the important subject of America. Though I have so lately had the honour of a seat in this House, yet I have for many years turned my thoughts and attention to matters of public concern and national policy. This question of America is now of many years standing; of the greatest public notoriety, as to the facts upon which it turns; and every opinion has been so fully debated over and over, that any man who has given his mind to public business, may be supposed equally informed out of the House as in it. When I threw out the Propositions casually before Christmas, which I shall offer more formally to you to-day, my view was in no sort hostile to the administration. I saw the difficulty that we were got into by our own precipitancy; that unhappy dilemma, which offered nothing but ruin in going forward, or disgrace in the retreat. I was in hopes, from some phrases dropt by the noble lord at the head of the Trea. sury, in the beginning of the session, of others being more sanguine and more impatient than himself; that he at least would have shewn some disposition to relent: and I still believe, if he were at liberty to follow his own inclination and judgment, that it would be so. I am the more warranted in thinking so, from the proposition which the noble lord himself offered to the House some time ago (See p. 319). There was in that proposition a shew of conciliation to captivate one side of the House, and sufficient to betray what were his own wishes; but on the other side there was the reality of every unrelenting and vindictive measure annexed, to prove, that there still were others more sanguine and more impatient than himself; over whom, with all his abilities, with all his eloquence, with all the advantages of his situation, he could not maintain his ascendant. Whatever struggles the noble lord may have had with himself or his friends, they are all at an end; the die is cast for war with America. It was found, that any conciliatory proposition must have been in some degree a concession, which none of his unrelenting friends would con sent to. However, by the noble lord's proposition, there is one concession made to America, under the authority of this House, which cannot be recalled; and which finally and conclusively condemns the conduct of every administration for these ten years past, one excepted; I mean the repeal of the Stamp Act. If it can be pro per now to offer to the colonies to pay upon requisition, what can this nation say for having kept out of the only right road for ten years? How can we censure the colonies for any errors committed by them, which were the consequences of our own beginning at the wrong end? Though a threat is now annexed to the noble lord's requisition, yet if, at first, we had begun with a requisition instead of taxing, it would have been more just and prudent. There could be no justice or prudence in threatening a people who had always contributed most freely; who never would have called our supposed right in question, but for our misapplication of it. Therefore, Sir, when I have brought back the noble lord's compulsory requisition, to my free requisition, it stands confessed upon the very nature of his proposition itself, that I have set it upon its own true original ground. There is another objection to the noble lord's plan, which as I have mentioned it upon a former occasion, I shall only remind you of in a few words; I mean a breach of faith with the colonies. A secretary of state writes, in 1769, a circular letter to the colonies, to assure them, That you will never raise a revenue by taxing. A few years after, upon a negociation with the East India Company, the three-penny tea-tax becomes not only merely a quitrent for the point of honour, but rises to an actual revenue. Then you plead, that you did not break your word, as the revenue arising was not in your original intentions, but only casual, from a regulation of trade. But what can you say now? The noble lord boasts, that he has put the question upon the true ground, a demand for a substantial revenue; a demand, attended with threats of compulsion. What is this less than raising a revenue by a tax? But in any case, let the noble lord think what he will of his proposition; why has he not, in so many weeks, given it some practicable shape? Why has he not offered some act of parliament to give it effect? However, as he has omitted that, I shall take the proposition without its objectionable parts, and propose an address to the King to give it force; in which motion, I hope to meet with the support of those gentlemen who gave it countenance originally, when it came from the noble lord. I shall give the whole substance of the proposition; only leaving out in the Address, to the King, any threats of the compulsion which you meditate in reserve." If you think that you have the right of taxing, I pass it over in silence,-if you have the power, I do not-I cannot, take that away. Then make a free requisition; and be contended to keep to yourselves the satisfaction of thinking, that you have something in reserve, in case of non-compliance. Keep that sub silentio; at least till you find that it becomes necessary. I am not an advocate either for the right or the expediency of taxing the Americans, but the contrary. However as far as we go the same road of requisitions, let us go together. As what I have to offer, will be founded upon requisitions to the colonies, I will endeavour to answer an objection beforehand, which I have heard in this House.. It is to the plan of royal requisition. This objection to the interference of the royal name, comes from a side of the House, from which one should least have expected it. However, if this be an objection, mine are not royal requisitions. My motion originates from the House of Commons, to desire the King, as the executive magistrate, to put their plan into effect. If the power of making requisitions to the colonies, is not in the