72 CHARLES LEE 



i 



assure your lordship that whenever it may please his 

 Majesty to call me forth to any honourable service 

 against the natural hereditary enemies of our country, 

 or in defence of his just rights and dignity, no man 

 will obey the righteous summons with more zeal and 

 alacrity than myself ; but the present measures seem 

 to me so absolutely subversive of the rights and lib- 

 erties of every individual subject, so destructive to the 

 whole empire at large, and ultimately so ruinous to his 

 Majesty's own person, dignity, and family, that I think 

 myself obliged in conscience, as a citizen, Englishman, 

 and soldier of a free state, to exert my utmost to defeat 

 them. I most devoutly pray to Almighty God to direct 

 his Majesty into measures more consonant to his interest 

 and honour, and more conducive to the happiness and 

 glory of his people." 1 



That Lee should have felt called upon to refuse 

 further pay from the crown at the moment of accept- 

 ing a commission from a revolutionary body engaged 

 in maintaining armed resistance to the crown and its 

 officers, one would think but natural. That in so 

 doing he should have declared himself to be acting in 

 deference to an absurd and overstrained notion of deli- 

 cacy, shows how far from overstrained his own sense 

 of delicacy was. His letter 2 is an unconscious con- 

 fession that he ought long ago to have resigned his 

 half-pay. Now he was simply making a merit of 

 necessity; for there could be little doubt that, as soon 

 as the news of his American commission should reach 

 the ears of the ministry, his half-pay would be cut off, 



1 Lee Papers, I. 186. 



2 Found in February, 1858, in Sutton Court, Somerset, home of Sir 

 Edward Strachey, where he kept many documents. 



