I can no more comprehend the policy, than acknowledge the justice of your deliberations.-Where is your force, what are your armies, how are they to be recruited, and how supported? The single province of Massachusetts has, at this moment, thirty thousand men, well trained and disciplined, and can bring, in case of emergency, ninety thousand into the field; and, doubt not, they will do it, when all that is dear is at stake, when forced to defend their liberty and property against their cruel oppressors. The right honorable gentleman with the blue riband assures us that ten thousand of our troops and four Irish regiments, will make their brains turn in the head a little, and strike them aghast with terror? But where does the author of this exquisite scheme propose to send his army? Boston, perhaps, you may lay in ashes, or it may be made a strong garrison; but the province will be lost to you. You will hold Boston as you hold Gibraltar, in the midst of a country which will not be yours; the whole American continent will remain in the power of your enemies. The ancient story of the philosopher Calanus and the Indian hide, will be verified; where you tread, it will be kept down; but it will rise the more in all other parts. Where your fleets and armies are stationed, the possession will be secured while they continue; but all the rest will be lost. In the great scale of empire, you will decline I fear, from the decision of this day; and the Americans will rise to independence, to power, to all the greatness of the most renowned states; for they build on the solid basis of general public liberty.

I dread the effects of the present resolution; I shudder at our injustice and cruelty; I tremble for the consequences of our imprudence. You will urge the Americans to desperation. They will certainly defend their property and liberties, with the spirit of freemen, with the spirit our ancestors did, and I hope we should exert on a like occasion. They will sooner declare themselves independent, and risk every consequence of such a contest, than submit to the galling yoke which administration is preparing for them. Recollect Philip II. king of Spain: remember the Seven Provinces, and the duke of Alva. It was deliberated, in the council of the monarch, what measures should be adopted respecting the Low Countries; some were disposed for clemency, others advised rigor; the second prevailed. The duke of Alva was victorious, it is true, wherever he appeared; but his cruelties sowed the teeth of the serpent. The beggars of the Briel, as they were called by the Spaniards, who despised them as you now despise the Americans, were those however, who first shook the power of Spain to the centre. And, comparing the probabilities of success in the contest of that day, with the chances in that of the present, are they so favorable to England as they were then to Spain? This none will pretend. You all know, however, the issue of that sanguinary conflict-how that powerful empire was rent asunder, and severed forever into many parts. Profit, then, by the experience of the past, if you

would avoid a similar fate. But you would declare the Americans rebels; and to your injustice and oppression, you add the most opprobrious language, and the most insulting scoffs. If you persist in your resolution, all hope of a reconciliation is extinct. The Americans will triumph-the whole continent of North America will be dismembered from Great Britain, and the wide arch of the raised empire fall. But I hope the just vengeance of the people will overtake the authors of these pernicious counsels, and the loss of the first province of the empire be speedily followed by the loss of the heads of those ministers who first invented them.

SPEECH ON A MOTION FOR REMOVING TROOPS FROM

BOSTON.

WILLIAM PITT-EARL OF CHATHAM.

House of Lords, December 20, 1775.

MY LORDS-After more than six weeks posession of the papers now before you, on a subject so momentous, at a time when the fate of this nation hangs on every hour, the ministry have at length condescended to submit, to the consideration of the House, intelligence from America, with which your lordships and the public have been long and fully acquainted.

The measures of last year, my lords, which have produced the present alarming state of America, were founded upon misrepresentation-they were violent, precipitate and vindictive. The nation was told, that it was only a faction in Boston, which opposed all lawful government; that an unwarrantable injury had been done to private property, for which the justice of Parliament was called upon, to order reparation; that the least appearance of firmness would awe the Americans into submission, and upon only passing the Rubicon we should be fine clade victor.

That the people might choose their representatives, under the impression of those misrepresentations, the Parliament was precipitately dissolved. Thus the nation was to be rendered instrumental in executing the vengeance of administration on that injured, unhappy, traduced eople.

But now, my lords, we find, that instead of suppressing the opposition of the faction at Boston, these measures have spread it over the whole continent. They have united that whole people, by the most indissoluble of all bands-intolerable wrongs. The just retribution is an indiscriminate, unmerciful proscription of the innocent with the guilty, unheard and untried. The bloodless victory, is an impotent general, with his dishonored army, trusting solely to the pick-axe and

the spade, for security against the just indignation of an injured and insulted people.

