I hope, sir, that, notwithstanding the austerity of the chair, your
good nature will incline you to some degree of indulgence toward human
frailty.[37] You will not think it unnatural that those who have an
object depending, which strongly engages their hopes and fears, should
be somewhat inclined to superstition. As I came into the House full of
anxiety about the event of my motion, I found, to my infinite surprise,
that the grand penal bill, by which we had passed sentence on the trade
and sustenance of America, is to be returned to us from the other
House.[38] I do confess, I could not help looking on this event as a
fortunate omen. I look upon it as a sort of providential favor, by
which we are put once more in possession of our deliberative capacity,
upon a business so very questionable in its nature, so very uncertain
in its issue. By the return of this bill, which seemed to have taken
its flight forever, we are, at this very instant, nearly as free to
choose a plan for our American government, as we were on the first day
of the session. If, sir, we incline to the side of conciliation, we
are not at all embarrassed (unless we please to make ourselves so) by
any incongruous mixture of coercion and restraint. We are therefore
called upon, as it were by a superior warning voice, 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 trust, I was
obliged to take more than common pains to instruct myself in every
thing which relates to our colonies. I was not less under the necessity
of forming some fixed ideas concerning the general policy of the
British empire. Something of this sort seemed to be indispensable,
in order, amid so vast a fluctuation of passions and opinions, to
concentre my thoughts; to ballast my conduct; to preserve me from being
blown about by every wind of fashionable doctrine. I really did not
think it safe or manly, to have fresh principles to seek upon every
fresh mail which should arrive from America.
At that period I had the fortune to find myself in perfect concurrence
with a large majority in this House.[39] Bowing under that high
authority, and penetrated with the sharpness and strength of that early
impression, I have continued ever since in my original sentiments
without the least deviation. Whether this be owing to an obstinate
perseverance in error, or to a religious adherence to what appears to
me truth and reason, it is in your equity to judge.
Sir, Parliament having an enlarged view of objects, made, during this
interval, more frequent changes in their sentiment and their conduct
than could be justified in a particular person upon the contracted
scale of private information. But though I do not hazard any thing
approaching to a censure on the motives of former Parliaments to all
those alterations, one fact is undoubted—that under them the state of
America has been kept in continual agitation. Everything administered
as remedy to the public complaint, if it did not produce, was at least
followed by, a heightening of the distemper; until, by a variety of
experiments, that important country has been brought into her present
situation—a situation which I will not miscall, which I dare not name,
which I scarcely know how to comprehend in the terms of any description.
In this posture, sir, things stood at the beginning of the session.
About that time, a worthy member of great parliamentary experience,
who, in the year 1766, filled the chair of the American committee with
much ability, took me aside, and, lamenting the present aspect of our
politics, told me things were come to such a pass that our former
methods of proceeding in the House would be no longer tolerated. That
the public tribunal (never too indulgent to a long and unsuccessful
opposition) would now scrutinize our conduct with unusual severity.
That the very vicissitudes and shiftings of ministerial measures,
instead of convicting their authors of inconstancy and want of system,
would be taken as an occasion of charging us with a predetermined
discontent, which nothing could satisfy; while we accused every measure
of vigor as cruel, and every proposal of lenity as weak and irresolute.
The public, he said, would not have patience to see us play the
game out with our adversaries: we must produce our hand. It would
be expected that those who, for many years, had been active in such
affairs, should show that they had formed some clear and decided idea
of the principles of colony government, and were capable of drawing out
something like a platform of the ground which might be laid for future
and permanent tranquillity.
I felt the truth of what my honorable friend represented, but I felt my
situation too. His application might have been made with far greater
propriety to many other gentlemen. No man was, indeed, ever better
disposed or worse qualified for such an undertaking than myself. Though
I gave so far into his opinion that I immediately threw my thoughts
into a sort of parliamentary form, I was by no means equally ready to
produce them. It generally argues some degree of natural impotence
of mind, or some want of knowledge of the world, to hazard plans of
government, except from a seat of authority.[40] Propositions are made,
not only ineffectually, but somewhat disreputably, when the minds of
men are not properly disposed for their reception; and, for my part, I
am not ambitious of ridicule—not absolutely a candidate for disgrace.
Besides, sir, to speak the plain truth, I have in general no very
exalted opinion of the virtue of paper government, nor of any politics
in which the plan is to be wholly separated from the execution. But
when I saw that anger and violence prevailed every day more and more,
and that things were hastening toward an incurable alienation of our
colonies, I confess my caution gave way. I felt this as one of those
few moments in which decorum yields to a higher duty. Public calamity
is a mighty leveller, and there are occasions when any, even the
slightest, chance of doing good, must be laid hold on, even by the most
inconsiderable person.
To restore order and repose to an empire so great and so distracted as
ours, is merely in the attempt an undertaking that would ennoble the
flights of the highest genius, and obtain pardon for the efforts of the
meanest understanding. Struggling a good while with these thoughts, by
degrees I felt myself more firm. I derived, at length, some confidence
from what in other circumstances usually produces timidity. I grew less
anxious, even from the idea of my own insignificance. For, judging of
what you are by what you ought to be, I persuaded myself that you
would not reject a reasonable proposition because it had nothing but
its reason to recommend it. On the other hand, being totally destitute
of all shadow of influence, natural or adventitious, I was very sure
that if my proposition were futile or dangerous—if it were weakly
conceived or improperly timed, there was nothing exterior to it of
power to awe, dazzle, or delude you. You will see it just as it is, and
you will treat it just as it deserves.
The PROPOSITION is peace.[41] Not peace through the medium of war;
not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless
negotiations; not peace to arise out of universal discord, fomented
from principle, in all parts of the empire; not peace to depend on
the juridical determination of perplexing questions, or the precise
marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex government. It is simple
peace, sought in its natural course and its ordinary haunts. It is
peace sought in the spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely
pacific. I propose, by removing the ground of the difference, and by
restoring _the former unsuspecting confidence of the colonies in the
mother country_,[42] to give permanent satisfaction to your people;
and, far from a scheme of ruling by discord, to reconcile them to each
other in the same act, and by the bond of the very same interest, which
reconciles them to British government.
My idea is nothing more. Refined policy ever has been the parent of
confusion, and ever will be so as long as the world endures. Plain good
intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud
is surely detected at last, is (let me say) of no mean force in the
government of mankind. Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and
cementing principle. My plan, therefore, being formed upon the most
simple grounds imaginable, may disappoint some people when they hear
it. It has nothing to recommend it to the pruriency of curious ears.
