The above would have been a moderate number of Field Officers to regulate the divisional duties, and to superintend the discipline of 70 Companies, consisting of 4287 men; to which the corps was reduced by a legislative vote at the close of 1763. Whether from dissent as to the expediency, or a non-compliance with the object of these suggestions, is immaterial, but they were unnoticed, although their propriety and justice did not escape the discriminating and liberal mind of Earl Sandwich, whose distinguished talents introduced him to the naval councils of his Country, and whose elevated rank in them, enabled him to controul those necessary reforms at a subsequent era.
A commendable but limited policy, in providing for the discharged servants of the state, prevailed at the close of this war, by holding out the inducements of land in the ceded province of Canada, to such Officers, Sailors, and Soldiers only who had aided in its subjection.
When we contemplate the connection that exists, in the events of war, how much local conquests are often promoted by the use of extraordinary energies in quarters distant from the scene of good fortune, like the judicious diversions and stratagems of an active Officer, to promote his real designs, no principle ought to restrain such national grants to the partial few who have been the happy agents of success.
It is an old axiom—that America was subdued in Germany.
[CHAP. XXVII.]
The genius of discovery, and commerce, began to supersede that of war in 1764 and many ensuing years.
Circumstances, however, very early occurred within the North American Provinces, which developed the genuine spirit of the people, and afforded the presage of future broils.
Gratitude to a Mother Country, who had delivered those Colonists from the terrors of a hostile and restless neighbour, had scarcely cooled throughout that Continent, when the example of New England, long famed for a bias to republican principles, began to evince an opposition to the laws of a parent, by whom they had been so long protected, and under which they continued to flourish.