under so many restraints in trade as the Americans, the noble lord in
the blue ribbon shall tell you that the restraints on trade are futile
and useless; of no advantage to us, and of no burden to those on whom
they are imposed; that the trade of America is not secured by the acts
of navigation, but by the natural and irresistible advantage of a
commercial preference.
Such is the merit of the trade laws in this posture of the debate. But
when strong internal circumstances are urged against the taxes; when
the scheme is dissected; when experience and the nature of things are
brought to prove, and do prove, the utter impossibility of obtaining an
effective revenue from the colonies; when these things are pressed, or
rather press themselves, so as to drive the advocates of colony taxes
to a clear admission of the futility of the scheme; then, sir, the
sleeping trade laws revive from their trance, and this useless taxation
is to be kept sacred, not for its own sake, but as a counterguard and
security of the laws of trade.
Then, sir, you keep up revenue laws which are mischievous, in order
to preserve trade laws that are useless. Such is the wisdom of our
plan in both its members. They are separately given up as of no value,
and yet one is always to be defended for the sake of the other. But I
cannot agree with the noble lord, nor with the pamphlet from whence
he seems to have borrowed these ideas, concerning the inutility of
the trade laws[61]; for, without idolizing them, I am sure they are
still, in many ways, of great use to us; and in former times, they have
been of the greatest. They do confine, and they do greatly narrow the
market for the Americans; but my perfect conviction of this does not
help me in the least to discern how the revenue laws form any security
whatsoever to the commercial regulations, or that these commercial
regulations are the true ground of the quarrel, or that the giving
way in any one instance of authority is to lose all that may remain
unconceded.
One fact is clear and indisputable. The public and avowed origin of
this quarrel was on taxation. This quarrel has, indeed, brought on new
disputes on new questions, but certainly the least bitter, and the
fewest of all, on the trade laws. To judge which of the two be the real
radical cause of quarrel, we have to see whether the commercial dispute
did, in order of time, precede the dispute on taxation. There is not a
shadow of evidence for it. Next, to enable us to judge whether at this
moment a dislike to the trade laws be the real cause of quarrel, it is
absolutely necessary to put the taxes out of the question by a repeal.
See how the Americans act in this position, and then you will be able
to discern correctly what is the true object of the controversy, or
whether any controversy at all will remain. Unless you consent to
remove this cause of difference, it is impossible, with decency, to
assert that the dispute is not upon what it is avowed to be. And I
would, sir, recommend to your serious consideration, whether it be
prudent to form a rule for punishing people, not on their own acts, but
on your conjectures. Surely it is preposterous at the very best. It
is not justifying your anger by their misconduct, but it is converting
your ill will into their delinquency.
But the colonies will go farther. Alas! alas! when will this
speculating against fact and reason end? What will quiet these panic
fears which we entertain of the hostile effect of a conciliatory
conduct? Is it true that no case can exist in which it is proper for
the sovereign to accede to the desires of his discontented subjects? Is
there any thing peculiar in this case to make a rule for itself? Is all
authority of course lost, when it is not pushed to the extreme? Is it
a certain maxim, that the fewer causes of dissatisfaction are left by
government the more the subject will be inclined to resist and rebel?
All these objections being, in fact, no more than suspicions,
conjectures, divinations, formed in defiance of fact and experience,
they did not, sir, discourage me from entertaining the idea of a
conciliatory concession, founded on the principles which I have just
stated.
In forming a plan for this purpose, I endeavored to put myself in that
frame of mind which was the most natural and the most reasonable,
and which was certainly the most probable means of securing me from
all error. I set out with a perfect distrust of my own abilities; a
total renunciation of every speculation of my own; and with a profound
reverence for the wisdom of our ancestors, who have left us the
inheritance of so happy a constitution and so flourishing an empire,
and, what is a thousand times more valuable, the treasury of the maxims
and principles which formed the one and obtained the other.
During the reigns of the Kings of Spain of the Austrian family,
whenever they were at a loss in the Spanish councils, it was common for
their statesmen to say, that they ought to consult the genius of Philip
the Second. The genius of Philip the Second might mislead them; and the
issue of their affairs showed that they had not chosen the most perfect
standard. But, sir, I am sure that I shall not be misled, when, in a
case of constitutional difficulty, I consult the genius of the English
Constitution. Consulting at that oracle (it was with all due humility
and piety), I found four capital examples in a similar case before me:
those of Ireland, Wales, Chester, and Durham.
Ireland, before the English conquest, though never governed by a
despotic power, had no Parliament. How far the English Parliament
itself was at that time modelled according to the present form, is
disputed among antiquarians. But we have all the reason in the world to
be assured, that a form of Parliament, such as England then enjoyed,
she instantly communicated to Ireland; and we are equally sure that
almost every successive improvement in constitutional liberty, as fast
as it was made here, was transmitted thither. The feudal baronage and
the feudal knighthood, the roots of our primitive constitution, were
early transplanted into that soil, and grew and flourished there.
Magna Charta, if it did not give us originally the House of Commons,
gave us, at least, a House of Commons of weight and consequence. But
your ancestors did not churlishly sit down alone to the feast of
Magna Charta. Ireland was made immediately a partaker. This benefit
of English laws and liberties, I confess, was not at first extended
to _all_ Ireland. Mark the consequence. English authority and English
liberty had exactly the same boundaries. Your standard could never
be advanced an inch before your privileges.[62] Sir John Davis shows
beyond a doubt, that the refusal of a general communication of
these rights was the true cause why Ireland was five hundred years
in subduing; and after the vain projects of a military government,
attempted in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it was soon discovered that
nothing could make that country English, in civility and allegiance,
but your laws and your forms of legislature.[63] It was not English
arms, but the English Constitution, that conquered Ireland. From
that time, Ireland has ever had a general Parliament, as she had
before a partial Parliament. You changed the people; you altered the
religion; but you never touched the form or the vital substance of
free government in that kingdom. You deposed kings; you restored them;
you altered the succession to theirs, as well as to your own crown:
but you never altered their Constitution; the principle of which was
respected by usurpation; restored with the restoration of monarchy, and
established, I trust, forever, by the glorious revolution. This has
made Ireland the great and flourishing kingdom that it is; and from a
disgrace and a burden intolerable to this nation, has rendered her a
principal part of our strength and ornament. This country cannot be
said to have ever formally taxed her. The irregular things done in the
confusion of mighty troubles, and on the hinge of great revolutions,
even if all were done that is said to have been done, form no example.
