honourable, popular, prosperous, and glorious. This, sir, is unnatural, unjust, unprofitable, cruel, and revengeful. It commenced in ignorance and despotism, and is pursued with a rancour bordering upon madness, which can end at best but in the destruction of your Colonies, with the loss of your troops. Then, sir, are the lives of the bravest officers and soldiers this or any other country ever produced, the only tribute that can satiate the blind passion and revenge of Administration? Why will they not relax a little, and be satisfied to entrust the execution of their bloodthirsty measures to such as are better suited to the temper and disposition of their employers—I mean their favourite army of bigoted Canadians and Roman Catholick marines, now raising in Ireland, and fitting for such laudable purposes? They, sir, are the natural enemies of both countries; and if they prove successful, will be ready to obey the first beck of their masters, and return with swords stained in the blood of every American Province, to enforce either the Declaratory Act, a Popery Bill, or any arbitrary assessment of Administration in Ireland; for we have been told, by very prevailing authority, [Mr. Rigby and Mr. Charles Jenkinson,] that the establishment of their Parliament does not preclude us from taxing them, which we may and ought to do whenever we judge proper; for that the Irish had the power to make by-laws, but nothing more. Indeed, the Minister of that House of Commons insists that this is but the rash opinion of some individuals, not that of Government. I wish he may be right; for I fear the Whigs and Protestants of that country would be able to make but a faint resistance against such an army. Which way they might probably be next disposed of, I will not venture to foretell. But however pleasing or beneficial the smiles or friendship of Ministers may be, it is with a heartfelt satisfaction I reflect that I differ, as widely in principle as in politicks, from a set of men whose aim, I am afraid, is the subversion of the Constitution; whose delight appears to be in blood, and in destroying the peace of millions.

Colonel Barré entered minutely into the particulars and consequences of the summer campaign; described the situation of the King’s forces as on a wen or little excrescence of land, blocked up within the town of Boston, and the fleet not even master of the river in which it lies. He drew a conclusion, that if an army of twenty-two thousand of our forces, with twenty thousand Provincials, and a fleet of twenty-two sail of the line, with more than as many frigates, were three years in subduing Canada, though completed every spring, what little prospect could there be for ten thousand men to effect the conquest of all America. He told the Minister, that as he expected but little information from him, he would give him some: That he had received a letter from a Major Caldwell, who was settled on a large estate in Canada, who assured him that the Canadians were not, by any means, to be driven into the war; that he had tried the arts of persuasion in vain; that he assembled about twelve hundred of them together, who came with large sticks, but had concealed four hundred fire-locks in the woods, which they were determined to make use of against the English, if they forced them to take either side. He said that General Carleton and Lord Pitt were within a quarter of an hour of falling into the hands of Jeremiah Duggan, a barber, who was now a Major in the Provincials. He laid the blood of his gallant friend Colonel Aber-crombie, at the Minister’s door—a man whom particular circumstances, which he could not then mention, but which the noble Lord was well acquainted with, should have secured from such a fate. He added, as to himself, he stood there, it was true, an humble individual, brought into Parliament with reluctance on his own part, by the hand of friendship; that his Majesty thought proper to call him into his service; but when the matter of general warrants was discussed in the House, and his conscience directed him to oppose the measure, (which he modestly did by a silent vote,) a younger officer was purposely put over his head, as an intimation that his services were no further necessary. He retired, without repining, on a scanty pittance, as he would have done to the most mortifying state, without a murmur. His Majesty again thought proper to call him into his service, and made him one of the joint Vice-Treasurers of Ireland, which he held but a short time, owing to change of both men and measures. Since that time, he had retired with the name, indeed, of Colonel; yet, in truth, simply but Mr. Barré. He desired the noble Lord before him to say if he had ever solicited the smiles of Government; nay, Ministers had empowered him, since the last session, to say more, but he should be silent.

In touching on the War Office arrangements in America, he said, though he had lost one eye in America, he had still one military eye left, which did not deceive him. The Americans had been called cowards; that the noble Lord at the head of the Admiralty had wantonly raked up the ashes of a deceased Admiral, to confirm his hasty assertion; but now he had sent for a living Admiral home, to give the departed one the lie. As to cowards, they were certainly the greatest to his knowledge; for the Forty-Seventh Regiment of Foot, which behaved so gallantly at Bunker’s Hill, (an engagement that smacked more of defeat than victory,) the very corps that broke the whole French column, and throw them in such disorder at the siege of Quebeck, were three-parts composed of these cowards. He would not say much of himself in a military capacity, to give weight to this account; yet it could not but be flattering to him to reflect that the dead Wolfe and the living Amherst honoured him with their esteem. He animadverted with great severity on the Minister having said, some time ago, that if Parliament would give him the men and the money he asked, he would immediately pilot them safe through this American storm. He then ridiculed the absurdity of General Gage’s signing the flowery answer to General Washington’s clear and manly letter: affirming that the letter was not the composition of the Commander-in-Chief, but that he was compelled to father it by superior powers: he was a good officer, but a plain man. He spoke highly of General Howe and of General Washington. He observed, that he and his friends were held up as the leaders of faction; that the conversation of Ministry with each other was, which of them should go to the Tower first; but this they regarded not. Oppose the King, they could not wish to do, for their ancestry seated his family on the throne; but to carry their point against the present unfeeling Administration, he would readily go to the block. He concluded with a recommendation to the Minister, to embrace the present, the only moment tolerated by Heaven, for an accommodation with the Americans: if they were driven a step further in resistance, the whole American continent was lost forever. He said, as he had mentioned General Gage’s letter, a quotation from it might now supply him with a general inference, with which he would conclude, as a seasonable memento to Administration: “Be temperate in political disquisition; give free operation to truth; and punish those who deceive and misrepresent; and not only the effects but the causes of this unhappy conflict will be removed.”

Lord Barrington answered Governour Johnstone and Colonel Barré, and denied the disaffection of the officers, &c.; and assured the House that they would receive satisfactory accounts to the contrary, in seven or eight days.

Mr. Wedderburn said: Mr. Speaker, the importance of the present subject of debate is confessed on all hands, and that importance must plead my excuse for trespassing upon the patience of the House at so late an hour of the night. Indeed, were I not emboldened by the former indulgence of this Assembly, which has so greatly exceeded my deserts, I should have remained content with a silent vote. But however much I think myself called upon to express the genuine dictates of my heart, (for such I would always be understood to deliver in this place,) I will obey the first hint from this House, and yield, as an inconsiderable individual, to the sense of a body of men whom I so much revere.

Sir, after premising that I do not consider this Address as merely complimentary, but as marking out the general line of conduct that we mean to follow in this great national question, I must observe that the gentleman who spoke last, [meaning Colonel Barré,] either did not understand the force of his own arguments, or, understanding their force, did not, from the premises which ho had laid down, choose to draw any conclusion. What he could not or would not do for himself, I will do for him. I will suppose his own state of the case. I will suppose Boston abandoned, Halifax taken, Canada reduced, and, in a word, America, for the present, lost. What is the inference to be drawn from these premises? Not, surely, the pusillanimous alternative proposed by Opposition; neither the dastardly