There is nothing at all new and captivating in it. It has nothing
of the splendor of the project which has been lately laid upon your
table by the noble Lord in the blue ribbon.[43] It does not propose to
fill your lobby with squabbling colony agents, who will require the
interposition of your mace at every instant to keep the peace among
them. It does not institute a magnificent auction of finance, where
captivated provinces come to general ransom by bidding against each
other, until you knock down the hammer, and determine a proportion of
payments beyond all the powers of algebra to equalize and settle.
The plan which I shall presume to suggest derives, however, one great
advantage from the proposition and registry of that noble Lord’s
project. The idea of conciliation is admissible. First, the House,
in accepting the resolution moved by the noble Lord, has admitted,
notwithstanding the menacing front of our address,[44] notwithstanding
our heavy bill of pains and penalties, that we do not think ourselves
precluded from all ideas of free grace and bounty.
The House has gone farther; it has declared conciliation admissible,
_previous_ to any submission on the part of America. It has even shot
a good deal beyond that mark, and has admitted that the complaints
of our former mode of exerting the right of taxation were not wholly
unfounded. That right, thus exerted, is allowed to have had something
reprehensible in it, something unwise, or something grievous; since, in
the midst of our heat and resentment, we, of ourselves, have proposed
a capital alteration, and, in order to get rid of what seemed so very
exceptionable, have instituted a mode that is altogether new; one that
is, indeed, wholly alien from all the ancient methods and forms of
Parliament.
The _principle_ of this proceeding is large enough for my purpose. The
means proposed by the noble Lord for carrying his ideas into execution,
I think, indeed, are very indifferently suited to the end; and this I
shall endeavor to show you before I sit down. But, for the present, I
take my ground on the admitted principle. I mean to give peace. Peace
implies reconciliation; and, where there has been a material dispute,
reconciliation does in a manner always imply concession on the one
part or on the other. In this state of things I make no difficulty
in affirming that the proposal ought to originate from us. Great and
acknowledged force is not impaired, either in effect or in opinion, by
an unwillingness to exert itself. The superior power may offer peace
with honor and with safety. Such an offer from such a power will be
attributed to magnanimity. But the concessions of the weak are the
concessions of fear. When such a one is disarmed, he is wholly at the
mercy of his superior, and he loses forever that time and those chances
which, as they happen to all men, are the strength and resources of all
inferior power.
The capital leading questions on which you must this day decide, are
these two: _First, whether you ought to concede; and, secondly, what
your concession ought to be_.
On the first of these questions we have gained, as I have just taken
the liberty of observing to you, some ground. But I am sensible that
a good deal more is still to be done. Indeed, sir, to enable us to
determine both on the one and the other of these great questions with
a firm and precise judgment, I think it may be necessary to consider
distinctly.
The true _nature_ and the peculiar _circumstances_ of the object which
we have before us; because, after all our struggle, whether we will
or not, we must govern America according to that nature and to those
circumstances, and not according to our imaginations; not according to
abstract ideas of right; by no means according to mere general theories
of government, the resort to which appears to me, in our present
situation, no better than arrant trifling. I shall therefore endeavor,
with your leave, to lay before you some of the most material of these
circumstances in as full and as clear a manner as I am able to state
them.
(1) The first thing that we have to consider with regard to the
nature of the object, is the number of people in the colonies. I have
taken for some years a good deal of pains on that point. I can by no
calculation justify myself in placing the number below two millions
of inhabitants of our own European blood and color, besides at least
five hundred thousand others, who form no inconsiderable part of the
strength and opulence of the whole. This, sir, is, I believe, about
the true number. There is no occasion to exaggerate, where plain truth
is of so much weight and importance. But whether I put the present
numbers too high or too low, is a matter of little moment. Such is the
strength with which population shoots in that part of the world, that,
state the numbers as high as we will, while the dispute continues, the
exaggeration ends. While we are discussing any given magnitude, they
are grown to it. While we spend our time in deliberating on the mode
of governing two millions, we shall find we have two millions more
to manage. Your children do not grow faster from infancy to manhood,
than they spread from families to communities, and from villages to
nations.[45]
I put this consideration of the present and the growing numbers in
the front of our deliberation; because, sir, this consideration will
make it evident to a blunter discernment than yours, that no partial,
narrow, contracted, pinched, occasional system will be at all suitable
to such an object. It will show you that it is not to be considered as
one of those _minima_[46] which are out of the eye and consideration of
the law; not a paltry excrescence of the state; not a mean dependent,
who may be neglected with little damage, and provoked with little
danger. It will prove that some degree of care and caution is required
in the handling such an object; it will show that you ought not, in
reason, to trifle with so large a mass of the interests and feelings
of the human race. You could at no time do so without guilt; and, be
assured, you will not be able to do it long with impunity.
But the population of this country, the great and growing population,
though a very important consideration, will lose much of its weight, if
not combined with other circumstances. The commerce of your colonies is
out of all proportion beyond the numbers of the people. This ground of
their commerce, indeed, has been trod some days ago, and with great
ability, by a distinguished person at your bar.[47] This gentleman,
after thirty-five years—it is so long since he appeared at the same
place to plead for the commerce of Great Britain—has come again before
you to plead the same cause, without any other effect of time, than
that, to the fire of imagination and extent of erudition which even
then marked him as one of the first literary characters of his age,
he has added a consummate knowledge in the commercial interest of his
country, formed by a long course of enlightened and discriminating
experience.
Sir, I should be inexcusable in coming after such a person with any
detail, if a great part of the members who now fill the House had not
the misfortune to be absent when he appeared at your bar. Besides, sir,
I propose to take the matter at periods of time somewhat different from
his. There is, if I mistake not, a point of view, from whence, if you
will look at this subject, it is impossible that it should not make an
impression upon you.
I have in my hand two accounts: one a comparative state of the export
trade of England to its colonies as it stood in the year 1704, and as
it stood in the year 1772; the other a state of the export trade of
this country to its colonies alone, as it stood in 1772, compared with
the whole trade of England to all parts of the world, the colonies
included, in the year 1704. They are from good vouchers; the latter
period from the accounts on your table, the earlier from an original
manuscript of Davenant, who first established the inspector general’s
office, which has been ever since his time so abundant a source of
parliamentary information.[48]
The export trade to the colonies consists of three great branches: the
African, which, terminating almost wholly in the colonies, must be
put to the account of their commerce; the West Indian, and the North
American. All these are so interwoven, that the attempt to separate
them would tear to pieces the contexture of the whole, and, if not
entirely destroy, would very much depreciate the value of all the
parts. I therefore consider these three denominations to be, what in
effect they are, one trade.
