Such are our sentiments on the duty and policy of conforming to the prejudices of a whole people, even where the foundation of such prejudices may be false or disputable. But permit us to lay at your Majesty's feet our deliberate judgment on the real merits of that principle, the violation of which is the known ground and origin of these troubles. We assure your Majesty, that, on our parts, we should think ourselves unjustifiable, as good citizens, and not influenced by the true spirit of Englishmen, if, with any effectual means of prevention in our hands, we were to submit to taxes to which we did not consent, either directly, or by a representation of the people securing to us the substantial benefit of an absolutely free disposition of our own property in that important case. And we add, Sir, that, if fortune, instead of blessing us with a situation where we may have daily access to the propitious presence of a gracious prince, had fixed us in settlements on the remotest part of the globe, we must carry these sentiments with us, as part of our being,—persuaded that the distance of situation would render this privilege in the disposal of property but the more necessary. If no provision had been made for it, such provision ought to be made or permitted. Abuses of subordinate authority increase, and all means of redress lessen, as the distance of the subject removes him from the seat of the supreme power. What, in those circumstances, can save him from the last extremes of indignity and oppression, but something left in his own hands which may enable him to conciliate the favor and control the excesses of government? When no means of power to awe or to oblige are possessed, the strongest ties which connect mankind in every relation, social and civil, and which teach them mutually to respect each other, are broken. Independency, from that moment, virtually exists. Its formal declaration will quickly follow. Such must be our feelings for ourselves: we are not in possession of another rule for our brethren.

When the late attempt practically to annihilate that inestimable privilege was made, great disorders and tumults, very unhappily and very naturally, arose from it. In this state of things, we were of opinion that satisfaction ought instantly to be given, or that, at least, the punishment of the disorder ought to be attended with the redress of the grievance. We were of opinion, that, if our dependencies had so outgrown the positive institutions made for the preservation of liberty in this kingdom, that the operation of their powers was become rather a pressure than a relief to the subjects in the colonies, wisdom dictated that the spirit of the Constitution should rather be applied to their circumstances, than its authority enforced with violence in those very parts where its reason became wholly inapplicable.

Other methods were then recommended and followed, as infallible means of restoring peace and order. We looked upon them to be, what they have since proved to be, the cause of inflaming discontent into disobedience, and resistance into revolt. The subversion of solemn, fundamental charters, on a suggestion of abuse, without citation, evidence, or hearing,—the total suspension of the commerce of a great maritime city, the capital of a great maritime province, during the pleasure of the crown,—the establishment of a military force, not accountable to the ordinary tribunals of the country in which it was kept up,—these and other proceedings at that time, if no previous cause of dissension had subsisted, were sufficient to produce great troubles: unjust at all times, they were then irrational.

We could not conceive, when disorders had arisen from the complaint of one violated right, that to violate every other was the proper means of quieting an exasperated people. It seemed to us absurd and preposterous to hold out, as the means of calming a people in a state of extreme inflammation, and ready to take up arms, the austere law which a rigid conqueror would impose as the sequel of the most decisive victories.

Recourse, indeed, was at the same time had to force; and we saw a force sent out, enough to menace liberty, but not to awe opposition,—tending to bring odium on the civil power, and contempt on the military,—at once to provoke and encourage resistance. Force was sent out not sufficient to hold one town; laws were passed to inflame thirteen provinces.

This mode of proceeding, by harsh laws and feeble armies, could not be defended on the principle of mercy and forbearance. For mercy, as we conceive, consists, not in the weakness of the means, but in the benignity of the ends. We apprehend that mild measures may be powerfully enforced, and that acts of extreme rigor and injustice may be attended with as much feebleness in the execution as severity in the formation.

In consequence of these terrors, which, falling upon some, threatened all, the colonies made a common cause with the sufferers, and proceeded, on their part, to acts of resistance. In that alarming situation, we besought your Majesty's ministers to entertain some distrust of the operation of coercive measures, and to profit of their experience. Experience had no effect. The modes of legislative rigor were construed, not to have been erroneous in their policy, but too limited in their extent. New severities were adopted. The fisheries of your people in America followed their charters; and their mutual combination to defend what they thought their common rights brought on a total prohibition of their mutual commercial intercourse. No distinction of persons or merits was observed: the peaceable and the mutinous, friends and foes, were alike involved, as if the rigor of the laws had a certain tendency to recommend the authority of the legislator.

Whilst the penal laws increased in rigor, and extended in application over all the colonies, the direct force was applied but to one part. Had the great fleet and foreign army since employed been at that time called for, the greatness of the preparation would have declared the magnitude of the danger. The nation would have been alarmed, and taught the necessity of some means of reconciliation with our countrymen in America, who, whenever they are provoked to resistance, demand a force to reduce them to obedience full as destructive to us as to them. But Parliament and the people, by a premeditated concealment of their real situation, were drawn into perplexities which furnished excuses for further armaments, and whilst they were taught to believe themselves called to suppress a riot, they found themselves involved in a mighty war.

At length British blood was spilled by British hands: a fatal era, which we must ever deplore, because your empire will forever feel it. Your Majesty was touched with a sense of so great a disaster. Your paternal breast was affected with the sufferings of your English subjects in America. In your speech from the throne, in the beginning of the session of 1775, you were graciously pleased to declare yourself inclined to relieve their distresses and to pardon their errors. You felt their sufferings under the late penal acts of Parliament. But your ministry felt differently. Not discouraged by the pernicious effects of all they had hitherto advised, and notwithstanding the gracious declaration of your Majesty, they obtained another act of Parliament, in which the rigors of all the former were consolidated, and embittered by circumstances of additional severity and outrage. The whole trading property of America (even unoffending shipping in port) was indiscriminately and irrecoverably given, as the plunder of foreign enemies, to the sailors of your navy. This property was put out of the reach of your mercy. Your people were despoiled; and your navy, by a new, dangerous, and prolific example, corrupted with the plunder of their countrymen. Your people in that part of your dominions were put, in their general and political, as well as their personal capacity, wholly out of the protection of your government.

Though unwilling to dwell on all the improper modes of carrying on this unnatural and ruinous war, and which have led directly to the present unhappy separation of Great Britain and its colonies, we must beg leave to represent two particulars, which we are sure must have been entirely contrary to your Majesty's order or approbation. Every course of action in hostility, however that hostility may be just or merited, is not justifiable or excusable. It is the duty of those who claim to rule over others not to provoke them beyond the necessity of the case, nor to leave stings in their minds which must long rankle even when the appearance of tranquillity is restored. We therefore assure your Majesty that it is with shame and sorrow we have seen several acts of hostility which could have no other tendency than incurably to alienate the minds of your American subjects. To excite, by a proclamation issued by your Majesty's governor, an universal insurrection of negro slaves in any of the colonies is a measure full of complicated horrors, absolutely illegal, suitable neither to the practice of war nor to the laws of peace. Of the same quality we look upon all attempts to bring down on your subjects an irruption of those fierce and cruel tribes of savages and cannibals in whom the vestiges of human nature are nearly effaced by ignorance and barbarity. They are not fit allies for your Majesty in a war with your people. They are not fit instruments of an English government. These and many other acts we disclaim as having advised, or approved when done; and we clear ourselves to your Majesty, and to all civilized nations, from any participation whatever, before or after the fact, in such unjustifiable and horrid proceedings.

But there is one weighty circumstance which we lament equally with the causes of the war, and with the modes of carrying it on,—that no disposition whatsoever towards peace or reconciliation has ever been shown by those who have directed the public councils of this kingdom, either before the breaking out of these hostilities or during the unhappy continuance of them. Every proposition made in your Parliament to remove the original cause of these troubles, by taking off taxes obnoxious for their principle or their design, has been overruled,—every bill brought in for quiet rejected, even on the first proposition. The petitions of the colonies have not been admitted even to an hearing. The very possibility of public agency, by which such petitions could authentically arrive at Parliament, has been evaded and chicaned away. All the public declarations which indicate anything resembling a disposition to reconciliation seem to us loose, general, equivocal, capable of various meanings, or of none; and they are accordingly construed differently, at different times, by those on whose recommendation they have been made: being wholly unlike the precision and stability of public faith, and bearing no mark of that ingenuous simplicity and native candor and integrity which formerly characterized the English nation.

