America.
But he preferred to let his friend Storer forward the political
information of the moment to Carlisle, so that a letter of Storer is
sometimes supplementary to one of Selwyn. The following is a
continuation, so to say, of that which Selwyn wrote on the same
date.

Anthony Storer to Lord Carlisle.

1775, December 14, Portugal Street.--I did not give Selwyn my
promise concerning our expedition to Castle Howard, and therefore
should not have mentioned it to you; but if I am not able to come,
it will be some comfort to me to know that you will have him and St.
John; so that if you fail of getting any politics out of George, I
think you must be very unlucky if you have not, what you wish, a
boar (sic) of politics from the other.

I assure you, at least so it appears to me, that American politics
are very much altered. Taxation and the exercise of it are totally
renounced. You never hear the right mentioned, but in order to give
it up. The rigid politician of last year, such a man for instance as
Wellbore Ellis, stands now almost single in the House of Commons.

You ask me if the Intercourse Bill,(135) as it is called, cuts off
all commerce and communication with the Islands. You may guess why
it is called the Intercourse Bill; it is lucus a non lucendo. The
Americans are neither to trade with the West Indies or Great
Britain; they are not interdicted any commerce with us, but they are
to be treated, both themselves and their vessels, as enemies in open
time of war, and the captures are to become the property of the
commanders and the sailors.

This is the winding up of our catastrophe. If it lasts more than one
year, it seems even to moderate West Indians to be totally ruinous
to them. What seems to affect them most by the passing of this Bill
is not the fear of starving, which they have their apprehensions of,
but the danger there is of their being taken on false pretences by
the men of war that are to protect them, or by the Americans, on
whose coast they are always obliged to pass very near. In short,
every West Indian, except Jack Douglas, is in the utmost
consternation.

Parliament, that is, the House of Commons, have done their business;
we are now waiting for this Bill to pass the Lords, and then we
adjourn for the holidays. The day before yesterday, the Sedgmoor
Inclosure Bill, in which Lord Bolingbroke was very much interested
(G. Selwyn was Chairman for and in the Committee) was thrown out,
ow