“Though I have so lately had the honor of a seat in this House, yet I have for many years turned my thoughts and attention to matters of public concern and national policy. This question of America is now of many years’ standing.”[477]
In this speech he acknowledges the services of New England at Louisburg:—
“In that war too, Sir, they took Louisburg from the French, single-handed, without any European assistance: as mettled an enterprise as any in our history; an everlasting memorial of the zeal, courage, and perseverance of the troops of New England. The men themselves dragged the cannon over a morass which had always been thought impassable, where neither horses nor oxen could go; and they carried the shot upon their backs. And what was their reward for this forward and spirited enterprise,—for the reduction of this American Dunkirk? Their reward, Sir, you know very well: it was given up for a barrier to the Dutch.”[478]
All his various propositions were negatived; but he was not disheartened. Constantly he spoke,—now on the Budget, then on the Address, and then on specific propositions. At this time he asserted the power of Parliament over the Colonies, and he proposed, on the 2d November, 1775, that a test of submission by the Colonists should be the recognition of an Act of Parliament enacting “that all the slaves in America should have the trial by jury.”[479] Shortly afterwards, on the 7th December, 1775, he brought forward a second set of “Propositions for Conciliation with America,” where, among other things, he embodied the test on slavery, which he put forward as a compromise; and here his language belongs not only to the history of our Revolution, but to the history of Antislavery. While declaring that in his opinion Great Britain was “the aggressor in everything,”[480] he sought to bring the two countries together on a platform of human rights, which he thus explained:—
“The act to be proposed to America, as an auspicious beginning to lay the first stone of universal liberty to mankind, should be what no American could hesitate an instant to comply with, namely, that every slave in North America should be entitled to his trial by jury in all criminal cases. America cannot refuse to accept and to enroll such an act as this, and thereby to reëstablish peace and harmony with the parent state. Let us all be reunited in this, as a foundation to extirpate slavery from the face of the earth. Let those who seek justice and liberty for themselves give that justice and liberty to their fellow-creatures. With respect to the idea of putting a final period to slavery in North America, it should seem best that when this country had led the way by the act for jury, that each Colony, knowing their own peculiar circumstances, should undertake the work in the most practicable way, and that they should endeavor to establish some system by which slavery should be in a certain term of years abolished. Let the only contention henceforward between Great Britain and America be, which shall exceed the other in zeal for establishing the fundamental rights of liberty to all mankind.”[481]
How grand and beautiful!—not to be read without gratitude! The motion was rejected; but among the twenty-three in its favor were Fox and Burke.
During this same month the unwearied defender of our country came forward again, declaring that he could not be “an adviser or a well-wisher to any of the vindictive operations against America, because he thought the cause unjust; but at the same time he must be equally earnest to secure British interests from destruction”; and he thus prophesies:—
“The fate of America is cast. You may bruise its heel, but you cannot crush its head. It will revive again. The New World is before them. Liberty is theirs. They have possession of a free government, their birthright and inheritance, derived to them from their parent state, which the hand of violence cannot wrest from them. If you will cast them off, my last wish is to them, May they go and prosper!”[482]
Again, on the 10th May, 1776, he vindicated anew his original proposition; and here again he testifies for peace and against slavery:—