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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America
+by Edmund Burke
+(#3 in our series by Edmund Burke)
+
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+Title: Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America
+
+Author: Edmund Burke
+
+Release Date: May, 2004  [EBook #5655]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on August 5, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+BURKE'S SPEECH
+
+ON
+
+CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA
+
+
+EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
+
+BY
+
+SIDNEY CARLETON NEWSOM
+
+TEACHER OF ENGLISH, MANUAL TRAINING HIGH SCHOOL INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+The introduction to this edition of Burke's speech on Conciliation with America
+is intended to supply the needs of those students who do not have access to a
+well-stocked library, or who, for any reason, are unable to do the collateral
+reading necessary for a complete understanding of the text.
+
+The sources from which information has been drawn in preparing this edition are
+mentioned under "Bibliography." The editor wishes to acknowledge indebtedness to
+many of the excellent older editions of the speech, and also to Mr. A. P.
+Winston, of the Manual Training High School, for valuable suggestions.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  POLITICAL SITUATION
+
+  EDMUND BURKE
+
+  BURKE AS A STATESMAN
+
+  BURKE IN LITERATURE
+
+  TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS
+
+  BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+  SPEECH ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA
+
+  NOTES
+
+  INDEX
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+POLITICAL SITUATION
+
+In 1651 originated the policy which caused the American Revolution. That policy
+was one of taxation, indirect, it is true, but none the less taxation. The first
+Navigation Act required that colonial exports should be shipped to England in
+American or English vessels. This was followed by a long series of acts,
+regulating and restricting the American trade. Colonists were not allowed to
+exchange certain articles without paying duties thereon, and custom houses were
+established and officers appointed. Opposition to these proceedings was
+ineffectual; and in 1696, in order to expedite the business of taxation, and to
+establish a better method of ruling the colonies, a board was appointed, called
+the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations. The royal governors found in
+this board ready sympathizers, and were not slow to report their grievances, and
+to insist upon more stringent regulations for enforcing obedience. Some of the
+retaliative measures employed were the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus,
+the abridgment of the freedom of the press and the prohibition of elections. But
+the colonists generally succeeded in having their own way in the end, and were
+not wholly without encouragement and sympathy in the English Parliament. It may
+be that the war with France, which ended with the fall of Quebec, had much to do
+with this rather generous treatment. The Americans, too, were favored by the
+Whigs, who had been in power for more than seventy years. The policy of this
+great party was not opposed to the sentiments and ideas of political freedom
+that had grown up in the colonies; and, although more than half of the
+Navigation Acts were passed by Whig governments, the leaders had known how to
+wink at the violation of nearly all of them.
+
+Immediately after the close of the French war, and after George III. had
+ascended the throne of England, it was decided to enforce the Navigation Acts
+rigidly. There was to be no more smuggling, and, to prevent this, Writs of
+Assistance were issued. Armed with such authority, a servant of the king might
+enter the home of any citizen, and make a thorough search for smuggled goods. It
+is needless to say the measure was resisted vigorously, and its reception by the
+colonists, and its effect upon them, has been called the opening scene of the
+American Revolution. As a matter of fact, this sudden change in the attitude of
+England toward the colonies, marks the beginning of the policy of George III.
+which, had it been successful, would have made him the ruler of an absolute
+instead of a limited monarchy. He hated the Tories only less than the Whigs, and
+when he bestowed a favor upon either, it was for the purpose of weakening the
+other. The first task he set himself was that of crushing the Whigs. Since the
+Revolution of 1688, they had dictated the policy of the English government, and
+through wise leaders had become supreme in authority. They were particularly
+obnoxious to him because of their republican spirit, and he regarded their
+ascendency as a constant menace to his kingly power. Fortune seemed to favor him
+in the dissensions which arose. There grew up two factions in the Whig party.
+There were old Whigs and new Whigs. George played one against the other,
+advanced his favorites when opportunity offered, and in the end succeeded in
+forming a ministry composed of his friends and obedient to his will.
+
+With the ministry safely in hand, he turned his attention to the House of
+Commons. The old Whigs had set an example, which George was shrewd enough to
+follow. Walpole and Newcastle had succeeded in giving England one of the most
+peaceful and prosperous governments within in the previous history of the
+nation, but their methods were corrupt. With much of the judgment, penetration
+and wise forbearance which marks a statesman, Walpole's distinctive qualities of
+mind eminently fitted him for political intrigue; Newcastle was still worse, and
+has the distinction of being the premier under whose administration the revolt
+against official corruption first received the support of the public.
+
+For near a hundred years, the territorial distribution of seats in the House had
+remained the same, while the centres of population had shifted along with those
+of trade and new industries. Great towns were without representation, while
+boroughs, such as Old Sarum, without a single voter, still claimed, and had, a
+seat in Parliament. Such districts, or "rotten boroughs," were owned and
+controlled by many of the great landowners. Both Walpole and Newcastle resorted
+to the outright purchase of these seats, and when the time came George did not
+shrink from doing the same thing. He went even further. All preferments of
+whatsoever sort were bestowed upon those who would do his bidding, and the
+business of bribery assumed such proportions that an office was opened at the
+Treasury for this purpose, from which twenty-five thousand pounds are said to
+have passed in a single day. Parliament had been for a long time only partially
+representative of the people; it now ceased to be so almost completely.
+
+With, the support which such methods secured, along with encouragement from his
+ministers, the king was prepared to put in operation his policy for regulating
+the affairs of America. Writs of Assistance (1761) were followed by the passage
+of the Stamp Act (1765). The ostensible object of both these measures was to
+help pay the debt incurred by the French war, but the real purpose lay deeper,
+and was nothing more or less than the ultimate extension of parliamentary rule,
+in great things as well as small, to America. At this crisis, so momentous for
+the colonists, the Rockingham ministry was formed, and Burke, together with
+Pitt, supported a motion for the unconditional repeal of the Stamp Act. After
+much wrangling, the motion was carried, and the first blunder of the mother
+country seemed to have been smoothed over.
+
+Only a few months elapsed, however, when the question of taxing the colonies was
+revived. Pitt lay ill, and could take no part in the proposed measure. Through
+the influence of other members of his party,--notably Townshend,--a series of
+acts were passed, imposing duties on several exports to America. This was
+followed by a suspension of the New York Assembly, because it had disregarded
+instructions in the matter of supplies for the troops. The colonists were
+furious. Matters went from bad to worse. To withdraw as far as possible without
+yielding the principle at stake, the duties on all the exports mentioned in the
+bill were removed, except that on tea. But it was precisely the principle for
+which the colonists were contending. They were not in the humor for compromise,
+when they believed their freedom was endangered, and the strength and
+determination of their resistance found a climax in the Boston Tea Party.
+
+In the meantime, Lord North, who was absolutely obedient to the king, had become
+prime minister. Five bills were prepared, the tenor of which, it was thought,
+would overawe the colonists. Of these, the Boston Port Bill and the Regulating
+Act are perhaps the most famous, though the ultimate tendency of all was blindly
+coercive.
+
+While the king and his friends were busy with these, the opposition proposed an
+unconditional repeal of the Tea Act. The bill was introduced only to be
+overwhelmingly defeated by the same Parliament that passed the five measures of
+Lord North.
+
+In America, the effect of these proceedings was such as might have been expected
+by thinking men. The colonies were as a unit in their support of Massachusetts.
+The Regulating Act was set at defiance, public officers in the king's service
+were forced to resign, town meetings were held, and preparations for war were
+begun in dead earnest. To avert this, some of England's greatest statesmen--Pitt
+among the number--asked for a reconsideration. On February the first, 1775, a
+bill was introduced, which would have gone far toward bringing peace. One month
+later, Burke delivered his speech on Conciliation with the Colonies.
+
+
+
+
+EDMUND BURKE
+
+There is nothing unusual in Burke's early life. He was born in Dublin, Ireland,
+in 1729. His father was a successful lawyer and a Protestant, his mother, a
+Catholic. At the age of twelve, he became a pupil of Abraham Shackleton, a
+Quaker, who had been teaching some fifteen years at Ballitore, a small town
+thirty miles from Dublin. In after years Burke was always pleased to speak of
+his old friend in the kindest way: "If I am anything," he declares, "it is the
+education I had there that has made me so." And again at Shackleton's death,
+when Burke was near the zenith of his fame and popularity, he writes: "I had a
+true honor and affection for that excellent man. I feel something like a
+satisfaction in the midst of my concern, that I was fortunate enough to have him
+under my roof before his departure." It can hardly be doubted that the old
+Quaker schoolmaster succeeded with his pupil who was already so favorably
+inclined, and it is more than probable that the daily example of one who lived
+out his precepts was strong in its influence upon a young and generous mind.
+
+Burke attended school at Ballitore two years; then, at the age of fourteen, he
+became a student at Trinity College, Dublin, and remained there five years. At
+college he was unsystematic and careless of routine. He seems to have done
+pretty much as he pleased, and, however methodical he became in after life, his
+study during these five years was rambling and spasmodic. The only definite
+knowledge we have of this period is given by Burke himself in letters to his
+former friend Richard Shackleton, son of his old schoolmaster. What he did was
+done with a zest that at times became a feverish impatience: "First I was
+greatly taken with natural philosophy, which, while I should have given my mind
+to logic, employed me incessantly. This I call my FUROR MATHEMATICUS." Following
+in succession come his FUROR LOGICUS, FUROR HISTORICUS, and FUROR PEOTICUS, each
+of which absorbed him for the time being. It would be wrong, however, to think
+of Burke as a trifler even in his youth. He read in the library three hours
+every day and we may be sure he read as intelligently as eagerly. It is more
+than probable that like a few other great minds he did not need a rigid system
+to guide him. If he chose his subjects of study at pleasure, there is every
+reason to believe he mastered them.
+
+Of intimate friends at the University we hear nothing. Goldsmith came one year
+later, but there is no evidence that they knew each other. It is probable that
+Burke, always reserved, had little in common with his young associates. His own
+musings, with occasional attempts at writing poetry, long walks through the
+country, and frequent letters to and from Richard Shackleton, employed him when
+not at his books.
+
+Two years after taking his degree, Burke went to London and established himself
+at the Middle Temple for the usual routine course in law. Another long period
+passes of which there is next to nothing known. His father, an irascible, hot-
+tempered man, had wished him to begin the practice of law, but Burke seems to
+have continued in a rather irregular way pretty much as when an undergraduate at
+Dublin. His inclinations were not toward the law, but literature. His father,
+angered at such a turn of affairs, promptly reduced his allowance and left him
+to follow his natural bent in perfect freedom. In 1756, six years after his
+arrival in London, and almost immediately following the rupture with his father,
+he married a Miss Nugent. At about the same time he published his first two
+books, [Footnote: A Vindication of Natural Society and Philosophical Inquiry
+into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful] and began in earnest
+the life of an author.
+
+He attracted the attention of literary men. Dr. Johnson had just completed his
+famous dictionary, and was the centre of a group of writers who accepted him at
+his own valuation. Burke did not want for company, and wrote
+copiously.[Footnote: Hints for an Essay on the Drama. Abridgement of the History
+of England] He became associated with Dodsley, a bookseller, who began
+publishing the Annual Register in 1759, and was paid a hundred pounds a year for
+writing upon current events. He spent two years (1761-63) in Ireland in the
+employment of William Hamilton, but at the end of that time returned, chagrined
+and disgusted with his would-be patron, who utterly failed to recognize Burke's
+worth, and persisted in the most unreasonable demands upon his time and energy.
