forty.

COMMITTEE FOR TAKING THE STATE OF THE NATION INTO CONSIDERATION.

On the 2nd of February, on the order of the day being read, for the
house to resolve itself into a committee to take the state of the nation
into consideration, Fox moved that no more troops should be sent out of
the kingdom. On the same day, the Duke of Richmond, also, made a similar
motion in the house of lords. In both houses the opposition represented
that war with France and Spain was inevitable; and that our means of
defence were not sufficient in the whole to meet the contingency; and,
therefore, it was not prudent to protract an impracticable contest.
No answer was made in the commons, but in the lords the motion and the
arguments adduced in support of it were denounced as amounting to a
public acknowledgment of our inability to prosecute war; as inviting
the house of Bourbon to attempt an invasion; and as attacking the
prerogative of the crown to raise, direct, and employ the military force
of the kingdom. The motions were rejected in the lords by ninety-one
against thirty-four; and in the commons by two hundred and ninety-five
against one hundred and sixty-five.

BURKE'S MOTION RELATIVE TO THE EMPLOYMENT OF INDIANS.

On the 6th of February, Burke introdued a motion for papers relative
to the employment of Indians in America, from 1774 to 1778. On this
occasion he made a speech three hours in length, during the whole of
which time the attention of the house was fixed on the orator. This
speech, however, which is represented as being one of the most splendid
efforts of his oratory, is very inadequately reported. From it,
notwithstanding, it may be gathered that he drew a striking and ghastly
picture of Indian warfare, and of the horrors committed by these savage
auxiliaries. It had a greater effect upon the house than Chatham's
denunciations of the practice of employing the Indian tribes in our
army, arising from the fact that the orator handled the subject with
clean hands. Colonel Barre, excited by it, declared that if it were
printed and published he would nail it on every church-door by the side
of the king's proclamation for a general fast; and Governor Johnson said
it was fortunate for Lord North and Germaine that the galleries had been
cleared before the speech was uttered, as the indignation and enthusiasm
of strangers might have excited the people to lay violent hands upon
them on their return home. The secret of t