vicinage, but that the Americans were going to lose the means which secured to them this rare and precious advantage.  The question with them was not, whether they were to remain as they had been before the troubles,—­for better, he allowed, they could not hope to be,—­but whether they were to give up so happy a situation without a struggle.  Mr. Burke had several other conversations with him about that time, in none of which, soured and exasperated as his mind certainly was, did he discover any other wish in favor of America than for a security to its ancient condition.  Mr. Burke’s conversation with other Americans was large, indeed, and his inquiries extensive and diligent.  Trusting to the result of all these means of information, but trusting much more in the public presumptive indications I have just referred to, and to the reiterated solemn declarations of their Assemblies, he always firmly believed that they were purely on the defensive in that rebellion.  He considered the Americans as standing at that time, and in that controversy, in the same relation to England as England did to King James the Second in 1688.  He believed that they had taken up arms from one motive only:  that is, our attempting to tax them without their consent,—­to tax them for the purposes of maintaining civil and military establishments.  If this attempt of ours could have been practically established, he thought, with them, that their Assemblies would become totally useless,—­that, under the system of policy which was then pursued, the Americans could have no sort of security for their laws or liberties, or for any part of them,—­and that the very circumstance of our freedom would have augmented the weight of their slavery.

Considering the Americans on that defensive footing, he thought Great Britain ought instantly to have closed with them by the repeal of the taxing act.  He was of opinion that our general rights over that country would have been preserved by this timely concession.[9] When, instead of this, a Boston Port Bill, a Massachusetts Charter Bill, a Fishery Bill, an Intercourse Bill, I know not how many hostile bills, rushed out like so many tempests from all points of the compass, and were accompanied first with great fleets and armies of English, and followed afterwards with great bodies of foreign troops, he thought that their cause grew daily better, because daily more defensive,—­and that ours, because daily more offensive, grew daily worse.  He therefore, in two motions, in two successive years, proposed in Parliament many concessions beyond what he had reason to think in the beginning of the troubles would ever be seriously demanded.