lATEWAY SERIES -VANDYKE 
 
 ^ - BURKE ON 
 -: It CONCILIATION 
 
 Q^m 
 
 MACDONAl 
 
Class _-^_^L. 
 Book_^^:l 
 
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 COPyRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
OF ENGLISH TEXTS 
 
 GENERAL EDITOR 
 
 HENRY VAN DYKE 
 
THE GATEWAY SERIES, 
 HENRY VAN DYKE, General Editor. 
 
 Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. Professor Felix E, 
 
 Schelling, University of Pennsylvania. 
 Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Dr. Hamilton W. Mabie, 
 
 "The Outlook." 
 Shakespeare's Macbeth. Professor T. M. Parrott, Prince- 
 ton University. 
 Milton's Minor Poems. Professor Mary A. Jordan, Smith 
 
 College. 
 Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. Professor 
 
 C. T. Winchester, Wesleyan University. 
 Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. Professor James A. 
 
 Tufts, Phillips Exeter Academy. 
 Burke's Speech on Conciliation. Professor William 
 
 MacDonald, Brown University. 
 Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner. Professor George 
 
 E. Woodberry, Columbia University. 
 Scott's Ivanhoe. Professor Francis H. Stoddard, New 
 
 York University. 
 Scott's Lady of the Lake. Professor R. M. Alden, Leland 
 
 Stanford Jr. University. 
 iRViNG's Life of Goldsmith. Professor Martin Wright 
 
 Sampson, Indiana University. 
 MaCAULAY'S Milton. Rev. E. L. Gulick, Lawrenceville 
 
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 Macaulay's Addison. Professor Charles F. McClumpha, 
 
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 Macaulay's Life of Johnson. Professor J. S. Clark, North- 
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 Carlyle's Essay on Burns. Professor Edwin Mims, Trin- 
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 George Eliot's Silas Marner. Professor W. L. Cross, 
 
 Yale University. 
 Tennyson's Princess. Professor Katharine Lee Bates, 
 
 Wellesley College. 
 Tennyson's Gareth and Lynette, Lancelot and 
 
 Elaine, and The Passing of Arthur. Henry van 
 
 Dyke. 
 
GATEIVAY SERIES 
 
 SPEECH ON CONCILIATION 
 WITH AMERICA 
 
 BY 
 
 EDMUND BURKE 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 WILLIAM MACDONALD, Ph.D., LL.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN BROWN UNIVERSITY 
 
 NEW YORK •:• CINCINNATI •:• CHICAGO 
 
 AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 
 
 rA 
 
LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
 Two Copies Received 
 MAY 3 1904 
 n CoDyrieht Entry 
 
 CLASS a- XXc. No. 
 
 ^ U ^ ^ I 
 COPY B 
 
 r T- ^ \ 
 
 
 Copyright, 1904, by 
 AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY. 
 
 Entered at Stationers' Hall, London. 
 
 BURKE S CONCILIATION. 
 W. P. I 
 
PREFACE 
 
 A BOOK whose method and aim are not fairly appar- 
 ent on inspection is not Hkely, I think, to be made 
 much clearer through the agency of a preface. In the 
 present instance, accordingly, it seems unnecessary to 
 say more than that I have sought, in harmony with the 
 general plan of the Gateway Series, to treat Burke's 
 speech, not as a " literary puzzle " for the student, or 
 as a medium for learned display by the editor, but 
 rather as a great argumentative discourse whose inter- 
 est for American youth ought always to be historical 
 as well as literary. The Speech on Conciliation is 
 rightly regarded as a masterpiece of logical exposition 
 and elaboration, but it will not do to forget that it is 
 also the sanest and most powerful plea for reasonable- 
 ness and consideration put forth during the whole 
 period of the struggle between the American colonies 
 and the mother country. The introduction, therefore, 
 dwells more upon the circumstances out of which the 
 speech sprang than upon its place in Burke's political 
 philosophy or its technical contribution to formal argu- 
 mentative writing, while the notes have been kept as 
 free as possible from the minute literary parallelism — 
 not seldom, as it seems to me, appreciably overdone — 
 
 5 
 
6 Preface 
 
 with which it has sometimes been thought necessary to 
 weight down this particular piece of good Hterature. 
 In other words, I have assumed that the teachers and 
 students who will use this book will be prepared to do 
 some work, especially in literary and rhetorical lines, 
 for themselves, and will not care to have their intel- 
 lectual food too much predigested. 
 
 Much of the material in the notes was collected for 
 other purposes long before I ever thought of editing 
 the Speech on Conciliation^ and I have not refrained 
 from using it because other editors have traversed 
 somewhat the same ground. Certain portions of the 
 explanatory matter have also done duty, in one form or 
 another, in other editions, and could not well be dis- 
 pensed with or radically changed in this. A consid- 
 erable number of notes, however, chiefly such as deal 
 with historical, legal, or parliamentary matters, are new. 
 It will be remembered that most of the bibliographi- 
 cal matter is, by the plan of the series, relegated to a 
 supplementary volume. 
 
 The text is that of the second edition, but with 
 modernized spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. 
 
 WILLIAM MACDONALD. 
 Brown University. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction : 
 
 I. The Colonies and the Mother Country 
 II. The Early Life of Burke 
 III. The Speech on Conciliation . 
 IV. Burke's Subsequent Career . 
 
 Bibliographical Note .... 
 Speech on Conciliation with America . 
 Notes 
 
 9 
 
 26 
 30 
 
 34 
 
 37 
 
 131 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 I. The Colonies and the Mother Country 
 
 From the middle of the seventeenth century it had 
 been the pohcy of the EngUsh Parhament to regulate the 
 trade of the American colonies with primary reference 
 to the interests of British merchants. A long series of 
 statutes, known collectively as the Navigation Acts or 
 Acts of Trade, were eventually passed to secure these 
 results. The acts were restrictive in that they debarred 
 foreigners, especially the Dutch, from participation in 
 the colonial carrying trade, but they were not oppressive, 
 nor did they on the whole seriously interfere with the 
 development of colonial commerce. As an offset to 
 some of the acts, bounties were granted on the pro- 
 duction or exportation of specified articles, as, for 
 example, on the rice of Carolina. Viewed from the 
 standpoint of the present day, the policy of England 
 was short-sighted. It was, however, in accord with the 
 prevailing political and economic theories of the time, 
 which looked upon a colony as a possession to be ex- 
 ploited for the benefit of the mother country. 
 
 From the beginning, however, the Acts of Trade had 
 9 
 
lo Burke's Speech on Conciliation 
 
 been more or less systematically evaded by the colonies, 
 particularly by New England. The most lucrative com- 
 merce of New England in the early part of the eighteenth 
 century was with the French and Dutch sugar-producing 
 colonies in the West Indies, and this trade, though for- 
 bidden by law, continued to thrive, and in no small part 
 with the connivance of the customs officials. From time 
 to time the English merchants complained to the Lords 
 of Trade — the committee of the Privy Council through 
 which the affairs of the colonies were administered — of 
 their loss of revenue, but political corruption in England 
 was so firmly intrenched that no effective steps toward 
 reform were taken for some time. 
 
 The capitulation of Montreal, in 1761, carried with it 
 the surrender of all Canada, and by the treaty of Paris, 
 in 1763, which closed the Seven Years' War, the whole 
 of the continental possessions of France in North 
 America passed into the control of Great Britain, The 
 colonies had exerted themselves to the utmost during 
 the war, and many of them had incurred large debts, 
 notwithstanding the reimbursement by Parliament of a 
 considerable part of their expenses. There were loud 
 complaints in England, however, of the cost of the war, 
 and particularly of the increase of the national debt, 
 now amounting to about ;£" 140,000,000. The immediate 
 advantage of the war, in freedom from French aggres- 
 sion, obviously accrued to the colonies rather than to the 
 mother country, while the likelihood of a renewal of the 
 war by France as soon as a convenient opportunity offered 
 
Introduction ii 
 
 made it clear that what had been won must also be 
 defended. The time seemed ripe, therefore, for some 
 reorganization of the colonial system, with a view to the 
 more effective control of the colonies by Great Britain. 
 
 When, in February, 1763, Charles Townshend became 
 First Lord of Trade in the brief ministry of Lord Bute, 
 it was announced that requisitions on the colonial assem- 
 bhes were to give place to taxes laid by Parliament, that 
 colonial governors and judges were thereafter to be paid 
 by the Crown instead of by the colonies, and that a small 
 standing army was to be maintained in America at 
 colonial expense. Grenville, who sucqeeded Bute as 
 prime minister in April, had been one of the Secretaries 
 of State in the previous administration, and was especially 
 well informed in regard to colonial matters. He resolved 
 to put an end to American smuggling, the extent of 
 which had greatly increased during the war. "The 
 Commissioners of Customs were ordered at once to their 
 posts. Several new revenue officers were appointed with 
 more rigid rules for the discharge of their duties. The 
 Board of Trade issued a circular to the colonies represent- 
 ing that the revenue had not kept pace with the increasing 
 commerce, and did not yield more than one-quarter of 
 the cost of collection, and requiring that illicit commerce 
 should be suppressed, and that proper support should be 
 given to the customhouse officials. English ships of war 
 were at the same time stationed off the American coast 
 for the purpose of intercepting smugglers." ^ 
 
 1 Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. iii, p. 334, 
 
12 Burke's Speech on Conciliation 
 
 The next step was the passage of a new Act of Trade. 
 An act of 1733, commonly known as the Molasses Act, 
 imposing prohibitory duties on the sugar and molasses of 
 the French West Indies in the interest of the English 
 sugar colonies, had been generally disregarded. That 
 act was now revived, though with reduced duties, and 
 a new act passed laying duties on sugar, indigo, coffee, 
 wines, linens, and other articles imported into the 
 colonies, and restricting to Great Britain the colonial 
 export trade in lumber and iron. The receipts from 
 these new duties were to be "disposed of by Parliament, 
 towards defraying the necessary expenses of defending, 
 protecting, and securing the British colonies and planta- 
 tions in America." At the same time, however, bounties 
 were granted on American hemp and rice, and the whale 
 fishery was thrown open to colonial participation without 
 restriction. 
 
 The third part of Grenville's scheme was a Stamp Act. 
 Stamp duties had long been familiar in England, but 
 Grenville moved slowly, and apparently with reluctance, 
 in extending the system to America. In March, 1764, 
 the proposed introduction of a stamp bill was announced 
 in the House of Commons, but the matter was then laid 
 over until the next session in order that the colonies 
 might, if they chose, suggest some method more agree- 
 able to them of raising the revenue which had been 
 determined upon. 
 
 When the news of the proposed legislation for the 
 colonies reached America, it everywhere occasioned pro- 
 
Introduction 13 
 
 found apprehension. Whatever the theoretical right of 
 Parliament to tax the colonies might be, that right had 
 not in fact been exercised thus far. The Acts of Trade 
 had had for their object the regulation of colonial com- 
 merce, and although at times vexatiously restrictive, had 
 not been on principle objected to. The proposal to tax 
 the colonies directly by act of Parliament, however, 
 seemed to the colonies, accustomed as they were to be 
 taxed only by their representative assemblies, not only 
 unwarranted but also highly dangerous. The purposes 
 for which the proceeds of the new taxes were to be used, 
 also, were not acceptable. The colonies had the tradi- 
 tional English dread of a standing army, however small 
 or apparently necessary, while the payment of the salaries 
 of governors and judges from the imperial treasury 
 instead of from the treasury of the colony would, it was 
 feared, by increasing the independence of those officials, 
 diminish their sense of responsibiHty to the people and 
 enable them, if they chose, to override the wishes of the 
 assemblies. 
 
 There was no agreement among the colonies, however, 
 as to the way in which the required revenue should be 
 raised, while protests were made against the raising of the 
 revenue at all. Grenville, accordingly, brought in and 
 carried the Stamp Act. There were remonstrances from 
 London merchants and protests from several of the 
 colonial agents, but there was no effective opposition in 
 Parliament. The estimated revenue from the act was 
 ^100,000. The dispatch to America of such troops as 
 
14 Burke's Speech on Conciliation 
 
 might be deemed necessary was further authorized, and 
 a Quartering Act passed to provide for their accommo- 
 dation. 
 
 The attitude of the colonies was at first that of passive 
 resistance, but before long the growing opposition led 
 to numerous outbreaks of violence, directed particularly 
 against the stamp distributers. In October, 1765, a 
 Stamp Act Congress, representing nine colonies, met in 
 New York and adopted resolutions declaring against the 
 right of Parliament to tax the colonies without their con- 
 sent. When the first of November, the date on which 
 the act was to go into effect, arrived, there were no 
 stamps to be had. Fortunately, events in England pre- 
 pared the way for a repeal of an act that obviously could 
 not be enforced. In July the Grenville ministry went out 
 of office. Rockingham, who succeeded as prime min- 
 ister, was friendly to America, and on the eighteenth of 
 March, 1766, the Stamp Act was repealed. Accompany- 
 ing the act of repeal, however, was a so-called Declara- 
 tory Act, asserting the right of Parliament to bind the 
 colonies by legislation in all cases whatsoever. 
 
 Events were to show that the Declaratory Act was not, 
 as many affected to believe, a mere empty assertion to 
 save the dignity of Parliament. The repeal of the Stamp 
 Act caused great rejoicing, but the political conditions in 
 England were disquieting. Grenville and his followers 
 refused to be reconciled, while George III, who had no- 
 toriously interfered with his ministers during the debates 
 on the repeal, was dissatisfied and chagrined. Rocking- 
 
Introduction 15 
 
 ham was marked for removal, and in July was dismissed, 
 a ministry headed by the Duke of Grafton succeeding, 
 but with Pitt, whom the king had won by assurances and 
 blandishments, as the real head of affairs. Virtuous as 
 Pitt's own motives undoubtedly were, his course at this 
 time has generally been regarded as the great mistake 
 of his political career. 
 
 Early in 1767 the landed gentry secured the passage 
 of an act reducing the land tax. It was generally assumed 
 that the deficiency of revenue thus caused would be made 
 good from America. Pitt, now Earl of Chatham, was 
 incapacitated by illness, and the actual control of minis- 
 terial policy was assumed by Charles Townshend, who 
 had already usurped it. Townshend brought forward 
 four bills relating to America, all of which became law 
 by the first of July. The first prohibited the New York 
 Assembly from legislating until it had fully complied with 
 the provisions of the Quartering Act. The second aimed 
 to improve the colonial customs service. The third pro- 
 posed to raise an American revenue by the imposition of 
 import duties, the proceeds to be applied to paying the 
 salaries of judicial and civil officers and defraying the 
 expenses of defending the colonies. The estimated an- 
 nual revenue from this act was ^^40,000. The fourth 
 act reduced the duties on tea. Tov/nshend died before 
 the acts went into effect, and the responsibility for their 
 enforcement passed to his successor. 
 
 The news of the passage of the Townshend acts revived 
 in America the earnest discussion of the right of Parlia- 
 
1 6 Burke's Speech on Conciliation 
 
 ment to tax the colonies, which had been fir^ awakened 
 by the Stamp Act. The first attempt to combat the acts 
 was by means of agreements not to import the articles on 
 which duties were laid, and to encourage domestic manu- 
 factures. The Massachusetts House of Representatives 
 went further, and in February, 1768, in a circular letter 
 to the other colonies, entered its protest, in dignified but 
 earnest language, against the claim to tax the colonies 
 by parliamentary authority, and the proposed payment of 
 judges and civil officers by the Crown. The repHes of the 
 other colonies were favorable. When the circular letter 
 became known in England, however, it was bitterly 
 denounced, and Lord Hillsborough, Secretary of State for 
 the Colonies, in a letter to the colonial governors, called 
 upop them to use their utmost influence to prevent its 
 approval by the assemblies, and in case the assemblies 
 persisted, to prorogue or dissolve them. The Massachu- 
 setts House of Representatives was also called upon to 
 rescind the resolution by which the circular letter was 
 authorized. By a vote of 92 to 17 the House refused 
 to rescind, whereupon the General Court was dissolved. 
 Similar dissolutions took place also in other colonies. 
 
