tyrant Philip did it after the same circumstance in the Netherlands. By edict he allowed their ships to enter their ports, and suffered them to depart in peace; he treated with them; made them propositions; and positively declared that he would redress all their grievances. And James 2, when he was sailing from France, at the head of a formidable force, assisted like you by foreign troops, and having great party in the kingdom, still offered specific terms;-while his exceptions of pardon were few, amongst the rest_my hon. friend's ancestor, sir Stephen Fox. But you will offer none;-you simply tell them to lay down their arms, and then you will do just as you please. Could the most cruel conqueror say less? Had you conquered the devil himself in hell, could you be less liberal? No! Sir, you would offer no terms; you meant to drive them to the declaration of independency: and even after it was issued, ought by your offers to have reversed the effect. You would not receive the remonstrance which I brought you from New York, [see p. 643] because it denied your rights to certain powers;-yet the late king of France received the remonstrances from his parliaments, that expressly denied his right to the powers he was in the constant exercise of answered them, and even redressed some of the grievances, which those very remonstrances complained of, though he refused to grant what he thought more peculiarly entrenched upon his own authority.

execution, and be mistaken too-the battle is not yet fought; but if it was fought, and the wreath of victory adorned your brow, still is not that continent conquered; witness the behaviour of one miserable woman, who with her single arm did that, which an army of a hundred thousand men could not do-arrested your progress, in the moment of your success. This miserable being was found in a cellar, with her visage besmeared and smutted over, with every mark of rage, despair, resolution, and the most exalted heroism, buried in combustibles, in order to fire NewYork, and perish in its ashes;-she was brought forth, and knowing that she would be condemned to die, upon being asked her purpose, said, "to fire the city!" and was determined to omit no opportunity of doing what her country called for. Her train was laid and fired; and it is worthy of your attention, how Providence was pleased to make use of those humble means to serve the American cause, when open force was used in vain. In order to bring things to this unhappy situation, did not you pave the way, by a succession of acts of tyranny ;-for this, you shut up their ports-cut off their fishery ;-annihilated their charters; and governed them by an army. Sir, the recollection of these things, being the evident causes of what we have seen, is more than what ought to be endured. This it is, that has burnt the noble city of New York; that has planted the bayonet in the bosoms of my principals;-in the bosom of the city; where alone your wretched government once boasted the only friends she could number in America. If this was not the only succession of events you determined, and therefore looked for, why was America left without any power in it, to give security to the persons and property of those who were and wished to be loyal;-this was essential to government; you did not, and might therefore be well said to have abdicated the government.

I have been reading a work given us by a country, that is perpetually employed in productions of merit. I believe it is not published yet the History of Philip the 2d; and I there find, that that tyrannical monarch never dreamt of the tyranny exerted by this administration. Gods! Sir, shall we be told, that you cannot analize grievances?-that you can have no communication with rebels, because they have declared for independency?-Shall you be told this, when the

In this situation, Sir, shocking to say, are we called upon by another proclamation to go to the altar of the Almighty, with war and vengeance in our hearts, in stead of the peace of our blessed Saviour. He said, "My peace I give you;" but we are, on this fast, to have war only in our hearts and mouths; war against our brethren. Till our churches are purified from this abominable service, I shall consider them, not as the temples of the Almighty, but the synagogues of Satan. An act not more infamous, respecting its political purposes, than blasphemous and profane as a pretended act of national devotion, when the people are called upon, in the most solemn and awful manner, to repair to church, to partake of a sacrament, and at the foot of the altar, to commit sacrilege, to perjure themselves publicly by charging their American brethren with the horrid crime of rebellion, with propsgating "specious falshoods," when either

the charge must be notoriously false, or those who make it, not knowing it to be true, call Almighty God to witness-not a specious, but a most audacious and blasphemous falshood.

Mr. Rous said there was one point, as a grand preliminary, which must be the basis of every conciliatory step on either side; that was a clear unequivocal acknowledgment of the legislative supremacy of the British parliament. If that was not to be obtained, but by the force of arins, he was most eagerly desirous that arms should be resorted to; that probably the advantages we had lately obtained at Long Island, and in the neighbourhood of New York, might give us an opportunity of establishing a civil government in that province, the example and influence of which, when accompanied with a promise of a redress of real grievances, might be productive of the most happy and salutary consequences. He would be better pleased to see Britain dying of the wounds she might receive in this unnatural conflict given by her rebellious ungrateful children, than consent to one condescending step that might tend to tarnish her former glories.

