“They are in a condition to give us battle, which I must not refuse, and which I cannot hope to gain.… The event must decide. But of one thing be certain, that I probably shall not survive the loss of the Colony.[384] … I shall at least console myself on my defeat, and on the loss of the Colony, by the full persuasion that this defeat will one day serve my country more than a victory, and that the conqueror, in aggrandizing himself, will find his tomb the country he gains from us.[385]… All the English Colonies would long since have shaken off the yoke, each province would have formed itself into a little independent republic, if the fear of seeing the French at their door had not been a check upon them.[386]… Canada, once taken by the English, would in a few years suffer much from being forced to be English.… They would soon be of no use to England, and perhaps they would oppose her.”[387] At once, on their appearance, these letters played an important part in the “high life” of politics. The “Monthly Review”[388] called them “genuine.” The “Gentleman’s Magazine”[389] said that “the sagacity of this accomplished general was equal to his bravery,” and quoted what it characterized as a “remarkable prediction.” In the House of Lords, 30th May, 1777, during a debate begun by Lord Chatham, and flashing with great names, Lord Shelburne said that they “had been discovered to be a forgery”;[390] but Lord Mansfield, the illustrious Chief Justice, relied upon the letters, “which he insisted were not spurious.”[391] In another important debate in the House of Lords, 5th March, 1778, Earl Temple observed that “the authenticity of those letters had been often disputed; but he could affirm that he saw them in manuscript, among the papers of a minister now deceased, long before they made their appearance in print, and at a time when American independency was in the contemplation of a very few persons indeed.”[392] Such was the contemporary testimony; but the pamphlet shared the fate of the numerous brood engendered by the war. Oblivion seemed to have settled on these letters, when their republication at Gibraltar, as late as 1858, by an author who treated them as genuine,[393] attracted the attention of Thomas Carlyle, who proceeded to make them famous again, by introducing them as an episode in his Life of Frederick, sometimes called “the Great.” Montcalm appears once more as prophet, and the readers of the career of the Prussian monarch turn with wonder to the inspired Frenchman, with “his power of faithful observation, his sagacity and talent of prophecy, so considerable.”[394] Then, quoting a portion of the last letter, the great author exclaims at different points: “Prediction first”; “This is a curiously exact prediction”; “Prediction second, which is still more curious.”[395]