world, that state the numbers as high as we will whilst the dispute continues, the exaggeration ends. Whilst we are discussing any given magnitude, they are grown to it. Whilst we spend our time in deliberating on the mode of governing two millions, I have in my hand two accounts, one a comwe shall find we have millions more to manage parative state of the export trade of England to Your children do not grow faster from infancy to its colonies, as it stood in the year 1704, and as it manhood, than they spread from families to com-stood in the year 1772. The other a state of the munities, and from villages to nations. export trade of this country to its colonies alone,

somewhat different from his. There is, if I mistake not, a point of view from whence, if you will look at this subject, it is impossible that it should not make an impression upon you.

I put this consideration of the present and thes it stood in 1772, compared with the whole trade growing numbers in the front of our deliberation; of England to all parts of the world (the colonies because, sir, this consideration will make it evident included) in the year 1704. They are from good to a blunter discernment than yours, that no partial, vouchers; the latter period from the accounts on narrow, contracted, pinched, occasional system will your table, the earlier from an original manuscript be at all suitable to such an object. It will shew of Davenant, who first established the inspectoryou that it is not to be considered as one of those general's office, which has been ever since his "minima," which are out of the eye and considera ime so abundant a source of parliamentary information of the law; not a paltry excresence of the state; tion. not a mean dependant, who may be neglected with little damage, and provoked with little danger. It will prove that some degree of care and caution is required in the handling such an object; it will shew that you ought not, in reason, to trifle with so large a mass of the interests and feelings of the human race. You could at no time do so without guilt, and be assured you will not be able to do it long with impunity.

The export trade to the colonies consists of

three great branches The African, which terminat. ing almost wholly in the colonies, must be put to the account of their commerce, the West-Indian and the North American. All these are so inter. woven, that the attempt to separate them would tear to pieces the contexture of the whole; and, if not entirely destroy, would very much depreciate the value of all the parts. I therefore consider these three deno ninations to be, what in effect they are, one trade.

The trade to the colonies, taken on the export side, at the beginning of this century, that is, in the year 1704, stood thus:

Exports to North America and the West-
Indies,

But the population of this country, the great and growing population, though a very important consideration, will lose much of its weight if not com bined with other circumstances. The commerce of your colonies is out of all proportion beyond the numbers of the people. This ground of their commerce indeed has been trod some days ago, and with great ability, by a distinguished* person at To Africa, your bar. This gentleman, after thirty-five years -it is so long since he first appeared at the same place to plead for the commerce of Great Britain, has come again before you to plead the same cause, without any other effect of time than that, to the fire of imagination, and extent of erudition, which even then marked him as one of the first literary characters of his age, he has added a consummate knowledge in the commercial interest of his country, formed by a long course of en ightened and discriminating experience.

Sir, I should be inexcusable in coming after such a person with any detail, if a great part of the mem. bers, who now fill the house, had not the misfortuné to be absent when he appeared at your bar. Besides, sir, I propose to take the matter at periods of time

Mr. Glover.

£483 255 86,665

560,930

In the year 1772, which I take as a middle year
between the highest and the lowest of those lately
laid on your table, the accounts were as follows:
To North America, and the West-
Indies,
To Africa,

To which if you add the export trade to
and from Scotland, which had in 1704
no existence,

£4,791.734 866,398

364,000

6,022,132

From five hundred and odd thousands, it has grown to six millions; it has increased no less than twelvefold. This is the state of the colony trade,

as compared with i self at these two periods, with-jost fortunate men of his age, had opened to him in this century; and this is matter for meditation n vision, that when, in the fourth generation, the But this is not all. Examine my second account.hird prince of the house of Brunswick had sat See how the export trade to the colonies alone, in twelve-years on the throne of that nation, which 1772, stood in the other point of view, that is, as (by the happy issue of moderate and healing councompared to the whole trade of England, in 1704 cils) was to be made Great Britain, he should see The whole export trade of England, inis son, lord Chancellor of England, turn back the current of hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise him to an higher rank of peerage, whilst he enriched the family with a new one; if, amidst these 485,000 bright and happy scenes of domestic honor and prosperity, that angel should have drawn up the

cluding that to the colonies, in 1704, 6,509,000 Expert to the colonies alone, in 1772 6,024,000

