20. REPEAL OF THE STAMP ACT.

[Lord Chatham is justly endeared to every American for his eloquent sppeals in their behalf against the aggressions of the Mother Country. Feeble and decripit as he had become, he forgot his age and sufferings. He stood forth in the presence of the whole empire to arraign as a breach of the Constitution every attempt to tax a people who had no representative in Parliament. It was the era of his sublimest efforts in oratory. He denounced the war with a prophetic sense of the shame and disaster attending such a conflict. His voice rang throughout every town and hamlet in the Colonies, and when he proclaimed in Parliament: "I rejoice that America has resisted!" millions of hearts on this side of the Atlantic swelled with a prouder determination of resisting even to the end.]

SIR

(IR,—A charge is brought against gentlemen sitting in this house of giving birth to sedition in America. Several have spoken their sentiments with freedom against this unhappy act, and that freedom has become their crime. Sorry I am to hear the liberty of speech in this house imputed as a crime. But the imputation shall not discourage me.

2. The gentleman tells us, America is obstinate; America is almost in open rebellion. I rejoice that America has resisted! Three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to let themselves be made slaves would have been fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest.

3. I come not here armed at all points with law cases and acts of Parliament, with statute-books doubled down in dogs' ears, to defend the cause of liberty. I would not debate a particular point of law with the gentleman. I know his abilities. But, for the defence of liberty, upon a general principle, upon a constitutional principle, it is a ground on which I stand firm-on which I dare meet any man.

4. The gentleman boasts of his bounties to America. Are not those bounties intended finally for the benefit of this kingdom? If they are not, he has misapplied the national treasures. He asks, When were the Colonies emancipated? I desire to know when they were made slaves! But I dwell not upon words.

5. I will be bold to affirm that the profits of Great

Britain from the trade of the Colonies, through all its branches, are two millions a year. This is the fund that carried you triumphantly through the last war. This is the price America pays for her protection. And shall a miserable financier come, with a boast that he can fetch a peppercorn into the exchequer, by the loss of millions to the nation?*

6. A great deal has been said, without doors, of the power, of the strength of America. It is a topic that ought to be cantiously meddled with. In a good cause, the force of this country can crush America to atoms. I know the valor of your troops; I know the skill of your officers.

7. But on this ground,-on the Stamp Act, when so many here will think it a crying injustice,-I am one who will lift up my hands against it. In such a cause, even your success would be hazardous. America, if she fell, would fall like the strong man. She would embrace the pillars of the State, and pull down the Constitution along with her. Is this your boasted peace? To sheathe the sword, not in its scabbard, but in the bowels of your countrymen?

8. Will you quarrel with yourselves, now the whole house of Bourbon is united against you? While France disturbs your fisheries in Newfoundland, embarrasses your slave-trade to Africa, and withholds from your subjects in Canada their property stipulated by treaty? while the ransom for Manillas is denied by Spain?

9. The Americans have been wronged. They have been driven to madness by injustice. Will you punish them for the madness you have occasioned? Rather let prudence and temper come first from this side! I will undertake for America hat she will follow the example.

"Be to her faults a little blind;

Be to her virtues very kind.”

Let the Stamp Act be repealed; and let the reason for the re

* Mr. Nugent had said that a peppercorn in acknowledgment of the right to tax America was of more value than millions without it.

peal-because the Act was founded on erroneous principles-be assigned. Let it be repealed absolutely, totally, and imme diately!

LORD CHATHAM,

21. RECONCILIATION WITH AMERICA.

[In regard to this speech, we find in the diary of Josiah Quincy, jr., the fol lowing memorandum: "Attended the debates in the House of Lords. Good fortune gave me one of the best places for hearing, and taking a few minutes. Lord Chatham rose like Marcellus. His language, voice, and gesture, were more pathetic than I ever saw or heard before, at the Bar or Senate. He seemed like an old Roman Senator, rising with the dignity of age, yet speaking with the fire of youth." Dr. Franklin, who was also present at the debate, said of this speech, that "he had seen, in the course of his life, sometimes eloquence without wisdom, and often wisdom without eloquence; in the present instance, he saw both united, and both, as he thought, in the highest degree possible."]

A

MERICA, my Lords, cannot be reconciled to this country - she ought not to be reconciled-till the troops of Britain are withdrawn. How can America trust you, with the bayonet at her breast? How can she suppose that you mean less than bondage or death? I therefore move that an address be presented to his majesty, advising that immediate orders be dispatched to General Gage, for removing his majesty's forces from the town of Boston.

2. The way must be immediately opened for reconciliation. It will soon be too late. An hour now lost in allaying ferments in America may produce years of calamity. Never will I desert for a moment the conduct of this weighty business. Unless nailed to my bed by the extremity of sickness I will pursue it to the end. I will knock at the door of this sleeping and confounded ministry, and will, if possible, rouse them to a sense of their danger.

3. I contend not for indulgence, but for justice, to America. What is our right to persist in such cruel and vindictive acts against a loyal, respectable people? They say you have no right to tax them without their consent. They say truly

Representation and taxation must go together; they are inseparable. I therefore urge and conjure your lordships immediately to adopt this conciliating measure.

4. If illegal violences have been, as it 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 inflic tions; amerce not thirty thousand; oppress not three millions; irritate them not to unappeasable rancor, for the fault of forty or fifty. Such severity of injustice must forever render incurable the wounds you have inflicted.

5. What though you march from town to town, from province to province? What though you enforce a temporary and local submission; how shall you secure the obedience of the country you leave behind you in your progress? How grasp the dominion of eighteen hundred miles of continent, populous in numbers, strong in valor, liberty, and the means of resistance?

7. 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.

8. This glorious Whig spirit 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. What shall oppose this spirit, aided by the congenial flame glowing in the breast of every Whig in England! ""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.

EARL OF CHATHAM.

22. THE AMERICAN WAR.

His style of In his lan"Give me an

[CHARLES JAMES Fox, born in England, 1729; died, 1762. oratory has been compared by some critics to Demosthenes'. guage Mr. Fox studied simplicity, strength, and boldness. elegant Latin word," said he, "and a homely Saxon one, and I will choose the latter." Another of his sayings was this: "Did the speech read well when reported; if so it was a bad one." These two remarks give us the

secret of his style as an orator.

The life of Fox has this lesson for young men: that early habits of recklessness and vice can hardly fail to destroy the influence of the most splendid abilities and the most humane and generous dispositions.]

WE

E are charged with expressing joy at the triumphs of America. True it is that, in a former session, I proclaimed it as my sincere opinion, that if the ministry had succeeded in their first scheme on the liberties of America, the liberties of this country would have been at an end. Thinking this, as I did, in the sincerity of an honest heart, I rejoiced at the resistance which the ministry had met to their attempt. That great and glorious statesman, the late Earl of Chatham, feeling for the liberties of his native country, thanked God that America had resisted.

"

2. But, it seems, all the calamities of the country are to be ascribed to the wishes, and the joy, and the speeches, of opposition." Oh, miserable and unfortunate ministry! Oh, blind and incapable men! whose measures are framed with so little foresight, and executed with so little firmness, that they not only crumble to pieces, but bring on the ruin of their country, merely because one rash, weak, or wicked man, in the House of Commons, makes a speech against them!

3. But who is he who arraigns gentlemen on this side of the House with causing, by their inflammatory speeches, the misfortunes of their country? The accusation comes from one whose inflammatory harangues have led the nation, step by step, from violence to violence, in that inhuman, unfeeling system of blood and massacre, which every honest man must detest, which every good man must abhor, and every wise man condemn !