nimity; the Merchants should forego their own interests for the sake of those permanent advantages which they would undoubtedly reap when the Americans were subdued, if, peradventure, a subduction, obtained by force, should be found expedient.

Mr. Hayley said that a Committee of three capital Merchants had attended the signing of the Petition, to prevent inconsiderable or improper persons from putting their names to it. He affirmed that no undue means were used to procure persons to sign it; on the contrary, the greatest caution was taken: many more would have signed it, but were prevented, either from not being known to be concerned in the American trade, or from being deemed too inconsiderable.

Mr. T. Townshend replied to Mr. Stanley with irony, accepting his acknowledgment of the distress that must fall on the commerce, the landholder, and the stockholder; but the place-holder, said he, will batten in the sunshine of his country's ruin; no distress of the publick can affect him; he may talk at ease of the patience with which others are to endure ruin. The contractors of every kind may pant for a civil war; but the event of violent councils must shake to its very foundation the publick credit, on which every thing depends.

Mr. Lewis said he had a speech of an honourable gentleman (meaning Mr. Burke) in his hand, wherein the eloquent declaimer had asserted, that during nine long years we had been lashed round the circle of miserable argumentation, without coming to any conclusion on the subject. The American Merchants, he thought, came too late; that they ought not to have been silent so long; and that having so long confided in Parliament, they ought to continue that confidence. He spoke of the relation of parent and child that subsisted between the countries; he supposed ingratitude in the child, and wished for its chastisement.

Mr. Jenkinson said that Parliament had a right to regulate the internal concerns of America. He instanced an Act for regulating their paper currency; and from their submission to that, he concluded they ought to submit to every act of English Legislature. He entertained no doubt that some resolutions for preserving the supremacy would answer every end of the Merchants' Petition, and restore trade.

Mr. Edmund Burke treated the talk of paper currency with very little respect, and said that Mr. Jenkinson's discourse had not the most remote tendency to prove this, or any other point. For what argument (said he) can be drawn from the instance of an Act to prevent paper currencies, to prove that the Merchants of London ought not to be heard in the American Committee? The most depreciated paper currency ever issued by Rhode-Island, in its worst times, was not more different from good money than this talk from sound argument. The other gentleman (Mr. Lewis) was sitting Member last Parliament. I thought he had a good right to his seat. I lamented that the publick had, for seven years, been deprived of the benefit of his talents; but suppose this had been the same Parliament whose acts he defends, and of whose injustice he was the proto-martyr, and that he had till the last session been silent, and that his modesty had persuaded him to defraud the House of the benefit of his talents to the last hour, would that septennial silence of his argue that he ought not to be heard at the end of the seven years, when he at last chose to interfere in the debates? Then we should have heard him patiently and calmly; nay, if his argument had required an answer, we should have answered him. He then turned to Sir Gilbert Elliot, who, in the former debate, had argued that the House was already perfectly acquainted, in general, with the trade and its importance, and admitted, in its full extent, whatever the Merchants could allege. He said that this gentleman was rather too ready to take the measure of mankind from himself; and because he was so very knowing, did not sufficiently condescend to, the ignorance of others. But whatever the knowledge of any individual in the House might be, there was a great difference between knowing and feeling. That the honourable gentleman could easily abstract and generalize his ideas even to the genus generalissimum; but the nature of mankind was such that general observation affected their minds in a slight and indistinct partner, when the detail of particulars, and the actual substance of things, made a most forcible impression. He illustrated this by a story of a learned Prince, who was of the same part of the Island to which we owe the honourable gentleman; James the First, who, as Osborne tells the story, having ordered a present of 20,000 Pounds for one of his favourites, his Treasurer, a wary and prudent Minister, Well read in human nature, and knowing how little the general expression of things operates, and that the words 20,000 Pounds were as easily pronounced as 20,000 Farthings, contrived to place the whole sum in a vast heap before the King's eyes as he passed to his levee, in good Jacobuses; when the King was taken out of his generals, and saw the money itself spread out before his eyes, he was frightened at what he was about, and threw himself, in great agony, on the mass of gold, and scrambling up a handful or two, there, said he, "ge'en that, that's enough." Now, said he, if we are to be generous in sacrificing our trade to our dignity, let us know what the value of the sacrifice is that we make; let us not be generous in the dark; true generosity is to give and see, and know whatever we give. Let us, then, see this thing, this trade we are to give up for our dignity. Your dignity may be worth it all, but let us be informed by the Merchants what all really is. To be generous, without knowing what we give, is not liberality, but negligence; and fearlessness, arising from ignorance, is not courage, but insensibility. He said that the reason given by those who sent the Petitions to the Coventry Committee, for not referring them to that on American Papers, was of a most extraordinary and unheard of nature: it was, that the resolutions of that Committee were to be solely on the grounds of policy, and that the commercial examination would delay the measures necessary for the coercion of America. This was to anticipate and predetermine the future proceedings in a Committee, as a reason for keeping information from it. How did they know what measures would be pursued there, and on what principles? Was there any instruction to the Committee so to confine itself? Or was it that the Ministry had already not only solved what that Committee was to do, but reckoned upon it so much as a certainty, and as a matter so justifiable, that they did not scruple to avow it, and to make it a ground of argument for what the House ought, or ought not to have brought before its Committee. This proceeding he thought no less alarming than unprecedented. If they meant hostility, the reason they gave for not hearing was the strongest for it. But as their war ever must be dependent upon their finances, and their finances must depend upon their commerce, the true state of that commerce was necessary to be known, especially as Colonies and commerce are inseparably connected.

Having thus pleaded for the necessity of hearing the Petitioners, Mr. Burke proceeded to lament the national calamities about to befall this devoted Kingdom. Besides the horrours of a civil war, besides the slaughtered innocents who are to be victimated to the counsels of a Ministry precipitate to dye the Rivers of America with the blood of her inhabitants; besides these disasters, an impoverished Revenue; famished millions; the stagnation of Manufactures; the total overthrow of Commerce; the increase of the Poor's Rate; the accumulation of Taxes; innumerable Bankruptcies; and other shocks which may make the fabrick of publick credit totter to its basis: these were all depicted in the strongest colours by Mr. Burke. He professedly reserved himself, however, for that day when, if properly supported by the people, he vowed by all that was dear to him here and hereafter, he would pursue to condign punishment the advisers of measures fraught with every destructive consequence to the Constitution, the commerce, the rights and liberties of this country.

Mr. Burke concluded his animated harangue by quoting an instance, related in history, of an archer about to direct an arrow to the heart of his enemy, but found that in his adversary's arms was enfolded his own child. This singular incident he recommended with cautionary admonition to those statesmen who had in contemplation the destruction of America, unmindful that they could not accomplish so baneful a purpose, without, at the same time, plunging a dagger into the vitals of Great Britain. Let your commerce, said Mr. Burke, come before you,—see whether it be not your child that America has in its arms,