BURKE
I
ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA[1]
(1775)
Born in 1729, died in 1797; elected to Parliament in 1766; Privy Councilor in 1782; conducted the impeachment of Warren Hastings in 1787–95, having resigned his seat in Parliament.
We are called upon again to attend to America; to attend to the whole of it together; and to review the subject with an unusual degree of care and calmness.
Surely it is an awful subject, or there is none so on this side of the grave. When I first had the honor of a seat in this House, the affairs of that continent pressed themselves upon us as the most important and most delicate object of parliamentary attention. My little share in this great deliberation oppressed me. I found myself a partaker in a very high trust; and having no sort of reason to rely on the strength of my natural abilities for the proper execution of that
- ↑ Delivered in the House of Commons, March 22, 1775, in support of thirteen resolutions looking to conciliation. Abridged. Burke spoke for three hours. Mackintosh describes this speech as "the most faultless of Mr. Burke's productions." The resolutions were lost by a vote of 270 to 78. When the result became known in America, the "embattled farmers" had already met the British at Concord Bridge.
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