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1766. Feb.

lature had no right to make this law. When the people consented to be taxed, they reserved to themselves the power of giving and granting by their representatives. The colonies, when they emigrated, carried their birthright with them; and the same spirit of liberty still pervades the new empire." He proceeded to show, from the principles and precedents of English law, that none could be taxed unless by their representatives; that the clergy, the counties palatine, Wales, Calais, and Berwick, were never taxed till they sent members to parliament; that Guernsey and Jersey send no members, and are not taxed; and, dwelling particularly on the case of Ireland, he cited the opinion of Chief Justice Hale, that Great Britain had no power to raise subsidies in Ireland. But, supposing the Americans had no exclusive right to tax themselves,.he maintained it would be good policy to give it them. This he argued as a question of justice; for, in the clashing interests of the mother country and the colonies, every Englishman would incline against them. This, too, he supported, as the only means of maintaining their dependence; for America felt that she could better do without England than England without America; and he reminded the house that inflexibility lost to the court of Vienna the dominion of the Low Countries.

Thus he reasoned in a strain of eloquence, which Pitt I called divine. With Benjamin Franklin for one of his listeners, Northington very shortly replied: "I cannot sit silent, upon doctrines being laid down so new, so unmaintainable, and so unconstitutional. In every state, there must be a supreme dominion; every government can arbitrarily impose laws on all its subjects, by which all are bound; and resistance to laws that are even contrary to the benefit and safety of the whole is at the risk of life and fortune.

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"I seek for the constitution of this kingdom no higher up than the revolution, as this country never had one before; and, in the reign of King William, an act passed, avowing the power of this legislature over the colonies. The king cannot suspend the stamp act; he is sworn by his

coronation oath to do the contrary. But, if you should concur as to the expediency of repeal, you will have twelve millions of your subjects of Great Britain and Ireland at your doors, not making speeches, but using club law.

"My lords, what have these favorite Americans done? They have sent deputies to a meeting of their states at New York, by which"-and, as he spoke, he appealed personally to Mansfield and Camden-"I declare, as a lawyer, they have forfeited all their charters. My lords, the colonies are become too big to be governed by the laws they at first set out with. They have therefore run into confusion, and it will be the policy of this country to form a plan of laws for them. If they withdraw allegiance, you must withdraw protection; and then the petty state of Genoa or the little kingdom of Sweden may run away with them."

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Next rose Mansfield, to whose authority the house of lords paid greater deference than to that of any man living. To him belonged the sad office of struggling to preserve the past, in which success is impossible; for nature flows on, and is never at rest. He performed his office earnestly and sincerely; though he entered public life as a whig, he was jealous of popular privileges or influence, and stood ready to serve the cause of power, even without sharing it. Cautious even to timidity, his understanding was clear, but his heart was cold. The childless man had been unsuccessful in love, and formed no friendships. His vast accumulations of knowledge, which a tenacious memory stored up in its hundred cells, were ever ready to come forward at his summons. The lucid order of his arrangement assisted to bring conviction; and he would readily expound the most mysterious intricacies of law, or analyze the longest series of reasonings and evidence, with an intelligent smile on his features that spoke plainly the perfect ease with which he did it. In subtlety, he had no equal; ornament seemed to flow so naturally from his subject that, while none could speak with more elegance, it seemed impossible for him to speak with less. In grace and dignity, not even imagination could paint any thing superior to him. His countenance

was beautiful, inspiring reverence and regard; his eye gleaming with light; his voice acutely clear, yet varied and musical. He had been a member of the cabinet when the plan of the stamp act was adopted; his legal opinion lay at its foundation; and he now vindicated its rightfulness, of which he saw clearly that the denial not merely invited America to independence. but also invoked changes in the British constitution.

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My lords," said he, speaking for two hours and a half, in reply to Camden, as he himself says, without special premeditation, and showing by his familiarity with the subject, as well as his taking the lead in the discussion, how intimately he was connected with the policy he defended, my lords, I shall speak to the question strictly as a matter of right. I shall also speak to the distinctions which have been taken, without any real difference, as to the nature of the tax; and I shall point out lastly the necessity there will be of exerting the force of the superior authority of government, if opposed by the subordinate part of it.

