ON AN ADDRESS TO THE THRONE CONCERNING AFFAIRS IN AMERICA. HOUSE OF
LORDS, NOVEMBER 18, 1777.
Though at the delivery of this speech Chatham had already entered
upon his seventieth year, he seems to have been inspired with all the
fire of his youth. It is by most critics regarded as his greatest
effort. Chatham had abundant reason for an extraordinary affection
for America, and, as he saw that a persistence in the mad course
entered upon would inevitably result in a loss of the colonies, he
brought all his powers to an advocacy of a treaty of peace on such
terms as would at once save the colonies and the honor of the mother
country. It is the only speech of Chatham, the report of which was
corrected by himself and published with his approval.
I rise, my Lords, to declare my sentiments on this most solemn and
serious subject. It has imposed a load upon my mind, which, I fear,
nothing can remove, but which impels me to endeavor its alleviation, by
a free and unreserved communication of my sentiments.
In the first part of the address, I have the honor of heartily
concurring with the noble Earl who moved it. No man feels sincerer
joy than I do; none can offer more genuine congratulations on every
accession of strength to the Protestant succession. I therefore join in
every congratulation on the birth of another princess, and the happy
recovery of her Majesty.
But I must stop here. My courtly complaisance will carry me no farther.
I will not join in congratulation on misfortune and disgrace. I cannot
concur in a blind and servile address, which approves and endeavors
to sanctify the monstrous measures which have heaped disgrace and
misfortune upon us. This, my Lords, is a perilous and tremendous
moment! It is not a time for adulation. The smoothness of flattery
cannot now avail—cannot save us in this rugged and awful crisis. It is
now necessary to instruct the Throne in the language of truth. We must
dispel the illusion and the darkness which envelop it, and display, in
its full danger and true colors, the ruin that is brought to our doors.
This, my Lords, is our duty. It is the proper function of this noble
assembly, sitting, as we do, upon our honors in this House, the
hereditary council of the Crown. _Who_ is the minister—_where_ is
the minister, that has dared to suggest to the Throne the contrary,
unconstitutional language this day delivered from it? The accustomed
language from the Throne has been application to Parliament for advice,
and a reliance on its constitutional advice and assistance. As it is
the right of Parliament to give, so it is the duty of the Crown to
ask it. But on this day, and in this extreme momentous exigency, no
reliance is reposed on our constitutional counsels! no advice is asked
from the sober and enlightened care of Parliament! but the Crown, from
itself and by itself, declares an unalterable determination to pursue
measures—and what measures, my Lords? The measures that have produced
the imminent perils that threaten us; the measures that have brought
ruin to our doors.
Can the minister of the day now presume to expect a continuance of
support in this ruinous infatuation? Can Parliament be so dead to its
dignity and its duty as to be thus deluded into the loss of the one and
the violation of the other? To give an unlimited credit and support for
the steady perseverance in measures not proposed for our parliamentary
advice, but dictated and forced upon us—in measures, I say, my Lords,
which have reduced this late flourishing empire to ruin and contempt!
“But yesterday, and England might have stood against the world: now
none so poor to do her reverence.” I use the words of a poet; but,
though it be poetry, it is no fiction. It is a shameful truth, that
not only the power and strength of this country are wasting away and
expiring, but her well-earned glories, her true honor, and substantial
dignity are sacrificed.
France, my Lords, has insulted you; she has encouraged and sustained
America; and, whether America be wrong or right, the dignity of this
country ought to spurn at the officious insult of French interference.
The ministers and embassadors of those who are called rebels and
enemies are in Paris; in Paris they transact the reciprocal interests
of America and France. Can there be a more mortifying insult? Can
even our ministers sustain a more humiliating disgrace? Do they dare
to resent it? Do they presume even to hint a vindication of their
honor, and the dignity of the State, by requiring the dismission of
the plenipotentiaries of America? Such is the degradation to which
they have reduced the glories of England! The people whom they
affect to call contemptible rebels, but whose growing power has at
last obtained the name of enemies; the people with whom they have
engaged this country in war, and against whom they now command our
implicit support in every measure of desperate hostility—this people,
despised as rebels, or acknowledged as enemies, are abetted against
you, supplied with every military store, their interests consulted,
and their embassadors entertained, by your inveterate enemy! and our
ministers dare not interpose with dignity or effect. Is this the honor
of a great kingdom? Is this the indignant spirit of England, who “but
yesterday” gave law to the house of Bourbon? My Lords, the dignity
of nations demands a decisive conduct in a situation like this. Even
when the greatest prince that perhaps this country ever saw filled our
Throne, the requisition of a Spanish general, on a similar subject, was
attended to and complied with; for, on the spirited remonstrance of
the Duke of Alva, Elizabeth found herself obliged to deny the Flemish
exiles all countenance, support, or even entrance into her dominions;
and the Count Le Marque, with his few desperate followers, were
expelled the kingdom. Happening to arrive at the Brille, and finding
it weak in defence, they made themselves masters of the place; and
this was the foundation of the United Provinces.
