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dangerous troubles in America, it may graciously please his majesty to tranfmit orders to general Gage for remov ing his majesty's forces from the town of Boston.' I know not, my lords, who advised the present measures; I know. not who advises to a preseverance and enforcement of them; but this I will say, that the authors of such advice ought to answer it at their utmost peril. I wish, my lords, not to lose a day in this urgent pressing crisis an hour now loft in allaying ferments in America may produce years of calamity. Never will I defert, in any stage of its progress, the conduct of this momentous business. Unlefs fettered to my bed by the extremity of fickness, I will give it unremitting attention. I will knock at the gates of this fleeping and confounded ministry, and will, if it be poffible, rouse them to a sense of their danger. The recall of your army I urge as neceffarily preparatory to the restoration of your peace. By this it will appear that you are disposed to treat amicably and equitably, and to confider, revise, and repeal, if it should be found neceffary, as I affirm it will, those violent acts and declarations which have diffeminated confufion throughout the empire. Resistance to these acts was necessary, and therefore just; and your vain declarations of the omnipotence of parliament, and your imperious doctrines of the neceffity of fubmiffion, will be found equally impotent to convince or enflave America, who feels that tyranny is equally intolerable, whether it be exercised by an individual part of the legiflature, or by the collective bodies which compose it. The means of enforcing this thraldom are found to be as ridiculous and weak in practice as they are unjust in principle. Conceiving of general Gage as a man of humanity and understanding; entertaining, as I ever must, the highest refpect and affection for the British troops, I feel the most anxious sensibility for their situation, pining in inglorious inactivity. You may call them an army of safety and of defence, but they are in truth an army of impotence and contempt

contempt; and to make the folly equal to the disgrace, they are an army of irritation and vexation. Allay then the ferment prevailed in America, by removing the obnoxious hoftile cause. If you delay conceffion till your vain hope shall be accomplished of triumphantly dictating reconciliation, you delay for ever; the force of this country would be difproportionately exerted against a brave, generous, and united people, with arms in their hands and courage in their hearts-three millions of people, the genuine defcendants of a valiant and pious ancestry, driven to these deferts by the narrow maxims of a fuperftitious tyranny. But, is the spirit of perfecution never to be adpeafed? Are the brave fons of those brave forefathers to inherit their fufferings as they have inherited their virtues? Are they to fustain the infliction of the most oppreffive and unexampled severity, beyond what history has related, or poetry has feigned?

Rhadamanthus habet durissima regna,

Gaftigatque, auditque, dolos.

But the Americans must not be heard; they have been condemned unheard. The indifcriminate hand of vengeance has devoted thirty thousand British subjects of all ranks, ages, and defcriptions to one common ruin. You may no doubt destroy their cities; you may cut them off from the fuperfluities, perhaps the conveniences of life; but, my lords, they will still despise your power, for they have yet remaining their woods and their liberty. What though you march from town to town, from province to province, though you should be able to enforce a temporary and local fubmiffion, how shall you be able to secure the obedience of the country you leave behind you, in your progress of eighteen hundred miles of continent animated with the same spirit of liberty and of resistance? This univerfal oppofition to your arbitrary system of taxation might have been foreseen; it was obvious from the nature of things and from the nature of man, and, above all, from the confirmed habits of thinking, from the spirit of whiggism flourishing in America. The spirit which now pervades America, is the fame which formerly oppofed loans, benevolences, and ship-money in this country; the same spirit which roused all England to action at the revolution; and which established, at a remote æra, your liberties, on the basis of that grand fundamental maxim of the conftitution, that no fubject of England shall be taxed but by his own confent. What shall oppose this spirit, aided by the congenial flame glowing in the breast of every generous Briton? To maintain this principle is the common cause of the whigs on the other fide of the Atlantic and on this; it is liberty to liberty engaged. In this great cause they are immoveably allied; it is the alliance of God and nature, immutable, eternal, fixed as the firmament of heaven. As an Englishman, I recognize to the Americans their fupreme unalterable right of property. As an American, I would equally recognize to England her supreme right of regulating commerce and navigation. This diftinction is involved in the abstract nature of things; property is private, individual, abfolute; the touch of another annihilates it. Trade is an extended aud complicated confideration; it reaches as far as ships can fail or winds can blow; it is a vast and various machine. To regulate the numberless movements of its several parts, and combine them into one harmonious effect, for the good of the whole, requires the superintending wisdom and energy of the fupreme power of the empire. On this grand practical distinction then let us rest; taxation is theirs, commercial regulation is ours. As to the metaphyfical refinements, attempting to show that the Americans are equally free from legislative control and commercial restraint, as from taxation for the purpose of revenue, I pronounce them futile, frivolous, and groundless. When your lordships have perused the papers tranfinitted us from Ame

