be rid of. Under such a disposition of mind, one would imagine there could be no occasion for fleets and armies to bring men to a good understanding. But, ray Lords, our difficulty lies in the point of honour. We must not let down the dignity of the mother country; but preserve her sovereignty over all the parts of the British Empire. This language has something in it that sounds pleasant to the ears of Englishmen, but is otherwise of little weight. For sure, my Lords, there are methods of making reasonable concessions, and yet without injuring our dignity. Ministers are generally fruitful in expedients to reconcile difficulties of this kind, to escape the embarrassments of forms, the competitions of dignity and precedency; and to let clashing rights sleep, while they transact their business. Now, my Lords, on this occasion can they find no excuse, no pretence, no invention, no happy turn of language, not one colourable argument for doing the greatest service, they can ever render to their country? It must be something more than incapacity that makes men barren of expedients at such a season as this. Do, but for once, remove this impracticable stateliness and dignity, and treat the matter with a little common sense and a little good humour, and our reconciliation would not be the work of an hour. But after all, my Lords, if there is any thing mortifying in undoing the errors of our Ministers, it is a mortification we ought to submit to. If it was unjust to tax them, we ought to repeal it for their sakes; if it was unwise to tax them, we ought to repeal it for our own. A matter so trivial in itself as the three-penny duty upon tea, but which has given cause to so much national hatred and reproach, ought not to be suffered to subsist an unnecessary day. Must the interest, the commerce, and the union of this country and her Colonies, be all of them sacrificed to save the credit of one imprudent measure of Administration? I own I cannot comprehend that there is any dignity either in being in the wrong, or persisting in it. I have known friendship preserved and affection gained, but I never knew dignity lost, by the candid acknowledgment of an error. And, my Lords, let me appeal to your own experience of a few years backward, (I will not mention particulars, because I would pass no censures and revive no unpleasant reflections,) but I think every candid Minister must own, that Administration has suffered in more instances than one, both in interest and credit, by not chusing to give up points, that could not be defended.

With regard to the People of Boston, I am free to own that I neither approve of their riots nor their punishment. And yet if we inflict it as we ought, with a consciousness that we were ourselves the aggressors, that we gave the provocation, and that their disobedience is the fruit of our own imprudent and imperious conduct, I think the punishment cannot rise to any great degree of severity.

I own my Lords, I have read the report of the Lords Committees of this House, with very different sentiments from those with which it was drawn up. It seems to be designed, that we should consider their violent measures and speeches, as so many determined acts of opposition to the sovereignty of England, arising from the malignity of their own hearts. One would think the mother country had been totally silent and passive in the progress of the whole affair. I, on the contrary, consider these violences as the natural effects of such measures as ours on the minds of freemen. And this is the most useful point of view in. which Government can consider them. In their situation, a wise man would expect to meet with the strongest marks of passion and imprudence, and be prepared to forgive them. The first and easiest thing to be done is to correct our own errors; and I am confident we should find it the most effectual method to correct theirs. At any rate let us put ourselves in the right; and then if we must contend with North America, we shall be unanimous at home, and the wise and the moderate there will be our friends. At present we force every North American to be our enemy; and the wise and moderate at home, and those immense multitudes, which must soon begin to suffer by the madness of our rulers, will unite to oppose them. It is a strange idea we have taken up, to cure their resentments by increasing their provocations: to remove the effects of our own ill conduct, by multiplying the instances of it. But the spirit of blindness and infatuation is gone forth. We are hurrying wildly on without any fixed design, without any important object. We pursue a vain phantom of unlimited sovereignty, which was not made for man, and reject the solid advantages of a moderate, useful and intelligible authority. That just God, whom we have all so deeply offended, can hardly inflict a severer national punishment, than by committing us to the natural consequences of our own conduct. Indeed, in my opinion, a blacker cloud never hung over this island.

To reason consistently with the principles of justice and national friendship, which I have endeavoured to establish, or rather to revive what was established by our ancestors, as our wisest rule of conduct for the government of America, I must necessarily disapprove of the Bill before us; for it contradicts every one of them. In our present situation every act of the legislature, even our acts of severity, ought to be so many steps towards the reconciliation we wish for. But to change the Government of a People, without their consent, is the highest and most arbitrary act of sovereignty, that one nation can exercise over another. The Romans hardly ever proceeded to this extremity even over a conquered nation, till its frequent revolts and insurrections had made them deem it incorrigible. The very idea of it implies a most total abject and slavish dependency in the inferior State. Recollect that the Americans are men of like passions with ourselves, and think how deeply this treatment must affect them. They have the same veneration for their charters that we have for our Magna Charta, and they ought in reason to have greater. They are the title deeds to all their rights both public and private. What? my Lords, must these rights never acquire any legal assurance and stability? Can they derive no force from the peaceable possession of near two hundred years? And must the fundamental constitution of a powerful State be for ever subject to as capricious alterations as you may think fit to make in the charters of a little mercantile company, or the corporation of a borough? This will undoubtedly furnish matter for a more pernicious debate than has yet been moved. Every other Colony will make the case its own. They will complain that their rights can never be ascertained; that every thing belonging to them depends upon our arbitrary will; and may think it better to run any hazard, than to submit to the violence of their mother country, in a matter in which they can see neither moderation nor end.

But let us coolly inquire, what is the reason of this unheard of innovation. Is it to make them peaceable? My Lords, it will make them mad. Will they be better governed if we introduce this change? Will they be more our friends? The least that such a measure can do is to make them hate us. And would to God, my Lords, we had governed ourselves with as much economy, integrity, and prudence, as they have done. Let them continue to enjoy the liberty our fathers gave them. Gave them, did I say? They are coheirs of liberty with ourselves; and their portion of the inheritance has been much better looked after than ours. Suffer them to enjoy a little longer that short period of public integrity and domestic happiness, which seems to be the portion allotted by Providence to young rising States. Instead of hoping that their constitution may receive improvement from our skill in Government, the most useful wish I can form in their favour is, that heaven may long preserve them from our vices and our politics.

Let me add farther, that to make any changes in their Government, without their consent, would be to transgress the wisest rules of policy, and to wound our most important interests. As they increase in numbers and in riches, our comparative strength must lessen. In another age, when our power has begun to lose something of its superiority, we should be happy if we could support our authority by mutual good will and the habit of commanding; but chiefly by those original establishments, which time and public honour might have rendered inviolable. Our posterity will then have reason to lament that they cannot avail themselves of those treasures of public friendship and confidence which our fathers had wisely hoarded up, and we are throwing away. 'Tis hard, 'tis cruel, besides all our debts and taxes, and those enormous expenses which are multiplying upon us every year, to load our unhappy