speration, una injudicious tax, and rotting in the finance by flinging away your rever.ue; you a!. warehouses of the Company, would have pre-lowed the whole drawback on export, and then vented all this distress, and all that series of des- you charged the duty (which you had before disperate measures which you thought yourselves charged) payable in the colonies, where it was obliged to take in consequence of it. America certain the collection would devour it to the would have furnished that vent, which no oth- bone, if any revenue were ever suffered to be er part of the world can furnish but America; collected at all. One spirit pervades and aniwhere tea is next to a necessary of life, and mates the whole mass. where the demand grows upon the supply. I hope our dear-bought East India committees have done us at least so much good as to let us know, that without a more extensive sale of that article, our East India revenues and acquisitions can have no certain connection with this country. It is through the American trade of tea that your East India conquests are to be prevented from erushing you with their burden. They are ponderous indeed; and they must have that great country to lean upon, or they tumble upon your head. It is the same folly that has lost you at once the benefit of the West and of the East. This folly has thrown open folding doors to contraband, and will be the means of giving the profits of the trade of your colonies to every nation but yourselves. Never did a people suffer so mach for the empty words of a preamble. It must be given up. For on what principle does it stand? This famous revenue stands, at this hour, on all the debate, as a description of revenue not as yet known in all the comprehensive, but too comprehensive! vocabulary of financea preambulary tax. It is, indeed, a tax of sophistry, a tax of pedantry, a tax of disputation, a tax of war and rebellion, a tax for any thing but benefit to the imposers, or satisfaction to the sub ject. Ought so nall atar to be com paned of? (3.) Well! but, whatever it is, gentlemen will force the colonists to take the teas. You will force them? Has seven years' struggle been yet able to force them? O, but it seems we are yet in the right. The tax is "trifling—in effect, it is rather an exoneration than an imposition; three fourths of the duty formerly payable on teas exported to America is taken off; the place of collection is only shifted; instead of the retention of a shilling from the drawback here, it is threepence custom paid in America." All this, sir, is very true. But this is the very folly and mischief of the act. Incredible as it may seem, you know that you nave deliberately thrown away a large duty which you held secure and quiet in your hands, the vain hope of getting one three fourths less, through every hazard, through certain litigation, and possibly through war. bolish by thus The manner of proceeding in the duties on Shown to be paper and glass imposed by the same very fact that act, was exactly in the same spirit. A is smail. There are heavy excises on those articles when used in England. On export, these excises are drawn back. But instead of withcolding the drawback, which might have been Jone, with ease, without charge, without possibility of smuggling; and instead of applying the noney (money already in your hands) according ivot pleasure, va began your operations in Could any thing be a subject of more just alarm to America than to see you go out of the plain high road of finance, and give up your most certain revenues and your clearest interest merely for the sake of insulting your colonies? No man ever doubted that the commodity of tea could bear an imposition of threepence. But no commodity will bear threepence, or will bear a penny, when the general feelings of men are irritated, and two millions of people are resolved not to pay. The feelings of the colonies were formerly the feelings of Great Britain. Theirs were formerly the feelings of Mr. Hampden when called upon for the payment of twenty shillings. Would twenty shillings have ruined Mr. Hampden's fortune? No! but the payment of half twenty shillings, on the principle it was demand ed, would have made him a slave. It is the weight of that preamble, of which you are so fond, and not the weight of the duty, that the Americans are unable and unwilling to bear. It is then, sir, upon the principle of this meas ure, and nothing else, that we are at issue. It is a principle of political expediency. Your act of 1767 asserts that it is expedient to raise a revenue in America; your act of 1769 [March, 1770], which takes away that revenue, contra. dicts the act of 1767; and, by something much stronger than words, asserts that it is not expedient. It is a reflection upon your wisdom to persist in a solemn parliamentary declaration of the expediency of any object, for which, at the same time, you make no sort of provision. And pray, sir, let not this circumstance