Difference

The trade with America alone is now within less curtain, and unfolded the rising glories of his than £500,000 of being equal to what this great country, and whilst he was gazing with admiration commercial nation, Engiand, carried on at the on the then commercial grandeur of England, the beginning of this century with the whole world! genius should point out to him a little speck, scarce If I had taken the largest year of those on your visible in the mass of the national interest, a small table, it would rather have exceeded. But it will seminal principle, rather than a formed body, and be said, is not this American trade an unnatural should tell him-"young man, there is America, protuberance, that has drawn the juices from the which at this day serves for little more than to rest of the body? The reverse. It is the very amuse you with stories of savage men, and uncouth food that has nourished every other part into its manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, shew present magnitude. Our general trade has been itself equal to the whole of that commerce which greatly augmented; and augmented more or less now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever in almost every part to which it ever extended; England has heen growing to by a progressive inbut with this material difference, that of the six crease of improvements, brought in by variety of millions which, in the beginning of the century, people, by succession of civilizing conquests and constituted the whole mass of our export com-civilizing set lements in a series of seventeen merce, the colony trade was but one twelfth part; hundred years, you shall see as much added to her it is now (as a part of seventeen millions) considera- by America, in the course of a single life!" If this bly more than a third of the whole. This is be relative proportion of the importance of the colonies at these two periods; and all reason concerning our mode of treating them must have this proportion as its basis, or it is a reasoning weak, rotten, and sophistical.

man.

state of his country had been foretold to him, would it not require all the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm, to make him believe it?-Fortunate man, he has lived to see it! Fortunate indeed, if he lives to see nothing that shall vary the prospect, and cloud the setting of his day!

Excuse me, sir, if turning from such thoughts I resume this comparative view once more. You have seen it on a large scale; look at it on a small one. I will point out to your attention a particular istance of it in the single province of Pennsylvania. In the year 1704 that province called for £11,459 This was the whole. What did it demand in 1772? in value of your commodities, native and foreign. Why, nearly fifty times as much, for in that year the export to Pennsylvania was £507,909 nearly equal to the export to all the colonies together in the first period.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot prevail upon myself to hurry over this great consideration. It is good for us to be here. We stand where we have an immense view of what is, and what is past. Clouds indeed, and darkness rest upon the future. Let us, however, before we descend from this noble eminence, reflect that this growth of our national prosperity has happened within the short period of the life of It has happened within sixty-eight years. There are those alive, whose memory might touch the two extremities! For instance, my lord Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress. He was, in 1704, of an age at least to be made to comprehend such things; he was then old enough, acta parentum jam legere, et quæ sit proterit cognosore I choose, sir, to enter into these minute and par virtus. Suppose, sir, that the angel of this auspicious ticular details; because generalities, which in all youth, foreseeing the many virtues, which made other cases are apt to highten and raise the subject, him one of the most amiable, as he is one of the nave here a tendency to sinks it. When we speak

of the commerce with our colonies, fic ion lags than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We after truth; invention is unfruitful; and imagination know that whilst some of them draw the line and cold and barren.

So far, sir, as to the importance of the object in the view of its commerce, as concerned in the exports from England. If I were to detail the im ports, I could shew how many enjoyments they procure which deceive the burthen of life; how many materials which invigorate the springs of national industry, and extend and animate every part of our foreign and domestic commerce. This would be a curious subject indeed; but I must prescribe bounds to myself in a matter so vast and various.

strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue the gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries; no climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance

of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dextrous and firm sagacity of English enterprize, ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people; a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. When I contemplate these I pass, therefore, to the colonies in another point things; when I know that the colonies in general owe of view—their agriculture. This they have pro-little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they secuted with such a spirit, that, besides feeding are not squeezed into this happy form by the plentifully their own growing multitude, their constraints of watchful and suspicious government, annual export of grain, comprehending rice, has but that, through a wise and salutary neglect, a some years ago exceeded a million in value; of their generous nature has been suffered to take her own last harvest, I am persuaded they will export much way to perfection; when I reflect upon these efforts, more. At the beginning of the century some of when I see how profitable they have been to us, [ these colonies imported corn from the mother feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption country. For some time past the oid world has in the wisdom of human contrivances melt, and die been fed from the new. The scarcity which you away within me. My rigour relents. I pardon have felt would have been a desolating famine, if something to the spirit of liberty. this child of your old age, with a true filial piety, with a Roman charity, had not put the full breast of its youthful exuberance to the mouth of its exhausted parent.

