In this state of affairs, Colonel Allen was dispatched to Governor Chittenden, in order to obtain his mediation between the contending parties. Having visited both encampments, and exhorted both to forbearance, he returned home immediately, and recommended that a superior force to that of New York should be sent to the assistance of the people of Vermont. This was accordingly effected, under the command of a Colonel Walbridge; and after several letters had passed between this officer and General Ganesvoort, the latter prudently retired without bloodshed. Governor Chittenden having written to General Washington on the subject of the independence of Vermont, received an answer from him, decidedly in favour of the sovereignty of that state, dated the 1st of January, 1782. Shortly after this, a party of loyal recruits, raised in Vermont, were taken with their officer by a body of the American adherents; but by the address of Colonel Allen, and according to the terms of his secret armistice, the lives of these men appear to have been saved; and they were exchanged for double their number of prisoners in Canada. From that time to the treaty of peace, in 1783, congress seem to have been counteracting their own resolutions in respect to Vermont; while Colonel Allen appears to have mimaged matters on both sides, and to have carried baca secret and confidential intercourse with General Haldimand in Canada. Immediately after the peace of 1783, the governor and council of Vermont appointed Colonel Ira Allen their commissioner, to concert measures with the legislature legislature of Canada for opening a free trade with Lake Champlain; and he seems also to have had secret instructions to sound the conditions and terms on which Vermont might be ultimately received as a British colony, notwithstanding the late treaty had acknowledged and recognized it as a part of the federal union. At length, however, the state of New York having passed conciliatory laws, the people of Vermont did the same on their part, and paid to that state a compensation of thirty thousand dollars for the extinction of her claims; and a convention of Vermont having now decided the general disposition of the people to be in favour of their remaining an independent state, rather than becoming a British colony, they elected representatives, and were formally received into the congress of the united states, in 1791. In the course of the same year Mr. Allen obtained an act of the legislature for the establishment of an university at Burlington, on Lake Champlain, pursuant to his memorial of 1789; and to this institution he then became the donor of lands, which have been since valued at four thousand pounds sterling. Soon after this, he rose to the rank of eldest majorgeneral in Vermont.. After various negotiations in Canada for the accommodation of the commerce of Vermont through the St. Lawrence, and for cutting a canal from the river leading into Lake Champlain to join the river St. Lawrence near Montreal, at his own expence and risk, General Allen set out on a voyage to England in 1795, for the avowed purpose of establishing establishing a commercial correspondence, purchasing arms for the militia of Vermont, and negotiating for his Majesty's permission to cut the above-mentioned canal. So far as we are furnished with documents, it does not appear that his applications concerning the navigation of Vermont have been attended with success. In the prosecution of that part of his mission which relates to the military interests of Vermont, and which has made a considerable noise in the English courts of admiralty, he set out from London on the 24th: of May, 1796, in search of arms. Having understood, as he says, that he could not export them from England without an order of the King in council, he proceeded to the continent, where he purchased of the French republic, through their agent the minister of war, twenty thousand muskets, bayonets, &c. twentyfour brass cannons, 4-pounders, six gun carriages, and six ammunition waggons. He accordingly shipped on board the Olive Branch, William Bryant, master, at Ostend, 14,730 muskets, 14,730 bayonets, 1091 scabbards for bayonets, 21 French brass field-pieces, 4-pounders, three travelling carriages for ditto, 12 fpunges for field-pieces, three wadhooks for ditto, six ammunition boxes for ditto, 18 handspikes for ditto, three elevating screws, 12 wood master-bars, with one pair of swingle-troes to cach, for horses to draw the carriages, and two pair of separate swingle-trees. On the 19th of November 1796, in the course of his voyage to New York, being about sixty leagues to the westward of Scilly, he was captured by his Ma jesty's jesty's ship Audacious, Davidge Gould, commander, and brought into Portsmouth. After a tedious litigation, in the court of admiralty of Great Britain, the cause was carried before the Lords Commissioners of appeals, where it is understood to be still depending. This event has been attended with the most disastrous consequences to General Allen, as it has deranged his private concerns, prevented all attention to his commercial pursuits, and subjected him more than once to be shut up in a spunging-house. It having been insinuated in the course of the legal proceedings that General Allen had not the concurrence of Governor Chittenden, in this undertaking, as had been afferted, a cloud of suspicion was in consequence thrown on this extraordinary purchase, and he determined to go to France for the testimonies required; and having procured passports to this end from the alien office, he went from London to Paris about the month of June 1798, where, we understand, he has until very lately been imprisoned. General Allen is not yet fifty years of age; he is a married man, and has several children. In point of stature he is below the middle size, and his person and address are both prepossessing. He has habitually acquired a command over his passions; is cheerful, good tempered and benevolent; but somewhat positive in his opinions, which has, however, given an air of firmness to all his public measures. During the course of the trial alluded to, General Allen printed the whole proceedings, as taken down by a short-hand writer; and he has also pub lished the History of the State of Vermont, which, according to his account, contained the progressive population, in fighting men, annexed to the respective periods, as follows, viz. In 1781, they were estimated at 7,000. 1792, 18,500. - near 30,000. Yet it is but a few years back that the whole country was a wilderness, overgrown with wood, the receptacle of wild beasts, and unimpressed by the footsteps of man! Mr. Ira Allen, who had shared in all its infant struggles, has lived to see Vermont attain an unexampled degree of prosperity, and after atchieving its independence, has beheld it become an important state in the American union; while he himself, by a cruel reverse of fortune, equally sudden and unexpected, after endowing an university, and acting as a legislator and a general, has been subjected in one foreign country to all the rigours of imprisonment, and in another to all the miseries attendant on confiscation. THOMAS JONES, M. A. SENIOR TUTOR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. THE subject of this memoir, though he has not appeared before the world as a writer, may justly be ranked among the public characters of the time. The distinguished reputation with which he has discharged, during many years, the duties of one of the most important |