over the calamities of his country: but to fee the noble lord stand up in the face of day, and hear him impudently vindicate the measures which had given birth to them-this was most of all alarming-this it was which froze his blood and harrowed up his foul!" Mr. Burke ridiculed with keen and exquifite poignancy the ftrefs fo abfurdly laid on the fuppofed original and inherent right of Great Britain to exercise taxation over America. "Oh ineftimable right!" exclaimed Mr. Burke, "Oh wonderful tranfcendent right! the affertion of which has coft this country thirteen provinces, fix iflands, 100,000 lives, and feventy millions of money! Oh invaluable right! for the fake of which we have facrificed our rank among nations, our importance abroad, and our happiness at home! Oh right! more dear to us than our existence; which has already coft us fo much, and which feems. likely to coft us our all!-Infatuated man!" cried Mr. Burke, fixing his eye on the minifter: «Miserable and undone country! not to know that the claim of right, without the power of enforcing it, is nugatory and idle! We had a right to tax America,' the noble lord tells us, therefore we ought to tax America.' This is the profound logic which comprises the whole chain of his reasoning. Not inferior to this was the wifdom of him who refolved to fhear the wolf.

wolf. What! fhear a wolf? Have you con

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fidered the resistance, the difficulty, the danger

of the attempt? No,' fays the madman, I have confidered nothing but the right. Man has a right of dominion over the beafts of the foreft, and therefore I will shear the wolf.' How wonderful that a nation could be thus deluded! But the noble lord dealt in cheats and delufions. They were the daily traffic of his invention. And he would continue to play off his cheats on that house fo long as he thought them neceffary to his purpose, and fo long as he had money enough at command to bribe gentlemen to pretend that they believed him. But a black and bitter day of reckoning would furely come; and whenever that day came, he trufted that he fhould be able, by a PARLIAMENTARY IMPEACHMENT, to bring upon the heads of the authors of our calamities the punishment they deferved."

An amendment of the fame import with that propofed by Mr. Fox was moved in the upper house by the earl of Shelburne, and fupported by the duke of Richmond, who declared "the misfortunes of this country to be owing to that wretched fyftem of government which had been early adopted in the reign of his prefent majefty, and to the influence of that INTERIOR CABINET which (he faid) had been the ruin of this coun

try;" and he recalled to the recollection of the houfe the memorable declaration of the late earl of Chatham, that he was duped and deceived, and that he had not been ten days in the cabinet before he felt the ground rotten under his feet.'

In both houfes, however, the addreffes were carried by great majorities, and a most melancholy and alarming profpect presented itself to the nation, of a fatal perfeverance in a war which, from an involuntary and irrefiftible conviction univerfally impreffed, was now regarded as desperate, and paffionately deprecated as tending to certain and remedilefs ruin.

In a very few days, a motion being made by fir Grey Cooper for the house to refolve itfelf into a committee of supply, a vehement debate arose. Mr. Fox, in the courfe of a moft animated fpeech, afked "if minifters would give any fatisfactory affurance to the house, that the military forces which should hereafter be fent across the Atlantic would be employed more fuccefsfully or honorably than thofe which had already been fent thither? Did the American fecretary wish to dispatch a third army to America, that general Washington might a third time receive them as prifoners of war? Did he wish that more British troops fhould be devoted to flaughter, captivity, and difgrace? Notwithstanding the defeat and dishonor which had attended the meafures of administration,

ministration, they had yet difcovered no figns of humiliation or penitence. Inftead of acknowledging that they turned their eyes with inquietude and shame upon the criminal expenditure of fruitless millions, they did not blush to move for an increase of grants, that they might profecute, till ruin fhould have stopped their infamous career, hoftilities which were the refult of barbarous ambition, of implacable malevolence, of a deteftation of liberty, of a contempt for every principle of juftice, equity, and honor."

The ministers were fo vigorously pushed in this debate, and feemed fo utterly incapable of defending themselves or their measures, that it was probably a welcome surprise to them, to find in their favor, on the divifion, 172 voices to 77.

It being understood that preparations were making for another embarkation of troops from Ireland to America, a very important motion was on the 12th of December made by fir James Lowther, "That it be refolved by the house, that the war carried on against the colonies and plantations of North America had been ineffectual to the purposes for which it was undertaken and that it was also the opinion of this house that all farther attempts to reduce the Americans to obedience by force must be injurious to this country, by weakening her powers to refift her antient and confederated enemies." In fupport

of

of this motion, which was indeed the plain dictate of common fenfe, the mover observed, "that the late fpeech from the throne had given à juft. alarm to the nation-it had fhewn them that the minifters were determined to persevere in the American war-that more blood and more money were to be lavifhed in this fatal conteft-the men invested with the powers of government derived no advantage from experience-the furrender of one army only gave them spirit to risk a fecond, and the furrender of the second only inftigated them to venture a third. There was no end of lofs nor of madnefs. The unexampled ignorance and mifconduct of the ministry were now vifible to all the world. It was therefore become the indifpenfable duty of that houfe to come to fome folemn refolution, in order to mark and define their idea of the American war, and to convince their conftituents that they were awake to the real fituation of the country.'

The motion was feconded by Mr. Powys, member for Northamptonshire, who acknowledged, "that a variety of pretexts infidiously advanced by the minifters, and too credulously received by the majority of that houfe, had feduced them, from one feffion to another, to move with fatal fteps along the path to national deftruction. The war with the colonies was the idol of his majesty's minifters; they had bowed before it themselves,

and