 In September, 1768, two British regiments from Halifax 
 arrived at Boston and were quartered in the town. On 
 the fifteenth of December an address to the king was 
 moved in the House of Lords, urging that immediate 
 steps be taken to apprehend the persons responsible for 
 the late disorders in Boston, — particularly those con- 
 nected with the seizure of John Hancock's sloop Liberty 
 
Introduction 17 
 
 for smugglfng, — with a view to sending them to England 
 for trial, under the alleged authority of a statute passed 
 in the reign of Henry VIII, for the trial of treasons com- 
 mitted out of the kingdom. Nothing yet done or threat- 
 ened so alarmed the colonies as this monstrous proposition. 
 The Virginia House of Burgesses protested strongly against 
 the proposed action as a flagrant violation of the right of 
 Englishmen to be tried by a jury of the vicinage and 
 according to the established course of the common law. 
 For passing these resolutions the House was dissolved, 
 but the members met and adopted a non-importation 
 agreement. 
 
 It was evident that the second attempt to tax America 
 had failed. In April, 1769, Thomas Pownall, formerly 
 governor of Massachusetts and now a member of Parlia- 
 ment, showed that the receipts from the Revenue Act, 
 which Townshend had estimated at ^40,000, had been 
 for the first year less than ^16,000, of which all but ^295 
 had been absorbed by the expenses of the new system of 
 customs administration ; while the extraordinary military 
 expenses in America for the same period amomited to 
 ^170,000. In January, 1770, the Grafton ministry fell, 
 and Lord North, who was to pilot the affairs of England 
 through the next twelve years of storm and stress, took 
 the helm. In March the duties imposed by the Town- 
 shend Revenue Act, except that on tea, were repealed, 
 the duty on tea being retained as an assertion of the right 
 of Parliament to tax the colonies — "a right," said North, 
 " he would contend for to the last hour of his life." 
 
 BURKE ON CONXII.IATIOX — 2 
 
1 8 Burke's Speech on Conciliation 
 
 The alarm and resentment of the colonies it the arbi- 
 trary course of Parliament were greatly increased by the 
 high-handed proceedings in the Wilkes case. John Wilkes, 
 a " worthless demagogue," though a member of the House 
 of Commons, had published in No. 45 of the North Briton 
 a severe criticism of the royal address transmitting to 
 Parliament the treaty of Paris, in 1763. A general war- 
 rant was issued for the apprehension of all persons con- 
 cerned in the publication of the offensive newspaper. 
 Wilkes, pleading his privilege as a member of Parliament, 
 was released, and the court shortly declared general war- 
 rants illegal ; but the House voted No. 45 a libel, and 
 Wilkes was expelled. A coarse poem written by Wilkes 
 was also voted a libel and a breach of privilege by the 
 House of Lords. Wilkes fled to the Continent, and in 
 February, 1764, was outlawed. In 1768, however, he 
 returned, and in the general election of that year came 
 forward as a champion of parliamentary reform. Though 
 still an outlaw, the voters of Middlesex returned him to 
 Parliament. The old sentence of outlawry was set aside 
 by Lord Mansfield as illegal, but Wilkes was immediately 
 arrested under the old charge of libel, and sentenced to 
 imprisonment for twenty-two months and a fine of ^1000. 
 Further, the House of Commons again expelled him. 
 The voters of Middlesex immediately reelected him, but 
 the House set the election aside as invalid. A third 
 election' gave Wilkes an overwhelming majority of the 
 votes, but the Commons seated his opponent. A grave 
 constitutional question, involving the right of the House 
 
Introduction 19 
 
 of Commons to ride roughshod over the electors, was 
 thus raised. Petitions poured into the House, and Wilkes, 
 now a popular hero, was chosen an alderman of London. 
 These events, clearly indicative of the arbitrary temper 
 of Parliament and king, were closely followed in America, 
 where they coincided with the opposition to the Town- 
 shend acts ; and the sympathy of the colonists was shown 
 by the addresses and presents which they sent to Wilkes 
 in prison. 
 
 The two or three years following the repeal of the 
 Townshend Revenue Act saw a general subsidence of the 
 excitement in America. The Boston massacre, in March, 
 1770, greatly imbittered popular feehng for a time in 
 Massachusetts, and made that colony more than ever the 
 leader of the colonial resistance; but with reasonable 
 moderation on the part of the colonies and the exercise 
 of common sense on the part of the king and his minis- 
 ters, the outlook was unquestionably favorable to peace. 
 In 1773, however, all the slumbering ill-feeling and irri- 
 tation between Massachusetts and the mother country 
 was suddenly fanned into flame by the publication of the 
 Hutchinson letters. Some letters written by Hutchinson, 
 before he became governor of Massachusetts, but while 
 he was occupying other important poHtical offices, to a 
 private correspondent in England, fell into the hands of 
 Franklin. The letters, " written with the perfect freedom 
 of confidential intercourse,"^ contained passages reflect- 
 ing on the motives and aims of the popular leaders in 
 1 Lecky, vol. iv, p. 413. 
 
20 Burke's Speech on Conciliation 
 
 Massachusetts, and expressing the hope that the connec- 
 tion between the colonies and Great Britain might not be 
 broken. Frankhn, who at once saw the pohtical impor- 
 tance of the letters, sent them to Massachusetts with the 
 stipulation that the)^ should not be printed and should 
 be eventually returned. Notwithstanding the stipulation, 
 however, the letters were published. The Massachusetts 
 House of Representatives shortly petitioned for Hutchin- 
 son's recall. In England, where the tide was now setting 
 strongly against America, Franklin, who had taken pains 
 to defend his part in the transaction, was dismissed from 
 his^ofifice of postmaster-general for North America. 
 
 ( The climax of colonial opposition, short of open war, 
 was reached in the resistance, during the fall of 1773, to 
 the importation of tea through the agency of the East 
 India Company. Here, as before, resistance was based, 
 not on the amount of the tax, but on the principle which 
 the payment of any tax levied on the colonies by author- 
 ity of Parliament involved.' English public opinion, im- 
 perfectly aware of the merits of the dispute, but tired of 
 colonial disorder on the one hand and ministerial vacilla- 
 tion on the other, was in favor of compeUing the turbulent 
 colonies to submit. Naturally Massachusetts, as the chief 
 offender, was now selected as the chief victim, j^etween 
 the last of March and the end of June, 1774, three drastic 
 coercive acts were passed. The Boston Port Act closed 
 the port of Boston to commerce, save in foods, and trans- 
 ferred the customs business to Salem. The Massachusetts 
 Government Act so altered the charter of the colony as 
 
Introduction 21 
 
 to provide for the appointment of councillors and judicial 
 officers by the governor, and the choice of jurors by the 
 sheriff^, while town meetings, save for the election of offi- 
 cers and sheriffs, were interdicted. The Administration 
 of Justice Act provided for the trial in England or in 
 another colony of any person indicted in Massachusetts 
 for murder or other capital crime because of some act 
 committed by him in the enforcement of law, in case 
 a fair trial could not be had in Massachusetts. A 
 new Quartering Act was also passed " to facilitate the 
 establishment of a temporary military government in 
 Am erica.' "^^ 
 
 The Boston Port Act went into effect on the first day 
 of June. On the seventeenth, the Massachusetts House 
 of Representatives issued a call for a congress of the col- 
 onies, to meet in Philadelphia on the first of September. 
 Delegates from twelve colonies appeared in response to 
 the summons. Petitions to the king and the people of 
 Great Britain, and a declaration of the rights and griev- 
 ances of the colonies were drawn up, and an agreement, 
 known as the " Association," pledging the signers to 
 nearly complete commercial non-intercourse with Great 
 Britain, was adopted. In Massachusetts, events moved 
 rapidly toward the inevitable crisis. The General Court 
 having been dissolved, a provincial congress was formed 
 in its stead, and by common consent assumed direction 
 of affairs. Arms and military supplies were collected and 
 the militia organized. Similar preparations for forcible 
 resistance, should that prove necessary, were made in 
 
22 Burke's Speech on Conciliation 
 
 other colonies, while committees of correspondence were 
 unceasingly active in stimulating public sentiment and 
 organizing opposition. 
 
 In September, 1774, while the aspect of American 
 affairs was gravely serious, Parliament was dissolved. The 
 result of the general election was a virtually complete in- 
 dorsement of the king and the ministerial policy. The 
 new Parliament met on the thirtieth of November, but for 
 some weeks nothing of importance was done. Then, on 
 the nineteenth of January, 1775, ^^^ petition to the king 
 drawn up by the Continental Congress, together with volu- 
 minous papers relating to affairs in the colonies, was laid 
 before Parhament. Although a majority of the members 
 were undoubtedly opposed to America and its claims, 
 the American cause at once found earnest and eloquent 
 advocates. The Earl of Chatham brought forward a plan 
 of concihation, and defended it in a great speech, but the 
 bill was not even accorded a second reading. An address 
 pledging support to the king in his efforts to put down 
 the rebellion was agreed to, notwithstanding the protest 
 of eighteen lords. On the tenth of February Lord North 
 moved for leave to bring in a bill to restrain the trade 
 and commerce of the New England colonies to Great 
 Britain, Ireland, and the West Indies. By a vote of 261 
 to 85 the motion was carried, and on the eighth of March 
 the bill passed the House of Commons without a division. 
 
 It was on the twenty-second of March, while the New 
 England Restraining Bill was before the lords, that Burke, 
 who had already protested against the Restraining Bill, 
 
Introduction 23 
 
 moved in the House of Commons a series of resolutions, 
 in whose support he made his great speech on Concilia- 
 tion with America. 
 
 II. The Early Life of Burke 
 
 Edmund Burke was born in Dublin, probably on the 
 twelfth of January, 1729. In 1743 he entered Trinity 
 College, taking his bachelor's degree there five years later. 
 He' seems to have read a good deal during vids college 
 days, but otherwise his career as a student was not dis- 
 tinguished. The details of his life for the next few years 
 are obscure, but he went to London in 1750 and began 
 the study of law, though he was never called to the bar. 
 A literary life had strong attractions for him, superior, 
 apparently, to those of the legal profession, but of the 
 particular direction of his studies we know nothing. In 
 the winter of 1756 he married. 
 
 Burke's first essays in authorship were his Vindication 
 of Natural Society and A Philosophical Inquiry into the 
 Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, both 
 published in 1756. These were followed by an Account 
 of the European Settlements in Amei'ica, not, probably, 
 entirely of his own composition. In 1759 began the 
 publication of the Annual Register, to which Burke for 
 many years contributed the account of political events. 
 
 In 1 761 Burke accompanied Hamilton, secretary to 
 Lord Halifax, to Ireland in some official capacity, and 
 in 1763 was granted a pension of ;£"3oo a year from the 
 
24 Burke's Speech on Conciliation 
 
 Irish treasury ; but his refusal to devote the whole of his 
 time to his patron led him, at the expiration of two years, 
 to relinquish both office and emoluments. When Rock- 
 ingham became prime minister, however, in 1765, Burke 
 became his private secretary, and the friendship thus 
 formed continued throughout Rockingham's hfe. Just 
 before the end of the year he obtained a seat in the 
 House of Commons. In the discussion of American 
 affairs then going on Burke at once took part, and two 
 speeches which he made in favor of the repeal of the 
 Stamp Act and the passage of the Declaratory Act 
 attracted much attention, and won high commendation 
 from Pitt and Dr. Johnson. It should be noted that 
 
 / Burke's opposition to the Stamp Act was based, not on 
 
 a denial of the right of Parliament to tax the colonies, 
 
 I but on the ground that it was inexpedient to assert the 
 
 V right under the circumstances. From this position Burke 
 
 * never departed. 
 
 In the great excitement over the Middlesex election 
 Burke championed the cause of Wilkes, as he did the 
 cause of the printers who were proceeded against for 
 reporting the debates of the House of Commons. As a 
 pohtician he was active in his efforts to keep together the 
 so-called Rockingham Whigs, ^' the most upright, con- 
 sistent and disinterested body of men then in public 
 life." ^ A pamphlet entitled Thoughts on the Cause of 
 the Present Discontents, published in 1770, reviewed in 
 a masterly way the whole course of policy which had 
 
 1 Morley, B?irke, p. 62. 
 
Introduction 25 
 
 brought about the existing disordered conditions. In 
 
 1 771 Burke was made colonial agent for New York. In 
 
 1772 he was urged to go out to India as head of a com- 
 mission to examine the affairs of the East India Com- 
 pany, of which he had been one of the proprietors, but 
 he declined. The next year he went to France, where 
 he had exceptional opportunities to observe at first hand 
 some of the social and intellectual conditions out of 
 which sprang the French Revolution. 
 
 In the general election of 1774, Burke was at first 
 chosen for the small borough of Malton, but was shortly 
 returned from Bristol, then the second city in commercial 
 importance in England. For the next eight years he was 
 allied with Fox in opposition to the policy of Lord North, 
 the prime minister. On the nineteenth of April, 1774, 
 while the proposed repeal of the tea duty was under dis- 
 cussion, Burke, in a great speech on American Taxation, 
 urged the repeal of the duty. A repeal would not, he 
 argued, lead to demands from the colonies for further 
 concessions, nor was the preamble of the Townshend 
 Revenue Act, which declared it to be " expedient " that 
 a revenue should be raised in America, an obstacle to 
 repeal. He pointed out also that Hillsborough's letter to 
 the governors was a surrender, in the name of the king 
 and the ministry, of the principle of taxing the colonies, 
 and he reviewed at length the history of American tax- 
 ation. The effect of the speech upon those who heard 
 it was very great. The public, however, were not ad- 
 mitted to the House to hear the debate, and did not 
 
i6 Burke's Speech on Conciliation 
 
 have the text of the speech until its pubhcation by 
 Burke about a year later. 
 
 III. The Speech on Conciliation 
 
 The speech on Conciliation, following so soon after 
 the speech on American taxation, might naturally be 
 expected to repeat much of what had been already said. 
 On the contrary, however, it is a new and fresh treatment 
 of the American situation, arguing with consummate 
 force of logic, rhetoric, and eloquence, but in a temperate 
 and conciliatory tone, the claims of the colonies to a 
 share in the privileges and spirit of the British constitu- 
 tion. Later speeches, particularly the speech on the 
 Nabob of Arcot's Debts, contain descriptive passages of 
 greater vividness, but in logical skill, rhetorical finish, 
 effective grouping of facts, mingled simplicity and or- 
 nateness of style, winning manner, and fervent appeal, 
 the speech on Conciliation marks a perfection beyond 
 which Burke did not go. 
 
 The speech falls naturally into four parts. In the first, 
 or introductory section, Burke, after noting the serious- 
 ness of the question before the House and the varying 
 attitude of Parliament from time to time toward it, pro- 
 poses to bring about peace by the simple plan of removing 
 the existing grounds of difference. Such action, indeed, 
 it is pointed out, is foreshadowed by the action of the 
 House in accepting Lord North's resolution, and is 
 justified on the broad ground that England, as the greater 
 
 I 
 
Introduction 27 
 
 power, ought to be the first to offer concessions. The 
 two leading questions before the House, therefore, are, 
 first, whether there ought to be concession, and, second, 
 what the concession ought to be. The determination of 
 these questions depends, not upon abstract ideas of right 
 or general theories of government, but upon the particu- 
 lar nature and circumstances of America. 
 
 With this introduction, Burke enters upon an account 
 of the present condition of America, particularly as re- 
 gards its population, its trade, its agriculture, its fisheries, 
 and the character of its people. It will be noted that, 
 disregarding strict logical arrangement, the vivid descrip- 
 tion of American character is preceded by an argumenta- 
 tive passage against the use of force — a passage whose 
 more logical place would be in connection with the third 
 part of the speech. 
 
 The ground having been thus prepared, Burke then 
 comes directly to the main question of how to deal with 
 America. He points out that the spirit which prevails 
 in the colonies can be dealt with in but three ways : first, 
 changing the spirit by removing its causes ; second, prose- 
 cuting it as criminal ; and third, yielding to it as neces- 
 sary, that is, giving up the pretended right of taxation. 
 The first is difficult, if not impossible. The second is 
 either impracticable or inexpedient. The third, there- 
 fore, is necessary, and the only one which will satisfy 
 colonial complaints. It is further pointed out that such 
 concession will not lead to demands for others, and 
 will be based on historical precedents which show its 
 
28 Burke's Speech on Conciliation 
 
 practicability, and stamp the present position of the 
 ministry as erroneous. 
 
