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

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




But the colonies will go further.--Alas! alas! when will this
speculating against fact and reason end? What will quiet these panic
fears which we entertain of the hostile effect of a conciliatory
conduct? Is it true that no case can exist in which it is proper for the
sovereign to accede to the desires of his discontented subjects? Is
there anything peculiar in this case, to make a rule for itself? Is all
authority of course lost, when it is not pushed to the extreme? Is it a
certain maxim, that, the fewer causes of dissatisfaction are left by
government, the more the subject will be inclined to resist and rebel?

All these objections being in fact no more than suspicions, conjectures,
divinations, formed in defiance of fact and experience, they did not,
Sir, discourage me from entertaining the idea of a conciliatory
concession, founded on the principles which I have just stated.

In forming a plan for this purpose, I endeavored to put myself in that
frame of mind which was the most natural and the most reasonable, and
which was certainly the most probable means of securing me from all
error. I set out with a perfect distrust of my own abilities, a total
renunciation of every speculation of my own, and with a profound
reverence for the wisdom of our ancestors, who have left us the
inheritance of so happy a Constitution and so flourishing an empire,
and, what is a thousand times more valuable, the treasury of the maxims
and principles which formed the one and obtained the other.

During the reigns of the kings of Spain of the Austrian family,
whenever they were at a loss in the Spanish councils, it was common for
their statesmen to say that they ought to consult the genius of Philip
the Second. The genius of Philip the Second might mislead them; and the
issue of their affairs showed that they had not chosen the most perfect
standard. But, Sir, I am sure that I shall not be misled, when, in a
case of constitutional difficulty, I consult the genius of the English
Constitution. Consulting at that oracle, (it was with all due humility
and piety,) I found four capital examples in a similar case before me:
those of Ireland, Wales, Chester, and Durham.

Ireland, before the English conquest, though never governed by a
despotic power, had no Parliament. How far the English Parliament itself
was at that time modelled according to the present form is disputed
among antiquarians. But we have all the reason in the world to be
assured, that a form of Parliament, such as England then enjoyed, she
instantly communicated to Ireland; and we are equally sure that almost
every successive improvement in constitutional liberty, as fast as it
was made here, was transmitted thither. The feudal baronage, and the
feudal knighthood, the roots of our primitive Constitution, were early
transplanted into that soil, and grew and flourished there. Magna
Charta, if it did not give us originally the House of Commons, gave us
at least an House of Commons of weight and consequence. But your
ancestors did not churlishly sit down alone to the feast of Magna
Charta. Ireland was made immediately a partaker. This benefit of English
laws and liberties, I confess, was not at first extended to _all_
Ireland. Mark the consequence. English authority and English liberty had
exactly the same boundaries. Your standard could never be advanced an
inch before your privileges. Sir John Davies shows beyond a doubt, that
the refusal of a general communication of these rights was the true
cause why Ireland was five hundred years in subduing; and after the vain
projects of a military government, attempted in the reign of Queen
Elizabeth, it was soon discovered that nothing could make that country
English, in civility and allegiance, but your laws and your forms of
legislature. It was not English arms, but the English Constitution, that
conquered Ireland. From that time, Ireland has ever had a general
Parliament, as she had before a partial Parliament. You changed the
people, you altered the religion, but you never touched the form or the
vital substance of free government in that kingdom. You deposed kings;
you restored them; you altered the succession to theirs, as well as to
your own crown; but you never altered their Constitution, the principle
of which was respected by usurpation, restored with the restoration of
monarchy, and established, I trust, forever by the glorious Revolution.
This has made Ireland the great and flourishing kingdom that it is, and,
from a disgrace and a burden intolerable to this nation, has rendered
her a principal part of our strength and ornament. This country cannot
be said to have ever formally taxed her. The irregular things done in
the confusion of mighty troubles, and on the hinge of great revolutions,
even if all were done that is said to have been done, form no example.
If they have any effect in argument, they make an exception to prove the
rule. None of your own liberties could stand a moment, if the casual
deviations from them, at such times, were suffered to be used as proofs
of their nullity. By the lucrative amount of such casual breaches in
the Constitution, judge what the stated and fixed rule of supply has
been in that kingdom. Your Irish pensioners would starve, if they had no
other fund to live on than taxes granted by English authority. Turn your
eyes to those popular grants from whence all your great supplies are
come, and learn to respect that only source of public wealth in the
British empire.