If they have any effect in argument, they make an exception to prove
the rule. None of your own liberties could stand a moment if the casual
deviations from them, at such times, were suffered to be used as proofs
of their nullity. By the lucrative amount of such casual breaches in
the Constitution, judge what the stated and fixed rule of supply has
been in that kingdom. Your Irish pensioners would starve, if they had
no other fund to live on than taxes granted by English authority. Turn
your eyes to those popular grants from whence all your great supplies
are come, and learn to respect that only source of public wealth in the
British empire.
My next example is Wales. This country was said to be reduced by Henry
the Third. It was said more truly to be so by Edward the First.[64]
But though then conquered, it was not looked upon as any part of the
realm of England. Its old Constitution, whatever that might have
been, was destroyed, and no good one was substituted in its place.
The care of that tract was put into the hands of Lords Marchers—a
form of government of a very singular kind; a strange heterogeneous
monster, something between hostility and government; perhaps it has a
sort of resemblance, according to the modes of those times, to that
of commander-in-chief at present, to whom all civil power is granted
as secondary. The manners of the Welsh nation followed the genius
of the government. The people were ferocious, restive, savage, and
uncultivated; sometimes composed, never pacified. Wales, within itself,
was in perpetual disorder; and it kept the frontier of England in
perpetual alarm. Benefits from it to the State there were none. Wales
was only known to England by incursion and invasion.
Sir, during that state of things, Parliament was not idle. They
attempted to subdue the fierce spirit of the Welsh by all sorts of
rigorous laws. They prohibited by statute the sending all sorts of
arms into Wales, as you prohibit by proclamation (with something more
of doubt on the legality) the sending arms to America. They disarmed
the Welsh by statute, as you attempted (but still with more question
on the legality) to disarm New England by an instruction. They made an
act to drag offenders from Wales into England for trial, as you have
done (but with more hardship) with regard to America. By another act,
where one of the parties was an Englishman, they ordained that his
trial should be always by English. They made acts to restrain trade, as
you do; and they prevented the Welsh from the use of fairs and markets,
as you do the Americans from fisheries and foreign ports. In short,
when the statute-book was not quite so much swelled as it is now, you
find no less than fifteen acts of penal regulation on the subject of
Wales.[65]
Here we rub our hands—a fine body of precedents for the authority of
Parliament and the use of it—I admit it fully; and pray add likewise
to these precedents, that all the while Wales rid this kingdom like an
_incubus_; that it was an unprofitable and oppressive burden; and that
an Englishman travelling in that country could not go six yards from
the highroad without being murdered.
The march of the human mind is slow. Sir, it was not until after two
hundred years discovered that, by an eternal law, Providence had
decreed vexation to violence, and poverty to rapine. Your ancestors
did, however, at length open their eyes to the ill husbandry of
injustice. They found that the tyranny of a free people could of all
tyrannies the least be endured, and that laws made against a whole
nation were not the most effectual methods for securing its obedience.
Accordingly, in the twenty-seventh year of Henry VIII., the course
was entirely altered. With a preamble stating the entire and perfect
rights of the Crown of England, it gave to the Welsh all the rights
and privileges of English subjects. A political order was established;
the military power gave way to the civil; the marches were turned into
counties. But that a nation should have a right to English liberties,
and yet no share at all in the fundamental security of these liberties,
the grant of their own property, seemed a thing so incongruous,
that, eight years after, that is, in the thirty-fifth of that reign,
a complete and not ill-proportioned representation by counties and
boroughs was bestowed upon Wales by act of Parliament. From that
moment, as by a charm, the tumults subsided; obedience was restored;
peace, order, and civilization followed in the train of liberty. When
the day-star of the English Constitution had arisen in their hearts,
all was harmony within and without.
Simul alba nautis
Stella refulsit,
Defluit saxis agitatus humor:
Concidunt venti, fugiuntque nubes;
Et minax (quod sic voluere) ponto
Unda recumbit.[66]
The very same year the county palatine of Chester received the same
relief from its oppressions and the same remedy to its disorders.
Before this time Chester was little less distempered than Wales. The
inhabitants, without rights themselves, were the fittest to destroy the
rights of others; and from thence Richard II. drew the standing army
of archers with which for a time he oppressed England. The people of
Chester applied to Parliament in a petition penned as I shall read to
you:
“To the King our sovereign lord, in most humble wise shown unto your
excellent Majesty, the inhabitants of your Grace’s county palatine
of Chester; that where the said county palatine of Chester is and
hath been always hitherto exempt, excluded and separated out and from
your high court of Parliament, to have any knights and burgesses
within the said court; by reason whereof the said inhabitants have
hitherto sustained manifold disherisons, losses, and damages, as
well in their lands, goods, and bodies, as in the good, civil, and
politic governance and maintenance of the Commonwealth of their said
country. (2) And, forasmuch as the said inhabitants have always
hitherto been bound by the acts and statutes made and ordained by
your said highness and your most noble progenitors, by authority of
the said court, as far forth as other counties, cities, and boroughs
have been, that have had their knights and burgesses within your said
court of Parliament, and yet have had neither knight nor burgess
there for the said county palatine; the said inhabitants, for lack
thereof, have been oftentimes touched and grieved with acts and
statutes made within the said court, as well derogatory unto the most
ancient jurisdictions, liberties, and privileges of your said county
palatine, as prejudicial unto the Commonwealth, quietness, rest, and
peace of your Grace’s most bounden subjects inhabiting within the
same.”
What did Parliament with this audacious address? Reject it as a libel?
Treat it as an affront to government? Spurn it as a derogation from
the rights of legislature? Did they toss it over the table? Did they
burn it by the hands of the common hangman? They took the petition of
grievance, all rugged as it was, without softening or temperament,
unpurged of the original bitterness and indignation of complaint; they
made it the very preamble to their act of redress, and consecrated its
principle to all ages in the sanctuary of legislation.
Here is my third example. It was attended with the success of the two
former. Chester, civilized as well as Wales, has demonstrated that
freedom, and not servitude, is the cure of anarchy, as religion, and
not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition. Sir, this pattern
of Chester was followed in the reign of Charles II. with regard to the
county palatine of Durham, which is my fourth example. This county had
long lain out of the pale of free legislation. So scrupulously was
the example of Chester followed, that the style of the preamble is
nearly the same with that of the Chester act; and without affecting
the abstract extent of the authority of Parliament, it recognizes the
equity of not suffering any considerable district in which the British
subjects may act as a body to be taxed without their own voice in the
grant.
