of 264 to 73; and in the Lords, by a majority of three to one. Neither the ministers nor opposition seem to have apprehended the storm that was so soon to burst upon their heads; for, before the Christmas recess, the estimates for the year, formed on a strict peace establishment, were hurried through the Commons. The short recess brought new and startling intelligence, and the ministers met petition and remonstrance, whether from Englishmen or Americans, with the frowns of power. They refused to lay before the King the petition of Congress, on the ground that this would be a recognition of an unauthorized and unconstitutional body. His Majesty referred it to Parliament, and Parliament, on the suggestion of ministers, refused to hear the explanation which the American agents-Franklin, Boland, and Lee, then in London-prayed to offer at the bar of the Commons. Lord North laid on the table of the house a variety of documents referring to the American contest; and, soon after, Lord Chatham, in the House of Lords, moved for an address to his majesty, praying him to take immediate measures for allaying the unhappy ferments in America.

Inspired by the solemnity of the occasion, his deep sense of the fatal policy blindly pursued by government, and his own stern convictions of the principles of liberty, his defence of the colonies was one of the grandest efforts of the genius of that illustrious man. "I will knock," said he, "at the door of this sleeping and confounded ministry, and rouse them to a sense of their imminent danger. When I state the importance of the colonies, and the magnitude of the danger hanging over this country from the present plan of misadministration, I desire not to be understood to argue a reciprocity of indulgence between England and America. I contend not for indulgence, but justice to America; and I will ever contend that the Americans justly owe obedience to us in a limited degree—they owe obedience to our ordinances of trade and navigation; but let the line be skilfully drawn between the objects of these ordinances and their private internal property. Let the sacredness of their property remain inviolate; let it be taxed only by their own consent, given in their own assemblies, else it will cease to be property. As to the metaphysical refinements, attempting to show that the Americans are equally free from obedience

and commercial restraints as from taxation for revenue, as being unrepresented here-I pronounce them futile, frivolous, and groundless. Resistance to your acts was necessary as it was just; and your vain declaration of the omnipotence of parliament, and your imperious doctrines of the necessity of submission, will be found equally impotent to convince or enslave your fellow-subjects in America. The means of enforcing this thraldom are found to be as ridiculous and weak in practice, as they are unjust in principle. Indeed, I cannot but feel an anxious sensibility for the situation of General Gage, thinking him, as I do, a man of humanity and understanding; and entertaining, as I ever shall, the highest respect and warmest love for the British troops, their situation is truly unworthy of them, penned up and pining in inglorious inactivity. They are an army of impotence. You may call them an army of safety and of guard, but they are, in truth, an army of impotence and contempt; and to make the folly equal to the disgrace, they are an army of irritation and vexation. The first drop of blood shed in civil and unnatural war, may be irremediable. Adopt the grace while you have the opportunity of reconcilement, or at least prepare the way. Allay the ferment prevailing in America by removing the obnoxious hostile causeobnoxious and unserviceable; for their merit can only consist in inaction; their force would be most disproportionably exerted against a brave, generous, and united people, with arms in their hands and courage in their hearts; three millions of people, genuine descendants of a valiant and pious ancestry, driven to those deserts by the narrow maxims of a superstitious tyranny. And is the spirit of persecution never to be appeased? Are the brave sons of those brave ancestors to inherit their sufferings as they have inherited their virtues? Are they to sustain the infliction of the most oppressive and unexampled severity, beyond the accounts of history or descriptions of poetry? 'Rhadamanthus habet durissima regna castigatque auditque.' So says the wisest poet, and, perhaps, the wisest statesman and politician of antiquity. But our ministers, say the Americans, must not be heard; they have been condemned unheard; the indiscriminating hand of vengeance has confounded together innocent and guilty-with all the formalities of hostility, has

blocked up the town, and reduced to beggary and famine thirty thousand inhabitants."

This motion and speech were described by the adherents of government as the result of turbulence and spleen, and one noble lord hinted that they were suggested by Franklin, who then sat under the gallery, and who, as he says himself, "kept his countenance, as if his features were made of wood,"* when the observation drew on him the general gaze of the house. The motion was rejected by a majority of 61 to 32.

