commerce. To counterwork the American con- Hence arose this unfortunate act, the subject of this day's debate; from a disposition which, after making an American revenue to please one, repealed it to please others, and again revived it in hopes of pleasing a third, and of catching some thing in the ideas of all. (4.) The revenue act of 1767 formed the fourth period of American policy. How we have fared since then; what woeful variety of schemes have been adopted; what enforcing and what repealing; what bullying and what submitting; what doing and undoing; what straining and what relaxing; what assemblies dissolved for not obeying, and called again without obedience; what troops sent out to quell resistance, and, on meetHe had observed (indeed, it could not escape ing that resistance, recalled; what shiftings, and him) that several persons, infinitely his inferiors changes, and jumblings of all kinds of men at in all respects, had formerly rendered themselves home, which left no possibility of order, consistconsiderable in this House by one method alone. ency, vigor, or even so much as a decent unity of They were a race of men (I hope in God the spe- color in any one public measure-It is a tedious, cies is extinct) who, when they rose in their place, irksome task. My duty may call me to open it no man living could divine, from any known ad-out some other time; on a former occasion I tried herence to parties, to opinions, or to principles, your temper on a part of it;26 for the present I from any order or system in their politics, or from shall forbear. any sequel or connection in their ideas, what part they were going to take in any debate. It is as tonishing how much this uncertainty, especially at critical times, called the attention of all parties on such men. All eyes were fixed on them, all ears open to hear them. Each party gaped, and looked alternately for their vote, almost to the end of their speeches. While the House hung in this uncertainty, now the hear-him's rose from this side-now they rebellowed from the other; and that party to whom they fell at length from their tremulous and dancing balance, always received them in a tempest of applause. The fortune of such men was a temptation too great to be resisted by one to whom a single whiff of incense withheld gave much greater pain than he received delight in the clouds of it which daily rose about him, from the prodigal superstition of innumerable admirers. He was a candidate for contradictory honors, and his great aim was to make those agree in admiration of him who never agreed in any thing else. 25 Mr. Burke has here touched with great tenderness and forbearance on the peculiar faults of Town send. Horace Walpole has given them with perhaps too much prominence in the following sketch: "He had almost every great talent and every little quality. His vanity exceeded even his abilities, and his suspicions seemed to make him doubt whether he had any. With such a capacity, he must have been the greatest man of his age, and perhaps inferior to no man in any age, had his faults been only in a moderate proportion-in short, if he had had but common truth, common sincerity, common honesty, common modesty, common steadiness, common courage, and common sense." Sir Dennis Le Marchant remarks in a note: "This portrait has the broad lines of truth, and is more to be depended upon than Mr. Burke's splendid and affectionate panegyric (Speech on American Taxation); and yet, who can blame the warmth with which this great man claims admiration for a genius which in some points resembled his own?" manded. After all these changes and agitations, your immediate situation upon the question A final and total on your paper is at length brought to repeal now de this. You have an act of Parliament, stating that "it is expedient to raise a revenue in America." By a partial repeal you annihilated the greatest part of that revenue, which this preamble declares to be so expedient. You have substituted no other in the place of it. A secretary of state has disclaimed, in the King's name, all thoughts of such a substitution in future. The principle of this disclaimer goes to what has been left as well as what has been repealed. The tax which lingers after its companions (under a preamble declaring an American revenue expedient, and for the sole purpose of supporting the theory of that preamble) mili tates with the assurance authentically conveyed to the colonies, and is an exhaustless source of jealousy and animosity. On this state, which I take to be a fair one, not being able to discern any grounds of honor, advantage, peace, or power, for adhering either to the act or to the preamble, I shall vote for the question which leads to the repeal of both. If If you do not fall in with this motion, then se cure something to fight for, consistent in theory and valuable in practice. If you must employ your strength, employ it to uphold you in some honorable right or some profitable wrong. you are apprehensive that the concession recommended to you, though proper, should be a means of drawing on you farther but unreasonable claims, why then employ your force in supporting that reasonable concession against those unreasonable demands. You will employ it with more grace, with better effect, and with great probable concurrence of all the quiet and rational people in the provinces, who are now united 26 By moving certain resolutions relative to the disturbances in America, in May, 1770. with and hurried away by the violent; having, indeed, different dispositions, but a common interest. If you apprehend that on a concession you shall be punished by metaphysical process to the extreme lines, and argued out of your whole authority, my advice is this: When you have recovered your old, your strong, your tenable position, then