The trade to the colonies, taken on the export side, at the beginning
of this century, that is, in the year 1704, stood thus:
Exports to North America and the West Indies £483,265
To Africa 86,665
--------
£569,930
In the year 1772, which I take as a middle year between the highest and
lowest of those lately laid on your table, the account was as follows:
To North America and the West Indies £4,791,734
To Africa 866,398
To which, if you add the export trade from
Scotland, which had in 1704 no existence 364,000
----------
£6,022,132
From five hundred and odd thousand, it has grown to six millions.
It has increased no less than twelve-fold. This is the state of the
colony trade, as compared with itself at these two periods, within
this century; and this is matter for meditation. But this is not all.
Examine my second account. See how the export trade to the colonies
alone in 1772 stood in the other point of view, that is, as compared to
the whole trade of England in 1704.
The whole export trade of England, including
that to the colonies, in 1704 £6,509,000
Exported to the colonies alone, in 1772 6,024,000
----------
Difference £485,000
The trade with America alone is now within less than £500,000 of
being equal to what this great commercial nation, England, carried
on at the beginning of this century with the whole world! If I had
taken the largest year of those on your table, it would rather have
exceeded. But, it will be said, is not this American trade an unnatural
protuberance, that has drawn the juices from the rest of the body? The
reverse. It is the very food that has nourished every other part into
its present magnitude. Our general trade has been greatly augmented,
and augmented more or less in almost every part to which it ever
extended, but with this material difference, that of the six millions
which in the beginning of the century constituted the whole mass of
our export commerce, the colony trade was but one twelfth part; it is
now (as a part of sixteen millions) considerably more than a third of
the whole. This is the relative proportion of the importance of the
colonies of these two periods; and all reasoning concerning our mode
of treating them must have this proportion as its basis, or it is a
reasoning weak, rotten, and sophistical.[49]
Mr. Speaker, I cannot prevail on myself to hurry over this great
consideration. It is good for us to be here. We stand where we have
an immense view of what is, and what is past. Clouds, indeed, and
darkness, rest upon the future. Let us, however, before we descend
from this noble eminence, reflect that this growth of our national
prosperity has happened within the short period of the life of man.
It has happened within sixty-eight years. There are those alive whose
memory might touch the two extremities. For instance, my Lord Bathurst
might remember all the stages of the progress. He was in 1704 of an age
at least to be made to comprehend such things. He was then old enough
“_acta parentum jam legere et quæ sit poterit cognoscere virtus_.”[50]
Suppose, sir, that the angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the
many virtues which made him one of the most amiable, as he is one of
the most fortunate men of his age, had opened to him in vision, that
when, in the fourth generation, the third prince of the House of
Brunswick had sat twelve years on the throne of that nation, which,
by the happy issue of moderate and healing councils, was to be made
Great Britain, he should see his son, Lord Chancellor of England, turn
back the current of hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise
him to a higher rank of peerage, while he enriched the family with
a new one. If, amid these bright and happy scenes of domestic honor
and prosperity, that angel should have drawn up the curtain, and
unfolded the rising glories of his country, and while he was gazing
with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the genius
should point out to him a little speck, scarce visible in the mass of
the national interest, a small seminal principle rather than a formed
body, and should tell him: “Young man, there is America—which at this
day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men
and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste death, show itself
equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the
world. Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive increase
of improvement, brought in by varieties of people, by succession
of civilizing conquests and civilizing settlements in a series of
seventeen hundred years, you shall see as much added to her by America
in the course of a single life!” If this state of his country had been
foretold to him, would it not require all the sanguine credulity of
youth, and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm, to make him believe it?
Fortunate man, he has lived to see it! Fortunate indeed, if he lived to
see nothing to vary the prospect and cloud the setting of his day!
Excuse me, sir, if, turning from such thoughts, I resume this
comparative view once more. You have seen it on a large scale; look
at it on a small one. I will point out to your attention a particular
instance of it in the single province of Pennsylvania. In the year 1704
that province called for £11,459 value of your commodities, native and
foreign. This was the whole. What did it demand in 1772? Why nearly
fifty times as much; for in that year the export to Pennsylvania was
£507,909, nearly equal to the export to all the colonies together in
the first period.
I choose, sir, to enter into these minute and particular details,
because generalities, which, in all other cases are apt to heighten and
raise the subject, have here a tendency to sink it. When we speak of
the commerce with our colonies, fiction lags after truth; invention is
unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.
So far, sir, as to the importance of the object in the view of its
commerce, as concerned in the exports from England. If I were to detail
the imports, I could show how many enjoyments they procure, which
deceive the burden of life; how many materials which invigorate the
springs of national industry, and extend and animate every part of our
foreign and domestic commerce. This would be a curious subject indeed;
but I must prescribe bounds to myself in a matter so vast and various.
(3) I pass, therefore, to the colonies in another point of view—their
agriculture. This they have prosecuted with such a spirit, that,
besides feeding plentifully their own growing multitude, their annual
export of grain, comprehending rice, has, some years ago, exceeded a
million in value. Of their last harvest I am persuaded they will export
much more. At the beginning of the century, some of these colonies
imported corn from the mother country. For some time past the old world
has been fed from the new. The scarcity which you have felt would have
been a desolating famine, if this child of your old age, with a true
filial piety, with a Roman charity, had not put the full breast of its
youthful exuberance to the mouth of its exhausted parent.[51]
As to the wealth which the colonies have drawn from the sea by their
fisheries, you had all that matter fully opened at your bar. You surely
thought those acquisitions of value, for they seemed even to excite
your envy; and yet, the spirit by which that enterprising employment
has been exercised, ought rather, in my opinion, to have raised your
esteem and admiration. And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to
it? Pass by the other parts, and look at the manner in which the
people of New England have of late carried on the whale fishery. While
we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them
penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson’s Bay and Davis’
Straits—while we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we
hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold—that
they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen Serpent of the
south. Falkland Island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object
for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place
in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial
heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the
poles. We know that while some of them draw the line, and strike the
harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue
their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed
by their fisheries. No climate that is not witness to their toils.
Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor
the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried
this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has
been pushed by this recent people—a people who are still, as it were,
but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. When
I contemplate these things—when I know that the colonies in general owe
little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed
into this happy form by the constraints of watchful and suspicious
government, but that, through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous
nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection—when I
reflect upon these effects—when I see how profitable they have been
to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the
wisdom of human contrivances melt, and die away within me. My rigor
relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.[52]
I am sensible, sir, that all which I have asserted in my detail is
admitted in the gross; but that quite a different conclusion is drawn
from it. America, gentlemen say, is a noble object. It is an object
well worth fighting for. Certainly it is, if fighting a people be the
best way of gaining them. Gentlemen in this respect will be led to
their choice of means by their complexions and their habits. Those who
understand the military art will, of course, have some predilection for
it. Those who wield the thunder of the State may have more confidence
in the efficacy of arms. But I confess, possibly for want of this
knowledge, my opinion is much more in favor of prudent management than
of force; considering force not as an odious, but a feeble, instrument
for preserving a people so numerous, so active, so growing, so spirited
as this, in a profitable and subordinate connection with us.
First, sir, permit me to observe, that the use of force alone is but
_temporary_. It may subdue for a moment, but it does not remove the
necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed which is
perpetually to be conquered.
My next objection is its _uncertainty_. Terror is not always the effect
of force; and an armament is not a victory. If you do not succeed,
you are without resource; for, conciliation failing, force remains;
but, force failing, no farther hope of reconciliation is left. Power
and authority are sometimes bought by kindness, but they can never be
begged as alms by an impoverished and defeated violence.
A farther objection to force is, that you _impair the object_ by your
very endeavors to preserve it. The thing you fought for is not the
thing which you recover; but depreciated, sunk, wasted, and consumed
in the contest. Nothing less will content me than _whole_ America. I
do not choose to consume its strength along with our own, because in
all parts it is the British strength that I consume. I do not choose to
be caught by a foreign enemy at the end of this exhausting conflict,
and still less in the midst of it. I may escape; but I can make no
insurance against such an event. Let me add, that I do not choose
wholly to break the American spirit, because it is the spirit that has
made the country.
Lastly, we have no sort of _experience_ in favor of force as an
instrument in the rule of our colonies. Their growth and their utility
have been owing to methods altogether different. Our ancient indulgence
has been said to be pursued to a fault. It may be so; but we know, if
feeling is evidence, that our fault was more tolerable than our attempt
to mend it; and our sin far more salutary than our penitence.
These, sir, are my reasons for not entertaining that high opinion of
untried force, by which many gentlemen, for whose sentiments in other
particulars I have great respect, seem to be so greatly captivated.
But there is still behind a third consideration concerning this object,
which serves to determine my opinion on the sort of policy which
ought to be pursued in the management of America, even more than its
population and its commerce—I mean its temper and character. In this
character of the Americans _a love of freedom_ is the predominating
feature, which marks and distinguishes the whole; and, as an ardent is
always a jealous affection, your colonies become suspicious, restive,
and untractable, whenever they see the least attempt to wrest from them
by force, or shuffle from them by chicane, what they think the only
advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger
in the English colonies, probably, than in any other people of the
earth, and this from a variety of powerful causes, which, to understand
the true temper of their minds, and the direction which this spirit
takes, it will not be amiss to lay open somewhat more largely.
First, the people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen.
England, sir, is a nation which still, I hope, respects, and formerly
adored her freedom. The colonists emigrated from you when this part of
your character was most predominant[53]; and they took this bias and
direction the moment they parted from your hands. They are, therefore,
not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English
ideas and on English principles. Abstract liberty, like other mere
abstractions, is not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible
object; and every nation has formed to itself some favorite point
which, by way of eminence, becomes the criterion of their happiness.
It happened you know, sir, that the great contests for freedom in
this country were, from the earliest times chiefly upon the question
of taxing. Most of the contests in the ancient commonwealths turned
primarily on the right of election of magistrates, or on the balance
among the several orders of the State. The question of money was not
with them so immediate. But in England it was otherwise. On this point
of taxes the ablest pens and most eloquent tongues have been exercised;
the greatest spirits have acted and suffered. In order to give the
fullest satisfaction concerning the importance of this point, it was
not only necessary for those who in argument defended the excellence
of the English Constitution, to insist on this privilege of granting
money as a dry point of fact, and to prove that the right had been
acknowledged in ancient parchments and blind usages to reside in a
certain body called the House of Commons. They went much farther:
they attempted to prove (and they succeeded) that in theory it ought
to be so, from the particular nature of a House of Commons, as an
immediate representative of the people, whether the old records had
delivered this oracle or not. They took infinite pains to inculcate,
as a fundamental principle, that, in all monarchies, the people must,
in effect, themselves, mediately or immediately, possess the power of
granting their own money, or no shadow of liberty could subsist. The
colonies draw from you, as with their life-blood, those ideas and
principles. Their love of liberty, as with you, fixed and attached
on this specific point of taxing. Liberty might be safe or might be
endangered in twenty other particulars, without their being much
pleased or alarmed. Here they felt its pulse, and, as they found that
beat, they thought themselves sick or sound. I do not say whether
they were right or wrong in applying your general arguments to their
own case. It is not easy, indeed, to make a monopoly of theorems and
corollaries. The fact is, that they did thus apply those general
arguments; and your mode of governing them, whether through lenity or
indolence, through wisdom or mistake, confirmed them in the imagination
that they, as well as you, had an interest in these common principles.
They were further confirmed in these pleasing errors by the form
of their provincial legislative assemblies. Their governments are
popular in a high degree; some are merely popular; in all, the popular
representative is the most weighty;[54] and this share of the people
in their ordinary government never fails to inspire them with lofty
sentiments, and with a strong aversion from whatever tends to deprive
them of their chief importance.