My next example is Wales. This country was said to be reduced by Henry
the Third. It was said more truly to be so by Edward the First. But
though then conquered, it was not looked upon as any part of the realm
of England. Its old Constitution, whatever that might have been, was
destroyed; and no good one was substituted in its place. The care of
that tract was put into the hands of Lords Marchers: a form of
government of a very singular kind; a strange, heterogeneous monster,
something between hostility and government: perhaps it has a sort of
resemblance, according to the modes of those times, to that of
commander-in-chief at present, to whom all civil power is granted as
secondary. The manners of the Welsh nation followed the genius of the
government: the people were ferocious, restive, savage, and
uncultivated; sometimes composed, never pacified. Wales, within itself,
was in perpetual disorder; and it kept the frontier of England in
perpetual alarm. Benefits from it to the state there were none. Wales
was only known to England by incursion and invasion.

Sir, during that state of things, Parliament was not idle. They
attempted to subdue the fierce spirit of the Welsh by all sorts of
rigorous laws. They prohibited by statute the sending all sorts of arms
into Wales, as you prohibit by proclamation (with something more of
doubt on the legality) the sending arms to America. They disarmed the
Welsh by statute, as you attempted (but still with more question on the
legality) to disarm New England by an instruction. They made an act to
drag offenders from Wales into England for trial, as you have done (but
with more hardship) with regard to America. By another act, where one of
the parties was an Englishman, they ordained that his trial should be
always by English. They made acts to restrain trade, as you do; and they
prevented the Welsh from the use of fairs and markets, as you do the
Americans from fisheries and foreign ports. In short, when the
statute-book was not quite so much swelled as it is now, you find no
less than fifteen acts of penal regulation on the subject of Wales.

Here we rub our hands,--A fine body of precedents for the authority of
Parliament and the use of it!--I admit it fully; and pray add likewise
to these precedents, that all the while Wales rid this kingdom like an
_incubus_; that it was an unprofitable and oppressive burden; and that
an Englishman travelling in that country could not go six yards from the
highroad without being murdered.

The march of the human mind is slow. Sir, it was not until after two
hundred years discovered, that, by an eternal law, Providence had
decreed vexation to violence, and poverty to rapine. Your ancestors did,
however, at length open their eyes to the ill husbandry of injustice.
They found that the tyranny of a free people could of all tyrannies the
least be endured, and that laws made against an whole nation were not
the most effectual methods for securing its obedience. Accordingly, in
the twenty-seventh year of Henry the Eighth the course was entirely
altered. With a preamble stating the entire and perfect rights of the
crown of England, it gave to the Welsh all the rights and privileges of
English subjects. A political order was established; the military power
gave way to the civil; the marches were turned into counties. But that a
nation should have a right to English liberties, and yet no share at all
in the fundamental security of these liberties,--the grant of their own
property,--seemed a thing so incongruous, that eight years after, that
is, in the thirty-fifth of that reign, a complete and not
ill-proportioned representation by counties and boroughs was bestowed
upon Wales by act of Parliament. From that moment, as by a charm, the
tumults subsided; obedience was restored; peace, order, and civilization
followed in the train of liberty. When the day-star of the English
Constitution had arisen in their hearts, all was harmony within and
without:--

Simul alba nautis
Stella refulsit,
Defluit saxis agitatus humor,
Concidunt venti, fugiuntque nubes,
Et minax (quod sic voluere) ponto
Unda recumbit.


The very same year the County Palatine of Chester received the same
relief from its oppressions, and the same remedy to its disorders.
Before this time Chester was little less distempered than Wales. The
inhabitants, without rights themselves, were the fittest to destroy the
rights of others; and from thence Richard the Second drew the standing
army of archers with which for a time he oppressed England. The people
of Chester applied to Parliament in a petition penned as I shall read to
you.

