factures, and starve all the West India islands. To them, therefore, it can only be said,

--Nec lex hâc justior ulla,

Quam necis artifices arte perire suâ.

Lord John Cavendish and Mr. Townshend replied, that they had been in office with the right hon. gentleman who spoke last, when the Declaratory Act passed, and afterwards long continued in intimacy with him, but had never heard publicly or privately, of his objections to the Declaratory Act, before this year. They thought it very odd, that he should have voted for several severe and proscriptive Acts, in order to force the Americans to obedience to taxes, since he thought that we had no right to impose any, and that in this respect he had gone far beyond the most zealous partizans of the rights of this country: as little could they reconcile his voting last year against the repeal of the tea duty, with his aversion to the right of taxation.

Lord Beauchamp and sir Richard Sutton supported the motion on the equity of prohibiting the trade of those who had prohibited ours.

the greatest tyrant upon earth, nor by any earthly power, before the Declaratory Act. He thought, therefore, the hon. gentleman should move a repeal of the Declaratory Act, and of every Act that he thought injurious to the freedom of America, before he exhorted the Americans to bring on themselves, their families, and their country, all the horrid consequences of rebellion. He had opposed, and ever would do the principle of laying internal taxes on America; but it was not taxation, but the trade of Great Britain, which the Americans now opposed. The tea duty is the only tax that remains; a tax, which the Americans first resisted, had afterwards complied with, and paid regularly; but when the East India Company sent the tea to be sold at a lower price than the smuggler of Dutch and Swedish teas could afford, then they began to resist the law, then they destroyed the merchants' property, then they began to threaten ruin to the commerce of this country, not in support of liberty, but merely to support their own illicit commerce. He had promoted the repeal of the Stamp Act, but would never have taken the part he did, could he have Mr. Burke said, that he did not mean supposed the ministers who gave up the to trouble the committee long-nor to be advantages, would have maintained the heard, beyond those to whom he imme principle of taxing America. Neither diately applied himself. That by the pro would he have consented to a repeal of the posed Bill, they had disposed of four of Stamp Act, had he not believed that the their provinces. Some were troubled ministers of that time would have made with a concealed rebellion; others were some effectual provision for the security concealers of that concealment; some and protection of the merchants who trade were infected; others next door to the to America. Instead of which, the Ame- infection. Provision, too, was to be made ricans were then taught, that they had by licences and dispensations, and tests for nothing to do but to threaten our mer- those in the several provinces who were chants with ruin, and our manufacturers more innocent or more in favour. But with famine, and then, upon such threats, there was a fifth province, for which no the legislature of Great Britain must sub-provision at all had been made, which was mit to their will. Three times, in the likely to be as great a sufferer as any space of a few years, they had thrown the the other four, though not in rebellion, or whole trade of Great Britain into confu- in the neighbourhood of rebellion. This sion; that it had better be given up, than province had used no other force, but of preserved on such conditions. Life itself one kind, which was not very terrible on was not worth keeping in a state of uncer- earth, though it was said to offer violence tainty and fear. Things were now brought to heaven, the force of prayers and peti to a crisis. The conflict must be borne, tions. That this province was England, and he hoped would never end, but in re- which had now several hundreds of thou linquishing our connections with America, sands of her property in the four provinces or fixing them on a sure and lasting basis. of New England. He then shewed, that As to the proposal of stopping the fisheries, New England was not a staple colony, and whatever distress it might bring on the could only pay her debts through the Americans, they had no reason to com- fishery and the trades which depended plain. It was no more than they had upon it; and that to stop their fishery begun to practise themselves. They had would be to beggar the English merchants taken a resolution as far as in them lay, to and manufacturers. This he explained ruin our merchants, impoverish our manu- by entering into the nature of the New

of

lic expence. He did not mean to bring home this charge to any particular person, or set of men; but it was well known it had been frequently practised by the confidential people in office.

England trade. He further said, it had been asserted, falsely, that the New England people had refused to pay their debts. It had been said also, truly, that they had no compassion on the English manufacturers. But had their dishonesty been as true as the want of compassion, both might have been natural to those we called rebels, but what ought we to think of a British legislature, disabling the payment of debts, and having no bowels of compassion towards the sufferings of our own innocent constituents.

The question was called for about 12 o'clock, when the committee divided; for the motion 261, against it 85. Leave was accordingly given to bring in the Bill.

Debate in the Commons on the Augmentation of the Navy.] Feb. 13. The House being in a Committee of Supply,

Mr. Buller moved, That an additional number of 2,000 men be allowed for Sea Service for the year 1775. He stated the respective services our ships were on, and said that the proposed augmentation was necessary to enforce the measures of government in America.

Lord North knew nothing of what had been done by such people, but believed upon his honour, that none of the present confidential servants in office did game in the funds; for it would be basely betraying the confidence of their prince.

Lord John Cavendish and Colonel Barré accused the noble lord of great inconsistency, in thinking so far to blind the House as to have it believed that the augmentation asked for could answer any purpose but to convince the Americans of the inveteracy of the mother country against them, and to throw a reconciliation to a yet greater distance: that a few thousand seamen added to the service would never effectually answer the purpose, if that purpose was to prohibit the trade of the most commercial colonies in America; that the noble lord must mean only to trifle with the House, and with mankind, in declaring one day America to be in rebellion, the next prohibiting the commerce of Massachuset's Bay, and the third coming for so insignificant an augmentation; that the gentlemen on the same side of the House had repeatedly asserted, that the commerce of the New Englanders, and much of that of the other colonies, was contraband; and that America was peopled with smugglers, to the great detriment of that advantage, which would otherwise flow to this country: how could administration, therefore, with any degree of consistency, suppose that such a system of smuggling, added to a new created system of the same, the fishery, be all kept under by any thing less than the most powerful armaments?