Now, if the doctrines of policy contained in these preambles, and the
force of these examples in the acts of Parliament, avail anything, what
can be said against applying them with regard to America? Are not the
people of America as much Englishmen as the Welsh? The preamble of the
act of Henry VIII. says, the Welsh speak a language no way resembling
that of his Majesty’s English subjects. Are the Americans not as
numerous? If we may trust the learned and accurate Judge Barrington’s
account of North Wales, and take that as a standard to measure the
rest, there is no comparison. The people cannot amount to above
200,000; not a tenth part of the number in the colonies. Is America
in rebellion? Wales was hardly ever free from it. Have you attempted
to govern America by penal statutes? You made fifteen for Wales. But
your legislative authority is perfect with regard to America. Was it
less perfect in Wales, Chester, and Durham! But America is virtually
represented. What! does the electric force of virtual representation
more easily pass over the Atlantic than pervade Wales, which lies in
your neighborhood; or than Chester and Durham, surrounded by abundance
of representation that is actual and palpable? But, sir, your ancestors
thought this sort of virtual representation, however ample, to be
totally insufficient for the freedom of the inhabitants of territories
that are so near, and comparatively so inconsiderable. How, then,
can I think it sufficient for those which are infinitely greater and
infinitely more remote?
You will now, sir, perhaps imagine that I am on the point of proposing
to you a scheme for representation of the colonies in Parliament.
Perhaps I might be inclined to entertain some such thought, but a great
flood stops me in my course. _Opposuit natura._ I cannot remove the
eternal barriers of the creation. The thing in that mode I do not know
to be possible. As I meddle with no theory, I do not absolutely assert
the impracticability of such a representation; but I do not see my
way to it; and those who have been more confident have not been more
successful. However, the arm of public benevolence is not shortened,
and there are often several means to the same end. What nature has
disjoined in one way wisdom may unite in another. When we cannot give
the benefit as we would wish, let us not refuse it altogether. If we
cannot give the principal, let us find a substitute. But how? Where?
What substitute?
Fortunately I am not obliged for the ways and means of this substitute
to tax my own unproductive invention. I am not even obliged to go to
the rich treasury of the fertile framers of imaginary commonwealths;
not to the Republic of Plato, not to the Utopia of More, not to the
Oceana of Harrington. It is before me. It is at my feet.
And the dull swain
Treads daily on it with his clouted shoon.[67]
I only wish you to recognize, for the theory, the ancient
constitutional policy of this kingdom with regard to representation,
as that policy has been declared in acts of Parliament; and, as to the
practice, to return to that mode which a uniform experience has marked
out to you as best, and in which you walked with security, advantage,
and honor, until the year 1763.
My resolutions, therefore, mean to establish the equity and justice of
a taxation of America, by _grant_ and not by _imposition_. To mark the
_legal competency_ of the colony assemblies for the support of their
government in peace, and for public aids in time of war. To acknowledge
that this legal competency has had _a dutiful and beneficial exercise_;
and that experience has shown the _benefit of their grants_, and the
_futility of parliamentary taxation as a method of supply_.
These solid truths compose six fundamental propositions. There are
three more resolutions corollary to these. If you admit the first set,
you can hardly reject the others. But if you admit the first, I shall
be far from solicitous whether you accept or refuse the last. I think
these six massive pillars will be of strength sufficient to support
the temple of British concord. I have no more doubt than I entertain
of my existence, that, if you admitted these, you would command an
immediate peace; and, with but tolerable future management, a lasting
obedience in America. I am not arrogant in this confident assurance.
The propositions are all mere matters of fact; and if they are such
facts as draw irresistible conclusions even in the stating, this is the
power of truth, and not any management of mine.
Sir, I shall open the whole plan to you together, with such
observations on the motions as may tend to illustrate them where they
may want explanation. The first is a resolution:
“That the colonies and plantations of Great Britain in North
America, consisting of fourteen separate governments, and
containing two millions and upward of free inhabitants, have
not had the liberty and privilege of electing and sending any
knights and burgesses or others to represent them in the high
court of Parliament.”
This is a plain matter of fact, necessary to be laid down, and
(excepting the description) it is laid down in the language of the
Constitution: it is taken nearly _verbatim_ from acts of Parliament.
The second is like unto the first:
“That the said colonies and plantations have been liable to
and bounden by several subsidies, payments, rates, and taxes,
given and granted by Parliament, though the said colonies and
plantations have not their knights and burgesses in the said
high court of Parliament, of their own election, to represent
the condition of their country; by lack whereof they have been
oftentimes touched and grieved by subsidies given, granted,
and assented to, in said court, in a manner prejudicial to
the commonwealth, quietness, rest, and peace of the subjects
inhabiting within the same.”
Is this description too hot or too cold, too strong or too weak? Does
it arrogate too much to the supreme Legislature? Does it lean too much
to the claims of the people? If it runs into any of these errors, the
fault is not mine. It is the language of your own ancient acts of
Parliament.
Nec meus hic sermo est sed quæ præcipit Ofellus
Rusticus, abnormis sapiens.[68]
It is the genuine produce of the ancient, rustic, manly, home-bred
sense of this country. I did not dare to rub off a particle of the
venerable rust that rather adorns and preserves, than destroys the
metal. It would be a profanation to touch with a tool the stones
which construct the sacred altar of peace.[69] I would not violate
with modern polish the ingenuous and noble roughness of these truly
constitutional materials. Above all things, I was resolved not to
be guilty of tampering, the odious vice of restless and unstable
minds. I put my foot in the tracks of our forefathers, where I can
neither wander nor stumble. Determining to fix articles of peace, I
was resolved not to be wise beyond what was written; I was resolved to
use nothing else than the form of sound words, to let others abound
in their own sense, and carefully to abstain from all expressions of
my own. What the law has said, I say. In all things else I am silent.
I have no organ but for her words. This, if it be not ingenious, I am
sure, is safe.
