Richmond made similar accusations of insincerity against Mansfield; and Mansfield and Shelburne gave one another the lie direct. With the exception of the taxing Bill, Lord Mansfield supported the whole of the recent legislation on America, sanctioned the measures shadowed forth in the address, and, speaking as a lawyer, asserted that the Americans were undoubtedly in a state of rebellion. The equally high authority of Lord Camden was advanced on the contrary side. That eminent jurist denied that a state of rebellion existed in America, for many distinctions were to be made between actual and constructive treason. Ultimately, the House agreed to the address of the Commons by a majority of nearly four to one. On the 9th of February, it was presented to the King by a numerous deputation from the two Houses, headed by the Lord Chancellor and the Speaker; and George, in his reply, pledged himself to enforce, speedily and effectually, obedience to the laws, and to the authority of the Legislature. To Lord North he spoke of adopting the most coercive measures, and in a message to the Commons he recommended an augmentation of the sea and land forces. The result was a vote of 2,000 additional seamen, and 4,400 additional soldiers-a very small increase, considering that not only were the Americans threatening to give a great deal of trouble, but France was arming on a large scale, with views not at all friendly to England.

Fortified by the large majority which had ratified the address, Lord North, on the 10th of February, introduced into the House of Commons a Bill for restraining the trade and commerce of the provinces of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, with Great Britain, Ireland, and the British West India Islands, and prohibiting them from pursuing any fishery on the banks of Newfoundland, excepting in the case of such persons as should procure from their Governors certificates of good and loyal conduct, and who should subscribe a test acknowledging the supremacy of the British Parliament. The penal Acts of the preceding year had been confined to Massachusetts; but, as the other New England provinces had since joined in the movement initiated by the principal colony of that part of America, they were now included in one general punishment. The opponents of the new measure represented that it had the vice of confounding the innocent with the guilty, and of destroying a trade on which whole provinces depended-an act which might have the effect of starving a large number of persons, and of provoking the Americans into repudiating their debts to British merchants. Sir George Saville argued that rebellion is sometimes right, and

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asked whether a people taxed without their consent, deprived of their charters, tyrannised over by an army, and denied even the privilege of complaining, might not be in justifiable rebellion. In support of the Bill, it was urged, with some pertinence and force, that, as the Americans had resolved not to trade with England, it was but fair to prevent their trading with other countries; that, as they had entered into associations to ruin English merchants, impoverish English manufacturers, and starve the West India Islands, it was a justifiable act of retaliation to return their mischiefs upon their own heads. The colonists, argued the Ministerial party, had incurred the penalties of rebellion, and, as a consequence, had rendered themselves liable to military execution; but, instead of proceeding to such extremities, Government only proposed to bring them back to a sense of duty by a restriction on their trade. The Bill was sanctioned by a large majority, and so was another measure for laying similar restraints on the colonies of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina, on account of their sympathy with New England. In one of the debates on this measure in the House of Lords, Camden justified the union of the Americans in defence of their liberties, and prophesied their inevitable success. A protest against the Act was signed by Rockingham and Shelburne.

It has been seen that the position of Lord North towards the colonies was somewhat equivocal. His own nature inclined him to conciliation; he was not without liberal ideas, and, with better subordinates in the Ministry, and a more reasonable Parliament, he might possibly have averted the struggle which deprived England of so large a part of her possessions. But the Cabinet consisted, to a great extent, of men holding absolutist views; and the elected, no less than the hereditary, Chamber was only too willing to abet their designs. Still, the Premier endeavoured, by advances of a more friendly character, to mitigate the effects of a severity which he did not wholly approve. On the 20th of February, while the coercive Act was still passing through Parliament, he brought forward, in a committee of the whole House, a resolution to the effect that, whenever any of the colonies should, by their own act, make provision for the common defence, and also for the support of the civil government and the administration of justice, Parliament would forbear to levy any taxation on the provinces so acting, except such as it might be expedient to impose for the regulation of commerce, the net produce of which should be carried to the account of such colonies exclusively. This proposal excited very general surprise and

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put forward by the Americans. If the ostensible causes of their opposition were the real causes, they would, he conceived, accept the proffered terms; if they refused them, it would be a proof that they had other views, and were actuated by other motives, than those which they professed. offer terms of peace," he said, "is wise and humane. If the colonists reject them, their blood must be on their own heads." It appeared at first as if the resolution would have been ignominiously negatived. Some, even of those who sat on the Treasury benches-a section of the Government

arms in their hands, nor assent to any measure which did not start with an express assertion of the supremacy of the British Parliament. The position of Lord North was serious, especially when a motion was made that the chairman should leave the chair, which was equivalent to proposing that the House should resume its ordinary business without the resolution being put to the vote. The policy of the Prime Minister, however, was ably supported by Sir Gilbert Elliot and by Wedderburn, who succeeded in convincing the majority that the twofold object of Lord North, as dimly and summarily

from the sea by their fisheries, you had all that matter fully opened at your bar. And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it? Pass by the other parts, and look at the manner in which the people of New England have of late carried on the whale fishery. Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits, whilst we are looking for them beneath the Arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the south. Falkland Island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but. a stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries; no climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dextrous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of hard industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people; a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. When I contemplate these things; when I know that the colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form by the constraints of watchful and suspicious government, but that, through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. My rigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty."

