The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) by Edmund Burke

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THE WORKS

OF

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

EDMUND BURKE

IN TWELVE VOLUMES

VOLUME THE SECOND

[Illustration: Burke Coat of Arms.]

LONDON
JOHN C. NIMMO
14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C.
MDCCCLXXXVII

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

SPEECH ON AMERICAN TAXATION, April 19, 1774 1

SPEECHES ON ARRIVAL AT BRISTOL AND AT THE CONCLUSION OF THE POLL,
October 13 and November 3, 1774 81

SPEECH ON MOVING RESOLUTIONS FOR CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA,
March 22, 1775 99

LETTER TO THE SHERIFFS OF BRISTOL, ON THE AFFAIRS OF AMERICA,
April 3, 1777 187

TWO LETTERS TO GENTLEMEN OF BRISTOL, ON THE BILLS DEPENDING IN
PARLIAMENT RELATIVE TO THE TRADE OF IRELAND, April 23 and
May 2, 1778 247

SPEECH ON PRESENTING TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS A PLAN FOR THE BETTER
SECURITY OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF PARLIAMENT, AND THE ECONOMICAL
REFORMATION OF THE CIVIL AND OTHER ESTABLISHMENTS,
February 11, 1780 265

SPEECH AT BRISTOL PREVIOUS TO THE ELECTION, September 6, 1780 365

SPEECH AT BRISTOL ON DECLINING THE POLL, September 9, 1780 425

SPEECH ON MR. FOX'S EAST INDIA BILL, December 1, 1783 431

A REPRESENTATION TO HIS MAJESTY, MOVED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS,
June 14, 1784 537

SPEECH

ON

AMERICAN TAXATION.

APRIL 19, 1774.

PREFACE.

The following speech has been much the subject of conversation, and the
desire of having it printed was last summer very general. The means of
gratifying the public curiosity were obligingly furnished from the notes
of some gentlemen, members of the last Parliament.

This piece has been for some months ready for the press. But a delicacy,
possibly over-scrupulous, has delayed the publication to this time. The
friends of administration have been used to attribute a great deal of
the opposition to their measures in America to the writings published in
England. The editor of this speech kept it back, until all the measures
of government have had their full operation, and can be no longer
affected, if ever they could have been affected, by any publication.

Most readers will recollect the uncommon pains taken at the beginning of
the last session of the last Parliament, and indeed during the whole
course of it, to asperse the characters and decry the measures of those
who were supposed to be friends to America, in order to weaken the
effect of their opposition to the acts of rigor then preparing against
the colonies. The speech contains a full refutation of the charges
against that party with which Mr. Burke has all along acted. In doing
this, he has taken a review of the effects of all the schemes which
have been successively adopted in the government of the plantations. The
subject is interesting; the matters of information various and
important; and the publication at this time, the editor hopes, will not
be thought unseasonable.

SPEECH.

During the last session of the last Parliament, on the 19th of
April, 1774, Mr. Rose Fuller, member for Rye, made the following
motion:--

"That an act made in the seventh year of the reign of his present
Majesty, intituled, 'An act for granting certain duties in the
British colonies and plantations in America; for allowing a
drawback of the duties of customs upon the exportation from this
kingdom of coffee and cocoa-nuts, of the produce of the said
colonies or plantations; for discontinuing the drawbacks payable on
china earthenware exported to America; and for more effectually
preventing the clandestine running of goods in the said colonies
and plantations, might be read."

And the same being read accordingly, he moved,--

"That this House will, upon this day sevennight, resolve itself
into a committee of the whole House, to take into consideration the
duty of three-pence per pound weight upon tea, payable in all his
Majesty's dominions in America, imposed by the said act; and also
the appropriation of the said duty."

On this latter motion a warm and interesting debate arose, in which
Mr. Burke spoke as follows.

Sir,--I agree with the honorable gentleman[1] who spoke last, that this
subject is not new in this House. Very disagreeably to this House, very
unfortunately to this nation, and to the peace and prosperity of this
whole empire, no topic has been more familiar to us. For nine long
years, session after session, we have been lashed round and round this
miserable circle of occasional arguments and temporary expedients. I am
sure our heads must turn and our stomachs nauseate with them. We have
had them in every shape; we have looked at them in every point of view.
Invention is exhausted; reason is fatigued; experience has given
judgment; but obstinacy is not yet conquered.

