points, and even fome of them not quite reasonable, by the aid of any denomination of men here, rather than they fhould be driven to feek for protection against the fury of foreign mercenaries, and the wafte of favages, in the arms of France.

When any community is fubordinately connected with another, the great danger of the connexion is the extreme pride and felf-complacency of the fuperior, which in all matters of controverfy will probably decide in its own fayour. It is a powerful corrective to fuch a very rational cause of fear, if the inferior body can be made to believe, that the party inclination or political views of several in the principal state, will induce them in some degree to counteract this blind and tyrannical partiality. There is no danger that any one acquiring confideration or power in the prefiding state should carry this leaning to the inferior too far. The fault of human nature is not of that fort. Power in whatever hands is rarely guilty of too ftrict limitations on itself. But one great advantage to the support of authority attends fuch an amicable and protecting connexion, that those who have conferred favours obtain influence; and from the forefight of future events can perfuade men, who have received obligations fometimes to return them. Thus by the mediation of those healing principles, (call them good or evil) troublesome difcuffions are brought to fome fort of adjustment; and every hot controversy is not a civil

war.

But, if the colonies (to bring the general matter home to us) could fee, that in Great Britain the mass of the people is melted into its government, and that every dispute with the ministry, must of neceffity be always a quarrel with the nation; they can ftand no longer in the equal and friendly relation of fellow-citizens to the fubjects of this

kingdom.

kingdom. Humble as this relation may appear to fome, when it is once broken, a ftrong tie is diffolved. Other fort of connexions will be fought. For, there are very few in the world, who will not prefer an useful ally to an infolent master.

Such difcord has been the effect of the unanimity into which fo many have of late been feduced or bullied, or into the appearance of which they have funk through mere despair. They have been told that their diffent from violent measures is an encouragement to rebellion. Men of great prefumption and little knowledge will hold a language which is contradicted by the whole courfe of history. General rebellions and revolts of an whole people never were encouraged, now or at any time. They are always provoked. But if this unheard-of doctrine of the encouragement of rebellion were true, if it were true that an affurance of the friendship of numbers in this country, towards the colonies could become an encouragement to them, to break off all connexion with it, what is the inference? Does any body seriously maintain, that charged with my share of the public councils, I am obliged not to refift projects which I think mifchievous, left men who fuffer should be encouraged to refift? The very tendency of such projects to produce rebellion is one of the chief reasons against them. Shall that reason not be given? Is it then a rule, that no man in this nation fhall open his mouth in favour of the colonies, fhall defend their rights, or complain of their fufferings? Or when war finally breaks out, no man fhall exprefs his defires of peace? Has this been the law of our past, or is it to be the terms of our future connexion? Even looking no further than ourselves, can it be true loyalty to any government, or true patriotism towards any country, to degrade their folemn councils into fervile drawing-rooms, to flatter VOL. II. their

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their pride and paffions, rather than to enlighten their reason, and to prevent them from being cautioned against violence left others fhould be encouraged to resistance? By fuch acquiefcence great kings and mighty nations have been undone; and if any are at this day in a perilous fituation from rejecting truth, and liftening to flattery, it would rather become them to reform the errors under which they fuffer, than to reproach thofe who forewarned them of their danger.

you to

But the rebels looked for affiftance from this country. They did fo in the beginning of this controversy most certainly; and they fought it by earnest fupplications to government, which dignity rejected, and by a fufpenfion of commerce, which the wealth of this nation enabled defpife. When they found that neither prayers nor menaces had any fort of weight, but that a firm resolution was taken to reduce them to unconditional obedience by a military force, they came to the last extremity. Despairing of us, they trusted in themselves. Not ftrong enough themfelves, they fought fuccour in France. In proportion as all encouragement here leffened, their diftance from this country encreased. The encouragement is over; the alienation is compleat.

In order to produce this favourite unanimity in delufion, and to prevent all poffibility of a return to our antient happy concord, arguments for our continuance in this courfe, are drawn from the wretched fituation itself into which we have been betrayed. It is faid, that being at war with the colonies, whatever our fentiments might have been before, all ties between ús are now diffolved; and all the policy we have left, is to ftrengthen the hands of government to reduce them. On the principle of this argument, the more mifchiefs we fuffer from any administration the more our

truft

truft in it is to be confirmed. Let them but once get us into a war, and then their power is fafe, and an act of oblivion past for all their misconduct.

But is it really true, that government is always to be ftrengthened with the inftruments of war, but never furnished with the means of peace? In former times ministers, I allow, have been fometimes driven by the popular voice to affert by arms the national honour against foreign powers. But the wisdom of the nation has been far more clear, when those minifters have been compelled to confult its interests by treaty. We all know that the fenfe of the nation obliged the court of King Charles the second to abandon the Dutch war; a war next to the prefent the most impolitic which we ever carried on. The good people of England confidered Holland as a fort of dependency on this kingdom; they dreaded to drive it to the protection, or subject it to the power of France, by their own inconfiderate hoftility. They paid but little respect to the court jargon of that day; nor were they inflamed by the pretended rivalship of the Dutch in trade; by their maffacre at Amboyna, acted on the stage to provoke the public vengeance; nor by declamations against the ingratitude of the United Provinces for the benefits England had conferred upon them in their infant state. They were not moved from their evident in-. terest by all these arts; nor was it enough to tell them, they were at war; that they must go through with it; and that the cause of the dispute was loft in the confequences. The people of England were then, as they are now, called upon to make government ftrong. They thought it a great deal better to make it wife and honest.

When I was amongst my constituents at the last fummer affizes, I remember that men.of all defcriptions did then exprefs à very strong defire for peace, and no flight hopes of

attaining it from the commiffion fent out by my Lord Howe. And it is not a little remarkable, that in proportion as every person fhewed a zeal for the court measures, he was then earnest, in circulating an opinion of the extent of the fuppofed powers of that commiffion. When I told them that Lord Howe had no powers to treat, or to promise fatiffaction on any point whatsoever of the controversy, I was hardly credited; so strong and general was the defire of terminating this war by the method of accommodation. As far as I could difcover, this was the temper then prevalent through the kingdom. The king's forces it must be obferved had at that time been obliged to evacuate Boston. The fuperiority of the former campaign rested wholly with the colonists. If fuch powers of treaty were to be wished, whilft fuccefs was very doubtful, how came they to be less fo, fince his majesty's arms have been crowned with many confiderable advantages? Have these fucceffes induced us to alter our mind, as thinking the feafon of victory not the time for treating with honour or advantage? Whatever changes have happened in the national character, it can fcarcely be our wifh, that terms of accommodation never fhould be propofed to our enemy, éxcept when they must be attributed folely to our fears. It has happened, let me fay unfortunately, that we read of his majesty's commiffion for making peace, and his troops evacuating his last town in the thirteen colonies at the fame hour, and in the fame. gazette. It was ftill more unfortunate, that no commiffion went to America to fettle the troubles there, until feveral months after an act had been paffed to put the colonies out of the protection of this government, and to divide their trading property without a poffibility of reftitution, as fpoil among the feamen of the navy. The most abject fubmiffion on the part of the colonies could not redeem them.

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