(This text might be useful for someone out there. It's blistering stuff, Dublin-born Edmund Burke was Secretary to the previous Prime Minister, the Whig leader the Marquess of Rockingham - and after America had been 'lost' by political incompetence, after the horse had bolted, Rockingham had a brief second term as PM. Three counties in revolution-era America were given the name Rockingham County, due to the respect the colonists had for him. More about that to follow... )
6 November 1776
Rejoiced I am, Sir, that the learned gentleman has regained, if not his talent, at least his voice; that as he would not, or could not, reply the other night to my hon. friend, charmed as he must have been with the powerful reasoning of that eloquent speech, he had the grace to be silent. On that memorable occasion he lay, like Milton’s devil, prostrate “on the oblivious pool,” confounded and astounded, though called upon by the whole Satanic host. He lay prostrate, dumbfounded, and unable to utter a single syllable, and suffered the goads of the two noble lords to prick him till he scarcely betrayed a single sign of animal or mental sensibility. Why, Sir, would he not be silent now — instead of attempting to answer what in truth was unanswerable?
But the learned gentleman has now called to his assistance the bayonets of 12,000 Hessians; and as he thinks it absurd to reason at present with the Americans, he tells us that by the healing, soothing, merciful measures of foreign swords, at the breasts of those unhappy people, their understandings would be enlightened and they would be enabled to comprehend the subtleties of his logic. It was well said, on another occasion, that your speech demands an army! — and I may say, that the learned gentleman demands blood. Reasoning he says is vain: the sword must convince America and clear up their clouded apprehensions. The learned gentleman’s abilities surely desert him if he is obliged to call such a coarse argument as an army to his assistance; not that I mean anything reflecting on his parts. I always esteem, and sometimes dread, his talents.
But has he told you why commissioners were not sent sooner to America? Has he explained that essential point? Not a jot. Why, after the Act passed for them, were they delayed full seven months and not permitted to sail till May; and why was the commission appointing them delayed till the 6th of that month? Answer this. The blood and devastation that followed was owing to this delay; upon your conscience it ought to lay a heavy load. If the measure was right and necessary in order for conciliation, as the King declared in his speech at the opening of that session, why was it not executed at a time in which it could be effectual instead of being purposely deferred to one when it could not possibly answer any end but that of adding hypocrisy to treachery and insult and mockery to cruelty and oppression? By this delay you drove them into the declaration of independency, not as a matter of choice, but necessity. And now [that] they have declared it, you bring it as an argument to prove that there can be no other reasoning used with them but the sword. What is this but declaring that you were originally determined not to prevent but to punish rebellion, not to use conciliation but an army, not to convince but to destroy? Such were the effects of those seven months cruelly lost, to which every mischief that has happened since must be attributed.
But still the learned gentleman persists, that nothing but the commissioners can give peace to America — [that] it is beyond the power of this House. What was the result of the conference with the delegates from the Congress? Why, we are told that they met in order to be convinced that taxation is no grievance — “no tyranny” used to be the phrase; but that is out of fashion now. Then, Sir, what an insult to all America was it to send as commissioners none but the commanders of the fleet and army to negotiate peace! Did it not shew how much you were determined that the only arguments you meant to use were your broadswords and broadsides. Let me assert, Sir, that the doctrines to be laid down in America would not have been too trivial an occasion, even for the reasoning abilities of the learned gentleman himself. But, Sir, you may think to carry these doctrines into execution — and be mistaken too; the battle is not yet fought. But if it was fought and the wreath of victory adorned your brow, still is not that continent conquered.
Witness the behaviour of one miserable woman who, with her single arm, did that which an army of a hundred thousand men could not do — arrested your progress in the moment of your success. This miserable being was found in a cellar, with her visage besmeared and smutted over, with every mark of rage, despair, resolution, and the most exalted heroism, buried in combustibles, in order to fire New York and perish in its ashes. She was brought forth and, knowing that she would be condemned to die, upon being asked her purpose, said, “to fire the city!’’ and was determined to omit no opportunity of doing what her country called for. Her train was laid and fired; and it is worthy of your attention how Providence was pleased to make use of those humble means to serve the American cause, when open force was used in vain.
In order to bring things to this unhappy situation, did not you pave the way, by a succession of acts of tyranny? For this you shut up their ports, cut off their fishery, annihilated their charter, and governed them by an army. Sir, the recollection of these things, being the evident causes of what we have seen, is more than what ought to be endured. This it is that has burnt the noble city of New York, that has planted the bayonet in the bosoms of my principals — in the bosom of the city where alone your wretched government once boasted the only friends she could number in America. If this was not the only succession of events you determined, and therefore looked for, why was America left without any power in it, to give security to the persons and property of those who were and wished to be loyal — this was essential to government. You did not, and might therefore be well said to have abdicated the government.
Gods! Sir, shall we be told that you cannot analyze grievances? — that you can have no communication with rebels because they have declared for independency? — Shall you be told this when the tyrant Philip did it after the same circumstance in the Netherlands. By edict he allowed their ships to enter their ports and suffered them to depart in peace; he treated with them; made them propositions; and positively declared that he would redress all their grievances. And James II, when he was sailing from France at the head of a formidable force, assisted like you by foreign troops, and having a great party in the kingdom, still offered specific terms — while his exceptions of pardon were few, amongst the rest my hon. friend’s ancestor, Sir Stephen Fox. But you will offer none. You simply tell them to lay down their arms and then you will do just as you please. Could the most cruel conqueror say less? Had you conquered the devil himself in hell, could you be less liberal? No! Sir, you would offer no terms. You meant to drive them to the declaration of independency; and even after it was issued, ought by your offers to have reversed the effect. You would not receive the remonstrance which I brought you from New York because it denied your rights to certain powers; yet the late king of France received the remonstrances from his parliaments that expressly denied his right to the powers he was in the constant exercise of, answered them, and even redressed some of the grievances which those very remonstrances complained of, though he refused to grant what he thought more peculiarly entrenched upon his own authority.
In this situation, Sir, shocking to say, are we called upon by another proclamation to go to the altar of the Almighty, with war and vengeance in our hearts, instead of the peace of our blessed Saviour. He said, “My peace I give you.” But we are, on this fast, to have war only in our hearts and mouths, war against our brethren. Till our churches are purified from this abominable service, I shall consider them, not as the temples of the Almighty, but the synagogues of Satan.
An act not more infamous, respecting its political purposes, than blasphemous and profane as a pretended act of national devotion, when the people are called upon, in the most solemn and awful manner, to repair to church, to partake of a sacrament, and, at the foot of the altar, to commit sacrilege, to perjure themselves publicly by charging their American brethren with the horrid crime of rebellion, with propagating “specious falsehoods,” when either the charge must be notoriously false, or those who make it, not knowing it to be true, call Almighty God to witness — not a specious but — a most audacious and blasphemous falsehood.
(The House groaned at this point of the speech, and some called out, “Order,” “Order.”) He said he rejoiced to hear such an involuntary burst of approbation of his remarks. He then repeated them, and, after urging the expediency of our ending the dispute with America, gave his hearty assent to Lord John’s motion.
.png)
