SPEECH, &c. HOPE, Sir, that notwithstanding the austerity I that of the Chair, your good-nature will incline you to fome degree of indulgence towards human frailty. You will not think it unnatural, that those who have an object depending, which strongly engages their hopes and fears, should be fomewhat inclined to fuperftition. As I came into the house full of anxiety about the event of my motion, I found to my infinite surprise, that the grand penal Bill, by which we had passed sentence on the trade and fuftenance of America, is to be returned to us from the other house.* I do confefs, I could not help looking on this event as a fortunate omen. I look upon it as a fort of providential favour; by which we are put once more in poffeffion of our deliberative capacity, upon a business so very quef *The Act to restrain the trade and commerce of the provinces of Maffachufet's-Bay and New Hampshire, and colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island, and Providence Plantation, in North America, to Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Iflands in the Weft Indies; and to prohibit fuch provinces and colonies from carrying on any fishery on the banks of Newfoundland, and other places therein mentioned, under certain conditions and limitations. tionable tionable in its nature, fo very uncertain in its issue. By the return of this Bill, which feemed to have taken its flight for ever, we are at this very inftant nearly as free to choose a plan for our Ame rican government, as we were on the first day of the feffion. If, Sir, we incline to the fide of con ciliation, we are not at all embarrassed (unless we please to make ourselves fo) by any incongruous mixture of coercion and restraint. We are therefore called upon, as it were by a fuperiour warning voice, again to attend to America; to attend to the whole of it together; and to review the fubject with an unusual degree of care and calmnefs. Surely it is an awful fubject; or there is none fo on this fide of the grave. When I first had the honour of a feat in this house, the affairs of that continent preffed themfelves upon us, as the most important and most delicate object of parliamentary attention. My little fhare in this great deliberation oppreffed me. I found myself a partaker in a very high truft; and having no fort of reason to rely on the strength of my natural abilities for the proper execution of that truft, I was obliged to take more than common pains, to inftruct myfelf in every thing which relates to our colonies, I was not lefs under the neceffity of forming fome fixed ideas, concerning the general policy of the British empire. Something of this fort seemed to be indifpenfable; in order, amidft fo vaft a fluctua tion of paffions and opinions, to concenter my thoughts; to ballaft my conduct; to preserve me from being blown about by every wind of fashionable doctrine. I really did not think it fafe, or manly, to have fresh principles to seek upon every fresh mail which fhould arrive from America. At that period, I had the fortune to find myself in perfect concurrence with a large majority in this House. Bowing under that high authority, and penetrated with the sharpness and ftrength of that early impreffion, I have continued ever fince, without the leaft deviation in my original fentiments. Whether this be owing to an obftinate perfeverance in errour, or to a religious adherence to what appears to me truth and reason, it is in your equity to judge, Sir, Parliament having an enlarged view of objects, made, during this interval, more frequent changes in their fentiments and their conduct, than could be juftified in a particular perfon upon the contracted scale of private information. But though I do not hazard any thing approaching to a cenfure on the motives of former parliaments to all those alterations, one fact is undoubted; that under them the state of America has been kept in continual agitation. Every thing administered as remedy to the publick complaint, if it did not produce, was at leaft followed by, an heightening of the distemper; until, by a variety of experiments, that 3 35 |