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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 
 PROFESSOR FELICIEN VICTOR PAGET 
 
 BY BEQUEST OF MADAME PAGET 
 NO. 
 
gftc .Students Series 0f gngHsli lassies. 
 
 BURKE S SPEECH 
 
 ON 
 
 CONCILIATION COLONIES 
 
 (MARCH 22, 1775). 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 L. DuPONT SYLE, M.A. (YALE), 
 
 INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 EDITOR OF " FROM MILTON TO TENNYSON." 
 
 " Whatever blemishes may be detected. Burke s magnificent speeches stand abso 
 lutely alone in the language. They are, literally speaking, the only English speeches 
 which may still be read with profit when the hearers and the speaker have long been 
 turned to dust" LESLIE STEPHEN. 
 
 OF THE 
 
 [ UNIVERSITY ) 
 
 LEACH, SHEWELL, & SANBORN, 
 
 BOSTON. NEW YORK. CHICAGO. 
 C,t V?VA \ 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1895, 
 BY LEACH, SHE WELL, & SANBOKN. 
 
 TYPOGRAPHY BY C. J. PETERS & SON. 
 
 PEESSWOBK UY BERWICK & SMITH. 
 
TO 
 
 5. E. JHoffjtt, 
 
 IN REMEMBRANCE OF HIS UNWEARIED EXERTIONS 
 FOR GOOD GOVERNMENT. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE books to which the editor of this edition is 
 chiefly indebted are mentioned under the heading, The 
 Best Books about Burke (p. xxi). Assistance has also 
 been received from PAYNE S edition of the Conciliation 
 Speech, and from Mr. LESLIE STEPHEN S incomparable 
 Dictionary of National Biography. 
 
 To Professor BERNARD MOSES of the University of 
 California, thanks are due for valuable advice and 
 criticism. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ix 
 
 THE BEST BOOKS ABOUT BURKE xxiii 
 
 NOTE ON THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM . . xxv 
 
 TEXT OF THE SPEECH 1 
 
 NOTES ON THE SPEECH 91 
 
EDMUND BUKKE. 
 
 EDMUND BURKE was born in Dublin in 1728 or 1729, 
 in which year is not known with certainty. His father 
 (a Protestant) was a lawyer of some local reputation ; 
 his mother was a Roman Catholic. In his first school 
 teacher, one Abraham Shackleton, Burke had the good 
 fortune to find a gentleman, a scholar, and a friend. 
 With fond and pardonable exaggeration, he attributes 
 his success in life to the teachings of this worthy man. 
 
 Burke was at Trinity College, Dublin, from 1743 to 
 1748 ; Goldsmith from 1744 to 1749. The young men 
 may have known each other at this time, though we 
 have no record of the fact ; we do know, however, that, 
 like most. men of genius, they both disliked and neg 
 lected the narrow routine of the college curriculum. 
 Burke in college read omnivorously in natural phi 
 losophy, logic, metaphysics, history, and poetry ; it is 
 not probable that he desired or needed much tutorial 
 guidance in acquiring a first-hand knowledge of these 
 subjects. 
 
 In 1750 Burke went to London and entered at the 
 Temple, but was never admitted to the bar. Fortunately 
 for us, the green fields of literature charmed him more 
 
X EDMUND BURKE 
 
 than the dusty courts of law. Fortunately, I said, but 
 not so thought his father. His solicitor-soul was hugely 
 grieved at the young man s apostasy ; in 1755 he with 
 drew his son s allowance, and Burke was left to sink or 
 swim on the frail plank of penny-a-lining. Somehow 
 or other he managed to support thereon not only himself, 
 but a wife, whom he took unto himself in 1756. The 
 same year he published two books, A Vindication of 
 Natural Society, and A Philosophical Inquiry into the 
 Origin of our Ideas on the Sublime and Beautiful. The 
 Vindication is a satire written in the style of Boling- 
 broke, and attempts to show that the kind of arguments 
 which that writer uses against revealed religion, applies 
 w r ith equal force against " artificial " society, that is, 
 society as developed and organized in Burke s day. In 
 this early paper we detect that profound distrust of 
 democracy which, in the Letters on a -Regicide Peace, 
 degenerated into a Toryism worthy of Tax-collector 
 Wordsworth. The Philosophical Inquiry is chiefly 
 interesting as having given Lessing some suggestions 
 for his Laokoon. Mr. Ruskin thinks poorly of Burke s 
 sesthetics ; what would Burke have thought of Mr. 
 Kuskin s political economy ? 
 
 From 1761 to 1763 Burke was in Ireland as private 
 secretary to Gerard Hamilton, chief secretary to the Lord 
 Lieutenant (Halifax). This was an unlucky connec 
 tion for Burke, as Hamilton was a small-minded and 
 ungrateful politician, quite unable to appreciate his sub 
 ordinate s ability. Burke had better have been in Lon 
 don engaged in the mournful task of writing articles for 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. xi 
 
 Dodsley s Annual Register ; to this treadmill he returned 
 in 1763, and toiled on for two years, steadily enlarging 
 the circle of his reputation, and beginning to number 
 among his friends such men as Hume, Garrick, Rey 
 nolds, Johnson. When Lord Rockingham became Prime 
 Minister, he made Burke his private secretary (June, 
 1765 ) ; in December of this same year Burke entered 
 Parliament for the borough of Wendover, and in Jan 
 uary, 1766, delivered his maiden speech. This was a 
 brilliant success ; it was an argument in favor of receiv 
 ing the petition sent to Parliament by the Stamp-Act 
 Congress. 
 
 Lord Rockingham was Prime Minister for little more 
 than a year ; when he was dismissed, Burke could have 
 held office under his successor, Pitt, but he preferred 
 merely to retain his seat in Parliament, and to follow 
 the political fortunes of his patron. The friendship 
 thus cemented was broken only by Lord Rockingham s 
 death sixteen years later; in his will he directed his 
 executors to destroy all evidences of Burke s indebted 
 ness to him. This indebtedness amounted to thirty 
 thousand pounds. Was ever politician so trusted 
 before ! 
 
 It is useless to disguise the fact that for nearly the 
 whole of his long political life Burke was overwhelmed 
 by debt. Of the twenty-two thousand pounds which, in 
 1769, he agreed to pay for an estate in Buckinghamshire, 
 fourteen thousand pounds were not paid until fifteen 
 years after his death, and six thousand pounds were 
 paid by Lord Rockingham. Yet, after all, are these 
 
Xll EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 facts as discreditable to Burke as to the English people 
 to whose service he devoted his life ? They looked on 
 with indifference while a corrupt oligarchy polluted the 
 springs of government ; they allowed their greatest 
 orator to drink the bitter waters of poverty and debt, 
 while they were paying that elegant vacuity, Horace 
 "Walpole, 6,000 a year for being the son of his father. 
 
 In the opening pages of his Thoughts on the Cause of 
 the Present Discontents, Burke describes the unconstitu 
 tional system of a double cabinet l under which England 
 was then misgoverned, and to which he attributes the fact 
 " that government is at once dreaded and contemned ; 
 that the laws are despoiled of all their respected and 
 salutary terrors; that their inaction is a subject of 
 ridicule, and their exertion of abhorrence ; that rank, 
 and office, and title, and all the solemn plausibilities of 
 the world, have lost their reverence and effect ; that 
 our foreign politics are as much deranged as our 
 domestic economy ; that our dependencies are slack 
 ened in their affection, and loosened from their obedi 
 ence ; that we know neither how to yield nor how to 
 enforce ; that hardly anything above or below, abroad 
 or at home, is sound and entire ; but that disconnection 
 and confusion, in offices, in parties, in families, in Parlia 
 ment, in the nation, prevail beyond the disorders of any 
 former time these are facts universally admitted and 
 lamented." 
 
 The body of the pamphlet is devoted to the evil effects 
 
 1 Compare the Kitchen-Cabinet in Jackson s first Administration. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. Xlll 
 
 of this double-cabinet system and to an exposition of 
 Burke s views ultra-conservative views we should now 
 call them on the English Constitution ; the concluding 
 pages contain as good a defense as has ever been set up 
 for party government. 
 
 The ministry of Lord North, then just entering upon 
 power (1770), were annoyed by the shafts of Burke s 
 rhetoric, but were much too thick-skinned to be seriously 
 wounded by them. Perhaps the crassness of their peri 
 crania rendered them impervious to the infiltration of 
 new ideas ; perhaps but whatever the cause, intellect 
 ual, physical, or immoral, Burke moved them not. They 
 attempted no reforms, either in home or foreign policy ; 
 a few years persistence in this course resulted in Sara 
 toga, Yorktown, and the loss of the American Colonies. 
 During these years Burke s conduct was beyond praise, 
 and deserves to be held in grateful remembrance of 
 every American : from his seat in Parliament he contin 
 ually raised the voice of protest and of warning but 
 it was the voice of one crying in the wilderness. He 
 spoke to a king whose political wrongheadedness faith 
 fully represented the popular will, and to a House of 
 Commons which had no fear of hell before their eyes, 
 save a deficit in the secret-service supplies. 1 
 
 In 1774 Burke was returned to Parliament for Bris 
 tol, then the second city in England. This seat he held 
 for six years, failing of re-election because of his refusal 
 to vote in accordance with certain sordid instructions 
 from his constituents. On the 19th of April, 1774, just 
 
 1 " Purs is the erchedeknes helle," seyde he. Canterbury Tales, 658. 
 
XIV EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 a year before Lexington, he delivered his speech on 
 American Taxation, in which he urged the repeal of the 
 tea-duty ; on the 22d of March, 1775, came the speech 
 on Conciliation with the Colonies ; on the 3d of April, 
 1777, the immortal Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol on 
 the Affairs of America. Of these three compositions 
 Mr. John Morley has written golden words, which it 
 would be absurd for me to try and burnish. He says : * 
 
 " It is no exaggeration to say that they compose the most per 
 fect manual in our literature, or in any literature, for one who 
 approaches the study of public affairs, whether for knowledge or 
 for practice. They are an example without fault of all the quali 
 ties which the critic, whether a theorist or an actor, of great 
 political situations should strive by night and by day to possess. 
 If the subject with which they deal were less near than it is to 
 our interests and affections as free citizens, these three per 
 formances would still abound in the lessons of an incomparable 
 political method. If their subject were as remote as the quarrel 
 between Corinthians and Corcyra, or the war between Rome 
 and the Allies, instead of a conflict to which the world owes 
 the opportunity of the most important of political experiments, 
 we should still have everything to learn from the author s treat 
 ment ; the vigorous grasp of masses of compressed detail, the 
 wide illumination from great principles of human experience, 
 the strong and masculine feeling for the two great political 
 ends of Justice and Freedom, the large and generous interpre 
 tation of expediency, the morality, the vision, the noble temper. 
 If ever, in the fullness of time and surely the fates of men 
 and literature cannot have it otherwise Burke becomes one 
 of the half-dozen names of established and universal currency 
 in education and in common books, rising above the wayward 
 ness of literary caprice or [of] intellectual fashions, as Shake- 
 
 1 Morley s Burke, chapter iv. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. XV 
 
 speare and Milton and Bacon rise above it, it [sic] will be the 
 mastery, the elevation, the wisdom of these far-shining dis 
 courses in which the world will in an especial degree recognize 
 the combination of sovereign gifts with beneficent uses." 
 
 The surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown gave the 
 deathblow to the ministry of Lord North, and to the 
 fatuous policy of the king upon which that ministry 
 leaned. Lord Rockingham became Prime Minister for 
 the second time (1782) ; and Burke, who had been the 
 brains and bone and sinew of the Opposition for sixteen 
 long years, who had kept the Whigs together and shaped 
 their policy, who had written their best pamphlets and 
 made their best speeches, who was allowed to have a 
 more extensive and varied knowledge of public affairs 
 than any man of his day Burke was omitted from the 
 list of cabinet officers, and was appointed to the compar 
 atively unimportant post of Paymaster of the Forces. 
 Here he ranked as high, perhaps, as an Assistant Secre 
 tary of the Treasury would with us. 
 
 Lord Bockingham died in July, 1782, having been 
 Prime Minister a brief three months. Burke could have 
 continued in office under his successor, Shelburne ; but 
 he preferred to follow Fox into opposition mistakenly 
 as it appears, for this jar shook to its foundations the 
 loosely cohering Whig party, and awoke from its coma 
 the corpus vile of that Court policy which all good men 
 hoped had passed into the stage of cadaveric rigidity. 
 Shelburne s incapacity seemed to prove at first that 
 Burke was right in his action ; for in April, 1783, the 
 Shelburne ministry went to pieces. In the new deal 
 
XVI EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 known as the Coalition Ministry Burke is reinstated 
 Paymaster of the Forces ; Fox becomes a Secretary of 
 State, and who is that fat, good-natured, little man 
 who sits as Fox s colleague and under whom the mighty 
 Burke is now content to serve ? We rub our eyes : 
 surely it is not the much berated Lord North ? Yes, 
 it is indeed Lord North. Politics has at times 
 made strange bed-fellows, but never did administration- 
 blanket cover a more ill-sorted couple than this. 
 
 " O, dumb "be passion s stormy rage 
 
 When he who might 
 Have lighted up and led his age, 
 Falls back in night." 
 
 The life of the Coalition Ministry was short. They 
 fell (December, 1783) attempting to carry a much- 
 needed bill (the work of Burke and Fox) for reforming 
 the government of India. The House of Commons, it is 
 true, supported them by a large majority ; but the Lords, 
 encouraged by the back-stairs support of the King, ven 
 tured to reject the bill by a majority of nineteen. Fox 
 was dismissed, and the younger Pitt was made Prime 
 Minister; Burke went out with his friend, and never 
 again filled an executive office. 
 
 If we ask how it came to pass that the first orator and 
 best-informed politician of his age never attained to a 
 position for which the brains of a Melbourne and a 
 Rosebery have been found sufficient the answer will 
 be five-fold. 1. Burke was poor, and worse than poor, 
 he was always in debt. " Give a dog a bad name and 
 hang him " we say, with more force than elegance, and 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. xvii 
 
 Burke s reputation doubtless suffered from the common 
 opinion embodied in this homely proverb. 2. In an old 
 society like that of England, where birth and family con 
 nections count for much, Burke was severely handicapped 
 by several highly undesirable relatives a cousin, a 
 brother, a son who clung to the skirts of the aspiring 
 prophet, and dragged him back as he stood there, with 
 one foot on the step of the fiery chariot that was to whirl 
 him up to the heaven of cabinet responsibility. 3. With 
 increasing years certain infirmities of will and temper 
 grew upon Burke, and more than once overmastered that 
 coolness and rationality of judgment that must be the 
 compass of the successful politician. 4. Burke s mother 
 and wife were Roman Catholics : the discriminations 
 which English law then enforced against members of 
 that church, these he detested and opposed as heartily 
 as he did the English attempts to tax the Colonies and 
 to plunder the natives of India. This liberal attitude 
 gained him no favor in the eyes of a nation that allowed 
 no Roman Catholic to sit in Parliament until thirty-two 
 years after Burke s death, and that as late as 1870 taxed 
 Roman Catholics to support a Protestant church in Ire 
 land. 5. Burke was an Irishman. I have seldom seen 
 an English book where this is referred to as a reason for 
 Burke s never having been made a Cabinet minister; but 
 to a foreigner who studies the English attitude towards 
 Ireland, this reason seems as potent, perhaps, as any. 
 
 To the question of the English rule or rather mis 
 rule in India, Burke had devoted many years of study. 
 
XVlll EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 His moral indignation was roused at what seemed to 
 him the wanton destruction, by Clive and Hastings, of a 
 venerable order of society that had by no means outlived 
 its usefulness. This indignation bore fruit in two mag 
 nificent speeches : On the Nabob ofArcot s Debts (1785), 
 and The Impeachment of Warren Hastings (1788), 
 the last mentioned best known, perhaps, by that frag 
 ment which Macaulay has extracted to set in the frame 
 of his gorgeous rhetoric. Hastings trial (begun in 
 1786) dragged on for eight years, and he was finally ac 
 quitted, but the moral victory remained with Burke. 
 Writing in 1840, Macaulay said : l 
 
 "During a long course of years, the English rulers of India, 
 surrounded by allies and enemies whom no engagement could 
 bind, have generally acted with sincerity and uprightness ; and 
 the event has proved that sincerity and uprightness are wisdom. 
 ... No fastness, however strong by art or nature, gives to its 
 inmates a security like that enjoyed by the chief who, passing 
 through the territories of powerful and deadly enemies, is armed 
 with the British guarantee." 
 
 The shadows of the Indian mutiny fall athwart this 
 delightful picture and dim its colors considerably, yet 
 the outlines remain true, and are doubtless, on the whole, 
 representative of the facts. The credit of preparing the 
 canvas for these outlines must ever be given to Burke. 
 
 No biography of Burke, however brief, can omit all 
 mention of the famous Literary Club of which he was a 
 member. Boswell, 2 writing in 1792, mentions the follow- 
 
 1 Essay on Lord Clive. 2 Life of Johnson, chapter xvi. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. XIX 
 
 ing (among others) as having belonged to it : Reynolds, 
 Johnson, Goldsmith, Garrick, Adam Smith, Bishop 
 Percy, Fox, Sheridan, Gibbon, Sir William Jones, 
 Windham, and last (but not, in his own eyes, least) 
 Boswell. In this assemblage of notables, Burke had no 
 superior in conversational powers, and no equal in 
 breadth and depth of general information. Johnson s 
 two sayings about him have been often quoted, but will 
 bear quoting again as imperishable tributes from one 
 great man to another. " Burke is such a man that, if 
 you met him for the first time in the street, where you 
 were stopped by a drove of oxen, and you and he 
 stepped aside to take shelter but for five minutes, he d 
 talk to you in such a manner that, when you parted, 
 you would say, This is an extraordinary man. " Upon 
 another occasion, when the doctor was ill, some one 
 happened to mention Burke s name. " That fellow 
 calls forth all my powers," said the prostrate sage; 
 " were I to see Burke now, it would kill me." Let us 
 also hear Goldsmith on Burke. Goldsmith at the Club, 
 awkward and shy, twinkled the feeblest star in that 
 splendid constellation ; Goldsmith at home (inspired by 
 a goose-quill and a tallow-dip) has thrown a light on 
 Burke s character such as the wit of neither Johnson 
 nor of Burke himself could have emitted : 
 
 " Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such, 
 We scarcely can praise it or blame it too much ; 
 Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind, 
 And to party gave up what was meant for mankind ; 
 Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat 
 To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote; 
 
XX EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 Who, too deep for his hearers, still went on refining, 
 And thought of convincing while they thought of dining: 
 Though equal to all things, for all things unfit; 
 Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit; 
 For a patriot, too cool ; for a drudge, disobedient ; 
 And too fond of the right to pursue the expedient." 1 
 
 There is no doubt that Burke was by temperament and 
 early conviction a Conservative, and that the experiences 
 of his political life had deepened and strengthened this 
 conservatism. It is easy, therefore, to understand the 
 distrust with which he watched the beginnings of the 
 revolutionary movement in France; it is less easy to 
 understand and impossible to forgive the vindictive 
 and frenzied violence with which he opposed the devel 
 opment of that movement. In the Reflections on the 
 French Revolution (1790), Burke s horror at the uncon 
 stitutional proceedings of the French Assembly blinded 
 him to the terrible evils and abuses which made such 
 proceedings necessary, necessary, if France were not 
 to die, strangled by the bandit-clutch of her monarchy, 
 her aristocracy (alas, poor word ! ), and her clergy. 
 Burke saw the old order changing and giving place 
 to new ; this new order the democratic seemed to 
 him no better than a foundation of sand whereon to 
 rear the temple of society. He doubtless thought, 
 therefore, that he was doing God service when he called 
 upon the English to wage a war of extermination and 
 revenge upon France, or, to use his own words, " I 
 speak it emphatically and with a desire that it should 
 
 1 Goldsmith s Retaliation, 29-42. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. xxi 
 
 be marked [we must contend] in a long war." * This 
 sentence Buckle very justly characterizes as "the most 
 horrible ever penned by an English politician." It is 
 sad and almost impossible to believe that this is the 
 same Burke who wrote, in 1777 : " The poorest being 
 that crawls on earth, contending to save itself from 
 injustice and oppression, is an object respectable in the 
 eyes of God and man." And again : " General rebellions 
 and revolts of a whole people never were encouraged, 
 now or at any time. They are always provoked" 
 
 Burke s attitude towards the French Kevolution 
 brought him many mortifications, among them the ap 
 proval of King George. It cost him also the friendship 
 of Fox, Sheridan, and, indeed, one might almost say of 
 nearly every public man in England whose friendship 
 was worth having. As time went on his feeling grew 
 more and more intense ; from the measured tone of dig 
 nified argumentation he passed to the uncontrollable 
 scream of passion ; in the Letter to a Member of the 
 National Assembly (1791), and in the Letters on a Regi 
 cide Peace (some of them not published till after his 
 death), we find passages worthy the worst days of that 
 Irish Parliament of whom Swift so touchingly wrote : 
 
 " May their God, the Devil, confound them! " 
 
 Fox declared, with equal wit and wisdom, that it was 
 lucky for Burke that he took the royal side in the 
 Revolution ; had he taken the other side, his violence 
 would certainly have got him hanged. 
 
 1 The Italics are Burke s. 
 
XXIV EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 The teacher who has mastered these four studies will find little 
 of value in the critiques of earlier writers upon Burke. Rather, 
 then, as literary curiosities than as substantial contributions to 
 thought, are mentioned the following : De Quincey s Essays on 
 Ehetoric and on Schlosser s Literary History of the Eighteenth 
 Century ; Hazlitfs Essay on the Character of Burke ; Sir 
 Joseph Napier s Lecture on Burke. References to Burke will 
 be found scattered through Boswell, The Diary of Madame 
 D Arblay, and Macaulay s Essays ; consult the Indexes to these 
 works. 
 
 The latest writer on Burke is Augustin Birrell in his Obiter 
 Dicta, Second Series. While it is impossible to take Mr. Birrell 
 seriously as a critic, he is certainly a delightful humorist, and 
 should be read as such. 
 
NOTE ON THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENTARY 
 SYSTEM. 
 
 THE English system of Parliamentary Government 
 differs in so many ways from our system of Congres 
 sional Government, that the young student of Burke may 
 find it helpful to have the details of the former briefly 
 explained here. 
 
 In the English system there is no such divorce be 
 tween the Legislative and the Executive as the consti 
 tution-makers effected in our system. The Cabinet 
 (Executive) consists of some twelve or fifteen officials 
 chosen from the political party that commands a major 
 ity in the House of Commons (Legislative) ; the cabinet, 
 therefore, is practically a Committee of the House of 
 Commons. Members of the Cabinet may be selected 
 from the House of Lords, a few invariably are ; but 
 it is the political complexion of the House of Commons 
 that determines the make-up of the Cabinet. The 
 Prime Minister is appointed nominally by the Crown ; 
 practically he is selected by the consensus of the influ 
 ential politicans in his own party. The other members 
 of the Cabinet are also appointed nominally by the 
 Crown ; but practically by the Prime Minister, after 
 consultation with his party friends. 
 
xxvi EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 Upon the Cabinet rests the responsibility of initiating 
 all legislation necessary for the successful administration 
 of government. Authority and responsibility are thus 
 centered in one and the same party ; this excellent prin 
 ciple is unfortunately lacking (except by rare chance) in 
 our system. When the Cabinet fails to carry through 
 the House of Commons any important measure, one of 
 two courses is open to them : 1. They may resign at 
 once, and hand over the responsibility of administration 
 to the party that has beaten them by obtaining a major 
 ity vote in the House of Commons. 2. If the Cabinet 
 feel that the vote in the House does not represent the 
 will of the nation, they will advise (i.e., authoritatively 
 request) the Crown to dissolve Parliament and issue 
 writs for a new election. If the new election results in 
 leaving the ministerial party still in minority, they will 
 at once resign and hand over their administrative duties 
 to the Opposition. 
 
 Every member of the Cabinet must be a member of 
 the House of Lords or of the House of Commons, as he 
 is expected to be present at the sessions of the Houses in 
 order to answer questions which may be asked him by 
 any member on matters of public policy. Yet no mem 
 ber of the House of Commons may accept an office from 
 the Crown without thereby losing his seat as member of 
 the House. 1 Hence we behold the curious spectacle of 
 a man being elected to the House of Commons, accept 
 ing a Cabinet office, and immediately going back to his 
 constituency for re-election. Should he fail of this 
 
 1 Compare the Constitution of the United States, Article I., Section vi., 2. 
 
THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM, xxvii 
 
 re-election, he is, of course, ineligible for the Cab 
 inet. 
 
