houfe, and to agree with the honourable gentleman on all the American queftions. My fentiments, I am fure, are well known to him; and I thought I had been perfectly acquainted with his. Though I find myself mistaken, he will ftill permit me to use the privilege of an old friendfhip, he will permit me to apply myself to the houfe under the fanction of his authority; and, on the various grounds he has measured out, to fubmit to you the poor opinions which I have formed, upon a matter of importance enough to demand the fulleft confideration I could bestow upon it.

He has stated to the houfe two grounds of de-. liberation; one narrow and fimple, and merely confined to the queftion on your paper: the ot or more large and more complicated; comprehend ing the whole series of the parliamentary proceedings with regard to America, their causes, and their confequences. With regard to the latter ground, he ftates it as ufelefs, and thinks it may be even dangerous, to enter into fo extenfive a field of inquiry. Yet, to my furprife, he had hardly laid down this reftrictive propofition, to which his authority would have given fo much weight, when directly, and with the fame authority, he condemns it; and declares it abfolutely neceffary to enter into the most ample hiftorical detail. His zeal has thrown him a little out of his ufual accuracy. In this perplexity what fhall we do, Sir, who are willing to fubmit to the law he gives us? He has re

probated

probated in one part of his fpeech 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 excurfion himself, as unbounded as the fubject 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 fuch of them as have the fanction of his example; and to ftick to that rule, which, though not confiftent with the other, is the moft rational. He was certainly in the right when he took the matter largely. I cannot prevail on myself to agree with him in his cenfure of his own conduct. It is not, he will give me leave to say, either useless or dangerous. He afferts, that retrospect is not wife; and the proper, the only proper, fubject 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 confult 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 eftablished amongft mankind. For, that fenfe and that reafon, I have always understood, abfolutely to prefcribe, whenever we are involved in difficulties from the measures we have purfued, that we fhould take a ftrict review of those measures, in order to correct our errours if they should be corrigible; or at least to avoid a dull uniformity in mifchief,

2

mifchief, and the unpitied calamity of being repeatedly caught in the fame fnare.

Sir, I will freely follow the honourable gentleman in his hiftorical difcuffion, without the leaft management for men or measures, further than as they shall seem to me to deferve it. But before I into that large confideration, because I would. omit nothing that can give the house fatisfaction, I wish to tread the narrow ground to which alone the honourable gentleman, in one part of his speech, has fo strictly confined us.

go

He defires to know, whether, if we were to repeal this tax, agreeably to the propofition of the honourable gentleman who made the motion, the Americans would not take poft on this conceffion, 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 fecurity on this fubject. 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 inftant, and reverts to in the next; to that experience, without the least wavering or hesitation on my part, I fteadily appeal; and would to God there was no other arbiter to decide on the vote with which the houfe is to conclude this day.

When parliament repealed the ftamp act in the VOL. II.

A a

year

year 1766, I affirm, firft, that the Americans did not in confequence of this measure call upon you to give up the former parliamentary revenue which fubfifted in that country; or even any one of the articles which compofe it. I affirm alfo, that when, departing from the maxims of that repeal, you revived the scheme of taxation, and thereby filled the minds of the colonifts with new jealoufy, and all forts of apprehenfions, then it was that they quarrelled with the old taxes, as well as the new; then it was, and not till then, that they queftioned all the parts of your legislative power; and by the battery of fuch questions have fhaken the folid ftructure of this empire to its deepeft foundations.

Of those two propofitions I fhall, before I have done, give fuch convincing, fuch 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 houfe. I fpeak with great confidence. I have reafon for it. The minifters are with me. They at leaft are convinced that the repeal of the ftamp act had not, and that no repeal can have, the confequences which the honourable gentleman who defends their measures is fo much alarmed at. To their conduct, I refer him for a conclufive anfwer to this objection. I carry my proof irresistibly into the very body of both miniftry and parliament; not on any general reafoning growing out of collateral matter, but on

the

the conduct of the honourable gentleman's minifterial friends on the new revenue itself.

The act of 1767, which grants this tea duty, fets forth in its preamble, that it was expedient to raife a revenue in America, for the fupport of the civil government there, as well as for purposes still more extenfive. To this fupport the act affigns fix branches of duties. About two years after this act paffed, the miniftry, I mean the present miniftry, thought it expedient to repeal five of the duties, and to leave (for reasons best known to themfelves) only the fixth ftanding. Suppose any perfon, at the time of that repeal, had thus addressed the minifter," Condemning, as you do, the repeal "of the stamp act, why do you venture to repeal "the duties upon glass, paper, and painters co"lours? Let your pretence for the repeal be what "it will, are you not thoroughly convinced, that

your conceffions will produce, not fatisfaction, "but infolence in the Americans; and that the giving up these taxes will neceffitate the giving up of all the reft?". This objection was as palpable then as it is now; and it was as good for preferving the five duties as for retaining the fixth. Besides, the minifter will recollect, that the repeal of the stamp act had but juft preceded his repeal; and the ill policy of that measure (had it been fo

* Lord North, then chancellor of the exchequer.