"Peace is still within our power; nay, we may command it. A suspension of arms on our part, if adopted in time, will secure it for us, and, I may add, on our own terms. _From which it is plain, as we have been the original aggressors in this business, if we obstinately persist, we are fairly answerable for all the consequences._ I again repeat, what I often urged before, that I was against this unnatural war from the beginning. I was equally against every measure, from the instant the first tax was proposed to this minute. When, therefore, it is insisted that we aim only to defend and enforce our own rights, I positively deny it. I contend that America has been driven by cruel necessity to defend her rights from the united attacks of violence, oppression, and injustice. I contend that America has been indisputably aggrieved.... I must still think, and shall uniformly continue to assert, that Great Britain was the aggressor, that most, if not all, the acts were founded in oppression, and that, if I were an American, I should resist to the last such manifest exertion of tyranny, violence, and injustice." On another occasion, in the Commons, December 8, 1775, Mr. Fox expressed himself thus sententiously:-- "I have always said that the war carrying on against the Americans is unjust." Again, in the Lords, March 5, 1776, the Earl of Effingham said:-- "I never can stand up in your Lordships' presence without throwing in a few words on the justice of this unnatural war." In the Commons, March 11, 1776, Colonel Barré, Mr. Burke, Mr. Fox, all vied in eulogy of General Montgomery, the account of whose death before Quebec had arrived a few days before. The same spirit was constantly manifest. In the Commons, April 24, 1776, in the debate on the Budget, embodying taxes to carry on the war against America, Mr. Fox laid down the constitutional rule of opposition to an unjust war. "To the resolutions he should give his flat negative, and that not because of any particular objections to the taxes proposed (although there might be a sufficient ground for urging many), _but because he could not conscientiously agree to grant any money for so destructive, so ignoble a purpose as the carrying on a war commenced unjustly, and supported with no other view than to the extirpation of freedom_ and the violation of every social compact. THIS HE CONCEIVED TO BE THE STRICT LINE OF CONDUCT TO BE OBSERVED BY A MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT.... He then painted the quarrel with America as unjust, and the pursuance of the war as blood-thirsty and oppressive." Colonel Barré followed, and adopted the phrase of Mr. Fox, "giving his flat negative to the resolutions, _as they were calculated to tax the subject for an unjust purpose_." The Duke of Grafton, in the Lords, October 31, 1776, repeated the sentiments he had avowed at an earlier day.