402 Speech of Edmund Burke, Efq; communication of English liberties. I do not fee that the fame principles might not be carried into twenty Iflands, and with the fame good effect. This is my model with regard to America, as far as the internal circumftances of the two countries are the fame. I know no other unity of this empire, than I can draw from its example during thefe periods, when it feemed to my poor understanding more united than it is now, or than it is likely to be by prefent methods. But fince I fpeak of thefe methods, I recollect, Mr. Speaker, almoft too late, that I promifed, before I finished, to fay fomething of the propofition of the Noble Lord on the floor, which has been foely received, and ftands on your Journals. I must be deeply concerned, whenever it is my misfortune to continue a difference with the majority of this houfe. But as the reafons for that difference are my apology for thus troubling you, furter me to tate them in a very few words. I fhall comprefs them into as fmall a body as I poflibly can, having already debated that matter at large, when the question was before the committtee. First, then, I cannot admit that propofition of a ranfom by auction;-because it is a meer projet. It is a thing he; unheard of; fupported by no experience; juftified by no analogy; without example of our ancestors, or root in the conftitution. It is neither regular parliamentary taxation, nor Colony grant. Experimentum in corpore vili, is a good rule, which will never make me adverfe to any trial of experiments on what i certainly the most valuable of all fubjects; the peace of this Empire. Secondly, it is an experiment which muit be fatal in the end to our conftitution. For what is it but a scheme for taxing the Colonies in the anti-chamber of the Noble Lord and his fucceffors? To fettle the quotas and proportions in this houfe, is clearly impoffible. Sir, may flatter yourself, you fall fit a You, flate auctioneer with a hammer in your hand, and knock down to each Colony as it bids. But to fettle (on the plan laid down by the Noble Lord) the trye proportional payment for four or five and twenty governments, according to the abfolute and the relative wealth of each, and according to the British proportion of wealth and burden, is a wild and chimerical notion. This new taxation muit therefore come in by the back-door NOT E. Lord North. July, of the conftitution. Each quota must be brought to this houfe ready formed; you gitter it. You can do nothing further. For can neither add nor alter. You must rether before or after the propofition? You on what grounds can you deliberate eicannot hear the counsel for all thefe Provinces, quarrelling each on its own quantity of payment, and its proportion to others. If you fhould attempt it, the committee of Provincial ways and means, to be called, muit fwallow up all the time or by whatever other name it will delight of Parliament. to the complaint of the Colonies. They Thirdly, it does not give fatisfaction complain, that they are taxed without their confent; you anfwer, that you will fix the fum at which they shall be taxed, That is, you give them the very grievance for the remedy. that you will leave the mode to themfelves. You tell them indeed, I really beg pardon: It gives me pain that you will not perform this part of the to mention it, but you must be sensible con past. For, fuppofe the Colonies were to lay the duties which furnished their Contingent, upon the importation of your manufactures; you know you would know too, that you would not suffer manever fulfer fuch a tax to be laid. You ny other modes of taxation. So that, when you come to explain yourle!f, it will be found, that you will neither leave to themselves the quantum nor the mode; nor indeed any thing. The whole is delufion from one end to the other. auction, unless it be univerfally accepted, Fourthly, this method of ranfom by will plunge you into great and inextricable difficulties. In what year of our Lord fettled? To fay nothing of the impoffibiare the proportions of payments to be lit that Colony agents fhould have general powers of taxing the Colonies at their difcretion; confider, I implore you, that the communication by special meffages, and orders, between thefe agents and their conftituents, on each variation of tend together, and to difpute on their the cafe, when the parties come to conrelative proportions, will be a matter of delay, perplexity, and confusion, that never can have an end. the outcry, what is the condition of thofe If all the Colonies do not appear at affemblies, who offer, by themselves or their agents, to tax themselves up to your ideas of their proportion? The refractory Colonies, who refufe all compofition, will remain taxed only to your old impofitions; which, however grievous in principle, are