of troops that is ordered for that country, is ordered, in the first place, to Boston, four regiments being the usual relief. Governor Hutchinson comes home, and his Majesty has appointed General Gage as Commander and Governor in Chief, a man whose great abilities, and extensive knowledge of that country, will give him a superior advantage, and his occasional residence there will prevent him from shewing any impolitic partiality to the Americans, and thereby enforce a due observance of those measures which we have taken, and shall send out. There is one thing I much wish, which is, the punishment of those individuals who have been the ringleaders and forerunners of these mischiefs. Our attention will be continually active in that point. A prosecution has been already ordered against them by his Majesty's servants, but I cannot promise myself any very good effect until this law shall have reached the Province. We must particularly guard against any illegal or ineffectual proceedings, or else, after all our trouble, we shall find ourselves at last in the same dilemma we were in at first. We must observe a perfect innocence, and a conscientious avoidance of the breach of any laws. His Majesty's servants, I make no doubt, will be thoroughly watchful against such breach, nor will they at any time proceed upon slight grounds. They have the happiness to be assisted by the ablest lawyers, who have both great resolution and abilities; and guarded by such outlines, I make no doubt, that the spirit of disobedience, which has hitherto unfortunately prevailed, will be tempered and brought to reason by a due observance of those measures which we have now taken, and, I trust, will secure to us the blessings of peace, radicated out of the boiling disturbances and violent spirit of opposition in that country. When those measures are pursued with that resolution, and those abilities which I have mentioned, I doubt not the event will be advantageous to this country. I have no more, Sir, to add but with permission will make the motion, "That the Chair man be directed to move the House, that leave be given to bring in a Bill for the impartial administration of justice, in the cases of persons questioned for any acts done by them in the execution of the laws, or for the suppression of the riots and tumults in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, in New England."

[It was observed that Lord North trembled and faultered at every word of his motion.]

Colonel Barré. I rise, Sir, with great unwillingness to oppose this measure in its very infancy, before its features are well formed, or to claim that attention which this House seems to bestow with so much reluctance on any arguments in behalf of America. But I must call you to witness that I have been hitherto silent, or acquiescing, to an unexpected degree of moderation. While your proceedings, severe as they were, had the least colour of foundation in justice, I desisted from opposing them; nay more—though your Bill for stopping up the port of Boston contained in it many things most cruel, unwarrantable, and unjust, yet, as they were couched under those general principles of justice, retribution for injury, and compensation for loss sustained, I not only desisted from opposing, but assented to its passing. The Bill was a bad way of doing what was right; but still it was doing what was right. I would not therefore, by opposing it, seem to countenance those violences which had been committed abroad; and of which no man disapproves more than I do.

Upon the present question I am totally unprepared. The motion itself bears no sort of resemblance to what was formerly announced. The noble Lord and his friends have had every advantage of preparation. They have reconnoitred the field, and chosen their ground. To attack them in these circumstances may, perhaps, favour more of the gallantry of a soldier than of the wisdom of a senator.

But, Sir, the proposition is so glaring; so unprecedented in any former proceedings of Parliament; so unwarranted by any delay, denial, or perversion of justice in America; so big with misery and oppression to that country, and with danger to this—that the first blush of it is sufficient to alarm and rouse me to opposition.

It is proposed to stigmatize a whole People as persecutors of innocence, and men incapable of doing justice; yet you have not a single fact on which to ground that imputation. I expected the noble Lord would have supported this motion by producing instances of the officers of GOvernment in America having been prosecuted with unremitting vengeance, and brought to cruel and dishonourable deaths, by the violence and injustice of American Juries. But he has not produced one such instance; and I will tell you more, Sir,—he cannot produce one. The instances which have happened are directly in the teeth of his proposition. Captain Preston and the soldiers, who shed the blood of the People, were fairly tried, and fully acquitted. It was an American Jury, a New England Jury, a Boston Jury, which tried and acquitted them. Captain Preston has, under his hand, publicly declared, that the inhabitants of the very town in which their fellow-citizens had been sacrificed, were his advocates and defenders. Is this the return you make them? Is this the encouragement you give them to persevere in so laudable a spirit of justice and moderation? When a Commissioner of the Customs, aided by a number of ruffians, assaulted the celebrated Mr. Otis in the midst of the town of Boston, and with the most barbarous violence almost murdered him, did the mob, which is said to rule that town, take vengeance on the perpetrators of this inhuman outrage against a person who is supposed to be their demagogue? No, Sir, the law tried them; the law gave heavy damages against them; which the irreparably injured Mr. Otis most generously forgave upon an acknowledgment of the offence. Can you expect any more such instances of magnanimity under the principle of the Bill now proposed?

But the noble Lord says, "We must now shew the Americans that we will no longer sit quiet under their insults." Sir, I am sorry to say that this is declamation, unbecoming the character and place of him who utters it. In what moment have you been quiet? Has not your Government for many years past been a series of irritating and offensive measures, without policy, principle, or moderation? Have not your troops and your ships made a vain and insulting parade in their streets and in their harbours? It has seemed to be your study to irritate and inflame them. You have stimulated discontent into disaffection, and you are now goading that disaffection into rebellion. Can you expect to be well informed when you listen only to partizans? Can you expect to do justice when you will not hear the accused?

Let us consider, Sir, the precedents which are offered to warrant this proceeding—the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in 1745—the making smugglers triable in Middlesex, and the Scotch rebels in England. Sir, the first was done upon the most pressing necessity, flagrante bello, with a dangerous rebellion in the very heart of the Kingdom; the second, you well know, was warranted by the most evident facts: armed bodies of smugglers marched publicly without presentment or molestation from the People of the county of Sussex; who, even to their Magistrates, were notoriously connected with them. They murdered the officers of the revenue, engaged your troops, and openly violated the laws. Experience convinced you, that the Juries of that, and of the counties similarly circumstanced, would never find such criminals guilty; and upon the conviction of this necessity you passed the Act. The same necessity justified the trying Scotch rebels in England. Rebellion had reared its dangerous standard in Scotland, and the principles of it had so universally tainted that People, that it was manifestly in vain to expect justice from them against their countrymen. But in America, not a single act of rebellion has been committed. Let the Crown law officers, who sit by the noble Lord, declare, if they can, that there is upon your table a single evidence of treason or rebellion in America. They know, Sir, there is not one, and yet are proceeding as if there were a thousand.

Having thus proved, Sir, that the proposed Bill is without precedent to support, and without facts to warrant it, let us now view the consequences it is like to produce. A soldier feels himself so much above the rest of mankind, that the strict hand of the civil power is necessary to controul the haughtiness of disposition which such superiority inspires. You know, Sir, what constant care is taken in this country to remind the military that they are under the restraint of the civil power. In America their superiority is felt still greater. Remove the check of the law, as this Bill intends, and what insolence, what outrage may you not expect? Every passion that is pernicious to society will