, they are starved--if dispersed, they are taken
off in detail. I am experienced in spring hopes and vernal promises: I
know what ministers throw out; but at last will come your equinoctial
disappointment. You have got nothing in America but stations. You have
been three years teaching them the art of war--they are apt scholars;
and I will venture to tell your lordships that the American gentry
will make officers enough fit to command the troops of all the European
powers.

"What you have sent there are too many to make peace--too few to make
war. If you conquer them, what then? You cannot make them respect you;
you cannot make them wear your cloth; you will plant an invincible
hatred in their breasts against you. Coming from the stock they do, they
can never respect you. If ministers are founded in saying there is no
sort of treaty with France, there is still a moment left; the point of
honour is still safe. France must be as self-destroying as England to
make a treaty, while you are giving her America at the expense of twelve
millions a year: the intercourse has produced everything to France; and
England, Old England, must pay for all. I have, at different times, made
different propositions, adapted to the circumstances in which they were
offered. The plan contained in the former bill is now impracticable:
the present will tell you where you are, and what you have now to depend
upon. It may produce a respectable division in America, and unanimity
at home: it will give America an option; she has yet had no option.
You have said, 'Lay down your arms,' and she has given you the Spartan
answer, 'Come, take.'" Lord Chatham here read his motion, which he
afterwards said, if earned, would prove the herald of peace, and would
open the way for treaty. In conclusion, he again urged the necessity of
making peace with America before France should espouse the quarrel on
behalf of the Americans. He observed, that the French court was too wise
to lose the opportunity of separating America from Great Britain; that
whenever that court, with that of Spain likewise, should enter into
a treaty with America, we must declare war against them; and that he
should be among the first to advise such a declaration, even though we
had only five ships of the line in our ports. The Earl of Chatham was
answered by Lords Gower, Mansfield, Lyttleton, and Weymouth, and by the
Archbishop of York, who all maintained that the original aim of America
was i