support of the Corsicans was cited as a precedent to the French embassy at London, and brought before the cabinet at Versailles. To Louis XVI., Vergennes in the same month explained that the proceedings of the continental congress contained the germ of a rebellion; that, while the Americans really desired a reconciliation with the mother country, the ministry, from their indifference, would prevent its taking place; that Lord North was disconcerted by the unanimity and vigor of the colonies; and that France had nothing to fear but the return of Chatham to power.

The interests of Britain required Chatham's return; for he thoroughly understood alike the policy of the French, and the disposition of the colonies. In his interview with Americans, he said, without reserve: "America, under all her oppressions and provocations, holds out to us the most fair and just opening for restoring harmony and affectionate intercourse." No public body ever gained so full and unanimous a recognition of its integrity and its wisdom as the general congress of 1774. Its policy sprung so necessarily out of the relations of free countries to their colonies, that within a few years it was adopted by all British statesmen, and for three quarters of a century regulated the colonial administration of every successive ministry, till it finally gave way to a system of navigation even far more liberal than the American congress had ventured to propose.

The day after Franklin's first conversation with Lord Howe, Chatham received him at Hayes. "The congress," said he, "is the most honorable assembly of statesmen since those of the ancient Greeks and Romans in the most virtuous times." He thought the petition to the king "decent, manly, and properly expressed." He questioned the assertion that the keeping up an army in the colonies in time of peace required their consent; with that exception, he admired and honored the whole of the proceedings. "The army at Boston," said Franklin, "cannot answer any good purpose, and may be infinitely mischievous. No accommodation can be properly entered into by the Americans while the bayonet is at their breasts. To have an agreement binding, all force should be withdrawn." The words sank deeply into the mind of Chatham, and he prom

ised his utmost efforts to the American cause, as the last hope of liberty for England. "I shall be well prepared,” said he, "to meet the ministry on the subject, for I think of nothing else both night and day."

To unite every branch of the opposition in one line of policy, Chatham desired a cordial junction with the Rockingham whigs. That party had only two friends who spoke in the house of lords, and in the house of commons was mouldering away. And yet Rockingham was impracticable. "I look back," he said, "with very real satisfaction and content on the line which I, indeed, emphatically I, took in the year 1766; the stamp act was repealed, and the doubt of the right of this country was fairly faced and resisted." Burke believed that the Americans would not preserve their unanimity, and that the controversy would derive its chief importance from its aspect on parties in England. He was still fondly supporting the omnipotence of parliament over the colonies, and derided Chatham as the best bower anchor of the ministry.

Chatham divined that peril was near, and could be averted only by limiting the assertion by parliament of its absolute power in all cases whatever. To further that end, the aged statesman paid a visit to Rockingham. At its opening, Chatham's countenance beamed with cordiality; but Rockingham perversely insisted on maintaining the declaratory act. "The Americans have not called for its repeal," was his reply to all objections; and he never could be made to comprehend that congress had restrained itself only from a reluctance to embarrass him and his friends. The opposition, thus divided, became helpless.

The majority of the cabinet, instead of respecting Lord North's scruples, were intriguing to get him turned out, and his place supplied by a thorough assertor of British supremacy. At a cabinet council held on the twelfth of January 1775, his colleagues refused to find in the proceedings of congress any honorable basis for conciliation. It was therefore resolved to interdict all commerce with the Americans, to protect the loyal, and to declare all others traitors and rebels.

At the meeting of parliament after the holidays, Lord North presented papers relating to America. They reminded

Chatham of the statesman who said to his son: "See with how little wisdom this world of ours is governed;” and he pictured to himself Ximenes and Cortes in the shades discussing the merits of the ministers of England.