escape you― it is very material—that the preamble of this act, which we wish to repeal, is not declaratory of a right, as some gentlemen seem to argue it; it is only a recital of the expediency of a certain exercise of a right supposed already to have been asserted; an exercise you are now contending for by ways and means, which you confess, though they were obeyed, to be utterly insufficient for their purpose. You are, therefore, at this moment in the awkward situation of fighting for a phantom-a quiddity—a thing that wants not only a substance, but even a name; for a thing which is neither abstract right, nor profitable enjoyment. Will dignity (4.) They tell you, sir, that your dignity is tied to it. I know not how it happens, but this dignity of yours is a terrible permit a te encumbrance to you, for it has of late been at war with your interest, your equity, and every idea of your policy. Show the thing you peal? 7 The refusal of this celebrated man to pay "ship. money," when illegally demanded by Charles I is known to all. ces. day of May, 1769. Five days after this speech, that is, on the 13th of the same month, the public circular letter, a part of which I am going to read to you, was written by Lord Hillsborough, secretary of state for the colonies. After reciting the substance of the King's speech, he goes on thus: "I can take upon me to assure you, notwith standing insinuations to the contrary, from mer with factious and seditious views, that his Majesty's present administration have at no time entertained a design to propose to Parliament to lay any farther taxes upon America for the purpose of raising a revenue; and that it is at pres ent their intention to propose, the next session of Parliament, to take off the duties upon glass, paper, and colors, upon consideration of such du ties having been laid contrary to the true prin ciples of commerce. contend for to be reasor; show it to be common | the House. This speech was made on the 9th sense; show it to be the means of attaining some useful end; and then I am content to allow it what dignity you please. But what dignity is derived from the perseverance in absurdity, is more than ever I could discern. The honorable gentleman has said well-indeed, in most of his general observations I agree with him-he says, that this subject does not stand as it did formerly. Oh, certainly not! every hour you continue on this ill-chosen ground, your difficulties thicken on yon; and, therefore, my conclusion is, remove from a bad position as quickly as you can. The disgrace, and the necessity of yielding, both of them, grow upon you every hour of your delay. But will you repeal the act, says the honorable Dignity did gentleman, at this instant, when Amernot prevent ica is in open resistance to your authe promise of a repeal in thority, and that you have just revived the very same circumstan- your system of taxation? He thinks he has driven us into a corner. But thus pent up, I am content to meet him, because I enter the lists supported by my old authority, his new friends, the ministers themselves. The honorable gentleman remembers that about five years ago as great disturbances as the present prevailed in America on account of the new taxes. The ministers represented these disturbances as treasonable; and this House thought proper, on that representation, to make a famous address for a revival and for a new application of a statute of Henry VIII. We besought the King, in that well-considered address, to inquire into treasons, and to bring the supposed traitors from America to Great Britain for trial. His Majesty was pleased graciously to promise a compliance with our request. All the attempts from this side of the House to resist these violences, and to bring about a repeal, were treated with the utmost scorn. An apprehension of the very consequences now stated by the honorable gentleman was then given as a reason for shutting the door against all hope of such an alteration. And so strong was the spirit for supporting the new taxes, that the session concluded with the following remarkable declaration. After stating the vigorous measures which had been pursued, the speech from the throne proceeds: "These have always been, and still are, the sentiments of his Majesty's present servants, and by which their conduct in respect to America has been governed. And his Majesty relies upor. your prudence and fidelity for such an explanation of his measures as may tend to remove the prejudices which have been excited by the mis. representations of those who are enemies to the peace and prosperity of Great Britain and her colonies, and to re-establish that mutual confidence and affection upon which the glory and safety of the British empire depend." Here, sir, is a canonical book of ministerial scripture; the General Epistle to the Ameri cans. What does the gentleman say to it? Here a repeal is promised; promised without condition, and while your authority was actually