trifling as to production. The obedient obedient colonies in this fcheme are heavily taxed; the refractory remain unbordened. What will you do; Will you lay new and heavier taxes by Parliament on the difobedient? Pray confider in what way you can do it? You are perfectly convinced that in the way of taxing, you can do nothing but at the ports. Now fuppofe it is Virginia that refuses to appear at your auction, while Maryland and North Carolina bid handsomely for their ranfom, and are taxed to your quota? How will you put the Colonies on a par? Will you tax the tobacco of Virginia? If you do, you give its death-wound to your English revenue at home, and to one of the very greatest articles of your own foreign trade. If you tax the import of that rebellious Colony, what do you tax but your own manufactures, or the goods of fome other obedient, and already well taxed-Colony? Who has faid one word on this labyrinth of detail, which bewilders you more and more as you enter into it? Who has prefented, who can prefent you, with a clue, to lead you out of it? I think, Sir, it is impoffible, that you fhould not recollect that the Colony bounds are fo implicated in one another (you know it by your other experiments in the Bill for prohibiting the New England fifheTy) that you can lay no poffible reftraints on almost any of them which may not be prefently eluded, if you do not confound the innocent with the guilty, and burden those whom, upon every principle, you ought to exonerate. He must be grofsly ignorant of America, who thinks, that, without falling into this confufion of all rules of equity and policy, you can reftrain any fingle Colony, efpecially Virginia and Maryland, the central, and molt important of them all. Let it alfo be confidered, that, either in the prefent confufion you fettle a permanent contingent, which will and muft betriffing; and then you have no effectual revenue or you change the quota atevery exigency; and then on every new repartition you will have a new quarrel. Reflect befides, that when you have fixed a quota for every Colony, you have not provided for prompt and punctual payment. Suppofe one, two, five, ten years arrears. You cannot iffue a treafury extent against the failing Colony. You must make new Bolton port bills, new reftraining laws, new acts for dragging men to England for trial. You must fend out new fleets, new armies. All is to begin again. From this day forward the Empire is never to know an hour's tranquility. An inteftir fre will be kept alive in the bowels of the Colonies, which one time or other must confume this whole empire. I allow indeed that the empire of Germany raises her revenue and her troops by quotas and contingents; but the revenue of the empire, and the army of the empire, is the worst revenue, and the worst army, in the world. Inttead of a standing revenue, you will therefore have a perpetual quarrel. Indeed the Noble Lord, who propofed this project of a raufom by auction, feemed himself to be of that opinion. His project was rather defigned for breaking the union of the Colonies, than for eftablishing a revenue. He confeffed, he apprehended that this propofal would not be to their tafe. I fay, this fcheme of difunion feems to be at the bottom of the project; for I will not fufpect that the noble Lord meant nothing but merely to delude the nation by an early phantom which he never intended to realize. But whatever his views may be; as I propose the peace and union of the Colonies as the very foundation of my plan, it cannot accord with one whofe foundation is perpetual discord. Compare the two. This I offer to give to you is plain and fimple. The other full of perplexed and intricate mazes. This is mild; that harfh. This is found by experience effectual for its purposes; the other is a new project. This is univerfal; the other calculated for certain Colonies only. This is immediate in its conciliatory operation; the other remote. contingent, full of hazard. Mine is what becomes the dignity of a ruling people, gratuitous, unconditional, and not held out as a matter of bargain and fale. I have done my duty in propofing it to you, I have indeed tired you by a long dif courfe; but this is the misfortune of those to whofe influence nothing will be conceded, and who muft win every inch of their ground by argument. You have heard me with good nefs. May you decide with wifdom! For my part, I feel my mind greatly difburdened, by what I have done to-day. I have been the lefs fearful of trying your patience, because on this fubject I mean to fpare it altogether in future. I have this comfort, that in every stage of the American Affairs, I have steadily opposed the measures that have produced the confufion, and may bring on the deftruction, of this empire. I now go fo far as to rifk a proposal of my own. If I cannot give peace to my country; I give it to my confcience. But what (fays the Financier) is a peace to us without moner? Your plan gives us no revenue. No! But it does-For it fecures to the fubject the power of REFUSAL; the first of all revenues. Experience is a cheat, and fact a liar, if this power in the subject of proportioning his grant, or of not granting at all, has not been found the richeft mine of revenue ever discovered by the fkill or by the fortune of man. It does not indeed vote you £152,730: 11: 2 three fourths, nor any paltry limited fum.