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but if they command us to believe, and annex rewards to belief, and severe penalties to unbelief, then are they most wicked and immoral, because they annex rewards and punishments to what is involuntary, and therefore neither rewardable nor punishable. It appears, then, very plainly unreasonable and unjust to command us to believe any doctrine, good or bad, wise or unwise; but when men command us to believe opinions which have not only no tendency to promote virtue, but which are. allowed to commute or atone for the want of it, then are they arrived at the utmost reach of impiety, then is their iniquity full, then have they finished the misery and completed the destruction of poor mortal men. By betraying the interest of virtue, they have undermined and sapped the foundation of all human happiness; and how treacherously and dreadfully have they betrayed it! A gift well applied-the chattering of some unintelligible sounds called creeds-an unfeigned assent and consent to whatever the Church enjoins-religious worships and consecrated feasts- repenting on a death-bedpardons rightly sued for, and absolutions authoritatively given-have done more toward making and continuing men vicious than all their natural passions and infidelity put together; for infidelity can only take away the supernatural rewards of virtue; but these superstitious opinions and practices have not only turned the scene, and made men lose sight of the natural rewards of it, but have induced them to think that, were there no hereafter, vice would be preferable to virtue, and that they still increase in happiness as they increase in wickedness; and this they have been taught in several religious discourses and sermons, delivered by men whose orthodoxy was never doubted; particularly by a late reverend prelate-I mean Bishop Atterby-in his sermon on these words-"If in this life only be hope, then we are of all men most miserable;" where vice and faith ride most lovingly and triumphantly together. But these doctrines, of the natural excellency of vice, the efficacy of a right belief, the dignity of atonements and propitiations, have, besides depriving us of the

native beauty and charms of honesty, and thus cruelly stabbing virtue to the heart, raised and diffused among men a certain unnatural passion, which we shall call religious hatred; a hatred constant, deep-rooted, and immortal. All other passions rise and fall, die and revive again; but this of religious and pious hatred rises and grows every day stronger upon the mind as we grow more religious; because we hate for God's sake, for our soul's sake, and for the sake of those poor souls too, who have the misfortune not to believe as we do. And can we, in so good a cause, hate too much? The more thoroughly we hate, the better we are; and the more mischief we do to the bodies and estates of those infidels and heretics, the more do we show our love to God. This is religious zeal, and this has been called divinity; but remember that the only true divinity is humanity.

III.-PITT ON AMERICA, AND THE INDIANS. I CANNOT, my Lords, I will not, join in congratulation on misfortune and disgrace. This, my Lords, is a perilous and tremendous moment. It is not a time for adulation: the smoothness of flattery cannot save us in this rugged and awful crisis. It is now necessary to instruct the throne in the language of truth. We must, if possible, dispel the delusion and darkness which envelope it; and display, in its full danger, and genuine colours, the ruin which is brought to our doors. Can ministers still presume to expect support in their infatuation? Can parliament be so dead to its dignity and duty, as to give their support to measures thus obtruded and forced upon them? Measures, my Lords, which have reduced this late flourishing empire to scorn and contempt! "But yesterday, and Britain might have stood against the world: now, none so poor to do her reverence." The people, whom we at first despised as rebels, but whom we now acknowledge as enemies, are abetted against us,

supplied with every military store, have their interest consulted, and their ambassadors entertained by our inveterate enemy—and ministers do not, and dare not, interpose with dignity or effect. The desperate state of our army abroad is in part known. No man more highly esteems and honours the British troops than I do ; I know their virtues and their valour; I know they can achieve anything but impossibilities; and I know that the conquest of British America is an impossibility. You cannot, 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, and suffered much. You may swell every expense, accumulate every assistance, and extend your traffic to the shambles of every German despot: your attempts will be for ever vain and impotent-doubly so, indeed, from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your adversaries, to over-run them with the mercenary sons of rapine and plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty.' If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms;Never, never, never! But, my Lords, who is the man, that, in addition to the disgraces and mischiefs of the war, has dared to authorize and associate to our arms the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the savage?—to call into civilised alliance, the wild and inhuman inhabitant of the woods ?—to delegate to the merciless Indian, the defence of disputed rights, and to wage the horrors of this barbarous war against our brethren? My Lords, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment. But, my Lords, this barbarous measure has been defended, not only on the principles of policy and necessity, but also on those of morality; "for it is perfectly allowable," says Lord Suffolk, "to use all the means which God and nature have put into our hands." I am astonished, I am shocked, to hear such principles confessed; to hear them avowed in this House, or in this country. My Lords, I did not intend to encroach so much on your attention,

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but I cannot repress my indignation-I feel myself impelled to speak. My Lords, we are called upon as members of this House, as men, as Christians, to protest against such horrible barbarity !" That God and nature have put into our hands!" What ideas of God and nature, that noble Lord may entertain, I know not; but I know, that such detestable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity. What! to attribute the sacred sanction of God and nature to the massacres of the Indian scalping-knife! to the cannibal savage, torturing, murdering, devouring, drinking the blood of his mangled victims! Such notions shock every precept of morality, every feeling of humanity, every sentiment of honour. These abominable principles, and this more abominable avowal of them, demand the most decisive indignation. I call upon that right reverend, and this most learned bench, to vindicate the religion of their God, to support the justice of their country. I call upon the bishops, to interpose the unsullied sanctity of their lawn; upon the judges, to interpose the purity of their ermine, to save us from this pollution. I call upon the honour of your Lordships, to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country, to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the constitution. From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of this noble lord frowns with indignation at the disgrace of his country. In vain did he defend the liberty, and establish the religion of Britain, against the tyranny of Rome, if these worse than Popish cruelties and inquisitorial practices, are endured among us. To send forth the merciless cannibal, thirsting for blood! against whom?-your Protestant brethren !-to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name, by the aid and instrumentality of these horrible hounds of war! Spain can no longer boast pre-eminence in barbarity. She armed herself with bloodhounds, to extirpate the wretched natives of Mexico; we, more ruthless, loose these dogs of war against our countrymen in America, endeared to us by

every tie that can sanctify humanity. I solemnly call upon your Lordships, and upon every order of men in the state, to stamp upon this infamous procedure, the indelible stigma of the public abhorrence. More particularly, I call upon the holy prelates of our religion, to do away with this iniquity; let them perform a lustration, to purify the country from this deep and deadly sin. My Lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have said less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor even reposed my head upon my pillow, without giving vent to my eternal abhorrence of such enormous and preposterous principles.

IV.-LORD THURLOW'S REPLY TO THE DUKE OF GRAFTON.

My Lords, I am amazed, yes, my Lords, I am amazed at his Grace's speech. The noble duke cannot look before him, behind him, or on either side of him, without seeing some noble peer who owes his seat in this house to his successful exertions in the profession to which I belong. Does he not feel that it is as honourable to owe it to these, as to being the accident of an accident? To all these noble lords, the language of the noble duke is as applicable and as insulting as it is to myself. But I do not fear to meet it single and alone. No one venerates the peerage more than I do. But, my Lords, I must say that the peerage solicited me, not I the peerage.

Nay, more, I can and will say, that, as a peer of parliament, as speaker of this right honourable house, as keeper of the great seal, as guardian of his Majesty's conscience, as lord high chancellor of England, nay, even in that character alone in which the noble duke would think it an affront to be considered, but which character none can deny me, as a MAN, I am at this moment as respectable, I beg leave to add, as much respected, as the proudest peer I now look down upon.

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