his Majesty, that in order to open the way towards an happy settlement of the dangerous troubles in America, it may gracioufly please his Majesty to tranfmit orders to General Gage for removing 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 perfeverance and enforcement of them; but this I will say, that the authors of fuch advice ought to answer it at their utmost peril. I wish, my Lords, not to lose a day in this urgent pressing crifis; 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. Unless fettered to my bed by the extremity of fickness, I will give it unremitted 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 necefsarily preparatory to the restoration of your peace. By this it will appear that you are disposed to treat amicably and equitably, and to confider, revife, and repeal, if it should be found necessary, as I affirm it will, those violent acts and declarations which have diffeminated confufion throughout the empire. Resistance to these acts was neceffary, and therefore just; and your vain declarations of the omnipotence of Parliament, and your imperi

ous

ous 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 Legislature, 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 respect 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; and to make the folly equal to the disgrace, they are an army of irritation and vexation. Allay then the ferment prevailing 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 those deferts by the narrow maxims of a fuperftitious tyranny. But, is the spirit of persecution never to be appeased? Are Are the brave fons of those brave forefathers to inherit their fufferings as they have inherited their virtues? Are they to sustain the infliction of the most oppreffive and unexampled severity, beyond what hiftory has related, or poetry has feigned?

Rhadamanthus habet durissima regna,

Caftigatque, 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 descriptions to one common ruin. You may no doubt destroy their cities; you may cut them off from the superfluities, 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 fecure 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 universal 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

of Whiggism flourishing in America. The spirit which now pervades America, is the fame which formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and shipmoney 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 Englanp shall be taxed but by his own consent. 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 fupreme right of regulating commerce and navigation. This distinction is involved in the abstract nature of things; property is private; individual, absolute; the touch of another annihilates it. Trade is an extended and 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 ef

fect

fect, for the good of the whole requires the fuperintending wisdom and energy of the fupreme power of the empire. On this grand practical diftinction then let us rest; taxation is theirs, commercial regulation is ours. As to the metaphysical 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 transmitted us from America; when you confider the dignity, the firmness, and the wisdom with which the Americans have acted, you cannot but respect their cause. Hiftory, 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 master-states of the world, I know not the People, or the Senate, 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 defpotism over fuch a mighty continental nation, must be vain, must be futile. Can such a national principled union be resisted by the tricks of office or

minifterial manœuvres? Heaping papers on the table,

VOL. II.

G