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tacks of political disaffection working upon that enthusiasm. If you encourage and authorize it to fall on the synagogue, it will go from thence to the meetinghouse, and in the end to the palace. But let us be careful to check its further progress. The more zealous we are to sup port Christianity, the more vigilant should we be in maintaining toleration. If we bring back persecution, we bring back the anti-Christian spirit of popery; and when the spirit is here, the whole system will soon follow. Toleration is the basis of all public quiet. It is a charter of freedom given to the mind, more valuable, I think, than that which secures our persons and estates. Indeed, they are inseparably connected together; for, where the mind is not free, where the conscience is enthralled, there is no freedom. Spiritual tyranny puts on the galling chains; but civil tyranny is called in, to rivet and fix them. We see it in Spain, and many other countries; we have formerly both seen and felt it in England. By the blessing of God, we are now delivered from all kinds of oppression. Let us take care, that they may never return.

§ 25. LORD CHATHAM on Taxing America. (After saying that, though the ministers were men of fair characters, yet he could not give them his confidence, he thus proceeded :) --

"Confidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom: youth is the season of credulity. By comparing events with each other, reasoning from effects to causes, methinks I plainly discover the traces of an over-ruling influence. I have had the honour to serve the crown, and could I have submitted to influence, I might still have continued to serve; but I would not be responsible for others. I have no local attachments. It is indifferent to me whether a man was rocked in his cradle on this side or that side of the Tweed. I countenanced and protected merit wherever it was to be found. It is my boast that I was the first minister who sought for it in the mountains of the north. I called it forth, and drew into your service, an hardy, an intrepid race of men, who were once dreaded as the inveterate enemies of the state. When I ceased to serve his Majesty as a minister, it was not the country of the man, by which I was moved, but the man of that country held principles incompatible with

freedom. It is a long time, Mr. Speaker, since I have attended in parliament. When the resolution was taken in this House to tax America, I was ill in bed. If I could have endured to have been carried in my bed, so great was the agitation of my mind for the consequences, I would have solicited some kind hand to have laid me down on this floor, to have borne my testimony against it. It is my opinion that this kingdom has no right to lay a tax upon the colonies. At the same time, I assert the authority of this kingdom to be sovereign and supreme in every circumstance of government and legislation whatsoever. Taxation is no part of the governing or legislative power: the taxes are a voluntary gift and grant of the commons alone. The concurrence of the Peers and of the Crown is necessary only as a form of law. This house represents the Commons of Great Britain. When in this house we give and grant; therefore we give and grant what is our own; but can we give and grant the property of the commons of America? It is an absurdity in terms. There is an idea in some, that the colonies are virtually represented in The idea of virtual representation is the this house. I would fain know by whom? most contemptible that ever entered into the head of man: it does not deserve a serious refutation. The commons in America, represented in their several assemblies, have invariably exercised this constitutional right of giving and granting their own money: they would have been slaves, if they had not enjoyed it. At the same time this kingdom has ever possessed the power of legislative and commercial control. The colonies acknowledged your authorities in all things, with the sole exception that you shall not take their money out of their pockets without their consent. Here would I draw the line, quam ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum.'

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ercise: it is a liberty by which the gentleman who calumniates it might have profited. He ought to have desisted from his project. We are told America is obstinate---America is almost in open rebellion. Sir, I REJOICE that America has resisted---three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest. I came not here armed at all points with law cases and acts of parliament; with the statute book doubled down in dogs' ears to defend the cause of liberty; but for the defence of liberty upon a general constitutional principle; it is a ground on which I dare meet any man: I will not debate points of law; but what, after all, do the cases of Chester and Durham prove, but that, under the most arbitrary reigns, parliament were ashamed of taxing a people without their consent, and allowed them representatives? A higher and better example might have been taken from Wales; that principality was never taxed by parliament till it was incorporated with England. We are told of many classes of persons in this kingdom not represented in parliament; but are they not all virtually represented as Englishmen resident within the realm? Have they not the option, many of them at least, of becoming themselves electors? Every inhabitant of this kingdom is necessarily included in the general system of representation. It is a misfortune that more are not actually represented. The honourable gentleman boasts of his bounties to America. Are not these bounties intended finally for the benefit of this kingdom? If they are not, he has misapplied the national treasures. I am no courtier of America. I maintain that parliament has a right to bind, to restrain America. Our legislative power over the colonies is sovereign and supreme. The honourable gentleman tells us, he understands not the difference between internal and external taxation; but surely there is a plain difference between taxes levied for the purpose of raising a revenue, and duties imposed for the regulation of commerce. When, said the honourable gentleman, were the colonies emancipated? At what time, say I in answer, were they made slaves? I speak from accurate knowledge, when I say, that the profits to Great Britain from the trade of the Colonies, through all its branches, is two millions per annum. This is the

