of American affairs; one whom all Europe ranks with our Boyles and Newtons, as an honor not to the English nation only, but to human nature."

1775.

Feb.

Overawed by the temper of the house, Dartmouth, with his wonted weakness, which made him execute the worst measures even when he seemed inclined to the best, wheeled round against his own candor, and declared for rejecting the plan immediately. This Gower demanded; this even Grafton advised.

Perceiving the unalterable purpose of the ministry, Chatham poured upon them a torrent of invective. "This bill," said he, "though rejected here, will make its way to the public, to the nation, to the remotest wilds of America; and, however faulty or defective, it will at least manifest how zealous I have been to avert those storms which seem ready to burst on my country. Yet I am not surprised that men who hate liberty should detest those that prize it; or that those who want virtue themselves should persecute those who possess it. The whole of your political conduct has been one continued series of weakness and temerity, despotism and the most notorious servility, incapacity and corruption. I must allow you one merit, a strict attention to your own interests: in that view, who can wonder that you should put a negative on any measure which must deprive you of your places, and reduce you to that insignificance for which God and nature designed you?"

Lord Chatham's bill, though on so important a subject, offered by so great a statesman, and supported by most able and learned speakers, was resisted by ignorance, prejudice, and passion, by misconceptions and wilful perversion of plain truth, and was rejected on the first reading by a vote of sixty-one to thirty-two.

"Hereditary legislators!" thought Franklin. "There would be more propriety in having hereditary professors of mathematics! But the elected house of commons is no better, nor ever will be while the electors receive money for their votes, and pay money wherewith ministers may bribe their representatives when chosen." Yet the wilfulness of the lords was happy for America; for Chatham's

proposition contained clauses to which it never could safely have assented, and yet breathed a spirit which must have calmed its resentment, distracted its councils, and palsied its will.

The number and weight of the minority should have led the ministers to pause; yet they rushed on with headlong indiscretion, thinking to subdue the Americans by fear. The first step towards inspiring terror was to declare Massachusetts in a state of rebellion, and to pledge the parliament and the whole force of Great Britain to its reduction; the next, by prohibiting the American fisheries, to starve New England; the next, to call out the savages on the rear of the colonies; the next, to excite a servile insurrection. Accordingly, Lord North, on the day after Chatham's defeat, proposed to the commons a joint address to the king to declare that a rebellion existed in Massachusetts, and to pledge their lives and properties to its suppression.

1775. Feb.

"The colonies," said Dunning, "are not in a state of rebellion, but resisting the attempt to establish despotism in America, as a prelude to the same system in the mother country. Opposition to arbitrary measures is warranted by the constitution, and established by precedent." "Nothing but the display of vigor," said Thurlow, "will prevent the American colonies becoming independent states."

Grant, the same officer who had been scandalously beaten at Pittsburg, and had made himself so offensive in South Carolina, famous in his day for gluttony, asserted, amidst the loudest cheering, that he knew the Americans very well, and was sure they would not fight; "that they were not soldiers and never could be made so, being naturally pusillanimous and incapable of discipline; that a very slight force would be more than sufficient for their complete reduction;" and he mimicked their peculiar expressions, and ridiculed their religious enthusiasm, manners, and ways of living, greatly to the entertainment of the house.

At this stage, Fox, displaying for the first time the full extent of his abilities, which made him for more than a quarter of a century the leading debater on the side of the

liberal party in England, entered into the history of the dispute with great force and temper, and stated truly that "the reason why the colonies objected to taxes for revenue was, that such revenue in the hands of government took out of the hands of the people to be governed the control which every Englishman thinks he ought to have over the government to which his rights and interests are intrusted." The defence of the ministry rested chiefly on Wedderburn. Gibbon had prepared himself to speak, but neither he nor Germain could find room for a single word.

