Coming

plant an invincible hatred in their breasts against you. from the stock they do, they can never respect you. If ministers are correct in saying there is no sort of treaty with France, there is still a moment left; the point of honor is still safe. France must be as self-destroying as England to make a treaty while you are giving her America, at the expense of twelve millions a year. The intercourse has produced everything to France; and England, poor old England, must pay for all.

I have at different times made different propositions, adapted to the circumstances in which they were offered. The plan contained in the former bill is now impracticable. The present motion will tell you where you are, and what you have now to depend upon. It may produce a respectable division in America and unanimity at home. It will give America an option. She has yet made no option. You have said, "Lay down your arms,” and she has given you the Spartan answer, “Come and take them!"

I will get out of my bed on Monday to move for an immediate redress of all their grievances, and for continuing to them the right of disposing of their own property. This will be the herald of peace; this will open the way for treaty; this will show that Parliament is sincerely disposed. Yet still much must be left to treaty. Should you conquer this people, you conquer under the cannon of France; under a masked battery, then ready to open. The moment a treaty with France appears, you must declare war, though you had only five ships of the line in England; but France will defer a treaty as long as possible.

You are now at the mercy of every little German chancery; and the pretensions of France will increase daily, so as to become an avowed party in either peace or war. We have tried for unconditional submission; let us try what can be gained by unconditional redress. Less dignity will be lost in the repeal than in submitting to the demands of German chanceries. We are the aggressors. We have invaded them. We have invaded them as much as the Spanish Armada invaded England. Mercy cannot do harm; it will seat the king where he ought to be,throned on the hearts of his people; and millions at home and abroad, now employed in obloquy or revolt, would then pray for him. WILLIAM PITT (LORD CHATHAM).

AMERICA STILL UNCONQUERABLE.

1777.

THE birth of a princess and universal congratulations on the one hand, and the presence of American ambassadors at the French Court, unresented by the British ministry, evoked from the great orator one of his most impassioned tributes to the patriotic colonists, on the 18th of November, 1777. As if the government had not sufficiently debased the credit of Great Britain as a Christian state, Lord Suffolk proposed to employ Indians as allies in the prosecution of the war in America, upon the specious plea that they "had the right to use all the means that God and nature had placed in their hands to conquer America." As among the last utterances of the great friend of the rising American republic, both speeches are worthy of perpetual remembrance by its youth. Lord Chatham's protest against the use of barbarous allies has been repeatedly adopted by humane statesmen in other lands where similar measures have been proposed.

(From Address, November 18, 1777.)

I rise, my lords, to declare my sentiments on this most solemn and serious subject. . . . "But yesterday, and England might have stood against the world; now, none so poor as to do her reverence." I use the words of a poet; but, though it is poetry, it is no fiction. It is a shameful truth that not only the power and strength of this country are wasting away and expiring, but her well-earned glories, her true honors, and substantial dignity are sacrificed.

The ministers and ambassadors of those who are called rebels and enemies are in Paris. In Paris they transact the reciprocal interests of America and France. Can there be a more mortifying insult? Can even our ministers sustain a more humiliating disgrace? Do they dare to resent it? Do they even presume to hint a vindication of their honor and the dignity of the State by requiring the dismissal of the Plenipotentiaries of America? Such is the degradation to which they have reduced the glories of England.

The people whom they affect to call rebels, but whose growing power has at last obtained the name of enemies; the people

with whom they have engaged this country in war, and against whom they now command our implicit support in every measure of desperate hostility; this people, despised as rebels, are acknowledged as enemies, are abetted against you, supplied with every military store, their interests consulted, and their ambassadors entertained by your inveterate enemy. And our ministers dare not interpose with dignity and effect. Is this the honor of a great kingdom? Is this the indignant spirit of England, who but yesterday gave law to the House of Bourbon? The dignity of nations demands a decisive conduct in a situation like this.

The desperate state of our arms abroad is in part known. I love and I honor the English troops. No man thinks more highly of them than I do. I know they can achieve anything except impossibilities; and I know that the conquest of English America is an impossibility. You cannot, I venture to say, you CANNOT conquer America.

Your armies in the last war effected everything that could be effected, and what was it? It cost a numerous army, under the command of a most noted general, now a noble lord in this House, a long and laborious campaign, to expel five thousand Frenchmen from French America. 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. We shall soon know, and in any event have reason to lament, what may have happened since.

As to conquest, my lords, I repeat,-it is impossible! You may swell every expense and every effort, still more extravagantly; pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow; traffic and barter with every little, pitiful German prince who will sell his subjects to the shambles of a foreign power! Your efforts are forever vain and impotent; doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely. For it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your enemies to overrun 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 remained in my country I NEVER would lay down my arms; NEVER, NEVER, NEVER. WILLIAM PITT (LORD CHATHAM.)

THE USE OF SAVAGE ALLIES DENOUNCED.

MY LORDS,

(In Parliament, November 18, 1777.)

I am

I am astonished to hear such principles confessed! shocked! 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 on 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 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 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, roasting, and eating-literally, my lords, eating the mangled victims of his barbarous battles! 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.

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 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 laws; upon the learned judges to interpose the purity of their ermine, 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.

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 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 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 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 country from this 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 reposed my head on my pillow, without giving this vent to my eternal abhorrence of such preposterous and enormous principles. WILLIAM PITT (LORD CHATHAM).

CONTINUED WAR WITH AMERICA IS FOLLY. (Address in Parliament, 1778.)

You have now two wars before you, of which you must choose one, for both you cannot support. The war against America has hitherto been carried on against her alone, unassisted by any ally whatever. Notwithstanding she stood alone, you have been obliged, uniformly, to increase your exertions and to push your efforts to the extent of your power without being able to bring it to an issue. You have exerted all your force hitherto without effect, and you cannot now divide a force found already inadequate to its object.

My opinion is for withdrawing your forces from America entirely, for a defensive war you can never think of there. A defensive war would ruin this nation at any time, and, in any circumstances, offensive war is pointed out as proper for this