There are, indeed, words expressive of grievance in this second
resolution, which those who are resolved always to be in the right
will deny to contain matter of fact, as applied to the present case,
although Parliament thought them true with regard to the counties
of Chester and Durham. They will deny that the Americans were ever
“touched and grieved” with the taxes. If they considered nothing in
taxes but their weight as pecuniary impositions, there might be some
pretence for this denial. But men may be sorely touched and deeply
grieved in their privileges as well as in their purses. Men may lose
little in property by the act which takes away all their freedom. When
a man is robbed of a trifle on the highway, it is not the twopence
lost that constitutes the capital outrage. This is not confined to
privileges. Even ancient indulgences withdrawn, without offence on
the part of those who enjoy such favors, operate as grievances. But
were the Americans then not touched and grieved by the taxes, in some
measure merely as taxes? If so, why were they almost all either wholly
repealed or exceedingly reduced? Were they not touched and grieved,
even by the regulating duties of the sixth of George II.? Else why were
the duties first reduced to one third in 1764, and afterward to a third
of that third in the year 1766? Were they not touched and grieved by
the Stamp Act? I shall say they were, until that tax is revived. Were
they not touched and grieved by the duties of 1767, which were likewise
repealed, and which Lord Hillsborough tells you, for the ministry,
were laid contrary to the true principle of commerce? Is not the
assurance given by that noble person to the colonies of a resolution
to lay no more taxes on them, an admission that taxes would touch
and grieve them? Is not the resolution of the noble lord in the blue
ribbon, now standing on your journals, the strongest of all proofs that
Parliamentary subsidies really touched and grieved them? Else why all
these changes, modifications, repeals, assurances, and resolutions?
The next proposition is:
“That, from the distance of the said colonies, and from other
circumstances, no method hath hitherto been devised for
procuring a representation in Parliament for the said colonies.”
This is an assertion of a fact. I go no farther on the paper; though in
my private judgment, a useful representation is impossible; I am sure
it is not desired by them, nor ought it, perhaps, by us, but I abstain
from opinions.
The fourth resolution is:
“That each of the said colonies hath within itself a body
chosen in part or in the whole, by the freemen, freeholders,
or other free inhabitance thereof, commonly called the General
Assembly, or General Court, with powers legally to raise, levy,
and assess, according to the several usages of such colonies,
duties and taxes toward the defraying all sorts of public
services.”
This competence in the colony assemblies is certain. It is proved by
the whole tenor of their acts of supply in all the assemblies, in
which the constant style of granting is, “an aid to his Majesty”; and
acts granting to the Crown have regularly for near a century passed
the public offices without dispute. Those who have been pleased
paradoxically to deny this right, holding that none but the British
Parliament can grant to the Crown, are wished to look to what is done,
not only in the colonies, but in Ireland, in one uniform, unbroken
tenor every session.[70]
Sir, I am surprised that this doctrine should come from some of the law
servants of the Crown. I say that if the Crown could be responsible,
his Majesty—but certainly the ministers, and even these law officers
themselves, through whose hands the acts pass biennially in Ireland,
or annually the colonies, are in a habitual course of committing
impeachable offences. What habitual offenders have been all presidents
of the council, all secretaries of state, all first lords of trade,
all attorneys, and all solicitors-general! However, they are safe, as
no one impeaches them; and there is no ground of charge against them,
except in their own unfounded theories.
The fifth resolution is also a resolution of fact:
“That the said General Assemblies, General Courts, or other
bodies legally qualified as aforesaid, have at sundry times
freely granted several large subsidies and public aids for
his Majesty’s service, according to their abilities, when
required thereto by letter from one of his Majesty’s principal
secretaries of State. And that their right to grant the same,
and their cheerfulness and sufficiency in the said grants, have
been at sundry times acknowledged by Parliament.”
To say nothing of their great expenses in the Indian wars; and not to
take their exertion in foreign ones, so high as the supplies in the
year 1695, not to go back to their public contributions in the year
1710, I shall begin to travel only where the journals give me light;
resolving to deal in nothing but fact authenticated by parliamentary
record, and to build myself wholly on that solid basis.
On the 4th of April, 1748, a committee of this House came to the
following resolution:
“_Resolved_, That it is the opinion of this committee, _that it
is just and reasonable_ that the several provinces and colonies
of Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode
Island, be reimbursed the expenses they have been at in taking
and securing to the Crown of Great Britain the Island of Cape
Breton and its dependencies.”
These expenses were immense for such colonies. They were above £200,000
sterling; money first raised and advanced on their public credit.
On the 28th of January, 1756, a message from the King came to us to
this effect:
“His Majesty being sensible of the zeal and vigor with which
his faithful subjects of certain colonies in North America have
exerted themselves in defence of his Majesty’s just rights and
possessions, recommends it to this House to take the same into
their consideration, and to enable his Majesty to give them
such assistance as may be a _proper reward and encouragement_.”
On the 3d of February, 1756, the House came to a suitable resolution,
expressed in words nearly the same as those of the message; but with
the farther addition, that the money then voted was an _encouragement_
to the colonies to exert themselves with vigor. It will not be
necessary to go through all the testimonies which your own records
have given to the truth of my resolutions. I will only refer you to
the places in the journals: Vol. xxvii., 16th and 19th May, 1757; vol.
xxviii., June 1st, 1758—April 26th and 30th, 1759—March 26th and 31st,
and April 28th, 1760—January 9th and 20th, 1761; vol. xxix., January
22d and 26th, 1762—March 14th and 17th, 1763.
Sir, here is the repeated acknowledgment of Parliament, that the
colonies not only gave, but gave to satiety. This nation has formally
acknowledged two things: first, that the colonies had gone beyond their
abilities, Parliament having thought it necessary to reimburse them;
secondly, that they had acted legally and laudably in their grants
of money, and their maintenance of troops, since the compensation is
expressly given as reward and encouragement. Reward is not bestowed for
acts that are unlawful; and encouragement is not held out to things
that deserve reprehension. My resolution, therefore, does nothing
more than collect into one proposition what is scattered through your
journals. I give you nothing but your own, and you cannot refuse in
the gross what you have so often acknowledged in detail. The admission
of this, which will be so honorable to them and to you, will, indeed,
be mortal to all the miserable stories by which the passions of the
misguided people have been engaged in an unhappy system. The people
heard, indeed, from the beginning of these disputes, one thing
continually dinned in their ears, that reason and justice demanded that
the Americans, who paid no taxes, should be compelled to contribute.
