ing to the forms of the constitution, the crown could declare war, make peace, and enter into treaties and compacts either with foreign powers or a part of our own subjects, without controul or advice; then the maxim which says, that the executive is subordinate to the legislative power, would be exactly reversed; for the executive, and not the legislative, would be the supreme power.-But taking the learned lord's argument fairly, what was it? but that there might be such a power vested in parliament, and that as it never had, so it ought never hereafter to be exercised, because ministers were ultimately responsible to parliament for their measures and the execution of them. He was persuaded that the learned lord could not seriously mean what he seemed to maintain so very warmly; for it would amount to this, that parliament had the right, but that they should forego the exercise of it, at the very moment only in which any national good could be expected from it; namely, when the folly, inability, and obstinacy of ministers had invited national destruction; when they appeared to be ultimately determined to persist in the same ruinous measures which had produced our present national calamities; and finally, when they were running forward in order to precipitate our fate. No, no, said the learned lord, let ministers go on; when they have totally ruined us, then will be the time for parliament to call them to account.-His lordship, after endeavouring to expose the absurdity, fallaciousness, and sophistry of such a stile of argument, entered pretty fully into the debate, and after reprobating the American war in all its parts, and describing its authors as no less inimical to the liberties of Great Britain than America, concluded his speech with testifying his warmest and most unreserved approbation of the motion made by his honourable friend. Lord Duncannon supported the motion warmly; he contended that the Americans had taken up arms in their own defence; and be the issue what it might, the evil advisers, who had imposed upon their sovereign, parliament, and the nation, ought to be deemed solely responsible for the consequences, and he had no doubt would be made so. He made some farther spirited observations on matters which had come from the opposite benches; but the House grew so disorderly that we could not dis tinctly hear his lordship; he said he heartily approved of the motion. The opposite benches growing ex. tremely vociferous, and calling out loudly for the question! the question! Mr. Fox presenting himself to reply, it was some minutes before the Speaker could restore order; at length order being enforced from the chair, Mr. Fox proceeded. He began with returning thanks to the House for the disposition they shewed to indulge him with a few words by way of reply, or rather for the purpose of giving a few explanations respecting some very plausible objections which had been raised against two or three of his strongest arguments. He was the more obliged to the House for this indulgence, because, according to the strict rules of parliamentary order, he was not entitled to rise a second time to speak to the same question; feeling, therefore, the obliga tion which he owed the House, he should repay it in the only way it was in hi power to repay it, that was by being a brief as possible, and not adding a syllable, which did not seem to him necessary for the illustration of his former arguments, or in such instances as he had been mis understood, or misrepresented. After this exordium, he said it was his duty, as it was that of every individual in that assembly, who called upon the repre sentatives of the people to unite in opinion with him upon a particular mea sure of policy or legislation, to do every thing in his power to shew that the meas sure so proposed was a wise and salutary one, and that the objections made to it were either frivolous or unfounded; under this call he now rose, and entreated a candid and patient hearing. The noble lord at the head of the American depart ment had recourse to a very extraordinary and novel species of logic, to prove that he was not mistaken in his expectations respecting the loyalty of the inhabitants of North Carolina: his lordship said, that lord Cornwallis was mistaken as well as he, which amounted to this; that in every given situation that could be imagined, a person being originally wrong, as soon as another person happened to coincide with him in opinion, from that instant he became right; and for what reason? The noble lord himself had told us: the noble lord himself was wrong, lord Cornwallis helped to confirm him in his mistakes, and of course they were each separately right, because both were in the wrong! twice, if not thrice the force which he really had; and equally cheated by false insinuations from hence, that he would be received with open arms by a host of friends, warmly and zealously attached to the cause which he came to maintain, instead of being publicly annoyed, or secretly betrayed or circumvented by a host of inveterate enemies. But not wishing to catch at words, instead of realities; what are the true grounds, said Mr. Fox, on which the noble ford maintains that the North Carolinians are loyal? His lordship says, general Green has been obliged to draw the subsistence of his army from the neighbouring provinces; the people of Carolina would not supply him any more than lord Cornwallis; that is, a great majority of the inhabitants of North Carolina wish well to government, and abhor the tyranny of the Congress; and how do they return the obligations they owe to the royal army? Why, they refuse all kind of aid or assistance to their saviours and protectors, and treat those who come to release them from the bonds of tyranny exactly as they do their tyrants and oppressors, by refusing all aid or succour whatever. Before he proceeded farther into personal or particular explanation, he would beg leave to make