The twentieth of January 1775 was the first day of the session in the house of lords. It is not probable that even one of the peers had heard of the settlements beyond the Alleghanies, where the Watauga and the forks of Holston flow to the Tennessee. Yet, on the same day, the lords of that region, most of them Presbyterians of Scottish-Irish descent, met in council near Abingdon. Their united congregations, having suffered from sabbaths too much profaned, or wasted in melancholy silence at home, had called Charles Cummings to the pastoral charge of their precious and immortal souls. The men never went to public worship without being armed, or without their families. Their minister, on sabbath morning, would ride to the service armed with shot-pouch and rifle. Their meeting-house was a large cabin of unhewn logs; and, when about twice in the year the bread and cup were distributed, the table was spread outside of the church in the neighboring grove. The news from congress reached them slowly; but, on receiving an account of what had been done, they assembled in convention, and the spirit of freedom swept through their minds as naturally as the ceaseless forest wind sways the firs on the sides of the Black Mountains. They adhered unanimously to the association of congress, and named as their committee Charles Cummings their minister, Preston, Christian, Arthur Campbell, John Campbell, Evan Shelby, and others. Adopting the delegates of Virginia as their representatives, they addressed them as men whose conduct would immortalize them in its annals. "We explored," said they, "our uncultivated wilderness, bordering on many nations of savages, and surrounded by mountains almost inaccessible to any but these savages; but even to these remote regions the hand of power hath pursued us, to strip us of that liberty and property with which God, nature, and the rights of humanity have vested us. We are willing to contribute all in our power, if applied to constitutionally, but cannot think of submitting our liberty or property to a venal British parliament or a cor

rupt ministry. We are deliberately and resolutely determined never to surrender any of our inestimable privileges to any power upon earth but at the expense of our lives. These are our real though unpolished sentiments of liberty and loyalty, and in them we are resolved to live and die."

While they were publishing the declaration which they were sure to make good, Chatham was attempting to rouse the ministry from its indifference. By a special appointment he met Franklin in the lobby of the house of lords, and saying to him, "Your presence at this day's debate will be of more service to America than mine," he walked with him arm in arm, and placed him conspicuously below the bar.

So soon as Dartmouth had laid the papers before the house, Chatham, after inveighing against the dilatoriness of the communication, moved to address the king for "immediate orders to remove the forces from the town of Boston as soon as possible."

"My lords!" he continued, "the way must be immediately opened for reconciliation; an hour now lost may produce years of calamity. This measure of recalling the troops from Boston is preparatory to the restoration of your peace and the establishment of your prosperity.

"Resistance to your acts was necessary as it was just; and your vain declarations of the omnipotence of parliament, and your imperious doctrines of the necessity of submission, will be found equally impotent to convince or enslave your fellowsubjects in America, who feel that tyranny, whether ambitioned by an individual part of the legislature," so he described the king, "or by the bodies who compose it, is equally intolerable to British subjects.

"The means of enforcing this thraldom are as weak in practice as they are unjust in principle. General Gage and the troops under his command are penned up, pining in inglorious inactivity. They are an army of impotence; and, to make the folly equal to the disgrace, they are an army of irritation. But this tameness, however contemptible, cannot be censured; for the first drop of blood shed in civil and unnatural war will make a wound that years, perhaps ages, may not heal. Their force would be most disproportionately ex

erted against a brave, generous, and united people with arms in their hands and courage in their hearts: three millions of people, the genuine descendants of a valiant and pious ancestry, driven to those deserts by the narrow maxims of a superstitious tyranny. And is the spirit of persecution never to be appeased? Are the brave sons of those brave forefathers to inherit their sufferings, as they have inherited their virtues? They have been condemned unheard. The indiscriminate hand of vengeance has lumped together innocent and guilty; with all the formalities of hostility, has blocked up the town of Boston, and reduced to beggary and famine thirty thousand inhabitants.

"But his majesty is advised that the union in America cannot last! I pronounce it a union, solid, permanent, and effectual. Its real stamina are the cultivators of the land; in their simplicity of life is found the integrity and courage of freedom. These true sons of the earth are invincible. What though you march from town to town and from province to province! How shall you be able to secure the obedience of the country you leave behind you in your progress to grasp the dominion of eighteen hundred miles of continent?

"The spirit which now resists your taxation in America is the same which formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and ship-money in England; the same which, by the bill of rights, vindicated the English constitution; the same which established the essential maxim of your liberties, that no subject of England shall be taxed but by his own consent. This glorious spirit of whiggism animates three millions in America, aided by every whig in England, to the amount, I hope, of double the American numbers. Ireland they have to a man.

"Let this distinction then remain forever ascertained: taxation is theirs, commercial regulation is ours. They say you have no right to tax them without their consent; they say truly. I recognise to the Americans their supreme, unalienable right in their property, a right which they are justified in the defence of to the last extremity. To maintain this principle is the great common cause of the whigs on the other side of the Atlantic, and on this. ""Tis liberty to liberty engaged;' the alliance of God and nature, immutable and eternal.