Sir, that the doctrines to be laid down in America, would not have been too trivial an occasion, even for the reasoning abilities of the learned gentleman himself. But, Sir, you may think to carry these doctrines into execution, and be mistaken too; —the battle is not yet fought; but if it were fought, and the wreath of victory adorned your brow, still is not that continent conquered; witness the behaviour of one miserable woman, who with her single arm did that which an army of a hundred thousand men could not doarrested your progress, in the moment of your success. This miserable being was found in a cellar, with her visage besmeared and smutted over, with every mark of rage, despair, resolution, and the most exalted heroism, buried in combustibles, in order to fire New York, and perish in its ashes; she was brought forth, and knowing that she would be condemned to die, upon being asked her purpose, said, "to fire the city!" and was determined to omit no opportunity of doing what her country called for. Her train was laid and fired; and it is worthy of attention, how Providence was pleased to make use of those humble means to serve the American cause, when open force was used in vain. In order to bring things to this unhappy situation, did not you pave the way, by a succession of acts of tyranny?—for this, you shut up their ports;--cut off their fishery; annihilated their charters; - and governed them by an army. Sir, the recollection of these things, being the evident causes of what we have seen, is more than what ought to be endured. This it is, that has burnt the noble city of New York; that has planted the bayonet in the bosoms of my principals; — in the bosom of the city, where alone your wretched government once boasted the only friends she could number in America. If this was not the only succession of events you determined upon, and therefore looked for, why was America left without any power in it, to give security to the persons and property of those who were and wished to be loyal? this was essential to government; you did it not, and might therefore be well said to have abdicated the government.

I have been reading a work given us by a country, that is perpetually employed in productions of merit. I believe it is not published yet-the History of Philip the Second; and I there find, that that tyrannical monarch never dreamt of the tyranny exerted by this administration. Good God! Sir, shall we be told, that you cannot analyze grievances? that you can have no communication with rebels, because they have declared for independency? Shall we be told this, when the tyrant Philip did it after the same circumstance in the Netherlands? By edict he allowed their ships to enter their ports, and suffered them to depart in peace; he treated with them; made them propositions; and positively declared that he would redress all their grievances. And James II., when he was sailing from France, at the head of a formidable force, assisted like you by foreign troops, and having a great party in the kingdom, still offered specific terms; while his exceptions of pardon were few, amongst the rest my honourable friend's ancestor, Sir Stephen Fox. But you will offer none: you simply tell them to lay down their arms, and then you will do just as you please. Could the most cruel conqueror say less? had you conquered, the devil himself in hell, could you be less liberal? No! Sir, you would offer no terms, you meant to drive them to the declaration of independency : and even after it was issued, you ought by your offers to have reversed the effect. You would not receive the Remonstrance which I brought you, from New York, because it denied your right to certain powers: — yet the late King of France received remonstrances from his parliaments, that expressly denied his right to the powers he and even was in the constant exercise of-answered them, redressed some of the grievances, which those very remonstrances complained of, though he refused to grant what he thought more peculiarly entrenched upon his own authority.

In this situation, Sir, shocking to say, are we called upon, by another proclamation, to go to the altar of the

of the peace of our blessed Saviour. He said, "my peace I give you;" but we are, on this fast, to have war only in our hearts and mouths; war against our brethren. Till our churches are purified from this abominable service, I shall consider them, not as the temples of the Almighty, but the synagogues of Satan. An act not more infamous, as far as respects its political purposes, than blasphemous and profane as a pretended act of national devotion-when the people are called upon, in the most solemn and awful manner, to repair to church, to partake of a sacrament, and at the foot of the altar, to commit sacrilege, to perjure themselves publicly by charging their American brethren with the horrid crime of rebellion, with propagating "specious falsehoods," when either the charge must be notoriously false, or those who make it, not knowing it to be true, call Almighty God to witness, not a specious but a most audacious and blasphemous falsehood.

The motion was also supported by Mr. Fox, Mr. Dunning, and Mr. Byng. Upon a division, the numbers were, Yeas 47: Noes 109. So it passed in the negative.

N

ARREARS OF THE CIVIL LIST.

April 16. 1777.

On the 9th of April 1777, Lord North delivered a message from the king, in which much concern was expressed by the sovereign at being obliged to acquaint them with the difficulties he laboured under, from debts incurred by the expences of the household, and of the civil government, which amounted on the 5th of the preceding January to upwards of 600,000l. That he relied on the loyalty and affection of his faithful commons, of which he had received so many signal proofs, for enabling him to discharge this debt, and that they would, at

the same time, make some further provision for the better support of his household, and of the honour and dignity of the crown. The message was attended with a number of papers, containing various accounts of the expenditure, and a comparative statement of the whole amount of the present civil list establishment, from the year 1760, with that of the produce of the former revenues, which had been appropriated to that service, during the same period; the former being intended to explain the causes of excess in the expenditure, and the latter to shew, that the crown had been a loser by the bargain which it then made with parliament. A motion was then made, and carried, that the message should, on the 16th, be referred to the consideration of the committee of supply. On the adjourned day for taking the message into consideration by the committee of supply, a motion was made by Lord John Cavendish, that the order of reference of the 9th instant might be discharged. The view of this motion was, that instead of carrying the question directly into the committee of supply, there to determine at once by a vote, whether provision should be made for supplying the whole demands, the accounts of the expenditure, the cause of the excess, the means of preventing it in future, and the propriety of complying in the whole or in part with the requisitions, should first be examined accurately, and considered with due deliberation, in a committee of the whole House. This motion accordingly, which was, in effect, whether the Speaker should leave the chair, brought out the whole force of. debate, which was long and ably supported, most of the considerablę speakers on both sides having distinguished themselves in its

course.

Mr. BURKE was severe upon Lord North. He said, that the time of bringing in this demand was full of indecency and impropriety; that when we were going to tax every gentleman's house in England, even to the smallest domestic accommodation, and to accumulate burthen upon burthen, nothing but a confidence in the servility of the House, and an experience of their carelessness, with regard to all affairs, could make the ministry desperate enough to tell them, that in such a time they had not provided sufficiently for the splendour of the crown, The main argu

ment on which the demand stood, was the experience of the whole reign, that 800,000l. was not sufficient for the civil list expences. To this ground of argument he objected; because if it were once admitted, the propriety of every man's practice would be judged by the practice itself; a man's extravagance would become the measure of his supply, and because he had actually spent a great deal, he ought in reason to be furnished with a great deal to spend. This would be to establish a principle of public profusion, which could never cease to operate, whilst we had a shilling to spend. It would even make it the interest of ministers to be prodigal, since their extravagance, instead of lessening their income, would be the certain means of increasing their estate.

Having refuted this kind of argument; taking for granted the very point in question-which was, whether the ministers had managed well or ill; whether they had incurred the debt properly or improperly, -he said, that the only way of judging of this matter was to proceed as wise men ought to do in all their private affairs, namely, to try whether the object obtained was equal to the consideration paid. The object to be obtained was the royal dignity; the consideration paid was 800,000l. a-year. The sum had been paid. Had the object been attained? Was the court great, splendid, and magnificent? To know whether the royal dignity might have been attained for that sum, and to discover whether the not obtaining it was owing to the scantiness of the supply, and not to the mismanagement of what was given, it was proper to see how other kings had maintained the royal dignity; what their charge, and what their incomes were. For this purpose, Mr. Burke took a comparative view of the income and stile of living of his present majesty, of George II., and of King William: That George II. had a more extensive family for a great part of his reign; that his income was not larger, nor so large, as that of the present king; that he appeared in a more princely manner than the ministers suffered his present majesty to live: That King