with the particulars; they have been stated and enforced by the noble and learned Lord who spoke last but one (Lord Camden), in a much more able and distinct manner than I could pretend to state them. If, then, we are the aggressors, it is your Lordships' business to make the first overture. I say again, this country has been the aggressor. You have made descents upon their coasts; you have burnt their towns, plundered their country, made war upon the inhabitants, confiscated their property, proscribed and imprisoned their persons. I do therefore affirm, my Lords, that instead of exacting unconditional submission from the colonies, we should grant them unconditional redress. We have injured them; we have endeavoured to enslave and oppress them. Upon this ground, my Lords, instead of chastisement, they are entitled to redress. A repeal of those laws, of which they complain, will be the first step to that redress. The people of America look upon Parliament as the authors of their miseries; their affections are estranged from their Sovereign. Let, then, reparation come from the hands that inflicted the injuries; let conciliation succeed chastisement; and I do maintain, that Parliament will again recover its authority; that his Majesty will be once more enthroned in the hearts of his American subjects; and that your Lordships, as contributing to so great, glorious, salutary, and benignant a work, will receive the prayers and benedictions of every part of the British empire."

The House divided for the motion, 28; against it, 99. It was therefore lost by a majority of 71.

DEBATE IN THE LORDS ON THE ADDRESS OF THANKS.

November 18. His Majesty opened the session with the following speech :-" My Lords and Gentlemen, it is a great satisfaction to me that I can have recourse to the wisdom and support of my Parliament in this conjuncture, when the continuance of the rebellion in North America demands our most serious attention. The powers which you have entrusted me with, for the suppression of this revolt, have been faithfully exerted; and I have a just confidence that the conduct and courage of my officers, and the spirit and intrepidity of my forces, both by sea and land, will, under the blessing of Divine Providence, be attended with important success: but as I am persuaded that you will see the necessity of preparing for such further operations as the contingencies of the war and the obstinacy of the rebels may render expedient, I am, for that purpose, pursuing the proper measures for keeping my land forces complete to their present establishment; and if I should have occasion to increase them, by contracting any new engagements, I rely on your zeal and public spirit to enable me to make them good.

"I receive repeated assurances from foreign powers of their pacific dispositions. My own cannot be doubted: but, at this time, when the armaments in the ports of France and Spain continue, I have thought it advisable to make a considerable augmentation to my naval force, as well to keep my dominions in a respectable state of security, as to provide an adequate protection for the extensive commerce of my subjects; and as on the one hand I am determined that the peace of Europe shall not be disturbed by me, so on the other I will always be a faithful guardian of the honour of the Crown of Great Britain.

"Gentlemen of the House of Commons, I have ordered the estimates for the ensuing year to be laid before you. The various services which I have mentioned to you will unavoidably require large supplies, and nothing could relieve my mind from the concern which I feel for the heavy charge which they must bring on my faithful people, but the perfect conviction that they are necessary for the welfare and the essential interests of my kingdom.

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My Lords and Gentlemen, I will steadily pursue the measures in which we are engaged for the re-establishment of that constitutional subordination, which, with the blessing of God, I will maintain through the several parts of my dominions; but I shall ever be watchful for an opportunity of putting a stop to the effusion of the blood of my subjects, and the calamities which are inseparable from a state of war. And I still hope that the deluded and unhappy multitude will return to their allegiance; and that the remembrance of what they once enjoyed, the regret for what they have lost, and the feelings of what they now suffer under the arbitrary tyranny of their leaders, will rekindle in their hearts a spirit of loyalty to their Sovereign, and of attachment to their mother-country; and that they will enable me, with the concurrence and support of my Parliament, to accomplish what I shall consider as the greatest happiness of my life, and the greatest glory of my reign-the restoration of peace, order, and confidence to my American colonies."

Earl Percy having moved the Address, the Earl of Chatham, soon afterwards, rose and delivered the following speech :

"I rise, my Lords," he said, "to declare my sentiments on this most solemn and serious subject. It has imposed a load upon my mind, which, I fear, nothing can remove; but which impels me to endeavour its alleviation, by a free and unreserved communication of my sentiments.

