ry we have had two rebellions, several plots and conspiracies; and we ourselves have been witnesses to the most dangerous excesses of sedition. But the Provinces in North America have engaged in no party, have excited no opposition; they have been utter strangers even to the name of Whig and Tory. In all changes, in all revolutions, they have quietly followed the fortunes and submitted to the Government of England.

Now let me appeal to your Lordships as to men of enlarged and liberal minds, who have been led by your office and rank to the study of history. Can you find in the long succession of ages, in the whole extent of human affairs, a single instance, where distant Provinces have been preserved in so flourishing a state, and kept at the same time in such due subjection to their mother country? My Lords, there is no instance; the case never existed before. It is perhaps the most singular phenomenon in all civil history; and the cause of it well deserves your serious consideration. The true cause is, that a mother country never existed before, who placed her natives and her Colonies on the same equal footing; and joined with them in fairly carrying on one common interest.

You ought to consider this, my Lords, not as a mere historical fact, but as a most important and invaluable discovery. It enlarges our ideas of the power and energy of good Government, beyond all former examples; and shews that it can act like gravitation at the greatest distances. It proves to a demonstration that you may have good subjects in the remotest corners of the earth, if you will but treat them with kindness and equity. If you have any doubts of the truth of this kind of reasoning, the experience we have had of a different kind will entirely remove them.

The good genius of our country had led us to the simple and happy method of governing freemen, which I have endeavoured to describe. Our Ministers received it from their predecessors, and for some time continued to observe it; but without knowing its value. At length, presuming on their own wisdom, and the quiet disposition of the Americans, they flattered themselves that we might reap great advantages from their prosperity by destroying the cause of it. They chose in an unlucky hour to treat them as other nations have thought fit to treat their Colonies; they threatened and they taxed them.

I do not now inquire whether taxation is matter of right; I only consider it as matter of experiment; for surely the art of government itself is founded on experience. I need not suggest what were the consequences of this change of measures. The evils produced by it were such as we still remember and still feel. We suffered more by our loss of trade with them, than the wealth flowing in from India was able to recompense. The bankruptcy of the East India Company, may be sufficiently accounted for by the rapine abroad and the knavery at home; but it certainly would have been delayed some years, had we continued our commerce with them in the single article of tea. But that and many other branches of trade have been diverted into other channels, any may probably never return entire to their old course. But what is worst of all, we have lost their confidence and friendship; we have ignorantly undermined the most solid foundation of our own power.

In order to observe the strictest impartiality, it is but just for us to inquire what we have gained by these taxes as well as what we have lost. I am assured that out of all the sums raised in America the last year but one, if the expenses are deducted, which the natives would else have discharged themselves, the net revenue paid into the Treasury to go in aid of the sinking fund, or to be employed in whatever public services Parliament shall think fit, is eighty-five pounds. Eighty-five pounds, my Lords, is the whole equivalent, we have received for all the hatred and mischief, and all the infinite losses this Kingdom has suffered during that year in her disputes with North America. Money that is earned so dearly as this, ought to be expended with great wisdom and economy. My Lords, were you to take up but one thousand pounds more from North America upon the same terms, the nation itself would be a bankrupt. But the most amazing and the most alarming circumstance is still behind. It is that our case is so incurable, that all this experience has made no impression upon us. And yet, my Lords, if you could but keep these facts, which I have ventured to lay before you, for a few moments in your minds (supposing your right of taxation to be never so clear) yet I think you must necessarily perceive that it cannot be exercised in any manner that can be advantageous to ourselves or them. We have not always the wisdom to tax ourselves with propriety; and I am confident we could never tax a People at that distance, without infinite blunders, and infinite oppression. And to own the truth, my Lords, we are not honest enough to trust ourselves with the power of shifting our own burthens upon them. Allow me, therefore, to conclude, I think, unanswerably, that the inconvenience and distress we have felt in this change of our conduct, no less than the ease and tranquillity we formerly found in the pursuit of it, will force us, if we have any sense left, to return to the good old path we trod in so long, and found it the way of pleasantness.

I desire to have it understood, that I am opposing no rights that our legislature may think proper to claim: I am only comparing two different methods of government. By your old rational and generous administration, by treating the Americans as your friends and fellow-citizens, you made them the happiest of human kind; and at the same time drew from them, by commerce, more clear profit than Spain has drawn from all its mines; and their growing numbers were a daily-increasing addition to your strength. There was no room for improvement or alteration in so noble a system of policy as this. It was sanctified by time, by experience, by public utility. I will venture to use a bold language, my Lords; I will assert, that if we had uniformly adopted this equitable administration in all our distant Provinces as far as circumstances would admit, it would have placed this country, for ages, at the head of human affairs in every quarter of the world. My Lords, this is no visionary or chimerical, doctrine. The idea of governing Provinces and Colonies by force is visionary and chimerical. The experiment has often been tried and it has never succeeded. It ends infallibly in the ruin of the one country or the other, or in the last degree of wretchedness.

If there is any truth, my Lords, in what I have said, and I most firmly believe it all to be true, let me recommend it to you to resume that generous and benevolent spirit in the discussion of our differences, which used to be the source of our union. We certainly did wrong in taxing them: when the Stamp Act was repealed, we did wrong in laying on other taxes, which tended only to keep alive a claim, that was mischevious, impracticable, and useless. We acted contrary to our own principles of liberty, and to the generous sentiments of our Sovereign, when we desired to have their judges dependent on the Crown for their stipends, as well as their continuance. It was equally unwise to wish to make the Governors independent of the People for their salaries. We ought to consider the Governors, not as spies entrusted with the management of our interest, but as the servants of the People, recommended to them by us. Our ears ought to be open to every complaint against the Governors; but we ought not to suffer the Governors to complain of the People. We have taken a different method, to which no small part of our difficulties are owing. Our ears have been open to the Governors and shut to the People. This must necessarily lead us to countenance the jobs of interested men, under the pretence of defending the rights of the Crown. But the People are certainly the best judges whether they are well governed; and the Crown can have no rights inconsistent with the happiness of the People.

Now, my Lords, we ought to do what I have suggested, and many things more, out of prudence and justice, to win their affection, and to do them public service. If we have a right to govern them, let us exert it for the true ends of Government. But, my Lords, what we ought to do, from motives of reason and justice, is much more than is sufficient to bring them to a reasonable accommodation. For thus, as I apprehend, stands the case. They petition for the repeal of an Act of Parliament, which they complain of as unjust and oppressive. And there is not a man amongst us, not the warmest friend of Administration, who does not sincerely wish that act had never been made. In fact, they only ask for what we wish to