The honorable gentleman has made one endeavor more to diversify the form
of this disgusting argument. He has thrown out a speech composed almost
entirely of challenges. Challenges are serious things; and as he is a
man of prudence as well as resolution, I dare say he has very well
weighed those challenges before he delivered them. I had long the
happiness to sit at the same side of the House, and to agree with the
honorable gentleman on all the American questions. My sentiments, I am
sure, are well known to him; and I thought I had been perfectly
acquainted with his. Though I find myself mistaken, he will still permit
me to use the privilege of an old friendship; he will permit me to apply
myself to the House under the sanction of his authority, and, on the
various grounds he has measured out, to submit to you the poor opinions
which I have formed upon a matter of importance enough to demand the
fullest consideration I could bestow upon it.

He has stated to the House two grounds of deliberation: one narrow and
simple, 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 causes, and
their consequences. With regard to the latter ground, he states it as
useless, and thinks it may be even dangerous, to enter into so extensive
a field of inquiry. Yet, to my surprise, he had hardly laid down this
restrictive proposition, to which his authority would have given so much
weight, when directly, and with the same authority, he condemns it, and
declares it absolutely necessary 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 submit to the
law he gives us? He has reprobated in one part of his speech 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 excursion,
himself, as unbounded as the subject and the extent of his great
abilities.

Sir, when I cannot obey all his laws, I will do the best I can. I will
endeavor to obey such of them as have the sanction of his example, and
to stick to that rule which, though not consistent 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
censure of his own conduct. It is not, he will give me leave to say,
either useless or dangerous. He asserts, that retrospect is not wise;
and the proper, the only proper subject of inquiry, is "not how we got
into this difficulty, but how we are to get out of it." In other words,
we are, according to him, to consult our invention, and to reject our
experience. The mode of deliberation he recommends is diametrically
opposite to every rule of reason and every principle of good sense
established amongst mankind. For that sense and that reason 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
mischief, and the unpitied calamity of being repeatedly caught in the
same snare.

Sir, I will freely follow the honorable gentleman in his historical
discussion, without the least management for men or measures, further
than as they shall seem to me to deserve it. But before I go into that
large consideration, because I would omit nothing that can give the
House satisfaction, I wish to tread the narrow ground to which alone the
honorable gentleman, in one part of his speech, has so strictly confined
us.

He desires to know, whether, if we were to repeal this tax, agreeably to
the proposition of the honorable gentleman who made the motion, the
Americans would not take post on this concession, 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 security on this subject. But I will
do all that I can, and all that can be fairly demanded. To the
_experience_ which the honorable gentleman reprobates in one instant and
reverts to in the next, to that experience, without the least wavering
or hesitation 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 Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in the year 1766, I affirm,
first, that the Americans did _not_ in consequence of this measure call
upon you to give up the former Parliamentary revenue which subsisted in
that country, or even any one of the articles which compose it. I affirm
also, 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 sorts of apprehensions, then it was that they
quarrelled with the old taxes as well as the new; then it was, and not
till then, that they questioned all the parts of your legislative power,
and by the battery of such questions have shaken the solid structure of
this empire to its deepest foundations.

Of those two propositions I shall, before I have done, give such
convincing, such 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 speak with great confidence. I
have reason 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 honorable gentleman who defends
their measures is so much alarmed at. To their conduct I refer him for a
conclusive 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
honorable gentleman's ministerial friends on the new revenue itself.

The act of 1767, which grants this tea-duty, sets 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 still more
extensive. To this support the act assigns six branches of duties. About
two years after this act passed, the ministry, I mean the present
ministry, thought it expedient to repeal five of the duties, and to
leave (for reasons best known to themselves) only the sixth standing.
Suppose any person, at the time of that repeal, had thus addressed the
minister:[2] "Condemning, as you do, the repeal of the Stamp Act, why do
you venture to repeal the duties upon glass, paper, and painters'
colors? Let your pretence for the repeal be what it will, are you not
thoroughly convinced that your concessions will produce, not
satisfaction, but insolence in the Americans, and that the giving up
these taxes will necessitate the giving up of all the rest?" This
objection was as palpable then as it is now; and it was as good for
preserving the five duties as for retaining the sixth. Besides, the
minister 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 so
impolitic as it has been represented,) and the mischiefs it produced,
were quite recent. Upon the principles, therefore, of the honorable
gentleman, upon the principles of the minister himself, the minister has
nothing at all to answer. He stands condemned by himself, and by all his
associates old and new, as a destroyer, in the first trust of finance,
of the revenues,--and in the first rank of honor, as a betrayer of the
dignity of his country.