an obsérvation or two upon a principle which pervaded the present debate, as well as all others which related to the American war. It was said, and said too with great confidence, and it came from quarters which proved its meaning to be the current opinions which prevailed in another place: it is not fit, though it be even competent for parliament to interfere in the exercise of 0! says the noble lord, that is not the those powers which the constitution has case; the loyal inhabitants would do other-devolved on the crown, and the crown as wise if they could do it with safety. a matter of course has delegated to its They made one attempt, but it miscar- servants, to disturb the deliberate chiried; and those who made it were sacri- meras or dreams of ministers; for be the ficed to the resentment of their enraged consequences what they may, ministers brethren. Surely he was in a dream, or must be ultimately responsible. The arthe noble lord did not mean to be seri- gument, he confessed, if not a good one, ous, when he said, that so great and able was at least plausible; it carried with general as lord Cornwallis confessedly it, it was true, a principle of eventual was, in the heart of a loyal and friendly ruin to the state, because it might be country, and at the head of a victorious pushed to a possible, he feared even to a army, were the good disposition of the probable case, in which ministerial reinhabitants and their eagerness to repair sponsibility, as had been observed by his to the royal standard as true as it had noble friend (lord Maitland) would be a been confidently asserted, would abandon farce-but taking up the idea, and acceptthe post. Surely the noble lord at the ing of it in the very manner in which it head of the American department would was intended to be pressed on the undernot gravely assert, that under such cir- standing of the House, it was his duty, cumstances it was possible that lord Corn- pledged as he then stood, to detect and wallis could have relinquished all hopes of expose the paltry sophistry which lay improving the advantages he had obtained, lurking under it. without at the same time insinuating the severest libel upon the military conduct of the noble commander. He was in his soul convinced of the contrary; he was persuaded the noble lord at the head of the southern American army was beyond the reach of any such insidious insinuation, if any such was intended. The truth was, his lordship met no friends when weighed in the opposite scale against his numerous enemies, and after doing all that an officer in his situation could do, he was obliged to abandon all hopes of success, because, like every other officer, he had been deceived on two grounds: he had been cheated in the first instance, and made to believe that he was to have had There were two constant objects which principally fixed the attention of that side of the House on which he had the honour to sit; the one, the maintenance of the supreme rights of the legislature, to direct, propound, and finally determine, on what ought or ought not to be asserted or conceded, in respect of the rights or claims of this country over America. This inherent right was never professedly controverted in that House by the boldest or most implicit ministerialist; but this night, for the first time, he heard the principle denied, or, which was the same thing, endeavoured to be set aside. The general principle of ministerial responsibility was opposed to the right of parliament subject; but happy as he was in the good opinion and friendship of the right hon. gentleman, he sincerely wished that be had forborne that part of his speech altogether, for he never, as a testimony of kindness or good will, accepted what came accompanied with indiscriminate censures upon those whom he held most dear, or with whom he was most intimately con nected. to interfere. Hitherto he had constantly | wherever his own conduct furnished the heard, that this was a parliamentary war, a legislative war, a war not to extend or increase the power or prerogative of the crown; no, but a war specially undertaken to vindicate the supremacy of parliament, and its legislative superintendance and controul over every part of the British empire; but to day it has been represented as a ministerial war, in the controul of which parliament have not the least pretence to interfere, nor to offer their advice, unless they are determined to violate the constitution, and usurp the exercise of the executive power. This was the uniform language held by those who maintained the propriety, the necessity, and expediency of the American war till this evening; when, for the first time, he heard that the war was no longer a parliamentary war, but a ministerial one. Parliament have no constitutional right to interfere, say some; they ought not to interfere, say others; because the hands of the King's servants will be so tied up that they will be deprived of inproving those opportunities of advancing the interests of the country, which they might be able to improve to the benefit of the nation, if left at liberty to act according to the various contingencies and circumstances which may arise in the course of future negociation. Here, then, were the most palpable and gross contradictions: if ministers were entreated to make peace; no, said they, that cannot be; the American war is a parliamentary or legislative war; the crown has no immediate or particular interest in the prosecution of it; parliament alone are responsible but as soon as a proposition is made, calling upon parliament to interfere; no, again, say the very same men, parliament have no right to interfere, nor, if they had, would it be politic or prudent for them so to do. After he had stated in the most pointed manner the contradictory language held by ministers, as it suited their present purpose, he proceeded to give specific answers to such gentlemen as had undertaken to controvert the