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. onciliation, you delay forever. 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 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 their 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. But our ministers say the Americans must not be heard. They have been condemned unheard. The indiscriminate hand of vengeance has lumped together innocent and guilty; with all the formalities of hostility, has blocked up the town [Boston], and reduced to beggary and famine thirty thousand inhabit. ants. The means of enforcing this thraldom are found to be as ridiculous and weak in practice as they are unjust in principle. Indeed, I can not 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 impo-selves, and delude the public, with the report of tence and contempt; and, to make the folly equal to the disgrace, they are an army of irritation and vexation. But his Majesty is advised that the union in America can not 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 a union solid, permanent, and effectual. Ministers may satisfy them what they call commercial bodies in America. They are not commercial. They are your packers and factors. They live upon nothing, for I But I find a report creeping abroad that min- call commission nothing. I speak of the minisisters censure General Gage's inactivity. Let terial authority for this American intelligencethem censure him—it becomes them-it be- the runners for government, who are paid for comes their justice and their honor. I mean not their intelligence. But these are not the men, to censure his inactivity. It is a prudent and nor this the influence, to be considered in Amernecessary inaction; but it is a miserable condi-ica, when we estimate the firmness of their union. tion, where disgrace is prudence, and where it is necessary to be contemptible. This tameness, however contemptible, can not be censured; for the first drop of blood shed in civil and unnatural war might be "immedicabile vulnus."3 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 rec Nil prosunt artes; erat immedicabile vulnus. Even to extend the question, and to take in the 4 Not to fight is to conquer. The passage is from the Eneid of Virgil, book vi., 366-7. Gnosius hæc Rhadamanthus habet durissima regna, O'er these dire realms Lord Chatham, from the order of the words, gives them an ingenious turn, as if the punishment came before the hearing; which was certainly true of justice as then administered in America, though not in the infernal regions of Virgil. own consent. really mercantile circle, will be totally inade- | Rights vindicated the English Constitution; the quate to the consideration. Trade, indeed, in- same spirit which established the great fundacreases the wealth and glory of a country; but mental, essential maxim of your liberties, that its real strength and stamina are to be looked for no subject of England shall be taxed but by his among the cultivators of the land. In their simplicity of life is found the simpleness of virtuethe 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 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, perhaps the conveniences of life, but that they were prepared to despise your power, and would not lament their loss, while they have-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 individuals. Such severity of injustice must forever render incurable the wounds you have already given your colonies; you irritate them to unappeasable rancor. 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 valor, liberty, and resistance? 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 defense of their rights as men, as freemen. What shall oppose this spirit, aided by the congenial flame glowing in the breast 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 coun try 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 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 toward internal taxation; for it does not exist in that relation; there is no such thing, no such idea in this Constitution, as a supreme power operating upon property. Let this distinction then remain forever ascertained; 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 supreme, unalienable right in their property: a right which they are justified in the defense of to the last extremity. To maintain this principle is the common cause of the Whigs on the other side 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 immovably allied: it is the alliance of God and natureimmutable, eternal-fixed as the firmament of heaven. 66 To such united force, what force shall be opposed? What, my Lords? A few regiments in America, and seventeen or eighteen thousand men at home! The idea is too ridiculous to This resistance to your arbitrary system of take up a moment of your Lordships' time. Nor taxation might have been foreseen. It was obcan such a national and principled union be revious from the nature of things, and of mankind;sisted by the tricks of office, or ministerial maand, above all, from the Whiggish spirit flourish-neuver. ing in that country. The spirit which now resists 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 46 It was Dr. Franklin. Laying of papers on your table, or counting numbers on a division, will not avert or postpone 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 maneuvers, shall be forced to hide their heads. They shall be forced to a disgrace ful abandonment of their present measures and principles, which they avow, but can not defend; measures which they presume to attempt, but can not hope to effectuate. They can not, my Lords, they can not stir 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 our bosom. You must repeal her fears and her resentments, and you may then hope for her love and gratitude. But now, insulted with an armed force posted at Boston, irritated with a hostile array before her eyes, her concessions, if you could force them, would be suspicious and insecure; they will be "irato animo" [with an angry spirit]; they will not be the sound, honorable passions of freemen; they will be the dictates of fear and extortions of force. But it is more than evident that you can not force them, united as they are, to your unworthy terms of submission. It is impossible. And when I hear General Gage censured for inactivity, I must retort with indignation on those whose intemperate measures and improvident counsels have betrayed him into his present situation. His situation reminds me, my Lords, of the answer of a French general in the civil wars of France-Monsieur Condé opposed to Monsieur Turenne. He was asked how it happened that he did not take his adversary prisoner, as