lous I have been to avert the impending storms which
seem ready to burst on it, and for ever overwhelm it in ruin. Yet,
when I consider the whole case as it lies before me, I am not much
astonished, I am not much surprised, that men who hate liberty should
detest those who prize it, or that those who want virtue themselves
should endeavour to persecute those who possess it. Were I disposed to
pursue this theme to the extent that truth would fully bear me out in, I
could demonstrate that the whole of your political conduct has been one
continued series of weakness, temerity, despotism, ignorance,
futility, negligence, and the most notorious servility, incapacity,
and corruption. On reconsideration I must allow you one merit, a strict
attention to your own interests--in that view you appear sound statesmen
and able politicians. You well know that if the present measure should
prevail, that you must instantly relinquish your places. I doubt much
whether you will be able to keep them on any terms; but sure I am
such are your well-known characters and abilities, that any plan of
reconciliation, however moderate, wise, and feasible, must fail in your
hands. Such, then, being your precarious situation, who could wonder
that you should put a negative on any measure which must annihilate your
power, deprive you of your emoluments, and at once reduce you to that
state of insignificance for which God and nature designed you." Earls
Gower and Hillsborough reprobated this severe language of Chatham, as
calculated to inflame the public mind both here and in the colonies, and
questioned if the noble lord would not, on some future day, if his age
permitted, give another of the many proofs of his versatility, by acting
with the ministers he condemned, and patronising the measures he now
censured. Upon a division, the bill was rejected by a majority of
sixty-one against thirty-two. Its rejection proved a fine theme out of
doors for those adverse to the ministry. A vote of thanks was passed by
the corporation of the city of London to Chatham, for his humane design;
and Franklin enlarged upon the folly and madness of the ministers in
rejecting it, although he had not expressed his approbation of it even
to Chatham himself. He obtained, however, by its introduction what he
most wanted--namely, a subject by means of which he could widen the
breach between America and the "dear old mother country."

In the meantime debates had taken place in t