-But it gives the ftrong box itself, the fund, the bank, from whence only revenues can arise amongst a people sensible of freedom. Pofita luditur arca. Cannot you in England; cannot you at this time of day; cannot you, an Houfe of Commons, truft to the principle which has raised fo mighty a revenue, and accumulated a debt of near 140 millions in this country? Is this principle to be true in England, and falfe every where elfe? Is it not true in Ireland? Has it not hitherto been true in the Colonies? Why fhould you prefume that, in any country, a body duly conftituted for any function, will neglect to perform its duty, and abdicate its truft? Such a prefumption will go against all government in all modes. But in truth, this dread of penury of fupply, from a free affembly, has no foundation in nature. For first observe, that, befides the defire which all men have naturally of fupporting the honour of their own government; that fenfe of dignity, and that fecurity to property, which ever attends freedom, has a tendency to increase the flock of the free community. Moit may be taken where moft is accumulated. And what is the foil or climate where experience has not uniformly proved, that the voluntary flow of heaped-up plenty, bursting from the weight of its own rich luxuriance, has ever run with a more copious fiream of revenue, than could be fqueezed from the dry husks of oppreffed indigence, by the ftraining of all the politick machinery in the world. Next we know, that parties muft ever exift in a free country. We know too, that the emulations of such parties, their contractions, their reciprocal neceffities, their hopes, and their fears, muft fend them all in their turns to him that holds the balance of the ftate. The parties are the Gamefters; but Government keeps the table, and is fure to be the winner in the end. When this game is played, I really think it is more to be feared, that the people will be exhaufted, than that Government will not be fupplied. Whereas whatever is got by acts of abfolute power ill obeyed, becaufe odious, or by Contract ill kept, because conftrained, will be narrow, feeble, uncertain, and precarious. Eafe would retra& vows made in pain, as violent and void.” I, for one, proteft against compounding our demands: I declare against compounding, for a poor limited fum, the immenfe, ever-growing, eternal Debt, which is due to generous Government from protected Freedom. And fo may I fpeed in the great object I propose to you, as I think it would not only be an act of injustice, but would be the worst œconomy in the world, to compel the Colonies to a fum certain, either in the way of ranfom, or in the way of compulfory compact. But to clear up my ideas on this fubjet-a revenue from America transmitted hither-do not delude yourselves-you never can receive it-No, not a fhilling. We have experience that from remote countries it is not to be expected. If, when you attempted to extract revenue from Bengal, you were obliged to return in loan what you had taken in impofition; what can you expect from North-America for certainly, if ever there was a country qualified to produce wealth, it is Ind; or an inftitution fit for the tranfmiffion, it is the Eaft-India company. America has none of these aptitudes. If America gives you taxable objects, on which you lay your duties here, and gives you, at the fame time, a furplus by a foreign fale of her commodities to pay the duties on these objects which you tax at home, he has performed her part to the British revenue. But with regard to her own internal establishments: the may, I doubt not fhe will, contribute in moderation. I fay in moderation; for the ought not to be permitted to exhaust herfelf. She ought to be referved to a war; the weight of which, with the enemies we are most likely to have, must be confiderable in her quarter of the globe. There she may ferve you, and serve you effentially. For that fervice, for all fervice, whether of revenue, trade, or empire, my truft is in her intereft in the British conftitution. My hold of the Colonies is in the clofe affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from fimilar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties, which, though light as air, are