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 [Footnote: 59] 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
[Footnote: 60] 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 [Footnote: 61] 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 [Footnote: 62] of the
Government of the Province of the 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 [Footnote: 63] 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, induced 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 Bay, 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 unbiassed 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, or 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 fifteenth Chapter of the Fourth 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 incumbrances on the building, than very materially
detrimental to its strength and stability.
Here, Sir, I should close, but 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 [Footnote: 64] 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 humanity 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 of
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. 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.
[Footnote: 65] 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 amongst 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 everything 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. Man acts from adequate motives 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.
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. Everything 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 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 [Footnote: 66]
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
[Footnote: 67] 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 burthen, 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 further, 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 compact. 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
anything. 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 clue 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 other 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 burthen 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 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 other
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 seems 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 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 a 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
disburthened 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.