That as no man of military experience had vouched for the sufficiency of the force, so no man in the Commissariat would answer for its subsistence from the moment it left the seacoast; that, therefore, its subsistence and its operation were become incompatible.

To the objection, that at this rate the Americans might always bring us to unreasonable terms, by the supposed impossibility of reducing them by force, he said he could not help the difficulties which arose from nature and the constitution of things; that he could not make America nearer to us than it is; or a country of another nature than what God has made it. That people who cannot contrive to reconcile their quarrels, must suffer the evils that happen to a divided nation. That he was of opinion there was no dishonour at all in any kind of amicable adjustment of domestick quarrels; and he would rather yield a hundred points, when it was Englishmen who gave and received, than a single point to a foreign nation; and we were in such circumstances that we must yield to either one or the other.

After an examination of the merits of the first plan, that of reducing the Colonies to obedience by simple war, in order to a perfect conquest, he entered into a discussion of the second, namely, that of the mixture of war and treaty.

Among the great and manifest diversity of sentiments which prevailed on the Treasury bench, he thought he could discern that this plan had been the most generally adopted by Ministers, or those who acted as such. That no light, however, had been let in upon the particulars of the scheme, except in the speech from the Throne. It was, indeed, very little, and that little very fallacious. One would be inclined to think from that speech, that nothing had retarded the restoration of peace but a doubt whether those in arms might, upon laying them down, obtain a speedy pardon. However, the fact was, no pardon had been ever applied for. If nothing had been wanting to conclude the peace but such a power, the Commander-in-Chief might be authorized to hold out mercy to all those who should submit; and then there would be no need of the laborious, expensive, uncertain, and dilatory process of a Commission.

It was impossible to pass by the very exceptionable manner in which this power of pardoning was to be delegated: “They shall have authority (says the speech from the Throne) to grant general or particular pardons or indemnities, in such manner and to such persons as they shall think fit.” A shocking, arbitrary power, not to be trusted to any persons, giving encouragement to dangerous partialities, and tending rather to distract than to quiet the country. That the rule of pardon, when delegated to subjects, ought not to be their pleasure or displeasure, but the compliance or non-compliance of the guilty with certain fixed conditions. That some such discretionary power as that mentioned in the speech seemed to be given already, and to have produced the mischiefs which might be expected from it; for that General Gage had already, whether by himself or by order from Ministers, made a very indiscreet use of it, by offering mercy to those who were openly in arms and actually besieging him in his station, and excluding from mercy those who were five hundred miles from him, and then sitting in an assembly never declared by authority to be illegal; an assembly from which the Ministers in the House of Commons had at one time declared they were not without hopes of proposals which might lead to accommodation. On this part of the speech from the Throne he animadverted with great severity.

He said he understood, that instead of the Americans waiting for pardons, they were to be persuaded by negotiation to accept them. Therefore it would be necessary to examine what body of men it was that Administration proposed to negotiate with, and what the objects of the negotiation were to be.

That if he did not mistake the discourses of Ministers, they did not now propose to negotiate with the present, or with any other General Congress or meeting, but with the several Assemblies distinctly. In this scheme, he said, they knew that they could not succeed; because there was one principal Province, that of Massachusetts-Bay, whose Assembly, under their charter, was destroyed by act of Parliament. That no Assembly would sit in that Province under the new Constitution, because, if it should, the inhabitants must, as a preliminary, yield the principal object for which they had taken up arms, and thus turn the negotiation against themselves, even before it should be opened. That this Province was the actual seat of war, as its sufferings had been the cause of the war itself. Treaty must, therefore, stumble upon the threshold.

That besides this objection, (which was fundamental,) a negotiation with so many Provinces, of such different Constitutions, tempers, and opinions, never could come to an end. In the meantime our hostile operations, with their whole train of disasters, accidents, and ruinous expenses, would be continued, to the destruction of this country and of that. That the hope of dividing the Colonies, on which this part of the plan was founded, and which was even avowed as a reason for adopting it, would be the most unfortunate thing that could happen; as it would protract the war, and complicate its horrors and miseries, without a possibility of ending it. It was, he said, a vain imagination, that any of the Colonies would take up arms in favour of Ministry for the execution of any of their plans; and that a part of the Colonies was sufficient at least to keep this war alive until the interference of foreign Powers should render it utterly destructive.

That with regard to the objects of the treaty, there must be concessions on the side of the Colonies, or upon ours, or upon both. That upon their side they must be either speculative recognitions of rights upon as large a scale as we had claimed them, and this it was absolutely certain they never would submit to; or upon a lesser, excluding taxation and its consequences, and this they had submitted to already; so that there seemed to be no object of the speculative kind, which made it necessary to postpone peace by a protracted negotiation.

That the other object of treaty might be a practical recognition of our right of taxing for a revenue; that this revenue was to be either nominal or beneficial; if only nominal, it amounted to nothing more than that speculative acknowledgment of right, which we knew they would forever refuse to make. If beneficial and productive, it was to be either by submitting to Lord North’s proposition, namely, that of forcing them to furnish a contingent, by authority of Parliament; or, according to their ancient mode, by a voluntary grant of their own Assemblies.

If the former, we know, said he, they have already rejected that proposition, and never can submit to it, without abandoning that point for the maintenance of which they have risked their all. If it only requires that they should resort to their ancient mode of granting by their Assemblies, they have declared again and again, from the beginning of this contest to the end, that they were willing to contribute according to their ability, as estimated by themselves, who were the best judges of what their ability was. That ability would be lessened, if not totally destroyed, by the continuance of those troubles. This armed negotiation for taxes would, therefore, inevitably defeat its own purposes; and prevent for ever the possibility of raising any revenue, either by our authority, or by that of their own Assemblies.

That if the Ministers treated for a revenue, or for any other purpose, they had but two securities for the performance of the terms : either the same force which compelled these terms; or the honour, sincerity, and good inclination of the people. If they could trust the people to keep the terms without force, they might trust them to make them without force. If nothing but force could hold them, and they meant nothing but independency, as the speech from the Throne asserted, then the House was to consider how a standing army of twenty-six thousand men, and seventy ships-of-war, could be constantly kept up in America. A people meaning independency will not mean it the less, because they have, to avoid a present inconvenience, submitted to treaty. That after all our struggles, our hold on America is, and must be, her good inclination. If this fails, all fails; and we had better trust to the honesty of the Colonies, before we had ruined ourselves, than after; before we had irritated them, than after we had alienated their affections for ever.

That the troops sent for the purpose of forwarding, would certainly impede the negotiation. That it was impossible the Provincials could be mad enough to lay down their arms, whilst a great adverse military power remained in their country, without any assurance whatsoever of their obtaining any one of the points for which they had contended. This would not be to negotiate, but to surrender at discretion. All the