King; my motion is to give the authority and sanction of parliament to this measure. It is so far from being my proposition, to enable the crown to raise what supply it can from America, independent of parliament, that my motion is the very first which has ever had in contemplation, to lay a parliamentary controul upon that power; and to require that all answers from America shall be laid before this House for the very purpose of controuling that power in the crown. I have so doubly guarded that point, that my motion is not even for the crown to demand a supply from America; but for services to be performed in America; for the defence, security and protection of the colonies themselves. I would wish to state to the House the merits of this question, of requisitions to the colonies; and to see upon what principles it is founded; to revise and settle the accounts between Great Britain and her colonies; and then, upon a foundation of distributive justice, to come to some settlement. We hear of nothing now, but the protection which we have given to them; of the immense expence incurred on their account. We are told that they have done nothing for themselves; that they pay no taxes; in short, every thing is asserted about America to serve the present turn, without the least regard to truth. I would have these matters fairly sifted out. To begin with the late war. The Americans turned the success of the war, at both ends of the line. General Monkton took Beausejour in Nova Scotia with 1,500 provincial troops and about 200 regulars. Sir William Johnson in the other part of America, changed the face of the war to success with a provincial army, which took baron Dieskau prisoner. But, Sir, the glories of the war, under the united British and American arms, are recent in every ones' memory. Suffice it to decide this question, that the Americans bore, even in our judgment, more than their full proportion; that this House did annually vote them an acknowledgment of their zeal and strenuous efforts, and a compensation for the excess of their zeal and expences, above their due proportion. They kept, one year with another, near 25,000 men on foot, and lost in the war the flower of their youth. How strange must it appear to them to hear of nothing down to March 14, 1763, but encomiums upon their active zeal and strenuous ef forts, and then, no longer after than the year 1764, in such a trice of time, to see the tide turn, and from that hour to this to hear it asserted that they were a burden upon the common cause; asserted even in that same parliament, which had voted them compensations for the liberality and excess of their services. Nor did they stint their services to North America, they followed the British arms out of their continent, to the Havannah and Martinique, after the complete conquest of America. And so they had done in the preceding war. They were not grudging of their exertions, they were at the siege of Carthagena; yet what was Carthagena to them, but as members of the common cause, of the glory of this country? In that war too, Sir, they took Louisbourg from the French, single handed, without any European assistance; as mettled an enterprize as any in our history! an everlasting memorial of the zeal, courage and perseverance of the troops of New England. The men themselves dragged the cannon over a morass which had always been thought impassable, where neither horses nor oxen could go, and they carried the shot upon their backs. And what was their reward for this for ward and spirited enterprize; for the reduction of this American Dunkirk? Their instead of that, they have been left to themselves for 100 or 150 years, upon the fortune and capital of private adventurers, to encounter every difficulty and danger. What towns have we built for them? What deserts have we cleared? What country have we conquered for them from the Indians? Name the officers; name the troops; the expeditions; their dates. Where are they to be found? Not in the journals of this kingdom. They are no where to be found. reward, Sir, you know very well; it was given up for a barrier to the Dutch. The only conquest in that war which you had to give up, which would have been an effectual barrier to them against the French power in America, though conquered by themselves, was surrendered for a foreign barrier. As a substitute for this, you settle Halifax for a place d'armes, leaving the limits of the province of Nova Scotia as a matter of contest with the French, which could not fail to prove, as it did, the cause of another war. Had you kept Louisbourg instead of settling Halifax, the Americans may say, at least, that there would not have been that pretext for imputing the late war to their account. It has been their forwardness in your cause, that made them the objects of the French resentment. In the war of 1744, at your requisition, they were the aggresors with the French in America. We know the orders given to Mons. D'Anville, to destroy and lay all their sea-port towns in ashes; and we know the cause of that resentment; it was to revenge their conquest of Louisbourg. Whenever Great Britain has declared war, they have taken their part. They were engaged in king William's wars and queen Anne's, even in their infancy. They conquered Acadia in the last century for us, and we then gave it up. Again, in queen Anne's war they conquered Nova Scotia, which, from that time, has always belonged to Great Britain. They have been engaged in more than one expedition to Canada, ever foremost to partake of honour and danger with the mother country. In all the wars which have been common to us and them, they have taken their full share. But in all their own dangers, in all the difficulties belonging separately to their situation, in all the Indian wars which did not immediately concern us, we left them to themselves to struggle their way through. For the whim of a minister you can bestow half a million to build