says,

Is this the return you make them? Is this the encouragement you give them to persevere in so laudable a spirit of justice and moderation? But the noble lord "We must now show the Americans that we will no longer sit quiet under their insults." Sir, I am sorry to say that this is declamation, unbecoming the character and place of him who utters it. In what moment have you been quiet?

Has not your government, for many years past, been a series of irritating and offensive measures, without policy, principle, or moderation? Have not your troops and your ships made a vain and insulting parade in their streets and in their harbors? Have you not stimulated discontent into disaffection, and are you not now goading disaffection into rebellion? Can you expect to be well informed when you listen only to partisans? Can you expect to do justice when you will not hear the accused?

Let the banners be once spread in America, and you are an undone people. You are urging this desperate, this destructive issue. I know the vast superiority of your disciplined troops over the Provincials; but beware how you supply the want of discipline by desperation! What madness is it that prompts you to attempt obtaining that by force, which you may more certainly procure by requisition? The Americans may be flattered into any thing; but they are too much like yourselves to be driven. Have some indulgence for your own likeness. Respect their sturdy English virtue. Retract your odious exertions of authority, and remember that the first step toward making them contribute to your wants, is to reconcile them to your government. FROM BARRE.

CCXLV.-AMERICAN TAXATION.

THE Revolutionary war originated in the claim of England of the right to tax America, without her own consent. Many distinguished English statesmen sustained America in her resistance to this principle. This and the succeeding are extracts from a speech in the English parliament on this subject.

COULD any thing be a subject of more just alarm to America, than to see you go out of the plain high road of finance, and give up your most certain revenues and your clearest interests, merely for the sake of insulting your colonies? No man ever doubted that the commodity of tea could bear an imposition of three-pence. But no commodity will bear three-pence, or will bear a penny, when the general feelings of men are irritated, and two millions of men are resolved not to pay.

The feelings of the colonies were formerly the feelings of Great Britain. Theirs were formerly the feelings of Mr. Hampden, when called upon for the payment of twenty shillings. Would twenty shillings have ruined Mr. Hampden's fortune? No! but the payment of half twenty shillings, on the principle it was demanded, would have made him a slave! It is the weight of that preamble, of which you are so fond, and not the weight of the duty, that the Americans are unable and unwilling to bear. You are, therefore, at this moment, in the awkward situation of fighting for a phantom; a thing that wants, not only a substance, but even a name; for a thing which is neither abstract right, nor profitable enjoyment.

They tell you, that your dignity is tied to it. I know not how it happens, but this dignity of yours is a terrible incumbrance to you. It has of late been ever at war with your interest, your equity, and every idea of your policy. Show the thing you contend for to be reason, show it to be common sense, show it to be the means of obtaining some useful end, and then I am content to allow it what dignity you please. But what dignity is derived from

NEW Ec. S.-36

the perseverance in absurdity, is more than I ever could discern !

Let us embrace some system or other before we end this session. Do you mean to tax America, and to draw a productive revenue from thence? If you do, speak out: name, fix, ascertain this revenue; settle its quantity; define its objects; provide for its collection; and then fight, when you have something to fight for. If you murder, rob; if you kill, take possession and do not appear in the character of madmen, as well as assassins; violent, vindictive, bloody, and tyrannical, without an object.

FROM BURKE.

CCXLVI.-ENGLAND'S RIGHT TO TAX AMERICA.

OH! inestimable right! Oh! wonderful, transcendent right, the assertion of which has cost this country thirteen provinces, six islands, one hundred thousand lives, and seventy millions of money! Oh! invaluable right! for the sake of which we have sacrificed our rank among nations, our importance abroad, and our happiness at home! Oh! right more dear to us than our existence, which has already cost us so much, and which seems likely to cost us our all.

Infatuated man! (fixing his eyes on the minister;) miserable and undone country! not to know that the claim of right, without the power of enforcing it, is nugatory and idle. We have a right to tax America, the noble lord tells us; therefore we ought to tax America. This is the profound logic which comprises the whole chain of his reasoning. Not inferior to this was the wisdom of him who resolved to shear the wolf! What! shear a wolf! Have you considered the resistance, the difficulty, the danger of the attempt? No, says the madman, I have considered nothing but the right. Man has a right of dominion over the beasts of the forest; and, therefore, I will shear the wolf! How wonderful that a nation could be thus deluded!

But the noble lord deals in cheats and delusions. They are the daily traffic of his invention. He will continue to play off his cheats on this house so long as he thinks them necessary to his purpose, and so long as he has money enough at command to bribe gentlemen to pretend that they believe him. But a black and bitter day of reckoning will surely come. Whenever that day comes, I trust I shall be able, by a parliamentary impeachment, to bring upon the heads of the authors of our calamities the punishment they deserve. FROM BURKE.

CCXLVII.-SUPPOSED SPEECH OF JAMES OTIS ON TAXATION.

JAMES OTIS was a distinguished citizen of Massachusetts, who died about the commencement of the Revolutionary war. He took an active part in the discussions which prepared the way for that war.

ENGLAND may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes, as fetter the step of Freedom. Arbitrary principles, like those against which we now contend, have cost one king of England his life, another, his crown, and they may yet cost a third his most flourishing colonies. We are two millions, one-fifth fighting men. We are bold · and vigorous, and we call no man master. To the nation from whom we are proud to derive our origin, we ever were, and we ever will be, ready to yield unforced assistance. But it must not, and it never can be, extorted.

Some have sneeringly asked, "Are the Americans too poor to pay a few pounds on stamped paper?" No! America, thank God, is rich. But the right to take ten pounds implies the right to take a thousand; and what must be the wealth, that avarice, aided by power, can not exhaust? True, the specter is now small; but the shadow he casts before him is huge enough to darken all this fair land. Others, in sentimental style, talk of the immense debt of gratitude which we owe to England. And what is the amount of this debt? Why, truly, it is the same that

the young lion owes to the dam, which has brought it forth on the solitude of the mountain, or left it amid the winds and storms of the desert.

We plunged into the wave, with the great charter of freedom in our teeth, because the fagot and torch were behind us. We have waked this new world from its savage lethargy. Forests have been prostrated in our path. Towns and cities have grown up suddenly as the flowers of the tropics, and the fires in our autumnal woods are scarcely more rapid than the increase of our wealth and population. And do we owe all this to the kind succor of the mother country? No! we owe it to the tyranny that drove us from her, to the pelting storms which invigorated our helpless infancy.

But perhaps others will say, "We ask no money from your gratitude; we only demand that you should pay your own expenses. And who, I pray, is to judge of their necessity? Why, the king: and, with all due reverence to his sacred majesty, he understands the real wants of his distant subjects as little as he does the language of the Choctaws! Who is to judge concerning the frequency of these demands? The ministry. Who is to judge whether the money is properly expended? The cabinet behind the throne.

In every instance, those who take, are to judge for those who pay. If this system is suffered to go into operation, we shall have reason to esteem it a great privilege that rain and dew do not depend upon parliament; otherwise they would soon be taxed and dried.

But, thanks to God, there is freedom enough left upon earth to resist such monstrous injustice! The flame of liberty is extinguished in Greece and Rome; but the light of its glowing embers is still bright and strong on the shores of America. Actuated by its sacred influence, we will resist unto death. But we will not countenance anarchy and misrule. The wrongs that a desperate community have heaped upon their enemies shall be amply and speedily repaired. Still, it may be well for some proud men to remember, that a fire is lighted in these colonies, which one breath of their king may kindle into such fury, that the blood of all England can not extinguish it!