1784] MOORE IN PARLIAMENT it

abandoned the siege and re-embarked. Their improvised fleet was caught by Collier at a deadly disadvantage, hampered as it was by the transports. Fleet and transports were destroyed.

For Moore's career one of the important results of this little campaign was that he acquired the friendship of MacLean. MacLean was a man who had studied his profession thoroughly, and he seems to have been the first person to introduce Moore to European military literature. He had a library of French and German books, which Moore's previous training made available for his study. Moore was, probably on MacLean's report, promoted to a Captaincy. He went on leave to New York hoping to see more service with Lord Cornwallis' army. He only arrived in time to hear of the capitulation of that army at Yorktown, Virginia, on October I9th, 1781. Whilst in New York he accidentally met both his brothers, Graham the sailor and James a medical officer, who was subsequently his biographer, and had just returned from Cornwallis' army.

After the peace in 1783 the Hamilton Regiment was disbanded, and Moore was put on half-pay. When Pitt dissolved Parliament in March 1784, in order to appeal to the country against the coalition of Lord North and Fox, by whom he had been constantly outvoted in the House of Commons, Moore was returned for Scottish boroughs under the influence of the Duke of Hamilton. He became a faithful follower of Pitt, but he had claimed from his friend the Duke an entire independence of judgment on every measure, and refused to enter Parliament on any other terms. Burke, who was a friend of his father's, but was as yet still acting with Fox, paid the young member on the opposite benches