as ftrong as links of iron. Let the Colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights affociated with your government; they will cling and grapple to you; and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood, that your Government Government may be one thing, and their Privileges another; that these two things may exist without any mutual relation; the cement is gone; the cohesion is loofened; and every thing haftens to decay and diffolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep the fovereign authority of this country as the fanctuary of liberty, the facred temple confecrated to our common faith, wherever the chofen race and fons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have; the more ardent ly they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have any where. It is a weed that grows in every foil. They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Pruffia. But until you become loft to all feeling of your true intereft and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from_tuation, and glow with zeal to fill our none but you. This is the commodity of price, of which you have the monopoly. This is the true act of navigation, which binds to you the commerce of the Colonies, and through them secures to you the wealth of the world. Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that fole bond, which originally made, and must still preserve, the unity of the empire. Do not entertain fo weak an imagination, as that your regifters and your bonds, your affidavits and your fufferances, your cockets and your clearances, are what form the great fecurities of your commerce. Do not dream that your letters of office, and your inftructions, and your fufpending clauses, are the things that hold together the great contexture of this myfterious whole. These things do not make your government. Dead inftruments, paffive tools as they are, it is the fpirit of English communion that gives all their life and efficacy to them. It is the fpirit of the English conftitution, which, infufed through the mighty mafs, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies, every part of the empire, even down to the minutest member. into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber. All this, I know well enough, will found wild and chimerical to the profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians, who have no place among us; a fort of people who think that nothing exifts but what is grofs and material; and who therefore, far from being qualified to be directors of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the machine. But to men truly initiated and rightly taught, these ruling and mafter principles, which, in the opinion of fuch men as I have mentioned, have no substantial exittence, are in truth every thing, and all in all. Magnanimity in politicks is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds' go ill together. If we are confcious of our fi Is it not the fame virtue that does every thing for us here in England? Do you imagine then, that it is the land tax act which raifes your revenue? that it is the annual vote in the committee of fupply, which gives you your army? or that it is the Mutiny Bill which infpires it with bravery and difcipline? Noi furely no! It is the love of the people; it is their attachment to their government, from the fenfe of the deep ftake they have in fuch a glorious inftitution, which gives you your army and your navy, and infufes place as becomes our station and ourselves, we ought to aufpicate all our public proceedings on America, with the old warning of the church, Surfum corda! We ought to elevate our minds to the greatnefs of that trust to which the order of Prividence has called us. By adverting to the dignity of this high calling, our anceftors have turned a favage wilderness into a glorious empire; and have made the moit extenfive, and the only honourable conquefts; not by deftroying, but by promoting, the wealth, the number, the happiness, of the human race. Let us get an American revenue as we have got an American empire. English privileges have made it all that it is; English privileges alone will make it all it can be. În full confidence of this unalterable truth, I now (quod felix fauftumque fit)-lay the firft ftone of the Temple of Peace; and I move you, "That the Colonies and Plantations of Great-Britain in North-America, confifting of Fourteen separate governments, and containing Two-Millions and upwards of free inhabitants, have not had the liberty and privilege of electing and fending any Knights and Burgeles, or others, to represent them in the bigh Court of Parliament." Upon this refolution, the previous queftion was put, and carried-for the previous question 270, against it 78. The Progrefs of Love. Continued from