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munication 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 dispute on their relative proportions, will be a matter of delay, perplexity, and confusion that never can have an end.

If all the colonies do not appear at the outery, what is the condition of those assemblies, who offer, by themselves or their agents, to tax themselves up to your 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 unburdened. 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 perfectly convinced that in the way of taxing you can do nothing but at the ports. Now suppose it is Virginia 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 Virginia? If you do, you give its death wound to your English revenue at home, and to one of the very greatest 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 bewilders 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 own experiments 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 burden those whom, upon every principle, you ought to exonerate. 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 and Maryland, the central and most important of them all.

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 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 can not issue a treasury extent against 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

T

this day forward the empire is never to know an hour's tranquillity. 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 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.

compared.

Instead of a standing revenue, you will therefore have a perpetual quarrel. Indeed, the noble Lord, who proposed this project of a ransom by auction, seemed himself to be of that opinion. His project was rather designed for breaking the union of the colonies than for establishing a revenue. He confessed that he apprehended that his proposal would not be to their taste. 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 and union of the colonies as the very foundation of my plan, it can not accord with one whose foundation is perpetual discord. Compare the two. This I offer to give you, is plain and simple. The other full of The two perplexed and intricate mazes. This is schemes mild; that harsh. This is found by experience effectual for its purposes; the other is a new project. This is universal; the other calculated for certain colonies only. This is immediate in its conciliatory operation; the other remote, contingent, full of hazard. Mine is what becomes the dignity of a ruling people; gratuitous, unconditional, and not held out as matter of bargain and sale. I have done my duty in proposing it to you. I have indeed tired you by a long discourse; but this is the misfortune 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 my part, I feel my mind greatly disburdened by what I have done to day. I have been the less fearful of trying your patience, because on this subject I mean to spare it altogether in future. I have this comfort, that in every stage of the American affairs, I have steadily opposed the measures that have produced the confusion, and may bring on the destruction of this empire. I now go so far as to risk a proposal of my own. If I can not give peace to my country, I give it to my conscience.

productive to

But what, says the financier, is peace to us without money? Your plan gives us Mr. Burke's no revenue. No! But it does. For scheme most it secures to the subject the power of the country. 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 or by the fortune of man. It does not indeed vote you £152,750 11s. 23d., nor any other paltry

limited sum, but it gives the strong box itself, the fund, the bank, from whence only revenues can arise among a people sensible of freedom : Posita luditur arca.39 Can not you in England; | can not you at this time of day; can not youa 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 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 functions will neglect to perform its duty, and abdicate its trust? Such a presumption would go against all government 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 supporting the honor of their own government, that sense of dignity, and that security of 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 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, by the straining of all the politic machinery in the world.

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 parties are the gamesters, but government keeps the 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 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.-Milt. 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 govern

39 The quotation is taken from the first Satire of Juvenal, the ninetieth line, where the poet describes the excess to which gambling was then carried on at Rome.

Neque enim loculis comitantibus itur Ad casum tabulæ, posità sed luditur arca. For now no more the pocket's stores supply The boundless charges of the desperate die; The chest is staked!-Gifford.

40"The debt immense of endless gratitude." Milton's Par. Lost, iv., 53.

ment from protected freedom. And so may I speed in the great object I propose to you, as 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 from America transmitted No direct rev hither-do not delude yourselves-enue ever to be you never can receive it-no, not a America. shilling. We have experience that from remote countries it is not to be expected. If, when you attempted to extract 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 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 commodities to pay the duties on these objects which you tax at home, she has performed her part to the British revenue. But with regard to her own internal establishments, she may, I doubt not she will, contribute in moderation; I say in moderation; for she ought not to be permitted to exhaust herself. She ought to be reserved to a war, the weight of which, with the enemies that we are most likely to have, must be considerable in her quarter of the globe. There she may serve you, and serve you essentially.

Peroration.