"To the king our sovereign lord, in most humble wise shown unto your
most excellent Majesty, the inhabitants of your Grace's County Palatine
of Chester: That where the said County Palatine of Chester is and hath
been alway hitherto exempt, excluded, and separated out and from your
high court of Parliament, to have any knights and burgesses within the
said court; by reason whereof the said inhabitants have hitherto
sustained manifold disherisons, losses, and damages, as well in their
lands, goods, and bodies, as in the good, civil, and politic governance
and maintenance of the common wealth of their said country: And
forasmuch as the said inhabitants have always hitherto been bound by the
acts and statutes made and ordained by your said Highness, and your most
noble progenitors, by authority of the said court, as far forth as other
counties, cities, and boroughs have been, that have had their knights
and burgesses within your said court of Parliament, and yet have had
neither knight no burgess there for the said County Palatine; the said
inhabitants, for lack thereof, have been oftentimes touched and grieved
with acts and statutes made within the said court, as well derogatory
unto the most ancient jurisdictions, liberties, and privileges of your
said County Palatine, as prejudicial unto the common wealth, quietness,
rest, and peace of your Grace's most bounden subjects inhabiting within
the same."

What did Parliament with this audacious address?--Reject it as a libel?
Treat it as an affront to government? Spurn it as a derogation from the
rights of legislature? Did they toss it over the table? Did they burn
it by the hands of the common hangman?--They took the petition of
grievance, all rugged as it was, without softening or temperament,
unpurged of the original bitterness and indignation of complaint; they
made it the very preamble to their act of redress, and consecrated its
principle to all ages in the sanctuary of legislation.

Here is my third example. It was attended with the success of the two
former. Chester, civilized as well as Wales, has demonstrated that
freedom, and not servitude, is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not
atheism, is the true remedy for superstition. Sir, this pattern of
Chester was followed in the reign of Charles the Second with regard to
the County Palatine of Durham, which is my fourth example. This county
had long lain out of the pale of free legislation. So scrupulously was
the example of Chester followed, that the style of the preamble is
nearly the came with that of the Chester act; and, without affecting the
abstract extent of the authority of Parliament, it recognizes the equity
of not suffering any considerable district, in which the British
subjects may act as a body, to be taxed without their own voice in the
grant.

Now if the doctrines of policy contained in these preambles, and the
force of these examples in the acts of Parliament, avail anything, what
can be said against applying them with regard to America? Are not the
people of America as much Englishmen as the Welsh? The preamble of the
act of Henry the Eighth says, the Welsh speak a language no way
resembling that of his Majesty's English subjects. Are the Americana not
as numerous? If we may trust the learned and accurate Judge Barrington's
account of North Wales, and take that as a standard to measure the
rest, there is no comparison. The people cannot amount to above 200,000:
not a tenth part of the number in the colonies. Is America in rebellion?
Wales was hardly ever free from it. Have you attempted to govern America
by penal statutes? You made fifteen for Wales. But your legislative
authority is perfect with regard to America: was it less perfect in
Wales, Chester, and Durham? But America is virtually represented. What!
does the electric force of virtual representation more easily pass over
the Atlantic than pervade Wales, which lies in your neighborhood? or
than Chester and Durham, surrounded by abundance of representation that
is actual and palpable? But, Sir, your ancestors thought this sort of
virtual representation, however ample, to be totally insufficient for
the freedom of the inhabitants of territories that are so near, and
comparatively so inconsiderable. How, then, can I think it sufficient
for those which are infinitely greater, and infinitely more remote?

You will now, Sir, perhaps imagine that I am on the point of proposing
to you a scheme for a representation of the colonies in Parliament.
Perhaps I might be inclined to entertain some such thought; but a great
flood stops me in my course. _Opposuit Natura._ I cannot remove the
eternal barriers of the creation. The thing, in that mode, I do not know
to be possible. As I meddle with no theory, I do not absolutely assert
the impracticability of such a representation; but I do not see my way
to it; and those who have been more confident have not been more
successful. However, the arm of public benevolence is not shortened; and
there are often several means to the same end. What Nature has
disjoined in one way wisdom may unite in another. When we cannot give
the benefit as we would wish, let us not refuse it altogether. If we
cannot give the principal, let us find a substitute. But how? where?
what substitute?