Most men, especially great men, do not always know their well-wishers. I
come to rescue that noble lord out of the hands of those he calls his
friends, and even out of his own. I will do him the justice 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 so much alarm
to his honorable friend. His work was not bad in its principle, but
imperfect in its execution; and the motion on your paper presses him
only to complete a proper plan, which, by some unfortunate and
unaccountable error, he had left unfinished.

I hope, Sir, the honorable gentleman who spoke last is thoroughly
satisfied, and satisfied out of the proceedings of ministry on their own
favorite act, that his fears from a repeal are groundless. If he is not,
I leave him, and the noble lord who sits by him, to settle the matter as
well as they can together; for, if the repeal of American taxes destroys
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 sorry to be compelled so often to expose the calamities and disgraces
of Parliament. The preamble of this law, standing as it now stands, has
the lie direct given to it by the provisionary part of the act: if that
can be called provisionary which makes no provision. I should be afraid
to express myself in this manner, especially in the face of such a
formidable array of ability as is now drawn up before me, composed of
the ancient household troops of that side of the House and the new
recruits from this, if the matter were not clear and indisputable.
Nothing but truth could give me this firmness; but plain truth and
clear evidence can be beat down by no ability. The clerk will be so good
as to turn to the act, and to read this favorite 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_ provision for defraying the charge of the _administration of
justice and support of civil government_ in such provinces where it
shall be found necessary, and towards _further defraying_ the expenses
of _defending, protecting, and securing the said dominions_."

You have heard this pompous performance. Now where is the revenue which
is to do all these mighty things? Five sixths
repealed,--abandoned,--sunk,--gone,--lost forever. Does the poor
solitary tea-duty support the purposes of this preamble? Is not the
supply there stated as effectually abandoned as if the tea-duty had
perished in the general wreck? Here, Mr. Speaker, is a precious
mockery:--a preamble without an act,--taxes granted in order to be
repealed,--and the reasons of the grant still carefully kept up! This is
raising a revenue in America! This is preserving dignity in England! If
you repeal this tax, in compliance with the motion, I readily admit that
you lose this fair preamble. Estimate your loss in it. The object of the
act is gone already; and all you suffer is the purging the statute-book
of the opprobrium of an empty, absurd, and false recital.

It has been said again and again, that the five taxes were repealed on
commercial principles. It is so said in the paper in my hand:[3] a paper
which I constantly carry about; which I have often used, and shall
often use again. What is got by this paltry pretence of commercial
principles I know not; for, if your government in America is destroyed
by the _repeal of taxes_, it is of no consequence upon what ideas the
repeal is grounded. Repeal this tax, too, upon commercial principles, if
you please. These principles will serve as well now as they did
formerly. But you know that either your objection to a repeal from these
supposed consequences has no validity, or that this pretence never could
remove it. This commercial motive never was believed by any man, either
in America, which this letter is meant to soothe, or in England, which
it is meant to deceive. It was impossible it should: because every man,
in the least acquainted with the detail of commerce, must know that
several of the articles on which the tax was repealed were fitter
objects of duties than almost any other articles that could possibly be
chosen,--without comparison more so than the tea that was left taxed, as
infinitely less liable to be eluded by contraband. The tax upon red and
white lead was of this nature. You have in this kingdom an advantage in
lead that amounts to a monopoly. When you find yourself in this
situation of advantage, you sometimes venture to tax even your own
export. You did so soon after the last war, when, upon this principle,
you ventured to impose a duty on coals. In all the articles of American
contraband trade, who ever heard of the smuggling of red lead and white
lead? You might, therefore, well enough, without danger of contraband,
and without injury to commerce, (if this were the whole consideration,)
have taxed these commodities. The same may be said of glass. Besides,
some of the things taxed were so trivial, that the loss of the objects
themselves, and their utter annihilation out of American commerce, would
have been comparatively as nothing. But is the article of tea such an
object in the trade of England, as not to be felt, or felt but slightly,
like white lead, and red lead, and painters' colors? Tea is an object of
far other importance. Tea is perhaps the most important object, taking
it with its necessary connections, of any in the mighty circle of our
commerce. If commercial principles had been the true motives to the
repeal, or had they been at all attended to, tea would have been the
last article we should have left taxed for a subject of controversy.

