{3218} UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775 (January-March). Vain efforts toward pacific statesmanship in the British Parliament, by Chatham, Burke, and others. A newly elected British Parliament "met on November 30, 1774; but no serious measure relating to America was taken till January 1775, when the House reassembled after the Christmas vacation. The Ministers had a large majority, and even apart from party interest the genuine feeling of both Houses ran strongly against the Americans. Yet at no previous period were they more powerfully defended. I have already noticed that Chatham, having returned to active politics after his long illness in 1774, had completely identified himself with the American cause, and had advocated with all his eloquence measures of conciliation. He … moved an address to the King praying that he would as soon as possible, 'in order to open the way towards a happy settlement of the dangerous troubles in America,' withdraw the British troops stationed in Boston. In the course of his speech he represented the question of American taxation as the root-cause of the whole division, and maintained that the only real basis of conciliation was to be found in a distinct recognition of the principle that 'taxation is theirs, and commercial regulation ours;' that England has a supreme right of regulating the commerce and navigation of America, and that the Americans have an inalienable right to their own property. He fully justified their resistance, predicted that all attempts to coerce them would fail, and eulogised the Congress at Philadelphia as worthy of the greatest periods of antiquity. Only eighteen peers voted for the address, while sixty-eight opposed it. On February 1 he reappeared with an elaborate Bill for settling the troubles in America. It asserted in strong terms the right of Parliament to bind the colonies in all matters of imperial concern, and especially in all matters of commerce and navigation. It pronounced the new colonial doctrine that the Crown had no right to send British soldiers to the colonies without the assent of the Provincial Assemblies, dangerous and unconstitutional in the highest degree, but at the same time it recognised the sole right of the colonists to tax themselves, guaranteed the inviolability of their charters, and made the tenure of their judges the same as in England. It proposed to make the Congress which had met at Philadelphia an official and permanent body, and asked it to make a free grant for imperial purposes. England, in return, was to reduce the Admiralty Courts to their ancient limits, and to suspend for the present the different Acts complained of by the colonists. The Bill was not even admitted to a second reading. Several other propositions tending towards conciliation were made in this session.