 Such, in very meager outline, is the working of the 
 English system to-day. The Crown has little power, 
 and the Lords have sunk into comparative insignificance. 
 No ministry would think of resigning on account of an 
 adverse vote in that House. In Burke s time the Crown 
 exercised an active and almost invariably mischievous 
 influence. If the policy of the ministers was displeasing 
 to the King, he considered himself justified in dismissing 
 them whenever he could obtain a vote adverse to them 
 in either House. For an instance of this, see the account 
 of the fall of the Coalition Ministry in 1783 (p. xiv. in 
 the biographical sketch of Burke). 
 
( UNIVERSITY ) 
 
 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 ON MOVING HIS RESOLUTIONS FOR CONCILIATION WITH THE 
 COLONIES, MARCH 22, 1775. 
 
 I HOPE, Sir, that, notwithstanding the austerity of the 
 Chair, your good-nature will incline you to some degree 
 of indulgence towards human frailty. You will not 
 think it unnatural that those who have an object de 
 pending, which strongly engages their hopes and fears, 5 
 should be somewhat inclined to superstition. As I 
 came into the House full of anxiety about the event of 
 my motion, I found, to my infinite surprise, that the 
 grand penal Bill, by which we had passed sentence on 
 the trade and sustenance of America, is to be returned 10 
 to us from the other House. I do confess I could not 
 help looking on this event as a fortunate omen. I look 
 upon it as a sort of providential favor, by which we 
 are put once more in possession of our deliberative 
 capacity, upon a business so very questionable in its 15 
 nature, so very uncertain in its issue. By the return of 
 this Bill, which seemed to have taken its flight forever, 
 we are at this very instant nearly as free to choose a 
 plan for our American Government as we were on the 
 
 1 
 
2 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 first day of the session. If, Sir, we incline to the side 
 of conciliation, we are not at all embarrassed (unless we 
 please to make ourselves so) by any incongruous mix 
 ture of coercion and restraint. We are therefore called 
 5 upon, as it were by a superior warning voice, again to 
 attend to America ; to attend to the whole of it to 
 gether, and to review the subject with an unusual -de 
 gree of care and calmness. 
 
 Surely it is an awful subject"; or there is none so on 
 
 10 this side of the grave. When I first had the honor of a 
 seat in this House, the affairs of that continent pressed 
 themselves upon us, as the most important and most 
 delicate object of Parliamentary attention. My little 
 share in this great deliberation oppressed me. I found 
 
 15 myself a partaker in a very high trust; and having no 
 sort of reason to rely on jbhe strength of mv natural 
 abilities for the ! proper ^execu^^n _oj_^tliaiJ i r_u^ I was 
 obliged to take more than common pains to instruct my 
 self in everything which relates to our Colonies. I was 
 
 20 not less under the npc.pssity_nf jFnrpiipg somfi fiyp.d klpas 
 concerning the general policy of foe Britjs^ Empire. 
 Something of this sort seemed to be indispensable, in 
 order, amidst so vast a fluctuation of passions and opin 
 ions, to concenter my thoughts, to ballast my conduct, 
 
 25 to preserve me from being blown about by every wind 
 of fashionable doctrine. I. really did not think it safe 
 or manly to have fresh principles to seek upon every 
 fresh mail which should arrive from America. 
 
 At that period I had the fortune to find myself in 
 perfect concurrence with a large majority in this House. 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 3 
 
 Bowing under that high authority, and penetrated with 
 the sharpness and strength of that early impression, 
 I have continued ever since, without the least devia 
 tion, in my original sentiments. Whether this be owing 
 to an obstinate perseverance in error, or to a religious 5 
 adherence to what appears to me truth and reason, it 
 is in your equity to judge. 
 
 Sir, Parliament having an enlarged view of objects, 
 made, during this interval, more frequent changes in 
 their sentiments and their conduct, than could be justi- 10 
 fied in a particular person upon the contracted scale of 
 private information. But though I do not hazard any 
 thing approaching to a censure on the motives of for 
 mer Parliaments to all those alterations, one fact is 
 undoubted, that under them the state of America has 15 
 been kept in continual agitation. Everything adminis 
 tered as remedy to the public complaint, if it did not 
 produce, was at least followed by, a heightening of the 
 distemper ; until, by a variety of experiments, that im 
 portant country has been brought into her present situa- 20 
 tion; a situation which I will not miscall, which I 
 dare not name, which I scarcely know how to compre 
 hend in the terms of any description. 
 
 In this posture, Sir, things stood at the beginning of 
 the session. About that time a worthy member of 25 
 great Parliamentary experience, who, in the year 1766, 
 filled the chair of the American Committee with much 
 ability, took me aside ; and, lamenting the present as 
 pect of our politics, told me, things were come to such 
 a pass, that our former methods of proceeding in the 
 
4 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 House would be no longer tolerated. That the public 
 tribunal (never too indulgent to a long and unsuccessful 
 opposition) would now scrutinize our conduct with un 
 usual severity. That the very vicissitudes and shift- 
 5 ings of Ministerial measures, instead of convicting their 
 authors of inconstancy and want of system, would be 
 taken as an occasion of charging us with a predeter 
 mined discontent, which nothing could satisfy; whilst 
 we accused every measure of vigor as cruel, and every 
 
 10 -proposal of lenity as weak and irresolute. The public, 
 he said, would not have patience to see us play the 
 game out with our adversaries : we must produce our 
 hand. It would be expected that those who for many 
 years had been active in such affairs should show that 
 
 15 they had formed some clear and decided idea of the 
 principles of colony government, and were capable of 
 drawing out something like a platform of the ground 
 which might be laid for future and permanent tran 
 quillity. 
 
 20 I felt the truth of what my honorable friend repre 
 sented, but I felt my situation too. His application 
 might have been made with far greater propriety to 
 many other gentlemen. No man was indeed ever bet 
 ter disposed, or worse qualified, for such an undertaking, 
 
 25 than myself. Though I gave so far into his opinion 
 that I immediately threw my thoughts into a sort of 
 Parliamentary form, I was by no means equally ready 
 to produce them. It generally argues some degree of 
 natural impotence of mind, or some want of knowledge 
 of the world, to hazard plans of government, except 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 5 
 
 from a seat of authority. Propositions are made, not 
 only ineffectually, but somewhat disreputably, when the 
 minds of men are not properly disposed for their recep 
 tion ; and for my part, I am not ambitious of ridicule, 
 not absolutely a candidate for disgrace. 5 
 
 Besides, Sir, to speak the plain truth, I have in gen 
 eral no very exalted opinion of the virtue of paper gov 
 ernment, nor of any politics in which the plan is to be 
 wholly separated from the execution. But when I saw 
 that anger and violence prevailed every day more and 10 
 more, and that things were hastening towards an incur 
 able alienation of our Colonies, I confess my caution 
 gave way. I felt this as one of those few moments in 
 which decorum yields to a higher duty. Public calamity 
 is a mighty leveler ; and there are occasions when any, 15 
 even the slightest, chance of doing good must be laid 
 hold on, even by the most inconsiderable person. 
 
 To restore order and repose to an empire so great and 
 so distracted as ours, is, merely in the attempt, an un 
 dertaking that would ennoble the flights of the highest 20 
 genius, and obtain pardon for the efforts of the meanest 
 understanding. Struggling a good while with these 
 thoughts, by degrees I felt myself more firm. I derived, 
 at length, some confidence from what in other circum 
 stances usually produces timidity. I grew less anxious, 25 
 even from the idea of my own insignificance. For, j udg- 
 ing of what you are, by what you ought to be, I per 
 suaded myself that you would not reject a reasonable 
 proposition, because it had nothing but its reason to 
 recommend it. On the other hand, being totally desti- 
 
6 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 tute of all shadow of influence, natural or adventitious, 
 I was very sure, that, if my proposition were futile or 
 dangerous, if it were weakly conceived or improperly 
 timed, there was nothing exterior to it, of power to awe, 
 5 dazzle, or delude you. You will see it just as it is, and 
 you will treat it just as it deserves. 
 
 The proposition is Peace. Xot Peace through the 
 medium of war ; not Peace to be limited through the 
 labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations; not 
 
 10 Peace to arise out of universal discord, fomented, from 
 principle, in all parts of the empire ; not Peace to de- 
 pend on the juridical determination of perplexing ques 
 tions, or the precise marking the shadowy boundaries 
 of a complex government. It is simple Peace, sought 
 
 15 in its natural course and in its ordinary haunts ; it is 
 Peace sought in the spirit of Peace and laid in princi 
 ples purely pacific. I propose, by removing the ground 
 of the difference, and by restoring the former unsi(S2)ect- 
 ing confidence of tJ/e Colon it s in tJic Mother Country, to 
 
 20 give permanent satisfaction to your people, and (far 
 from a scheme of ruling by discord) to reconcile them 
 to each other in the same act, and by the bond of the 
 very same interest which reconciles them to British 
 Government. 
 
 25 My idea is nothing more. Refined policy ever has 
 been the parent of confusion, and ever will be so. as long 
 as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is 
 as easily discovered at the first view, as fraud is surely 
 detected at last, is, let me say, of no mean force in the 
 government of mankind. Genuine simplicity of heart 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 7 
 
 is a healing and cementing principle. My plan, there 
 fore, being formed upon the most simple grounds ima 
 ginable, may disappoint some people, when they hear it. 
 It has nothing to recommend it to the pruriency of 
 curious ears. There is nothing at all new and captivat- 5 
 ing in it. It has nothing of the splendor of the project 
 which has been lately laid upon your table by the Noble 
 Lord in the Blue Ribbon. It does not propose to fill 
 your lobby with squabbling Colony agents, who will 
 require the interposition of your mace, at every instant, 10 
 to keep the peace amongst them. It does not institute 
 a magnificent auction of finance, where captivated prov 
 inces come to general ransom by bidding against each 
 other, until you knock down the hammer, and determine 
 a proportion of payments beyond all the powers of 15 
 algebra to equalize and settle. 
 
 The plan which I shall presume to suggest derives, 
 however, one great advantage from the proposition and 
 registry of that Noble Lord s project. The idea of con 
 ciliation is admissible. First, the House, in accepting 20 
 the resolution moved by the Noble Lord, has admitted, 
 notwithstanding the menacing front of our Address,-, 
 notwithstanding our heavy Bills of Pains and Penalties, 
 that we do not think ourselves precluded from all ideas 
 of free grace and bounty. 25 
 
 The House has gone farther ; it has declared concilia 
 tion admissible, previous to any submission on the part 
 of America. It has even shot a good deal beyond that 
 mark, and has admitted that the complaints of our 
 former mode of exerting the right of taxation were not 
 
8 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 wholly unfounded. That right thus exerted is allowed 
 to have something reprehensible in it, something un 
 wise or something grievous, since, in the midst of our 
 heat and resentment, we, of ourselves, have proposed 
 5 a capital alteration ; and, in order to get rid of what 
 seemed so very exceptionable, have instituted a mode 
 that is altogether new ; one that is, indeed, wholly alien 
 from all the ancient methods and forms of Parliament. 
 The principle of this proceeding is large enough for 
 
 10 my purpose. The means proposed by the Noble Lord 
 for carrying his ideas into execution, I think, indeed, 
 are very indifferently suited to the end, and this I 
 shall endeavor to show you before I sit down. But for 
 the present I take my ground on the admitted prin- 
 
 15 ciple. I mean to give peace. Peace implies reconcilia 
 tion ; and, where there lias been a material .dispute, 
 reconciliation does, in a manner, always imply con 
 cession on the one part or on the other. In this state 
 of things I make no difficulty in affirming that the pro- 
 
 20 posal ought to originate from us. Great and acknowl- 
 edged force is not impaired, either in effect or in 
 opinion, by an unwillingness to exert itself. The 
 superior power may offer peace with honor and with 
 safety. Such an offer from such a power will be 
 
 25 attributed to magnanimity. But the concessions of the 
 weak are the concessions of fear. When such a one is 
 disarmed, he is wholly at the mercy of his superior ; 
 and he loses forever that time and those chances which, 
 as they happen to all men, are the strength and re 
 sources of all inferior power. 
 
O^ CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 9 
 
 The capital leading questions on which you must this 
 day decide are these two : Firsts whether you ought to 
 concede ; and secondly, what your concession ought to 
 be. On the first of these questions we have gained (as 
 I have just taken the liberty of observing to you) some 5 
 ground. But I am sensible that a good deal more is 
 still to be done. Indeed, .Sir, to enable us to determine 
 both on the one and the other of these great questions 
 with a firm and precise judgment, I think it may be 
 necessary to consider distinctly the true nature and the 10 
 peculiar circumstances of the object which we have 
 before us. Because after all our struggle, whether we 
 will or not, we must govern America according to that 
 nature and to those circumstances, and not according to 
 our own imaginations, nor according to abstract ideas of 15 
 right ; by no means according to mere general theories 
 of government, the resort to which appears to me, in our 
 present situation, no better than arrant trifling. I shall 
 therefore endeavor, with your leave, to lay before you 
 some of the most material of these circumstances in as 20 
 full and as clear a manner as I am able to state them. 
 
 The first thing that we have to consider with regard 
 to the nature of the object is the number of people in 
 the Colonies. I have taken for some years a good deal 
 of pains on that point. I can by no calculation justify 25 
 myself in placing the number below two millions of 
 inhabitants of our own European blood and color; be 
 sides at least five hundred thousand others, who form 
 no inconsiderable part of the strength and opulence of 
 
10 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 the whole. This, Sir, is, I believe, about the true num 
 ber. There is no occasion to exaggerate, where plain 
 truth is of so much weight and importance. But 
 whether I put the present numbers too high or too low, 
 5 is a matter of little moment. Such is the strength with 
 which population shoots in that part of the world that, 
 state the numbers as high as we will, whilst the dispute 
 continues the exaggeration ends. Whilst we are discuss 
 ing any given magnitude, they are grown to it. Whilst 
 
 10 we spend our time in deliberating on the mode of gov 
 erning two millions, we shall find we have millions more 
 to manage. Your children do not grow faster from 
 infancy to manhood, than they spread from families to 
 communities, and from villages to nations. 
 
 15 I put this consideration of the present and the grow 
 ing numbers in the front of our deliberation ; because, 
 Sir, this consideration will make it evident to a blunter 
 discernment " tliaiT~youfs, tJTat~no partial, narrow, con- 
 "tracted, pinched, occasional system will be at all suitable 
 
 20 to such an object. It will show you that it is not to 
 be considered as one of those minima which are out of 
 the eye and consideration of the law ; not a paltry ex 
 crescence of the state ; not a mean dependant, who may 
 be neglected with little damage, and provoked with little 
 
 25 danger. It will prove that some degree of care and 
 caution is required in the handling such an object; it 
 will show that you ought not, in reason, to trifle with so 
 large a mass of the interests and feelings of the human 
 race. You could at no time do so without guilt ; and be 
 assured you will not be able to do it long with impunity. 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 11 
 
 But the population of this country, the great and 
 growing population, though a very important considera 
 tion, will lose much of its weight, if not combined with 
 other circumstances. The commerce of your Colonies 
 is out of all proportion beyond the numbers of the 5 
 people. This ground of their commerce indeed has 
 been trod some days a^o, and with -Teat ability, by 
 a distinguished person, at your bar. This gentleman, 
 after thirty-five years it is so long since he first ap 
 peared at IKe same place to plead for the commerce of 10 
 Great Britain has come again before you to plead the 
 same cause, without any other effect of time than that, 
 to the fire of imagination and extent of erudition which 
 even then marked him as one of the first literary char 
 acters of his age, he has added a consummate knowledge 15 
 in the commercial interest of his country, formed by 
 a long course of enlightened and discriminating expe 
 rience. 
 
 Sir, I should be inexcusable in coming after such a 
 person with any detail, if a grea.t part of tha members 20 
 who now fill the Hon<fft frffrfl no ^ ^ ft misfortune tn be 
 absent when he appeared at your bar. Besides, Sir, I 
 propose to take the matter at periods of time somewhat 
 different from his. There is, if I mistake not, a point 
 of view, from whence, if you will look at the subject, 25 
 it is impossible that it should not make an impression 
 upon you. 
 
 I have in my hand two accounts : one a comparative 
 state of the export trade of England to its Colonies, as 
 it stood in the year 1704, and as it stood in the year 
 
12 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 1772 ; the other a state of the export trade of this 
 country to its Colonies alone, as it stood in 1772, com 
 pared with the whole trade of England to all parts of 
 the world (the Colonies included) in the year 1704. 
 5 They are from good vouchers ; the latter period from 
 the accounts on your table, the earlier from an original 
 
 7 manuscript of Davenant, who first established the In 
 spector-General s office, which has been ever since his 
 time so abundant a source of Parliamentary information. 
 
 10 The export trade to the Colonies consists of three 
 great branches : the African, which, terminating almost 
 wholly in the Colonies, must be put to the account of 
 their commerce ; the West Indian ; and the North 
 American. All these are so interwoven that the at- 
 
 15 tempt to separate them would tear to pieces the con 
 texture of the whole, and if not entirely destroy, would 
 very much depreciate the value of all the parts. I 
 therefore consider these three denominations to be, 
 what in effect they are, one trade. 
 
 20 The trade to the Colonies, taken on the export side, 
 at the beginning of this century, that is, in the year 
 1704, stood thus : - 
 
 Exports to North America, and the West 
 
 Indies 483,265 
 
 25 To Africa 86,665 
 
 569,930 
 
 In the year 1772, which I take as a middle year 
 between the highest and lowest of those lately laid on 
 your table, the account was as follows : 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 13 
 
 To North America, and the West 
 
 Indies ........... 4,791,734 
 
 To Africa 866,398 
 
 To which, if you add the export trade 
 
 from Scotland, which had in 1704 no 5 
 
 existence 364,000 
 
 6,022,132 
 
 From five hundred and odd thousand, it has grown to 
 six millions. It has increased no less than twelvefold. 
 This is the state of the Colony trade, as compared with 10 
 itself at these two periods, within this century ; and 
 this is matter for meditation. But this is not all. 
 Examine my second account. See how the export trade 
 to the Colonies alone in 1772 stood in the other point of 
 view, that is, as compared to the whole trade of England 15 
 in 1704. 
 
 The whole export trade of England, 
 including that to the Colonies, in 
 1704 6,509,000 
 
 Export to the Colonies alone, in 1772 6,024,000 20 
 
 Difference, 485,000 
 
 The trade with America alone is now within less than 
 500,000 of being equal to what this great commercial 
 nation, England, carried on at the beginning of this 
 century with the whole world ! If I had taken the 25 
 largest year of those on your table, it would rather 
 have exceeded. But, it will be said, is not this Ameri 
 can trade an unnatural protuberance, that has drawn 
 
14 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 the juices from the rest of the body ? The reverse, 
 It is the very food that has nourished every other part 
 into its present magnitude. Our general trade has been 
 greatly augmented ; and augmented more or less in 
 
 5 almost every part to which it ever extended ; but with 
 this material difference, that of the six millions which 
 in the beginning of the century constituted the whole 
 mass of our export commerce, the Colony trade was but 
 one-twelfth part ; it is now (as a part of sixteen mil- 
 
 10 lions) considerably more than a third of the whole. 
 This is the relative proportion of the importance of. the 
 Colonies at these two periods; and all reasoning con 
 cerning our mode of treating them must have this pro 
 portion as its basis, or it is a reasoning weak, rotten, 
 
 ir> and sophistical. 
 
 > s Mr. Speaker, I cannot prevail on myself to hurry over 
 this great consideration. It is good for us to be here. 
 We stand where we have an immense view of what is, 
 and what is past. Clouds, indeed, and darkness rest 
 
 20 upon the future. Let us, however, before we descend 
 from this noble eminence, reflect that this growth of 
 our national prosperity has happened within the short- 
 period of the life of man. It has happened within 
 sixty-eight years. There are those alive whose memory 
 
 25 might touch the two extremities. For instance, my 
 Lord Bathurst might remember all the stages of the 
 progress. He was in 1704 of an age at least to be made 
 to comprehend such things. He was then old enough 
 acta parentum jam legere, et quce sit potuit cognoscere 
 virtus. Suppose, Sir, that the angel of this auspicious 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 15 
 
 youth, foreseeing the many virtues which made him 
 one of the most amiable, as he is one of the most 
 fortunate, men of his age, had opened to him in vision, 
 that when, in the fourth generation the third Prince of 
 the House of Brunswick had sat twelve years on the 5 
 throne of that nation, which (by the happy issue of 
 moderate and healing counsels) was to be made Great 
 Britain, he should see his son, Lord Chancellor of Eng 
 land, turn back the current of hereditary dignity to its 
 fountain, and raise him to a higher rank of peerage, 10 
 whilst he enriched the family with a new one if 
 amidst these bright and happy scenes of domestic 
 honor and prosperity, that angel should have drawn 
 up the curtain, and unfolded the rising glories of his 
 country, and, whilst he was gazing with admiration on 15 
 the then commercial grandeur of England, the genius 
 should point out to him a little speck, scarcely visible 
 in the mass of the national interest, a small seminal 
 principle rather than a formed body, and should tell 
 him: "Young man, there is America which at this 20 
 day serves for little more than to amuse you with 
 stories of savage men, and uncouth manners ; yet shall, 
 before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole - 
 of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the 
 world. Whatever England has been growing to by a 25 
 progressive increase of improvement, brought in by 
 varieties of people, by succession of civilizing conquests 
 and civilizing settlements in a series of seventeen hun 
 dred years, you shall see as much added to her by 
 America in the course of a single life ! " If this state 
 
 X^T^^N 
 
16 SPEECH OF EDMUND BUEKE 
 
 of his country had been foretold to him, would it not 
 require all the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the 
 fervid glow of enthusiasm, to make him believe it ? 
 Fortunate man, he has lived to see it ! Fortunate 
 5 indeed, if he lives to see nothing that shall vary the 
 prospect, and cloud the setting of his day ! 
 
 Excuse me, Sir, if, turning from such thoughts, I re 
 sume this comparative view once more. You have seen 
 it on a large scale ; look at it on a small one. I will 
 
 10 point out to your attention a particular instance of it in 
 the single province of Pennsylvania. In the year 1704, 
 that province called for 11,459 in value of your com- 
 modities, native and foreign. This was the whole. 
 What did it demand in 1772? Why, nearly fifty 
 
 15 times as much; for in that year the export to Penn 
 sylvania was 507,909, nearly equal to the export to all 
 the Colonies together in the first period. 
 
 I choose, Sir, to enter into these minute and particu 
 lar details, because generalities, which in all other 
 
 20 cases are apt to heighten and raise the subject, have 
 here a tendency to sink it. When we speak of the com 
 merce with our Colonies, fiction lags after truth, inven 
 tion is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren. 
 So far, Sir, as to the importance of the object, in view 
 
 25 of its commerce, as concerned in the exports from Eng 
 land. If I were to detail the imports, I could show how 
 
 - many enjoyments they procure, which deceive the bur 
 then of life; how many materials which invigorate the 
 springs of national industry, and extend and animate 
 every part of our foreign and domestic commerce. This 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 17 
 
 would be a curious subject indeed ; but I must pre 
 scribe bounds to myself in a matter so vast and various. 
 
 I pass therefore to the Colonies in another point of 
 view, thfir agrirultiiiv. This they have prosecuted 
 with such a spirit, that, besides feeding plentifully 5 
 their own growing multitude, their annual export of 
 grain, comprehending rice, has some years ago exceeded 
 a million in value. Of their last harvest, I am per 
 suaded they will export much more. At the beginning 
 of the century some of these colonies imported corn 10 
 from the mother country. For some time past, the Old 
 World has been fed from the New. The scarcity which 
 you have felt would have been a desolating famine, if 
 this child of your old age, with a true filial piety, with 
 a Koman charity, had not put the full breast of its 15 
 youthful exuberance to the mouth of its exhausted 
 parent. 
 