I am sensible, sir, that all which I have asserted in my detail, is admitted in the gross; but that quite a different conclusion is drawn from it. America, gentlemen, I say is a noble object. It is an object As to the wealth which the colonies have drawn well worth fighting for. Certainly it is, if fighting from the sea by their fisheries, you had all that a people be the best way of gaining them; gentlematter fully opened at your bar; you surely thought men, in this respect, will be led to their choice of those acquisitions, for they seemed even to excite means by their complexions and their habits. Those your envy; and yet the spirit, by which that enter- who understand the military art, will of course have some predilection for it. Those who wield the prizing employment has been exercised, ought rather, in my opinion, to have raised your esteem thunder of the state, may have more confidence in and admiration. And pray, sir, what in the world the efficacy of arms. But I confess, possibly for is equal to it? Pass by the other parts, and look want of this knowledge, my opinion is much more at the manner in which the people of New England in favor of prudent management than of force; conhave of late carried on the whale fishery. Whilst sidering force not as an odious, but a feeble instruwe follow them among the tumbling mountains of ment, for preserving a people, so numerous, so`acice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest tive, so growing, so spirited as this, in a profitable frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits, and subordinate connexion with us. whilst we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold; that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the south. Falkland island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting place My next object is its uncertainty; terror is not in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor always the effect of force; and an armament is not is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them la victory. If you do not succeed, you are without

First, sir, permit me to observe that the use of force alone is but temporary; it may subdue for a moment, but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.

resource; for, conciliation failing, force remains:[ directions which this spirit takes, it will not be but, force failing, no further hope of reconciliation amiss to lay open somewhat more largely.

is left. Power and authority are sometimes bough by kindness; but they can never be begged as alms by an impoverished and defeated violence.

First, the people of the colonies are descendents of Englishmen. England, sir, is a nation which sill I hope respects, and formerly adored her

A farther objection to force is, that you impair the freedom. The colonists emigrated from you, when object by your very endeavors to preserve it. The this part of your character was most predominant; thing you fought for, is not the thing which you re- and they took this bias and direction the moment cover; but depreciated, sunk, wasted, and consum- they parted from your hands. They are therefore ed in the contest. Nothing less will content me not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty accord. than whole America. I do not choose to consume ing to English ideas, and on English principles. its strength along with our own, because in all Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is parts it is the British strength that I consume. 1 not be found Liberty inheres in some sensible obdo not choose to be caught by a foreign enemy at ject; and every nation has formed to itself some the end of this exhausting conflict; and still less favorite point which by way of eminence becomes in the midst of it. I may escape, but I can make the criterion of their happiness. It happened, you no insurance against such an event. Let me add, know, sir, that the great contests for freedom in that I do not choose wholly to break the Amerithis country were from the earliest times chiefly can spirit, because it is the spirit that has made the upon the question of taxing. Most of the contests

country.

Lastly, we have no sort of experience in favor of force as an instrument in the rule of our colonies Their growth and their utility has been owing to methods altogether different. Our ancient indul gence has been said to be pursued to a fault. I may be so. But we know, if feeling is evidence, that our fault was more tolerable than our attempt to mend it, and our sin far more salutary than our penitence.

in the ancient commonweal hs turned primarily on the right of election of magistrates; or on the balance among the several orders of the state. The question of money was not with them so immediate. But in England it was otherwise, on this point of taxes, the ablest pens, and most eloquent longues have been exercised; the greatest spirits have acted and suffered.

In order to give the fullest satisfaction concerning the importance of this point, it was not only necessary for those, who in argument defended the These, sir, are my reasons for not entertaining excellence of the English constitution, to insist on that high opinion of untried force, by which many bis privilege of granting money as a dry point of gentlemen, for whose sentiments in other particulars fact, and to prove that the right had been acknow. I have great respect, seem to be so greatly captivat-ledged in ancient parchments and blind usages, to ed. But there is still behind a third consideration reside in a certain body called an house of com. concerning this object, which serves to determine mons. They went much further; they attempted my opinion on the sort of policy which ought to be to prove, and they succeeded, that in theory it pursued in the management of America, even more than its population and its commerce, I mean its temper and character.

