CHAPTER If illegal violences have been, as it is said, committed XLII. in America; prepare the way, open the door of poffibi

1775.

☑ lity, for acknowledgment and fatisfaction: but proceed not to fuch 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 unappeasable 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 fubmiffion, which I only suppose, not admit-how shall you be able to fecure the obedience of the country you leave behind yo you in your progress, and preserve the dominion of eighteen hundred miles of continent, populous in 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 refifts your taxation in America, is the * same which formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and shipmoney, 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 fubject of England shall be taxed but by his own confent.

This glorious fpirit of Whiggism animates three millions in America; who prefer poverty with liberty, to gilded chains and fordid affluence; and who will die in the defence of their rights as men, as freemen. What shall oppofe 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 distinc

:

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1775

tion I contend for is and must be obferved. This country CHAPTER superintends and controuls their trade and navigation; but they tax themselves. And this distinction between external and internal controul is sacred and insurmountable; it is involved in the abstract nature of things. Property is private, individual, absolute. Trade is an extended and complicated confideration: it reaches as far as ships can fail or winds can blow: it is a great and various machine. To regulate the numberless movements of its several parts, and combine them into effect, for the good of the whole, requires the superintending wisdom and energy of the supreme power in the empire. But this supreme power has no effect towards internal taxation; for it does not exist in that relation; there is no such thing, no such idea in this conftitution, as a fupreme power operating upon property. Let this distinction then remain for ever afcertained; taxation is theirs, commercial regulation is ours. As an American I would recognize to England her supreme right of regulating commerce and navigation: as an Englishman by birth and principle, I recognize to the Americans their fupreme unalienable right in their property; a right which they are justified in the defence of to the last extremity. To maintain this principle, is the common cause of the Whigs on the other fide of the Atlantic, and on this. "'Tis liberty to liberty engaged," that they will defend themselves, their families, and their country. In this great cause they are immoveably allied: it is the alliance of God and nature-immutable, eternal-fixed as the firmament of heaven.

To such united force, what force shall be opposed?What, my Lords? -A few regiments in America, and feventeen or eighteen thousand men at home!-The idea is too ridiculous to take up a moment of your Lordships time. Nor can such a national and principled union be refifted by the tricks of office, or Minifterial manœuvre. Laying of papers on your table, or counting noses on a division, will not avert or poftpone 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, spite of all their confidence, and all their manœuvres, shall be forced to hide their heads. They shall be forced to a disgraceful abandonment of their present

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CHAPTER prelent measures and principles, which they avow, but cannot defend; meafures which they prefume to attempt, but cannot hope to effectuate. They cannot, my Lords, 1775. they cannot ftir a step; they have not a move* left; they are check mated.

But it is not repealing this act of Parliament, it is not repealing a piece of parchment, that can restore America to your bofom: you must repeal her fears and her refentments; and you may then hope for her love and gratitude. But now, infulted with an armed force, pofted at Boston; irritated with an hoftile array before her eyes, het conceffions, if you could force them, would be fufpicious and insecure; they will be irato animo; they will not be the.... found honourable passions of freemen; they will be the dictates of fear, and extortions of force. But it is more than evident, that you cannot force them unprincipled and united as they are, to your unworthy terms of fubmiffion -it is impoffible: And when I hear General GAGE censured for inactivity, I must retort with indignation on those, whose intemperate measures and improvident councils have betrayed him into his present situation. His fituation reminds me, my Lords, of the answer of a French General in the civil wars of France Monfieur CONDE opposed to Monfieur TURENNE: he was asked, how it happened that he did not take his adverfary prifoner, as he was often very near him: "J'ai peur," replied CONDE, very honestly, "J'ai peur qu'il ne me

prenne;"-I'm afraid he'll take me.

When your Lordships look at the papers tranfmitted us from America; when you confider their decency, firmness, and wisdom, you cannot but respect their caufe, and wish to make it your own. For myself, I must dé

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clare and avow, that in all my reading and observation CHAPTER and it has been my favourite study-I have read Thucidydes, and have ftudied and admired the mafter-states of the world that for folidity of reasoning, force of fagacity, 1775. and wisdom of conclufion, under such a complication of difficult circumstances, no nation, or body of men can stand in preference to the general Congress at Philadelphia. I trust it is obvious to your Lordships, that all attempts to impose servitude upon fuch men, to establish despotism over fuch a mighty continental nation, must be vain, must be fatal. We shall be forced ultimately to re tract; let us retract while we can, not when we must. I fay we muft neceffarily 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 stake my reputation on it :---I will confent to be taken for an idi t, if they are not finally repealed.-Avoid, then, this humiliating, difgraceful neceffity. With a dignity becoming your exalted situation, make the first advances to concord, to peace and happiness: for that is your true dignity, to act with prudence and justice. That you should hrit concede, is obvious, from found and rational policy. Conceffion comes with better grace and more falutary effects from superior power; it reconciles fuperiority of power with the feelings of men; and establishes folid confidence on the foundations of affection and gratitude.

So thought a wife poet and a wife man in political fagacity; the friend of Mecenas, and the eulogift of Augustus. To him, the adopted fon and succeffor of the first Cæfar, to him, the master of the world, he wisely urged this conduct of prudence and dignity; " Tuque "prior, tu parce; projice tela manu."

Every motive, therefore, of justice and of policy, of dignity and of prudence, urges you to allay the ferment in America,-by a removal of your troops from Boston, -by a repeal of your acts of Parliament;-and by demonstration of amicable dispositions towards your Colonies. On the other hand, every danger and every hazard

Acts of Parliament passed the preceding feffion; for shutting up the port of Boston; altering the charter of Massachuset's Bay, &c The noble Speaker's prediction was strictly verified: the repeal of these acts was at last, after three years fruitless war, fent out as a peace-offering to the Congress of America; by whom it was treated with contempt

impend,

CHAPTER impend, to deter you from perseverance in your present XLII. ruinous measures.-Foreign war hanging over your heads

by a flight and brittle thread: France and Spain watch1775 ing 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 perfevere in misadvising and misleading the King, I will not fay, that they can alienate the affections of his subjects from his crown; but I will affirm, that 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 Editor of the preceding Speech, added the following explanatory observations:

"The reader will recollect, that the motion which accompanied the preceding speech, for removing his. Majefty's troops from Boston, was urged by the noble Speaker exprefsly on the ground of peaceably accommodating the dispute with America. He will remember that the only ground of dispute then, was the taxation of that country claimed by this; the attempted exercise of which, had produced a riot at Boston. The independence of America was not then in contemplation: unless in the reveries of a reverend writer * on the subject, who maintained a proposition, memorable only for its fingularity, "that the independence of America would be a beneficial event to England." To the Americans it never occurred, unless for the refutation of fome injurious suspicions, by the moft folemn, absolute, and express disavowal.

"The noble Lord's motion was, however, rejected: and hoftilities commenced at Lexington, on the 19th of the following April,

"It is unnecessary to particularize the subsequent events. They are too well known, too feverely felt, by every friend of his countryt. "Years of calamity"

*Dr. TUCKER...

•† The infinite number of taxes laid upon the people of Great Britain, from the year 1775 to the year 1782, may be justly imputed to the American war,

fatally