 Asjx) the wealth which the Colonies have drawn from 
 the sea by their fiahftriftg,. ynn htu? n.11 iflmt. matter fully 
 npftnftd af. ynnr bar Vrm snrply thought those acquisi- 20 
 
 tions of value, for they seemed even to excite your envy ; 
 and yet the spirit by which that enterprising employ 
 ment has been exercised, ought rather, in my opinion, 
 to have raised your esteem and admiration. And pray, 
 Sir, what in the world is equal to it ? Pass by the 25 
 other parts, and look at the manner in which the people 
 of New England have of late carried on the whale fish 
 ery. Whilst we follow them among the tumbling moun- 
 
18 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 tains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest 
 frozen recesses of Hudson s Bay and Davis Straits, 
 whilst we are looking for them beneath the Arctic Cir 
 cle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite 
 5 region of polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, and 
 engaged under the frozen Serpent of the south. Falk 
 land Island, which seemed too remote and romantic an 
 object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage 
 and resting-place in the progress of their victorious in- 
 
 10 dustry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging 
 to them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. 
 We know that whilst some of them draw the line and 
 strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the 
 longitude, and pursue their gigantic game along the 
 
 15 coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their 
 fisheries. No climate that is not witness to their toils. 
 Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of 
 France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English 
 enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of 
 
 20 hardy industry to the extent to which it has been 
 pushed by this recent people ; a people who are still, 
 as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into 
 the bone of manhood. When I contemplate these 
 things ; when I know that the Colonies in general 
 
 25 owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that 
 they are not squeezed into this happy form by the 
 constraints of watchful and suspicious government, but 
 that, through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous 
 nature has been suffered to take her own way to per 
 fection ; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 19 
 
 how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride 
 of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of 
 human contrivances melt and die away within me. My 
 rigor relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty. 
 
 I am sensible, Sir, that all which I have asserted in 5 
 my detail, is admitted in the gross ; but that quite a 
 different conclusion is drawn from it. America, gentle 
 men say, is a noble object. It is an object well worth 
 fighting for. Certainly it is, if fighting a people be the 
 best way of gaining them. Gentlemen in this respect 10 
 will be led to their choice of means by their complexions 
 and their habits. Those who understand the military 
 art, will of course have some predilection for it. Those 
 who wield the thunder of the state, may have more con 
 fidence in the efficacy of arms. But I confess, possibly 15 
 for want of this knowledge, my opinion is much more in 
 favor of prudent management, than of force ; consider 
 ing force not as an odious, but a feeble instrument, for 
 preserving a people so numerous, so active, so growing, 
 so spirited as this, in a profitable and subordinate con- 20 
 nection with us. 
 
 First, Sir, permit me to observe that the use of force 
 alone is but temporary. It may subdue, for a moment, 
 but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again ; 
 and a nation is not governed which is perpetually to be 25 
 conquered. 
 
 My next objection is its inicrrtainfy. Terror is not - 
 always the effect of force ; and an armament is not a vic 
 tory. If you do not succeed, you are without resource ; 
 
20 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 for, conciliation failing, force remains ; but, force failing, 
 no further hope of reconciliation is left. Power and 
 authority are sometimes bought by kindness ; but they 
 can never be begged as alms by an impoverished and 
 5 defeated violence. 
 
 A further objection to force is, that you impair the 
 object by your very endeavors to preserve it. The thing 
 you fought for is not the thing which you recover, but- 
 depreciated, sunk, wasted, and consumed in the contest. 
 
 10 Nothing less will content me than whole America. I do 
 not choose to consume its strength along with our own ; 
 because in all parts it is the British strength that I con 
 sume. I do not choose to be caught by a foreign enemy 
 at the end of this exhausting conflict, and still less in 
 
 15 the midst of it. I may escape, but I can make no in 
 surance against such an event. Let me add, that I do 
 not choose wholly to break the American spirit, because 
 it is the spirit that has made the country. 
 
 Lastly, we have no sort of experience in favor of force 
 
 20 as an instrument in the rule of our Colonies. Their 
 growth and their utility have been owing to methods 
 altogether different. Our ancient indulgence has been 
 said to be pursued to a fault. It may be so. But we 
 know, if feeling is evidence, that our fault was more tol- 
 
 25 erable than our attempt to mend it, and our sin far more 
 salutary than our penitence. 
 
 These, Sir, are my reasons for not entertaining that 
 high opinion of untried force, by which many gentlemen, 
 for whose sentiments in other particulars I have great 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 21 
 
 respect, seem to be so greatly captivated. But there is 
 still behind a third consideration concerning this object, 
 which serves to determine my opinion on the sort of 
 policy which ought to be pursued in the management of 
 America, even more than its population and its com- 5 
 merce I mean its temper and character. 
 
 In this character of the Americans, a love of freedom 
 is the predominating feature which marks and distin 
 guishes the whole; and as an ardent is always a jealous 
 affection, your Colonies become suspicious, restive, and 10 
 untractable y whenever they ee the least aMftmpt. f.n wrpsf. 
 from them by force, or shuttle from them by chicane. 
 what they think the only advantage worth living for. 
 This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English 
 Colonies probably than in any other people of the earth, 16 
 and this from a great variety of powerful causes ; which, 
 to understand the true temper of their minds, and the 
 direction which this spirit takes, it will not be amiss to 
 lay open somewhat more largely. 
 
 First, the people of the Colonies are descendants of 20 
 Englishmen. England, Sir, is a nation which still I 
 hope respects, and formerly adored, her freedom. The 
 Colonists emigrated from you when this part of your 
 character was most predominant, and they took this 
 bias and direction the moment they parted from your 25 
 hands. They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, 
 but to liberty according to English ideas and on English 
 principles. Abstract liberty, like other mere abstrac 
 tions, is not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensi 
 ble object ; and every nation has formed to itself some 
 
22 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 favorite point, which by way of eminence becomes the 
 criterion of their happiness. It happened, you know, 
 Sir, that the great contests for freedom in this country 
 were from the earliest times chiefly upon the question of 
 5 taxing. Most of the contests in the ancient common 
 wealths turned primarily on the right of election of 
 magistrates, or on the balance among the several orders 
 of the state. The question of money was not with them 
 so immediate. But in England it was otherwise. On 
 
 10 this point of taxes the ablest pens and most eloquent 
 tongues have been exercised, the greatest spirits have 
 acted and suffered. In order to give the fullest satisfac 
 tion concerning the importance of this point, it was not 
 only necessary for those who in argument defended the 
 
 15 excellence of the English Constitution, to insist on this 
 privilege of granting money as a dry point of fact, and 
 to prove that the right had been acknowledged in an 
 cient parchments and blind usages, to reside in a cer 
 tain body called a House of Commons. They went 
 
 20 much farther; they attempted to prove, and they suc 
 ceeded, that in theory it ought to be so, from the partic 
 ular nature of a House of Commons, as an immediate 
 representative of the people ; whether the old records 
 had delivered this oracle or not. They took infinite 
 
 25 pains to inculcate, as a fundamental principle, that in all 
 monarchies the people must in effect themselves, medi 
 ately or immediately, possess the power of granting their 
 own money, or no shadow of liberty can subsist. The 
 Colonies draw from you, as with their life-blood, these 
 ideas and principles. Their love of liberty, as with you, 
 
O^V CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 23 
 
 fixed and attached on this specific point of taxing. Lib 
 erty might be safe, or might be endangered, in twenty 
 other particulars, without their being much pleased or 
 alarmed. Here they felt its pulse ; and as they found 
 that beat, they thought themselves sick or sound. I do 5 
 not say whether they were right or wrong in applying 
 your general arguments to their own case. It is not 
 easy indeed to make a monopoly of theorems and corol 
 laries. The fact is, that they did thus apply those 
 general arguments ; and your mode of governing them, 10 
 whether through lenity or indolence, through wisdom 
 or mistake, confirmed them in the imagination, that 
 they, as well as you, had an interest in these common 
 principles. 
 
 They were farther confirmed in tins pleasing error 15 
 by the form of their provincial legislative assemblies. 
 Their governments are popular in a high degree : some 
 are merely popular ; in all, the popular representative 
 is the most weighty ; and this share of the people in 
 their ordinary government never faiR to inspire them 20 
 with lofty sentiments, and with a strong aversion from 
 whatever tends to deprive them of their chief impor 
 tance. 
 
 If anything were wanting to this necessary operation 
 of the form of government, religion would have given 25 
 it a complete effect. Eeligion, always a principle of 
 energy, in this new people is no way worn out or im 
 paired ; and their mode of professing it is also one main 
 cause of this free spirit. The people are Protestants ; 
 and of that kind which is the most adverse to all im- 
 
24 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 plicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a per 
 suasion not only favorable to liberty, but built upon it. 
 I do not think, Sir, that the reason of this averseness 
 in the dissenting churches, from all that looks like 
 5 absolute government, is so much to be sought in their 
 religious tenets, as in their history. Every one knows 
 that the Roman Catholic religion is at least coeval with 
 most of the governments where it prevails ; that it has 
 generally gone hand in hand with them, and received 
 
 10 great favor and every kind of support from authority. 
 The Church of England, too, was formed from her cradle 
 under the nursing care of regular government. But the 
 dissenting interests have sprung up in direct opposition 
 to all the ordinary powers of the world, and could 
 
 15 justify that opposition only on a strong claim to natural 
 liberty. Their very existence depended on the powerful 
 and unremitted assertion of that claim. All Protest 
 antism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dis 
 sent. But the religion most prevalent in our Northern 
 
 20 Colonies is a refinement on the principle of resist 
 ance ; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the Protestant 
 ism of the Protestant religion. This religion, under a 
 variety of denominations agreeing in nothing but in the 
 communion of the spirit of liberty, is predominant in 
 
 25 most of the Northern Provinces ; where the Church of 
 England, notwithstanding its legal rights, is in reality 
 no more than a sort of private sect, not composing, most 
 probably, the tenth of the people. The colonists left 
 England when this spirit was high, and in the emigrants 
 was the highest of all; and even that stream of for- 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH TILE COLONIES. 25 
 
 eigners, which has been constantly flowing into these 
 Colonies, has, for the greatest part, been composed of 
 dissenters from the establishments of their several coun 
 tries, who have brought with them a temper and character 
 far from alien to that of the people with whom they 5 
 mixed. 
 
 Sir, I can perceive by their manner that some gentle 
 men object to the latitude of this description ; because 
 in the Southern Colonies the Church of England forms 
 a large body and has a regular establishment. It is 10 
 certainly true. There is, however, a circumstance at 
 tending these Colonies, which, in my opinion, fully 
 counterbalances this difference, and makes the spirit 
 of liberty still more high and haughty than in those to 
 the northward. It is, that in Virginia and the Carolinas 15 
 they have a vast multitude of slaves. Where this is 
 the case in any part of the world, those who are free 
 are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. 
 Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind 
 of rank and privilege. Not seeing there, that freedom, 20 
 as in countries where it is a common blessing, and as 
 broad and general as the air, may be united with much 
 abject toil, with great misery, with all the exterior of 
 servitude, liberty looks, amongst them, like something 
 that is more noble and liberal. I do not mean, Sir, to 25 
 commend the superior morality of this sentiment, which 
 has at least as much pride as virtue in it ; but I cannot 
 alter the nature of man. The fact is so ; and these 
 people of the Southern Colonies are much more strongly, 
 and with a higher and more stubborn spirit, attached 
 
26 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 to liberty, than those to the northward. Such were all 
 the ancient commonwealths ; such were our Gothic an 
 cestors ; such in our days were the Poles j and such will 
 be all masters of slaves who are not slaves themselves. 
 5 In such a people, the haughtiness of domination com 
 bines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders 
 it invincible. 
 
 Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance in our 
 Colonies, which contributes no mean part towards the 
 
 10 growth and effect of this untractable spirit. I mean 
 their educati6n."Th no country perhaps in the world 
 is thp. la.w so gp.np.ra.l a. study. The profession itself is 
 numerous and powerful, and in most provinces it takes 
 the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to 
 
 15 the Congress were lawyers. But all who read (and most 
 do read) endeavor to obtain some smattering in that 
 science. I have been told by an eminent bookseller, 
 that in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular 
 devotion, were so many books as those on the law 
 
 20 exported to the Plantations. The Colonists have now 
 fallen into .the way of printing them for their own use. 
 I hear that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone s 
 Commentaries in America as in England. General Gage 
 marks out this disposition very particularly in a letter 
 
 25 on your table. He states that all the people in his 
 government are lawyers, or smatterers in law ; and that 
 in Boston they have been enabled, by successful chicane, 
 wholly to evade many parts of one of your capital penal 
 "Institutions. The smartness of debate will say that 
 this knowledge ought to teach them more clearly the 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 27 
 
 rights of legislature, their obligations to obedience, and 
 the penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty well. But 
 my honorable and learned friend on the floor, who con 
 descends to mark what I say for animadversion, will 
 disdain that ground. He has heard, as well as I, that 5 
 when great honors and great emoluments do not win 
 over this knowledge to the service of the state, it is a 
 formidable adversary to government. If the spirit be 
 not tamed and broken by these happy methods, it is 
 stubborn and litigious. Abeunt studio, in mores. This 10 
 study renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt 
 in attack, ready in defense, full of resources. In other 
 countries, the people, more simple and of a less mer 
 curial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only 
 by an actual grievance ; here they anticipate the evil, 15 
 and jinl.u 1 of the pressure of the grievance by the bad 
 ness of the principle. They augur misgovermnent at a 
 distance, and snuff the approach of tyranny in every 
 tainted breeze. 
 
 last cause of this disobedient spirit in the Colo- 20 
 nies is hardly less powerful than the rest, as it is not 
 merely moral, but laid deep in the natural constitution 
 of things. Three thousand miles of ocean lie between 
 you and them. No contrivance can prevent the effect 
 of this distance in weakening govflrnTnanf.. Sp.aa mil 25 
 and months pass between the order and the execution; 
 and the want of a speedy explanation of a single point 
 is enough to defeat a whole system. You have, indeed, 
 winged ministers of vengeance, who carry your bolts in 
 their pounces to the remotest verge of the sea. But 
 
28 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 there a power steps in, that limits the arrogance of 
 raging passions and furious elements, and says, " So far 
 shalt thou go, and no farther." Who are you, that you 
 should fret and rage, and bite the chains of nature ? 
 5 Nothing worse happens to you than does to all nations 
 who have extensive empire ; and it happens in all the 
 forms into which empire can be thrown. In large 
 bodies, the circulation of power must be less vigorous at 
 the extremities. Nature has said it. The Turk can- 
 
 10 not govern Egypt, and Arabia, and Kurdistan, as he 
 governs Thrace ; nor has he the same dominion in 
 Crimea and Algiers, which he has at Brusa and Smyrna. 
 Despotism itself is obliged to truck and huckster. The 
 Sultan gets such obedience as he can. He governs with 
 
 15 a loose rein, that he may govern at all ; and the whole 
 of the force and vigor of his authority in his center is 
 derived from a prudent relaxation in all his borders. 
 Spain in her provinces is, perhaps, not so well obeyed 
 as you are in yours. She complies too, she submits, 
 
 20 she watches times. This is the immutable condition, 
 the eternal law, of extensive and detached empire. 
 
 Then, sir, from these six capital sources : of descent ; 
 of form of government ; of religion in the Northern 
 Provinces; of manners in the Southern; of education; 
 
 25 of the remoteness of situation from the first mover 
 of government from all these causes a fierce spirit of 
 liberty has grown up. It has grown with the growth of 
 the people in your Colonies, and increased with the in 
 crease of their wealth ; a spirit, that unhappily meeting 
 with an exercise of power in England, which, however 
 
O.V CONCILIATION WITH TUB COLONIES. 29 
 
 lawful, is not reconcilable to any ideas of liberty, much 
 less with theirs, has kindled this flame that is ready to 
 consume us. 
 
 I do not mean to commend either the spirit in this 
 excess, or the moral causes which produce it. Perhaps 5 
 a more smooth and accommodating spirit of freedom in 
 them would be more acceptable to us. Perhaps ideas of 
 liberty might be desired, more reconcilable with an ar 
 bitrary and boundless authority. Perhaps we might 
 wish the Colonists to be persuaded that their liberty is 10 
 more secure when held in trust for them by us, as their 
 guardians during a perpetual minority, than with any 
 part of it in their own hands. The question is, not 
 whether their spirit deserves praise or blame, but 
 what, in the name of God, shall we do with it ? You 15 
 have before you the object, such as it is, with all its 
 glories, w r ith all its imperfections, on its. head. You see 
 the magnitude, the importance, the temper, the habits, the 
 disorders. By all these considerations we are strongly 
 urged to determine something concerning it. We are 20 
 called upon to fix some rule and line for our future con 
 duct, which may give a little stability to our politics, 
 and prevent the return of such unhappy deliberations as 
 the present. Every such return will bring the matter 
 before us in a still more untractable form. For, what 25 
 astonishing and incredible things have we not seen 
 already ! What monsters have not been generated from 
 this unnatural contention ! Whilst every principle of 
 authority and resistance has been pushed, upon both 
 
30 SPEECH OF EDMUND BUBKE 
 
 sides, as far as it would go, there is nothing so solid and 
 certain, either in reasoning or in practice, that has not 
 been shaken. Until very lately, all authority in America 
 seemed to be nothing but an emanation from yours. Even 
 5 the popular part of the Colony Constitution derived all 
 its activity, and its first vital movement, from the pleas 
 ure of the Crown. We thought, Sir, that the utmost 
 which the discontented Colonists could do, was to dis 
 turb authority ; we never dreamt they could of them- 
 
 10 selves supply it, knowing in general what an operose 
 business it is to establish a government absolutely new. 
 But having, for our purposes, in this contention, re 
 solved that none but an obedient assembly should sit, 
 the humors of the people there, finding all passage 
 
 15 through the legal channel stopped, with great violence 
 broke out another way. Some provinces have tried their 
 experiment, as we have tried ours ; and theirs has suc 
 ceeded. They have formed a government sufficient for 
 its purposes, without the bustle of a revolution, or the 
 
 20 troublesome formality of an election. Evident necessity 
 .and tacit consent have done the business in an instant. 
 So well they have done it, that Lord Dunmore (the ac 
 count is among the fragments on your table) tells you 
 that the new institution is infinitely better obeyed than 
 
 25 the ancient government ever was in its most fortunate 
 periods. Obedience is what makes government, and 
 not the names by which it is called ; not the name of 
 governor, as fuuiibil.y, or committee, as at present. This 
 new govemlnelrfTras~orTginaTedrdirectly from the peo 
 ple, and was not transmitted through any of the ordi- 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 31 
 
 nary artificial media of a positive constitution. It was 
 not a manufacture ready formed and transmitted to 
 them in that condition from England. The evil arising 
 from hence is this : that the colonists having once found 
 the possibility of enjoying the advantages of order in 5 
 the midst of a struggle for liberty, such struggles will 
 not henceforward seem so terrible to the settled and 
 sober part of mankind as they had appeared before the 
 trial. 
 
 iJ^Pursuing the same plan of punishing by the denial of 10 
 the exercise of government to still greater lengths, we 
 wholly abrogated the ancient government of Massachu 
 setts. We were confident that the first feeling, if not 
 the very prospect of anarchy, would instantly enforce a 
 complete submission. The experiment was tried. A 15 
 new, strange, unexpected face of things appeared. An 
 archy is found tolerable. A vast province has now sub 
 sisted, and subsisted in a considerable degree of health 
 and vigor, for near a twelvemonth, without governor, 
 without public council, without judges, without execu- 20 
 tive magistrates. How long it will continue in this 
 state, or what may arise out of this unheard-of situation, 
 how can the wisest of us conjecture ? Our late experience 
 has taught us that many of those fundamental principles 
 formerly believed infallible, are either not of the impor- 25 
 tance they were imagined to be ; or that we have not at 
 all adverted to some other far more important and far 
 more powerful principles, which entirely overrule those 
 we had considered as omnipotent. I am much against 
 any farther experiments, which tend to put to the proof 
 
32 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 any more of these allowed opinions, which contribute so 
 much to the public tranquillity. - In effeat, we suffer as 
 much at home by this loosening of all ties, and this con 
 cussion of all established opinions, as we do abroad. 
 
 5 For, in order to prove that the Americans have no right 
 to their liberties, we are every day endeavoring to sub 
 vert the maxims which preserve the whole spirit of our 
 own. To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, 
 we are obliged to depreciate the value of freedom itself ; 
 
 10 and we never seem to gain a paltry advantage over them 
 in debate, without attacking some of those principles, or 
 deriding some of those feelings, for which our ancestors 
 have shed their blood. 
 
 But, Sir, in wishing to put an end to pernicious exper- 
 
 15 iments, I do not mean to preclude the fullest inquiry. 
 Far from it. Far from deciding on a sudden or partial 
 view, I would patiently go round and round the subject, 
 and survey it minutely in every possible aspect. Sir, if 
 I were capable of engaging you to an equal attention, I 
 
 20 would state, that, as far as I am capable of discerning, 
 there are but three ways of proceeding relative to this 
 stubborn spirit which prevails in your Colonies and 
 disturbs your Government. These are : to change that 
 spirit, as inconvenient, by removing the pauses j to pros- 
 
 25 ecute it as criminal ; or, to comply with it as necessary. 
 I would not be guilty of an imperfect enumeration ; I 
 can think of but these three. Another has indeed been 
 started, that of giving up the Colonies ; but it met so 
 slight a reception, that I do not think myself obliged to 
 dwell a great while upon it. It is nothing but a little 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 33 
 
 sally of anger, like the frowardness of peevish children, 
 who, when they cannot get all they would have, are 
 resolved to take nothing. 
 
 The first of these plans, to change the spirit as incon 
 venient, by removing the causes, I think is the most 5 
 like a systematic proceeding. It is radical in its princi 
 ple, but it is attended with great difficulties, some of 
 ^hem little short, as I conceive, of impossibilities. This 
 will appear by examining into the plans which have 
 been proposed. 10 
 
 As the growing population in the Colonies is evidently 
 one cause of their resistance, it was last session men 
 tioned in both Houses, by men of weight, and received 
 not without applause, that in order to check this evil, 
 it would be proper for the Crown to make no further is 
 grants of land. But to this scheme there are two objec 
 tions : the first, that there is already so much unsettled 
 land in private hands, as to afford room for an immense 
 future population, although the Crown not only withheld 
 its grants, but annihilated its soil. If this be the case, 20 
 then the only effect of this avarice of desolation, this 
 hoarding of a royal wilderness, would be to raise the 
 value of the possessions in the hands of the great pri 
 vate monopolists, without any adequate check to the 
 growing and alarming mischief of population. 25 
 
 But if you stopped your grants, what would be the 
 consequence ? The people would occupy without grants. 
 They have already so occupied in many places. You 
 cannot station garrisons in every part of these deserts. 
 If you drive the people from one place, they will carry 
 
34 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 on their annual tillage, and remove with their flocks 
 and herds to another. Many of the people in the back 
 settlements are already little attached to particular 
 situations. Already they have topped the Appalachian 
 5 mountains. From thence they behold before them an 
 immense plain, one vast, rich, level meadow ; a square 
 of five hundred miles. Over this they would wander 
 without a possibility of restraint ; they would change 
 their manners with the habits of their life ; would soon 
 
 10 forget a government by which they were disowned ; 
 would become hordes of English Tartars ; and pouring 
 down upon your unfortified frontiers a fierce and irresis 
 tible cavalry, become masters of your governors and 
 your counselors, your collectors and comptrollers, and 
 
 15 of all the slaves that adhered to them. Such would, 
 and, in no long time, must be, the effect of attempting 
 to forbid as a crime, and to suppress as an evil, the 
 command and blessing of Providence, " Increase and 
 multiply." Such would be the happy result of the en- 
 
 20 deavor to keep as a lair of wild beasts, that earth, which 
 God, by an express charter, has given to the children of 
 men. Far different, and surely much wiser, has been 
 our policy hitherto. Hitherto we have invited our peo 
 ple, by every kind of bounty, to fixed establishments. 
 
 25 We have invited the husbandman to look to authority 
 for his title. We have taught him piously to believe in 
 the mysterious virtue of wax and parchment. We have 
 thrown each tract of land, as it was peopled, into dis 
 tricts, that the ruling power should never be wholly 
 out of sight. We have settled all we could, and we 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 35 
 
 have carefully attended every settlement with govern 
 ment. 
 
 Adhering, Sir, as I do, to this policy, as well as for 
 the reasons I have just given, I think this new project 
 of hedging in population to be neither prudent nor 5 
 practicable. 
 
 To impoverish the Colonies in general, and in particu 
 lar to arrest the noble course of their marine enter 
 prises, would be a more easy task. I freely confess it. 
 We have shown a disposition to a system of this kind ; 10 
 a disposition even to continue the restraint after the 
 offense, looking on ourselves as rivals to our Colonies, 
 and persuaded that of course we must gain all that they 
 shall lose. Much mischief we may certainly do. The 
 power inadequate to all other things is often more than 15 
 sufficient for this. I do not look on the direct and im 
 mediate power of the Colonies to resist our violence as 
 very formidable. In this, however, I may be mistaken. 
 But when I consider that we have Colonies for no pur 
 pose but to be serviceable to us, it seems to my poor 20 
 understanding a little preposterous to make them un 
 serviceable in order to keep them obedient. It is, in 
 truth, nothing more than the old, and, as I thought, 
 exploded problem of tyranny, which proposes to beggar 
 its subjects into submission. But remember, when you 25 
 have completed your system of impoverishment, that 
 nature still proceeds in her ordinary course ; that dis 
 content will increase with misery ; and that there are 
 critical moments in the fortune of all states, when they 
 who are too weak to contribute to your prosperity may 
 
36 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 be strong enough to complete your ruin. Spoliatis arma 
 supersunt. 
 
