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birth of a princess, to recommend an immediate cessation of hostilities, and the commencement of a treaty to restore peace and liberty to America, strength and happiness to England, security and permanent prosperity to both countries. This, my Lords, is yet in our power; 5 and let not the wisdom and justice of your Lordships neglect the happy, and, perhaps, the only opportunity. By the establishment of irrevocable law founded on mutual rights, and ascertained by treaty, these glorious enjoyments may be firmly perpetuated. And let me re- 10 peat to your Lordships that the strong bias of America, at least of the wise and sounder parts of it, naturally inclines to this happy and constitutional reconnection with you. Notwithstanding the temporary intrigues with France, we may still be assured of their ancient 15 and confirmed partiality to us. America and France cannot be congenial. There is something decisive and confirmed in the honest American that will not assimilate to the futility and levity of Frenchmen.

My Lords, to encourage and confirm that innate incli- 20 nation to this country, founded on every principle of affection as well as consideration of interest; to restore that favorable disposition into a permanent and powerful reunion with this country; to revive the mutual strength of the empire; again to awe the house of Bour- 25 bon, instead of meanly truckling, as our present calamities compel us, to every insult of French caprice and Spanish punctilio; to re-establish our commerce; to reassert our rights and our honor; to confirm our interests, and renew our glories forever a consummation most 30 devoutly to be endeavored! and which, I trust, may yet arise from reconciliation with America I have the honor of submitting to you the following amendment, which I move to be inserted after the two first paragraphs of the Address:

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"And that this House does most humbly advise and supplicate his Majesty to be pleased to cause the most speedy and effectual measures to be taken for restoring peace in America; and that no time may be lost in proposing an immediate cessation of hostilities there, in order to the opening of a treaty for the final settlement of the tranquillity of these invaluable Provinces, by a removal of the unhappy causes of this ruinous civil war, and by a just and adequate security against the return of the like calamities in times to come. And this House desire to offer the most dutiful assurances to his Majesty that they will, in due time, cheerfully co-operate with the magnanimity and tender goodness of his Majesty for the preservation of his people, by such explicit and most solemn declarations, and provisions of fundamental and irrevocable laws, as may be judged necessary for the ascertaining and fixing forever the respective rights of Great Britain and her Colonies.

[In the course of this debate, Lord Suffolk, secretary for the Northern Department, undertook to defend the 20 employment of the Indians in the war. His Lordship contended that, besides its policy and necessity, the measure was also allowable on principle; for that "it was perfectly justifiable to use all the means that God and nature put into our hands!"]

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I am astonished [exclaimed Lord Chatham as he rose], shocked to hear such principles confessed to hear them avowed in this House, or in this country; principles equally unconstitutional, inhuman, and unchristian !

My Lords, I did not intend to have encroached again 30 upon your attention, but I cannot repress my indignation. I feel myself impelled by every duty. My Lords, we are called upon as members of this House, as men, as Christian men, to protest against such notions standing near the Throne, polluting the ear of Majesty. "That 35 God and nature put into our hands!" I know not what ideas that lord may entertain of God and nature, but I know that such abominable principles are equally abhor

rent to religion and humanity. What! to attribute the sacred sanction of God and nature to the massacres of the Indian scalping-knife- to the cannibal savage torturing, murdering, roasting, and eating-literally, my Lords, eating the mangled victims of his barbarous bat- 5 tles! Such horrible notions shock every precept of religion, divine or natural, and every generous feeling of humanity. And, my Lords, they shock every sentiment of honor; they shock me as a lover of honorable war, and a detester of murderous barbarity.

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These abominable principles, and this more abominable avowal of them, demand the most decisive indignation. I call upon that right reverend bench, those holy ministers of the Gospel, and pious pastors of our Church I conjure them to join in the holy work, and vindicate the 15 religion of their God. I appeal to the wisdom and the law of this learned bench to defend and support the justice of their country. I call upon the Bishops to interpose the unsullied sanctity of their lawn; upon the learned Judges, to interpose the purity of their ermine, 20 to save us from this pollution. I call upon the honor of your Lordships to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the Constitution. 25 From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of this noble lord frowns with indignation at the disgrace of his country. In vain he led your victorious fleets against the boasted Armada of Spain; in vain he defended and established the honor, the liberties, the 30 religion the Protestant religion of this country, against the arbitrary cruelties of Popery and the Inquisition, if these more than popish cruelties and inquisitorial practices are let loose among us to turn forth into our settlements, among our ancient connections, friends, and 35

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relations, the merciless cannibal, thirsting for the blood of man, woman, and child! to send forth the infidel savage against whom? against your Protestant brethren; to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, 5 and extirpate their race and name with these horrible hell-hounds of savage war-hell-hounds, I say, of savage war! Spain armed herself with blood-hounds to extirpate the wretched natives of America, and we improve on the inhuman example even of Spanish cruelty; we turn 10 loose these savage hell-hounds against our brethren and countrymen in America, of the same language, laws, liberties, and religion, endeared to us by every tie that should sanctify humanity.

My Lords, this awful subject, so important to our 15 honor, our Constitution, and our religion, demands the most solemn and effectual inquiry; and I again call upon your Lordships, and the united powers of the state, to examine it thoroughly and decisively, and to stamp upon it an indelible stigma of the public abhorrence. And I 20 again implore those holy prelates of our religion to do away these iniquities from among us. Let them perform a lustration; let them purify this House, and this country, from this sin.

My Lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable 25 to say more; but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have said less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor reposed my head on my pillow, without giving this vent to my eternal abhorrence of such preposterous and enormous principles.

EDMUND BURKE.

SPEECH PREVIOUS TO THE BRISTOL ELECTION; A
DEFENCE OF HIS CONDUCT IN PARLIAMENT.

AT THE GUILDHALL, BRISTOL,

SEPTEMBER 6, 1780.

MR. MAYOR, AND GENTLEMEN,

I am extremely pleased at the appearance of this large and respectable meeting. The steps I may be obliged to take will want the sanction of a considerable authority; and in explaining anything which may appear doubtful 5 in my public conduct, I must naturally desire a very full audience.

I have been backward to begin my canvass. The dissolution of the Parliament was uncertain; and it did not become me, by an unseasonable importunity, to appear 10 diffident of the fact of my six years' endeavors to please you. I had served the city of Bristol honorably; and the city of Bristol had no reason to think that the means of honorable service to the public were become indifferent to me.

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I found on my arrival here that three gentlemen had been long in eager pursuit of an object which but two of us can obtain. I found that they had all met with encouragement. A contested election, in such a city as this, is no light thing. I paused on the brink of the 20 precipice. These three gentlemen, by various merits

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