resisted. I pass by the public promise of a peer relative to the repeal of taxes by this House. I pass by the use of the King's name in a matter of supply-that sacred and reserved right of the Commons. I conceal the ridiculous figure of Parliament, hurling its thunders at the gigantie rebellion of America, and then, five days after, prostrate at the feet of those assemblies we affected to despise, begging them, by the intervention of our ministerial sureties, to receive our submission, and heartily promising amendment. These might have been serious matters formerly but we are grown wiser than our fathers. Passing, therefore, from the constitutional consideration to the mere policy, does not this letter imply that the idea of taxing America for the purpose of revenue is an abominable project, when the ministry suppose none but factious men, and with seditious views, could charge them with it? Does not this letter adopt and sanctify the American distinction of taxing for a revenue? Does it not state the ministerial rejection of such principle of taxation, not as the occasional, but the constant opinion of the King's servants? Does it not say-I care not how consistently-but does it In February, 1769, Parliament addressed the not say that their conduct with regard to AmerKing, at the suggestion of ministers, requesting himica has been always governed by this policy? It to exercise the powers here mentioned, under an obsolet art of the 35th of Henry VIII "You have assured me of your firm support in the prosecution of them. Nothing, in my opinion, could be more likely to enable the welldisposed among my subjects in that part of the world effectually to discourage and defeat the designs of the factious and seditious, than the hearty concurrence of every branch of the Legislature in maintaining the execution of the laws in every part of my dominions." After this, no man dreamed that a repeal under this ministry could possibly take place. The honorable gentleman knows as well as I that the idea was utterly exploded by those who sway goes a great deal farther. These excellent and trusty servants of the King, justly fearful lest the themselves should have lost all credit with the was the letter of the noble Lord upon the floor world, bring out the image of their gracious Sov- [Lord North], and of all the King's then ministers, ereign from the inmost and most sacred shrine, who (with, I think, the exception of two only) are and they pawn him as a security for their prom- his ministers at this hour. The very first news ses. His Majesty relies on your prudence and that a British Parliament heard of what it was to fidelity for such an explanation of his measures.” do with the duties which it had given and grantThese sentiments of the minister, and these meas-ed to the King, was by the publication of the ures of his Majesty, can only relate to the princi- votes of American assemblies. It was in Amerfle and practice of taxing for a revenue; and, ac-ica that your resolutions were predeclared. It cordingly, Lord Botetourt, stating it as such, did, with great propriety, and in the exact spirit of his instructions, endeavor to remove the fears of the Virginian assembly, lest the sentiments which it seems (unknown to the world) had always been those of the ministers, and by which their conduct in respect to America had been governed, should, y some possible revolution, favorable to wicked American taxers, be hereafter counteracted. He addresses them in this manner: was from thence that we knew to a certainty luctance) that reverential affection which so en- "It may possibly be objected that, as his Maj-losing (I feel it with sorrow, I utter it with reesty's present administration are not immortal, their successors may be inclined to attempt to undo what the present ministers shall have attempted to perform, and to that objection I can give but this answer: that it is my firm opinion that the plan I have stated to you will certainly take place, and that it will never be departed from; and so determined am I forever to abide by it, that I will be content to be declared infanious if I do not, to the last hour of my life, at all times, in all places, and upon all occasions, exert every power with which I either am, or ever shall be legally invested, in order to obtain and maintain for the continent of America that satisfaction which I have been authorized to promise this day, by the confidential servants of our gracious Sovereign, who, to my certain knowledge, rates his honor so high, that he would rather part with his crown than preserve it by deceit."9 If this dignity, which is to stand in the place of just policy and common sense, had been consulted, there was a time for preserving it, and for reconciling it with any concession. If, in the ses sion of 1768, that session of idle terror and empty menaces, you had, as you were often pressed to do, repealed those taxes, then your strong oper ations would have come justified