How did that fact of their paying nothing stand when the taxing system
began? When Mr. Grenville began to form his system of American revenue,
he stated in this House that the colonies were then in debt two million
six hundred thousand pounds sterling money, and was of opinion they
would discharge that debt in four years. On this state, those untaxed
people were actually subject to the payment of taxes to the amount of
six hundred and fifty thousand a year. In fact, however, Mr. Grenville
was mistaken. The funds given for sinking the debt did not prove quite
so ample as both the colonies and he expected. The calculation was too
sanguine: the reduction was not completed till some years after, and at
different times in different colonies. However, the taxes after the war
continued too great to bear any addition, with prudence or propriety;
and when the burdens imposed in consequence of former requisitions were
discharged, our tone became too high to resort again to requisition. No
colony, since that time, ever has had any requisition whatsoever made
to it.
We see the sense of the Crown, and the sense of Parliament, on the
productive nature of a _revenue by grant_. Now search the same journals
for the produce of the _revenue by imposition_. Where is it? Let us
know the volume and the page. What is the gross, what is the net
produce? To what service is it applied? How have you appropriated its
surplus? What, can none of the many skilful index-makers that we are
now employing, find any trace of it? Well, let them and that rest
together. But, are the journals, which say nothing of the revenue,
as silent on the discontent? Oh, no! a child may find it. It is the
melancholy burden and blot of every page.
I think, then, I am, from those journals, justified in the sixth and
last resolution, which is:
“That it hath been found by experience that the manner of
granting the said supplies and aids, by the said general
assemblies, hath been more agreeable to the said colonies, and
more beneficial and conducive to the public service, than the
mode of giving and granting aids in Parliament, to be raised
and paid in the said colonies.”
This makes the whole of the fundamental part of the plan. The
conclusion is irresistible. You cannot say that you were driven by
any necessity to an exercise of the utmost rights of legislature. You
cannot assert that you took on yourselves the task of imposing colony
taxes, from the want of another legal body, that is competent to the
purpose of supplying the exigencies of the State without wounding
the prejudices of the people. Neither is it true that the body so
qualified, and having that competence, had neglected the duty.
The question now on all this accumulated matter, is—whether you will
choose to abide by a profitable experience, or a mischievous theory;
whether you choose to build on imagination or fact; whether you prefer
enjoyment or hope; satisfaction in your subjects or discontent?
If these propositions are accepted, every thing which has been made to
enforce a contrary system must, I take it for granted, fall along with
it. On that ground I have drawn the following resolution, which, when
it comes to be moved, will naturally be divided in a proper manner:
“That it may be proper to repeal an act, made in the seventh
year of the reign of his present Majesty, entitled 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; and that it may be proper to repeal an act, made
in the fourteenth year of the reign of his present Majesty,
entitled, An Act to discontinue, in such manner, and for such
time as are therein mentioned, the landing and discharging,
lading, or shipping, of goods, wares, and merchandise, at
the town and within the harbor of Boston, in the province of
Massachusetts Bay, in North America; and that it may be proper
to repeal an act, made in the fourteenth year of the reign
of his present Majesty, entitled, An Act for the impartial
administration of justice in the cases of persons questioned
for any acts done by them in the execution of the law, or
for the suppression of riots and tumults in the province of
Massachusetts Bay, in New England; and that it may be proper
to repeal an act, made in the fourteenth year of the reign of
his present Majesty, entitled, An Act for the better regulating
the government of the province of Massachusetts Bay, in New
England; and also, that it may be proper to explain and amend
an act, made in the thirty-fifth year of the reign of King
Henry the Eighth, entitled, An Act for the trial of treasons
committed out of the King’s dominions.”
I wish, sir, to repeal the Boston Port Bill, because (independently
of the dangerous precedent of suspending the rights of the subject
during the King’s pleasure) it was passed, as I apprehend, with
less regularity, and on more partial principles, than it ought. The
corporation of Boston was not heard before it was condemned. Other
towns, full as guilty as she was, have not had their ports blocked up.
Even the restraining bill of the present session does not go to the
length of the Boston Port Act. The same ideas of prudence which induced
you not to extend equal punishment to equal guilt, even when you were
punishing, induce me, who mean not to chastise, but to reconcile, to be
satisfied with the punishment already partially inflicted.
Ideas of prudence, and accommodation to circumstances, prevent you
from taking away the charters of Connecticut and Rhode Island, as you
have taken away that of Massachusetts Colony, though the Crown has
far less power in the two former provinces than it enjoyed in the
latter; and though the abuses have been full as great and as flagrant
in the exempted as in the punished. The same reasons of prudence
and accommodation have weight with me in restoring the charter of
Massachusetts Bay. Besides, sir, the act which changes the charter of
Massachusetts is in many particulars so exceptionable, that if I did
not wish absolutely to repeal, I would by all means desire to alter it,
as several of its provisions tend to the subversion of all public and
private justice. Such, among others, is the power in the Governor to
change the Sheriff at his pleasure, and to make a new returning officer
for every special cause. It is shameful to behold such a regulation
standing among English laws.
The act for bringing persons accused of committing murder under the
orders of government to England for trial, is but temporary. That act
has calculated the probable duration of our quarrel with the colonies,
and is accommodated to that supposed duration. I would hasten the happy
moment of reconciliation, and therefore must, on my principle, get rid
of that most justly obnoxious act.
The act of Henry the Eighth, for the trial of treasons, I do not mean
to take away, but to confine it to its proper bounds and original
intention; to make it expressly for trial of treasons (and the greatest
treasons may be committed) in places where the jurisdiction of the
Crown does not extend.
Having guarded the privileges of local legislature, I would next secure
to the colonies a fair and unbiased judicature; for which purpose, sir,
I propose the following resolution:
“That, from the time when the General Assembly or General
Court of any colony or plantation in North America, shall
have appointed by act of assembly, duly confirmed, a settled
salary to the offices of the Chief Justice and other judges
of the Superior Court, it may be proper that the said Chief
Justice and other judges of the Superior Courts of such colony,
shall hold his and their office and offices during their good
behavior, and shall not be removed therefrom, but when the
said removal shall be adjudged by his Majesty in council,
upon a hearing on complaint from the General Assembly, or on
a complaint from the Governor, or Council, or the House of
Representatives severally, of the colony in which the said
Chief Justice and other judges have exercised the said offices.”
The next resolution relates to the Courts of Admiralty. It is this:
“That it may be proper to regulate the Courts of Admiralty, or
Vice Admiralty, authorized by the 15th chapter of the 4th of
George the Third, in such a manner as to make the same more
commodious to those who sue, or are sued, in the said courts,
and to provide for the more decent maintenance of the judges in
the same.”
