duke of Cumberland, who was now full of vengeance against the king, on account of the Royal Marriage Act, and his exclusion from court, voted in the minority.

Chatham, undeterred by the fate of his motion, determined to make one more effort, and bring in a bill for the pacification of the colonies, and he called upon Franklin to assist in framing it. Franklin had, in the preceding autumn, been introduced at Hayes, through lord Stanhope, and Chatham had expressed his regret at what he heard, viz., that the Americans were bent on absolute separation from the mother-country. Franklin warmly protested against any such idea being entertained. He says himself, "I assured his lordship, that, having more than once travelled almost from one end of the continent to the other, and kept a great variety of company-eating, drinking, and conversing with them freely-I never heard, in any conversation, from any person, drunk or sober, the least expression of a wish for a separation, or hint that such a thing would be advantageous to America." These most positive assurances at once satisfied Chatham, as well they might, that this was the true state of the case. But what was the fact? We have the evidence of Josiah Quincy, a young American from Boston, who had taken a very active part amongst the "Sons of Liberty," and who, as the son of an old friend, was now constantly with Franklin in London. Writing at the very time that Franklin was making this solemn and earnest statement to Chatham to a friend in Boston-namely, on the 27th of November, 1774he says, "Dr. Franklin is an American in heart and soul. You may trust him; his ideas are not contracted within the narrow limits of exemption from taxes, but are constructed upon the broad scale of total emancipation! He is explicit and bold upon the subject."

Righteous as was the cause of America, we have had, and shall have again, to lament that her champions often acted on her behalf by no means a high or honourable part. Duplicity and petty tricks often took the place of open and honest policy, and no one offended in this respect more than the ablest of all their champions-Dr. Franklin.

and he called on the lords to entertain it cordially, to correct its crudenesses, and pass it for the peace of the whole empire. The bill first explicitly asserted our supreme power over the colonies; it declared that all that related to the disposing of the army belonged to the prerogative of the crown, but that no armed force could be lawfully employed against the rights and liberties of the inhabitants; that no tax, or tollage, or other charge for the revenue, should be levied without the consent of the provincial assemblies. Still, all regulations regarding trade and commerce were declared as belonging exclusively to the crown of England. It proposed that the intended congress should be held as fixed at Philadelphia, on the 9th of May, when it should, in the first place, recognise the supreme legislative right of parliament; and then, after making due provision for the support of the civil government of the respective colonies, it should make a free grant to the king of a certain perpetual revenue towards the alleviation of the national debt. And this last claim was set up on the ground that the mother country had burthened himself heavily for the defence, extension, and prosperity of the colonies. The powers of the admiralty and viceadmiralty courts in America were, according to the prayer of the last congress, to be restrained within their original limits, and it declared it unlawful to send a person indicted for murder in one province to be tried in another, or in the mother country. The acts of parliament relating to America passed since 1764 were wholly repealed; the judges were made permanent during their good behaviour, and the charters and constitutions of the several provinces were not to be infringed or set aside, unless upon some valid ground of forfeiture. All these concessions were, of course, made conditional on the recognition of the colonies of the supreme authority of parliament.

Had this bill been frankly accepted by ministers, it would have gone far to heal the rupture betwixt the mother country and her colonies. There was yet in it one clause to which it is not to be supposed the congress would have agreed-that with reference to the control of the trade of America; but it would have shown a real disposition on the part of England to recognise the rights of the subject in colonies as well as at home; and the great question of taxation being settled, this minor question might have been amicably arranged, and, in the words of Chatham, true reconcilement would have averted impending calamities. But

