T, EARL OF CHATHAM

I. WAR WITH AMERICA[28]

I will not join in congratulation on misfortune and disgrace. I cannot
concur in a blind and servile address, which approves and endeavors to
sanctify the monstrous measures which have heaped disgrace and
misfortune upon us. This, my lords, is a perilous and tremendous moment!
It is not a time for adulation. The smoothness of flattery cannot now
avail; cannot save us in this rugged and awful crisis. It is now
necessary to instruct the throne in the language of truth. We must
dispel the illusion and the darkness which envelop it, and display, in
its full danger and true colors, the ruin that is brought to our doors.

Can the minister of the day now presume to expect a continuance of
support in this ruinous infatuation? Can Parliament be so dead to its
dignity and its duty as to be thus deluded into the loss of the one and
the violation of the other? To give an unlimited credit and support for
the steady perseverance in measures not proposed for our parliamentary
advice, but dictated and forced upon us--in measures which have reduced
this late flourishing empire to ruin and contempt! "But yesterday and
England might have stood against the world; now none so poor to do her
reverence." It is a shameful truth that not only the power and strength
of this country are wasting away and expiring, but her well-earned
glories, her true honor and substantial dignity, are sacrificed.

My lords, this ruinous and ignominious situation, where we cannot act
with success, nor suffer with honor, calls upon us to remonstrate in the
strongest and loudest language of truth, to rescue the ear of Majesty
from the delusions which surround it. The desperate state of our arms
abroad is in part known. No man thinks more highly of them than I do. I
love and honor the English troops. I know their virtues and their valor.
I know they can achieve anything except impossibilities; and I know that
the conquest of English America is an impossibility. You cannot, I
venture to say it, you cannot conquer America. Your armies in the last
war effected everything that could be effected; and what was it? It cost
a numerous army, under the command of a most able general, a long and
laborious campaign, to expel five thousand Frenchmen from French
America. My lords, you cannot conquer America.

What is your present situation there? We do not know the worst; but we
know that in three campaigns we have done nothing an