For that service, for all service, whether of revenue, trade, or empire, my trust is in her interest in the British Constitution. My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil 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 allegiance. But let it be once understood that your government may be one thing, and their privileges another; that these two things may exist without any mutual relation; the cement is gone; the cohesion is loosened; and every thing hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship Freedom, they will turn their faces toward you.41 The more they multiply, the more

41 This is one of those beautiful allusions to the Scriptures with which Mr. Burke so often adorns his pages. The practice among the Jews of worshiping toward the temple in all their dispersions, was founded on the prayer of Solomon at its dedication: "If thy people go out to battle, or whithersoever thou shalt send them, and shall pray unto the Lord toward the city which thou hast chosen, and toward

It

friends you will have. The more ardently they | bravery and discipline? No! surely no! It is love liberty, the more perfect will be their obe- the love of the people; it is their attachment to dience. Slavery they can have any where. their government, from the sense of the deep is a weed that grows in every soil. They may stake they have in such a glorious institution, have it from Spain; they may have it from Prus- which gives you your army and your navy, and sia; but, until you become lost to all feeling of infuses into both that liberal obedience, without your true interest and your natural dignity, free- which your army would be a base rabble, and dom they can have from none but you. This is your navy nothing but rotten timber. the commodity of price, of which you have the monopoly. This is the true Act of Navigation, which binds to you the commerce of the colonies, and through them secures to you the wealth of the world. Deny them 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 and your clearances, are what form the great securities of your commerce. Do not dream that your letters of office, and your instructions, and your suspending clauses, are the things that hold together the great contexture of this mysterious whole. These things do not make your governDead instruments, passive tools as they are, it is the spirit of the English communion that gives all their life and efficacy to them. It is the spirit of the English Constitution, which, infused through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of the empire, even down to the minutest member.12

ment.

Is it not the same virtue which does every thing for us here in England? Do you imagine, then, that it is the land tax which raises your revenue? that it is the annual vote in the Committee of Supply, which gives you your army? or that it is the Mutiny Bill which inspires it with

the House that I have built for thy name, then hear thon in heaven their prayer and their supplication, and maintain their cause."-1st Kings, ix., 44–5. Accordingly, "When Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime."-Dan.,

vi., 10.

42 The reader of Virgil will trace the origin of this beautiful sentence to the poet's description of the Animus Mundi, or soul of the universe, in the sixth book of the Eneid, lines 926-7.

Spiritus intus alit; totamque infusa per artus Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscit. Within a Spirit lives: a Mind infused Through every member of that mighty mass, Pervades, sustains, and actuates the whole. Mr. Burke's application of this image to the Spirit of Freedom in the English Constitution is one of the finest conceptions of his genius. The thought rises into new dignity and strength when we view it (as it lay in the mind of Burke) in connection with the sublime passage by which it was suggested.

All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical to the profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians, who have no place among us; a sort of people who think that nothing exists but what is gross and material, and who therefore, far from being qualified to be directors of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the machine. But to men truly initiated and rightly taught, these ruling and master principles, which, in the opinion of such men as I have mentioned, have no substantial existence, are in truth every thing and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together. If we are conscious of our situation, and glow with zeal to fill our place as becomes our station and ourselves, we ought to auspicate all our public proceedings on America with the old warning of the Church, Sursum corda !43 We ought to elevate our minds to the greatness of that trust to which the order of Providence has called us. By adverting to the dignity of this high calling, our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire, and have made the most extensive and the only 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 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 in the temple of peace; and I move you,

"That the colonies and plantations of Great Britain in North America, consisting of fourteen separate governments, and containing two millions and upward of free inhabitants, have not had the liberty and privilege of electing and sending any knights and burgesses, or others, to represent them in the high court of Parliament."

On this resolution the previous question was demanded, and was carried against Mr. Burke by a majority of 270 to 78. The other resolutions, of course, fell to the ground.

43"Let your hearts rise upward," a call to silent prayer, at certain intervals of the Roman Catholic service.

**This was a form of prayer among the Romans at the commencement of any important undertaking, "that it may be happy and prosperous."

SPEECH

OF MR. BURKE AT BRISTOL, PREVIOUS TO THE ELECTION, DELIVERED SEPTEMBER 6, 1780.

INTRODUCTION.