Instead of any relaxation of the claim of taxing at the discretion of Parliament, your ministers have devised a new mode of enforcing that claim, much more effectual for the oppression of the colonies, though not for your Majesty's service, both as to the quantity and application, than any of the former methods; and their mode has been expressly held out by ministers as a plan not to be departed from by the House of Commons, and as the very condition on which the legislature is to accept the dependence of the colonies.

At length, when, after repeated refusals to hear or to conciliate, an act dissolving your government, by putting your people in America out of your protection, was passed, your ministers suffered several months to elapse without affording to them, or to any community or any individual amongst them, the means of entering into that protection, even on unconditional submission, contrary to your Majesty's gracious declaration from the throne, and in direct violation of the public faith.

We cannot, therefore, agree to unite in new severities against the brethren of our blood for their asserting an independency, to which we know, in our conscience, they have been necessitated by the conduct of those very persons who now make use of that argument to provoke us to a continuance and repetition of the acts which in a regular series have led to this great misfortune.

The reasons, dread Sir, which have been used to justify this perseverance in a refusal to hear or conciliate have been reduced into a sort of Parliamentary maxims which we do not approve. The first of these maxims is, "that the two Houses ought not to receive (as they have hitherto refused to receive) petitions containing matter derogatory to any part of the authority they claim." We conceive this maxim and the consequent practice to be unjustifiable by reason or the practice of other sovereign powers, and that it must be productive, if adhered to, of a total separation between this kingdom and its dependencies. The supreme power, being in ordinary cases the ultimate judge, can, as we conceive, suffer nothing in having any part of his rights excepted to, or even discussed before himself. We know that sovereigns in other countries, where the assertion of absolute regal power is as high as the assertion of absolute power in any politic body can possibly be here, have received many petitions in direct opposition to many of their claims of prerogative,—have listened to them,—condescended to discuss, and to give answers to them. This refusal to admit even the discussion of any part of an undefined prerogative will naturally tend to annihilate any privilege that can be claimed by every inferior dependent community, and every subordinate order in the state.

The next maxim which has been put as a bar to any plan of accommodation is, "that no offer of terms of peace ought to be made, before Parliament is assured that these terms will be accepted." On this we beg leave to represent to your Majesty, that, if, in all events, the policy of this kingdom is to govern the people in your colonies as a free people, no mischief can possibly happen from a declaration to them, and to the world, of the manner and form in which Parliament proposes that they shall enjoy the freedom it protects. It is an encouragement to the innocent and meritorious, that they at least shall enjoy those advantages which they patiently expected rather from the benignity of Parliament than their own efforts. Persons more contumacious may also see that they are resisting terms of perhaps greater freedom and happiness than they are now in arms to obtain. The glory and propriety of offered mercy is neither tarnished nor weakened by the folly of those who refuse to take advantage of it.

We cannot think that the declaration of independency makes any natural difference in the reason and policy of the offer. No prince out of the possession of his dominions, and become a sovereign de jure only, ever thought it derogatory to his rights or his interests to hold out to his former subjects a distinct prospect of the advantages to be derived from his readmission, and a security for some of the most fundamental of those popular privileges in vindication of which he had been deposed. On the contrary, such offers have been almost uniformly made under similar circumstances. Besides, as your Majesty has been graciously pleased, in your speech from the throne, to declare your intention of restoring your people in the colonies to a state of law and liberty, no objection can possibly lie against defining what that law and liberty are; because those who offer and those who are to receive terms frequently differ most widely and most materially in the signification of these words, and in the objects to which they apply.

To say that we do not know, at this day, what the grievances of the colonies are (be they real or pretended) would be unworthy of us. But whilst we are thus waiting to be informed of what we perfectly know, we weaken the powers of the commissioners,—we delay, perhaps we lose, the happy hour of peace,—we are wasting the substance of both countries,—we are continuing the effusion of human, of Christian, of English blood.

We are sure that we must have your Majesty's heart along with us, when we declare in favor of mixing something conciliatory with our force. Sir, we abhor the idea of making a conquest of our countrymen. We wish that they may yield to well-ascertained, well-authenticated, and well-secured terms of reconciliation,—not that your Majesty should owe the recovery of your dominions to their total waste and destruction. Humanity will not permit us to entertain such a desire; nor will the reverence we bear to the civil rights of mankind make us even wish that questions of great difficulty, of the last importance, and lying deep in the vital principles of the British Constitution, should be solved by the arms of foreign mercenary soldiers.

It is not, Sir, from a want of the most inviolable duty to your Majesty, not from a want of a partial and passionate regard to that part of your empire in which we reside, and which we wish to be supreme, that we have hitherto withstood all attempts to render the supremacy of one part of your dominions inconsistent with the liberty and safety of all the rest. The motives of our opposition are found in those very sentiments which we are supposed to violate. For we are convinced beyond a doubt, that a system of dependence which leaves no security to the people for any part of their freedom in their own hands cannot be established in any inferior member of the British empire, without consequentially destroying the freedom of that very body in favor of whose boundless pretensions such a scheme is adopted. We know and feel that arbitrary power over distant regions is not within the competence, nor to be exercised agreeably to the forms or consistently with the spirit, of great popular assemblies. If such assemblies are called to a nominal share in the exercise of such power, in order to screen, under general participation, the guilt of desperate measures, it tends only the more deeply to corrupt the deliberative character of those assemblies, in training them to blind obedience, in habituating them to proceed upon grounds of fact with which they can rarely be sufficiently acquainted, and in rendering them executive instruments of designs the bottom of which they cannot possibly fathom.

To leave any real freedom to Parliament, freedom must be left to the colonies. A military government is the only substitute for civil liberty. That the establishment of such a power in America will utterly ruin our finances (though its certain effect) is the smallest part of our concern. It will become an apt, powerful, and certain engine for the destruction of our freedom here. Great bodies of armed men, trained to a contempt of popular assemblies representative of an English people,—kept up for the purpose of exacting impositions without their consent, and maintained by that exaction,—instruments in subverting, without any process of law, great ancient establishments and respected forms of governments,—set free from, and therefore above, the ordinary English tribunals of the country where they serve,—these men cannot so transform themselves, merely by crossing the sea, as to behold with love and reverence, and submit with profound obedience to, the very same things in Great Britain which in America they had been taught to despise, and had been accustomed to awe and humble. All your Majesty's troops, in the rotation of service, will pass through this discipline and contract these habits. If we could flatter ourselves that this would not happen, we must be the weakest of men; we must be the worst, if we were indifferent whether it happened or not. What, gracious sovereign, is the empire of America to us, or the empire of the world, if we lose our own liberties? We deprecate this last of evils. We deprecate the effect of the doctrines which must support and countenance the government over conquered Englishmen.

As it will be impossible long to resist the powerful and equitable arguments in favor of the freedom of these unhappy people that are to be drawn from the principle of our own liberty, attempts will be made, attempts have been made, to ridicule and to argue away this principle, and to inculcate into the minds of your people other maxims of government and other grounds of obedience than those which have prevailed at and since the glorious Revolution. By degrees, these doctrines, by being convenient, may grow prevalent. The consequence is not certain; but a general change of principles rarely happens among a people without leading to a change of government.

Sir, your throne cannot stand secure upon the principles of unconditional submission and passive obedience,—on powers exercised without the concurrence of the people to be governed,—on acts made in defiance of their prejudices and habits,—on acquiescence procured by foreign mercenary troops, and secured by standing armies. These may possibly be the foundation of other thrones: they must be the subversion of yours. It was not to passive principles in our ancestors that we owe the honor of appearing before a sovereign who cannot feel that he is a prince without knowing that we ought to be free. The Revolution is a departure from the ancient course of the descent of this monarchy. The people at that time reentered into their original rights; and it was not because a positive law authorized what was then done, but because the freedom and safety of the subject, the origin and cause of all laws, required a proceeding paramount and superior to them. At that ever memorable and instructive period, the letter of the law was superseded in favor of the substance of liberty. To the free choice, therefore, of the people, without either King or Parliament, we owe that happy establishment out of which both King and Parliament were regenerated. From that great principle of liberty have originated the statutes confirming and ratifying the establishment from which your Majesty derives your right to rule over us. Those statutes have not given us our liberties: our liberties have produced them. Every hour of your Majesty's reign, your title stands upon the very same foundation on which it was at first laid; and we do not know a better on which it can possibly be placed.

