XX. so perfectly acquainted with the whole of American CHAP. affairs, one whom all Europe ranks with our Boyles 1775. and Newtons, as an honor not to the English nation Feb. only, but to human nature." Overawed by the temper of the house, Dartmouth, with his wonted weakness, which made him execute the worst measures even when he seemed inclined to the best, turned round against his own candor, and declared for rejecting the plan immediately. This even Grafton advised; and Gower demanded. Perceiving the fixed purpose of the ministry, Chatham poured upon them a torrent of invective. "This bill," said he, "though rejected here, will make its way to the public, to the nation, to the remotest wilds of America; and however faulty or defective, it will at least manifest how zealous I have been to avert those storms which seem ready to burst on my country. Yet I am not surprised, that men who hate liberty, should detest those that prize it; or that those who want virtue themselves should persecute those who possess it. The whole of your political conduct has been one continued series of weakness and temerity, despotism and the most notorious servility, incapacity and corruption. I must allow you one merit, a strict attention to your own interests: in that view, who can wonder that you should put a negative on any measure which must deprive you of your places, and reduce you to that insignificance, for which God and nature designed you." Lord Chatham's bill, though on so important a subject, offered by so great a statesman, and supported by most able and learned speakers, was re XX. CHAP. sisted by ignorance, prejudice and passion, by misconceptions and wilful perversion of plain truth, and was rejected on the first reading by a vote of sixtyone to thirty-two. 1775. Feb. "Hereditary legislators!" thought Franklin. "There would be more propriety, in having hereditary professors of mathematics! But the elected house of commons is no better, nor ever will be while the electors receive money for their votes, and pay money wherewith ministers may bribe their representatives when chosen." Yet the wilfulness of the lords was happy for America; for Chatham's proposition contained clauses, to which it never could safely have assented, and yet breathed a spirit which must have calmed its resentment, distracted its councils, and palsied its will. It had now no choice left but between submission and independence. The number and weight of the minority should have led the ministers to pause; but they rushed on with headlong indiscretion, thinking not to involve the empire in civil war, but to subdue the Americans by fear. The first step towards inspiring terror was, to declare Massachusetts in a state of rebellion, and to pledge the parliament and the whole force of Great Britain to its reduction; the next, by prohibiting the American fisheries, to starve New England; the next, to call out the savages on the rear of the colonies; the next, to excite a servile insurrection. Accordingly, Lord North on the day after Chatham's defeat, proposed to the commons a joint address to the king to declare that a rebellion existed in Massachusetts, and to pledge their lives and properties to its suppression. XX. 1775. "The colonies are not in a state of rebellion," CHAP. said Dunning; "but resisting the attempt to estab lish despotism in America, as a prelude to the same Feb. system in the mother country. Opposition to arbitrary measures is warranted by the constitution, and established by precedent." "Nothing but the display of vigor," said Thurlow, "will prevent the American colonies becoming independent states." Grant, the same officer, who had been scanda lously beaten at Pittsburg, and had made himself so offensive in South Carolina, asserted amidst the loudest cheering, that he knew the Americans very well, and was certain they would not fight; "that they were not soldiers and never could be made so, being naturally pusillanimous and incapable of discipline; that a very slight force would be more than sufficient for their complete reduction ;" and he fortified his statement by repeating their peculiar expressions, and ridiculing their religous enthusiasm, manners, and ways of living, greatly to the entertainment of the house. At this stage of the debate, Fox, displaying for the first time the full extent of his abilities, which made him for more than a quarter of a century the leading debater on the side of the liberal party in England, in a speech of an hour and twenty minutes, entered into the history of the dispute with great force and temper, and stated truly, that "the reason why the colonies objected to taxes for revenue was, that such revenue in the hands of government took out of the hands of the people that were to be governed, that control which every Englishman thinks he ought to have over the government to which his CHAP. rights and interests are intrusted." The defence of XX. the ministry rested chiefly on Wedderburn. Gibbon 1775. had prepared himself to speak, but neither he nor Lord George Germaine could find room for a single word. Feb. Lord North again shrunk from measures against which his nature revolted; and Franklin, whose mediation was once more solicited, received a paper containing the results of ministerial conferences on "the hints" which he had written. "We desire nothing but what is necessary to our security and well-being," said Franklin to the friendly agents who came to him. In reply they declared with authority, that the repeal of the tea-act and the Boston port-act would be conceded; the Quebec act might be amended by reducing the province to its ancient limits; but the Massachusetts acts must be continued, both "as real amendments" of the constitution of that province, and "as a standing example of the power of parliament." Franklin's reply was brief: "While parliament claims the right of altering American constitutions at pleasure, there can be no agreement, for we are rendered unsafe in every privilege." "An agreement is necessary for America," it was answered; "it is so easy for Britain to burn all your seaport towns." "My little property," rejoined Franklin, "consists of houses in those towns; you may make bonfires of them whenever you please; the fear of losing them will never alter my resolution to resist to the last the claim of parliament." The plan of intimidation proceeded. When on the sixth of February the address was reported to the house, Lord John Cavendish earnestly "depre XX. 177 5. Feb. 7. cated civil war, necessarily involving a foreign one CHAP. also." "A fit and proper resistance," said Wilkes, "is a revolution, not a rebellion. Who can tell, whether in consequence of this day's violent and mad address, the scabbard may not be thrown away by the Americans as well as by us, and should success attend them, whether, in a few years, the Americans may not celebrate the glorious era of the revolution of 1775 as we do that of 1688? Success crowned the generous effort of our forefathers for freedom; else they had died on the scaffold as traitors and rebels, and the period of our history which does us the most honor, would have been deemed a rebellion against lawful authority, not the expulsion of a tyrant." During the debate, which lasted till half past two in the morning, Lord North threw off the responsibility of the tax on tea, in order to prepare the way for offering the repeal of that tax as the basis for conciliation. It was too late, for a new question of the power of parliament over charters and laws had intervened. The disavowal offended his colleagues, and in itself was not honest; his vote had decided the measure in the cabinet, and it was unworthy of a minister of the crown to intimate that he had obsequiously followed a chief like Grafton, or yielded his judgment to the king. Lord George Germaine was fitly selected to deliver the message of the commons at the bar of the lords. "There is in the address one paragraph which I totally disclaim;" said Rockingham; "I openly declare, I will risk neither life nor fortune in support of the measures recommended. Four-fifths of the |