"The spirit which resists your taxation in America is the same that formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and ship-money in England. * * * This glorious spirit of Whiggism animates three millions in America who prefer poverty with liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence, and who will die in defence of their rights as freemen. * * * For myself, I must declare that in all my reading and observation--and history has been my favorite study; I have read Thucydides, and have studied and admired the master states of the world--that for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion under such a complication of difficult circumstances, no nation or body of men can stand in preference to the General Congress at Philadelphia. * * * All attempts to impose servitude upon such men, to establish despotism over such a mighty continental nation, must be vain, must be fatal. We shall be forced ultimately to retreat. Let us retreat while we can, not when we must." In accordance with these sentiments Chatham withdrew his eldest son from the army rather than suffer him to be engaged in the war. Lord Effingham, finding his regiment was to serve against the Americans, threw up his commission and renounced the profession for which he had been trained and loved, as the only means of escaping the obligation of fighting against the cause of freedom. Admiral Keppel, one of the most gallant officers in the British navy, expressed his readiness to serve against the ancient enemies of England, but asked to be released from employment against the Americans. It is said that Amherst refused to command the army against the Americans. In 1776 it was openly debated in parliament whether British officers ought to serve their sovereign against the Americans, and no less a person then General Conway leaned decidedly to the negative, and compared the case to that of French officers who were employed in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Just after the battle of Bunker Hill, the duke of Richmond declared in parliament that he "did not think that the Americans were in rebellion, but that they were resisting acts of the most unexampled cruelty and oppression." The Corporation of London, in 1775, drew up an address strongly approving of the resistance of the Americans, and similar addresses were expressed by other towns. A great meeting in London, and also the guild of merchants in Dublin, returned thanks to lord Effingham for his recent conduct. When Montgomery fell at the head of the American troops before Quebec, he was eulogized in the British parliament.