 The temper and character which prevail in our Colo 
 nies are, I am afraid, unalterable by any human art. 
 
 5 We cannot, I fear, falsify the pedigree of this fierce 
 people, and persuade them that they are not sprung 
 from a nation in whose veins the blood of freedom cir 
 culates. The language in which they would hear you 
 tell them this tale would detect the imposition ; your 
 
 10 speech would betray you. An Englishman is the im- 
 fittest person on earth to argue another Englishman 
 into slavery. 
 
 I think it is nearly as little in our power to change 
 their republican religion as their free descent, or to 
 
 15 substitute the Roman Catholic as a penalty, or the 
 Church of England as an improvement. The mode of 
 inquisition and dragooning is going out of fashion in 
 the Old World ; and I should not confide much to their 
 efficacy in the New. The education of the Americans 
 
 20 is also on the same unalterable bottom with their reli 
 gion. You cannot persuade them to burn their books 
 of curious science; to banish their lawyers from their 
 courts of laws ; or to quench the lights of their assem 
 blies, by refusing to choose those persons who are best 
 
 25 read in their privileges. It would be no less impracti 
 cable to think of wholly annihilating the popular assem 
 blies in which these lawyers sit. The army, by which 
 we must govern in their place, would be far more charge 
 able to us, not quite so effectual, and perhaps, in the 
 end, full as difficult to be kept in obedience. 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 37 
 
 With regard to the high aristocratic spirit of Virginia 
 and the Southern Colonies, it has been proposed, I know, 
 to reduce it by declaring a general enfranchisement of 
 their slaves. This project nas nad its advocates and 
 
 panegyrists, yet I never could argue myself into any 5 
 opinion of it. Slaves are often much attached to their 
 masters. A general wild offer of liberty would not 
 always be accepted. History furnishes few instances 
 of it. It is sometimes as hard to persuade slaves to 
 be free as it is to compel freemen to be slaves - 3 and 10 
 in this auspicious scheme we should have both these 
 pit-using tasks on our hands at once. ]>ut when \vc talk 
 of enfranchisement, do we not perceive that the Ameri 
 can master may enfranchise too, and arm servile hands 
 in defense of freedom ? a measure to which other peo- 15 
 pie have had recourse more than once, and not without 
 success, in a desperate situation of their affairs. 
 
 Slaves as these unfortunate black people are, and dull 
 as jj_jj^J|-_^_rQ--6y in . s ^ ave yy...?P: us ^ they nc-t a. little_sns- 
 pect the offer of freedom from that very nation which 20 
 has sold them to their present masters, from that na 
 tion, one of whose causes of quarrel with those mas 
 ters is their refusal to deal any more in that inhuman 
 traffic ? An offer of freedom from England would opme 
 rather oddly, shipped to them in an African vessel, 25 
 which is refused an entry into the ports of Virginia or 
 Carolina with a cargo of three hundred Angola negroes. 
 It would be curious to see the Guinea captain attempt 
 ing at the same instant to publish his proclamation of 
 liberty, and to advertise his sale of slaves. 
 
38 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 But let us suppose all these moral difficulties got over. 
 
 The oceau remains. You cannot pump this dry ; and 
 
 as long as it continues in its present brrlj nn long jll the 
 
 causes Avhich weaken authority by distance will con- 
 
 5 lisas* 
 
 " Ye gods, annihilate but space and tiine, 
 And make two lovers happy ! " 
 
 was a pious and passionate prayer ; but just as reason 
 able as many of the serious wishes of very grave and 
 10 solemn politicians. 
 
 If then, Sir, it seems almost desperate to think of any 
 alterative course for changing the moral causes, and 
 not quite easy to remove the natural, which produce 
 prejudices irreconcilable to the late exercise of our 
 
 15 authority ; but that the spirit infallibly will continue, 
 and, continuing, will produce such effects as now em 
 barrass us ; the second mode under consideration is, to 
 prosecute that spirit in its overt acts as criminal. 
 At this proposition I must pause a moment. The 
 
 20 thing seems a great deal too big for my ideas of juris 
 prudence. It should seem to my way of conceiving 
 such matters, that there is a very wide difference in 
 reason and policy, between the mode of proceeding on 
 the irregular conduct of scattered individuals, or even of 
 
 25 bands of men, who disturb order within the state, and 
 the civil dissensions which may from time to time, on 
 great questions, agitate the several communities which 
 compose a great empire. It looks to me to be narrow 
 and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 39 
 
 justice to this great public contest. I do not know the 
 method of drawing up an indictment against a whole 
 people. -I cannot insult and ridicule the feelings of 
 millions of my fellow-creatures, as Sir Edward Coke 
 insulted one excellent individual (Sir Walter Raleigh) 5 
 at the bar. I hope I am not ripe to pass sentence on 
 the gravest public bodies, intrusted with magistracies of 
 great authority and dignity, and charged with the safety 
 of their fellow-citizens, upon the very same title that 
 I am. I really think, that for wise men, this is not 10 
 judicious ; for sober men, not decent ; for minds tinc 
 tured with humanity, not mild and merciful. 
 
 Perhaps, Sir, I am mistaken in my idea of an empire 
 as distinguished from a single state or kingdom. But 
 my idea of it is this, that an empire is the aggregate 15 
 of many states under one common head, whether this 
 head be a monarch or a presiding republic. It does, in 
 such constitutions, frequently happen (and nothing but 
 the dismal, cold, dead uniformity of servitude can pre 
 vent its happening) that the subordinate parts have 20 
 many local privileges and immunities. Between these 
 privileges and the supreme common authority the line 
 may be extremely nice. Of course disputes, often too 
 very bitter disputes and much ill-blood, will arise. But 
 though every privilege is an exemption (in the case) 25 
 from the ordinary exercise of the supreme authority, it 
 is no denial of it. The claim of a privilege seems rather, 
 ex vi termini, to imply a superior power. For to talk of 
 the privileges of a state or of a person who has no 
 superior, is hardly any better than speaking nonsense. 
 
40 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 Now, in such unfortunate quarrels among the component 
 parts of a great political union of communities, I can 
 scarcely conceive anything more completely imprudent 
 than for the head of the empire to insist that, if any 
 5 privilege is pleaded against his will or his acts, his 
 whole authority is denied ; instantly to proclaim rebel 
 lion, to beat to arms, and to put the offending provinces 
 under the ban. Will not this, Sir, very soon teach the 
 provinces to make no distinctions on their part ? Will 
 
 10 it not teach them that the government, against which 
 a claim of liberty is tantamount to high treason, is a 
 government to which submission is equivalent to slav 
 ery ? It may not always be quite convenient to impress 
 dependent communities with such an idea. 
 
 15 We are indeed, in all disputes with the Colonies, by 
 the necessity of things, the judge. It is true, Sir. But 
 I confess that the character of judge in my own cause is 
 a thing that frightens me. Instead of filling me with 
 pride, I am exceedingly humbled by it. I cannot pro- 
 
 20 ceed with a stern, assured, judicial confidence, until I 
 find myself in something more like a judicial character. 
 I must have these hesitations as long as I am compelled 
 to recollect that, in my little reading upon such contests 
 as these, the sense of mankind has at least as often de- 
 
 25 cided against the superior as the subordinate power. 
 Sir, let me add too, that the opinion of my having some 
 abstract right in my favor would not put me much at 
 my ease in passing sentence, unless I could be sure that 
 there were no rights which, in their exercise under cer 
 tain circumstances, were not the most odious of all 
 
(XZV CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 41 
 
 wrongs, and the most vexatious of all injustice. Sir, 
 these considerations have great weight with me when 
 I find things so circumstanced that I see the same party 
 at once a civil litigant against me in point of right and 
 a culprit before me, while I sit as a criminal judge on 5 
 acts of his, whose moral quality is to be decided upon 
 the merits of that very litigation. Men are every now 
 and then put, by the complexity of human affairs, into 
 strange situations ; but justice is the same, let the 
 judge be in what situation he will. 10 
 
 There is, Sir, also a circumstance which convinces me 
 that this mode of criminal proceeding is not (at least in 
 the present stage of our contest) altogether expedient ; 
 which is nothing less than the conduct of those very 
 persons who have seemed to adopt that mode, by lately 15 
 declaring a rebellion in Massachusetts Bay, as they had 
 formerly addressed to have traitors brought hither, 
 under an Act of Henry the Eighth, for trial. For, 
 though rebellion is declared, it is not proceeded against 
 as such, nor have any steps hppn t.fl.1r PT | towards th? 20 
 apprehension^ pr conviction of any individual ^ff^TKV^ 
 either on our late or our former Address; but modes of 
 public coercion have been adopted, and such as have 
 much more resemblance to a sort of qualified hostility 
 towards an independent power, than the punishment of 25 
 rebellious subjects. All this .seems rather inconsistent ; 
 but it shows how difficult it is to apply these juridical 
 ideas to our present case. 
 
 In this situation let us seriously and coolly ponder. 
 What is it we have got by all our menaces, which have 
 
SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 been many and ferocious ? What advantage have we 
 derived from the penal laws we have passed, and which, 
 for the time, have been severe and numerous ? What 
 advances have we made towards our object by the 
 
 5 sending of a force, which, by land and sea, is no con 
 temptible strength ? Has the disorder abated ? Noth 
 ing less. When I see things in this situation, after 
 such confident hopes, bold promises, and active exer 
 tions, I cannot, for my life, avoid a suspicion that the 
 
 10 plan itself is not correctly right. 
 
 If, then, the removal of the causes of this spirit of 
 American liberty be, for the greater part, or rather 
 entirely, impracticable ; if the ideas of criminal process 
 be inapplicable, or, if applicable, are in the highest 
 
 15 degree inexpedient; what way yet remains? No way 
 is open but the tliml and. last, to comply with the 
 American spirit as necessary; or, if you please, to 
 submit to it as a necessary evil. 
 
 If we adopt this mode, if we mean to conciliate and 
 
 20 concede, let us see of what nature the concession ought 
 to be ; to ascertain the nature of our concession, we 
 must look at their complaint. The Colonies complain 
 that they have not the characteristic mark and seal of 
 British freedom. They complain that they are taxed in 
 
 25 a Parliament in which they are not represented. If 
 you mean to satisfy them at all, you must satisfy 
 them with regard to this complaint. If you mean 
 to please any people, you must give them the boon 
 which they ask, not what you may think better for 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 43 
 
 them, but of a kind totally different. Such an act 
 may be a wise regulation, but it is no concession; 
 whereas our present thenie is the mode of giving sat 
 isfaction. 
 
 Sir, I think you must perceive that I am resolved this 5 
 day to have nothing at all to do with the question of 
 the right of taxation. Some gentlemen startle, but it is 
 true ; I put it totally out of the question. It is less 
 than nothing in my consideration. I do not indeed 
 wonder, nor will you, Sir, that gentlemen of profound 10 
 learning are fond of displaying it on this profound sub 
 ject. But my consideration is narrow, confined, and 
 wholly limited to the policy of the question. / I do not 
 examine whether the giving away a man s money be a 
 power excepted and reserved out of the general trust of 15 
 government ; and how far all mankind, in all forms of 
 polity, are entitled to an exercise of that right by the 
 charter of nature. Or whether, on the contrary, a right 
 of taxation is necessarily involved in the general prin 
 ciple of legislation, and inseparable from the ordinary 20 
 supreme power. These are deep questions, where great 
 names militate against each other, where reason is per 
 plexed, and an appeal to authorities only thickens the 
 confusion. For high and reverend authorities lift up 
 their heads on both sides ; and there is no sure footing 25 
 in the middle. This point is the 
 
 " great Serbonian bog, 
 
 Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, 
 Where armies whole have sunk." 
 
44 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 I do not intend to be overwhelmed in that bog, though 
 in such respectable company. The question with me is 
 not whether you have a right to render your people 
 miserable, but whether it is not your interest to make 
 5 them happy. It is not what a lawyer tells me I may 
 do, but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I 
 ought to do. Is a politic act the w^orse for being *a 
 generous one ? Is no concession proper but that which 
 is made from your want of right to keep what you 
 
 10 grant ? Or does it lessen the grace or dignity of relax 
 ing in the exercise of an odious claim because you have 
 your evidence-room full of titles, and your magazines 
 stuffed with arms to enforce them ? What signify all 
 those titles and all those arms ? Of what avail are they 
 
 15 when the reason of the thing tells me that the assertion 
 of my title is the loss of my suit, and that I could do, 
 nothing but wound myself by the use of my own 
 weapons ? 
 
 Such is steadfastly my opinion of the absolute neces- 
 
 20 sity of keeping up the concord of this Empire by a 
 unity of spirit, though in a diversity of operations, that, 
 if I were sure the colonists had, at their leaving this 
 country, sealed a regular compact of servitude, that 
 they had solemnly abjured all the rights of citizens, 
 
 25 that they had made a vow to renounce all ideas of 
 liberty for them and their posterity to all generations, 
 yet I should hold myself obliged to conform to the 
 temper I found universally prevalent in my own day, 
 and to govern two millions of men, impatient of servi 
 tude, on the principles of freedom. I am not determin- 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 45 
 
 ing a point of law, I am restoring tranquillity ; and the 
 general character and situation of a people must deter 
 mine what sort of government is fitted for them. That 
 point nothing else can or ought to determine. 
 
 My idea, therefore, without considering whether we 5 
 yield as matter of right, or grant as matter of favor, is 
 to admit the people of our Colonies into an interest in the 
 Constitution; and, by recording that admission in the 
 Journals of Parliament, to give them as strong an assur 
 ance as the nature of the thing will admit, that w r e 10 
 mean forever to adhere to that solemn declaration of 
 systematic indulgence. 
 
 Some years ago, the repeal of a revenue act upon its 
 understood principle might have served to show that we 
 intended an unconditional abatement of the exercise of 15 
 a taxing power. Such a measure was then sufficient to 
 remove all suspicion and to give perfect content. But 
 unfortunate events since that time may make something 
 further necessary ; and not more necessary for the satis 
 faction of the Colonies than for the dignity and consist- 20 
 ency of our own future proceedings. 
 
 I have taken a very incorrect measure of the disposi 
 tion of the House, if this proposal in itself would be 
 received with dislike. I think, Sir, we have few Amer 
 ican financiers. But our misfortune is, we are too 25 
 acute, we are too exquisite in our conjectures of the 
 future for men oppressed with such great and present 
 evils. The more moderate among the opposers of Par 
 liamentary concession freely confess that they hope no 
 
46 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 good from taxation ; but they apprehend the colonists 
 have further views, and if this point were conceded, 
 they would instantly attack the trade laws. These 
 gentlemen are convinced that this was the intention 
 
 5 from the beginning, and the quarrel of the Americans 
 with taxation was no more than a cloak and cover to 
 this design. Such has been the language even of a 
 gentleman of real moderation, and of a natural temper 
 well adjusted to fair and equal government. I am, 
 
 10 however, Sir, not a little surprised at this kind of dis 
 course whenever I hear it ; and I am the more surprised 
 on account of the arguments which I constantly find in 
 company with it, and which are often urged from the 
 same mouths, and on the same day. 
 
 15 For instance, when we allege that it is against reason 
 to tax a people under so many restraints in trade as the 
 Americans, the Noble Lord in the Blue Kibbon shall 
 tell you that the restraints on trade are futile and 
 useless ; of no advantage to us, and of no burthen to 
 
 20 those on whom they are imposed ; that the trade to 
 America is not secured by the Acts of Navigation, but 
 by the natural and irresistible advantage of a com 
 mercial preference. 
 
 Such is the merit of the trade laws in this posture 
 
 25 of the debate. But when strong internal circumstances 
 are urged against the taxes ; when the scheme is dis 
 sected ; when experience and the nature of things are 
 brought to prove, and do prove, the utter impossibility 
 of obtaining an effective revenue from the Colonies; 
 when these things are pressed, or rather press them- 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 47 
 
 selves, so as to drive the advocates of Colony taxes to a 
 clear admission of the futility of the scheme then, Sir, 
 the sleeping trade laws revive from their trance ; and 
 this useless taxation is to be kept sacred, not for its own 
 sake, but as a counter- guard and security of the laws of 5 
 trade. 
 
 Then, Sir, you keep up revenue laws which are mis 
 chievous, in order to preserve trade laws that are useless. 
 Such is the wisdom of our plan in both its members. 
 They are separately given up as of no value ; and yet 10 
 one is always to be defended for the sake of the other. 
 But I cannot agree with the Noble Lord, nor with the 
 pamphlet from whence he seems to have borrowed 
 these ideas concerning the inutility of the trade laws. 
 For, without idolizing them, I am sure they are still, in 15 
 many ways, of great use to us ; and in former times they 
 have been of the greatest. They do confine and they 
 do greatly narrow the market for the Americans. But 
 my perfect conviction of this does not help me in the 
 least to discern how the revenue laws form any secu- 20 
 rity whatsoever to the commercial regulations ; or that 
 these commercial regulations are the true ground of the 
 quarrel ; or that the giving way, in any one instance of 
 authority, is to lose all that may remain unconceded. 
 
 One fact is clear and indisputable. The public and 25 
 avowed origin of this quarrel was on taxation. This 
 quarrel has indeed brought on new disputes on new 
 questions, but certainly the least bitter, and the fewest 
 of all, on the trade laws. To judge which of the two 
 be the real, radical cause of quarrel, we have to see 
 
48 SPEECH OF EDMUND ZURKE 
 
 whether the commercial dispute did, in order of time, 
 precede the dispute on taxation. There is not a shadow 
 of evidence for it. Next, to enable us to judge whether 
 at this moment a dislike to the trade laws be the real 
 5 cause of quarrel, it is absolutely necessary to put the 
 taxes out of the question by a repeal. See how the 
 Americans act in this position, and then you will be able 
 to discern correctly what is the true object of the con 
 troversy, or whether any controversy at all will remain. 
 
 10 Unless you consent to remove this cause of difference, it 
 is impossible, with decency, to assert that the, dispute is 
 not upon what it is avowed to be. And I would, Sir, 
 recommend to your serious consideration, whether it be 
 prudent to form a rule for punishing people, not on their 
 
 15 own acts, but on your conjectures. Surely it is pre 
 posterous at the very best. It is not justifying your 
 anger by their misconduct ; but it is converting your 
 ill-will into their delinquency. 
 
 But the Colonies will go farther. Alas ! alas ! when 
 
 20 will this speculation against fact and reason end ? 
 What will quiet these panic fears which we entertain 
 of the hostile effect of a conciliatory conduct ? Is it 
 true that no case can exist in which it is proper for the 
 sovereign to accede to the desires of his discontented 
 
 25 subjects ? Is there anything peculiar in this case to 
 make a rule for itself ? Is all authority of course lost, 
 when it is not pushed to the extreme ? Is it a certain 
 maxim, that, the fewer causes of dissatisfaction are left 
 by government, the more the subject will be inclined to 
 resist and rebel ? 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 49 
 
 All these objections being in fact no more than sus 
 picions, conjectures, divinations, formed in defiance of 
 fact and experience, they did not, Sir, discourage me 
 from entertaining the idea of a conciliatory conces 
 sion, founded on the principles which I have just 5 
 stated. 
 
 In forming a plan for this purpose, I endeavored to 
 put myself in that frame of mind which was the most 
 natural, and the most reasonable ; and which was cer 
 tainly the most probable means of securing me from all 10 
 error. I set out with a perfect distrust of my own abili 
 ties ; a total renunciation of every speculation of my 
 own ; and with a profound reverence for the wisdom of 
 our ancestors, who have left us the inheritance of so 
 happy a constitution, and so flourishing an empire, and 15 
 what is a thousand times more valuable, the treasury of 
 the maxims and principles which formed the one, and 
 obtained the other. 
 
 During the reigns of the kings of Spain of the Aus 
 trian family, whenever they were at a loss in the Span- 20 
 ish councils, it was common for their statesmen to say 
 that they ought "to consult the genius of Philip the 
 Second. The genius of Philip the Second might mis 
 lead them ; and the issue of their affairs showed that 
 they had not chosen the most perfect standard. But, 25 
 Sir, I am sure that I shall not be misled, when in a case 
 of constitutional difficulty, I consult the genius of the 
 English Constitution. Consulting at that oracle (it was 
 with all due humility and piety) I found four capital 
 
50 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 examples in a similar case before me, those of Ireland, 
 Wales, Chester, and Durham. 
 
 Ireland, before the English conquest, though never 
 governed by a despotic power, had no parliament. 
 
 5 How far the English Parliament itself was at that 
 time modelled according to the present form, is dis 
 puted among antiquaries. But we have all the reason 
 in the world to be assured that a form of parliament, 
 such as England then enjoyed, she instantly communi- 
 
 10 cated to Ireland ; and we are equally sure that almost 
 every successive improvement in constitutional liberty, 
 as fast as it was made here, was transmitted thither. 
 The feudal baronage and the feudal knighthood, the 
 roots of our primitive constitution, were early trans- 
 
 15 planted into that soil ; and grew and flourished there. 
 Magna Charta, if it did not give us originally the House 
 of Commons, gave us at least a House of Commons of 
 weight and consequence. But your ancestors did not 
 churlishly sit down alone to the feast of Magna Charta. 
 
 20 Ireland was made immediately a partaker. This benefit 
 of English laws and liberties, I confess, was not at first 
 extended to all Ireland. Mark the consequence. Eng 
 lish authority and English liberties had exactly the same 
 boundaries. Your standard could never be advanced an 
 
 25 inch before your privileges. Sir John Davis shows 
 beyond a doubt, that the refusal of a general communi 
 cation of these rights was the true cause why Ireland 
 was five hundred years in subduing ; and after the vain 
 projects of a military government, attempted in the 
 reign of Queen Elizabeth, it was soon discovered that 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 51 
 
 nothing could make that country English, in civility 
 and allegiance, but your laws and your forms of legis 
 lature. It was not English arms, but the English^ C on- 
 stitution, that conquered Ireland. From that t-imft, 
 Ireland has ever had a general parliament, as she had 5 
 before a partial parliament. You changed the people ; 
 you altered the religion ; but you never touched the 
 form or the vital substance of free government in that 
 kingdom. You deposed kings, you restored them ; you 
 altered the succession to theirs, as well as to your 10 
 own Crown ; but you never altered their constitution ; 
 the principle of which was respected by usurpation, 
 restored with the restoration of monarchy, and estab 
 lished, I trust, forever, by the glorious Revolution. 
 This has made Ireland the great and flourishing king- 15 
 dom that it is ; and from a disgrace and a burthen intol 
 erable to this nation, has rendered her a principal part 
 of our strength and ornament. This country cannot be 
 said to have ever formally taxed her. The irregular 
 things done in the confusion of mighty troubles, and on 20 
 the hinge of great revolutions, even if all were done that 
 is said to have been done, form no example. If they 
 have any effect in argument, they make an exception to 
 prove the rule. None of your own liberties could stand 
 a moment if the casual deviations from them, at such 25 
 times, were suffered to be used as proofs of their nullity. 
 By the lucrative amount of such casual breaches in the 
 constitution, judge what the stated and fixed rule of 
 supply has been in that kingdom. Your Irish pension 
 ers would starve if they had no other fund *to live on 
 
52 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 than taxes granted by English authority. Turn your 
 eyes to those popular grants from whence all your great 
 supplies are come, and learn to respect that only source 
 of public wealth in the British Empire. 
 5 My next example is Wales. This country was said to 
 be reduced by Henry the Third. It was said more truly 
 to be so by Edward the First. But though then con 
 quered, it was not looked upon as any part of the realm 
 of England. Its old constitution, whatever that might 
 
 10 have been, was destroyed ; and no good one was substi 
 tuted in its place. The care of that tract was put into 
 the hands of lords marchers a form of government 
 of a very singular kind ; a strange heterogeneous mon 
 ster, something between hostility and government ; per- 
 
 15 haps it has a sort of resemblance, according to the modes 
 of those times, to that of commander-in-chief at pres 
 ent, to whom all civil power is granted as secondary. 
 The manners of the Welsh nation followed the genius 
 of the government; the people were ferocious, restive, 
 
 20 savage, and uncultivated, sometimes composed, never 
 pacified. Wales, within itself, was in perpetual dis 
 order ; and it kept the frontier of England in perpetual 
 alarm. Benefits from it to the state there were none. 
 Wales was only known to England by incursion and 
 
 25 invasion. 
 
