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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)




Let it also be considered, that either in the present confusion you
settle a permanent contingent, which will and must be trifling, and
then you have no effectual revenue,--or you change the quota at every
exigency, and then on every new repartition you will have a new quarrel.

Reflect besides, that, when you have fixed a quota for every colony, you
have not provided for prompt and punctual payment. Suppose one, two,
five, ten years' arrears. You cannot issue a Treasury extent against the
failing colony. You must make new Boston port bills, new restraining
laws, new acts for dragging men to England for trial. You must send out
new fleets, new armies. All is to begin again. From this day forward the
empire is never to know an hour's tranquillity. An intestine fire will
be kept alive in the bowels of the colonies, which one time or other
must consume 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.

Instead of a standing revenue, you will therefore have a perpetual
quarrel. Indeed, the noble lord who proposed this project of a ransom by
auction seemed himself to be of that opinion. His project was rather
designed for breaking the union of the colonies than for establishing a
revenue. He confessed he apprehended that his proposal would not be to
_their taste_. I say, this scheme of disunion seems to be at the bottom
of the project; for I will not suspect that the noble lord meant nothing
but merely to delude the nation by an airy 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 whose foundation is perpetual discord.

Compare the two. This I offer to give you is plain and simple: the other
full of perplexed and intricate mazes. This is mild: that harsh. This is
found by experience effectual for its purposes: the other is a new
project. This is universal: 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 matter of bargain
and sale. I have done my duty in proposing it to you. I have, indeed,
tired you by a long discourse; but this is the misfortune of those to
whose influence nothing will be conceded, and who must win every inch of
their ground by argument. You have heard me with goodness. May you
decide with wisdom! For my part, I feel my mind greatly disburdened by
what I have done to-day. I have been the less fearful of trying your
patience, because on this subject I mean to spare 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
confusion, and may bring on the destruction, of this empire. I now go so
far as to risk a proposal of my own. If I cannot give peace to my
country, I give it to my conscience.

But what (says the financier) is peace to us without money? Your plan
gives us no revenue.--No! But it does: for it secures to the subject 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 richest mine of
revenue ever discovered by the skill or by the fortune of man. It does
not, indeed, vote you L152,750: 11: 2-3/4ths, nor any other paltry
limited sum; but it gives the strong-box itself, the fund, the bank,
from whence only revenues can arise amongst a people sensible of
freedom: _Posita luditur arca_. Cannot you in England, cannot you at
this time of day, cannot you, an House of Commons, trust to the
principle which has raised so mighty a revenue, and accumulated a debt
of near 140 millions in this country? Is this principle to be true in
England and false everywhere else? Is it not true in Ireland? Has it not
hitherto been true in the colonies? Why should you presume, that, in any
country, a body duly constituted for any function will neglect to
perform its duty, and abdicate its trust? Such a presumption would go
against all government in all modes. But, in truth, this dread of penury
of supply from a free assembly has no foundation in Nature. For first,
observe, that, besides the desire which all men have naturally of
supporting the honor of their own government, that sense of dignity, and
that security to property, which ever attends freedom, has a tendency to
increase the stock of the free community. Most may be taken where most
is accumulated. And what is the soil 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 stream of revenue than could be squeezed from the dry husks of
oppressed indigence by the straining of all the politic machinery in the
world?

Next, we know that parties must ever exist in a free country. We know,
too, that the emulations of such parties, their contradictions, their
reciprocal necessities, their hopes, and their fears, must send them all
in their turns to him that holds the balance of the state. The parties
are the gamesters; but government keeps the table, and is sure 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 exhausted than that government will
not be supplied. Whereas whatever is got by acts of absolute power ill
obeyed because odious, or by contracts ill kept because constrained,
will be narrow, feeble, uncertain, and precarious.

"Ease would retract
Vows made in pain, as violent and void."


