to the lives, properties, and liberties of a very great part of our fellow-fubjects.

We conceive that an addrefs upon fuch objects as are before us, and at such a time as this, muft neceffarily have a confiderable influence upon our future proceedings; and muft imprefs the public with an idea of the general spirit of the measures which we mean to fupport.

Whatever methods we shall think it adviseable to pursue, either in fapport of the mere authority of parliament, which feems to be the fole confideration with fome, or for reconciling that authority with the peace and fatisfaction of the whole empire, which has ever been our conftant and invariable object, it will certainly add to the weight and efficacy of our proceedings, if they appear the refult of full information, mature deliberation, and temperate enquiry.

No materials for fuch an enquiry have been laid before us; nor have any fuch been so much as promised in the fpeech from the throne, or even in any verbal affurance from minifters.

In this fituation we are called upon to make an addrefs, arbitrarily impofing qualities and defcriptions upon acts done in the colonies, of the true nature and just extent of which we are as yet in a great meafure unapprized; a procedure which appears to us by no means confonant to that purity which we ought ever to preserve in our judicial, and to that caution which ought to guide us in our deliberate capacity.

2. Because this addrefs does, in effect, imply an approbation of the fyftem adopted with regard to the

This unfortunate fyftem, conceived with fo little prudence, and purfued with fo little temper, confif tency, or forefight, we were in hopes, would beat length abandoned, from an experience of the mis. chiefs which it has produced, in proportion to the time in which it was continued, and the diligence with which it has been pursued; a system which has created the utmost confufion in the colonies, without any rational hope of advantage to the revenue, and with certain detriment to the commerce of the mother country. And it affords us a melancholy prospect of the difpofition of lords in the present parliament, when we see the house, under the pressure of fo fevere and uniform an experience, again ready, without any enquiry, to countenance, if not to adopt, the spirit of the former fatal proceedings.

But whatever may be the mifchievous defigns, or the inconfiderate temerity, which leads others to this defperate courfe, we wish to be known as perfons who have ever disapproved of measures fo pernicious in their past effects, and their future tendency, and who are not in hafte, without inquiry or information, to commit ourselves in declarations which may precipitate Our country into all the calamities of a civil war.

Richmond, Portland,

Rockingham, Stamford, Stanhope,

Torrington,

Ponsonby,

Tranflation of bis Catholic Majefty's Declaration of War against the Emperor of Morocco.

HEREAS at the adjuftment of the peace with the

which cafe you will be allowed four months, that every body may know it; and what we have faid concerning our going to the faid countries, is, because we are obliged to it, and have no method of excufing ourselves from it. But with But with respect to peace at fea, we will do according to our own will. And now we give you an account of the truth of this bufinefs, that you may be advised thereof, and confider what fuits you; and we have figned this letter with our own illuftrious hand, that you may be affured of its certainty. Greeting, the 15th day of the month of Rageb, in the year 1188." (19th Sept. 1774.)

And judging it unbecoming my fovereignty to liften to, much lefs to admit fuch propofitions; and being befides informed that the perfon who was charged by the King of Morocco to deliver this letter to the governor of Ceuta for me, had declared, that, in proof. of the peace being at an end, the Moors in the camp would fire against the fort with balls as foon as he had left it; which they a&ually did; and being informed that the faid Moors have fince continued to fire against certain fishermen's boats, which were near them as ufual, by which hoftilities the Moors have broken the peace; I have refolved, upon account of thefe acts, and from the time they were committed, to declare, That it is to be understood, that the friendship and good harmony with the King of Morocco is interrupt. ed, all communication is to cease between my fubjects and his, and things to return to the state of war, by fea and land, in which they were before the treaty was fettled, keeping up only the 17th article of it, in which it was ftipulated,

that, in cafe of a rupture, fix months fhould be allowed to the individuals of both nations to retire freely to their respective countries with their goods and effects, which I order fhall be kept and obferved punctually with the Morocco fubjects; being perfuaded, that that prince will obfèrve the fame with refpect to mine. And whereas lately, the King of Morocco having fent me fome Spanish captives, which he had obtained from the regency of Algiers, I did order the alcaide who brought them, that not only all the Morocco Moors, who, by having been taken on board Algerine veffels, were prifoners in Carthagena, fhould be de livered up, but allo all the wounded and old Algerines who were there; am defirous that thefe unhappy people fhould effectually have their liberty, and be conyeyed to the kingdom of Morocco, as was intended, notwithstanding the new. ftate of affairs which has arifen, being moved thereto by the pity with which I confider their fate, and becaufe they fhould not be prejudiced by an event in which they have no concern. Wherefore, and in confequence of all that has been stated, I order, That the peace between thofe dominions and these fhall be held to be broken, and the war be renewed, and that the fubjects of the King of Morocco fhall not be difturbed in their free return to their country, with their goods and effects, for which I grant the term of fix months, counting from the publication of this cedula, for fuch is my will. Dated at San Lorenzo el Real. October 23, 1774.

I THE KING, Geronimo de Grimaldi.

CHARA C

Some Particulars of the Life of LEWIS XV. late King of FRANCE and NAVARRE; with fhort Sketches of the Character and Conduct of fome of his Minifters, Generals, and Favourites.

HE annals of the French

efforts of this alliance; but having provoked the English by his repeated infidelities, their arms, under the invincible Marlborough, with the Auftrians, commanded by the immortal Eugene, rendered the latter part of his life as miferable as the beginning of it was fplendid.

five reigns fcarcely paralleled in the hiftory of other nations. Lewis XIV. reigned feventy-two years, and the late king, his great grandfon, fiftynine. Few princes ever bore the fway of a great empire with fuch uncommon longevity, and with an equally amazing viciffitude of fortune. Thefe two reigns form one of the most interesting periods in modern hiftory, as the intrigues of their courts and cabinets, their ambition, their politics, their wars, their treaties, their acquifitions, their conquefts, their loffes, and their defeats, totally changed the face of Europe. Lewis XIV.was the only fovereign of our continent truly powerful, formidable, and magnificent; his pride and ambition awoke the refentment of the fovereigns he defigned to enflave, and at last raised against him that famous confederacy of almost all the other princes of Europe, at the head of which was king William III. He was fo well ferved, that he baffled for feveral years all the warlike VOL. XVII.

1711, was one continued feries of defeats and calamities; and he had the humiliation to fee the enemies he had formerly infulted and defpifed, difplay their victorious ftandards on thofe very places he had acquired by force and artifice. Just as he was reduced, old as he was, to the defperate refolution of collecting his people, and dying at their head, he was faved by the English withdrawing from their allies, and concluding the peace of Utrecht, in 1713. He furvived his deliverance but two years, for he died on the firft of September, 1715, having furvived all his pofterity but Philip of Anjou, (whom in his difafters he had offered to facrifice to his competitor in the Spanifh monarchy, and a fickly infant, his fucceffor to the crown.

This was Lewis XV. the late king, born Feb. 15, 1710 he remained in the hands of women, fuperintended by the duchess of Ventadour, a lady of refpectable character, till the duke of Villeroy, B

his

his governor, and the bishop of Frejus, his preceptor, afterwards cardinal Fleury, fhared amongst them the principal departments of his princely education. The duke was a nobleman of unfpotted honour, and a probity proof against all the contagious examples of a court immersed in voluptuoufnefs and effeminacy, wholly influenced by glittering fycophants, whofe tranfient favour is the reward of the meanest adulation and fervility. He was grave and decent in his deportment, a philofopher amidst gran deur, frank, generous, open, affable, and popular; but his merit chiefly confifted in good breeding, and his knowledge, fkill and gracefulness in dancing, fencing, and riding, which the French nobility and gentry confider as the moft effential accomplishments.

The bishop of Frejus was better qualified for the fpiritual government of his fmall diocefe, than for the education of a prince born to rule over a great empire. He was a prelate of great candour, purity of manners, and moderation, but a fhallow politician; a meek, pufillanimous man, who had never been converfant enough with books and men for the tuition of his royal pupil.

being in debt about 100 millions fterling, or 2000 millions of livres, yet by laying hold of almoft all the current money in the kingdom, and by arbitrarily raifing or lowering the value of coins, in four years time the duke regent of France published a general ftate of the public debts, by which it appeared the king scarcely owed 340 millions of livres this being done by a national robbery, we can form no idea but that of defpotifm of the means by which fo great a reduction was effected.

Philip V. king of Spain, had beheld with a jealous eye the regency folely vefted in the duke of Orleans, and the bold fteps he had taken to force the parliament of Paris to recognize his title. Cardinal Alberoni, the Spanish minister, a most enterprizing genius, proud, active, and turbulent, capable to form confpiracies, and to delineate the revolutions of empires, but wanting that judgment, fagacity, and perfeverance, which command fuccefs, planned an unnatural alliance with Charles XII. king of Sweden, whose ambition confifted in dethroning monarchs, and bestowing kingdoms upon his allies. The Swedish hero, unfhaken by his defeats, his exile, and his calamities, profeffed the highest displeasure at George I. having entered into a confederacy against him in his abfence. His implacable vengeance prompted him to fecond the project of Alberoni in reftoring the Pretender in England. The death of Charles, who was killed by a cannon-ball, at the fiege of Frederickstadt, foon put an end to the difquietudes of George I. from that quarter.

France,