fund which carried you triumphantly through the last war; this is the price America pays you for her protection; and shall a miserable financier come with a boast that he can fetch a pepper-corn into the exchequer, at the loss of millions to the nation? I know the valour of your troops; I know the skill of your officers; I know the force of this country; but in such a cause, your success would be hazardous. America, if she fell, would fall like the strong man: she would embrace the pillars of the state, and pull down the constitution with her. Is this your boasted peace? Not to sheathe the sword in the scabbard, but to sheathe it in the bowels of your countrymen? The Americans have been wronged; they have been driven to madness by injustice. Will you punish them for the madness you have occasioned? No; let this country be the first to resume its prudence and temper. I will pledge myself for the colonies, that, on their part, animosity and resentment will cease. Let affection be the only bond of coercion.

Upon the whole I will beg leave to tell the House in a few words, what is really my opinion. It is that the Stamp Act be repealed--ABSOLUTELY--TOTALLY-and IMMEDIATELY.

§ 27. LORD CHATHAM on the Bill for quartering Soldiers in America.

If, my lords, we take a transient view of those motives which induced the ancestors of our fellow-subjects in America to leave their native country, to encounter the innumerable difficulties of the unexplored regions of the western world, our astonishment at the present conduct of their descendants will naturally subside. There was no corner of the globe to which they would not have fled, rather than submit to the slavish and tyrannical spirit which prevailed at that period in their native country; and viewing them in their originally forlorn and now flourishing state, they may be cited as illustrious instances to instruct the world, what great exertions mankind will naturally make, when left to the free exercise of their own powers. Notwithstanding my intention to give my hearty negative to the question now before you, I condemn, my lords, in the severest manner, the turbulent, and unwarrantable conduct of the Americans in some instances, particularly in the late riots at Boston; but, my lords, the mode

which has been pursued to bring them back to a sense of their duty, is so diametrically opposite to every principle of sound policy, as to excite my utmost astonishment. You have involved the guilty and the innocent in one common punishment, and avenge the crimes of a few lawless depredators upon the whole body of the inhabitants. My lords, the different provinces of America, in the excess of their gratitude for the repeal of the Stamp Act, seemed to vie with each other in expressions of loyalty and duty; but the moment they perceived your intention to tax them was renewed under a pretence of serving the East India Company, their resentment got the ascendant of their moderation, and hurried them into actions which their cooler reason would abhor. But, my lords, from the whole complexion of the late proceedings, I cannot but incline to think that administration has purposely irritated them into these violent acts, in order to gratify their own malice and revenge. What else could induce them to dress taxation, the father of American sedition, in the robes of an East India director, but to break in upon that mutual peace and harmony, which then so happily subsisted between the colonies and the mother country? My lords, it has always been my fixed and unalterable opinion, and I will carry it with me to the grave, that this country had no right under heaven to tax America. It is contrary to all the principles of justice and civil policy: it is contrary to that essential, that unalterable right in nature, engrafted into the British constitution as a fundamental law, 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. Pass then, my lords, instead of these harsh and severe edicts, an amnesty over their errors: by measures of lenity and affection allure them to their duty: act the part of a generous and forgiving parent. A period may arrive when this parent may stand in need of every assistance she can receive from a grateful and affectionate offspring. The welfare of this country, my lords, has ever been my greatest joy, and under all the vicissitudes of my life has afforded me the most pleasing consolation. Should the all-disposing hand of Providence prevent me from contributing my poor and feeble aid in the day of her distress, my prayers shall be ever

for her prosperity. Length of days be in her right hand, and in her left hand riches and honour. May her ways be ways of pleasantness; and all her paths be peace!"

