Page:Journal of the First Congress of the American Colonies (1765).djvu/59

 opportunity of distreening their rivalom-admitting that your feets, the opposed, shall level to the ground those cities which inge under your pre Motina, became the pillars of your commerse, and your nation's boast- ndanitting that foreiga mercenaries spread desolation, that thousands mult before them, and that, humbled under the combined woes of poverty, marclay, want and defeat, the exhausted colonies fall suppliant at the fortet at their conquerorunmadmitting all this will be the oase, (which cannot welt be expected from the past,) there necessarily follows a most momen. o question: What are the great advantages that Great Britain is to re. site is exchange for the blessings of peace and a lucrative commeroe, for th offsotion and loyalty, for the prosperity, for the lives of so many of its #safal snbjects sacrificed? Would the bare acknowledgement of a rigte in Parliament to tax them, compensate for the millions expended, the dangers incurred, the miseries entailed, the destruction of human happiness and of life that must ensue from a war with our colonies, united as they are in one common cause, and fired to desperate enthusiasm by apprehensions of impending slavery? Or can you be so absurd as to imagine that concessions extorted in a time of danger and of urgent misery, will form a bond of lasting union ? Impoverished and undone by their exertions, and the calamities of war, instead of being able to repay the expenses of this country, or to supply a revenue, they would stand in need of your earliest assistance to revive depressed and almost extin. guished commerce, as well as to renew and uphold their necessary civil ortablishments.

"I am well aware, sit, that it is said we must maintain the dignity af Parliament. Let me ask what dignity is that which will not descend to make millions happy-which will sacrifice the treasures and best blood of the nation to extort submissions, fruitless submissions, that will be disavowed and disregarded the moment the compulsory, oppressive force is removed? What dignity is that which, to enforce a disputed mode of obtaining a revenue, will destroy commerce, spread poverty and deso lation, and dry up every channel, every source, from which either revenus or any real substantial bepefit can be expected ?

Is it not high time then, Mr. Speaker, to examine the full extent of our danger, to pause and mark the paths which have misled us, and the wretched, bewildered guides who have brought us into our present dit pultias ? Let us seek out the destroying angel, and stop his coutse, whild wa bave yet anything valuable to preserve. The breach is not yet it here pable, and perralt me, with all deferende, to say, I have not a doubt bat that liberal and explacit tems of teconciliation, with a fult and Armh padarity against any anjust or oppressive exercise of parliamentary taxi won, if held out to the colonies before the war takes a wider and more nammotive pourse, will lead speedily to a settlement, and técall thè