had expressed had prevailed, by which means those sinister designs were prevented from taking effect," &c. In other words, the Ministers were afraid of the effect which might be produced by the knowledge of facts relating to America among the mercantile and trading parts of the community, and the opposition which might thence arise to the Ministerial plan of coercion. Lord Suffolk's foresight was fully justified; the abrupt dissolution prevented any influence being exercised by American affairs on the temper of the elections, and a Parliament was returned prepared to enter with alacrity the dreadful portal of civil war.

CHAPTER VI.

NEW PARLIAMENT-PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 1774-5 COMMENCEMENT

OF CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

THE new Parliament met for the first time on the 29th of November, 1774. The King declared in his speech his firm resolution to withstand every attempt to weaken or impair the supreme authority of the Legislature over all the dominions of the Crown. The Duke of Richmond moved an amendment in the House of Lords, which was rejected by 63 to 13. Lord John Cavendish moved a similar amendment in the House of Commons, requesting information, and promising serious consideration and advice. This amendment was rejected by 264 to 73. Thus the nation had the satisfaction of finding that it had a strong Government. But a strong Government which overleaps wisdom and violates justice is one of the worst evils that can befal a country. Parliament adjourned before Christmas to the 19th of January. On the 20th of that month Lord Chatham moved an address to the Crown. He began his speech by stating the purport of his motion. It was to pray that "it may graciously please His Majesty that immediate orders be despatched to General Gage for removing His Majesty's forces from the town of Boston as soon as the rigour of the season, and other circumstances

indispensable to the safety and accommodation of the said troops, may render the same practicable."

In advising this step he said:

"When I urge this measure of recalling the troops from Boston, I urge it on this pressing principle, that it is necessarily preparatory to the restoration of peace and the establishment of your prosperity. It will then appear that you are disposed to treat amicably and equitably, and to consider, revise, and repeal, if it should be found necessary, as I affirm it will, those violent acts and declarations which have disseminated confusion throughout your empire.

"Resistance to your acts was necessary, as it was just; and your vain declarations of the omnipotence of Parliament, and your imperious doctrines of the necessity of submission, will be found equally impotent to convince or to enslave your fellow subjects in America, who feel that tyranny, whether ambitioned by an individual part of the legislature, or the bodies who compose it, is equally intolerable to British subjects.

"I remember, some years ago, when the repeal of the Stamp Act was in agitation, conversing in a friendly confidence with a person of undoubted respect and authenticity on that subject; and he assured me, with a certainty which his judgment and opportunity gave him, that these were the prevalent and steady principles of America; that you might destroy their towns, and cut them off from the superfluities, perhaps the conveniences, of life, but that they were prepared to despise your power, and would not lament their loss whilst they have-what, my Lord?-their woods and their liberty. The name of my authority, if I am called upon, will authenticate the opinion irrefragably.*

* It was Dr. Franklin.

"If illegal violences have been, as is said, committed in America, prepare the way, open the door of possibility, for acknowledgment and satisfaction; but proceed not to such coercion, such proscription; cease your indiscriminate inflictions; amerce not thirty thousand; oppress not three millions for the fault of forty or fifty individuals. Such severity of injustice must for ever render incurable the wounds you have already given your colonies; you irritate them to unappeasable rancour. What though you march from town to town, and from province to province; though you should be able to enforce a temporary and local submission, which I only suppose, not admit, how will you be able to secure the obedience of the country you leave behind you in your progress to grasp the dominion of eighteen hundred miles of continent, populous in numbers, possessing valour, liberty, and resistance?

"This resistance to your arbitrary system of taxation might have been foreseen: it was obvious from the nature of things and of mankind; above all, from the Whiggish spirit flourishing in that country. The spirit which now resists your taxation in America is the same which formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and ship-money in England; the same spirit which called all England on its legs, and by the Bill of Rights vindicated the English Constitution; the same spirit which established the great fundamental, essential maxim of your liberties, that no subject of England shall be taxed but by his own consent.

"This glorious spirit of Whiggism animates three millions in America, who prefer poverty with liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence, and who will die in defence of their rights as men-as freemen. What shall oppose this spirit, aided by the congenial flame glowing in the breasts

of every Whig in England, to the amount, I hope, of double the American numbers? Ireland they have to a man. In that country, joined as it is with the cause of the colonies, and placed at their head, the distinction I contend for is and must be observed. This country superintends and controls their trade and navigation; but they tax themselves. And this distinction between external and internal control is sacred and insurmountable; it is involved in the abstract nature of things. Property is private, individual, absolute. Trade is an extended and complicated consideration; it reaches as far as ships can sail or winds can blow; it is a great and various machine. To regulate the numberless movements of its several parts, and combine them into effect, for the good of the whole, requires the superintending wisdom and energy of the supreme power in the empire. But this supreme power has no effect towards internal taxation; for it does not exist in that relation; there is no such thing, no such idea in this Constitution, as a supreme power operating upon property. Let this distinction, then, remain for ever ascertained-taxation is theirs, commercial regulation is ours. As an American I would recognise to England her supreme right of regulating commerce and navigation; as an Englishman by birth and principle I recognise to the Americans their supreme unalienable right in their property-a right which they are justified in the defence of to the last extremity. To maintain this principle is the common cause of the Whigs on the other side of the Atlantic and on this. 'Tis liberty to liberty engaged,' that they will defend themselves, their families, and their country. In this great cause they are immovably allied; it is the alliance of God and nature— immutable, eternal-fixed as the firmament of heaven.