name of all the duties you owe to your sovereign, to your country and to yourselves, to perform that office to which you are called by the constitution, by informing his majesty truly of the condition of his subjects, and of the real cause of their dissatisfaction.

PITT ON AN ADDRESS TO THE KING, JANUARY, 1766.

Ir is a long time, Mr. Speaker, since I have attended in parliament. When the resolution was taken in this house to tax America, I was ill in bed. If I could have endured to have been carried in my bed, so cat was the agitation of my mind for the consequences, I would have solicited some kind hand to have laid me down on this floor, to have borne my testimony against it. It is my opinion that this kingdom has no right to lay a tax upon the colonies. At the same time, I assert the authority of this kingdom to be sovereign and supreme in every circumstance of government and legislation whatsoever. Taxation is no part of the governing or legislative power: the taxes are a voluntary gift and grant of the commons alone. The concurrence of the peers and of the crown is necessary only as a form of law. This house represents the commons of Great Britain. When in this house we give and grant; therefore we give and grant what is our own; but can we give and grant the property of the commons of America? It is an absurdity in terms. There is an idea in some, that the colonies are virtually represented in this house! I would fain know by whom? The idea of virtual representation is the most contemptible that ever entered into the head of man: it does not deserve a serious refutation. The commons in America, represented in their several assemblies, have invariably exercised this constitutional right of giving and granting their own money they would have been slaves, if they had not enjoyed it. At the same time this kingdom has ever possessed the power of legislative and commercial control. The colonies acknowledge your authorities in all things, with the sole exception that you shall not take their

money out of their pockets without their consent. Here would I draw the line, quam ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum.

Sir, a charge is brought against gentlemen sitting in the house, for giving birth to sedition in America. The freedom with which they have spoken their sentiments against this unhappy act, is imputed to them as a crime; but the imputation shall not discourage me. It is a liberty which I hope no gentleman will be afraid to exercise: it is a liberty by which the gentleman who calumniates it might have profited. He ought to have desisted from his project. We are told America is obstinate-America is almost in open rebellion. Sir, I REJOICE that America has resisted-three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest. I came not here armed at all points with law cases and acts of parliament; with the statute book doubled down in dog's ears to defend the cause of liberty; but for the defence of liberty upon a general constitutional principle; it is a ground on which I dare meet any man: I will not debate points of law; but what, after all, do the cases of Chester and Durham prove, but that, under the most arbitrary reigns, parliament were ashamed of taxing a people without their consent, and allowed them representatives? A higher and better example might have been taken from Wales; that principality was never taxed by parliament till it was incorporated with England. We are told of many classes of persons in this kingdom not represented in parliament; but are they not all virtually represented as Englishmen resident within the realm? Have they not the option, many of them at least, of becoming themselves electors? Every inhabitant of this kingdom is necessarily included in the general system of representation. It is a misfortune that more are not actually represented. The honorable gentleman beasts of his bounties to America. Are not these bounties in tended finally for the benefit of this kingdom? If they are not, he has misapplied the national treasures. I am no courtier of America. I maintain that parliament has a right to bind, to restrain America. Our legislative power over the colonies is sovereign and supreme. The honorable gentleman tells us he under

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stands not the difference between internal and external taxation; but surely there is a plain difference between taxes levied for the purpose of raising a revenue, and duties imposed for the regulation of commerce. When, said the honorable gentleman, were the colonies emancipated? At what time, say I in answer, were they made slaves? I speak from accurate knowledge, when I say, that the profits to Great Britain from the trade of the colonies, through all its branches, is two millions per annum. This is the fund which carried you triumphantly through the last war; this is the price 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, at the loss of millions to the nation? I know the valor of your troops; I know the skill of your officers; I know the force of this country; but 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 with her. Is this your boasted peace? Not to sheathe the sword in the scabbard, but to sheathe it in the bowels of your countrymen? The Americans have been wronged; they have been driven to madness by injustice. Will you punish them for the madness you have occasioned? No; let this country be the first to resume its prudence and temper. I will pledge myself for the colonies, that, on their part, animosity and resentment will cease. Let affection be the only bond of coercion. The system of policy I would earnestly recommend Great Britain to adopt, in relation to America, is happily expressed in the words of a favorite poet :

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

Let all her ways be unconfined;

And clap your padlock on her mind.

