austed the country by levying exorbitant contributions,
and connived at such outrages as degraded his own dignity, and reflected
disgrace on the character of his nation. The court of London, to make
a merit of necessity, affected to consider the conventional act as a
provisional armistice, to pave the way for a negotiation that might
terminate in a general peace, and proposals were offered for that
purpose; but the French ministry kept aloof, and seemed resolved that
the electorate of Hanover should be annexed to their king's dominions.
At least, they were bent upon keeping it as a precious depositum,
which, in the plan of a general pacification, they imagined, would
counterbalance any advantage that Great Britain might obtain in other
parts of the world. Had they been allowed to keep this deposit, the
kingdom of Great Britain would have saved about twenty millions of
money, together with the lives of her best soldiers; and Westphalia
would have continued to enjoy all the blessings of security and peace.
But the king of England's tenderness for Hanover was one of the chief
sources of the misfortunes which befel the electorate. He could not bear
the thoughts of seeing it, even for a season, in the hands of the
enemy; and his own sentiments in this particular were reinforced by the
pressing remonstrances of the Prussian monarch, whom, at this juncture,
he thought it dangerous to disoblige. Actuated by these motives, he was
pleased to see the articles of the convention so palpably contravened,
because the violation unbound his hands, and enabled him, consistently
with good faith, to take effectual steps for the assistance of his ally,
and the recovery of his own dominions. He, therefore, in quality of
elector of Brunswick-Lunen-burgh, published a declaration, observing,
"That his royal highness the duke of Cumberland had, on his part,
honestly fulfilled all the conditions of the convention; but the duke
de Richelieu demanded that the troops should enter into an engagement
specified above, and lay down their arms; although it was expressly
stipulated in the convention, that they should not be regarded as
prisoners of war, under which quality alone they could be disarmed:
that the French court pretended to treat the convention as a military
regulation only; and, indeed, it was originally nothing more; but as
they had expressly disowned its validity, and a negotiation had been
actually begun for disarming the auxiliaries, upon