+
+For once Burke's independence served him well. In 1765 Lord Rockingham became
+prime minister, and Burke, widely known as the chief writer for the Annual
+Register, was free to accept the position of private secretary, which Lord
+Rockingham was glad to offer him. His services here were invaluable. The new
+relations thus established did not end with the performance of the immediate
+duties of his office, but a warm friendship grew up between the two, which
+lasted till the death of Lord Rockingham. While yet private secretary, Burke was
+elected to Parliament from the borough of Wendover. It was through the influence
+of his friend, or perhaps relative, William Burke, that his election was
+secured.
+
+Only a few days after taking his seat in the House of Commons, Burke made his
+first speech, January 27, 1766. He followed this in a very short time with
+another upon the same subject--the Taxation of the American Colonies.
+Notwithstanding the great honor and distinction which these first speeches
+brought Burke, his party was dismissed at the close of the session and the
+Chatham ministry formed. He remained with his friends, and employed himself in
+refuting [Footnote: Observations on the Present State of the Nation] the charges
+of the former minister, George Grenville, who wrote a pamphlet accusing his
+successors of gross neglect of public duties.
+
+At this point in his life comes the much-discussed matter of Beaconsfield. How
+Burke became rich enough to purchase such expensive property is a question that
+has never been answered by his friends or enemies. There are mysterious hints of
+successful speculation in East India stock, of money borrowed, and Burke
+himself, in a letter to Shackleton, speaks of aid from his friends and "all [the
+money] he could collect of his own." However much we may regret the air of
+mystery surrounding the matter, and the opportunity given those ever ready to
+smirch a great man's character, it is not probable that any one ever really
+doubted Burke's integrity in this or any other transaction. Perhaps the true
+explanation of his seemingly reckless extravagance (if any explanation is
+needed) is that the conventional standards of his time forced it upon him; and
+it may be that Burke himself sympathized to some extent with these standards,
+and felt a certain satisfaction in maintaining a proper attitude before the
+public.
+
+The celebrated case of Wilkes offered an opportunity for discussing the narrow
+and corrupt policy pursued by George III. and his followers. Wilkes, outlawed
+for libel and protected in the meantime through legal technicalities, was
+returned to Parliament by Middlesex. The House expelled him. He was repeatedly
+elected and as many times expelled, and finally the returns were altered, the
+House voting its approval by a large majority. In 1770 Burke published his
+pamphlet [Footnote: Present Discontents] in which he discussed the situation.
+For the first time he showed the full sweep and breadth of his understanding.
+His tract was in the interest of his party, but it was written in a spirit far
+removed from narrow partisanship. He pointed out with absolute clearness the
+cause of dissatisfaction and unrest among the people and charged George III. and
+his councillors with gross indifference to the welfare of the nation and
+corresponding devotion to selfish interests. He contended that Parliament was
+usurping privileges when it presumed to expel any one, that the people had a
+right to send whomsoever they pleased to Parliament, and finally that "in all
+disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption was at least upon a par
+in favor of the people." From this time until the American Revolution, Burke
+used every opportunity to denounce the policy which the king was pursuing at
+home and abroad. He doubtless knew beforehand that what he might say would pass
+unnoticed, but he never faltered in a steadfast adherence to his ideas of
+government, founded, as he believed, upon the soundest principles. Bristol
+elected him as its representative in Parliament. It was a great honor and Burke
+felt its significance, yet he did not flinch when the time came for him to take
+a stand. He voted for the removal of some of the restrictions upon Irish trade.
+His constituents, representing one of the most prosperous mercantile districts,
+angered and disappointed at what they held to be a betrayal of trust, refused to
+reelect him.
+
+Lord North's ministry came to an end in 1782, immediately after the battle of
+Yorktown, and Lord Rockingham was chosen prime minister. Burke's past services
+warranted him in expecting an important place in the cabinet, but he was
+ignored. Various things have been suggested as reasons for this: he was poor;
+some of his relations and intimate associates were objectionable; there were
+dark hints of speculations; he was an Irishman. It is possible that any one of
+these facts, or all of them, furnished a good excuse for not giving him an
+important position in the new government. But it seems more probable that
+Burke's abilities were not appreciated so justly as they have been since. The
+men with whom he associated saw some of his greatness but not all of it. He was
+assigned the office of Paymaster of Forces, a place of secondary importance.
+
+Lord Rockingham died in three months and the party went to pieces. Burke refused
+to work under Shelburne, and, with Fox, joined Lord North in forming the
+coalition which overthrew the Whig party. Burke has been severely censured for
+the part he took in this. Perhaps there is little excuse for his desertion, and
+it is certainly true that his course raises the question of his sincere devotion
+to principles. His personal dislike of Shelburne was so intense that he may have
+yielded to his feelings. He felt hurt, too, we may be sure, at the disposition
+made of him by his friends. In replying to a letter asking him for a place in
+the new government, he writes that his correspondent has been misinformed. "I
+make no part of the ministerial arrangement," he writes, and adds, "Something in
+the official line may be thought fit for my measure."
+
+As a supporter of the coalition, Burke was one of the framers of the India Bill.
+This was directed against the wholesale robbery and corruption which the East
+India Company had been guilty of in its government of the country. Both Fox and
+Burke defended the measure with all the force and power which a thorough mastery
+of facts, a keen sense of the injustice done an unhappy people, and a splendid
+rhetoric can give. But it was doomed from the first. The people at large were
+indifferent, many had profitable business relations with the company, and the
+king used his personal influence against it. The bill failed to pass, the
+coalition was dismissed, and the party, which had in Burke its greatest
+representative, was utterly ruined.
+
+The failure of the India Bill marked a victory for the king, and it also
+prepared the way for one of the most famous transactions of Burke's life.
+Macaulay has told how impressive and magnificent was the scene at the trial of
+Warren Hastings. There were political reasons for the impeachment, but the chief
+motive that stirred Burke was far removed from this. He saw and understood the
+real state of affairs in India. The mismanagement, the brutal methods, and the
+crimes committed there in the name of the English government, moved him
+profoundly, and when he rose before the magnificent audience at Westminster, for
+opening the cause, he forced his hearers, by his own mighty passion, to see with
+his own eyes, and to feel his own righteous anger. "When he came to his two
+narratives," says Miss Burney, "when he related the particulars of those
+dreadful murders, he interested, he engaged, he at last overpowered me; I felt
+my cause lost. I could hardly keep my seat. My eyes dreaded a single glance
+toward a man so accused as Mr. Hastings; I wanted to sink on the floor, that
+they might be saved so painful a sight. I had no hope he could clear himself;
+not another wish in his favor remained." The trial lasted for six years and
+ended with the acquittal of Hastings. The result was not a surprise, and least
+of all to Burke. The fate of the India Bill had taught him how completely
+indifferent the popular mind was to issues touching deep moral questions. Though
+a seeming failure, he regarded the impeachment as the greatest work of his life.
+It did much to arouse and stimulate the national sense of justice. It made clear
+the cruel methods sometimes pursued under the guise of civilization and
+progress. The moral victory is claimed for Burke, and without a doubt the claim
+is valid.
+
+The second of the great social and political problems, which employed English
+statesmen in the last half of the eighteenth century, was settled in the
+impeachment of Warren Hastings. The affairs of America and India were now
+overshadowed by the French Revolution, and Burke, with the far-sighted vision of
+a veteran statesman, watched the progress of events and their influence upon the
+established order. In 1773 he had visited France, and had returned displeased.
+It is remarkable with what accuracy he pointed out the ultimate tendency of much
+that he saw. A close observer of current phases of society, and on the alert to
+explain them in the light of broad and fundamental principles of human progress,
+he had every opportunity for studying social life at the French capital. Unlike
+the younger men of his times, he was doubtful, and held his judgment in
+suspense. The enthusiasm of even Fox seemed premature, and he held himself aloof
+from the popular demonstrations of admiration and approval that were everywhere
+going on. The fact is, Burke was growing old, and with his years he was becoming
+more conservative. He dreaded change, and was suspicious of the wisdom of those
+who set about such widespread innovations, and made such brilliant promises for
+the future. But the time rapidly approached for him to declare himself, and in
+1790 his Reflections on the Revolution in France was issued. His friends had
+long waited its appearance, and were not wholly surprised at the position taken.
+What did surprise them was the eagerness with which the people seized upon the
+book, and its effect upon them. The Tories, with the king, applauded long and
+loud; the Whigs were disappointed, for Burke condemned the Revolution
+unreservedly, and with a bitterness out of all proportion to the cause of his
+anxiety and fear. As the Revolution progressed, he grew fiercer in his
+denunciation. He broke with his lifelong associates, and declared that no one
+who sympathized with the work of the Assembly could be his friend. His other
+writings on the Revolution [Footnote: Letter to a Member of the National
+Assembly and Letters on a Regicide Peace.] were in a still more violent strain,
+and it is hard to think of them as coming from the author of the Speech on
+Conciliation.
+
+Three years before his death, at the conclusion of the trial of Warren Hastings,
+Burke's last term in Parliament expired. He did not wish office again and
+withdrew to his estate. Through the influence of friends, and because of his
+eminent services, it was proposed to make him peer, with the title of Lord
+Beacons field. But the death of his son prevented, and a pension of twenty-five
+hundred pounds a year was given instead. It was a signal for his enemies, and
+during his last days he was busy with his reply. The "Letter to a Noble Lord,"
+though written little more than a year before his death, is considered one of
+the most perfect of his papers. Saddened by the loss of his son, and broken in
+spirits, there is yet left him enough old-time energy and fire to answer his
+detractors. But his wonderful career was near its close. His last months were
+spent in writing about the French Revolution, and the third letter on a Regicide
+Peace--a fragment--was doubtless composed just before his death. On the 9th of
+July, 1797, he passed away. His friends claimed for him a place in Westminster,
+but his last wish was respected, and he was buried at Beaconsfield.
+
+
+
+
+BURKE AS A STATESMAN
+
+There is hardly a political tract or pamphlet of Burke's in which he does not
+state, in terms more or less clear, the fundamental principle in his theory of
+government. "Circumstances," he says in one place, "give, in reality, to every
+political principle, its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The
+circumstances are what renders every civil and political scheme beneficial or
+obnoxious to mankind." At another time he exclaims: "This is the true touchstone
+of all theories which regard man and the affairs of men; does it suit his nature
+in general, does it suit his nature as modified by his habits?" And again he
+extends his system to affairs outside the realm of politics. "All government,"
+he declares, "indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every
+prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter."
+
+It is clear that Burke thought the State existed for the people, and not the
+people for the State. The doctrine is old to us, but it was not so in Burke's
+time, and it required courage to expound it. The great parties had forgotten the
+reason for their existence, and one of them had become hardened and blinded by
+that corruption which seems to follow long tenure of office. The affairs of
+India, Ireland, and America gave excellent opportunity for an exhibition of
+English statesmanship, but in each case the policy pursued was dictated, not by
+a clear perception of what was needed in these countries, but by narrow
+selfishness, not unmixed with dogmatism of the most challenging sort. The
+situation in India, as regards climate, character, and institutions, counted for
+little in the minds of those who were growing rich as agents of the East India
+Company. Much the same may be said of America and Ireland. The sense of
+Parliament, influenced by the king, was to use these parts of the British Empire
+in raising a revenue, and in strengthening party organization at home. In
+opposing this policy, Burke lost his seat as representative for Bristol, then
+the second city of England; spent fourteen of the best years of his life in
+conducting the impeachment of Warren Hastings, Governor-General of India; and,
+greatest of all, delivered his famous speeches on Taxation and Conciliation, in
+behalf of the American colonists.