Convinced, Sir, that you cannot have different rights and a different security in different parts of your dominions, we wish to lay an even platform for your throne, and to give it an unmovable stability, by laying it on the general freedom of your people, and by securing to your Majesty that confidence and affection in all parts of your dominions which makes your best security and dearest title in this the chief seat of your empire.

Such, Sir, being, amongst us, the foundation of monarchy itself, much more clearly and much more peculiarly is it the ground of all Parliamentary power. Parliament is a security provided for the protection of freedom, and not a subtile fiction, contrived to amuse the people in its place. The authority of both Houses can still less than that of the crown be supported upon different principles in different places, so as to be for one part of your subjects a protector of liberty, and for another a fund of despotism, through which prerogative is extended by occasional powers, whenever an arbitrary will finds itself straitened by the restrictions of law. Had it seemed good to Parliament to consider itself as the indulgent guardian and strong protector of the freedom of the subordinate popular assemblies, instead of exercising its powers to their annihilation, there is no doubt that it never could have been their inclination, because not their interest, to raise questions on the extent of Parliamentary rights, or to enfeeble privileges which were the security of their own. Powers evident from necessity, and not suspicious from an alarming mode or purpose in the exertion, would, as formerly they were, be cheerfully submitted to; and these would have been fully sufficient for conservation of unity in the empire, and for directing its wealth to one common centre. Another use has produced other consequences; and a power which refuses to be limited by moderation must either be lost, or find other more distinct and satisfactory limitations.

As for us, a supposed, or, if it could be, a real, participation in arbitrary power would never reconcile our minds to its establishment. We should be ashamed to stand before your Majesty, boldly asserting in our own favor inherent rights which bind and regulate the crown itself, and yet insisting on the exercise, in our own persons, of a more arbitrary sway over our fellow-citizens and fellow-freemen.

These, gracious sovereign, are the sentiments which we consider ourselves as bound, in justification of our present conduct, in the most serious and solemn manner to lay at your Majesty's feet. We have been called by your Majesty's writs and proclamations, and we have been authorized, either by hereditary privilege or the choice of your people, to confer and treat with your Majesty, in your highest councils, upon the arduous affairs of your kingdom. We are sensible of the whole importance of the duty which this constitutional summons implies. We know the religious punctuality of attendance which, in the ordinary course, it demands. It is no light cause which, even for a time, could persuade us to relax in any part of that attendance. The British empire is in convulsions which threaten its dissolution. Those particular proceedings which cause and inflame this disorder, after many years' incessant struggle, we find ourselves wholly unable to oppose and unwilling to behold. All our endeavors having proved fruitless, we are fearful at this time of irritating by contention those passions which we have found it impracticable to compose by reason. We cannot permit ourselves to countenance, by the appearance of a silent assent, proceedings fatal to the liberty and unity of the empire,—proceedings which exhaust the strength of all your Majesty's dominions, destroy all trust and dependence of our allies, and leave us, both at home and abroad, exposed to the suspicious mercy and uncertain inclinations of our neighbor and rival powers, to whom, by this desperate course, we are driving our countrymen for protection, and with whom we have forced them into connections, and may bind them by habits and by interests,—an evil which no victories that may be obtained, no severities which may be exorcised, ever will or can remove.

If but the smallest hope should from any circumstances appear of a return to the ancient maxims and true policy of this kingdom, we shall with joy and readiness return to our attendance, in order to give our hearty support to whatever means may be left for alleviating the complicated evils which oppress this nation.

If this should not happen, we have discharged our consciences by this faithful representation to your Majesty and our country; and however few in number, or however we may be overborne by practices whose operation is but too powerful, by the revival of dangerous exploded principles, or by the misguided zeal of such arbitrary factions as formerly prevailed in this kingdom, and always to its detriment and disgrace, we have the satisfaction of standing forth and recording our names in assertion of those principles whose operation hath, in better times, made your Majesty a great prince, and the British dominions a mighty empire.



ADDRESS

TO THE

BRITISH COLONISTS IN NORTH AMERICA.

The very dangerous crisis into which the British empire is brought, as it accounts for, so it justifies, the unusual step we take in addressing ourselves to you.

The distempers of the state are grown to such a degree of violence and malignity as to render all ordinary remedies vain and frivolous. In such a deplorable situation, an adherence to the common forms of business appears to us rather as an apology to cover a supine neglect of duty than the means of performing it in a manner adequate to the exigency that presses upon us. The common means we have already tried, and tried to no purpose. As our last resource, we turn ourselves to you. We address you merely in our private capacity, vested with no other authority than what will naturally attend those in whose declarations of benevolence you have no reason to apprehend any mixture of dissimulation or design.

We have this title to your attention: we call upon it in a moment of the utmost importance to us all. We find, with infinite concern, that arguments are used to persuade you of the necessity of separating yourselves from your ancient connection with your parent country, grounded on a supposition that a general principle of alienation and enmity to you had pervaded the whole of this kingdom, and that there does no longer subsist between you and us any common and kindred principles upon which we can possibly unite, consistently with those ideas of liberty in which you have justly placed your whole happiness.

If this fact were true, the inference drawn from it would be irresistible. But nothing is less founded. We admit, indeed, that violent addresses have been procured with uncommon pains by wicked and designing men, purporting to be the genuine voice of the whole people of England,—that they have been published by authority here, and made known to you by proclamations, in order, by despair and resentment, incurably to poison your minds against the origin of your race, and to render all cordial reconciliation between us utterly impracticable. The same wicked men, for the same bad purposes, have so far surprised the justice of Parliament as to cut off all communication betwixt us, except what is to go in their own fallacious and hostile channel.

But we conjure you by the invaluable pledges which have hitherto united, and which we trust will hereafter lastingly unite us, that you do not suffer yourselves to be persuaded or provoked into an opinion that you are at war with this nation. Do not think that the whole, or even the uninfluenced majority, of Englishmen in this island are enemies to their own blood on the American continent. Much delusion has been practised, much corrupt influence treacherously employed. But still a large, and we trust the largest and soundest, part of this kingdom perseveres in the most perfect unity of sentiments, principles, and affections with you. It spreads out a large and liberal platform of common liberty, upon which we may all unite forever. It abhors the hostilities which have been carried on against you, as much as you who feel the cruel effect of them. It has disclaimed in the most solemn manner, at the foot of the throne itself, the addresses which tended to irritate your sovereign against his colonies. We are persuaded that even many of those who unadvisedly have put their hands to such intemperate and inflammatory addresses have not at all apprehended to what such proceedings naturally lead, and would sooner die than afford them the least countenance, if they were sensible of their fatal effects on the union and liberty of the empire.

For ourselves, we faithfully assure you, that we have ever considered you as rational creatures, as free agents, as men willing to pursue and able to discern your own true interest. We have wished to continue united with you, in order that a people of one origin and one character should be directed to the rational objects of government by joint counsels, and protected in them by a common force. Other subordination in you we require none. We have never pressed that argument of general union to the extinction of your local, natural, and just privileges. Sensible of what is due both to the dignity and weakness of man, we have never wished to place over you any government, over which, in great, fundamental points, you should have no sort of check or control in your own hands, or which should be repugnant to your situation, principles, and character.

No circumstances of fortune, you may be assured, will ever induce us to form or tolerate any such design. If the disposition of Providence (which we deprecate) should even prostrate you at our feet, broken in power and in spirit, it would be our duty and inclination to revive, by every practicable means, that free energy of mind which a fortune unsuitable to your virtue had damped and dejected, and to put you voluntarily in possession of those very privileges which you had in vain attempted to assert by arms. For we solemnly declare, that, although we should look upon a separation from you as an heavy calamity, (and the heavier, because we know you must have your full share in it,) yet we had much rather see you totally independent of this crown and kingdom than joined to it by so unnatural a conjunction as that of freedom with servitude,—a conjunction which, if it were at all practicable, could not fail, in the end, of being more mischievous to the peace, prosperity, greatness, and power of this nation than beneficial by any enlargement of the bounds of nominal empire.