 In conclusion, the resolutions embodying the plan 
 already set forth are submitted, their provisions dis- 
 cussed in detail, the objections to them answered, and 
 Lord North's plan criticised by comparison. 
 
 The speech on Conciliation affords a good illustration 
 of Burke's political creed and his characteristics as a 
 writer. Burke reckoned himself a Whig, as the term was 
 then understood in England, but his political opinions 
 were such as would class him now as a Conservative. It 
 must be remembered that in the latter part of the eigh- 
 teenth century it was the Tories, and not the Whigs, who 
 were the progressive or reform party in England. Burke, 
 who always insisted that he was politically consistent, 
 favored reform, but not such as would endanger the 
 ancient constitution of the government. He abhorred 
 abstract theories and *' metaphysical generalities " in 
 politics, and insisted that the guiding question for the 
 statesman ought to be, not so much whether a proposed 
 action was right in law, as whether it was expedient. 
 For democracy, in the usual eighteenth century sense, 
 he had no liking, and never ceased to denounce its pre- 
 tensions. At the same time, his enormous wealth of 
 political information gave to his outlook a broader range 
 than that of most of his contemporaries, and led him to 
 trust the general sense of mankind as more reliable than 
 the opinions of the moment. 
 
 To the student who approaches Burke's speeches for 
 
 Q 
 
Introduction 
 
 29 
 
 the first time, their most striking Hterary characteristic is 
 Hkely to seem their conversational style. "They have 
 always the air of a spoken appeal from man to man." ^ 
 As compared with the fashion of the present day, the 
 style is formal, with here and there a rhetorical ornate- 
 ness which would now be thought extravagant and over- 
 done.^ Burke represents, however, a period of transition 
 from the formality of the early eighteenth century to the 
 greater naturalness of the nineteenth ; and while his 
 rhetoric, like his thought, is often gorgeous or grand, it 
 is pervadingly natural and suited to the subject. The 
 preference for particular rather than general terms,^ the 
 skillful alternation of short and long sentences,'' the nu- 
 merous and carefully contrived figures of speech,^ the 
 frequent literary allusions, especially to the Bible and the 
 Greek and Latin classics, and in general the union 
 of forcibleness, naturalness, and comprehensiveness with 
 brevity and compactness,^ are further characteristics of 
 which the speech on Conciliation affords numerous illus- 
 trations. 
 
 1 Burke, Select Works, edited by Payne, I, xxxiii. 
 
 2 Eg. the reference to Lord Bathurst, p. 51. 
 
 ^ E.g. the passage beginning "In large bodies the circulation of 
 power," p. 64, and the description of the political condition of Ireland, 
 pp. 87, 88. 
 
 4 E.g. the paragraphs beginning, " First, the people of the colonies," 
 p. 58. and, " Secondly, it is an experiment," p. 115. 
 
 s Eg. the account of Ireland, pp. 87, 88, and the passage beginning, 
 " For that service, for all service," p, 124. 
 
 6 Tlie passage beginning, "Sir, here is the repeated acknowledg- 
 ment," p. 103, is a good specific illustration of this general quality. 
 
JO Burke's Speech on Conciliation 
 
 On the other hand, while Burke was a great orator, he 
 was not a great debater, nor did his speeches carry con- 
 viction to those who heard them as forcibly as they did 
 to those who read them. " The heavy Quaker-like figure, 
 the scratch wig, the round spectacles, the cumbrous roll 
 of paper which loaded Burke's pocket," ^ were not pre- 
 possessing. Some of the members of the House styled 
 him the " dinner-bell," and the speech on Conciliation, 
 according to Erskine, emptied the House, though every- 
 body read it afterward. His intense earnestness, im- 
 passioned manner, awkward gestures, and pronounced 
 Irish brogue, coupled with not the best of temper under 
 opposition or criticism, often, especially in his later years, 
 weakened the effect of what he said. At the same time, 
 it must be remembered that the oratory of Burke was of 
 a kind to which the House of Commons was not accus- 
 tomed, and which violated the time-honored traditions of 
 public speaking, so that it was not wholly unnatural that 
 the unfamiliar manner should have tended to obscure the 
 wisdom of what was being said. 
 
 IV. Burke's Subsequent Career 
 
 Burke's subsequent career, though of the highest im- 
 portance in the history of the time, must be briefly 
 sketched. The speeches on America had established 
 Burke's reputation as an orator and a statesman, and 
 thereafter whatever he said or wrote was sure of attention 
 
 1 Green, Short History, p. 770. 
 
Introduction 31 
 
 even from those who, at the moment, preferred not to 
 listen to his speeches. Consistent opposition to the 
 poUcy of the ministry in deaHng with America led him in 
 1776, together with others of his party, to absent himself 
 from the House when American affairs were under dis- 
 cussion ; and in a notable Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol 
 he defended his course. In February, 1778, however, he 
 made a great speech against the employment of Indians 
 in the war with the colonies. In 1780 he championed 
 the cause of economical reform, with the object not only 
 of reducing expenditures, but also of so reforming the 
 civil service as to put a stop to the political corruption 
 through which the House of Commons was still largely 
 controlled. His support of the claims of Ireland to 
 more liberal commercial treatment, however, offended his 
 Bristol constituency, and in the election of 1780 he was 
 defeated. Through the influence of Rockingham he 
 was shortly returned from Malton. When Rockingham 
 succeeded North as prime minister, in 1782, Burke was 
 made paymaster of the forces, but the death of Rocking- 
 ham and the elevation of Shelburne brought about a dis- 
 ruption of the Whig party, for which Burke was largely 
 responsible. His excessive vehemence in debate in- 
 creased, and annoying interruptions in the House were 
 frequent. 
 
 The formation of the Coalition ministry, in 1783, 
 brought again into office North, Fox, and Burke. A bill 
 for administrative reform in India was defended by Burke 
 in one of his greatest speeches, but to no purpose. The 
 
32 Burke's Speech on Conciliation 
 
 Coalition ministry had no hold on the people, and gave 
 way at the end of 1783 to that of William Pitt, who con- 
 tinued prime minister until 1804. In 1785, in a speech 
 on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts, Burke began the attack 
 on the administration of the East India Company which 
 culminated in the charges of impeachment against War- 
 ren Hastings. The trial opened in 1788, and after drag- 
 ging along for seven years, resulted in a verdict of acquittal 
 by the House of Lords. In the meantime he had pub- 
 lished, in 1790, his Reflections on the French Revolution, 
 in which he attacked the revolution, its principles and 
 leaders, with the utmost vehemence, and pointed out the 
 evils which he was convinced must flow from the spread 
 or adoption of the democratic ideas which underlay it. 
 The book had, for the time, an enormous sale, and was 
 eagerly read even by the many who wholly dissented from 
 its views. The Reflections is, in many respects, Burke's 
 greatest intellectual achievement; its criticisms of the 
 revolutionary programme as that programme was formu- 
 lated in 1790 were not only sound, but abundantly borne 
 out by the event ; but Burke's view of the revolution as a 
 political rather than a social movement, together with his 
 insufficient knowledge of the subject, distorted his esti- 
 mate of the more general and fundamental issues involved. 
 The work divided public opinion in England, seriously 
 injured the Whigs, and created a strong reaction against 
 revolutionary ideas. 
 
 Burke continued to write on French affairs, but although 
 he was still a great figure and a great name, his political 
 
Introduction ^3 
 
 influence had much declined. In 1791, in a dramatic 
 scene, he broke finally with Fox and his party, and stood 
 alone. High ideals, broad views, and generous impulses 
 had given way to invective, personal denunciation, and 
 extravagant declamation. An Appeal from the New to 
 the Old JVhigs sought to bring back the party to its old 
 position ; but the Letters on a Regicide Peace, written to 
 urge England to push with energy the w^ar with France 
 begun in 1793, while showing examples of Burke's finest 
 manner, have been justly characterized as " deplorable." ^ 
 But the end was near. The death of his only son, in 
 1794, was a blow from which Burke never recovered. 
 He survived the loss a little less than three years, dying 
 on the ninth of July, 1797, in his sixty-eighth year. 
 
 1 Morley, Burke, p. 199. 
 
 BURKE ON CONCILTATION — ^ 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 
 
 v 
 Editions of Burke's writings were published in Boston, 
 in 1839, in 9 volumes; in London, in 1852 and 1898, 
 in 8 and 12 volumes, respectively; and in Bohn's 
 British Classics, 1855-64, in 8 volumes. An edition 
 of his Select IVorks, in 3 volumes, edited by E. J. 
 Payne, is published in the Clarendon Press Series; 
 this edition has an elaborate introduction and valuable 
 notes. The Speech on Conciliation has been several 
 times published separately during the past ten years in 
 annotated school editions. 
 
 The best compact biography of Burke is that by John 
 Morley in the English Men of Letters series. The same 
 author's Edmund Burke: An Historical Study is of 
 great value. The article *' Burke " in the Dictionary of 
 National Biography, Vol. VII, by William Hunt, is of the 
 first importance for the details of Burke's life. The ear- 
 lier biographies by Prior (1854, 2 vols.) and Macknight 
 (1858-60, 3 vols.) are larger and less critical, but have 
 not been superseded. 
 
 34 
 
SPEECH 
 
 OF 
 
 EDMUND BURKE, ESQ. 
 
 ON 
 
 Moving his Resolutions 
 
 FOR 
 
 Conciliation with the Colonies 
 
 March 22, 1775 
 
 THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 PRINTED FOR J. DODSLEY, IN PALL-MALL 
 
 MDCCLXXV 
 
SPEECH ON CONCILIATION WITH 
 AMERICA 
 
 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 depending^ 
 which strongly engages their hopes and fears should be 5 
 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 sus- 
 tenance of America is to be returned to us from the other 10 
 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 pos- 
 session of our deliberative capacity, upon a business so 
 very questionable in its nature, so very uncertain in its 15 
 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 first day of the session. If, Sir, we 
 
 1 Pending. 2 Result. 
 
38 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 incline to the side of conciliation, we are not at all em- 
 barrassed (unless we please to make ourselves so) by 
 any incongruous mixture of coercion and restraint. We 
 are therefore called upon, as it were by a superior warn- 
 5 ing voice, again to attend to America ; to attend to the 
 whole of it together ; and to review the subject wilh an 
 unusual degree of care and calmness. 
 
 Surely it is an awful subject, or there is none so on 
 this side of the grave. When I first had the honor of a 
 
 10 seat in this House, the affairs of that continent pressed 
 themselves upon us as the most important and most deli- 
 cate^ object of parliamentary attention. My little share 
 in this great deliberation oppressed me. I found myself 
 a partaker in a very high trust ; and having no sort of 
 
 15 reason to rely on the strength of my natural abilities for 
 the proper execution of that trust, I was obliged to take 
 more than common pains to instruct myself in everything 
 which relates to our colonies. I was not less under the 
 necessity of forming some fixed ideas concerning the gen- 
 
 2oeral policy of the British Empire. Something of this sort 
 seemed to be indispensable, in order, amidst so vast a 
 fluctuation of passions and opinions, to concentre- my 
 thoughts, to ballast my conduct, to preserve me from be- 
 ing blown about by every wind of fashionable doctrine. 
 
 25 1 really did not think it safe or manly to have fresh prin- 
 ciples to seek upon every fresh mail which should arrive 
 from America. 
 
 At that period I had the fortune to find myself in per- 
 1 Requiring care or tact. ^ Concentrate. 
 
Speech on Conciliation 39 
 
 feet concurrence with a large majority in this House. 
 Bowing under that high authority, and penetrated with 
 the sharpness and strength of that early impression, I 
 have continued ever since, without the least deviation, in 
 my original sentiments. Whether this be owing to an 5 
 obstinate perseverance in error, or to a religious ^ adher- 
 ence 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 10 
 their sentiments and their conduct than could be justified 
 in a particular person upon the contracted scale of private 
 information. But though I do not hazard anything ap- 
 proaching to a censure on the motives of former Par- 
 liaments to all those alterations, one fact is undoubted, 15 
 — that under them the state of America has been kept in 
 continual agitation. Everything administered as remedy 
 to the public complaint;^ if it did not produce, was at 
 least followed by, an heightening of the distemper; until 
 by a variety of experiments that important country has 20 
 been brought into her present situation — a situation 
 which I will not miscall, which I dare not name, which I 
 scarcely know how to comprehend in the terms of any 
 description. 
 
 In this posture. Sir, things stood at the beginning of the 25 
 session. About that time a worthy member* of great 
 parliamentary experience, who in the year 1766 filled the 
 
 1 Conscientious. ^ Impartiality. 
 
 8 Disease. * Rose Fuller, 
 
40 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 Chair of the American Committee with much abiHty, 
 took me aside and, lamenting the present aspect of our 
 politics, told me things were come to such a pass that our 
 former methods of proceeding in the House would be no 
 5 longer tolerated; that the public tribunal (never too in- 
 dulgent to a long and unsuccessful opposition) would now 
 scrutinize our conduct with unusual severity ; that the 
 very vicissitudes and shiftings of ministerial measures, 
 instead of convicting their authors of inconstancy and 
 
 10 want of system, would be taken as an occasion of charg- 
 ing us with a predetermined discontent which nothing 
 could satisfy, whilst we accused ^ every measure of vigor 
 as cruel, and every proposal of lenity as weak and irreso- 
 lute. The public, he said, would not have patience to 
 
 15 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 they had formed some clear and decided idea 
 of the principles of colony government, and were capable 
 
 20 of drawing out something like a platform- of the ground 
 which might be laid for future and permanent tranquillity. 
 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 
 
 25 other gentlemen. No man was, indeed, ever better dis- 
 posed or worse qualified for such an undertaking than 
 myself. Though I gave so far into^ his opinion that I 
 immediately threw my thoughts into a sort of parliamen- 
 1 Arraigned. ^ Plan, outline. ^ Acquiesced in. 
 
 1 
 
Speech on Conciliation 41 
 
 tary form, I was by no means equally ready to produce^ 
 them. It generally argues some degree of natural impo- 
 tence of mind, or some want of knowledge of the world, 
 to hazard plans of government except from a seat of 
 authority. Propositions are made, not only ineffectually, 5 
 but somewhat disreputably,^ when the minds of men are 
 not properly disposed for their reception ; and for my 
 part, I am not ambitious of ridicule, not absolutely a 
 candidate for disgrace. 
 
 Besides, Sir, to speak the plain truth, I have in general 10 
 no very exalted opinion of the virtue of paper ^ govern- 
 ment, 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 more, 
 and that things were hastening towards an incurable ahen- 13 
 ation 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 
 leveller ; and there are occasions when any, even the 
 slightest, chance of doing good must be laid hold on 20 
 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 under- 
 taking that would ennoble the flights of the highest genius 
 and obtain pardon for the efforts of the meanest under- 25 
 standing. Strugghng a good wfiile with these thoughts, 
 
 1 Give expression to. 
 
 2 With injury to the reputati<3h of those who make them. 
 ^Agreed upon, but not carried into effect; hence, theoretical. 
 
42 speech on Conciliation 
 
 by degrees I felt myself more firm. I derived, at length, 
 some confidence from what in other circumstances usually 
 produces timidity. I grew less anxious, even from the 
 idea of my own insignificance. For judging of what you 
 
 5 are by what you ought to be, I persuaded 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 destitute of all shadow of influence, 
 natural or adventidous, I was very sure that if my propo- 
 
 losition were futile or dangerous, if it were weakly con- 
 ceived or improperly timed, there was nothing exterior 
 to it, of power to awe, 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. Not peace through the 
 
 15 medium of war ; not peace to be hunted through the 
 labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations ; not peace 
 to arise out of universal discord fomented from principle 
 in all parts of the empire ; not peace to depend on the 
 juridical^ determination of perplexing questions, or the 
 
 20 precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex 
 government. It is simple peace, sought in its natural 
 course and in its ordinary haunts. It is peace sough- -.n 
 the spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely pacific. 
 I propose, by removing the ground of the difference, and 
 
 25 by restoring the fo7'mer tinsuspecting confidence of the 
 colonies in the mother country, to give permanent satis- 
 faction to your people ; and (far from a scheme of ruling 
 by discord) to reconcile them to each other in the same 
 1 Purely legal. 
 
Speech on Conciliation 43 
 
 act and by the bond of the very same interest which 
 reconciles them to British government. 
 