+
+Notwithstanding the distinctly modern tone of Burke's ideas, it would be wrong
+to think of him as a thoroughgoing reformer. He has been called the Great
+Conservative, and the title is appropriate. He would have shrunk from a purely
+republican form of government, such as our own, and it is, perhaps, a fact that
+he was suspicious of a government by the people. The trouble, as he saw it, lay
+with the representatives of the people. Upon them, as guardians of a trust,
+rested the responsibility of protecting those whom they were chosen to serve.
+While he bitterly opposed any measures involving radical change in the
+Constitution, he was no less ardent in denouncing political corruptions of all
+kinds whatsoever. In his Economical Reform he sought to curtail the enormous
+extravagance of the royal household, and to withdraw the means of wholesale
+bribery, which offices at the disposal of the king created. He did not believe
+that a more effective means than this lay in the proposed plan for a
+redistribution of seats in the House of Commons. In one place, he declared it
+might be well to lessen the number of voters, in order to add to their weight
+and independence; at another, he asks that the people be stimulated to a more
+careful scrutiny of the conduct of their representatives; and on every occasion
+he demands that the legislators give their support to those measures only which
+have for their object the good of the whole people.
+
+It is obvious, however, that Burke's policy had grievous faults. His reverence
+for the past, and his respect for existing institutions as the heritage of the
+past, made him timid and overcautious in dealing with abuses. Although he stood
+with Pitt in defending the American colonies, he had no confidence in the
+thoroughgoing reforms which the great Commoner proposed. When the Stamp Act was
+repealed, Pitt would have gone even further. He would have acknowledged the
+absolute injustice of taxation without representation. Burke held tenaciously to
+the opposing theory, and warmly supported the Declaratory Act, which "asserted
+the supreme authority of Parliament over the colonies, in all cases whatsoever."
+His support of the bill for the repeal of the Stamp Act, as well as his plea for
+reconciliation, ten years later, were not prompted by a firm belief in the
+injustice of England's course. He expressly states, in both cases that to
+enforce measures so repugnant to the Americans, would be detrimental to the home
+government. It would result in confusion and disorder, and would bring, perhaps,
+in the end, open rebellion. All of his speeches on American affairs show his
+willingness to "barter and compromise" in order to avoid this, but nowhere is
+there a hint of fundamental error in the Constitution. This was sacred to him,
+and he resented to the last any proposition looking to an organic change in its
+structure. "The lines of morality," he declared, "are not like ideal lines of
+mathematics. They are broad and deep, as well as long. They admit of exceptions;
+they demand modifications. These exceptions and modifications are made, not by
+the process of logic, but the rules of prudence. Prudence is not only first in
+rank of all the virtues, political and moral, but she is the director, the
+regulator, the standard of them all."
+
+The chief characteristics, then, of Burke's political philosophy are opposed to
+much that is fundamental in modern systems. His doctrine is better than that of
+George III, because it is more generous, and affords opportunity for superficial
+readjustment and adaptation. It is this last, or rather the proof it gives of
+his insight, that has secured Burke so high a place among English statesmen.
+
+
+
+
+A GROUP OF WRITERS COMING IMMEDIATELY BEFORE BURKE
+
+Addison. . . . 1672-1719
+Steele . . . . 1672-1729
+Defoe. . . . . 1661-1731
+Swift. . . . . 1667-1745
+Pope . . . . . 1688-1744
+Richardson . . 1689-1761
+
+
+
+
+A GROUP OF WRITERS CONTEMPORARY WITH BURKE
+
+Johnson . . . . 1709-1784
+Goldsmith . . . 1728-1774
+Fielding. . . . 1707-1754
+Sterne. . . . . 1713-1768
+Smollett. . . . 1721-1771
+Gray. . . . . . 1716-1771
+Boswell . . . . 1740-1795
+
+
+
+
+BURKE IN LITERATURE
+
+It has become almost trite to speak of the breadth of Burke's sympathies. We
+should examine the statement, however, and understand its significance and see
+its justice. While he must always be regarded first as a statesman of one of the
+highest types, he had other interests than those directly suggested by his
+office, and in one of these, at least, he affords an interesting and profitable
+study.
+
+To the student of literature Burke's name must always suggest that of Johnson
+and Goldsmith. It was eight years after Burke's first appearance as an author,
+that the famous Literary Club was formed. At first it was the intention to limit
+the club to a membership of nine, and for a time this was adhered to. The
+original members were Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, Reynolds, and Hawkins. Garrick,
+Pox, and Boswell came in later. Macaulay declares that the influence of the club
+was so great that its verdict made and unmade reputations; but the thing most
+interesting to us does not lie in the consideration of such literary
+dictatorship. To Boswell we owe a biography of Johnson which has immortalized
+its subject, and shed lustre upon all associated with him. The literary history
+of the last third of the eighteenth century, with Johnson as a central figure,
+is told nowhere else with such accuracy, or with better effect.
+
+Although a Tory, Johnson was a great one, and his lasting friendship for Burke
+is an enduring evidence of his generosity and great-mindedness. For twenty
+years, and longer, they were eminent men in opposing parties, yet their mutual
+respect and admiration continued to the last. To Burke, Johnson was a writer of
+"eminent literary merit" and entitled to a pension "solely on that account." To
+Johnson, Burke was the greatest man of his age, wrong politically, to be sure,
+yet the only one "whose common conversation corresponded to the general fame
+which he had in the world"--the only one "who was ready, whatever subject was
+chosen, to meet you on your own ground." Here and there in the Life are
+allusions to Burke, and admirable estimates of his many-sided character.
+
+Coming directly to an estimate of Burke from the purely literary point of view,
+it must be borne in mind that the greater part of his writings was prepared for
+an audience. Like Macaulay, his prevailing style suggests the speaker, and his
+methods throughout are suited to declamation and oratory. He lacks the ease and
+delicacy that we are accustomed to look for in the best prose writers, and
+occasionally one feels the justice of Johnson's stricture, that "he sometimes
+talked partly from ostentation", or of Hazlitt's criticism that he seemed to be
+"perpetually calling the speaker out to dance a minuet with him before he
+begins."
+
+There may be passages here and there that warrant such censure. Burke is
+certainly ornate, and at times he is extremely self-conscious, but the dominant
+quality of his style, and the one which forever contradicts the idea of mere
+showiness, is passion. In his method of approaching a subject, he may be, and
+perhaps is, rather tedious, but when once he has come to the matter really in
+hand, he is no longer the rhetorician, dealing in fine phrases, but the great
+seer, clothing his thoughts in words suitable and becoming. The most magnificent
+passages in his writings--the Conciliation is rich in them--owe their charm and
+effectiveness to this emotional capacity. They were evidently written in moments
+of absolute abandonment to feeling--in moments when he was absorbed in the
+contemplation of some great truth, made luminous by his own unrivalled powers.
+
+Closely allied to this intensity of passion, is a splendid imaginative quality.
+Few writers of English prose have such command of figurative expression. It must
+be said, however, that Burke was not entirely free from the faults which
+generally accompany an excessive use of figures. Like other great masters of a
+decorative style, he frequently becomes pompous and grandiloquent. His thought,
+too, is obscured, where we would expect great clearness of statement,
+accompanied by a dignified simplicity; and occasionally we feel that he forgets
+his subject in an anxious effort to make an impression. Though there are
+passages in his writings that justify such observations, they are few in number,
+when compared with those which are really masterpieces of their kind.
+
+Some great crisis, or threatening state of affairs, seems to furnish the
+necessary condition for the exercise of a great mind, and Burke is never so
+effective as when thoroughly aroused. His imagination needed the chastening
+which only a great moment or critical situation could give. Two of his greatest
+speeches--Conciliation, and Impeachment of Warren Hastings--were delivered under
+the restraining effect of such circumstances, and in each the figurative
+expression is subdued and not less beautiful in itself than, appropriate for the
+occasion.
+
+Finally, it must be observed that no other writer of English prose has a better
+command of words. His ideas, as multifarious as they are, always find fitting
+expression. He does not grope for a term; it stands ready for his thought, and
+one feels that he had opportunity for choice. It is the exuberance of his fancy,
+already mentioned, coupled with this richness of vocabulary, that helped to make
+Burke a tiresome speaker. His mind was too comprehensive to allow any phase of
+his subject to pass without illumination. He followed where his subject led him,
+without any great attention to the patience of his audience. But he receives
+full credit when his speeches are read. It is then that his mastery of the
+subject and the splendid qualities of his style are apparent, and appreciated at
+their worth.
+
+In conclusion, it is worth while observing that in the study of a great
+character, joined with an attempt to estimate it by conventional standards,
+something must always be left unsaid. Much may be learned of Burke by knowing
+his record as a partisan, more by a minute inspection of his style as a writer,
+but beyond all this is the moral tone or attitude of the man himself. To a
+student of Burke this is the greatest thing about him. It colored every line he
+wrote, and to it, more than anything else, is due the immense force of the man
+as a speaker and writer. It was this, more than Burke's great abilities, that
+justifies Dr. Johnson's famous eulogy: "He is not only the first man in the
+House of Commons, he is the first man everywhere."
+
+
+
+
+A GROUP OF WRITERS COMING IMMEDIATELY AFTER BURKE
+
+Wordsworth . . . . 1770-1850
+
+Coleridge . . . . . 1772-1834
+
+Byron . . . . . . . 1788-1824
+
+Shelley . . . . . . 1792-1822
+
+Keats . . . . . . . 1795-1821
+
+Scott . . . . . . . 1771-1832
+
+
+
+
+TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS
+
+1. "Like Goldsmith, though in a different sphere, Burke belongs both to the old
+order and the new." Discuss that statement.
+
+2. Burke and the Literary Club. (Boswell's Life of Johnson.)
+
+3. Lives of Burke and Goldsmith. Contrast.
+
+4. An interpretation of ten apothegms selected from the Speech on Conciliation.
+
+5. A study of figures in the Speech on Conciliation.
+
+6. A definition of the terms: "colloquialism" and "idiom" Instances of their use
+in the Speech on Conciliation.
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+1. Burke's Life. John Morley. English Men of Letters Series.
+
+2. Burke. John Morley. An Historical Study.
+
+3. Burke. John Morley. Encyclopaedia Britannica.
+
+4. History of the English People. Green. Vol. IV., pp 193-271.
+
+5 History of Civilization in England. Buckle. Vol I, pp. 326-338
+
+6. The American Revolution. Fiske. Vol. I, Chaps. I., II.
+
+7. Life of Johnson. Boswell. (Use the Index)
+
+
+
+
+EDMUND BURKE
+
+ON MOVING HIS RESOLUTIONS FOR CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. HOUSE OF COMMONS,
+MARCH 22, 1775
+
+
+I hope, Sir, that notwithstanding the austerity of the Chair, your good nature
+will incline you to some degree of indulgence towards human frailty. You will
+not think it unnatural that those who have an object depending, which strongly
+engages their hopes and fears, should be somewhat inclined to superstition. As I
+came into the House full of anxiety about the event of my motion, I found, to my
+infinite surprise, that the grand penal bill, [Footnote: 1] by which we had
+passed sentence on the trade and sustenance of America, is to be returned to us
+from the other House. I do confess I could not help looking on this event as a
+fortunate omen. I look upon it as a sort of providential favor, by which we are
+put once more in possession of our deliberative capacity upon a business so very
+questionable in its nature, so very uncertain in its issue. By the return of
+this bill, which seemed to have taken its flight forever, we are at this very
+instant nearly as free to choose a plan for our American Government as we were
+on the first day of the session. If, Sir, we incline to the side of
+conciliation, we are not at all embarrassed (unless we please to make ourselves
+so) by any incongruous mixture of coercion and restraint. We are therefore
+called upon, as it were by a superior warning voice, again to attend to America;
+to attend to the whole of it together; and to review the subject with an unusual
+degree of care and calmness.
