on the unforced gaiety by which he himself is swayed at the moment, and which he has the art and the power to diffuse among his hearers. The walls of the chamber fairly shook with applause; Lord North himself "was almost suffocated by laughter"; and Colonel Barré declared that, if Burke would only print the speech, he, on his part, would undertake that it should be nailed to the door of every parish church beneath the notice proclaiming a day of general fasting and humiliation on account of the surrender of Saratoga. That speech would explain, far better than the homily of any courtly bishop, the real causes of the disaster which had brought the nation to dust and ashes.

The reception accorded to Edmund Burke's exposition of his plan of Economical Reform was of a nature which left him nothing to desire. An immense crowd of members sat and stood, listening, and learning, and enjoying while he rolled out his vivid and picturesque, but most accurate and businesslike, catalogue of financial abuses, and while he descanted upon their intimate relation to the good fame and efficiency of Parliament. After holding his audience during more than three hours he wound up what he had to say with a few unadorned sentences, pitched in a quiet strain; and, when Edmund Burke spoke calmly and simply under the stress of deep emotion, his words always possessed a strange and mysterious charm. The House remained spell-bound. Fox took off his hat to second the motion. North, embarrassed, and a great deal more than half-convinced, stated it

as his belief that no other gentleman could have been equal to the task so ably performed by the Honorable Member, "although he had the happiness to know that there were many then present who had very brilliant parts." Burke approached the subject in a spirit of high comedy. He professed a desire to rescue a company of eminent writers from dry and irksome functions which distracted them from loftier studies, and more congenial labors. As an Academy of Belles Lettres, he said, he held them hallowed. As a Board of Trade he wished to abolish them. That Board, to his view, was a crow's nest in which nightingales were kept prisoners; and his design was to restore the nightingales to their liberty in the hope that they might sing the more delightfully. Aroused by the sympathy and applause of his audience, which has often inspired lesser men, Burke positively reveled in the freedom and license of committee. He spoke as often as he chose, and each successive apologist for the Board of Trade was overwhelmed by the exuberance of his diction and imagination, and the irresistible play of his satire. "I can never," so Gibbon confessed, "forget the delight with which that diffusive and ingenious orator was heard by all sides of the House, and even by those whose existence he proscribed. The Lords of Trade blushed at their own insignificancy; and Mr. Eden's appeal to the thousand five hundred volumes of our reports served only to excite a general laugh." At a quarter past two in the morning the Committee at length divided, and voted for abolishing the Board by two hundred and seven as against a hundred and ninety-nine.

V

SPEECH OF WILLIAM PITT, THE EARL OF

CHATHAM

IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS, JANUARY 20, 1775, MOVING AN

ADDRESS TO HIS MAJESTY FOR THE IMMEDIATE REMOVAL OF HIS TROOPS FROM BOSTON.

I congratulate your Lordships that the business is at last entered upon by the noble Lord's laying the papers before you. As I suppose your Lordships too well apprised of their contents, I hope I am not premature in submitting to you my present motion:

That an humble address be presented to his Majesty, humbly to desire and beseech his Majesty that in order to open the way towards a happy settlement of the dangerous troubles in America, by beginning to allay ferments and soften animosities there, and above all for preventing in the meantime any sudden and fatal catastrophe at Boston, now suffering under the daily irritation of an army before their eyes, posted in their town, it may graciously please his Majesty that immediate orders be despatched to General Gage for removing his Majesty's forces from the town of Boston as soon as the rigor of the season and other circumstances indispensable to the safety and accommodation of the said troops may render the same practicable.

I wish, my Lords, not to lose a day in this urgent, pressing crisis; an hour now lost in allaying ferments in America may produce years of calamity. For my own part, I will not desert, for a moment, the conduct of this weighty business, from the first to the last; unless nailed to my bed by the extremity of sickness, I will give it unremitted attention; I will knock at the door of this sleeping and confounded Ministry, and will rouse them to a sense of their important danger.

When I state the importance of the colonies to this country, and the magnitude of the danger hanging over this country, from the present plan of mis-administration practiced against them, I desire not to be understood to argue for a reciprocity of indulgence between England and America. I contend not for indulgence, but for justice to America; and I shall ever contend that the Americans justly owe obedience to us in a limited degree, they owe obedience to our ordinances of trade and navigation. But let the line be skilfully drawn between the objects of those ordinances and their private, internal property; let the sacredness of their property remain inviolate; let it be taxable only by their own consent, given in their provincial assemblies, else it will cease to be property. As to the metaphysical refinements, attempting to show that the Americans are equally free from obedience and commercial restraints as from taxation for revenue, as being unrepresented here, I pronounce them futile, frivolous, and groundless.

When I urge this measure of recalling the troops from Boston, I urge it on this pressing principle, that

it is necessarily preparatory to the restoration of your peace, and the establishment of your prosperity. It will then appear that you are disposed to treat amicably and equitably, and to consider, revise, and repeal, if it should be found necessary, as I affirm it will, those violent acts and declarations which have disseminated confusion throughout your empire.

Resistance to your acts was necessary as it was just; and your vain declarations of the omnipotence of Parliament, and your imperious doctrines of the necessity of submission, will be found equally impotent to convince or to enslave your fellow-subjects in America, who feel that tyranny, whether ambitioned by an individual part of the legislature or the bodies who compose it, is equally intolerable to British subjects.

The means of enforcing this thraldom are found to be as ridiculous and weak in practice as they are unjust in principle. Indeed, I cannot but feel the most anxious sensibility for the situation of General Gage and the troops under his command; thinking him, as I do, a man of humanity and understanding; and entertaining, as I ever will, the highest respect, the warmest love, for the British troops. Their situation is truly unworthy, penned up pining in inglorious inactivity. They are an army of impotence. You may call them an army of safety and of guard; but they are in truth an army of impotence and contempt; and to make the folly equal to the disgrace, they are an army of irritation and vexation.

But I find a report creeping abroad that Ministers censure General Gage's inactivity: let them censure