and enforced. in case your concessions had been returned by outrages. But, preposterously, you began with violence; and before terrors could have any effect, either good or bad, your ministers immediately begged pardon, and promised that repeal A glorious and true character! which (since to the obstinate Americans which they had rewe suffer his ministers with impunity to answer fused in an easy, good-natured, complying Britfor his ideas of taxation) we ought to make it ourish Parliament. The assemblies, which had been business to enable his Majesty to preserve in all its luster. Let him have character, since ours is no more! Let some part of government be kept in respect! This epistle is not the letter of Lord Hillsboraugh solely, though he held the official pen. It A material point is omitted by Mr. Burke in this speech, viz., the manner in which the Americans received this royal assurance. The Assembly of Virginia, in their address in answer to Lord Botetourt's speech, express themselves thus: "We will not suffer our present hopes, arising from the pleasing prospect your Lordship hath so kindly opened and displayed to us, to be dashed by the bitter reflection that any future administration will entertain a wish to depart from that plan which affords the surest and raost permanent foundation of public tranquillity and happiness. No, my Lord, we are sure our most gracious Sovereign, under whatever changes may hap pen in his confidential servants, will remain immu table in the ways of truth and justice, and that he is incapat le of deceiving his faithful subjects; and we esteem your Lordship's information not only as waranted, but even sauctified by the royal word." publicly and avowedly dissolved for their contumacy, are called together to receive your submission. Your ministerial directors blustered like tragic tyrants here; and then went mumping with a sore leg in America, canting, and whining, and complaining of faction, which represented them as friends to a revenue from the colonies. I hope nobody in this House will hereafter have the impudence to defend American taxes in the name of ministry. The moment they do, with this letter of attorney in my hand, I will tell them, in the authorized terms, they are wretches, "with factious and seditious views; enemies to the peace and prosperity of the mother country and the colonies," and sub verters "of the mutual affection and confidence on which the glory and safety of the British em. pire depend." After this letter, the question is no more cr propriety or dignity. They are gone already The faith of your sovereign is pledged for the political principle. The general declaration in the letter goes to the whole of it. You must therefore either abandon the scheme of taxing, or you must send the ministers tarred and feathered to America, who dared to hold out the royal faith for a renunciation of all taxes for revenue. Them you must punish, or this faith you must preserve. The preservation of this faith is of more consequence than the duties on red lead, or white lead, or on broken glass, or atlas-ordinary, or demy-fine, or blue royal, or bastard, or fool's-cap, which you have given up, or the threepence on tea which you have retained. The letter went stamped with the public authority of this kingdom. The instructions for the colony government go under no other sanction; and America can not believe, and will not obey you, if you do not preserve this channel of communication sacred. You are now punishing the colonies for acting on distinctions held out by that very ministry which is here shining in riches, in favor, and in power, and urging the punishment of the very offense to which they had themselves been the tempters. Sir, if reasons respecting simply your own commerce, which is your own convenience, were the sole grounds of the repeal of the five duties, why does Lord Hillsborough, in disclaiming in the name of the King and ministry their ever having had an intent to tax for revenue, mention it as the means of "re-establishing the confidence and affection of the colonies ?" Is it a way of soothing others to assure them that you will take good care of yourself? The medium, the only medium, for regaining their affection and confidence is, that you will take off something oppressive to their minds. Sir, the letter strongly enforces that idea; for, though the repeal of the taxes is promised on commercial principles, yet the means of counteracting "the insinuations of men with factious and seditious views," is by a disclaimer of the intention of taxing for REVENUE, as a constant invariable sentiment and rule of conduct in the government of America. Proof from the taxes on the Isle of Man, that those on America were not repealed on commercial principles. I remember that the noble Lord [Lord North] on the floor-not in a former debate, to be sure (it would be disorderly to refer to it-I suppose I read it somewhere)-but the noble Lord was pleased to say