as spoil among the seamen of the navy.  The most abject submission on the part of the colonies could not redeem them.  There was no man on that whole continent, or within three thousand miles of it, qualified by law to follow allegiance with protection or submission with pardon.  A proceeding of this kind has no example in history.  Independency, and independency with an enmity, (which, putting ourselves out of the question, would be called natural and much provoked,) was the inevitable consequence.  How this came to pass the nation may be one day in an humor to inquire.

All the attempts made this session to give fuller powers of peace to the commanders in America were stifled by the fatal confidence of victory and the wild hopes of unconditional submission.  There was a moment favorable to the king’s arms, when, if any powers of concession had existed on the other side of the Atlantic, even after all our errors, peace in all probability might have been restored.  But calamity is unhappily the usual season of reflection; and the pride of men will not often suffer reason to have any scope, until it can be no longer of service.

I have always wished, that as the dispute had its apparent origin from things done in Parliament, and as the acts passed there had provoked the war, that the foundations of peace should be laid in Parliament also.  I have been astonished to find that those whose zeal for the dignity of our body was so hot as to light up the flames of civil war should even publicly declare that these delicate points ought to be wholly left to the crown.  Poorly as I may be thought affected to the authority of Parliament, I shall never admit that our constitutional rights can ever become a matter of ministerial negotiation.

I am charged with being an American.  If warm affection towards those over whom I claim any share of authority be a crime, I am guilty of this charge.  But I do assure you, (and they who know me publicly and privately will bear witness to me,) that, if ever one man lived more zealous than another for the supremacy of Parliament and the rights of this imperial crown, it was myself.  Many others, indeed, might be more knowing in the extent of the foundation of these rights.  I do not pretend to be an antiquary, a lawyer, or qualified for the chair of professor in metaphysics.  I never ventured to put your solid interests upon speculative grounds.  My having constantly declined to do so has been attributed to my incapacity for such disquisitions; and I am inclined to believe it is partly the cause.  I never shall be ashamed to confess, that, where I am ignorant, I am diffident.  I am, indeed, not very solicitous to clear myself of this imputed incapacity; because men even less conversant than I am in this kind of subtleties, and placed in stations to which I ought not to aspire, have, by the mere force of civil discretion, often conducted the affairs of great nations with distinguished felicity and glory.