+
+Surely it is an awful subject, or there is none so on this side of the grave.
+When I first had the honor [Footnote: 2] of a seat in this House, the affairs of
+that continent pressed themselves upon us as the most important and most
+delicate object of Parliamentary attention. My little share in this great
+deliberation oppressed me. I found myself a partaker in a very high trust; and,
+having no sort of reason to rely on the strength of my natural abilities for the
+proper execution of that trust, I was obliged to take more than common pains to
+instruct myself in everything which relates to our Colonies. I was not less
+under the necessity of forming some fixed ideas concerning the general policy of
+the British Empire. Something of this sort seemed to be indispensable, in order,
+amidst so vast a fluctuation of passions and opinions, to concentre my thoughts,
+to ballast my conduct, to preserve me from being blown about by every wind of
+fashionable doctrine. I really did not think it safe or manly to have fresh
+principles to seek upon every fresh mail which should arrive from America.
+
+At that period I had the fortune to find myself in perfect concurrence with a
+large majority in this House. Bowing under that high authority, and penetrated
+with the sharpness and strength of that early impression, I have continued ever
+since, without the least deviation, in my original sentiments. [Footnote: 3]
+Whether this be owing to an obstinate perseverance in error, or to a religious
+adherence to what appears to me truth, and reason, it is in your equity to
+judge.
+
+Sir, Parliament having an enlarged view of objects, made, during this interval,
+more frequent changes in their sentiments and their conduct than could be
+justified in a particular person upon the contracted scale of private
+information. But though I do not hazard anything approaching to a censure on the
+motives of former Parliaments to all those alterations, one fact is undoubted--
+that under them the state of America has been kept in continual agitation.
+[Footnote: 4] Everything administered as remedy to the public complaint, if it
+did not produce, was at least followed by, an heightening of the distemper;
+until, by a variety of experiments, that important country has been brought into
+her present situation--a situation which I will not miscall, which I dare not
+name, which I scarcely know how to comprehend in the terms of any description.
+
+In this posture, Sir, things stood at the beginning of the session. About that
+time, a worthy member [Footnote: 5] of great Parliamentary experience, who, in
+the year 1766, filled the chair of the American committee with much ability,
+took me aside; and, lamenting the present aspect of our politics, told me things
+were come to such a pass that our former [Footnote: 6] methods of proceeding in
+the House would be no longer tolerated: that the public tribunal (never too
+indulgent to a long and unsuccessful opposition) would now scrutinize our
+conduct with unusual severity: that the very vicissitudes and shiftings of
+Ministerial measures, instead of convicting their authors of inconstancy and
+want of system, would be taken as an occasion of charging us with a
+predetermined discontent, which nothing could satisfy; whilst we accused every
+measure of vigor as cruel, and every proposal of lenity as weak and irresolute.
+The public, he said, would not have patience to see us play the game out with
+our adversaries; we must produce our hand. It would be expected that those who
+for many years had been active in such affairs should show that they had formed
+some clear and decided idea of the principles of Colony government; and were
+capable of drawing out something like a platform of the ground which might be
+laid for future and permanent tranquillity.
+
+I felt the truth of what my honorable friend represented; but I felt my
+situation too. His application might have been made with far greater propriety
+to many other gentlemen. No man was indeed ever better disposed, or worse
+qualified, for such an undertaking than myself. Though I gave so far in to his
+opinion that I immediately threw my thoughts into a sort of Parliamentary form,
+I was by no means equally ready to produce them. It generally argues some degree
+of natural impotence of mind, or some want of knowledge of the world, to hazard
+plans of government except from a seat of authority. Propositions are made, not
+only ineffectually, but somewhat disreputably, when the minds of men are not
+properly disposed for their reception; and, for my part, I am not ambitious of
+ridicule--not absolutely a candidate for disgrace
+
+Besides, Sir, to speak the plain truth, I have in general no very exalted
+opinion of the virtue of paper government; [Footnote: 7] nor of any politics in
+which the plan is to be wholly separated from the execution. But when I saw that
+anger and violence prevailed every day more and more, and that things were
+hastening towards an incurable alienation of our Colonies, I confess my caution
+gave way. I felt this as one of those few moments in which decorum yields to a
+higher duty. Public calamity is a mighty leveller; and there are occasions when
+any, even the slightest, chance of doing good must be laid hold on, even by the
+most inconsiderable person.
+
+To restore order and repose to an empire so great and so distracted as ours, is,
+merely in the attempt, an undertaking that would ennoble the flights of the
+highest genius, and obtain pardon for the efforts of the meanest understanding.
+Struggling a good while with these thoughts, by degrees I felt myself more firm.
+I derived, at length, some confidence from what in other circumstances usually
+produces timidity. I grew less anxious, even from the idea of my own
+insignificance. For, judging of what you are by what you ought to be, I
+persuaded myself that you would not reject a reasonable proposition because it
+had nothing but its reason to recommend it. On the other hand, being totally
+destitute of all shadow of influence, natural or adventitious, I was very sure
+that, if my proposition were futile or dangerous--if it were weakly conceived,
+or improperly timed--there was nothing exterior to it of power to awe, dazzle,
+or delude you. You will see it just as it is; and you will treat it just as it
+deserves.
+
+The proposition is peace. Not peace through the medium of war; not peace to be
+hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations; not peace to
+arise out of universal discord fomented, from principle, in all parts of the
+Empire, not peace to depend on the juridical determination of perplexing
+questions, or the precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex
+government. It is simple peace; sought in its natural course, and 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.
+
+First, the people of the Colonies are descendants of Englishmen. England, Sir,
+is a nation which still, I hope, respects, and formerly adored, her freedom. The
+Colonists emigrated from you when this part of your character was most
+predominant; and they took this bias and direction the moment they parted from
+your hands. They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty
+according to English ideas, and on English principles. Abstract liberty, like
+other mere abstractions, is not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible
+object; and every nation has formed to itself some favorite point, which by way
+of eminence becomes the criterion of their happiness. It happened, you know,
+Sir, that the great contests [Footnote: 24] for freedom in this country were
+from the earliest times chiefly upon the question of taxing. Most of the
+contests in the ancient commonwealths turned primarily on the right of election
+of magistrates; or on the balance among the several orders of the state. The
+question of money was not with them so immediate. But in England it was
+otherwise. On this point of taxes the ablest pens, and most eloquent tongues,
+have been exercised; the greatest spirits have acted and suffered. In order to
+give the fullest satisfaction concerning the importance of this point, it was
+not only necessary for those who in argument defended the excellence of the
+English Constitution to insist on this privilege of granting money as a dry
+point of fact, and to prove that the right had been acknowledged in ancient
+parchments and blind usages to reside in a certain body called a House of
+Commons. They went much farther; they attempted to prove, and they succeeded,
+that in theory it ought to be so, from the particular nature of a House of
+Commons as an immediate representative of the people, whether the old records
+had delivered this oracle or not. They took infinite pains to inculcate, as a
+fundamental principle, that in all monarchies the people must in effect
+themselves, mediately or immediately, possess the power of granting their own
+money, or no shadow of liberty can subsist. The Colonies draw from you, as with
+their life-blood, these ideas and principles. Their love of liberty, as with
+you, fixed and attached on this specific point of taxing. Liberty might be safe,
+or might be endangered, in twenty other particulars, without their being much
+pleased or alarmed. Here they felt its pulse; and as they found that beat, they
+thought themselves sick or sound. I do not say whether they were right or wrong
+in applying your general arguments to their own case. It is not easy, indeed, to
+make a monopoly of theorems and corollaries. The fact is, that they did thus
+apply those general arguments; and your mode of governing them, whether through
+lenity or indolence, through wisdom or mistake, confirmed them in the
+imagination that they, as well as you, had an interest in these common
+principles.
+
+They were further confirmed in this pleasing error by the form of their
+provincial legislative assemblies. Their governments are popular in an high
+degree; some are merely popular; in all, the popular representative is the most
+weighty; and this share of the people in their ordinary government never fails
+to inspire them with lofty sentiments, and with a strong aversion from whatever
+tends to deprive them of their chief importance.
+
+If anything were wanting to this necessary operation of the form of government,
+religion would have given it a complete effect. Religion, always a principle of
+energy, in this new people is no way worn out or impaired; and their mode of
+professing it is also one main cause of this free spirit. The people are
+Protestants; and of that kind which is the most adverse to all implicit
+submission of mind and opinion. This is a persuasion not only favorable to
+liberty, but built upon it. I do not think, Sir, that the reason of this
+averseness in the dissenting churches from all that looks like absolute
+government is so much to be sought in their religious tenets, as in their
+history. Every one knows that the Roman Catholic religion is at least co-eval
+with most of the governments where it prevails; that it has generally gone hand
+in hand with them, and received great favor and every kind of support from
+authority. The Church of England too was formed from her cradle under the
+nursing care of regular government. But the dissenting interests have sprung up
+in direct opposition to all the ordinary powers of the world, and could justify
+that opposition only on a strong claim to natural liberty. Their very existence
+depended on the powerful and unremitted assertion of that claim. All
+Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the
+religion most prevalent in our Northern Colonies is a refinement on the
+principle of resistance; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism
+of the Protestant religion. This religion, under a variety of denominations
+agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the spirit of liberty, is
+predominant in most of the Northern Provinces, where the Church of England,
+notwithstanding its legal rights, is in reality no more than a sort of private
+sect, not composing most probably the tenth of the people. The Colonists left
+England when this spirit was high, and in the emigrants was the highest of all;
+and even that stream of foreigners which has been constantly flowing into these
+Colonies has, for the greatest part, been composed of dissenters from the
+establishments of their several countries, who have brought with them a temper
+and character far from alien to that of the people with whom they mixed.
+
+Sir, I can perceive by their manner that some gentlemen object to the latitude
+of this description, because in the Southern Colonies the Church of England
+forms a large body, and has a regular establishment. It is certainly true. There
+is, however, a circumstance attending these Colonies which, in my opinion, fully
+counterbalances this difference, and makes the spirit of liberty still more high
+and haughty than in those to the northward. It is that in Virginia and the
+Carolinas they have a vast multitude of slaves. Where this is the case in any
+part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of
+their freedom. Freedom is to them [Footnote: 25] not only an enjoyment, but a
+kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing there, that freedom, as in countries
+where it is a common blessing and as broad and general as the air, may be united
+with much abject toil, with great misery, with all the exterior of servitude;
+liberty looks, amongst them, like something that is more noble and liberal. I do
+not mean, Sir, to commend the superior morality of this sentiment, which has at
+least as much pride as virtue in it; but I cannot alter the nature of man. The
+fact is so; and these people of the Southern Colonies are much more strongly,
+and with an higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty than those to
+the northward. Such were all the ancient commonwealths; such were our Gothic
+ancestors; such in our days were the Poles; and such will be all masters of
+slaves, who are not slaves themselves. In such a people the haughtiness of
+domination combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it
+invincible.
