208 APPENDIX TO BRITISH COUNTER CASE. 



this article ? That the commissioners or even Congress had no power 

 to undertake farther; how true let the other articles testify; but allow 

 it true, why treat without fuller powers granted ? Admit the neces- 

 sity of treating with persons not fully empowered. Why not then 

 omit an article so useless and yet so reproachful? But were there 

 no means left to secure a better article for the loyalists? Can it 

 be forgot, that, besides all other advantages yielded by the treaty, 

 our troops maintain the possession of York Island, Staten Island, 

 Long Island, the inhabitants are armed with us in defence of their 

 own estates; these estates by recent acts have been confiscated; that 

 when we evacuate these places, we shall deliver up the houses, goods, 

 even the persons of our friends. If this were the capitulation of a 

 besieged town, it would be scandalous to surrender upon such 

 125 terms. At the lowest ebb of distress, reduced, and almost un- 

 done, the necessity can hardly be conceived that should oblige 

 a State to subscribe to an article evidently inserted for no other pur- 

 pose than to blast for ever the hitherto-untainted honour of the 

 nation. Francis the First, vanquished and captive, wrote to his sub- 

 jects, "Every thing is lost except honour," and the spirit of that 

 sentiment preserved his kingdom and restored his fortune. If we had 

 implored in this instance the aid of France and Spain, the generosity 

 of two great and respectable States would have interposed in favour 

 of the men we have deserted. The fidelity of the loyalists to their 

 King and country, however obnoxious to the hostile pursuit of Amer- 

 ica, while the war lasted, could never have been felt by any honest 

 mind as a crime that excluded them from any conditions of peace. 



In every treaty that has terminated a civil war, the articles of 

 mutual forgiveness and restoration have ever been the easiest to settle. 

 The Catalonians, at the peace of Utrecht, though rebels to King 

 Philip, were admitted to all the rights of the most favoured subjects, 

 the Castilians ; and even an abridgment of some provincial privileges 

 which they claimed, was imputed as an unjust desertion of them by 

 the Powers which had availed themselves of their insurrection. No 

 war was ever more marked by personal animosity and party hatred 

 than that carried on in Ireland after the abdication of James II, 

 yet in the articles of Limerick, mere articles for the surrender of 

 a town, there was no difficulty of admitting the most favourable 

 terms for the Catholics engaged against King William. In ancient 

 or in modern history there cannot be found an instance of so shame- 

 ful a desertion of men who had sacrificed all to their duty, and to 

 their reliance upon our faith. There is even an horrible refinement 

 in the cruelty of the articles; they are told that one year is allowed 

 them to solicit from the lenity of their persecutors that mercy, which 

 their friends neglected to secure ; to beg their bread of those by whom 

 they have been stripped of their all; to kiss the hands that have 

 been dippt in the blood of their parents, and to obtain, if they can, 

 leave to repurchase what they have no money to pay for. . ". . . 



The Lord Chancellor .... 



The learned Lord would forgive him for treating what he had 

 said lightly, as he professed, upon his honour, that his plain and 

 narrow conception did not reach his meaning. He had thought 

 proper to allege that the prerogative of the Crown did not reach so 

 far, as to warrant the alienation of territories, in the making of peace, 



