the rights of his Majesty’s crown and the interests of his people are so essentially concerned; and we hope and trust that we shall, by the blessing of God, put such strength and force into his Majesty’s hands as may soon defeat and suppress this rebellion, and enable his Majesty to accomplish his gracious wish, of re-establishing order, tranquillity, and happiness, through all the parts of his united empire.”

Governour Lyttelton seconded the motion. He expatiated on the necessity of strengthening the hands of Government, if coercive measures were intended to be pursued. He compared America to a chain, the upper part of which was strong, and the lower weak; he explained this by saying, the Northern Colonies, or upper part of the chain, were strong, populous, and of course able to make resistance; the Southern Colonies, or lower part, were weak, on account of the number of negroes in them. He intimated, if a few regiments were sent there the negroes would rise, and imbrue their hands in the blood of their masters. He was against any conciliatory offers being made; said that this was the most proper time to speak out; and thought, at all events, the honour of the nation required coercive measures; that the Colonies ought to be conquered, and then to have mercy shown them; concluding from Virgil, with “parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.”

Lord John Cavendish moved, as an amendment, to leave out from the words “To assure his Majesty that,” to the end of the question, in order to insert these words: “We behold with the utmost concern the disorders in the British Colonies rather increased than diminished by the means which have been used to suppress and allay them; a circumstance alone sufficient to give his faithful Commons just reason to fear that those means were not originally well considered or properly adapted to answer the ends to which they were directed.

“We are satisfied, by experience, that this misfortune has, in a great measure, arisen from the want of full and proper information being laid before Parliament, of the true state and condition of the Colonies, by reason of which measures have been carried into execution injudicious and inefficacious, from which no salutary end was reasonably to be expected, and which necessarily tended to tarnish the lustre of the British arms, to bring discredit on the wisdom of his Majesty’s councils, and to nourish, without hope of end, a most dangerous civil war.

“Deeply impressed with a sense of this melancholy state of the publick concerns, we shall, on the fullest information we can obtain, and with the most mature deliberation we can employ, review the whole of the late proceedings, that we may be enabled to discover, as we shall be most willing to apply, the most effectual means for restoring order to the distracted affairs of the British empire, confidence to his Majesty’s Government, obedience, by a temperate and prudent use of its powers, to the authority of Parliament, and satisfaction and happiness to all his people.

“By these means we trust we may avoid any occasion for having recourse to the alarming and dangerous expedient of calling in foreign forces for the support of his Majesty’s authority within his own dominions, and the dreadful calamity of shedding British blood by British hands.”

Sir James Lowther seconded this motion. He strongly urged the great impropriety and danger of vesting the important fortresses of Gibraltar and Minorca in the hands of foreigners. He condemned the Address throughout; attacked the whole system of Colony government, and the measures arising from it; and, with peculiar energy, urged the interest he had in the event of those measures, the stake he had to lose, and the motives which might consequently be supposed to influence his conduct.

The Lord Mayor, Mr. Wilkes, said: Sir, I entirely agree with the honourable gentleman who seconded the motion for an Address to his Majesty, that every man ought now to speak out; and in a moment so important as the present to the whole empire, I think it ill becomes the dignity and duty of Parliament to lose itself in such a fulsome, adulatory address to the Throne as that now proposed. We ought rather, sir, to approach our Sovereign with sound and whole-some advice, and even with remonstrances against the conduct of his Ministers, who have precipitated the nation into an unjust, ruinous, felonious, and murderous war. I call the war with our brethren in America an unjust, felonious war, because the primary cause and confessed origin of it is, to attempt to take their money from them without their consent, contrary to the common rights of all mankind, and those great fundamental principles of the English Constitution for which Hampden bled. I assert, sir, that it is in consequence a murderous war, because it is an effort to deprive men of their lives for standing up in the just cause of the defence of their property and their clear rights. It becomes no less a murderous war, with respect to many of our fellow-subjects of this island; for every man, either of the navy or army, who has been sent by Government to America, and fallen a victim in this unnatural and unjust contest, has, in my opinion, been murdered by Administration, and his blood lies at their door. Such a war, I fear, sir, will draw down the vengeance of Heaven upon this devoted kingdom.

I think this war, sir, fatal and ruinous to our country. It absolutely annihilates the only great source of our wealth, which we enjoyed unrivalled by other nations, and deprives us of the fruits of the laborious industry of near three millions of subjects, which centred here. That commerce has already taken its flight, and our American merchants are now deploring the consequences of a wretched policy, which has been pursued to their destruction. It is, sir, no less ruinous with regard to the enormous expense of the fleets and armies necessary for this nefarious undertaking, and of consequence the enormous supplies to be raised; so that we are wasting our present wealth, while we are destroying the sources of all we might have in future. A humane mind must contemplate with agony the dreadful calamities and convulsions which are the consequence of every civil war, and especially a civil war of this magnitude and extent.

I speak, sir, as a firm friend to England and America, but still more to universal liberty and the rights of all mankind. I trust no part of the subjects of this vast empire will ever submit to be slaves. I am sure the Americans are too high-spirited to brook the idea. Your whole power, and that of your allies, if you had any, and of all the German troops, of all the ruffians from the North, whom you can hire, cannot effect so wicked a purpose. The conduct of the present Administration has already wrested the sceptre of America out of the hands of our Sovereign, and he has now scarcely even a postmaster left in that whole Northern continent. More than half the empire is already lost, and almost all the rest in confusion and anarchy. The Ministry have brought our Sovereign into a more disgraceful situation than any crowned head now living. He alone has already lost, by their fatal counsels, more territory than the three great united powers of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, have together, by a wicked confederacy, robbed Poland of, and by equal acts of violence and injustice from Administration.

England was never engaged in a contest of such importance to our most valuable concerns and possessions. We are fighting for the subjection, the unconditional submission, of a country infinitely more extended that our own, of which every day increases the wealth, the natural strength, the population. Should we not succeed, it will be a loss never enough to be deplored, a bosom friendship soured to hate and resentment. We shall be considered as their most implacable enemies, an eternal separation will follow, and the grandeur of the British empire pass away. Success, final success, seems to me not equivocal, not uncertain, but impossible. However we may differ among ourselves, they are perfectly united. On this side the Atlantick party rage unhappily divides us, but one soul animates the vast Northern continent of America, the General Congress, and each Provincial Assembly. An appeal has been made to the sword; and at the close of the last campaign what have we conquered? Bunker’s Hill only, and with the loss of twelve hundred men. Are we to pay as dearly for the rest of America? The idea of the conquest of that immense continent is as romantic as unjust.

The honourable gentleman who moved the Address, says, “the Americans have been treated with lenity.” Will facts justify the assertion? Was your Boston Port Bill a measure of lenity? Was your Fishery Bill a measure of lenity? Was your bill for taking away the Charter of the Massachusetts-Bay a measure of lenity, or even justice? I omit your many other gross provocations and insults, by which the brave Americans have been driven into their present

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