 Sir, during that state of things, Parliament was not 
 idle. They attempted to subdue the fierce spirit of the 
 Welsh by all sorts of rigorous laws. They prohibited 
 by statute the sending all sorts of arms into Wales, as 
 you prohibit by proclamation (with something more of 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 53 
 
 doubt on the legality) the sending arms to America. 
 They disarmed the Welsh by statute, as you attempted 
 (but still with more question on the legality) to disarm 
 New England by an instruction. They made an act to 
 drag offenders from Wales into England for trial, as 5 
 you have done (but with more hardship) with regard to 
 America. By another act, where one of the parties 
 was an Englishman, they ordained that his trial should 
 be always by English. They made acts to restrain 
 trade, as you do; and they prevented the Welsh from 10 
 the use of fairs and markets, as you do the Americans 
 from fisheries and foreign ports. In short, when the 
 statute book was not quite so much swelled as it is 
 now, you find no less than fifteen acts of penal regula 
 tion on the subject of Wales. 15 
 
 Here we rub our hands a fine body of precedents 
 for the authority of Parliament and the use of it ! I 
 admit it fully ; and pray add likewise to these prece 
 dents, that all the while Wales rid this kingdom like 
 an incubus, that it was an unprofitable and oppressive 20 
 burthen, and that an Englishman traveling in that 
 country could not go six yards from the high road 
 without being murdered. 
 
 The march of the human mind is slow. Sir, it was 
 not, until after two nuncirea years, discovered that, by 25 
 an eternal law, Providence had decreed vexation to 
 violence, and poverty to rapine. Your, ancestors did, 
 however, at length open their eyes to the ill husbandry 
 of injustice. They found that the tyranny of a free 
 people could, of all tyrannies, the least be endured ; and 
 
54 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 that laws made against a whole nation were not the 
 most effectual methods of securing its obedience. Ac 
 cordingly, in the twenty-seventh year of Henry the 
 Eighth, the course was entirely altered. With a pre- 
 5 amble stating the entire and perfect rights of the Crown 
 of England, it gave to the Welsh all the rights and 
 privileges of English subjects. A political order was 
 established ; the military power gave way to the civil ; 
 the marches were turned into counties. But that a 
 
 10 nation should have a right to English liberties, and yet 
 no share at all in the fundamental security of these 
 liberties the grant of their own property seemed 
 a thing so incongruous, that eight years after, that is, 
 in the thirty-fifth of that reign, a complete and not ill- 
 
 15 proportioned representation by counties and boroughs 
 was bestowed upon Wales by Act of Parliament. From 
 that moment, as by a charm, the tumults subsided ; 
 obedience was restored ; peace, order, and civilization 
 followed in the train of liberty. When the day-star 
 
 20 of the English Constitution had arisen in their hearts, 
 all was harmony within and without 
 
 " simul alba nautis 
 
 Stella refulsit, 
 
 Defluit saxis agitatus humor ; 
 
 25 Concidunt venti, fugiuntque nubes, 
 
 Et minax (quod sic voluere) ponto 
 Unda recumbit." 
 
 The very same year the County Palatine of Chester 
 received the same relief from its oppressions, and the 
 same remedy to its disorders. Before this time Chester 
 
O.V CONCILIATION WITH TUE COLONIES. 55 
 
 was little less distempered than Wales. The inhabi 
 tants, without rights themselves, were the fittest to de 
 stroy the rights of others ; and from thence Richard the 
 Second drew the standing army of Archers, with which 
 for a time he oppressed England. The people of Chester 5 
 applied to Parliament in a petition penned as I shall 
 read to you : 
 
 To the King our Sovereign Lord, ih most humble wise 
 shewen unto your Excellent Majesty the inhabitants of 
 your Grace s County Palatine of Chester; (1.) That 10 
 where the said County Palatine of Chester is and hath 
 been always hitherto exempt, excluded, and separated out 
 and from your High Court of Parliament, to have any 
 Knights and Burgesses within the said Court ; by reason 
 whereof the said inhabitants have hitherto sustained 15 
 manifold disherisons, losses, and damages, as well in 
 their lands, goods, and bodies, as in the good, civil, and 
 politic governance and maintenance of the common 
 wealth of their said county : (2.) And forasmuch as 
 the said inhabitants have always hitherto been bound by 20 
 the Acts and Statutes made and ordained by your said 
 Highness, and your most noble progenitors, by authority 
 of the said Court, as far forth as other counties, cities, 
 and boroughs have been, that have had their Knights 
 and Burgesses within your said Court of Parliament, and 25 
 yet have had neither Knight ne Burgess there for the 
 said County Palatine ; the said inhabitants, for lack 
 thereof, have been oftentimes touched and grieved with 
 Acts and Statutes made within the said Court, as well 
 derogatory unto the most ancient jurisdictions, liberties, 30 
 and privileges of your said County Palatine, as preju- 
 
56 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 dicial unto the commonwealth, quietness, rest, and peace 
 of your Grace s most bounden subjects inhabiting within 
 the same. 
 
 Wliat did Parliament with this audacious address ? 
 5 Reject it as a libel ? Treat it as an affront to Govern 
 ment ? Spurn it as a derogation from the rights of le 
 gislature ? Did they toss it over the table ? Did they 
 burn it by the hands of the common hangman ? They 
 took the petition of grievance, all rugged as it was, with- 
 10 out softening or temperament, unpurged of the original 
 bitterness and indignation of complaint ; they made it 
 the very preamble to their Act of redress ; and conse 
 crated its principle to all ages in the sanctuary of legis 
 lation. 
 
 15 Here is my third example. It was attended with the 
 success of the two former. Chester, civilized as well as 
 Wales, has demonstrated that freedom, and not servi 
 tude, is the cure of anarchy ; as religion, and not atheism, 
 is the true remedy for superstition. Sir, this pattern of 
 20 Chester was followed in the reign of Charles the Second, 
 with regard to the County Palatine of Durham, which 
 is my fourthf example. This county had long lain out 
 of the pale of free legislation. So scrupulously was the 
 example of Chester followed, that the style of the pre- 
 25 amble is nearly the same with that of the Chester Act ; 
 and, without affecting the abstract extent of the au 
 thority of Parliament, it recognizes the equity of not 
 suffering any considerable district, in which the British 
 subjects may act as a body, to be taxed without their 
 own voice in the grant. 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 57 
 
 Now, if the doctrines of policy contained in these 
 preambles, and the force of these examples in the Acts 
 of Parliaments, avail anything, what can be said against 
 applying them with regard to America? Are not the 
 people of America as much Englishmen as the Welsh ? 5 
 The preamble of the act of Henry the Eighth says the 
 Welsh speak a language no way resembling that of his 
 Majesty s English subjects. Are the Americans not as 
 numerous ? If we may trust the learned and accurate 
 Judge Barrington s account of North Wales, and take 10 
 that as a standard to measure the rest, there is no com 
 parison. The people cannot amount to above two hun 
 dred thousand ; not a tenth part of the number in the 
 Colonies. Is America in rebellion ? Wales was hardly 
 ever free from it. Have you attempted to govern 15 
 America by penal statutes ? You made fifteen for 
 Wales. But your legislative authority is perfect with 
 regard to America. Was it less perfect in Wales, 
 Chester, and Durham ? But America is virtually rep 
 resented. What ! does the electric force of virtual 20 
 representation more easily pass over the Atlantic than 
 pervade Wales, which lies in your neighborhood, or 
 than Chester and Durham, surrounded by abundance of 
 representation that is actual and palpable ? But, Sir, 
 your ancestors thought this sort of virtual representa- 25 
 tion, however ample, to be totally insufficient for the 
 freedom of the inhabitants of territories that are so 
 near, and comparatively so inconsiderable. How then 
 can I think it sufficient for those which are infinitely 
 greater, and infinitely more remote ? 
 
58 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 You will now, Sir, perhaps imagine that I am on the 
 point of proposing to you a scheme for a representation 
 of the Colonies in Parliament. Perhaps I might be 
 inclined to entertain some such thought; but a great 
 5 flood stops me in my course. Opposuit natura I can 
 not remove the eternal barriers of the creation. The 
 thing, in that mode, I do not know to be possible. As I 
 meddle with no theory, I do not absolutely assert the 
 impracticability of such a representation. But I do not 
 
 10 see my way to it, and those who have been more con 
 fident have not been more successful. However, the 
 arm of public benevolence is not shortened, and there 
 are often several means to the same end. What nature 
 has disjoined in one way, wisdom may unite in another. 
 
 15 When we cannot give the benefit as we would wish, .let 
 us not refuse it altogether. If we cannot give the 
 principal, let us find a substitute. But how ? Where ? 
 What substitute ? 
 
 Fortunately I am not obliged for the ways and means 
 
 20 of this substitute to tax my own unproductive inven 
 tion. I am not even obliged to go to the rich treasury 
 of the fertile framers of imaginary commonwealths; 
 not to the Republic of Plato; not to the Utopia of 
 More ; not to the Oceana of Harrington. It is before 
 
 25 me it is at my feet, 
 
 " and the rude swain 
 
 Treads daily on it with his clouted shoon." 
 
 I only wish you to recognize, for the theory, the ancient 
 constitutional policy of this kingdom with regard to 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 59 
 
 representation, as that policy has been declared in Acts 
 of Parliament ; and, as to the practice, to return to 
 that mode which a uniform experience has marked out 
 to you as best, and in which you walked with security, 
 advantage, and honor, until the year 1763. 5 
 
 My resolutions therefore mean to establish the equity 
 and justice of a taxation of America by grant, and not 
 by imposition; to mark the legal competency of the 
 Colony Assemblies for the support of their government 
 in peace, and for public aids in time of war; to ac- 10 
 knowledge that this legal competency has had a dutiful 
 and beneficial exercise ; and that experience has shown 
 the benefit of their grants, and the futility of Parlia 
 mentary taxation as a method of supply. 
 
 These solid truths compose six fundamental proposi- 15 
 tions. There are three more resolutions corollary to 
 these. If you admit the first set, you can hardly reject 
 the others. But if you admit the first, I shall be far 
 from solicitous whether you accept or refuse the last. 
 I think these six massive pillars will be of strength suf- 20 
 ficient to support the temple of British concord. I have 
 110 more doubt than I entertain of my existence, that if 
 you admitted these, you would command an immediate 
 peace ; and, with but tolerable future management, a 
 lasting obedience in America. I am not arrogant in 25 
 this confident assurance. The propositions are all mere 
 matters of fact ; and if they are such facts as draw irre 
 sistible conclusions even in the stating, this is the power 
 of truth, and not any management of mine. 
 
60 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 Sir, I shall open the whole plan to you, together with 
 such observations on the motions as may tend to illustrate 
 them where they may want explanation. The first is a 
 resolution 
 
 5 That the Colonies and Plantations of Great Britain in 
 North America, consisting of Fourteen separate Govern 
 ments, 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 
 10 others to represent them in the High Court of Parlia 
 
 ment. 
 
 This is a plain matter of fact, necessary to be laid 
 down, and (excepting the description) it is laid down in 
 the language of the Constitution ; it is taken nearly 
 15 verbatim from Acts of Parliament. 
 The second is like unto the first 
 
 That the said Colonies and Plantations have been liable to, 
 and bounden by, several subsidies, payments, rates, and 
 taxes, given and granted by Parliament, tho ugh the said 
 
 20 Colonies and Plantations have not their Knights and 
 
 Burgesses in the said High Court of Parliament, of their 
 own election to represent the condition of their country ; 
 by lack whereof they have been oftentimes touched and 
 grieved by subsidies given, granted, and assented to, in 
 
 25 the said Court in a manner prejudicial to the common 
 
 wealth, quietness, rest, and peace of the subjects inhabit 
 ing within the same. 
 
 Is this description too hot, or too cold ; too strong, or 
 too weak ? Does it arrogate too much to the supreme 
 
O.V CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 61 
 
 legislature ? Does it lean too much to the claims of 
 the people ? If it runs into any of these errors, the fault 
 is not mine. It is the language of your own ancient 
 Acts of Parliament. 
 
 " Non meus hie sermo, sed quae praecepit Ofellus, ? 5 
 
 Rusticus, abnorniis sapiens." 
 
 It is the genuine produce of the ancient, rustic, manly, 
 homebred sense of this country : I did not dare to rub 
 off a particle of the venerable rust that rather adorns and 
 preserves, than destroys the metal. It would be a prof- 10 
 anation to touch with a tool the stones which construct 
 the sacred altar of peace. I would not violate with 
 modern polish the ingenuous and noble roughness of 
 these truly constitutional materials. Above all things, 
 I was resolved not to be guilty of tampering ; the odious 15 
 vice of restless and unstable minds. I put my foot in 
 the tracks of our forefathers, where I can neither wan 
 der nor stumble. Determining to fix articles of peace, I 
 was resolved not to be wise beyond what was w r ritten ; 
 I was resolved to use nothing else than the form of 20 
 sound words ; to let others abound in their- own sense, 
 and carefully to abstain from all expressions of my own. 
 What the Law has said, I say. In all things else I am 
 silent. I have no organ but for her words. This, if it 
 be not ingenious, I am sure is safe. 25 
 
 There are indeed words expressive of grievance in this 
 second resolution, which those who are resolved always 
 to be in the right will deny to contain matter of fact, 
 as applied to the present case ; although Parliament 
 
62 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 thought them true, with regard to the counties of Ches 
 ter and Durham. They will deny that the Americans 
 were ever " touched and grieved " with the taxes. If 
 they consider nothing in taxes but their weight as 
 5 pecuniary impositions, there might be some pretense for 
 this denial. But men may be sorely touched and deeply 
 grieved in their privileges, as well as in their purses. 
 Men may lose little in property by the act which takes 
 away all their freedom. When a man is robbed of a 
 
 10 trifle on the highway, it is not the twopence lost that 
 constitutes the capital outrage. This is not confined to 
 privileges. Even ancient indulgences withdrawn, with 
 out offense on the part of those who enjoyed such 
 favors, operate as grievances. But were the Americans 
 
 15 then not touched and grieved by the taxes, in some 
 measure, merely as taxes ? If so, why were they almost 
 all either wholly repealed or exceedingly reduced ? 
 Were they not touched and grieved even by the regulat 
 ing duties of the Sixth of George the Second ? Else 
 
 20 why were the duties first reduced to one-third in 1764, 
 and afterwards to a third of that third in the year 1766 ? 
 Were they ftot touched and grieved by the Stamp Act ? 
 I shall say they were, until that tax is revived. Were 
 they not touched and grieved by the duties of 1767, 
 
 25 which were likewise repealed, and which Lord Hills- 
 borough tells you (for the ministry) were laid contrary 
 to the true principle of commerce ? Is not the assur 
 ance given by that noble person to the Colonies of a 
 resolution to lay no more taxes on them, an admission 
 that taxes would touch and grieve them? Is not the 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 63 
 
 resolution of the Noble Lord in the Blue Ribbon, now 
 standing on your Journals, the strongest of all proofs 
 that Parliamentary subsidies really touched and grieved 
 them ? Else why all these changes, modifications, re 
 peals, assurances, and resolutions ? 5 
 The next proposition is 
 
 That, from the distance of the said Colonies, and from 
 other circumstances, no method hath hitherto been de 
 vised for procuring a representation in Parliament for 
 the said Colonies. 10 
 
 This is an assertion of a fact. I go no farther on the 
 paper, though, in my private judgment, a useful repre 
 sentation is impossible, I am sure it is not desired by 
 them, nor ought it perhaps by us, but I abstain from 
 opinions. 15 
 
 The fourth Resolution is, 
 
 That each of the said Colonies hath within itself a body, 
 chosen in part, or in the whole, by the freemen, free 
 holders, or other free inhabitants thereof, commonly 
 called the General Assembly, or General Court ; with 20 
 powers legally to raise, levy, and assess, according to the 
 several usage of such Colonies, duties and taxes towards 
 defraying all sorts of public services. 
 
 This competence in the Colony Assemblies is certain. 
 It is proved by the whole tenor of their Acts of Supply 25 
 in all the Assemblies in which the constant style of 
 granting is " an aid to his Majesty ; " and Acts granting 
 to the Crown have regularly for near a century passed 
 
64 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 the public offices without dispute. Those who have been 
 pleased paradoxically to deny this right, holding that 
 none but the British Parliament can grant to the Crown, 
 are wished to look to what is done, not only in the 
 
 5 Colonies, but in Ireland, in one uniform unbroken tenor 
 every session. Sir, I am surprised that this doctrine 
 should come from some of the law servants of the 
 Crown. I say, that if the Crown could be responsible, 
 his Majesty but certainly the ministers, and even 
 
 10 these law officers themselves, through whose hands the 
 Acts pass, biennially in Ireland, or annually in the 
 Colonies are in a habitual course of committing im- 
 peachable offenses. What habitual offenders have been 
 all Presidents of the Council, all Secretaries of State, all 
 
 15 First Lords of Trade, all Attorneys, and all Solicitors 
 General ! However, they are safe, as no one impeaches 
 them ; and there is no ground of charge against them, 
 except in their own unfounded theories. 
 
 The fifth resolution is also a resolution of fact 
 
 20 That the said General Assemblies, General Courts, or other 
 bodies legally qualified as aforesaid, have at sundry 
 times freely granted several large subsidies and public 
 aids for his Majesty s service, according to their abilities, 
 when required thereto by letter from one of his Majesty s 
 
 25 principal Secretaries of State ; and that their right to 
 
 grant the same, and their cheerfulness and sufficiency in 
 the said grants have been at sundry times acknowledged 
 by Parliament. 
 
 To say nothing of their great expenses in the Indian 
 wars, and not to take their exertion in foreign ones, so 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH TUE COLONIES. 65 
 
 high as the supplies in the year 1695 ; not to go back 
 to their public contributions in the year 1710 ; I shall 
 begin to travel only where the Journals give me light, 
 resolving to deal in nothing but fact, authenticated by 
 Parliamentary record, and to build myself wholly on 5 
 that solid basis. 
 
 On the 4th of April, 1748, a committee of this House 
 came to the following resolution : 
 
 Resolved, That it is the opinion of this Committee, that it 
 is just and reasonable that the several Provinces and 10 
 Colonies of Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire, Con 
 necticut, and Rhode Island, be reimbursed the expenses 
 they have been at in taking and securing to the Crown 
 of Great Britain the Island of Cape Breton and its de 
 pendencies. 15 
 
 The expenses were immense for such Colonies. They 
 were above 200,000 sterling ; money first raised and 
 advanced on their public credit. 
 
 On the 28th of January, 1756, a message from the 
 King came to us to this effect : 20 
 
 His Majesty, being sensible of the zeal and vigor with which 
 his faithful subjects of certain Colonies in North America 
 have exerted themselves in defense of his Majesty s just 
 rights and possessions, recommends it to this House to 
 take the same into their consideration, and to enable 25 
 his Majesty to give them such assistance as may be a 
 proper reward and encouragement. 
 
 On the 3d of February, 1756, the House came to a 
 suitable resolution, expressed in words nearly the same 
 
66 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 as those of the message ; but with the further addition 
 that the money then voted was as an encouragement to the 
 Colonies to exert themselves with vigor. It will not be 
 necessary to go through all the testimonies which your 
 5 own records have given to the truth of my Resolutions. 
 I will only refer you to the places in the Journals : 
 
 Vol. xxvii. 16th and 19th May, 1757. 
 
 Vol. xxviii. June 1, 1758 ; April 26 and 30, 1759 ; March 
 
 26 and 31, and April 28, 1760 ; Jan. 9 and 20, 1761. 
 10 Vol. xxix. Jan. 22 and 26, 1762 ; March 14 and 17, 1763. 
 
 Sir, here is the repeated acknowledgment of Parlia 
 ment that the Colonies not only gave, but gave to 
 satiety. This nation has formally acknowledged two 
 things : first, that the Colonies had gone beyond their 
 
 15 abilities, Parliament having thought it necessary to 
 reimburse them ; secondly, that they had acted legally 
 and laudably in their grants of money and their main 
 tenance of troops, since the compensation is expressly 
 given as reward and encouragement. Reward ia-Jiot 
 
 20 bestowed for acts that are unlawful ^ and ennnurage- 
 ment is not held out to tilings that deserve reprehension. 
 My resolution, therefore, does nothing more than collect 
 into one proposition what is scattered through your 
 Journals. I give you nothing but your own; and you 
 
 25 cannot refuse in the gross what you have so often 
 acknowledged in detail. The admission of this, which 
 w ill be so honorable to 
 
 be mortal to all the miserable stories by which the pas 
 sions of the misguided people have been engaged in 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 67 
 
 an unhappy system. The people heard, indeed, from 
 the beginning of these disputes one thing continually 
 dinned in their ears, that reason and justice demanded 
 that the Americans, who paid no taxes, should be com 
 pelled to contribute. How did that fact of their paying 5 
 nothing stand when the taxing system began ? When 
 Mr. Grenville began to form his system of American 
 revenue, he stated in this House that the Colonies 
 were then in debt two millions six hundred thousand 
 pounds sterling money, and was of opinion they would 10 
 discharge that debt in four years. On this state, those 
 untaxed people were actually subject to the payment of 
 taxes to the amount of , six hundred and fifty thousand 
 a year. In fact, however, Mr. Grenville was mistaken. 
 The funds given for sinking the debt did not prove 15 
 quite so ample as both the Colonies and he expected. 
 The calculation was too sanguine ; the reduction was 
 not completed till some years after, and at different 
 times in different" Colonies. However, the taxes after 
 the war continued too great to bear any addition, with 20 
 prudence or propriety ; and when the burthens imposed 
 in consequence of former requisitions were discharged, 
 our tone became too high to resort again to requisition. 
 No Colony, since that time, ever has had any requisition 
 whatsoever made to it. 25 
 
 We see the sense of the Crown and the sense of Par 
 liament on the productive nature of a revenue by grant. 
 Now search the same Journals for the produce of the 
 revenue by imposition. Where is it ? Let us know 
 the yolume and the page. What is the gross, what is 
 
68 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 the net produce ? To what service is it applied ? How 
 have you appropriated its surplus ? What, can none of 
 the many skillful index-makers that we are now em 
 ploying find any trace of it ? Well, let them and that 
 5 rest together. But are the Journals, which say nothing 
 of the revenue, as silent on the discontent ? Oh, no ! 
 a child may find it. It is the melancholy burthen and 
 blot of every page. 
 
 I think then I am, from those Journals, justified in 
 10 the sixth and last resolution, which is 
 
 That it hath been found by experience that the manner of 
 granting the said supplies and aids by the said General 
 Assemblies hath been more agreeable to the said Colonies, 
 and more beneficial and conducive to the public service 
 15 than the mode of giving and granting aids in Parliament, 
 
 to be raised and paid in the said Colonies. 
 
 This makes the whole of the fundamental part of the 
 plan. The conclusion is irresistible. You cannot say 
 that you were driven by any necessity to an exercise of 
 
 20 the utmost rights of legislature. You cannot assert 
 that you took on yourselves the task of imposing Colony 
 taxes from the want of another legal body that is com 
 petent to the purpose of supplying the exigencies of the 
 State without wounding the prejudices of the people. 
 
 25 Neither is it true that the body so qualified, and having 
 that competence, had neglected the duty. 
 
 The question now, on all this accumulated matter, 
 is : whether you will choose to abide by a profitable 
 experience, or a mischievous theory ; whether you choose 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 69 
 
 to build on imagination, or fact ; whether you prefer 
 enjoyment, or hope ; satisfaction in your subjects, or 
 discontent ? 
 
