Page:Journal of the First Congress of the American Colonies (1765).djvu/56

 necessity and expediency of inquiring into the causes of the present alarming state of public aifairs. By discovering what has proved injurious and ruinous in the past, we may loam at least to avoid the same pemicious steps for the future. If their measures had been conducted with justice and prudence, it is a duty that Administration owe to their characters, to disarm, by a tree examination, that censure on their conduct which may possibly arise from ignorance. But if they love darkness rather than light, ' because their deeds are eeil, ' it becomes the duty of the guardians of the nation to drag their miscarriages and misdeeds into open day, and to expose them, with all their deformities, to public investigation.

Mr. Speaker, such an inquiry was ever necessary, the present time assuredly demands it.` If we look to the past, one uniform train of disappointments and misfortunes crowd the view. If to the future, a gloomy prospect of increasing miseries, from a continuance of the same left handed policy, and ill-projected measures. `

We are involved, sir, in a war in which success itself would be ruinous to Great Britain. The colonies, as if animated with one soul, are determined to perish or be free. We are told they must be subdued. We shall soon be called upon to make new exertions of force. Everything wears the aspect of hostile preparations; and, as if disappointment could create confidence, we are urged to pursue the same fatal measures by arguments drawn from their miscarriage. ' Nothing' (it is now sa.id,) will satisfy America but independence-that the people of that country have almost unanimously taken up arms-they act not only on the defensive, but have endeavored to deprive you of all Canada. An inquiry (they say,) would produce a fatal procrastination-that the urgency and necessity of the case demand and justify immediate vigor and execution. These measures must be pursued, or the government of the colonies surrendered to an ambiguous Congress?

Such, sir, are the reasons advanced to preclude inquiry, and to procure a hasty acquiescence in schemes of policy, on which the fate of the empire so materially depends. By such arguments as these our jealousy is excited, and our resentment intlamed, against a people, who, alter the most earnest endeavors to preserve their liberties from invasion, by petition and remonstrance-after having repeatedly submitted their complaints (without eifeot) to the justice of parliament, and Laid them humbly at the foot of the throne-stter beholding the most formidable preparation to divest them of their Rights by the sword—aher finding hostilities already commenced, and fresh violenee threatened, have taken up arms in their own defence, and endeavored to repel destructive tbree by force. The compledon and character, sir, of their present oppodtion (whether unjust or honorable) rea not on their present measures, but arises from,