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THE WORKS
OF
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
EDMUND BURKE
IN TWELVE VOLUMES
VOLUME THE SECOND
[Illustration: Burke Coat of Arms.]
LONDON
JOHN C. NIMMO
14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C.
MDCCCLXXXVII
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
SPEECH ON AMERICAN TAXATION, April 19, 1774 1
SPEECHES ON ARRIVAL AT BRISTOL AND AT THE CONCLUSION OF THE POLL,
October 13 and November 3, 1774 81
SPEECH ON MOVING RESOLUTIONS FOR CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA,
March 22, 1775 99
LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL, ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA,
April 3, 1777 187
TWO LETTERS TO GENTLEMEN OF BRISTOL, ON THE BILLS DEPENDING IN
PARLIAMENT RELATIVE TO THE TRADE OF IRELAND, April 23 and
May 2, 1778 247
SPEECH ON PRESENTING TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS A PLAN FOR THE BETTER
SECURITY OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF PARLIAMENT, AND THE ECONOMICAL
REFORMATION OF THE CIVIL AND OTHER ESTABLISHMENTS,
February 11, 1780 265
SPEECH AT BRISTOL PREVIOUS TO THE ELECTION, September 6, 1780 365
SPEECH AT BRISTOL ON DECLINING THE POLL, September 9, 1780 425
SPEECH ON MR. FOX'S EAST INDIA BILL, December 1, 1783 431
A REPRESENTATION TO HIS MAJESTY, MOVED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS,
June 14, 1784 537
SPEECH
ON
AMERICAN TAXATION.
APRIL 19, 1774.
PREFACE.
The following speech has been much the subject of conversation, and the
desire of having it printed was last summer very general. The means of
gratifying the public curiosity were obligingly furnished from the notes
of some gentlemen, members of the last Parliament.
This piece has been for some months ready for the press. But a delicacy,
possibly over-scrupulous, has delayed the publication to this time. The
friends of administration have been used to attribute a great deal of
the opposition to their measures in America to the writings published in
England. The editor of this speech kept it back, until all the measures
of government have had their full operation, and can be no longer
affected, if ever they could have been affected, by any publication.
Most readers will recollect the uncommon pains taken at the beginning of
the last session of the last Parliament, and indeed during the whole
course of it, to asperse the characters and decry the measures of those
who were supposed to be friends to America, in order to weaken the
effect of their opposition to the acts of rigor then preparing against
the colonies. The speech contains a full refutation of the charges
against that party with which Mr. Burke has all along acted. In doing
this, he has taken a review of the effects of all the schemes which
have been successively adopted in the government of the plantations. The
subject is interesting; the matters of information various and
important; and the publication at this time, the editor hopes, will not
be thought unseasonable.
SPEECH.
During the last session of the last Parliament, on the 19th of
April, 1774, Mr. Rose Fuller, member for Rye, made the following
motion:--
"That an act made in the seventh year of the reign of his present
Majesty, intituled, 'An act for granting certain duties in the
British colonies and plantations in America; for allowing a
drawback of the duties of customs upon the exportation from this
kingdom of coffee and cocoa-nuts, of the produce of the said
colonies or plantations; for discontinuing the drawbacks payable on
china earthenware exported to America; and for more effectually
preventing the clandestine running of goods in the said colonies
and plantations, might be read."
And the same being read accordingly, he moved,--
"That this House will, upon this day sevennight, resolve itself
into a committee of the whole House, to take into consideration the
duty of three-pence per pound weight upon tea, payable in all his
Majesty's dominions in America, imposed by the said act; and also
the appropriation of the said duty."
On this latter motion a warm and interesting debate arose, in which
Mr. Burke spoke as follows.
Sir,--I agree with the honorable gentleman[1] who spoke last, that this
subject is not new in this House. Very disagreeably to this House, very
unfortunately to this nation, and to the peace and prosperity of this
whole empire, no topic has been more familiar to us. For nine long
years, session after session, we have been lashed round and round this
miserable circle of occasional arguments and temporary expedients. I am
sure our heads must turn and our stomachs nauseate with them. We have
had them in every shape; we have looked at them in every point of view.
Invention is exhausted; reason is fatigued; experience has given
judgment; but obstinacy is not yet conquered.
The honorable gentleman has made one endeavor more to diversify the form
of this disgusting argument. He has thrown out a speech composed almost
entirely of challenges. Challenges are serious things; and as he is a
man of prudence as well as resolution, I dare say he has very well
weighed those challenges before he delivered them. I had long the
happiness to sit at the same side of the House, and to agree with the
honorable gentleman on all the American questions. My sentiments, I am
sure, are well known to him; and I thought I had been perfectly
acquainted with his. Though I find myself mistaken, he will still permit
me to use the privilege of an old friendship; he will permit me to apply
myself to the House under the sanction of his authority, and, on the
various grounds he has measured out, to submit to you the poor opinions
which I have formed upon a matter of importance enough to demand the
fullest consideration I could bestow upon it.