My Lords, this ruinous and ignominious situation, where we can not
act with success, nor suffer with honor, calls upon us to remonstrate
in the strongest and loudest language of truth, to rescue the ear of
majesty from the delusions which surround it. The desperate state
of our arms abroad is in part known. No man thinks more highly of
them than I do. I love and honor the English troops. I know their
virtues and their valor. I know they can achieve any thing except
impossibilities; and I know that the conquest of English America _is an
impossibility_. You cannot, I venture to say it, _you cannot_ conquer
America. Your armies in the last war effected every thing that could be
effected; and what was it? It cost a numerous army, under the command
of a most able general [Lord Amherst], now a noble Lord in this House,
a long and laborious campaign, to expel five thousand Frenchmen from
French America. My Lords, _you cannot conquer America_. What is your
present situation there? We do not know the worst; but we know that in
three campaigns we have done nothing and suffered much. Besides the
sufferings, perhaps _total loss_ of the Northern force,[32] the best
appointed army that ever took the field, commanded by Sir William Howe,
has retired from the American lines. _He was obliged_ to relinquish his
attempt, and with great delay and danger to adopt a new and distant
plan of operations. We shall soon know, and in any event have reason
to lament, what may have happened since. As to conquest, therefore,
my Lords, I repeat, it is impossible. You may swell every expense
and every effort still more extravagantly; pile and accumulate every
assistance you can buy or borrow; traffic and barter with every little
pitiful German prince that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles
of a foreign prince; your efforts are forever vain and impotent—doubly
so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates, to
an incurable resentment, the minds of your enemies, to overrun them
with the mercenary sons of rapine and plunder, devoting them and their
possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an American,
as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country,
I never would lay down my arms—never—never—never.
Your own army is infected with the contagion of these illiberal allies.
The spirit of plunder and of rapine is gone forth among them. I know
it; and, notwithstanding what the noble Earl [Lord Percy] who moved
the address has given as his opinion of the American army, I know from
authentic information, and the _most experienced officers_, that our
discipline is deeply wounded. While this is notoriously our sinking
situation, America grows and flourishes; while our strength and
discipline are lowered, hers are rising and improving.
But, my Lords, who is the man that, in addition to these disgraces and
mischiefs of our army, has dared to authorize and associate to our arms
the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the savage? to call into civilized
alliance the wild and inhuman savage of the woods; to delegate to
the merciless Indian the defence of disputed rights, and to wage the
horrors of his barbarous war against our brethren? My Lords, these
enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment. Unless thoroughly done
away, it will be a stain on the national character. It is a violation
of the Constitution. I believe it is against law. It is not the least
of our national misfortunes that the strength and character of our
army are thus impaired. Infected with the mercenary spirit of robbery
and rapine; familiarized to the horrid scenes of savage cruelty, it
can no longer boast of the noble and generous principles which dignify
a soldier; no longer sympathize with the dignity of the royal banner,
nor feel the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war, “that make
ambition virtue!” What makes ambition virtue?—the sense of honor. But
is the sense of honor consistent with a spirit of plunder, or the
practice of murder? Can it flow from mercenary motives, or can it
prompt to cruel deeds? Besides these murderers and plunderers, let me
ask our ministers, What other allies have they acquired? What _other
powers_ have they associated in their cause? Have they entered into
alliance with the _king of the gipsies_? Nothing, my Lords, is too low
or too ludicrous to be consistent with their counsels.
