the transmission, it is the East India Company. America has none of these aptitudes. If America gives you taxable objects, on which you lay your duties here, and gives you, at the same time, a surplus by a foreign sale of her commodities to pay the duties on these objects which you tax at home, she has performed her part to the British Revenue But with regard to her own internal establishments, she may, I doubt not she will, contribute in moderation. I say in moderation, for she ought not to be permitted to exhaust herself. She ought to be reserved to a war, the weight of which, with the enemies that we are most likely to have, must be considerable in her quarter of the globe. There she may serve you, and serve you essentially.

For that service, for all service, whether of Revenue, Trade, or Empire, my trust is in her interest in the British Constitution. My hold of the Colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which though light as air, are as strong as links of iron Let the Colonies always keep the idea of their civil fights associated with your Government—they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under Heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood that your Government may be one thing, and their privileges another; that these two things may exist without any mutual relation, the cement is gone; the cohesion is loosened, and every thing hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply the more friends you will have; the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere; it is a Weed that grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia. But until you become lost to all feeling of your true Interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you. This is the commodity of price, of which you have the monopoly. This is the true Act of Navigation, which binds to you the commerce of the Colonies, and through them secures to you the wealth of the world. Deny them tills, participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond which originally made, and must still preserve, the unity of the Empire. Do not entertain so weak an imagination, as that your Registers and your Bonds, your Affidavits and your Sufferances, your Cockets and your Clearances, are what form, the great securities of your commerce. Do not dream that your Letters of Office, and your Instructions, and your Suspending Clauses, are the things that hold together the great contexture of this mysterious whole. These things do not make your Government. Dead instruments, passive tools as they are, it is the spirit of the English communion that gives all their life and efficacy to them. It is the spirit of the English Constitution, which, infused through die mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies, every part of the Empire, even down to the minutest member.

Is it not the same virtue which does every thing for us herein England? Do you imagine, then, that it is the Land Tax Act which raises your Revenue; that it is the annual vote in the Committee of Supply which gives you your Army? Or that it is the Mutiny Bill which inspires it with bravery and discipline? No! surely no! It is the love of the people; it is their attachment to their Government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your Army and your Navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your Army would be a base rabble, and your Navy nothing but rotten timber.

All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical to the profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians, who have no place among us; a sort of people who think that nothing exists but what is gross and material; and who, therefore, far from being qualified to be directors of the great movement of Empire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the Machine. But to men truly initiated and rightly taught, these ruling and master principles which, in the opinion of such men as I have mentioned, have no substantial existance, are in truth every thing, and all in all. Magnanimity in politicks is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great Empire and little minds go ill together. If we are conscious of our situation, and glow with zeal to fill our places as becomes our station and ourselves, we ought to auspicate all our publick proceedings on America, with the old warning of the Church, Sursum corda! We ought to elevate our minds to the greatness of that trust to which the order of Providence has called us. By adverting to the dignity of this high calling, our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious Empire, and have made the most extensive and the only honourable conquests, not by destroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness of the human race. Let us get an American Revenue as we have got an American Empire. English privileges have made it all that it is; English privileges alone will make it all it can be.

In full confidence of this unalterable truth, I now (quod felix faustumque sit) lay the first stone of the Temple of Peace; and I now move you,

"That the Colonies and Plantations of Great Britain, in North America, consisting of fourteen separate Governments, and containing two millions and upwards of free inhabitants, have not had the liberty and privilege of electing and sending any Knights and Burgesses, or others, to represent them in the High Court of Parliament."*

The question being put on this Resolution, Mr. Burke was answered by the Attorney General, who displayed great dexterity and address in his observations on the plan. The other speakers on that side, were, Mr. Jenkinson, Mr. Cornwall, Lord Frederick Campbell, and others. The motions were supported by Lord John Cavendish, Mr. Hotham, Mr. Tuffnell, Mr. Sawbridge, and by Mr. Fox, who spoke with the greatest ability and spirit.

The Ministerial side did not, in general, so much object to this plan, as repeat and enforce their general arguments on the supremacy of the British Parliament, and in favour of the policy and necessity of American Taxation. They denied that the American Assemblies ever had, at any time, a legal power of granting a Revenue to the Crown, that this was the privilege of Parliament only, and could not he communicated to any other body whatsoever. For this,

Mr. Jenkinson quoted the famous Act for securing the rights and liberties of the subject, commonly called the Declaration of Rights, which, as they insisted, clearly enforced the exclusive right of taxing in Parliament all parts

* During this debate the standing order, for the exclusion of strangers, was strictly enforced.

"On this, motion, and on the whole matter, the debate was long and animated. It was objected, in general, that these Resolutions abandoned, the whole object for which we were contending. That in words, indeed, they did not give up the right of taxing; but they did so in effects. The first Resolution, they said, was artfully worded, as containing in appearance nothing but matters of fact; but if adopted, consequences would follow highly prejudicial to the publick good. That the mere, truth of a proposition did not, of course, make it necessary or proper to resolve it. As they had frequently resolved not to admit the unconstitutional claims of the Americans, they could not admit Resolutions directly leading to them. They had no assurance, that if they should adopt these propositions, the Americans would make any dutiful returns on their side; and thus the scheme, pursued through so many difficulties, of compelling that refractory people to contribute their fair proportion to the expenses of the whole Empire, would fall to the ground. The House of Lords would not, they said, permit another plan, somewhat of the same kind, so much as to lie on their table; and the House of Commons had in this session, already adopted one, which they judged to be conciliatory upon a ground more consistent with the supremacy of Parliament. It was assorted that the American Assemblies had made provision upon former occasions; but this, they said, was only when pressed by their own immediate danger; and for their own local use. But if the dispositions of the Colonies had been a favourable as they were represented, still it was denied that the American. Assemblies ever had a legal power of granting a revenue to the Crown. This they insisted to be the privilege of Parliament only; and a privilege which could not be communicated to any other body whatsoever. In support of this doctrine, they quoted the following clause from that palladium of the English Constitution, and of the rights and liberties of the subject, commonly called, the Bill, or Declaration, of Rights: viz. that "Levying money for, of to the use of the Crown, by pretence of prerogative, without grant of Parliament, for a longer time, or in other manner, than the same is, or shall be granted, is illegal."

"This clause, they insisted, clearly enforced the exclusive right in Parliament of taking every part of the Empire. And this right, they said, was not only prudent, but necessary. The right of taxation must be inherent in the supreme power, and, being the most essential of all others, was the most necessary, not only to be reserved in theory, but exercised in practice, or it would, in effect, be lost and all other powers along with it This principle was carried so far, that it was said any Minister ought to be impeached, who suffered the grant of any sort revenue from the Colonies to the Crown. That such a practice in time of war, might possibly be tolerated from the necessity of