he was often very near him. "J'ai peur," replied Condé, very honestly, "j'ai peur qu'il ne me prenne;" I'm afraid he'll take me. 9 If Lord Chatham's memory had not failed him in respect to these words, his taste and genius would have suggested a still finer turn. They were addressed, not by Virgil to Augustus Cesar, but to a parent advancing in arms against a child; and would, therefore, have been applied with double force and beauty to the contest of England against America. The words are taken from that splendid passage at the close of the sixth book of Virgil's Eneid, where Anchises is showing to Eneas, in the world of spirits, the souls of those who were When your Lordships look at the papers destined to pass within "the gates of life," and to transmitted us from America-when you con- swell, as his descendants, the long line of Roman sider their decency, firmness, and wisdom, you greatness. After pointing out the Decii and Drusii, can not but respect their cause, and wish to make Torquatus with his bloody ax, and Camillus with it your own. For myself, I must declare and his standards of glory, he comes at last to Julius Ceavow, that in all my reading and observation-sar, and Pompey, his son-in-law, preparing for the and it has been my favorite study-I have read Thucydides, and have studied and admired the master-states of the world-that for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion, 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 such men, to establish despotism over such a mighty continental nation, must be vain, must be fatal. We shall be forced ultimately to retract; let us retract while we can, not when we must. I say we must necessarily undo these violent, oppressive 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 consent to be taken for an idiot if they are not finally repealed. Avoid, then, this humiliating, disgraceful necessity. With a dignity becoming your exalted situation, make the first advances to concord, to peace, and The Boston Port Bill, and the act taking away the charter of Massachusetts. This prediction was verified. After a war of three years, a repeal of these acts was sent out to propitiate the Americans, but it was too late. battle of Pharsalia. As if the conflict might yet be Thou! thou, descended from Olympian Jove! present ruinous measures. Foreign war hang- | King, I will not say that they can alienate the ing over your heads by a slight and brittle affections of his subjects from his crown, but I thread; France and Spain watching your con- will affirm that they will make the crown not duct, and waiting for the maturity of your er-worth his wearing. I will not say that the King rors, with a vigilant eye to America and the is betrayed, but I will pronounce that the kingtemper of your colonies, more than to their own dom is undone. concerns, be they what they may. The motion, after a long debate, was lost by To conclude, my Lords, if the ministers thus persevere in misadvising and misleading the a vote of 68 to 18. SPEECH OF LORD CHATHAM ON A MOTION FOR AN ADDRESS TO THE CROWN, TO PUT A STOP TO HOS TILITIES IN AMERICA, DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS, MAY 30, 1777. INTRODUCTION. LORD CHATHAM had now been prevented by his infirmities from taking his place in the House of Lords for more than two years. Anxious to make one effort more for ending the contest with America, he made his appearance in the House on the 30th of May, 1777, wrapped in flannels, and supported on crutches, and moved an address to the King, recommending that speedy and effectual measures be taken to put an end to the war between the colonies and the mother country. He spoke as follows: SPEECH, &c. My Lords, this is a flying moment; perhaps but six weeks left to arrest the dangers that surround us. The gathering storm may break; it has already opened, and in part burst. It is difficult for government, after all that has passed, to shake hands with defiers of the King, defiers of the Parliament, defiers of the people. I am a defier of nobody; but if an end is not put to this war, there is an end to this country. I do not trust my judgment in my present state of health; this is the judgment of my better days -the result of forty years' attention to America. They are rebels; but for what? Surely not for defending their unquestionable rights! What have these rebels done heretofore? I remember when they raised four regiments on their own bottom, and took Louisbourg from the veteran troops of France. But their excesses have been great: I do not mean their panegyric; but must observe, in extenuation, the erroneous and infatuated counsels which have prevailed; the door to mercy and justice has been shut against them; but they may still be taken up upon the grounds of their former submission. [Referring to their petition.] I state to you the importance of America: it is a double market-the market of consumption, and the market of supply. This double market for millions, with naval stores, you are giving to your hereditary rival. America has carried you through four wars, and will now carry you to your death, if you don't take things in time. In the sportsman's phrase, when you have found yourselves at fault, you must try back. You have ransacked every corner of Lower Saxony; but forty thousand German boors never can conquer ten times the number of British freemen. You may ravage-you can not conquer; it is impossible; you can not conquer the Americans. You talk, my Lords, of your numerous friends among them to annihilate the Congress, and of your powerful forces to disperse their army. I might as well talk of driving them before me with this crutch! But what would you conquer · the map of America? I am ready to meet any general officer on the subject [looking at Lord Amherst.] What will you do out of the protection of your fleet? In the winter, if together, they are starved; and if dispersed, they are taken off in detail. I am experienced in spring hopes and vernal promises; I know what ministers throw out; but at last will come your equinoctial disappointment. You have got nothing in America but stations. You have been three years teaching them the art of war; they are apt scholars; and I will venture to tell your Lordships that the American gentry will make officers enough, fit to command the troops of all the European powers. What you have sent there are too many to make peace-too few to make war. If you conquer them, what then? You can not make them respect you; you can not make them wear your cloth; you will plant an invincible hatred in their breasts against you. Coming from the stock they do, they can never respect you. If ministers are founded in