Conflans to the count de St. Florentin, secretary of the marine. In this
partial misrepresentation, their admiral was made to affirm, that the
British fleet consisted of forty ships of the line of battle, besides
frigates; that the Soleil Royal had obliged the Royal George to sheer
off; that the seven ships which retreated into the river Vilaine had
received very little damage, and would be soon repaired; and that, by
the junction of Bompart's squadron, he should be soon able to give a
good account of the English admiral. These tumid assertions, so void of
truth, are not to be imputed to an illiberal spirit of vain glory, so
much as to a political design of extenuating the national calamity, and
supporting the spirit of the people.

THE IRISH PARLIAMENT.

The alarm of the French invasion, which was thus so happily frustrated,
not only disturbed the quiet of Great Britain, but also diffused itself
to the kingdom of Ireland, where it was productive of some public
disorder. In the latter end of October, the two houses of parliament,
assembled at Dublin, received a formal message from the duke of Bedford,
lord-lieutenant of that kingdom, to the following effect: That, by a
letter from the secretary of state, written by his majesty's express
command, it appeared that France, far from resigning her plan of
invasion, on account of the disaster that befel her Toulon squadron, was
more and more confirmed in her purpose, and even instigated by despair
itself to attempt, at all hazards, the only resource she seemed to have
left for thwarting, by a diversion at home, the measures of England
abroad in prosecuting a war which hitherto opened, in all parts of the
world, so unfavourable a prospect to the views of French ambition: that,
in case the body of French troops, amounting to eighteen thousand men,
under the command of the duc d'Aiguillon, assembled at Vannes, where
also a sufficient number of transports was prepared, should be able to
elude the British squadron, Ireland would, in all probability, be one of
their chief objects; his grace thought it therefore incumbent upon him,
in a matter of such high importance to the welfare of that kingdom, to
communicate this intelligence to the Irish parliament. He told them, his
majesty would make no doubt but that the zeal of his faithful protestant
subjects in that kingdom had been already sufficiently quickened by the
repeated accounts received of the enemy's dangerous designs an