under his jurisdiction, followed by legislatures formed on principles similar to those of the neighbouring British colo

nies.

During the whole of his governmennt, which lasted about seven years, General M. only once quitted his post, and that was in 1769, when he returned to England, on business of the highest importance to the future security and prosperity of the colonies entrusted to his care; and notwithstanding the numberless difficulties he had to surmount, in a government so extensive and so complicated, he had the satisfaction to see that his administration was duly appreciated, and gave very general satisfaction. Some partial complaints by a few disappointed individuals, brought against him, while in London, but directed in fact rather against the King's council in Grenada than against the governor himself, were found to be utterly frivolous, and were of course deservedly disregarded by the King and council at home. As to any charges of peculation, the most common subject of complaint against persons in his situation, nothing of that sort was. ever even insinuated against General M. on the contrary, it was well known at home, as well as abroad, that with opportunities of amassing wealth, in the sole settlement and administration of so many newly-acquired colonies, such as had never fallen to the lot of any foreign governor, General M. esisted the frequent and pressing offers made to him by speculators, to enter into their schemes of acquisition, in which he might, with perfect propriety, have embarked; and that practising an honest and honourable abstinence, he retired from his governme::t much poorer than many of the adventurers in it, who had realised their acquisitions, without any original property, on mere speculation and credit.

It is but justice to add, that although General M.'s salary from home, as go. vernor of so many islands, hardly execeded 10001. per annum, yet he not only refused to accept of the offered, and usual salaries from each colony, but gave up niany official fees, where he conceived sach a step might tend to the advantage of the new colonists. The duties of a major-general, throughout the several istands under lus command, he also punctually discharged, without any allowance or charge whatever on the public on that account. Even in the

all purchases of land he chose to

make, in some of the islands under his command, General M. was swayed much more by considerations of public advantage than of private emolument. For Tobago, almost a desert, and Dominica, situated between and within view of the two great French islands, Martinique and Guadaloupe, presented so few attractions to new colonists, that unless the governor, by selecting plantations in them, had evinced his confidence in their security as British possessions, few or no adventurers would have hazarded their property in either of those unpromising colonies.

From the period when he retired from his government, General M. adhering to his favorite maxim of taking nothing for doing nothing, never solicited, nor even wished, for any pension, salary, or other emolument whatever, from the public purse, although his eminent ser vices, and his ill health, and total loss of sight, originally contracted in the discharge of his public duties, might well have encouraged him to proffer claims so commonly made and allowed in similar circumstances.

When, by the public recognition, on the part of France, of the independence of the United States of North America, hostilities with that kingdom were deemed unavoidable, General Melville was consulted by administration, on the means to be adopted for the security of our own West India colonies, and for the conquest of those belonging to France; and had the opinions he offered on those subjects accorded with the views already entertained by his Majesty's ministers, the country would again have reaped the fruits of his local and military knowledge, in an important command beyond the Atlantic. He was, however, too well acquainted with the nature of the service on which he was consulted, and, above all, with the talents and dispositions of the Marquis de Bouillé, commander in chief of the French forces in the West Indies, and this not from report only, but from personal intercourse in the course of his government-with the formidable qualities of that distinguished commander, General M. was too well acquainted to undertake the services then in agitation, without being accompanied by a force, far more respectable than that which it seemed to be in contemplation to place under his command. Other measures were accordingly adopted, and the result is well

known:

known in a short time M. de Bouillé was in possession of the greater number of the British colonies in the West Indies. The resemblance, in many important points, between these two commanders, was peculiarly striking; both men eminently endowed with all the qualities requisite for the discharge of their several duties; both men of consummate valour and military skill; both peculiarly distinguished by a high sense of honour, and actuated by motives the most disinterested, generous, aud humane; both accustomed to service in the probable scene of action; and both personally acquainted with the quarters where that service would probably be required; both inflamed with ardent zeal in the cause of their respective countries; and each with a determination to recommend himself to his antagonist by the faithful discharge of his duties: a contest between two

such commanders, on proper terms, must have furnished ample room for the instruction of every military man.

The last service rendered to his country by General Melville, in a public capacity, related to Tobago, an island originally settled by him, and long fostered with peculiar care. This colony, in the course of the conquests of M. de Bouillé, fell into his hands, after a defence in which the civil governor (George Ferguson, esq.) and the inhabitants so greatly distinguished themselves, as to merit, and to obtain, from the captor a most liberal capitulation. By the preliminary articles of peace, concluded in the beginning of the year 1783, Tobago was ceded to France, without any of those stipulations for the advantage of the British settlers, proprietors, and traders, usually granted on similar occasions.

To remove as much as possible the alarm excited by this circumstance, in the minds of all persons interested in the fate of Tobago, measures were adopted by those in Britain, for obtaining from the court of France some amelioration of their condition. The first step was to select a proper negotiator; and for this purpose all eyes were turned towards General Melville, who was requested to repair to Versailles, there to solicit for the unfortunate colonists of Tobago those indulgencies to which, from the terms of the cession, they could form no claim. In acceding to this request, the General, that the application from the new subjects to their new master might appear the more decorous, suggested that coadjutor should be given to him in

the business; and Mr. Young, (the present Sir William Young,) was joined in the mission.