 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 5 
 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 is 
 an healing and cementing principle. My plan, therefore, 
 being formed upon the most simple grounds imaginable, 10 
 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 captivating 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 15 
 blue ribbon. It does not propose to fill your lobby with 
 squabbling colony agents, who will require the interposi- 
 tion of your mace at every instant to keep the peace 
 amongst them. It does not institute a magnificent 
 auction of finance, where captivated provinces come to 20 
 general ransom by bidding against each other, until you 
 knock down the hammer, and determine a proportion of 
 payments beyond all the powers of algebra to equalize 
 and settle. 
 
 The plan which I shall presume to suggest derives, 25 
 
 however, one great advantage from the proposition and 
 
 registry of that noble lord's project. The idea of con- 
 
 cihation is admissible. First, the House, in accepting 
 
 1 Elaborate. 2 Desire, in the bad sense. 
 
44 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 the resolution moved by the noble lord, has admitted, 
 notwithstanding the menacing front ^ of our address, not- 
 withstanding our heavy bill of pains and penalties, that 
 we do not think ourselves precluded from all ideas of 
 5 free grace and bounty. 
 
 The House has gone farther : it has declared concilia- 
 tion admissible, p7'evious 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 
 
 10 mode of exerting the right of taxation were not wholly 
 unfounded. That right thus exerted is allowed to have 
 something reprehensible in it, something unwise or some- 
 thing grievous; since, in the midst of our heat and resent- 
 ment, we of ourselves have proposed a capital - alteration ; 
 
 15 and, in order to get rid of what seemed so very excep- 
 tionable, 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 
 
 20 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 en- 
 deavor to show you before I sit down. But, for the pres- 
 ent, I take my ground" on the admitted principle. I mean 
 
 25 to give peace. Peace implies reconcihation ; and where 
 there has been a material dispute, reconciliation does 
 in a manner always imply concession on the one part or 
 
 1 Appearance. ^ Of the first importance. 
 
 ^ Stand. * Real, as opposed to formal. 
 
Speech on Conciliation 45 
 
 on the other. In this state of things I make no difficulty 
 in affirming that the proposal ought to originate from us. 
 Great and acknowledged 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 5 
 safety. Such an offer from such a power will be 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 hap- 10 
 pen to all men, are the strength and resources of all 
 inferior power. 
 
 The capital leading questions on which you must this 
 day decide are these two : first, whether you ought to 
 concede; and secondly, what your concession ought 15 
 to be. On the first of these questions we have gained 
 (as I have just taken the liberty of observing to you) 
 some ground. But I am sensible^ that a good deal more 
 is still to be done. Indeed, Sir, to enable us to deter- 
 mine both on the one and the other of these great ques- 20 
 tions with a firm and precise judgment, I think it may 
 be necessary to consider distincdy the true nature and 
 the 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 25 
 and to those circumstances, and not according to our own 
 imaginations, not according to abstract ideas of right ; by 
 no means according to mere general theories of govern- 
 1 Aware. 
 
46 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 merit, 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 full and as clear 
 
 5 a manner as I am able to state them. 
 d 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 my- 
 
 10 self in placing the number below two millions of inhab- 
 itants of our own European blood and color, besides at 
 least 500,000 others who form no inconsiderable part 
 of the strength and opulence of the whole. This, Sir, is, 
 I believe, about the true number. There is no occasion 
 
 15 to exaggerate where plain truth is of so much weight and 
 importance. But whether I put the present numbers too 
 high or too low 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, 
 
 20 whilst the dispute continues, the exaggeration ends. 
 Whilst we are discussing any given magnitude, they are 
 grown to it. Whilst we spend our time in deliberating 
 on the mode of governing two millions, we shall find we 
 have millions more to manage. Your children do not 
 
 25 grow faster from infancy to manhood, than they spread 
 from families to communities, and from villages to nations. 
 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 
 
Speech on Conciliation 47 
 
 discernment than yours, that no partial, narrow, con- 
 tracted, pinched, occasional^ system will be at all suit- 
 able 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 5 
 excrescence of the state ; not a mean dependent, who 
 may be neglected with little damage and provoked with 
 httle 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 10 
 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. 
 
 But the population of this country, the great and 15 
 growing population, though a very important consider- 
 ation, 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 
 people. This ground of their commerce, indeed, has 20 
 been trod some days ago, and with great ability, by 
 a distinguished person" at your bar. This gentleman, 
 after thirty-five years, — it is so long since he first ap- 
 peared at the same place to plead for the commerce 
 of Great Britain, — has come again before you to plead 25 
 the same cause, without any other effect of time than 
 that to the fire of imagination and extent of erudition 
 
 1 Special, designed for the occasion. 
 2 Trifles. ^ Richard Glover. 
 
48 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 which even then marked him as one of the first hterary 
 characters of his age, he has added a consummate knowl- 
 edge in the commercial interest of his country, formed 
 by a long course of enlightened and discriminating 
 5 experience. 
 
 Sir, I should be inexcusable in coming after such a 
 person with any detail, if a great part of the members 
 who now nil the House had not the misfortune to be 
 absent when he appeared at your bar. Besides, Sir, I 
 
 10 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 this subject, it is 
 impossible that it should not make an impression upon 
 you. 
 
 15 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 
 1772 ; the other a state of the export trade of this coun- 
 try to its colonies alone, as it stood in 1772, compared 
 
 20 with the whole trade of England to all parts of the world 
 (the colonies included) in the year 1704. They are 
 from good vouchers : the latter period from the accounts 
 on your table, the earlier from an original manuscript of 
 Davenant, who first established the Inspector-General's 
 
 25 office, which has been ever since his time so abundant 
 a source of parliamentary information. 
 
 The export trade to the colonies consists of three 
 great branches : the African, which, terminating almost 
 1 Statement. 
 
Speech on Conciliation 49 
 
 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 attempt to separate 
 them would tear to pieces the contexture ^ of the whole ; 
 and, if not entirely destroy, would very much depreciate 5 
 the value of all the parts. I therefore consider these 
 three denominations - to be, what in effect they are, 
 one trade. 
 
 The trade to the colonies, taken on the export side, at 
 the beginning of this century, that is, in the year 1 704, 10 
 stood thus : — 
 
 Exports to North America and the West Indies ;^483,265 
 To Africa 86,665 
 
 ;^569,930 
 
 In the year 1772, which I take as a middle year 15 
 between the highest and lowest of those lately laid on 
 your table, the account was as follows : — 
 
 To North America and the West Indies . . ;^4,79 1,734 
 
 To Africa 866,398 
 
 To which if you add the export trade from 20 
 
 Scotland, which had in 1704 no existence 364,000 
 
 ^6,022,132 
 
 PVom 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 25 
 
 1 Construction, arrangement. ^ Classes. 
 
 BURKE ON CONCILIATION — 4 
 
50 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 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 colo- 
 nies alone in 1772 stood in the other point of view, that 
 5 is, as compared to the whole trade of England in 1704 : — 
 
 The whole export trade of England, including 
 
 that to the colonies, in 1704 ;i^6,509,ooo 
 
 Export to the colonies alone in 1772 . . . 6,024,000 
 
 Difference .... ;^485,ooo 
 
 10 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 
 largest year of those on your table, it would rather have 
 
 15 exceeded. But, it will be said, is not this American 
 trade an unnatural protuberance that has drawn 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 aug- 
 
 20 mented, and augmented more or less in almost every 
 part to which it ever extended, but with this material 
 difference, that of the six millions which in the be- 
 ginning of the century constituted the whole mass of our 
 export commerce, the colony trade was but one-twelfth 
 
 25 part; it is now (as a part of sixteen millions) consider- 
 ably 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 concerning our mode of treat- 
 
Speech on Conciliation 51 
 
 ing them must have this proportion as its basis ; or it is a 
 reasoning weak, rotten and sophistical. 
 
 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, 5 
 and what is past. Clouds, indeed, and liarkness rest 
 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 10 
 years. There are those alive whose memory might 
 touch the two extremities. For instance, my Lord 
 Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress. 
 He was in 1 704 of an age at least to be made to com- 
 prehend such things. He was then old enough acta 15 
 parentiim jam legei'c, et quae sit pote7'it cognoscere virtus. 
 Suppose, Sir, that the angel of this auspicious^ 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 20 
 fourth generation the third prince of the House of 
 Brunswick had sat twelve years on the throne of that 
 nation which (by the happy issue of moderate and heal- 
 ing counsels) was to be made Great Britain, he should 
 see his son. Lord Chancellor of England, turn back the 25 
 current of hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise 
 him to a higher rank of peerage, whilst he enriched the 
 family with a new one ; — if, amidst these bright and 
 ^ Fortunate. 
 
52 speech on Conciliation 
 
 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 the then commercial grandeur of 
 5 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 day serves for little more than to amuse you with 
 
 10 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 progressive 
 increase of improvement, brought in by varieties of 
 
 15 people, by succession of civilizing conquests and civilizing 
 settlements in a series of seventeen hundred years, you 
 shall see as much added to her by America in the course 
 of a single life ! " If this state of his country had been 
 foretold to him, would it not require all the sanguine 
 
 20 credulity of youth and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm 
 
 to make him believe it? Fortunate man, he has lived to 
 
 see it ! Fortunate 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 
 
 25 resume this comparative view once more. You have 
 seen it on a large scale ; look at it on a small one. I 
 will point out to your attention a particular instance of it 
 in the single province of Pennsylvania. In the year 
 1704 that province called for ;£"i 1,459 in value of your 
 
Speech on Conciliation ^^ 
 
 commodities, native and foreign. This was the whole. 
 What did it demand in 1772 ? Why, nearly fifty times as 
 much ; for in that year the export to Pennsylvania was 
 ^507,909, nearly equal to the export to all the colonies 
 together in the first period. 5 
 
 I choose, Sir, to enter into these minute and particular 
 details, because generalities, which in all other cases 
 are apt to heighten and raise the subject, have here a 
 tendency to sink it. When we speak of the commerce 
 with our colonies, fiction lags after truth, invention is 10 
 unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren. 
 
 So far, Sir, as to the importance of the object in 
 the view of its commerce, as concerned in the exports 
 from England. If I were to detail the imports, I could 
 show how many enjoyments they procure which deceive ^ 15 
 the burden 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 
 would be a curious^ subject indeed, — but I must pre- 
 scribe bounds to myself in a matter so vast and various. 20 
 
 I pass, therefore, to the colonies in another point 
 of view, — their agriculture. This they have prosecuted 
 with such a spirit that, besides feeding plentifully their 
 own growing multitude, their annual export of grain, 
 comprehending rice, has some years ago exceeded a 25 
 million in value. Of their last harvest, I am persuaded, 
 they will export much more. At the beginning of the 
 century some of these colonies imported corn from the 
 1 Lighten. 2 Interesting. 
 
54 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 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 Roman 
 
 5 charity, had not put the full breast of its youthful exuber- 
 ance to the mouth of its exhausted parent. 
 
 As to the wealth which the colonies have drawn from 
 the sea by their fisheries, you had all that matter fully 
 opened at your bar. You surely thought those acquisi- 
 
 lotions of value, for they seemed even to excite your envy; 
 and yet the spirit by which that enterprising employment 
 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 other parts, and 
 
 15 look at the manner in which the people of New England 
 have of late carried on the whale fishery. Whilst we 
 follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and 
 behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses 
 of Hudson Bay and Davis Strait, whilst we are looking 
 
 20 for them beneath the Arctic Circle, we hear that they 
 have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that 
 they are at the antipodes and engaged under the frozen 
 Serpent of the south. Falkland Islar. i, which seemed too 
 remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national 
 
 25 ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress 
 of their victorious industry. 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 
 
speech on Conciliation 55 
 
 Africa, others run the longitude and pursue their gigantic 
 game along the 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 5 
 of English enterprise ever carried this most perilous 
 mode of 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 10 
 things ; when I know that the colonies in general 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 15 
 suffered to take her own way to perfection; — when I 
 reflect upon these effects, when I see 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. 1 20 
 pardon something to the spirit of liberty.^ 
 
 I am sensible, Sir, that all which I have asserted in my 
 detail is admitted in the gross, but that quite a different 
 conclusion is drawn from it. America, gentlemen say, is 
 a noble object; it is an object well worth fighting for. 25 
 Certainly it is, if fighting a people be the best way of 
 gaining them. Gentlemen in this respect will be led to 
 their choice of means by their complexions^ and their 
 
 1 Bold, 2 Active, high-spiiited. ^ Temperaments. 
 
^6 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 habits. Those who understand the miUtary art will of 
 course have some predilection for it. Those who wield 
 the thunder of the state may have more confidence in the 
 efficacy of arms. But I confess, possibly for want of 
 Sethis knowledge, my opinion is much more in favor of 
 prudent management than of force, — considering 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 connection with 
 
 loUS. 
 
 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 
 
 15 conquered. 
 
 My next objection is its uncertainty. Terror is not 
 always the effect of force, and an armament is not a 
 victory. If you do not succeed, you are without re- 
 source : for conciliation failing, force remains ; but force 
 
 20 failing, no further hope of reconciliation is left. Power 
 and authority are sometimes bought by kindness, but 
 they can never be begged as arms by an impoverished 
 and defeated violence. 
 
 A further objection to force is that you impair the object 
 
 25 by your very endeavors to preserve it. The thing you 
 fought for is not the thing which you recover, but de- 
 preciated, sunk, wasted and consumed in the contest. 
 Nothing less will content me than ivhole Ajnerica. I do 
 not choose to consume its strength along with our own ; 
 
Speech on Conciliation 57 
 
 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 
 the midst of it. I may escape, but I can make no in- 
 surance against such an event. Let me add that I do 5 
 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 
 as an instrument in the rule of our colonies. Their 
 growth and their utility have been owing to methods alto- 10 
 gether 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 tolerable than 
 our attempt to mend it, and our sin far more salutary 
 than our penitence. 15 
 
 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 
 respect, seem to be so greatly captivated. But there is 
 still behind a third consideration concerning this object, 20 
 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 commerce : 
 I mean its temper and cha7'acter. 
 
 In this character of the Americans a love of freedom is 25 
 the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes 
 the whole : and as an ardent is always a jealous affection, 
 your colonies become suspicious, restive and untractable, 
 whenever they see the least attempt to wrest from them 
 
58 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 by force or shuffle 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; and this from a great 
 5 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 
 
 10 Englishmen. England, Sir, is a nation which still, I hope, 
 respects, and formerly adored, her freedom. The colo- 
 nists 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 hands. 
 
 15 They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to 
 liberty according to English ideas and on English prin- 
 ciples. Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is 
 not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible ob- 
 ject ; and every nation has formed to itself some favorite 
 
 20 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 taxing. Most 
 of the contests in the ancient commonwealths turned 
 
 25 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 this point of taxes the 
 ablest pens and most eloquent tongues have been exer- 
 
Speech on Conciliation 59 
 
 cised, the greatest spirits have acted and suffered. In 
 order to give the fullest satisfaction concerning the im- 
 portance of this point, it was not only necessary for those 
 who in argument defended the excellence of the English 
 Constitution to insist on this privilege of granting money 5 
 as a dry point of fact, and to prove that the right had 
 been acknowledged in ancient parchments and blind 
 usages to reside in a certain body called a House of Com- 
 mons. They went much farther : they attempted to 
 prove, and they succeeded, that in theory it ought to be 10 
 so, from the particular nature of the House of Commons 
 as an immediate representative of the people, whether 
 the old records had delivered this oracle or not. They 
 took infinite pains to inculcate, as a fundamental principle, 
 that in all monarchies the people must in effect themselves, 15 
 mediately or immediately, possess the power of granting 
 their own money, or no shadow of liberty could subsist. 
 The colonies draw from you, as with their life-blood, 
 these ideas and principles. Their love of liberty, as with 
 you, fixed and attached on this specific point of taxing. 20 
 Liberty 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 
 not say whether they were right or wrong in applying 25 
 your general arguments to their own case. It is not easy, 
 indeed, to make a monopoly of theorems and corollaries. 
 The fact is that they did thus apply those general 
 arguments ; and your mode of governing them, whether 
 
6o Speech on Conciliation 
 
 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 further confirmed in this pleasing error by 
 5 the form of their provincial legislative assemblies. Their 
 governments are popular in an high degree : some are 
 merely popular ; in all the popular representative is the 
 most weighty ; and this share of the people in their ordi- 
 nary government never fails to inspire them with lofty 
 
 lo sentiments and with a strong aversion from whatever 
 tends to deprive them of their chief importance. 
 