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rica, when you confider the dignity, the firmness, and the wifdom with which the Americans have acted, you cannot but respect their cause. History, my lords, has been my favorite study, and in the celebrated writings of antiquity have I often admired the patriotism of Greece and Rome: but, my lords, I must declare and avow, that in the masterstates of the world, I know not the people, or the fenate, who, in such a complication of difficult circumstances, can stand in preference to the delegates of America assembled in general congress at Philadelphia. I trust it is obvious to your lordships, that all attempts to impose servitude upon such men, to establish despotism over such a mighty continental nation, must be vain, must be futile. Can fuch a national principled union be resisted by the tricks of office or ministerial manœuvres? Heaping papers on the table, or counting your majorities on a divifion, will not avert or postpone the hour of danger. It must arrive, my lords, unless these fatal acts are done away; it must arrive in all its horrors; and then these boastful ministers, in fpite of all their confidence and all their manœuvres, shall be compelled to hide their heads. But it is not repealing a piece of parchment that can restore America to your bofom; you must repeal her fears and resentments, and then you may hope for her love and gratitude. But now, infulted with an armed force, irritated with an hoftile array before her eyes, her conceffions, if you could force them, would be suspicious and infecure. But it is more than evident that you cannot force them to your unworthy terms of fubmiffion; it is impoffible: WE Ourselves shall be forced ultimately to retract; let us retract while we can, not when we must. I repeat it, my lords, we shall one day be forced to undo these violent oppreffive Acts; they must be repealed, you will repeal them; I pledge myself for it, that you will in the end repeal them; I ftake my reputation on it; I will confent to be taken for In IDIOT if they are not repealed. Avoid this then humiliating miliating disgraceful neceffity. With a dignity becoming your exalted fituation, make the first advances to concord, to peace, and to happiness. Conceffion comes with better grace and more falutary effect from fuperior power; it reconciles fuperiority of power with the feelings of man, and establishes folid confidence on the foundations of affection and gratitude. On the other hand, every danger and every hazard impend to deter you from perseverance in the present ruinous measures; foreign war hanging over your heads by a flight and brittle thread; France and Spain watching your conduct, and waiting for the maturity of your errors, with a vigilant eye to America and the temper of your colonies, MORE THAN TO THEIR OWN CONCERNS, BE THEY WHAT THEY MAY. To conclude, my lords, if the ministers thus persevere in mifadvifing and mifleading the KING, I will not say that they can alienate the affections of his subjects from the crown; but I affirm, they will make the crown not worth his wearing. I will not say that the KING is BETRAYED, but I will pronounce that the KINGDOM IS UNDONE."

The motion of lord Chatham was most ably seconded and fupported by lord Camden: "king, lords, and commons," said this great constitutional lawyer, " are grand and founding names: but king, lords, and commons may become tyrants as well as others. Tyranny in one or more is the fame: it is as lawful to resist the tyranny of many as of one; this has been a doctrine known and acted upon in this country, for ages. When the famous Selden was afked by what statute resistance to tyranny could be justified? his reply was, " It is to be justified by the custom of England, which is a part of the law of the land.' I will affirm, my lords, not only as a statesman, politician, and philosopher, but as a common lawyer, that you have no right to tax America. No man, agreeably to the principles of natural or civil liberty, can be divested of any part of his property without his consent; and when

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