saying there is no sort of treaty with France, there is still a moment left; the point of honor is still safe. France must be as self-destroying as England, to make a treaty while you are giving her America, at the expense of twelve millions a year. The intercourse has produced every thing to France; and England, Old England, must pay for all. I have, at different times, made different propositions, adapted to the circumstances in which they were offered. The plan contained in the former bill is now impracticable; the present motion will tell you where you are, and what you have now to depend upon. It may produce a respectable division in America, and unanimity at home; it will give America an option; she has yet had no option. You have said, Lay down your arms; and she has given you the Spartan answer, “Come, take." [Here he read his motion.] "That an humble address be presented to his Majesty, most dutifully representing to his royal wisdom that this House is deeply penetrated with the view of impending ruin to the kingdom, from the continuation of an unnatural war against the British colonies in America; and most humbly to advise his Majesty to take the most speedy and effectual measures for putting a stop to such fatal hostilities, upon the only just and solid foundation, namely, the removal of accumulated grievances; and to assure his Majesty that this House will enter upon this great and necessary work with cheerfulness and dispatch, in order to open to his Majesty the only means of regaining the affections of the British colonies, and of securing to Great Britain the commercial advantages of these valuable possessions; fully persuaded that to heal and to redress will be more congenial to the goodness and magnanimity of his Majesty, and more prevalent over the hearts of generous and free-born subjects, than the rigors of chastisement and the horrors of a civil war, which hitherto have served only to sharpen resentments and consolidate union, and, if continued, must end in finally dissolving all ties between Great Britain and the colonies." [His Lordship rose again.] The proposal, he said, is specific. I thought this so clear, that I did not enlarge upon it. I mean the redress of all their grievances, and the right of disposing of their own money. This is to be done instantaneously. I will get out of my bed to move it on Monday. This will be the herald of peace; this will open the way for treaty; this will show Parliament sincerely disposed. Yet still much must be left to treaty. Should you conquer this people, you conquer under the cannon of France -under a masked battery then ready to open. The moment a treaty with France appears, you must declare war, though you had only five ships of the line in England; but France will defer a treaty as long as possible. You are now at the mercy of every little German chancery; and the pretensions of France will increase daily, so as to become an avowed party in either peace or We have tried for unconditional submission; try what can be gained by unconditional redress. Less dignity will be lost in the repeal, than in submitting to the demands of German chanceries. We are the aggressors. We have invaded them. We have invaded them as much as the Spanish Armada invaded England. Merey can not do harm; it will seat the King where he ought to be, throned on the hearts of his people; and millions at home and abroad, now employed in obloquy or revolt, would pray for him. [In making his motion for addressing the King, Lord Chatham insisted frequently and strongly on the absolute necessity of immediately making peace with America. Now, he said, was the crisis, before France was a party to the treaty. war. This was the only moment left before the fate of this country was decided. The French court, he observed, was too wise to lose the opportunity of effectually separating America from the dominions of this kingdom. War between France and Great Britain, he said, was not less probable because it had not yet been declared. It would be folly in France to declare it now, while America gave full employment to our arms, and was pouring into her lap her wealth and produce, the benefit of which she was enjoying in peace. He enlarged much on the importance of America to this country, which, in peace and in war, he observed, he ever considered as the great source of all our wealth and power. He then added (raising his voice), Your trade languishes, your taxes increase, your revenues diminish. France at this moment is securing and drawing to herself that commerce which created your seamen, fed your islands, &c. He reprobated the measures which produced, and which had been pursued in the conduct of the civil war, in the severest language; infatuated measures giving rise to, and still continuing a cruel, unnatural, self-destroying war. Success, it is said, is hoped for in this campaign. Why? Because our army will be as strong this year as it was last, when it was not strong enough. The notion of conquering America he treated with the greatest contempt. After an animated debate, in which the motion was opposed by Lords Gower, Lyttelton, Mansfield, and Weymouth, and the Archbishop of York, and supported by the Dukes of Grafton and Manchester, Lord Camden and Shelburne, and the Bishop of Peterborough, The Earl of Chatham again rose, and in reply to what had fallen from Lord Weymouth, said :] My Lords, I perceive the noble Lord neither apprehends my meaning, nor the explanation given by me to the noble Earl [Earl Gower] in the blue ribbon, who spoke early in the debate. I will, therefore, with your Lordships' permission, state shortly what I meant. My Lords, my motion was stated generally, that I might leave the question at large to be amended by your Lordships. I did not dare to point out the specific means. I drew the motion up to the best of my poor abilities; but I intended it only as the herald of conciliation, as the harbinger of peace to our afflicted colonies. But as the noble Lord seems to wish for something more specific on the subject, and through that medium seeks my particular sentiments, I will tell your Lordships very fairly what I wish for. I wish for a repeal of every oppressive act which your Lordships have passed since 1763. I would put our brethren in America precisely on the same footing they stood at that period. I would expect, that, being left at liberty to tax themselves, and dispose of their own property, they would, in return, contribute to the common burdens according to their means and abilities. I will move your Lordships for a bill of repeal, as the only means left to arrest that approaching destruction which threatens to overwhelm us. My Lords, I shall no |