MR. BURKE did not originally seek the honor of representing the city of Bristol in the House of Commons. On the dissolution of Parliament in 1774, he was chosen member for Malton in Yorkshire, through the influence of Lord Rockingham; and was in the act of returning thanks to his constituents, when a deputation arrived from Bristol, informing him that he had been put in nomination by his friends there. He repaired immediately to the spot, and after a severe contest was elected by a considerable majority. During the six years which followed, Mr. Burke was laboriously engaged in his duties as a member of Parliament. His time was so fully occupied, that while he never neglected the interests of his constituents, he found but little leisure or opportunity to see them in person. He was, indeed, ill fitted, in some respects, for conciliating popular favor by visits and entertainments. His studious habits and refined tastes led him to shrink from the noise and bustle of a progress among the people of Bristol, which, in so large a city, would almost of necessity assume the character of a regular canvass. In addition to this, he had offended a majority of his constituents by his political conduct, especially by opposing the American war—by voting (against their positive instructions) for the grant of increased privileges to the Irish trade-by supporting Lord Beauchamp's bill for the relief of insolvent debtors-and by the share he took in the repeal of some very cruel enactments against the Roman Catholics.

In this state of things, Parliament was unexpectedly dissolved about a year before its regular term of expiration, and Mr. Burke found himself suddenly thrown, under every possible disadvantage, into the midst of a contested election. He immediately repaired to Bristol; and, as a preliminary step, in order to try his ground, he requested a meeting of the corporation, at which he delivered the following speech in explanation and defense of his conduct. Never was there a more manly or triumphant vindication. Conscious of the rectitude of his intentions, he makes no attempt to shuffle or evade. "No," he exclaims, "I did not obey your instructions. I conformed to the instructions of truth and nature, and maintained your interest against your opinions, with the constancy that became me. A representative that was worthy of you ought to be a person of stability. I am to look, indeed, to your opinions; but to such opinions as you and I must have five years hence. I was not to look at the flash of the day. I knew that you chose me in my place, along with others, to be a pillar of the state, and not a weather-cock on the top of the edifice, exalted for my levity and versatility, and of no use but to indicate the shiftings of every fashionable gale." The voice of posterity has decided in Mr. Burke's favor upon all the topics here discussed; and the wonder is, that these masterly reasonings should ever have been necessary, in de fense of measures which were equally demanded by justice and humanity, and perhaps by the very existence of the empire.

This is, in many respects, the best speech of Mr. Burke for the study and imitation of a young orator. It is more simple and direct than any of his other speeches. It was addressed to merchants and business-men; and while it abounds quite as much as any of his productions in the rich fruits of political wisdom, and has occasionally very bold and striking images, it is less ambitious in style, and less profluent in illustration, than his more elaborate efforts in the House of Commons.

SPEECH, &c.

MR. MAYOR AND GENTLEMEN,-I am extremely pleased at the appearance of this large and respectable meeting. The steps I may be obliged to take will want the sanction of a considerable authority; and in explaining any thing which may appear doubtful in my public conduct, I must naturally desire a very full audience. I have been backward to begin my canvass. The dissolution of the Parliament was uncertain; and it did not become me, by an unseasonable importunity, to appear diffident of the fact of my six years' endeavors to please you. I had served the city of Bristol honorably; and the city of Bristol had no reason to think that the means of honorable service to the public were become indifferent to me.

Reasons for

the meeting

I found, on my arrival here, that three gentlemen had been long in eager pursuit of an object which but two of us can ob- requesting tain. I found that they had all met with encouragement. A contested election in such a city as this is no light thing. I paused on the brink of the precipice. These three gentlemen, by various merits, and on various titles, I made no doubt were worthy of your favor. I shall never attempt to raise myself by depreciating the merits of my competitors. plexity and confusion of these cross pursuits, I wished to take the authentic public sense of my friends upon a business of so much delicacy. I wished to take your opinion along with me; that if I should give up the contest at the very begin

In the com

ning, my surrender of my post may not seem the effect of inconstancy, or timidity, or anger, or disgust, or indolence, or any other temper unbecoming a man who has engaged in the public service. If, on the contrary, I should undertake the election, and fail of success, I was full as anxious that it should be manifest to the whole world that the peace of the city had not been broken by my rashness, presumption, or fond conceit of my own merit.