If any thing were wanting to this necessary operation of the form of
government, religion would have given it a complete effect. Religion,
always a principle of energy, in this new people is no way worn out or
impaired; and their mode of professing it is also one main cause of
this free spirit. The people are Protestants; and of that kind which is
the most averse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This
is a persuasion not only favorable to liberty, but built upon it. I do
not think, sir, that the reason of this averseness in the dissenting
churches from all that looks like absolute government, is so much to be
sought in their religious tenets as in their history. Everyone knows
that the Roman Catholic religion is at least coeval with most of the
governments where it prevails; that it has generally gone hand in hand
with them; and received great favor and every kind of support from
authority. The Church of England, too, was formed from her cradle under
the nursing care of regular government. But the dissenting interests
have sprung up in direct opposition to all the ordinary powers of
the world, and could justify that opposition only on a strong claim
to natural liberty. Their very existence depended on the powerful
and unremitted assertion of that claim. All Protestantism, even the
most cold and passive, is a kind of dissent. But the religion most
prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle
of resistance; it is the dissidence of dissent; and the Protestantism
of the Protestant religion. This religion, under a variety of
denominations, agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the spirit
of liberty, is predominant in most of the northern provinces; where
the Church of England, notwithstanding its legal rights, is in reality
no more than a sort of private sect, not composing, most probably, the
tenth of the people. The colonists left England when this spirit was
high, and in the emigrants was the highest of all; and even that stream
of foreigners, which has been constantly flowing into these colonies,
has, for the greatest part, been composed of dissenters from the
establishments of their several countries, and have brought with them
a temper and character far from alien to that of the people with whom
they mixed.
Sir, I can perceive by their manner that some gentlemen object to the
latitude of this description, because in the southern colonies the
Church of England forms a large body, and has a regular establishment.
It is certainly true. There is, however, a circumstance attending these
colonies, which, in my opinion, fully counterbalances this difference,
and makes the spirit of liberty still more high and haughty than in
those to the northward. It is that in Virginia and the Carolinas they
have a vast multitude of _slaves_. Where this is the case in any part
of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous
of their freedom. Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind
of rank and privilege. Not seeing there that freedom, as in countries
where it is a common blessing, and as broad and general as the air,
may be united with much abject toil, with great misery, with all the
exterior of servitude, liberty looks, among them, like something that
is more noble and liberal. I do not mean, sir, to commend the superior
morality of this sentiment, which has at least as much pride as virtue
in it; but I cannot alter the nature of man. The fact is so; and these
people of the southern colonies are much more strongly, and with a
higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty than those to the
northward. Such were all the ancient commonwealths; such were our
Gothic ancestors; such, in our days, were the Poles, and such will be
all masters of slaves, who are not slaves themselves. In such a people
the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom,
fortifies it, and renders it invincible.
Permit me, sir, to add another circumstance in our colonies, which
contributes no mean part toward the growth and effect of this
untractable spirit—I mean their _education_. In no country perhaps
in the world is the law so general a study. The profession itself is
numerous and powerful; and in most provinces it takes the lead. The
greater number of the deputies sent to Congress were lawyers. But all
who read, and most do read, endeavor to obtain some smattering in that
science. I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch
of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books
as those on the law exported to the Plantations. The colonists have
now fallen into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear
that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone’s Commentaries in
America as in England. General Gage marks out this disposition very
particularly in a letter on your table. He states that all the people
in his government are lawyers, or smatterers in law; and that in Boston
they have been enabled, by successful chicane,[55] wholly to evade many
parts of one of your capital penal constitutions. The smartness of
debate will say that this knowledge ought to teach them more clearly
the rights of legislature, their obligations to obedience, and the
penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty well. But my honorable and
learned friend [the Attorney-General, afterward Lord Thurlow] on the
floor, who condescends to mark what I say for animadversion, will
disdain that ground. He has heard, as well as I, that when great honors
and great emoluments do not win over this knowledge to the service of
the State, it is a formidable adversary to government. If the spirit
be not tamed and broken by these happy methods, it is stubborn and
litigious. _Abeunt studia in mores._ This study renders men acute,
inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of
resources. In other countries, the people, more simple and of a less
mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an
actual grievance. Here they anticipate the evil, and judge of the
pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur
misgovernment at a distance; and snuff the approach of tyranny in
every tainted breeze.
The last cause of this disobedient spirit in the colonies is hardly
less powerful than the rest, as it is not merely moral, but laid deep
in the natural constitution of things. Three thousand miles of ocean
lie between you and them. No contrivance can prevent the effect of this
distance in weakening government. Seas roll and months pass between
the order and the execution; and the want of a speedy explanation of a
single point is enough to defeat the whole system. You have, indeed,
“winged ministers” of vengeance, who carry your bolts in their pouches
to the remotest verge of the sea.[56] But there a power steps in that
limits the arrogance of raging passion and furious elements, and says:
“So far shalt thou go, and no farther.” Who are you, that should fret
and rage, and bite the chains of nature? Nothing worse happens to you
than does to all nations who have extensive empire; and it happens in
all the forms into which empire can be thrown. In large bodies the
circulation of power must be less vigorous at the extremities. Nature
has said it. The Turk cannot govern Egypt, and Arabia, and Koordistan
as he governs Thrace; nor has he the same dominion in Crimea and
Algiers which he has at Broosa and Smyrna. Despotism itself is obliged
to truck and huckster. The Sultan gets such obedience as he can. He
governs with a loose rein, that he may govern at all; and the whole
of the force and vigor of his authority in his centre is derived from
a prudent relaxation in all his borders. Spain, in her provinces, is,
perhaps, not so well obeyed as you are in yours. She complies too;
she submits; she watches times. This is the immutable condition, the
eternal law, of extensive and detached empire.
Then, sir, from these six capital sources of descent, of form of
government, of religion in the northern provinces, of manners in the
southern, of education, of the remoteness of situation from the first
mover of government—from all these causes a fierce spirit of liberty
has grown up. It has grown with the growth of the people in your
colonies, and increased with the increase of their wealth; a spirit
that, unhappily meeting with an exercise of power in England, which,
however lawful, is not reconcilable to any ideas of liberty, much less
with theirs, has kindled this flame, that is ready to consume us.
I do not mean to commend either the spirit in this excess, or the
moral causes which produce it. Perhaps a more smooth and accommodating
spirit of freedom in them would be more acceptable to us. Perhaps
ideas of liberty might be desired, more reconcilable with an arbitrary
and boundless authority. Perhaps we might wish the colonists to be
persuaded that their liberty is more secure when held in trust for
them by us, as guardians during a perpetual minority, than with any
part of it in their own hands. But the question is not whether their
spirit deserves praise or blame. What, in the name of God, shall we
do with it? You have before you the object, such as it is, with all
its glories, with all its imperfections on its head. You see the
magnitude, the importance, the temper, the habits, the disorders. By
all these considerations we are strongly urged to determine something
concerning it. We are called upon to fix some rule and line for our
future conduct, which may give a little stability to our politics,
and prevent the return of such unhappy deliberations as the present.
