f
every part, to constitute and preserve the prosperous arrangement of the
whole empire.

You cannot conciliate America by your present measures. You cannot
subdue her by your present, or by any measures. What, then, can you do?
You cannot conquer, you cannot gain, but you can address; you can lull
the fears and anxieties of the moment into an ignorance of the danger
that should produce them. But, my lords, the time demands the language
of truth. We must not now apply the flattering unction of servile
compliance or blind complaisance. In a just and necessary war to
maintain the rights or honor of my country, I would strip the shirt from
my back to support it. But in such a war as this, unjust in principle,
impracticable in its means, and ruinous in its consequences, I would not
contribute a single effort, nor a single shilling. I do not call for
vengeance on the heads of those who have been guilty; I only recommend
to them to make their retreat; and let them make haste, or they may be
assured that speedy and condign punishment will overtake them.

My lords, I have submitted to you, with the freedom and truth which I
think my duty, my sentiments on this awful situation. I have laid before
you the ruin of your power, the disgrace of your reputation, the
pollution of your discipline, the contamination of your morals, the
complication of calamities, foreign and domestic, that overwhelm your
sinking country. Your dearest interests, your own liberties, the
constitution itself, totters to the foundation. All this disgraceful
danger, this multitude of misery, is the monstrous offspring of this
unnatural war. We have been deceived and deluded too long. Let us now
stop short. This is the crisis, the only crisis of time and situation,
to give us a possibility of escape from the fatal effects of our
delusions. But if, in an obstinate and infatuated perseverance in folly,
we slavishly echo the peremptory words this day presented to us, nothing
can save this devoted country from complete and final ruin.

Is it possible, can it be believed, that ministers are yet blind to this
impending destruction? I did hope that instead of this false and empty
vanity, this overweening pride, that ministers would have humbled
themselves in their errors, would have confessed and retracted them, and
by an active though a late repentance, have endeavored to redeem them.
But, my lords, since they had neither sagacity to foresee, nor justice
nor human