These courts I do not wish to take away. They are in themselves proper
establishments. This court is one of the capital securities of the
Act of Navigation. The extent of its jurisdiction, indeed, has been
increased; but this is altogether as proper, and is, indeed, on many
accounts, more eligible, where new powers were wanted, than a court
absolutely new. But courts incommodiously situated, in effect, deny
justice; and a court, partaking in the fruits of its own condemnation,
is a robber. The Congress complain, and complain justly, of this
grievance.
These are the three consequential propositions. I have thought of
two or three more, but they come rather too near detail, and to the
province of executive government, which I wish Parliament always to
superintend, never to assume. If the first six are granted, congruity
will carry the latter three. If not, the things that remain unrepealed
will be, I hope, rather unseemly encumbrances on the building, than
very materially detrimental to its strength and stability.
Here, sir, I should close, but that I plainly perceive some objections
remain, which I ought, if possible, to remove. The first will be,
that, in resorting to the doctrine of our ancestors, as contained in
the preamble to the Chester act, I prove too much; that the grievance
from a want of representation stated in that preamble, goes to the
whole of legislation as well as to taxation. And that the colonies,
grounding themselves upon that doctrine, will apply it to all parts of
legislative authority.
To this objection, with all possible deference and humility, and
wishing as little as any man living to impair the smallest particle
of our supreme authority, I answer, that _the words are the words
of Parliament, and not mine_; and that all false and inconclusive
inferences drawn from them are not mine, for I heartily disclaim any
such inference. I have chosen the words of an act of Parliament, which
Mr. Grenville, surely a tolerably zealous and very judicious advocate
for the sovereignty of Parliament, formerly moved to have read at your
table, in confirmation of his tenets. It is true that Lord Chatham
considered these preambles as declaring strongly in favor of his
opinions. He was a no less powerful advocate for the privileges of the
Americans. Ought I not from hence to presume that these preambles
are as favorable as possible to both, when properly understood;
favorable both to the rights of Parliament, and to the privilege of the
dependencies of this crown? But, sir, the object of grievance in my
resolution I have not taken from the Chester, but from the Durham act,
which confines the hardship of want of representation to the case of
subsidies, and which, therefore, falls in exactly with the case of the
colonies. But whether the unrepresented counties were _de jure_ or _de
facto_ bound, the preambles do not accurately distinguish; nor indeed
was it necessary; for, whether _de jure_ or _de facto_, the Legislature
thought the exercise of the power of taxing, as of right, or as of fact
without right, equally a grievance, and equally oppressive.
I do not know that the colonies have, in any general way or in any
cool hour, gone much beyond the demand of immunity in relation to
taxes. It is not fair to judge of the temper or dispositions of any
man, or any set of men, when they are composed and at rest, from their
conduct or their expressions in a state of disturbance and irritation.
It is, besides, a very great mistake to imagine that mankind follow
up practically any speculative principle, either of government or
freedom, as far as it will go in argument and logical illation. We
Englishmen stop very short of the principles upon which we support any
given part of our Constitution, or even the whole of it together. I
could easily, if I had not already tired you, give you very striking
and convincing instances of it. This is nothing but what is natural and
proper. All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every
virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.[71]
We balance inconveniences; we give and take; we remit some rights that
we may enjoy others; and we choose rather to be happy citizens than
subtle disputants. As we must give away some natural liberty to enjoy
civil advantages, so we must sacrifice some civil liberties for the
advantages to be derived from the communion and fellowship of a great
empire. But, in all fair dealings, the thing bought must bear some
proportion to the purchase paid. None will barter away “the immediate
jewel of his soul.”[72] Though a great house is apt to make slaves
haughty, yet it is purchasing a part of the artificial importance of
a great empire too dear to pay for it all essential rights and all
the intrinsic dignity of human nature. None of us who would not risk
his life rather than fall under a government purely arbitrary. But,
although there are some among us who think our Constitution wants many
improvements to make it a complete system of liberty, perhaps none who
are of that opinion would think it right to aim at such improvement
by disturbing his country, and risking every thing that is dear to
him. In every arduous enterprise we consider what we are to lose as
well as what we are to gain; and the more and better stake of liberty
every people possess, the less they will hazard in a vain attempt to
make it more. These are _the cords of man_.[73] Man acts from adequate
motive relative to his interest, and not on metaphysical speculations.
Aristotle, the great master of reasoning, cautions us, and with great
weight and propriety, against this species of delusive geometrical
accuracy in moral arguments as the most fallacious of all sophistry.[74]
The Americans will have no interest contrary to the grandeur and glory
of England, when they are not oppressed by the weight of it; and
they will rather be inclined to respect the acts of a superintending
Legislature, when they see them the acts of that power which is itself
the security, not the rival, of their secondary importance. In this
assurance my mind most perfectly acquiesces, and I confess I feel not
the least alarm from the discontents which are to arise from putting
people at their ease; nor do I apprehend the destruction of this empire
from giving, by an act of free grace and indulgence, to two millions of
my fellow-citizens, some share of those rights upon which I have always
been taught to value myself.
It is said, indeed, that this power of granting, vested in American
assemblies, would dissolve the unity of the empire, which was preserved
entire, although Wales, and Chester, and Durham were added to it.
Truly, Mr. Speaker, I do not know what this unity means, nor has it
ever been heard of, that I know, in the constitutional policy of this
country. The very idea of subordination of parts excludes this notion
of simple and undivided unity. England is the head, but she is not
the head and the members too. Ireland has ever had from the beginning
a separate, but not an independent Legislature, which, far from
distracting, promoted the union of the whole. Every thing was sweetly
and harmoniously disposed through both islands for the conservation
of English dominion and the communication of English liberties. I
do not see that the same principles might not be carried into twenty
islands, and with the same good effect. This is my model with regard to
America, as far as the internal circumstances of the two countries are
the same. I know no other unity of this empire than I can draw from its
example during these periods, when it seemed to my poor understanding
more united than it is now, or than it is likely to be by the present
methods.
But since I speak of these methods, I recollect, Mr. Speaker, almost
too late, that I promised, before I finished, to say something of the
proposition of the noble Lord [Lord North] on the floor, which has
been so lately received, and stands on your journals. I must be deeply
concerned whenever it is my misfortune to continue a difference with
the majority of this House. But as the reasons for that difference are
my apology for thus troubling you, suffer me to state them in a very
few words. I shall compress them into as small a body as I possibly
can, having already debated that matter at large when the question was
before the committee.
