“Be to her faults a little blind; Be to her virtues very kind.” Upon the whole, I will beg leave to tell the House what is my opinion. It is, that the Stamp Act be repealed absolutely, totally, and immediately. That the reason for the repeal be assigned, viz., because it was founded on an erroneous principle. At the same time, let the sovereign authority of this country over the colonies be asserted in as strong terms as can be devised, and be made to extend to every point of legislation whatsoever; that we may bind their trade, confine their manufactures, and exercise every power whatsoever, except that of taking their money out of their pockets without their consent. Notwithstanding the advice of Pitt, the government pushed on in its mad course. The Stamp Act had to be repealed; but accompanying the repeal was a declaration that Parliament had the power and the right “to bind the colonies and people of America in all cases whatsoever.” This was the very position that the Colonies had denied. It was not so much the _tax_ as the _right_ to tax that the Americans questioned. When the resolution reached the House of Peers, Lord Camden sustained the American view. He said: “My position is this,—I repeat it—I will maintain to the last hour, taxation and representation are inseparable. This position is founded on the law of nature. It is more, it is in itself an eternal law of nature. For whatever is a man’s own is absolutely his own. No man has a right to take it from him without his consent either expressed by himself or his representative. Whoever attempts to do this attempts an injury. Whoever does it, commits a robbery.” Lord Mansfield, however, as we shall see, took the opposite ground, and the opposite ground prevailed. The consequence was that the Colonies were lost. LORD CHATHAM. ON AN ADDRESS TO THE THRONE CONCERNING AFFAIRS IN AMERICA. HOUSE OF LORDS, NOVEMBER 18, 1777. Though at the delivery of this speech Chatham had already entered upon his seventieth year, he seems to have been inspired with all the fire of his youth. It is by most critics regarded as his greatest effort. Chatham had abundant reason for an extraordinary affection for America, and, as he saw that a persistence in the mad course entered upon would inevitably result in a loss of the colonies, he brought all his powers to an advocacy of a treaty of peace on such terms as would at once save the colonies and the honor of the mother country. It is the only speech of Chatham, the report of which was corrected by himself and published with his approval. I rise, my Lords, to declare my sentiments on this most solemn and serious subject. It has imposed a load upon my mind, which, I fear, nothing can remove, but which impels me to endeavor its alleviation, by a free and unreserved communication of my sentiments.