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of sedition, and the Americans with designing to CHAP. emancipate themselves from the act of navigation.

Jan.

Chatham closed the debate as he had opened it, 1775. by insisting on the right of Great Britain to regulate 20. 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 that Rockingham had expressed his adherence to his old opinion of the propriety of the 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, to be transmitted from generation to generation, and showed that the true spirit of England, which had grown great by freedom, was on the side of America. Its

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CHAP. independence was foreshadowed, and three of Chatham's hearers on that day, Franklin, Shelburne, and 1775. his own son, William Pitt, never ceased in exertions, till their joint efforts established peace and international good will.

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20.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE PEOPLE OF NEW YORK TRUE TO UNION.

JANUARY FEBRUARY, 1775

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1775.

Jan.

WHILE Gage was waiting for England to undertake CHAP. in earnest the subjugation of America, the king expected every moment to hear that the small but well-disciplined force at Boston had struck a decisive blow at a disorderly "rabble." Neither he 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 held a general meeting, Jan. which was soon resolved into a provincial congress, with Charles Pinckney for president. They then called upon their deputies 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. Gadsden proposed to strike out the exceptional privilege in

11.

CHAP. the association in favor of exporting rice. The XIX. torrent of enthusiasm was able to have broken down 1775. the plea of interest; and after a debate of a whole 11. day, in which John Rutledge pointed out the practi

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17.

cal inequality and general impolicy of extending the restriction, nearly half the body, seventy-five members against eighty-seven, were still ready to sacrifice the whole rice crop. Had the minority prevailed, they would have impoverished the province without benefit to the union; South Carolina wisely adopted the measures of the general congress without change, completed her internal organization, and re-elected delegates to the continental congress. If blood should be spilt in Massachusetts, her sons were to rise in arms.

The congress called at Savannah, failed of its end, since five only out of twelve parishes in the province were represented. But on the southern border, the inhabitants of the parish of St. John, chiefly descendants of New England people, mocked by the royalists as Puritans, Independents, republicans, or at least Oliverians, 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 Virginia all eyes turned to Washington as the adviser in military affairs. On the seventeenth of January he presided over a meeting of the men of Fairfax county between sixteen and fifty years of age, who voted to enroll themselves in companies of sixty-eight men, under officers of their own choice. They also formed an association to defend their re

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ligion, laws, and rights. The committee of North- CHAP. ampton county offered a premium for the manufacture of gunpowder. Dunmore's excursion to the fron- 1775. tiers had justified a prorogation of the assembly until the second of February; but when, near the end of January, the colony was surprised by a further prorogation to May, Peyton Randolph, as the organ of the people against the representative of the crown, called upon the several counties to choose deputies to a colony convention to be held on the twentieth of March.

Maryland was encouraged by Thomas Johnson, a patriot venerated and loved for his private virtues; in public life looking always to the general good; neither hasty nor backward; quick to perceive what was possible, and effectively assisting to do it; joining modesty and practical wisdom to zeal and courage. The Presbyterians of Baltimore resolutely supported "the good old cause." Near Annapolis, the volunteers whom Charles Lee began to muster, melted away before his overbearing manner and incapacity; but the people would hear of no opposition to the recommendations of congress. They invited a voluntary offering to the amount of ten thousand pounds, for the purchase of arms and ammunition; and taking the sword out of the hands of the governor, they elected their own officers to defend Massachusetts and themselves. In the lower counties on Delaware, a little army that stood in the same relation to the people, sprung up from the general enthusiasm.

The trust of the ministry was in the central provinces. To divide the colonies they were urged