that he did not conceive how it could enter into the head of man to impose such taxes as those of 1767 (I mean those taxes which he voted for imposing and voted for repealing), as being taxes, contrary to all the principles of commerce, laid on British manufactures. I dare say the noble Lord is perfectly well read, because the duty of his particular office requires he should be so, in all our revenue laws, and in the policy which is to be collected out of them. Now, sir, when he had read this act of American revenue, and a little recovered from his astonishment, I suppose he made one step retrograde (it is but one), and looked at the act which stands just before in the statute-book. The American revenue is the forty-fifth chapter; the other to which I refer is the forty-fourth of the same sessin. These two acts are both to the same pur pose; both revenue acts; both taxing out of the kingdom; and both taxing Britis: manufactures exported. As the forty-fifth is an act for raising a revenue in America, the forty-fourth is an act for raising a revenue in the Isle of Man. The two acts perfectly agree in all respects excep one. In the act for taxing the Isle of Man, the noble Lord will find (not, as in the American act, four or five articles, but) almost the whole body of British manufactures taxed from two and a half to fifteen per cent., and some articles, such as that of spirits, a great deal higher. You did not think it uncommercial to tax the whole mass of your manufactures, and, let me add, your ag. riculture too; for, I now recollect, British corn is there also taxed up to ten per cent., and this, too, in the very nead-quarters, the very citadel of smuggling, the Isle of Man. Now, will the noble Lord condescend to tell me why he repealed the taxes on your manufactures sent out to America, and not the taxes on the manufactures ex. ported to the Isle of Man? The principle was exactly the same, the objects charged infinitely more extensive, the duties without comparison higher. Why? why, notwithstanding all his childish pretexts, because the taxes were quietly submitted to in the Isle of Man ; and because they raised a flame in America. Your reasons were political, not commercial. The repeal was made, as Lord Hillsborough's letter well expresses it, to regain "the confidence and affection of the colo nies, on which the glory and safety of the British empire depend." A wise and just motive surely, if ever there was such. But the mischief and dishonor is, that you have not done what you had given the colonies just cause to expect, when your ministers disclaimed the idea of taxes for a rev enue. There is nothing simple, nothing manly, nothing ingenuous, open, decisive, or steady in the proceeding, with regard either to the continuance or the repeal of the taxes. The whole has an air of littleness and fraud. The article of tea is slurred over in the circular letter, as i were by accident. Nothing is said of a resolution either to keep that tax or to give it up. There is no fair dealing in any part of the transaction. If you mean to follow your true motive and your public faith, give up your tax on tea for raising a revenue, the principle of which has, in effect, been disclaimed in your name, and which produces you no advantage-no, not a penny. Or, if you choose to go on with a poor pretense instead of a solid reason, and will still adhere to your cant of commerce, you have ten thousand times more strong commercial reasons for giving up this duty on tea than for abandoning the five others that you have already renounced. The American consumption of teas is annually, I believe, worth £300,000, at the least farthing If you urge the American violence as a justifi cation of your perseverance in enforcing this tax, you know that you can never answer this plain question, "Why did you repeal the others given in the same act, while the very same violence subsisted ?" But you did not find the violer.ce ginning, purely commercial; and the commercial system was wholly restrictive. It was the system of a monopoly. No trade was let loose from that constraint, but merely to enable the col onists to dispose of what, in the course of your trade, you could not take; or to enable them t dispose of such articles as we forced upon them, and for which, without some degree of liberty, they could not pay. Hence all your specific and detailed enumerations; hence the innumerable checks and counter checks; hence that infinite variety of paper chains by which you bind together this complicated system of the colonies. This principle of commercial monopoly runs through no less than twenty-nine acts of Parliament, from the year 1660 to the unfortunate pc. riod of 1764. The laws under revenue bills cease upon that concession? No! because the concession was far short of satisfying the principle which Lord Hillsborough had abjured, or even the pretense on which the repeal of the other taxes was announced; and because, by enabling the East