+
+Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance in our Colonies which contributes no
+mean part towards the growth and effect of this untractable spirit. I mean their
+education. In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study. The
+profession itself is numerous and powerful; and in most provinces it takes the
+lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to the Congress were lawyers. But
+all who read, and most do read, endeavor to obtain some smattering in that
+science. I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his
+business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the
+law exported to the Plantations. The Colonists have now fallen into the way of
+printing them for their own use. I hear that they have sold nearly as many of
+Blackstone's Commentaries in America as in England. General Gage marks out this
+disposition very particularly in a letter on your table. He states that all the
+people in his government are lawyers, or smatterers in law; and that in Boston
+they have been enabled, by successful chicane, wholly to evade many parts of one
+of your capital penal constitutions. The smartness of debate will say that this
+knowledge ought to teach them more clearly the rights of legislature, their
+obligations to obedience, and the penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty
+well. But my honorable and learned friend on the floor, who condescends to mark
+what I say for animadversion, will disdain that ground. He has heard, as well as
+I, that when great honors and great emoluments do not win over this knowledge to
+the service of the state, it is a formidable adversary to government. If the
+spirit be not tamed and broken by these happy methods, it is stubborn and
+litigious. Abeunt studia in mores. [Footnote: 26] This study readers men acute,
+inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources.
+In other countries, the people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge
+of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; here they
+anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness
+of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance, and snuff the approach
+of tyranny in every tainted breeze.
+
+The last cause of this disobedient spirit in the Colonies is hardly less
+powerful than the rest, as it is not merely moral, but laid deep in the natural
+constitution of things. Three thousand miles of ocean lie between you and them.
+No contrivance can prevent the effect of this distance in weakening government.
+Seas roll, and months pass, between the order and the execution, and the want of
+a speedy explanation of a single point is enough to defeat a whole system. You
+have, indeed, winged ministers of vengeance, [Footnote: 27] who carry your bolts
+in their pounces to the remotest verge of the sea. But there a power steps in
+that limits the arrogance of raging passions and furious elements, and says, SO
+FAR SHALL THOU GO, AND NO FARTHER. Who are you, that you should fret and rage,
+and bite the chains of nature? Nothing worse happens to you than does to all
+nations who have extensive empire; and it happens in all the forms into which
+empire can be thrown. In large bodies the circulation [Footnote: 28] of power
+must be less vigorous at the extremities. Nature has said it. The Turk cannot
+govern Egypt and Arabia and Kurdistan as he governs Thrace; nor has he the same
+dominion in Crimea and Algiers which he has at Brusa and Smyrna. Despotism
+itself is obliged to truck and huckster. The Sultan gets such obedience as he
+can. He governs with a loose rein, that he may govern at all; and the whole of
+the force and vigor of his authority in his centre is derived from a prudent
+relaxation in all his borders. Spain, in her provinces, is, perhaps, not so well
+obeyed as you are in yours. She complies, too; she submits; she watches times.
+This is the immutable condition, the eternal law of extensive and detached
+empire.
+
+Then, Sir, from these six capital sources--of descent, of form of government, of
+religion in the Northern Provinces, of manners in the Southern, of education, of
+the remoteness of situation from the first mover of government--from all these
+causes a fierce spirit of liberty has grown up. It has grown with the growth of
+the people in your Colonies, and increased with the increase of their wealth; a
+spirit that unhappily meeting with an exercise of power in England which,
+however lawful, is not reconcilable to any ideas of liberty, much less with
+theirs, has kindled this flame that is ready to consume us.
+
+I do not mean to commend either the spirit in this excess, or the moral causes
+which produce it. Perhaps a more smooth and accommodating spirit of freedom in
+them would be more acceptable to us. Perhaps ideas of liberty might be desired
+more reconcilable with an arbitrary and boundless authority. Perhaps we might
+wish the Colonists to be persuaded that their liberty is more secure when held
+in trust for them by us, as their guardians during a perpetual minority, than
+with any part of it in their own hands. The question is, not whether their
+spirit deserves praise or blame, but--what, in the name of God, shall we do with
+it? You have before you the object, such as it is, with all its glories, with
+all its imperfections [Footnote: 29] on its head. You see the magnitude, the
+importance, the temper, the habits, the disorders. By all these considerations
+we are strongly urged to determine something concerning it. We are called upon
+to fix some rule and line for our future conduct which may give a little
+stability to our politics, and prevent the return of such unhappy deliberations
+as the present. Every such return will bring the matter before us in a still
+more untractable form. For, what astonishing and incredible things have we not
+seen already! What monsters have not been generated from this unnatural
+contention! Whilst every principle of authority and resistance has been pushed,
+upon both sides, as far as it would go, there is nothing so solid and certain,
+either in reasoning or in practice, that has not been shaken. Until very lately
+all authority in America seemed to be nothing but an emanation from yours. Even,
+the popular part of the Colony Constitution derived all its activity and its
+first vital movement from the pleasure of the Crown. We thought, Sir, that the
+utmost which the discontented Colonies could do was to disturb authority; we
+never dreamt they could of themselves supply it--knowing in general what an
+operose business it is to establish a government absolutely new. But having, for
+our purposes in this contention, resolved that none but an obedient Assembly
+should sit, the humors of the people there, finding all passage through the
+legal channel stopped, with great violence broke out another way. Some provinces
+have tried their experiment, as we have tried ours; and theirs has succeeded.
+They have formed a government sufficient for its purposes, without the bustle of
+a revolution or the formality of an election. Evident necessity and tacit
+consent have done the business in an instant. So well they have done it, that
+Lord Dunmore--the account is among the fragments on your table--tells you that
+the new institution is infinitely better obeyed than the ancient government ever
+was in its most fortunate periods. Obedience is what makes government, and not
+the names by which it is called; not the name of Governor, as formerly, or
+Committee, as at present. This new government has originated directly from the
+people, and was not transmitted through any of the ordinary artificial media of
+a positive constitution. It was not a manufacture ready formed, and transmitted
+to them in that condition from England. The evil arising from hence is this;
+that the Colonists having once found the possibility of enjoying the advantages
+of order in the midst of a struggle for liberty, such struggles will not
+henceforward seem so terrible to the settled and sober part of mankind as they
+had appeared before the trial. Pursuing the same plan [Footnote: 30] of
+punishing by the denial of the exercise of government to still greater lengths,
+we wholly abrogated the ancient government of Massachusetts. We were confident
+that the first feeling if not the very prospect, of anarchy would instantly
+enforce a complete submission. The experiment was tried. A new, strange,
+unexpected face of things appeared. Anarchy is found tolerable. A vast province
+has now subsisted, and subsisted in a considerable degree of health and vigor
+for near a twelvemonth, without Governor, without public Council, without
+judges, without executive magistrates. How long it will continue in this state,
+or what may arise out of this unheard-of situation, how can the wisest of us
+conjecture? Our late experience has taught us that many of those fundamental
+principles, formerly believed infallible, are either not of the importance they
+were imagined to be, or that we have not at all adverted to some other far more
+important and far more powerful principles, which entirely overrule those we had
+considered as omnipotent. I am much against any further experiments which tend
+to put to the proof any more of these allowed opinions which contribute so much
+to the public tranquillity. In effect we suffer as much at home by this
+loosening of all ties, and this concussion of all established opinions as we do
+abroad; for in order to prove that the Americans have no right to their
+liberties, we are every day endeavoring to subvert the maxims which preserve the
+whole spirit of our own. To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we
+are obliged to depreciate the value of freedom itself; and we never seem to gain
+a paltry advantage over them in debate without attacking some of those
+principles, or deriding some of those feelings, for which our ancestors have
+shed their blood.
+
+But, Sir, in wishing to put an end to pernicious experiments, I do not mean to
+preclude the fullest inquiry. Far from it. Far from deciding on a sudden or
+partial view, [Footnote: 31] I would patiently go round and round the subject,
+and survey it minutely in every possible aspect. Sir, if I were capable of
+engaging you to an equal attention, I would state that, as far as I am capable
+of discerning, there are but three ways [Footnote: 32] of proceeding relative to
+this stubborn spirit which prevails in your Colonies, and disturbs your
+government. These are--to change that spirit, as inconvenient, by removing the
+causes; to prosecute it as criminal; or to comply with it as necessary. I would
+not be guilty of an imperfect enumeration; I can think of but these three.
+Another has indeed been started,--that of giving up the Colonies; but it met so
+slight a reception that I do not think myself obliged to dwell a great while
+upon it. It is nothing but a little sally of anger, like the forwardness of
+peevish children who, when they cannot get all they would have, are resolved to
+take nothing.
+
+The first of these plans--to change the spirit, as inconvenient, by removing the
+causes--I think is the most like a systematic proceeding. It is radical in its
+principle; but it is attended with great difficulties, some of them little
+short, as I conceive, of impossibilities. This will appear by examining into the
+plans which have been proposed.
+
+As the growing population in the Colonies is evidently one cause of their
+resistance, it was last session mentioned in both Houses, by men of weight, and
+received not without applause, that in order to check this evil it would be
+proper for the Crown to make no further grants of land. But to this scheme there
+are two objections. The first, that there is already so much unsettled land in
+private hands as to afford room for an immense future population, although the
+Crown not only withheld its grants, but annihilated its soil. If this be the
+case, then the only effect of this avarice of desolation, this hoarding of a
+royal wilderness, would be to raise the value of the possessions in the hands of
+the great private monopolists without any adequate cheek to the growing and
+alarming mischief of population.
+
+But if you stopped your grants, what would be the consequence? The people would
+occupy without grants. They have already so occupied in many places. You cannot
+station garrisons in every part of these deserts. If you drive the people from
+one place, they will carry on their annual tillage, and remove with their flocks
+and herds to another. Many of the people in the back settlements are already
+little attached to particular situations. Already they have topped the
+Appalachian Mountains. From thence they behold before them an immense plain, one
+vast, rich, level meadow; a square of five hundred miles. Over this they would
+wander without a possibility of restraint; they would change their manners with
+the habits of their life; would soon forget a government by which they were
+disowned; would become hordes of English Tartars; and, pouring down upon your
+unfortified frontiers a fierce and irresistible cavalry, become masters of your
+governors and your counsellors, your collectors and comptrollers, and of all the
+slaves that adhered to them. Such would, and in no long time must be, the effect
+of attempting to forbid as a crime and to suppress as an evil the command and
+blessing of providence, INCREASE AND MULTIPLY. Such would be the happy result of
+the endeavor to keep as a lair of wild beasts that earth which God, by an
+express charter, has given to the children of men. Far different, and surely
+much wiser, has been our policy hitherto. Hitherto we have invited our people,
+by every kind of bounty, to fixed establishments. We have invited the husbandman
+to look to authority for his title. We have taught him piously to believe in the
+mysterious virtue of wax and parchment. We have thrown each tract of land, as it
+was peopled, into districts, that the ruling power should never be wholly out of
+sight. We have settled all we could; and we have carefully attended every
+settlement with government.
+
+Adhering, Sir, as I do, to this policy, as well as for the reasons I have just
+given, I think this new project of hedging-in population to be neither prudent
+nor practicable.