But because, brethren, these professions are general, and such as even enemies may make, when they reserve to themselves the construction of what servitude and what liberty are, we inform you that we adopt your own standard of the blessing of free government. We are of opinion that you ought to enjoy the sole and exclusive right of freely granting, and applying to the support of your administration, what God has freely granted as a reward to your industry. And we do not confine this immunity from exterior coercion, in this great point, solely to what regards your local establishment, but also to what may be thought proper for the maintenance of the whole empire. In this resource we cheerfully trust and acquiesce, satisfied by evident reason that no other expectation of revenue can possibly be given by freemen, and knowing from an experience uniform both on yours and on our side of the ocean that such an expectation has never yet been disappointed. We know of no road to your coffers but through your affections.

To manifest our sentiments the more clearly to you and to the world on this subject, we declare our opinion, that, if no revenue at all (which, however, we are far from supposing) were to be obtained from you to this kingdom, yet, as long as it is our happiness to be joined with you in the bonds of fraternal charity and freedom, with an open and flowing commerce between us, one principle of enmity and friendship pervading, and one right of war and peace directing the strength of the whole empire, we are likely to be at least as powerful as any nation, or as any combination of nations, which in the course of human events may be formed against us. We are sensible that a very large proportion of the wealth and power of every empire must necessarily be thrown upon the presiding state. We are sensible that such a state ever has borne and ever must bear the greatest part, and sometimes the whole, of the public expenses: and we think her well indemnified for that (rather apparent than real) inequality of charge, in the dignity and preeminence she enjoys, and in the superior opulence which, after all charges defrayed, must necessarily remain at the centre of affairs. Of this principle we are not without evidence in our remembrance (not yet effaced) of the glorious and happy days of this empire. We are therefore incapable of that prevaricating style, by which, when taxes without your consent are to be extorted from you, this nation is represented as in the lowest state of impoverishment and public distress, but when we are called upon to oppress you by force of arms, it is painted as scarcely feeling its impositions, abounding with wealth, and inexhaustible in its resources.

We also reason and feel as you do on the invasion of your charters. Because the charters comprehend the essential forms by which you enjoy your liberties, we regard them as most sacred, and by no means to be taken away or altered without process, without examination, and without hearing, as they have lately been. We even think that they ought by no means to be altered at all, but at the desire of the greater part of the people who live under them. We cannot look upon men as delinquents in the mass; much less are we desirous of lording over our brethren, insulting their honest pride, and wantonly overturning establishments judged to be just and convenient by the public wisdom of this nation at their institution, and which long and inveterate use has taught you to look up to with affection and reverence. As we disapproved of the proceedings with regard to the forms of your constitution, so we are equally tender of every leading principle of free government. We never could think with approbation of putting the military power out of the coercion of the civil justice in the country where it acts.

We disclaim also any sort of share in that other measure which has been used to alienate your affections from this country,—namely, the introduction of foreign mercenaries. We saw their employment with shame and regret, especially in numbers so far exceeding the English forces as in effect to constitute vassals, who have no sense of freedom, and strangers, who have no common interest or feelings, as the arbiters of our unhappy domestic quarrel.

We likewise saw with shame the African slaves, who had been sold to you on public faith, and under the sanction of acts of Parliament, to be your servants and your guards, employed to cut the throats of their masters.

You will not, we trust, believe, that, born in a civilized country, formed to gentle manners, trained in a merciful religion, and living in enlightened and polished times, where even foreign hostility is softened from its original sternness, we could have thought of letting loose upon you, our late beloved brethren, these fierce tribes of savages and cannibals, in whom the traces of human nature are effaced by ignorance and barbarity. We rather wished to have joined with you in bringing gradually that unhappy part of mankind into civility, order, piety, and virtuous discipline, than to have confirmed their evil habits and increased their natural ferocity by fleshing them in the slaughter of you, whom our wiser and better ancestors had sent into the wilderness with the express view of introducing, along with our holy religion, its humane and charitable manners. We do not hold that all things are lawful in war. We should think that every barbarity, in fire, in wasting, in murders, in tortures, and other cruelties, too horrible and too full of turpitude for Christian mouths to utter or ears to hear, if done at our instigation, by those who we know will make war thus, if they make it at all, to be, to all intents and purposes, as if done by ourselves. We clear ourselves to you our brethren, to the present age, and to future generations, to our king and our country, and to Europe, which, as a spectator, beholds this tragic scene, of every part or share in adding this last and worst of evils to the inevitable mischiefs of a civil war.

We do not call you rebels and traitors. We do not call for the vengeance of the crown against you. We do not know how to qualify millions of our countrymen, contending with one heart for an admission to privileges which we have ever thought our own happiness and honor, by odious and unworthy names. On the contrary, we highly revere the principles on which you act, though we lament some of their effects. Armed as you are, we embrace you as our friends and as our brethren by the best and dearest ties of relation.

We view the establishment of the English colonies on principles of liberty as that which is to render this kingdom venerable to future ages. In comparison of this, we regard all the victories and conquests of our warlike ancestors, or of our own times, as barbarous, vulgar distinctions, in which many nations, whom we look upon with little respect or value, have equalled, if not far exceeded us. This is the peculiar and appropriated glory of England. Those who have and who hold to that foundation of common liberty, whether on this or on your side of the ocean, we consider as the true, and the only true, Englishmen. Those who depart from it, whether there or here, are attainted, corrupted in blood, and wholly fallen from their original rank and value. They are the real rebels to the fair constitution and just supremacy of England.

We exhort you, therefore, to cleave forever to those principles, as being the true bond of union in this empire,—and to show by a manly perseverance that the sentiments of honor and the rights of mankind are not held by the uncertain events of war, as you have hitherto shown a glorious and affecting example to the world that they are not dependent on the ordinary conveniences and satisfactions of life.

Knowing no other arguments to be used to men of liberal minds, it is upon these very principles, and these alone, we hope and trust that no flattering and no alarming circumstances shall permit you to listen to the seductions of those who would alienate you from your dependence on the crown and Parliament of this kingdom. That very liberty which you so justly prize above all things originated here; and it may be very doubtful, whether, without being constantly fed from the original fountain, it can be at all perpetuated or preserved in its native purity and perfection. Untried forms of government may, to unstable minds, recommend themselves even by their novelty. But you will do well to remember that England has been great and happy under the present limited monarchy (subsisting in more or less vigor and purity) for several hundred years. None but England can communicate to you the benefits of such a constitution. We apprehend you are not now, nor for ages are likely to be, capable of that form of constitution in an independent state. Besides, let us suggest to you our apprehensions that your present union (in which we rejoice, and which we wish long to subsist) cannot always subsist without the authority and weight of this great and long respected body, to equipoise, and to preserve you amongst yourselves in a just and fair equality. It may not even be impossible that a long course of war with the administration of this country may be but a prelude to a series of wars and contentions among yourselves, to end at length (as such scenes have too often ended) in a species of humiliating repose, which nothing but the preceding calamities would reconcile to the dispirited few who survived them. We allow that even this evil is worth the risk to men of honor, when rational liberty is at stake, as in the present case we confess and lament that it is. But if ever a real security by Parliament is given against the terror or the abuse of unlimited power, and after such security given you should persevere in resistance, we leave you to consider whether the risk is not incurred without an object, or incurred for an object infinitely diminished by such concessions in its importance and value.

As to other points of discussion, when these grand fundamentals of your grants and charters are once settled and ratified by clear Parliamentary authority, as the ground for peace and forgiveness on our side, and for a manly and liberal obedience on yours, treaty and a spirit of reconciliation will easily and securely adjust whatever may remain. Of this we give you our word, that, so far as we are at present concerned, and if by any event we should become more concerned hereafter, you may rest assured, upon the pledges of honor not forfeited, faith not violated, and uniformity of character and profession not yet broken, we at least, on these grounds, will never fail you.

