try nevertheless attempted to
alarm the subjects of Great Britain with the project of an invasion.
Flat-bottomed boats were built, transports collected, large ships of
the line equipped, and troops ordered to assemble on the coast
for embarkation; but this was no more than a feint to arouse the
apprehension of the English, disconcert the administration, prejudice
the national credit, and deter the government from sending forces to
keep alive the war in Germany. A much more effectual method they took to
distress the trade of England, by laying up their useless ships of
war, and encouraging the equipment of stout privateers, which did
considerable damage to the commerce of Great Britain and Ireland, by
cruising in the seas of Europe and America. Some of them lay close in
the harbours of the channel, fronting the coast of England, and darted
out occasionally on the trading ships of this nation, as they received
intelligence from boats employed for that purpose. Some chose their
station in the North sea, where a great number of captures were made
upon the coast of Scotland; others cruised in the chops of the channel,
and even to the westward of Ireland; but the far greater number scoured
the seas in the neighbourhood of the Leeward Islands in the West Indies,
where they took a prodigious number of British ships, sailing to and
from the sugar colonies, and conveyed them to their own settlements in
Martinique, Guadeloupe, or St. Domingo.

CONDUCT OF THE KING OF DENMARK.

With respect to the war that raged in Germany, the king of Denmark
wisely pursued that course, which happily preserved him from being
involved in those troubles by which great part of Europe was agitated,
and terminated in that point of national advantage which a king ought
ever to have in view for the benefit of his people. By observing a
scrupulous neutrality, he enhanced his importance among his neighbours:
he saw himself courted by all the belligerent powers: he saved the
blood and treasure of his subjects: he received large subsidies, in
consideration of his forbearance; and enjoyed, unmolested, a much more
considerable share of commerce than he could expect to carry on, even
in times of universal tranquillity. He could not perceive that the
protestant religion had anything to apprehend from the confederacy which
was formed against the Prussian monarch; nor was he misled into all the
expense, the perils, and disquiets of a sanguinary war, by that