Page:Journal of the First Congress of the American Colonies (1765).djvu/52



Den Sis:-I proceed to redeem my promise to you of furnishing some extracts fmnri the speeches of Mr. Henry Cruger, (originally of New-York,) delivered in the British Parliament during the year 1774, in defence of American rights and liberties. Mr; Cruger, though born in New-York, residedchietly in Bristol, (England) where he was, like his father, a wealthy merchant, and Mayor of the city at the time of his election to Parliament as colleague of Edmund Burke. In the speech which he delivered at the hinting; in Bristol, when he introduced Mr. Burke for the first time to his constituents, he says, in regard to the impending quarrel hetwoeu Great Britain and the Colonies:—“

As far as the impulse of my power can he felt, it shall be exerted to heal and reconcile the unhappy differences now existing, and not to foment them. I consider the commercial interests of England and the Colonies as one and the same-they are reciprocal and perfectly coincident. God, nature, and sound policy, have linked them together in the strongest bonds of amity, mutual interest and safety, and he who would divide them, has either a weak head or a bad heart.”

In Parliament, during the session of that year, he used every effort to induce the ministry to adopt conciliatory measures, urging upon them the danger of driving the colonies into open revolution, or into the, arms of a foreign power to escape the tyrannical oppressions of a relentless mother. In these warning predictions, not only in this, but'in all his subsequent speeches, Mr, Cruger proved himself to be a true prophet as well as an eloquent and patriotic champion of his native land. In his dist speech in Parliament upon this subject, on the 16th of December, 1774, he commences as follows:

I rise, sir, to say a few words on this important subject with all the dididence and awe which must strike the mind on a first attempt to speak before so august an assembly. Had I remained silent on this occasion, I must have condemned myself for seeming to desert a cause which I