improvement by disturbing his country, and ris everything that is dear to him. In every ardu enterprise we consider what we are to lose, as wel what we are to gain; and the more and better stak liberty every people possess, the less they will hazar a vain attempt to make it more. These are the cord man. Man acts from adequate motives relative to interest, and not on metaphysical speculations. A totle, the great master of reasoning, cautions us, with great weight and propriety, against this specie delusive geometrical accuracy in moral arguments as most fallacious of all sophistry.

The Americans will have no interest contrary to grandeur and glory of England, when they are not pressed by the weight of it; and they will rather inclined to respect the acts of a superintending leg ture when they see them the acts of that power w is itself the security, not the rival, of their second importance. In this assurance my mind most perfe acquiesces, and I confess I feel not the least alarm f the discontents which are to arise from putting pe at their ease, nor do I apprehend the destruction of Empire from giving, by an act of free grace and in gence, to two millions of my fellow-citizens some s of those rights upon which I have always been taugh value myself.

It is said, indeed, that this power of granting, ve in American Assemblies, would dissolve the unity of

Empire, which was preserved entire, although Wales, and Chester, and Durham were added to it. Truly, Mr. Speaker, I do not know what this unity means, nor has it ever been heard of, that I know, in the constitutional 5 policy of this country. The very idea of subordination of parts excludes this notion of simple and undivided unity. England is the head; but she is not the head and the members too. Ireland has ever had from the beginning a separate, but not an independent, legisla10 ture, which, far from distracting, promoted the union of the whole. Everything was sweetly and harmoniously disposed through both islands for the conservation of English dominion, and the communication of English liberties. I do not see that the same principles might 15 not be carried into twenty islands and with the same good effect. This is my model with regard to America, as far as the internal circumstances of the two countries are the same. I know no other unity of this Empire than I can draw from its example during these periods, 20 when it seemed to my poor understanding more united than it is now, or than it is likely to be by the present methods.

But since I speak of these methods, I recollect, Mr. Speaker, almost too late, that I promised, before I fin25 ished, to say something of the proposition of the noble lord on the floor, which has been so lately received and stands on your Journals. I must be deeply concerned whenever it is my misfortune to continue a difference with the majority of this House; but as the reasons for 30 that difference are my apology for thus troubling you, suffer me to state them in a very few words. I shall compress them into as small a body as I possibly can, having already debated that matter at large when the question was before the Committee.

35 First, then, I cannot admit that proposition of a ran

som by auction; because it is a mere project. It is a thing new, unheard of; supported by no experience; justified by no analogy; without example of our ancestors, or root in the Constitution. It is neither regular Parliamentary taxation, nor Colony grant. Experimen- 5 tum in corpore vili is a good rule, which will ever make me adverse to any trial of experiments on what is certainly the most valuable of all subjects, the peace of this Empire.

Secondly, it is an experiment which must be fatal in 10 the end to our Constitution. For what is it but a scheme for taxing the Colonies in the ante-chamber of the noble lord and his successors? To settle the quotas and proportions in this House is clearly impossible. You, Sir, may flatter yourself you shall sit a state auctioneer, with 15 your hammer in your hand, and knock down to each Colony as it bids. But to settle, on the plan laid down by the noble lord, the true proportional payment for four or five and twenty governments according to the absolute and the relative wealth of each, and according to the British 20 proportion of wealth and burthen, is a wild and chimerical notion. This new taxation must therefore come in by the back door of the Constitution. Each quota must be brought to this House ready formed; you can neither add nor alter. You must register it. You can do noth- 25 ing further; for on what grounds can you deliberate either before or after the proposition? You cannot hear the counsel for all these provinces, quarrelling each on its own quantity of payment, and its proportion to others. If you should attempt it, the Committee of Provincial 30 Ways and Means, or by whatever other name it will delight to be called, must swallow up all the time of Parliament.

Thirdly, it does not give satisfaction to the complaint of the Colonies. They complain that they are taxed 35

without their consent; you answer, that you will fix the sum at which they shall be taxed. That is, you give them the very grievance for the remedy. You tell them, indeed, that you will leave the mode to themselves. I 5 really beg pardon it gives me pain to mention it — but you must be sensible that you will not perform this part of the compact. For, suppose the Colonies were to lay the duties, which furnished their contingent, upon the importation of your manufactures, you know you 10 would never suffer such a tax to be laid. You know, too, that you would not suffer many other modes of taxation; so that, when you come to explain yourself, it will be found that you will neither leave to themselves the quantum nor the mode, nor indeed anything. The whole 15 is delusion from one end to the other.

Fourthly, this method of ransom by auction, unless it be universally accepted, will plunge you into great and inextricable difficulties. In what year of our Lord are the proportions of payments to be settled? To say 20 nothing of the impossibility that Colony agents should have general powers of taxing the Colonies at their discretion, consider, I implore you, that the communication by special messages and orders between these agents and their constituents, on each variation of the case, when 25 the parties come to contend together and to dispute on their relative proportions, will be a matter of delay, perplexity, and confusion that never can have an end.

If all the Colonies do not appear at the outcry, what is the condition of those assemblies who offer, by them30 selves or their agents, to tax themselves up to your ideas

of their proportion? The refractory Colonies who refuse all composition will remain taxed only to your old impositions, which, however grievous in principle, are trifling as to production. The obedient Colonies in this 35 scheme are heavily taxed; the refractory remain un

burdened. What will you do? Will you lay new and heavier taxes by Parliament on the disobedient? Pray consider 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 suppose it is Virginia that refuses ♪ to appear at your auction, while Maryland and North Carolina bid handsomely for their ransom, and are taxed to your quota, how will you put these 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, 10 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 some other obedient and already well-taxed Colony? Who has said one word on this labyrinth of 15 detail, which bewilders you more and more as you enter into it? Who has presented, who can present you with a clue to lead you out of it? I think, Sir, it is impossible that you should not recollect that the Colony bounds are so implicated in one another you know it 20 by your other experiments in the bill for prohibiting the New England fishery,—that you can lay no possible restraints on almost any of them which may not be presently eluded, if you do not confound the innocent with the guilty, and burthen those whom, upon every 25 principle, you ought to exonerate. He must be grossly ignorant of America who thinks that, without falling into this confusion of all rules of equity and policy, you can restrain any single Colony, especially Virginia and Maryland, the central and most important of them all.

30

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 35 quarrel.