I will address a few words to the honourable Lord, and have done; I will tell him that decision and resolution, even when employed to but indifferent purposes, render their possessor respectable; I will speak with tenderness, I will not tell the noble Lord what effect, even with the best intentions, the contrary qualities will have. I will conclude with telling the noble Lord that if he adopts a decided line of conduct, he will have decided friends, and he may still stand on firm ground; but that if he continues to waver between both he will fall to the ground unsupported by either.

Mr. Temple Luttrell. Sir, upon a former occasion I presumed to state a few of my sentiments to the House, relative to the war impending over the Americans, because I was sure I could not answer it to my own feelings, I thought I could not answer it to my country, had I neglected, at the very earliest moment that might offer, to declare my utter abhorrence of those unconstitutional, arbitrary, and diabolical projects devised by his Majesty's Ministers for the destruction of that unhappy people. I flatter myself a certain illustrious character may soon be left out of this opprobrious list of projectors; there seems to be a divine gleam of radiance coming round his temples; and I foresee almost, if not altogether, as marvellous a conversion into the right path as that which happened in days of yore, to the great persecutor of the Christian followers on the plains of Damascus.

To what black storm in the political firmament we are indebted for this sudden change, I, sir, move in too contracted a sphere to discover; but the noble Lord will allow me to tender him my hearty congratulations, that he is at length awakening to that clemency, and to that justice, which will best agree with the innate temper of his heart. There is a long line of statesmen seated in firm array not far from your chair, who have, ever since the birth of this Parliament, uniformly shrunk (and I am sure their consciences always must shrink, whatsoever their politicks or their eloquence may do) from the great American question; they have wished to defer, to the latest hour possible, all discussion of this critical topick, in hopes, as they term it, to learn what is actually doing on the other side of the Atlantic. Sir, I can inform them; there rises not a sun in that hemisphere, but sets to such additional grievances and outcries as the most soothing future concessions, the most exemplary future sacrifices on your part, will scarce be able to atone for.

However grating to the ears of some individuals the subject may be, I shall take the liberty, with the indulgence of the House, to affirm, that these measures of compelling the Americans, by force of arms, to acknowledge the paramount and unlimited authority of Parliament, in the taxation of their property—a property created by their faculties, and by their industry, are not just, not politick, not practicable, but a traitorous infringement on the Constitution of the Colonies, which rests upon the same fundamental principles that uphold the property and uphold the franchises of every native of this Island.

Sir, I ever will contend that the united Parliaments of England and Scotland cannot legally impose a tax on the subjects of any other part of the British Dominions, without the consent of such subjects, either by themselves in person, or by their Representatives. Let the champions of Despotism avail themselves of all their knowledge and sophistry, I will venture to maintain this proposition, not arrogantly presuming on my talents or skill to manage it, but on its own clear intrinsick merits, and the conviction that, to every dispassionate mind, must naturally result from its investigation. The coercion proposed militates against the privileges of all emigrants of their description, from the time of the Patriarchal disjunctions to this day; emigrants who carried with them (as their penates) certain inherent rights natural to mankind—immutable and unalienable: confirmed to them for an heritage by that blessed Constitution of Saxon contexture under which they were born. Laws established on first necessity and impotence between them and the present state, either by express or tacit assent, were not of an universal, indefinite obligation, they were of a fiduciary nature, adapted to the comparative state of the contracting parties, for the purpose of temporary expedience, and must, of course, vary conformably to such other relative, alterations as lapse of time and the vicissitude of human affairs may affect. Acts of Parliaments, or other diplomatick titles, may be produced to shew a formal, and perhaps uncontested assumption of power at some given period of time, but will not countervail the primeval and indefeisible rights of mankind, whenever such rights shall be asserted by a clear major part of the community. On this ground, and this ground only, rests our spiritual reform under Harry the Eighth, and that most glorious of all civil Revolutions—the Revolution by which James the Second lost the throne of these Realms. Those gentlemen who plead for the omnipotence of Parliaments, and the infallibility of their codes, should advert to the many absurd, contradictory positions and doctrines laid down during the contention of the several pretenders of the. Plantagenet line, and afterwards of the heiresses of the House of Tudor.

In fact, sir, your Statutes of those days borrowed too frequently their maxims and complexion from whatsoever brow might happen to be encircled with the regal diadem. In the reign of Richard the Second, a law passed to transfer the power of both Houses of Parliament to twelve Barons. By an Act under one of the Henries, the King's Proclamation, with the consent of his Privy Council, was thenceforward to carry with it the force and efficacy of a law of the land. And we all know that the Parliament of 1641 voted itself perpetual, never to be dissolved nor prorogued but by its own consent: and the Act read by an honourable Member to the Committee on the present Resolution, and which he treated with so much deference, because it declared the people of the Massachusetts Bay in a state of revolt, was passed by this immaculate Parliament.

Now, sir, let us suppose (what in these our uncorrupt days there can be no reason to apprehend) that a Statute should be procured by some future Minister and minion of the Sovereign, vesting the whole Legislative as well as Executive power in the Crown, totally to abolish both Houses of Parliament; would such Statute be valid and binding on the subject throughout Great Britain and America? All persons have natural rights—a free people have legal rights, independent of Parliamentary edicts, and of which no form of Government whatever can deprive them. Laws not founded on constitutional justice are, in themselves null and void; nor are the makers of them legislators, but usurpers. A very wise and learned writer, Judge Blackstone, has in his Commentaries the following passage: "If the sovereign power advance with gigantick strides and threaten desolation to a State, mankind will not be reasoned out of the feelings of humanity, nor will sacrifice their liberty by a scrupulous adherence to those political maxims which were originally established to preserve that liberty."

If the powers and pretensions of a few adventurers and fugitives, occupying, about two centuries ago, a small corner of a graceless desert, and possessed of none of the good things of this life, are to ascertain the powers and pretensions of three millions of people, spread over a land flowing with milk and honey, and a thousand leagues in circumference, they may, with the same justice and propriety, be brought two centuries hence to ascertain the rights and pretensions of thirty millions, when the inhabitants of this diminutive Isle shall scarce reach a fourth part of that number; neither can I own such disparity in the calculation of increase to be at all exaggerated, if we consider the various drains from this country, and the daily influx of persons of both sexes at the very meridian of life into these inviting regions; besides, new settlers usually restrict themselves to hunting and agriculture—to toils which afford vigour to the body and enterprise to the mind. They live on plain, wholesome diet; their progeny is healthful, and of boundless increase; whereas, in Nations that have reached their full zenith of luxury, the mass of the people are occupied at sedentary arts and manufactures, drawing in, from morn to eve, an impure, confined atmosphere, or brooding over unwholesome furnaces; hence the vital stamina are hurt, the appetites soon appaled, the spirits easily depressed; they become enfeebled ere the sand of their mortal glass be half run out; their offspring is sapless and emasculate.

America has been loudly charged with ingratitude towards the parent country, from whom she received protection during the late conflict of war. 'Tis not quite clear how far the balance of that account is in her disfavour;