grace? Do they dare to resent it? Do they presume even to hint a
vindication of their honor, and the dignity of the State, by
requiring the dismission of the plenipotentiaries of America? Such
is the degradation to which they have reduced the glories of
England! The people whom they affect to call contemptible rebels,
but whose growing power has at last obtained the name of enemies;
the people with whom they have engaged this country in war, and
against whom they now command our implicit support in every measure
of desperate hostility--this people, despised as rebels, or
acknowledged as enemies, are abetted against you, supplied with
every military store, their interests consulted, and their
ambassadors entertained, by your inveterate enemy! and our ministers
dare not interpose with dignity or effect. Is this the honor of a
great kingdom? Is this the indignant spirit of England, who "but
yesterday" gave law to the house of Bourbon? My Lords, the dignity
of nations demands a decisive conduct in a situation like this....

My Lords, this ruinous and ignominious situation, where we can
not act with success, nor suffer with honor, calls upon us to
remonstrate in the strongest and loudest language of truth, to
rescue the ear of majesty from the delusions which surround it. The
desperate state of our arms abroad is in part known. No man thinks
more highly of them than I do. I love and honor the English troops.
I know their virtues and their valor. I know they can achieve
anything except impossibilities; and I know that the conquest of
English America _is an impossibility_. You cannot, I venture to say
it, _you cannot_ conquer America. Your armies in the last war
effected everything that could be effected; and what was it? It cost
a numerous army, under the command of a most able general [Lord
Amherst], now a noble Lord in this House, a long and laborious
campaign, to expel five thousand Frenchmen from French America. My
Lords, _you cannot conquer America_. What is your present situation
there? We do not know the worst; but we know that in three campaigns
we have done nothing and suffered much. Besides the sufferings,
perhaps _total loss_ of the Northern force, the best appointed army
that ever took the field, commanded by Sir William Howe, has retired
from the American lines. _He was obliged_ to relinquish his attempt,
and with great delay and danger to adopt a new and distant plan of
operations. We shall soon know, and in an