rhaps ages, may not heal.... 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....

"When your lordships look at the papers transmitted to us from
America--when you consider their decency, firmness, and wisdom, you
cannot but respect their cause, and wish to make it your own. For
myself, I must avow that in all my reading--and I have read Thucydides,
and have studied the master-states of the world--for solidity of reason,
force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion under a complication of
difficult circumstances, no nation or body of men can stand in
preference to the General Congress of Philadelphia. The histories of
Greece and Rome give us nothing equal to it, and all attempts to impose
servitude upon such a mighty continental nation must be vain. We shall
be forced ultimately to retract; let us retract while we can, not when
we must. These violent Acts must be repealed; you will repeal them; I
pledge myself for it, I stake my reputation upon it, that you will in
the end repeal them. Avoid, then, this humiliating necessity. With a
dignity becoming your exalted station, make the first advance towards
concord, peace, and happiness; for that is your true dignity. Concession
comes with better grace from superior power, and establishes solid
confidence on the foundations of affection and gratitude. Be the first
to spare; throw down the weapons in your hand.

"Every motive of justice and policy, of dignity and of prudence, urges
you to allay the ferment in America by a removal of your troops from
Boston, by a repeal of your Acts of Parliament, and by demonstrating
amiable dispositions towards your colonies.... If the Ministers
persevere in thus misadvising and misleading the King, I will not say
that the King is betrayed, but I will pronounce that the kingdom is
undone; I will not say that they can alienate the affections of his
subjects from his Crown, but I will affirm that, the American jewel out
of it, they will make the Crown not worth his wearing."[354]

The Earl of Suffolk, with whining vehemence, assured the House that, in
spite of Lord Chatham's prophecy, the Government was resolved to repeal
not one of the Acts, but to use all possible means to bring the
Americans to obedience; and after declaiming violently against their
conduct, boasted as "having b