r from the benignity of
Parliament than their own efforts. Persons more contumacious may also
see that they are resisting terms of perhaps greater freedom and
happiness than they are now in arms to obtain. The glory and propriety
of offered mercy is neither tarnished nor weakened by the folly of those
who refuse to take advantage of it.

We cannot think that the declaration of independency makes any natural
difference in the reason and policy of the offer. No prince out of the
possession of his dominions, and become a sovereign _de jure_ only, ever
thought it derogatory to his rights or his interests to hold out to his
former subjects a distinct prospect of the advantages to be derived from
his readmission, and a security for some of the most fundamental of
those popular privileges in vindication of which he had been deposed. On
the contrary, such offers have been almost uniformly made under similar
circumstances. Besides, as your Majesty has been graciously pleased, in
your speech from the throne, to declare your intention of restoring
your people in the colonies to a state of law and liberty, no objection
can possibly lie against defining what that law and liberty are; because
those who offer and those who are to receive terms frequently differ
most widely and most materially in the signification of these words, and
in the objects to which they apply.

To say that we do not know, at this day, what the grievances of the
colonies are (be they real or pretended) would be unworthy of us. But
whilst we are thus waiting to be informed of what we perfectly know, we
weaken the powers of the commissioners,--we delay, perhaps we lose, the
happy hour of peace,--we are wasting the substance of both
countries,--we are continuing the effusion of human, of Christian, of
English blood.

We are sure that we must have your Majesty's heart along with us, when
we declare in favor of mixing something conciliatory with our force.
Sir, we abhor the idea of making a conquest of our countrymen. We wish
that they may yield to well-ascertained, well-authenticated, and
well-secured terms of reconciliation,--not that your Majesty should owe
the recovery of your dominions to their total waste and destruction.
Humanity will not permit us to entertain such a desire; nor will the
reverence we bear to the civil rights of mankind make us even wish that
questions of great difficulty, of the last importance, and lying deep in
the vital principles of t