defence. Some ships of war and several merchant vessels with valuable cargoes, fell into their power. In the number of the first was the Rotterdam, of fifty guns, which was taken by the Warwick ship of the line. But these losses were trivial, in comparison with those which the Dutch sustained in the East Indies. The British commanders in that part had received early instructions to make themselves masters of the possessions of the republic, whether insular or continental. The security of a long peace had occasioned in them a desuetude of all defensive precaution; and thus the riches therein amassed, might easily become the prey of the first enemy who should present himself.

Admiral Rodney, who towards the close of the preceding year had returned from New York to St. Lucia, and general Vaughan, concerted their operations forthwith. Herein they moved with the more alacrity, as the king, by a late order, had granted to his laud and sea officers a considerable part of the booty that should be gained upon the Dutch. After a vain attempt to recapture the island of St. Vincent, and having, in order to mask the real design, alarmed the inhabitants of Martinico by a sudden appearance upon their coasts, Rodney and Vaughan presented themselves unexpectedly, the third of February, before the island of St. Eustatius, belonging to the Dutch. Their forces consisted of seventeen ships, and four thousand land forces. This island was as defenceless as the wealth it contained was prodigious. Although it is rough and mountainous, and affords one only landing place, and that easily defensible, yet the governor, with a handful of men for all garrison, could have no hope of being able to repulse an attack. The population itself comprised but a very small number of Dutch; the remainder was composed of men of divers countries and sentiments; French, Spaniards, Americans, English, all persons occupied exclusively with their commerce, and strangers to military service. The governor himself, almost without soldiers and without arms, would sooner have believed any thing else, than that he was menaced with an approaching attack.

The island of St. Eustatius, is by nature arid and steril. It produces not above six or seven hundred hogsheads of sugar a year. But it was become at this epoch the most frequented and richest emporium of the West Indies. Being a free port, it attracted a vast conflux of merchants from all parts of the world, assured of finding in it protection, facility of exchanges, and money in abundance. Its neutrality in the midst of belligerent powers, had brought it to this flourishing condition, and rendered it the mart of nations. Thither went the Spaniards and French to dispose of their commodities, and to procure the manufactures of England. Thither repaired the English to sell these merchandises, and to buy those of France and Spain.

But no people derived more profit than the Americans from the fortunate neutrality of St. Eustatius. They carried thither the produce of their soil, and to the incalculable utility of the cause they defended, they obtained in return, arms and military stores, with which the French, Spaniards, Dutch, and even the English themselves, kept that market well supplied. Hence, an orator of the House of Commons, hurried away by a blameable resentment, did not scruple to say; 'that if St. Eustatius had been sunk to the bottom of the ocean, American independence would have been crushed in an instant.' The facts which followed, were but too much in consonance with this inhuman language. All Europe resounded with complaints against British avarice.

Rodney and Vaughan sent a peremptory summons to the governor to surrender the island and its dependencies within an hour; accompanied with a declaration or threat, that if any resistance was made, he must abide by the consequences. M. de Graaf, totally ignorant of the rupture, could scarcely believe the officer who delivered the summons to be serious. He, however, returned for answer, that being utterly incapable of making any defence against the force which invested the island, he must, of necessity, surrender it; only recommending the town and inhabitants to the clemency and mercy of the British commanders. We are about to relate what were the effects of this recommendation. The wealth found in the place was so immense, as to excite the astonishment even of the conquerors, notwithstanding even their intimate previous knowledge of its nature and circumstances. All the storehouses were not only filled with the most precious merchandises, but the very streets and beach were covered with bogsheads of tobacco and sugar. The value of the commodities was estimated at a loose, but supposed moderate calculation, as being considerably above three millions sterling. All, without distinction, were seized, inventoried, and confiscated.

The loss of the Dutch was severe; it fell principally upon their West India company, with the magistracy and citizens of Amsterdam, to whom a considerable part of the property belonged. The English observed it with no little gratification; they were irritated against that city more than against any other part of the United Provinces, on account of the warmth it had manifested in favor of France. The greatest weight of the calamity, however, appears to have fallen upon the British merchants, who, confiding in the neutrality of the place, and in some acts of parliament, made to encourage the bringing of their property from the islands lately taken by the French, had accumulated a great quantity of West India produce, as well as of European goods, in this place. Nor was the loss of the Dutch confined to the seizure of the merchandise on shore; above two hundred and fifty vessels of all denominations, and many of them richly loaded, were taken in the bay; exclusive of a Dutch frigate of war, of thirty

eight guns, and five armed vessels of less force. But fortune showed herself still more adverse to the Hollanders. Rodney having information that a fleet of about thirty large ships, richly laden with sugar and other West India commodities, had just before his arrival, sailed from Eustatius for Holland, under convoy of a flag-ship of sixty guns, be, with his ordinary activity, immediately despatched two ships of the line, the Monarch and Panther, with the Sybil frigate, in pursuit of them. These soon overtook the convoy. The Dutch admiral, Krull, notwithstanding the great inferiority of his force, resolved to brave all the dangers of combat, rather than to surrender dishonorably. With his ship, the Mars, he engaged the Monarch, of seventyfour guns; but he was killed soon after the commencement of the action, and his successor immediately struck. The Panther and Sybil having in the mean time restrained the flight and separation of the merchantmen, the whole convoy was taken.

