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 single 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 tames 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 strictest 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 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 imbruing his hands in the blood of his fellowsubjects, his feelings, his life, his honor 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 execute 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 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 foun

dation 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 frenzy, at the same risk here. You have changed your ground. You are becoming the aggressors, and offering the last of human. 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 olivebranch I mean a repeal of all the late laws, fruitless to you and oppressive to them.

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 acknowledg ments of the zeal with which they have contributed to the general necessities of the state. 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 anything; but they are too 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.

COLONEL BARRE IN REPLY TO ONE OF THE MINISTRY.

THEY planted by your care! No, your oppressions planted them in America. They fled from your tyranny, to a then uncultivated and inhospitable country, where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable; and, among others, to the cruelties of a savage foe, the most subtle, and I will take upon me to say, the most formidable of any people upon the face of God's earth; and yet, actuated by principles of true English liberty, they met all hardships with pleasure, compared with those they suffered in their own country, from the hands of those that should have been their friends. They nourished by your indulgence! They grew by your neg lect of them. As soon as you began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule them, in one department and another, who were, perhaps, the deputies of deputies to some members of this house, sent to spy out their liberties, to misrepresent their actions, and to pry upon them—men, whose behavior on many occasions, has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them-men promoted to the highest seats of justice; some who to my knowledge were glad, by going to a foreign country, to escape being brought to the bar of a court of justice in their own. They protected by your arms! They have nobly taken up arms in your defence; have exerted a valor, amidst their constant and laborious industry, for the defence of a country, whose frontier was drenched in blood, while its interior parts yielded all its little savings to your emolument. And believe me, remember I this day told you so, that same spirit of freedom, which actuated that people at first, wiil accompany them still-but prudence forbids me to explain myself further. God knows I do not at this time speak from motives of party heat; what I deliver are the genuine sentiments of my heart. However superior to me in general knowledge and experience the respectable body of this house may be, yet I claim to know more of America than most of you, having seen and been conversant in that country. The people, I believe, are as truly loyal as any

subjects the king has; but a people jealous of their liberties, and who will vindicate them if ever they should be violated-but the subject is too delicate-I will say no more.

LORD CHATHAM ON THE BILL FOR QUARTERING SOLDIERS IN BOSTON-1774.

IF, my lords, we take a transient view of the motives which induced the ancestors of our fellow-subjects in America to leave their native country, to encounter the innumerable difficulties of the unexplored regions of the western world, our astonishment at the present conduct of their descendants will naturally subside. There was no corner of the globe to which they would not have fled, rather than submit to the slavish and tyrannical spirit which prevailed at that period in their native country; and viewing them in their originally forlorn and now flourishing state, they may be cited as illustrious instances to instruct the world, what great exertions mankind will naturally make, when left to the free exercise of their own powers. Notwithstanding my intention to give my hearty negative to the question now before you, I condemn, my lords, in the severest manner, the turbulent and unwarrantable conduct of the Americans in some instances, particularly in the late riots at Boston; but, my lords, the mode which has been pursued to bring them back to a sense of their duty, is so diametrically opposite to every principle of sound policy, as to excite my utmost astonishment. You have involved the guilty and the innocent in one common punishment, and avenge the crimes of a few lawless depredators upon the whole body of the inhabitants. My lords, the different provinces of America, in the excess of their gratitude for the repeal of the Stamp Act, seemed to vie with each other in expressions of loyalty and duty; but the moment they perceived your intention to tax them was renewed under a pretence of serving the East India Company, their resentment got the ascendant of their moderation, and hurried them into actions which their cooler reason would abhor. But,