§ 28. LORD CHATHAM for the immediate removal of the Troops from Boston in America.

On the 20th of January 1775, the plan of absolute coercion being resolved upon by the ministry, Lord Dartmouth, the secretary of state for America, laid before the Peers the official papers belonging to his department, when Lord CHATHAM, though sinking under bodily infirmities, made the following powerful effort, before the die was finally cast, to avert the calamity, the danger, and the ruin, which he saw impending :

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Too well apprized of the contents of the papers, now at last laid before the House, I shall not take up your lordships' time in tedious and fruitless investigations, but shall seize the first moment to open the door of reconcilement; for every moment of delay is a moment of danger. 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, America, my lords, cannot be reconciled, she ought not to be reconciled to this country, till the troops of Britain are withdrawn from the continent; they are a bar to all confidence; they are a source of perpetual irritation; they threaten a fatal catastrophe. How can America trust you with the bayonet at her breast? How can she suppose that you mean less than bondage or death? I therefore, my lords, move, that an humble address be presented to his Majesty, most humbly to advise and beseech his Majesty, that, in order to open the way towards an happy settlement of the dangerous troubles in America, it may graciously please his Majesty to transmit orders to General GAGE for removing his Majesty's forces from the town of Boston. I know not, my lords, who advised the present measures; I know not who advises to a perseverance and enforcement of them; but this I will say, that the authors of such advice ought to answer it at their utmost peril. I wish, my lords, not to lose a day in this urgent,

pressing crisis: an hour now lost in allay-
ing ferments in America may produce
years of calamity. Never will I desert,
in any stage of its progress, the conduct of
this momentous business. Unless fettered
to my bed by the extremity of sickness, I
will give it unremitting attention. I will
knock at the gates of this sleeping and
confounded ministry, and will, if it be
possible, rouse them to a sense of their
danger. The recall of your army I urge
as necessarily preparatory to the restora-
tion of your peace. By this it will ap-
pear that you are disposed to treat ami-
cably and equitably, and to consider, re-
vise, and repeal, if it should be found
necessary, as I affirm it will, those vio-
lent acts and declarations which have dis-
seminated confusion throughout the em-
pire. Resistance to these acts was neces-
sary, and therefore just: and your vain
declarations of the omnipotence of parlia-
ment, and your imperious doctrines of
the necessity of submission, will be
found equally impotent to convince or
enslave America, who feels that tyranny
is equally intolerable, whether it be ex-
ercised by an individual part of the Le-
gislature, or by the collective bodies
which compose it.
The means of enforc-
ing this thraldom are found to be as ri-
diculous and weak in practice as they are
unjust in principle. Conceiving of Ge-
neral Gage as a man of humanity and un-
derstanding; entertaining, as I ever must,
the highest respect and affection for the
British troops, I feel the most anxious
sensibility for their situation, pining in in-
glorious inactivity. You may call them
an army of safety and defence, 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. Allay then the ferment
prevailing in America by removing the
obnoxious hostile cause. If you delay
concession till your vain hope shall be ac-
complished of triumphantly dictating re-
conciliation, you delay for ever: the force
of this country would be disproportion-
ately exerted against a brave, generous,
and united people, with arms in their
hands, and courage in their hearts-three
millions of people, the genuine descen-
dants of a valiant and pious ancestry,
driven to those deserts by the narrow
maxims of a superstitious tyranny. But
is the spirit of persecution never to be ap-
peased? 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 what history has related, or poetry has feigned?

-Rhadamanthus habet durissima regna,

Castigatque, auditque dolos.

