in arts also. It is an established fact, that the principal towns in America are learned and polite, and understand the constitution of the empire as well as the noble Lords who are now in office; and, consequently, they will have a watchful eye over their liberties, to prevent the least encroachment on their hereditary rights. "This observation has been so recently exemplified in an excellent pamphlet, which comes from the pen of an American gentleman, that I shall take the liberty of reading to your Lordships his thoughts on the competency of the British Parliament to tax America, which, in my opinion, puts this interesting matter in the clearest view. "The High Court of Parliament,' says he, is the supreme legislative power over the whole empire; in all free states the constitution is fixed; and as the supreme legislature derives its power and authority from the constitution, it cannot overleap the bounds of it, without destroying its own foundation. The constitution ascertains and limits both sovereignty and allegiance and therefore his Majesty's American subjects, who acknowledge themselves bound by the ties of allegiance, have an equitable claim to the full enjoyment of the fundamental rules of the English constitution; and that it is an essential unalterable right in nature, ingrafted into the British constitution as a fundamental law, and ever held sacred and irrevocable by the subjects within the realm-that what a man has honestly acquired, is absolutely his own; which he may freely give, but which cannot be taken from him without his consent.' ever. “This, my Lords, though no new doctrine, has always been my received and unalterable opinion, and I will carry it to my grave, that this country had no right under heaven to tax America. It is contrary to all the principles of justice and civil policy, which neither the exigencies of the state, nor even an acquiescence in the taxes, could justify upon any occasion whatSuch proceedings will never meet with their wished-for success; and, instead of adding to their miseries, as the bill now before you most undoubt. edly does, adopt some lenient measures, which may lure them to their duty; act like a kind and affectionate parent towards a child whom he tenderly loves; and, instead of those harsh and severe proceedings, pass an amnesty on all their youthful errors; clasp them once more in your fond and affectionate arms; and, I will venture to affirm, you will find them children worthy of their sire. But should their turbulence exist after your proffered terms of forgiveness, which I hope and expect this House will immediately adopt, I will be among the foremost of your Lordships to move for such measures as will effectually prevent a future relapse, and make them feel what it is to provoke a fond and forgiving parent! a parent, my Lords, whose welfare has ever been my greatest and most pleasing consolation. This declaration may seem unnecessary; but I will venture to declare, the period is not far distant when she will want the assistance of her most distant friends: but should the all-disposing hand of Providence prevent me from affording her my poor assistance, my prayers shall be ever for her welfare. Length of days be in her right hand, and in her left riches and honour; may her ways be ways of pleasantness, and all her paths be peace!" The bill passed by a majority of 57 to 16. LORD CHATHAM'S MOTION TO WITHDRAW THE TROOPS FROM BOSTON. 1775. January 20. By his Majesty's command, Lord Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the Colonies, presented to the House of Lords the papers relating to the disturbances in North America.* Upon this occassion, the Earl of Chatham delivered the following speech : "He began with inveighing against the dilatoriness of administration, but, said he, as I have not the honour of access to his Majesty, I will endeavour to transmit to him, through the constitutional channel of this House, my ideas of America, to rescue him from the mis-advice of his present Ministers. I congratulate your Lordships that the business is at last entered upon, by the noble Lord's laying the papers before you. As I suppose your Lordships too well apprised of their contents, I hope I am not premature in submitting to you my present motion, "That an humble address be presented to his Majesty, humbly to desire and beseech his Majesty, that in order to open the way towards a happy settlement of the dangerous troubles in America, by beginning to allay ferments and soften animosities there; and above all, for preventing in the meantime any sudden and fatal catastrophe at Boston, now suffering under the daily irritation of an army before their eyes, posted in their town; it may graciously please his Majesty that immediate orders be despatched to General Gage, for removing his Majesty's forces from the town of Boston, as soon as the rigour of the season, and other circumstances indispensable to the safety and accommodation of the said troops, may render the same practicable.' "I wish, my Lords, not to lose a day in this urgent, pressing crisis; an hour now lost in allaying ferments in America, may