fome at another, just as they preffed, without any Do you forget that, in the very laft year, you verge verge of beggary and ruin. Such was your representation-such, in fome measure, was your cafe. The vent of ten millions of pounds of this commodity, now locked up by the operation of an injudicious tax, and rotting in the warehouses of the company, would have prevented all this diftrefs, and all that feries of desperate measures which you thought yourselves obliged to take in confequence of it. America would have furnished that vent, which no other part of the world can furnish but America; where tea is next to a neceffary of life; and where the demand grows upon the supply. I hope our dear-bought East India committees have done us at leaft fo much good, as to let us know, that without a more extenfive fale of that article our Eaft India revenues and acquifitions can have no certain connection with this country. It is through the American trade of tea that your Eaft India conquefts are to be prevented from crufhing you with their burthen. They are ponderous indeed; and they must have that great country to lean upon, or they tumble upon your head. It is the fame folly that has loft you at once the benefit of the weft and of the east. This folly has thrown open folding-doors to contraband; and will be the means of giving the profits of the trade of your colonies, to every nation but yourselves. Never did a people fuffer fo much for the empty words of a pre amble. amble. It must be given up. For on what principle does it stand? This famous revenue stands, at this hour, on all the debate, as a defcription of revenue not as yet known in all the comprehenfive (but too comprehenfive!) vocabulary of financea preambulary tax. It is indeed a tax of fophiftry, a tax of pedantry, a tax of disputation, a tax of war and rebellion, a tax for any thing but benefit to the impofers, or fatisfaction to the subject. Well! but whatever it is, gentlemen will force the colonifts to take the teas. You will force them? has seven years struggle been yet able to force them? O but it feems" we are in the right.—The tax is trifling-in effect it is rather an exoneration than an impofition; three-fourths of the duty for"merly payable on teas exported to America is taken off; the place of collection is only shifted; "instead of the retention of a fhilling from the "draw-back here, it is three-pence custom paid in "America." All this, Sir, is very true. But this is the very folly and mifchief of the act. Incredible as it may feem, you know that you have deliberately thrown away a large duty which you held fecure and quiet in your hands, for the vain hope of getting one three-fourths lefs, through every hazard, through certain litigation, and poffibly through war. The manner of proceeding in the duties on paper and glass impofed by the fame aft, was exactly in the the fame fpirit. There are heavy excifes on thofe articles when used in England. On export, these excifes are drawn back. But inftead of withholding the draw-back, which might have been done, with eafe, without charge, without poffibility of fmuggling; and inftead of applying the money (money already in your hands) according to your pleasure, you began your operations in finance by flinging away your revenue; you allowed the whole draw-back on export, and then you charged the duty (which you had before difcharged), payable in the colonies; where it was certain the collection would devour it to the bone; if any revenue were ever fuffered to be collected at all. One spirit pervades and animates the whole mafs. Could any thing be a fubject of more juft alarm to America, than to fee you go out of the plain high road of finance, and give up your moft certain revenues and your cleareft intereft, merely for the fake of infulting your colonies? No man ever doubted that the commodity of tea could bear an impofition of three-pence. But no commodity will bear three-pence, or will bear a penny, when the general feelings of men are irritated, and two millions of people are refolved not to pay. The feelings of the colonies were formerly the feelings of Great Britain. Theirs were formerly the feelings of Mr. Hampden when called upon for the payment of twenty fhillings. Would twenty " fhillings fhillings have ruined Mr. Hampden's fortune? No! but the payment of half twenty fhillings, on the principle it was demanded, would have made him a flave. It is the weight of that preamble, of which you are fo fond, and not the weight of the duty, that the Americans are unable and unwilling to bear. It is then, Sir, upon the principle of this measure, and nothing else, that we are at iffue. It is a principle of political expediency. Your act of 1767 afferts, that it is expedient to raise a revenue in America; your act of 1769, which takes away that revenue, contradicts the act of 1767; and, by fomething much stronger than words, afferts, that it is not expedient. It is a reflexion upon your wisdom to perfift in a folemn parliamentary declaration of the expediency of any object, for which, at the fame time, you make no fort of provifion. And pray, Sir, let not this circumftance escape you; it is very material; that the preamble of this act, which we wish to repeal, is not declaratory of right, as fome gentlemen feem to argue it; it is only a recital of the expediency of a certain exercife of a right fuppofed already to have been afferted; an exercife you are now contending for by ways and means, which you confefs, though they were obeyed, to be utterly infufficient for their purpofe. You are therefore at this moment in the aukward fituation of fighting for a phan tom; |