nd could have been
reasonably expected; tending to tarnish the lustre of the British arms,
to bring discredit on the wisdom of his majesty's councils, and to
nourish, without hope of end, a most unhappy civil war. That, deeply
impressed with the melancholy state of public concerns, they would,
in the fullest information they could obtain, and with the most
mature deliberation they could employ, review the whole of the late
proceedings, that they might be enabled to discover, as they would be
most willing to apply, the most effectual means of restoring order
to the distracted affairs of the British empire, confidence to his
majesty's government, obedience, by a prudent and temperate use of its
powers, to the authority of parliament, and satisfaction and happiness
to all his people. That by these means they trusted to avoid any
occasion of having recourse to the alarming and dangerous expedient
of calling in foreign forces to the support of his majesty's authority
within his own dominions, and the still more dreadful calamity of
shedding British blood by British arms." An acrimonious debate followed
this proposal, in which the opposition vehemently arraigned the
principle and conduct of the contest; assumed the facts contained in the
speech to be untrue; condemned the confiding such important fortresses
as Port Mahon and Gibraltar to foreigners; and exposed the idea of
conquest to ridicule. In reply, Lord North urged the necessity of
regaining the colonies, and exposed the extravagant pretensions of
the colonial assemblies, as well as of the general congress, and the
encroachments on all the rights of the parent state. He also defended
the conduct of ministers, maintaining that they had tried conciliation,
but that the attempt had signally failed: lenity on the part of
government and parliament being construed by the Americans into weakness
and fear. Parliament had, he said, during the last session obviated the
objections made to the right of taxing their colonies by permitting the
Americans to tax themselves in their own assemblies; and yet not one
assembly would offer a single shilling towards the common exigencies of
the state. He observed, that to repeal every act passed relating to the
colonies, since the year 1703, would indeed terminate the dispute, as
from that moment America would be raised to independence: at the same
time he vindicated those acts from the charge of being either ungenerous
or unjust. The amendmen