The success of the application at Versailles, exceeded the most sanguine expectations: and to the beneficent magnanimity of the ill-fated Louis XVI. on the liberal suggestions of his truly respectable minister for the navy and the colonies, the late Marshal Duke de Castries, that success was by General M. uniformly attributed. Let it however be added, by one who, as secretary to the General on that occasion, had indubitable evidence of the fact, that the representations of the minister, and the consequent decisions of the sovereign, were very materially influenced by esteem for the character of General M. and con fidence in the manly, candid, and honourable conduct he displayed in every part of the negociation. The humanity, liberality, and disinterestedness, which

had marked the whole of his administration in Guadaloupe, while it remained under the British flag, and the whole of his general government of the ceded French colonies, had in the persons of some individuals, and in the connections of others of distinction in France, secured for General M. a cordial, and confidential reception, which it may have been the happiness of few negociators to possess. At his last interview with M. de Castries, that minister expressed his royal master's entire satisfaction with the General's management of so delicate a negotiation; adding, that his Majesty was convinced the General had, throughout the whole business, performed the part of a genuine and impartial friend and umpire between France and Tobago:

Vous avez agi en orai tiers, was

the expression.

Ex pede Herculem.-To present some idea of the spirit by which General M. was actuated in his administration of affairs, civil and military, in Guadaloupe, and its dependent islands, the following specimen may suffice.

By the capitulation, the French royal council had been preserved in the full exercise of all its functions and privileges, and the French laws, civil and criminal, remained in their original force: the governor, who was, ex officio, president of the council, was the only British subject in that body. At a meeting of the council, in the capital of the island in 1760, while General M. was seated at the head of the council-table, the board being. complete, and the crown-lawyers con

ducting

at Les Echelles, along the vale to Cham berry, up the banks of the Isere, by Conflans and Moustier, over the gorge of the Alps, called the Little St. Bernard, and down their eastern slopes by Aosti, and Ivrea, to the plains of Piedmont, in the neighbourhood of Turin.

Intracing this route, which seems to have been strangely disregarded by commentators, historians, and antiquarians, of the greatest note, although certainly the most obvious for that illustrious Carthaginian to have followed, General M. found the nature of the country, the distances, the situations of the rivers, rocks, and mountains, most accurately to tally with the circumstances related by Polybius; nay, even the Leucopetron, that celebrated crux criticorum, he discovered still to subsist in its due position, and still to be known under the identical denomination of La Roche Blanche. Not satisfied however with the evidence arising from so many coincidences, General M. crossed and re-crossed the Alps in various other directions, pointed out for the track of Annibal's march: but of those not one could, without doing great violence indeed to the text of Polybius, be brought in any reasonable way to correspond to the narrative.

Newton is reported to have said, that if he possessed any peculiar advantage over his fellow-labourers in the field of science, it consisted merely in his allowing himself to consider matters more patiently and deliberately than the genera lity of mankind. It was General M.'s practice, in his researches into truth, first to collect all the information to be procured on the subject, next to weigh the authorities and evidences the one against the other, in order to ascertain those to which the greatest credit was to be allowed, and lastly to apply his own reason in tracing out the object of his enquiry, conformably to the evidences he had approved. By this process, simple in appearance, but which few men are able to follow, he solved difficulties and discovered truths, which had been abandoned by many able investigators, as insoluble and unattainable. On other occasions, when evidences were evenly balanced, or where testimonies were perplexed, his method was to enquire what would be the conduct of a given person, endowed with ordinary faculties, and possessed of a due portion of information on his subject, for the attainment of a certain end. Placing himself thus, in that person's situation, he often arrived

at an object which, in the usual mode of research, had remained for ages unKnown. Of the former mode of investigation, an example has just been given, in the discovery of the true route of Annibal across the Alps. Of the latter motie, a pregnant instance was, his Theory of the Order of Battle employed by the Ancient Romans. It has been assigned as one reason, why military antiquities have been less satisfactorily explained than the other branches of antiquarian research; that scholars and antiquarians have seldom been military men; and that military men have seldom been scholars and antiquarians. Polybius's Treatise on Tactics has unfortunately perished; and the other ancient writers who have noticed military affairs, have only mentioned the legionary arrangement in battle, in a cursory way, as a subject familiar to their readers: little direct information therefore has been afforded by them on the subject. On the revival of learning in Europe, ecclesias tics, and other men of a recluse life, were almost its only encouragers and promoters; it is not therefore a wonder if these should, by their writings, furnish but little light on this matter. In the end of the sixteenth century, Justus Lipsius, of Louvain, a writer not more distinguished by his learning than by his singularity and love of paradox, sent into the world a system of the Roman art of war, professed to be drawn from certain passages in Polybius.

to the

neces.

This system, borrowed, with very little acknowledgment indeed, from a preceding work of Patrizzi, of Ferrara, coming from such an author, was implicitly received and repeated by all succeeding writers on the subject. The absurdity, nay, the utter impracti cability, of the Lipsian system, placed in contrast with the learning and ability of its propagat, reduced other enquirers sity of abandoning the matter as alto her inexplicable. Amongst these enquirers was General M. when but a young man: but happening in Scotland to be shown what was called a Roman gladius, or legionary sword, (not however genuine,) he discarded at once all his systematic knowledge, and handling the weapon, asked himself in what manner men armed with that sword, in the right hand, and with a legionary shield in the left, ought to be arranged, in order that they might be able to make the best possible use of their arms, offensive and defensive. He immediately saw that they ought to be placed, not in

deep