or Brunswickers, or she might have none; and that they should be paid by this country on the present occasion. This sure is a happy change. Ireland may have foreigners; she may have them for nothing; and she is fairly told, she shall not have one without the consent of Parliament; and, even if she should consent, she shall not pay a single shilling towards their maintenance or support. Great Britain shall have foreigners, whether she will or not; Ireland may have them if she pleases; but even then Great Britain shall pay them.

The Hon. Mr. Fitzpatrick complained of the conduct of Administration, in keeping everything secret; it was very probable, if Administration could have kept it a secret that the King’s troops were defeated at Lexington in April, or that they suffered worse than a defeat at Bunker’s Hill, we should have never heard of those two very mortifying occurrences; nor that an army of ten thousand men, with a most formidable train of artillery, and commanded by four Generals of reputation, have been blocked up during the whole summer by a body of people who have been described in this House, ever since their names have been first mentioned, as a mere cowardly rabble. He could easily discern that the bill breathed nothing but war, and that not of an ordinary nature; for it was not a war that might be stifled or compromised by a mixture of assertion or concession, but made upon a principle of ruin to one of the parties, if not to both; in short, it was a war of mere revenge, not of justice.

Mr. Fox presaged no good from the bill proposed; if no terms are to be accepted, he said, but unconditional submission, nothing could expose the folly of Administration more than to expect it. From the commencement of the present contest, every step has marked the Ministerial measures with weakness or absurdity; with arrogance at one time and meanness at another. At first setting out, the cry was, tax America; and, if she complains, tax her more. When this would not go down, the tone was lowered : acknowledge the right of taxation, and we will forego the exercise. This, too, was rejected. Tax yourselves in a certain proportion, and raise the revenue as you please. That, too, refused. Then comes, Acknowledge, ye slaves, unlimited obedience to the British Parliament, or the indignation of the State shall be roused against you, and the whole weight of Great Britain fall heavy upon you. Now the terrible day is arrived; the British Lion roars, and the forests quake. Neighbouring nations wait with impatience to see the event, and Britons to be enriched with the spoils. “Parturiunt montes, et nascitur ridiculus mus.”

Mr. Attorney-General [Thurlow] wished, if taking up arms against the State is not rebellion, that his learned friend would define what it is. Our ancestors, he said, opposed the encroachments of one branch of the Legislature upon the constitutional rights of the other two. The Americans rise in arms against the legal acts of the whole Legislature, King, Lords, and Commons, in their full plenitude of uncontrollable authority; and set at defiance the Executive powers of the State, as incapable of carrying those legal acts into execution. The distinction, he believed, was obvious. He insisted that no troops had been offered to Ireland, as asserted by his learned friend, who, he feared, laid too much stress upon newspaper information. Even if the fact were so, this was not the proper time to debate it, nor could he perceive what kind of relation there was between the supposed offer made to Ireland and the bill under consideration.

Mr. Burke reprobated the bill as unprecedented in the annals of history. It was a bill, in every light it could be viewed, diabolically constructed; for it inflicted punishment for acts thought innocent at the time they were committed, and legalized others which were acts of atrocious plunder and robbery. Our Saviour sent his Apostles to teach and proclaim peace to all nations; but the political Apostles to be sent out by this bill would be the harbingers of civil war, in all its most horrid and hideous forms, accompanied by fire, sword and famine.

Mr. T. Townshend was severe on the ostensible Minister, who was but a mere shadow of authority, all real power being lodged in the person of the honourable gentleman who sat next him, [Mr. Jenkinson.]

Mr. Jenkinson said, he did not understand what such insinuations led to, if not to mislead the House; that he had always acted conformably to the spirit of the Constitution, and defied his accusers to point out a single instance to the contrary.

Lord George Cavendish said, the manufactures were daily declining in almost every part of the kingdom, and the consequences of this bill must be dreadful, as he supposed, before the end of the year, it would throw above forty thousand hands out of employment.

Lord Stanley could not contradict the noble Lord’s general information, but he could venture to affirm, it was not the case in Lancashire.

Mr. Temple Luttrell. When the noble Lord at the head of the Treasury first gave notice of this bill, he told us it was his intention to repeal the three acts restrictive on the trade of New-England, and certain other Colonies, as insufficient to the purpose he had in view. Now, if I have comprehended the noble Lord aright, he has at different times professed to have in view two very distinct and contradictory purposes: the one to accelerate a peace, the other to continue the war with energy, and a profuse effusion of blood. If the noble Lord would repeal these iniquitous acts, and suspend all other hostile proceedings for the present, he may probably lay the groundwork of peace; but if he proceeds to a more diffuse and rigorous severity, he will put an end to every ray of hope that could be entertained of sincere or effectual conciliation. One hope, sir, I will, however, still entertain, and which I am neither afraid nor ashamed to avow; it is, that the Americans may prove successful in the maintenance of their just rights. Sir, I heartily wish them success, for their sakes, who have been grossly injured; and I wish it for our own. We have now before us a dreadful alternative; if the Colonists gain the victory, we bid farewell to the most valuable branch of the commerce of Great Britain, and we no longer hold that pre-eminent distinction which the triumphs of the last war, and our superior form of Government, gave us a just title to among the Powers of Europe. If, on the other hand, the Ministerial Army should come off with conquest, to judge by your northern addresses; by the accommodating temper of the miltary, (so different from former times;) and, above all, to judge by the complexion of our present rulers, the liberties of England must inevitably fall a sacrifice on the American continent. But, sir, I trust the eyes of Great Britain will open ere it be too late, and that she will discover the dangerous precipice, on the brink of which she at this day stands. Sir, I venture to foretell, that if these violent measures of coercion be further persevered in, you will involve every district of the British dominions throughout the four quarters of the globe in the various calamities and horrours of your unnatural civil war. Surely, sir, the country gentlemen, who are so frequently called upon from all sides of the House, now they are retiring into the country, must ponder during the Christmas recess, on the mischiefs they have been accessary to, and will return to Parliament with sentiments of contrition, and such sentiments as have usually actuated that valuable body of Englishmen. Neither will I despair of seeing this Parliament, which has borrowed the name of the memorable Coventry Parliament, and copied so many of its misdeeds, take from it the only good precedent it can afford. The Coventry Parliament, in the fifth of Henry IV, (about the month of January,) having granted to the Crown very exorbitant and unjustifiable taxes, a very few weeks alter caused the record containing that grant to be committed to the flames, hoping, by such expedient, to prevent their offence from being discovered to future generations. Let us, sir, follow that bright example, and have all the American acts passed since 1763, whether relative to unlimited sovereignty, to famine, or to taxation, selected from your rolls, and put into the fire; and when you send Commissioners over to Boston, with the olive-branch of peace in one hand, I would have them, instead of the exterminating sword of war, carry in the other a cinerary vase, filled with the ashes of those defunct parchments, to be a sacrifice at the tree of liberty, where they should be burried, and with them our mutual animosities, and every idea that might hereafter grow up to malice, reproach, or mistrust. Such a legation, and such credentials, would be worthy the wisdom and justice of the British Legislature, and restore your empire to its former splendour and prosperity; but if the character of herald be to predominate in this Commission, there is not one leaf of the olive-branch will be accepted of in America