Page:Journal of the First Congress of the American Colonies (1765).djvu/57

 and must be weighed by the causes which have mule meh omduot and such measures necesssry. A free and impartial inquiry, therefore, into the leading and primary eaums is indispensably necessary to a just decision of the case. If their claims of exemption from Parliamentary laxationare founded in equity and the principles of the constitution-if they have been driven by a wanton, »cruel and impolite attack on their privileges to their present desperate defence-then, sir, the 'whole guilt and censure is chargeable on those, and those alone, whose ambition and ill direeted measures have forced them to those extremities. Thus also, if a form of government is introduced into Canada, »[breathing little of the spirit of English liberty, ] and intended to liuk the Canadians to the chain of ministerial intiuence-if they scrupled not to make a religion which has so often deluged Europe with blood an engine of their despotism to crush the Protestant colonies-if every artifiee was used to seduce and employe. servile, bigoted people to subvert the liberties of America, nan we wonder, sir, can we complain, if the colonists wisely diverted the storm, and secured a country to their own allil-nee, the strength and lfllll of which were avowedly to be directed to their destruction? When what was dearer to them than their lives—their liberties-were at stake-when, Mr. Speaker, 'their opposition to government reached no higher than petition and remonstrance, then they were stigmatized with want of courage. Every 'method was taken to irritate them. Insults on their character as a people were added to encroachments on their Rights as citizens. The partisans of confident oppresaifm represented them ll a herd of puslianimous wretches, whom the appearance of martial array would terrify into submission. How unjust-how impolitic, to reduce men to the miserable alternative of being branded with the epithet of cowards, or of taking up arms to vindicate their injured honor and violated liberties-first, to compel them to resistance, and then to derive arguments of their guilt from their vigor, courage and success. How contemptible the cause which pleads the misfortunes it has occasioned as reasons for its support!

The arguments of Administration, stripped, of their false CQIOHDQI, with all humility, I conceive to be these: ' We have plunged Great Britain into a most expensive and ruinous contest with her colonies; we have opened the door for endless animosities, by reviving disputed questions and claims which shake the foundation of the empire. The meassures we have pursued have increased the storm, and multiplied the common misfortunes. We have united all America in a firm league against you. Your trade has been impaired-your ships insulted and taken. We have lost for you every place of strength or importance in the eolo. nies; we have left' you an army broken by sickness, fatigue and want, and now perishing under all the modifications, ignemin and