Anecdotes of the Life of the Right Hon. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham: And of the Principal Events of His Time, with His Speeches in Parliament, from the Year 1736 to the Year 1778, Volume 2

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William Porter, 1792

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Page 156 - I feel myself impelled by every duty. My Lords, we are called upon as members of this House, as men, as Christian men, to protest against such notions standing near the Throne, polluting the ear of Majesty. "That God and nature put into our hands!
Page 148 - France, my lords, has insulted you ; she has encouraged and sustained America ; and whether America be wrong or right, the dignity of this country ought to spurn at the officious insult of French interference. The ministers and...
Page 147 - As it is the right of parliament to give, so it is the duty of the crown to ask it. But on this day, and in this extreme momentous exigency, no reliance is reposed on our constitutional counsels!
Page 418 - England, his ambition was fame. Without dividing, he destroyed party ; without corrupting, he made a venal age unanimous. France sunk beneath him. With one hand he smote the house of Bourbon, and wielded in the other the democracy of England. The sight of his mind was infinite ; and his schemes were to affect, not England, not the present age only, but Europe and posterity.
Page 147 - 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.
Page 18 - Those Iron Barons (for so I may call them when compared with the Silken Barons of modern days), were the Guardians of the People; yet their virtues, my Lords, were never engaged in a question of such importance as the present. A breach has been made in the Constitution — the battlements are dismantled — the citadel is open to the first invader — the walls totter — the Constitution is not tenable.
Page 149 - 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.
Page 149 - Northern force, the best appointed army that ever took the field, commanded by Sir William Howe, has retired from the American lines. He was obliged to relinquish his attempt, and, with great delay and danger, to adopt a new and distant plan of operations. We shall soon know, and in any event have reason to lament, what may have happened since. As to conquest, therefore, my Lords, I repeat it is impossible.
Page 427 - His eloquence was of every kind, and he excelled in the argumentative as well as in the declamatory way ; but his invectives were terrible, and uttered with such energy of diction, and...
Page 125 - Trade is an extended and complicated consideration ; it reaches as far as ships can sail, or winds can blow; it is a great and various machine. To regulate the numberless movements of its several parts, and combine them into effect for the good of the whole, requires the superintending wisdom and energy of the supreme power in the empire.

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