+
+To impoverish the Colonies in general, and in particular to arrest the noble
+course of their marine enterprises, would be a more easy task. I freely confess
+it. We have shown a disposition to a system of this kind, a disposition even to
+continue the restraint after the offence, looking on ourselves as rivals to our
+Colonies, and persuaded that of course we must gain all that they shall lose.
+Much mischief we may certainly do. The power inadequate to all other things is
+often more than sufficient for this. I do not look on the direct and immediate
+power of the Colonies to resist our violence as very formidable. In this,
+however, I may be mistaken. But when I consider that we have Colonies for no
+purpose but to be serviceable to us, it seems to my poor understanding a little
+preposterous to make them unserviceable in order to keep them obedient. It is,
+in truth, nothing more than the old and, as I thought, exploded problem of
+tyranny, which proposes to beggar its subjects into submission. But remember,
+when you have completed your system of impoverishment, that nature still
+proceeds in her ordinary course; that discontent will increase with misery; and
+that there are critical moments in the fortune of all states when they who are
+too weak to contribute to your prosperity may be strong enough to complete your
+ruin. Spoliatis arma supersunt. [Footnote: 34]
+
+The temper and character which prevail in our Colonies are, I am afraid,
+unalterable by any human art. We cannot, I fear, falsify the pedigree of this
+fierce people, and persuade them that they are not sprung from a nation in whose
+veins the blood of freedom circulates. The language in which they would hear you
+tell them this tale would detect the imposition; your speech would betray you.
+[Footnote: 35] An Englishman is the unfittest person on earth to argue another
+Englishman into slavery.
+
+I think it is nearly as little in our power to change their republican religion
+as their free descent; or to substitute the Roman Catholic as a penalty, or the
+Church of England as an improvement. The mode of inquisition and dragooning is
+going out of fashion in the Old World, and I should not confide much to their
+efficacy in the New. The education of the Americans is also on the same
+unalterable bottom with their religion. You cannot persuade them to burn their
+books of curious science; to banish their lawyers from their courts of laws; or
+to quench the lights of their assemblies by refusing to choose those persons who
+are best read in their privileges. It would be no less impracticable to think of
+wholly annihilating the popular assemblies in which these lawyers sit. The army,
+by which we must govern in their place, would be far more chargeable to us, not
+quite so effectual, and perhaps in the end full as difficult to be kept in
+obedience. With regard to the high aristocratic spirit of Virginia and the
+Southern Colonies, it has been proposed, I know, to reduce it by declaring a
+general enfranchisement of their slaves. This object has had its advocates and
+panegyrists; yet I never could argue myself into any opinion of it. Slaves are
+often much attached to their masters. A general wild offer of liberty would not
+always be accepted. History furnishes few instances of it. It is sometimes as
+hard to persuade slaves [Footnote: 36] to be free, as it is to compel freemen to
+be slaves; and in this auspicious scheme we should have both these pleasing
+tasks on our hands at once. But when we talk of enfranchisement, do we not
+perceive that the American master may enfranchise too, and arm servile hands in
+defence of freedom?--a measure to which other people have had recourse more than
+once, and not without success, in a desperate situation of their affairs.
+
+Slaves as these unfortunate black people are, and dull as all men are from
+slavery, must they not a little suspect the offer of freedom from that very
+nation which has sold them to their present masters?--from that nation, one of
+whose causes of quarrel [Footnote: 37] with those masters is their refusal to
+deal any more in that inhuman traffic? An offer of freedom from England would
+come rather oddly, shipped to them in an African vessel which is refused an
+entry into the ports of Virginia or Carolina with a cargo of three hundred
+Angola negroes. It would be curious to see the Guinea captain attempting at the
+same instant to publish his proclamation of liberty, and to advertise his sale
+of slaves.
+
+But let us suppose all these moral difficulties got over. The ocean remains. You
+cannot pump this dry; and as long as it continues in its present bed, so long
+all the causes which weaken authority by distance will continue.
+
+     "Ye gods, annihilate but space and time,
+     And make two lovers happy!"
+
+was a pious and passionate prayer; but just as reasonable as many of the serious
+wishes of grave and solemn politicians.
+
+If then, Sir, it seems almost desperate to think of any alterative course for
+changing the moral causes, and not quite easy to remove the natural, which
+produce prejudices irreconcilable to the late exercise of our authority--but
+that the spirit infallibly will continue, and, continuing, will produce such
+effects as now embarrass us--the second mode under consideration is to prosecute
+that spirit in its overt acts as criminal.
+
+At this proposition I must pause a moment. The thing seems a great deal too big
+for my ideas of jurisprudence. It should seem to my way of conceiving such
+matters that there is a very wide difference, in reason and policy, between the
+mode of proceeding on the irregular conduct of scattered individuals, or even of
+bands of men who disturb order within the state, and the civil dissensions which
+may, from time to time, on great questions, agitate the several communities
+which compose a great empire. It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply
+the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not
+know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people. I cannot
+insult and ridicule the feelings of millions of my fellow-creatures as Sir
+Edward Coke insulted one excellent individual (Sir Walter Raleigh) at the bar. I
+hope I am not ripe to pass sentence on the gravest public bodies, intrusted with
+magistracies of great authority and dignity, and charged with the safety of
+their fellow-citizens, upon the very same title that I am. I really think that,
+for wise men, this is not judicious; for sober men, not decent; for minds
+tinctured with humanity, not mild and merciful.
+
+Perhaps, Sir, I am mistaken in my idea of an empire, as distinguished from a
+single state or kingdom. But my idea of it is this; that an empire is the
+aggregate of many states under one common head, whether this head be a monarch
+or a presiding republic. It does, in such constitutions, frequently happen--and
+nothing but the dismal, cold, dead uniformity of servitude can prevent its
+happening--that the subordinate parts have many local privileges and immunities.
+Between these privileges and the supreme common authority the line may be
+extremely nice. Of course disputes, often, too, very bitter disputes, and much
+ill blood, will arise. But though every privilege is an exemption, in the case,
+from the ordinary exercise of the supreme authority, it is no denial of it. The
+claim of a privilege seems rather, ex vi termini, [Footnote: 38] to imply a
+superior power; for to talk of the privileges of a state or of a person who has
+no superior is hardly any better than speaking nonsense. Now, in such
+unfortunate quarrels among the component parts of a great political union of
+communities, I can scarcely conceive anything more completely imprudent than for
+the head of the empire to insist that, if any privilege is pleaded against his
+will or his acts, his whole authority is denied; instantly to proclaim
+rebellion, to beat to arms, and to put the offending provinces under the ban.
+Will not this, Sir, very soon teach the provinces to make no distinctions on
+their part? Will it not teach them that the government, against which a claim of
+liberty is tantamount to high treason, is a government to which submission is
+equivalent to slavery? It may not always be quite convenient to impress
+dependent communities with such an idea.
+
+We are, indeed, in all disputes with the Colonies, by the necessity of things,
+the judge. It is true, Sir. But I confess that the character of judge in my own
+cause is a thing that frightens me. Instead of filling me with pride, I am
+exceedingly humbled by it. I cannot proceed with a stern, assured, judicial
+confidence, until I find myself in something more like a judicial character. I
+must have these hesitations as long as I am compelled to recollect that, in my
+little reading upon such contests as these, the sense of mankind has at least as
+often decided against the superior as the subordinate power. Sir, let me add,
+too, that the opinion of my having some abstract right [Footnote: 39] in my
+favor would not put me much at my ease in passing sentence, unless I could be
+sure that there were no rights which, in their exercise under certain
+circumstances, were not the most odious of all wrongs and the most vexatious of
+all injustice. Sir, these considerations have great weight with me when I find
+things so circumstanced, that I see the same party at once a civil litigant
+against me in point of right and a culprit before me, while I sit as a criminal
+judge on acts of his whose moral quality is to be decided upon the merits of
+that very litigation. Men are every now and then put, by the complexity of human
+affairs, into strange situations; but justice is the same, let the judge be in
+what situation he will.
+
+There is, Sir, also a circumstance which convinces me that this mode of criminal
+proceeding is not, at least in the present stage of our contest, altogether
+expedient; which is nothing less than the conduct of those very persons who have
+seemed to adopt that mode by lately declaring a rebellion in Massachusetts Bay,
+as they had formerly addressed to have traitors brought hither, under an Act of
+Henry the Eighth, [Footnote: 40] for trial. For though rebellion is declared, it
+is not proceeded against as such, nor have any steps been taken towards the
+apprehension or conviction of any individual offender, either on our late or our
+former Address; but modes of public coercion have been adopted, and such as have
+much more resemblance to a sort of qualified hostility towards an independent
+power than the punishment of rebellious subjects. All this seems rather
+inconsistent; but it shows how difficult it is to apply these juridical ideas to
+our present case.
+
+In this situation, let us seriously and coolly ponder. What is it we have got by
+all our menaces, which have been many and ferocious? What advantage have we
+derived from the penal laws we have passed, and which, for the time, have been
+severe and numerous? What advances have we made towards our object by the
+sending of a force which, by land and sea, is no contemptible strength? Has the
+disorder abated? Nothing less. When I see things in this situation after such
+confident hopes, bold promises, and active exertions, I cannot, for my life,
+avoid a suspicion that the plan itself is not correctly right. [Footnote: 41]
+
+If, then, the removal of the causes of this spirit of American liberty be for
+the greater part, or rather entirely, impracticable; if the ideas of criminal
+process be inapplicable--or, if applicable, are in the highest degree
+inexpedient; what way yet remains? No way is open but the third and last,--to
+comply with the American spirit as necessary; or, if you please, to submit to it
+as a necessary evil.
+
+If we adopt this mode,--if we mean to conciliate and concede,--let us see of
+what nature the concession ought to be. To ascertain the nature of our
+concession, we must look at their complaint. The Colonies complain that they
+have not the characteristic mark and seal of British freedom. They complain that
+they are taxed in a Parliament in which they are not represented. If you mean to
+satisfy them at all, you must satisfy them with regard to this complaint. If you
+mean to please any people you must give them the boon which they ask; not what
+you may think better for them, but of a kind totally different. Such an act may
+be a wise regulation, but it is no concession; whereas our present theme is the
+mode of giving satisfaction.
+
+Sir, I think you must perceive that I am resolved this day to have nothing at
+all to do with the question of the right of taxation. Some gentlemen start--but
+it is true; I put it totally out of the question. It is less than nothing in my
+consideration. I do not indeed wonder, nor will you, Sir, that gentlemen of
+profound learning are fond of displaying it on this profound subject. But my
+consideration is narrow, confined, and wholly limited to the policy of the
+question. I do not examine whether the giving away a man's money be a power
+excepted and reserved out of the general trust of government, and how far all
+mankind, in all forms of polity, are entitled to an exercise of that right by
+the charter of nature; or whether, on the contrary, a right of taxation is
+necessarily involved in the general principle of legislation, and inseparable
+from the ordinary supreme power. These are deep questions, where great names
+militate against each other, where reason is perplexed, and an appeal to
+authorities only thickens the confusion; for high and reverend authorities lift
+up their heads on both sides, and there is no sure footing in the middle. This
+point is the great
+
+     "Serbonian bog,
+     Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old,
+     Where armies whole have sunk."
