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There is, however, a time for all things. It is not every conjuncture which calls with equal force upon the activity of honest men; but critical exigencies now and then arise; and I am mistaken, if this be not one of them. Men will see the necessity of honest combination; but they may see it when it is too late. They may embody, when it will be ruinous to themselves, and of no advantage to the country; when, for want of such a timely union as may enable them to oppose in favour of the laws, with the laws on their side, they may at length find themselves under the necessity of conspiring, instead of consulting. The law, for which they stand, may become a weapon in the hands of its bitterest enemies; and they will be cast, at length, into that miserable alternative, between slavery and civil confusion, which no good man can look upon without horrour; an alternative in which it is impossible he should take either part, with a conscience perfectly at repose. To keep that situation of guilt and remorse at the utmost distance is, therefore, our first obligation. Early activity may prevent late and fruitless violence. As yet we work in the light. The scheme of the enemies of publick tranquillity has disarranged, it has not destroyed us.

ting to; and such as, I believe, no connexions (ex- | Publick life is a situation of power and energy; cept some court factions) ever could be so sense- he trespasses against his duty who sleeps upon lessly tyrannical as to impose. Men thinking freely, his watch, as well as he that goes over to the will, in particular instances, think differently. But enemy. still as the greater part of the measures which arise in the course of publick business are related to, or dependent on, some great, leading, general principles in government, a man must be peculiarly unfortunate in the choice of his political company if he does not agree with them at least nine times in ten. If he does not concur in these general principles upon which the party is founded, and which necessarily draw ona concurrence in their application, he ought from the beginning to have chosen some other, more conformable to his opinions. When the question is in its nature doubtful, or not very material, the modesty which becomes an individual, and (in spite of our court moralists) that partiality which becomes a well-chosen friendship, will frequently bring on an acquiescence in the general sentiment. Thus the disagreement will naturally be rare; it will be only enough to indulge freedom, without violating concord, or disturbing arrangement. And this is all that ever was required for a character of the greatest uniformity and steadiness in connexion. How men can proceed without any connexion at all, is to me utterly incomprehensible. Of what sort of materials must that man be made, how must he be tempered and put together, who can sit whole years in parliament, with five hundred and fifty of his fellow citizens, amidst the storm of such tempestuous passions, in the sharp conflict of so many wits, and tempers, and characters, in the agitation of such mighty questions, in the discussion of such vast and ponderous interests, without seeing any one sort of men, whose character, conduct, or disposition, would lead him to associate himself with them, to aid and be aided, in any one system of publick utility?

I remember an old scholastick aphorism, which says, "that the man who lives wholly detached from others, must be either an angel or a devil." When I see in any of these detached gentlemen of our times the angelick purity, power, and beneficence, I shall admit them to be angels. In the mean time we are born only to be men. We shall do enough if we form ourselves to be good ones. It is therefore our business carefully to cultivate in our minds, to rear to the most perfect vigour and maturity, every sort of generous and honest feeling that belongs to our nature. To bring the dispositions that are lovely in private life into the service and conduct of the commonwealth; so to be patriots, as not to forget we are gentlemen. To cultivate friendships, and to incur enmities. To have both strong, but both selected in the one, to be placable; in the other, immovable. To model our principles to our duties and our situation. To be fully persuaded, that all virtue which is impracticable is spurious; and rather to run the risk of falling into faults in a course which leads us to act with effect and energy, than to loiter out our days without blame and without use.

If the reader believes that there really exists such a faction as I have described; a faction ruling by the private inclinations of a court, against the general sense of the people; and that this faction, whilst it pursues a scheme for undermining all the foundations of our freedom, weakens (for the present at least) all the powers of executory government, rendering us abroad contemptible, and at home distracted; he will believe also, that nothing but a firm combination of publick men against this body, and that, too, supported by the hearty concurrence of the people at large, can possibly get the better of it. The people will see the necessity of restoring publick men to an attention to the publick opinion, and of restoring the constitution to its original principles. Above all, they will endeavour to keep the house of commons from as suming a character which does not belong to it. They will endeavour to keep that house, for its existence, for its powers, and its privileges, as independent of every other, and as dependent upon themselves, as possible. This servitude is to a house of commons (like obedience to the divine law) "perfect freedom." For if they once quit this natural, rational, and liberal obedience, having deserted the only proper foundation of ther power, they must seek a support in an abject and unnatural dependence somewhere else. Wher through the medium of this just connexion with their constituents, the genuine dignity of the house of commons is restored, it will begin to think of casting from it, with scorn, as badges of servility, all the false ornaments of illegal power, with which it has been, for some time, disgraced. It will