He has stated to the House two grounds of deliberation: one narrow and
simple, and merely confined to the question on your paper; the other
more large and more complicated,--comprehending the whole series of the
Parliamentary proceedings with regard to America, their causes, and
their consequences. With regard to the latter ground, he states it as
useless, and thinks it may be even dangerous, to enter into so extensive
a field of inquiry. Yet, to my surprise, he had hardly laid down this
restrictive proposition, to which his authority would have given so much
weight, when directly, and with the same authority, he condemns it, and
declares it absolutely necessary to enter into the most ample historical
detail. His zeal has thrown him a little out of his usual accuracy. In
this perplexity, what shall we do, Sir, who are willing to submit to the
law he gives us? He has reprobated in one part of his speech the rule he
had laid down for debate in the other, and, after narrowing the ground
for all those who are to speak after him, he takes an excursion,
himself, as unbounded as the subject and the extent of his great
abilities.
Sir, when I cannot obey all his laws, I will do the best I can. I will
endeavor to obey such of them as have the sanction of his example, and
to stick to that rule which, though not consistent with the other, is
the most rational. He was certainly in the right, when he took the
matter largely. I cannot prevail on myself to agree with him in his
censure of his own conduct. It is not, he will give me leave to say,
either useless or dangerous. He asserts, that retrospect is not wise;
and the proper, the only proper subject of inquiry, is "not how we got
into this difficulty, but how we are to get out of it." In other words,
we are, according to him, to consult our invention, and to reject our
experience. The mode of deliberation he recommends is diametrically
opposite to every rule of reason and every principle of good sense
established amongst mankind. For that sense and that reason I have
always understood absolutely to prescribe, whenever we are involved in
difficulties from the measures we have pursued, that we should take a
strict review of those measures, in order to correct our errors, if they
should be corrigible,--or at least to avoid a dull uniformity in
mischief, and the unpitied calamity of being repeatedly caught in the
same snare.
Sir, I will freely follow the honorable gentleman in his historical
discussion, without the least management for men or measures, further
than as they shall seem to me to deserve it. But before I go into that
large consideration, because I would omit nothing that can give the
House satisfaction, I wish to tread the narrow ground to which alone the
honorable gentleman, in one part of his speech, has so strictly confined
us.
He desires to know, whether, if we were to repeal this tax, agreeably to
the proposition of the honorable gentleman who made the motion, the
Americans would not take post on this concession, in order to make a new
attack on the next body of taxes; and whether they would not call for a
repeal of the duty on wine as loudly as they do now for the repeal of
the duty on tea. Sir, I can give no security on this subject. But I will
do all that I can, and all that can be fairly demanded. To the
_experience_ which the honorable gentleman reprobates in one instant and
reverts to in the next, to that experience, without the least wavering
or hesitation on my part, I steadily appeal: and would to God there was
no other arbiter to decide on the vote with which the House is to
conclude this day!
When Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in the year 1766, I affirm,
first, that the Americans did _not_ in consequence of this measure call
upon you to give up the former Parliamentary revenue which subsisted in
that country, or even any one of the articles which compose it. I affirm
also, that, when, departing from the maxims of that repeal, you revived
the scheme of taxation, and thereby filled the minds of the colonists
with new jealousy and all sorts of apprehensions, then it was that they
quarrelled with the old taxes as well as the new; then it was, and not
till then, that they questioned all the parts of your legislative power,
and by the battery of such questions have shaken the solid structure of
this empire to its deepest foundations.
Of those two propositions I shall, before I have done, give such
convincing, such damning proof, that, however the contrary may be
whispered in circles or bawled in newspapers, they never more will dare
to raise their voices in this House. I speak with great confidence. I
have reason for it. The ministers are with me. _They_ at least are
convinced that the repeal of the Stamp Act had not, and that no repeal
can have, the consequences which the honorable gentleman who defends
their measures is so much alarmed at. To their conduct I refer him for a
conclusive answer to his objection. I carry my proof irresistibly into
the very body of both Ministry and Parliament: not on any general
reasoning growing out of collateral matter, but on the conduct of the
honorable gentleman's ministerial friends on the new revenue itself.
The act of 1767, which grants this tea-duty, sets forth in its preamble,
that it was expedient to raise a revenue in America for the support of
the civil government there, as well as for purposes still more
extensive. To this support the act assigns six branches of duties. About
two years after this act passed, the ministry, I mean the present
ministry, thought it expedient to repeal five of the duties, and to
leave (for reasons best known to themselves) only the sixth standing.
