as called on to assist them by treaty. Joseph
failed in his attempt to put the sword into the hands of the empress,
but he diminished her attachment to the English, and increased her
desire to extend that confederacy. As for Joseph himself, he now openly
declared his accession to the Armed Neutrality, and thereby testified a
desire for the triumph of the Americans, so that ministers plainly saw
that they had nothing to hope from his mediation. This he continued
to offer, while binding himself to the most active enemies of Great
Britain; but "all was false and hollow."

MEETING OF PARLIAMENT.

Parliament reassembled on the 27th of November. Two days before
this, intelligence had arrived of the surrender of Lord
Cornwallis--intelligence which had caused great consternation in the
British cabinet. His majesty, however, had heard the news with calmness,
dignity, and self-command; and his speech from the throne was in the
same determined language as at the close of the last session, when the
prospects of the nation were radiant with hope. After expressing his
concern at the sad reverse, he declared that he could not consent to
sacrifice, either to his own desire of peace, or to the temporary
ease and relief of his subjects, those essential rights and permanent
interests on which the strength and security of this country must ever
principally depend. He retained, he said, a firm confidence in the
protection of Divine Providence, and a perfect conviction of the
justice of his cause; and he called for the concurrence and support of
parliament, together with a vigorous, animated, and united exertion of
the faculties and resources of the people. In the course of his speech
he remarked, that the favourable appearance of our affairs in the East
Indies, and of the safe arrival of our numerous commercial fleets,
were matters for congratulation: evidently designing these as a kind of
set-off for our reverses in the West, and as encouragements to persevere
in the struggle.

In the commons, an amendment to the address was moved by Mr. Fox, who
declared, "that any one unacquainted with the British constitution, and
not knowing that the speech was contrived by a cabinet-council, would
pronounce it that of an arbitrary and unfeeling monarch, who, having
involved the slaves, his subjects, in a ruinous and unnatural war, to
glut his enmity or satiate his revenge, was determined to persevere, in
spite of calamity or fate itself." In