Respecting your wisdom, and valuing your safety, we do not call upon you to trust your existence to your enemies. We do not advise you to an unconditional submission. With satisfaction we assure you that almost all in both Houses (however unhappily they have been deluded, so as not to give any immediate effect to their opinion) disclaim that idea. You can have no friends in whom you cannot rationally confide. But Parliament is your friend from the moment in which, removing its confidence from those who have constantly deceived its good intentions, it adopts the sentiments of those who have made sacrifices, (inferior, indeed, to yours,) but have, however, sacrificed enough to demonstrate the sincerity of their regard and value for your liberty and prosperity.

Arguments may be used to weaken your confidence in that public security; because, from some unpleasant appearances, there is a suspicion that Parliament itself is somewhat fallen from its independent spirit. How far this supposition may be founded in fact we are unwilling to determine. But we are well assured from experience, that, even if all were true that is contended for, and in the extent, too, in which it is argued, yet, as long as the solid and well-disposed forms of this Constitution remain, there ever is within Parliament itself a power of renovating its principles, and effecting a self-reformation, which no other plan of government has ever contained. This Constitution has therefore admitted innumerable improvements, either for the correction of the original scheme, or for removing corruptions, or for bringing its principles better to suit those changes which have successively happened in the circumstances of the nation or in the manners of the people.

We feel that the growth of the colonies is such a change of circumstances, and that our present dispute is an exigency as pressing as any which ever demanded a revision of our government. Public troubles have often called upon this country to look into its Constitution. It has ever been bettered by such a revision. If our happy and luxuriant increase of dominion, and our diffused population, have outgrown the limits of a Constitution made for a contracted object, we ought to bless God, who has furnished us with this noble occasion for displaying our skill and beneficence in enlarging the scale of rational happiness, and of making the politic generosity of this kingdom as extensive as its fortune. If we set about this great work, on both sides, with the same conciliatory turn of mind, we may now, as in former times, owe even to our mutual mistakes, contentions, and animosities, the lasting concord, freedom, happiness, and glory of this empire.

Gentlemen, the distance between us, with other obstructions, has caused much misrepresentation of our mutual sentiments. We, therefore, to obviate them as well as we are able, take this method of assuring you of our thorough detestation of the whole war, and particularly the mercenary and savage war carried on or attempted against you,—our thorough abhorrence of all addresses adverse to you, whether public or private,—our assurances of an invariable affection towards you,—our constant regard to your privileges and liberties,—and our opinion of the solid security you ought to enjoy for them, under the paternal care and nurture of a protecting Parliament.

Though many of us have earnestly wished that the authority of that august and venerable body, so necessary in many respects to the union of the whole, should be rather limited by its own equity and discretion, than by any bounds described by positive laws and public compacts,—and though we felt the extreme difficulty, by any theoretical limitations, of qualifying that authority, so as to preserve one part and deny another,—and though you (as we gratefully acknowledge) had acquiesced most cheerfully under that prudent reserve of the Constitution, at that happy moment when neither you nor we apprehended a further return of the exercise of invidious powers, we are now as fully persuaded as you can be, by the malice, inconstancy, and perverse inquietude of many men, and by the incessant endeavors of an arbitrary faction, now too powerful, that our common necessities do require a full explanation and ratified security for your liberties and our quiet.

Although his Majesty's condescension, in committing the direction of his affairs into the hands of the known friends of his family and of the liberties of all his people, would, we admit, be a great means of giving repose to your minds, as it must give infinite facility to reconciliation, yet we assure you that we think, with such a security as we recommend, adopted from necessity and not choice, even by the unhappy authors and instruments of the public misfortunes, that the terms of reconciliation, if once accepted by Parliament, would not be broken. We also pledge ourselves to you, that we should give, even to those unhappy persons, an hearty support in effectuating the peace of the empire, and every opposition in an attempt to cast it again into disorder.

When that happy hour shall arrive, let us in all affection, recommend to you the wisdom of continuing, as in former times, or even in a more ample measure, the support of your government, and even to give to your administration some degree of reciprocal interest in your freedom. We earnestly wish you not to furnish your enemies, here or elsewhere, with any sort of pretexts for reviving quarrels by too reserved and severe or penurious an exercise of those sacred rights which no pretended abuse in the exercise ought to impair, nor, by overstraining the principles of freedom, to make them less compatible with those haughty sentiments in others which the very same principles may be apt to breed in minds not tempered with the utmost equity and justice.

The well-wishers of the liberty and union of this empire salute you, and recommend you most heartily to the Divine protection.



A

LETTER

TO

THE RIGHT HON. EDMUND S. PERY

SPEAKER OF THE IRISH HOUSE OF COMMONS,

IN RELATION TO

A BILL FOR THE RELIEF OF THE ROMAN CATHOLICS OF IRELAND.

JULY 18, 1778.

NOTE.

This Letter is addressed to Mr. Pery, (afterwards Lord Pery,) then Speaker of the House of Commons of Ireland. It appears, there had been much correspondence between that gentleman and Mr. Burke, on the subject of Heads of a bill (which had passed the Irish House of Commons in the summer of the year 1778, and had been transmitted by the Irish Privy Council of [to?] England) for the relief of his Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects in Ireland. The bill contained a clause for exempting the Protestant Dissenters of Ireland from the sacramental test, which created a strong objection to the whole measure on the part of the English government. Mr. Burke employed his most strenuous efforts to remove the prejudice which the king's ministers entertained against the clause, but the bill was ultimately returned without it, and in that shape passed the Irish Parliament. (17th and 18th Geo. III cap. 49.) In the subsequent session, however, a separate act was passed for the relief of the Protestant Dissenters of Ireland.

LETTER.

My Dear Sir,—I received in due course your two very interesting and judicious letters, which gave me many new lights, and excited me to fresh activity in the important subject they related to. However, from that time I have not been perfectly free from doubt and uneasiness. I used a liberty with those letters, which, perhaps, nothing can thoroughly justify, and which certainly nothing but the delicacy of the crisis, the clearness of my intentions, and your great good-nature can at all excuse. I might conceal this from you; but I think it better to lay the whole matter before you, and submit myself to your mercy,—assuring you, at the same time, that, if you are so kind as to continue your confidence on this, or to renew it upon any other occasion, I shall never be tempted again to make so bold and unauthorized an use of the trust you place in me. I will state to you the history of the business since my last, and then you will see how far I am excusable by the circumstances.

On the 3rd of July I received a letter from the Attorney-General, dated the day before, in which, in a very open and obliging manner, he desires my thoughts of the Irish Toleration Bill, and particularly of the Dissenters' clause. I gave them to him, by the return of the post, at large; but, as the time pressed, I kept no copy of the letter. The general drift was strongly to recommend the whole, and principally to obviate the objections to the part that related to the Dissenters, with regard both to the general propriety and to the temporary policy at this juncture. I took, likewise, a good deal of pains to state the difference which had always subsisted with regard to the treatment of the Protestant Dissenters in Ireland and in England, and what I conceived the reason of that difference to be. About the same time I was called to town for a day; and I took an opportunity, in Westminster Hall, of urging the same points, with all the force I was master of, to the Solicitor-General. I attempted to see the Chancellor for the same purpose, but was not fortunate enough to meet him at home. Soon after my return hither, on Tuesday, I received a very polite and I may say friendly letter from him, wishing me (on supposition that I had continued in town) to dine with him as [on?] that day, in order to talk over the business of the Toleration Act, then before him. Unluckily I had company with me, and was not able to leave them until Thursday, when I went to town and called at his house, but missed him. However, in answer to his letter, I had before, and instantly on the receipt of it, written to him at large, and urged such topics, both with regard to the Catholics and Dissenters, as I imagined were the most likely to be prevalent with him. This letter I followed to town on Thursday. On my arrival I was much alarmed with a report that the ministry had thoughts of rejecting the whole bill. Mr. M'Namara seemed apprehensive that it was a determined measure; and there seemed to be but too much reason for his fears.