face about-stop short-do nothing more reason not at all-oppose the ancient policy and practice of the empire as a rampart against the speculations of innovators on both sides of the question, and you will stand on great, manly, and sure ground. On this solid basis fix your machines, and they will draw worlds toward you. Your ministers, in their own and his Majesty's name, have already adopted the American distinction of internal and external duties. It is a distinction, whatever merit it may have, that was originally moved by the Americans themselves; and I think they will acquiesce in it, if they are not pushed with too much logic and too little sense in all the consequences; that is, if external taxation be understood as they and you understand it when you please, to be, not a distinction of geography, but of policy; that it is a power for regulating trade, and not for supporting establishments. The distinction, which is as nothing with regard to right, is of most weighty consideration in practice. Recover your old ground and your old tranquillity. Try it. I am persuaded the Americans will compromise with you. When confidence is once restored, the odious and suspicious summum jus27 will perish of course. The spirit of practicability, of moderation, and mutual convenience, will never call in geometrical exactness as the arbitrator of an amicable settlement. Consult and follow your experience: Let not the long story with which I have exercised your patience prove fruitless to your inter ests. bills. cess. For my part, I should choose (if I could have my wish) that the proposition of the honorable gentleman [Mr. Fuller] for the repeal could go to America without the attendance of the penal Alone, I could almost answer for its sucI can not be certain of its reception in the bad company it may keep. In such heterogeneous assortments, the most innocent person will lose the effect of his innocency. Though you should send out this angel of peace, yet you are sending out a destroying angel too; and what would be the effect of the conflict of these two adverse spirits, or which would predominate in the end, is what I dare not say whether the lenient measures would cause American passion to subside, or the severe would increase its fury. All this is in the hand of Providence. Yet now, even now, I should confide in the prevailing virtue and efficacious operation of lenity, though working in darkness, and in chaos, in the midst of all this unnatural and turbid combination. should hope it might produce order and beauty in the end. I Let us, sir, embrace some system or other before we end this session. Do you mean Peroration to tax America, and to draw a productive revenue from thence? If you do, speak out: name, fix, ascertain this revenue; settle its quantity; define its objects; provide for its collection; and then fight, when you have something to fight for. If you murder, rob! If you kill, take possession; and do not appear in the character of madmen, as well as assassins, violent, vindictive, bloody, and tyrannical, without an object. But may better counsels guide you! Again and again revert to your old principles. Seek peace and ensue it. Leave America, if she has taxable matter in her, to tax herself. I am not here going into the distinctions of rights, nor attempting to mark their boundaries. I do not enter into these metaphysical distinctions. I hate the very sound of them. Leave the Americans as they anciently stood, and these distinctions, born of our unhappy contest, will die along with it. They and we, and their and our ancestors, have been happy under that system. Let the memory of all actions, in contradiction to that good old mode, on both sides, be extinguished forever. Be content to bind America by laws of trade; you have always done it. Let this be your reason for binding their trade. Do not burden them with taxes; you were not used to do so from the beginning. Let this be your reason for not taxing. These are the arguments of states and kingdoms. Leave the rest to the schools, for there only they may be discussed with safety. But if, intemperately, unwisely, fatally, you sophisticate and poison the very source of government, by urging subtle deductions, and consequences odious to those you govern, from the unlimited and illimitable nature of supreme sovereignty, you will teach them by these means to call that sovereignty itself in question. When you drive him hard, the boar will surely turn upon the hunters. If that sovereignty and their freedom can not be reconciled, which will they take? They will cast your sovereignty in your face. Nobody will be argued into slavery. Sir, let the gentlemen on the other side call forth all their ability; let the best of them get up and tell me what one character of liberty the Americans have, and what one brand of slavery they are free from, if they are bound in their property and industry by all the restraints you can imagine on commerce, and at the same time are made pack-horses of every tax you choose to impose, without the least share in granting them? When they bear the burdens of unlimited monopoly, will you bring them to bear the burdens of unlimited revenue too? The Englishman in America will feel that this is slavery-that it is legal slavery will be no compensation either to his feelings or his understanding. A noble Lord [Lord Carmarthen], who spoke some time ago, is full of the fire of ingenuous youth; and when he has modeled the ideas of a 27 Referring to the adage, “Summum jus et sum-lively imagination by farther experience, he will ma injuria"-Right, when pressed to an extreme, be- be an ornament to his country in either House. comes the height of injustice. He has said that the Americans are our children, and how can they revolt against their parent? | ually afford mutual