a town, and to plant a royal colony of Nova Scotia; a greater sum than you have bestowed upon every other colony together, since their foundation. And notwithstanding all these, which are the real facts, now that they have struggled though their difficulties, and begin to hold up their heads, and to shew that empire which promises to be the foremost in the world, we claim them and theirs, as implicitly belonging to us, without any consideration of their own rights. We charge them with ingratitude, without the least regard to truth, just as if this kingdom had for a century and a half attended to no other object; as if all our revenue, all our power, all our thought, had been bestowed upon them, and all our national debt had been contracted in the Indian wars of America, totally forgetting the subordination in commerce and manufactures, in which we have bound them; and for which, at least, we owe them help towards their protection. Well, Sir, what have we done for them? Have we conquered the country for them from the Indians? Have we cleared it? Have we drained it? Have we made it habitable? What have we done for them? I believe precisely nothing at all, but just Look at the preamble of the Act of keeping watch and ward over their trade, Navigation, and every American Act, and that they should receive nothing but from see if the interests of this country is not ourselves, and at our own price. I will the avowed object. If they make a hat or not positively say, that we have spent no- a piece of steel, an act of parliament calls thing; though I do not recollect any such it a nuisance: a tilting hammer, a steel article upon our Journals: but I mean, furnace, must be abated in America as a not any material expence in setting them nuisance. Is it so with their fellow subout as colonists. The royal military go-jects on this side of the Atlantic? Are the vernment of Nova Scotia cost, indeed, not hats and cloths of Gloucestershire nuia little sum; above 500,000l. for its plan-sances? Are the tilting hammers of Pontation, and its first years. Had your other tipool nuisances? Are the cutleries of colonies cost any thing similar, either in Sheffield and Birmingham nuisances? Are their outset or support, there would have the stockings of Nottingham nuisances? been something to say on that side; but Are the linens of Scotland, Ireland, or Broomsgrove nuisances? Are the|blishment since the late war, and the total woollen cloths of Yorkshire, the crapes of expulsion of the French interest, be higher Norwich, or the cottons of Manchester, than it was before the late war, and when nuisances? Sir, I speak from facts. I call the French possessed above half the Ameyour books of statutes and journals to wit-rican continent? If it be so, there must be ness. With the least recollection, every some singular reason. one must acknowledge the truth of these facts. I cannot suppose that you mean, under the general term of North America, to saddle all the expences of Canada, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, Newfoundland, Florida, and the West Indies, upon the old colonies of North America. You cannot mean to keep the sovereignty, the property, the possession (these are the terms of the cession in the treaty of 1763) to yourselves, and lay the expence of the military establishment, which you think proper to keep up, upon the old colonies. Sir, the colonies never thought of inter But it is said, the peace establishment of North America has been, and is, very expensive to this country. Sir, for what has been, let us take the peace establishment before 1739, and 1748. All that I can find in your journals is, four companies kept up at New York, and three companies in Carolina. As to the four companies at New York, this country should know best why they put themselves to that expence; or whether they were really at any expence at all; for these were com-fering in the prerogative of making war or panies of fictitious men. Unless the money was repaid into the treasury, it was applied to some other purpose; for these companies were not a quarter full. In the year 1754, two of them were sent up to Albany, to attend commissioners to treat with the Six Nations, to impress them with a high idea of our military power; to display all the pomp and circumstance of war before them, in hopes to scare them; when, in truth, we made a very ridiculous figure. The whole complement of the two companies did not exceed thirty tattered, tottering invalids, fitter to scare the crows. This information I have had from eye-wit nesses. It has not fallen in my way to hear any account of the three Carolina companies: these are trifles. The substantial question is, what material expence have you been at in the periods alluded to, for the peace establishment of North America? Ransack your journals, search your public offices for army or ordnance expences. Make out your bill, and let us see what it is. No one yet knows it. Had there been any such, I believe the administration would have produced it before now, with aggravation; as was the case a few years ago with the East India Company, who had their effects arrested for a long bill, when they little expected it, and that bill too not very scrupulously charged: but when money is in the case, whether from the east or from the west, ministers can make as long bills as other people. But is not the peace establishment of North America now very high, and very expensive? I would answer that by another question; why should the peace esta peace; but if this nation can be so unjust as to meditate the settling the expence of your new conquests separately upon them, they ought to have had a voice in settling the terms of peace. It is you, on this side of the water, who have first brought up the idea of separate interests, by planning separate and distinct charges. It was their men, and their money, which had conquered North America and the West Indies, as well as