 If anything were wanting to this necessary operation 
 of the form of government, religion would have given 
 it a complete effect. Religion, always a principle of 
 
 15 energy, in this new people is no way worn out or 
 impaired ; and their mode of professing it is also one 
 main cause of this free spirit. The people are Protest- 
 ants, and of that kind which is the most adverse to all 
 implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a 
 
 20 persuasion not only favorable to liberty, but built upon 
 it. I do not think, Sir, that the reason of this averse- 
 ness in the dissenting churches from all that looks like 
 absolute government is so much to be sought in their 
 religious tenets as in their history. Every one knows 
 
 25 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 
 great favor and every kind of support from authority. 
 The Church of England too was formed from her cradle 
 
Speech on Conciliation 6i 
 
 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 justify 
 that opposition only on a strong claim to natural liberty. 
 Their very existence depended on the powerful and un- 5 
 remitted assertion of that claim. All Protestantism, even 
 the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the 
 religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a 
 refinement on the principle of resistance : it is the dis- 
 sidence of dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant 10 
 religion. This religion, under a variety of denomina- 
 tions agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the 
 spirit of Hberty, is predominant in most of the northern 
 provinces, where the Church of England, notwithstand- 
 ing its legal rights, is in reality no more than a sort of 15 
 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 foreigners which has been con- 
 stantly flowing into these colonies has, for the greatest 20 
 part, been composed of dissenters from the establishments^ 
 of their several countries, and have brought with them a 
 temper and character far from alien to that of the people 
 with whom they mixed. 
 
 Sir, I can perceive by their manner that some gentle- 25 
 
 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 
 
 1 Comprising. 2 State churches. ^ Scope, 
 
62 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 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 
 
 5 northward. It is, that in Virginia and the Carolinas 
 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. Free- 
 dom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of 
 
 10 rank and privilege. Not seeing there that freedom, 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 
 
 15 noble and liberal. I do not mean. Sir, to 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 south- 
 ern colonies are much more strongly and with a higher 
 
 20 and more stubborn spirit attached to liberty than those 
 to the northward. Such were all the ancient common- 
 wealths ; such were our Gothic ancestors ; such in our 
 days were the Poles ; and such will be all masters of 
 slaves, who are not slaves themselves. In such a people 
 
 25 the haughtiness of domination combines 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 growth and effect of this untractable spirit : I mean 
 
Speech on Conciliation 6;^ 
 
 their education. In no country perhaps in the world is 
 the law so general 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 
 the Congress were lawyers. But all who read (and most 5 
 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 ex- 
 ported to the plantations. The colonists have now fallen 10 
 into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear 
 that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's C(?m- 
 mentaries in America as in England. General Gage 
 marks out this disposition very particularly in a letter on 
 your table. He states that all the people in his govern- 15 
 ment 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 con- 
 stitutions.^ The smartness of debate will say that this 
 knowledge ought to teach them more clearly the rights 20 
 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 dis- 
 dain that ground. He has heard, as well as I, that when 25 
 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 
 1 Enactments. ^ The Attorney-General. 
 
64 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 broken by these happy methods, it is stubborn and 
 litigious. Abeicnt stiidia hi mores. This study renders 
 men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready 
 in defence, full of resources. In other countries the 
 5 people, more simple and of a less mercurial cast, judge of 
 an ill principle in government only by an actual griev- 
 ance ; here they anticipate the evil and judge of the 
 pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle; 
 They augur misgovernment at a distance and snuff the 
 
 10 approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze. 
 
 The last cause of this disobedient spirit in the colonies 
 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 
 
 15 them. No contrivance can prevent the effect of this 
 distance in weakening government. Seas roll 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 minis- 
 
 20 ters of vengeance, who carry your bolts in their pounces 
 to the remotest verge of the sea. But 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, 
 
 25 and bite the chains of Nature ? 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. 
 
Speech on Conciliation 6^ 
 
 The Turk cannot 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 5 
 a loose rein, that he may govern at all ; and the whole 
 of the force and vigor of his authority in his centre 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 ; she 10 
 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 prov- 
 inces, of manners in the southern, of education, of the 15 
 remoteness of situation from the first mover of govern- 
 ment, — from all these causes a fierce spirit of liberty 
 has grown up. It has grown with the growth of the peo- 
 ple in your colonies, and increased with the increase of 
 their wealth : a spirit that, unhappily meeting with an 20 
 exercise of power in England, which, however 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 a 25 
 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 
 arbitrary and boundless authority. Perhaps we might 
 
 BURKE ON CONCILIATION — 5 
 
66 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 wish the colonists to be persuaded that their Hberty is 
 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 
 5 their spirit deserves praise or blame, but what, in the 
 name of God, shall we do with it ? You have before 
 you the object, such as it is, with all its glories, with all 
 its imperfections on its head. You see the magnitude, 
 the importance, the temper, the habits, the disorders. 
 
 10 By all these considerations we are strongly urged to de- 
 termine something concerning it. We are called upon 
 to fix some rule and line for our future conduct, which 
 may give a litde stability to our politics and prevent the 
 return of such unhappy deliberations as the present. 
 
 15 Every such return will bring the matter before us in a 
 still more untractable form. For what 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 
 
 20 resistance has been pushed, upon both sides, as far as 
 it would go, there is nothing so sohd 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 the popular 
 
 25 part of the colony constitution derived all its activity, and 
 its first vital movement, from the pleasure of the crown. 
 We thought. Sir, that the utmost which the discontented, 
 colonists could do was to disturb authority ; we never 
 dreamt they could of themselves supply it, knowing in 
 
Speech on Conciliation 67 
 
 general what an operose business it is to establish a gov- 
 ernment absolutely new. But having for our purposes in 
 this contention resolved that none but an obedient assem- 
 bly should sit, the humors of the people there, finding all 
 passage through the legal channel stopped, with great 5 
 violence broke out another way. Some provinces have 
 tried their experiment, as we have tried ours ; and theirs 
 has succeeded. They have formed a government suffi- 
 cient for its purposes, without the bustle of a revolution 
 or the troublesome formality of an election. Evident 10 
 necessity and tacit consent have done the business in an 
 instant. So well they have done it that Lord Dun more 
 (the account is among the fragments on your table) tells 
 you that the new institution is infinitely better obeyed 
 than the ancient government ever was in its most fortu- 15 
 nate periods. Obedience is what makes government, and 
 not the names by which it is called : not the name of 
 governor, as formerly, or committee, as at present. This 
 new government has originated directly from the people, 
 and was not transmitted through any of the ordinary 20 
 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 the 25 
 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. 
 Pursuing the same plan of punishing, by the denial of 
 
68 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 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 com- 
 5 plete submission. The experiment was tried. A new, 
 strange, unexpected face of things appeared. Anarchy 
 is found tolerable. A vast province has now subsisted, 
 and subsisted in a considerable degree of health and 
 vigor, for near a twelvemonth, without governor, without 
 
 10 public council, without judges, without executive magis- 
 trates. 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 
 
 15 believed infallible are either not of the importance they 
 were imagined to be, or that we have not at all adverted 
 to some other far more important and far more power- 
 ful principles, which entirely overrule those we had con- 
 sidered as omnipotent. I am much against any further 
 
 20 experiments which tend to put to the proof any more 
 of these allowed opinions which contribute so much to 
 the public tranquilKty. In effect, we suffer as much at 
 home by this loosening of all ties and this concussion^ 
 of all established opinions, as we do abroad. For, in 
 
 25 order to prove that the Americans have no right to 
 their liberties, we are every day endeavoring to subvert 
 the maxims which preserve the whole spirit of our own. 
 To prove that Americans ought not to be free, we are 
 
 1 Shaking. 
 
Speech on Conciliation 69 
 
 obliged to depreciate the value of freedom itself; and 
 we never seem to gain a paltry advantage over them in 
 debate, without attacking some of those principles, or 
 deriding some of those feehngs, for which our ancestors 
 have shed their blood. 5 
 
 But, Sir, in wishing to put an end to pernicious 
 experiments, 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 10 
 aspect. Sir, if I were capable of engaging you to an 
 equal attention, I 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 15 
 change that spirit, as inconvenient, by removing the 
 causes ; to prosecute 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 ; 20 
 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 sally of anger, like the frowardness 
 of peevish children, who, when they cannot get all they 
 would have, are resolved to take nothing. 25 
 
 The first of these plans, to change the spirit, as incon- 
 venient, by removing the causes, I think is the most 
 like a systematic proceeding. It is radical in its princi- 
 ple j but it is attended with great difficulties, some of 
 
yo Speech on Conciliation 
 
 them little short, as I conceive, of impossibilities. This 
 will appear by examining into the plans which have been 
 proposed. 
 
 As the growing population in the colonies is evidently 
 
 5 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 
 grants of land. But to this scheme there are two objec- 
 
 10 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, 
 then the only effect of this avarice of desolation, this 
 
 15 hoarding of a royal wilderness, would be to raise the 
 value of the possessions in the hands of the great private 
 monopolists, without any adequate check to the growing 
 and alarming mischief of population. 
 
 But if you stopped your grants, what would be the 
 
 20 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 
 on their annual tillage and remove with their flocks and 
 
 25 herds to another. Many of the people in the back 
 settlements are already little attached to particular situ- 
 ations. Already they have topped the Appalachian 
 Mountains. From thence they behold before them an 
 1 Even though. 
 
speech on Conciliation 71 
 
 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 
 forget a government by which they were disowned ; 5 
 would become hordes of English Tartars, and pouring 
 down upon your unfortified frontiers a fierce and irre- 
 sistible cavalry, become masters of your governors and 
 your counsellors, your collectors and comptrollers, and of 
 all the slaves that adhered to them. Such would, and 10 
 in no long time must, be the effect of attempting to for- 
 bid 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 an endeavor to keep 
 as a lair of wild beasts that earth which God, by an 15 
 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 people, by every 
 kind of bounty, to fixed establishments. We have 
 invited the husbandman to look to authority for his title. 20 
 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 districts, that the 
 ruling power should never be wholly out of sight. We 
 have settled all we could, and we have carefully attended 25 
 every settlement with government. 
 
 Adhering, Sir, as I do, to this policy, as well as for the 
 reasons I have just given, I think this new project of hedg- 
 ing-in population to be neither prudent nor practicable. 
 
72 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 To impoverish the colonies in general, and in par- 
 ticular to arrest the noble course of their marine enter- 
 
 • prises, would be a more easy task. I freely confess 
 it. We have showi\ a disposition to a system of this 
 5 kind, — a disposition even to continue the restraint after 
 the offence, 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 
 
 10 sufficient for this. I do not look on the direct and 
 immediate 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 
 
 15 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, ex- 
 ploded ^ problem of tyranny, which proposes to beggar its 
 subjects into submission. But remember, when you have 
 
 20 completed your system of impoverishment, that Nature 
 still proceeds in her ordinary course ; that discontent 
 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 be 
 
 25 strong enough to complete your ruin. Spoliatis a7'ma 
 supers unt. 
 
 The temper and character which prevail in our 
 colonies are, I am afraid, unalterable by any human art. 
 1 Discredited. 
 
speech on Conciliation 73 
 
 We cannot, I fear, falsify the pedigree of this fierce peo- 
 ple and persuade them that they are not sprung from a 
 nation in whose veins the blood of freedom circulates. 
 The language in which they would hear you tell them 
 this tale would detect the imposition ; your speech would 5 
 betray you. An Englishman is the unfittest person on 
 earth to argue another Enghshman into slavery. 
 
 I think it is nearly as little in our power to change their 
 republican rehgion as their free descent, or to substitute 
 the Roman Catholic as a penalty, or the Church of 10 
 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 ef^cacy in the 
 New. The education of the Americans is also on the 
 same unalterable bottom^ with their religion. You 15 
 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 assemblies by re- 
 fusing to choose those persons who are best read in their 
 privileges. It would be no less impracticable to think of 20 
 wholly annihilating the popular assemblies in which these 
 lawyers sit. The army, by which we must govern in 
 their place, would be far more chargeable ^ to us ; not 
 quite so effectual; and perhaps in the end full as difficult 
 to be kept in obedience. 25 
 
 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 
 ^ Foundation. "^ Mysterious, occult. ^ Costly. 
 
74 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 their slaves. This project has had its advocates and pane- 
 gyrists ; yet I never could argue myself into any opinion 
 of it. Slaves are often much attached to their masters. 
 A general wild offer of liberty would not always be 
 5 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 ; and in this auspicious 
 scheme we should have both these pleasing tasks on our 
 hands at once. But when we talk of enfranchisement, 
 
 10 do we not perceive that the American master may 
 enfranchise too, and arm servile hands in defence of 
 freedom? — a measure to which other people have had 
 recourse more than once, and not without success, in 
 a desperate situation of their affairs. 
 
 15 Slaves as these unfortunate black people are, and dull 
 as all men are from slavery, must they not a little suspect 
 the offer of freedom from that very nation which has sold 
 them to their present masters? from that nation, one of 
 whose causes of quarrel with those masters is their refusal 
 
 20 to deal any more in that inhuman traffic? An offer of 
 freedom from England would come rather oddly, shipped 
 to them in an African vessel, 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 
 
 25 Guinea captain attempting at the same instant to publish 
 his proclamation of liberty and to advertise his sale of 
 slaves. 
 
 But let us suppose all these moral difficulties got over. 
 The ocean remains. You cannot pump this dry ; and as 
 
Speech on Conciliation 75 
 
 long as it continues in its present bed, so long all the 
 causes which weaken authority by distance will continue. 
 
 Ye gods, annihilate but space and time, 
 And make two lovers happy ! 
 
 was a pious and passionate prayer, but just as reasonable 5 
 as many of the serious wishes of very grave and 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 preju- 10 
 dices irreconcilable to the late exercise of our authority, 
 but that the spirit infallibly will continue ; and continuing, 
 will produce such effects as now embarrass us, — the 
 second mode under consideration is to prosecute that 
 spirit in its overt acts as criininal. 15 
 
 At this proposition I must pause a moment. The 
 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 20 
 conduct of scattered individuals, or even of 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 25 
 ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public 
 contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an in- 
 dictment against a whole people. I cannot insult and 
 
76 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 ridicule the feelings of millions of my fellow-creatures, as 
 Sir Edward Coke insulted one excellent individual (Sir 
 Walter Raleigh) at the bar. I am not ripe to pass 
 sentence on the gravest public bodies, entrusted with 
 5 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 judicious ; for sober men, not decent ; for minds 
 tinctured ^ with humanity, not mild and merciful. 
 
 10 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 of 
 many states under one common head, whether this head 
 be a monarch or a presiding republic. It does in such 
 
 15 constitutions frequently happen (and nothing but the 
 dismal, cold, dead uniformity of servitude can prevent its 
 happening) that the subordinate parts have many local 
 privileges and immunities. Between these privileges and 
 the supreme common authority the line may be extremely 
 
 2onice.^ Of course disputes — often, too, very bitter dis- 
 putes — and much ill blood will arise. But though every 
 privilege is an exemption (in the case) from the ordinary 
 exercise of the supreme authority, it is no denial of it. 
 The claim of a privilege seems rather, ex vi tejinini, to 
 
 25 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. Now in such unfortunate 
 
 quarrels among the component parts of a great political 
 
 ^ Imbued. 2 Fine, difficult to see. 
 
Speech on Conciliation 77 
 
 union of communities, I can scarcely conceive anything 
 more completely imprudent than for the head of the 
 empire to insist that, if any privilege is pleaded against 
 his will or his acts, [that] his whole authority is denied ; 
 instantly to proclaim rebeUion, to beat to arms, and to 5 
 put the offending provinces under the ban. Will not this. 
 Sir, very soon teach the provinces to make no distinction 
 on their part ? Will it not teach them that the govern- 
 ment against which a claim of liberty is tantamount to 
 high treason is a government to which submission is 10 
 equivalent to slavery? It may not always be quite con- 
 venient to impress dependent communities with such 
 an idea. 
 
