germany. The elector of Saxony put aside the thought at its first suggestion, saying that "to send part of his army into the remote countries of the New World affected too nearly his paternal tenderness for his subjects,

and seemed too much in contrast with the rules of a healthy policy.'

It was hoped that the duke of Brunswick could supply at least three thousand, and the landgrave of Hesse-Cassel five thousand; in November 1775, Suffolk repeated to Colonel Faucitt, his agent, the instructions before given to the British minister in Russia: "Your point is to get as many men as you can; it will be much to your credit to procure the most moderate terms, though expense is not so much the object in the present emergency as in ordinary cases. Great activity is necessary, as the king is extremely anxious."

"I shall regard it as a favor," wrote the prince of Waldeck, "if the king will accept a regiment of six hundred men, composed of officers and soldiers, who, like their prince, will certainly demand nothing better than to find an opportunity of sacrificing themselves for his majesty." The offer was eagerly closed with.

Charles, the reigning duke of Brunswick, was at that time about sixty-three. During the forty years of his rule the spendthrift had squandered a loan of twelve millions of thalers, beside millions of his revenue, on his Italian opera, his corps of French dancers, his theatre, journeys, mistresses, and gaming, his experiments in alchemy, but most of all on his little army. Within three years a new prime minister had improved his finances, and Prince Ferdinand, the heir apparent, had been admitted as co-regent. In 1764 Ferdinand had married Augusta, a sister of George III., receiving with her a dowry of eighty thousand pounds, beside an annuity of eight thousand more, chargeable on the revenues of Ireland and Hanover. His governor had been indulgent to the vices of his youth. He adopted the skepticism of his century, with which he mixed up enough of philanthropic sentiment to pass for a liberal and humane free thinker. Stately in his appearance, a student of attitudes before the glass, he was profuse of bows and affectedly polite. His eyes were of a most beautiful blue, and their expression friendly and winning. He himself and those about him professed the strongest sense of the omnipotence of legiti

*Count Sacken, the Saxon minister, to Count Moritz von Brühl, Saxon envoy at London, 22 October 1775. From the archives of Saxony. MS.