Every such return will bring the matter before us in a still more
untractable form. For, what astonishing and incredible things have we
not seen already? What monsters have not been generated from this
unnatural contention? While every principle of authority and resistance
has been pushed upon both sides, as far as it would go, there is
nothing so solid and certain, either in reasoning or in practice, that
it has not been shaken. Until very lately, all authority in America
seemed to be nothing but an emanation from yours. Even the popular
part of the colony constitution derived all its activity, and its
first vital movement, from the pleasure of the Crown. We thought, sir,
that the utmost which the discontented colonists could do, was to
disturb authority. We never dreamed they could of themselves supply
it, knowing in general what an operose business it is to establish
a government absolutely new. But having, for our purposes in this
contention, resolved that none but an obedient assembly should sit,
the humors of the people there, finding all passage through the legal
channel stopped, with great violence broke out another way. Some
provinces have tried their experiment, as we have tried ours; and
theirs has succeeded. They have formed a government sufficient for
its purposes, without the bustle of a revolution, or the troublesome
formality of an election. Evident necessity and tacit consent have
done the business in an instant. So well they have done it, that Lord
Dunmore (the account is among the fragments on your table) tells you,
that the new institution is infinitely better obeyed than the ancient
government ever was in its most fortunate periods. Obedience is what
makes government, and not the names by which it is called; not the
name of governor, as formerly, or committee, as at present. This
new government has originated directly from the people, and was not
transmitted through any of the ordinary artificial media of a positive
constitution. It was not a manufacture ready formed, and transmitted
to them in that condition from England. The evil arising from hence is
this: that the colonists having once found the possibility of enjoying
the advantages of order in the midst of a struggle for liberty, such
struggles will not henceforward seem so terrible to the settled and
sober part of mankind as they had appeared before the trial.
Pursuing the same plan of punishing by the denial of the exercise of
government to still greater lengths, we wholly abrogated the ancient
government of Massachusetts. We were confident that the first feeling,
if not the very prospect of anarchy, would instantly enforce a complete
submission. The experiment was tried. A new, strange, unexpected
face of things appeared. Anarchy is found tolerable. A vast province
has now subsisted, and subsisted in a considerable degree of health
and vigor, for near a twelvemonth, without governor, without public
council, without judges, without executive magistrates. How long it
will continue in this state, or what may arise out of this unheard-of
situation, how can the wisest of us conjecture? Our late experience has
taught us, that many of those fundamental principles, formerly believed
infallible, are either not of the importance they were imagined to be,
or that we have not at all adverted to some other far more important
and far more powerful principles, which entirely overrule those we had
considered as omnipotent. I am much against any farther experiments,
which tend to put to the proof any more of these allowed opinions,
which contribute so much to the public tranquillity. In effect,
we suffer as much at home by this loosening of all ties, and this
concussion of all established opinions, as we do abroad. For, in order
to prove that the Americans have no right to their liberties, we are
every day endeavoring to subvert the maxims which preserve the whole
spirit of our own. To prove that the Americans ought not to be free,
we are obliged to depreciate the value of freedom itself; and we never
seem to gain a paltry advantage over them in debate, without attacking
some of those principles, or deriding some of those feelings, for which
our ancestors have shed their blood.
But, sir, in wishing to put an end to pernicious experiments, I do not
mean to preclude the fullest inquiry. Far from it. Far from deciding
on a sudden or partial view, I would patiently go round and round the
subject, and survey it minutely in every possible aspect. Sir, if I
were capable of engaging you to an equal attention, I would state
that, as far as I am capable of discerning, there are but three ways
of proceeding relative to this stubborn spirit which prevails in your
colonies and disturbs your government. These are, to change that
spirit, as inconvenient, by removing the causes; to prosecute it as
criminal; or to comply with it as necessary. I would not be guilty
of an imperfect enumeration. I can think of but these three. Another
has, indeed, been started—that of giving up the colonies; but it met
so slight a reception, that I do not think myself obliged to dwell a
great while upon it. It is nothing but a little sally of anger, like
the frowardness of peevish children, who, when they cannot get all they
would have, are resolved to take nothing.
The _first_ of these plans, to change the spirit, as inconvenient,
by removing the causes, I think is the most like a systematic
proceeding. It is radical in its principle, but it is attended with
great difficulties, some of them little short, as I conceive, of
impossibilities. This will appear by examining into the plans which
have been proposed.
As the growing population of the colonies is evidently one cause of
their resistance, it was last session mentioned in both Houses by men
of weight, and received, not without applause, that, in order to check
this evil, it would be proper for the Crown to make no farther grants
of land. But to this scheme there are two objections. The first, that
there is already so much unsettled land in private hands as to afford
room for an immense future population, although the Crown not only
withheld its grants, but annihilated its soil. If this be the case,
then the only effect of this avarice of desolation, this hoarding of a
royal wilderness, would be to raise the value of the possessions in the
hands of the great private monopolists without any adequate check to
the growing and alarming mischief of population.
But if you stopped your grants, what would be the consequence? The
people would occupy without grants. They have already so occupied
in many places. You cannot station garrisons in every part of these
deserts. If you drive the people from one place, they will carry
on their annual tillage, and remove with their flocks and herds to
another. Many of the people in the back settlements are already
little attached to particular situations. Already they have topped
the Apalachian Mountains.[57] From thence they behold before them an
immense plain, one vast, rich, level meadow—a square of five hundred
miles. Over this they would wander without a possibility of restraint.
They would change their manners with the habits of their life; would
soon forget a government by which they were disowned; would become
hordes of English Tartars; and, pouring down upon your unfortified
frontiers a fierce and irresistible cavalry, become masters of your
governors and your counsellors, your collectors and controllers, and
of all the slaves that adhered to them. Such would, and, in no long
time, must be the effect of attempting to forbid as a crime, and to
suppress as an evil, the command and blessing of Providence, “Increase
and multiply.” Such would be the happy result of an endeavor to keep as
a lair of wild beasts that earth which God by an express charter has
given to the children of men. Far different, and surely much wiser, has
been our policy hitherto. Hitherto we have invited our people, by every
kind of bounty, to fixed establishments. We have invited the husbandman
to look to authority for his title. We have taught him piously to
believe in the mysterious virtue of wax and parchment. We have thrown
each tract of land, as it was peopled, into districts, that the ruling
power should never be wholly out of sight. We have settled all we
could, and we have carefully attended every settlement with government.