 We are, indeed, in all disputes with the colonies, by 
 the necessity of things, the judge. It is true. Sir. 15 
 But I confess that the character of judge in my own 
 cause is a thing that frightens me. Instead of filhng me 
 with pride, I am exceedingly humbled by it. I cannot 
 proceed with a stern, assured, judicial confidence, until 
 I find myself in something more like a judicial character. 20 
 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- 
 cided against the superior as the subordinate power. 
 Sir, let me add, too, that the opinion of my having some 25 
 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 certain cir- 
 cumstances, were not the most odious of all wrongs and 
 
yS Speech on Conciliation 
 
 the most vexatious of all injustice. Sir, these considera- 
 tions have great weight with me, when I find things so 
 circumstanced that I see the same party at once a civil 
 htigant against me in point of right and a culprit before 
 
 5 me, while I sit as a criminal judge on 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 
 
 10 he will. 
 
 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 
 
 15 persons who have seemed to adopt that mode, by 
 lately 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 
 
 20 as such ; nor have any steps been taken towards the 
 apprehension or conviction of any individual offender, 
 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 
 
 25 towards an independent power than the punishment of 
 rebellious subjects. All this seems rather inconsistent ; 
 but it shows how difficult it is to apply these juridical 
 ideas to our present case. 
 
 1 Petitioned. 
 
speech on Conciliation 79 
 
 In this situation, let us seriously and coolly ponder. 
 What is it we have got by all our menaces, which have 
 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 5 
 advances have we made towards our object, by the 
 sending of a force which, by land and sea, is no contemp- 
 tible strength? Has the disorder abated? Nothing 
 less. When I see things in this situation, after such 
 confident hopes, bold promises and active exertions, 10 
 I cannot for my life avoid a suspicion that the 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 15 
 be inapplicable, or, if applicable, are in the highest de- 
 gree inexpedient; what way yet remains? No way is 
 open but the third and last, — to comply with the Ameri- 
 can spirit as necessary ; or, if you please, to submit to it 
 as a necessary evil. 20 
 
 If we adopt this mode, if we mean to conciliate and 
 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 of25 
 British freedom. They complain that they are taxed in 
 a Parliament in which they are not represented. If you 
 mean to satisfy them at all, you must satisfy them with 
 1 Exactly. 
 
8o Speech on Conciliation 
 
 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 them, but of a kind 
 totally different. Such an act may be a wise regulation, 
 5 but it is no concession ; whereas our present theme is the 
 mode of giving satisfaction. 
 
 Sir, I think you must perceive that I am resolved this 
 day to have nothing at all to do with the question of 
 the right of taxation. Some gentlemen startle,^ but it 
 
 lo is true ; I put it totally out of the question. It is less 
 than nothing in my consideration. I do not indeed won- 
 der, nor will you. Sir, that gentlemen of profound learn- 
 ing are fond of displaying it on this profound subject. 
 But my consideration is narrow, confined, and wholly 
 
 15 hmited to the policy of the question. I do not examine 
 whether the giving away a man's money be a power ex- 
 cepted and reserved out of the general trust of govern- 
 ment, and how far all mankind, in all forms of polity, 
 are entitled to an exercise of that right by the charter of 
 
 20 Nature ; or whether, on the contrary, a right of taxation 
 is necessarily involved in the general principle of legisla- 
 tion and inseparable from the ordinary supreme power. 
 These are deep questions, where great names militate 
 against each other, where reason is perplexed, and an 
 
 25 appeal to authorities only thickens the confusion : for 
 high and reverend authorities Hft up their heads on both 
 sides, and there is no sure footing in the middle. This 
 point is the great 
 
 1 Are startled. 
 
Speech on Conciliation 8i 
 
 Serbonian bog, 
 Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, 
 Where armies whole have sunk. 
 
 I do not intend to be overwhelmed in that bog, though 
 in such respectable company. The question with me is, 5 
 not whether you have a right to render your people mis- 
 erable, but whether it is not your interest to make 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 pohtic act the worse for being a generous one? Is 10 
 no concession proper but that which is made from your 
 want of right to keep what you grant ? Or does it lessen 
 the grace or dignity of relaxing in the exercise of an 
 odious claim, because you have your evidence-room full 
 of titles and your magazines stuffed with arms to enforce 15 
 them ? What signify all those titles and all those arms ? 
 Of what avail are they, 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 ? 20 
 
 Such is steadfastly my opinion of the absolute necessity 
 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 25 
 solemnly abjured all the rights of citizens, 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 univer- 
 
 BURKE ON CONCILIATION — 6 
 
82 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 sally prevalent in ray own day, and to govern two million 
 of men, impatient of servitude, on the principles of free- 
 dom. I am not determining a point of law ; I am 
 restoring tranquillity ; and the general character and 
 
 5 situation of a people must determine what sort of govern- 
 ment is fitted for them. That point nothing else can or 
 ought to determine. 
 
 My idea, therefore, without considering whether we 
 yield as matter of right or grant as matter of favor, is 
 
 \oto 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 we mean 
 forever to adhere to that solemn declaration of systematic 
 
 15 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 a taxing power. Such a measure was then sufficient 
 
 20 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 con- 
 sistency of our own future proceedings. 
 
 25 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 Ameri- 
 can financiers. But our misfortune is, we are too acute ; 
 1 Suspension. 
 
speech on Conciliation 83 
 
 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 parliamen- 
 tary concession freely confess that they hope no good 
 from taxation ; but they apprehend the colonists have 5 
 further views, and if this point were conceded, they 
 would instantly attack the trade laws. These gentlemen 
 are convinced that this was the intention from the begin- 
 ning, and the quarrel of the Americans with taxation 
 was no more than a cloak and cover to this design. 10 
 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, however. Sir, not a 
 little surprised at this kind of discourse whenever I hear 
 it ; and I am the more surprised on account of the argu- 15 
 ments which I constantly find in company with it, and 
 which are often urged from the same mouths and on the 
 same day. 
 
 For instance, when we allege that it is against reason 
 to tax a people under so many restraints in trade as the 20 
 Americans, the noble lord in the blue ribbon^ shall tell 
 you that the restraints on trade are futile and useless, of 
 no advantage to us, and of no burden to those on whom 
 they are imposed ; that the trade to America is not 
 secured by the Acts of Navigation, but by the natural 25 
 and irresistible advantage of a commercial preference. 
 
 Such is the merit of the trade laws in this posture 
 
 1 Careful, detailed, 2 George Rice. 
 
 3 Lord North. 
 
84 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 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 impossibihty 
 
 5 of obtaining an effective revenue from the colonies ; — 
 when these things are pressed, or rather press theui- 
 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 
 
 10 useless taxation is to be kept sacred, not for its own sake, 
 but as a counterguard and security of the laws of 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. 
 
 15 They are separately given up as of no value ; and yet 
 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 inutihty of the trade laws ; for with- 
 
 20 out idolizing them, I am sure they are still in 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 dis- 
 
 25 cern how the revenue laws form any security 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. 
 
Speech on Conciliation 85 
 
 One fact is clear and indisputable : the public and 
 avowed origin of this quarrel was on taxation. This 
 quarrel has indeed brought on new disputes on new ques- 
 tions ; but certainly the least bitter and the fewest of all 
 on the trade laws. To judge which of the two be the 5 
 real, radical cause of quarrel, we have to see 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 10 
 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. 15 
 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 20 
 own acts, but on your conjectures. Surely it is prepos- 
 terous 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 further. Alas ! alas ! when 25 
 will this speculating 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 
 
86 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 to accede to the desires of his discontented subjects ? 
 Is there anything pecuhar 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 
 
 5 fewer causes of dissatisfaction are left by government, the 
 more the subject will be inclined to resist and rebel ? 
 
 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 
 
 10 from entertaining the idea of a conciliatory concession, 
 founded on the principles which I have just 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 certainly 
 
 15 the most probable means of securing me from all error. 
 I set out with a perfect distrust of my own abilities, a 
 total renunciation of every speculation of my own, and 
 with a profound reverence for the wisdom of our an- 
 cestors, who have left us the inheritance of so happy a 
 
 20 constitution and so flourishing an empire, and, 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 Austrian 
 
 25 family, whenever they were at a loss in the Spanish 
 
 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 mislead them ; 
 
 1 Sound. 2 Surmises. 
 
speech on Conciliation 87 
 
 and the issue of their affairs showed that they had not 
 chosen the most perfect standard. But, Sir, I am sure 
 that I shall not be misled when, in a case of constitu- 
 tional difficulty, I consult the genius of the English 
 Constitution. Consulting at that oracle (it was with all 5 
 due humility and piety), I found four capital examples 
 in a similar case before me : those of Ireland, Wales, 
 Chester and Durham. 
 
 Ireland, before the Enghsh conquest, though never 
 governed by a despotic power, had no Parliament. How 10 
 far the English Parliament itself was at that time mod- 
 elled according to the present form is disputed among 
 antiquarians. But we have all the reason in the world 
 to be assured that a form of Parliament such as England 
 then enjoyed she instantly communicated to Ireland ; 15 
 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 baron- 
 age and the feudal knighthood, the roots of our primitive 
 consUtution, were early transplanted into that soil, and 20 
 grew and flourished there. Magna Charta, if it did not 
 give us originally a 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. Ireland was made im- 25 
 mediately a partaker. This benefit of English laws and 
 Hberties, I confess, was not at first extended to all 
 Ireland. Mark the consequence. English authority 
 and English liberties had exactly the same boundaries. 
 
88 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 Your standard could never be advanced an inch before 
 your privileges. Sir John Davies shows beyond a doubt 
 that the refusal of a general communication of these 
 rights was the true cause why Ireland was five hundred 
 5 years in subduing^ ; and after the vain projects of a mili- 
 tary government, attempted in the reign of Queen Eliza- 
 beth, it was soon discovered that nothing could make 
 that country English, in civility" and allegiance, but your 
 laws and your forms of legislature. It was not English 
 
 10 arms, but the English Constitution, that conquered Ire- 
 land. From that time Ireland has ever had a general 
 Parliament, as she had before a partial Parliament. You 
 changed the people, you altered the religion, but you 
 never touched the form or the vital substance of free 
 
 15 government in that kingdom. You deposed kings ; you 
 restored them ; you altered the succession to theirs as 
 well as to your own crown ; but you never altered their 
 constitution, the principle of which was respected by 
 usurpation, restored with the restoration of monarchy, 
 
 20 and established, I trust, forever by the glorious Revolu- 
 tion. This has made Ireland the great and flourishing 
 kingdom that it is : and from a disgrace and a burden 
 intolerable to this nation, has rendered her a principal 
 part of her strength and ornament. This country cannot 
 
 25 be said to have ever formally taxed her. The irregular 
 things done in the confusion of mighty troubles and on 
 the hinge ^ of great revolutions, even if all were done that 
 
 ^ Being: subdued. ^ Civilization. ^ Eve. 
 
Speech on Conciliation 89 
 
 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 Hberties could stand 
 a moment if the casual deviations from them at such 
 times were suffered to be used as proofs of their nullity. 5 
 By the lucrative amount of such casual breaches in the 
 Constitution, judge what the stated and fixed rule of sup- 
 ply has been in' that kingdom. Your Irish pensioners 
 would starve if they had no other fund to hve on than 
 taxes granted by English authority. Turn your eyes to 10 
 those popular grants from whence all your great supplies 
 are come, and learn to respect that only source of pubhc 
 wealth in the British Empire. 
 
 My next example is Wales. This country was said 
 to be reduced by Henry the Third. It was said more 15 
 truly to be so by Edward the First. But though then 
 conquered, it was not looked upon as any part of the 
 realm of England. Its old constitution, whatever that 
 might have been, was destroyed, and no good one was 
 substituted in its place. The care of that tract ^ was put 20 
 into the hands of Lords Marchers, — a form of govern- 
 ment of a very singular kind, a strange, heterogeneous 
 monster, something between hostility and government : 
 perhaps it has a sort of resemblance, according to the 
 modes ^ of those times, to that of commander-in-chief at 25 
 present, to whom all civil power is granted as secondary. 
 The manners of the Welsh nation followed the genius 
 
 1 Region. 2 Usages. 
 
90 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 of the government : the people were ferocious, restive, 
 savage, and uncultivated, sometimes composed,^ never 
 pacified. Wales, within itself, was in perpetual disorder, 
 and it kept the frontier of England in perpetual alarm. 
 
 5 Benefits from it to the state there were none. Wales was 
 only known to England by incursion and 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 
 
 10 the sending all sorts of arms into Wales, as you prohibit 
 by proclamation (with something more of 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 legaHty) to disarm New England 
 
 15 by an instruction. They made an act to drag offenders 
 from Wales into England for trial, as 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. 
 
 20 They made acts to restrain trade, as you do ; and they 
 prevented the Welsh from 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 
 
 25 of penal regulation on the subject of Wales. 
 
 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 precedents, 
 1 Quieted, 
 
Speech on Conciliation 91 
 
 that all the while Wales rid this kingdom like an incubus; 
 that it was an unprofitable and oppressive burden ; and 
 that an Englishman travelling 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 5 
 not until after two hundred years discovered that by 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 10 
 tyrannies the least be endured, and that laws made 
 against an whole nation were not the most effectual 
 methods for securing its obedience. Accordingly, in the 
 twenty-seventh year of Henry the Eighth, the course was 
 entirely altered. With a preamble stating the entire and 15 
 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 nation should have a right to Enghsh liberties, 20 
 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-proportioned representation by counties and 25 
 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 of the 
 
9^ Speech on Conciliation 
 
 English Constitution had arisen in their hearts, all was 
 harmony within and without : — 
 
 — Simul alba nautis 
 
 Stella refulsit, 
 5 Defluit saxis agitatus humor; 
 
 Concidunt venti, fugiuntque nubes, 
 Et minax (quod sic voluere) ponto 
 
 Unda recumbit. 
 
 The very same year the County Palatine of Chester 
 10 received the same relief from its oppressions and 
 the same remedy to its disorders. Before this time 
 Chester was little less distempered^ than Wales. The 
 inhabitants, without rights themselves, were the fittest 
 to destroy the rights of others ; and from thence Richard 
 15 the Second drew the standing army of archers with which 
 for a time he oppressed England. The people of Chester 
 applied to Parliament in a petition penned as I shall read 
 to you : — 
 
 To the King our Sovereign Lord, in most humble wise shewen ^ 
 20 unto your most excellent Majesty the inhabitants of your Grace's 
 County Palatine of Chester: (i) That where ^ the said County 
 Palatine of Chester is and hath been always hitherto exempt, ex- 
 cluded and separated out and from your high court of Parliament, 
 to have any knights and burgesses within the said court; by reason 
 25 whereof the said inhabitants have hitherto sustained manifold dis- 
 herisons,* losses and damages, as well in their lands, goods and 
 bodies, as in the good, civil and politic governance and maintenance 
 of the commonwealth of their said country. (2) And forasmuch 
 
 1 Disordered. ^ Show. The form is obsolete. 
 
 2 Whereas. * Deprivations. 
 
^" 
 
 Speech on Conciliation 93 
 
 as the said inhabitants have always hitherto been bound by the acts 
 and statues 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, 5 
 and 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 and privileges of your said County Palatine, as prejudicial lo 
 unto the commonwealth, quietness, rest and peace of your Grace's 
 most bounden subjects inhabiting within the same. 
 
 What did Parliament with this audacious address? 
 Reject it as a Hbel ? Treat it as an affront to government? 
 Spurn it as a derogation from the rights of legislature ? 15 
 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, without 
 softening or temperament,^ unpurged of the original 
 bitterness and indignation of complaint ; they made it 20 
 the very preamble to their act of redress, and consecrated 
 its principle to all ages in the sanctuary of legislation. 
 
 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 servitude, 25 
 is the cure for anarchy ; as rehgion, and not atheism, is 
 the true remedy for superstition. Sir, this pattern of 
 Chester was followed in the reign of Charles the Second 
 with regard to the County Palatine of Durham, which is 
 ^ Nor. 2 Modification. 
 
94 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 my fourth 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 preamble is 
 nearly the same with^ that of the Chester act; and 
 5 without affecting the abstract extent of the authority 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. 
 
 10 Now if the doctrines of policy contained in these pre- 
 ambles 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 ? The 
 
 15 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 Barring- 
 ton's account of North Wales, and take that as a standard 
 
 20 to measure the rest, there is no comparison. The 
 people cannot amount to above 200,000, — not a tenth 
 part of the number in the colonies. Is America in 
 rebelHon? Wales was hardly ever free from it. Have 
 you attempted to govern America by penal statutes? 
 