Suppose any person, at the time of that repeal, had thus addressed the
minister:[2] "Condemning, as you do, the repeal of the Stamp Act, why do
you venture to repeal the duties upon glass, paper, and painters'
colors? Let your pretence for the repeal be what it will, are you not
thoroughly convinced that your concessions will produce, not
satisfaction, but insolence in the Americans, and that the giving up
these taxes will necessitate the giving up of all the rest?" This
objection was as palpable then as it is now; and it was as good for
preserving the five duties as for retaining the sixth. Besides, the
minister will recollect that the repeal of the Stamp Act had but just
preceded his repeal; and the ill policy of that measure, (had it been so
impolitic as it has been represented,) and the mischiefs it produced,
were quite recent. Upon the principles, therefore, of the honorable
gentleman, upon the principles of the minister himself, the minister has
nothing at all to answer. He stands condemned by himself, and by all his
associates old and new, as a destroyer, in the first trust of finance,
of the revenues,--and in the first rank of honor, as a betrayer of the
dignity of his country.
Most men, especially great men, do not always know their well-wishers. I
come to rescue that noble lord out of the hands of those he calls his
friends, and even out of his own. I will do him the justice he is denied
at home. He has not been this wicked or imprudent man. He knew that a
repeal had no tendency to produce the mischiefs which give so much alarm
to his honorable friend. His work was not bad in its principle, but
imperfect in its execution; and the motion on your paper presses him
only to complete a proper plan, which, by some unfortunate and
unaccountable error, he had left unfinished.
I hope, Sir, the honorable gentleman who spoke last is thoroughly
satisfied, and satisfied out of the proceedings of ministry on their own
favorite act, that his fears from a repeal are groundless. If he is not,
I leave him, and the noble lord who sits by him, to settle the matter as
well as they can together; for, if the repeal of American taxes destroys
all our government in America,--he is the man!--and he is the worst of
all the repealers, because he is the last.
But I hear it rung continually in my ears, now and formerly,--"The
preamble! what will become of the preamble, if you repeal this tax?"--I
am sorry to be compelled so often to expose the calamities and disgraces
of Parliament. The preamble of this law, standing as it now stands, has
the lie direct given to it by the provisionary part of the act: if that
can be called provisionary which makes no provision. I should be afraid
to express myself in this manner, especially in the face of such a
formidable array of ability as is now drawn up before me, composed of
the ancient household troops of that side of the House and the new
recruits from this, if the matter were not clear and indisputable.
Nothing but truth could give me this firmness; but plain truth and
clear evidence can be beat down by no ability. The clerk will be so good
as to turn to the act, and to read this favorite preamble.
"Whereas it is _expedient_ that a revenue should be raised in your
Majesty's dominions in America, for making a more _certain_ and
_adequate_ provision for defraying the charge of the _administration of
justice and support of civil government_ in such provinces where it
shall be found necessary, and towards _further defraying_ the expenses
of _defending, protecting, and securing the said dominions_."
You have heard this pompous performance. Now where is the revenue which
is to do all these mighty things? Five sixths
repealed,--abandoned,--sunk,--gone,--lost forever. Does the poor
solitary tea-duty support the purposes of this preamble? Is not the
supply there stated as effectually abandoned as if the tea-duty had
perished in the general wreck? Here, Mr. Speaker, is a precious
mockery:--a preamble without an act,--taxes granted in order to be
repealed,--and the reasons of the grant still carefully kept up! This is
raising a revenue in America! This is preserving dignity in England! If
you repeal this tax, in compliance with the motion, I readily admit that
you lose this fair preamble. Estimate your loss in it. The object of the
act is gone already; and all you suffer is the purging the statute-book
of the opprobrium of an empty, absurd, and false recital.
It has been said again and again, that the five taxes were repealed on
commercial principles. It is so said in the paper in my hand:[3] a paper
which I constantly carry about; which I have often used, and shall
often use again. What is got by this paltry pretence of commercial
principles I know not; for, if your government in America is destroyed
by the _repeal of taxes_, it is of no consequence upon what ideas the
repeal is grounded. Repeal this tax, too, upon commercial principles, if
you please. These principles will serve as well now as they did
formerly. But you know that either your objection to a repeal from these
supposed consequences has no validity, or that this pretence never could
remove it. This commercial motive never was believed by any man, either
in America, which this letter is meant to soothe, or in England, which
it is meant to deceive. It was impossible it should: because every man,
in the least acquainted with the detail of commerce, must know that
several of the articles on which the tax was repealed were fitter
objects of duties than almost any other articles that could possibly be
chosen,--without comparison more so than the tea that was left taxed, as
infinitely less liable to be eluded by contraband. The tax upon red and
white lead was of this nature. You have in this kingdom an advantage in
lead that amounts to a monopoly. When you find yourself in this
situation of advantage, you sometimes venture to tax even your own
export. You did so soon after the last war, when, upon this principle,
you ventured to impose a duty on coals. In all the articles of American
contraband trade, who ever heard of the smuggling of red lead and white
lead? You might, therefore, well enough, without danger of contraband,
and without injury to commerce, (if this were the whole consideration,)
have taxed these commodities. The same may be said of glass. Besides,
some of the things taxed were so trivial, that the loss of the objects
themselves, and their utter annihilation out of American commerce, would
have been comparatively as nothing. But is the article of tea such an
object in the trade of England, as not to be felt, or felt but slightly,
like white lead, and red lead, and painters' colors? Tea is an object of
far other importance. Tea is perhaps the most important object, taking
it with its necessary connections, of any in the mighty circle of our
commerce. If commercial principles had been the true motives to the
repeal, or had they been at all attended to, tea would have been the
last article we should have left taxed for a subject of controversy.