India Company to open a shop for defeating the American resolution not to pay that specific tax, you manifestly showed a hanketing after the principle of the act which you formerly had renounced. Whatever road you take leads to a compliance with this motion. It opens to you at the end of every vista. Your commerce, your policy, your promises, your reasons, your pretenses, your consistency, your inconsistency-all jointly oblige you to this repeal.10 But still it sticks in our throats. If we go so far, the Americans will go farther. We do not know that. We ought, from experience, rather In all those acts the system of commerce to presume the contrary. Do we not know for is established, as that from whence certain that the Americans are going on as fast alone you proposed to make the col- that system no: as possible, while we refuse to gratify them? onies contribute (I mean directly and Can they do inore, or can they do worse, if we by the operation of your superintending legisla yield this point? I think this concession will tive power) to the strength of the empire. I venrather fix a turnpike to prevent their farther ture to say, that during that whole period, a parprogress. It is impossible to answer for bodies liamentary revenue from thence was never once of men. But I am sure the natural effect of fidel- in contemplation. Accordingly, in all the numity, clemency, kindness, in governors, is peace, ber of laws passed with regard to the plantagood will, order, and esteem, on the part of the tions, the words which distinguish revenue laws, governed. I would certainly, at least, give these specifically as such, were, I think, premeditatedfair principles a fair trial, which, since the mak-ly avoided. I do not say, sir, that a form of ing of this act to this hour, they never have had. II. Sir, the honorable gentleman having spoken what he thought necessary upon al view of the narrow part of the subject, I have Le subject. given him, hope, a satisfactory answer. He next presses me, by a variety of direct challenges and oblique reflections, to say something on the HISTORICAL PART. I shall therefore, sir, open myself fully on that important and delicate subject; not for the sake of telling you a long story (which I know, Mr. Speaker, you are not particularly fond of), but for the sake of the weighty instruction that, I flatter myseif, will necessarily result from it. It shall not be longer, if I can help it, than so serious a matter requires. Bread and his If any man has been accustomed to regard Mr. Burke as more of a rhetorician than a reasoner, let bin turn back and study over the series of arguments contained in this first head. There is nothing in any of the speeches of Mr. Fox or Mr. Pitt which surpasses it for close reasoning on the facts of the case, or the binding force with which, at every step, the conclusion is linked to the premises. It is unnecessary to speak of the pungency of its application, or the power with which he brings to bear upon Lord North the whole course of his measures respecting the col onies, as an argument for repealing this "solitary daty on tea. "This celebrated act was passed during the way of Cromwell in 1651, at the suggestion of St. John, the English embassador to Holland, who had words alters the nature of the law, or abridges the power of the law-giver. It certainly does not. However, titles and formal preambles are not always idle words; and the lawyers frequently argue from them. I state these facts to show, not what was your right, but what has been your settled policy. Our revenue laws have usually a title, purporting their being grants; and the words give and grant usually precede the enacting parts. Although duties were imposed on America in acts of King Charles the Second, and in acts of King William, no one title of giving "an aid to his Majesty," or any of the usual titles to revenue acts, was to be found in any of them till 1764; nor were the words "give and grant" in any preamble until the 6th of George the Second. However, the title of this act of George the Second, notwithstanding the words of donation, considers it merely as a regulation"an act for the better securing of the trade of his Majesty's sugar colonies in America." This act was made on a compromise of all, at the express desire of a part of the colonies themselves. It was therefore in some measure with their con sent; and having a title directly purporting only a commercial regulation, and being in truth noth. ing more, the words were passed by, at a time been treated with gross indignity by the Dutch. It was designed to deprive the Dutch of the immense carrying trade which they enjoyed, and therefore prohibited the importation into England or any of her dependencies, in foreign vessels, of any commod ities which were not the growth of the respective countries in whose vessels they were imported. At a subsequent period, other acts were passed for the increased advantage of British shipping |