Representative British Orations Volume 1 (of 4) With Introductions and Explanatory Notes

I speak not now with respect to parties. I stand up in this place single and independent. As to the late ministry [turning himself to Mr. Grenville, who sat within one of him],...

However, since the breach of the last Parliament, his majesty hath, by a new book of rates, very much increased the burden upon merchandise, and now tonnage and poundage, old an...

Permit me, sir, to add another circumstance in our colonies, which contributes no mean part toward the growth and effect of this untractable spirit—I mean their _education_. In...

Of the speeches delivered by Burke, in all several hundred in number, only six of the more important ones have been preserved. These were written out for publication by the orat...

First, to maintain, in what she might, a unity in France, that that kingdom, being at peace within itself, might be a bulwark to keep back the power of Spain by land. Next, to p...

He said he would labor to contract those manifold affairs both of the Church and State, which did so earnestly require the wisdom and faithfulness of this House, into a double m...

Here is my third example. It was attended with the success of the two former. Chester, civilized as well as Wales, has demonstrated that freedom, and not servitude, is the cure...

There is, sir, also a circumstance which convinces me that this mode of criminal proceeding is not, at least in the present stage of our contest, altogether expedient, which is...

5. It puts the King upon improper ways of supply, which, being not warranted by law, are much more burdensome to the subject than advantageous to his Majesty. In France, not lon...

For that service, for all service, whether of revenue, trade or empire, my trust is in her interest in the British Constitution. My hold of the colonies is in the close affectio...

“That, from the time when the General Assembly or General Court of any colony or plantation in North America, shall have appointed by act of assembly, duly confirmed, a settled...

The Constitutions of the different colonies are thus made up of different principles. They must remain dependent, from the necessity of things, and their relations to the jurisd...

AMERICAN ORATIONS, to illustrate American Political History, edited, with introductions, by ALEXANDER JOHNSTON, Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy in the College o...

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...

I have in my hand two accounts: one a comparative state of the export trade of England to its colonies as it stood in the year 1704, and as it stood in the year 1772; the other...

These abominable principles, and this more abominable avowal of them, demand the most decisive indignation. I call upon that right reverend bench, those holy ministers of the Go...

NOTE 33, p. 132.—Negotiations had been going on between the colonies and France for more than a year, though this fact, of course, was not known in England. Silas Deane had been...