There was, as you will see, six bastions and eight batteries,
with embrasures for 148 cannon. On the island at the entrance of the
harbour, which we just passed, was a battery of thirty twenty-eight
pounders, and at the bottom of the port another mounting thirty-eight
heavy guns. In 1745, a plan for taking it was conceived by a
colonial-lawyer, a Governor of Massachusetts, and executed by a body
of New England volunteers, led on by a country trader. History can
hardly furnish such another instance of courage and conduct in an
undisciplined body, laying siege to a regular constructed fortress
like this. Commodore Warren, when first applied to for assistance,
declined to afford it, as well because he had no orders as that he
thought the enterprise a rash one. He was however at last instructed
from home to co-operate with the Yankee troops, and arrived in season
to witness the progress of the siege, and receive the whole of the
honour which was so exclusively due to the Provincials. This act of
insolence and injustice on the part of the British was never forgotten
by your countrymen, but the memory of favours is short-lived, and a
similar distribution of rewards has lately surprised and annoyed the
Canadians. The colonist who raised the militia and saved Canada, as
you have justly remarked elsewhere, was knighted, while he who did no
more than his duty as an officer in the army, was compensated for two
or three little affairs in which the soldiers were engaged by a
coronet and a pension.
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