assistance. It is necessary He says that if they are not free in their present to coerce the negligent, to restrain the violent, state, England is not free, because Manchester, and to aid the weak and deficient by the overand other considerable places, are not represent- ruling plenitude of her power. She is never to ed. So, then, because some towns in England are intrude into the place of others while they are not represented, America is to have no represent- equal to the common ends of their institution. ative at all. They are "our children;" but when But, in order to enable Parliament to answer all children ask for bread, we are not to give a stone. these ends of provident and beneficent superinIs it because the natural resistance of things, and tendence, her powers must be boundless. The the various mutations of time, hinders our govern- gentlemen who think the powers of Parliament ment, or any scheme of government, from being limited, may please themselves to talk of requiany more than a sort of approximation to the sitions. But suppose the requisitions are not right, is it therefore that the colonies are to re- obeyed. What! shall there be no reserved cede from it infinitely? When this child of ours power in the empire to supply a deficiency wishes to assimilate to its parent, and to reflect which may weaken, divide, and dissipate the with a true filial resemblance the beauteous coun- whole? We are engaged in war; the Secretenance of British liberty, are we to turn to them tary of State calls upon the colonies to contribthe shameful parts of our Constitution? Are we ute; some would do it-I think most would to give them our weakness for their strength-cheerfully furnish whatever is demanded; one our opprobrium for their glory; and the slough of slavery, which we are not able to work off, to serve them for their freedom? If this be the case, ask yourselves this question: Will they be content in such a state of slavery? If not, look to the consequences. Reflect how you ought to govern a people who think they ought to be free, and think they are not. Your scheme yields no revenue; it yields nothing but discontent, disorder, disobedience; and, such is the state of America, that, after wading up to your eyes in blood, you could only end just where you began; that is, to tax where no revenue is to be found; to-my voice fails me; my inclination, indeed, carries me no farther-all is confusion beyond it. [Here Mr. Burke was compelled by illness to stop for a short time, after which he proceeded :] Well, sir, I have recovered a little, and, before I sit down, I must say something to another point with which gentlemen urge us: What is to become of the Declaratory Act, asserting the entireness of British legislative authority, if we abandon the practice of taxation? not set aside by a Act. For my part, I look upon the rights stated in Declaratory Act that act exactly in the manner in repeal of the Tea which I viewed them on its very first proposition, and which I have often taken the liberty, with great humility, to lay before you. I look, I say, on the imperial rights of Great Britain, and the privileges which the colonists ought to enjoy under these rights, to be just the most reconcilable things in the world. The Parliament of Great Britain sits at the head of her extensive empire in two capacities: one as the local Legislature of this island, providing for all things at home, immediately, and by no other instrument than the executive power. The other, and, I think, her nobler capacity, is what I call her imperial character, in which, as from the throne of heaven, she superintends all the several inferior Legislatures, and guides and controls them all without annihilating any. As all these provincial Legislatures are only co-ordinate to each other, they ought all to be subordinate to her; else they can neither preserve mutual peace, nor hope for mutual justice, nor effect or two, suppose, hang back, and, easing themselves, let the stress of the draught lie on the others surely it is proper that some authority might legally say, "Tax yourselves for the common supply, or Parliament will do it for you." This backwardness was, as I am told, actually the case of Pennsylvania for some short time toward the beginning of the last war, owing to some internal dissensions in the colony. But, whether the fact were so or otherwise, the case is equally to be provided for by a competent sovereign power. But then this ought to be no ordinary power, nor ever used in the first instance. This is what I meant when I have said at various times that I consider the power of taxing in Parliament as an instrument of empire, and not as a means of supply. Such, sir, is my idea of the constitution of the British empire, as distinguished from the constitution of Britain; and on these grounds I think subordination and liberty may be sufficiently reconciled through the whole; whether to serve a refining speculatist or a factious demagogue, I know not; but enough, surely, for the ease and happiness of man. Sir, while we held this happy course, we drew more from the colonies than all the impotent violence of despotism ever could extort from them. We did this abundantly in the last war. It has never been once denied; and what reason have we to imagine that the colonies would not have proceeded in supplying government as liberally, if you had not stepped in and hindered them from contributing, by interrupting the channel in which their liberality flowed with so strong a course; by attempting to take, instead of being satisfied to receive? Sir William Temple says, that Holland has loaded itself with ten times the impositions which it revolted from Spain rather than submit to. He says true. Tyranny is a poor provider. It knows neither how to accumulate nor how to extract. I