carried the shot upon their backs. And what was their reward for this
forward and spirited enterprise,--for the reduction of this American
Dunkirk? Their reward, sir, you know very well; it was given up for a
barrier to the Dutch."[72]

All his various propositions were negatived; but he was not
disheartened. On every occasion he spoke,--now on the budget, then on
the address, and then on specific propositions. At this time he asserted
the power of Parliament over the Colonies, and he proposed on the 2d
November, 1775, that a test of submission by the Colonists should be the
recognition of an act of Parliament, "enacting that all the slaves in
America should have the trial by jury."[73] Shortly afterwards _on the
5th December, 1775_, he brought forward another set of "propositions for
conciliation with America," where, among other things, he embodied the
test on slavery, which he put forward as a compromise; and here his
language belongs, not only to the history of our Revolution, but to the
history of anti-slavery. While declaring that in his opinion Great
Britain was "the aggressor in everything," he sought to bring the two
countries together on a platform of human rights, which he thus
explained:--

"The act to be proposed to America, _as an auspicious beginning to lay
the first stone of universal liberty to mankind_, should be what no
American could hesitate an instant to comply with, namely, that every
slave in North America should be entitled to his trial by jury in all
criminal cases. America cannot refuse to accept and enroll such an act
as this, and thereby to re-establish peace and harmony with the parent
state. _Let us all be re-united in this, as a foundation to extirpate
slavery from the face of the earth. Let those who seek justice and
liberty for themselves give that justice and liberty to their
fellow-creatures._ With respect to putting a final period to slavery in
North America, it should seem best that, when this country had led the
way by the act for jury, each Colony, knowing their own peculiar
circumstances, should undertake the work in the most practicable way,
and that they should endeavor to establish some system by which slavery
should be in a certain term of years abolished. _Let the only contention
henceforward between Great Britain and America be, which shall exceed
the other in zeal for establishing the fundamental rights of liberty for
all mankind._"[74]

The motion was rejected; but am