FOLLY OF ATTEMPTING TO CONQUER AMERICA.

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which envelop it; and display, in its full danger and true colors, the ruin that is brought to our doors.

As

This, my lords, is our duty. It is the proper function of this noble assembly, sitting, as we are, upon our honors in this house, the hereditary council of the crown. Who is the minister-where is the minister, that has dared to suggest to the throne the contrary unconstitutional language this day delivered from it? The accustomed language from the throne has been application to parliament for advice, and a reliance on its constitutional advice and assistance. it is the right of parliament to give, so it is the duty of the crown to ask it. But on this day, and in this extreme momentous exigency, no reliance is placed on our constitutional counsels! no advice is asked from the sober and enlightened care of parliament! but the crown, from itself, and by itself, declares an unalterable determination to pursue measures-and what measures, my lords? The measures that have produced the imminent perils that threaten us; the measures that have brought ruin to our doors.

Can the minister of the day now expect a continuance of support in this ruinous infatuation? Can parliament be so dead to its dignity and its duty, as to be thus deluded into the loss of the one, and the violation of the other? To give an unlimited credit and support for the steady perseverance in measures not proposed for our parliamentary advice, but dictated and forced upon us-in measures, I say, my lords, which have reduced this flourishing empire to ruin and contempt! "But yesterday, and England might have stood against the world; now none so poor as to do her reverence." I use the words of a poet; but though it be poetry, it is no fiction. It is a shameful truth, that not only the power and strength of this country are wasting away and expiring; but her well-earned glories, her true honor, and substantial dignity are sacrificed.

Ex. LXIV.—FOLLY OF ATTEMPTING TO CONQUER AMERICA.

Speech in Parliament, Nov. 18, 1777.

EARL OF CHATHAM,

FRANCE, my lords, has insulted you; she has encouraged and sustained America, and whether America be wrong or

right, the dignity of this country ought to spurn at the officious insult of French interference. The ministers and ambassadors of those who are called rebels and enemies, are in Paris, in Paris they transact the reciprocal interests of America and France. Can there be a more mortifying insult? Can even our ministers sustain a more humiliating disgrace! Do they dare to resent it? Do they presume even to hint a vindication of their honor and the dignity of the state by requiring the dismission of the plenipotentiaries of America? Such is the degradation to which they have reduced the glories of England.

The people whom they affect to call contemptible rebels, but whose growing power has at last obtained the name of enemies; the people with whom they have engaged this country in war, and against whom they now command our implicit support in every measure of desperate hostility, this people, despised as rebels, or acknowledged as enemies, are abetted against you, supplied with every military store, their interests consulted, and their ambassadors entertained, by your inveterate enemy! and our ministers dare not interpose with dignity or effect. Is this the honor of a great kingdom? Is this the indignant spirit of England, who "but yesterday" gave law to the house of Bourbon? My lords, the dignity of nations demands a decisive conduct in a situation like this.

Even when the greatest prince that perhaps this country ever saw, filled our throne, the requisition of a Spanish general on a similar subject was attended to, and complied with. For, on the spirited remonstrance of the Duke of Alva, Elizabeth found herself obliged to refuse the Flemish exiles all countenance, support, or even entrance into her dominions; and the Count le Marque, with his few desperate followers, was expelled the kingdom. Happening to arrive at the Brille, and finding it weak in defence, they made themselves masters of the place; and this was the foundation of the United Provinces.

My lords, this ruinous and ignominious situation, where we can not act with success, nor suffer with honor, calls upon us in the strongest and loudest language of truth, to rescue the ear of majesty from the delusions which surround it. The desperate state of our army abroad is in part known; no man thinks more highly of it than I do. I love and honor the English troops. I know their virtues and their valor. I know they can achieve anything except im

possibilities; and I know that the conquest of English America is an impossibility. You can not, I venture to say it, you can not conquer America.

Your armies in the last war effected everything that could be effected, and what was it? It cost a numerous army, under the command of a most able general, now a noble lord in this house, a long and laborious campaign, to expel five thousand Frenchmen from French America. My lords, you can not conquer America. What is your present situation there? We do not know the worst; but we know, that in three campaigns we have done nothing and suffered much. Besides the sufferings, perhaps total loss, of the northern force, the best appointed army that ever took the field, commanded by Sir William Howe, has retired from the American lines. He was obliged to relinquish his attempt, and with great delay and danger to adopt a new and distant plan of operations.