"In the first part of the Address, I have the honour of heartily concurring with the noble Earl who moved it. No man feels sincerer joy than I do ; none can offer more genuine congratulation on every accession of strength to the Protestant succession: I therefore join in every congratulation on the birth of another Princess, and the happy recovery of her Majesty. But I must stop here; my courtly complaisance will carry me no further: I will not join in congratulation on misfortune and disgrace: I cannot concur in a blind and servile Address, which approves, and endeavours to sanctify, the

monstrous measures that have heaped disgrace and misfortune upon us-that have brought ruin to our doors. This, my Lords, is a perilous and a tremendous moment! It is no time for adulation. The smoothness of flattery cannot now avail-cannot save us in this rugged and awful crisis. It is now necessary to instruct the Throne in the language of truth. We must dispel the delusion and the darkness which envelope it; and display, in its full danger and true colours, the ruin that is brought to our doors.

“This, my Lords, is our duty; it is the proper function of this noble assembly, sitting, as we do, upon our honours in this House, the hereditary council of the Crown; and who is the minister-where is the minister, that has dared to suggest to the Throne the contrary unconstitutional language, this day delivered from it? The accustomed language from the Throne has been application to Parliament for advice, and a reliance on its constitutional advice and assistance: as it is the right of Parliament to give, so it is the duty of the Crown to ask it. But on this day, and in this extreme momentous exigency, no reliance is reposed on our constitutional counsels! no advice is asked from the sober and enlightened care of Parliament ! But the Crown, from itself, and by itself, declares an unalterable determination to pursue measures—and what measures, my Lords? The measures that have produced the imminent perils that threaten us: the measures that have brought ruin to our doors.

"Can the Minister of the day now presume to expect a continuance of support, and in this ruinous infatuation? Can Parliament be so dead to its dignity and its duty as to be thus deluded into the loss of the one, and the violation of the other?-To give an unlimited credit and support for the steady perseverance in measures-that is the word and the conduct-proposed for our Parliamentary advice, but dictated and forced upon us-in measures, I say, my Lords, which have reduced this late flourishing empire to ruin and contempt!-But yesterday, and England might have stood against the world: now none so poor to do her reverence. I use the words of a poet; but though it be poetry, it is no fiction. It is a shameful truth, that not only the power and strength of this country are wasting away and expiring; but that her well-earned glories, her true honour, and substantial dignity, are sacrificed. France, my Lords, has insulted you; she has encouraged and sustained America; and whether America be wrong or right, the dignity of this country ought to spurn at the officious insult of French interference. The Ministers and Ambassadors of those who are called rebels and enemies are in Paris; in Paris they transact the reciprocal interests of America and France. Can there be a more mortifying insult? Can even our Ministers sustain a more humiliating disgrace? Do they dare to resent it? Do they presume even to hint a vindication of their honour, and the dignity of the State, by requiring the dismissal of the plenipotentiaries of America? Such is the degradation to which they have reduced the glories of England! The people, whom they affect to call contemptible rebels, but whose growing power has at last obtained the name of enemies; the people with whom they

have engaged this country in war, and against whom they now command our implicit support in every measure of desperate hostility: this people, despised as rebels, or acknowledged as enemies, are abetted against you, supplied with every military store, their interests consulted, and their Ambassadors entertained, by your inveterate enemy! and our Ministers dare not interpose with dignity or effect. Is this the honour of a great kingdom? Is this the indignant spirit of England, who, but yesterday,' gave law to the House of Bourbon? My Lords, the dignity of nations demands a decisive conduct in a situation like this. Even when the greatest Prince that perhaps this country ever saw, filled our throne, the requisition of a Spanish General, on a similar subject, was attended to, and complied with; for, on the spirited remonstrance of the Duke of Alva, Elizabeth found herself obliged to deny the Flemish exiles all countenance, support, or even entrance into her dominions; and the Count le Marque, with his few desperate followers, was expelled the kingdom. Happening to arrive at the Brille, and finding it weak in defence, they made themselves masters of the place: and this was the foundation of the United Provinces.

