I am resolved this day to have nothing at all to do with the question of
the right of taxation. Some gentlemen startle, but it is true; I put
it totally out of the question. It is less than nothing in my
consideration. I do not indeed wonder, nor will you, Sir, that gentlemen
of profound learning are fond of displaying it on this profound subject.
But my consideration is narrow, confined, and wholly limited to the
policy of the question. I do not examine whether the giving away a
man's money be a power excepted and reserved out of the general trust
of government; and how far all mankind, in all forms of polity, are
entitled to an exercise of that right by the charter of nature. Or
whether, on the contrary, a right of taxation is necessarily involved in
the general principle of legislation, and inseparable from the ordinary
supreme power. These are deep questions, where great names militate
against each other; where reason is perplexed; and an appeal to
authorities only thickens the confusion. For high and reverend
authorities lift up their heads on both sides; and there is no sure
footing in the middle. This point is the GREAT SERBONIAN BOG, BETWIXT
DAMIATA AND MOUNT CASIUS OLD, WHERE ARMIES WHOLE HAVE SUNK. I do
not intend to be overwhelmed in that bog, though in such respectable
company. The question with me is, not whether you have a right to render
your people miserable; but whether it is not your interest to make them
happy. It is not what a lawyer tells me I MAY do; but what humanity,
reason, and justice tell me I ought to do. Is a politic act the worse
for being a generous one? Is no concession proper, but that which is
made from your want of right to keep what you grant? Or does it lessen
the grace or dignity of relaxing in the exercise of an odious claim,
because you have your evidence-room full of titles, and your magazines
stuffed with arms to enforce them? What signify all those titles, and
all those arms? Of what avail are they, when the reason of the thing
tells me, that the assertion of my title is the loss of my suit; and
that I could do nothing but wound myself by the use of my own weapons?