Mr. Byng observed, that administration had all along acted upon system, and how ever mistaken they might be as to some of the effects of their measures, they never lost sight of the great object they had in contemplation from the beginning; that was, to compel America to consent to unconditional submission, which was, in other words, to consent to be slaves; or, in the event of their refusal and consequent resistance, to endeavour to subdue or extirpate them. This he contended was the great pervading principle which governed the American system, and such was the intention of those to whom carrying it into execution was committed. The opposition given to the motion was of a piece with the whole of the ministerial conduct, since the commencement of this business. Ministers in private, and their runners in public, were constantly known to load the officers entrusted with the superior commands with reproaches, or to flatly charge them with disobedience of orders, and the commission of acts to which they were not authorized. This underhand conduct on the part of administration, answered more purposes than one; it answered in a military, as well as a civil capacity, to skreen and varnish over, as well as to mislead and betray. Thus they had the address +

and effrontery to shift the censure they would have so deservedly incurred off their own shoulders. This he instanced in the persons of Carleton, Howe, Clinton, and several others, who were represented by their runners about town, and even by some of the principals, as mad, ignorant, rash, or inactive, according as it suited the present moment. He should not have particularly adverted to those circumstances, if it had not called to his recollection the fate of a near relation, who fell a sacrifice to the same treacherous motives of self acquittal.

Lord George Germain rose to clear up some matters of fact. The noble lord who made the motion, had supposed that he received the proclamation with the dispatch from general and lord Howe; on the contrary, the proclamation was left at Falmouth with other matters, and coming up to town in the ordinary way, did not reach his hands till Monday morning, when the extraordinary Gazette was already published. He forbore to insert it in Tuesday's Gazette, because he really did not think it of importance enough; it was not concealed, many copies having been pasted against the walls of New York, and many sent all over America. As it was only part of a treaty, he thought it improper to publish it, and conceived it was altogether unusual, as he remembered the conversations between lord Chatham' (when Mr. Pitt) and M. de Bussy, previous to the finishing the treaty of peace with France, was never published. He was averse to the present motion, as it would deprive general and lord Howe of the honour of making peace with America. As to the proclamation for a fast, he had before this day only heard it read once in council, and therefore from what the hon. gentleman had said, he had been induced to imagine, that the Archbishop who drew it up might have made some mistake; but that he had now read it, and thought it a very good and a very proper proclamation. His lordship then read it at the table, and having finished, declared the words, "specious falshoods," were properly introduced; he bid the gentlemen recollect the American declaration for independency, and then ask, if the rebels had not published "specious falshoods?" He bid them read their several other publications, and he doubted not they would all agree with him, that the assertion was most true; but he could easily account for his not seeing the matter in the

same light as the hon. gentleman opposite him; he was neither so accomplished an orator, nor so excellent a divine!

Mr. Dunning opened with observing, that he was not at the Opera on Tuesday evening, and as he did not imagine any news-paper contained any matter likely to entertain him, he had not read one that day; that he came down to Westminsterhall in the way of his profession, and had come from thence into that House, without any previous knowledge of the debate; but as the proclamation had been declared to be authentic, it was evident that news-paper information was to be trusted as much as that given in any other manner. He declared his amazement, that the motion should be deemed sudden and ill-timed; he said, he knew of no time more proper for appointing a committee for the revision of such Acts as were deemed grievances by the Americans than the present. That the question was not now, what should be altered, and what should remain in force; that those were considerations to be agitated when they came into a committee; that it was high time the legislature of Great Britain gave America reason to suppose they would not always turn a deaf ear to her complaints; that it appeared by the proclamation of lord Howe that he had promised in the King's name, that such Acts as they thought grievances should be revised; that the promise went to an assertion, that parliament, as a branch of the legislature, would enable the King to keep his word; that therefore it was high time parliament convinced America how ready they were to second the King's endeavours to restore peace, by beginning the good work with a revisal of the Acts which oppressed America. He said, the remarks of a learned gentleman relative to the futility of the House's taking into their consideration what they thought the grievances of America, because it might afterwards appear they were not considered by the Americans as grievances, was notoriously ill-founded. That the gentleman did himself and the House much wrong, if because parliament had collectively been blind to the several publications of America, he supposed that the members as individuals had been equally blind, and neglected to peep into the petitions which had been presented. That all the members had made themselves masters of the subject, and that the House knew the grievances America had to complain of, was

