rduous contest I can have no other object but
to promote the true interests of all my subjects. No people ever enjoyed
more happiness, or lived under a milder government than those now
revolted in the provinces: the improvements in every art of which they
boast declare it: their numbers, their wealth, their strength by sea and
land, which they think sufficient to enable them to make head against
the whole power of the mother country, are irrefragable proofs of it. My
desire is to restore them to the blessings of law and liberty,
equally enjoyed by every British subject, which they have fatally and
desperately exchanged for all the calamities of war, and the arbitrary
tyranny of their chiefs."

{GEORGE III. 1776-1777}

DEBATES ON AMERICA.

Addresses which were, as usual, echoes of the speech, were brought
forward in both houses, and they elicited violent debates. In the
commons Lord John Cavendish moved an amendment of greater length than
even the proposed address. This amendment was seconded by the Marquess
of Granby, and in it, and the debates that ensued, it was affirmed that
the disaffection and revolt of the colonists could not have taken place,
if there had not been great faults committed against them. The faults
pointed out were, chiefly, the rejection of petitions and complaints;
the improper instructions given to commissioners for the purpose
of reconciliation; the endeavours made to break down the spirit and
independence of the colonists, by the many acts of parliament passed
during the recent sessions; and the project of extirpating the Americans
by the sword. All these errors were imputed by the opposition to the
want of information, and the too great confidence in ministers, who
though in duty bound to ascertain the temper and disposition of the
Americans, had totally failed for want of that knowledge. An appeal to
the sword was denounced as a most dangerous precedent, and by a strange
perversity of mind the leaders of the American revolution were described
and especially by Wilkes, as men averse to a change of government,
and as being only driven to extremities by an accumulation of neglect,
insult and injury, and by two years of a savage, piratical, and unjust
war, carried on against them by the English people. Wilkes also,
with others on the same side, took umbrage at the word "treason,"
as applicable to the Americans, asserting that what ministers called
"treason," the Americans denominated "a j