ought to be so from the particular nature of a house of commons, as an immediate representa tive of the people, whether the old records had delivered this oracle or not. They took infinite In this character of the Americans a love of free pains to inculcate, as a fundamental principle, that dom is the predominating feature, which marks and in all monarchies the people must in effect them. distinguishes the whole; and as an ardent is always selves mediately or immediately posses the power a jealous affection, your colonies become suspicious, of granting their own money, or no shadow of li restive, and untractable, whenever they see the least berty could subsist. The colonies draw from you, attempt to wrest from them by force, or shuffle as with their life blood, these ideas and principles. from them by chicane, what they think the only Their love of liberty, as with you, fixed and attached advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of on this specific point of taxing. Liberty might be liberty is stronger in the English colonies probably safe, or might be endangered in twenty other parthan in any other people of the earth, and this from ticulars, without their being much pleased or a great variety of powerful causes; which, to under alarmed. Here they felt its pulse; and as they stand the true temper of their minds, and the found that beat, they thought themselves sick er

.

sound. I do not say whether they were right or spirit of liberty, is predominant in most of the wrong in applying your general arguments to their northern provinces; where the church of England, own case. It is not easy indeed to make a monopoly notwithstanding its legal rights, is in reality no of theorems and corollaries. The fact is, that they more than a sort of private sect; not composing did thus apply those general arguments; and your most probably the tenth of the people. The colonists mode of governing them, whether through lenity left England when this spirit was high: and in the or indolence, through wisdom or mistake, confirm them in the imagination that they, as well as you, had an interest in these common principles.

emigrants was the highest of all, and even that strain of foreigners, which has been constantly flowing into these colonies, has for the greatest part, been composed of dissenters from the establishments of their several countries; and have brought with them a temper and character far from alien to that of a people with whom they mixed.

They were further confirmed in this pleasing error by the form of 'their provincial legislative assemblies. Their governments are popular in an high degree, some are merely popular; in all, the Popular representative is the most weighty; and Sir, I can perceive, by their manner, that some this share of the people in their ordinary govern- gentleman object to the latitude of this description: ment never fails to inspire them with lofty senti- because in the southern colonies the church of Engments, and with a strong aversion from whatever land forms a large body, and has a regular establishtends to deprive them of their chief importance.

ment. It is certainly true. There is, however, a circumstance attending these colonies, which in my opinion, fully counterbalances this difference, and makes the spirit of liberty still more high and haughty than in those to the northward. It is that in Virginia and the Carolinas, they have a vast

If any thing were wanting to this necessary operation of the form of government, religion would have given it a complete effect. Religion, always a prin ciple of energy, in this new people, is no way worn out or impaired; and their mode of professing it is multitude of slaves. Where this is the case in any also one main cause of this free spirit. The people are protestants; and of that kind which is the most averse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion.

part of the world, those who are free, are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing there that freedom, as in countries where it is a common blessing, and as broad and general as the air, may be united with much abject toil, with great misery, with all the exterior of servitude, liberty looks amongst them like something that is more noble and liberal. I do not mean, sir, to commend the superior morality of this sentiment, which has at least as much pride as virtue in it, but I cannot alter the nature of man. The fact is so, and these people of the southern colonies are much more strongly, and with an higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty than those of the northward. Such were all the ancient commonwealths; such were our Gothic ancestors; such in our days were the Poles; and such will be all masters of slaves, who are not slaves themselves. In such a people the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible.

This is a persuasion not only favorable to liberty but built upon it. I do not think, sir, that the reason of this averseness in the dissenting churches, from all that looks like absolu e government, is so much to be sought in their religious tenets, as in their history. Every one knows, that the Roman Catholic religion is at least coeval with most of the governments where it prevails; that it has generally gope hand in hand with them, and received great favor and every kind of support from authority. The church of England too was formed from her cradle under the nursing care of regular govern. ment. But the dissenting interests have sprung up in direct opposition to all the ordinary powers of the world; and could justify that opposition only on a strong claim to natural liberty. Their very existence depended on the powerful and unremitted assertion of that claim. All Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in To impoverish the colonies in general, and in our northern colonies, is a refinement on the prin- particular to arrest the noble course of their marine ciple of resistance, it is the diffidence of dissent; enterprizes, would be a more easy task, I freely and the protestantism of the protestant religion. confess it. We have shewn a disposition even to This religion, under a variety of denominations, continue the restraint after the offence, looking agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the on ourselves as rivals to our colonies, and persuad