Vmerican affairs will perhaps be impracticable for ever." This was in May, 1769.

"You can never govern an unwilling people; they will obstruct and pervert every effort of your policy; their obedience is now at this crisis, at the very lowest point that it will ever be. On the other hand, your power is now at its height. If you endeavour to push them down but a hair's breadth lower, like a spring they will fly all to pieces, and they will never be brought to the same point again."

He argued in vain-for, though the house seemed affected by his reasonings, the ministers talked of the late time of the session, and the governor's motion was put off.

In 1770, Lord North moved the repeal of several offensive duties; but retained the tea tax, to evidence the right.

It was in vain that Governor Pownall and others remonstrated that this would leave the merchants of America still in a state of hostility with us, resorting to their non-importation associations; that the right of taxation, not the quantity of the tax, was the point of interest to them. "The merchants," he said, "in America and England are the links of the chain that binds both countries together. Whatever we may think of the operation and effect of our sovereign government, commerce and intercommunion of our mutual wants and supplies is the real power and spirit of attraction which keeps us united. The operation of this has been, and is at present suspended. The repeal of the whole of the act will alone take off the suspension, and cement again our union by the best and surest principle; will lead once more again to that happy spirit of government, under which the people knew no bounds to their confidence, and under which government led the people almost by enchantment.”

But in whatever point of view this subject could be placed, and on every different occasion, the effect was the same. was determined to insist on the taxation of America.

It

In April, 1774, "I know," said Colonel Barré, "the vast superiority of your disciplined troops over the provincials;

but beware how you supply the place of discipline by desperation. 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. What madness is it that prompts you to attempt by force what you may more certainly procure by requisition? They may be flattered into anything; but are too much like yourselves to be driven. Have some indulgence for your own likeness; respect their sturdy English virtue; retract your odious exertions of authority. The first step towards making them contribute to your wants is to reconcile them to your government."

Mr. Fox, then a young man, observed, "that if the tax was persisted in, the country would be forced into open rebellion." Lord North, on the contrary, "that we had only to be firm and resolved, and obedience would be the result." The tea duty was therefore insisted upon by one hundred and eightytwo to forty-nine. It was insisted upon for the purposes of sovereignty and revenue-and both sovereignty and revenue were from that moment gone for ever.

Injustice produces resistance, and one coercive measure is sure to be followed by another; the usual progress of harsh government. The province of Massachusetts had resisted, and therefore, in the April of 1774, Lord North brought in his bill for taking away the charter, and introducing a less popular form of government. "The Americans," said he, "have plundered your merchants, burnt your ships, denied all obedience to your laws and authority; yet so clement and long-forbearing has our conduct been, that it is incumbent on us now to take a different course." But on the contrary, said Governor Pownall in reply (observe how prophetic was his reply), "I told this house, it is now four years past, that the people of America would resist the tax which lay then upon them; that they would not oppose power to your power, but that they would become impracticable; have they not been so from that time to this very hour? I tell you now, that they will resist the measures now pursued in a

more vigorous way. The committees of correspondence are in constant connection; they will next hold conferences, and to what these committees, thus met in congress, will grow up, I will not say. Should matters ever come to arms, you will hear of other officers than those appointed by your governors. It will then be, as in the civil wars in this country, of little consequence to dispute who were the aggressors. That will be matter of opinion. It is of more consequence at this moment so to act, to take such measures, that no such misfortunes may come in the event."

"My lords," said Lord Chatham, in 1774, "this country is little obliged to the framers and supporters of the tea tax. The Americans had almost forgot in their excess of gratitude for the repeal of the Stamp Act, any interest but that of the mother country. This temper would have continued, if not interrupted by your fruitless endeavours to tax them without their consent. I am an old man, and would advise the noble lords in office to adopt a more gentle method of governing America; proceedings like these will never meet with the wished-for success. Instead of these pass an amnesty on all their youthful errors, clasp them once more to your fond and affectionate arms, and I will venture to affirm you will find them children worthy of their sire. If otherwise, I will be among the foremost to move for such measures as will make them feel what it is to provoke a fond and forgiving parent-a parent, my lords, whose welfare has ever been my greatest and most pleasing consideration. The period is not far distant when she will want the assistance of her most distant friends; but my prayers shall ever be for her welfare. Length of days be in her right hand, and in her left riches and honour! May her ways be ways of pleasantness, and all her paths be peace!"

But neither could ministers listen in one house to the excellent sense and local information of Governor Pownall, nor be moved in the other by these affecting appeals of Lord Chatham-by these effusions of a generous and magnanimous

spirit, the true and only source of all eloquence, commanding as his.

I had made many other extracts to the same purport as those now given, but I omit them, for my lecture is already too long.

You will look at the examination of Mr. Penn, at the speeches of Mr. Wilkes, Mr. Fuller, and others, and at the speech of Serjeant Adair, in October, 1775. I can only now refer you to them; the notices I have already taken of the debates in the houses are sufficiently strong and numerous to indicate how wise and prophetic was the general strain of those who resisted the measure of coercion and taxation, so long and so unhappily persevered in from the unfortunate. dismission of the Rockingham administration.

And why these prophecies were uttered in vain, and why this system was either originally adopted, or afterwards pursued, with the general countenance of the people of this country, can only, I think, be thoroughly explained, first by a reference to the sentiment which I first alluded to, an opinion that our cause was just, that the Americans were rebellious and ungrateful; and, secondly, very discreditably (to us), by a reference to such causes as I have enumerated, ignorance of political economy, blind selfishness, national pride, high principles of government, and on the whole a certain vulgarity of thinking on political subjects, which, if I could prepare your minds hereafter to avoid, I confess I should consider as one of the greatest objects which these lectures could accomplish.

LECTURE XXXII.

AMERICAN WAR.

IN the lecture of yesterday, I endeavoured to state to you, in the first place, the interest that belongs to the subject of the American War. I next reminded you of the general principles that belong to the subject of nations connected with each other; a parent state and colonies for instance; such general principles as I had submitted to your consideration when I treated of the Union with Scotland. I then enumerated to you the original works which I thought you might consult; then those which you might read; then those, lastly, which must be read, which are entirely indispensable.

I then proceeded to state to you what had been the causes that, as far as the ministers and people of England were concerned, had led to this important contest.

in

The first of these causes I stated to be one not in its sentiment discreditable to us, a general notion in the English nation that their cause was just; that the sovereignty was the parent state; that in this right was included the right of taxation; and that as we had protected the Americans from France, they were ungrateful as well as rebellious. But I then proceeded to state that this sentiment would never have produced the American War, if not excited and exasperated

by other considerations.

These other remaining causes of the American War I considered as very discreditable to us; and I first stated them, and endeavoured to illustrate them by quotations from the different speeches of remarkable men at the time in the de

bates of the two houses.