every military store, have their interest consulted, and their ambassadors entertained by our inveterate enemyand ministers do not, and dare not, interpose with dignity or effect. The desperate state of our army abroad is in part known. No man more highly esteems and honours the British troops than I do; I know their virtues and their valour; I know they can achieve any thing but impossibilities; and I know that the conquest of British America is an impossibility. You cannot, 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. You may swell every expense, accumulate every assistance, and extend your traffic to the shambles of every German despot: your attempts will be for ever vain and impotent -doubly so, indeed, from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your adversaries, to over-run 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 arms;Never!-never!-never!

But, my Lords, who is the man, that, in addition to the disgraces and mischiefs of the war, has dared to authorize and associate to our arms the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the savage?—to call into civilized alliance, the wild and inhuman inhabitant of the woods?-to delegate to the merciless Indian, the defence of disputed rights, and to wage the horrors of his barbarous war against our brethren? My Lords, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment. But, my Lords, this barbarous measure has been defended, not only on the principles of policy and necessity, but also on those of morality; "for it is perfectly allowable," says Lord Suffolk, "to use all the means, which God and nature have put into our hands." I am astonished, I am shocked, to hear such principles confessed; to hear them avowed in this House, or in this country. My Lords, I did not intend to encroach so much on your attention; but I cannot repress my indignationI feel myself impelled to speak. My Lords, we are called upon as members of this House, as men, as Christians, to protest against such horrible barbarity!" That God and nature have put into our hands!" What ideas of God and

nature, that noble Lord may entertain, I know not; but I know, that such detestable principles are equally abhorrent 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, devouring, drinking the blood of his mangled victims! Such notions shock every precept of morality, every feeling of humanity, every sentiment of honour. These abominable principles, and this more abominable avowal of them, demand the most decisive indignation.

I in

I call upon that Right Reverend, and this most Learned Bench, to vindicate the religion of their God, to support the justice of their country. I call upon the Bishops, to interpose the unsullied sanctity of their lawn;-upon the Judges, to interpose the purity of their ermine, to save us from this pollution. I call upon the honour 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. voke the genius of the constitution.- -To send forth the merciless cannibal, thirsting for blood! against whom?our brethren!—to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name, by the aid and instrumentality of these horrible hounds of war!Spain can no longer boast pre-eminence in barbarity. She armed herself with bloodhounds, to extirpate the wretched natives of Mexico! We, more ruthless, loose these dogs of war against our countrymen in America, endcared to us by every tie that can sanctify humanity. I solemnly call upon your Lordships, and upon every order of men in the state, to stamp upon this infamous procedure, the indelible stigma of public abhorrence. More particularly, I call upon the holy prelates of our religion, to do away this iniquity; let them perform a lustration, to purify the country from this deep and deadly sin. My Lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable 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 even reposed my head upon my pillow, without giving vent to my eternal abhorrence of such enormous and preposterous principles.

Cicero against Verres.

THE time is come, Fathers, when that which has long been wished for, towards allaying the envy your order has been subject to, and removing the imputations against trials, is effectually put in our power. An opinion has long prevailed, not only here at home, but likewise in foreign countries, both dangerous to you, and pernicious to the state that in prosecutions, men of wealth are always safe, however clearly convicted. There is now to be brought upon his trial before you to the confusion, I hope, of the propagators of this slanderous imputation-one, whose life and actions condemn him, in the opinion of all impartial persons; but who, according to his own reckoning, and declared dependence upon his riches, is already acquitted-I mean Caius Verres. I demand justice of you, Fathers, upon the robber of the public treasury, the oppressor of Asia Minor and Pamphylia, the invader of the rights and privileges of Romans, the scourge and curse of Sicily! If that sentence is passed upon him which his crimes deserve, your authority, Fathers, will be venerable and sacred in the eyes of the public; but if his great riches should bias you in his favour, I shall still gain one point -to make it apparent to all the world, that what was wanting in this case, was-not a criminal nor a prosecutor -but justice and adequate punishment.

