June 20, a part of those incredible shoals of cod, herring, and offer watery tribes, which nature has with such astonishing prodigality poured on the western coasts of Scotland. An hundredth or even a thousandth part of the millions expended in this war, would have been sufficient to found a colony of fishermen in the Hebrides worth all our foreign pofsefsions put together. But such a colony would not have answered the purposes of ministerial corruption. They would not have entangled us in a quarrel with the rest of Europe. They would not have supplied our rulers with a plausible pretence for loading the public with extravagant debts. We are forced to think that the chief object of ministers is to tear money from the very entrails of the nation, to serve the vile ends of parade and luxury, or the viler end of buying a majority in our virtuous House of Commons. Hence every succefsive administration fatigues us with a new series of absurdities. For a century past, the history of Britain * fhould be entitled "The progrefs 6. of Injustice conducted by Folly." Our affairs cannot, in future, be worse managed than they have beent; and on this topic it is now full time to be se

* Et might with cqual propriety be said the history of Europe. Edit. + For ex mple, "In the course of the late war, from 1776 to 17S2, «forty-six millions five hundred and fifty thousand pounds were added. to the thee per cents. and twenty-nine millions seven hundred and « fifty thousand pounds to the four, per cents. making together a capital. "of seventy-three millions.four hundred thousand pounds, for which the 65 money advanced was only forty-eight millions." Guthrie's Grammar,. edition xi. p. 295. The writer has here committed a mistake. The two sums nominally borrowed, when added, amount to seventy-six millions ¿ree kundred thousand pounds.. After subtracting the suns actually resixed, there is a balance of premium amounting to twenty-eight millicus,

$

rious, when every subject of Britain pays of public taxes between two and three pounds sterling per annum. At this rate, twenty pounds sterling are exacted every year from a family that consists of eight persons; and if the poor pay ten pounds lefs, it is equally certain that the rich must pay ten pounds more, and so in proportion. The sums which have been squandered since the revolution, upon foolish wars, and useless colonies, on the balance of power, and the balance of trade, would have been ten times more than sufficient for converting both Britain and Ireland into a garden. Had this been the case, our situation would have been as much superior to what it is now, as we are at present superior to those naked savages who gave battle to Julius Cæsar, on the coast of Dover, I am, &c.

Laurencekirk,

May 31. 1792.

TIMOTHY THUNDERPROOF,

P. S. The practice of hiring foreign mercenaries, so frequently mentioned in the preceding letters, must provoke the disapprobation of every reader. If we cannot or dare not fight our own battles, what right have we to fhed the blood of a. fhoal of wretches, driven to slaughter at so much per head by their worthlef's sovereign? The necefsities of the state may, perhaps, in some cases, supersede the common obligations of morality; and a philosopher may forgive, though he cannot vindicate, the infidelity of an American congrefs, who,

thrée hundred thousand pounds. At three and a half per cent. the interest of this sum amounts to nine hundred and ninety 1btusand five hundred. pounds; and this deluge of inte.est we continue to pay for a lean cub. b gever quas advanced.

standing on the verge of destruction, are said to have violated some articles of the convention of Saratoga*. But what necefsity impelled the British cabinet to hire the peasants of Denmark and Hefse Cafsel to butcher the peasants of Brandenburgh and Lusatia ? This is, indeed, in the worst sense of the word, A SLAVE TRADE; and in a thousand instances to one, those who buy, and those who sell, are equally detestable.

In this branch of commerce, the court of Hefse Cafsel has long been distinguished by superior infamy. The reader may be surprised by the following anecdotes of Hefsian discipline. They were communicated by a gentleman of undoubted veracity, who resided during last war in North America.

"In this service it is a rule, that no soldier can "be put to death by order of a court martial, till "the sentence has been confirmed by the Landgrave. "Hence it happened that a prisoner might have been "confined for eighteen months, before his sentence "could have been ratified, and the confirmation re❝ turned. The Hefsian officers took a fhorter way. "You have heard of a north-west American snow

storm; but unless you had felt it, you cannot pofsibly conceive its severity; with every precaution "of clothing its effects on the human body are often

*This is a species of morality that our ingenious correspondent has proily borrowed from the cabine:; philosophers may be there found who will vindicate any thing. But the stern moralist will admit of no excusę as valid for a breach of contract, but physical inpofsibility alone. Our author, who leads the cause of justice so ably in other cases, ought not to become the apologist for injustice of any kind.

Edit.

terrible, and the lofs of a nose, an ear, or a chin, ❝is but one of its slightest consequences.

"A Hefsian soldier had deserted, and his officers ❝ were determined to dispatch him as soon as pos"sible. He was tied up to be flogged in a northwest snow storm. Every drop of blood froze on ❝ the cat's tail. I was within an hundred yards of "the halberts when he expired.

66

"One evening, when riding into Halifax, about "eleven o'clock, I was stopped and insulted by the corporal of a Hefsian picket guard. I complained "next morning to his colonel, who, with all the dignity of a despot, ordered the man to stand with his " left arm stretched above his head. Two serjeants 66 were called, and their orders were to thrash at him " with their sticks till I fhould bid them stop. In

66

1

ten minutes I suppose they must have pounded "him into a mummy. I need hardly tell you that "I immediately put an end to such a barbarous superfluity of vengeance.

"Among the Hefsians, theft was universal. One of them, an old man, stole a great coat of "mine; it was found, but he had cut off and sold "the buttons. I interposed with his commander, but “in vain. He was condemned to run the gauntlet "twelve times through the regiment, which consisted of a thousand men. They were drawn up in two lines. Every man was supplied with a switch; "an officer, arnied with a cudgel, walked up behind each of the ranks, as the prisoner walked, and woe "be to the man who neglected to give him a severe "stroke! To make him march deliberate and erect,

a halbert was held pointed at his breast, and ano"ther at his back, so that he could go but at a cer"tain pace. In a few minutes his back, his "breast, and even his face, were in a gore of "blood. So much for the buttons of a great coat! "His infernal majesty has not served half his

apprenticeship, unless he has been a planter in the "West Indies, the captain of a slave ship, or the colonel of a Hefsian regiment.

When these troops were first landed from Europe, the appearance of many of them announced an utmost consummation of wretchednefs; the sick and the dead were treated with equal indifference; "the scurvy had made dreadful havock, and I have 46 seen them, like as many dogs, buried by cartloads.

"Every circumstance in their behaviour was "marked with grofsnefs and barbarity. In some "regiments, the major might at pleasure cudgel his "captains, the captain his lieutenant, and the latter his ensign. Numbers of Americans, whose sensibility would not have allowed them to fight with Englifhmen, were forward to exterminate these "devoted foreigners.".

66

$

In the American war, we maintained an army of between twenty-five and thirty thousand German mercenaries, including those in Gibraltar and Minorca. The expence was nominally about seven hundred thousand pounds per annum, but amounted in fact to much more; for the extraordinaries of the army, as they were called, for 1781 alone, amounted to THREE MILLIONS AND A HALF STERLING. The original object