But the Americans must not be heard; they have been condemned unheard. The indiscriminate hand of vengeance has devoted thirty thousand British subjects of all ranks, ages, and descriptions, to one common ruin. You may, no doubt, destroy their cities; you may cut them off from the superfluities, perhaps the conveniences of life; but my lords, they will still despise your power, for they have yet remaining their woods and their liberty. What, though you march from town to town, from province to province; though you should be able to enforce a temporary and local submission, how shall you be able to secure the obedience of the country you leave behind you, in your progress of eighteen hundred miles of continent, animated with the same spirit of liberty and of resistance? This universal opposition to your arbitrary system of taxation might have been foreseen; it was obvious, from the nature of things, and from the nature of man, and, above all, from the confirmed habits of thinking, from the spirit of whiggism, flourishing in America. The spirit which now pervades America, is the same which formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and ship money in this country-the same spirit which roused all England to action at the revolution, and which established at a remote æra your liberties on the basis of that great fundamental maxim of the constitution, that no subject of England shall be taxed but by his own consent. What shall oppose this spirit, aided by the congenial flame glowing in the breast of every generous Briton? To maintain this principle is the common cause of the whigs on the other side of the Atlantic, and on this; it is liberty to liberty engaged. In this great cause they are immoveably allied: it is the alliance of God and nature, immutable, eternal, fixed as the firmament of heaven. As an Englishman, I recognise to the Americans their supreme unalterable right of property. As an American, I would equally recognise to England her supreme right of regulating commerce and navigation. This distinction is

involved in the abstract nature of things: property is private, individual, absolute: the touch of another annihilates it. Trade is an extended and complicated consideration it reaches as far as ships can sail, or winds can blow: it is a vast and various machine. To regulate the numberless movements of its several parts, and to combine them in one harmonious effect, for the good of the whole, requires the superintending wisdom and energy of the supreme power of the empire. On this grand practical distinction, then, let us rest: taxation is theirs; commercial regulation is ours. As to the metaphysical refinements, attempting to shew that the Americans are equally free from legislative controul and commercial restraint, as from taxation for the purpose of revenue, I pronounce them futile, frivolous, groundless. When your lordships have perused the papers transmitted us from America, when you consider the dignity, the firmness, and the wisdom with which the Americans have acted, you cannot but respect their cause. History, my lords, has been my favourite study; and in the celebrated writings of antiquity have I often admired the patriotism of Greece and Rome; but, my lords, I must declare and avow, that, in the master-states of the world, I know not the people, nor the senate, who, in such a complication of difficult circumstances, can stand in preference to the Delegates of America, assembled in General Congress at Philadelphia. 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 futile. Can such a national principled union be resisted by the tricks of office or ministerial manœuvres ? Heaping papers on your table, or counting your majorities 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, in spite of all their confidence and all their manoeuvres, shall be compelled to hide their heads. But it is not repealing this or that act of parliament; it is not repealing a piece of parchment, that can restore America to your bosom: you must repeal her fears and resentments, and then you may hope for her love and gratitude. But now, insulted with an armed force, irritated

I

with an hostile array before her eyes, her concessions, if you could force them, would be suspicious and insecure. But it is more than evident that you cannot force them to your unworthy terms of submission: it is impossible: we ourselves shall be forced ultimately to retract: let us retract while we can, not when we must.

we shall one day be forced to undo these I repeat it, my lords, violent acts of oppression: 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 IDEOT if they are not repealed. Avoid then this humiliating, disgraceful necessity. With a dignity becoming your exalted situation, make the first advances to concord, to peace, and to happiness. Concession comes with better grace and more salutary effect from superior power: it reconciles superiority of power with the feelings of man, and establishes solid confidence on the foundations of affection and gratitude. On the other hand, every danger and every hazard impend to deter you froin perseverance in the present ruinous measures: foreign war hanging thread-France and Spain watching your over your heads by a slight and brittle 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.
clude, my lords, if the ministers thus
To con-
persevere in misadvising and misleading
alienate the affections of his subjects from
the King, I will not say, that they can
the crown not worth his wearing. I will
the crown; but I affirm, they will make
I will pronounce, that the KINGDOM is
not say that the KING is BETRAYED, but

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§ 29.

LORD CHATHAM on moving an Amendment to the Address.

On the 20th of November, 1777, just at the time that government had received some dispatches of an unfavourable nature from General BURGOYNE, but not extending to the catastrophe of Saratoga, parliament assembled; and the speech from the throne expressed not only a con. fidence that the spirit and intrepidity of with important success; but "a dehis Majesty's forces would be attended

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