yours, though you seized all the spoils; but they never thought of dictating to you what you should keep or what you should give up, little dreaming that you reserved the expence of your military governments for them. Who gave up the Havannah ? Who gave up Martinique? Who gave up Guadaloupe, with Mariegalante? Who gave up Santa Lucia? Who gave up the Newfoundland fishery? Who gave up all these, without their consent, without their participation, without their consultation, and after all without equivalents? Sir, if your colonies had but been permitted to have gathered up the crumbs which have fallen from your table, they would have gladly supported the whole establishment of North America. Your colonies have now shewn you the value of lands in North America; and therefore you have vested in the crown the sovereignty, property, and possession of infinite tracts of land, perhaps as extensive as all Europe, which the crown may dispose of at its own price, as the land rises in America, and grants become invaluable; and to enable the crown to support an arbitrary military, nay even a Romish government, till these lands rise American port, but British ships and men. While you are defending the American commerce, you are defending Leeds and Halifax, Sheffield and Birmingham, Manchester and Hull, Bristol and Liverpool, London, Dublin and Glasgow. However, as our fleet does protect whatever commerce belongs to them, let that be set to the account. It is an argument to them, as well as to us. As it has been the sole policy of this kingdom, for ages, by the operation of every commercial act of parliament, to make the American commerce totally subservient to our own convenience, the least that we owe to them in return is protection. to their future immense value, you are casting about to saddle the expence either upon the American or the British supplies. The Americans must, indeed, be in a state of insanity, if they do not see the tendency of all this; and we ourselves must be more insane and blind even than the Americans; we, who have already seen the patronage of the East Indies put into the hands of the crown, and who now see the sovereignty, property, and possession of North America, with every military and despotic power, vested solely in the King's hands; we, who are made to learn every hour, by precept and example, that charters, being but the breath of kings, are to be annihilated by the breath of pliable parliaments; we must be, Sir, I say, more insane than them, if we do not see the tendency of all this, and if we do not provide in time for our own security, as well as for that of America. I will not suppose, that we can be so improvident as not to attend to these important and perhaps not very distant events; nor, with respect to the present question, will I suppose that parliament meditates so great an injustice, as to require your old colonies to support the charge of all your new conquests, and all the rest of America. This country is very liberal in its boast ing of its protection and parental kndness to America. Is it for that purpose that we have converted the province of Canada into an absolute and military government, and have established the Romish bigotry dominant, as a terror upon all our ancient and Protestant colonies? What security, what protection do they derive? In what sort are they the better for the conquest of the French dominions, if we take that opportunity to establish a government, civil, military, and ecclesiastical, in the utmost degree hostile to the government of our own provinces, and with the intent to set a thorn in their sides? Is this affection and parental kindness? Surely you do not expect that they should be taxed and talliaged to pay for this rod of iron which you are preparing for them! Now, Sir, I come to a point, in which I think you may be said to have given some protection. I mean the protection of your fleet to the American commerce. And even here I am at a loss by what terms to call it; whether you are protecting yourselves or them. They are your cargoes, your manufactures, your commerce, your navigation. Every ship from America is bound to Great Britain. None enter an [VOL. XVIII. ] Sir, I have now stated my sentiments upon the preliminary matters. I have endeavoured to state the services, in war, of the Americans, with ours, and their mutual proportions; in which, by our own confession, the Americans have taken more than their share. I have stated the expence of your military establishment for them, such as it has been, or such as it need to be, always protesting against the imposition of the charge of the conquered provinces upon them; and I have stated the necessity and convenience of your fleet to their commerce. Let this line of dividing the question be pursued to what minuteness you will, in order that we may come to a fundamental judgment; let debtor or creditor fall on which side it will, I have no bias to either side of the argument; but to have perfect and liberal justice done, and reconcilement, if possible, effected upon sound and equitable principles. I will beg leave to read to the House a draught of a letter of requisition, which I have drawn up after the manner of former requisitions to the colonies, and which I have endeavoured to adapt to the present circumstances. Here he read the following draught of a Letter of Requisition to the colonies: "His Majesty having nothing so much at heart, as to see every part of his dominions put into a state of security, both by sea and land, against any attack, or even apprehension of attack, from foreign powers, has therefore particularly taken into his consideration the necessity of keeping up a respectable marine establishment, as well for the actual protection of the commercial interests of Great Britain and America, as to maintain undiminished the power and pre-eminence of the royal flag of Great Britain, and to preserve that navy, which has in the time of [20] |