Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 5.djvu/284

270 liberty and the protestant religion, and that the only security for rational freedom and liberty of conscience was in the return to the mild sway of England. Congress replied to these in many respects just reproaches with violent recriminations. On the part of the British, the conduct of the Americans to André produced no alteration in their spirit or temper. They never put into execution any of the menaces of retaliation only employed to endeavour to save that unfortunate officer.



They continued to treat with the utmost mildness the Americans, who constantly offended against the laws of war; and even the forty gentlemen from Charlestown, who had flagrantly broken their parole, and gone over again to the American ranks, were merely transferred from the prison-ships to Pensacola and St. Augustine, in Florida, and there again their parole was allowed them, but under stricter surveillance. About this time some exchanges of prisoners were effected. Lincoln was given up for major-general Phillips, who had been prisoner since the surrender of Saratoga; but the congress still refused to keep their engagement with the army which there capitulated, and held it, in defiance of every principle of honour, to the end of the war.

Washington and all the principal officers now pressed on congress something like the conscription which France soon after adopted, for maintaining the army, insisting that the soldiers must also be engaged for the whole war, and that the officers must have half-pay for life. There was a loud outcry in congress on this, that the commander-in-chief was intending to make himself a dictator, as Cromwell had done, and that the States would only escape from one king to have another self-created; but the necessities of the case rose above these democratic clamours, and the proposals were carried, but with little relief to Washington, for the regulations were doggedly resisted in almost every direction, and even for the soldiers he had found it almost impossible to procure subsistence. He still continued to occupy his position on the highlands above the Hudson; Rochambeau in his camp on Rhode Island, and Clinton in New York, and all parties retired early into winter quarters.

During this year the Americans continued to hope for relief to themselves from the progress of the armed neutrality, but derived little good from it, though, through their exertions, they beheld Holland added to the open enemies of England. The czarina of Russia expressed her chagrin at the little effect which it produced, declaring that it was only an armed nullity; whilst her favourite and minister, Potemkin, declared to the British ambassador, Sir James Harris, that it had been conceived in mistake, had been perfected by vanity, and was only maintained on the