Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

AMERICAN TAXATION.

THESE two speeches ("Taxation" and "Conciliation ") both deserve to be studied with the utmost diligence by every American scholar.— Chauncey A. Goodrich.

Of all Burke's writings none are so fit to secure unqualified and unanimous admiration as the speeches on this momentous struggle. (American Revolution). They compose the most perfect manual in our literature for one who approaches the study of public affairs, whether for knowledge or for practice.-John Morley.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

THE measures of the different British ministers regarding American taxation, from the passage of the Stamp Act, in 1765, to the repeal of all the taxes except that on tea in 1770, are well known to every student of American history. Lord North's policy in respect to America was arbitrary and fluctuating. After the destruction of tea in Boston harbor violent measures prevailed. In March, 1774, laws were passed depriving Massachusetts of her charter, and closing the port of Boston against all commerce. Some, however, who had supported Lord North in these measures, thought they should be accompanied by an act indicative of a desire to conciliate. Accordingly, Mr. Rose Fuller, of Rye, who usually voted with the Ministry, moved on the 19th of April, 1774, "that the House resolve itself into a committee of the whole House, to take into consideration the duty of three-pence per pound on tea, payable in all his Majesty's dominions in America," with a view to repealing the same. Mr. Burke seconded the proposal, and sustained it in the following speech. The applause so lavishly bestowed upon this speech was richly deserved. The matter is most admirably arranged. The language is racy and pungent. It is marked by deep research, cogent reasoning, cutting sarcasm, graphic description, and fervid declamation. Burke consented to the publication of this speech at the earnest solicitation of his friends. It seems to have been from a gen

7

erous wish to give the British Ministry an opportunity of doing their best to restore tranquillity, and from an indisposition to appear equally unwilling to soften down the terms in which he had spoken, that Burke deferred the publication of the speech until the beginning of the following year. It was several times reprinted, and, like most of the great orator's publications, provoked an "Answer," which is not worthy of attention.

1. SIR-I agree with the Honorable Gentleman1 who spoke last, that this subject is not new2 in this House. Very disagreeably to this House, very unfortunately to this nation, and to the peace and prosperity of this whole empire, no topic has been more familiar to us. For nine long years, session after session, we have been lashed round and round 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.

3

2. The Honorable Gentleman has made one endeavor 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

NOTE.-The Editor has omitted such passages in this speech, as are of no special interest to students of the present day. The wording has not been changed, nor have any sentences been abridged.

1. Honorable gentleman.-Charles Wolfran Cornwall, became a Lord of the Treasury in 1774, chosen Speaker of the House of Commons in 1780. Lord Chatham said of him: "Such men are not found every day." 2. Subject is not new. The present debate had begun in the dullest possible style. Many speakers had already well tried the patience of the House. The members had begun to disperse to the adjoining apartments, or places of refreshment. Hence the short, lashing, petulant exordium, contrasting strongly with those of the great speeches on the Economical Reform, and the Nabob of Arcot's Debts. It was necessary to arrest the attention of the House in the dullest part of a debate. The report of it spread rapidly, and members crowded back till the hall was filled to the utmost. It resounded throughout the speech with the loudest applause. The student should observe the contrast between this preamble and that of the speech which follows. The latter is full of touches of that trifling which was so common in the speaking of the last century; what Hazlitt terms, calling out the Speaker to dance a minuet with him before he begins.'

3. Disgusting.-This epithet simply means "wearisome," "tedious," "More disgusting than his own rent-roll.-Goldsmith.

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 Honorable 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.

3. 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 the latter ground, he states it as useless, and thinks it may be even dangerous, to enter into so extensive a field of inquiry. 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 narrowing 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.

4. Sir, When I cannot obey all his laws, I will do the best I can. I will endeavor to obey such of them as have the

4. At the same side.-Cornwall was a renegade from Lord Shelburne's party, and had spoken with effect on the side of the opposition in the debates on the American question.

5. Historical detail.-It is to this demand of Cornwall that we are indebted for the second part of this speech-the history of American taxation-one of the most interesting passages in English literature.

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 give me leave to say, either useless or dangerous. He asserts, that retrospect is not wise; and the proper, the only proper, subject of inquiry, is not how we got into this difficulty, but how we 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 errors, 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 Honorable Gentleman in his historical discussion, without the least management for men or measures, farther 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 Honorable Gentleman, in one part of his speech, has so strictly confined us.

6

5. He desires to know, whether, if we were to repeal this tax, agreeably to the proposition of the Honorable 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

6. Take post, etc,-To take their stand on it as an argument for future concessions,

subject. But I will do all that I can, and all that can be fairly demanded. To the experience which the Honorable 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!

6. 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 quarreled 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.

7. Of those two propositions I shall, before I have done, give such convincing 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 Honorable Gentleman who defends their measures is so much alarmed at. To their conduct I refer him for a conclusive answer to his 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 Honorable Gentleman's Ministerial friends on the new revenue itself.

7. Compose it.-There is reason to believe that the Colonies would not have made any opposition to duties imposed for the mere regulation of trade.

« AnteriorContinuar »