PRIOB.

Upon the whole I beg leave to tell the house in a few words, what is really my opinion. It is that the stamp act be repealed -ABSOLUTELY-TOTALLY and IMMEDIATELY.

COLONEL BARRE ON AMERICAN AFFAIRS.

I RISE with great unwillingness to oppose this measure in its very infancy, before its features are well formed, or to claim that attention which this house seems to bestow with so much reluctance on any arguments in behalf of America. But I must call you to witness, that I have been hitherto silent, or acquiescent, to an unexpected degree of moderation. While your proceedings, severe as they were, had the least color of foundation in justice, I desisted from opposing them; nay more-though your bill for stopping up the port of Boston contained in it many things most cruel, unwarrantable, and unjust, yet as they were couched under those general principles of justice, retribution for injury, and compensation for loss sustained, I not only desisted from opposing, but assented to its passing. The bill was a bad way of doing what was right; but still it was doing what was right. I would not, therefore, by opposing it, seem to countenance those violences which had been committed abroad; and of which no man disapproves more than I do.

Upon the present question I am totally unprepared. The motion itself bears no sort of resemblance to what was formerly announced. The noble lord and his friends have had every advantage of preparation. They have reconnoitred the field, and chosen their ground. To attack them in these circumstances may, perhaps, savor more of the gallantry of a soldier, than of the wisdom of a senator. But, sir, the proposition is so glaring; so unprecedented in any former proceedings of parliament; so unwarranted by any delay denial, or preservation of justice in America; so big with misery and oppression to that country, and with danger to this-that the first blush of it is sufficient to alarm and rouse me to opposition.

It is proposed to stigmatize a whole people as persecutors of innocence, and men incapable of doing justice; yet you have not a single fact on which to ground that imputation. I expected the noble lord would have supported this motion by producing instances of the officers of government in America having been

prosecuted with unremitting vengeance, and brought to cruel and dishonorable deaths by the violence and injustice of American juries. But he has not produced one such instance; and I will tell you more, sir-he cannot produce one. The instances which have happened are directly in the teeth of his proposition. Colonel Preston, and the soldiers, who shed the blood of the people, were fairly tried, and fully acquitted. It was an American jury, a New England jury, a Boston jury, which tried and acquitted them. Colonel Preston has, under his hand, publicly declared, that the inhabitants of the very town in which their fellow-citizens had been sacrificed, were his advocates and defenders. Is this the return you make them? Is this the encouragement you give them to persevere in so laudable a spirit of justice and moderation? When a commissioner of the customs, aided by a number of ruffians, assaulted the celebrated Mr. Otis in the midst of the town of Boston, and with the most barbarous violence almost murdered him, did the mob, which is said to rule that town, take vengeance on the perpetrators of this inhuman outrage, against a person who is supposed to be their demagogue? No, sir, the law tried them: the law gave heavy damages against them; which the irreparably injured Mr. Otis most generously forgave, upon the acknowledgment of the offence. Can you expect any more such instances of magnanimity under the principle of the bill now proposed? But the noble lord says, "We must now show the Americans that we will no longer sit quiet under their insults." Sir, I am sorry to say that this is declamation, unbecoming the character and place of him who utters it. In what moment have you been quiet? Has not your government for many years past been a series of irritating and offensive measures, without policy, principle, or moderation? Have not your troops and your ships made a vain and insulting parade in their streets and in their harbors? It has seemed to be your study to irritate and inflame them. You have stimulated discontent into disaffection, and you are now goading that disaffection into rebellion. Can you expect to be well informed when you listen only to partisans? Can you expect to do justice when you will not hear the accused?