upon a matter of importance enough to demand the fullest confideration I could bestow upon it. He has stated to the house two grounds of deliberation; one narrow and fimple, and merely confined to the question on your paper: the other more large and more complicated; comprehending the whole series of the parliamentary proceedings with regard to America, their caufes, and their confequences. With regard to the latter ground, he states it as useless, and thinks it may be even dangerous, to enter into fo extenfive a field of enquiry. Yet, to my furprize, he had hardly laid down this restrictive propofition, to which his authority would have given so much weight, when directly, and with the fame authority, he condemns it; and declares it abfolutely neceffary to enter into the most ample historical detail. His zeal has thrown him a little out of his usual accuracy. In this perplexity what shall we do, Sir, who are willing to fubmit to the law he gives us? He has reprobated 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 beft I can. I will endeavour to obey fuch of them as have the fanction of his example; and to stick to that rule, which, though not confiftent with the other, is the most 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 fay, either useless or dangerous. He afferts, that retrospect is not wife; and the proper, the only proper, fubject of enquiry is, "not how we got into this difficulty, but "how we are to get out of it." In other words, we are, VOL. I. 3 U according according to him, to confult our invention, and to reject our experience. The mode of deliberation he recommends is diametrically oppofite to every rule of reason, and every principle of good fense established amongst mankind. For, that fenfe and that reafon, I have always understood, absolutely to prescribe, whenever we are involved in difficulties from the measures we have pursued, that we should take a strict review of those measures, in order to correct our errors· if they should be corrigible; or at least to avoid a dull uniformity in 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 least management for men or measures, further than as they fhall feem to me to deferve it. But before I go into that large confideration, because I would omit nothing that can give the house satisfaction, I wish to tread the narrow ground to which alone the honourable gentleman, in one part of his fpeech, has so strictly confined us. 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 post 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 hefitation on my part, I steadily appeal; and would to God there was no other arbiter to decide on the vote with which the house is to conclude this day! When When parliament repealed the stamp act in the year 1766, I affirm, first, 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 colonists with new jealousy, 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 structure of this empire to its deepest 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 house. I fpeak with great confidence. I have reafon for it. The ministers are with me. They at least are convinced that the repeal of the stamp act had not, and that no repeal can have, the consequences which the honourable gentleman who defends their measures is fo much alarmed at. To their conduct, I refer him for a conclufive answer to his objection. I carry my proof irresistibly into the very body of both ministry and parliament; not on any general reasoning growing out of collateral matter, but on the conduct of the honourable gentleman's ministerial 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 raise a revenue in America, for the support of the civil government there, as well as for purposes ftill more extensive. To this support the act affigns fix branches of duties. About two years af3 U 2 ter 66 ter this act paffed, the ministry, I mean the prefent miniftry, thought it expedient to repeal five of the duties, and to leave (for reasons best known to themselves) only the fixth ftanding. Suppofe any perfon, at the time of that repeal, had thus addreffed the minifter*, " Condemning, as you do, the repeal of the ftamp act, why do you venture to repeal the duties upon glafs, paper, and painters "colours? 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 preserving the five duties as for retaining the fixth. Besides, the minifter will recollect, that the repeal of the stamp act had but just preceded his repeal; and the ill policy of that measure (had it been fo impolitic as it has been reprefented), and the mischiefs it produced, were quite recent. Upon the principles therefore of the honourable gentleman, upon the principles of the minister himself, the minister has nothing at all to answer. He ftands condemned by himself, and by all his affociates old and new, as a destroyer, in the first trust of finance, of the revenues; and in the first rank of honour, as a betrayer of the dignity of his country. Moft men, especially great men, do not always know their well-wishers. I come to rescue that noble lord out of the hands of thofe he calls his friends; and even out of his own. I will do him the juftice, he is denied at home. He has not been this wicked or imprudent man. He knew that a repeal had no tendency to produce the mischiefs which give fo much alarm to his honourable friend. His work was not * Lord North, then chancellor of the exchequer. bad bad in its principle, but imperfect in its execution; and the motion on your paper preffes him only to compleat a proper plan, which, by fome unfortunate and unaccountable error, he had left unfinished. I hope, Sir, the honourable gentleman who spoke laft, is thoroughly satisfied, and fatisfied out of the proceedings of miniftry on their own favourite act, that his fears from a repeal are groundlefs. If he is not, I leave him, and the noble lord who fits by him, to fettle the matter, as well as they can, together; for if the repeal of American taxes deftroys all our government in America-He is the man!and he is the worst of all the repealers, because he is the last. But I hear it rung continually in my ears, now and formerly," the preamble! what will become of the preamble, "if you repeal this tax?"-I am forry to be compelled fo often to expose the calamities and difgraces of parliament. The preamble of this law, ftanding as it now stands, has the lie direct given to it by the provifionary part of the act; if that can be called provifionary which makes no provifion. I should be afraid to exprefs myfelf in this manner, efpecially in the face of fuch a formidable array of ability as is now drawn up before me, compofed of the antient household troops of that fide of the houfe, and the new recruits from this, if the matter were not clear and indifputable. Nothing but truth could give me this firmnefs; but plain truth and clear evidence can be beat down by no ability. The clerk will be fo good as to turn to the act, and to read this favourite preamble: Whereas it is expedient that a revenue should be raised in your majesty's dominions in America, for making a more certain and adequate provifion for defraying the charge of the administration of justice, and fupport of civil government, in |