I, for one, protest against compounding our demands: I declare against
compounding, for a poor limited sum, the immense, ever-growing, eternal
debt which is due to generous government from protected freedom. And so
may I speed 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 economy in the
world, to compel the colonies to a sum certain, either in the way of
ransom, or in the way of compulsory compact.

But to clear up my ideas on this subject,--a revenue from America
transmitted hither. Do not delude yourselves: you can never receive
it,--no, not a shilling. 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
imposition, what can you expect from North America? For, certainly, if
ever there was a country qualified to produce wealth, it is India; or an
institution fit for the transmission, it is the East 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 same
time a surplus by a foreign sale of her commodities to pay the duties on
these objects which you tax at home, she has performed her part to the
British revenue. But with regard to her own internal establishments, she
may, I doubt not she will, contribute in moderation. I say in
moderation; for she ought not to be permitted to exhaust herself. She
ought to be reserved to a war; the weight of which, with the enemies
that we are most likely to have, must be considerable in her quarter of
the globe. There she may serve you, and serve you essentially.

For that service, for all service, whether of revenue, trade, or empire,
my trust is in her interest in the British Constitution. My hold of the
colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from
kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are
ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the
colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated 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 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 loosened, and everything
hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep
the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the
sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race
and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards
you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have; the more
ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience.
Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil.
They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia. But, until
you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural
dignity, freedom they can have from 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 sole bond which originally
made, and must still preserve, the unity of the empire. Do not entertain
so weak an imagination as that your registers and your bonds, your
affidavits and your sufferances, your cockets and your clearances, are
what form the great securities of your commerce. Do not dream that your
letters of office, and your instructions, and your suspending clauses
are the things that hold together the great contexture of this
mysterious whole. These things do not make your government. Dead
instruments, passive tools as they are, it is the spirit of the English
communion that gives all their life and efficacy to them. It is the
spirit of the English Constitution, which, infused through the mighty
mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of the
empire, even down to the minutest member.

Is it not the same virtue which does everything for us here in England?
Do you imagine, then, that it is the Land-Tax Act which raises your
revenue? that it is the annual vote in the Committee of Supply which
gives you your army? or that it is the Mutiny Bill which inspires it
with bravery and discipline? No! surely, no! It is the love of the
people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of
the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you
your army and your navy, and infuses 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 sound wild and chimerical to the
profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians who have no
place among us: a sort of people who think that nothing exists but what
is gross 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 master principles, which in the opinion of such men as
I have mentioned have no substantial existence, are in truth everything,
and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom;
and a great empire and little minds go ill together. If we are conscious
of our situation, and glow with zeal to fill our place as becomes our
station and ourselves, we ought to auspicate all our public proceedings
on America with the old warning of the Church, _Sursum corda!_ We ought
to elevate our minds to the greatness of that trust to which the order
of Providence has called us. By adverting to the dignity of this high
calling our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious
empire, and have made the most extensive and the only honorable
conquests, not by destroying, 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.

In full confidence of this unalterable truth, I now (_quod felix
faustumque sit!_) lay the first stone of the Temple of Peace; and I move
you,--

"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."

Upon this resolution the previous question was put and carried: for the
previous question, 270; against it, 78.

* * * * *

As the propositions were opened separately in the body of the speech,
the reader perhaps may wish to see the whole of them together, in the
form in which they were moved for.

"MOVED,

"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."

"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 amended to, in the said, court, in a manner
prejudicial to the common wealth, quietness, rest, and peace of the
subjects inhabiting within the same_."

"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."

"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."[30]

"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."

"That it hath been found by experience, that the manner of granting the
said supplies and aids by the said general assemblies hath been more
agreeable to the inhabitants of the said colonies, and more beneficial
and conducive to the public service, than the mode of giving and
granting aids and subsidies in Parliament, to be raised and paid in the
said colonies."

"That it may be proper to repeal 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 earthen
ware exported to America; and for more effectually preventing the
clandestine running of goods in the said colonies and plantations.'"

