On Monday the 23rd of that month, three days before Parliament met for the new session, Becket announced the publication of a work entitled “_ANTICIPATION_, Containing the Substance of his M⸻y’s most gracious Speech to both H⸺s of P⸻t, on the Opening of the approaching Session. Together with a full and authentic account of the Debate in the H⸺ of C⸻, that will take place on the motion for the address and amendment.” On Tuesday night Edward Gibbon wrote his friend Holroyd: You sometimes complain that I do not send you early news; but you will now be satisfied with receiving a full and true account of all the parliamentary transactions of _next_ Thursday. In town we think it an excellent piece of humour (the author is one Tickell). Burke and C. Fox are pleased with their own Speaches, but serious Patriots groan that such things should be turned to farce.[16] Horace Walpole, though unable to deny the wit of _Anticipation_, was among those who thought its jocularity ill-timed. Said he: The drollery of the pamphlet was congenial with the patron: a very unprosperous and disgraceful civil war, just heightened by a bloody proclamation of Sir Henry Clinton, and accompanied by a war with France, was not a very decent moment for joking![17] _3_ No one in any party was disposed to deny the seriousness of the moment. The preceding twelve months, as some were then aware, had proved the turning-point in the war with America. The threat of French aggression following Burgoyne’s defeat had transformed Britain’s war of subjugation into one of defence. After a comfortable winter in Philadelphia, without having struck a blow at the inferior American forces at Valley Forge, Sir William Howe was ordered to evacuate that city lest it be cut off by a French fleet. Englishmen at home could still cling to the official view, held by George III and expressed by Lord North in _Anticipation_, that most Americans, if given a chance to choose, would prefer conciliation with England to an upstart democracy and an “unnatural connection” with France. But those on the spot saw that the hope of affording Americans such a chance was now dashed. At Philadelphia Admiral Lord Howe’s secretary wrote in his journal on the 22nd of May: I now look upon the Contest as at an End. No man can be expected to declare for us, when he cannot be assured of a Fortnight’s Protection. Every man, on the contrary, whatever might have been his primary Inclinations, will find it his Interest to oppose & drive us out of the Country.[18]