grounds and propriety of his motion. A right hon. gentleman on the floor, who had honoured him with the name of friend (Mr. Rigby) had paid him compliments which he was not so vain or foolish as to think were well founded. He felt no consciousness that the right hon. gentleman's eulogies were fitly applied The right hon. gentleman says, that every administration since the accession of his present Majesty, let them disagree upon what other points they might, were at least unanimous in one, that of taxing and coercing America. The right ho gentleman, in the warmth of political zeal and trusting with the most unbounded confidence in the fidelity of his memory, asserts that the administration, who pass ed the Stamp Act, supported the princi ple on which the American war was car ried on: that the real political arrange ment under the auspices of a noble mar quis (of Rockingham) a member of the other House, supported the same princ ple, when, by repealing the Stamp Act they asserted the unconditional right and dominion of this country over America by passing the Declaratory Law. The next administration is charged by the right hon. gentleman with following the same track which had been traced out by ther predecessors in office; and a justly dis tinguished and celebrated statesman, some time deceased, and a noble duke (the earl of Chatham and the duke of Grafton) who successively directed his Majesty's coun cils, are specially pointed out by the right hon. gentleman, as being the promoters of the Port Duty Bill, and sending troops to Boston to inforce the legal execution of that law. They are represented as treading in the footsteps of the two preceding administrations, so as to prove the right hon. gentleman's assertion to the unlimited extent in which he would have it credited; that every administration, and every man of every party in a public situation, had pledged themselves to the support and maintenance of the American war. The right hon. gentleman, not content. ed with general assertions, has pushed the charge still farther, down to the actual commencement of hostilities, and to events of even a later date; and as a farther confirmation of what he has said on the subject, has described the American friendship upon such terms; nor can I sit silent without professing my utmost disapprobation of assertions every way so illfounded, and arguments so sophistical and fallacious. war to have been in its origin and pro- | gress a most popular war. Before I proceed to controvert the right hon. gentleman's conclusions, feeling as I do, I find myself compelled, from a just and well founded resentment, to vindicate the character of some persons, whom the right hon. gentleman has thought proper to load with ill-founded aspersions, in the observations he has made in this part of his speech. The right hon. gentleman concludes his observations thus: "Surely, if the American war be wicked, ruinous, unjust, and bloody; if it was planned with folly, prosecuted with cruelty, and ultimately tends to national destruction; the several persons thus described, having maintained the principle on which the war was commenced, and approved of the measures which actually produced it, were equally unjust and cruel, and blinded with the same spirit of persecution, as those to whose lot it had fallen to carry the meagures into execution which brought on this execrable war." I will meet the right hon. gentleman on his own conclusion; I an ready to join issue with him on the merits, and allow that all he has said and insinuated is strictly consonant to truth; that they would be wicked and cruel, if they had either promoted or approved of such a war; but I do aver, that the charge is not founded in fact, but directly repugnant to fair, even to colourable conclusions; and, high and powerfully supported as that right hon. gentleman stands in this House and out of it, I would recommend to him to be more temperate in his language when he makes such positive charges, and draws such severe conclusions against some of the greatest and most respectable characters in this country. I am ready to declare my opinion of the right hon. gentleman's integrity and abilities; I am willing to give full credit to his assertions declarative of the motives on which he acted; I thank him for his very favourable, but unmerited sentiments respecting so insignificant a person as I am, whom he has thought fit to exalt into a degree of consequence to which I am by no means entitled; but while in the midst of this shew of kindness I hear my dearest friends and connections directly or indirectly charged with, what I think the worst and blackest of crimes, as the authors of a system, or the supporters of measures which led to, and produced the American war, I cannot accept of any appearances of I am ready to appeal to every impartial person in this House, whether there is not an immense difference between a speculative assertion of a right, and the enforcing that right with the point of the bayonet? I would appeal to those who hear me, whether there is any similarity between regulations of commerce and actual taxes? But I shall avoid entering into particulars at so late an hour, and only refer to the conduct of the noble lord in the blue ribbon, and the noble lord near him at the head of the American department. What was the language of the former?" We must and will have a revenue from America; not a pepper-corn, merely to maintain an ideal and unprofitable right; but a clear, substantial, and productive revenue." What was the language of the latter? "Not to listen to any terms short of unconditional submission." What was the purport of the noble lord's conciliatory propositions but to tax the colonies by proxy: that is, the colonies to tax themselves, and the produce to be transmitted home to Great Britain, to be at the disposal of the British parliament? What again was the conduct of the people of America? Why, they resisted it as one