Not having met the Chancellor at home, either on my first visit or my second after receiving his letter, and fearful that the Cabinet should come to come unpleasant resolution, I went to the Treasury on Friday. There I saw Sir G. Cooper. I possessed him of the danger of a partial, and the inevitable mischief of the total rejection of the bill. I reminded him of the understood compact between parties, upon which the whole scheme of the toleration originating in the English bill was formed,—of the fair part which the Whigs had acted in a business which, though first started by them, was supposed equally acceptable to all sides, and the risk of which they took upon themselves, when others declined it. To this I added such matter as I thought most fit to engage government, as government,—not to sport with a singular opportunity which offered for the union of every description of men amongst us in support of the common interest of the whole; and I ended by desiring to see Lord North upon the subject. Sir Grey Cooper showed a very right sense of the matter, and in a few minutes after our conversation I went down from the Treasury chambers to Lord North's house. I had a great deal of discourse with him. He told me that his ideas of toleration were large, but that, large as they were, they did not comprehend a promiscuous establishment, even in matters merely civil; that he thought the established religion ought to be the religion of the state; that, in this idea, he was not for the repeal of the sacramental test; that, indeed, he knew the Dissenters in general did not greatly scruple it; but that very want of scruple showed less zeal against the Establishment; and, after all, there could no provision be made by human laws against those who made light of the tests which were formed to discriminate opinions. On all this he spoke with a good deal of temper. He did not, indeed, seem to think the test itself, which was rightly considered by Dissenters as in a manner dispensed with by an annual act of Parliament, and which in Ireland was of a late origin, and of much less extent than here, a matter of much moment. The thing which seemed to affect him most was the offence that would be taken at the repeal by the leaders among the Church clergy here, on one hand, and, on the other, the steps which would be taken for its repeal in England in the next session, in consequence of the repeal in Ireland. I assured him, with great truth, that we had no idea among the Whigs of moving the repeal of the test. I confessed very freely, for my own part, that, if it were brought in, I should certainly vote for it; but that I should neither use, nor did I think applicable, any arguments drawn from the analogy of what was done in other parts of the British dominions. We did not argue from analogy, even in this island and United Kingdom. Presbytery was established in Scotland. It became no reason either for its religious or civil establishment here. In New England the Independent Congregational Churches had an established legal maintenance; whilst that country continued part of the British empire, no argument in favor of Independency was adduced from the practice of New England. Government itself lately thought fit to establish the Roman Catholic religion in Canada; but they would not suffer an argument of analogy to be used for its establishment anywhere else. These things were governed, as all things of that nature are governed, not by general maxims, but their own local and peculiar circumstances. Finding, however, that, though he was very cool and patient, I made no great way in the business of the Dissenters, I turned myself to try whether, falling in with his maxims, some modification might not be found, the hint of which I received from your letter relative to the Irish Militia Bill, and the point I labored was so to alter the clause as to repeal the test quoad military and revenue offices: for these being only subservient parts in the economy and execution, rather than the administration of affairs, the politic, civil, and judicial parts would still continue in the hands of the conformists to religious establishments. Without giving any hopes, he, however, said that this distinction deserved to be considered. After this, I strongly pressed the mischief of rejecting the whole bill: that a notion went abroad, that government was not at this moment very well pleased with the Dissenters, as not very well affected to the monarchy; that, in general, I conceived this to be a mistake,—but if it were not, the rejection of a bill in favor of others, because something in favor of them was inserted, instead of humbling and mortifying, would infinitely exalt them: for, if the legislature had no means of favoring those whom they meant to favor, as long as the Dissenters could find means to get themselves included, this would make them, instead of their only being subject to restraint themselves, the arbitrators of the fate of others, and that not so much by their own strength (which could not be prevented in its operation) as by the cooeperation of those whom they opposed. In the conclusion, I recommended, that, if they wished well to the measure which was the main object of the bill, they must explicitly make it their own, and stake themselves upon it; that hitherto all their difficulties had arisen from their indecision and their wrong measures; and to make Lord North sensible of the necessity of giving a firm support to some part of the bill, and to add weighty authority to my reasons, I read him your letter of the 10th of July. It seemed, in some measure, to answer the purpose which I intended. I pressed the necessity of the management of the affair, both as to conduct and as to gaining of men; and I renewed my former advice, that the Lord Lieutenant should be instructed to consult and cooperate with you in the whole affair. All this was, apparently, very fairly taken.

In the evening of that day I saw the Lord Chancellor. With him, too, I had much discourse. You know that he is intelligent, sagacious, systematic, and determined. At first he seemed of opinion that the relief contained in the bill was so inadequate to the mass of oppression it was intended to remove, that it would be better to let it stand over, until a more perfect and better digested plan could be settled. This seemed to possess him very strongly. In order to combat this notion, and to show that the bill, all things considered, was a very great acquisition, and that it was rather a preliminary than an obstruction to relief, I ventured to show him your letter. It had its effect. He declared himself roundly against giving anything to a confederacy, real or apparent, to distress government; that, if anything was done for Catholics or Dissenters, it should be done on its own separate merits, and not by way of bargain and compromise; that they should be each of them obliged to government, not each to the other; that this would be a perpetual nursery of faction. In a word, he seemed so determined on not uniting these plans, that all I could say, and I said everything I could think of, was to no purpose. But when I insisted on the disgrace to government which must arise from their rejecting a proposition recommended by themselves, because their opposers had made a mixture, separable too by themselves, I was better heard. On the whole, I found him well disposed.

As soon as I had returned to the country, this affair lay so much on my mind, and the absolute necessity of government's making a serious business of it, agreeably to the seriousness they professed, and the object required, that I wrote to Sir G. Cooper, to remind him of the principles upon which we went in our conversation, and to press the plan which was suggested for carrying them into execution. He wrote to me on the 20th, and assured me, "that Lord North had given all due attention and respect to what you said to him on Friday, and will pay the same respect to the sentiments conveyed in your letter: everything you say or write on the subject undoubtedly demands it." Whether this was mere civility, or showed anything effectual in their intentions, time and the success of this measure will show. It is wholly with them; and if it should fail, you are a witness that nothing on our part has been wanting to free so large a part of our fellow-subjects and fellow-citizens from slavery, and to free government from the weakness and danger of ruling them by force. As to my own particular part, the desire of doing this has betrayed me into a step which I cannot perfectly reconcile to myself. You are to judge how far, on the circumstances, it may be excused. I think it had a good effect. You may be assured that I made this communication in a manner effectually to exclude so false and groundless an idea as that I confer with you, any more than I confer with them, on any party principle whatsoever,—or that in this affair we look further than the measure which is in profession, and I am sure ought to be in reason, theirs.

I am ever, with the sincerest affection and esteem,

My dear Sir,

Your most faithful and obedient humble servant,

EDMUND BURKE.

BEACONSFIELD, 18th July, 1778.

I intended to have written sooner, but it has not been in my power.

To the Speaker of the House of Commons of Ireland.



TWO LETTERS

TO

THOMAS BURGH, ESQ.,

AND

JOHN MERLOTT, ESQ.,

IN VINDICATION OF HIS PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT RELATIVE TO THE AFFAIRS OF IRELAND.

1780.



LETTER

TO THOMAS BURGH, ESQ.[14]

My Dear Sir,—I do not know in what manner I am to thank you properly for the very friendly solicitude you have been so good as to express for my reputation. The concern you have done me the honor to take in my affairs will be an ample indemnity from all that I may suffer from the rapid judgments of those who choose to form their opinions of men, not from the life, but from their portraits in a newspaper. I confess to you that my frame of mind is so constructed, I have in me so little of the constitution of a great man, that I am more gratified with a very moderate share of approbation from those few who know me than I should be with the most clamorous applause from those multitudes who love to admire at a due distance.

I am not, however, Stoic enough to be able to affirm with truth, or hypocrite enough affectedly to pretend, that I am wholly unmoved at the difficulty which you and others of my friends in Ireland have found in vindicating my conduct towards my native country. It undoubtedly hurts me in some degree: but the wound is not very deep. If I had sought popularity in Ireland, when, in the cause of that country, I was ready to sacrifice, and did sacrifice, a much nearer, a much more immediate, and a much more advantageous popularity here, I should find myself perfectly unhappy, because I should be totally disappointed in my expectations,—because I should discover, when it was too late, what common sense might have told me very early, that I risked the capital of my fame in the most disadvantageous lottery in the world. But I acted then, as I act now, and as I hope I shall act always, from a strong impulse of right, and from motives in which popularity, either here or there, has but a very little part.