Sir, it is not a pleasant consideration, but nothing in the world can
read so awful and so instructive a lesson as the conduct of ministry in
this business, upon the mischief of not having large and liberal ideas
in the management of great affairs. Never have the servants of the state
looked at the whole of your complicated interests in one connected view.
They have taken things by bits and scraps, some at one time and one
pretence, and some at another, just as they pressed, without any sort of
regard to their relations or dependencies. They never had any kind of
system, right or wrong; but only invented occasionally some miserable
tale for the day, in order meanly to sneak out of difficulties into
which they had proudly strutted. And they were put to all these shifts
and devices, full of meanness and full of mischief, in order to pilfer
piecemeal a repeal of an act which they had not the generous courage,
when they found and felt their error, honorably and fairly to disclaim.
By such management, by the irresistible operation of feeble councils,
so paltry a sum as three-pence in the eyes of a financier, so
insignificant an article as tea in the eyes of a philosopher, have
shaken the pillars of a commercial empire that circled the whole globe.
Do you forget that in the very last year you stood on the precipice of
general bankruptcy? Your danger was indeed great. You were distressed in
the affairs of the East India Company; and you well know what sort of
things are involved in the comprehensive energy of that significant
appellation. I am not called upon to enlarge to you on that danger,
which you thought proper yourselves to aggravate, and to display to the
world with all the parade of indiscreet declamation. The monopoly of the
most lucrative trades and the possession of imperial revenues had
brought you to the verge of beggary and ruin. Such was your
representation; such, in some measure, was your case. The vent of ten
millions of pounds of this commodity, now locked up by the operation of
an injudicious tax, and rotting in the warehouses of the Company, would
have prevented all this distress, and all that series of desperate
measures which you thought yourselves obliged to take in consequence of
it. America would have furnished that vent, which no other part of the
world can furnish but America, where tea is next to a necessary of life,
and where the demand grows upon the supply. I hope our dear-bought East
India Committees have done us at least so much good, as to let us know,
that, without a more extensive sale of that article, our East India
revenues and acquisitions can have no certain connection with this
country. It is through the American trade of tea that your East India
conquests are to be prevented from crushing you with their burden. They
are ponderous indeed; and they must have that great country to lean
upon, or they tumble upon your head. It is the same folly that has lost
you at once the benefit of the West and of the East. This folly has
thrown open folding-doors to contraband, and will be the means of giving
the profits of the trade of your colonies to every nation but
yourselves. Never did a people suffer so much for the empty words of a
preamble. It must be given up. For on what principle does it stand? This
famous revenue stands, at this hour, on all the debate, as a description
of revenue not as yet known in all the comprehensive (but too
comprehensive!) vocabulary of finance,--_a preambulary tax_. It is,
indeed, a tax of sophistry, a tax of pedantry, a tax of disputation, a
tax of war and rebellion, a tax for anything but benefit to the imposers
or satisfaction to the subject.
Well! but whatever it is, gentlemen will force the colonists to take the
teas. You will force them? Has seven years' struggle been yet able to
force them? Oh, but it seems "we are in the right. The tax is
trifling,--in effect it is rather an exoneration than an imposition;
three fourths of the duty formerly payable on teas exported to America
is taken off,--the place of collection is only shifted; instead of the
retention of a shilling from the drawback here, it is three-pence custom
paid in America." All this, Sir, is very true. But this is the very
folly and mischief of the act. Incredible as it may seem, you know that
you have deliberately thrown away a large duty, which you held secure
and quiet in your hands, for the vain hope of getting one three fourths
less, through every hazard, through certain litigation, and possibly
through war.
