INTELLIGENCE OF BURGOYNES DEFEAT
The hope that ministers had entertained of soon hearing of some glorious victory in America, whereby the mouth of opposition might be stopped, was at length swept away. On the 3rd of December Colonel Barre rose in the house of commons, with a grave countenance, and asked Lord George Germaine what had become of Burgoyne’s army? and whether he had not received intelligence from Quebec of their having surrendered to the enemy? Lord George, in reply, confessed that he had received the unhappy intelligence, by express, from Quebec; but as it was unauthenticated, he could not declare it officially. He expressed a hope, therefore, that the house would suspend their judgment; at the same time declaring, that if he had committed a fault in drawing out the plan of the expedition, he was ready to answer for it. He made this declaration in such a cold, self-satisfied tone, that it drew down upon his head the most bitter inventive from members of the opposition. Barre, Luttrell, Burke, Townshend, and Fox, all, in their turns, assailed the haughty secretary, and revelled in descriptions of the loss and disgrace which we had sustained—necessarily, from chagrin, heightening the effect of the picture by exaggeration. The solicitor-general, Wedderburne, endeavoured to reconcile the house to this loss, by appealing to British magnanimity under distress, which, he conceived, was the harbinger of victory. During the war of the succession, he said, General Stanhope was compelled to surrender himself, and his whole army, prisoners of war in Spain; but the disgrace only served to call forth an ardour which soon effaced the stigma, and achieved glorious successes. Lord North, having declared that he had from the beginning been desirous of peace; that if the surrender of his place and honours could obtain it he would resign them; and that while he remained in office he would support it to the best of his power, the conversation dropped.
In the house of lords, however, the subject was taken up more seriously. On the 5th of December, having previously arranged matters with the opposition peers, the Earl of Chatham moved, “that an address be presented to his majesty for copies of all orders and instructions issued to General Burgoyne, relative to the late expedition from Canada.” Chatham commenced an able, though rambling speech, which he delivered on this occasion, by criticising the king’s speech at the opening of the session; representing it as containing an unfaithful and delusive picture of the state of public affairs. He then lamented Burgoyne’s fate, in pathetic terms. His character, he said, with the glory of the British arms, and the dearest interests of the country, had all been sacrificed to the ignorance, temerity, and impotence of ministers. Yet almost in the same breath, Chatham said that he would not condemn ministers without evidence! Burgoyne, he remarked, might or might not be an able officer; he might have received orders it was not in his power to execute; and those instructions might have been wisely given, and faithfully and judiciously executed, although the general had miscarried. Many events, he said, happened which no human foresight could prevent; but, as it was evident, a fault had been committed either by Burgoyne or the ministers, he was desirous of having the papers laid before the house, in order to ascertain to whom the blame was in reality attached. At the same time, he asserted that he already knew sufficient to justify him in affirming that the measures for that campaign were founded in weakness, barbarity, and inhumanity. Here again he launched forth in bitter invective against the practice of employing the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the Indians in the war. Then, turning from the field of battle, he attacked the court. He remarked:—“Within the last fifteen years the system has been introduced at St. James’s of breaking all connexion,—of extinguishing all principle. A few men have got an ascendency, where no man should have a personal ascendency; by the executive powers of state being at their command, they have been furnished with the means of creating divisions. This has brought pliable men, not capable men, into the highest situations; and to such men is the government of this once-glorious empire now entrusted. The spirit of delusion has gone forth; the ministers have imposed on the people; parliament has been induced to sanctify the imposition; false lights have been held out to the country gentlemen, and they have been seduced into the support of a most destructive war, under the impression that the land-tax would be diminished by means of an American revenue. The visionary phantom, thus conjured up for the basest of purposes—that of deception—is now about to vanish.” Chatham had said that Burgoyne might or might not be an able officer; but he now eulogised his zeal, his bravery, and his abilities, and then, in defiance of his assertion that he would not condemn ministers without evidence, he laid the whole blame upon them, and said