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begin to think of its old office of CONTROUL. will not suffer that last of evils to predominate in the country; men without popular confidence, publick opinion, natural connexion, or mutual trust, invested with all the powers of government. When they have learned this lesson themselves, they will be willing and able to teach the court, 1 that it is the true interest of the prince to have Le but one administration; and that one composed of those who recommend themselves to their sovereign through the opinion of their country, and d not by their obsequiousness to a favourite. Such men will serve their sovereign with affection and fidelity; because his choice of them, upon such principles, is a compliment to their virtue. They

will be able to serve him effectually; because they will add the weight of the country to the force of the executory power. They will be able to serve their king with dignity; because they will never abuse his name to the gratification of their private spleen or avarice. This, with allowances for human frailty, may probably be the general character of a ministry, which thinks itself account-able to the house of commons; when the house of commons thinks itself accountable to its constituents. If other ideas should prevail, things must remain in their present confusion; until they are hurried into all the rage of civil violence; or until they sink into the dead repose of despotism.

MR. BURKE'S SPEECH

ON

AMERICAN TAXATION.

1774.

PREFACE.

THE following speech has been much the subject of conversation; and the desire of having it printed was last summer very general. The means of gratifying the publick curiosity were obligingly furnished from the notes of some gentlemen, members of the last parliament.

This piece has been for some months ready for the press. But a delicacy, possibly over-scrupulous, has delayed the publication to this time. The friends of administration have been used to attribute a great deal of the opposition to their measures in America to the writings published in England. The editor of this speech kept it back, until all the measures of government have had their full operation, and can be no longer affected, if ever they could have been affected, by any publication.

Most readers will recollect the uncommon pai taken at the beginning of the last session of the last parliament, and indeed during the whole course of it, to asperse the characters, and decry the mea sures, of those who were supposed to be friends to America; in order to weaken the effect of ther opposition to the acts of rigour then preparis: against the colonies. The speech contains a ful refutation of the charges against that party w which Mr. Burke has all along acted. In deg this, he has taken a review of the effects of the schemes which have been successively adept in the government of the plantations. The s ject is interesting; the matters of informats various, and important; and the publication this time, the editor hopes, will not be thoug

unseasonable.

SPEECH, &c.

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66

DURING the last session of the last Parliament, sevennight, resolve itself into a committee f on the 19th of April, 1774, Mr. Rose Fuller, "the whole house, to take into consideration th member for Rye, made the following motion; duty of 3d. per pound weight upon tea, payab That an act made in the seventh year of the reign"in all his majesty's dominions in America, of his present majesty, intituled, "An act for posed by the said act? and also the appropria "granting certain duties in the British colonies "tion of the said duty." "and plantations in America; for allowing a “drawback of the duties of customs upon the ex"portation from this kingdom of coffee and cocoa nuts, of the produce of the said colonies or "plantations; for discontinuing the drawbacks "payable on china earthen ware exported to "America; and for more effectually preventing "the clandestine running of goods in the said "colonies and plantations;" might be read.

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And the same being read accordingly; he moved, "That this house will, upon this day

Charles Wolfran Cornwall, Esq. lately appointed one of the

On this latter motion a warm and interest 2 debate arose, in which Mr. Burke spoke as follows SIR,

I agree with the honourable gentleman* ** spoke last, that this subject is not new in the house. Very disagreeably to this house, very f fortunately to this nation, and to the peace a prosperity of this whole empire, no topick has be more familiar to us. For nine long years, sessi after session, we have been lashed round and rot

lords of the treasury.

this miserable circle of occasional arguments and temporary expedients. I am sure our heads must turn, and our stomachs nauseate with them. We have had them in every shape; we have looked at them in every point of view. Invention is exhausted; reason is fatigued; experience has given judgment; but obstinacy is not yet conquered. The honourable gentleman has made one endeavour more to diversify the form of this disgusting argument. He has thrown out a speech composed almost entirely of challenges. Challenges are serious things; and as he is a man of prudence as well as resolution, I dare say he has very well weighed those challenges before he delivered them. I had long the happiness to sit at the same side of the house, and to agree with the honourable gentleman on all the American questions. My sentiments, I am sure, are well known to him; and I thought I had been perfectly acquainted with his. Though I find myself mistaken, he will still permit me to use the privilege of an old friendship; he will permit me to apply myself to the house under the sanction of his authority; and, on the various grounds he has measured out, to submit to you the poor opinions which I have formed upon a matter of importance enough to demand the fullest consideration I could bestow upon it.

