204 APPENDIX TO BBITISH COUNTER CASE. 



mendation to the States, in favour of the colonists, or continue the 

 war. It is in our power to do no more than recommend. Is there 

 any man who hears me, who will clap his hand on his heart, and step 

 forward and say ; I ought to have broken off the treaty ? If there be, 

 I am sure he neither knows the state of the country, nor yet has he 

 paid any attention to the wishes of it. But still I do not despond 

 with respect to the loyalists. I rely upon the wisdom, the honour, 

 and the temper of the Congress. Their recommendation was all 

 that in the nature of things we could procure. They were cautious 

 in wording their treaty, lest they should possibly give offence to the 

 new States, whose constitutions had not advanced to those habits of 

 appearance and strength that banishes all suspicions; peremptory 

 language is not the language of a new State. They must soften their 

 applications. In all their measures for money, for men, they have 

 used the word recommendation to the proper local assemblies; and 

 it has always, or at least generally been paid respect to. And, 

 believe me, they do the loyalists the offices not of friends, who sur- 

 mise doubts on this occasion. But say the worst; and that after all, 

 this estimable set of men are not received and cherished in the bosom 

 of .their own country : is England so lost to gratitude, and all the 

 feelings of humanity, as not to afford them an asylum? Who can 

 be so base as to think she will refuse it to them ? Surely it cannot be 

 that noble-minded man. who would plunge his country again knee- 

 deep in blood, and saddle it with an Expense of 20 millions for the 

 purpose of restoring them. Without one drop of blood spilt, and 

 without one-fifth of the expense of one year's campaign, happiness 

 and easiness can be given the loyalists in as ample a manner as these 

 blessings were ever in their enjoyment ; therefore let the outcry cease 

 on this head. But which of the two styles of language is the more 

 likely to assist the loyalists: the style of the address which declares 

 the confidence of Parliament in the good intentions of the Congress, 

 or of the noble Lords who declare that recommendation is nothing? 

 It surely requires no great depth of penetration to distinguish 

 123 between these things. A noble Viscount asks why Mr. Oswald 

 was appointed as negociator against such odds? Because he 

 was fitted for the great work in question, by the qualities both of his 

 head and his heart. He was inflexibly upright; had long and lib- 

 erally been engaged in commerce, and was well versed in the local 

 knowledge of America : no man, therefore, would deny Mr. Oswald's 

 fitness for his station. At the same time his Lordship was free to 

 say, there might be a few men more fit, but they had not come to his 

 cognisance. The noble Viscount (Sackville) might have been a bet- 

 ter negotiator; might have distinguished himself as he had always 

 done, both in the Cabinet and in the field. Or, perhaps, the other 

 noble Viscount (Stormont) might have been more remarkable; and 

 if we could have conquered any aversion in his Lordship to venture 

 again on the same theatre, where he had not been received with very 

 general satisfaction before, he, no doubt, would have concluded a 

 peace with the same fortunate distinction with which he commenced 

 the war. 



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Let me, before I conclude, call to your Lordships minds the general 

 state of this country, at the period in which the pacific negociations 

 were set on foot. Were we not at the extremity of distress? Did 



