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JANUARY

        “The gentleman boasts of his bounties to America. Are those bounties intended finally for the benefit of this kingdom? If they are, where is his peculiar merit to America? If they are not, he has misapplied the national treasures.
     “If the gentleman cannot understand the difference between internal and external taxes, I cannot help it. But there is a plain distinction between taxes levied for the purposes of raising revenue, and duties imposed for the regulation of trade for the accommodation of the subject, although in the consequences some revenue may accidentally arise from the latter.
     “The gentleman asks, ‘When were the colonies emancipated?’ I desire to know when they were made slaves. But I do not dwell upon words. The profits to Great Britain from the trade of the colonies, through all its branches, is two millions a year. This is the fund that carried you triumphantly through the last war. The estates that were rented at two thousand pounds a year, threescore years ago, are at three thousand pounds at present. You owe this to America. This is the price that America pays you for her protection. And shall a miserable financier come with a boast that he can fetch a pepper-corn into the exchequer to the loss of millions to the nation? I dare not say how much higher these profits may be augmented. Omitting the immense increase of people in the northern colonies by natural population and the migration from every part of Europe, I am convinced the whole commercial system may be altered to advantage. Improper restraints have been laid on the continent in favor of the islands. Let acts of parliament in consequence of treaties remain; but let not an English minister become a customhouse officer for Spain, or for any foreign power.
     “The gentleman must not wonder he was not contradicted, when, as the minister, he asserted a right of parliament to tax America. There is a modesty in this house which does not choose to contradict a minister. I wish gentlemen would get the better of it. If they do not, perhaps,” he continued, glancing at the coming question of the reform of parliament, “the collective body may begin to abate of its respect for the representative. Lord Bacon has told me that a great question will not fail of being agitated at one time or another.
     “A great deal has been said without doors of the strength of America. It is a topic that ought to be cautiously meddled with. In a good cause, on a sound bottom, the force of this country can crush America to atoms. If any idea of renouncing allegiance has existed, it was but a momentary frenzy; and, if the case was either probable or possible, I should think of the Atlantic sea as less than a line dividing one country from another. The will of parliament, properly signified, must for ever keep the colonies dependent upon the sovereign kingdom of Great Britain. But on this ground of the stamp act, when so many here will think it a crying injustice, I am one who will lift up my hands against it. In such a cause, your success would be hazardous. America, If she fell, would fall like the strong man; she would embrace the pillars of the state, and pull down the constitution along with her.
     “Is this your boasted peace? Not to sheathe the sword in its scabbard, but to sheathe it in the bowels of your brothers, the Americans? Will you quarrel with yourselves, now the whole house of Bourbon is united against you? The Americans have not acted in all things with prudence and temper. They have been driven to madness by injustice. Will you punish them for the madness you have occasioned? Rather let prudence and temper come first from this side. I will undertake for America that she will follow the example.
 

Be to her faults a little blind;
Be to her virtues very kind.
 

     “Upon the whole, I will beg leave to tell the house what is really my opinion. It is that the stamp act be repealed, absolutely, totally, and immediately; that the reason for the repeal be assigned, because it was founded on an erroneous principle. At the same time, let the sovereign authority of this country over the colonies be asserted in as strong terms as can be devised, and be made to extend to every point of legislation, that we may bind their trade, confine their manufacturers, and exercise every power whatsoever except that of taking their money out of their pockets without their consent.
     “Let us be content with the advantages which Providence has bestowed upon us. We have attained the highest glory and greatness; let us strive long to preserve them for our own happiness and that of our posterity.”

     Thus he spoke, with fire unquenchable; “like a man inspired;” greatest of orators, for his words opened the gates of futurity to a better culture. His manner was impassioned; and there was truth in his arguments, that were fitly joined together: so that his closely woven speech was as a chain cable in a thunderstorm, along which the lightning pours its flashes, touching the links of iron with its brightest flame. Men in America, for the moment, paid no heed to the assertion of parliamentary authority to bind manufacturers and trade; it was enough that the great commoner had, in the house of commons, thanked God for America’s resistance.
 

•George Bancroft in his History of the United States, Vol. III

 

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