We shall soon know, and in any event have reason to lament, what may have happened since. As to conquest, therefore, my lords, I repeat, it is impossible. You may swell every expense, and every effort, still more extravagantly; pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow; traffic and barter with every little pitiful German prince, that sends and sells his subjects to the shambles of a foreign despot; your efforts are forever vain and impotent; doubly so from this mercenary aid upon which you rely. For it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your enemies, to overrun them with the mercenary sons of rapine and plunder; devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I would lay down my arms never, NEVER, NEVER.

Ex. LXV.-A HYMN.

Written 1778.

WILLIAM BILLINGS.

LET tyrants shake their iron rod,
And slavery clank her galling chains;
We fear them not; we trust in God-
New England's God forever reigns.

The foe comes on with haughty stride;
Our troops advance with martial noise;
Their veterans flee before our youth,
And generals yield to beardless boys.

When God inspired us for the fight,
Their ranks were broken-fled their host;
Their ships were shattered in our sight,
Or swiftly driven from our coast.

What grateful offering shall we bring?
What shall we render to the Lord?
Loud hallelujahs let us sing,

And praise his name on every chord.

Ex. LXVI.-ON THE CHOICE OF A WAR WITH AMERICA OR WITH FRANCE.

Speech in Parliament, February 17, 1778.

CHARLES JAMES FOX.*

You have now two wars before you, of which you must choose one, for both you can not support. The war against America has been hitherto carried on by her alone, unassisted by any ally; yet notwithstanding she stood alone, you have been obliged uniformly to increase your exertions, and to push your efforts to the extent of your power, without being able to bring it to any favorable issue. You have exerted all your strength hitherto without effect, and you can not now divide a force already found inadequate to its object; the war with America is against your own countrymen; every blow you strike there is against yourselves, even though you should be able (which you never will be) to force them to submit.

The war of the Americans is a war of passion; it is of a nature to be supported by the most powerful virtues-love of liberty and of country-and at the same time by those passions in the human heart which give courage, strength and

*Fox was one of the most renowned of English Parliamentary orators; and, like Chatham, Burke, and Pitt, his abilities were always enlisted on the side of the Americans. He died in the same year with William Pitt, 1806.

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perseverance to man; the spirit of revenge for the injuries you have done them, of retaliation for the hardships inflicted on them, and of opposition to the unjust powers you would have exercised over them; everything combines to animate them to this war, and such a war is without end; for whatever obstinacy enthusiasm ever inspired man with, you now have to contend against in America. No matter what gives birth to that enthusiasm-whether the name of religion or of liberty-the effects are the same; it inspires a spirit that is unconquerable, and solicitous to undergo difficulties and dangers; and as long as there is a man in America, so long will you have him against you in the field. The war with France is of another sort; it is a war of interest. It was interest that first induced her to engage in it, and it is by that same interest she will measure its continuance.

Nobody is more sensible than I am of the necessity of unanimity at this juncture; and I wish I had the opportunity afforded me of supporting the ministry with justice to the country; but that, Sir, can never be the case with the present; I know them too well to do so, and shall feel it my duty to give them every opposition in my power. I know that doing so at this time will be called clogging the wheels of government at a time when they ought to be assisted by every man; but, Sir, they have reduced us to that paradoxical situation that I must choose one of two evils, for they have not left us the power of choosing any good. It is a paradox in fact, and I will choose that part which seems to me, though bad, the best; I must, consequently, use all my. exertions to remove the present ministry, by using every means in my power to clog them in this House, to clog them out of this House, and to clog everything they engage in while they continue in office; and I will do so because I consider this course to be less ruinous than to submit any longer to their blundering system of politics.

Ex. LXVII.-AMERCIA LOST TO GREAT BRITAIN.

Speech in Parliament, Nov. 26, 1778.

JOHN WILKES.

THE honorable gentleman, Sir, has told us that the Americans were determined to separate their rights from