The manner of proceeding in the duties on paper and glass, imposed by
the same act, was exactly in the same spirit. There are heavy excises on
those articles, when used in England. On export, these excises are drawn
back. But instead of withholding the drawback, which might have been
done, with ease, without charge, without possibility of smuggling, and
instead of applying the money (money already in your hands) according to
your pleasure, you began your operations in finance by flinging away
your revenue; you allowed the whole drawback on export, and then you
charged the duty, (which you had before discharged,) payable in the
colonies, where it was certain the collection would devour it to the
bone,--if any revenue were ever suffered to be collected at all. One
spirit pervades and animates the whole mass.
Could anything be a subject of more just alarm to America than to see
you go out of the plain highroad of finance, and give up your most
certain revenues and your clearest interest, merely for the sake of
insulting your colonies? No man ever doubted that the commodity of tea
could bear an imposition of three-pence. But no commodity will bear
three-pence, or will bear a penny, when the general feelings of men are
irritated, and two millions of people are resolved not to pay. The
feelings of the colonies were formerly the feelings of Great Britain.
Theirs were formerly the feelings of Mr. Hampden, when called upon for
the payment of twenty shillings. Would twenty shillings have ruined Mr.
Hampden's fortune? No! but the payment of half twenty shillings, on the
principle it was demanded, would have made him a slave. It is the weight
of that preamble, of which you are so fond, and not the weight of the
duty, that the Americans are unable and unwilling to bear.
It is, then, Sir, upon the _principle_ of this measure, and nothing
else, that we are at issue. It is a principle of political expediency.
Your act of 1767 asserts that it is expedient to raise a revenue in
America; your act of 1769, which takes away that revenue, contradicts
the act of 1767, and, by something much stronger than words, asserts
that it is not expedient. It is a reflection upon your wisdom to persist
in a solemn Parliamentary declaration of the expediency of any object,
for which, at the same time, you make no sort of provision. And pray,
Sir, let not this circumstance escape you,--it is very material,--that
the preamble of this act which we wish to repeal is not _declaratory of
a right_, as some gentlemen seem to argue it: it is only a recital of
the _expediency_ of a certain exercise of a right supposed already to
have been asserted; an exercise you are now contending for by ways and
means which you confess, though they were obeyed, to be utterly
insufficient for their purpose. You are therefore at this moment in the
awkward situation of fighting for a phantom,--a quiddity,--a thing that
wants, not only a substance, but even a name,--for a thing which is
neither abstract right nor profitable enjoyment.
They tell you, Sir, that your dignity is tied to it. I know not how it
happens, but this dignify of yours is a terrible incumbrance to you; for
it has of late been ever at war with your interest, your equity, and
every idea of your policy. Show the thing you contend for to be reason,
show it to be common sense, show it to be the means of attaining some
useful end, and then I am content to allow it what dignity you please.
But what dignity is derived from the perseverance in absurdity is more
than ever I could discern. The honorable gentleman has said
well,--indeed, in most of his _general_ observations I agree with
him,--he says, that this subject does not stand as it did formerly. Oh,
certainly not! Every hour you continue on this ill-chosen ground, your
difficulties thicken on you; and therefore my conclusion is, remove from
a bad position as quickly as you can. The disgrace, and the necessity of
yielding, both of them, grow upon you every hour of your delay.
But will you repeal the act, says the honorable gentleman, at this
instant, when America is in open resistance to your authority, and that
you have just revived your system of taxation? He thinks he has driven
us into a corner. But thus pent up, I am content to meet him; because I
enter the lists supported by my old authority, his new friends, the
ministers themselves. The honorable gentleman remembers that about five
years ago as great disturbances as the present prevailed in America on
account of the new taxes. The ministers represented these disturbances
as treasonable; and this House thought proper, on that representation,
to make a famous address for a revival and for a new application of a
statute of Henry the Eighth. We besought the king, in that
well-considered address, to inquire into treasons, and to bring the
supposed traitors from America to Great Britain for trial. His Majesty
was pleased graciously to promise a compliance with our request. All the
attempts from this side of the House to resist these violences, and to
bring about a repeal, were treated with the utmost scorn. An
apprehension of the very consequences now stated by the honorable
gentleman was then given as a reason for shutting the door against all
hope of such an alteration. And so strong was the spirit for supporting
the new taxes, that the session concluded with the following remarkable
declaration. After stating the vigorous measures which had been pursued,
the speech from the throne proceeds:--
"You have assured me of your _firm_ support in the _prosecution_ of
them. Nothing, in my opinion, could be more likely to enable the
well-disposed among my subjects in that part of the world effectually to
discourage and defeat the designs of the factious and seditious than the
hearty concurrence of every branch of the legislature in the resolution
of _maintaining the execution of the laws in every_ part of my
dominions."