He has stated to the house two grounds of deliberation; one narrow and simple, and merely confined to the question on your paper: the other more large and more complicated; comprehending the whole series of the parliamentary proceedings with regard to America, their causes, and their consequences. With regard to the latter ground, he states it as useless, and thinks it may be even dangerous, to enter into so extensive a field of enquiry. Yet, to my surprise, he had hardly laid down this restrictive proposition, to which his authority would have given so much weight, when directly, and with the same authority, he condemns it; and declares it absolutely necessary to enter into the most ample historical detail. His zeal has thrown him a little out of his usual accuracy. In this perplexity what shall we do, Sir, who are willing to submit to the law he gives us? He has reprobated in one part of his speech the rule he had laid down for debate in the other; and, after Larrowing the ground for all those who are to speak after him, he takes an excursion himself, as unbounded as the subject and the extent of his great abilities.

Sir, when I cannot obey all his laws, I will do the best I can. I will endeavour to obey such of them as have the sanction of his example; and to stick to that rule, which, though not consistent with the other, is the most rational. He was certainly in the right when he took the matter largely. I cannot prevail on myself to agree with him in his censure of his own conduct. It is not, he will ive me leave to say, either useless or dangerous. He asserts, that retrospect is not wise; and the proper, the only proper, subject of enquiry, is not how we got into this difficulty, but how we

66 are to get out of it." In other words, we are, according to him, to consult our invention, and to reject our experience. The mode of deliberation he recommends is diametrically opposite to every rule of reason, and every principle of good sense established amongst mankind. For, that sense and that reason, I have always understood, absolutely to prescribe, whenever we are involved in difficulties from the measures we have pursued, that we should take a strict review of those measures, in order to correct our errours, if they should be corrigible; or at least to avoid a dull uniformity in mischief, and the unpitied calamity of being repeatedly caught in the same snare.

Sir, I will freely follow the honourable gentleman in his historical discussion, without the least management for men or measures, further than as they shall seem to me to deserve it. But before I go into that large consideration, because I would omit nothing that can give the house satisfaction, I wish to tread the narrow ground to which alone the honourable gentleman, in one part of his speech, has so strictly confined us.

He desires to know, whether, if we were to repeal this tax, agreeably to the proposition of the honourable gentleman who made the motion, the Americans would not take post on this concession, in order to make a new attack on the next body of taxes; and whether they would not call for a repeal of the duty on wine as loudly as they do now for the repeal of the duty on tea? Sir, I can give no security on this subject. But I will do all that I can, and all that can be fairly demanded. To the experience which the honourable gentleman reprobates in one instant, and reverts to in the next; to that experience, without the least wavering or hesitation on my part, I steadily appeal ; and would to God there was no other arbiter to decide on the vote with which the house is to conclude this day.

When parliament repealed the stamp act in the year 1766, I affirm, first, that the Americans did not in consequence of this measure call upon you to give up the former parliamentary revenue which subsisted in that country; or even any one of the articles which compose it. I affirm also, that when, departing from the maxims of that repeal, you revived the scheme of taxation, and thereby filled the minds of the colonists with new jealousy, and all sorts of apprehensions, then it was that they quarrelled with the old taxes, as well as the new; then it was, and not till then, that they questioned all the parts of your legislative power; and by the battery of such questions have shaken the solid structure of this empire to its deepest foundations.

Of those two propositions I shall, before I have done, give such convincing, such damning proof, that however the contrary may be whispered in circles, or bawled in newspapers, they never more will dare to raise their voices in this house. I speak with great confidence. I have reason for it. The ministers are with me. They at least are convinced that the repeal of the stamp act had not, and that no repeal can have, the consequences

which the honourable gentleman who defends their measures is so much alarmed at. To their conduct I refer him for a conclusive answer to this objection. I carry my proof irresistibly into the very body of both ministry and parliament; not on any general reasoning growing out of collateral matter, but on the conduct of the honourable gentleman's ministerial friends on the new revenue itself.

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by him, to settle the matter, as well as they can, together; for if the repeal of American taxes destroys all our government in America-He is the man!-and he is the worst of all the repealers, because he is the last.