First, then I cannot admit that proposition of a ransom by auction,
because it is a mere project. It is a thing new; unheard of;
supported by no experience; justified by no analogy; without example
of our ancestors, or root in the Constitution. It is neither regular
parliamentary taxation nor colony grant. “_Experimentum in corpore
vili_”[75] is a good rule, which will ever make me adverse to any trial
of experiments on what is certainly the most valuable of all subjects,
the peace of this empire.
Secondly, it is an experiment which must be fatal, in the end, to our
Constitution. For what is it but a scheme for taxing the colonies in
the ante-chamber of the noble Lord and his successors? To settle the
quotas and proportions in this House is clearly impossible. You, sir,
may flatter yourself you shall sit a state auctioneer with your hammer
in your hand, and knock down to each colony as it bids. But to settle
(on the plan laid down by the noble Lord) the true proportional payment
for four or five-and-twenty governments according to the absolute and
the relative wealth of each, and according to the British proportion of
wealth and burden, is a wild and chimerical notion. This new taxation
must therefore come in by the back door of the Constitution. Each
quota must be brought to this House ready formed; you can neither
add nor alter. You must register it. You can do nothing farther.
For on what grounds can you deliberate, either before or after the
proposition. You cannot hear the counsel for all these provinces,
quarrelling each on its own quantity of payment, and its proportion to
others. If you should attempt it, the committee of provincial ways and
means, or by whatever other name it will delight to be called, must
swallow up all the time of Parliament.
Thirdly, it does not give satisfaction to the complaint of the
colonies. They complain that they are taxed without their consent;
you answer, that you will fix the sum at which they shall be taxed.
That is, you give them the very grievance for the remedy. You tell
them indeed, that you will leave the mode to themselves. I really beg
pardon. It gives me pain to mention it; but you must be sensible that
you will _not perform_ this part of the contract. For, suppose the
colonies were to lay the duties which furnished their contingent upon
the importation of your manufactures? you know you would never suffer
such a tax to be laid. You know, too, that you would not suffer many
other modes of taxation; so that when you come to explain yourself, it
will be found that you will neither leave to themselves the quantum nor
the mode, nor, indeed, any thing. The whole is delusion from one end to
the other.
Fourthly, this method of ransom by auction, unless it be _universally_
accepted, will plunge you into great and inextricable difficulties. In
what year of our Lord are the proportions of payments to be settled,
to say nothing of the impossibility, that colony agents should have
general powers of taxing the colonies at their discretion? Consider,
I implore you, that the communication by special messages, and orders
between these agents and their constituents on each variation of the
case, when the parties come to contend together, and to dispute on
their relative proportions, will be a matter of delay, perplexity, and
confusion that never can have an end.
If all the colonies do not appear at the outcry, what is the condition
of those assemblies, who offer, by themselves or their agents, to
tax themselves up to your ideas of their proportion? The refractory
colonies who refuse all composition will remain taxed only to your old
impositions, which, however grievous in principle, are trifling as to
production. The obedient colonies in this scheme are heavily taxed;
the refractory remain unburdened. What will you do? Will you lay new
and heavier taxes by Parliament on the disobedient? Pray consider in
what way you can do it. You are perfectly convinced that in the way of
taxing you can do nothing but at the ports. Now suppose it is Virginia
that refuses to appear at your auction, while Maryland and North
Carolina bid handsomely for their ransom, and are taxed to your quota.
How will you put these colonies on a par? Will you tax the tobacco of
Virginia? If you do, you give its death wound to your English revenue
at home, and to one of the very greatest articles of your own foreign
trade. If you tax the import of that rebellious colony, what do you
tax but your own manufactures, or the goods of some other obedient and
already well-taxed colony? Who has said one word on this labyrinth of
detail, which bewilders you more and more as you enter into it? Who
has presented, who can present you with a clew to lead you out of it?
I think, sir, it is impossible that you should not recollect that the
colony bounds are so implicated in one another (you know it by your
on experiments in the bill for prohibiting the New England fishery)
that you can lay no possible restraints on almost any of them which
may not be presently eluded, if you do not confound the innocent with
the guilty, and burden those whom, upon every principle, you ought to
exonerate. He must be grossly ignorant of America who thinks that,
without falling into this confusion of all rules of equity and policy,
you can restrain any single colony, especially Virginia and Maryland,
the central and most important of them all.
Let it also be considered, that either in the present confusion you
settle a permanent contingent which will and must be trifling, and
then you have no effectual revenue; or, you change the quota at every
exigency, and then on every new repartition you will have a new quarrel.
Reflect, besides, that when you have fixed a quota for every colony,
you have not provided for prompt and punctual payment. Suppose one,
two, five, ten years arrears. You cannot issue a Treasury Extent[76]
against the failing colony. You must make new Boston Port bills, new
restraining laws, new acts for dragging men to England for trial. You
must send out new fleets, new armies. All is to begin again. From this
day forward the empire is never to know an hour’s tranquillity. An
intestine fire will be kept alive in the bowels of the colonies, which
one time or another must consume this whole Empire. I allow, indeed,
that the Empire of Germany raises her revenue and her troops by quotas
and contingents; but the revenue of the Empire, and the army of the
Empire, is the worst revenue and the worst army in the world.
Instead of a standing revenue, you will therefore have a perpetual
quarrel. Indeed, the noble Lord who proposed this project of a ransom
by auction, seemed himself to be of that opinion. His project was
rather designed for breaking the union of the colonies than for
establishing a revenue. He confessed that he apprehended that his
proposal would not be to _their taste_. I say this scheme of disunion
seems to be at the bottom of the project; for I will not suspect that
the noble Lord meant nothing but merely to delude the nation by an airy
phantom which he never intended to realize. But, whatever his views
may be, as I propose the peace and union of the colonies as the very
foundation of my plan, it cannot accord with one whose foundation is
perpetual discord.