My lords I am happy that a relaxation of my infirmities permits me to seize this earliest opportunity of offering my poor advice to save this unhappy country, at this moment tottering to its ruin. But as I have not the honor of access to his Majesty, I will endeavor to trans mit to him, through the constitutional channel of this House, my ideas on American business, to rescue him from the misadvice of his present ministers. I congratulate your lordships that that business is at last entered upon, by the noble lords (Lord Dartmouth) laying the papers before you. As I suppose your lordships are too well apprised of their contents, I hope I am not premature in submitting to you my present motion (reads the motion). I wish my lords not to lose a day in this urging present crisis. An hour now lost in allaying the ferment in America, may produce years of calamity: but, for my own part, I will not desert for a moment the conduct of this mighty business from the first to the last, unless nailed to my bed by the extremity of sickness; I will give it unremitting attention: I will knock at the door of this sleeping, or confounded ministry, and will rouse them to a sense of their important danger. When I state the importance of the colonies to this country, and the magnitude of danger hanging over this country from the present plan of misadministration practised against them, I desire not to be understood to argue for a reciprocity of indulgence between England and America: I contend not for indulgence, but justice, to America; and I shall ever contend that the Americans owe obedience to us, in a limited degree; they owe obedience to our ordinances of trade and navigation; but let the line be skilfully drawn between the objects of those ordinances, 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 to commercial restraints, as from taxation for revenue, as being unrepresented here, I pronounce them futile, frivolous and groundless.-Property is, in its nature, single as an atom. It is indivisible, can belong to one only, and cannot be touched but by his own consent. The law that attempts to alter this disposal of it annihilates it.

When I urge this measure for recalling the troops from Boston, I urge it on this pressing principle-that it is necessarily preparatory to the restoration 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 violen acts and declarations which have disseminated confusion throughout your empire. Resistance to your acts, was as 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 enslave your fellow subjects in America, who feel that tyranny, whether ambitioned by an individual part of the legislature, or by the bodies which compose it, is equally intolerable to British principles.

As to the means of enforcing this thraldom, they are found to be as ridiculous and weak in practice, as they were unjust in principle. Indeed I cannot but feel, with the most anxious sensibility, for the situa tion 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 shall, the highest respect, the warmest love, for the British troops. Their situation is truly unworthy, pent 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 impotence and contempt-and to render the folly equal to the disgrace, they are an army of irritation. I do not mean to censure the inactivity of the troops. It is prudent and necessary inaction. But it is a mis. erable condition, where disgrace is prudence; and where it is necessary to be contemptible. This tameness, however disgraceful, ought not to be blamed, as I am surprised to hear is done by these ministers. The first drop of blood, shed in a civil and unnatural war, would be an immedicabile vulnus. It would entail hatred and contention between the two people, from generation to generation. Woe be to him who sheds the first, the unexpiable drop of blood in an impious war, with a people contending in the great cause of public liberty. I will tell you plainly, my lords, no son of mine nor any one over whom I have influence, shall ever draw his sword upon his fellow subjects. I therefore urge and conjure your lordships immediately to adopt this conciliatory measure. I will pledge myself for its immediately producing conciliatory effects, from its being well timed: But if you delay, till your vain hope of triumphantly dictating the terms shall be accomplished-you delay forever. And, even admitting that this hope, which in truth is desperate, should be accomplished, what will you gain by a victorious imposition of 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 corps. 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 these deserts by the narrow maxims of a superstitious tyranny. And is the spirit of tyrannous 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 inflictions of the most oppressive and unexampled severity, beyond the accounts of history or the description of poetry? "Rhadamanthus habet durrissima regna, castigatque auditque." So says the wisest statesman and politician. But the Bostonians have been condemned unheard. The discriminating hand of vengeance has lumped together innocent and guilty; with all the formalities of hostility, has blocked up the town, and reduced to beggary and famine 30,000 inhabitants. But his Majesty is advised that the union of America cannot last.-Ministers have more eyes than I, and should have more ears, but from all the information I have been able to procure, I can pronounce it a union solid, permanent and effectual. Ministers may satisfy themselves and delude the public with the reports of what they call commercial bodies in America. They are not commercial. They are your packers and factors; they live upon nothing, for I call commission nothing: I mean the ministerial authority for their American intelligence. The runners of government, who are paid for their intelligence. But these are not the men, nor this the influence to be considered in America, when we estimate the firmness of their union. Even to extend the question, and to take in the really mercantile circle, will be totally inadequate to the consideration. Trade indeed increases the wealth and glory of a country; but its real strength and stamina are to be looked for among the cultivators of the land. In their simplicity of life is founded the simplicity of virtue, the integrity and courage of freedom. Those 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 American 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 ever has 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 this 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, whilst they had, what, my lords?-Their woods and liberty. name of my authority, if I am called upon, will authenticate the opinion irrefragably.

The

If illegal violences have been, as it is said, committed in America, prepare the way, open a door of possibility, for acknowledgment and