FRENCH AMBASSADOR RECALLED.

Upon the arrival of the news of this action at Paris, the French ambassador, M. de Mirepoix, was recalled from London, and M. de Bussy from Hanover, where he had just arrived, to attend the king of England in a public character. They complained loudly of Boscawen’s attacking the ships, as a breach of national faith; but it was justly retorted on the part of England, that their encroachments in America had rendered reprisals both justifiable and necessary. The resolution of making them was the effect of mature deliberation in the English council. The vast increase of the French marine of late years, which in all probability would soon be employed against Great Britain, occasioned an order for making reprisals general in Europe as well as in America; and that all French ships, whether outward or homeward bound, should be stopped, and brought into British ports. To give the greater weight to these orders, it was resolved to send out those admirals who had distinguished themselves most towards the end of the last war. Accordingly, on the twenty-first of July, sir Edward Hawke sailed on a cruise to the westward, with eighteen ships of the line, a frigate, and a sloop; but, not meeting with the French fleet, these ships returned to England about the latter end of September and the beginning of October; on the fourteenth of which last month another fleet, consisting of twenty-two ships of the line, two frigates, and two sloops, sailed again on a cruise to the westward, under admiral Byng, in hopes of intercepting the French squadron under Duguay, and likewise that commanded by La Mothe, in case of its return from America. But this fleet likewise returned to Spithead on the twenty-second of November, without having been able to effect any thing, though it was allowed by all that the admiral had acted judiciously in the choice of his stations.

While these measures were pursued, for the general security of the British coasts and trade in Europe, several new ships of war were begun, and finished with the utmost expedition, in his majesty’s docks: twelve frigates and sloops, contracted for in private yards, were completed by the month of August; and twenty-four ships and twelve colliers were then taken into the service of the government, to be fitted out as vessels of war, to carry twenty guns and one hundred and twenty men each. In the meantime the French trade was so annoyed by the English cruisers, that before the end of this year three hundred of their merchant ships, many of which, from St. Domingo and Martinique, were extremely rich, and eight thousand of their sailors were brought into English ports. By these captures the British ministry answered many purposes: they deprived the French of a great body of seamen, and withheld from them a very large property, the want of which greatly distressed their people, and ruined many of their traders. Their outward-bound merchant ships were insured at the rate of thirty per cent., whilst the English paid no more than the common insurance. This intolerable burden was felt by all degrees of people amongst them: their ministry was publicly reviled, even by their parliaments; and the French name, from being the terror, began to be the contempt of Europe. Their uneasiness was also not a little heightened by new broils between their king and the parliament of Paris, occasioned by the obstinacy of the clergy of that kingdom, who seemed determined to support the church, in all events, against the secular tribunals, and as much as possible to enforce the observance of the bull Unigenitus, which had long been the occasion of so many disputes among them. However, the parliament continuing firm, and the French king approving of its conduct, the ecclesiastics thought proper to submit for the present, and in their general assembly this year, granted him a free gift of sixteen millions of livres, which he demanded of them—a greater sum than they had ever given before, even in time of war.