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 5 peace to my country, I give it to my conscience.

133.

"But what," says the financier, "is peace to us without money? Your plan gives us no revenue.' No! But it does; for it secures to the subject the power of REFUSAL, the first of all revenues. Experience is a 10 cheat and fact a liar, if this power in the subject of proportioning his grant, or of not granting at all, has not been found the richest mine of revenue ever discovered by the skill or by the fortune of man. It does not indeed vote you £152,750 11S. 23/4ths, nor any other 15 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. Cannot you in England, cannot you at this time of day, cannot you, an House of Commons, trust to the 20 principle which has raised so mighty a revenue and accumulated a debt of near 140 millions in this country? Is this principle to be true in England and false everywhere else? Is it not true in Ireland? Has it not hitherto been true in the colonies? Why should you 25 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 would go against all governments in all modes. But in truth this dread of penury of supply from a free assembly has no foundation 30 in nature. For first observe, that besides the desire which all men have naturally of supporting the honor of

FREEDOM THE GREATEST OF REVENUES. 77

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 5 what is the soil or climate where experience has not uniformly proved that the voluntary flow of heaped-up plenty, bursting from the weight on its own rich luxuriance, has ever run with a more copious stream of revenue than could be squeezed from the dry husks of oppressed 10 indigence by the straining of all the politic machinery in the world?

134. 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 neces15 sities, 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 20 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.

25

Ease would retract

Vows made in pain, as violent and void.

135. 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 30 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.

136. But to clear up my ideas on this subject,—a 5 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 10 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 for the transmission, it is the East India Company. America has none of these aptitudes. If America 15 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 20 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.

ought to be reserved to a war, the weight of which, with the enemies that we are most likely to have, must be con- 25 siderable in her quarter of the globe. There she may serve you, and serve you essentially.

137. 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 30 affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges and equal protection.

These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government,—they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven 5 will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood that your government may be one thing and their privileges another; that these two things may exist without any mutual relation, the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened and everything hastens 10 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 to15 wards 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 20 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 25 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 30 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 commun- 5 ion 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.

ΙΟ

138. 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 15 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 20 without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.

139. All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical to the profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians who have no place among us,- -a 25 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 30 master principles, which in the opinion of such men as I have mentioned have no substantial existence, are in truth