charge, therefore, to this new and unfortunate system, the loss not only of peace, of union, and of commerce, but even of revenue, which its friends are contending for. It is morally certain that we have lost at least a million of free grants since the peace. I think we have lost a great laid deep in your truest interests; and that, by deal more; and that those who look for a rev- limiting the exercise, it fixes on the firmest founenue from the provinces, never could have pur-dations a real, consistent, well-grounded authorsued, even in that light, a course more directly ity in Parliament. Until you come back to that repugnant to their purposes. system, there will be no peace for England. Now, sir, I trust I have shown, first, on that narrow ground which the honorable gentleman measured, that you are like to lose nothing by complying with the motion except what you have lost already. I have shown afterward, that in time of peace you flourished in commerce, and when war required it, had sufficient aid from the colonies, while you pursued your ancient policy; that you threw every thing into confusion when you made the Stamp Act; and that you restored every thing to peace and order when you repealed it. I have shown that the revival of the system of taxation has produced the very worst effects; and that the partial repeal has produced, not partial good, but universal evil. Let these considerations, founded on facts, not one of which can be denied, bring us back to our reason by the road of our experience. I can not, as I have said, answer for mixed measures; but surely this mixture of lenity would give the whole a better chance of success. When you once regain confidence, the way will be clear before you. Then you may enforce the Act of Navigation when it ought to be enforced. You will yourselves open it where it ought still farther to be opened. Proceed in what you do, whatever you do, from policy, and not from ranLet us act like men, let us act like statesmen. Let us hold some sort of consistent conduct. It is agreed that a revenue is not to be had in America. If we lose the profit, let us get rid of the odium. cor. Mr. Burke's motion was negatived by a vote of 182 to 49. The ministry were bent on violent measures, and the act for quartering troops in Boston was passed about a month after. The name of Lord North occurs so often in this speech and in other parts of this volume, that the reader will be interested in a brief notice of his life and character. He was the eldest son of the Earl of Guilford, and was born in 1732. Having completed his education at Oxford, and traveled extensively on the Continent, he became a member of Parliament in 1754, and in 1759 was brought into office by Lord Chatham as a Commissioner of the Treasury. This office he continued to hold during Lord Bute's administration, and at the close of it was made head of the board by Mr. Grenville, who could always rely on him as a determined advocate of American taxation. He was thrown out of office in 1766, when Lord Rockingham came into power; but the next year was made Paymaster of the Forces by Lord Chatham, in his third administration, so graphically described in this speech. In 1767 he became Chancellor of the Exchequer under the Duke of Grafton, and when the latter resigned in 1770, took his place as First Lord of the Treasury and prime minister. The King felt greatly indebted to Lord North for thus saving him the necessity of going back to the Whigs under Lord Chatham and Lord Rockingham; On this business of America, I confess I am and Lord North, on his part, yielded implicitly to serious even to sadness. I have had but one the King's wishes, and carried on the war long opinion concerning it since I sat, and before I sat, after he was convinced that the contest was hopein Parliament. The noble Lord [Lord North] less. At the end of twelve years he was defeatwill, as usual, probably attribute the part takened on this subject in the House of Commons, and, by me and my friends in this business to a desire of getting his places. Let him enjoy this happy and original idea. If I deprived him of it, I should take away most of his wit, and all his argument. But I had rather bear the brunt of all his wit, and, indeed, blows much heavier, than stand answerable to God for embracing a system that tends to the destruction of some of the very best and fairest of his works. But I know the map of England as well as the noble Lord, or as any other person; and I know that the way I take is not the road to preferment. My excellent and honorable friend under me on the floor [Mr. Dowdeswell] has trod that road with great toil for upward of twenty years together. He is not yet arrived at the noble Lord's destination. However, the tracks of my worthy friend are those I have ever wished to follow, because I know they lead to honor. Long may we tread the same road together, whoever may accompany us, or whoever may laugh at us on our journey. I honestly and solemnly declare, I have in all seasons adhered to the system of 1766, for no other reason than that I think it although urged by the King to persevere, he resigned his office on the 19th of March, 1782. Within a year from this time he formed his coalition with Mr. Fox, and came again into power as joint Secretary of State with his old opponent. They were dismissed, however, within less than nine months, and from this time Lord North held no responsible office under government. As leader of the House of Commons, he showed much more talent than his early opponents, especially Junius, supposed him to possess. He never rose into high eloquence, but he succeeded admirably in managing the House. He had extraordinary tact, perfect self-command, and inflexible courage. To these was added a great fund of wit, which he used with much