 25 You made fifteen for Wales. But your legislative au- 
 thority is perfect with regard to America. Was it less 
 perfect in Wales, Chester, and Durham? But America 
 is virtually^ represented. What ! does the electric force 
 1 As. 2 Essentially, though not actually. 
 
Speech on Conciliation 95 
 
 of virtual representation more easily pass over the Atlan- 
 tic 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 representation, 5 
 however ample, to be totally insufficient for the freedom 
 of the inhabitants of territories that are so near and com- 
 paratively so inconsiderable. How then can I think it 
 sufficient for those which are infinitely greater and in- 
 finitely more remote ? 10 
 
 You will now, Sir, perhaps imagine that I am on 
 the point of proposing to you a scheme for a representa- 
 tion of the colonies in ParHament. Perhaps I might be 
 inclined to entertain some such thought ; but a great 
 flood stops me in my course. Opposnit natura — I can- 15 
 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 
 impracticabihty of such a representation: but I do not 
 see my way to it ; and those who have been more confi- 20 
 dent 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. 
 When we cannot give the benefit as we would wish, let 25 
 us not refuse it aUogether. If we cannot give the prin- 
 cipal, let us find a substitute. But how? Where ? What 
 substitute? 
 
 Fortunately I am not obliged for the ways and 
 
96 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 means of this substitute to tax my own unproductive in- 
 vention. I am not even obliged to go to the rich treas- 
 ury of the fertile framers of imaginary commonwealths ; 
 not to the Republic of Plato, not to the Utopia of More, 
 5 not to the Oceana of Harrington. It is before 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 an- 
 
 locient constitutional policy of this kingdom with regard 
 to representation, as that poHcy 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, advan- 
 
 15 tage and honor until the year 1763. 
 
 My resolutions, therefore, mean to estabhsh the equity 
 and justice of a taxation of America by grants and not by 
 imposition ; to mark the legal competency of the colony 
 assemblies for the support of their government in peace 
 
 20 and for public aids in time of war ; to acknowledge 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 parliamentary taxation 
 as a jnethod of supply. 
 
 25 These solid truths compose six fundamental proposi- 
 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 
 
Speech on Conciliation 97 
 
 from solicitous whether you accept or refuse the last. I 
 think these six massive pillars will be of strength suffi- 
 cient to support the temple of British concord. I have 
 no more doubt than I entertain of my existence that, if 
 you admitted these, you would command an immediate 5 
 peace, and, with but tolerable future management, a last- 
 ing obedience in America. I am not arrogant in this 
 confident assurance. The propositions are all mere 
 matters of fact ; and if they are such facts as draw 
 irresistible conclusions even in the stating, this is the 10 
 power of truth, and not any management of mine. 
 
 Sir, I shall, open the whole plan to you, together with 
 such observations on the motions as may tend to illus- 
 trate them where they may want explanation. The first 
 is a resolution, — i- 
 
 That the colonies and plantations of Great Britain in North 
 America, consisting of fourteen separate governments, and con- 
 taining two millions and upwards of free inhabitants, have not had 
 the liberty and privilege of electing and sending any knights and 
 burgesses, or others, to represent them in the high court of Parlia- 20 
 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 verbatim 
 from acts of Parliament. 25 
 
 The second is Hke unto the first, — 
 
 That the said colonies and plantations have been liable to, and 
 bounden^ by, several subsidies, payments, rates and taxes, given 
 
 1 Bound. 
 
 BURKE ON CONCILIATION — 7 
 
98 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 and granted by Parliament, though the said colonies and planta- 
 tions 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 
 5 and grieved by subsidies given, granted and assented to, in the 
 said court, in a manner prejudicial to the commonwealth, quiet- 
 ness, rest and peace of the subjects inhabiting within the same. 
 
 Is this description too hot or too cold, too strong or 
 too weak? Does it arrogate too much to the supreme 
 10 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 Ofellaeus, 
 15 Rusticus, abnormis sapiens. 
 
 It is the genuine produce of the ancient, rustic, manly, 
 home-bred 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 
 
 20 profanation to touch with a tool the stones which con- 
 struct 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 
 
 25 odious vice of restless and unstable minds. I put my 
 foot in the tracks of our forefathers, where I can neither 
 wander nor stumble. Deteruiining to fix articles of 
 peace, I was resolved not to be wise beyond what was 
 written ; I was resolved to use nothing else than the form 
 
Speech on Conciliation 99 
 
 of 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. 5 
 
 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 thought 
 them true with regard to the counties of Chester and 10 
 Durham. They will deny that the Americans were ever 
 " touched and grieved " with the taxes. If they con- 
 sider nothing in taxes but their weight as pecuniary 
 impositions, there might be some pretence for this 
 denial. But men may be sorely touched and deeply 15 
 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 trifle 
 on the highway, it is not the twopence lost that consti- 
 tutes the capital outrage. This is not confined to privi- 20 
 leges. Even ancient indulgences withdrawn, without 
 offence on the part of those who enjoyed such favors, 
 operate as grievances. But were the Americans then not 
 touched and grieved by the taxes, in some measure, 
 merely as taxes? If so, why were they almost all either 25 
 wholly repealed or exceedingly reduced? Were they 
 not touched and grieved even by the regulating duties of 
 the sixth of George the Second? Else why were the 
 duties first reduced to one-third in 1 764, and afterwards 
 L.ofC. 
 
lOO speech on Conciliation 
 
 to a third of that third in the year 1766? Were they 
 not 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, which were 
 5 likewise repealed, and which Lord Hillsborough tells you 
 (for the ministry) were laid contrary to the true principle 
 of commerce ? Is not the assurance 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 
 
 10 grieve them? Is not the 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, repeals, assurances and resolutions ? 
 
 15 The next proposition is, — 
 
 That, from the distance of the said colonies and from other cir- 
 cumstances, no method hath hitherto been devised for procuring a 
 representation in Parliament for the said colonies. 
 
 This is an assertion of a fact. I go no further on the 
 30 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. 
 
 The fourth resolution is, — 
 
 25 That each of the said colonies hath within itself a body, chosen 
 in part or in the whole by the freemen, freeholders or other free in- 
 habitants thereof, commonly called the general assembly, or gen- 
 
Speech on Conciliation loi 
 
 eral court, with powers legally to raise, levy and assess, according 
 to the several usages of such colonies, duties and taxes towards 
 defraying ^ all sorts of public services. 
 
 This competence in the colony assembUes is certain. 
 It is proved by the whole tenor of their acts of supply in 5 
 all the assemblies, in which the constant style - of grant- 
 ing is, " An aid to his Majesty " ; and acts granting to 
 the crown have regularly for near a century passed the 
 public offices without dispute. Those who have been 
 pleased paradoxically to deny this right, holding that lo 
 none but the British Parliament can grant to the crown, 
 are wished^ to look to what is done, not only in the 
 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. 15 
 I say that if the crown could be responsible, his Majesty 
 — but certainly the ministers, and even these law officers 
 themselves through whose hands the acts pass, biennially 
 in Ireland or annually in the colonies, are in an habitual 
 course of committing impeachable offences. What habit- 20 
 ual offenders have been all presidents of the council, all 
 secretaries of state, all 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 25 
 theories. 
 
 1 Supply "the cost of." 
 2 Language. 3 Desired. 
 
I02 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 The fifth resolution is also a resolution of fact, — 
 
 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, ac- 
 5 cording to their abilities, v^'hen required thereto by letter from one 
 of his Majesty's 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 
 
 10 wars, and not to take their exertion in foreign ones so 
 
 high ^ as the supplies in the year 1695, not to go back to 
 
 their public contributions in the year 1710, 1 shall begin to 
 
 travel only where the journals give me light, — resolving 
 
 to deal in nothing but fact authenticated by parliamentary 
 
 15 record, and to build myself wholly on 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 jiist 
 and reasonable that the several provinces and colonies of Massa- 
 20 chusetts Bay, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Islan 1, 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 
 dependencies. 
 
 These expenses were immense for such colonies. 
 25 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 : — 
 
 ^ So far back. ^ Journals of the House, Vol. XXV. 
 
 3 Journals of the House, Vol. XXVII. 
 
Speech on Conciliation 103 
 
 His Majesty, being sensible of the zeal and vigor with which his 
 faithful sul:)jects of certain colonies in North America have exerted 
 themselves in defence of his Majesty's just rights and possessions, 
 recommends it to this House to take the same into their considera- 
 tion, and to enable his Majesty to give them such assistance as may 5 
 be di proper reward and encouragement. 
 
 On the 3d of February, 1756/ the House came to a 
 suitable resolution, expressed in words nearly the same as 
 those of the message, but with the further addition that 
 the money then voted was as an encouragement to the 10 
 colonies to exert themselves with vigor. It will not be 
 necessary to go through all the testimonies which your 
 own records have given to the truth of my resolutions. 
 I will only refer you to the places in the journals : — 
 
 Vol. XXVH. — i6th and 19th May, 1757. 15 
 
 Vol. XXVHI. — June ist, 1758; April 26th and 30th, 1759; 
 
 March 26th and 31st, and April 28th, 1760; Jan. 9th and 20th, 1761. 
 Vol. XXIX. — Jan. 22d and 26th, 1762; March 14th and 17th, 
 
 1763- l^ 
 
 Sir, here is the repeated acknowledgment of Parliament 20 
 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 abilities, Parlia- 
 ment having thought it necessary to reimburse them ; 
 secondly, that they had acted legally and laudably in their 25 
 grants of money and their maintenance of troops, since 
 the compensation is expressly given as reward and en- 
 couragement. Reward is not bestowed for acts that are 
 
 1 Journals of the House, Vol. XXVII. 
 
I04 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 unlawful ; and encouragement is not held out to things 
 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 
 5 your own ; and you cannot refuse in the gross what 
 you have so often acknowledged in detail. The ad- 
 mission of this, which will be so honorable to them and 
 to you, will indeed be mortal ^ to all the miserable stories 
 by which the passions of the misguided people have been 
 
 10 engaged in 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 compelled to contribute. How did that fact of their pay- 
 
 15 ing 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 million six hundred thousand pounds 
 sterling money, and was of opinion they would discharge 
 
 20 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 quite so ample 
 
 25 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 colo- 
 nies. However, the taxes after the war continued too 
 1 Fatal. 
 
Speech on Conciliation 105 
 
 great to bear any addition with prudence or propriety ; 
 and when the burdens 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. 5 
 
 We see the sense - of the crown and the sense of Par- 
 hament 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 
 volume and the page. What is the gross, what is the net 10 
 produce? To what service is it applied? How have 
 you appropriated its surplus? What, can none of the 
 many skilful index-makers that we are now employing 
 find any trace of it? Well, let them and that rest to- 
 gether. But are the journals, which say nothing of the 15 
 revenue, as silent on the discontent? Oh, no ! a child 
 may find it. It is the melancholy burden and blot of 
 every page. 
 
 I think, then, I am, from those journals, justified in the 
 sixth and last resolution, which is, — 20 
 
 That it hath been found by experience that the manner of grant- 
 ing 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, than the mode of giving and grant- 
 ing aids in Parliament, to be raised and paid in the said colonies. 25 
 
 This makes the whole of the fundamental part of the 
 plan. The conclusion is irresistible. You cannot say 
 
 1 Upon. 2 Opinion. 
 
io6 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 that you were driven by any necessity to an exercise of 
 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 competent to 
 
 5 the purpose of supplying the exigencies of the state 
 without wounding the prejudices of the people. 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, 
 
 10 — whether you will choose to abide by a profitable expe- 
 rience or a mischievous theory ; whether you choose to 
 build on imagination or fact ; whether you prefer enjoy- 
 ment or hope ; satisfaction in your subjects or discontent? 
 If these propositions are accepted, everything which has 
 
 15 been made to enforce a contrary system must, I 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 man- 
 ner : — 
 
 20 That it may be proper to repeal an act made in the seventh year 
 of the rtign of his present Majesty, entitled, " 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 exporta- 
 tion from this kingdom, of coffee and cocoanuts of the produce of 
 
 25 the said colonies or plantations; for discontinuing the drawbacks 
 payable on China earthenware exported to America; and for more 
 effectually preventing the clandestine running 1 of goods in the 
 said colonies and plantations." — And that it maybe proper to 
 repeal an act iTiade in the fourteenth year of the reign of his pres- 
 
 l Smuggling. 
 
Speech on Conciliation 107 
 
 ent Majesty, entitled, "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 tlie town 
 and within the harbor of Boston, in the province of Massachusetts 
 Bay, in North America." — And that it may be proper to repeal an 5 
 act made in the fourteenth year of the reign of his present Majesty, 
 entitled, "An act for the impartial administration of justice in the 
 cases of persons questioned for any acts done by them in the exe- 
 cution of the law, or for the suppression of riots and tumults, in the 
 province of Massachusetts Bay, in New England." — And that it 10 
 may be proper to repeal an act made in the fourteenth year of the 
 reign of his present Majesty, entitled, "An act for the better regu- 
 lating 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 15 
 Henry the Eighth, entitled, " An act for the trial of treasons com- 
 mitted out of the king's dominions." 
 
 I wish, Sir, to repeal the Boston Port Bill, because 
 (independently of the dangerous precedent of suspending 
 the rights of the subject during the king's pleasure) it 20 
 was passed, as I apprehend, with less regularity and on 
 more partial principles than it ought. The corporation 
 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 25 
 present session does not go to the length of the 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 punish- 30 
 ment already partially inflicted. 
 
io8 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 Ideas of prudence and accommodation to circumstances 
 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 
 5 power in the two former provinces than it enjoyed in the 
 latter, and though the abuses have been full as great and 
 as flagrant in the exempted as in the punished. The 
 same reasons of prudence and accommodation have weight 
 with me in restoring the charter of Massachusetts Bay. 
 
 10 Besides, Sir, the act which changes the charter of Massa- 
 chusetts is in many particulars so exceptionable that, if I 
 did not wish absolutely to repeal, 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 
 
 15 others, is the power in 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 
 
 20 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- 
 
 25 fore must, on my principle, get rid of that most justly 
 obnoxious act. 
 
 The act of Henry the Eighth for the trial of treasons I 
 do not mean to take away, but to confine it to its proper 
 bounds and original intention ; to make it expressly for 
 
Speech on Conciliation 109 
 
 trial of treasons (and the greatest treasons may be 
 committed) in places where the jurisdiction of the 
 crown does not extend. 
 
 Having guarded the privileges of local legislature, I 
 would next secure to the colonies a fair and unbiased 5 
 judicature ; for Which purpose, Sir, I propose the 
 following resolution : — 
 
 That from the time when the general assembly, or general 
 court, of any colony or plantation in North America shall have 
 appointed, by act of assembly duly confirmed, a settled salary to lo 
 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 their office 
 and offices during their good behavior, and shall not be removed 
 therefrom but when the said removal shall be adjudged by his 15 
 Majesty in council, upon a hearing on complaint from the general 
 assembly, or on a complaint from the governor or council or the 
 house of representatives, severally, of the colony in which the said 
 chief justice and other judges have exercised the said offices. 
 
 The next resolution relates to the courts of admiralty. 20 
 It is this : — 
 
 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 who are sued in the said courts ; 25 
 and to provide for the more 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 
 
no Speech on Conciliation 
 
 the capital securities of the Act of Navigation. The 
 extent of its jurisdiction, indeed, has been increased ; 
 but this is altogether as proper, and is indeed on many 
 accounts more eligible,^ where new powers were wanted, 
 5 than a court absolutely new. But courts incommodiously 
 situated in effect deny justice ; and a court partaking in 
 the fruits of its own condemnation is a robber. The 
 Congress complain, and complain jusdy, of this griev- 
 ance. 
 
 10 These are the three consequential propositions. I 
 have thought of two or three more ; but they come 
 rather too near detail and to the province of executive 
 government, which I wish Parliament always to superin- 
 tend, never to assume. If the first six are granted, con- 
 
 15 gruity will carry the latter three. If not, the things that 
 remain unrepealed will be, I hope, rather unseemly 
 incumbrances on the building than very materially detri- 
 mental to its strength and stability. 
 
