s almost wholly
anti-American, while the merchants, tradesmen, and the common people
were generally opposed to a war.[3]

[Footnote 2: "Correspondence with Lord North." Donne.]

[Footnote 3: Upon this point Dr. Price said: "Let it be granted,
_though probably far from true_, that the _majority_ of the kingdom
favor the present measures. No good argument could be drawn from
thence against receding."]

Having voted to push the war in earnest, Parliament proceeded to
supply the sinews. On November 3d, Lord Barrington brought in the army
estimates for 1776. Fifty-five thousand men, he reported, was the
force necessary and intended to be raised for the purposes of the
nation, the ordinary expense of maintaining which would be something
over L1,300,000. Of these troops, twenty thousand would be retained
to garrison Great Britain, ten thousand for the West Indies,
Gibraltar, Minorca and the coast of Africa, while the actual force
destined for America was to be increased to thirty-four battalions,
each of 811 men, including two regiments of light horse, amounting, in
the aggregate, to upwards of twenty-five thousand men. Barrington, at
the same time, frankly acknowledged to the House that these figures
showed well only on paper, as none of the regiments for America were
complete, and, what was a still more unwelcome admission, that great
difficulty was experienced in enlisting new recruits. Nothing, he
said, had been left untried to secure them. The bounty had been raised
and the standard lowered, and yet men were not forthcoming.
Anticipating this dearth, he had warned the king of it as early as
July, when the latter first determined to increase the army. "I wish,
sir, most cordially," wrote this faithful secretary, "that the force
intended for North America may be raised in time to be sent thither
next spring; but I not only fear, but am confident, the proposed
augmentation cannot possibly be raised, and ought not to be depended
on."

Barrington was compelled to give an explanation of this state of
things, for the point had been made in and out of Parliament that few
recruits could be had in England, because the particular service was
odious to the people in general. For the government to admit this
would have been clearly fatal; and Barrington argued, per contra, that
the scarcity of soldiers was to be traced to other and concurrent
causes. The great influx of real and nominal wealth of recent years,
the consequent lux