effect in allaying the violence of debate, when rendered almost savage, as it was at times, by the impetuous attacks of Mr. Fox and his other opponents. Often, when assailed with the bitterest invectives, threatened with impeachment, or held out as a fit object of popular violence, he would rise at the close of a debate and turn the laugh on his opponents by his good-humored pleasantry, while he furnished the ministerial benches with plausible reasons, at least, for carrying him through by their votes. He sometimes refreshed himself with a nap during these attacks; and on one occasion, when the orator, who had been threatening him with the block for his crimes, poured out an invective against him for being able to slumber over the ruin of his country, Lord North rose and complained of it as cruel that he should be denied a privilege always granted to criminals, that of a good night's rest before going to execution. After his union with Mr. Fox, when Mr. Martin, who harped continually on the subject, said "he wished he could see a starling perched on the right elbow of the speaker's chair, to repeat incessantly to the Treasury Bench 'disgraceful, shameless COALITION,'" Lord North suggested it would be a saving of expense to have the honorable gentleman himself perform the service, as deputy to the starling. In one instance, when the worst possible spirit prevailed in the House, arising out of an attack made by Colonel Fullerton on Lord Shelburne, and Mr. Adam on Mr. Fox (leading to a duel in the latter case), Lord North attempted to allay the feeling, and check the prevailing disposition to take offense at what was said in debate. He referred to the attacks on himself, and the manner in which he was accustomed to treat them. "A gentleman," he remarked, "spoke of me some time ago as that thing called a minister. Now," said he, looking down at his large, round form, and patting his side, "I certainly am a thing: the member, when he called me so, said what was true. I can not, therefore, be angry with him. And when he spoke of me as the thing called a minister, he called me that which of all things he wished to be himself, and therefore I took it as a compliment." In private life, Lord North was beloved by all; and, notwithstanding the incessant attacks to which he was subjected in the House of Commons, it is probably true, as Charles Butler remarks, that "among all his political adversaries he had not a single enemy.' On the death of his father in 1790, he succeeded to the earldom of Guilford, and died about two years after, at the age of sixty. | SPEECH OF MR. BURKE ON MOVING HIS RESOLUTIONS FOR CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA, DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, MARCH 22, 1775. INTRODUCTION. THIS speech was occasioned by one of those sudden changes of policy which occurred so often in Lord North's treatment of the colonies. In the midst of violent measures, and at the moment when bills were before Parliament for extinguishing the entire trade of America, he came forward, to the astonishment of his nearest friends, with a plan for conciliation! It was in substance this, that, whenever a colony, in addition to providing for its own government, should raise a fair proportion for the common defense, and place this sum at the disposal of Parliament, that colony should be exempted from all farther taxation, except such duties as might be necessary for the regulation of commerce. This was obviously an insidious scheme for sowing dissension among the Americans. Lord North's design was to open the way for treating separately with the different provinces. He could thus favor the loyal and burden the disaffected. He could array them against each other by creating hostile interests; and thus taking them in detail, he could reduce them all to complete subjection. There was cunning in the scheme, but it proceeded on a false estimate of American character. It sprung from a total ignorance of the spirit which actuated the colonies in resisting the mother country; and exemplified in a striking manner the truth of the remarks made by Mr. Burke in the preceding speech, on "the mischief of not having large and liberal ideas in the management of great affairs." While Mr. Burke saw through this scheme, he thought it presented a favorable opportunity for bringing forward a plan of conciliation suited to the exigencies of the case; a plan which, if not adopted, might at least put the ministry wholly in the wrong. The idea of conciliating, and even of conceding, before America had submitted, was certainly admissible, for the minister himself had founded his scheme upon it. Mr. Burke, therefore, proposed "to admit the Americans to an equal interest in the British Constitution, and place them at once on the footing of other Englishmen." In urging this measure, he discusses two questions: 1st. "Ought we to concede?" and if so, 2dly. "What should the concession be?" In considering the first question, he enters minutely, and with surprising accuracy of detail, into the condition of the colonies, (1.) their population, (2.) commerce, (3.) agriculture, and (4.) fisheries. He shows that force is an improper and inadequate instrument for holding such a people in subjection to the mother country; especially considering their spirit of liberty, which he traces to (1.) their descent, (2.) their forms of government, (3.) the religious principles of the North, (4.) the social institutions of the South, (5.) the peculiarities of their education, and (6.) their remoteness from Great Britain. He concludes this head by show. ing that it is vain to think either (1.) of extinguishing this spirit by removing the causes mentioned above (since this is plainly impossible), or (2.) of putting it down by proceeding against it as criminal. He |