power. No man is to be trusted in such a situation. It is not the fault of the soldier, but the vice of human nature, which, unbridled by law, becomes insolent and licentious, wantonly violates the peace of society, and tramples upon the rights of human kind.

With respect to those gentlemen who are destined to this service, they are much to be pitied. It is a service, which an officer of feeling and of worth must enter upon with infinite reluctance. A service, in which his only merit must be, to bear much, and do little. With the melancholy prospect before him of commencing a civil war, and embruing his hands in the blood of his fellow-subjects, his feelings, his life, his honour are hazarded, without a possibility of any equivalent or compensation. You may perhaps think a law, founded upon this motion, will be his protection. I am mistaken if it will. Who is to ex

ecute it? He must be a bold man indeed who makes the attempt: if the people are so exasperated, that it is unsafe to bring the man who has injured them to trial, let the governor who withdraws him from the justice look to himself. The people will not endure it: they would no longer deserve the reputation of being descended from the loins of Englishmen, if they did endure it.

When I stand up as an advocate for America, I feel myself the firmest friend of this country. We stand upon the commerce of America. Alienate your colonies, and you will subvert the foundation of your riches and your strength. Let the banners be once spread in America, and you are an undone people. You are urging this desperate, this destructive issue. You are urging it with such violence, and by measures tending so manifestly to that fatal point, that, but for that state of madness which only could inspire such an intention, it would appear to be your deliberate purpose. In assenting to your late bill I resisted the violence of America, at the hazard of my popularity there. I now resist your phrenzy, at the same risk here. You have changed your ground. You are becoming the aggressors, and offering the last of hu

man outrages to the people of America, by subjecting them, in effect, to military execution. I know the vast superiority of your disciplined troops over the Provincials; but beware how you supply the want of discipline by desperation. Instead of sending them the olive branch, you have sent the naked sword. By the olive branch I mean a repeal of all the late laws, fruitless to you and oppressive to them.

Ask their aid in a constitutional manner, and they will give it to the utmost of their ability. They never yet refused it when properly required. Your journals bear the recorded acknowledgments of the zeal with which they have contributed to the general necessities of the state. What madness is it that prompts you to attempt obtaining that by force which you may more certainly procure by requisition? They may be flattered into any thing; but they are to much like yourselves to be driven. Have some indulgence for your own likeness; respect their sturdy English virtue; retract your odious exertions of authority, and remember, that the first step towards making them contribute to your wants, is to reconcile them to your government.

(It was observed that lord North trembled and faltered at every word of this motion.)

HON. TEMPLE LUTTRELL.

I have introduced the following Speech as an exquisite specimen of unaccountably absurd affectation.

On Mr. Buller's Motion that 2000 additional Seamen be employed for the year 1775, to enforce the Measures of Government in America.

IRISE up under a number of disadvantages, and shall scarce be able to express my sentiments without much agitation and embarrassment, a novice as I am at political disquisitions, and attempting (from a seat which

till this hour I might not call my own) to speak on a subject of such high import, in the presence, and possibly against the opinion of the most experienced statesmen in any country of the universe. But, sir, it has been earnestly recommended to me, as well by the elec tors of the borough of which I have the honour to be a representative, as by several other persons of respectable consideration, that I will exert the utmost of my humble endeavours and faculties, towards the establishing of peace, and conciliating the affections of the American colonies with their parent-state of Great Britain, and to promote the joint happiness of both divisions of this mighty empire, on the firm basis of equality and mutual good offices: and I should hold it an unpardonable omission of duty were I to remain now silent, especially as I was precluded, by the dependence before parliament of a controverted return, from declaring my disposition towards the oppressed colonists, at the opening of the present sessions, when a speech from the throne of the most inimical tendency to America, and therefore the most alarming and dangerous tendency to the whole British realm, received the thanks of this house. I was under the same preclusion when commerce here stood a dejected supplicant, in just apprehension from the impending storm. Well, sir, might she be alarmed, to see a pilot at the helm, as the winds and the billows arise, who, rather than part with the guns throws the merchandize overboard: save them, sir, he may, by so costly a sacrifice, but not for jubilee or triumph; they shall be saved for signals of distress, and to solemnize the obsequies of your empire. The merchants were not then to be heard, lest their candid story should set in the proper point of view, those insidious fragments of official letters laid on your table. What human understanding could cement such a mangled cor-> respondence together, so as to derive any clear accurate knowledge of the real condition or sentiments of the Americans? Whatsoever might extenuate offences, exVOL. II.

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cuse error, and restore perfect amity between the two countries, did the partial hand of administration wickedly suppress; while in too glaring a light was exhibited every fact that could serve to widen the breach, and inflame the passions, and blow up a faint, luckless spark of animosity to the full combustion and horrors of a civil war ! These misrepresentations, however, answered the ends proposed, for both houses were blindly entrapped to give their sanction to as sanguinary a scroll (in the form of an address) as was ever laid by a prostitute senate at the feet of deluded majesty.

Did not your ancestors, sir, manfully fight, did not some of them heroically fall, to preserve those constitutional rights of the subject to every Briton, which you have now by one vote pledged yourself, at the hazard of life and fortune, to subvert and to annihilate throughout the better part of the whole British monarchy ?

I do not conceive it possible that any man here present can feel as he ought, be conscious of a participation in the superintendence of the common-wealth, and remain a mere tranquil observer when so weighty, so interesting a subject comes before you; a subject on the issue of which perhaps his own individual happiness or misery, doubtless the happiness or misery of his nearest posterity, will depend. With what hebitude, sir, must the blood circulate through his veins! What must his definition be of an ignominious supineness and apathy? This is not a debate of slow animation, in which few persons are concerned, and of limited influence; we are now to decide upon the fate of millions through a long series of ages, and the part which every man shall take on this occasion must stamp him with characters indeli ble through all eternity-a patriot or a parricide.

"Tis, sir, from the collisions of controversy that those radiant sparks are struck out by which truth lights her sacred torch-nor have I less expectation from those gentlemen who are but just initiated into parliamentary business, than from your veteran politicians, " deep ou

whose front engraven (to use the phrase of Milton) deliberation sits and public care." Such veterans, might, indeed, be our surest judges, were we now about to agitate questions wrapt up in subdolous Machiavelian mystery, and only to be developed by the acutest abstract reasoning. The present juncture, sir, requires only a well principled heart, and a head moderately conversant with the nature of men and things. It is not, I own, I feel, given to a young member of this august assembly to deliver his ideas with that method, that guarded correctness, that unagitated confidence, which long habitude of speaking usually supplies; but will he, sir, yield with less ductility to the dictates and honest zeal of inward conscience? He comes among you at last with a judgment unbiassed: he has not pledged himself to any partial junto, whose maxims and interest he is at all events to adopt for the measure of his political career : he has not stood forth an accomplice to any of those manifold mischiefs and blunders which have heretofore been committed in the administration of your colonies : he has had no share in inflaming the evil by temporary. anodynes; nor has he treated the imperial concerns of that wide-stretched continent as only accessary to, and of trivial account, when compared with his own private schemes of ambition and aggrandisement. Upon the whole, sir, I cannot but think him rather the more likely to execute the share of such important award committed to his discretion, as becomes an upright delegate of the people at large, heedless whether his conduct therein may quadrate with the narrow, selfish views of this or that set of men, who are candidates for titles or power: not but that I have the satisfaction to see here present some characters animated with true patriotic spirit, who have long and worthily been seated within these walls; on whose eminent talents, on whose approved integrity, America rests her best hope. Such gentlemen as come within the scope of any of those disadvantageous allusions I have just thrown out, will consider, that a well