A similar motion, submitted to the House of Commons by Charles James Fox, met a similar fate. Both houses appeared emulous to exceed each other in the race of severity and coercion; and the King himself, in reply to a remonstrance addressed to him by the Corporation of London, condemnatory of the policy pursued towards the colonies, with marked emphasis, which courtiers translated into royal emotion, “expressed his utmost astonishment at finding any of his subjects capable of encouraging the rebellious disposition which unhappily existed in some of his colonies of North America."†

In compliance with the King's recommendation, contained in his answer to the Commons' address, they voted an augmentation of the forces, both by sea and land, to the number of 2,000 seamen and 4,388 soldiers; and on the 10th of February, Lord North introduced his bill for restraining the commerce of New England, which met with violent and acrimonious opposition. But ere this bill had proceeded many stages, at the end of nine days, the noble lord, to the surprise of friends and foes, submitted to the house in committee his celebrated conciliatory resolution, which provided that wherever any of the colonies made provision for the common defence, by assessment in proportion to their circumstances, the sum raised to be at the disposal of parliament, and should also engage to make provision for the maintenance of the civil government, and that such provisions and engagement should be approved of by the King in parliament, it would be proper to impose no further tax, save such as related to the regulation of commerce.

This resolution was treated by the opposition with scorn, as

*Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 150.

†King's 's answer to Wilkes-Hume and Smollett (Continuation), vol. 15, p. 194.

wanting in courage, dignity, and justice; but, being supported by the ministerial party, although it directly contravened the bill, the principle of which they had affirmed nine days before, it passed the house. The opposition determined to propose a measure of conciliation, of a far larger and more liberal character; and committed its preparation to the gigantic abilities of the celebrated Edmund Burke, whose splendid genius and wonderful acquirements had already dazzled the house and the country. On the 22d of March he submitted his plan, which was comprised in thirteen articles. Here, too, the spirit of party was at work. The ministerialists resisted every proposition of Mr. Burke's, as the opposition resisted every proposition contained in Lord North's resolution—the members of each party feeling their personal and political principles more in issue than the fate of the colonies, and determined at all risks to maintain them. That stormy session closed its sittings on the 20th of May, without having again entertained the disputed subject of American policy, or hearing of the disasters that befell or the difficulties that beset the British arms in the western hemisphere; and of all its labours, eloquence, and anger nothing reached America but the empty resolution of Lord North, which, by its ungracious concessions and wavering tyranny, only excited the scorn of the flushed victors of Lexington.

CHAPTER VI

The Two Camps-American Army-Union of States' Congress-Second Sitting Battle of Bunker's Hill

Lord North's resolution was, however, backed by 10,000 additional men, who reached Boston about the same time, and found the colonial soldiers, now better disciplined, officered, and armed, encamped round the peninsula, and occupying a line, in form of a crescent, from Cambridge to Roxbury, a distance of over twenty miles. Thus stood these two armies in face of each other; the one on the height of the town, and the other on the surrounding hills, each animated by powerful but different impulses to begin that contest, which was to decide the fate of American liberty. The British, weary of inactivity, thirsted to become participators in the glory which their new generals— Howe, Burgoyne, and Clinton-had won on every debated field in Europe over the most disciplined and tried valour, and which they did not think could be perilled in open conflict with the raw, unorganised mobs of the colonies. Even those who shared in the former short struggle and sudden flight, could not admit that, on a fair field and in battle order, they would not be an overmatch for ten times their number of the provincials. Surrounding them was the ocean, over whose vast space spread their undisturbed dominion, while their enemies had not a single shallop or a mounted gun along their extended line of coast. Between them and their country, profuse in wealth, valour, and stores of war, there rose no barrier, nor could even cowards' fear suggest the apprehension, that a country without a single ship would attempt to intercept their convoys on that open road, where the angry elements alone were supposed to be their rivals. The army was well stored and provided with everything necessary for aggression or defence. Their vessels of war were moored around the town, and so placed as not alone to render the narrow accesses thereto impregnable, but, if need be, to reduce the town itself to ashes in a single hour. And this fair and growing town was the