ACT FOR RAISING A REGIMENT OF FOOT IN NORTH AMERICA.

The next object of the immediate attention of parliament in this session, was the raising of a new regiment of foot in North America; for which purpose the sum of eighty-one thousand one hundred and seventy-eight pounds, sixteen shillings, to which the estimate thereof amounted, was voted. This regiment, which was to consist of four battalions of a thousand men each, was intended to be raised chiefly out of the Germans and Swiss, who, for many years past, had annually transported themselves in great numbers to the British plantations in America, where waste lands had been assigned them upon the frontiers of the provinces; but, very injudiciously, no care had been taken to intermix them with the English inhabitants of the place. To this circumstance it is owing, that they have continued to correspond and converse only with one another; so that very few of them, even of those who have been born there, have yet learned to speak or understand the English tongue. However, as they were all zealous protestants, and in general strong hardy men, and accustomed to the climate, it was judged that a regiment of good and faithful soldiers might be raised out of them, particularly proper to oppose the French; but to this end it was necessary to appoint some officers, especially subalterns, who understood military discipline, and could speak the German language; and as a sufficient number of such could not be found among the English officers, it was necessary to bring over and grant commissions to several German and Swiss officers and engineers; but this step, by the act of settlement, could not be taken without the authority of parliament; an act was now passed for enabling his majesty to grant commissions to a certain number of foreign protestants, who had served abroad as officers or engineers, to act and rank as officers or engineers in America only. An act was likewise passed in this session, strictly forbidding, under pain of death, any of his majesty’s subjects to serve as officers under the French king, or to enlist as soldiers in his service, without his majesty’s previous license; and also for obliging such of his majesty’s subjects as should, in time to come, accept of commissions in the Scotch brigade in the Dutch service, to take the oaths of allegiance and abjuration, on pain of forfeiting five hundred pounds.