believe they do not insist upon more weighty arguments than that constant one he furnishes them with. Since, therefore, Parliament cannot merely, from the materials on your table, approve or sanctify this violent attack upon America; and since the safety or consequence of it cannot be tried on any commercial considerations, which this House has for the present debarred us from, kindly indeed, in one respect, as the view of it would have exhibited a most gloomy and uncomfortable prospect; we are, therefore, in obedience to their will, to combat them on the ground they have chosen; and we must consider this American war, in regard to its being a constitutional, and likewise a political question, under the latter head, including foreign and domestick policy. On the ground, then, that they have chosen, I will meet them, and fairly put our cause to the issue.

First, to consider it in a constitutional light, it militates against the great principles which has constantly been adopted by the friends of liberty, which is the life and soul of true Whiggism—that the interest of the community at large, and their sense of that interest, ought to govern and be the rule for the Executive power to act by, in preference to the will or opinion of any man, or order of men, however dignified, as servants of that community. To evince this clearly, let us look back to the first struggle for liberty, in the reign of Charles the martyr. What was then the great point to be decided? Was it not whether the few, though possessed of all the powers in the state, civil, military, and ecclesiastical, might employ those powers against the will of the many (the body of the people) or should conform themselves to the latter?

On the one side were, not only the Monarch then on the throne, but a high spirited and spendid Peerage, my Lords the Bishops, and indeed the whole hierarchy called the Church, by far the majority of my Lords the Judges, and the other superiours of the Long Robe, with their numerous dependants. These all were for supporting the prerogative of the Crown, as enlarged by the Tudors and Stuarts. They were for the dispensing power, star-chamber prosecutions, ship-money, and other arbitrary claims, as the true plan on which this Nation should be governed.

On the contrary side, were the People of England at large, and as part of themselves, their faithful and independent Representatives in this House; the great commercial Cities of London and Bristol; the important inland Towns, Coventry, Birmingham, Manchester, &c., the Manufacturers, Artificers, and Husbandmen, throughout the Kingdom; both sides appealed to the sword, and after the trial of many a well-fought field, it was determined in favour of the People at large; and on that decision all your liberty, property, and happiness has been founded—on that principle, of the sovereignty, virtually, ultimately, and really residing in the people. All Whiggism, every rational idea of the Constitution of this, and any other perfectly free country, must rest, and be bottomed on this definition. It was the Constitution of Rome, when in its perfection. The Romans had Consuls, representing the Kingly power; they had also a Senate, but the sovereignty virtually and ultimately resided in the People at large.

Now, sir, let us try the question of this day, as it includes in its consequences the liberty and property of your whole wide and extended Empire, still more extensive than that of Rome. Let us try it, sir, by that touchstone, that criterion, the interest and the opinion of that interest, consequently the will and desire of all who claim the rights of Englishmen. First, sir, your vast and beneficial territories in America; your Kingdom of Ireland; your unpensioned and unwarped neighbours of Scotland; and at home, your citizens of London, Bristol, and Norwich; your trading Towns of Manchester, Birmingham, and Coventry; and, in short, every great commercial and manufacturing City and Town in England; the Whigs dispersed throughout every County; these are all averse to this dreadful and dangerous civil war, and are attached and rivetted to the cause I now espouse, and to which Administration are enemies.

Pray, sir, what can you arrange on the opposite side? And who are for supporting those hostile measures? for, excepting the noble Lord at the head of Administration, and some few others, so very few, that they will easily occur to everyone that hears me, the rest of the abetters of this extraordinary attempt, are as contemptible a collection of servile courtiers, renegado Whigs, and fawning, bigoted Tories, as ever strove to support the measures of any Administration. It reminds me of Virgil's arrangement of the opposite forces at the battle of Actium. On the one side were Troops of Bactrians, Arabians, Egyptians, and every servile Nation then in the world; and at the head of them their contemptible divinities. "Omnigenumque Deum monstra et latrator Anubis.?(that Egyptian dog who was the emblem of servitude)? "Contra Neptunum et, Venerem contraque Minervam; for, sir, Neptune, that is the whole seafaring as well as commercial interest, is against this measure. As to Venus, every grace of body and mind is annexed to liberty. And as for Minerva, wisdom and true policy are on the side of the Americans; and the Arts, of which she is the patroness, must immediataly withdraw, when you have removed her olive branch.

And now, sir, to view it next in a political light: first, in regard to foreign Powers, and then in regard to ourselves at home. Is it possible to conceive that any thing on earth could give that heartfelt pleasure to France and Spain that this unfortunate system of oppressing America has done! You had become the masters of all warlike America, which they term bold America; and with that assistance you bid fair to crush their power hr every part of the globe, whenever they dared to provoke you; and now you have weakly, impoliticly, and dangerously contrived to irritate, injure, and inflame all America against you; and if we are not blind to our own interest, we might easily perceive this by the conduct of the French and Spaniards, on your applying to their respective Courts for orders to stop their Merchants from supplying America with Goods or Warlike Stores. They immediately (apparently against every motive of their interest and policy) comply with your demands; and for what ends, but plainly to urge you on, and to incite you to your own destruction? For depend on it, that notwithstanding all this courtesy and politesse, the Americans will receive from them every ounce of Powder and Ball that they can pay for, as well as all other Goods in abundance. This is, therefore, a measure of confiding in our new friends and old enemies, the French and Spaniards, instead of our old friends and brethren the Americans. This kind of policy is insecure in private concerns, but must be ruinous in this important, this decisive one. And now, sir, to sift and examine it in what is infinitely of more importance, by a political process; by which it may be tried in those respects wherein it would operate as to our own internal happiness and security; that the making our Prince absolute and despotick over all his vast American Dominions, cannot, in the sober apprehension or constitutional creed of any man that hears me, add a tittle to the happiness our Sovereign enjoys, as a Monarch limited by the laws he found established both there and here; and I am fully persuaded, by the frequent gracious declarations that have fallen from his mouth, he, following his natural and noble disposition, unperverted and unseduced, either by his avowed or inward Cabinet, would, of all men living, less wish to possess such despotick power. But that the attempt may prove ruinous to our liberty, property, and every thing dear to our civil rights, I appeal to the history of every state that has heretofore figured on the stage of the world.

The adopting of the measures of supporting large Standing Armies to enforce the sovereignty over their Provinces, (an alluring motive) has subjugated them all in their turns, and extinguished their constitutional provisions and barriers against tyranny. To pass over the lesser states, not only Marias, and Sylla, and Casar, but Augustus and Tiberius, those able tyrants, who systematically ruined the Roman liberty—achieved it by Troops raised to maintain the Roman sovereignty over their Provinces. They did, indeed, subdue those Provinces; but they also oppressed the liberty of the Roman Republick; and their project reached still farther than they expected; for it stopped not till the military power, established by them for that end, overturned the imperial power itself. In less than fifty years from the death of Augustus, those Armies, raised to keep the Provinces in awe, had no less than three Emperours on foot at the same time; and thenceforward the military power disposed of the Empire, and gave to whom it pleased the