another act of Parliament, in which the rigors of all the former were consolidated, and embittered by circumstances of additional severity and outrage.  The whole trading property of America (even unoffending shipping in port) was indiscriminately and irrecoverably given, as the plunder of foreign enemies, to the sailors of your navy.  This property was put out of the reach of your mercy.  Your people were despoiled; and your navy, by a new, dangerous, and prolific example, corrupted with the plunder of their countrymen.  Your people in that part of your dominions were put, in their general and political, as well as their personal capacity, wholly out of the protection of your government.

Though unwilling to dwell on all the improper modes of carrying on this unnatural and ruinous war, and which have led directly to the present unhappy separation of Great Britain and its colonies, we must beg leave to represent two particulars, which we are sure must have been entirely contrary to your Majesty’s order or approbation.  Every course of action in hostility, however that hostility may be just or merited, is not justifiable or excusable.  It is the duty of those who claim to rule over others not to provoke them beyond the necessity of the case, nor to leave stings in their minds which must long rankle even when the appearance of tranquillity is restored.  We therefore assure your Majesty that it is with shame and sorrow we have seen several acts of hostility which could have no other tendency than incurably to alienate the minds of your American subjects.  To excite, by a proclamation issued by your Majesty’s governor, an universal insurrection of negro slaves in any of the colonies is a measure full of complicated horrors, absolutely illegal, suitable neither to the practice of war nor to the laws of peace.  Of the same quality we look upon all attempts to bring down on your subjects an irruption of those fierce and cruel tribes of savages and cannibals in whom the vestiges of human nature are nearly effaced by ignorance and barbarity.  They are not fit allies for your Majesty in a war with your people.  They are not fit instruments of an English government.  These and many other acts we disclaim as having advised, or approved when done; and we clear ourselves to your Majesty, and to all civilized nations, from any participation whatever, before or after the fact, in such unjustifiable and horrid proceedings.

But there is one weighty circumstance which we lament equally with the causes of the war, and with the modes of carrying it on,—­that no disposition whatsoever towards peace or reconciliation has ever been shown by those who have directed the public councils of this kingdom, either before the breaking out of these hostilities or during the unhappy continuance of them.  Every proposition made in your Parliament to remove the original cause of these troubles, by taking off taxes obnoxious for their principle or their design, has been overruled,—­every