The next day (Wednesday), the 1st of February, Chatham appeared in the house of lords with his bill. He declared that it was a bill not merely of concession, but of assertion,

the great statesman; they were men of that contracted mind who are born to effect the liberation of nations by oppressing them, and thus to become the unconscious instruments of Providence for the inauguration of revolutions; and a series of revolutions, as that of France, grew out of this impending one. The earl of Dartmouth, the secretary of state for the colonies, proposed that the bill should lie on the table for deliberation. The duke of Grafton complained of the manner in which the bill had been hurried into the house, and, as Chatham in his reply observed, showed every disposition to hurry it as quickly out again. The friends of the duke of Bedford, who had joined the administration, showed the most rancorous disposition towards America. The chief of these, lord Sandwich, declared that he never could believe this bill was the work of any British peer, but rather of an

time to lord Hyde, who, with equal want of success, urged the philosopher to adhere to the conditions of Chatham's bill, took the paper, saying he would lay it before lord North, but he was quite certain with no chance of its acceptance. Lord North rejected the scheme at once, and determined to lay before the commons a plan of his own. So long as Franklin remained in England, he continued to lord Chatham, lord Howe, and all influential men that he came near, his warm assurances of his tender desire for the preservation of union, but never for a moment conceded a point that stood in the way of reconciliation.

On the 6th of February the address to the king was reported, and then Wilkes, who, on this question, was always right, declared that a just and proper resistance to despotism was nothing less than revolution, and that this violent and insane address would probably cause the Americans to fling away the scabbard as we had done, that they might hereafter be celebrating the glorious revolution of 1775 as we did that of 1688. Lord John Cavendish spoke out in terms of a noble indignation :-"My heart and hand," he said, "join in deprecating the horrors of a civil war, which will be rendered still more dreadful by its involving in its certain consequences a foreign one, with the combined forces of great and powerful nations." The same sentiments, the same warnings of a European war in the train of an American one, were uttered by others, but in vain; the address was carried by an overwhelming majority, and the next day a conference was held with the house of lords on the address, which was then accepted by the peers, and sent up to the throne. The king, in reply, assured the house of his resolve to carry out their views, and recommended the commons to vote additional forces. Accordingly, they voted four thousand four hundred additional troops, and two thousand additional sailors-an absurd number, when, if they must apply force, it ought to have been overwhelming, and when they acknowledged that the movements of France were more than suspicious; they were menacing, for she was augmenting and preparing for sea her fleet.

On the 10th of February lord North took a fresh step for the coercion of the Americans. He said they had continually threatened us with ceasing to trade with us; that they had entered into the most unlawful and daring associations to ruin our merchants, and to starve our West Indians, who had derived their provisions from them; and that it was only proper to show them that the power of obstruction to trade really lay in our hands. He therefore moved for leave to bring in a bill to cut off the entire trade of New England, and their profitable fisheries, except to such persons as obtained certificates of their loyalty and good behaviour from the colonial governors. Spite of all opposition, leave was given. Numerous petitions were then poured in from merchants and others, praying to be heard 1 against the bill, and numerous parties were heard. It was shown by these witnesses that the people of New England were indebted to the merchants of London alone no less than a million sterling; that this bill would ruin our fisheries as well as the Americans'; but this was contradicted by the merchants of Poole, in Dorsetshire, who howed that England alone employed in the Newfoundland

fisheries four hundred ships, two thousand fishing shallops, and twenty thousand men. The Quakers prayed that their brethren in the island of Nantucket, who had one hundred and thirty vessels employed in fisheries all over the world, and had nothing to do with war or rebellion. should bo exempt from the operation of the act. This prayer was so far complied with, that all ships, the property of the Quakers of Nantucket, which had sailed before the 1st of March, were exempt from the penalties of the bill. The bill having been sent up to the lords, was passed finally, and, on the 30th of March, received the royal assent.

But scarcely had this bill of lord North's been brought forward, when he seemed to have been struck with compunction. He had listened to the outlines of negotiation with Franklin, through lord Howe and David Barclay, and though these, as we have seen, had come to nought, he was still sufficiently impressed by the solemn warnings of Chatham and others to attempt a conciliatory measure of his own. Accordingly, on the 20th of February, only ten days after his bill restrictive of the American trade, and whilst it was progressing, he moved in a committee of the whole house, "That if the legislature of any of the American provinces should propose to make some provision for the common defence, and also for the civil government of that province, and if such proposal shall be approved of by the king and parliament, it would be proper to forbear, whilst such provision lasted, from levying or proposing any tax, duty, or assessment within the said province."