Lord North remarked, that the subject had been so amply discussed on Friday, by being so much blended with the means of restraining the fishery of Massachuset's Bay, that he should have the less to offer upon this occasion; that the rebellious disposition and motions of that and other colonies made it necessary to have such a guard upon the coasts of North America, that the augmentation was highly necessary; and as the people of New England could not be restrained from the fishery without some sloops stationed for that purpose, the circumstance made it doubly requisite to provide accordingly. He gave no precise explanation; but only general Mr. Cornwall, taking an historical cirassurances that this would be the last ap-cuit of American affairs, in order to shew plication of the kind. He said, he could the connection and dependence of the minot possibly pretend to foretel every event nister's measures on each other, replied to that might happen, and consequently could the objections that had been started: he not bind himself by any specific promise remarked, that to pass Acts to restrain or engagement. commerce, and to declare the extra-provincial meetings in the colonies illegal, whose object principally was to import arms and ammunition, in order for the purposes of rebellion, would be nugatory and absurd, unless corresponding measures were taken to enforce those Acts; that as to great armaments and fleets of men of war of the line, the gentlemen of the House in that line of the military well knew them to be unnecessary, and out of

Governor Johnstone observed, that this was a most extraordinary mode of procedure, and that he was at a loss to determine, whether it proceeded from ignorance or design. He was certain, however, that it gave full scope to gaming in the Alley, for stocks had been falling gradually, till they had now come down 5 per cent. It furnished a happy opportunity to those in the secret to enrich themselves at the pub[VOL. XVIII.]

[X]

cement such a mangled correspondence | agitate questions wrapt up in subdolous together, so as to derive any clear accu- Machiavelian mystery, and only to be derate knowledge of the real condition or veloped by the acutest abstract reasoning. sentiments of the Americans? Whatso- The present juncture, Sir, requires only a ever might extenuate offences, excuse well principled heart, and a head modeerror, and restore perfect amity between rately conversant with the nature of men the two countries, did the partial hand of and things. administration wickedly suppress, while in too glaring a light was exhibited every fact that could serve to widen the breach, and inflame the passions, and blow up a faint, luckless spark of animosity to the full combustion and horrors of a civil war! These misrepresentations however answered the ends proposed, for both Houses were blindly entrapped to give their sanction to as sanguinary a scroll (in the form of an address) as was ever laid by a prostitute senate at the feet of deluded majesty. Did not your ancestors, Sir, manfully fight, did not some of them heroically fall, to preserve those constitutional rights of the subject to every Briton, which you have now by one vote pledged yourself, at the hazard of life and fortune, to subvert and to annihilate throughout the better part of the whole British monarchy ?

I do not conceive it possible that any man here present can feel as he ought, be conscious of the least participation in the superintendence of the common-wealth, and remain a mere tranquil observer, when so interesting a subject comes before you; a subject on the issue of which perhaps his own individual happiness or misery, doubtless the happiness or misery of his nearest posterity will depend. With what hebitude, Sir, must the blood circulate through his veins ! What must his definition be of an ignominious supineness and apathy! This is not a debate of slow animation, in which few persons are concerned, and of limited influence; we are now to decide upon the fate of millions through a long series of ages, and the part which every man shall take on this occasion must stamp him with characters indelible through all eternity-a patriot or a parricide. It is, Sir, from the collisions of controversy that those radiant sparks are struck out by which truth lights her sacred torch-nor have I less expectation from those gentlemen who are but just initiated into parliamentary business, than from your veteran politicians "deep on whose front engraven" (to use the phrase of Milton) "deliberation sits and public care." Such veterans might indeed be our surest guides, were we now about to

It is not, I own, I feel, given to a young member to deliver his ideas with that guarded correctness, that unagitated confidence which long habitude of speaking usually supplies; but will he, Sir, yield with less ductility to the dictates and honest zeal of inward conscience? he comes among you at least with a judgment unbiassed: he has not pledged himself to any partial junto, whose maxims and interests he is at all events to adopt for the measure of his political career: he has not stood forth an accomplice to any of those manifold mischiefs and blunders which have heretofore been committed in the administration of your colonies: he has had no share in enflaming the evil by temporary anodynes; nor has he treated the imperial concerns of that wide-stretched continent as only accessary to, and of trivial account when compared with his own private schemes of ambition and aggrandisement. Upon the whole, Sir, I can but think him rather the more likely to execute the share of such important award committed to his discretion, as becomes an upright delegate of the people at large, heedless whether his conduct therein may quadrate with the narrow, selfish views of this or that set of men who are candidates for titles or power: not but that I have the satisfaction to see here present some characters animated with the true patriotic spirit, who have long and worthily been seated within these walls; on whose eminent talents, on whose approved integrity, America rests her best hope.

Such gentlemen as come within the scope of any of those disadvantageous allusions I have just thrown out, will consider, that a well-timed recession from error claims the next praise to a perfect exemption therefrom: they will no longer endeavour to palliate a dreadful disease, which, if once arrived at a full paroxysm, it will baffle the Esculapian skill of their expertest state-doctors to cope with.

Our present sagacious rulers had, it seems, drawn their political clue in that quarter of the globe to so Gordian a tie, that despairing to revolve by patience and sober wisdom through the several impli cations their hands had wrought, they