diftinction, which is as nothing with regard to right, is of moft weighty confideration in practice. Recover your old ground, and your old tranquillity try it-I am perfuaded the Americans will compromise with you. When confidence is once

reftored, the odious and fufpicious fummum jus will perish of courfe. The spirit of practicability, of moderation, and mutual convenience, will never call in geometrical exactness as the arbitrator of an amicable fettlement. Confult and follow your experience. Let not the long ftory with which I have exercised your patience, prove fruitless to your interefts.

*

For my part, I fhould choose (if I could have my wifh) that the propofition of the honourable gentleman for the repeal, could go to America without the attendance of the penal bills. Alone I could almoft anfwer for its fuccefs. I cannot be certain of its reception in the bad company it may keep. In fuch heterogeneous affortments, the most innocent perfon will lofe the effect of his innocency. Though you fhould fend out this angel of peace, yet you are sending out a destroying angel and what would be the effect of the conflict of these two adverfe fpirits, or which would predominate in the end, is what I dare not fay; whether the lenient measures would cause American paffion to fubfide, or the fevere would increase

too;

Mr. Fuller.

its

its fury-All this is in the hand of Providence yet now, even now, I fhould confide in the prevailing virtue, and efficacious operation of lenity, though working in darkness, and in chaos, in the midft of all this unnatural and turbid combination. I should hope it might produce order and beauty in the end.

Let us, Sir, embrace fome fyftem or other before we end this feffion. Do you mean 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 fomething to fight for. If you murderrob; if you kill, take poffeffion: and do not appear in the character of madmen, as well as affaffins, violent, vindictive, bloody, and tyrannical, without an object. But may better counfels guide you!

Again, and again, revert to your old principlesfeek peace and enfue it-leave America, if fhe has taxable matter in her, to tax herself. I am not here going into the diftinctions of rights, nor attempting to mark their boundaries. I do not enter into thefe metaphyfical diftinctions; I hate the very found of them. Leave the Americans as they anciently stood, and these distinctions, born of our unhappy conteft, 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 fides, be extinguished for ever. Be content to bind America by laws of trade; you have always done it. Let this be your reafon for binding their trade. Do not burthen them by taxes; you were not ufed to do fo from the beginning. Let this be your reafon for not taxing. These are the arguments of states and kingdoms. Leave the reft to the fchools; for there only they may be difcuffed with fafety. But if, intemperately, unwifely, fatally, you sophisticate and poifon the very fource of government, by urging fubtle deductions, and confequences odious to thofe you govern, from the unlimited and illimitable nature of fupreme fovereignty, you will teach them by thefe means to call that fovereignty itself in queftion. When you drive him hard, the boar will furely turn upon the hunters. If that fovereignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they take? They will caft your fovereignty in your face. No body will be argued into flavery. Sir, let the gentlemen on the other fide call forth all their ability; let the beft of them get up, and tell me, what one character of liberty the Americans have, and what one brand of flavery 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 fame time are made pack-horfes of every tax you choose to impofe, without the least share in granting them. When they bear the burthens VOL. II. Ff

of

of unlimited monopoly, will you bring them to bear the burthens of unlimited revenue too? The Englishman in America will feel that this is flavery that it is legal flavery, will be no compenfation, either to his feelings or his understanding.

66

A noble lord *, who spoke some time ago, is full of the fire of ingenuous youth; and when he has modelled the ideas of a lively imagination by further experience, he will be an ornament to his country in either houfe. He has faid, that the Americans are our children, and how can they revolt against their parent? He says, that if they are not free in their present state, England is not free; because Manchester, and other confiderable places, are not reprefented. So then, because fome towns in England are not reprefented, America is to have no reprefentative at all. They are our chil"dren;" but when children afk for bread, we are not to give a stone. Is it because the natural refiftance of things, and the various mutations of time, hinders our government, or any fcheme of government, from being any more than a fort of approximation to the right, is it therefore that the colonies are to recede from it infinitely? When this child of ours wishes to affimilate to its parent, and to reflect with a true filial refemblance the beauteous countenance of British liberty; are we to turn to them the fhameful parts of our confti

* Lord Carmarthen.

tution?

tution? are we to give them our weakness for their ftrength; our opprobrium for their glory; and the flough of flavery, which we are not able to work off, to ferve them for their freedom?

If this be the cafe, aík yourfelves this question, Will they be content in such a state of flavery? If not, look to the confequences. Reflect how you are to govern a people, who think they ought to be free, and think they are not. Your fcheme yields no revenue; it yields nothing but difcontent, diforder, difobedience; and fuch is the state of America, that after wading up to your eyes blood, you could only end just where you begun; that is, to tax where no revenue is to be found, to-my voice fails me; my inclination indeed carries me no further—all is confusion beyond it.

in

Well, Sir, I have recovered a little, and before I fit down I muft fay fomething to another point with which gentlemen urge us. What is to become of the declaratory act afferting the entireness of British legislative authority, if we abandon the practice of taxation?

For

my part I look upon the rights stated in that act, exactly in the manner in which I viewed them on its very firft propofition, and which I have often taken the liberty, with great humility, to lay before you. I look, I fay, on the imperial rights of Great Britain, and the privileges which the colonifts ought to enjoy under thefe rights, to be just the most reconcileable things in the world. The