Page:The Hessians and the other German auxiliaries of Great Britain in the revolutionary war.djvu/42

 30 to produce a single instance in which the same number of men, within the same time, had cost the nation so much.

The Hon. James Luttrell pointed out that there were already a hundred and fifty thousand Germans settled in America, and that the hired troops were likely to desert. Edmund Burke stated that for every thousand foreigners they were paying as much as for fifteen hundred natives. Sir George Saville insisted that this was the worst bargain of the kind ever made since the hiring of foreign troops had prevailed; and Alderman Bull closed the debate. “Let not the historian be obliged to say,” he exclaimed, “that the Russian and the German slave was hired to subdue the sons of Englishmen and of freedom; and that in the reign of a prince of the House of Brunswick, every infamous attempt was made to extinguish the spirit which brought his ancestors to the throne, and in spite of treachery and rebellion seated them firmly upon it.” The alderman's sentiments were better than his rhetoric, but both were equally unavailing. The motion was passed by two hundred and forty-two votes to eighty-eight.

On March 5, 1776, the Duke of Richmond moved in the House of Lords that a humble address be presented to his Majesty, praying that he would be graciously pleased to countermand the march of the foreign troops, and to give directions for an immediate suspension of hostilities in America. The protest expressed the sense which the House entertained of the danger and disgrace of the treaties, which