"That it may be proper to repeal an act, made in the fourteenth year of
the reign of his present Majesty, intituled, 'An act to discontinue, in
such manner and for such time as are therein mentioned, the landing and
discharging, lading or chipping, of goods, wares, and merchandise, at
the town and within the harbor of Boston, in the province of
Massachusetts Bay, in North America.'"

"That it may be proper to repeal an act, made in the fourteenth year of
the reign of his present Majesty, intituled, 'An act for the impartial
administration of justice, in the cases of persons questioned for any
acts done by them, in the execution of the law, or for the suppression
of riots and tumults, in the province of the Massachusetts Bay, in New
England.'"

"That it may be proper to repeal an act, made in the fourteenth year of
the reign of his present Majesty, intituled, 'An act for the better
regulating the government of the province of the Massachusetts Bay, in
New England.'"

"That it may be proper to explain and amend an act, made in the
thirty-fifth year of the reign of King Henry the Eighth, intituled, 'An
act for the trial of treasons committed out of the king's dominions.'"

"That, from the time when the general assembly, or general court, of any
colony or plantation in North America, shall have appointed, by act of
assembly duly confirmed, a settled salary to the offices of the chief
justice and other judges of the superior courts, it may be proper that
the said chief justice and other judges of the superior courts of such
colony shall hold his and their office and offices during their good
behavior, and shall not be removed therefrom, but when the said removal
shall be adjudged by his Majesty in council, upon a hearing on complaint
from the general assembly, or on a complaint from the governor, or the
council, or the house of representatives, severally, of the colony in
which the said chief justice and other judges have exercised the said
offices."

"That it may be proper to regulate the courts of admiralty or
vice-admiralty, authorized by the 15th chapter of the 4th George the
Third, in such a manner as to make the same more commodious to those who
sue or are sued in the said courts; _and to provide for the mere decent
maintenance of the judges of the same_."

FOOTNOTES:

[18] The act to restrain the trade and commerce of the provinces of
Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire, and colonies of Connecticut and
Rhode Island and Providence Plantation, in North America, to Great
Britain, Ireland, and the British Islands in the West Indies; and to
prohibit such provinces and colonies from carrying on any fishery on the
banks of Newfoundland, and other places therein mentioned, under certain
conditions and limitations.

[19] Mr. Rose Fuller.

[20] "That when the governor, council, and assembly, or general court,
of any of his Majesty's provinces or colonies in America shall _propose_
to make provision, _according to the condition, circumstances_, and
_situation_ of such province or colony, for contributing their
_proportion_ to the _common defence_, (such _proportion_ to be raised
under the authority of the general court or general assembly of such
province or colony, and disposable by Parliament,) and shall _engage_ to
make provision, also for the support of the civil government and the
administration, of justice in such province or colony, it will be
proper, _if such proposal shall be approved by his Majesty and the two
Houses of Parliament_, and for so long as such provision shall be made
accordingly, to forbear, in _respect of such province or colony_, to
levy any duty, tax, or assessment, or to impose any farther duty, tax,
or assessment, except only such duties as it may be expedient to
continue to levy or to impose for the regulation of commerce: the net
produce of the duties last mentioned to be carried to the account of
such province or colony respectively."--Resolution moved by Lord North
in the Committee, and agreed to by the House, 27th February, 1775.

[21] Mr. Glover.

[22] The Attorney-General.

[23] Mr. Rice.

[24] Lord North.

[25] Journals of the House, Vol. XXV.

[26] Journals of the House, Vol. XXVII.

[27] Ibid.

[28] The Solicitor-General informed Mr. B., when the resolutions were
separately moved, that the grievance of the judges partaking of the
profits of the seizure had been redressed by office; accordingly the
resolution was amended.

[29] Lord North.

[30] The first four motions and the last had the previous question put
on them. The others were negatived.