I am not come, by a false and counterfeit show of deference to your judgment, to seduce it in my favor. I ask it seriously and unaffectedly. If you wish that I should retire, I shall not consider that advice as a censure upon my conduct, or an alteration in your sentiments, but as a rational submission to the circumstances of affairs. If, on the contrary, you should think it proper for me to proceed on my canvass, if you will risk the trouble on your part, I will risk it on mine. My pretensions are such as you can not be ashamed of, whether they succeed or fail. If you call upon me, I shall solicit the favor of the city upon manly ground. I come before you with the plain confidence of an honest servant in the equity of a candid and discerning master. I come to claim your approbation, not to amuse you with vain apologies, or with professions still more vain and senseless. I have lived too long to be served by apologies, or to stand in need of them. The part I have acted has been in open day; and to hold out to a conduct, which stands in that clear and steady light for all its good and all its evil, to hold out to that conduct the paltry winking tapers of excuses and promises, I never will do it. They may obscure it with their smoke, but they never can illumine sunshine by such a flame as theirs.

should not be treated

I am sensible that no endeavors have been left untried to injure me in your opinion. But the Transition: use of character is to be a shield against Public men calumny. I could wish, undoubtedly (if idle wishes were not the most idle of captiously. all things), to make every part of my conduct agreeable to every one of my constituents. But in so great a city, and so greatly divided as this, it is weak to expect it. In such a discordancy of sentiments, it is better to look to the nature of things than to the humors of men. The very attempt toward pleasing every body, discovers a temper always flashy, and often false and insincere. Therefore, as I have proceeded straight onward in my conduct, so I will proceed in my account of those parts of it which have been most excepted to. But I must first beg leave just to hint to you, that we may suffer very great detriment by being open to every talker. It is not to be imagined how much of service is lost from spirits full of activity and full of energy, who are pressing, who are rushing forward to great and capital objects, when you oblige them to be continually looking back. While they are defending one service, they defraud you of a hundred. Applaud us when we run; console us when we fall; cheer us when we recover; but let us pass on-for God's sake, let us pass on.

Do you think, gentlemen, that every public act in the six years since I stood in this place before you—that all the arduous things which have been done in this eventful period, which has crowded into a few years' space the revolutions of an age, can be opened to you on their fair grounds in half an hour's conversation?

But it is no reason, because there is a bad mode of inquiry, that there should be no examination at all. Most certainly it is our duty to examine; it is our interest too. But it must be with discretion; with an attention to all the circumstances, and to all the motives; like sound judges, and not like caviling pettifoggers and quibbling pleaders, prying into flaws and hunting for exceptions. Look, gentlemen, to the whole tenor of your member's conduct. Try whether his ambition or his avarice have justled him out of the straight line of duty, or whether that grand foe of the offices of active life-that master-vice in men of business, a degenerate and inglorious sloth-has made him flag, and languish in his course. This is the object of our inquiry. If our member's conduct can bear this touch, mark it for sterling. He may have fallen into errors; he must have faults; but our error is greater, and our fault is radically ruinous to ourselves, if we do not bear, if we do not even applaud the whole compound and mixed mass of such a character. Not to act thus is folly, I had almost said, it is impiety. He censures God who quarrels with the imperfections of man.

them from the

Gentlemen, we must not be peevish with those who serve the people; for none will It will drive serve us while there is a Court to service of the serve, but those who are of a nice people. and jealous honor. They who think every thing, in comparison of that honor, to be dust and ashes, will not bear to have it soiled and impaired by those for whose sake they make a thousand sacrifices to preserve it immaculate and whole. We shall either drive such men from the public stage, or we shall send them to the Court for protection, where, if they must sacrifice their reputation, they will at least secure their interest. Depend upon it, that the lovers of freedom will be free. None will violate their conscience to please us in order afterward to discharge that conscience which they have violated by doing us faithful and affectionate service. If we degrade and deprave their minds by servility, it will be absurd to expect that they who are creeping and abject toward us will ever be bold and incorruptible asserters of our freedom against the most seducing and the most formidable of all powers. No! Human nature is not so formed; nor shall we improve the faculties or better the morals of public men by our possession of the most infallible receipt in the world for making cheats and hypocrites.

Let me say with plainness, I, who am no longer in a public character, that if by a fair, by an indulgent, by a gentlemanly behavior to our representatives, we do not give confidence to their minds and a liberal scope to their under

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