The Impeachment of the House of BrunswickBradlaugh, Charles
History
The Impeachment of the House of Brunswick
Bradlaugh, Charles
Great Britain -- History -- 1714-1837; Hanover, House of
In 1777, during this American war, Earl Chatham, in one of his grand
speeches, after denouncing "the traffic and barter driven with every
little pitiful German Prince that sells his subjects to the shambles
of a foreign country," adds: "The mercenary aid on which you rely,
irritates to an incurable resentment the minds of your enemies, whom you
overrun with the sordid sons of rapine and of plunder, devoting them
and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an
American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my
country, I never would lay down my arms, never! never! never!" In reply
to Lord Suffolk, who had said, in reference to employing the Indians,
that "we were justified in using all the means which God and nature had
put into our hands," "I am astonished," exclaimed Lord Chatham, as he
rose, "shocked, to hear such principles confessed, to hear them avowed
in this House, or in this country; principles equally unconstitutional,
inhuman, and un-Christian. _That God and Nature put into our hands!_ I
know not what idea that Lord may entertain of God and Nature, but I know
that such abominable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and
humanity. What! attribute the sacred sanction of God and nature to
the massacres of the Indian scalping-knife, to the cannibal savage,
torturing, murdering, roasting, and eating; literally, my Lords, eating
the mangled victims of his barbarous battles!"
And yet even after this we find George III. writing to Lord North,
on the 22d of June, 1779: "I do not yet despair that, with Clinton's
activity, and the Indians in their rear, the provinces will soon now
submit."
Actually so late as the 27th of November, 1781, after the surrender of
Cornwallis, we find George III. saying that "retaining a firm confidence
in the wisdom and protection of Divine Providence," he should be able
"by the valor of his fleets and armies to conquer America." Fox, in the
House of Commons, denounced this speech of the King's as one "breathing
vengeance, blood, misery, and rancor;" and "as containing the sentiments
of some arbitrary, despotic, hard-hearted, and unfeeling monarch, who,
having involved his subjects in a ruinous and unnatural war, to glut
his feelings of revenge, was determined to persevere in it in spite of
calamity." "Divest the speech," said he, "of its official forms, and
what was its purport? 'Our losses in America have been most calamitous;
the blood of my subjects has flowed in copious streams; the treasures of
Great Britain have been wantonly lavished; the load of taxes imposed on
an over-burthened country is become intolerable; my rage for conquest
is unquenched; my revenge unsated; nor can anything except the total
subjugation of my American subjects allay my animosity.'"
The following table shows what this disastrous war ultimately cost this
country in mere money; no table can efficiently show its cost in blood
and misery:--
Year.
Taxation.
Loans.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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