produce years of calamity: for my own part, I will not desert, for a moment, the conduct of this weighty business, from the first to the last; unless nailed to my bed by the extremity of sickness, I will give it unremitted attention; I will knock at the door of this sleeping and confounded Ministry, and will rouse them to a sense of their important danger. "When I state the importance of the colonies to this country, and the magnitude of the danger hanging over this country, from the present plan of mis-administration practised against them, I desire not to be understood to argue for a reciprocity of indulgence between England and America. I contend not for indulgence, but for justice to America; and I shall ever contend, that the Americans justly owe obedience to us in a limited degree-they owe See these Papers, Parl. Hist. vol. xviii. p. 74, et seq. obedience to our ordinances of trade and navigation; but let the line be skilfully drawn between the objects of those ordinances, and their private, internal property; let the sacredness of their property remain inviolate; let it be taxable only by their own consent, given in their provincial assemblies, else it will cease to be property. As to the metaphysical refinements, attempting to show that the Americans are equally free from obedience and commercial restraints, as from taxation for revenue, as being unrepresented here; I pronounce them futile, frivolous, and groundless. "When I urge this measure of recalling the troops from Boston, I urge it on this pressing principle, that it is necessarily preparatory to the restoration of your peace, and the establishment of your prosperity. It will then appear that you are disposed to treat amicably and equitably; and to consider, revise, and repeal, if it should be found necessary, as I affirm it will, those violent acts and declarations which have disseminated confusion throughout your empire. "Resistance to your acts was necessary as it was just; and your vain declarations of the omnipotence of Parliament, and your imperious doctrines of the necessity of submission, will be found equally impotent to convince or to enslave your fellow-subjects in America, who feel that tyranny, whether ambitioned by an individual part of the legislature, or the bodies who compose it, is equally intolerable to British subjects. "The means of enforcing this thraldom are found to be as ridiculous and weak in practice as they are unjust in principle. Indeed I cannot but feel the most anxious sensibility for the situation of General Gage, and the troops under his command; thinking him, as I do, a man of humanity and understanding; and entertaining, as I ever will, the highest respect, the warmest love, for the British troops. Their situation is truly unworthy; penned up pining in inglorious inactivity. They are an army of impotence. You may call them an army of safety and of guard; 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. "But I find a report creeping abroad, that Ministers censure General Gage's inactivity: let them censure him-it becomes them-it becomes their justice and their honour.—I mean not to censure his inactivity; it is a prudent and necessary inaction. But what a miserable condition is that, where disgrace is prudence, and where it is necessary to be contemptible! This tameness, however contemptible, cannot be censured; for the first drop of blood shed in civil and unnatural war might be immedicabile vulnus. "I therefore urge and conjure your Lordships immediately to adopt this conciliating measure: I will pledge myself for its immediately producing conciliatory effects, by its being thus well-timed; but if you delay till your vain hope shall be accomplished, of triumphantly dictating reconciliation, you delay for ever. But, admitting that this hope, which in truth is desperate, should be accomplished, what do you gain by the imposition of your victorious amity?-you will be untrusted and unthanked. Adopt, then, the grace, while you have the opportunity of reconcilement, or at least prepare the way. Allay the ferment prevailing in America, by removing the obnoxious, hostile cause-obnoxious and unserviceable, for their merit can be only in inaction: Non dimicare est vincere,—their victory can never be by exertions. Their force would be most disproportionately exerted against a brave, generous, and united people, with arms in their hands, and courage in their hearts :—three millions of people, the genuine descendants of a valiant and pious ancestry, driven to those deserts by the narrow maxims of a superstitious tyranny. And is the spirit of persecution never to be appeased? Are the brave sons of those brave forefathers to inherit the sufferings, as they have inherited their virtues? Are they to sustain the infliction of the most oppressive and unexampled severity, beyond the accounts of history, or description of poetry: Rhadamanthus habet durissima regna, castigatque, AUDITQUE. So says the wisest poet, and perhaps the wisest statesman and politician of antiquity. But our Ministers say, the Americans must not be heard. They have been condemned unheard; the discriminating