The retaliation practised by congress in cutting off the British fisheries from all colonial provisions and supplies, threw the whole business upon the banks and coasts of Newfoundland into the greatest confusion, and brought distress upon all who were employed by sea or land in that quarter. Instead of prosecuting the service they went upon, many of the ships were constrained to make the best of their way to any place where provisions could be procured. It was computed, that to the value of full half a million sterling was left in the bowles of the deep, and forever lost to mankind, by the first operation of the fishery bill. The storm which happened last September the 11th, during the fishing season, and of which you will have received some general accounts, may probably be reckoned by the Americans, as it is here by the more serious or those who favour them, a providential retaliation of the supreme Ruler on such as had deprived them, by a parliamentary act, of that sustenance, which seemed to be given them as their peculiar property. Lest you should not have had the particulars, let me mention, that a most dreadful tempest, of a particular kind, discharged itself on the coasts of Newfoundland. The sea rose near upon thirty feet almost instantly. Above seven hundred boats, with all their people, perished, and eleven ships with most of their crews. At Havre-de-Grace, no fewer than three hundred boats were lost. The devastation was hardly less on the land; the waters broke in beyond their usual bounds, and occasioned vast destruction.—The shores presented a shocking spectacle. As the time approached for the meeting of a parliament, addresses were poured in from different quarters, condemning the conduct of the Americans; approving of all the acts of government; and in general recommending a perseverance in the same until the colonies shall be reduced to a thorough obedience.—Manchester distinguished itself by taking the lead. These addresses necessarily implied an approbation of the measure that was then in execution, viz. the sending of five battalions of Hanoverian troops, to replace the like number of British, in the garrisons of Gibralter and Minorca thereby to increase the force in America with the addition of the latter. The electoral regiments sailed for the places of destination the first of November.