till you have riveted fetters on the last hand that has nerves able to resist you. I know, sir, that for a subject to resist the Executive power of the Government over that society of which he is a member, must be deemed an act of rebellion, unless such Executive power shall have committed a prior act of rebellion against its creators—the people; for then it virtually lays itself under an interdict; and resistance is not only pardonable, but praiseworthy—it becomes the duty of every good citizen; therefore the glorious founders of the Revolution in 1688 were patriots, not rebels; and the foreign Princes they brought over, and seated on the throne of England, in preference to all hereditary claims of succession, were legal sovereigns, and not usurpers. Sir, I shall repeatedly affirm, that the administrators of Government in this country were guilty of a heinous act of rebellion, when they sent fleets on fleets, and armies on armies, to America, to compel the Colonists to admit of taxation. Three millions of people, three thousand miles distant, without one delegate in your legislative body, and so eccentral with respect to this Island as not to be possibly comprehended in virtual representation, occupying a territory of such magnitude that were you to take from the map of it the extent of the British Isles, the defect would scarcely be visible to the most accurate eye;—I say, sir, this was rebellion against the fundamental Constitution of Great Britain, established on reason and the natural rights of mankind, from the earliest ages, confirmed century after century and reign after reign; it was rebellion in the fullest sense of the word against the inalienable rights of such an imperial mass of British freemen. Such is my law; such I hold to be the law of common sense, and such I understand to be the efficient law of the land. Sir, I shall certainly give my vote to reject this bill. I abominate every principle on which it is founded.

Mr. Bayley said he must tell those vociferous gentlemen, who were calling out in such a hurry for the question, that he must first call on the noble Lord [North] for his estate, which was going to be taken from him by this bill. He said if all trade and intercourse were stopped between the West-Indies and North-America, the plantations were at once ruined, as it was impossible to make either sugar or rum, or send it to this country, without American supplies. That as soon as it was made lawful to take American vessels, he did not doubt but all the sugar ships would be made prizes of; for as they were obliged to come home by the coast of America, it would be easy for a petty officer of a man-of-war to say those ships were found hovering upon that coast, and that they had arms and gunpowder on board, (which no merchant-ship is without,) and were going to supply the Rebels with them; this pretence is sufficient to condemn them; so that every planter’s property would be confiscated and shared amongst the favourites of the Minister. Proof had been given to the House that the annual exports to North-America, before this fatal war broke out, amounted to three millions and a half, of which more than three-fourths were of our own manufactures; and that we got great profit from the other fourth; but that the whole of this exportation was lost, as also six hundred thousand pounds exported in the same manner from Scotland. That the West-Indies took more than one million one hundred thousand pounds annually of British manufactory, and four hundred and seventy thousand pounds worth of goods were annually exported to Africa, to carry on the West-India trade; all this added together, amounted to the amazing sum of nearly six millions sterling; and if this bill passed, the whole of this immense export would be stopped, and thereby so great a national benefit would be lost, besides the infinite advantages we reaped on our trade and imports from thence, and a million of net money annually paid into the Exchequer. Therefore, he implored gentlemen would consider whether it was not madness to risk so great a loss, and put the nation to so immense an expense of blood and treasure, in order to establish an arbitrary and unjust right in America, as taxing them without their own consent, and which the Minister confessed he never meant to make use of. Besides this, he would advise gentlemen to reflect, whether, as soon as commissions were given to one cruiser to take and make prizes of all vessels which were found on the coast of America with arms and ammunition on board, if this would not inevitably involve us in a war with France and Spain, as their ships and gallions all came home from their American Colonies by the coast of America, and were well provided with arms and ammunition, which would give just the same pretence for seizing them as our own vessels. Even the stopping and searching may as reasonably be supposed to give as much offence to them as the Spaniards gave to us, when the war before the last was actually declared against the Spaniards, for no other reason than stopping and searching our vessels in the West-Indies. The House then divided. The yeas went forth:

Resolved, That the Bill be committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

A motion was made, and the question being proposed, That this House will, upon Tuesday next, resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole House upon the said Bill;

Upon this, several gentlemen begged Lord North to postpone it for a few days, to give the West-India merchants and planters, who had advertised a meeting of their body on this Bill for the 6th, an opportunity of laying before the House any information they might judge necessary. For this purpose, an amendment was proposed to be made to the question, by leaving out the word “next,” and inserting the word “sevennight,” instead thereof.

And the question being put, That the word “next” stand part of the question;

It was resolved in the affirmative.

Then the main question being put, That this House will, upon Tuesday next, resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole House, upon the said Bill;

The House divided. The yeas went forth :

Tuesday, December 5, 1775.

The Order of the Day being read, for the House to resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole House upon the Bill,

Lord Folkestone observed, that the bill, in its present form, was the strangest heterogeneous mixture of war and conciliation imaginable. He said, that the disparity of numbers in the House of those inclined to war and those who wished for peace was very great, but nothing like the disparity in the clauses of the bill; that there were thirty-five clauses that aimed at desolation, and one only—a single one—that pretended to be pacifick; that this mixture of hostility and conciliation in the same bill could proceed from no motive but a desire, either of confounding the attention by the variety of the objects, and diverting it from observing the disparity of the various parts, or of precluding debate, by continuing the subject-matter of two bills in one; that both these reasons were indecent and unparliamentary. He animadverted on the immense powers conveyed by the bill, on it did not know whom, or it did not know how many or how few Commissioners, or whether more than one, and observed that they were left to act upon discretion, nay, without any rule to judge by, had power to suspend the act. That if he had no other reason for wishing the House to agree to the motion in this way, there at least would be a bill of peace to balance one that prescribes nothing but war, horror, and confiscation. His Lordship, on these principles, moved,

“That it be an instruction to the Committee, that they do divide and separate the said Bill into two Bills.”

Mr. Dempster seconded him.

Mr. Rice opposed the motion, on the ground that the matter of the bill and its substantial operation, would answer the ideas of the noble Lord as well in one bill as two.

Mr. Dempster then enlarged upon the bill itself, and said, he wished much for the motion, not quite for the same reasons as had been given by the noble Lord, for he approved of that part which treated of the Commissioners; for though he thought the powers too great, yet great powers were undoubtedly necessary to the success of the commission

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