Fortunately, I am not obliged, for the ways and means of this
substitute, to tax my own unproductive invention. I am not even obliged
to go to the rich treasury of the fertile framers of imaginary
commonwealths: not to the Republic of Plato, not to the Utopia of More,
not to the Oceana of Harrington. It is before me,--it is at my feet,--

"And the rude swain
Treads daily on it with his clouted shoon."

I only wish you to recognize, for the theory, the ancient constitutional
policy of this kingdom with regard to representation, as that policy has
been declared in acts of Parliament,--and as to the practice, to return
to that mode which an uniform experience has marked out to you as best,
and in which you walked with security, advantage, and honor, until the
year 1763.

My resolutions, therefore, mean to establish the equity and justice of a
taxation of America by _grant_, and not by _imposition_; to mark the
_legal competency_ of the colony assemblies for the support of their
government in peace, and for public aids in time of war; to acknowledge
that this legal competency has had a _dutiful and beneficial exercise_,
and that experience has shown _the benefit of their grants_, and _the
futility of Parliamentary taxation, as a method of supply_.

These solid truths compose six fundamental propositions. There are three
more resolutions corollary to these. If you admit the first set, you can
hardly reject the others. But if you admit the first, I shall be far
from solicitous whether you accept or refuse the last. I think these six
massive pillars will be of strength sufficient to support the temple of
British concord. I have no more doubt than I entertain of my existence,
that, if you admitted these, you would command an immediate peace, and,
with but tolerable future management, a lasting obedience in America. I
am not arrogant in this confident assurance. The propositions are all
mere matters of fact; and if they are such facts as draw irresistible
conclusions even in the stating, this is the power of truth, and not any
management of mine.

Sir, I shall open the whole plan to you together, with such observations
on the motions as may tend to illustrate them, where they may want
explanation.

The first is a resolution,--"That the colonies and plantations of Great
Britain in North America, consisting of fourteen separate governments,
and containing two millions and upwards of free inhabitants, have not
had the liberty and privilege of electing and sending any knights and
burgesses, or others, to represent them in the high court of
Parliament."

This is a plain matter of fact, necessary to be laid down, and
(excepting the description) it is laid down in the language of the
Constitution; it is taken nearly _verbatim_ from acts of Parliament.

The second is like unto the first,--"That the said colonies and
plantations have been made liable to, and bounden by, several subsidies,
payments, rates, and taxes, given and granted by Parliament, though the
said colonies and plantations have not their knights and burgesses in
the said high court of Parliament, of their own election, to represent
the condition of their country; by lack whereof they have been
oftentimes touched and grieved by subsidies, given, granted, and
assented to, in the said court, in a manner prejudicial to the common
wealth, quietness, rest, and peace of the subjects inhabiting within the
same."

Is this description too hot or too cold, too strong or too weak? Does it
arrogate too much to the supreme legislature? Does it lean too much to
the claims of the people? If it runs into any of these errors, the fault
is not mine. It is the language of your own ancient acts of Parliament.

Non meus hic sermo, sed quae praecepit Ofellus
Rusticus, abnormis sapiens.

It is the genuine produce of the ancient, rustic, manly, home-bred sense
of this country. I did not dare to rub off a particle of the venerable
rust that rather adorns and preserves than destroys the metal. It would
be a profanation to touch with a tool the stones which construct the
sacred altar of peace. I would not violate with modern polish the
ingenuous and noble roughness of these truly constitutional materials.
Above all things, I was resolved not to be guilty of tampering,--the
odious vice of restless and unstable minds. I put my foot in the tracks
of our forefathers, where I can neither wander nor stumble. Determining
to fix articles of peace, I was resolved not to be wise beyond what was
written; I was resolved to use nothing else than the form of sound
words, to let others abound in their own sense, and carefully to abstain
from all expressions of my own. What the law has said, I say. In all
things else I am silent. I have no organ but for her words. This, if it
be not ingenious, I am sure is safe.