The independent views of America have been stated and asserted as
the foundation of this address. My Lords, no man wishes for the due
dependence of America on this country more than I do. To preserve it,
and not confirm that state of independence into which _your measures_
hitherto have _driven them_, is the object which we ought to unite in
attaining. The Americans, contending for their rights against arbitrary
exactions, I love and admire. It is the struggle of free and virtuous
patriots. But, contending for independency and total disconnection
from England, as an Englishman, I cannot wish them success; for in
a due constitutional dependency, including the ancient supremacy of
this country in regulating their commerce and navigation, consists
the mutual happiness and prosperity both of England and America. She
derived assistance and protection from us; and we reaped from her the
most important advantages. She was, indeed, the fountain of our wealth,
the nerve of our strength, the nursery and basis of our naval power. It
is our duty, therefore, my Lords, if we wish to save our country, most
seriously to endeavor the recovery of these most beneficial subjects;
and in this perilous crisis, perhaps the present moment may be the
only one in which we can hope for success. For in their negotiations
with France, they have, or think they have, reason to complain; though
it be notorious that they have received from that power important
supplies and assistance of various kinds, yet it is certain they
expected it in a more decisive and immediate degree. America is in
ill humor with France; on some points they have not entirely answered
her expectations. Let us wisely take advantage of every possible
moment of reconciliation. Besides, the natural disposition of America
herself still leans toward England; to the old habits of connection and
mutual interest that united both countries. This _was_ the established
sentiment of all the Continent; and still, my Lords, in the great and
principal part, the sound part of America, this wise and affectionate
disposition prevails. And there is a very considerable part of America
yet sound—the middle and the southern provinces. Some parts may be
factious and blind to their true interests; but if we express a wise
and benevolent disposition to communicate with them those immutable
rights of nature and those constitutional liberties to which they
are equally entitled with ourselves, by a conduct so just and humane
we shall confirm the favorable and conciliate the adverse. I say, my
Lords, the rights and liberties to which they are equally entitled
with ourselves, _but no more_. I would participate to them every
enjoyment and freedom which the colonizing subjects of a free state
can possess, or wish to possess; and I do not see why they should not
enjoy every fundamental right in their property, and every original
substantial liberty, which Devonshire, or Surrey, or the county I live
in, or any other county in England, can claim; reserving always, as the
sacred right of the mother country, the due constitutional dependency
of the colonies. The inherent supremacy of the state in regulating
and protecting the navigation and commerce of all her subjects, is
necessary for the mutual benefit and preservation of every part, to
constitute and preserve the prosperous arrangement of the whole empire.
The sound parts of America, of which I have spoken, must be sensible
of these great truths and of their real interests. America is not in
that state of desperate and contemptible rebellion which this country
has been deluded to believe. It is not a wild and lawless banditti,
who, having nothing to lose, might hope to snatch something from public
convulsions. Many of their leaders and great men have a great stake
in this great contest. The gentleman who conducts their armies, I am
told, has an estate of four or five thousand pounds a year; and when I
consider these things, I cannot but lament the inconsiderate violence
of our penal acts, our declaration of treason and rebellion, with all
the fatal effects of attainder and confiscation.
As to the disposition of foreign powers which is asserted [in the
King’s speech] to be pacific and friendly, let us judge, my Lords,
rather by their actions and the nature of things than by interested
assertions. The uniform assistance supplied to America by France
suggests a different conclusion. The most important interests of
France in aggrandizing and enriching herself with what she most wants,
supplies of every naval store from America, must inspire her with
different sentiments. The extraordinary preparations of the House of
Bourbon, by land and by sea, from Dunkirk to the Straits, equally
ready and willing to overwhelm these defenceless islands, should rouse
us to a sense of their real disposition and our own danger.[33] Not
five thousand troops in England! hardly three thousand in Ireland!
What can we oppose to the combined force of our enemies? Scarcely
twenty ships of the line so fully or sufficiently manned, that any
admiral’s reputation would permit him to take the command of. The
river of Lisbon in the possession of our enemies! The seas swept by
American privateers! Our Channel trade torn to pieces by them! In this
complicated crisis of danger, weakness at home, and calamity abroad,
terrified and insulted by the neighboring powers, unable to act in
America, or acting only to be destroyed, where is the man with the
forehead to promise or hope for success in such a situation, or from
perseverence in the measures that have driven us to it? Who has the
forehead to do so? Where is that man? I should be glad to see his face.