 If these propositions are accepted, everything which 
 has been made to enforce a contrary system, must, I 5 
 take it for granted, fall along with it. On that ground, 
 I have drawn the following resolution, which, when it 
 comes to be moved, will naturally be divided in a proper 
 manner : 
 
 That it may be proper to repeal an Act, made in the seventh 10 
 year of the reign of his present Majesty, intituled, An 
 Act for granting certain duties in the British Colonies 
 and Plantations in America ; for allowing a drawback of 
 the duties of Customs upon the exportation from this King 
 dom, of coffee and cocoa-nuts of the produce of the said 15 
 Colonies or Plantations ; for discontinuing the drawbacks 
 payable on china earthenware exported to America ; and 
 for more effectually preventing the clandestine running of 
 goods in the said Colonies and Plantations. And that 
 it may be proper to repeal an Act, made in the fourteenth 20 
 year of the reign of his present Majesty, intituled, An 
 Act to discontinue, in such manner, and for such time, 
 as are therein mentioned, the landing and discharging, 
 lading or shipping, of goods, wares, and merchandise, 
 at the town and within the harbor of Boston, in the 25 
 province of Massachusetts Bay, in North America. 
 And that it may be proper to repeal an Act, made in the 
 fourteenth year of the reign of his present Majesty, in 
 tituled, An Act for the impartial administration of jus 
 tice, in the cases of persons questioned for any acts done 30 
 by them, in the execution of the law, or for the suppres- 
 
70 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 sion of riots and tumults, in the province of Massa 
 chusetts Bay, in New England And that it may be 
 
 proper to repeal an Act, made in the fourteenth year of 
 
 the reign of his present Majesty, intituled, An Act .for 
 
 5 the better regulating of the Government of the province 
 
 of the Massachusetts Bay, in New England. And, also, 
 
 that it may be proper to explain and amend an Act, 
 
 made in the thirty-fifth year of the reign of King Henry 
 
 the Eighth, intituled, An Act for the Trial of Treasons 
 
 10 committed out of the King s Dominions. 
 
 I wish, Sir, to repeal the Boston Port Bill, because 
 (independently of the dangerous precedent of suspend 
 ing the rights of the subject during the King s pleasure) 
 it was passed, as I apprehend, with less regularity, and 
 
 15 on more partial principles, than it ought. The corpora 
 tion of Boston was not heard before it was condemned. 
 Other towns, full as guilty as she was, have not had 
 their ports blocked up. Even the Restraining Bill of 
 the present Session does not go to the length of the 
 
 20 Boston Port Act. The same ideas of prudence which 
 induced you not to extend equal punishment to equal 
 guilt, even when you were punishing, induced me, 
 who mean not to chastise, but to reconcile, to be 
 satisfied with the punishment already partially in- 
 
 25 flicted. 
 
 Ideas of prudence and accommodation to circum 
 stances prevent you from taking away the charters of 
 Connecticut and Rhode Island, as you have taken away 
 that of Massachusetts Colony, though the Crown has far 
 less power in the two former provinces than it enjoyed 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 71 
 
 in the latter ; and though the abuses have been full as 
 great, and as flagrant, in the exempted as in the pun 
 ished. The same reasons of prudence and accommoda 
 tion have weight with me in restoring the charter of 
 Massachusetts Bay. Besides, Sir, the Act which changes 5 
 the charter of Massachusetts is in many particulars so 
 exceptionable, that if I did not wish absolutely to re 
 peal, I would by all means desire to alter it, as several of 
 its provisions tend to the subversion of all public and 
 private justice. Such, among others, is the power in 10 
 the governor to change the sheriff at his pleasure, and 
 to make a new returning officer for every special cause. 
 It is shameful to behold such a regulation standing 
 among English laws. 
 
 The Act for bringing persons accused of committing 15 
 murder under the orders of Government to England for 
 trial is but temporary. That Act has calculated the 
 probable duration of our quarrel with the Colonies and 
 is accommodated to that supposed duration. I would 
 hasten the happy moment of reconciliation ; and there- 20 
 fore must, on my principle, get rid of that most justly 
 obnoxious Act. 
 
 The Act of Henry the Eighth, for the Trial of Trea 
 sons, I do not mean to take away, but to confine it to 
 its proper bounds and original intention; to make it 25 
 expressly for Trial of Treasons (and the greatest trea 
 sons may be committed) in places where the jurisdic 
 tion of the Crown does not extend. 
 
 W ll ftVJ: fifYT ~ ^ *l Pnln^nn n P 1 1 ^ 
 
72 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 judicature; for which purpose, Sir, I propose the f ol- 
 
 lo\viii rr resolution i 
 
 That, from the time when the General Assembly or Gen 
 eral Court of any Colony or Plantation in North Amer- 
 5 ica shall have appointed by Act of Assembly, duly 
 
 confirmed, a settled salary to the offices of the Chief 
 Justice and other Judges of the Superior Court, it may 
 be proper that the said Chief Justice and other judges of 
 the Superior Courts of such Colony, shall hold his and 
 
 10 their office and offices during their good behavior ; and 
 
 shall not be removed therefrom, but when the said re 
 moval shall be adjudged by his Majesty in Council, upon 
 a hearing on complaint from the General Assembly, or 
 ^on a complaint from the Governor, or Council, or the 
 
 15 House of Representatives severally, or of the Colony in 
 
 which the said Chief Justice and other Judges have ex 
 ercised the said offices. 
 
 The next resolution relates to the Courts of Admi 
 ralty. It is this : 
 
 20 That it may be proper to regulate the Courts of Admiralty, 
 or Vice- Admiralty, authorized by the fifteenth Chapter 
 of the Fourth of George the Third, in such a manner as 
 to make the same more commodious to those who sue, or 
 are sued, in the said Courts, and to provide for the more 
 
 25 decent maintenance of the Judges in the same. 
 
 These Courts I do not wish to take away ; they are in 
 themselves proper establishments. This Court is one of 
 the capital securities of the Act of Navigation. The 
 extent of its jurisdiction, indeed, has been increased; 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 73 
 
 but this is altogether as proper, and is indeed on many 
 accounts more eligible, where new powers were wanted, 
 than a Court absolutely new. But Courts incommo 
 diously situated in effect deny justice ; and a Court 
 partaking in the fruits of its own condemnation is a 5 
 robber. The Congress complain, and complain justly, 
 of this grievance. 
 
 These are the three consequential propositions. I 
 have thought of too or three more; but they come 
 rather too near detail, and to the province of executive 10 
 government, which I wish Parliament always to super 
 intend, never to assume. If the first six are granted, 
 congruity will carry the latter three. If not, the things 
 that remain unrcpealed will be, I hope, rather unseemly 
 incumbrances on the building, than very materially 15 
 detrimental to its strength and stability. 
 
 Here, Sir, I should close ; but I plainly perceive 
 some objections remain, which I ought, if possible, to 
 remove. The first will be, that, in resorting to the 
 doctrine of our ancestors, as contained in the preamble 20 
 to the Chester Act, I prove too much ; that the griev 
 ance from a want of representation, stated in that pre 
 amble, goes to the whole of legislation as well as to 
 taxation, and that the Colonies, grounding themselves 
 upon that doctrine, will apply it to all parts of legisla- 25 
 tive authority. 
 
 To this objection, with all possible deference and 
 humility, and wishing as little as any man living to 
 impair the smallest particle of our supreme authority, 
 
74 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 I answer, that the words are the words of Parliament , 
 and not mine; and that all false and inconclusive in 
 ferences drawn from them are not mine, for I heartily 
 disclaim any such inference. I have chosen the words 
 5 of an Act of Parliament, which Mr. Grenville, surely 
 a tolerably zealous and very judicious advocate for the 
 sovereignty of Parliament, formerly moved to have read 
 at your table in confirmation of his tenets. It is true 
 that Lord Chatham considered these preambles as de- 
 
 10 claring strongly in favor of his opinions. He was a no 
 less powerful advocate for the privileges of the Ameri 
 cans. Ought I not from hence to presume that these 
 preambles are as favorable as possible to both, when 
 properly understood ; favorable both to the rights of 
 
 15 Parliament, and to the privileges of the dependencies of 
 this Crown ? But, Sir, the object of grievance in my 
 resolution I have not taken from the Chester, but from 
 the Durham Act, which confines the hardship of want 
 of representation to the case of subsidies, and which 
 
 20 therefore falls in exactly with the case of the Colonies. 
 But whether the unrepresented counties were dejure or 
 de facto bound, the preambles do not accurately distin 
 guish ; nor, indeed, was it necessary ; for, whether de 
 jure or de facto, the Legislature thought the exercise of 
 
 25 the power of taxing, as of right, or as of fact without 
 right, equally a grievance, and equally oppressive. 
 
 I do not know that the Colonies have, in any general 
 way, or in any cool hour, gone much beyond the demand 
 of immunity in relation to taxes. It is not fair to judge 
 of the temper or dispositions of any man, or any set of 
 
CLV CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 75 
 
 men, when they are composed and at rest, from their 
 conduct or their expressions in a state of disturbance 
 and irritation. It is, besides, a very great mistake to 
 imagine that mankind follow up practically any specu 
 lative principle, either of government or of freedom, as 5 
 far as it will go in argument and logical illation. We 
 Englishmen stop very short of the principles upon 
 which we support any given part of our Constitution, 
 or even the whole of it together. I could easily, if I 
 had not already tired you, give you very striking and 10 
 convincing instances of it. This is nothing but what 
 is natural and proper. All government, indeed every 
 human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every 
 prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. We 
 balance inconveniences; \YL- ^ivc and hike; \ve remit ir> 
 some rights, that we may enjoy others ; and we choose 
 rather to be happy citizens, than subtle disputants. As 
 we must give away some natural liberty to enjoy civil 
 advantages, so we must sacrifice some civil liberties for 
 the advantages to be derived from the communion and 20 
 fellowship of a great empire. But, in all fair dealings, 
 the thing bought must bear some proportion to the pur 
 chase paid. None will barter away the immediate jewel 
 of his soul. Though a great house is apt to make slaves 
 haughty, yet it is purchasing a part of the artificial im- 25 
 portance of a great empire too dear, to pay for it all 
 essential rights, and all the intrinsic dignity of human 
 nature. None of us who would not risk his life rather 
 than fall under a government purely arbitrary. But 
 although there are some amongst us who think our 
 
76 SPEECH OF EDMUND BUSKS 
 
 Constitution wants many improvements .to make it a 
 complete system of liberty, perhaps none who are of 
 that opinion would think it right to aim at such im 
 provement by disturbing his country, and risking every- 
 
 5 thing that is dear to him. In every arduous enterprise 
 we consider what we are to lose, as well as what we are 
 to gain ; and the more and better stake of liberty every 
 people possess, the less they will hazard in a vain 
 attempt to make it more. These are the cords of man. 
 
 10 Man acts from adequate motives relative to his interest, 
 and nut on metaphysical speculations. Aristotle, the 
 great master of reasoning, cautions us, and with great 
 weight and propriety, against this species of delusive 
 geometrical accuracy in moral arguments, as the most 
 
 15 fallacious of all sophistry. 
 
 The Americans will have no interest contrary to the 
 grandeur and glory of England, when they are not op 
 pressed by the weight of it ; and they will rather be in 
 clined to respect the acts of a superintending legislature 
 
 20 when they see them the acts of that power which is it 
 self the security, not the rival, of their secondary im 
 portance. In this assurance my mind most perfectly 
 acquiesces ; and I confess I feel not the least alarm from 
 the discontents which are to arise from putting people 
 
 25 at their ease ; nor do I apprehend the destruction of 
 this empire, from giving, by an act of free grace and 
 indulgence to two millions of my fellow-citizens, some 
 share of those rights upon which I have always been 
 taught to value myself. 
 
 It is said, indeed, that this power of granting, vested 
 
O^ CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 77 
 
 in American Assemblies, would dissolve the unity of the 
 empire, which was preserved entire, although Wales, 
 and Chester, and Durham were added to it. Truly,_Mr. 
 Speaker, I do not know what this unity means ; nor has 
 it ever been heard of, that I know, in the constitutional 5 
 policy of this country. The very idea of subordination 
 of parts excludes this notion of simple and undivided 
 unity. England is the head, but she is not the head 
 and the members too. Ireland has ever had from the 
 beginning a separate, but not an independent, legisla- 10 
 ture, which, far from distracting, promoted the union of 
 the whole. Everything was sweetly and harmoniously 
 disposed through both islands for the conservation of 
 English dominion, and the communication of English 
 liberties. I do not see that the same principles might 15 
 not be carried into twenty islands, and with the same 
 good effect. This is my model with regard to America, 
 as far as the internal circumstances of the two countries 
 are the same. I know no other unity of this empire 
 than I can draw from its example during these periods, 20 
 when it seemed to my poor understanding more united 
 than it is now, or than it is likely to be by the present 
 methods. 
 
 But since I speak of these methods, I recollect, Mr. 
 Speaker, almost too late, that I promised, before I fin- 25 
 ished, to say something of the proposition of the Noble 
 Lord on the floor, which has been so lately received and 
 stands on your Journals. I must be deeply concerned 
 whenever it is my misfortune to continue a difference 
 
78 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 with the majority of this House. But as the reasons 
 for that difference are my apology for thus troubling 
 you, suffer me to state them in a very few words. I 
 shall compress them into as small a body as I possibly 
 
 5 can, having already debated that matter at large when 
 the question was before the committee. 
 
 First, then, I cannot admit that proposition of a ran 
 som by auction, because it is a mere project. It is a 
 thing new, unheard of, supported by no experience, jus- 
 
 10 tified by no analogy, without example of our ancestors, 
 or root in the Constitution. It is neither regular Par 
 liamentary taxation nor Colony grant. Experimentum in 
 corpore mil is a good rule, which will ever make me 
 adverse to any trial of experiments on what is cer- 
 
 15 tainly the most valuable of all subjects, the peace of 
 this empire. 
 
 Secondly, it is an experiment which must be fatal in 
 the end to our Constitution. For what is it but a scheme 
 for taxing the Colonies in the ante-chamber of the Noble 
 
 20 Lord and his successors ? To settle the quotas and pro 
 portions in this House is clearly impossible. You, Sir, 
 may flatter yourself you shall sit a state auctioneer, with 
 your hammer in your hand, and knock down to each 
 Colony as it bids. But to settle (on the plan laid down 
 
 25 by the Noble Lord) the true proportional payment for 
 four or five and twenty governments, according to the 
 absolute and the relative wealth of each, and accord 
 ing to the British proportion of wealth and burthen, 
 is a wild and chimerical notion. This new taxation 
 must therefore come in by the back door of the Con- 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 79 
 
 stitution. Each quota must be brought to this House 
 ready formed ; you can neither add nor alter. You 
 must register it. You can do nothing further. For 
 on what grounds can you deliberate either before or 
 after the proposition ? You cannot hear the counsel 5 
 for all these provinces, quarreling each on its own 
 quantity of payment and its proportion to others. If 
 you should attempt it, the Committee of Provincial 
 Ways and Means, or by whatever other name it will 
 delight to be called, must swallow up all the time of 10 
 Parliament. 
 
 Thirdly, it does not give satisfaction to the complaint 
 of the Colonies. They complain that they are taxed 
 without their consent ; you answer that you will fix 
 the sum at which they shall be taxed. That is, you 15 
 give them the very grievance for the remedy. You tell 
 them, indeed, that you will leave the mode to themselves. 
 I really beg pardon, it gives me pain to mention it, 
 but you must be sensible that you will not perform this 
 part of the compact. For, suppose the Colonies were 20 
 to lay the duties, which furnished their contingent, upon 
 the impoitatiuii uf jemt mmnifftetures ; you know you 
 would never suffer such a tax to be laid. You know, 
 toOjIhaFyou would not suffer many other modes of tax 
 ation. So that, when you come to explain yourself, it 25 
 will be found that you will neither leave to themselves 
 the quantum nor the mode, nor, indeed, anything. The 
 whole is delusion from one end to the other. 
 
 Fourthly, this method of ransom by auction, unless it 
 be universally accepted, will plunge you into great and 
 
80 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 inextricable difficulties. In what year of our Lord are 
 the proportions of payments to be settled ? To say 
 nothing of the impossibility that Colony agents should 
 have general powers of taxing the Colonies at their dis- 
 5 cretion, consider, I implore you, that the communication 
 by special messages and orders between these agents 
 and their constituents on each variation of the case, 
 when the parties come to contend together, and to dis 
 pute on their relative proportions, will be a matter of 
 
 10 delay, perplexity, and confusion that never can have 
 an end. 
 
 If all the Colonies do not appear at the outcry, what 
 is the condition of those assemblies who offer, by them 
 selves or their agents, to tax themselves up to your 
 
 15 ideas of their proportion ? The refractory Colonies who 
 refuse all composition will remain taxed only to your 
 old impositions, which, however grievous in principle, 
 are trifling as to production. The obedient Colonies in 
 this scheme are heavily taxed; the refractory remain 
 
 20 unburthened. What will you do ? Will you lay new 
 and heavier taxes by Parliament on the disobedient ? 
 Pray consider in what way you can do it. You are per 
 fectly convinced, that, in the way of taxing, you can do 
 nothing but at the ports. Now suppose it is Virginia 
 
 25 that refuses to appear at your auction, while Maryland 
 and North Carolina bid handsomely for their ransom, 
 and are taxed to your quota, how will you put these 
 Colonies on a par ? Will you tax the tobacco of Vir 
 ginia ? If you do, you give its death-wound to ycur 
 English revenue at home, and to one of the very great- 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 81 
 
 est articles of your own foreign trade. If you tax the 
 import of that rebellious Colony, what do you tax but 
 your own manufactures, or the goods of some other 
 obedient and already well-taxed Colony ? Who has 
 said one word on this labyrinth of detail, which bewil- 5 
 ders you more and more as you enter into it ? Who has 
 presented, who can present you, with a clew to lead you 
 out of it ? I think, Sir, it is impossible that you should 
 not recollect that the Colony bounds are so implicated 
 in one another (you know it by your other experiments 10 
 in the bill for prohibiting the New England fishery), 
 that you can lay no possible restraints on almost any of 
 them which may not be presently eluded, if you do not 
 confound the innocent with the guilty, and burthen those 
 whom, upon every principle, you ought to exonerate. 15 
 He must be grossly ignorant of America, who thinks 
 that, without falling into this confusion of all rules of 
 equity and policy, you can restrain any single Colony, 
 especially Virginia arid Maryland, the central and most 
 important of them all. 20 
 
 Let it also be considered that, either in the present 
 confusion you settle a permanent contingent, which will 
 and must be trifling, and then you have no effectual 
 revenue ; or you change the quota at every exigency, 
 and then on every new repartition you will have a new 25 
 quarrel. 
 
 Reflect, besides, that when you have fixed a quota for 
 every Colony, you have not provided for prompt and 
 punctual payment. Suppose one, two, five, ten years 
 arrears. You cannot issue a Treasury Extent against 
 
82 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 the failing Colony. You must make new Boston Port 
 Bills, new restraining laws, new Acts for dragging men 
 to England for trial. You must send out new fleets, 
 new armies. All is to begin again. From this day 
 5 forward the Empire is never to know an hour s tran 
 quillity. An intestine fire will be kept alive in the 
 bowels of the Colonies, which one time or other must 
 consume this whole Empire. I allow, indeed, that the 
 empire of Germany raises her revenue and her troops 
 
 10 by quotas and contingents ; but the revenue of the 
 empire, and the army of the empire, is the worst 
 revenue, and the worst army, in the world. 
 
 Instead of a standing revenue, you will therefore have 
 a perpetual quarrel. Indeed, the Noble Lord who pro- 
 
 is posed this project of a ransom by auction, seemed him 
 self to be of that opinion. His project was rather 
 designed for breaking the union of the Colonies, than 
 for establishing a revenue. He confessed he appre 
 hended that his proposal would not be to their taste. 
 
 20 I say this scheme of disunion seems to be at the bottom 
 of the project ; for I will not suspect that the Noble 
 Lord meant nothing but merely to delude the nation by 
 an airy phantom which he never intended to realize. 
 But whatever his views may be, as I propose the peace 
 
 25 and union of the Colonies as the very foundation of my 
 plan, it cannot accord with one whose foundation is 
 perpetual discord. 
 
 Compare the two. This I offer to give you is 
 plain "ana simple; the other, fiill of perplexed and 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 83 
 
 intricate mazes. This is milck jfrhftt harsh. This is 
 found by experience effectual ipr its purposes ; the 
 
 other is a new project. This is universal ; the other 
 calculated for certain Colonies only. This is imme 
 diate in its conciliatory operation ; the other remote, 5 
 contingent, full of hazard. .Mine is what becomes the 
 dignity of a ruling people, gratuitous, unconditional, 
 and not held out as a matter of bargain -and sale. I 
 have done my duty in proposing it to you. I have in 
 deed tired you hy a long discourse; but this is the mis- 10 
 fortune of those to whose influence nothing will be 
 conceded, and who must win. every inch of their ground 
 by argument. You have heard me with goodness. May 
 you decide with wisdom! For mv part ; I feel my 
 mind greatly disburthened by what I have done to-day. 15 
 I have been the less fearful of trying your patience, 
 because on this subject I mean to spare it altogether 
 in fnfnTp T TIQVQ f.l4ff tmmf* -t-^of in air^y stage 
 of the American affairs I haye steadily opposed the 
 measures that have produced the confusion, and may 20 
 briiig_on the destruction., /of "this Empire. I now go so 
 far .as.. to jiskLa^ proposal of my own. If I cannot give 
 peace to my country, I give it to my conscience. 
 
 But what (says the financier) is peace to us without 
 money ? Your plan gives us no revenue. No ! But it 25 
 does, for it secures to the subject the power of REFUSAL, 
 the first of all revenues. Experience is a cheat, and 
 fact a liar, if this power in the subject of proportioning 
 his grant, or of not granting at all, has not been found 
 the richest mine of revenue ever discovered by the skill 
 
84 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 or by the fortune of man. It does not, indeed, vote you 
 152,750 lls. 2fd., nor any other paltry limited sum. 
 But it gives the strong box itself, the fund, the bank, 
 from, whence only revenues can arise amongst a people 
 5 sensible of freedom. Posita luditur area. Cannot you, 
 in England ; cannot you, at this time of day ; cannot you, 
 a House of Commons trust to the principle which has 
 raised so mighty a revenue, and accumulated a debt of 
 near one hundred and forty millions in this country ? Is 
 
 10 this principle to be true in England and false every 
 where else ? Is it not true in Ireland ? Has it not 
 hitherto been true in the Colonies ? Why should you 
 presume that, in any country, a body duly constituted 
 for any function will neglect to perform its duty, and 
 
 15 abdicate its trust ? Such a presumption would go 
 against all governments in all modes. But, in truth, 
 this dread of penury of supply from a free assembly 
 has no foundation in nature. For first observe that, 
 besides the desire which all men have naturally of 
 
 20 supporting the honor of their own government, that 
 sense of dignity and that security to property which 
 ever attends freedom, has a tendency to increase the 
 stock of the free community. Most may be taken 
 where most is accumulated. And what is the soil or 
 
 25 climate where experience has not uniformly proved 
 that the voluntary flow of heaped-up plenty, bursting 
 from the weight of its own rich luxuriance, has ever run 
 with a more copious stream of revenue than could be 
 squeezed from the dry husks of oppressed indigence, t}y 
 the straining of all the politic machinery in the world ? 
 
CLV CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 8^ 
 
 Next, we know that parties must ever exist in a free 
 country. We know, too, that the emulations of such 
 <. parties, their contradictions, their reciprocal necessities, 
 their hopes, and their fears, must send them all in their 
 turns to him that holds the balance of the state. The 5 
 parties are the gamesters; but Government keeps Hie 
 table, and is sure to be the winner in the end. When 
 this game is played, I really think it is more to be 
 feared that the people will be exhausted than that 
 Government will not be supplied. Whereas, whatever 10 
 is got by acts of absolute power ill obeyed because 
 odious, or by contracts ill kept because constrained, 
 will be narrow, feeble, uncertain, and precarious. 
 
 " Ease would retract 
 Vows made in pain, as violent and void." 15 
 
 I, for one, protest against compounding our demands ; 
 I declare against compounding, for a poor limited sum, 
 the immense, ever-growing, eternal debt, which is due 
 to generous government from protected freedom. And 
 so may I speed in the great object I propose to you, as 20 
 I think it would not only be an act of injustice, but 
 would be the worst economy in the world to compel the 
 Colonies to a sum certain, either in the way of ransom 
 or in the way of compulsory compact. 
 
 But to clear up my ideas on this subject : a revenue 25 
 from America transmitted hither do not delude your 
 selves you never can receive it ; no, not a shilling. 
 We have experience that from remote countries it is 
 not to be expected. If, when you attempted to extract 
 
86 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 revenue from Bengal, you were obliged to return in 
 loan what you had taken in imposition, what can you 
 expect from North America ? For certainly, if ever 
 there was a country qualified to produce wealth, it is 
 
 5 India ; or an institution fit for 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 com- 
 
 10 modities 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 estab 
 lishments, she may, I doubt not she will, contribute in 
 moderation. I say in moderation, for she ought not to 
 
 15 be permitted to exhaust herself. She ought to be re 
 served 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. 
 
 20 For that service, for all service, whether of revenue, 
 tra^eyor empire, my trust is in her interest in the Brit- 
 isfc-Constitution. My hold of the Colonies is in the close 
 affection which grows from common names, from kin 
 dred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. 
 
