for their victims; and therefore nothing is more remote from the tendency of the proposed act than any idea of retirement or repose. On the contrary, you have all of you, as principals or auxiliaries, a much better and more desperate conflict, in all probability, to undergo than any you have been yet engaged in. The only question is, whether the risk ought to be run for the chance (and it is no more) of recalling the people of England to their ancient principles, and to that personal interest which formerly they took in all public affairs? At any rate, I am sure it is right, if we take this step, to take it with a full view of the consequences; and with minds and measures in a state of preparation to meet them. It is not becoming that your boldness should arise from a want of foresight. It is more reputable, and certainly it is more safe, too, that it should be grounded on the evident necessity of encountering the dangers which you foresee. Your Lordship will have the goodness to excuse me, if I state in strong terms the difficulties attending a measure, which on the whole I heartily concur in. But as, from my want of importance, I can be personally little subject to the most trying part of the consequences, it is as little my desire to urge others to dangers in which I am myself to have so inconsiderable a share. If this measure should be thought too great for our strength, or the dispositions of the times, then the point will be to consider what is to be done in Parliament. A weak, irregular, desultory, peevish opposition there will be as much too little as the other may be too big. Our scheme ought to be such, as to have in it a succession of measures; else it is impossible to secure anything like a regular attendance; opposition will otherwise always carry a disreputable air; neither will it be possible, without that attendance, to persuade the people that we are in earnest. Above all, a motion should be well digested for the first day. There is one thing in particular I wish to recommend to your Lordship's consideration; that is, the opening of the doors of the House of Commons. Without this, I am clearly convinced, it will be in the power of ministry to make our opposition appear without doors just in what light they please. To obtain a gallery is the easiest thing in the world, if we are satisfied to cultivate the esteem of our adversaries by the resolution and energy with which we act against them: but if their satisfaction and good humour be any part of our object, the attempt, I admit, is idle. I had some conversation, before I left town, with the D. of M. He is of opinion, that, if you adhere to your resolution of seceding, you ought not to appear on the first day of the meeting. He thinks it can have no effect, except to break the continuity of your conduct, and thereby to weaken and fritter away the impression of it. It certainly will seem odd to give solemn reasons for a discontinuance of your attendance in parliament, after having two or three times returned to it, and immediately after a vigorous act of opposition. As to trials of the temper of the House, there have been of that sort so many already, that I see no reason for making another that would not hold equally good for another after that; particularly, as nothing has happened in the least calculated to alter the disposition of the House. If the secession were to be general, such an attendance, followed by such an act, would have force; but being in its nature incomplete and broken, to break it further by retreats and returns to the chase must entirely destroy its effect. I confess I am quite of the D. of M.'s opinion in this point. I send your Lordship a corrected copy of the paper; your Lordship will be so good to communicate it, if you should approve of the alterations, to Lord J. C. and Sir G. S. I showed it to the D. of P. before his Grace left town, and at his, the D. of P.'s desire, I have sent it to the D. of R. The principal alteration is in the pages last but It is made to remove a difficulty which had been suggested to Sir G. S., and which he thought had a good Ideal in it. I think it much the better for that alteration. Indeed it may want still more corrections, in order to adapt it to the present or probable future state of things. one. What shall I say in excuse for this long letter, which frightens me when I look back upon it? Your Lordship will take it, and all in it, with your usual incomparable temper, which carries you through so much both from enemies and friends. My most humble respects to Lady R., and believe me, with the highest regard, ever, etc. E. B. I hear that Dr. Franklin has had a most extraordinary reception at Paris from all ranks of people. Beaconsfield, Monday night, : 1 AN ADDRESS TO THE KING 1 WE, your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, several of the peers of the realm, and several members of the House of Commons chosen by the people to represent them in parliament, do in our individual capacity, but with hearts filled with a warm affection to your Majesty, with a strong attachment to your royal house, and with the most unfeigned devotion to your true interest, beg leave, at this crisis of your affairs, in all humility to approach your royal presence. Whilst we lament the measures adopted by the public councils of the kingdom, we do not mean to question the legal validity of their proceedings. We do not desire to appeal from them to any person whatsoever. We do not dispute the conclusive authority of the bodies in which we have a place over all their members. We know that it is our ordinary duty to submit ourselves to the determinations of the majority in everything except what regards the just defence of our honour and reputation. But the situation into which the British empire has been brought, and the conduct to which we are reluctantly driven in that situation, we hold ourselves bound by the relation in which we stand both to the Crown and the people clearly to explain to your Majesty and our country. We have been called upon in the speech from the throne at the opening of this session of parliament, in a manner peculiarly marked, singularly emphatical, and from a place from whence anything implying censure falls with no common weight, to concur in unanimous approbation of those measures which have produced our present distresses, and threaten us in future with others far more grievous. We trust, therefore, that we shall stand justified in offering to our sovereign and the public our reasons for persevering inflexibly in our uniform 1 See note, p. 153. dissent from every part of those measures. We lament them from an experience of their mischief, as we originally opposed them from a sure foresight of their unhappy and inevitable tendency. We see nothing in the present events in the least degree sufficient to warrant an alteration in our opinion. We were always steadily averse to this civil war-not because we thought it impossible that it should be attended with victory; but because we were fully persuaded that in such a contest victory would only vary the mode of our ruin; and, by making it less immediately sensible, would render it the more lasting and the more irretrievable. Experience had but too fully instructed us in the possibility of the reduction of a free people to slavery by foreign mercenary armies. But we had an horror of becoming the instruments in a design of which, in our turn, we might become the victims. Knowing the inestimable value of peace, and the contemptible value of what was sought by war, we wished to compose the distractions of our country, not by the use of foreign arms, but by prudent regulations in our own domestic policy. We deplored, as your Majesty has done in your speech from the throne, the disorders which prevail in your empire: but we are convinced that the disorders of the people, in the present time and in the present place, are owing to the usual and natural cause of such disorders at all times, and in all places, where such have prevailed, the misconduct of government;-that they are owing to plans laid in error, pursued with obstinacy, and conducted without wisdom. We cannot attribute so much to the power of faction, at the expense of human nature, as to suppose, that in any part of the world a combination of men, few in number, not considerable in rank, of no natural hereditary dependencies, should be able, by the efforts of their policy alone, or the mere exertion of any talents, to bring the people of your American dominions into the disposition. which has produced the present troubles. We cannot conceive that, without some powerful concurring cause, any management should prevail on some millions of |