The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II | Page 3

agreeably to
the proposition of the honorable gentleman who made the motion, the
Americans would not take post on this concession, in order to make a
new attack on the next body of taxes; and whether they would not call
for a repeal of the duty on wine as loudly as they do now for the repeal
of the duty on tea. Sir, I can give no security on this subject. But I will
do all that I can, and all that can be fairly demanded. To the experience
which the honorable gentleman reprobates in one instant and reverts to
in the next, to that experience, without the least wavering or hesitation
on my part, I steadily appeal: and would to God there was no other
arbiter to decide on the vote with which the House is to conclude this
day!
When Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in the year 1766, I affirm,
first, that the Americans did not in consequence of this measure call
upon you to give up the former Parliamentary revenue which subsisted
in that country, or even any one of the articles which compose it. I
affirm also, that, when, departing from the maxims of that repeal, you
revived the scheme of taxation, and thereby filled the minds of the
colonists with new jealousy and all sorts of apprehensions, then it was
that they quarrelled with the old taxes as well as the new; then it was,
and not till then, that they questioned all the parts of your legislative
power, and by the battery of such questions have shaken the solid
structure of this empire to its deepest foundations.
Of those two propositions I shall, before I have done, give such
convincing, such damning proof, that, however the contrary may be
whispered in circles or bawled in newspapers, they never more will
dare to raise their voices in this House. I speak with great confidence. I
have reason for it. The ministers are with me. They at least are
convinced that the repeal of the Stamp Act had not, and that no repeal
can have, the consequences which the honorable gentleman who
defends their measures is so much alarmed at. To their conduct I refer
him for a conclusive answer to his objection. I carry my proof
irresistibly into the very body of both Ministry and Parliament: not on
any general reasoning growing out of collateral matter, but on the

conduct of the honorable gentleman's ministerial friends on the new
revenue itself.
The act of 1767, which grants this tea-duty, sets forth in its preamble,
that it was expedient to raise a revenue in America for the support of
the civil government there, as well as for purposes still more extensive.
To this support the act assigns six branches of duties. About two years
after this act passed, the ministry, I mean the present ministry, thought
it expedient to repeal five of the duties, and to leave (for reasons best
known to themselves) only the sixth standing. Suppose any person, at
the time of that repeal, had thus addressed the minister:[2]
"Condemning, as you do, the repeal of the Stamp Act, why do you
venture to repeal the duties upon glass, paper, and painters' colors? Let
your pretence for the repeal be what it will, are you not thoroughly
convinced that your concessions will produce, not satisfaction, but
insolence in the Americans, and that the giving up these taxes will
necessitate the giving up of all the rest?" This objection was as palpable
then as it is now; and it was as good for preserving the five duties as for
retaining the sixth. Besides, the minister will recollect that the repeal of
the Stamp Act had but just preceded his repeal; and the ill policy of that
measure, (had it been so impolitic as it has been represented,) and the
mischiefs it produced, were quite recent. Upon the principles, therefore,
of the honorable gentleman, upon the principles of the minister himself,
the minister has nothing at all to answer. He stands condemned by
himself, and by all his associates old and new, as a destroyer, in the
first trust of finance, of the revenues,--and in the first rank of honor, as
a betrayer of the dignity of his country.
Most men, especially great men, do not always know their well-wishers.
I come to rescue that noble lord out of the hands of those he calls his
friends, and even out of his own. I will do him the justice he is denied
at home. He has not been this wicked or imprudent man. He knew that
a repeal had no tendency to produce the mischiefs which give so much
alarm to his honorable friend. His work was not bad in its principle, but
imperfect in its