You can not _conciliate_ America by your present measures. You cannot
_subdue_ her by your present or by any measures. What, then, can you
do? You cannot conquer; you cannot gain; but you can _address_; you
can lull the fears and anxieties of the moment into an ignorance of
the danger that should produce them. But, my Lords, the time demands
the language of truth. We must not now apply the flattering unction
of servile compliance or blind complaisance. In a just and necessary
war, to maintain the rights or honor of my country, I would strip the
shirt from my back to support it. But in such a war as this, unjust
in its principle, impracticable in its means, and ruinous in its
consequences, I would not contribute a single effort nor a single
shilling. I do not call for vengeance on the heads of those who have
been guilty; I only recommend to them to make their retreat. Let them
walk off; and let them make haste, or they may be assured that speedy
and condign punishment will overtake them.
My Lords, I have submitted to you, with the freedom and truth which
I think my duty, my sentiments on your present awful situation. I
have laid before you the ruin of your power, the disgrace of your
reputation, the pollution of your discipline, the contamination of
your morals, the complication of calamities, foreign and domestic,
that overwhelm your sinking country. Your dearest interests, your own
liberties, the Constitution itself, totters to the foundation. All
this disgraceful danger, this multitude of misery, is the monstrous
offspring of this unnatural war. We have been deceived and deluded
too long. Let us now stop short. This is the crisis—the only crisis
of time and situation, to give us a possibility of escape from the
fatal effects of our delusions. But if, in an obstinate and infatuated
perseverance in folly, we slavishly echo the peremptory words this day
presented to us, nothing can save this devoted country from complete
and final ruin. We madly rush into multiplied miseries, and “confusion
worse confounded.”
Is it possible, can it be believed, that ministers are yet blind to
this impending destruction? I did hope, that instead of this false and
empty vanity, this overweening pride, engendering high conceits and
presumptuous imaginations, ministers would have humbled themselves
in their errors, would have confessed and retracted them, and by an
active, though a late, repentance, have endeavored to redeem them.
But, my Lords, since they had neither sagacity to foresee, nor justice
nor humanity to shun these oppressive calamities—since not even severe
experience can make them feel, nor the imminent ruin of their country
awaken them from their stupefaction, the guardian care of Parliament
must interpose. I shall, therefore, my Lords, propose to you an
amendment of the address to his Majesty, to be inserted immediately
after the two first paragraphs of congratulation on the birth of a
princess, to recommend an immediate cessation of hostilities, and the
commencement of a treaty to restore peace and liberty to America,
strength and happiness to England, security and permanent prosperity
to both countries. This, my Lords, is yet in our power; and let not the
wisdom and justice of your Lordships neglect the happy, and, perhaps,
the only opportunity. By the establishment of irrevocable law, founded
on mutual rights, and ascertained by treaty, these glorious enjoyments
may be firmly perpetuated. And let me repeat to your Lordships, that
the strong bias of America, at least of the wise and sounder parts of
it, naturally inclines to this happy and constitutional reconnection
with you. Notwithstanding the temporary intrigues with France, we may
still be assured of their ancient and confirmed partiality to us.
America and France cannot be congenial. There is something decisive
and confirmed in the honest American, that will not assimilate to the
futility and levity of Frenchmen.
My Lords, to encourage and confirm that innate inclination to
this country, founded on every principle of affection, as well as
consideration of interest; to restore that favorable disposition into a
permanent and powerful reunion with this country; to revive the mutual
strength of the empire; again to awe the House of Bourbon, instead of
meanly truckling, as our present calamities compel us, to every insult
of French caprice and Spanish punctilio; to re-establish our commerce;
to reassert our rights and our honor; to confirm our interests,
and renew our glories forever—a consummation most devoutly to be
endeavored! and which, I trust, may yet arise from reconciliation with
America—I have the honor of submitting to you the following amendment,
which I move to be inserted after the two first paragraphs of the
address:
“And that this House does most humbly advise and supplicate his Majesty
to be pleased to cause the most speedy and effectual measures to be
taken for restoring peace in America; and that no time may be lost in
proposing an immediate opening of a treaty for the final settlement of
the tranquillity of these invaluable provinces, by a removal of the
unhappy causes of this ruinous civil war, and by a just and adequate
security against the return of the like calamities in times to come.
