This mode of proceeding, by harsh laws and feeble armies, could not be defended on the principle of mercy and forbearance.  For mercy, as we conceive, consists, not in the weakness of the means, but in the benignity of the ends.  We apprehend that mild measures may be powerfully enforced, and that acts of extreme rigor and injustice may be attended with as much feebleness in the execution as severity in the formation.

In consequence of these terrors, which, falling upon some, threatened all, the colonies made a common cause with the sufferers, and proceeded, on their part, to acts of resistance.  In that alarming situation, we besought your Majesty’s ministers to entertain some distrust of the operation of coercive measures, and to profit of their experience.  Experience had no effect.  The modes of legislative rigor were construed, not to have been erroneous in their policy, but too limited in their extent.  New severities were adopted.  The fisheries of your people in America followed their charters; and their mutual combination to defend what they thought their common rights brought on a total prohibition of their mutual commercial intercourse.  No distinction of persons or merits was observed:  the peaceable and the mutinous, friends and foes, were alike involved, as if the rigor of the laws had a certain tendency to recommend the authority of the legislator.

Whilst the penal laws increased in rigor, and extended in application over all the colonies, the direct force was applied but to one part.  Had the great fleet and foreign army since employed been at that time called for, the greatness of the preparation would have declared the magnitude of the danger.  The nation would have been alarmed, and taught the necessity of some means of reconciliation with our countrymen in America, who, whenever they are provoked to resistance, demand a force to reduce them to obedience full as destructive to us as to them.  But Parliament and the people, by a premeditated concealment of their real situation, were drawn into perplexities which furnished excuses for further armaments, and whilst they were taught to believe themselves called to suppress a riot, they found themselves involved in a mighty war.

At length British blood was spilled by British hands:  a fatal era, which we must ever deplore, because your empire will forever feel it.  Your Majesty was touched with a sense of so great a disaster.  Your paternal breast was affected with the sufferings of your English subjects in America.  In your speech from the throne, in the beginning of the session of 1775, you were graciously pleased to declare yourself inclined to relieve their distresses and to pardon their errors.  You felt their sufferings under the late penal acts of Parliament.  But your ministry felt differently.  Not discouraged by the pernicious effects of all they had hitherto advised, and notwithstanding the gracious declaration of your Majesty, they obtained