Compare the two. This I offer to give you is plain and simple. The
other, full of perplexed and intricate mazes. This is mild; that,
harsh. This is found by experience effectual for its purposes; the
other is a new project. This is universal; the other, calculated for
certain colonies only. This is immediate in its conciliatory operation;
the other, remote, contingent, full of hazard. Mine is what becomes the
dignity of a ruling people; gratuitous, unconditional, and not held
out as matter of bargain and sale. I have done my duty in proposing it
to you. I have indeed tired you by a long discourse; but this is the
misfortune of those to whose influence nothing will be conceded, and
who must win every inch of their ground by argument. You have heard
me with goodness. May you decide with wisdom! For my part, I feel my
mind greatly disburdened by what I have done to-day. I have been the
less fearful of trying your patience, because on this subject I mean to
spare it altogether in future. I have this comfort, that in every stage
of the American affairs, I have steadily opposed the measures that
have produced the confusion, and may bring on the destruction of this
Empire. I now go so far as to risk a proposal of my own. If I cannot
give peace to my country, I give it to my conscience.
But 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 £152,750 11_s._ 2¾_d._, nor any other paltry
limited sum, but it gives the strong box itself, the fund, the bank,
from whence only revenues can arise among a people sensible of freedom:
_Posita luditur arca_.[77]
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 one hundred and forty 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 functions will neglect to perform its
duty, and abdicate its trust? Such a presumption would go against all
government 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 honor of their own government, that sense of dignity, and that
security of property, which ever attends freedom, has 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.
Next, we know that parties must ever exist in a free country. We know,
too, that the emulations of such parties, their contradictions, their
reciprocal necessities, their hopes and their fears, must send them
all in their turns to him that holds the balance of the state. The
parties are the gamesters, but Government keeps the table, and is sure
to be the winner in the end. When this game is played, I really think
it is more to be feared that the people will be exhausted, than that
Government will not be supplied; whereas, whatever is got by acts of
absolute power, ill obeyed, because odious, or by contracts ill kept,
because constrained, will be narrow, feeble, uncertain, and precarious.
“Ease would retract
Vows made in pain, as violent and void.”[78]
I, for one, protest against compounding our demands. I declare against
compounding, for a poor limited sum, the immense ever-growing, eternal
debt which is due to generous government from protected freedom. And so
may I speed in the great object I propose to you, as I think it would
not only be an act of injustice, but would be the worst economy in the
world, to compel the colonies to a sum certain, either in the way of
ransom or in the way of compulsory compact.
But to clear up my ideas on this subject; a revenue from America
transmitted hither—do not delude yourselves—you never can receive
it—no, not a shilling. We have experienced that from remote countries
it is not to be expected. If, when you attempted to extract revenue
from Bengal, you were obliged to return in loan what you had taken in
imposition, what can you expect from North America? for certainly, if
ever there was a country qualified to produce wealth, it is India;
or an institution fit for the transmission, it is the East India
Company. America has none of these aptitudes. If America gives you
taxable objects on which you lay your duties _here_, and gives you,
at the same time, a surplus by a foreign sale of her commodities
to pay the duties on these objects which you tax at home, she has
performed her part to the British revenue. But with regard to her own
internal establishments, she may, I doubt not she will, contribute in
moderation; I say in moderation, for she ought not to be permitted
to exhaust herself. She ought to be reserved to a war, the weight
of which, with the enemies that we are most likely to have, must be
considerable in her quarter of the globe. There she may serve you, and
serve you essentially.
For that service, for all service, whether of revenue, trade or empire,
my trust is in her interest in the British Constitution. My hold of the
colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from
kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These
are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron.
Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated
with your government; they will cling and grapple to you, and no force
under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But
let it be once understood that your government may be one thing, and
their privileges another; that these two things may exist without any
mutual relation; the cement is gone; the cohesion is loosened; and
every thing hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the
wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary
of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever
the chosen race and sons of England worship Freedom, they will turn
their faces toward you. The more they multiply, the more friends you
will have. The more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will
be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that
grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain; they may have it
from Prussia; but, until you become lost to all feeling of your true
interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but
you. This is the commodity of price, of which you have the monopoly.
This is the true Act of Navigation, which binds to you the commerce
of the colonies, and through them secures to you the wealth of the
world. Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that sole
bond which originally made, and must still preserve, the unity of the
empire. Do not entertain so weak an imagination as that your registers
and your bonds, your affidavits and your sufferances, your cockets and
your clearances, are what form the great securities of your commerce.
Do not dream that your letters of office, and your instructions, and
your suspending clauses, are the things that hold together the great
contexture of this mysterious whole. These things do not make your
government. Dead instruments, passive tools as they are, it is the
spirit of the English communion that gives all their life and efficacy
to them. It is the spirit of the English Constitution, which, infused
through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies
every part of the empire, even down to the minutest member.[79]
Is it not the same virtue which does every thing for us here in
England?
Do you imagine then, that it is the Land Tax[80] which raises your
revenue? that it is the annual vote in the Committee of Supply, which
gives you your army? or that it is the Mutiny Bill,[81] which inspires
it with bravery and discipline? No! surely no! It is the love of the
people; it is their attachment to their Government, from the sense
of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which
gives you your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal
obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your
navy nothing but rotten timber.
All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical to the
profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians, who have no
place among us; a sort of people who think that nothing exists but what
is gross and material, and who, therefore, far from being qualified to
be directors of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a
wheel in the machine. But to men truly initiated and rightly taught,
these ruling and master principles, which, in the opinion of such
men as I have mentioned, have no substantial existence, are in truth
every thing and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the
truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.
If we are conscious of our situation, and glow with zeal to fill our
place as becomes our station and ourselves, we ought to auspicate all
our public proceeding on America with the old warning of the church,
_sursum corda_![82] We ought to elevate our minds to the greatness of
that trust to which the order of Providence has called us. By adverting
to the dignity of this high calling, our ancestors have turned a savage
wilderness into a glorious empire, and have made the most extensive
and the only honorable conquests, not by destroying but by promoting,
the wealth, the number, the happiness of the human race. Let us get an
American revenue as we have got an American empire. English privileges
have made it all that it is; English privileges alone will make it all
it can be.
In full confidence of this unalterable truth, I now, _quod felix
faustumque sit_,[83] lay the first stone in the temple of peace; and I
move you,
That the colonies and plantations of Great Britain in North America,
consisting of fourteen separate governments, and containing two
millions and upward of free inhabitants, have not had the liberty and
privilege of electing and sending any knights and burgesses, or others,
to represent them in the high court of Parliament.
On the first resolution offered by Mr. Burke the votes in favor of it
were only 78 while those against it were 270. The other resolutions
were not put to vote. This may be regarded as the final answer of
the House of Commons to all attempts to save the colonies except by
force. The policy of war was thus adopted, with what result the world
very well knows.