a worse opposition on their parts. He thought he saw, by the obstinate conduct of Boston in holding out so long, and under such inconveniences, that their designs were very deep; and he was convinced that the satisfaction to Custom House Officers, required as a condition of pardon by the Act which shut up their Port, was their principal reason for this stubborn opposition. And this pointed clearly to the true object of their resistance.

Mr. Edmund Burke was afraid any debate on this subject was to little purpose. When this Parliament, originally disengaged to any system, and free to choose among all, had, previous to any examination whatsoever, begun by adopting the proceedings of the last, the whole line of our publick conduct was then determined. [Here the majority raised a great cry of approbation.] He said the cry was natural, and the inference from what he had said just; that the road by penitence to amendment was, he knew, humiliating and difficult; and that the greater part of mankind were disposed, like Macbeth, to think—

"I am in blood

Stept in so far, that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er;"

and thus they pass towards the further bank, be the channel ever so wide, or the flood ever so deep and rapid. That as this measure was in the same spirit as all the former, he did not doubt but that it would be productive of the very same consequence.

That this was, in effect, the Boston Port Bill, but upon infinitely a larger scale. That evil principles are prolifick; this Boston Port; Bill begot this New England Bill; this New England Bill will beget a Virginia Bill; again a Carolina Bill, and that will beget a Pennsylvania Bill; till one by one Parliament will ruin all its Colonies, and root tip all its commerce, until the Statute Book becomes nothing but a black and bloody roll of proscription—a frightful code of rigour and tyranny—a monstrous digest of Acts of penalty, incapacity, and general attainder; and that, open it were you will, you will find a title for destroying some trade, or ruining some Province.

That the scheme of Parliament was new and unheard of in any civilized Nation, "to preserve your authority by destroying your Dominions." It was rather the idea of hostility between independent states, where one not being able to conquer another, thinks to reduce its strength gradually, by destroying its trade and cutting off its resources. That this mode was never used by Princes towards their subjects in rebellion; the maxim in such cases always was, to cut, off the rebels but to spare the country, because its strength is the strength of the Sovereign himself. Here the principle was reversed; the force used against the rebels was trifling (though very expensive) but the trade, which was the wealth of the country, was to be destroyed.

He then entered into the difference of expense, and the loss between the two modes; and proved, in detail, that these Bills would, in all probability, cost the Nation more than the maintenance of an Army of forty thousand men. That when things were come to violences he thought the sword much the most effectual, and though severe, not so unjust as these universal proscriptions, because it would fall only on those who resisted. But this Act confounded all kinds of people, all sexes, all ages, in one common ruin. That nothing could be at once more foolish, more cruel, and more resulting, than to hold out, as a resource to the starving Fishermen, Ship Builders, and the infinite number of other Mechanicks employed in Trade and Fishery, and ruined by this Act, that after the plenty of the Ocean, they may poke in the brooks, and rake in the puddles of their respective countries, and diet on what we considered as husks and draft for hogs.

It was, he said, foolish and insulting; because, when you deprive a man of his trade and occupation, you deprive him of the means of his livelihood, if there were ever so much Fish in the streams, or Corn in the fields. That a, Shoemaker's livelihood goes when a Fisherman can no longer pay him for his shoes. He has no resource in other people's plenty. How is he to get at Horse-beans or Indian Corn, or at the worst of food for himself and his starving family? Then he shewed that the ruin of the staple trade of a people, involved in it the ruin of the, whole community; and proved, by entering minutely Into its nature and employment, that the British capital employed in the New England trade could not possibly be turned to the British Fishery; and (treating very lightly the demonstration of Euclid) he shewed, that one year's intermission of the course of the New England foreign trade, would be the certain loss of the whole debt now due to the English Merchants.

But the point on which he rested most was this: the sentence was, in the mildest way, beggary, if not famine, on four great Provinces. The condition of their redemption was, "When it should be made appear to the Governors, and the majority of the Council in two of these Provinces, that the laws would be obeyed." By what evidence, said he, is this to be made to appear? Who is to produce it? What facts are to be proved? What rule has the person who is to make it appear, to go by? What rule have the two Governours to determine, so as to acquit them—in employing or in refusing, either to Government here, or to the people there? You sentence, said he, to famine, at least three hundred thousand people in two Provinces, at the mere arbitrary will and pleasure of two men whom you do not know; for you do not know who will be Governours when this Act takes place. And, lest these two should risk an act of mercy, you add, as a control to them, the majority of two Councils, whom you do not know, and one of them, at present, has no existence. And as to the other Provinces, Connecticut and Rhode-Island, the Act has not left a man in these two Provinces, who, by the exertion even of an arbitrary discretion, can relieve two hundred thousand people more, or any innocent or repenting individual, let their behaviour be what it will. A Governour of another Province, who can never regularly and officially know their true state, can alone be arbitrary in favour of justice.

This, said he, is because in these two ill-starred Provinces, the people choose their Governours; but is that a crime in individuals, which is the legal Constitution of the country? If it be a bad one, England has given it to them, and has not taken even a step towards altering it. On this point, of the unheard of power given to Governours, of starving so many hundreds of thousands at their mere pleasures, of which, he said, no history of real, and even no fabulous invention of fictitious tyranny, had ever furnished an example; he dwelt a long time, and placed it in an infinite variety of lights, and kindled into such warmth, that he was at length called to order. But he continued to repeat the strong terms, as, he said, he had a right to give such epithets to the Bill as he pleased, until it had passed the House. If that should be the case, he would then be silent, because it would be against order to speak of it as it deserved, and against prudence, to offend a body of men who had so much power, and would shew, by passing that Bill, how harsh an use they were disposed to make of it.

He said, however, he was convinced by the whole tenour of the debate, as well as by his private conversation, that most of those who would vote for this Bill had never read it; that what they did was not out of malice, but out of respect to the opinions of others, who, by presenting them such a Bill, shewed how little they deserved this unlimited confidence. He said, that if any were in that situation, he hoped they would have the benefit of the prayer made for those who alone had done an act worse than this, "Forgive them, they know not what they do."

The Lord Advocate of Scotland began with disclaiming any thing of cruelty, as foreign to his nature and disposition; but authority must be preserved, though the guilty, and sometimes even the guiltless, by accident, should suffer. That rigour was annexed to the idea of punishment, and that punishment was right or wrong, according to the desert of the parties; that whatever necessity made this punishment so rigorous, or extended it to so vast a latitude, was owing to those who, taking part with America, in this House, or elsewhere, encouraged them to resist the just authority of Parliament. They were, he said, guilty of the blood of the Colonists. That he was sure the taxation of America was just and defensible, by every principle of the Constitution; and that though this ground of taxation was very much beaten, yet, as the whole question originated there, it was necessary to shew the foundation of the right; this he did by a distinct enumeration of the Acts of Parliament. He was clear and methodical; but the House was not disposed to listen to an argument which they had heard so