Burke went on to show that, in these American colonies, from a great variety of sources, had grown пр what he described as a fierce spirit of liberty. To prosecute that spirit as criminal-to apply to so great a public contest the ordinary ideas of criminal justice-appeared to him narrow and pedantic. It was in this speech that Burke made use of that brilliant expression which has since become one of the common-places of political discussion :-"I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people." He pointed out what a

mind of less penetration would have failed to discover, but which is certainly as true as it seems paradoxical-that provinces where slaves must abound are all the more, instead of the less, attached to their own freedom on account of that institution. Slavery, by perverting the moral sense of the slave-holders, will in time destroy the very life of freedom in any nation; but, in young communities, the possession of this privilege of domineering over others, with its consequent immunity from painful or ignoble toils, from poverty, and from many forms of suffering, always makes the privileged class more haughty in rejecting the arbitrary rule of others. It is true that slavery was forced on the Americans by England, and that many of the colonists strongly objected to its continuance; yet there it was, and it had its effect on the character of the people, especially in the south. Another subject upon which Burke dilated was the difficulty of governing, except with a loose rein, a dependency so distant from the centre as America from England. "Three thousand miles of ocean," he remarked, "lie between you and your subjects. This is a powerful principle in the natural constitution of things for weakening government, which no contrivance can prevent. Seas roll, and months pass, between the order and the execution; and the want of a speedy explanation of a single point is enough to defeat a whole system." This, said Burke, was a weakness inherent in all great and widely-extended Empires: the Turk could not govern Egypt as he governed Thrace, nor exercise the same dominion in the Crimea or Algiers as at Brusa or Smyrna. "My hold of the colonies," he continued, "is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government-they will cling and grapple to you; and no force under heaven will le of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood that your government is one thing, and their privileges another; that these two things may exist without any mutual relation; the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened, and everything hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our commen faith-wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have; the more ardently they love liberty,

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the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil. But, until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you. This is the commodity of price, of which you have the monopoly. This is the true act of navigation, which binds to you the commerce of colonies, and through them secures to you the wealth of the world. Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break the unity of the Empire. It is the spirit of the English constitution, which, infused into the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of the Empire, even down to the minutest member. Is it not the same virtue which does everything for us here in England?"

The eloquence of Burke's address held the House in rapt attention for three hours; but his arguments persuaded few who were not already persuaded. The vote against him was more than three to one, and it was now evident that the Opposition in Parliament had done all they could. The quarrel was one which, at the stage it had then reached,. was not likely to be composed either by reasoning er by oratory. Personal rancour had envenomed it national pride had stepped in to forbid any settlement but that which should be determined by the sword. The King believed that the dignity of his Crown was concerned in a complete subjugation of the revolted colonists. The colonists, on their part, desired, it can hardly be questioned, not merely to assert their rights, but to humiliate the mother country, in revenge for a series of wrongs under which they smarted. Hot blood had been engendered on both sides, and it was not to be allayed even by eloquence the most splendid. Burke was always in favour of maintaining the supremacy of the Crown and Parliament over the colonies, and to that supremacy he still clung, though, acknowledging the force of events and the difficulties of the time, he felt compelled to make very considerable concessions, and to relinquish the Imperial privilege of taxing the American provinces, for which he had formerly contended. could not have supposed, after Chatham's failure, that his resolutions would be affirmed; he was content that the subject should be once more discussed, and that he should be enabled to express, in fiery and sonorous words, his latest views on the great question of the day. It is perhaps doubtful whether even these concessions would have been deemed sufficient. The passions of both antagonists Lal by this time been so excited that probably nohing but complete and unconditional victory would have satisfied either. The proposals of the Govern

He

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ment had not the smallest chance of being accepted by the Americans. They were conveyed to the several Governors in a circular letter from Lord Dartmouth, the Colonial Secretary, but were received with contempt. The exemption of New York, Delaware, and North Carolina from the penal enactments of Parliament increased the resentment of the other colonies, without in the slightest degree conciliating the provinces which it was sought to flatter. On the contrary, its effect was to throw those provinces unreservedly into the arms of the malcontents. A series of blunders had reached its natural termination in irreconcilable hostility.

During the early months of 1775, some further communications with a view to a reconciliation had taken place between Franklin and Lord Howe, but without result. Howe had been appointed to the command of the fleet in America, but he was, if possible, to act the part of a pacificator as well. He and his brother, Sir William Howe, to whom the direction of the land forces in the colonies was assigned, under the general orders of Gage, were invested by the King with commissions for the restoration of peace, according to the terms proposed by Lord North. Until about the middle of March, Franklin continued to negotiate with Lord Howe, and with other English gentlemen, in a vain endeavour after some accommodation. At one time there seemed a faint prospect of success. Franklin offered for the consideration of Government a set of seventeen terms, embodying the demands of his countrymen. Of these, the greater number, either in whole or in part, were accepted by the Administration; but the right of Parliament to exercise a power of altering the American constitutions was still asserted, and this condition was so utterly rejected by Franklin that he refused even to discuss it. Counter-propositions were made on behalf of the Government; but, though much was conceded by the Cabinet, and, on the other part, liberal money-grants were promised by Franklin if the requirements of the colonies were allowed, the negotiations always broke down on the question of Parliamentary control, which, as a general principle, would not be waived by the one side, nor allowed by the other. Franklin also insisted on denying the right of the King to send troops to any colony, except with the consent of its Legislature-a condition which even Chatham regarded as inadmissible. It was not until he had made this attempt at an agreement that Lord North brought forward his conciliatory motion. in the House of Commons; and, although Franklin and Lord Howe still continued to discuss the matter, it became every day more obvious that