To pass over the shameful irregularities of his youth, what does his quæstorship, the first public employment he held, what does it exhibit, but one continued scene of villanies? Cneius Carbo plundered of the public money by his own treasurer, a consul stripped and betrayed, an army deserted and reduced to want, a province robbed, the civil and religious rights of a people violated. The employment he held in Asia Minor and Pamphylia-what did it produce but the ruin of those countries; in which houses, cities, and temples, were robbed by him? What was his conduct in the prætorship here at home? Let the plundered temples and public works-neglected, that he might embezzle the money intended for carrying them on-bear witness. How did he discharge the office of a judge? Let those who suffered by his injustice answer. But his prætorship in Sicily crowns all his works of wickedness, and finishes a lasting monument to his infamy. The mis

chiefs done by him in that unhappy country, during the three years of his iniquitous administration, are such, that many years, under the wisest and best of prætors, will not be sufficient to restore things to the condition in which he found them: for it is notorious, that, during the time of his tyranny, the Sicilians neither enjoyed the protection of their own original laws; of the regulations made for their benefit by the Roman Senate, upon their coming under the protection of the commonwealth; nor of the natural and unalienable rights of men. His nod has decided all causes in Sicily for these three years; and his decisions have broken all law, all precedent, all right. The sums he has, by arbitrary taxes and unheard-of impositions, extorted from the industrious poor, are not to be computed. The most faithful allies of the commonwealth have been treated as enemies; Roman citizens have, like slaves, been put to death with tortures; the most atrocious criminals, for money, have been exempted from the deserved punishments; and men of the most unexceptionable characters, condemned and banished unheard. The harbours, though sufficiently fortified, and the gates of strong towns, opened to pirates and ravagers; the soldiery and sailors, belonging to a province under the protection of the commonwealth, starved to death; whole fleets, to the great detriment of the province, suffered to perish. The ancient monuments of either Sicilian or Roman greatness, the statues of heroes and princes, carried off; and the temples stripped of the images. Having, by his iniquitous sentences, filled the prisons with the most industrious and deserving of the people, he then proceeded to order numbers of Roman citizens to be strangled in the gaols; so that the exclamation, "I am a citizen of Rome!" which has often, in the most distant regions, and among the most barbarous people, been a protection, was of no service to them; but, on the contrary, brought a speedier and more severe punishment upon them.

I ask now, Verres, what you have to advance against this charge? Will you pretend to deny it? Will you pretend, that any thing false, that even any thing aggravated, is alleged against you? Had any prince, or any state, committed the same outrage against the privileges of Roman citizens, should we not think we had sufficient ground for declaring immediate war against them? What punishment ought, then, to be inflicted upon a tyrannical and wicked

Milo in his own grounds; and this at a time when he was obliged to leave a tumultuous assembly, which he had summoned that very day, where his presence was necessary to carry on his mad designs-a thing he never would have done, if he had not been desirous to take the advantage of that particular time and place for perpetrating his villany But Milo, after having stayed in the Senate that day till the house was broke up, went home, changed his clothes, waited a while, as usual, till his wife had got ready to attend him, and then set forward, about the time that Clodius, if he had proposed to come back to Rome that day, might have returned. He meets Clodius, near his own estate, a little before sun-set, and is immediately attacked by a body of men, who throw their darts at him from an eminence, and kill his coachman. Upon which, he threw off his cloak, leaped from his chariot, and defended himself with great bravery. In the mean time, Clodius's attendants drawing their swords, some of them ran back to the chariot, in order to attack Milo in the rear; whilst others, thinking that he was already killed, fell upon his servants who were behind. These being resolute and faithful to their master, were, some of them slain; whilst the rest, seeing a warm engagement near the chariot, being prevented from going to their master's assistance, hearing besides from Clodius himself that Milo was killed, and believing it to be a fact, acted upon this occasion—I mention it, not with a view to elude the accusation, but because it was the true state of the case—without the orders, without the knowledge, without the presence of their master, as every man would wish his own servants should act in the like circumstances.

This, my Lords, is a faithful account of the matter of fact: the person who lay in wait was himself overcome, and force subdued by force, or rather audaciousness chastised by true valour. I say nothing of the advantage which accrues to the state in general, to yourselves in particular, and to all good men: I am content to waive the argument I might draw from thence in favour of my client -whose destiny was so peculiar, that he could not secure his own safety, without securing yours and that of the republic at the same time. If he could not do it lawfully, there is no room for attempting his defence. But, if reason

ches the learned; necessity, the barbarian; common cus, all nations in general; and even nature itself instructs