man, from one end of the North American continent to the other. The colonies resisted both principles equally; they resisted taxation in one instance, and foreign legislation in the other; they determined, una voce, to legislate for and tax themselves. After explaining himself very fully, in order to shew that none of the great and respectable names alluded to, nor their friends, went the length of actual taxation or legislation in any instance, but so far as the latter might have reference to commercial regulation and mutual benefit, he spoke of his own conduct and the conduct of his friends relative to the passing of the Boston Port Bill. The right hon. gentleman says, that the Boston Port Bill passed without a division, without a debate, or any kind of opposition whatever. He has stated this circumstance, to shew that the measures which immediately produced the American war met with the approbation of all parties; but the right hon. gentleman's argument upon the presumed fact, is as fallacious as the fact itself is ill-founded. The Boston Port Bill was opposed in several of its stages. I opposed it myself, said Mr. Fox, and there are many within my hearing who also very strenuously opposed it. The right hon. gentleman avers, that it was not opposed in either House of Parliament. Though it may not be quite regular to take notice of what passed on that occasion in the other House, I am warranted in answering an argument supported upon such ground; and I am warranted to do this upon equal authority; for I know there was an opposition made to the Boston Port Bill in the other House as well as in this; but I will explain to the right hon. gentleman what he seems to have forgotten, for I am not to presume that he purposely omitted it. The reason why there was not so stre. nuous and regular an opposition to that measure, and that no division ensued, was this: the riot in Boston and the destruction of the tea was represented by ministers as a partial rising, confined to that town alone, and not countenanced by any persons of property even there; and highly disapproved of by the leading people in the province of Massachusets Bay, and reprobated throughout the other colonies. Such being the presumed facts, as stated by those who recommended the measure, with what request did they come to parliament? That, as it was but a local insurrection, or rather popular tumult, which arose among the very dregs of the people, the Bill would, as soon as known, have the effect of restoring peace, good order, and legal government; and should it prove otherwise, a regiment or two then under orders to repair thither would immediately, without farther trouble or any effusion of blood, force the townsmen into an obedience to the laws. As the language of the day was, that the sword and the olive branch would be presented, and offenders would be left to their option. This, I am free to contend, was the true state of that transaction; but at the time, I defy the right hon. gentleman to say, that it was so much as hinted by any person in a responsible situation, that the parliament of Great Britain had any intention of enforcing any claims of universal taxation, unlimited legislation, or unconditional submission. The right hon. gentleman, and several others who have spoken since, particularly the learned Lord Advocate of Scotland, have made, what they seem to think, a most important discovery, that I have declined to move a vote, declaring the American colonies in resistance independent; though, say they, my motion goes precisely to the. same point. If this is meant to hold out to the House, that while I profess one thing I mean another, nothing, I do assure you, Sir, can be more unfounded; for to be very plain, had not I other reasons but such as might militate against the mere naked question of declaring America in dependent, I should not hesitate a single moment upon what was proper to be done; for, thinking as I do, that America is lost, irrecoverably lost to this country, we could lose nothing by a vote declaring America independent; but I had even more than one reason: the first and most pressing motive on my mind was, that I did not choose to go the full length of what I feared we must, in the end, be obliged to consent to; what I know we must, without reserve, consent to-to declare America' independent; because such a declaration, on our part, being an ultimatum, might beget still higher pretensions in the minds of the people of America on their own ac count. The other, that although we should hold out an offer of independence, we are not so fully and perfectly ac quainted with the connection between France and America as to say, whether, the point of independence being once gained, France would not improve that cir cumstance to her own partial advantage, and on that ground urge farther claims, to comply with which both the interest and honour of this country must be sacrificed. As to the mere single proposition, whe ther America might with propriety be de clared independent, abstracted from other considerations, it is perfectly ridiculous to debate about it in this House this evening. America, as the right hon. gentleman has confessed, is already independent; and, as he well observed, ought to be consider ed, in one light, as a public enemy, I most heartily agree with the right hon. gentleman, that she is independent: I may possibly disagree with him, when I affirm again, that she will and must be independent. It is, however, impossible to say, with any degree of confidence or precision, to what extent or effect the other evils the right hon. gentleman predicts may be averted; such as the safety of our West India islands, &c. but this I am in my own mind authorised to say, were it not that conciliatory, healing, and friendly negociation, may effect much in preventing the bad consequences which a vote, declaring America independent, might be productive of hereafter, I should, instead of making |