 25 These are ties, which, though light as air, are as strong 
 as links of iron. Let the Colonists always keep the idea 
 of their civil rights^ 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 alle 
 giance. But let it be once understood that your govern- 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 87 
 
 ment may be one thing, and their privileges another; 
 that these two things may exist without any mutual re 
 lation the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened, 
 and everything hastens to decay arid dissolution. As 
 long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign 5 
 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 toward you. The 
 more they multiply, the more friends you will have ; the 10 
 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 15 
 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. 20 
 Deny them this 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 25 
 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 the mysterious whole. These things do 
 
88 SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 not make your government. Dead instruments, pas 
 sive 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 in- 
 5 fused through the 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 everything for 
 us here in England ? Do you imagine, then, that it is 
 
 10 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 in 
 spires it with bravery and discipline ? No ! surely no ! 
 It is the love of the people, it is their attachment to 
 
 15 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 tim- 
 
 20 ber. 
 
 All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and 
 chimerical to the profane herd of those vulgar and me 
 chanical politicians who have no place among us ; a 
 sort of people who think that nothing exists but what 
 
 25 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 exis- 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 89 
 
 tence, are in truth everything, and all in all. Magna 
 nimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom ; and 
 a great empire and little minds go ill together. If we 
 are conscious of our station, and glow with zeal to fill 
 our places as becomes our situation and ourselves, we 5 
 ought to auspicate all our public proceedings on Amer 
 ica 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 10 
 ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glo 
 rious empire, and have made the most extensive, and 
 the only honorable 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 15 
 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 20 
 temple of peace ; and I move you 
 
 That the Colonies and Plantations of Great Britain in 
 North America, consisting of Fourteen separate govern- 
 
 ments, and containing Two "Millions and upwards of free 
 inhabitants, have not had the liberty and privilege of 25 
 electing and sending any Knights and Burgesses, or 
 others, to represent them in the High Court of Parlia 
 ment. 
 
NOTES. 
 
INTKODUCTOKY NOTE. 
 
 THE young student is supposed to be acquainted with the principal 
 events of the twelve years constitutional struggle that preceded the 
 delivery of tbis speech. What happened in America he will find pre 
 sented in any good United States History, such as Fiske or Johnston, 
 or much better in Hosmer s Samuel Adams (Am. Commonwealth Series ). 
 The situation in England is concisely and clearly portrayed in Green s 
 Short History of the English People, Chapter X., Sec. ii. See also 
 Macaulay s Second Essay on the Earl of Chatham, for a brilliant group 
 ing with Pitt as central figure. 
 
 Sir. Addressing the speaker, austerity of the Chair = 
 
 the dignity of the House as personified in the Speaker. 
 
 grand penal Bill. This was the act proposed by Lord North 
 on Feb. 10, 1775, and was entitled "An Act to restrain the 
 Commerce of the Provinces of Massachuset s Bay and New 
 Hampshire and Colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island, 
 and Providence Plantation, in North America, to Great 
 Britain, Ireland, and the British Islands in the West Indies; 
 and to prohibit such Provinces and Colonies from carrying on 
 any Fishery on the Banks of Newfoundland, and other places 
 therein mentioned, under certain conditions and limitations." 
 
 mixture of coercion and restraint. Referring to the 
 provisions of the Act just mentioned. 
 
 When I first had the honor; i.e., in 1765 the year when 
 the Stamp Act was passed. 
 
 bloAA T n about by every wind, etc. Ephesians iv. 14. The 
 phraseology of Burke, Bright, and Gladstone shows an inti 
 mate acquaintance with the literature of the Bible tbe ver 
 sion of 1611. (The revised version is better Greek, but not 
 better English.) 
 
 2 : 4 
 
 10 
 25 
 
94 
 
 NOTES TO SPEECH OF EDMUND BUEKE 
 
 At that period. When the Stamp Act was repealed (Feb. 
 21, 1766). 
 
 Everything administered. The Tea-Tax; the Boston 
 Port Bill ; the Massachusetts Colony Bill ; the Transportation 
 Bill; the Quebec Act. Consult your United States History 
 under the years 1770-1774. 
 
 a situation . . . which I dare not name. The battle of 
 Lexington was fought less than a month after the delivery 
 of this speech. 
 
 a worthy member : Mr. Rose Fuller. He owes his acci 
 dental immortality entirely to this reference by Burke. 
 
 platform: in the old sense of sketch or plan. So used by 
 Bacon in his Essay, " Of Gardens " (last paragraph). 
 
 disreputably = with discredit (to the maker of the propo 
 sition). 
 
 paper government. Perhaps Burke was thinking of Caro 
 lina, which had the misfortune to have its first constitution 
 drawn up by the metaphysician Locke. He proposed to have 
 society organized along feudal lines barons, landgraves, 
 " caziques," and serfs. The serfs were to be bought and sold 
 with the soil. The plan was a ridiculous failure like the 
 dropsical constitutions of some of our recently admitted States. 
 
 the shadowy boundaries. This figure seems to be an 
 echo from Pope s Essay on Man, ii., 205-210. 
 
 Extremes in Nature equal ends produce, 
 
 In Man they join to some mysterious use; 
 
 Tho each by turns the other s bound invade, 
 
 As, in some well-wrought picture, light and shade, 
 
 And oft so mix, the diflTrence is too nice 
 
 Where ends the Virtue, or begins the Vice. 
 
 Burke was fond of painting, and a good judge of pictures ; 
 " The best I know," said Sir Joshua Reynolds. 
 
 former unsuspecting confidence. "The Congress [at 
 Philadelphia] has used an expression with regard to this paci 
 fication, which appears to me truly significant. After the 
 repeal of the Stamp Act, the Colonies fell, says this Assem 
 bly, into their ancient state of unsuspecting confidence in the 
 mother country. This unsuspecting confidence is the true 
 center of gravity amongst mankind, about which all the parts 
 are at rest. It is this unsuspecting confidence that removes all 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 95 
 
 difficulties, and reconciles all the contradictions which occur 
 in the complexity of all ancient, puzzled, political establish 
 ments." Burke s Letter to the Sheriff s of Bristol (1777). 
 
 the Noble Lord in the Blue Ribbon : Lord North, the 
 only member of the House of Commons who was then a Knight 
 of the Garter, and was therefore entitled to wear the Blue 
 Ribbon of that order. Notice that he was a " Lord " only by 
 courtesy; his father (the Earl of Guildford) did not die until 
 1790; until that date, therefore, "Lord" North was, in the 
 eyes of the law, a commoner, and eligible to a seat in the 
 House of Commons. Similarly, in our own time, the Marquis 
 of Hartington has been for many years a distinguished mem 
 ber of the House of Commons; by the recent death of his 
 father he has become a member of the House of Peers under 
 the title of the Duke of Devonshire. 
 
 The project referred to is criticised at length by Burke near 
 the close of this speech (see pp. 77-85) ; it is outlined in the 
 following Resolution passed by the House on Feb. 27, 1775: 
 
 "That when the Governor, Council, or Assembly, or Gen 
 eral Court, of any of his Majesty s Provinces or Colonies in 
 America, shall propose to make provision, according to the 
 condition, circumstances, and situation, of such Province or 
 Colony, for contributing their proportion to the Common De 
 fence (such proportion to be raised under the Authority of the 
 General Court, or General Assembly, of such Province or Col 
 ony, and disposable by Parliament), and shall engage to make 
 provision also for the support of the Civil Government, and 
 the Administration of Justice, in such Province or Colony, it 
 will be proper, if such Proposal shall be approved by his Ma 
 jesty, and the two Houses of Parliament, and for so long as 
 such Provision shall be made accordingly, to forbear, in respect 
 of such Province or Colony, to levy any duty, Tax, or Assess 
 ment, or to impose any further Duty, Tax, or Assessment, 
 except such duties as it may be expedient to continue to levy 
 or impose, for the Regulation of Commerce ; the Nett Produce 
 of the Duties last mentioned to be carried to the account of 
 such Province or Colony respectively." 
 
 mace. The crowned club or scepter which lies on the table 
 of the House, and is symbolical of its authority. If debaters 
 become angry or personal, the speaker directs the Sergeant-at- 
 
96 
 
 NOTES TO SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 arms to advance the mace between the disputants: this im 
 plied threat of discipline generally quiets even an Irish 
 member. When Cromwell " purged " the House of Commons, 
 he is reported to have pointed to the mace, and to have said: 
 " Take away that bauble." 
 
 our Address. An address to the King, urging him to 
 action against the American "rebels," had recently passed the 
 House. 
 
 Bills of Pains and Penalties. See note on 3 : 6. 
 
 peace with honor. This phrase has become famous in 
 recent years, from its employment by Disraeli in the speech 
 with which he celebrated his triumphant return from the 
 Congress of Berlin (1878). " I bring you peace," said he to 
 the mob of Jingoes who howled under the windows of the For 
 eign Office; " I bring you Peace; and Peace with Honor." 
 
 that time and those chances. Compare Julius Caesar, 
 iv. iii. 216-219 : 
 
 There is a tide in the affairs of men 
 "Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; 
 Omitted, all the voyage of their life 
 Is bound in shallows and in miseries. 
 
 the number of people. The most recent authorities put 
 the number at "about 2,600,000," or slightly over Burke s 
 estimate. Virginia came first, with 560,000; Massachusetts 
 next, with 360,000; Georgia last, with 30,000. the cities of 
 New York and Brooklyn alone contained 2,321,644 people in 
 1890; to-day they probably contain a larger population than did 
 the whole of the American Colonies 120 years ago. Yet one 
 might experience some trouble to-day in finding in New York 
 and Brooklyn a Franklin, a Washington, a Jefferson, a Ham 
 ilton. Herein lies food for thought. 
 
 Notice the effective use of antithesis and of parallel con 
 structions in this passage. 
 
 the front of our deliberation. Compare Othello, i. iii. 
 
 81-82: 
 
 The very head and front of my offending 
 Hath this extent, no more. 
 
 occasional = irregular, fitful. 
 
 those minima. Referring to the proverb, DP. minimis non 
 curat lex (The law does not concern itself about trifles); i.e., 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 97 
 
 courts of justice overlook trifling irregularities in a law, so 
 long as these irregularities do not affect the public interest. 
 
 a distinguished person : Richard Glover (1712-85), mer 
 chant, politician, and versifier. He was esteemed a poet in 
 his day, on the strength of a dull ballad (Admiral Hosier s 
 Ghost) and two long and dreary epics, Leonidas and The 
 Athenaid (in thirty books!). The former was published in 
 1737, at which time Swift was still living; Pope, Bolingbroke, 
 Thomson and Young were in their literary prime; Fielding, 
 Richardson, and Johnson had begun to write. Burke s char 
 acterization of him, then, as " one of the first literary characters 
 of his age," is supremely ridiculous, even as an oratorical com 
 pliment. The fact is, Glover was such a bad poet that it is 
 a wonder he escaped being appointed Poet-Laureate. The only 
 thing that saved him was the existence of Whitehead, who, 
 being even a greater adept than Glover in the art of sinking in 
 poetry, received the appointment in 1757. 
 
 Davenaiit. Charles Davenant (1656-1714), Member of Par 
 liament, Inspector of Plays, and Inspector-General of Exports 
 and Imports. Macaulay * calls him "an acute and well- 
 informed, though most unprincipled and and rancorous politi 
 cian." He was the son of Sir William Davenant, the poet, 
 who claimed to be the godson of Shakespeare. 
 
 the African. A euphemism for the slave-trade. 
 
 six millions. For the year 1891 the exports of Great 
 Britain to the United States, Canada, the West Indies, and 
 Africa amounted to 51,598,998; of this, 27,544,553 went to 
 the United States. 
 
 It is good for us to be here. Mark ix. 5. 
 
 Lord Bathhurst. Allen Apsley Bathhurst was born in 1684, 
 and died about six months after the delivery of this speech. 
 He was made Baron in 1712, and Earl in 1772. Though a Tory 
 politician of some prominence, he found time to cultivate the 
 friendship of such men as Pope, Swift, Congreve, and Sterne. 
 By the first mentioned he was held in especial esteem : to him 
 Pope dedicated that famous Epistle on the Use of Riches, which 
 
 opens : 
 
 Who shall decide, when doctors disagree 
 And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me? 
 
 1 History of England, chapter iii. 
 
98 
 
 NOTES TO SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 Lines 219-228 contain this fine compliment to Bathhurst : 
 
 The sense to value riches, with the art 
 
 T enjoy them, and the virtue to impart, 
 
 Not meanly, nor ambitiously pursu d, 
 
 Not sunk by sloth, nor rais d by servitude; 
 
 To balance fortune by a just expense, 
 
 Join with economy, magnificence; 
 
 With splendor, charity; with plenty, health; 
 
 O teach us, Bathhurst! yet unspoiled by wealth! 
 
 That secret rare between the extremes to move 
 
 Of mad good-nature and of mean self-love. 
 
 acta parentum. Virgil, Eel. iv. 26-27: 
 
 At simul heroum laudes et facta parentis 
 
 Jam legere et quae sit poteris cognoscere virtus, 
 
 "But soon as thou shalt be of an age to read at length of the 
 glories of heroes and thy father s deeds, and to acquaint thyself with 
 the nature of manly worth," 
 
 in the fourth generation the third prince, etc. 
 
 George I., 1714-1727. 
 George II., 1727-1760. 
 [Frederic, P. of Wales, died 1751.] 
 George III., 1760-1820. 
 
 was to be made Great Britain. Scotland had wisely 
 been united to England by the Long Parliament in 1652. At 
 the Restoration (1660) Charles II. refused to recognize this 
 Union, perceiving that by so doing he could weaken the politi 
 cal influence of Puritanism. After long and bitter opposition 
 in both countries, they were again united by the Treaty of 
 Union in 1707. The united valor and the patriotism of the 
 Scotch had practically preserved the independence of their 
 country through more than four hundred years; when they 
 united with England, then, they were in a position to demand 
 honorable and advantageous terms- Contrast this with the 
 case of Ireland, where the lawlessness and petty jealousies 
 of the native chiefs invited English conquest. Cromwell 
 "united " Ireland to England by fire and sword; Charles II. 
 dissolved the Union ; Pitt reunited her in 1800 by expending 
 $5,000,000 in bribes to Irish "statesmen," and by distributing 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 99 
 
 places and pensions galore. To-day the Irish question seems 
 as far from settlement as ever, while Scotland is peaceful and 
 prosperous. 
 
 his son. Henry, the eldest son of Lord Bathhurst, was 
 made Lord Chancellor in 1771, with the title of Baron Apsley. 
 
 before you taste of death. Compare Julius Caesar, u. ii. 
 
 32,33. 
 
 Cowards die many times before their deaths; 
 The valiant never taste of death but once. 
 
 For the Biblical origin of the phrase, see Matthew xvi. 28; 
 John viii. 52. 
 
 close the setting of his day. Possibly an echo from 
 Johnson s Vanity of Human Wishes, 311, 312 : 
 
 But few there are whom hours like these await, 
 Who set unclouded in the gulfs of Fate. 
 
 Mr. E. J. Payne, (an English authority) tells us that this 
 fine passage concludes "in a higher strain of rhetoric than is 
 now permissible in Parliamentary speaking." This suggests 
 two queries : (1) Have you now a Burke, capable of originat 
 ing such a high strain ? (2) If you have, and if parliamentary 
 custom does not permit him to deliver it, is not your Middle- 
 class Parliament even more stupid than its severest critics 
 declare it to be ? 
 
 deceive = beguile, alleviate, lighten: a poetic Latinism 
 (fallo). Compare Virgil, JEneid, iv. 84, 85: 
 
 Aut gremio Ascanium, genitoris imagine capta, 
 Detinet, infandum si fallere possit amorem, 
 
 thus translated by Dryden : 
 
 Or in her bosom young Ascanius bears, 
 And seeks the father s image in the child, 
 If love by likeness might be so beguiled. 
 
 comprehending = including. 
 
 a Roman charity. The story here referred to is given in 
 different versions by different Latin authors. Hyginus tells 
 us that it was a daughter who saved her imprisoned father 
 from starvation by nourishing him from her own breasts. 
 
 whale fishery. Massachusetts was the colony chiefly 
 interested in the whale fishery. In 1758 she had 304 vessels 
 (tonnage, 28,000) engaged in that industry. The maximum 
 
100 NOTES TO SPEECH OF EDMUND BUEKE 
 
 18: 6 
 
 18: 13 
 
 was reached in 1854, when the United States owned 668 whal 
 ing vessels (tonnage 208,399). Whales have now become so 
 scarce, and other substances have so largely superseded whale- 
 oil, that the business has shrunk to insignificant proportions. 
 
 the frozen serpent. There is a constellation lying across 
 the Antarctic Circle called the Serpent. Its northernmost 
 star is not visible until you reach latitude 28 North. 
 
 Falkland. Island : more correctly Falkland Islands. They 
 were discovered in 1592, and, on account of their barrenness, 
 were not considered worth colonizing at that time. Through 
 the growth of the whale-fisheries they acquired a temporary 
 importance as a refitting station. 
 
 run the longitude. This expression is still used to-day, 
 but is not common. Its disuse is attributable to the advance 
 in the science of navigation brought about by improved instru 
 ments. Literally "run the longitude" means run east or 
 west ; practically it might mean any direction east or west of 
 north or south. The expression, therefore, may be properly 
 used to indicate any direction or point of the compass lying 
 south of east or west, except south itself. 
 
 A similar expression is used in connection with latitude: 
 " run down the (or your) latitude," is more frequently heard 
 than the expression Burke uses. As a matter of fact, running 
 down the latitude is to this day practiced to some extent by 
 masters of schooners and other small vessels on our coasts, 
 who are unskilled in the mysteries of navigation, their knowl 
 edge of the subject being limited to " dead reckoning " and the 
 simple problem of determining the latitude from the observed 
 altitude of the sun at noon. Thus, having "run down their 
 latitude" they sail east or west, and so, in time, arrive at 
 their port of destination in a sort of instinctive way bred of 
 their practical knowledge of the sea. 1 
 
 No sea but what is vexed. Compare Paradise Lost, i. 
 305-307 : 
 
 . . . when with fierce winds Orion armed 
 
 Hath vexed the Red Sea coast, whose waves o erthrew 
 
 Busiris and his Memphi.in chivalry. 
 
 1 For the substance of this note I am indebted to the courtesy of 
 Captain C. S. Cotton of the U. S. S. Philadelphia. 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 101 
 
 No climate, etc. Evidently suggested by ^Eneid, i. 
 
 459,460: 
 
 Quis jam locus, inquit, Achute, 
 Quae regio in terris nostri noil plena laboris ? 
 
 " Is there, friend, he cries, a spot 
 
 That knows not Troy s unhappy lot ? " 
 
 I pardon something to the spirit of liberty. The fine 
 passage closed by this sentence has all the essentials of poetry 
 except versification. For the sentiment, compare the closing 
 lines of Mill s " Essay on Liberty." 
 
 complexions = temperament, disposition. This is the ori 
 ginal meaning of the word. Compare Hamlet, I. iv. 27, 28: 
 
 By the o ergrowth of some complexion 
 
 Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason. 
 
 Terror is not always the effect of force ; and an ar 
 mament is not a victory. Burke is terribly long-winded at 
 times, yet when he chooses he can be (as here) as finely sen 
 tentious as Tacitus. Compare the Agricola, chapter 30: 
 " ubi solitvdinem faciunt, pacem appellant." 
 
 when this part of your character was most promi 
 nent. Plymouth Colony was founded in 1(520; Massachusetts 
 Bay in 1628; Connecticut between 1630 and 1639; and there 
 was a steady immigration to them so long as the tyranny of 
 Charles I. and Laud endured. When the Puritans gained 
 control of the government of England, this immigration fell 
 off materially. 
 
 Abstract liberty ... is not to be found. .Liberty 
 inheres in some sensible object. If all political orators had 
 but taken to heart this maxim, what oceans of frothy decla 
 mation we should have been spared! In spite of all the 
 theorizing about Liberty, Liberty is a very simple thing: it is 
 the right to live your own life in your own way, subject only 
 to the condition that your actions be not harmful to others. 
 
 contests in the ancient commonwealths. Consult a 
 History of Kome under the years 496-494, 451, 443, 367 B.C. 
 
 ablest pens : Selden, Swift, Bolingbroke. most eloquent 
 tongues: Pym, Hampden, Vane. The last mentioned was 
 executed after the Restoration. 
 
 imagination = opinion. 
 
102 
 
 NOTES TO SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 popular = of the people (populus), democratic. 
 
 dissenting churches. The Church of England people 
 call all Protestant sects except their own Dissenters (from the 
 established church). 
 
 under the nursing care, of Henry VIII., Edward VI., 
 and Elizabeth. 
 
 the dissidence of dissent, etc. 
 
 "Nowhere has Puritanism found so adequate an expression as in 
 the religious organization of the Independents. The modern Inde 
 pendents have a newspaper, The Nonconformist, written with great 
 sincerity and ability. The rnotto, the standard, the profession of 
 faith, which this organ of theirs carries aloft is : The Dissidence of 
 Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion. There is 
 sweetness and light, and an ideal of complete harmonious human 
 perfection ! One need not go to culture and poetry to find language 
 to judge it. Religion, with its instinct for perfection, supplies lan 
 guage to judge it, language, too, which is in our mouths every day. 
 Finally, be of one mind, united in feeling, says St. Peter. There 
 is an ideal which judges the Puritan ideal : The Dissidence of Dis 
 sent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion ! " MATTHEW 
 ARNOLD, Culture and Anarchy, chapter i. 
 
 people of the Southern Colonies. For an incomparable 
 picture of 18th century life in Colonial Virginia, see Thackeray s 
 Virginians, chapters iii.-xiii. 
 
 Gothic; incorrectly used for Teutonic. But this is not as 
 bad as Shelley, who speaks of the Austrians as Kelts (Euganean 
 Hills, 223). 
 
 the Poles. Poland was first partitioned (i.e., enslaved) by 
 the three robbers, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, in 1772. 
 
 Plantations = colonies. The official name of Rhode 
 Island, according to the charter of 1663, was Rhode Island 
 and Providence Plantations. 
 
 successful chicane. When General Gage prohibited the 
 calling of a town-meeting in Boston, the colonial leaders de 
 clared each successive meeting merely adjourned, and so 
 bestowed upon it legal immortality. Gage was actually stu 
 pid and weak enough to let this flimsy obstacle delay his 
 action. For the particulars, see Hosmer s Samuel Adams, 
 chapter xix. 
 
 my honorable and learned friend: Edward Thurlow, 
 at this time Attorney-General ; in 1778 created Lord Chan 
 cellor. He was a man of some ability, who managed to get on 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH TUE COLONIES. 103 
 
 the wrong side of almost every public question he touched. 
 He opposed the Americans, defended Warren Hastings, and 
 supported the slave-trade all with equal violence. Much of 
 his success in life was due to his conscientious adherence to 
 the (Thackerayan) maxim that if you want comfortable stand 
 ing grotind, stamp on your neighbor s toe. Do you think he 
 won t pull it out of the way? 
 
 Abeunt stadia in mores : " Pursuits pass into charac 
 ter:" from Ovid, Heroides, xv. 83. 
 
 in weakening government. For illustration, notice the 
 case of Governor Andros, who was deposed by the New Eng- 
 landers and deported by them to England in 1689. 
 winged ministers of vengeance. 
 
 Qualem ministrum fulminis alitem, 
 
 Cui rex deorum regimm in aves vagas 
 
 Permisit HO RACK, Carm. iv. 4, 1-3. 
 
 " Like as the thunder-bearing bird 
 
 On whom o er all the fowls of air 
 Dominion was by Jove conferred " 
 
 pounces = claws, talons. 
 
 So far shalt thou go, etc. Read Thackeray s fine ballad 
 of King Canute. The origin of the phrase is evidently in the 
 eleventh verse of that magnificent lyric, the thirty-eighth 
 chapter of Job. 
 
 Nothing worse happens, etc. Notice how this abstract 
 statement is vivified by the concrete illustrations that follow. 
 
 " No reckoning made, but sent to my account 
 With all my imperfections on my head. Hamlet, i. v. 78, 79. 
 
 Lord Dunmore : the last royal Governor of Virginia, 
 appointed in 1771. His arbitrary measures made him ex 
 tremely unpopular. After Lexington, he fled from the colony, 
 and established himself on board the English fleet, which, 
 under his direction, harried the coast for more than a year. 
 After the war he was appointed Governor of the Bermudas. 
 