There are, indeed, words expressive of grievance in this second
resolution, which those who are resolved always to be in the right will
deny to contain matter of fact, as applied to the present case; although
Parliament thought them true with regard to the Counties of Chester and
Durham. They will deny that the Americans were ever "touched and
grieved" with the taxes. If they consider nothing in taxes but their
weight as pecuniary impositions, there might be some pretence for this
denial. But men may be sorely touched and deeply grieved in their
privileges, as well as in their purses. Men may lose little in property
by the act which takes away all their freedom. When a man is robbed of a
trifle on the highway, it is not the twopence lost that constitutes the
capital outrage. This is not confined to privileges. Even ancient
indulgences withdrawn, without offence on the part of those who enjoyed
such favors, operate as grievances. But were the Americans, then, not
touched and grieved by the taxes, in some measure, merely as taxes? If
so, why were they almost all either wholly repealed or exceedingly
reduced? Were they not touched and grieved even by the regulating duties
of the sixth of George the Second? Else why were the duties first
reduced to one third in 1764, and afterwards to a third of that third in
the year 1766? Were they not touched and grieved by the Stamp Act? I
shall say they were, until that tax is revived. Were they not touched
and grieved by the duties of 1767, which were likewise repealed, and
which Lord Hillsborough tells you (for the ministry) were laid contrary
to the true principle of commerce? Is not the assurance given by that
noble person to the colonies of a resolution to lay no more taxes on
them an admission that taxes would touch and grieve them? Is not the
resolution of the noble lord in the blue riband, now standing on your
journals, the strongest of all proofs that Parliamentary subsidies
really touched and grieved them? Else why all these changes,
modifications, repeals, assurances, and resolutions?

The next proposition is,--"That, from the distance of the said colonies,
and from other circumstances, no method hath hitherto been devised for
procuring a representation in Parliament for the said colonies."

This is an assertion of a fact. I go no further on the paper; though, in
my private judgment, an useful representation is impossible; I am sure
it is not desired by them, nor ought it, perhaps, by us: but I abstain
from opinions.

The fourth resolution is,--"That each of the said colonies hath within
itself a body, chosen, in part or in the whole, by the freemen,
freeholders, or other free inhabitants thereof, commonly called the
General Assembly, or General Court, with powers legally to raise, levy,
and assess, according to the several usages of such colonies, duties and
taxes towards defraying all sorts of public services."

This competence in the colony assemblies is certain. It is proved by the
whole tenor of their acts of supply in all the assemblies, in which the
constant style of granting is, "An aid to his Majesty"; and acts
granting to the crown have regularly, for near a century, passed the
public offices without dispute. Those who have been pleased
paradoxically to deny this right, holding that none but the British
Parliament can grant to the crown, are wished to look to what is done,
not only in the colonies, but in Ireland, in one uniform, unbroken
tenor, every session. Sir, I am surprised that this doctrine should come
from Rome of the law servants of the crown. I say, that, if the crown
could be responsible, his Majesty,--but certainly the ministers, and
even these law officers themselves, through whose hands the acts pass
biennially in Ireland, or annually in the colonies, are in an habitual
course of committing impeachable offences. What habitual offenders have
been all Presidents of the Council, all Secretaries of State, all First
Lords of Trade, all Attorneys and all Solicitors General! However, they
are safe, as no one impeaches them; and there is no ground of charge
against them, except in their own unfounded theories.

The fifth resolution is also a resolution of fact,--"That the said
general assemblies, general courts, or other bodies legally qualified as
aforesaid, have at sundry times freely granted several large subsidies
and public aids for his Majesty's service, according to their abilities,
when required thereto by letter from one of his Majesty's principal
Secretaries of State; and that their right to grant the same, and their
cheerfulness and sufficiency in the said grants, have been at sundry
times acknowledged by Parliament."

To say nothing of their great expenses in the Indian wars, and not to
take their exertion in foreign ones, so high as the supplies in the year
1695, not to go back to their public contributions in the year 1710, I
shall begin to travel only where the journals give me light,--resolving
to deal in nothing but fact authenticated by Parliamentary record, and
to build myself wholly on that solid basis.

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