Mr. Hartley. Sir, upon this pause which is offered to you by the return of this Bill from the Lords, I confess that I feel a kind of superstitution to wish for one last word to deprecate the fatal blow, and that our unremitted opposition and remonstrance from the first to the very last stage of this Bill may remain as a memorial, that some of us, at least, lament this final separation of America with an affectionate regret. We are overpowered by numbers, and all our entreaties and remonstrances are in vain. An inflexible majority in parliament have now declared all America to be an independent hostile state. Disputes originally between administration and America, are become, by the influence of administration, the ground of a parliamentary war with America. The sense of the nation is not with that war, and I trust it never will be. However, speaking in parliament to ministers as they seem determined to drive all things to extremities, I must ask whether you are to expect that while you burn their towns, take or destroy their ships and property, they will sit with their arms folded, or whether they will not be driven to repel injury by injury. You have found their active powers of defence by the experience of the last year, when by your orders the shedding of the first civil blood was precipitated on the fatal 19th of April, before your pretended conciliatory motion could be proposed to any of the American assemblies? Why were you found unguarded in Canada? You have lost all Canada. Two regiments are taken prisoners. Your officers are hostages, and yet you proceed in this unjust and unnatural war, with fire, sword, and rapine. What farther hostages may fall into their hands at Boston, or what blood of our fellow subjects may be shed there, I contemplate with horror. I dread some fatal event there. Public report threatens. When the provincials shall hear the fate of their late and last petition, and when they see all prospect of peace become desperate, what can you expect but that they should exert every power to destroy your land forces in America during the severity of the winter, before you can support or relieve them. Who will be answerable for these things? When this Bill of rapine, which now lies before you, gets to them, they will set themselves to retaliate upon your fleet. Your land force has been disgraced and annihilated in the first campaign, notwithstanding all your boastings. Are we not then to expect that those ministers of vengeance who shall press on a naval war with America, shall be responsible to their country, for the consequences of their headstrong measures, if the navy of this country should be brought to disgrace and defeat. Weigh the consequences. If you send large ships they will not be able to act; if small ones, may they not be overpowered? Consider the distance of your operations. Every port in America will be a Dunkirk to you. We know their skill and bravery as privateers in the last war. In any case you are laying the foundation of an hostile marine in America, which has been and ought to be the source of the marine of Great Britain. I cannot be an adviser or a well wisher to any of the vindictive operations against America, because I think the cause unjust; but at the same time I must be equally earnest to secure British interests from destruction; neither a victory of Great Britain over America, nor of America over Great Britain can afford any matter of triumph. Both are equally destructive. If nothing can abate your fury against the Americans in this ministerial war, we shall expect at least that you should guard your own vulnerable parts. Are you guarded at Newfoundland? Are you prepared against any expedition of retaliation if the provincials should meditate any thing to the destruction of your fisheries there? Administration have been the aggressors in every thing, step by step. By this fatal Bill of separation you now declare the Americans to be enemies in form, therefore it is yourselves that force upon them the rights of enemies. You must now be responsible to your country for the events of your own war, to which they have been so reluctant and you so precipitate. When this country shall come to open its eyes, to see and to feel the consequences, they will know of whom to require an account. Sir, I shall now move you, instead of agreeing to the amendments of the Lords, to adjourn the consideration of them for six weeks; I confess with very little hopes of averting this Bill, but as I told you at my out-set, from a superstitious feeling in my mind, to perform the last ceremonial office of affection and everlasting farewell to peace and to America. 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. When the final period of this once happy country shall overtake ourselves, either through tumult or tyranny, may another Phoenix rise out of our ashes! ²