George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 6, 10th edition.

[176] hands and the act of bad faith conducted by his col-

Chap. XXXV.} 1768. July.

leagues.¹ Unsolicited by Paoli, the General of the insurgents, they sent to him Dunant, a Genevese, as a British emissary, with written² as well as verbal instructions.

Paoli was found wanting every thing, money, artillery, armed vessels, muskets with bayonets, and small field-pieces, such as could be carried on mules;³ but he gave assurances of the fixed purpose of himself and of the Corsican people to defend their common liberty;⁴ and persuaded the British Ministry, that if supplied with what he needed, he could hold out for eighteen months.⁵ ‘A moment was not lost in supplying most of the articles requested by the Corsicans’ ‘in the manner that would least risk a breach with France;’ ‘and indeed many thousand stands of arms were furnished from the stock in the Tower, yet so as to give no indication that they were sent from Government.’ While British Ministers were enjoying the thought of baffling France, they had the vexation to find Paoli himself obliged to retire by way of Leghorn to England. But their notorious interference was treasured up in memory as a precedent.

When, on the twenty-seventh of July, the Cabinet definitively agreed on the measures to be pursued towards America, it sought to unite all England by resting its policy on Rockingham's Declaratory Act, and to divide America by proceeding severely only against Boston.