Though unwilling to dwell on all the improper modes of carrying on this unnatural and ruinous war, and which have led directly to the present unhappy separation of Great Britain and its colonies, we must beg leave to represent two particulars, which we are sure must have been entirely contrary to your Majesty's order or approbation. Every course of action in hostility, however that hostility may be just or merited, is not justifiable or excusable. It is the duty of those who claim to rule over others not to provoke them beyond the necessity of the case, nor to leave stings in their minds which must long rankle even when the appearance of tranquillity is restored. We therefore assure your Majesty that it is with shame and sorrow we have seen several acts of hostility which could have no other tendency than incurably to alienate the minds of your American subjects. To excite, by a proclamation issued by your Majesty's governor, an universal insurrection of negro slaves in any of the colonies is a measure full of complicated horrors, absolutely illegal, suitable neither to the practice of war nor to the laws of peace. Of the same quality we look upon all attempts to bring down on your subjects an irruption of those fierce and cruel tribes of savages and cannibals in whom the vestiges of human nature are nearly effaced by ignorance and barbarity. They are not fit allies for your Majesty in a war with your people. They are not fit instruments of an English government. These and many other acts we disclaim as having advised, or approved when done; and we clear ourselves to your Majesty, and to all civilized nations, from any participation whatever, before or after the fact, in such unjustifiable and horrid proceedings.
But there is one weighty circumstance which we lament equally with the causes of the war, and with the modes of carrying it on,—that no disposition whatsoever towards peace or reconciliation has ever been shown by those who have directed the public councils of this kingdom, either before the breaking out of these hostilities or during the unhappy continuance of them. Every proposition made in your Parliament to remove the original cause of these troubles, by taking off taxes obnoxious for their principle or their design, has been overruled,—every bill brought in for quiet rejected, even on the first proposition. The petitions of the colonies have not been admitted even to an hearing. The very possibility of public agency, by which such petitions could authentically arrive at Parliament, has been evaded and chicaned away. All the public declarations which indicate anything resembling a disposition to reconciliation seem to us loose, general, equivocal, capable of various meanings, or of none; and they are accordingly construed differently, at different times, by those on whose recommendation they have been made: being wholly unlike the precision and stability of public faith, and bearing no mark of that ingenuous simplicity and native candor and integrity which formerly characterized the English nation.
Instead of any relaxation of the claim of taxing at the discretion of Parliament, your ministers have devised a new mode of enforcing that claim, much more effectual for the oppression of the colonies, though not for your Majesty's service, both as to the quantity and application, than any of the former methods; and their mode has been expressly held out by ministers as a plan not to be departed from by the House of Commons, and as the very condition on which the legislature is to accept the dependence of the colonies.
At length, when, after repeated refusals to hear or to conciliate, an act dissolving your government, by putting your people in America out of your protection, was passed, your ministers suffered several months to elapse without affording to them, or to any community or any individual amongst them, the means of entering into that protection, even on unconditional submission, contrary to your Majesty's gracious declaration from the throne, and in direct violation of the public faith.
We cannot, therefore, agree to unite in new severities against the brethren of our blood for their asserting an independency, to which we know, in our conscience, they have been necessitated by the conduct of those very persons who now make use of that argument to provoke us to a continuance and repetition of the acts which in a regular series have led to this great misfortune.
The reasons, dread Sir, which have been used to justify this perseverance in a refusal to hear or conciliate have been reduced into a sort of Parliamentary maxims which we do not approve. The first of these maxims is, "that the two Houses ought not to receive (as they have hitherto refused to receive) petitions containing matter derogatory to any part of the authority they claim." We conceive this maxim and the consequent practice to be unjustifiable by reason or the practice of other sovereign powers, and that it must be productive, if adhered to, of a total separation between this kingdom and its dependencies. The supreme power, being in ordinary cases the ultimate judge, can, as we conceive, suffer nothing in having any part of his rights excepted to, or even discussed before himself. We know that sovereigns in other countries, where the assertion of absolute regal power is as high as the assertion of absolute power in any politic body can possibly be here, have received many petitions in direct opposition to many of their claims of prerogative,—have listened to them,—condescended to discuss, and to give answers to them. This refusal to admit even the discussion of any part of an undefined prerogative will naturally tend to annihilate any privilege that can be claimed by every inferior dependent community, and every subordinate order in the state.
The next maxim which has been put as a bar to any plan of accommodation is, "that no offer of terms of peace ought to be made, before Parliament is assured that these terms will be accepted." On this we beg leave to represent to your Majesty, that, if, in all events, the policy of this kingdom is to govern the people in your colonies as a free people, no mischief can possibly happen from a declaration to them, and to the world, of the manner and form in which Parliament proposes that they shall enjoy the freedom it protects. It is an encouragement to the innocent and meritorious, that they at least shall enjoy those advantages which they patiently expected rather from the benignity of Parliament than their own efforts. Persons more contumacious may also see that they are resisting terms of perhaps greater freedom and happiness than they are now in arms to obtain. The glory and propriety of offered mercy is neither tarnished nor weakened by the folly of those who refuse to take advantage of it.
We cannot think that the declaration of independency makes any natural difference in the reason and policy of the offer. No prince out of the possession of his dominions, and become a sovereign de jure only, ever thought it derogatory to his rights or his interests to hold out to his former subjects a distinct prospect of the advantages to be derived from his readmission, and a security for some of the most fundamental of those popular privileges in vindication of which he had been deposed. On the contrary, such offers have been almost uniformly made under similar circumstances. Besides, as your Majesty has been graciously pleased, in your speech from the throne, to declare your intention of restoring your people in the colonies to a state of law and liberty, no objection can possibly lie against defining what that law and liberty are; because those who offer and those who are to receive terms frequently differ most widely and most materially in the signification of these words, and in the objects to which they apply.
To say that we do not know, at this day, what the grievances of the colonies are (be they real or pretended) would be unworthy of us. But whilst we are thus waiting to be informed of what we perfectly know, we weaken the powers of the commissioners,—we delay, perhaps we lose, the happy hour of peace,—we are wasting the substance of both countries,—we are continuing the effusion of human, of Christian, of English blood.
We are sure that we must have your Majesty's heart along with us, when we declare in favor of mixing something conciliatory with our force. Sir, we abhor the idea of making a conquest of our countrymen. We wish that they may yield to well-ascertained, well-authenticated, and well-secured terms of reconciliation,—not that your Majesty should owe the recovery of your dominions to their total waste and destruction. Humanity will not permit us to entertain such a desire; nor will the reverence we bear to the civil rights of mankind make us even wish that questions of great difficulty, of the last importance, and lying deep in the vital principles of the British Constitution, should be solved by the arms of foreign mercenary soldiers.