Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 1).djvu/249

Rh denied the advisability of exercising it; and showing the speciousness of the plea of virtual representation which had been advanced to support it, made a speech which chancing to be reported by of Connecticut, immensely increased his Parliamentary reputation and rendered the phrase "Sons of Liberty," a household word in every home on the other side of the Atlantic:

"They planted by your care!" he fiercely retorted on Charles Townshend, who had applied those words to the origin of the colonists: "No, your oppressions planted them in America. They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated, inhospitable country, where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable, and among others to the cruelties of a savage foe, the most subtle and I will take upon me to say the most formidable of any people upon the face of God's earth; and actuated by principles of true English liberty, they met all hardships with pleasure compared with those they suffered in their own country from the hands of those who should be their friends. They nourished up by your indulgence! They grew by your neglect of them. As soon as you began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule them in one department and another, who were perhaps the deputies of deputies to some member of this House, sent to spy out their liberties, to misrepresent their actions, and to prey upon them; men whose behaviour on many occasions, has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them; men promoted to the highest seats of justice, some of whom to my knowledge were glad by going to a foreign country to escape being brought to a bar of a court of justice in their own. They protected by your arms! They have nobly taken up arms in your defence, have exerted a valour amidst their constant and laborious industry for the defence of a country whose frontier was drenched in blood, while its interior parts yielded all its little savings to your emolument. And, believe me, remember I this day told you so, the same spirit of freedom, which actuated that people at first will