Again Lord North hesitated; and Franklin, whose mediation was once more solicited, received a paper containing the results of ministerial conferences on "the hints" which he had written. "We desire nothing but what is necessary to our security and well-being," said Franklin to the friendly agents who came to him. They declared, by authority, that the repeal of the tea act and the Boston port act would be conceded; the Quebec act might be amended by reducing the province to its ancient limits; but the Massachusetts acts must be continued, both "as real amendments" of the constitution of that province, and "as a standing example of the power of parliament." Franklin's reply was brief: "While parliament claims the right of altering American constitutions at pleasure, there can be no agreement, for we are rendered unsafe in every privilege." "An agreement is necessary for America," it was answered; "it is so easy for Britain to burn all your seaport towns." "My little property," rejoined Franklin, "consists of houses in those towns; make bonfires of them whenever you please; the fear of losing them will never alter my resolution to resist to the last the claim of parliament."

1775. Feb. 7.

When on the sixth of February the address was reported to the house, Lord John Cavendish earnestly "deprecated civil war, necessarily involving a foreign one also." "A fit and proper resistance," said Wilkes, "is a revolution, not a rebellion. Who can tell whether, in consequence of this day's violent and mad address, the scabbard may not be thrown away by the Americans as well as by us; and, should success attend them, whether, in

a few years, the Americans may not celebrate the glorious era of the revolution of 1775 as we do that of 1688? Success crowned the generous effort of our forefathers for freedom ; else they had died on the scaffold as traitors and rebels, and the period of our history which does us the most honor would have been deemed a rebellion against lawful authority, not the expulsion of a tyrant."

During the debate, which lasted till half past two in the morning, Lord North threw off the responsibility of the tax on tea, in order to prepare the way for offering the repeal of that tax as the basis for conciliation. It was too late; for a new question of the power of parliament over charters and laws had intervened. The disavowal offended his colleagues, and in itself was not honest; his vote in the cabinet had decided the measure, and it was unworthy of a minister of the crown to intimate that he had obsequiously followed a chief like Grafton, or yielded his judgment to the king.

Lord George Germain was fitly selected to deliver the message of the commons at the bar of the lords. "There

1775. Feb. 7.

is in the address one paragraph which I totally disclaim," said Rockingham; "I openly declare I will risk neither life nor fortune in support of the measures recommended. Four fifths of the nation are opposed to this address; for myself, I shall not tread in the steps of my noble but ill-fated ancestor, Lord Strafford, who first courted popular favor, and then deserted the cause he had embarked in; as I have set out by supporting the cause of the people, so I shall never, for any temptation whatsoever, desert or betray them."

Mansfield, as if in concert with North, took the occasion to deny having advised the tea-tax; and he condemned it as the most absurd measure that could be imagined. "The original cause of the dispute," said Camden, "is the duty on tea," in which he too disclaimed having had the least hand. "It is mean," said Grafton, "for him at this time to screen himself, and shift the blame off his own shoulders, to lay it on those of others. The measure was consented to in the cabinet. He acquiesced in it; he presided in the

house of lords when it passed through its several stages; and he should equally share its censure or its merit."

A passionate debate ensued, during which Mansfield praised the Boston port act and its attendant measures, including the regulating act for Massachusetts, as worthy to be gloried in for their wisdom, policy, and equity; but he denied that they were in any degree the fruit of his influence. Now as they were founded on his legal opinions, and as he had often in the house of lords been the mouthpiece of Hutchinson, whose reports reached him through Mauduit, Shelburne insinuated that Mansfield's disclaimer was in substance not correct. Mansfield retorted by charging Shelburne with uttering gross falsehoods; and Shelburne in a rejoinder gave the illustrious jurist the lie.

On Thursday the ninth of February, the lord 1775. chancellor, the speaker, and a majority of the lords Feb. 9. and commons went in state to the palace, and, in the presence of the representatives of the great powers of Europe, presented to George III. their joint sanguinary address. The king, in his reply, pledged himself speedily and effectually to enforce "obedience to the laws and the authority of the supreme legislature." His heart was hardened. Having just heard of the seizure of ammunition at the fort in New Hampshire, he intended that his language should 66 open the eyes of the deluded Americans." "If it does not," said he to his faltering minister, "it must set every delicate man at liberty to avow the propriety of the most coercive measures."