On March 22, 1775, Burke, in one of his greatest speeches, moved a series of resolutions recommending a repeal of the recent Acts complained of in America, reforming the Admiralty Court and the position of the judges, and leaving American taxation to the American Assemblies, without touching upon any question of abstract right. A few days later, Hartley moved a resolution calling upon the Government to make requisitions to the colonial Assemblies to provide of their own authority for their own defence; and Lord Camden in the House of Lords and Sir G. Savile in the House of Commons endeavoured to obtain a repeal of the Quebec Act. All these attempts, however, were defeated by enormous majorities. The petition of Congress to the King was referred to Parliament, which refused to receive it, and Franklin, after vain efforts to effect a reconciliation, returned from England to America." _W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the 18th Century, chapter 12. (volume 3)._ The following are the more important passages of the speech of Burke, on moving the resolutions which he introduced in the House of Commons, March 22, 1775: "The proposition is peace. Not peace through the medium of war; not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations; not peace to arise out of universal discord, fomented from principle, in all parts of the empire; not peace to depend on the juridical determination of perplexing questions, or the precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex government. It is simple peace, sought in its natural course and in its ordinary haunts. It is peace sought in the spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely pacific. I propose, by removing the ground of the difference, and by restoring the former unsuspecting confidence of the colonies in the mother country, to give permanent satisfaction to your people,—and (far from a scheme of ruling by discord) to reconcile them to each other in the same act and by the bond of the very same interest which reconciles them to British government. My idea is nothing more. Refined policy ever has been the parent of confusion,—and ever will be so, as long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is, let me say, of no mean force in the government of mankind. Genuine simplicity of heart is an healing and cementing principle. … The capital leading questions on which you must this day decide are these two: First, whether you ought to concede; and secondly, what your concession ought to be. On the first of these questions we have gained … some ground. But I am sensible that a good deal more is still to be done. Indeed, Sir, to enable us to determine both on the one and the other of these great