In the same connection, it may be well to inquire and to consider what the Earl of Coventry meant, when, in his place in the House of Lords, on the twenty-fifth of November, 1779, he said, " He lamented that a "War so fatal to Great Britain should ever have been begun, much more " that it should be continued with so much obstinacy; and declared that, "had the House paid attention to the propositions which he, the last "Sessions, informed them he was authorized to make from two persons "of authority and influence, in .\merica, and which, had they been " listened to, by Parliament, and agreed to, would have been ratified by "Congress, we should have been, at this hour, in peace with America." -- Speech of the Rirl of Coventry, in the House of Lords, in Almon s Parliamentary Register, xv., 17.

" The last Sessions." during which the Earl of Coventry, by authority, presented overtures for reconciliation to which the Continental Congress would have agreed, was the Fifth Session of the Fourteenth Parliament of Great Britain, (November 26, 1778, to July .3, 1779,) long after the alliance of the United States with France had been perfected, and utilized in America. As the Earl, on another occasion, boldly acknowledged his personal friendship and coriespondence with more than one of those who, then, were regarded as prime leaders in the Rebellion, there need be very little trouble in searching for the names of those who were, undoubtedly, the mouthpieces of the Continental Congress, in the work of reconciliation, on the occasion referred to by the Earl of Coventry, in 1779.