APPENDIX. EARL OF SHELBURNE TO LORD MAHON. MY DEAR LORD, [Stanhope Papers.] High Wycombe, April 7. 1780. I AM very sorry that the Buckinghamshire Committee has been appointed to meet in London, as they cannot be assisted by the country members without manifest inconvenience. I cannot, with any propriety, ask the gentlemen in this part to go out of the county. As to the business which it meets upon, I can only repeat to your Lordship, that I cannot discover in the plan of the Yorkshire Association a single exceptionable principle. General union is acknowledged to be essential to our success. To this end, there must be a reasonable lead somewhere. Where can it remain so safely or so honourably as with the Meeting of the County of York, which took its rise from a sense of oppression, who have uniformly proceeded hitherto with a view to measures and not to men, and regarding whom there does not exist the smallest well founded suspicion of the interference of party? Next as to the points which are made subjects of association. It is acknowledged, that the approaching Election has a very great influence on the divisions now taking place in the House of Commons in favour of Reform and redress of grievances. The county members have very generally voted on the public side, except a few who are likely to lose their seats by not doing so.What, then, is so natural or so reasonable, as to follow where these principles lead, and desire that Parliaments shall be shortened, and an effectual addition or substitu tion of county members made to the present House of Commons? My principle does not go to influence the political opinion of any man. But I think it a duty to declare my own, and your Lordship will do me a great deal of honour by communicating these as my sentiments to the Committee either individually or collectively, if those of absent persons shall be alluded to. I have the honour to be, with the greatest attachment, &c., &c., SIR HENRY CLINTON TO LORD GEORGE GERMAINE. (Secret.) MY LORD, New York, August 25. 1780. (Received Sept. 25.) I HAVE thought this letter of so much importance that I have induced Brigadier General Dalrymple, notwithstanding his high and responsible station in this army, to be the bearer of it. His intimate knowledge of my opinions concerning public affairs in America, and of the circumstances on which they are founded, will enable him, I trust, to satisfy your Lordship in any points on which you may wish a further discussion. I had the honour to inform you in my last public despatch, that I had placed the troops in front of Kingsbridge defences. On the 18th July, by a courier from the east end of Long Island, the first intelligence was received of the arrival of the French fleet off Rhode Island on the 10th, which I transmitted immediately to Admiral Arbuthnot. In the hope that I might be able to undertake something offensive against the enemy newly disembarked, I had, in expectation of their coming, requested that transports for 6000 men might be kept in readiness for the immediate embarkation of troops. Notwithstanding the tardy notice I had of the enemy's arrival, I yet determined, as speedily as possible, to put a body of troops afloat in the Sound, at hand either for operation eastward, if 1780. STATE PAPER OFFICE. practicable, or to be brought rapidly back and act against the rebel army, should they, in my absence, form any enterprise on these posts. Many causes conspired to retard the anchoring of the transports off Frog's Neck, from which place my embarkation was effected, but not until the 27th. From the 28th to the 31st of July, I kept the fleet of transports in Huntingdon Bay; but the Admiral having sent me advice that the French had since their landing, then a fortnight, been employed in strengthening themselves with new works and batteries added to those we had quitted, and that they had drawn to their assistance the force of the neighbouring district, I found no encouragement to my hope of effecting anything with the troops solely. I am well persuaded that after my zealous offer for a joint attempt of fleet and army, the Admiral, had he conceived an attack practicable upon that footing, would have invited me to it. Under these circumstances I returned with the army to Whitestone, where the troops are landed, and where the transports lie ready to receive them again if necessary. During this time General Washington, with an army increased to 12,000 men, moved from his position in the Jersey Mountains to King's Ferry, where he crossed the Hudson on the 2nd inst., and from whence he advanced towards Croton River. He probably supposed my armament sailed for Rhode Island, and intended either to threaten New York, or to move to succour the French. Washington repassed the river; his troops are now near Orange Town. On the At this new epoch in the war, when a foreign force has already landed, and an addition to it is expected, I owe to my country, and I must in justice to my own fame declare to your Lordship, that I become every day more sensible of the utter impossibility of prosecuting the war in this country without reinforcements. And I must add, that with every succour I require—unless I have the good fortune to meet in the commander of the fleet a gentleman whose views with respect to the conduct of the war are similar to my own, and whose co-operation with me, as Commander-in-Chief and Commissioner, is cordial, uniform, and animated, the powers with which the King may, in his most gracious confidence, intrust me, any more than my own exertions, cannot have their fair trial or their full effeacy. The revolutions fondly locked for by means of friends to the British Government, I must represent as visionary. These, I well know, are numerous, but they are fettered. An inroad is no countenance, and to possess territory demands garrisons. The accession of friends, without we occupy the country they inhabit, is but the addition of unhappy exiles to the list of pensioned refugees. If it has required 6000 men to hold Carolina, where nature has traced out a defensible boundary against outward foes, and given little resource for domestic insurrection, surely, my Lord, I cannot hope with the field army my Whitestone Embarkation Return exhibits (six thousand men), first to subdue, and then to cover and protect, the neighbouring populous tracts, circumscribed by no natural impediments, and full of enemies and resources. Nor will reason warrant the assertion, that from the friends to Government, who pine in oppression within the limits of the usurpation, we are to expect those aids that are to disperse Mr. Washington's army, or maintain the country against him. With the addition of 6000 men, and security against a superior fleet and a foreign army, I trust the peninsula between Chesapeak and Delaware might be reduced to obedience. That district is locally friendly to the masters of the sea. But dependent as its geography has rendered it, a less force than 4000 could not after conquest screen it from insult. Arrived at that stage of success, a glance upon the Returns of the army divided into garrisons and reduced by casualties on the one part, with the consideration of the task yet before us on the other, would, I fear, renew the too just reflection, that we are by some thousands too weak to subdue this formidable rebellion. I am sensible, my Lord, that men reason with partiality towards themselves; but there is in my breast so full a conviction of the rectitude of my intentions, and of the candour and fairness of my proceedings with the Admiral, that, with the strictest scrutiny into my conduct, I can ace the difficulties and clogs the service suffers from |