"To such united force, what force shall be opposed? A few regiments in America, and seventeen or eighteen thousand men at home! The idea is too ridiculous to take up a moment of your lordships' time. Unless the fatal acts are done away, the hour of danger must arrive in all its horrors, and then these boastful ministers, spite of all their confidence, shall be forced to abandon principles which they avow, but cannot defend; measures which they presume to attempt, but cannot hope to effectuate.

"It is not repealing a piece of parchment that can restore America to our bosom: you must repeal her fears and her resentments, and you may then hope for her love and gratitude. United as they are, you cannot force them to your unworthy terms of submission.

"When your lordships look at the papers transmitted us from America, when you consider their decency, firmness, and wisdom, you cannot but respect their cause, and wish to make it your own. For myself, I must avow that in all my reading --and I have read Thucydides and have studied and admired the master-states of the world-for solidity of reason, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion under a complication of difficult circumstances, no body of men can stand in preference to the general congress at Philadelphia. The histories of Greece and Rome give us nothing equal to it, and all attempts to impose servitude upon such a mighty continental nation must be vain. We shall be forced ultimately to retract; let us retract while we can, not when we must. These violent acts must be repealed; you will repeal them; I stake my reputation on it, that you will in the end repeal them. Avoid, then, this humiliating necessity. With a dignity becoming your exalted situation, make the first advances to concord, peace, and happiness, for that is your true dignity. Concession comes with better grace from superior power, and establishes solid confidence on the foundations of affection and gratitude. Be the first to spare; throw down the weapons in your hand.

"Every motive of justice and policy, of dignity and of prudence, urges you to allay the ferment in America by a removal of your troops from Boston, by a repeal of your acts of parliament, and by demonstrating amicable dispositions

toward your colonies. On the other hand, to deter you from perseverance in your present ruinous measures, every danger and every hazard impend, foreign war hanging over you by a thread, France and Spain watching your conduct, and waiting for the maturity of your errors.

"If the ministers persevere in thus misadvising and misleading the king, I will not say that the king is betrayed, but I will pronounce that the kingdom is undone; I will not say that they can alienate the affections of his subjects from his crown, but I will affirm that, the American jewel out of it, they will make the crown not worth his wearing."

The words of Chatham, when reported to the king, recalled his last interview with George Grenville, and stung him to the heart. He raved at the wise counsels of the greatest statesman of his dominions, as the words of an abandoned politician, "void of gratitude"; and months afterward was looking for the time "when decrepitude or age should put an end to him as the trumpet of sedition."

With a whining delivery, of which the bad effect was heightened by violence, Suffolk, who boasted of having been one of the first to advise coercive measures, assured the house that, in spite of Lord Chatham's prophecy, the government was resolved to repeal not one of the acts, but to use all possible means to bring the Americans to obedience.

Shelburne gave his adhesion to the sentiments of Chatham, not from personal engagements, but solely from his conviction of their wisdom, justice, and propriety. Camden, who in the discussion surpassed every one but Chatham, returned to his old ground. "This," he declared, "I will say, not only as a statesman, politician, and philosopher, but as a common lawyer: my lords, you have no right to tax America; the natural rights of man and the immutable laws of nature are all with that people. King, lords, and commons are fine-sounding names; but king, lords, and commons may become tyrants as well as others; it is as lawful to resist the tyranny of many as of one. Somebody once asked the great Selden in what book you might find the law for resisting tyranny. 'It has always been the custom of England,' answered Selden, England is the law of the land.""

and the custom of

"My lords," said Lord Gower, with contemptuous sneers, "let the Americans talk about their natural and divine rights! their rights as men and citizens! their rights from God and nature! I am for enforcing these measures." Rochford held Lord Chatham, jointly with the Americans, responsible in his own person for disagreeable consequences. Lyttelton reproached Chatham with spreading the fire of sedition, and the Americans with designing to emancipate themselves from the act of navigation.

Chatham closed the debate by insisting on the right of Great Britain to regulate the commerce of the whole empire; but as to the right of the Americans to exemption from taxation, except by their implied or express assent, they derived it from God, nature, and the British constitution. Franklin with rapt admiration listened to the man who on that day had united the highest wisdom and eloquence. "His speech," said the young William Pitt, "was the most forcible that can be imagined; in matter and manner far beyond what I can express; it must have an infinite effect without doors, the bar being crowded with Americans."