The words in Italics were, by an amendment that was carried, left out of
the motion; which will appear in the journals, though it is not the
practice to insert such amendments in the votes.




A

LETTER

TO

JOHN FARR AND JOHN HARRIS, ESQRS.,

SHERIFFS OF THE CITY OF BRISTOL,

ON THE

AFFAIRS OF AMERICA.

1777.




Gentlemen,--I have the honor of sending you the two last acts which have
been passed with regard to the troubles in America. These acts are
similar to all the rest which have been made on the same subject. They
operate by the same principle, and they are derived from the very same
policy. I think they complete the number of this sort of statutes to
nine. It affords no matter for very pleasing reflection to observe that
our subjects diminish as our laws increase.

If I have the misfortune of differing with some of my fellow-citizens on
this great and arduous subject, it is no small consolation to me that I
do not differ from you. With you I am perfectly united. We are heartily
agreed in our detestation of a civil war. We have ever expressed the
most unqualified disapprobation of all the steps which have led to it,
and of all those which tend to prolong it. And I have no doubt that we
feel exactly the same emotions of grief and shame on all its miserable
consequences, whether they appear, on the one side or the other, in the
shape of victories or defeats, of captures made from the English on the
continent or from the English in these islands, of legislative
regulations which subvert the liberties of our brethren or which
undermine our own.

Of the first of these statutes (that for the letter of marque) I shall
say little. Exceptionable as it may be, and as I think it is in some
particulars, it seems the natural, perhaps necessary, result of the
measures we have taken and the situation we are in. The other (for a
partial suspension of the _Habeas Corpus_) appears to me of a much
deeper malignity. During its progress through the House of Commons, it
has been amended, so as to express, more distinctly than at first it
did, the avowed sentiments of those who framed it; and the main ground
of my exception to it is, because it does express, and does carry into
execution, purposes which appear to me so contradictory to all the
principles, not only of the constitutional policy of Great Britain, but
even of that species of hostile justice which no asperity of war wholly
extinguishes in the minds of a civilized people.

It seems to have in view two capital objects: the first, to enable
administration to confine, as long as it shall think proper, those whom
that act is pleased to qualify by the name of _pirates_. Those so
qualified I understand to be the commanders and mariners of such
privateers and ships of war belonging to the colonies as in the course
of this unhappy contest may fall into the hands of the crown. They are
therefore to be detained in prison, under the criminal description of
piracy, to a future trial and ignominious punishment, whenever
circumstances shall make it convenient to execute vengeance on them,
under the color of that odious and infamous offence.

To this first purpose of the law I have no small dislike, because the
act does not (as all laws and all equitable transactions ought to do)
fairly describe its object. The persons who make a naval war upon us, in
consequence of the present troubles, may be rebels; but to call and
treat them as pirates is confounding not only the natural distinction of
things, but the order of crimes,--which, whether by putting them from a
higher part of the scale to the lower or from the lower to the higher,
is never done without dangerously disordering the whole frame of
jurisprudence. Though piracy may be, in the eye of the law, a _less_
offence than treason, yet, as both are, in effect, punished with the
same death, the same forfeiture, and the same corruption of blood, I
never would take from any fellow-creature whatever any sort of advantage
which he may derive to his safety from the pity of mankind, or to his
reputation from their general feelings, by degrading his offence, when I
cannot soften his punishment. The general sense of mankind tells me that
those offences which may possibly arise from mistaken virtue are not in
the class of infamous actions. Lord Coke, the oracle of the English law,
conforms to that general sense, where he says that "those things which
are of the highest criminality may be of the least disgrace." The act
prepares a sort of masked proceeding, not honorable to the justice of
the kingdom, and by no means necessary for its safety. I cannot enter
into it. If Lord Balmerino, in the last rebellion, had driven off the
cattle of twenty clans, I should have thought it would have been a
scandalous and low juggle, utterly unworthy of the manliness of an
English judicature, to have tried him for felony as a stealer of cows.

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