After this no man dreamt that a repeal under this ministry could
possibly take place. The honorable gentleman knows as well as I, that
the idea was utterly exploded by those who sway the House. This speech
was made on the ninth day of May, 1769. Five days after this speech,
that is, on the thirteenth of the same month, the public circular
letter, a part of which I am going to read to you, was written by Lord
Hillsborough, Secretary of State for the Colonies. After reciting the
substance of the king's speech, he goes on thus:--
"I can take upon me to assure you, notwithstanding insinuations to the
contrary from men with _factious and seditious views_, that his
Majesty's _present administration have at no time entertained a design
to propose to Parliament to lay any further taxes upon America, for the
purpose of_ RAISING A REVENUE; and that it is at present their intention
to propose, the next session of Parliament, to take off the duties upon
glass, paper, and colors, upon consideration of such duties _having been
laid contrary to the true principles of commerce_.
"These have _always_ been, and _still are_, the sentiments of _his
Majesty's present servants_, and by which their conduct _in respect to
America has been governed._ And _his Majesty_ relies upon your prudence
and fidelity for such an explanation of _his_ measures as may tend to
remove the prejudices which have been excited by the misrepresentations
of those who are enemies to the peace and prosperity of Great Britain
and her colonies, and to reëstablish that mutual _confidence and
affection_ upon which the glory and safety of the British empire
depend."
Here, Sir, is a canonical boot of ministerial scripture: the general
epistle to the Americans. What does the gentleman say to it? Here a
repeal is promised,--promised without condition,--and while your
authority was actually resisted. I pass by the public promise of a peer
relative to the repeal of taxes by this House. I pass by the use of the
king's name in a matter of supply, that sacred and reserved right of the
Commons. I conceal the ridiculous figure of Parliament hurling its
thunders at the gigantic rebellion of America, and then, five days
after, prostrate at the feet of those assemblies we affected to
despise,--begging them, by the intervention of our ministerial sureties,
to receive our submission, and heartily promising amendment. These might
have been serious matters formerly; but we are grown wiser than our
fathers. Passing, therefore, from the Constitutional consideration to
the mere policy, does not this letter imply that the idea of taxing
America for the purpose of revenue is an abominable project, when the
ministry suppose none but _factious_ men, and with seditious views,
could charge them with it? does not this letter adopt and sanctify the
American distinction of _taxing for a revenue_? does it not formally
reject all future taxation on that principle? does it not state the
ministerial rejection of such principle of taxation, not as the
occasional, but the constant opinion of the king's servants? does it not
say, (I care not how consistently,) but does it not say, that their
conduct with regard to America has been _always_ governed by this
policy? It goes a great deal further. These excellent and trusty
servants of the king, justly fearful lest they themselves should have
lost all credit with the world, bring out the image of their gracious
sovereign from the inmost and most sacred shrine, and they pawn him as a
security for their promises:--"_His Majesty_ relies on your prudence and
fidelity for such an explanation of _his_ measures." These sentiments of
the minister and these measures of his Majesty can only relate to the
principle and practice of taxing for a revenue; and accordingly Lord
Botetourt, stating it as such, did, with great propriety, and in the
exact spirit of his instructions, endeavor to remove the fears of the
Virginian assembly lest the sentiments which it seems (unknown to the
world) had _always_ been those of the ministers, and by which _their_
conduct _in respect to America had been governed_, should by some
possible revolution, favorable to wicked American taxers, be hereafter
counteracted. He addresses them in this manner:--
"It may possibly be objected, that, as his Majesty's present
administration are _not immortal_, their successors may be inclined to
attempt to undo what the present ministers shall have attempted to
perform; and to that objection I can give but this answer: that it is my
firm opinion, that the plan I have stated to you will certainly take
place, and that it will never be departed from; and so determined am I
forever to abide by it, that I will be content to be declared infamous,
if I do not, to the last hour of my life, at all times, in all places,
and upon all occasions, exert every power with which I either am or ever
shall be legally invested, in order to obtain and _maintain_ for the
continent of America that _satisfaction_ which I have been authorized to
promise this day by the _confidential_ servants of our gracious
sovereign, who to my certain knowledge rates his honor so high _that he
would rather part with his crown than preserve it by deceit_."[4]
A glorious and true character! which (since we suffer his ministers with
impunity to answer for his ideas of taxation) we ought to make it our
business to enable his Majesty to preserve in all its lustre. Let him
have character, since ours is no more! Let some part of government be
kept in respect!
This epistle was not the letter of Lord Hillsborough solely, though he
held the official pen. It was the letter of the noble lord upon the
floor,[5] and of all the king's then ministers, who (with, I think, the
exception of two only) are his ministers at this hour. The very first
news that a British Parliament heard of what it was to do with the
duties which it had given and granted to the king was by the publication
of the votes of American assemblies. It was in America that your
resolutions were pre-declared. It was from thence that we knew to a
certainty how much exactly, and not a scruple more nor less, we were to
repeal. We were unworthy to be let into the secret of our own conduct.