And this House desire to offer the most dutiful assurances to his
Majesty, that they will, in due time, cheerfully co-operate with the
magnanimity and tender goodness of his Majesty for the preservation
of his people, by such explicit and most solemn declarations, and
provisions of fundamental and irrevocable laws, as may be judged
necessary for the ascertaining and fixing forever the respective rights
of Great Britain and her colonies.”
[In the course of this debate, Lord Suffolk, secretary for the northern
department, undertook to defend the employment of the Indians in the
war. His Lordship contended that, besides its _policy_ and _necessity_,
the measure was also allowable on _principle_; for that “it was
perfectly justifiable to use all the means that _God and nature put
into our hands_!”]
I am astonished [exclaimed Lord Chatham, as he rose], shocked! to hear
such principles confessed—to hear them avowed in this House, or in this
country; principles equally unconstitutional, inhuman, and unchristian!
My Lords, I did not intend to have encroached again upon your
attention, but I cannot repress my indignation. I feel myself impelled
by every duty. My Lords, we are called upon as members of this House,
as men, as Christian men, to protest against such notions standing
near the Throne, polluting the ear of Majesty. “That God and nature
put into our hands!” I know not what ideas that Lord may entertain
of God and nature, but I know that such abominable principles are
equally abhorrent to religion and humanity. What! to attribute the
sacred sanction of God and nature to the massacres of the Indian
scalping-knife—to the cannibal savage, torturing, murdering, roasting,
and eating—literally, my Lords, _eating_ the mangled victims of his
barbarous battles! Such horrible notions shock every precept of
religion, divine or natural, and every generous feeling of humanity.
And, my Lords, they shock every sentiment of honor; they shock me as a
lover of honorable war, and a detester of murderous barbarity.
These abominable principles, and this more abominable avowal of them,
demand the most decisive indignation. I call upon that right reverend
bench, those holy ministers of the Gospel, and pious pastors of our
Church—I conjure them to join in the holy work, and vindicate the
religion of their God. I appeal to the wisdom and the law of this
learned bench, to defend and support the justice of their country. I
call upon the Bishops to interpose the unsullied sanctity of their
lawn; upon the learned judges, to interpose the purity of their
ermine, to save us from this pollution. I call upon the honor of
your Lordships, to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to
maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country
to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the
Constitution. From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal
ancestor of this noble Lord frowns with indignation at the disgrace
of his country.[34] In vain he led your victorious fleets against the
boasted Armada of Spain; in vain he defended and established the honor,
the liberties, the religion—the _Protestant religion_—of this country,
against the arbitrary cruelties of popery and the Inquisition, if
these more than popish cruelties and inquisitorial practices are let
loose among us—to turn forth into our settlements, among our ancient
connections, friends, and relations, the merciless cannibal, thirsting
for the blood of man, woman and child, to send forth the infidel
savage—against whom? against your Protestant brethren; to lay waste
their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race
and name with these horrible hell-hounds of savage war—_hell-hounds, I
say, of savage war!_ Spain armed herself with blood-hounds to extirpate
the wretched natives of America, and we improve on the inhuman example
even of Spanish cruelty; we turn loose these savage hell-hounds
against our brethren and countrymen in America, of the same language,
laws, liberties, and religion, endeared to us by every tie that should
sanctify humanity.
My Lords, this awful subject, so important to our honor, our
Constitution, and our religion, demands the most solemn and effectual
inquiry. And I again call upon your Lordships, and the united powers of
the State, to examine it thoroughly and decisively, and to stamp upon
it an indelible stigma of the public abhorrence. And I again implore
those holy prelates of our religion to do away these iniquities from
among us. Let them perform a lustration; let them purify this House,
and this country, from this sin.
My Lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my
feelings and indignation were too strong to have said less. I could
not have slept this night in my bed, nor reposed my head on my pillow,
without giving this vent to my eternal abhorrence of such preposterous
and enormous principles.
The warning voice was heard in vain. Chatham’s urgent anxiety was
not enough to carry his amendment. It was lost by a vote of 97 to
24. The address triumphed; Parliament adjourned; the members went
to their Christmas festivities; the treaty with France was framed
and ratified; and the chance of recovering the colonies was lost
forever. Chatham did not live till the end of the war, but as soon as
he learned that the treaty with France was signed, he knew that the
fatal result was inevitable.