My Lords, this ruinous and ignominious situation, where we cannot act with success, nor suffer with honour, calls upon us to remonstrate in the strongest and loudest language of truth, to rescue the ear of Majesty from the delusions which surround it. The desperate state of our arms abroad is in part known: no man thinks more highly of them than I do: I love and honour the English troops: I know their virtues and their valour: I know they can achieve any thing except impossibilities; and I know that the conquest of English America is an impossibility. You cannot, I venture to say it, you CANNOT conquer America. Your armies last war effected every thing that could be effected; and what was it? It cost a numerous army, under the command of a most able general,* now a noble Lord in this House, a long and laborious campaign, to expel five thousand Frenchmen from French America. My Lords, you cannot conquer America. What is your present situation there? We do not know the worst; but we know, that in three campaigns we have done nothing, and suffered much. Besides the sufferings, perhaps total loss, of the Northern force; the best appointed army that ever took the field, commanded by Sir William Howe, has retired from the American lines; he was obliged to relinquish his attempt, and, with great delay and danger, to adopt a new and distant plan of operations. We shall soon know, and in any event have reason to lament, what may have happened since. As to conquest, therefore, my Lords, I repeat, it is impossible. You

* Lord Amherst.

+ Under General Burgoyne. This prediction of the total loss of General Bourgoyne's army was too faithfully verified. While advancing from Canada to support the operations of General Howe, who was marching on Philadelphia, he was compelled by the Americans, under General Gates, to surrender his whole army, by a convention concluded at Saratoga, October 16, 1777. The intelligence of this defeat did not reach England until the beginning of December.

may swell every expense, and every effort, still more extravagantly; pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow; traffic and barter with every little pitiful German Prince, that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country; your efforts are for ever vain and impotentdoubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your enemies-to overrun them with the sordid sons of rapine and of plunder; devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms, never! never! never!

"Your own army is infected with the contagion of these illiberal allies. The spirit of plunder and of rapine is gone forth among them. I know it— and notwithstanding what the noble Earl, who moved the Address, has given as his opinion of our American army, I know from authentic information, and the most experienced officers, that our discipline is deeply wounded. Whilst this is notoriously our sinking situation, America grows and flourishes; whilst our strength and discipline are lowered, theirs are rising and improving.

"But, my Lords, who is the man that, in addition to these disgraces and mischiefs of our army, has dared to authorize and associate to our arms the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the savage? To call into civilized alliance the wild and inhuman savage of the woods; to delegate to the merciless Indian the defence of disputed rights; and to wage the horrors of his barbarous war against our brethren? My Lords, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment: and unless thoroughly done away, they will be an indelible stain on the national character. It is a violation of the constitution. I believe it is against law. It is not the least of our national misfortunes, that the strength and character of our army are thus impaired : infected with the mercenary spirit of robbery and rapine-familiarized to horrid scenes of savage cruelty, it can no longer boast the noble and generous principles which dignify a soldier; no longer sympathize with the dignity of the royal banner, nor feel the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war, that make ambition virtue! What makes ambition virtue? The sense of honour. But is the sense of honour consistent with a spirit of plunder, or the practice of murder? Can it flow from mercenary motives, or can it prompt to cruel deeds? Besides these murderers and plunderers, let me ask our Ministers-what other allies have they acquired? What other powers have they associated to their cause? Have they entered into alliance with the King of the Gypsies? Nothing, my Lords, is too low or too ludicrous to be consistent with their counsels.

"The independent views of America have been stated and asserted as the foundation of this Address. My Lords, no man wishes more for the due dependence of America on this country than I do: to preserve it, and not confirm that state of independence into which your measures hitherto have driven them, is the object which we ought to unite in attaining. The