Adhering, sir, as I do, to this policy, as well as for the reasons I
have just given, I think this new project of hedging in population to
be neither prudent nor practicable.
To impoverish the colonies in general, and in particular to arrest the
noble course of their marine enterprises, would be a more easy task.
I freely confess it. We have shown a disposition to a system of this
kind; a disposition even to continue the restraint after the offence,
looking on ourselves as rivals to our colonies, and persuaded that of
course we must gain all that they shall lose. Much mischief we may
certainly do. The power inadequate to all other things is often more
than sufficient for this. I do not look on the direct and immediate
power of the colonies to resist our violence as very formidable. In
this, however, I may be mistaken. But when I consider that we have
colonies for no purpose but to be serviceable to us, it seems to my
poor understanding a little preposterous to make them unserviceable in
order to keep them obedient. It is, in truth, nothing more than the
old, and, as I thought, exploded problem of tyranny, which proposes
to beggar its subject into submission. But, remember, when you have
completed your system of impoverishment, that nature still proceeds in
her ordinary course; that discontent will increase with misery; and
that there are critical moments in the fortunes of all states, when
they who are too weak to contribute to your prosperity may be strong
enough to complete your ruin. “_Spoliatis arma supersunt._”
The temper and character which prevail in our colonies are, I am
afraid, unalterable by any human art. We cannot, I fear, falsify the
pedigree of this fierce people, and persuade them that they are not
sprung from a nation in whose veins the blood of freedom circulates.
The language in which they would hear you tell them this tale would
detect the imposition. Your speech would betray you. An Englishman is
the unfittest person on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery.
I think it is nearly as little in our power to change their republican
religion as their free descent; or to substitute the Roman Catholic
as a penalty, or the Church of England as an improvement. The mode
of inquisition and dragooning is going out of fashion in the old
world, and I should not confide much to their efficacy in the new. The
education of the Americans is also on the same unalterable bottom with
their religion. You cannot persuade them to burn their books of curious
science; to banish their lawyers from their courts of law; or to quench
the lights of their assemblies, by refusing to choose those persons who
are best read in their privileges. It would be no less impracticable
to think of wholly annihilating the popular assemblies in which these
lawyers sit. The army, by which we must govern in their place, would be
far more chargeable to us; not quite so effectual; and perhaps, in the
end, full as difficult to be kept in obedience.
With regard to the high aristocratic spirit of Virginia and the
southern colonies, it has been proposed, I know, to reduce it, by
declaring a general enfranchisement of their slaves. This project has
had its advocates and panegyrists, yet I never could argue myself into
an opinion of it. Slaves are often much attached to their masters. A
general wild offer of liberty would not always be accepted. History
furnishes few instances of it. It is sometimes as hard to persuade
slaves to be free as it is to compel freemen to be slaves; and in this
auspicious scheme we should have both these pleasing tasks on our
hands at once. But when we talk of enfranchisement, do we not perceive
that the American master may enfranchise too, and arm servile hands in
defence of freedom? A measure to which other people have had recourse
more than once, and not without success, in a desperate situation of
their affairs.
Slaves as these unfortunate black people are, and dull as all men
are from slavery, must they not a little suspect the offer of freedom
from that very nation which has sold them to their present masters?
From that nation, one of whose causes of quarrel with those masters is
their refusal to deal any more in that inhuman traffic? An offer of
freedom from England would come rather oddly, shipped to them in an
African vessel, which is refused an entry into the ports of Virginia
or Carolina, with a cargo of three hundred Angola negroes. It would
be curious to see the Guinea captain attempt at the same instant to
publish his proclamation of liberty and to advertise the sale of slaves.
But let us suppose all these moral difficulties got over. The ocean
remains. You cannot pump this dry; and as long as it continues in its
present bed, so long all the causes which weaken authority by distance
will continue.
“Ye gods! annihilate but space and time,
And make two lovers happy!”
was a pious and passionate prayer, but just as reasonable as many of
these serious wishes of very grave and solemn politicians.
If, then, sir, it seems almost desperate to think of any alterative
course for changing the moral causes (and not quite easy to remove
the natural) which produce the prejudices irreconcilable to the
late exercise of our authority, but that the spirit infallibly will
continue, and, continuing, will produce such effects as now embarrass
us, the _second_ mode under consideration is to prosecute that spirit
in its overt acts as _criminal_.
At this proposition I must pause a moment. The thing seems a great deal
too big for my ideas of jurisprudence. It should seem, to my way of
conceiving such matters, that there is a very wide difference in reason
and policy between the mode of proceeding on the irregular conduct
of scattered individuals, or even of bands of men, who disturb order
within the state, and the civil dissensions which may, from time to
time, on great questions, agitate the several communities which compose
a great empire. It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the
ordinary ideas of criminal justice so this great public contest. I
do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole
people. I cannot insult and ridicule the feelings of millions of my
fellow-creatures, as Sir Edward Coke insulted one excellent individual
at the bar.[58] I am not ripe to pass sentence on the gravest public
bodies, intrusted with magistracies of great authority and dignity,
and charged with the safety of their fellow-citizens, upon the very
same title that I am. I really think that, for wise men, this is
not judicious; for sober men, not decent; for minds tinctured with
humanity, not mild and merciful.
Perhaps, sir, I am mistaken in my idea of an empire, as distinguished
from a single state or kingdom. But my idea of it is this; that an
empire is the aggregate of many states, under one common head, whether
this head be a monarch or a presiding republic. It does, in such
constitutions, frequently happen (and nothing but the dismal, cold,
dead uniformity of servitude can prevent its happening) that the
subordinate parts have many local privileges and immunities. Between
these privileges and the supreme common authority, the line may be
extremely nice. Of course, disputes—often, too, very bitter disputes,
and much ill blood, will arise. But, though every privilege is an
exemption, in the case, from the ordinary exercise of the supreme
authority, it is no denial of it. The claim of a privilege seems
rather, _ex vi termini_, to imply a superior power; for to talk of the
privileges of a state or of a person who has no superior, is hardly any
better than speaking nonsense. Now, in such unfortunate quarrels among
the component parts of a great political union of communities, I can
scarcely conceive any thing more completely imprudent than for the head
of the empire to insist that, if any privilege is pleaded against his
will or his acts, that his _whole_ authority is denied; instantly to
proclaim rebellion, to beat to arms, and to put the offending provinces
under the ban. Will not this, sir, very soon teach the provinces to
make no distinctions on their part? Will it not teach them that the
government against which a claim of liberty is tantamount to high
treason, is a government to which submission is equivalent to slavery?