well aware what she felt as grievances, and might with great certainty proceed to redress them. The learned gentleman had given some new ideas of liberty; he had declared, that America must be subdued, America must be conquered in order to her deliverance. This sort of deliverance was to him a new consequence of conquest; from all that he had read or heard, he never knew that a conquered people were a free people, and he believed the House would join with him in supposing, that from time immemorial, the very reverse of freedom had been the fate of the conquered. As to the observation, that lord Howe's first proclamation was necessary to inform the public that lord Howe was arrived in America, it might also have been proper to have published the present proclamation to shew that he was still there. The noble lord who spoke last had accommodated himself to all parties, in his reasons for not publishing the Declaration in the Gazette. To those who thought it ought to have been made public, he had declared, any man might read it in the news-papers; and to those who thought it ought to be kept private, he had said, none could read it but those who chose to take a voyage to New York, where they would find it pasted on the walls of the half-burnt houses; and that he had not printed it in the Gazette, because lord Chatham's private negocia tions with M. de Bussy were not printed there. He said he should give his vote for the motion, although he knew it would not be carried, and ended with declaring, in reply to the observation about the fast proclamation, that he thought a church an improper place to promulgate a court creed in, and that so to act was to profane the place of worship. The House divided.

Debate in the Commons on the Navy Estimates.] Nov. 8. In the Committee of Supply, Mr. Buller moved, "That 45,000 seamen, including 10,129 marines, be employed for the year 1777."

Sir George Yonge should not oppose the motion, though he must condemn the service for which the greatest part of the seamen were destined. But while he approved of putting this country in a proper state of defence, he must reprobate that ruinous system upon which the present civil war was founded. He adverted to the declaration made by lord and general Howe, and positively affirmed the minis ters were by that declaration pledged to a reversal of their system with America.

Mr. Temple Luttrell said, that the naval strength of this nation, for the protection of Great Britain and Ireland, was by no means equal to the account publicly given by some of the most responsible characters in office. So far from 23 ships of the line being fit for sea, as was asserted at the opening of parliament by the first naval authority in Great Britain, and positively insisted on by a noble lord over the way (lord G. Germaine) we had not, on the first day of the session, a sufficient number of men to complete the complements of 13 sail of the 23 guardships then in commission, so as to render them in a condition to encounter an enemy, and yet the highest war establishment of this country is lower as to numbers than that of any other naval power in the universe. He conceived it to be the immediate duty of parliament to take measures for putting these kingdoms in a proper state of naval defence, and not suffer the most useful of the ships, and the flower of your seamen, to be sent 3,000 miles off, on a fruitless, romantic attempt, to reduce the vast continent of America to unconditional submission; utterly lost to these dominions, to borrow the words of a very emphatic orator (Mr. Solicitor General) of the long robe, "by the folly of a few, the madness of some, and the evil designs of many, who have gone headlong into these desperate enterprizes." Let us be the more careful of what yet remains of empire and of liberty, nor leave these islands in a defence

so marked, that some of the principal leaders of opposition, after attending the House of Commons, in the morning, upon private business, as soon as a public question was introduced, took a formal leave of the Speaker, and immediately withdrew." Annual Register.

less state, while our confederate enemies of France and Spain actually command all the European seas with a fleet of 50 men of war. We should be told, perhaps, that it is highly improper thus publicly to expose the weakness of our navy to those inimical powers, of whom such strong apprehensions are now expressed. If there was a ray of hope consistent with common sense, that such specious falshoods of government could impose upon the clearsighted statesmen on the other side of the channel, or upon their ministers or emissaries on this side, we might allow that we had in the noble earl the best commissioner of the Admiralty that ever presided at that board; I mean so long as the safety of the nation depends upon concealing or disguising the truth; for I verily believe him to be the only man of his rank and education in these realms, I am sure he is the only professed moralist, who, after reiterated detection in the grossest impositions, and deep-laid fictions, can rally again, and return to the charge with so sanctimonious a composure, so dauntless an effrontery, that the rarity and perfection of the yice almost constitutes it a virtue.

Mr. Attorney General called Mr. Luttrell to order, appealing to the committee, whether so personal an attack ought to be suffered ?

Mr. Luttrell said, he would persevere in his privilege as a representative of the people, to set forth, in as strong colours as he pleased, the official faults or iniquities of any of the public ministers of this country, where he was ready to support his allegations by circumstantial proofs.

The Attorney General insisted, that as there was no accusation formally before the House, Mr. Luttrell could not, consistently with the rules of the House, proceed any further.

Mr. Luttrell replied, that he would, at all hazards, proceed in acquitting himself of his duty. He knew (with great deference to that learned gentleman) he was within the law of parliament, and the rights of every member of it; and that the plea of wanting a formal accusation was a chicane which should avail nothing; for if the ministry would suffer him to carry a motion for the returns and state of the assured the House he would do no less in navy on which to ground his charges, he consequence of those abuses and mal-practices which must on enquiry come out, than follow such a motion by an address to his Majesty," that he would be gra