+     [Footnote: 42]
+
+I do not intend to be overwhelmed in that bog, though in such respectable
+company. The question [Footnote: 43] with me is, not whether you have a right to
+render your people miserable, but whether it is not your interest to make them
+happy. It is not what a lawyer tells me I MAY do, but what humanity, reason, and
+justice tell me I OUGHT to do. Is a politic act the worse for being a generous
+one? Is no concession proper but that which is made from your want of right to
+keep what you grant? Or does it lessen the grace or dignity of relaxing in the
+exercise of an odious claim because you have your evidence-room full of titles,
+and your magazines stuffed with arms to enforce them? What signify all those
+titles, and all those arms? Of what avail are they, when the reason of the thing
+tells me that the assertion of my title is the loss of my suit, and that I could
+do nothing but wound myself by the use of my own weapons?
+
+Such is steadfastly my opinion of the absolute necessity of keeping up the
+concord of this Empire by an unity of spirit, though in a diversity of
+operations, that, if I were sure the Colonists had, at their leaving this
+country, sealed a regular compact of servitude; that they had solemnly abjured
+all the rights of citizens; that they had made a vow to renounce all ideas of
+liberty for them and their posterity to all generations; yet I should hold
+myself obliged to conform to the temper I found universally prevalent in my own
+day, and to govern two million of men, impatient of servitude, on the principles
+of freedom. I am not determining a point of law, I am restoring tranquillity;
+and the general character and situation of a people must determine what sort of
+government is fitted for them. That point nothing else can or ought to
+determine.
+
+My idea, therefore, without considering whether we yield as matter of right, or
+grant as matter of favor, is to admit the people of our Colonies into an
+interest in the Constitution; and, by recording that admission in the journals
+of Parliament, to give them as strong an assurance as the nature of the thing
+will admit, that we mean forever to adhere to that solemn declaration of
+systematic indulgence.
+
+Some years ago the repeal of a revenue Act, upon its understood principle, might
+have served to show that we intended an unconditional abatement of the exercise
+of a taxing power. Such a measure was then sufficient to remove all suspicion,
+and to give perfect content. But unfortunate events since that time may make
+something further necessary; and not more necessary for the satisfaction of the
+Colonies than for the dignity and consistency of our own future proceedings.
+
+I have taken a very incorrect measure of the disposition of the House if this
+proposal in itself would be received with dislike. I think, Sir, we have few
+American financiers. But our misfortune is, we are too acute, we are too
+exquisite [Footnote: 44] in our conjectures of the future, for men oppressed
+with such great and present evils. The more moderate among the opposers of
+Parliamentary concession freely confess that they hope no good from taxation,
+but they apprehend the Colonists have further views; and if this point were
+conceded, they would instantly attack the trade laws. [Footnote: 45] These
+gentlemen are convinced that this was the intention from the beginning, and the
+quarrel of the Americans with taxation was no more than a cloak and cover to
+this design. Such has been the language even of a gentleman of real moderation,
+and of a natural temper well adjusted to fair and equal government. I am,
+however, Sir, not a little surprised at this kind of discourse, whenever I hear
+it; and I am the more surprised on account of the arguments which I constantly
+find in company with it, and which are often urged from the same mouths and on
+the same day.
+
+For instance, when we allege that it is against reason to tax a people 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 burthen to those on whom they are imposed; that the
+trade to 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. 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 further. Alas! alas! when will this speculation 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 anything 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, [Footnote: 46] 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 antiquaries;
+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 liberties had exactly the same boundaries. Your standard could never be
+advanced an inch before your privileges. 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. 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; [Footnote: 47] 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 burthen 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. 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 [Footnote: 48]--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 terms, 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.
+
+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 burthen, and that an Englishman travelling in
+that country could not go six yards from the high road 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 of securing its obedience.
+Accordingly, in the twenty-seventh year of Henry the Eighth 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."
+     [Footnote: 49]
+
+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 the Second 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 hunible wise
+   shewen unto your excellent Majesty the inhabitants of
+   your Grace's County Palatine of Chester: (1) 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
+   county; (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
+   ne Burgess there for the said County Palatine, the said
+   inhabitants, for lack thereof, have been oftentime 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 the Second 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 Parliaments, 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 the Eighth 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 at tempted 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 a 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. [Footnote: 50 ]--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,[Footnote: 51] 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,
+[Footnote: 52] not to the Utopia of More, [Footnote: 52] not to the Oceana of
+Harrington. It is before me--it is at my feet,
+
+   "And the rude swain Treads daily on it with his clouted shoon."
+   [Footnote: 53]
+
+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. [Footnote: 54]
+
+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
+[Footnote: 55] 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 upwards 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 the 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.
+
+     "Non meus hic sermo, sed quae praecepit Ofellus,
+     Rusticus, abnormis sapiens."
+     [Footnote: 56]
+
+It is the genuine produce of the ancient, rustic, manly, homebred 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. 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.
+[Footnote: 57]
+
+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 consider 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 enjoyed 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 the Second? Else, why were the duties first
+reduced to one third in 1764, and afterwards 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 further 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, free-holders, or other free inhabitants thereof,
+commonly called the General Assembly, or General Court, with powers legally to
+raise, levy, and assess, according to the several usage of such Colonies duties
+and taxes towards 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. 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 passed, biennially in Ireland, or annually in the
+Colonies--are in an 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."
+
+The expenses were immense for such Colonies. They were above L200,000 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 further addition,
+that the money then voted was as 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;
+          Jan. 9th and 20th, 1761.
+  Vol. xxix.--Jan. 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 [Footnote: 58] 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 millions 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 burthens 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 burthen 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, everything 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 [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.
+
+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 or 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 L152,750 11s. 23/4d, nor any other
+paltry limited sum; but it gives the strong box itself, the fund, the bank--from
+whence only revenues can arise amongst a people sensible of freedom. Posita
+luditur arca. [Footnote: 68] 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 140,000,000 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 function will
+neglect to perform its duty and abdicate its trust? Such a presumption
+[Footnote: 69] would go against all governments 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 to 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? [Footnote: 70]
+
+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."
+
+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 experience 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 [Footnote: 71] 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, [Footnote: 72] are as strong as links of iron. Let the Colonists always
+keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government,--they will
+cling and grapple to you, [Footnote: 73] 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 [Footnote: 74]-
+-the cohesion is loosened--and everything 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 towards 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 the 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.
+
+Is it not the same virtue which does everything for us here in England? Do you
+imagine, then, that it is the Land Tax Act 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 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
+[Footnote: 75] 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 everything, and all in all. Magnanimity [Footnote: 76] in politics is
+not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill
+together. If we are conscious of our station, and glow with zeal to fill our
+places as becomes our situation and ourselves, we ought to auspicate [Footnote:
+77] all our public proceedings on America with the old warning of the church,
+Sursum corda! [Footnote: 78] 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,
+[Footnote: 79] lay the first stone of 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 upwards 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."
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[Footnote: 1. grand penal bill. This bill originated with Lord North. It
+restricted the trade of the New England colonies to England and her
+dependencies. It also placed serious limitations upon the Newfoundland
+fisheries. The House of Lords was dissatisfied with the measure because it did
+not include all the colonies.]
+
+[Footnote: 2. When I first had the honor. Burke was first elected to Parliament
+Dec. 26, 1765. He was at the time secretary to Lord Rockingham, Prime Minister.
+Previous to this he had made himself thoroughly familiar with England's policy
+in dealing with her dependencies--notably Ireland.]
+
+[Footnote: 3. my original sentiments. After many demonstrations both in America
+and England the Stamp Act became a law in 1765. One of the first tasks the
+Rockingham ministry set itself was to bring about a repeal of this act. Burke
+made his first speech in support of his party. He argued that the abstract and
+theoretical rights claimed by England in matters of government should be set
+aside when they were unfavorable to the happiness and prosperity of her colonies
+and herself. His speech was complimented by Pitt, and Dr. Johnson wrote that no
+new member had ever before attracted such attention.]
+
+[Footnote: 4. America has been kept in agitation. For a period of nearly one
+hundred years the affairs of the colonies had been intrusted to a standing
+committee appointed by Parliament. This committee was called "The Lords of
+Trade." From its members came many if not the majority of the propositions for
+the regulation of the American trade. To them the colonial governors, who were
+appointed by the king, gave full accounts of the proceedings of the colonial
+legislatures. These reports, often colored by personal prejudice, did not always
+represent the colonists in the best light. It was mainly through the influence
+of one of the former Lords of Trade, Charles Townshend, who afterwards became
+the leading voice in the Pitt ministry, that the Stamp Act was passed.]
+
+[Footnote: 5. a worthy member. Mr. Rose Fuller.]
+
+[Footnote: 6. former methods. Condense the thought in this paragraph. Are such
+"methods" practised nowadays?]
+
+[Footnote: 7. paper government. Burke possibly had in mind the constitution
+prepared for the Carolinas by John Locke and Earl of Shaftesbury. The scheme was
+utterly impracticable and gave cause for endless dissatisfaction.]
+
+[Footnote: 8. Refined policy. After a careful reading of the paragraph determine
+what Burke means by "refined policy."]
+
+[Footnote: 9. the project. The bill referred to had been passed by the House on
+Feb. 27. It provided that those colonies which voluntarily voted contributions
+for the common defence and support of the English government, and in addition
+made provision for the administration of their own civil affairs, should be
+exempt from taxation, except such as was necessary for the regulation of trade.
+It has been declared by some that the measure was meant m good faith and that
+its recognition and acceptance by the colonies would have brought good results.
+Burke, along with others of the opposition, argued that the intention of the
+bill was to cause dissension and division among the colonies. Compare 7, 11-12.
+State your opinion and give reasons.]
+
+[Footnote: 10. the noble lord in the blue ribbon Lord North (1732-1792) He
+entered Parliament at the age of twenty-two, served as Lord of the Treasury,
+1759; was removed by Rockingham, 1765; was again appointed by Pitt to the office
+of Joint Paymaster of the Forces, became Prime Minister, 1770, and resigned,
+1781 Lord North is described both by his contemporaries and later histonaus as
+an easy-going, indolent man, short-sighted and rather stupid, though obstinate
+and courageous. He was the willing servant of George III, and believed in the
+principle of authority as opposed to that of conciliation. The blue ribbon was
+the badge of the Order of the Garter instituted by Edward III Lord North was
+made a Knight of the Garter, 1772. Burke often mentions the "blue ribbon" in
+speaking of the Prime Minister. Why?]
+
+[Footnote: 11. Colony agents. It was customary for colonies to select some one
+to represent them in important matters of legislation. Burke himself served as
+the agent of New York. Do you think this tact accounts in any way for his
+attitude in this speech?]
+
+[Footnote: 12. our address Parliament had prepared an address to the king some
+months previous, in which Massachusetts was declared to be in a state of
+rebellion. The immediate cause of this address was the Boston Tea Party. The
+lives and fortunes of his Majesty's subjects were represented as being in
+danger, and he was asked to deal vigorously not only with Massachusetts but with
+her sympathizers.]
+
+[Footnote: 13. those chances. Suggested perhaps by lines in Julius Caesar, IV.,
+iii., 216-219:--
+
+     "There is a tide in the affairs of men,
+     Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
+     Omitted, all the voyage of their life
+     Is bound in shallows and in miseries."]
+
+[Footnote: 14. according to that nature and to those circumstances. Compare with
+8. Point out the connection between the thought here expressed and Burke's idea
+of "expediency."]
+
+[Footnote: 15. great consideration. This paragraph has been censured for its too
+florid style. It may be rather gorgeous and rhetorical when considered as part
+of an argument, yet it is very characteristic of Burke as a writer. In no other
+passage of the speech is there such vivid clear-cut imagery. Note the
+picturesque quality of the lines and detect if you can any confusion in
+figures.]