With the support of that consciousness I can bear a good deal of the coquetry of public opinion, which has her caprices, and must have her way. Miseri, quibus intentata nitet! I, too, have had my holiday of popularity in Ireland. I have even heard of an intention to erect a statue.[15] I believe my intimate acquaintance know how little that idea was encouraged by me; and I was sincerely glad that it never took effect. Such honors belong exclusively to the tomb,—the natural and only period of human inconstancy, with regard either to desert or to opinion: for they are the very same hands which erect, that very frequently (and sometimes with reason enough) pluck down the statue. Had such an unmerited and unlooked-for compliment been paid to me two years ago, the fragments of the piece might at this hour have the advantage of seeing actual service, while they were moving, according to the law of projectiles, to the windows of the Attorney-General, or of my old friend, Monk Mason.

To speak seriously,—let me assure you, my dear Sir, that, though I am not permitted to rejoice at all its effects, there is not one man on your side of the water more pleased to see the situation of Ireland so prosperous as that she can afford to throw away her friends. She has obtained, solely by her own efforts, the fruits of a great victory, which I am very ready to allow that the best efforts of her best well-wishers here could not have done for her so effectually in a great number of years, and perhaps could not have done at all. I could wish, however, merely for the sake of her own dignity, that, in turning her poor relations and antiquated friends out of doors, (though one of the most common effects of new prosperity,) she had thought proper to dismiss us with fewer tokens of unkindness. It is true that there is no sort of danger in affronting men who are not of importance enough to have any trust of ministerial, of royal, or of national honor to surrender. The unforced and unbought services of humble men, who have no medium of influence in great assemblies, but through the precarious force of reason, must be looked upon with contempt by those who by their wisdom and spirit have improved the critical moment of their fortune, and have debated with authority against pusillanimous dissent and ungracious compliance, at the head of forty thousand men.

Such feeble auxiliaries (as I talk of) to such a force, employed against such resistance, I must own, in the present moment, very little worthy of your attention. Yet, if one were to look forward, it scarcely seems altogether politic to bestow so much liberality of invective on the Whigs of this kingdom as I find has been the fashion to do both in and out of Parliament. That you should pay compliments, in some tone or other, whether ironical or serious, to the minister from whose imbecility you have extorted what you could never obtain from his bounty, is not unnatural. In the first effusions of Parliamentary gratitude to that minister for the early and voluntary benefits he has conferred upon Ireland, it might appear that you were wanting to the triumph of his surrender, if you did not lead some of his enemies captive before him. Neither could you feast him with decorum, if his particular taste were not consulted. A minister, who has never defended his measures in any other way than by railing at his adversaries, cannot have his palate made all at once to the relish of positive commendation. I cannot deny but that on this occasion there was displayed a great deal of the good-breeding which consists in the accommodation of the entertainment to the relish of the guest.

But that ceremony being past, it would not be unworthy of the wisdom of Ireland to consider what consequences the extinguishing every spark of freedom in this country may have upon your own liberties. You are at this instant flushed with victory, and full of the confidence natural to recent and untried power. We are in a temper equally natural, though very different. We feel as men do, who, having placed an unbounded reliance on their force, have found it totally to fail on trial. We feel faint and heartless, and without the smallest degree of self-opinion. In plain words, we are cowed. When men give up their violence and injustice without a struggle, their condition is next to desperate. When no art, no management, no argument, is necessary to abate their pride and overcome their prejudices, and their uneasiness only excites an obscure and feeble rattling in their throat, their final dissolution seems not far off. In this miserable state we are still further depressed by the overbearing influence of the crown. It acts with the officious cruelty of a mercenary nurse, who, under pretence of tenderness, stifles us with our clothes, and plucks the pillow from our heads. Injectu multae vestis opprimi senem jubet. Under this influence we have so little will of our own, that, even in any apparent activity we may be got to assume, I may say, without any violence to sense, and with very little to language, we are merely passive. We have yielded to your demands this session. In the last session we refused to prevent them. In both cases, the passive and the active, our principle was the same. Had the crown pleased to retain the spirit, with regard to Ireland, which seems to be now all directed to America, we should have neglected our own immediate defence, and sent over the last man of our militia to fight with the last man of your volunteers.

To this influence the principle of action, the principle of policy, and the principle of union of the present minority are opposed. These principles of the opposition are the only thing which preserves a single symptom of life in the nation. That opposition is composed of the far greater part of the independent property and independent rank of the kingdom, of whatever is most untainted in character, and of whatever ability remains unextinguished in the people, and of all which tends to draw the attention of foreign countries upon this. It is now in its final and conclusive struggle. It has to struggle against a force to which, I am afraid, it is not equal. The whole kingdom of Scotland ranges with the venal, the unprincipled, and the wrong-principled of this; and if the kingdom of Ireland thinks proper to pass into the same camp, we shall certainly be obliged to quit the field. In that case, if I know anything of this country, another constitutional opposition can never be formed in it; and if this be impossible, it will be at least as much so (if there can be degrees in impossibility) to have a constitutional administration at any future time. The possibility of the former is the only security for the existence of the latter. Whether the present administration be in the least like one, I must venture to doubt, even in the honey-moon of the Irish fondness to Lord North, which has succeeded to all their slappings and scratchings.

If liberty cannot maintain its ground in this kingdom, I am sure that it cannot have any long continuance in yours. Our liberty might now and then jar and strike a discord with that of Ireland. The thing is possible: but still the instruments might play in concert. But if ours be unstrung, yours will be hung up on a peg, and both will be mute forever. Your new military force may give you confidence, and it serves well for a turn; but you and I know that it has not root. It is not perennial, and would prove but a poor shelter for your liberty, when this nation, having no interest in its own, could look upon yours with the eye of envy and disgust. I cannot, therefore, help thinking, and telling you what with great submission I think, that, if the Parliament of Ireland be so jealous of the spirit of our common Constitution as she seems to be, it was not so discreet to mix with the panegyric on the minister so large a portion of acrimony to the independent part of this nation. You never received any sort of injury from them, and you are grown to that degree of importance that the discourses in your Parliament will have a much greater effect on our immediate fortune than our conversation can have upon yours. In the end they will seriously, affect both.

I have looked back upon our conduct and our public conversations in order to discover what it is that can have given you offence. I have done so, because I am ready to admit that to offend you without any cause would be as contrary to true policy as I am sure it must be to the inclinations of almost every one of us. About two years ago Lord Nugent moved six propositions in favor of Ireland in the House of Commons. At the time of the motions, and during the debate, Lord North was either wholly out of the House, or engaged in other matters of business or pleasantry, in the remotest recesses of the West Saxon corner. He took no part whatsoever in the affair; but it was supposed his neutrality was more inclined towards the side of favor. The mover being a person in office was, however, the only indication that was given of such a leaning. We who supported the propositions, finding them better relished than at first we looked for, pursued our advantage, and began to open a way for more essential benefits to Ireland. On the other hand, those who had hitherto opposed them in vain redoubled their efforts, and became exceedingly clamorous. Then it was that Lord North found it necessary to come out of his fastness, and to interpose between the contending parties. In this character of mediator, he declared, that, if anything beyond the first six resolutions should be attempted, he would oppose the whole, but that, if we rested there, the original motions should have his support. On this a sort of convention took place between him and the managers of the Irish business, in which the six resolutions were to be considered as an uti possidetis, and to be held sacred.

By this time other parties began to appear. A good many of the trading towns, and manufactures of various kinds, took the alarm. Petitions crowded in upon one another, and the bar was occupied by a formidable body of council. Lord N. was staggered by this new battery. He is not of a constitution to encounter such an opposition as had then risen, when there were no other objects in view than those that were then before the House. In order not to lose him, we were obliged to abandon, bit by bit, the most considerable part of the original agreement.