 Patriotism must have been almost dead in England when 
 such a convincing historical argument as this could fall upon 
 deaf ears. 
 
 They have already so occupied : as in the case of the 
 Massachusetts immigrants who founded the Connecticut towns 
 of Weathersfield (1634), Windsor (1635), and Hartford (1636). 
 
104 NOTES TO SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 a square of five hundred miles ; the western boundary 
 being the Mississippi. Thence the Spaniards claimed to the 
 Pacific. 
 
 the command . . . of Providence. Genesis ix. 1. 
 
 given to the children of men. Psalms cxv. 16. 
 
 Spoliatis arma s upersunt. " To the plundered remain 
 arms. Juvenal, viii. 12-4. 
 
 your speech would betray you. Matthew xxvi. 73. 
 
 dragooning : persecution by means of armed force (dra 
 goons). 
 
 burn their books of curious science. Acts xix. 19. 
 
 more chargeable = more expensive. 
 
 difficult to be kept in obedience. The Long Parliament 
 created the Cromwellian army, and the army abolished the 
 Parliament. 
 
 History furnishes few instances, etc. One of the most 
 admirable things about Burke is his constant reference to the 
 teachings of history. Of no subject are the American people 
 more ignorant than of this ; when we look at our national 
 legislation for the last thirty-five years, it seems as if our pub 
 lic men had learned almost nothing from twenty-five hundred 
 years of European experiences. 
 
 other people : the Spartans under Cleomenes III. (third 
 century B.C.) ; the Romans after Cannae (216 B.C.). This does 
 not exhaust the instances. 
 
 their refusal. " [In 1769, the Virginia House of Bur 
 gesses] unanimously adopted an agreement drawn by George 
 Mason and presented by George "Washington, not to import or 
 purchase any English commodities, or any slaves, until their 
 rights were redressed." John Esten Cooke s Virginia, in. 
 vi. (p. 401, edition of 1885). 
 
 It would be curious, etc. The English have seldom 
 cared about moral consistency when there was a shilling to be 
 made by disregarding it. Witness the iniquitous opium war of 
 1842, when that deadly drug was forced upon the protesting 
 Chinese, at the cannon s mouth, by a nation whose state reli 
 gion is Christianity. 
 
 Ye gods, etc. There is a tradition that this is from one of 
 Dryden s plays; and it certainly sounds like Maximim in Ty- 
 ranic Love, or like Antony in All for Love; but diligent 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 105 
 
 search fails to reveal it in either of these places. It is quoted 
 in The Art of Sinking in Poetry, chapter xi., as a burlesque 
 example of " The Hyperbole or The Impossible." See Court- 
 hope and El win s Pope, vol. x., p. 381. 
 
 alterative = having power to restore healthy functions: a 
 medical term, used here with admirable precision. 
 
 Sir Edward Coke, Attorney-General from 1594 to IGlfi. 
 He was a fine specimen of the legal bully. We have the fol 
 lowing record 1 of his behavior at Raleigh s trial (1603). 
 " Coke : I will prove you the notoriest traitor that ever came 
 to the bar. Raleigh: Your words cannot condemn me ; my 
 innocency is my defence. Coke : Thou art a monster. Thou 
 hast an English face, but a Spanish heart. " 
 
 empire. The flourishing condition of the British Empire 
 to-day shows that her statesmen have at last learned the lesson 
 Burke here so finely teaches. 
 
 ex vi termini : from the very force of the term. 
 
 ban = sentence of outlawry. Originally the ban was merely 
 an edict or proclamation summoning to arms. 
 
 addressed = presented an address to the King. See note 
 on 3 : 10. 
 
 correctly right is certainly a curious tautology. 
 
 startle, here used intransitively. Compare Ben Jonson, 
 
 Alchemist, iv. i. 23-26. 
 
 Physic or mathematics, 
 Poetry, state ... as I told you 
 She will endure and never startle; but 
 No word of controversy. 
 
 The quotation is from Paradise Lost, ii. 592-5M. It is 
 more than doubtful if the Tory squires who listened to Burke 
 understood the quotation, or appreciated the delightful irony 
 that precedes it. 
 
 a revenue act. The Stamp Act ; repealed in 1766. 
 
 American financiers: not "financiers that are Ameri 
 cans," but " financiers who think America could be made to 
 yield us a revenue by taxation." 
 
 a gentleman of real moderation. A Mr. Rice to 
 fame and biographical dictionaries unknown. 
 
 shall, here implies not futurity, but almost duty or obliga- 
 
 1 In Howell s State Trials, vol. ii. 
 
106 NOTES TO SPEECH ON EDMUND BURKE 
 
 tion: very common in this sense in Middle English. Compare 
 the German Sollen. 
 
 the Acts of Navigation. The original Navigation Act 
 was passed in 1G51, and was part of the English war-policy 
 against the Dutch. It prohibited foreign vessels from bring 
 ing to England any products save those of the countries to 
 which they belonged. In 1672 the law was made more strin 
 gent ; importations from Asia, Africa, and America, were en 
 tirely prohibited unless brought in English ships. When the 
 American colonies achieved independence, they passed retali 
 atory laws: we then beheld the edifying spectacle of the ships 
 of each nation making half the round trip empty, and the con 
 sumers at each end paying double freight. This attempt of 
 two nations to grow rich by plundering each other flourished 
 until 1814, when it was brought to an end by the Treaty of 
 Ghent. It revived, in modified form, in the absurd Shipping 
 Laws of our Reconstruction period. 
 
 the pamphlet: probably the " Four Tracts, together with 
 Two Sermons on Political and Commercial Subjects," by 
 Josiah Tucker, Dean of Gloucester. The writer s views remind 
 one of Captain Lismahago s unanswerable argument as to the 
 benefits England had received from her union with Scotland. 
 The good dean wished England to throw away her American 
 Colonies as of no value, nor would he have her take them back 
 until they humbly petitioned for the inestimable privilege of 
 subjection to the mother-country. 
 
 Philip the Second (1555-1598) married Queen Mary of 
 England. During the early part of his reign Spain was the 
 first country in Europe. 
 
 Ireland. See note on 15 : 7. 
 
 Magna Charta. Consult Green s Short History of the 
 English People, chapter iii., sections ii., iii. 
 
 Sir John Davis, or more correctly Davies (1569-1626) : 
 rake, wit, poet, and lawyer ; author of Discoverie of the True 
 Causes why Ireland Was Never Entirely Subdued until the 
 Beginning of His Majesty s Happy Reign (1612). He was well 
 acquainted with the state of Ireland, having resided there 
 from 1603 to 1616, and having filled there the offices of solici 
 tor-general, attorney-general, and speaker of the House of 
 Commons. 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 107 
 
 the Revolution, of 1688, when Parliament deposed James 
 II., and (practically) elected William of Orange king. 
 
 great and flourishing kingdom. Burke draws largely 
 upon his imagination here. For a true description of Irish 
 society iu 1771, see Thackeray s Barry Lyndon, chapter xiv. 
 Ireland is to-day a disgrace and burthen intolerable to 
 England, just as the negro prohlem is to us; if she has never 
 been formally taxed, she has been informally taxed, by 
 rack-renting, even below the limit of subsistence. 
 
 Henry the Third: 1216-1272 ; Edward the First : 1272- 
 1307. 
 
 lords marchers. See the Introduction and the first chap 
 ter of Scott s The Betrothed ; also, Green s History, chapter 
 iv., section i. 
 
 secondary (noun) = deputy. This use of the word is rare 
 now, except as applied to a minor officer of a cathedral. See 
 
 Measure for Measure, i. i. 47, 48. 
 
 old Escalus, 
 Though first in question, is thy secondary. 
 
 rid : old preterite for rode. 
 
 the twenty-seventh year of Henry the Eighth: i.e., in 
 1535. 
 
 day-star . . . had arisen : 2 Peter i. 19. 
 
 The quotation is from Horace s Odes, i. 12, 27-32. He is 
 speaking of Castor and Pollux : 
 
 " soon as gleam 
 
 Their stars at sea, 
 The lashed spray trickles from the steep, 
 
 The wind sinks down, the storm-cloud flies, 
 The threatening billow on the deep 
 
 Obedient lies." 
 
 shewen. Shew is an older spelling than show. The ter 
 mination is the old form of the plural ; very common as late as 
 Chaucer, and revived as a poetic archaism by Spenser and 
 Thomson. 
 
 Palatine = having royal or imperial privileges. There 
 were only three Counties Palatine in England: Lancaster, 
 Chester, and Durham. Their lords exercised within these 
 realms the same judicial powers as did the king. The ety 
 mology of Palatine is worth tracing. 
 
108 NOTES TO SPEECH OF EDMUND BUEKE 
 
 disherisons = disinheritings. 
 
 ne = nor. 
 
 bounden: old form of the past participle; almost obsolete 
 now, except in the phrase bounden duty. 
 
 pale (Latin pains, a stake) = fence, limit, bound ; then the 
 region inclosed by bounds. The English Pale in Ireland was 
 the strip on the south and east coasts, where English arms and 
 law prevailed. 
 
 Judge Barrington : Daines Barrington (1727-1800) ; lawyer, 
 naturalist, and antiquarian. In 1757 he was made a justice for 
 the counties of Anglesey, Caernarvon, and Merioneth. That he 
 never rose higher in the law was due, not to lack of ability, 
 but to his literary tastes. Bentham says that he had a " higher 
 intellect " than Blackstone. Charles Lamb (Essay on the Old 
 Benchers) says he attained to considerable dignity " upon the 
 strength of being a tolerable antiquarian, and having a brother 
 a bishop." 
 
 Wales was hardly ever free from it. The last rising of 
 the Welsh (1400-1410) was under Owen Glendower. See his 
 character in Shakespeare s 1 Henry IV. Read also Gray s 
 Bard. 
 
 The quotation (from Juvenal x., 152) is about as inappro 
 priate as can be imagined. Juvenal is speaking of Hannibal, 
 and tells us how successfully he removed the barriers which 
 Nature opposed to his progress: Burke wishes to impress upon 
 his hearers the fact that Nature opposes them with an abso 
 lutely irremovable barrier. 
 
 the arm ... is not shortened. Isaiah lix. 1. 
 
 Plato; More; Harrington. Students who have time to 
 consult these classics will find them published at trifling cost 
 in the following editions: the Republic in the Golden Treasury 
 Series (Macmillan) ; the Utopia in No. 23, and the Oceana in 
 No. 53 of Morley s Universal Library (Routledge). 
 
 The (inaccurate) quotation is from Comus, G34-G35: 
 
 and the dull swain 
 
 Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon ; 
 
 irresistible conclusions. If Burke was ever blinded by 
 the popular fallacy about the irresistible power of Truth, 
 the vote against his Resolutions (270-78) must have opened 
 his eyes. On this subject Mill has written wise words (Essay 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 109 
 
 on Liberty, chapter ii. H 17). "Men are not more zealous for 
 truth than they often are for error, and a sufficient application 
 of legal, or even of social, penalties, will generally succeed in 
 stopping the propagation of either. The real advantage which 
 truth has consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may 
 be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but, in the course 
 of ages, there will generally be found persons to rediscover 
 it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when, 
 from favorable circumstances, it escapes persecution until it 
 has made such head as to withstand all subsequent attempts 
 to suppress it." 
 
 The quotation is from Horace, Lib. ii. Sat. ii. 2, 3. 
 " What the virtue consists in, and why it is great, 
 To live on a little, whatever your state 
 ( Tis not I who discourse, but Ofellus the hind, 
 Though no scholar, a sage of exceptional kind)" 
 
 rust that . . . adorns is an image that can with difficulty 
 be admired by a reader with a sense of humor; and rust that 
 preserves, though a chemical possibility, is certainly rare. 
 
 touch with a tool. Exodus xx. 25. 
 
 wise beyond what was written. 1 Corinthians iv. 6. 
 
 the form of sound words. 2 Timothy i. 13. 
 
 Lord Hillsborough : Secretary of State for the Colonies 
 from 17G8 to 1772. He was a bitter opponent of the conciliation 
 policy; as late as November, 1781, he expressed the hope that 
 "the independence of America would never be admitted." 
 Even George III. (temporarily forgetting his own existence) 
 declared he did not know a man " of less judgment than Lord 
 Hil Isborough . 
 
 wished = recommended : so used by Shakespeare and Ben 
 Jonson. See Century Dictionary for illustrative quotations. 
 
 the Council. A well-condensed description of the Privy 
 Council will be found in the Century Dictionary, article 
 Council (9). 
 
 the misguided people = the common people of England. 
 At this time the prospect of war was undoubtedly popular there. 
 
 Mr. Grenville, George Grenville, brother-in-law of Pitt, 
 originator of the Stamp Act, and Prime Minister from 17(i3 to 
 1765. See his character sketched by Macaulay in the second 
 Essay on the Earl of Chatham. 
 
110 NOTES TO SPEECH OF EDMUNti BURKE 
 
 state = statement. 
 
 Courts of Admiralty : Courts that have exclusive juris 
 diction over maritime causes. In the United States, only 
 Federal Courts are allowed to exercise this jurisdiction. 
 
 the immediate jewel, etc. From Othello, in. iii. 156: 
 
 [Good name, in man and woman, dear my lord] 
 Is the immediate jewel of their souls. 
 
 a great house, etc. An echo from Juvenal, v. 67. 
 Maxima quaeque domus servis est plena superbis. 
 
 cords of man. Hosea xi. 4. 
 
 Aristotle . . . cautions us ; in the Nichomachean Eth 
 ics, Book I. chapter iii. 
 
 " In matters so little stable [as those of politics and ethics] 
 we must be contented, therefore, with catching the general 
 resemblance of truth ; and our conclusions will deserve to be 
 approved, if in most cases they are found to hold true ; for it is 
 the part of wisdom to be satisfied in each subject with that 
 kind of evidence which the nature of the subject allows; it 
 not being less absurd to require demonstrations of an orator 
 than to be contented with probabilities from a mathemati 
 cian." 
 
 Ireland has ever had, etc. See note on 15: 7 and 51: 15. 
 Sweet and harmonious hardly describe the relations between 
 England and Ireland to-day. 
 
 the Noble Lord : Lord North. 
 
 that proposition. See second paragraph of the note on 
 7:8. 
 
 Experimentum in corpore vili. " Tis well to try your 
 experiment on a subject that is worthless." 
 
 back door of the Constitution; i.e., some committee. 
 In our system of Congressional government, these back-doors 
 have become so numerous and so much used, that the main- 
 door (public and intelligent discussion) is left to rust upon its 
 hinges. 
 
 the tobacco of Virginia. " There has never been a com 
 munity, probably, in which any one great staple has played 
 such a part as in Virginia, Tobacco founded the colony and 
 gave it wealth. It was the currency of Virginia; as bad a one 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. Ill 
 
 as could Je devised, and fluctuating with every crop ; yet it 
 retained its place as circulating medium despite the most 
 strenuous efforts to introduce specie. The clergy were paid 
 and taxes were levied by the Burgesses in tobacco. The 
 whole prosperity of the colony rested upon it for more than 
 a century, and it was not until the period of the Revolution 
 that other crops began to come in and replace it. The fluctua 
 tions in tobacco caused the first conflict with England, brought 
 on by the violence of the clergy, and paved the way for re 
 sistance. In tobacco the Virginian estimated his income and 
 the value of everything he possessed ; and in its various func 
 tions, as well as in its method of cultivation, it had a strong 
 effect upon the character of the people. ... It was, too, 
 always a sore subject with England ; and the case of the 
 Planters of Tobacco, in 1733, presents a sad picture of the 
 losses inflicted by the mother country by extortionate duties, 
 and, what was much worse, by fraud, corruption, clipping, 
 and favoritism of all sorts in the custom-house. . . . Just be 
 fore the Revolution the exportation of tobacco, including a 
 small quantity from North Carolina, had risen from sixty thou 
 sand in 1759, to one hundred thousand hogsheads, was worth 
 nearly a million pounds sterling, and employed about three 
 hundred vessels." LODGE ; Short History of the English 
 Colonies in America, cbapter ii., pp. 64, 65. 
 
 Virginia and Maryland. See note on 9 : 23. Maryland 
 at this time was only fifth in population (220,000): the extent 
 of her navigable waters, as well as her central position, gave 
 her importance. 
 
 a Treasury Extent : a remedy for recovering debts due 
 the Crown, under which the body, goods, and land of the 
 debtor may be summarily seized. 
 
 the empire of Germany : not the modern Empire of 
 Germany, which dates only from 1871, but the Holy Roman 
 Empire, a congeries of states under the leadership of Aus 
 tria, which Napoleon dissolved when he formed the Confeder 
 ation of the Rhine in 1806. 
 
 Posita luditur area. From Juvenal s First Satire, lines 
 89,90. 
 
 Neque enim loculis comitantibus itur 
 Ad casum tabulae posita sed luditur area. 
 
112 NOTES TO SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 " For now-a-days men do not go to the gambling-teable with 
 what they happen to have in purse, but they stake their very 
 treasure-chest." Burke s quotations from Juvenal show a 
 better remembrance of the words than of the thought. See 
 note on 58 : 5. 
 
 one hundred and forty millions. The national debt 
 had nearly doubled within twenty-five years. The senseless 
 war with the colonies added to this 133,000,000. 
 
 And what is the soil, etc. Notice how admirably the 
 metaphor is carried out; how it is exhausted, yet not tor 
 tured. There is no " restless pursuit of comparison, ... we 
 see great accuracy in depicting the things themselves or their 
 suggestions, so that we may be certain the things presented 
 themselves in the field of the poet s vision and were painted 
 because seen." G. H. LEWES: Principles of Success in Lit 
 erature, in., ii. 5. 
 
 parties must ever exist in a free country. Must they ? 
 Is this an immutable principle of human nature ? Notice the 
 metaphor from gambling with which Burke props this assump 
 tion; he is down to the level of ex-Senator Ingalls when he 
 declared that government is warfare. "The persistence of 
 parties, under our present conditions, is due to the fact that 
 the citizen exhausts all his political power for a fixed period 
 in a single act, and that act the election of some man or men 
 to office. There may be a dozen principles which he would 
 like to see embodied in legislation, but he can neither vote 
 for each of them directly nor for a different man for each prin 
 ciple. The best he can do is to vote for a candidate whose 
 views, on the whole, are most nearly in accordance with his 
 own, and resign himself to being misrepresented on the points 
 upon which he and his candidate differ. From this has arisen 
 the habit of picking out what seem to be for the moment the 
 most important subjects in dispute, making them the issues on 
 which candidates contest for election, and ignoring less press 
 ing matters. This at once divides the community into parties, 
 having the nominal ultimate purpose of carrying out their 
 characteristic principles, and the actual immediate purpose of 
 getting their candidates into office. . . . 
 
 "As party government has naturally grown out of present 
 conditions, so it would naturally disappear if the conditions 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. 113 
 
 were changed. There is no reason why the man who believes 
 in free trade, the single gold standard, and the Government 
 ownership of railroads, should seek all those objects through 
 one political organization, except that under our present 
 methods he has only one vote, and must cast it for the candi 
 date of one political organization or lose it. If he could vote 
 on each important measure separately, he would probably be 
 long to one association, or party, devoted to the propagation 
 of the free-trade idea, to another working for the gold stand 
 ard, and to another engaged in agitating for the nationaliza 
 tion of railroads. He would no more expect always to associate 
 with the same men in political matters than in social, reli 
 gious, and business matters." MOFFETT: Suggestions on Gov 
 ernment, chapter vi. 
 
 Ease would retract. See Paradise Lost, iv. 96, 97: 
 
 Ease would recant 
 Vows made in pain, as violent and void 
 
 Burke might appropriately have finished the quotation: 
 (For never can true reconcilement grow 
 Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep) . 
 
 speed = prosper, as in Pope s translation of Odyssey, xv. 
 
 69-71 : - 
 
 True friendship s laws are by this rule express d : 
 Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest. 
 
 the East India Company. Founded as a trading corpo 
 ration in 1600, this company, through its officers, Clive and 
 Hastings, in the eighteenth century, laid the foundations of 
 the British Empire in India. Its royal powers were not re 
 sumed by the Crown until 1858. 
 
 the enemies: Spain, who claimed from the Mississippi to 
 the Pacific, and France, who had many possessions in the West 
 Indies. See 34 : 7 and Note. 
 
 ties . . . light as air. Perhaps suggested by 
 
 Trifles light as air 
 
 Are to the jealous confirmations strong 
 As proofs of holy writ. 
 
 Othello, in. iii. 322-321. 
 
 chosen race . . . turn their faces. There are faint 
 echoes of Biblical phraseology here. See 1 Kings viii. 44, 45 ; 
 Daniel vi. 10. 
 
114 NOTES TO SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE 
 
 Spain, then under an excellent ruler (Charles III.), com 
 pares favorably with England under Lord North ; Prussia, 
 under the tyranny of Frederick called the Great, was certainly 
 a pure despotism. See Thackeray s Barry Lyndon, chapters 
 v., vi. 
 
 registers, bonds, etc. Custom-house terms. A suffer 
 ance is a permit to ship goods. Cocket means, (1) the little 
 boat in which goods are transported from ship to custom 
 house; (2) the seal of the custom-house; (3) a certificate of 
 entry stamped with this seal. 
 
 the spirit . . . infused through the mighty mass. 
 The phraseology is an echo from that employed by Virgil in 
 his exposition of the pantheistic philosophy. 
 
 Know first that heaven and earth s compacted frame, 
 And flowing waters and the starry flame, 
 And both the radiant lights, one common soul 
 Inspires and feeds and animates the whole. 
 This active mind infused through all the space, 
 Unites and mingles with the mighty mass; 
 
 JEmid, vi. 725-728. (Dryden s Translation.) 
 
 Mutiny Bill. The annual bill that grants money for the 
 support of the standing army ; so called because the first bill 
 of this kind was passed to suppress a mutiny (of Scotch troops 
 at Ipswich in 1689). "To this day, however, the Estates of 
 the Realm continue to set up periodically, with laudable 
 jealousy, a landmark on the frontier which was traced at the 
 time of the Revolution. They solemnly reassert every year 
 the doctrine laid down in the Declaration of Right ; and they 
 grant to the Sovereign an extraordinary power to govern a 
 certain number of soldiers according to certain rules for twelve 
 months more." MACAULAY: History of England, chapter xi. 
 
 profane herd. See Horace, Lib. iii. Carm. 1: 
 
 Odi profanum vulgus et arceo; 
 Favete linguis : 
 
 " Ye rabble rout, avaunt ! 
 Your vulgar din give o er," 
 
 The opening lines of this paragraph describe only too well that 
 professional politician so well known in our country. 
 
 a great empire and little minds go ill together. A 
 
ON CONCILIATION WITH T1IE COLONIES. 115 
 
 sentence that should be inscribed in letters of gold over the 
 main entrance to the Capitol at Washington. 
 
 auspicate. The classical imagery in this word goes incon 
 gruously with the Christian imagery in Sursum corda (Lift 
 up your hearts). This ancient Catholic warning (= bidding, 
 summons) is still used in the Communion Service of , the (Prot 
 estant) Church of England and of the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church in the United States. 
 
 the dignity of this high calling. Philippians iii. 14. 
 
 quod felix, etc. A Roman invocation of great antiquity. 
 Concerning it Cicero says (Div. i. 45, 102) : maiores nostri . . . 
 omnibus rebus agendis : QUOD BONUM FAUSTUM FELIX FORTU- 
 NATUMQUE ESSEX prxfabantur. " Our forefathers in all their 
 undertakings were wont to utter a preliminary prayer : May 
 it turn out good, favorable, propitious, and fortunate. " Under 
 slightly varying forms and generally abbreviated thus, Q. B. 
 F. F. Q. S., this religious formula has figured even down to 
 our own time in legal documents and formal instruments, espe 
 cially such as commemorate human institutions. 
 
 To this speech, as a whole, no one can deny Vision, Sin 
 cerity, Beauty: l Vision, because the speaker saw clearly every 
 aspect of his subject; Sincerity, because he describes it exactly 
 as he saw it ; Beauty, because, disregarding a few minor blem 
 ishes, his expression is in conformity with the laws of litera 
 ture as a fine art. If the student cannot perceive and feel 
 for himself these qualities, the critic can do little to help him. 
 Flaws in the diamond, spots on the sun, false notes in the 
 music these the critic can detect, and has pointed out, in no 
 carping spirit, it is hoped ; but rather that the learner may not 
 be misled, by the glamour of a great name, into admiring that 
 which is not truly admirable, or be allowed to forget for a 
 moment that his aim and object is nothing less than the STUDY 
 OF PERFECTION. 
 
 1 According to Lewes well-known classification. 
 
 XV* R A R 
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