"I am extremely sorry that the question has ever become necessary to be agitated, and that there should be a decision upon it. No one in this house will live long enough to see an end put to the mischief which will be the result of the doctrine that has been inculcated; but the arrow is shot, and the wound already given.

"All arguments fetched from Locke, Harrington, and speculative men, who have written upon the subject of government, the law of nature, or of other nations, are little to the purpose; for we are not now settling a new constitution, but finding out and declaring the old one.

"The doctrine of representation seems ill-founded; there are twelve millions of people in England and Ireland who are not represented. The parliament first depended upon tenures; representation by election came by the favor of the crown; and the notion now taken up, that every subject must be represented by deputy, is purely ideal. The doctrine of representation never entered the heads of the great writers in Charles I.'s time against ship money or other illegal exertions of the prerogative, nor was the right of

representation claimed in the petition of rights at the great era of the revolution.

"The colonists," thus he continued, after having answered one by one the writs and records quoted by Lord Camden, the arguments fetched from the Marches of Wales, from the counties palatine, from Guernsey and Jersey, from the case of the clergy, as well as those drawn from the colonies of antiquity, and from the states of Holland, "the colonists, by

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the condition on which they migrated, settled, and now exist, are more emphatically subjects of Great Britain than those within the realm; and the British legislature have, in every instance, exercised their right of legislation over them without any dispute or question, till the fourteenth of January last.

"Our colonies emigrated under the sanction of the crown and parliament, upon the terms of being subjects of England. They were modelled gradually into their present forms, by charters, grants, and statutes; but they were never separated from the mother country, or so emancipated as to become their own masters. The very idea of a colony implies subordination and dependence, to render allegiance for protection. If they are not subjects, they ought to pay duties as aliens. The charter colonies had among their directors members of the privy council and of both houses of parliament, and were under the authority of the privy council. In the nineteenth year of James I., a doubt was thrown out in the house of commons whether parliament had any thing to do with America, and the doubt was immediately answered by Coke. The rights of Maryland were, by charter, coextensive with those of any bishop of Durham in that county palatine; and the statute-book shows that Durham was taxed by parliament before it was represented. The commonwealth parliament passed a resolution or act, and it is a question whether it is not in force now, to declare and establish the authority of England over its colonies. The charter of Pennsylvania, who have preposterously taken the lead," and Franklin was present to hear this, "is stamped with every badge of subordination, and a particular saving as to all English acts of parliament. Could the king's bench

vacate the Massachusetts charter, and yet the parliament be unable to tax them? Do they say this, when they themselves acquiesced in the judgment, and took a new charter? "In 1724, the assembly of Jamaica having refused to raise taxes for their necessary support, the late Lord Hardwicke, then attorney-general, and Sir Clement Wearg, solicitor-general, gave their opinion that, if Jamaica is to be considered as a conquered country, the king may tax it by his own authority: if otherwise, it must be by the British legislature.

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"Let the advocates for America draw their line. Let them move their exception, and say how far the sovereignty of the British parliament should go, and where it should stop. Did the Americans keep the right of the purse only, and not of their persons and their liberties?

"But if there was no express law, or reason founded upon any necessary inference from an express law, yet the usage alone would be sufficient to support that authority of England over its colonies; for have they not submitted, ever since their first establishment, to the jurisdiction of the mother country? In all questions of property, the appeals from them have been to the privy council here; and such causes have been determined not by their laws, but by the law of England. They have been obliged to recur very frequently to the jurisdiction here to settle the disputes among their own governments.

"The colonies must remain dependent upon the jurisdiction of the mother country, or they must be totally dismembered from it, and form a league of union among themselves against it, which could not be effected without great violences. No one ever thought the contrary, till now the trumpet of sedition has been blown. It is sufficient to

turn over the index to the statute-book to show that acts of parliament have been made not only without a doubt of their legality, but with universal applause, the great object of which has been ultimately to fix the trade of the colonies so as to centre in the bosom of that country from which they took their original. The navigation act shut up their intercourse with foreign countries. Their ports have been

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