What (says the financier) is peace to us without money? Your plan gives
us no revenue. No! But it does--for it secures to the subject the power
of REFUSAL; the first of all revenues. Experience is a cheat, and fact a
liar, if this power in the subject of proportioning his grant, or of
not granting at all, has not been found the richest mine of revenue ever
discovered by the skill or by the fortune of man. It does not indeed
vote you 152,752 pounds : 11 : 2 3/4ths, nor any other paltry limited
sum. But it gives the strong box itself, the fund, the bank, from whence
only revenues can arise amongst a people sensible of freedom: Posita
luditur arca. Cannot you in England; cannot you at this time of day;
cannot you, a House of Commons, trust to the principle which has raised
so mighty a revenue, and accumulated a debt of near 140 millions in this
country? Is this principle to be true in England, and false everywhere
else? Is it not true in Ireland? Has it not hitherto been true in the
colonies? Why should you presume, that, in any country, a body duly
constituted for any function, will neglect to perform its duty, and
abdicate its trust? Such a presumption would go against all governments
in all modes. But, in truth, this dread of penury of supply, from a free
assembly, has no foundation in nature. For first observe, that besides
the desire which all men have naturally of supporting the honour of
their own government, that sense of dignity, and that security to
property, which ever attend freedom, have a tendency to increase
the stock of the free community. Most may be taken where most is
accumulated. And what is the soil or climate where experience has not
uniformly proved, that the voluntary flow of heaped-up plenty, bursting
from the weight of its own rich luxuriance, has ever run with a more
copious stream of revenue, than could be squeezed from the dry husks of
oppressed indigence, by the straining of all the politic machinery in
the world.