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whole continent of North America will be dismembered from Great Britain, and the wide arch of the raised empire will fall. But may the just vengeance of the people overtake the authors of these pernicious counsels! May the loss of the first province of the empire be speedily followed by the loss of the heads of those ministers who have persisted in these wicked, these fatal, these most disastrous measures!
II
CONQUEST OF AMERICA IMPOSSIBLE[1]
(1777)
Sir, it ill becomes the duty and dignity of Parliament to lose itself in such a fulsome adulatory address to the Throne as that now proposed. We ought rather, sir, to approach it with sound and wholesome advice, and even with remonstrances, against the ministers who have precipitated the nation into an unjust, ruinous, murderous and felonious war. I call the war with our brethren in America an unjust and felonious war, because the primary cause and confessed origin of it is to attempt to take their money from them without their consent, contrary to the common rights of all mankind, and
- ↑ The date of this speech is probably November or December, 1777, when Lord Chatham had already delivered against the American war the speech entitled "On Affairs in America."
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