have been laid on the continent in favor of the islands. You have but two nations to trade with in America. Would you had twenty!

A great deal has been said without doors of the power, of the strength, of America. It is a topic that ought to be cautiously meddled with. In a good cause, on a sound bottom, the force of this country can crush America to atoms. I know the valor of your troops; I know the skill of your officers. There is not a company of foot that has served in America, out of which you may not pick a man of sufficient knowledge and experience to make a governor of a colony there. 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 a 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? Will you quarrel with yourselves now that the whole House of Bourbon is united against you? - while France disturbs your fisheries in Newfoundland, and withholds from your subjects in Canada their property stipulated by treaty? while the ransom for the Manillas is denied by Spain, and its gallant conqueror basely traduced into a mean plunderer,

a gentleman whose noble and generous spirit would do honor to the proudest grandee of the country?

The Americans have not acted in all things with prudence and temper. The Americans have been wronged. They have been driven to madness by injustice. Will you punish them for the madness which you have occasioned? Rather let prudence and temper come first from this side. I will undertake for America that she will follow the example. Upon the whole, I will beg leave to tell the House what is really my opinion. It is, that the Stamp Act be repealed, absolutely, totally, and immediately.

THE ATTEMPT TO SUBJUGATE AMERICA

This speech was delivered in the House of Lords, November 18, 1777. The report of it was afterwards carefully corrected by Chatham himself. It is considered the greatest of his orations.

I. AMERICA INVINCIBLE

I rise, my lords, to declare my sentiments on this most solemn and serious subject. It has imposed a load upon my mind, which, I fear, nothing can remove; but which impels me to endeavor its alleviation, by a free and unreserved communication of my sentiments. I will not join in congratulation on misfortune and disgrace, I cannot concur in a blind and servile address, which approves and endeavors to sanctify the monstrous measures which have heaped disgrace and misfortune upon us. This, my lords, is a perilous and tremendous moment! It is not a time for adulation. The smoothness of flattery cannot now avail, cannot save us in this rugged and awful crisis. It is now necessary to instruct the throne in the language of truth. We must dispel the delusion and the darkness which envelop it; and display, in its full danger and true colors, the ruin that is brought to our doors.

My lords, this ruinous and ignominious situation where we cannot act with success, nor suffer with honor, calls upon us to remonstrate in the strongest and loudest language of truth, to rescue the ear of majesty from the delusions which surround it. The desperate state of our arms abroad is in part known; no man thinks more highly of them than I do. I love and honor the English troops. I know their virtues and their valor. I know they can achieve anything except impossibilities; and I know that the conquest of English America is an impossibility. You cannot, I venture to say it, you cannot conquer America. Your armies in the last war effected everything that could be effected; and what was it? It cost a numerous army, under the command of a most able general, now a noble lord in the House, a long and laborious campaign, to expel five thousand Frenchmen from French America. My lords, you

cannot conquer America. What is your present situation there? We do not know the worst, but we know that in three campaigns we have done nothing and suffered much. Besides the sufferings, perhaps total loss, of the northern force, the best-appointed army that ever took the field, commanded by Sir William Howe, has retired from the American lines. He was obliged to relinquish his attempt, and with great delay and danger, to adopt a new and distant plan of operations. We shall soon know, and in any event have reason to lament, what may have happened since. As to conquest, therefore, my lords, I repeat, it is impossible. You may swell every expense and every effort still more extravagantly; pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow; traffic and barter with every pitiful German prince that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign prince; your efforts are forever vain and impotent; doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely. For it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your enemies

to overrun them with the mercenary sons of rapine and plunder; devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an American,as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my

The address referred to in the first line of the following extract is the Address to the Throne proposed by the House of Lords.

The independent views of America have been stated and asserted as the foundation of this address. My lords, no man wishes for the due dependence of America on this country more than I do. To preserve it, and not confirm that state of independence into which your measures hitherto have driven them, is the object which we ought to unite in attaining. The Americans, contending for their rights against arbitrary exactions, I love and admire. It is the struggle of free and virtuous patriots; but contending for independency and total disconnection from England,

as an Englishman, I cannot wish them success. For, in a due constitutional dependency, including the ancient supremacy of this country in regulating their commerce and navigation, consists the mutual happiness and prosperity both of England and America. She derived assistance and protection from us; and we reaped from her the most important advantages. She was, indeed, the fountain of our wealth, the nerve of our strength, the nursery and basis of our naval power. It is our duty, therefore, my lords, if we wish to save our country, most seriously to endeavor the recovery of these most beneficial subjects; and in this perilous crisis, perhaps the present moment may be the only one in which we can hope for success. Let us wisely take advantage of every possible moment of reconciliation. I would participate to them every enjoyment and freedom which the colonizing subjects of a free State can possess, or wish to possess; and I do not see why they should not enjoy every fundamental right in their property, and every original substantial liberty, which Devonshire or Surrey, or the county I live in, or any other county in England, can claim; reserving always, as the sacred right of the mother country, the due constitutional dependency of the colonies. The inherent supremacy of the State in regulating and protecting the navigation and commerce of all her subjects is necessary for the mutual benefit and preservation of every part, to constitute and preserve the prosperous arrangement of the whole empire.

You cannot conciliate America by your present measures. You cannot subdue her by your present, or by any measures. What, then, can you do? You cannot conquer; you cannot gain; but you can address; you can lull the fears and anxieties of the moment into an ignorance of the danger that should produce them. But, my lords, the time demands the language of truth. We must not now apply the flattering unction of servile compliance or blind. complaisance. In a just and necessary war to maintain the rights or honor of my country, I would strip the shirt from my back to support it. But in such a war as this, unjust in its principle, impracticable in its means, and ruinous in its consequences, I would

not contribute a single effort, nor a single shilling. I do not call for vengeance on the heads of those who have been guilty; I only recommend to them to make their retreat. Let them walk off; and let them make haste, or they may be assured that speedy and condign punishment will overtake them.

My lords, I have submitted to you, with the freedom and truth which I think my duty, my sentiments on your present awful situation. I have laid before you the ruin of your power, the disgrace of your reputation, the pollution of your discipline, and contamination of your morals, the complication of calamities, foreign and domestic, that overwhelm your sinking country. Your dearest interests, your own liberties, the constitution itself, totters to the foundation. All this disgraceful danger, this multitude of misery, is the monstrous offspring of this unnatural war. We have been deceived and deluded too long. Let us now stop short. This is the crisis the only crisis of time and situation, to give us a possibility of escape from the fatal effects of our delusions. But if, in an obstinate and infatuated perseverance in folly, we slavishly echo the peremptory words this day presented to us, nothing can save this devoted country from complete and final ruin. We madly rush into multiplied miseries and "confusion worse confounded."

Is it possible, can it be believed, that ministers are yet blind to this impending destruction? I did hope that instead of this false and empty vanity, this overweening pride, engendering high conceits and presumptuous imaginations, that ministers would have humbled themselves in their errors, would have confessed and retracted them, and by an active, though a late repentance, have endeavored to redeem them. But, my lords, since they had neither sagacity to foresee, nor justice nor humanity to shun, these oppressive calamities; since not even severe experience can make them feel, nor the imminent ruin of their country awaken them from their stupefaction, the guardian care of Parliament must interpose. I shall, therefore, my lords, propose to you an amendment to the address of his Majesty, to recommend an immediate cessation of