It may not always be quite convenient to impress dependent communities
with such an idea.
We are, indeed, in all disputes with the colonies, by the necessity of
things, the judge. It is true sir; but I confess that the character of
judge in my own cause is a thing that frightens me. Instead of filling
me with pride, I am exceedingly humbled by it. I cannot proceed with a
stern, assured, judicial confidence, until I find myself in something
more like a judicial character. I must have these hesitations as long
as I am compelled to recollect that, in my little reading upon such
contests as these, the sense of mankind has at least as often decided
against the superior as the subordinate power. Sir, let me add, too,
that the opinion of my having some abstract right in my favor would
not put me much at my ease in passing sentence, unless I could be
sure that there were no rights which in their exercise under certain
circumstances, were not the most odious of all wrongs, and the most
vexatious of all injustice. Sir, these considerations have great weight
with me, when I find things so circumstanced that I see the same party
at once a civil litigant against me in point of right and a culprit
before me; while I sit as criminal judge on acts of his whose moral
quality is to be decided on upon the merits of that very litigation.
Men are every now and then put, by the complexity of human affairs,
into strange situations; but justice is the same, let the judge be in
what situation he will.
There is, sir, also a circumstance which convinces me that this mode
of criminal proceeding is not, at least in the present stage of our
contest, altogether expedient, which is nothing less than the conduct
of those very persons who have seemed to adopt that mode, by lately
declaring a rebellion in Massachusetts Bay, as they had formerly
addressed to have traitors brought hither, under an act of Henry
the Eighth, for trial. For, though rebellion is declared, it is not
proceeded against as such; nor have any steps been taken toward the
apprehension or conviction of any individual offender, either on our
late or our former address; but modes of _public_ coercion have been
adopted, and such as have much more resemblance to a sort of qualified
hostility toward an independent power than the punishment of rebellious
subjects. All this seems rather inconsistent; but it shows how
difficult it is to apply these juridical ideas to our present case.
In this situation, let us seriously and coolly ponder. What is it we
have got by all our menaces, which have been many and ferocious? What
advantage have we derived from the penal laws we have passed, and
which, for the time, have been severe and numerous? What advances have
we made toward our object by the sending of a force which, by land and
sea, is no contemptible strength? Has the disorder abated? Nothing
less. When I see things in this situation, after such confident hopes,
bold promises, and active exertions, I cannot, for my life, avoid a
suspicion that the plan itself is not correctly right.
If, then, the removal of the causes of this spirit of American liberty
be, for the greater part, or rather entirely, impracticable; if the
ideas of criminal process be inapplicable, or, if applicable, are in
the highest degree inexpedient, what way yet remains? No way is open
but the third and last—to comply with the American spirit as necessary,
or, if you please, to submit to it as a necessary evil.
If we adopt this mode, if we mean to conciliate and concede, let us
see, of what nature the concessions ought to be. To ascertain the
nature of our concession, we must look at their complaint. The colonies
complain that they have not the characteristic mark and seal of British
freedom. They complain that they are taxed in Parliament in which they
are not represented. If you mean to satisfy them at all, you must
satisfy them with regard to this complaint. If you mean to please any
people, you must give them the boon which they ask; not what you may
think better for them, but of a kind totally different. Such an act
may be a wise regulation, but it is no concession, whereas our present
theme is the mode of giving satisfaction.
Sir, I think you must perceive that 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.
The point is
That Serbonian bog
Betwixt Damieta and Mount Cassius old,
Where armies whole have sunk.[59]
I do not intend to be overwhelmed in this 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?[60]
Such is steadfastly my opinion of the absolute necessity of keeping up
the concord of this empire by a unity of spirit, though in a diversity
of operations, that, if I were sure the colonists had, at their leaving
this country, sealed a regular compact of servitude; that they had
solemnly abjured all the rights of citizens; that they had made a vow
to renounce all ideas of liberty for them and their posterity to all
generations, yet I should hold myself obliged to conform to the temper
I found universally prevalent in my own day, and to govern two millions
of men, impatient of servitude, on the principles of freedom. I am
not determining a point of law. I am restoring tranquillity, and the
general character and situation of a people must determine what sort of
government is fitted for them. That point nothing else can or ought to
determine.
My idea, therefore, without considering whether we yield as matter of
right, or grant as matter of favor, is _to admit the people of our
colonies into an interest in the Constitution_, and, by recording that
admission in the journals of Parliament, to give them as strong an
assurance as the nature of the thing will admit, that we mean forever
to adhere to that solemn declaration of systematic indulgence.
Some years ago, the repeal of a revenue act, upon its understood
principle, might have served to show that we intended an unconditional
abatement of the exercise of a taxing power. Such a measure was then
sufficient to remove all suspicion, and to give perfect content.
But unfortunate events, since that time, may make something farther
necessary, and not more necessary for the satisfaction of the colonies,
than for the dignity and consistency of our own future proceedings.
I have taken a very incorrect measure of the disposition of the House,
if this proposal in itself would be received with dislike. I think,
sir, we have few American financiers. But our misfortune is, we are
too acute; we are too exquisite in our conjectures of the future, for
men oppressed with such great and present evils. The more moderate
among the opposers of parliamentary concessions freely confess that
they hope no good from taxation, but they apprehend the colonists have
farther views, and, if this point were conceded, they would instantly
attack the Trade Laws. These gentlemen are convinced that this was the
intention from the beginning, and the quarrel of the Americans with
taxation was no more than a cloak and cover to this design. Such has
been the language even of a gentleman [Mr. Rice] of real moderation,
and of a natural temper well adjusted to fair and equal government. I
am, however, sir, not a little surprised at this kind of discourse,
whenever I hear it; and I am the more surprised, on account of the
arguments which I constantly find in company with it, and which are
often urged from the same mouths and on the same day.