hand of vengeance has lumped together innocent and guilty; with all the formalities of hostility, has blocked up the town,* and reduced to beggary and famine thirty thousand inhabitants. "But his Majesty is advised, that the union in America cannot last! Ministers have more eyes than I, and should have more ears; but, with all the information I have been able to procure, I can pronounce it—an union solid, permanent, and effectual. Ministers may satisfy themselves, and delude the public, with the report of what they call commercial bodies in America: they are not commercial; they are your packers and factors: they live upon nothing-for I call commission nothing. I mean the Ministerial authority for this American intelligence; the runners for Government, who are paid for their intelligence. But these are not the men, nor this the influence, to be considered in America, when we estimate the firmness of their union: even to extend the question, and to take in the really mercantile circle, will be totally inadequate to the consideration. Trade, indeed, increases the wealth and glory of a country; but its real strength and stamina are to be looked for among the cultivators of the land: in their simplicity of life is found the simpleness of virtue-the integrity and courage of freedom. These true, genuine sons of the earth are invincible: and they surround and hem in the mercantile bodies: even if these bodies, which supposition I totally disclaim, could be supposed disaffected to the cause of liberty. Of this general spirit existing in the British nation-(for so I wish to distinguish the real and genuine Americans from the pseudo-traders I have described)—of this spirit of independence, animating the nation of America, I have the most authentic information. It is not new among them; it is, and has ever been, their established principle-their confirmed persuasion; it is their nature and their doctrine. "I remember, some years ago, when the repeal of the Stamp Act was in * Boston.. agitation, conversing in a friendly confidence with a person of undoubted respect and authenticity, on that subject; and he assured me, with a certainty which his judgment and opportunity gave him, that these were the prevalent and steady principles of America:-that you might destroy their towns, and cut them off from the superfluities, and perhaps the conveniences, of life; but that they were prepared to despise your power, and would not lament their loss, whilst they had-what, my Lords?—their woods and their liberty. The name of my authority, if I am called upon, will authenticate the opinion irrefragably.* "If illegal violences have been, as it is said, committed in America, prepare the way-open the door of possibility, for acknowledgment and satisfaction; but proceed not to such coercion-such proscription: cease your indiscriminate inflictions; amerce not thirty thousand; oppress not three millions, for the fault of forty or fifty. Such severity of injustice must for ever render incurable the wounds you have already given your colonies: you irritate them to unappeaseable rancour. What, though you march from town to town, and from province to province; though you should be able to enforce a temporary and local submission, which I only suppose, not admit-how shall you be able to secure the obedience of the country you leave behind you in your progress, to grasp the dominion of eighteen hundred miles of continent, populous in numbers, possessing valour, liberty, and resistance? "This resistance to your arbitrary system of taxation might have been foreseen: it was obvious, from the nature of things and of mankind; and, above all, from the Whiggish spirit flourishing in that country. The spirit which now resists your taxation in America, is the same which formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and ship-money, in England: the same spirit which called all England on its legs, and by the Bill of Rights vindicated the English constitution: the same spirit which established the great, fundamental, essential maxim of your liberties, that no subject of England shall be taxed but by his own consent. "This glorious spirit of Whiggism animates three millions in America ; who prefer poverty with liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence; and who will die in defence of their rights as men, as freemen. What shall oppose this spirit, aided by the congenial flame glowing in the breasts of every Whig in England, to the amount, I hope, of double the American numbers? Ireland they have to a man. In that country, joined as it is with the cause of the colonies, and placed at their head, the distinction I contend for is and must be observed. This country superintends and controls their trade and navigation; but they tax themselves. And this distinction between external and internal control is sacred and insurmountable; it is involved in the abstract nature of things. Property is private, individual, absolute. Trade is an extended and complicated consideration: it reaches as far as ships can sail or winds can blow; it is a great and various machine. To It was Dr. Franklin, |