In several parts, however, he continued fair and firm. For my own part, I acted, as I trust I commonly do, with decision. I saw very well that the things we had got were of no great consideration; but they were, even in their defects, somewhat leading. I was in hopes that we might obtain gradually and by parts what we might attempt at once and in the whole without success,—that one concession would lead to another,—and that the people of England discovering by a progressive experience that none of the concessions actually made were followed by the consequences they had dreaded, their fears from what they were yet to yield would considerably diminish. But that to which I attached myself the most particularly was, to fix the principle of a free trade in all the ports of these islands, as founded in justice, and beneficial to the whole, but principally to this, the seat of the supreme power. And this I labored to the utmost of my might, upon general principles, illustrated by all the commercial detail with which my little inquiries in life were able to furnish me. I ought to forget such trifling things as those, with all concerning myself; and possibly I might have forgotten them, if the Lord Advocate of Scotland had not, in a very flattering manner, revived them in my memory, in a full House in this session. He told me that my arguments, such as they were, had made him, at the period I allude to, change the opinion with which he had come into the House strongly impressed. I am sure that at the time at least twenty more told me the same thing. I certainly ought not to take their style of compliment as a testimony to fact; neither do I. But all this showed sufficiently, not what they thought of my ability, but what they saw of my zeal. I could say more in proof of the effects of that zeal, and of the unceasing industry with which I then acted, both in my endeavors which were apparent and those that were not so visible. Let it be remembered that I showed those dispositions while the Parliament of England was in a capacity to deliberate and in a situation to refuse, when there was something to be risked here by being suspected of a partiality to Ireland, when there was an honorable danger attending the profession of friendship to you, which heightened its relish, and made it worthy of a reception in manly minds. But as for the awkward and nauseous parade of debate without opposition, the flimsy device of tricking out necessity and disguising it in the habit of choice, the shallow stratagem of defending by argument, what all the world must perceive is yielded to force,—these are a sort of acts of friendship which I am sorry that any of my countrymen should require of their real friends. They are things not to my taste; and if they are looked upon as tests of friendship, I desire for one that I may be considered as an enemy.

What party purpose did my conduct answer at that time? I acted with Lord N. I went to all the ministerial meetings,—and he and his associates in office will do me the justice to say, that, aiming at the concord of the empire, I made it my business to give his concessions all the value of which they were capable, whilst some of those who were covered with his favors derogated from them, treated them with contempt, and openly threatened to oppose them. If I had acted with my dearest and most valued friends, if I had acted with the Marquis of Rockingham or the Duke of Richmond, in that situation, I could not have attended more to their honor, or endeavored more earnestly to give efficacy to the measures I had taken in common with them. The return which I, and all who acted as I did, have met with from him, does not make me repent the conduct which I then held.

As to the rest of the gentlemen with whom I have the honor to act, they did not then, or at any other time, make a party affair of Irish politics. That matter was always taken up without concert; but, in general, from the operation of our known liberal principles in government, in commerce, in religion, in everything, it was taken up favorably for Ireland. Where some local interests bore hard upon the members, they acted on the sense of their constituents, upon ideas which, though I do not always follow, I cannot blame. However, two or three persons, high in opposition, and high in public esteem, ran great risks in their boroughs on that occasion. But all this was without any particular plan. I need not say, that Ireland was in that affair much obliged to the liberal mind and enlarged understanding of Charles Fox, to Mr. Thomas Townshend, to Lord Midleton, and others. On reviewing that affair, which gave rise to all the subsequent manoeuvres, I am convinced that the whole of what has this day been done might have then been effected. But then the minister must have taken it up as a great plan of national policy, and paid with his person in every lodgment of his approach. He must have used that influence to quiet prejudice, which he has so often, used to corrupt principle: and I know, that, if he had, he must have succeeded. Many of the most active in opposition would have given him an unequivocal support. The corporation of London, and the great body of the London West India merchants and planters, which forms the greatest mass of that vast interest, were disposed to fall in with such a plan. They certainly gave no sort of discountenance to what was done or what was proposed. But these are not the kind of objects for which our ministers bring out the heavy artillery of the state. Therefore, as things stood at that time, a great deal more was not practicable.

Last year another proposition was brought out for the relief of Ireland. It was started without any communication with a single person of activity in the country party, and, as it should seem, without any kind of concert with government. It appeared to me extremely raw and undigested. The behavior of Lord N., on the opening of that business, was the exact transcript of his conduct on the Irish question in the former session. It was a mode of proceeding which his nature has wrought into the texture of his politics, and which is inseparable from them. He chose to absent himself on the proposition and during the agitation of that business,—although the business of the House is that alone for which he has any kind of relish, or, as I am told, can be persuaded to listen to with any degree of attention. But he was willing to let it take its course. If it should pass without any considerable difficulty, he would bring his acquiescence to tell for merit in Ireland, and he would have the credit, out of his indolence, of giving quiet to that country. If difficulties should arise on the part of England, he knew that the House was so well trained that he might at his pleasure call us off from the hottest scent. As he acted in his usual manner and upon his usual principle, opposition acted upon theirs, and rather generally supported the measure. As to myself, I expressed a disapprobation at the practice of bringing imperfect and indigested projects into the House, before means were used to quiet the clamors which a misconception of what we were doing might occasion at home, and before measures were settled with men of weight and authority in Ireland, in order to render our acts useful and acceptable to that country. I said, that the only thing which could make the influence of the crown (enormous without as well as within the House) in any degree tolerable was, that it might be employed to give something of order and system to the proceedings of a popular assembly; that government being so situated as to have a large range of prospect, and as it were a bird's-eye view of everything, they might see distant dangers and distant advantages which were not so visible to those who stood on the common level; they might, besides, observe them, from this advantage, in their relative and combined state, which people locally instructed and partially informed could behold only in an insulated and unconnected manner;—but that for many years past we suffered under all the evils, without any one of the advantages of a government influence; that the business of a minister, or of those who acted as such, had been still further to contract the narrowness of men's ideas, to confirm inveterate prejudices, to inflame vulgar passions, and to abet all sorts of popular absurdities, in order the better to destroy popular rights and privileges; that, so far from methodizing the business of the House, they had let all things run into an inextricable confusion, and had left affairs of the most delicate policy wholly to chance.

After I had expressed myself with the warmth I felt on seeing all government and order buried under the ruins of liberty, and after I had made my protest against the insufficiency of the propositions, I supported the principle of enlargement at which they aimed, though short and somewhat wide of the mark,—giving, as my sole reason, that the more frequently these matters came into discussion, the more it would tend to dispel fears and to eradicate prejudices.

This was the only part I took. The detail was in the hands of Lord Newhaven and Lord Beauchamp, with some assistance from Earl Nugent and some independent gentlemen of Irish property. The dead weight of the minister being removed, the House recovered its tone and elasticity. We had a temporary appearance of a deliberative character. The business was debated freely on both sides, and with sufficient temper. And the sense of the members being influenced by nothing but what will naturally influence men unbought, their reason and their prejudices, these two principles had a fair conflict, and prejudice was obliged to give way to reason. A majority appeared, on a division, in favor of the propositions.

As these proceedings got out of doors, Glasgow and Manchester, and, I think, Liverpool, began to move, but in a manner much more slow and languid than formerly. Nothing, in my opinion, would have been less difficult than entirely to have overborne their opposition. The London West India trade was, as on the former occasion, so on this, perfectly liberal and perfectly quiet; and there is abroad so much respect for the united wisdom of the House, when supposed to act upon a fair view of a political situation, that I scarcely ever remember any considerable uneasiness out of doors, when the most active members, and those of most property and consideration in the minority, have joined themselves to the administration. Many factious people in the towns I mentioned began, indeed, to revile Lord North, and to reproach his neutrality as treacherous and ungrateful to those who had so heartily and so warmly entered into all his views with regard to America. That noble lord, whose decided character it is to give way to the latest and nearest pressure, without any sort of regard to distant consequences of any kind, thought fit to appear, on this signification of the pleasure of those his worthy friends and partisans, and, putting himself at the head of the posse scaccarii, wholly regardless of the dignity and consistency of our miserable House, drove the propositions entirely out of doors by a majority newly summoned to duty.

In order to atone to Ireland for this gratification to Manchester, he graciously permitted, or rather forwarded, two bills,—that for encouraging the growth of tobacco, and that for giving a bounty on exportation of hemp from Ireland. They were brought in by two very worthy members, and on good principles; but I was sorry to see them, and, after expressing my doubts of their propriety, left the House. Little also [else?] was said upon them. My objections were two: the first, that the cultivation of those weeds (if one of them could be at all cultivated to profit) was adverse to the introduction of a good course of agriculture; the other, that the encouragement given to them tended to establish that mischievous policy of considering Ireland as a country of staple, and a producer of raw materials.