page 331 of our laft. M extravagancies-But as any attempt to defcribe the emotions of thefe two lovers in their ftate of feparation would be fruitless, I fhall only present TODESTUS now acted a thousand the the letters that paffed between the during that time. They knew beft how to paint their own feelings. To SOPHIA. "O Sophia! how fhail I exprefs the anguifh of my heart-1 knew not the extent of my felicity till I was deprived of it. Our delights were fuperior to the conceptions of vulgar fouls-greater were fiill in view; but, fhould we ever meet again, what, O what would they be! "Ah! let me avoid the dangerous illufion-let me no more be deceived. The fharpeft pang which now I feel is pleasure to the agony of difappointment. O Sophia, reason had almott left her feat! -I was on the borders of diftraction, Torturing change!-from the height of blissful expectation, to be plunged in the abyfs of defpair! It has made me an infidel. Though hope fhould pour around me the fplendors of noon-day, I would not credit the deceiver. Away, ye idle dreams! ye Platonic vifions hence! I will not believe, till the blood rushing from the bottom of my heart, tells me it is not a cheat-tells me Sophia fills my arms, Alas, my very reafonings betray me! -while exploding illufion, I am a dupe to its influence!-abandoned by hope, I am a prey to imagination! But my mind is difordered, and impatient of relief, miftakes an opiate for a cure. I wait with anxiety for the accustomed hour, the delicious moments of love!-I repair to the place, where firft my Sophia was kind-I blefs the grove, and I kifs the tree; vet thefe only ferve to increase the grief that afflicts my heart. 46 66 But, ah Sophia! it is not abfence alone that distracts me. The fquire ftill haunts my foul-haunts me even in fleep. Be not afraid, my angel, I am not jealous-I know thy heart too well to be capable of a doubt. But, though I cannot doubt thy affection, I have all the folicitude of a lover.-Should the ruftic trifle with thy beauties-fhould he--Pardon me, Sophia, I am fubject to a thoufand weakneffes, that love can only excufe-fhould he attempt to touch thy bofom, may lightning blaft the impicus hand-Smile not at his rude jocularity. It is treason to love. A look of complacency would put me mad. "O Sophia, bear with my foibles! they fpring from a noble fource. Pity me, my angel! and let me know, if the cup of comfort contains one drop, to relieve the mind of your affectionate-but afflicted Modeftus." From SOPHIA. to clear-we shall yet be happy. From Mrs. Trufty's behaviour I learn, that the fole aim of this vifit is to remove my averfion to the fquire. Our intercourse is still undiscovered. But, alast it is cruelly in terrupted. "O Modeftus, furely there is magic in love!-No fooner had I read your let ter than I found myfelf infected with all your diftrefs. Oh, infuperable load !--Was not my fituation fufficiently wretched before?-Torn from the man I loveexpofed to the importunities of him I hate-without a counsellor, without a friend, to whom I can unburden my forrowful heart -My lover become my tormentor !-Ah, Modeftus, why will you kill me with your anxieties?-You do not doubt my affection-why then doubt my difcretion -Do not mile. Alas, Modeftus! gaiety is not the prevailing humour of my mind. I am but too much a prey to melancholy. Yet I must feem chearful, and fmile when it would be a pleafure to weep. This is a distress to which you are a firanger, and one of the most painful fituations in life. While the features fympathize with the heart, there is pleafure even in forrow; but, O the filent anguish, of the heart that feels, yet muft not complain! "Love, Modestus, has made me a hypocrite-my heart is veiled to all but you; and it is for you that I veil it. Are you satisfied?—is your anxious mind at reft ?-Without this deceit I fhould never elude the eye of fufpicion-conjecture would fupply the place of evidence:I fhould never behold my Modestus, never more the partner of my foul !-my life would be confumed in grief-I fhould fall, like a withered flower. "But to whom do I bare my heart?To him from whom it should be doubly veiled. To the man who is already but too much favoured-who alone can accomplish my ruin: Though I long to return-though I languish here-ah, Modeflus, I dread the event!-Iain alarmed at a paffion that knows no boundsI am diffident of my own firength. Spare, dear youth ! fpare the virtue of your Sophia." To SOPHIA, "We fhall yet be bapty-But when, my angel! when thall the blissful moment arrive-Stretch me not again on the rack of expectation-let thy lips, not thy pen, announce my felicity. Our intercourse you fay is undifcovered; but what avails the cause, when the effect is the fame ?-You are abfent Yes, Modeftus, the profpect begins I am wretched. O Sophia, every mo ment |