The assemblies had _confidential_ communications from his Majesty's
_confidential_ servants. We were nothing but instruments. Do you, after
this, wonder that you have no weight and no respect in the colonies?
After this are you surprised that Parliament is every day and everywhere
losing (I feel it with sorrow, I utter it with reluctance) that
reverential affection which so endearing a name of authority ought ever
to carry with it? that you are obeyed solely from respect to the
bayonet? and that this House, the ground and pillar of freedom, is
itself held up only by the treacherous underpinning and clumsy
buttresses of arbitrary power?
If this dignity, which is to stand in the place of just policy and
common sense, had been consulted, there was a time for preserving it,
and for reconciling it with any concession. If in the session of 1768,
that session of idle terror and empty menaces, you had, as you were
often pressed to do, repealed these taxes, then your strong operations
would have come justified and enforced, in case your concessions had
been returned by outrages. But, preposterously, you began with violence;
and before terrors could have any effect, either good or bad, your
ministers immediately begged pardon, and promised that repeal to the
obstinate Americans which they had refused in an easy, good-natured,
complying British Parliament. The assemblies, which had been publicly
and avowedly dissolved for _their_ contumacy, are called together to
receive _your_ submission. Your ministerial directors blustered like
tragic tyrants here; and then went mumping with a sore leg in America,
canting, and whining, and complaining of faction, which represented them
as friends to a revenue from the colonies. I hope nobody in this House
will hereafter have the impudence to defend American taxes in the name
of ministry. The moment they do, with this letter of attorney in my
hand, I will tell them, in the authorized terms, they are wretches "with
factious and seditious views," "enemies to the peace and prosperity of
the mother country and the colonies," and subverters "of the mutual
affection and confidence on which the glory and safety of the British
empire depend."
After this letter, the question is no more on propriety or dignity. They
are gone already. The faith of your sovereign is pledged for the
political principle. The general declaration in the letter goes to the
whole of it. You must therefore either abandon the scheme of taxing, or
you must send the ministers tarred and feathered to America, who dared
to hold out the royal faith for a renunciation of all taxes for revenue.
Them you must punish, or this faith you must preserve. The preservation
of this faith is of more consequence than the duties on _red lead_, or
_white lead_, or on broken _glass_, or _atlas-ordinary_, or _demy-fine_,
or _blue-royal_, or _bastard_, or _fools cap_, which you have given up,
or the three-pence on tea which you retained. The letter went stamped
with the public authority of this kingdom. The instructions for the
colony government go under no other sanction; and America cannot
believe, and will not obey you, if you do not preserve this channel of
communication sacred. You are now punishing the colonies for acting on
distinctions held out by that very ministry which is here shining in
riches, in favor, and in power, and urging the punishment of the very
offence to which they had themselves been the tempters.
Sir, if reasons respecting simply your own commerce, which is your own
convenience, were the sole grounds of the repeal of the five duties, why
does Lord Hillsborough, in disclaiming in the name of the king and
ministry their ever having had an intent to tax for revenue, mention it
as the means "of reëstablishing the confidence and affection of the
colonies?" Is it a way of soothing _others_, to assure them that you
will take good care of _yourself_? The medium, the only medium, for
regaining their affection and confidence is that you will take off
something oppressive to their minds. Sir, the letter strongly enforces
that idea: for though the repeal of the taxes is promised on commercial
principles, yet the means of counteracting the "insinuations of men with
factious and seditious views" is by a disclaimer of the intention of
taxing for revenue, as a constant, invariable sentiment and rule of
conduct in the government of America.
I remember that the noble lord on the floor, not in a former debate to
be sure, (it would be disorderly to refer to it, I suppose I read it
somewhere,) but the noble lord was pleased to say, that he did not
conceive how it could enter into the head of man to impose such taxes as
those of 1767: I mean those taxes which he voted for imposing, and voted
for repealing,--as being taxes, contrary to all the principles of
commerce, laid on _British manufactures_.
I dare say the noble lord is perfectly well read, because the duty of
his particular office requires he should be so, in all our revenue laws,
and in the policy which is to be collected out of them. Now, Sir, when
he had read this act of American revenue, and a little recovered from
his astonishment, I suppose he made one step retrograde (it is but one)
and looked at the act which stands just before in the statute-book. The
American revenue act is the forty-fifth chapter; the other to which I
refer is the forty-fourth of the same session. These two acts are both
to the same purpose: both revenue acts; both taxing out of the kingdom;
and both taxing British manufactures exported. As the forty-fifth is an
act for raising a revenue in America, the forty-fourth is an act for
raising a revenue in the Isle of Man. The two acts perfectly agree in
all respects, except one. In the act for taxing the Isle of Man the
noble lord will find, not, as in the American act, four or fire
articles, but almost the _whole body_ of British manufactures, taxed
from two and a half to fifteen per cent, and some articles, such as that
of spirits, a great deal higher. You did not think it uncommercial to
tax the whole mass of your manufactures, and, let me add, your
agriculture too; for, I now recollect, British corn is there also taxed
up to ten per cent, and this too in the very head-quarters, the very
citadel of smuggling, the Isle of Man. Now will the noble lord
condescend to tell me why he repealed the taxes on your manufactures
sent out to America, and not the taxes on the manufactures exported to
the Isle of Man? The principle was exactly the same, the objects charged
infinitely more extensive, the duties without comparison higher. Why?
