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 in 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,
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 [Footnote: 8] 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 an 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 [Footnote: 9] which has been lately laid upon
your table by the noble lord in the blue ribbon. [Footnote: 10] It does
not propose to fill your lobby with squabbling Colony agents, [Footnote:
11] who will require the interposition of your mace, at every instant,
to keep the peace amongst 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, [Footnote: 12]
notwithstanding our heavy bills 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 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,
[Footnote: 13] 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, [Footnote: 14] and not according to our
own imaginations, nor 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.
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, whilst the dispute continues, the exaggeration ends.
Whilst we are discussing any given magnitude, they are grown to it.
Whilst we spend our time in deliberating on the mode of governing two
millions, we shall find we have 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.
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 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. This gentleman, after
thirty-five years--it is so long since he first 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 the 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.
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. [Footnote: 15]
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. L483,265
To Africa. .................................. 86,665
--------
L569,930
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 ...... L4,791,734
To Africa. ................................ 866,398
To which, if you add the export trade from
Scotland, which had in 1704 no existence .. 364,000
----------
L6,022,132
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. ................ L6,509,000
Export to the Colonies alone, in 1772 ......... 6,024,000
----------
Difference, L485,000
The trade with America alone is now within less than L500,000 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 at
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.
Mr. Speaker, I cannot prevail on myself to hurry over this great
consideration. [Footnote: 15] IT IS GOOD FOR US TO BE HERE. [Footnote:
16] 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 quae sit potuit cognoscere virtus.
[Footnote: 17] 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 counsels, 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, whilst he enriched the family with a new
one--if, amidst 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, whilst he was gazing with
admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the genius should
point out to him a little speck, scarcely 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 of death, [Footnote: 18]
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 lives to see nothing that shall 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 L11,459 in 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 L507,909,
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 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 burthen 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.
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, [Footnote: 19] had not put the full breast
of its youthful exuberance to the mouth of its exhausted parent.
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. Whilst we follow them among
the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the
deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits, whilst 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
whilst 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.
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 [Footnote: 20] 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 [Footnote:
21] 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 [Footnote: 22]
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 further 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 further 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 has been
owing to methods altogether different. Our ancient indulgence [Footnote:
23] 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 great 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.