The statesmanship of Chatham and the close reasoning of Camden "availed no more than the whistling of the winds;" the motion was rejected by a vote of sixty-eight against eighteen ; but the duke of Cumberland, one of the king's own brothers, was found in the minority. The king, triumphing in "the very handsome majority," was sure "nothing could be more calculated to bring the Americans to submission;" but the debate of that day, notwithstanding Rockingham had expressed his adherence to his declaratory act, went forth to the colonies as an assurance that the inevitable war would be a war with a ministry, not with the British people. It took from the contest the character of internecine hatred, and showed that the true spirit of England, which had grown great by freedom, was on the side of America. Its independence was foreshadowed, and three of Chatham's hearers on that day-Franklin, Shelburne, and his own son, William Pitt-never wearied in their exertions till their joint efforts established peace between Britain and the United States of America.

CHAPTER VII.

PARLIAMENT DECLARES MASSACHUSETTS IN REBELLION.

JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1775.

NEITHER the king nor his ministers believed the hearty union of so vast a region as America possible. But, at the one extreme, New Hampshire in convention unanimously adhered to the recent congress, and elected delegates to the next. At the other, South Carolina, on the eleventh of January 1775, held a general meeting, which was soon resolved into a provincial congress, with Charles Pinckney for president. The deputies to the general congress were then called upon to explain why they had not included in the list of grievances the entire series of monopolies and restrictions; and they murmured at the moderation of Virginia, which had refused to look further back than 1763. But South Carolina wisely adopted the continental measures without change, completed her own internal organization, elected delegates to the general congress, encouraged her inhabitants to learn the use of arms, and asked their prayers that God would defend their just title to freedom, and "avert the impending calamities of civil war." If blood should be spilled in Massachusetts, her sons were to rise in arms.

On the twelfth, the representatives of the extensive district of Darien, in Georgia, assembling in a local congress, held up the conduct of Massachusetts to the imitation of mankind, joined in the resolutions of the grand American congress, and instructed their delegates to the provincial congress accordingly. They demanded liberal land laws to attract the distressed in Britain and "the poor of every nation." every nation." "To show

the world," these were their words, "that we are not influenced by contracted or interested motives, but a general philanthropy for all mankind, of whatever climate, language, or complexion, we hereby declare our disapprobation and abhorrence of the unnatural practice of slavery in America (however the uncultivated state of our country or other specious arguments may plead for it); a practice founded in injustice and cruelty, and highly dangerous to our liberties as well as lives, debasing part of our fellow-creatures below men, corrupting the morals of the rest, and laying the basis of that liberty we contend for upon a very wrong foundation. We therefore resolve at all times to use our utmost endeavors for the manumission of our slaves in this colony, upon the most safe and equitable footing for the masters and themselves."

The provincial congress, which was called to meet on the eighteenth at Savannah, failed of its end, since five only out of twelve parishes in the province were represented, and some of these were bound to half-way measures by their instructions. The legislature, which simultaneously assembled, was suddenly prorogued by the royal governor. But in the parish of St. John, which contained one third of the wealth of Georgia, the inhabitants, chiefly descendants of New England people, conformed to the resolutions of the continental congress, appointed Lyman Hall to represent them in Philadelphia, and set apart two hundred barrels of rice for their brethren in Boston.

In December 1774, the Maryland convention had recommended to the inhabitants of the province to form themselves into companies of sixty-eight men under officers of their own choice, and had apportioned among the several counties the sum of ten thousand pounds in currency, to be raised by subscription or voluntary offerings for the purchase of arms. Of this resolve the Virginia Fairfax county committee, whose chairman was Washington, on the seventeenth of January 1775, adopted the substance, and Washington published it signed with his own name. A company, composed of "the sons of gentlemen" in his neighborhood, elected him their commander. Every county in Virginia glowed with zeal to imbody its militia; marksmen, armed with rifles, chose the costume of the painted hunting-shirt and moccasons. They pledged them