Bills came on for debate in the House of Lords,[1] when Richmond declared his willingness to consent that the experiment of a treaty with America should be tried, if such was the sense of the House; while Shelburne declared that he hoped never to have to consent to the independence of that country. "The moment," he emphatically said, "that the independence of America is agreed to by our Government, the sun of Great Britain is set, and we shall no longer be a powerful or respectable people." The idea he entertained was that there should be a federal connection between the two countries, which would then have the same friends and the same enemies, with one purse and one sword for common purposes. He then reprobated the idea that the loss of the Colonies could be compensated by a commercial treaty; "for trade and commerce," he said, "between independent states of different interests would not be restrained; they would flow into their natural channels, in spite of every attempt to give them an artificial direction." Under the influence however of the notion held by Adam Smith and the political economists of the time, that the Navigation Act, though wrong from a commercial, was defensible from a political point of view, he then proceeded to adjure the House to hold this distinction in mind and not to give up the Act;[2] then reverting to the question of American independence he explained that he did not mean that he never would agree to acknowledge it under any circumstances whatever; for circumstances might create a necessity for such an acknowledgment, though they could not justify the folly of an Administration which should reduce him and the nation to so abject a situation; but when the day came on which American independence should be acknowledged, he trusted that House would with one voice call for justice on those who should be the occasion of so fatal a necessity. As to the treaty with France, the existence of which, though still denied by the Government, had been openly stated by Grafton
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WILLIAM, EARL OF SHELBURNE
CH. I
