s adverse to the proceedings
and members of the Congress, and the opposition to the coercive Acts of
Parliament.

Ministers and their supporters were pleased with these papers, which
abetted their policy, lauded and caressed their authors, and decided to
concede nothing, and continue and strengthen the policy of coercion.

On the 20th of January, the first day of the re-assembling of the Lords,
Lord Dartmouth laid the papers received from America before the House.
The Earl of Chatham, after an absence of two years, appeared again in
the House with restored health, and with all his former energy and
eloquence. He moved:

"That a humble address be presented to his Majesty, most humbly to
advise and beseech him that, in order to open the way toward a happy
settlement of the dangerous troubles in America, by beginning to allay
ferments and soften animosities there, and above all for preventing, in
the meantime, any sudden catastrophe at Boston, now suffering under
daily irritation of an army before their eyes, posted in their town, it
may graciously please his Majesty that immediate orders may be
despatched to General Gage for removing his Majesty's forces from the
town of Boston as soon as the rigours of the season and other
circumstances indispensable to the safety and accommodation of said
troops may render the same practicable."

Lord Chatham advocated his motion in a very pathetic speech, and was
supported by speeches by the Marquis of Rockingham, Lords Shelburne and
Camden, and petitions from merchants and manufacturers throughout the
kingdom, and most prominently by those of London and Bristol. But the
motion was negatived by a majority of 63 to 13.

In the course of his speech Lord Chatham said:

"Resistance to your acts was as necessary as it was just; and your
imperious doctrine of the omnipotence of Parliament and the necessity of
submission will be found equally impotent to convince or to enslave.

"The means of enforcing the 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. You may call them an army of
safety and of guard, but they are in truth 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, pe