+
+[Footnote: 16. It is good for us to be here. Burke's favorite books were
+Shakespeare, Milton, and the Bible. Trace the above sentence to one of these.]
+
+[Footnote: 17.
+          "Facta parentun
+     Jam legere et quae sit poteris cognoscere virtus."
+           --VIRGIL'S Eclogues, IV., 26, 27]
+
+Notice the alteration. Already old enough to study the deeds of his father and
+to know what virtue is.
+
+[Footnote: 18. before you taste of death. Compare 16.]
+
+[Footnote: 19. Roman charity. This suggests the more famous "Ancient Roman
+honor" (Merchant of Venice, III., 11, 291). The incident referred to by Burke is
+told by several writers. A father condemned to death by starvation is visited in
+prison by his daughter, who secretly nourishes him with milk from her breasts.]
+
+[Footnote: 20. complexions. "Mislike me not for my COMPLEXION."--M. V. Is the
+word used in the same sense by Burke?]
+
+[Footnote: 21. the thunder of the state. What is the classical allusion?]
+
+[Footnote: 22. a nation is not governed.
+
+     "Who overcomes By force hath overcome but half his foe"
+     --Paradise Lost, 1, 648, 649.]
+
+[Footnote: 23. Our ancient indulgence. "The wise and salutary neglect," which
+Burke has just mentioned, was the result of (a) the struggle of Charles I. with
+Parliament, (b) the confusion and readjustment at the Restoration, (c) the
+Revolution of 1688, (d) the attitude of France in favoring the cause of the
+Stuarts, (e) the ascendency of the Whigs. England had her hands full in
+attending to affairs at home. As a result of this the colonies were practically
+their own masters in matters of government. Also the political party known as
+the Whigs had its origin shortly before William and Mary ascended the throne.
+This party favored the colonies and respected their ideas of liberty and
+government.]
+
+[Footnote: 24. great contests. One instance of this is Magna Charta. Suggest
+others.]
+
+[Footnote: 25. Freedom is to them Such keen analysis and subtle reasoning is
+characteristic of Burke It is this tendency that justifies some of his admirers
+in calling him "Philosopher Statesman". Consider his thought attentively and
+determine whether or not his argument is entirely sound. Is he correct in
+speaking of our Gothic ancestors?]
+
+[Footnote: 26. Abeunt studia in mores. Studies become a part of character.]
+
+[Footnote: 27. winged ministers of vengeance. A figure suggested perhaps by
+Horace, Odes, Bk. IV., 4: "Ministrum fulmims alitem"--the thunder's winged
+messenger.]
+
+[Footnote: 28. the circulation. The Conciliation, as all of Burke's writings, is
+rich in such figurative expressions. In every instance the student should
+discover the source of the figure and determine definitely whether or not his
+author is accurate and suggestive.]
+
+[Footnote: 29. its imperfections.
+
+     "But sent to my account
+     With all my imperfections upon my head."
+     --Hamlet, I, v, 78, 79.]
+
+[Footnote: 30. same plan. The act referred to, known as the Regulating Act,
+became a law May 10, 1774. It provided (a) that the council, or the higher
+branch of the legislature, should be appointed by the Crown (the popular
+assemblies had previously selected the members of the council); (b) that
+officers of the common courts should be chosen by the royal governors, and (c)
+that public meetings (except for elections) should not be held without the
+sanction of the king. These measures were practically ignored. By means of
+circular letters the colonies were fully instructed through their
+representatives. As a direct result of the Regulating Act, along with other
+high-handed proceedings of the same sort, delegates were secretly appointed for
+the Continental Congress on Sept. 1 at Philadelphia. The delegates from
+Massachusetts were Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Paine, and Thomas Cushing.]
+
+[Footnote: 31. their liberties. Compare 24]
+
+[Footnote: 32. sudden or partial view. Goodrich, in his Select British
+Eloquence, speaking of Burke's comprehensiveness in discussing his subject,
+compares him to one standing upon an eminence, taking a large and rounded view
+of it on every side. The justice of this observation is seen in such instances
+as the above. It is this breadth and clearness of vision more than anything else
+that distinguishes Burke so sharply from his contemporaries.]
+
+[Footnote: 33. three ways. How does the first differ from the third?]
+
+[Footnote: 34. Spoliatis arma supersunt. Though plundered their arms still
+remain.]
+
+[Footnote: 35. your speech would betray you. "Thy speech bewrayeth thee"--Matt.
+xxvi 73. There is much justice in the observation that Burke is often verbose,
+yet such paragraphs as this prove how well he knew to condense and prune his
+expression. It is an excellent plan to select from day to day passages of this
+sort and commit them to memory for recitation when the speech has been
+finished.]
+
+[Footnote: 36. to persuade slaves. Does this suggest one of Byron's poems?]
+
+[Footnote: 37. causes of quarrel. The Assembly of Virginia in 1770 attempted to
+restrict the slave trade. Other colonies made the same effort, but Parliament
+vetoed these measures, accompanying its action with the blunt statement that the
+slave trade was profitable to England. Observe how effectively Burke uses his
+wide knowledge of history.]
+
+[Footnote: 38. ex vi termini. From the force of the word.]
+
+[Footnote: 39. abstract right. Compare with 14; also 8. Point out connection in
+thought.]
+
+[Footnote: 40. Act of Henry the Eighth. Burke alludes to this in his letter to
+the sheriffs of Bristol in the following terms: "To try a man under this Act is
+to condemn him unheard. A person is brought hither in the dungeon of a ship
+hold; thence he is vomited into a dungeon on land, loaded with irons,
+unfurnished with money, unsupported by friends, three thousand miles from all
+means of calling upon or confronting evidence, where no one local circumstance
+that tends to detect perjury can possibly be judged of;--such a person may be
+executed according to form, but he can never be tried according to justice."]
+
+[Footnote: 41. correctly right. Explain.]
+
+[Footnote: 42. Paradise Lost, II., 392-394.]
+
+[Footnote: 43. This passage should be carefully studied. Burke's theory of
+government is given in the Conciliation by just such lines as these. Refer to
+other instances of principles which he considers fundamental in matters of
+government.]
+
+[Footnote: 44. exquisite. Exact meaning?]
+
+[Footnote: 45. trade laws. What would have been the nature of a change
+beneficial to the colonies?]
+
+[Footnote: 46. English conquest. At Henry II.'s accession, 1154, Ireland had
+fallen from the civilization which had once flourished upon her soil and which
+had been introduced by her missionaries into England during the seventh century.
+Henry II. obtained the sanction of the Pope, invaded the island, and partially
+subdued the inhabitants. For an interesting account of England's relations to
+Ireland the student should consult Green's Short History of the English People.]
+
+[Footnote: 47. You deposed kings. What English kings have been deposed?]
+
+[Footnote: 48. Lords Marchers. March, boundary. These lords were given
+permission by the English kings to take from the Welsh as much land as they
+could. They built their castles on the boundary line between the two countries,
+and when they were not quarrelling among themselves waged a guerilla warfare
+against the Welsh. The Lords Marchers, because of special privileges and the
+peculiar circumstances of their life, were virtually kings--petty kings, of
+course.]
+
+[Footnote: 49. "When the clear star has shone upon the sailors, the troubled
+water flows down from the rocks, the winds fall, the clouds fade away, and,
+since they (Castor and Pollux) have so willed it, the threatening waves settle
+on the deep."--HORACE, Odes, I., 12, 27-32.]
+
+[Footnote: 50. Opposuit natura. Nature opposed.]
+
+[Footnote: 51. no theory. Select other instances of Burke's impatience with
+fine-spun theories in statescraft]
+
+[Footnote: 52. Republic of Plato Utopia of More Ideal states
+ Consult the Century Dictionary]
+
+[Footnote: 53.
+              "And the DULL swain
+   Treads daily on it with his clouted shoon"
+                 --MILTON'S Comus, 6, 34, 35.]
+
+[Footnote: 54. the year 1763 The date marks the beginning of the active struggle
+between England and the American colonies. The Stamp Act was the first definite
+step taken by the English Parliament in the attempt to tax the colonies without
+their consent.]
+
+[Footnote: 55. legal competency. This had been practically recognized by
+Parliament prior to the passage of the Stamp Act. In Massachusetts the Colonial
+Assembly had made grants from year to year to the governor, both for his salary
+and the incidental expenses of his office. Notwithstanding the fact that he was
+appointed (in most cases) by the Crown, and invariably had the ear of the Lords
+of Trade, the colonies generally had things their own way and enjoyed a
+political freedom greater, perhaps, than did the people of England.]
+
+[Footnote: 56. This is not my doctrine, but that of Ofellus; a rustic, yet
+unusually wise]
+
+[Footnote: 57. Compare in point of style with 43, 22-25; 44, 1-6 In what way do
+such passages differ from Burke's prevailng style? What is the central thought
+in each paragraph?]
+
+[Footnote: 58. misguided people. There is little doubt that the colonists m many
+instances were misrepresented by the Lords of Trade and by the royal governors.
+See an interesting account of this in Fiske's American Revolution.]
+
+[Footnote: 59. an Act. Passed in 1767. It provided for a duty on imports,
+including tea, glass, and paper.]
+
+[Footnote: 60 An Act. Boston Post Bill.]
+
+[Footnote: 61. impartial administration of justice. This provided that if any
+person in Massachusetts were charged with murder, or any other capital offence,
+he should be tried either in some other colony or in Great Britain]
+
+[Footnote: 62. An Act for the better regulating See 87, 23. ]
+
+[Footnote: 63. Trial of Treasons See 50, 20.]
+
+[Footnote: 64. de jure. According to law. de facto. According to fact.]
+
+[Footnote: 65. jewel of his soul.
+
+     "Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
+     Is the immediate jewel of their souls"
+     --Othello, III, iii, 155,156.]
+
+[Footnote: 66. proposition of a ransom. See 8, 13.]
+
+[Footnote: 67. An experiment upon something of no value.]
+
+[Footnote: 68. They stake their fortune and play.]
+
+[Footnote: 69. Such a presumption Is Burke right in this? Select instances which
+seem to warrant rest such a presumption. Discuss the political parties of
+Burke's own day from this point of view.]
+
+[Footnote: 70. What can you say about the style of this passage? Note the
+figure, sentence structure, and diction. Does it seem artificial and
+overwrought? Compare it with 43, 22-25; 44. 1-6; also with 90, 23-25, 91, 1-25,
+92, 1-23.]
+
+[Footnote: 71. enemies. France and Spain.]
+
+[Footnote: 72. light as air.
+
+       "Trifles light as air
+      Are to the jealous confirmations strong
+       As proofs of holy writ"
+      --Othello, III, iii, 322-324]
+
+[Footnote: 73. grapple to you.
+  "The friends thou hast and their adoption tried
+  Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel"
+           --Hamlet, I., iii, 62,63.]
+
+[Footnote: 74. the cement is gone. Figure?]
+
+[Footnote: 75. profane herd.
+
+   "Odi profanum volgus et arceo"
+   I hate the vulgar herd and keep it from me
+          --Horace, Odes, III, 1, 1]
+
+[Footnote: 76. Magnanimity. Etymology?]
+
+[Footnote: 77. auspicate Etymology and derivation?]
+
+[Footnote: 78. Sursum corda. Lift up your hearts.]
+
+[Footnote: 79. quod felix faustumque sit. May it be happy and fortunate.]
+
+
+
+
+
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