This proposal, which, at an earlier stage of the dispute, might have been listened to, was one at this stage which was sure to be rejected, and was only one of those miserable half measures which commonplace minds so frequently put forth only to demonstrate their inability to grasp the amplitude of the occasion. It was supposed that the measure had been intended to be larger, but that the Bedford party had fallen on it in council, and reduced it to these pitiable dimensions. Yet when it was introduced into the commons by lord North, the Bedford party looked at each other in consternation, and soon the tempest broke loose in the treasury benches themselves. Welbore Ellis, usually so compliant to ministerial measures, and Rigby, the Bedford creature, denounced the proposal as giving up everything to the Americans and the opposition. All was confusion, and, as lord Chatham afterwards observed, lord North looked like a man exploded; the whole cabinet seemed about to explode too, altogether. In vain did lord North endeavour to calm the enraged friends of government. Gibbon, in a letter to lord Sheffield, says—“ We went into the house in confusion, expecting every moment that tho Bedfords would fly into rebellion against these measures. Lord North rosa six times in the midst of lives and fortunes, war and famine.' He rose to appease the storm, but all in vain; till at length Sir Gilbert Elliot declared for administration, and the troops all rallied under their proper standard."

But the storm was appeased only by lord North's condescending to explain his measure in such a manner as deprived it of every particle of generous feeling, and reduced it to the lowest Machiavellian level. He said, the real object of the resolution was to divide the Americans-to satisfy the moderate part of them, and oppose them to the immoderate,

killed eight of them. The English, on the other hand, declare that the Americans, in retiring, no sooner reached the shelter of a wall than they fired on the British; that the firing came also from some adjoining houses, and shot one man, and wounded major Pitcairn's horse in two places; that then the English were ordered to fire, that they killed several, wounded others, and put the body, about a hundred in number, to flight. The English then pushed on to Concord, the grenadiers having now come up. On approaching Concord they observed another body of minute-men drawn up on a hill near the meeting-house, but, as the regulars advanced, these retired across a bridge into the town. The

at their enemies, the minute-men pressing on their rear, still sheltered by trees and walls. The result would have been more disastrous had not general Gage sent on to Lexington another detachment of foot and marines, consisting of about sixteen companies, under command of lord Percy. His lordship formed his troops into a hollow square, in which he received the exhausted soldiers, who flung themselves on the ground with their tongues hanging out of their mouths, like dogs after a chase.

After they were somewhat rested, lord Percy slowly marched back towards Boston, but the Americans, who had drawn back at the junction of these fresh troops, now

regulars advanced and took possession of the bridge, sending a number of soldiers into the town to destroy the stores there. They succeeded in throwing into the river five hundred pounds of ball, breaking to pieces sixty barrels of flour, part of which, however, was recovered, and spiking three guns.

By this time the alarm had spread, the minute-men came running from all places, and as the English, having executed their commission, began to retire, the Americans shouted, "The lobsters run!" The minute-men now rushed over the bridge after them, and firing from behind trees and walls, killed a considerable number of them. The Americansexcellent shots with their rifles-could only be seen by the smoke of these rifles, and the English, tired with their long night march, instead of halting to hunt them out, kept on their way towards Lexington. The whole march was of this description: the English, unable to get a good shot

hung again on their rear in increased numbers, and, carefully concealing themselves behind trees, walls, and in houses, kept up an almost incessant fire the whole way-the English scarcely ever being able to get a shot at them. As they approached the river, some Americans endeavoured to draw them, on pretence of showing them a ford, into an ambuscade, but lord Percy used his own judgment, and crossed safely. But the other side of the river was equally infested with riflemen, who followed the troops to the very gates of Boston, which they entered, quite worn out, about sunset. In this first bloodshed betwixt the colonists and the mother country, the English found they had lost sixty killed, forty-nine missing, and one hundred and thirty-six wounded. The Americans admitted that they had a loss of sixty, of whom two-thirds were killed.

The Americans, elated with their success, styled it "the glorious victory in the battle of Lexington," for we shall