Why, notwithstanding all his childish pretexts, because the taxes were
quietly submitted to in the Isle of Man, and because they raised a flame
in America. Your reasons were political, not commercial. The repeal was
made, as Lord Hillsborough's letter well expresses it, to regain "the
confidence and affection of the colonies, on which the glory and safety
of the British empire depend." A wise and just motive, surely, if ever
there was such. But the mischief and dishonor is, that you have not done
what you had given the colonies just cause to expect, when your
ministers disclaimed the idea of taxes for a revenue. There is nothing
simple, nothing manly, nothing ingenuous, open, decisive, or steady, in
the proceeding, with regard either to the continuance or the repeal of
the taxes. The whole has an air of littleness and fraud. The article of
tea is slurred over in the circular letter, as it were by accident:
nothing is said of a resolution either to keep that tax or to give it
up. There is no fair dealing in any part of the transaction.
If you mean to follow your true motive and your public faith, give up
your tax on tea for raising a revenue, the principle of which has, in
effect, been disclaimed in your name, and which produces you no
advantage,--no, not a penny. Or, if you choose to go on with a poor
pretence instead of a solid reason, and will still adhere to your cant
of commerce, you have ten thousand times more strong commercial reasons
for giving up this duty on tea than for abandoning the five others that
you have already renounced.
The American consumption of teas is annually, I believe, worth 300,000_l._
at the least farthing. If you urge the American violence as a
justification of your perseverance in enforcing this tax, you know that
you can never answer this plain question,--Why did you repeal the others
given in the same act, whilst the very same violence subsisted?--But you
did not find the violence cease upon that concession.--No! because the
concession was far short of satisfying the principle which Lord
Hillsborough had abjured, or even the pretence on which the repeal of
the other taxes was announced; and because, by enabling the East India
Company to open a shop for defeating the American resolution not to pay
that specific tax, you manifestly showed a hankering after the principle
of the act which you formerly had renounced. Whatever road you take
leads to a compliance with this motion. It opens to you at the end of
every visto. Your commerce, your policy, your promises, your reasons,
your pretences, your consistency, your inconsistency,--all jointly
oblige you to this repeal.
But still it sticks in our throats, if we go so far, the Americans will
go farther.--We do not know that. We ought, from experience, rather to
presume the contrary. Do we not know for certain, that the Americans are
going on as fast as possible, whilst we refuse to gratify them? Can they
do more, or can they do worse, if we yield this point? I think this
concession will rather fix a turnpike to prevent their further
progress. It is impossible to answer for bodies of men. But I am sure
the natural effect of fidelity, clemency, kindness in governors is
peace, good-will, order, and esteem, on the part of the governed. I
would certainly, at least, give these fair principles a fair trial;
which, since the making of this act to this hour, they never have had.
Sir, the honorable gentleman having spoken what he thought necessary
upon the narrow part of the subject, I have given him, I hope, a
satisfactory answer. He next presses me, by a variety of direct
challenges and oblique reflections, to say something on the historical
part. I shall therefore, Sir, open myself fully on that important and
delicate subject: not for the sake of telling you a long story, (which,
I know, Mr. Speaker, you are not particularly fond of,) but for the sake
of the weighty instruction that, I flatter myself, will necessarily
result from it. It shall not be longer, if I can help it, than so
serious a matter requires.
Permit me then, Sir, to lead your attention very far back,--back to the
Act of Navigation, the cornerstone of the policy of this country with
regard to its colonies. Sir, that policy was, from the beginning, purely
commercial; and the commercial system was wholly restrictive. It was the
system of a monopoly. No trade was let loose from that constraint, but
merely to enable the colonists to dispose of what, in the course of your
trade, you could not take,--or to enable them to dispose of such
articles as we forced upon them, and for which, without some degree of
liberty, they could not pay. Hence all your specific and detailed
enumerations; hence the innumerable checks and counterchecks; hence that
infinite variety of paper chains by which you bind together this
complicated system of the colonies. This principle of commercial
monopoly runs through no less than twenty-nine acts of Parliament, from
the year 1660 to the unfortunate period of 1764.