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JANUARY

   “The stamp act is but the pretext of which they make use to arrive at independence. It was thoroughly considered, and not hurried at the end of a session. It passed through the different stages in full houses, with only one division on it. When I proposed to tax America, I asked the house if any gentleman would object to the right; I repeatedly asked it, and no man would attempt to deny it. Protection and obedience are reciprocal. Great Britain protects America; America is bound to yield obedience. If not, tell me when the Americans were emancipated? When they want the protection of this kingdom, they are always ready to ask for it. That protection has always been afforded them in the most full and ample manner. The nation has run itself into an immense debt to give it them; and, now that they are called upon to contribute a small share towards an expense arising from themselves, they renounce your authority, insult your officers, and break out, I might almost say, into open rebellion.
     “The seditious spirit of the colonies owes its birth to the factions in this house. We were told we trod on tender ground; we were bid to expect disobedience. What was this but telling the Americans to stand out against the law, to encourage their obstinacy with the expectation of support from hence? Let us only hold out a little, they would say; our friends will soon be in power.
     “Ungrateful people of America! Bounties have been extended to them. When I had the honor to serve the crown, while you yourselves were loaded with an enormous debt of one hundred and forty millions sterling, and paid a revenue of ten millions sterling, you have given bounties on their lumber, on their iron, their hemp, and many other articles. You have relaxed, in their favor, the act of navigation, that palladium of British commerce. I offered to do every thing in my power to advance the trade of America. I discouraged no trade but what was prohibited by act of parliament. I was above giving an answer to anonymous calumnies; but in this place it becomes me to wipe off the aspersion.”
     As Mr. Grenville finished, several members got up; but the house clamored for Mr. Pitt, who seemed to rise. A point of order was decided in his favor, and the walls of St. Stephen’s resounded with, “Go on! Go on!”
     “Gentlemen,” he exclaimed in his fervor, while floods of light poured from his eyes, and the crowded assembly stilled itself into breathless silence: “sir,” he continued, remembering to address the speaker, “I have been charged with giving birth to sedition in America. They have spoken their sentiments with freedom against this unhappy act, and that freedom has become their crime. Sorry I am to hear the liberty of speech in this house imputed as a crime. But the imputation shall not discourage me. It is a liberty I mean to exercise. No gentleman out to be afraid to exercise it. It is a liberty by which the gentleman who calumniates it might and ought to have profited. He ought to have desisted from his project. The gentleman tells us America is obstinate; America is almost in open rebellion. I rejoice that America has resisted.” At the word, the whole house started as though an electric spark had leaped through them all.
     “I rejoice that America has resisted. If its millions of inhabitants had submitted, taxes would soon have been laid on Ireland; and, if ever this nation should have a tyrant for its king, six millions of freemen, so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would be fit instruments to make slaves of the rest.
     “I come not here armed at all points with law cases and acts of parliament, with the statute-book, doubled down in dogs’ ears, to defend the cause of liberty; if I had, I would myself have cited the two cases of Chester and Durham, to show, that, even under arbitrary reigns, parliaments were ashamed of taxing a people without their consent, and allowed them representatives. Why did the gentleman confine himself to Chester and Durham? He might have taken a higher example in Wales, that was never taxed by parliament till it was incorporated. I would not debate a particular point of law with the gentleman, but I draw my ideas of freedom from the vital powers of the British constitution, not from the crude and fallacious notions too much relied upon, as if we were but in the morning of liberty. I can acknowledge no veneration for any procedure, law, or ordinance that is repugnant to reason and the first elements of our constitution; and,” he added, sneering at Grenville, who was once so much of a republican as to have opposed the whigs, “I shall never bend with the pliant suppleness of some who have cried aloud for freedom, only to have an occasion of renouncing or destroying it.
     “The gentleman tells us of many who are taxed, and are not represented, the India company, merchants, stockholders, manufacturers. Surely, many of these are represented in other capacities. It is a misfortune that more are not actually represented. But they are all inhabitants, and as such are virtually represented. Many have it in their option to be actually represented. They have connection with those that elect, and they have influence over them.
     “Not one of the ministers who have taken the lead of government since the accession of King William ever recommended a tax like this of the stamp act. Lord Halifax, educated in the house of commons, Lord Oxford, Lord Orford, a great revenue minister, never thought of this. None of these ever dreamed of robbing the colonies of constitutional rights. That was reserved to mark the era of the late administration.

 

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