The Dutch colors were kept up for some time in the fort of St. Eustatius; this stratagem was fatal to a considerable number of French, Dutch, and American vessels, which were thus decoyed into the hands of their enemies. The violation of the property of private men, though enemies, a violation not sanctioned by the usages of civilised nations, excited energetic remonstrances on the part of the inhabitants of the British West India islands, and of Great Britain itself, so far as they were interested. They alleged, that their connections with St. Eustatius, and the property they had lodged in it, were all in pursuance to, and under the sanction of repeated acts of the British parliament; that in every age, all conquerors who have not chosen to be classed with barbarians, have respected, not only the private property of their fellow-citizens, but even that of their enemies; and that this example might have the most pernicious consequences. In effect,' said they, if, through the incalculable chances of war, our islands should fall into the power of the enemy, would he not be authorised by the right of reprisal, to violate the property of private Englishmen, and even to ruin them totally? Did the French give an example of this barbarous conduct when they became masters of Grenada? Did they lay hands upon the property of a single private individual, though they had taken the island by assault, and without any capitulation? If the count d'Estaing went so far as to sequester, until peace, the estates of absentees, the court of Versailles was not slow to condemn this resolution of its admiral, by ordering the removal of the sequestrations. St. Eustatius was a free port, and as such recognised by all the maritime powers of Europe, not excepting England herself. Our laws had not only permitted, but even encouraged a commerce with that island. The officers of the British customs delivered clearances for those very goods destined for St. Eustatius, which are now subjected to confiscation. Has not this trade furnished the means of subsistence to the islands of Anti

gua and St. Christophers, whose inhabitants, but for this resource, must have perished by famine, or thrown themselves into the arms of the enemy? The colonists of St. Eustatius are indebted in large sums to British merchants; how will they be able to clear these balances if their effects remain confiscated?

'In a word, it is to be presumed that the conquest of the Dutch islands by the arms of the king, has been undertaken with nobier views than that of pillaging and ruining their inhabitants.'

All these representations were of no avail. Rodney had acted in strict conformity to the instructions of his government. He answered the complainers, that he could not recover from his astonishment that British merchants, instead of sending their goods into the windward islands belonging to England, had sent then to a leeward island, whither they could only have been transported with intent to supply the wants of the enemies of their king and country. But it is to be observed, that if these British merchants were in fault, the commanders of the king's vessels were still more blameable for having brought in and sold at this same port of St. Eustatius, the prizes they had captured at sea; some laden with provisions, others with arms and military stores; which thus found their way to the enemies of Great Britain, and served to recruit their resources for continuing the war. Rodney added, that the island of St. Eustatius was Dutch, every thing in it was Dutch, was under the protection of the Dutch flag, and as Dutch it should be treated. The vigor of these principles was applied likewise to the neighboring small islands of St. Martin and Saba, which fell at the same time into the power of the English. But the British commanders, not content with pillaging property, proceeded to wreak their cruelty on persons. All individuals not English, were not only banished from the island, but subjected to the most odious vexations. The Jews, who were numerous and wealthy, were the first to experience the brutality of the conqueror. They were all crowded into the custom house; searched from head to foot; then the skirts of their coats were docked to the waist. Their trunks and portmanteaux were forced open and ransacked. Stripped of their money and effects, they were, in that state of nakedness and wretchedness, transported as outlaws, and landed on the island of St. Christophers. A sea captain named Santon, was the superintendent and chief executioner of the barbarity of his chiefs. The Americans soon shared the fate of the Jews. After having undergone a total spoliation, these unhappy people were sent to St. Christophers, as a race devoted to misery and death. Among them, however, were many of those loyalists, who had been obliged to fly their native country through the part which they had taken in support of the British cause and government.

Thus expelled by their fellow-citizens as friends to the English, and expelled by the English as friends to the Americans, these ill fated refugees were punished as severely for having preserved their fidelity

towards the king, as if they had violated it. The assembly of St. Christophers manifested the most honorable compassion for these victims at once of rapine and of cruelty; they passed an immediate act for their relief and future provision, until they should have time to recover from their calamitous situation. The French and Dutch merchants were banished the last from St. Eustatius. This decree was executed with particular rigor towards those of Amsterdam. In the meantime, public sales were advertised, invitation given, and protection afforded, to purchasers of all nations and sorts; and the island of St. Eustatius became one of the greatest auctions that ever was opened in the universe. It was attended by an immense concourse of the merchants of friendly or neutral nations; they bought as well for their own account as on commission for the French and Spaniards, to whom their vicinity and the war rendered these goods more valuable. Thus, after having so cruelly treated the inhabitants of St. Eustatius, under the pretence that they had supplied the enemies of England, in the ordinary way of commerce, the British commanders undertook themselves to supply those enemies by opening a public market, and bidding buyers by proclamation. Never perhaps was a more considerable sale; the gains of Rodney and Vaughan were immense; but it was fated that they should not long enjoy them; heaven, as we shall soon see, had in reserve an exemplary chastisement for their avarice.

The loss of St. Eustatius was not the only misfortune which befell the Dutch in the West Indies. It seemed as if the English, in their zeal to reduce their new enemy, had forgotten that they had any other to encounter. Holland possessed on the continent of South America, in that vast country anciently called Guiana, the important colony of Surinam. The governor had made no preparations for defence; he was even ignorant of the declaration of war. But all of a sudden he was visited by a squadron of British privateers, mostly belonging to Bristol. In contempt of all danger, they entered the rivers of Demerary and Issequibo, and brought out from under the guns of the Dutch forts and batteries, almost all the vessels of any value in either river. The colonists of that part, seized with consternation at the approach of these audacious cruisers sent to make a tender of their submission to the governor of Barbadoes; requiring no other terms but a participation of those which had been granted to St. Eustatius, without knowing however, what they were. The governor readily consented to their wishes. When shortly after they were apprised of the fate of St. Eustatius, they began to tremble for their own. But Rodney showed himself more humane towards the colonists of Demerary, Issequibo, and Berbice, who had voluntarily put themselves under the British dominion, than he had been towards those of St. Eustatius. He guaranteed the safety of persons and property, and made no change in their existing laws and authorities.