Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 2).djvu/23



met on the 31st of October 1776, three months after the Declaration of Independence, the news of which was closely followed by the announcement of the failure of the negotiations conducted by Lord Howe under the commission given to him and his brother the general for the pacification of America. The despondency which ensued upon these events was however soon effaced by the successes of the royal troops at Long Island and New York, and the King's Speech on the first day of the Session breathed nothing but confidence regarding the war in America and the preservation of peace in Europe. The Opposition however did not abate their zeal for conciliation. They attacked the speech in both Houses. Shelburne denounced it as "a piece of metaphysical refinement, framed with a design to impose," and the defence set up for it, as nothing more than "a string of sophisms, no less wretched in their texture than insolent in their tenor." He then proceeded to go through it clause by clause. He denied that the Americans had rejected the means of conciliation held out to them under the authority of the royal commission with circumstances of "indignity and insult." The pretended means of conciliation were held back so long, that even if the Commissioners had Rh