But I hear it rung continually in my ears, now and formerly, the preamble ! what will become "of the preamble, if you repeal this tax?"—I am sorry to be compelled so often to expose the calamities and disgraces of parliament. The preamble of this law, standing as it now stands, has the le direct given to it by the provisionary part of the act; if that can be called provisionary which makes no provision. I should be afraid to express myself in this manner, especially in the face of such formidable array of ability as is now drawn up before me, composed of the ancient household troops of that side of the house, and the new recruits from this, if the matter were not clear and indisputable. Nothing but truth could give me this firmness; but plain truth and clear evidence can be beat down by no ability. The clerk will be so good as to turn to the act, and to read this favourite preamble:

The act of 1767, which grants this tea duty, sets forth in its preamble, that it was expedient to raise a revenue in America, for the support of the civil government there, as well as for purposes still more extensive. To this support the act assigns six branches of duties. About two years after this act passed, the ministry, I mean the present ministry, thought it expedient to repeal five of the duties, and to leave (for reasons best known to themselves) only the sixth standing. Suppose any person, at the time of that repeal, had thus addressed the minister, "Condemning, as you do, "the repeal of the stamp act, why do you venture “ to repeal the duties upon glass, paper, and | "painters colours? Let your pretence for the repeal be what it will, are you not thoroughly Whereas it is expedient that a revenue should “ convinced, that your concessions will produce, be raised in your majesty's dominions in Amerien, "not satisfaction, but insolence, in the Ameri- for making a more certain and adequate provision cans; and that the giving up these taxes will for defraying the charge of the administration of "necessitate the giving up of all the rest?" This justice, and support of civil government, in such objection was as palpable then as it is now; and provinces where it shall be found necessary; d it was as good for preserving the five duties as for towards further defraying the expences of defend. retaining the sixth. Besides, the minister will re-ing, protecting, and securing the said dominions collect, that the repeal of the stamp act had but You have heard this pompous performance just preceded his repeal; and the ill policy of that Now where is the revenue which is to do all the measure, (had it been so impolitick as it has been mighty things? Five sixths repealed-abandone: represented,) and the mischiefs it produced, were-sunk-gone-lost for ever. Does the pr quite recent. Upon the principles therefore of the honourable gentleman, upon the principles of the minister himself, the minister has nothing at all to answer. He stands condemned by himself, and by all his associates old and new, as a destroyer, in the first trust of finance, of the revenues; and in the first rank of honour, as a betrayer of the dignity of his country.

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Most men, especially great men, do not always know their well-wishers. I come to rescue that noble lord out of the hands of those he calls his friends; and even out of his own. I will do him the justice he is denied at home. He has not been this wicked or imprudent man. He knew that a repeal had no tendency to produce the mischiefs which give so much alarm to his honourable friend. His work was not bad in its principle, but imperfect in its execution; and the motion on your paper presses him only to complete a proper plan, which, by some unfortunate and unaccountable errour, he had left unfinished.

I hope, Sir, the honourable gentleman, who spoke last, is thoroughly satisfied, and satisfied out of the proceedings of ministry on their own favourite act, that his fears from a repeal are groundless. If he is not, I leave him, and the noble lord who sits

• Lord North, then chancellor of the exchequer.

↑ Lord Hillsborough's circular letter to the governours of the

solitary tea duty support the purposes of this p
amble? Is not the supply there stated as effectually
abandoned as if the tea duty had perished in t
general wreck? Here, Mr. Speaker, is a precies
mockery-a preamble without an act-taxes greate
ed in order to be repealed-and the reasons of the
grant still carefully kept up! This is raising a re-
venue in America! This is preserving dignity t
England! If you repeal this tax in compliance wit
the motion, I readily admit that you lose this f
preamble. Estimate your loss in it. The o
of the act is gone already; and all
suffer s
the purging the statute-book of the opprobriar
of an empty, absurd, and false recital.

you

It has been said again and again, that the tr taxes were repealed on commercial principles. It is so said in the paper in my hand; + a paper whi I constantly carry about; which I have often used, and shall often use again. What is got by the paltry pretence of commercial principles I k not; for, if your government in America is de stroyed by the repeal of taxes, it is of no cur quence upon what ideas the repeal is grounde Repeal this tax too upon commercial principles f you please. These principles will serve as well ne as they did formerly. But you know that, either

colonies, concerning the repeal of some of the duties laid in the

act of 1767.

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