Sir, it is not a pleasant consideration, but nothing in the world can
read so awful and so instructive a lesson as the conduct of ministry in
this business, upon the mischief of not having large and liberal ideas
in the management of great affairs. Never have the servants of the state
looked at the whole of your complicated interests in one connected view.
They have taken things by bits and scraps, some at one time and one
pretence, and some at another, just as they pressed, without any sort of
regard to their relations or dependencies. They never had any kind of
system, right or wrong; but only invented occasionally some miserable
tale for the day, in order meanly to sneak out of difficulties into
which they had proudly strutted. And they were put to all these shifts
and devices, full of meanness and full of mischief, in order to pilfer
piecemeal a repeal of an act which they had not the generous courage,
when they found and felt their error, honorably and fairly to disclaim.
By such management, by the irresistible operation of feeble councils,
so paltry a sum as three-pence in the eyes of a financier, so
insignificant an article as tea in the eyes of a philosopher, have
shaken the pillars of a commercial empire that circled the whole globe.

Do you forget that in the very last year you stood on the precipice of
general bankruptcy? Your danger was indeed great. You were distressed in
the affairs of the East India Company; and you well know what sort of
things are involved in the comprehensive energy of that significant
appellation. I am not called upon to enlarge to you on that danger,
which you thought proper yourselves to aggravate, and to display to the
world with all the parade of indiscreet declamation. The monopoly of the
most lucrative trades and the possession of imperial revenues had
brought you to the verge of beggary and ruin. Such was your
representation; such, in some measure, was your case. 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 distress, and all that series of desperate
measures which you thought yourselves obliged to take in consequence 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 necessary of life,
and where the demand grows upon the supply. I hope our dear-bought East
India Committees have done us at least so much good, as to let us know,
that, without a more extensive sale of that article, our East India
revenues and acquisitions can have no certain connection with this
country. It is through the American trade of tea that your East India
conquests are to be prevented from crushing you with their burden. They
are ponderous indeed; and they must have that great country to lean
upon, or they tumble upon your head. It is the same folly that has lost
you at once the benefit of the West 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 suffer so much for the empty words of a
preamble. 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 description
of revenue not as yet known in all the comprehensive (but too
comprehensive!) vocabulary of finance,--_a preambulary tax_. It is,
indeed, a tax of sophistry, a tax of pedantry, a tax of disputation, a
tax of war and rebellion, a tax for anything but benefit to the imposers
or satisfaction to the subject.

Well! but whatever it is, gentlemen will force the colonists to take the
teas. You will force them? Has seven years' struggle been yet able to
force them? Oh, but it seems "we are in the right. The tax is
trifling,--in effect it is rather an exoneration than an imposition;
three fourths of the duty formerly payable on teas exported to America
is taken off,--the place of collection is only shifted; instead of the
retention of a shilling from the drawback here, it is three-pence custom
paid in America." All this, Sir, is very true. But this is the very
folly and mischief of the act. Incredible as it may seem, you know that
you have deliberately thrown away a large duty, which you held secure
and quiet in your hands, for the vain hope of getting one three fourths
less, through every hazard, through certain litigation, and possibly
through war.

The manner of proceeding in the duties on paper and glass, imposed by
the same act, was exactly in the same spirit. There are heavy excises on
those articles, when used in England. On export, these excises are drawn
back. But instead of withholding the drawback, which might have been
done, with ease, without charge, without possibility of smuggling, and
instead 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 drawback on export, and then you
charged the duty, (which you had before discharged,) payable in the
colonies, where it was certain the collection would devour it to the
bone,--if any revenue were ever suffered to be collected at all. One
spirit pervades and animates the whole mass.

Could anything be a subject of more just alarm to America than to see
you go out of the plain highroad of finance, and give up your most
certain revenues and your clearest interest, merely for the sake of
insulting your colonies? No man ever doubted that the commodity of tea
could bear an imposition 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 resolved 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 shillings. Would twenty shillings have ruined Mr.
Hampden's fortune? No! but the payment of half twenty shillings, on the
principle it was demanded, would have made him a slave. It is the weight
of that preamble, of which you are so fond, and not the weight of the
duty, that the Americans are unable and unwilling to bear.

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