This all-important question was adjourned to the next day, the 8th of June, when it was debated in a committee of the whole House. As the discussion, however, took place with closed doors, as all great debates of Congress did, to hide the real state of opinion, and to give to the ultimate decision an air of unanimity, the reports of it are meagre and unsatisfactory. We know, however, that Lee, the original mover, was supported by his colleague Wythe, and most energetically by John Adams; that it was as vigorously opposed by John Dickinson and his colleagues, Wilson, of Pennsylvania, Robert Livingstone, of New York, and John Rutledge, of South Carolina. Moreover, a considerable number of members from different States opposed the motion, on the ground, not of its being improper in itself, but, as yet, premature. Six colonies declared for it, including Virginia. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland were at present against it. New York, Delaware, and South Carolina, were not decided to move yet; and it was proposed to give them time to make up their minds. Dr. Zubly, of Georgia, protested against it, and quitted the Congress. To give time for greater unanimity, the subject was postponed till the 1st of July; but, meanwhile, a committee was appointed to draw up a Declaration of Independence. The members of this committee were only five, namely, Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia; John Adams, of Massachusetts; Roger Sherman, of Connecticut; Richard R. Livingstone, of New York; and Benjamin Franklin, of Pennsylvania.
DEATH OF THE EARL OF CHATHAM. (From the Painting by J. S. Copley, R.A., in the National Gallery, London.)Alexander of Russia, having obtained all that he hoped for from the peace of Tilsit and the alliance with Napoleon by the conquest of Finland, was looking about for a new ally to aid him in freeing himself from the insolent domination of Buonaparte, who was ruining Russia as well as the rest of Europe by his Continental system, when these unexpected events in Sweden opened up to him a sudden and most marvellous ally. The Swedes had chosen the Duke of Sudermania, the uncle of the deposed king. Charles XIII., the brother of Gustavus III. (assassinated by Count Anckarstr?m in 1792), was old, imbecile, and childless. A successor was named for him in the Duke of Augustenburg, who was extremely popular in Norway, and who had no very distant expectations of the succession in Denmark. This princea member of an unlucky househad scarcely arrived in Sweden when he died suddenly, not without suspicion of having been poisoned; in fact, various rumours of such a fate awaiting him preceded his arrival. Russia, as well as a powerful party in Sweden, was bent on restoring the line of Vasa. Alexander was uncle to the young prince, who, by no fault of his own, was excluded from the throne. Whatever was the real cause, Augustenburg died, as had been predicted; and while the public mind in Sweden was agitated about the succession, the aged king, Charles XIII., applied to Napoleon for his advice. But Napoleon had bound himself at Tilsit to leave the affairs of the North in the hands of Alexander, and especially not to interfere in those of Sweden. He therefore haughtily replied:"Address yourself to Alexander; he is great and generous"ominous words, which were, ere long, applied, to his astonishment and destruction.
Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick was more successful. He was at the head of an army of fifty-five thousand men, including ten or twelve thousand English, under Lord George Sackville. As the French had taken Frankfort-on-the-Main, he left the British and Hanoverian troops, amounting to twenty-eight thousand men, to watch the French, under Marshal de Contades, upon the Lippe, and set out to drive back the other divisions of the French, under De Broglie. He found these amounted to thirty-five thousand strong, but he did not hesitate to engage them at Bergen, on the Nidda, near Frankfort. After a hard-fought battle, he was defeated with a loss of two thousand men and five pieces of cannon. De Broglie pushed rapidly after him, formed a junction with Contades, and speedily reduced Cassel, Münster, and Minden. There appeared every prospect of the whole Electorate of Hanover being again overrun by them. The archives were once more sent off to Stade, ready for embarkation. But Ferdinand now displayed the superiority of his generalship. He left five thousand of his troops, with an air of carelessness, in the way of the French, who, unsuspicious of any stratagem, hastened forward to surprise them, when, to their astonishment, they found the whole of Ferdinand's army had been brought up in the night, and were drawn up behind a ridge near Minden.Bute made overtures to France through the neutral Court of Sardinia. Louis XV. and his Ministers caught at the very first whisper of such a thing with the eagerness of drowning men; a sufficient intimation to an able and cautious minister, that he might safely name his own terms. The ambassadors, however, soon found that the real business of the treaty was transacted between Bute, on the part of Britain, and the Duke de Choiseul, on that of France; and that not through ambassadors, but through Sardinian envoys.Mackintosh, who was a young lawyer of excellent education, but yet entirely unknown, this year published his "Vindici? Gallic?," in reply to Burke; but he did it with the behaviour of a gentleman, and evident admiration of the genius and political services of the great man whom he opposed. His book was immensely admired, and at once lifted him into notice. But it was not long before he began to see the correctness of Burke's views and prophecies as to the French Revolution, and he did not shrink from avowing the change of his sentiments in the Monthly Review and in conversation. His talents and this alteration of his views recommended him to the Ministers, and he was appointed by Pitt and Loughborough a professor of Lincoln's Inn, where, in a course of lectures on the Constitution of England, he exhibited himself as an uncompromising censor of the doctrines he had approved in his "Vindici? Gallic?." For this he was classed, by the vehement worshippers of French ideas, with Burke, as a venal turncoat. Mackintosh did not content himself with recanting his opinions on this topic from the platform and the press; he wrote directly to Burke, who was now fast sinking under his labours and his disappointments, and expressed his undisguised admiration of his sagacity as a politician, and of his general principles and political philosophy. Burke invited him down to Beaconsfield, where a closer view of the philosopher and orator greatly increased his esteem and admiration of the man.Blucher's headquarters were at Namur, his right extending to Charleroi, near the left of Wellington, and his left and reserves covering Gevil and Lige. His force amounted to eighty thousand men, supplied with two hundred cannon. On the 15th Buonaparte addressed his army, telling them that the enemies arrayed against them were the same that they had so often beaten, and whom they must beat again if they were the men they had been. "Madmen!" he exclaimed, "the moment of prosperity has blinded them. The oppression and humiliation of the French people are beyond their power. If they enter France they will there find their tomb!" This address had such an effect that the French advanced with all the spirit of their former days. They swept the western bank of the Sambre of the Prussian outposts; they advanced to Charleroi, drove out the Prussians under Ziethen, and compelled them to fall back on the village of Gosselies, and thence to Ligny and St. Amand. It was now seen that the object of Buonaparte was to cut off the communication between the Prussians and British, and defeat the Prussians first, instead of having to fight the two armies at once. To complete this Ney had been dispatched to attack and drive back the British advance at Quatre Bras and Frasnes; but, hearing firing in the direction of Charleroi, which was the engagement with Ziethen, he sent a division to support the French there, and thus found his main body too weak to move the British at Quatre Bras. For doing this without orders, Buonaparte reprimanded Ney, as he afterwards did Grouchy for too implicitly following his orders in pursuit of Blucher.
