liament; so unwarranted by any delay, denial, or preservation of justice in America; so big with misery and oppression to that country, and with danger to thisthat the first blush of it is sufficient to alarm and rouse me to opposition.

It is proposed to stigmatize a whole people as persecutors of innocence, and men incapable of doing jus tice; yet you have not a single fact on which to ground that imputation. I expected the noble lord would have supported this motion by producing instances of the officers of government in America having been prosecuted with unremitting vengeance, and brought to cruel and dishonourable deaths by the violence and injustice of American juries. But he has not produced one such instance; and I will tell you more, sir-he cannot produce one. The instances which have happened are directly in the teeth of his proposition. Colonel Preston, and the soldiers, who shed the blood of the people, were fairly tried, and fully acquitted. It was an American jury, a New England jury, a Boston jury, which tried and acquitted them. Colonel Preston has, under his hand, publicly declared, that the inhabitants of the very town in which their fellow citizens had been sacrificed, were his advocates and defenders. Is this the return you make them? Is this the encouragement you give them to persevere in so laudable a spirit of justice and moderation? When a commissioner of the customs, aided by a number of ruffians, assaulted the cele, brated Mr. Otis in the midst of the town of Boston, and with the most barbarous violence almost murdered him, did the mob, which is said to rule that town, take vengeance on the perpetrators of this inhuman outrage, against a person who is supposed to be their demagogue? No, sir, the law tried them: the law gave heavy damages against them; which the irreparably injured Mr. Otis most generously forgave, upon an acknowledgment of the offence. Can you expect any more such instances of magnanimity under the principle of the bill now pro

posed? But the noble lord says, "We must now shew the Americans that we will no longer sit quiet under their insults." Sir, I am sorry to say that this is declamation, unbecoming the character and place of him who utters it. In what moment have you been quiet? Has not your government for many years past been a series of irritating and offensive measures, without policy, principle, or moderation? Have not your troops and your ships made a vain and insulting parade in their streets and in their harbours? It has seemed to be your study to irritate and inflame them. You have stimulated discontent into disaffection, and you are now goading that disaffection into rebellion. Can you expect to be well informed when you listen only to partizans? Can you expect to do justice when you will not hear the accused?

Let us consider, sir, the precedents which are offered to warrant this proceeding the suspension of the habeas corpus act in 1745-the making smugglers triable in Middlesex, and the Scotch rebels in England. Sir, the first was done upon the most pressing necessity, flagrante bello, with a dangerous rebellion in the very heart of the kingdom; the second, you well know, was warranted by the most evident facts; armed bodies of smugglers marched publicly, without presentment or molestation from the people of the county of Sussex, who, even to their magistrates, were notoriously connected with them. They murdered the officers of the revenue, engaged your troops, and openly violated the laws. Experience convinced you, that the juries of that, and of the counties similarly circumstanced, would never find such criminals guilty; and upon the conviction of this necessity you passed the act. The same necessity justified the trying Scotch rebels in England. Rebellion had raised its dangerous standard in Scotland, and the principles of it had so universally tainted that people, that it was manifestly in vain to expect justice from them against their countrymen. But in America, not a sin

gle act of rebellion has been committed. Let the crown law officers, who sit by the noble lord, declare, if they can, that there is upon your table a single evidence of treason or rebellion in America. They know, sir, there is not one, and yet are proceeding as if there were a thousand.

Having thus proved, sir, that the proposed bill is without precedent to support, and without facts to warrant it, let us now view the consequences it is likely to produce. A soldier feels himself so much above the rest of mankind, that the strict hand of the civil power is necessary to control the haughtiness of disposition which such superiority inspires. You know, sir, what constant care is taken in this country to remind the military that they are under the restraint of the civil power. In America their superiority is felt still greater. Remove the check of the law, as this bill intends, and what insolence, what outrage may you not expect? Every passion that is pernicious to society will be let loose upon a people unaccustomed to licentiousness and intemperance. On the one hand will be a people who have been long complaining of oppression, and see in the soldiery those who are to enforce it upon them; on the other, an army studiously prepossessed with the idea of that people being rebellious, unawed by the apprehension of civil control, and actuated by that arbitrary spirit which prevails even amongst the best of troops.-In this situation the prudent officer will find it impossible to restrain his soldiers, or prevent that provocation which will rouse the tamest people to resistance. The inevitable consequence will be, that you will produce the rebellion you pretend to obviate.

I have been bred a soldier; having served long.-I respect the profession, and live in the strickest habits of friendship with a great many officers; but there is not a country gentleman of you all, who looks upon the army with a more jealous eye, or would the more strenuously resist the setting them above the control of the civil

power. No man is to be trusted in such a situation. It is not the fault of the soldier, but the vice of human nature, which, unbridled by law, becomes insolent and licentious, wantonly violates the peace of society, and tramples upon the rights of human kind.

With respect to those gentlemen who are destined to this service, they are much to be pitied. It is a service, which an officer of feeling and of worth must enter upon with infinite reluctance. A service, in which his only merit must be, to bear much, and do little. With the melancholy prospect before him of commencing a civil war, and embruing his hands in the blood of his fellow-subjects, his feelings, his life, his honour are hazarded, without a possibility of any equivalent or compensation. You may perhaps think a law, founded upon this motion, will be his protection. I am mistaken if it will. Who is to ex

ecute it? He must be a bold man indeed who makes the attempt: if the people are so exasperated, that it is unsafe to bring the man who has injured them to trial, let the governor who withdraws him from the justice look to himself. The people will not endure it: they would no longer deserve the reputation of being descended from the loins of Englishmen, if they did endure it.

When I stand up as an advocate for America, I feel myself the firmest friend of this country. We stand upon the commerce of America. Alienate your colonies, and you will subvert the foundation of your riches and your strength. Let the banners be once spread in America, and you are an undone people. You are urging this desperate, this destructive issue. You are urging it with such violence, and by measures tending so manifestly to that fatal point, that, but for that state of madness which only could inspire such an intention, it would appear to be your deliberate purpose. In assenting to your late bill I resisted the violence of America, at the hazard of my popularity there. I now resist your phrenzy, at the same risk here. You have changed your ground. You are becoming the aggressors, and offering the last of hu

man outrages to the people of America, by subjecting them, in effect, to military execution. I know the vast superiority of your disciplined troops over the Provincials; but beware how you supply the want of discipline by desperation. Instead of sending them the olive branch, you have sent the naked sword. By the olive branch I mean a repeal of all the late laws, fruitless to you and oppressive to them.

state.

Ask their aid in a constitutional manner, and they will give it to the utmost of their ability. They never yet refused it when properly required. Your journals bear the recorded acknowledgments of the zeal with which they have contributed to the general necessities of the What madness is it that prompts you to attempt obtaining that by force which you may more certainly procure by requisition? They may be flattered into any thing; but they are to much like yourselves to be driven. Have some indulgence for your own likeness; respect their sturdy English virtue; retract your odious exertions of authority, and remember, that the first step towards making them contribute to your wants, is to reconcile them to your government.

(It was observed that lord North trembled and faltered at every word of this motion.)

HON. TEMPLE LUTTRELL.

I have introduced the following Speech as an exquisite specimen of unaccountably absurd affectation.

On Mr. Buller's Motion that 2000 additional Seamen be employed for the year 1775, to enforce the Measures of Government in America.

I RISE up under a number of disadvantages, and shall scarce be able to express my sentiments without much agitation and embarrassment, à novice as I am at political disquisitions, and attempting (from a seat which