William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham - America Quotes

4 Sourced Quotes

View all William Pitt Quotes
If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I would never lay down my arms—never, never, never! You cannot conquer America.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people, so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
When trade is at stake, it is your last entrenchment; you must defend it, or perish... Sir, Spain knows the consequence of a war in America; whoever gains, it must prove fatal to her... is this any longer a nation? Is this any longer an English Parliament, if with more ships in your harbours than in all the navies of Europe; with above two millions of people in your American colonies, you will bear to hear of the expediency of receiving from Spain an insecure, unsatisfactory, dishonourable Convention?

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
We retain nothing, although we have conquered everything... France is chiefly, if not solely, to be dreaded by us in the light of a maritime and commercial power; and therefore by restoring to her all the valuable West India islands, and by our concessions in the Newfoundland fishery, we have given her the means of recovering her prodigious losses and of becoming once more formidable to us at sea... all the Spanish treasures and riches in America, lay at our mercy.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham