and not in all; if they had such a right, the defence of it would justify resistance; and to contend that subjects had a right of resisting the Government, was a doctrine he should be glad to hear maintained, on any principle of Civil Government, reason, experience, or common sense. This led his Lordship to the subject of the Petitions, but he contended that they did not at all come in the way of the present motion. He did not doubt but the Petitioners were aggrieved; he did not doubt but they laboured under great and singular distresses; he did not doubt but every degree of men, the landed Gentleman, the Merchant, the Manufacturer, the Mechanick, would all heavily feel, in their several situations, the threatened calamities. Nay, he went further, he did not promise certain success from the present measure. The Army might proceed to hostilities, they might be defeated, the Americans might prevail, we might be forever stripped of the sovereignty of that country; but what of that? the events of war were uncertain; the question was, allowing all the inconveniences as set forth in the Petitions to be precisely just, and taking into full contemplation every possible contingency that human foresight and prudence could suggest, Whether we should relinquish our rights, or resolve at all events to resolutely persist in asserting them? His Lordship again returned to his former argument, of the Acts they had protested against, and observed, that though he was not present when a noble Lord on a former occasion (Lord Chatham) had insisted, that in return for their temporary suspension and constant repeal, he would insist on the most unequivocal declaration on the part of America, of the supreme Legislative controlling power of the British Legislature, in every other case whatever, but that of taxation only, he could not help remarking, that they avoided every declaration, equivocal or unequivocal; for all they promised in return, was to consent to the Act of Navigation, while they were boldly contending for the repeal of every one Act almost which was to give that great constitutional law the least force or effect. He next proceeded to prove, by a variety of arguments, that the Colonies were in actual rebellion; insisted on the right of the mother country over the Colonies; doubted of the expediency of taxing now, on account of the repeal of the Stamp Act; but said it was utterly impossible to say a syllable on the matter of expediency, till the right was first as fully asserted on one side, as acknowledged on the other. He loudly condemned the bad policy of laying the taxes on in 1767; and laid all our present troubles and political confusions at that door. He said it was the most absurd measure that could possibly be imagined, for all the purpose it answered, was at once to throw the Colonies into a ferment and ill-humour, and to hurt the commerce of Britain, by furnishing the Americans with a temptation to smuggle; that is, loading our own Manufactures with duties, and permitting other Powers to supply the American markets with the same commodities, without paying any.

Lord Camden took up the last noble Lord on his assertion, that the Colonies were in rebellion. If rebellion and treason meant the same thing, he would be bold to say the Colonies were not in rebellion. He said he knew no species of treason but those described by the Statute of the twenty-fifth of Edward the Third, which were, levying war within the Realm, or compassing or imagining the death of the King. He owned that there were many precedents in the books of constructed treason, where certain acts of an atrocious nature were adjudged and referred to one or other of those; but he contended that no one act hitherto committed in America, came within any of those precedents. He said constructive treason was a dangerous thing; the rule should be certain and definite; for, were it otherwise, no man could tell where it would end, as the lives and properties of the subject would be then at the mercy of the Judge: the culprit would then suffer at the will of the Judge, not by the spirit or the letter of the law. He insisted he had as great and good a Judge as ever sat in Westminster Hall, Lord Hale, to support him in this opinion, who, after laying down the law of Edward the. Third, and the expositions of it in the several decisions of his predecessors, asserts, in the most absolute and unreserved terms, that nothing should be deemed treason, by any parity of reasoning or similarity of circumstances, unless it came expressly within the Statute, or the interpretation of it, as laid down in the several decisions which had been given since the passing of the law. He added, on this head, that the wisdom of the framers of it had provided for any mischief that might arise, by directing the Judges to apply to Parliament for their advice, should any new case arise which did not come within the words or obvious meaning of the Statute. He next replied to the noble and learned Lord, as being seemingly involved in the censure passed on the Administration which consented to lay the duties, one of which, (that on Tea) was now the original cause of the unhappy disputes subsisting between Great Britain and the Colonies. He utterly disclaimed having the least hand in that measure; said he was not consulted in the framing the law which laid on those duties, and that he was at the time closely and laboriously employed in discharging the weighty functions of his office. He next entered into a very full and detailed view of both the previous and detailed question. He said he was astonished to hear a noble Lord, in the course of the debate, advise the very extraordinary measure of blocking up the American Ports, and thereby preventing them from all commerce whatever. He observed, that sending an Army thither in a hostile manner, was insanity the first; but were the present proposed measures adopted, it would indeed be insanity the second. It would be no less than a political felo de se; and would be like a man, who, to be revenged of a person that he supposed had injured him, should sheath a poinard in his own bosom. Our commerce, says his Lordship, is at once the source of our wealth and of our power; it both gives us seamen to man our Fleets, and money to pay them; without commerce, this Island, when compared with many countries on the Continent, is but a small insignificant spot; it is from our commerce alone that we are entitled to that consequence we bear in the great political scale. When compared with several of the great Powers of Europe, England, in the words of Shakspeare, being no more than a "bird's nest floating on a pool." What then would be the consequence of adopting so wild and dangerous an expedient? We should neither have Ships to defend us, seamen to man them, nor money to pay them, and we must of course fall a prey to the first invader; for both the means of defence, and the sources which were wont to support it, would be at once cut off. He said every engine had been set to work, and art essayed, to prejudice the landed Interest, and distinguish it, on the present occasion, from the commercial, as if the latter could sustain any injury that the other must not equally feel. What rose the value of the lands but commerce? What supported commerce again but the lands?—their interests being as inseparable as the benefits they derived from each other were mutual and reciprocal. He concluded generally on the high sounding unintelligible phrases of Legislative supremacy and Parliamentary omnipotence; but, for his part, they conveyed to his mind precisely such an idea, and gave equal satisfaction, as the answer given by the fine gentleman in the play, who, being charged with baseness by his friend, who told him he had eat his meat, drank his wine, and lain with his wife, made no other reply, at the end of every sentence, but, "Sir, I wear a sword."

The Duke of Grafton rose with great warmth, and after observing that his ideas on this important subject did not coincide with what had been urged from any side of the House, and that he meant to reserve his opinion till the great question, with all its several relations and collateral circumstances, came to be taken into consideration and finally decided on, animadverted with no small degree of acrimony and resentment on the conduct of the two learned and noble Lords who preceded him. Of the latter (Lord Camden) lie insisted it was mean, and much beneath the dignity of one who acted in the exalted station he did, at the time the duties now mentioned were imposed, to come at this time to screen himself from the disagreeable consequences that measure produced, and shift the blame of his own shoulders to lay it on those of others, whom he was perfectly convinced, and fully conscious, had no more particular hand in it than his Lordship. The measure, said his Grace, was consented to, at least, in the Cabinet The noble Lord acquiesced in it, he sat in that chair, (pointing to the Lord Keeper's) while it was passing through this House in its several, stages. The learned Lord was the very person who signified the Royal approbation of this law