that they ought to submit to all the obloquy till the general had an opportunity of justifying himself. Chatham now again denounced the practice of employing the Indians; coupling the German bayonet with the scalping-knife and tomahawk. The only thing which could be done, he said, to preserve America in our dependence was to disband the Indians, recall the Germans, and withdraw our troops in toto. As for American independence, he could not endure the thought of such a consummation. While he abhorred the system of government attempted to be established in America, he as earnestly and zealously contended for a Whig government and a Whig connexion between the two countries, founded on a constitutional dependence and subordination of America upon England. Against Tory principles he entertained the most bitter hatred; and in the course of his speech he exhibited that feeling, by animadverting, in severe terms, on the high Tory doctrines maintained by Dr. Markham, Archbishop of York. The pernicious doctrines advanced by that prelate, he said, were the doctrines of Atterbury and Sacheverel; and as a Whig, he abjured and detested them, and hoped to see the day, not only when they should be deemed libels, but when the authors of such doctrines should be liable to punishment. Chatham concluded, by moving for the papers relative to the instructions given to Burgoyne, which was lost by a majority of forty to nineteen. But though the motion was negatived, the noble lord returned to the charge, by moving for copies of all instructions relative to the employment of Indians in conjunction with the British troops. In this, however, he made a whip for his own back. In opposing the motion, Lord Gower asserted, that the noble lord had himself employed, and acknowledged that he had employed, savages in the operation of the last war. This charge Chatham denied. Indians, he said, had crept into the service during that war; but he challenged ministers to produce any document of his sanctioning their employment. He appealed to Lord Amherst, who had commanded the troops in Canada, for a declaration of the truth, and that noble lord had the honesty to declare the truth. The Indians, he said, had been employed on both sides: the French engaged their services first, and we had followed their example: but most certainly he should not have ventured to have done so if he had not received orders to that effect. Lord Shelburne suggested, that the orders might have proceeded from the Board of Trade: but Lord Denbigh, who called Chatham “the great oracle with a short memory,” said, that this was impossible, as Chatham, when in office under George II., had monopolised functions which did not belong to him, and had guided and directed everything relative to the war. In reply, Chatham said, that he was sure the order had not passed through his office, and that the humanity of his late majesty would not have permitted him to sanction so satanic a measure. But Chatham was now floundering in the mire, and the more he endeavoured to extricate himself, the deeper he got into it. The fallacy of this pretence was exposed by Lord Suffolk, who said, that all instructions to governors and commanders-in-chief necessarily passed through the office of the secretary-of-state, which office Chatham then held, and were countersigned by the king. Finding that Chatham’s veracity could not be established, the lords, in opposition, now turned the subject, and endeavoured to justify his employment of the Indians. There was a difference, they maintained, between the two wars—the one having been against our old enemies, the French, the other being against our fellow-subjects. They also argued, that the French having set the example, we were justified in following it. But this argument applied equally to the present war. Arnold took with him into Canada the very savages whose services we had refused; and one of the first cares of congress was to secure the alliance of the Six Nations. It was, moreover, understood by all, that the treaty was not to stop at neutrality, but to engage those Indians as auxiliaries in the war. Want of means, coupled with the animosities which existed between the Indian tribes and their American neighbours of the back settlements, and with a species of reverence which the red men entertained for the name of King George, had prevented the success of congress; but the Americans had, to all intents and purposes, set the deplorable example of using the tomahawk against their Protestant brethren of England. The Earl of Dunmore, indeed, declared that he had himself, while governor of Virginia, been attacked by a party of Indians who had been instigated by the Virginians. Evil examples should not be followed; but the present ministry had, at least, the same plea to offer for employing the Indians as Chatham and the opposition lords had for employing them in the war in Canada. The man who endeavours to blacken the characters of others should himself possess an untarnished reputation. Chatham’s motion was lost by a majority of forty to eighteen.