for the constitutional rights of Englishmen;
that they intended and desired nothing more. On the ground that the
colonists, like the barons of Runnymede, were contending for the sacred
rights of Englishmen, and relying on the faith of their declaration that
Englishmen they would ever remain, their cause was patriotically
espoused and nobly vindicated in England by Lords Chatham, Camden,
Shelburne, the Duke of Richmond, and others in the House of Lords; by
Messrs. Burke and Fox, Lord John Cavendish, Mr. Dunning (afterwards Lord
Ashburton), and others in the House of Commons; and by corporations of
cities and towns, and multitudes out of Parliament. Lord Mahon, in the
sixth volume of his History of England (pp. 35-37), relates that before
the Earl of Chatham introduced his famous "Provincial Bill for Settling
Troubles in America," and supported it by his masterly speeches in the
Lords, he sent for Dr. Franklin, the principal representative of the
colonists, to consult him and ascertain from him distinctly whether
there was any tendency or danger of the American colonies separating
from England, and was assured by Dr. Franklin that there was not the
least feeling in that direction; that the American colonies were
universally loyal to connection with the mother country, and desired and
contended for nothing more than the constitutional rights of
Englishmen.[396]

It was not till after this assurance, and it was under this conviction
and with this object, that the Earl of Chatham delivered those appeals
in behalf of America which electrified the British public, and gave tone
to the subsequent debates in both Houses of Parliament. These eloquent
and unanswerable defences of British rights, invaded and denied in
regard to the persons of the American colonists, were delivered in 1775
and the early part of 1776; but scarcely had their echoes died away on
the waves of the Atlantic, when news came from America that the
Congress, so warmly eulogized in the British Parliament for its fidelity
to English connection, as well as to the rights of England, had, after a
secret session of two months, renounced all connection with England, and
all acknowledgment of its authority and principles of government, thus
fulfilling the statements and predictions of the parliamentary enemies
of American rights, and presenting their advocates, Chatham, Camden,
Burke, etc., as liars and deceivers before the British nation and in the
face of all Europe