into our hands!" he reiterated, with bitter scorn. "I know not what idea that lord may entertain of God and nature, but I know that such abominable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity. What! attribute the sacred sanction of God and nature to the massacres of the Indian scalping-knife, to the cannibal and savage, torturing, murdering, roasting, and eating-literally, my lords, eating-the mangled victims of his barbarous battles.....These abominable principles, and this most abominable avowal of them, demand most decisive indignation. I call upon that right reverend bench (pointing to the bishops), those holy ministers of the Gospel and pious pastors of the Church-I conjure them to join in the holy work, and to vindicate the religion of their God."
In the Lower House, Burke, Fox, and Barré were equally severe upon the ministers; and on the 3d of December, when the news of Burgoyne's defeat reached London, the latter arose in his place in the Commons, and, with a severe and solemn countenance, asked Lord George Germain, the Secretary of War, what news he had received by his last expresses from Quebec, and to say, upon his word of honor, what had become of Burgoyne and his brave army. The haughty secretary was irritated by the cool irony of the question, but he was obliged to unbend and to confess that the unhappy intelligence had reached him, but added it was not yet authenticated. *
Lord North, the premier, with his usual adroitness, admitted that misfortune had befallen the British arms, but denied that any blame could be imputed to ministers themselves, and proposed an adjournment of December, 1778 Parliament on the 11th (which was carried) until the 20th of January. ** It was a clever trick of the premier to escape the castigations which he knew the opposition would inflict while the nation was smarting under the goadings of mortified pride.
The victory over Burgoyne, unassisted as our troops were by foreign aid, placed the prowess of the United States in the most favorable light upon the Continent. Our urgent solicitations for aid, hitherto but little noticed except by France, were now listened to with respect, and the American commissioners at Paris. Dr. Franklin, Silas Deane,3 and Arthur Lee,4 * * occupied a commanding position among the diplomatists of Europe. France, Spain, the States General of Holland, the Prince of Orange, and even Catharine of Russia and Pope Clement XIV. (Ganganelli), all
* History of the Reign of George III., i., 326.
** Pitkin, i., 397. Annual Register, 1778, p| 74.