 Here, Sir, I should close ; but I plainly perceive some 
 
 20 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 to the Chester 
 Act, I prove too much ; that the grievance from a want 
 of representation, stated in that preamble, goes to the 
 
 25 whole of legislation as well as to taxation ; and that the 
 colonies, grounding themselves upon that doctrine, will 
 apply it to all parts of legislative authority. 
 /'To this objection, with all possible deference and 
 1 Suitable. 
 
Speech on Conciliation 1 1 1 
 
 humility, and wishing as Httle as any man hving to im- 
 pair the smallest particle of our supreme authority, I 
 answer that the 'wo?-ds are the ivords of Parliament, and 
 not mine ; and that all false and inconclusive inferences 
 drawn from them are not mine, for I heartily disclaim 5 
 any such inference. I have chosen the words 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 10 
 considered these preambles as declaring strongly in favor 
 of his opinions. He was a no less powerful advocate for 
 the privileges of the Americans. Ought I not from 
 hence to presume that these preambles are as favorable 
 as possible to both, when properly understood, — favorable 15 
 both to the rights of Parliament and to the privilege 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 sub- 20 
 sidies, and which therefore falls in ^ exactly with the case 
 of the colonies. But whether the unrepresented counties 
 were de jure or de facto bound, the preambles do not ac- 
 curately distinguish ; nor indeed was it necessary ; for 
 whether de jure or de facto, the legislature thought the 25 
 exercise of 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 
 1 Agrees. 
 
112 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 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 disposition of any man or any set of 
 men, when they are composed and at rest, from their 
 5 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 speculative prin- 
 ciple, either of government or of freedom, as far as it 
 will go in argument and logical illation. We Englishmen 
 
 10 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 convincing instances of 
 it. This is nothing but what is natural and proper. All 
 
 15 government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, 
 every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on com- 
 promise and barter. We balance inconveniences ; we 
 give and take ; we remit some rights that we may enjoy 
 others ; and we choose rather to be happy citizens than 
 
 20 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 fellowship of a great empire. 7 But in 
 all fair dealings the thing bought must bear some pro- 
 
 25 portion to the purchase 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 importance of a great empire too dear to 
 pay for it all essential rights and all the intrinsic dignity 
 
Speech on Conciliation 113 
 
 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 
 Constitution wants many improvements to make it a com- 
 plete system of liberty, perhaps none who are of that 5 
 opinion would think it right to aim at such improvement 
 by disturbing his country and risking everything 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, 10 
 the less they will hazard in a vain attempt to make it 
 more. These are the cords of man. Man acts from 
 adequate motives relative to his interest, and not on 
 metaphysical speculations. Aristotle, the great master of 
 reasoning, cautions us, and with great weight and pro- 15 
 priety, against this species of delusive geometrical ac- 
 curacy in moral arguments, as the most fallacious of all 
 sophistry. ^ 
 
 The Americans will have no interest contrary to the 
 grandeur and glory of England, when they are not 20 
 oppressed by the weight of it ; and they will rather be 
 inclined to respect the acts of a superintending legisla- 
 ture, when they see them the acts of that power which 
 is itself the security, not the rival, of their secondary 
 importance. In this assurance my mind most perfectly 25 
 acquiesces; and I confess I feel not the least alarm from 
 the discontents which are to arise from putting people 
 at their ease ; nor do I apprehend the destruction of this 
 empire from giving, by an act of free grace and indul- 
 
 BURKE ON CONCILIATION — 8 
 
114 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 gence, 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 
 
 5 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 
 
 10 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 begin- 
 ning a separate, but not an independent, legislature, which, 
 
 15 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 not be carried 
 
 20 into twenty islands, and with the same good effect. This 
 is my model with regard to America, as far as the inter- 
 nal 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 when it seemed to my 
 
 25 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 
 finished, to say something of the proposition of the 
 
Speech on Conciliation 115 
 
 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 with the majority of this House. But as the 
 reasons for that difference are my apology for thus 5 
 troubling you, suffer me to state them in a very few 
 words. I shall compress them into as small a body as I 
 possibly can, having already debated that matter at 
 large when the question was before the committee. 
 
 First, then, I cannot admit that proposition of a ransom 10 
 by auction, because it is a mere project.^ It is a thing 
 new, unheard of, supported by no experience, justified 
 by no analogy, without example of our ancestors or root 
 in the Constitution. It is neither regular parliamentary 
 taxation nor colony grant. Experimeutum in corpore vili 15 
 is a good rule which will ever make me adverse to any 
 trial of experiments on what is certainly 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 20 
 for taxing the colonies in the antechamber of the 
 noble lord and his successors? To settle the quotas and 
 proportions 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 25 
 colony as it bids. But to settle (on the plan laid down 
 by the noble lord) the true proportional payment for four 
 
 ^ Lord North. 2 a bare proposition and nothing more. 
 
ii6 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 or five and twenty governments, according to the abso- 
 lute and the relative wealth of each, and according to the 
 British proportion of wealth and burden, is a wild and 
 chimerical notion. This new taxation must therefore 
 5 come in by the back door of the Constitution. 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? 
 
 loYou cannot hear the counsel for all these provinces, 
 quarrelling 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 
 
 15 all the time of 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 give 
 
 20 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 to lay 
 
 25 the duties which furnished their contingent upon the im- 
 portation of your manufactures, you know you would 
 never suffer such a tax to be laid. You know, too, that 
 you would not suffer any other modes of taxation. So 
 that when you come to explain yourself, it will be found 
 
Speech on Conciliation 117 
 
 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. U 
 
 Fourthly, this method of ransom by auction, unless it 
 be tniiversally accepted, will plunge you into great and 5 
 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- 
 cretion, consider, I implore you, that the communication 10 
 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, per- 
 plexity and confusion that never can have an end. ^ 15 
 
 If all the colonies do not appear at the outcry,^ 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 imposi- 20 
 tions, 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 25 
 what way you can do it. You are perfectly convinced 
 that in the way of taxing you can do nothing but at the 
 
 1 Public sale at auction. '^ Settlement or adjustment. 
 
ii8 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 ports. Now suppose it is Virginia that refuses to appear 
 at your auction, while Maryland and North CaroUna bid 
 handsomely for their ransom, and are taxed to your 
 quota: how will you put these colonies on a par? Will 
 
 5 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 
 
 10 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 clue to lead you out of it? 
 I think. Sir, it is impossible that you should not recollect 
 
 15 that the colony bounds^ are so implicated in one another 
 (you know it by your other 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 
 
 20 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 
 falHng into this confusion of all rules of equity and policy, 
 you can restrain any single colony, especially Virginia 
 
 25 and Maryland, the central and most important of them all. 
 Let it also be considered that either in the present con- 
 fusion you settle a permanent contingent,^ which will and 
 must be trifling, and then you have no effectual revenue ; 
 1 Boundaries. 2 Quota. 
 
Speech on Conciliation 119 
 
 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' 5 
 arrears. You cannot 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 this day forward the empire 10 
 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 15 
 revenue of the empire and the army of the empire is the 
 worst revenue and the worst army in the world. 
 
 Instead of 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 20 
 of that opinion. His project was rather designed for 
 breaking the union of the colonies than for establishing a 
 revenue. He confessed he apprehended that his pro- 
 posal would not be to their taste. I say this scheme of 
 disunion seems to be at the bottom of the project ; for 1 25 
 will not suspect that the noble lord meant nothing but 
 merely to delude the nation by an airy phantom which he 
 
 1 A writ for valuing land to be taken in satisfaction of a debt due 
 to the Crown. ^ Permanent. 
 
I20 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 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 cannot accord with one 
 whose foundation is perpetual discord. 
 5 Compare the two. This I offer to give you is plain 
 and simple ; the other full of perplexed and intricate 
 mazes. This is 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 
 
 10 certain colonies only. This is immediate in its concilia- 
 tory 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 
 a matter of bargain and sale. I have done my duty in 
 
 15 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 ! 
 
 20 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 
 
 25 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. 
 " But what," says the financier, " is peace to us with- 
 
Speech on Conciliation 121 
 
 out money? Your plan gives us no revenue." No! 
 But it 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 pro- 
 portioning his grant, or of not granting at all, has not 5 
 been found the richest mine of revenue ever discovered 
 by the skill or by the fortune of man. It does not in- 
 deed vote you ^152,750 iis. 2|ths, nor any other 
 paltry limited sum ; but it gives the strong-box itself, the 
 fund, the bank, from whence only revenues can arise 10 
 amongst a people sensible of freedom. Posiia luditur 
 area. Cannot you in England, cannot you at this time 
 of day, cannot you, an House of Commons, trust to the 
 principle which has raised so mighty a revenue and ac- 
 cumulated a debt of near 140 millions in this country? 15 
 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 function will neglect to perform its duty and abdicate 20 
 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 supporting the honor of 25 
 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. 
 ^Accumulated capital. 
 
122 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 Most may be taken where most is accumulated. And 
 what is the soil or climate where experience has not uni- 
 formly proved that the voluntary flow of heaped-up 
 plenty, bursting from the weight of its own rich luxuri- 
 5 ance, 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 
 
 10 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 
 
 15 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 con- 
 
 20 tracts ill kept because constrained, will be narrow, feeble, 
 uncertain and precarious. 
 
 Ease would retract 
 Vows made in pain, as violent and void. 
 
 I, for one, protest against compounding our demands. 
 
 25 1 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 
 
 1 Political. 
 
Speech on Conciliation 123 
 
 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 colo- 
 nies to a sum certain, either in the way of ransom or in 
 the way of compulsory compact. 5 
 
 But to clear up my ideas on this subject : a revenue 
 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 reve- lo 
 nue 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 for the transmission, it is the East India Com- 15 
 pany. 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 for- 
 eign sale of her commodities to pay the duties on these 
 objects which you tax at home, she has performed her 20 
 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 25 
 the enemies that we are most Hkely to have, must be con- 
 siderable in her quarter of the globe. There she may 
 serve you, and serve you essentially.^ 
 1 Indispensably. 
 
124 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 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 
 5 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 
 
 lo 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 everything hastens 
 
 15 to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wis- 
 dom 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 to- 
 
 20 wards you. The more they multiply, the more friends 
 you will have ; the more ardently they love liberty, the 
 more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can 
 have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil. 
 They may have it from Spain ; they may have it from 
 
 25 Prussia. But until you become lost to all feeling of your 
 
 true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can 
 
 have from none but you. This is the commodity of 
 
 price ^ of which you have the monopoly. This is the 
 
 1 The priceless commodity. 
 
speech on Conciliation 125 
 
 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. 5 
 Do not entertain so weak an imagination as that your 
 registers and your bonds, your affidavits and your suffer- 
 ances, 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 10 
 suspending clauses are the things that hold together the 
 great contexture of the mysterious whole. These things 
 do not make your government. Dead instruments, pas- 
 sive tools as they are, it is the spirit of the English com- 
 munion that gives all their life and efficacy to them. It 15 
 is the spirit of the Enghsh Constitution, which, infused 
 through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigo- 
 rates, vivifies every part of the empire, even down to the 
 minutest member. 
 
 Is it not the same virtue which does everything for us 20 
 here in England? Do you imagine, then, that it is the 
 Land Tax Act which raises your revenue ? that it is the 
 annual vote in the Committee of Supply which gives you 
 your army? or that it is the Mutiny Bill which inspires 
 it with bravery and discipline? No! surely no! It is 25 
 the love of the people ; it is their attachment to their 
 government, from the sense of the deep stake they have 
 in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army 
 and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience 
 
126 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 without which your army would be a base rabble, and 
 your navy nothing but rotten timber. 
 
 All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and 
 chimerical to the profane^ herd of those vulgar^ and 
 5 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 em- 
 pire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the machine. But to 
 
 10 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 
 everything and all in all. "Magnanimity in poHtics is not 
 seldom the truest wisdom ; and a great empire and little 
 
 15 minds go ill together. - If we are conscious of our station, 
 and glow with zeal to fill our places as becomes our situa- 
 tion and ourselves, we ought to auspicate all our public 
 proceedings on America with the old warning of the 
 church, Sursum corda f We ought to elevate our minds 
 
 20 to the greatness of that trust to which the order ^ of Provi- 
 dence has called us. By adverting to the dignity of this 
 high calling, our ancestors have turned a savage wilder- 
 ness into a glorious empire, and have made the most 
 extensive, and the only honorable conquests, not by de- 
 
 25 stroying, 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 
 
 1 Corrupt. 2 Commonplace. ^ Plan. 
 
Speech on Conciliation 127 
 
 privileges have made it all that it is ; English privileges 
 alone will make it all it can be. 
 
 In full confidence of this unalterable truth, I now {quod 
 felix faustumque sit!) lay the first stone of the Temple 
 of Peace ; and I move you, — 5 
 
 That the colonies and plantations of Great Britain in North 
 America, consisting of fourteen separate governments, and con- 
 taining two millions and upwards of free inhabitants, have not had 
 the liberty and privilege of electing and sending any knights and 
 burgesses, or others, to represent them in the high court of Parlia- ic 
 ment. 
 
 Upon this resolution the previous question was put and 
 carried : for the previous question, 270; against it, 78. 
 
 As the propositions were opened' separately in the 
 body of the speech, the reader perhaps may wish to see 15 
 the whole of them together in the form in which they 
 were moved for. The first four motions and the last had 
 the previous question put on them. The others were 
 negatived. The words in itahcs were, by an amendment 
 that was carried, left out of the motion ; which will appear 2c 
 in the journals, though it is not the practice to insert such 
 amendments in the votes. 
 
 Moved, 
 
 That the colonies and plantations of Great Britain in North 
 America, consisting of fourteen separate governments, and con- 25 
 taining two millions and upwards of free inhabitants, have not had 
 
 1 Presented. 
 
128 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 the liberty and privilege of electing and sending any knights and 
 burgesses, or others, to represent them in the high court of Parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 That the said colonies and plantations have been liable to, and 
 Sbounden by, several subsidies, payments, rates and taxes, given 
 and granted by Parliament, though the said colonies and planta- 
 tions 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 oflejiihnes touched 
 10 and grieved by subsidies given, granted and assented to, in the said 
 court, in a manner prejudicial to the commonwealth, quiettiess, rest 
 and peace of the subjects inhabiting zvithin the same. 
 
 That, from the distance of the said colonies and from other 
 circumstances, no method hath hitherto been devised for procuring 
 15 a representation in Parliament for the said colonies. 
 
 That each of the said colonies hath within itself a body, chosen 
 in part or in the whole by the freemen, freeholders or other free 
 inhabitants thereof, commonly called the general assembly, or gen- 
 eral court, with powers legally to raise, levy and assess, according 
 20 to the several usages of such colonies, duties and taxes towards 
 defraying all sorts of public services. 
 
 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, 
 25 according to their abilities, when required thereto by letter from 
 one of his Majesty's 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. 
 
 That it hath been found by experience that the manner of grant- 
 
 30 ing the said supplies and aids by the said general assemblies hath 
 
 been more agreeable to the said colonies, and more beneficial and 
 
speech on Conciliation 129 
 
 conducive to the public service, than the mode of giving and grant- 
 ing aids in Parliament, to be raised and paid in the said colonies. 
 
 That it may be proper to repeal an act made in the seventh year 
 of the reign of his present Majesty, entitled, " An act for granting 
 certain duties in the British colonies and plantations in America; 5 
 f or alluvvi ng a drawback of the duties of customs upon the expor- 
 tation from this kingdom of coffee and cocoanuts of the produce 
 of the said colonies or plantations; for discontinuing the draw- 
 backs payable on China earthenware exported to America; and 
 for more effectually preventing the clandestine running of goods in 10 
 the said colonies and plantations." 
 
 That it may be proper to repeal an act made in the fourteenth 
 year of the reign of his present Majesty, entitled, " An act to dis- 
 continue, in such manner and for such time as are therein mentioned, 
 the landing and discharging, lading or shipping, of goods, wares 15 
 and merchandise, at the town and within the harbor of Boston, in 
 the province of Massachusetts Bay, in North America." 
 
 That it may be proper to repeal an act made in the fourteenth 
 year of the reign of his present Majesty, entitled, " An act for the 
 impartial administration of justice in the cases of persons questioned 20 
 for any acts done by them in the execution of the law, or for the 
 suppression of riots and tumults, in the province of Massachusetts 
 Bay, in New England." 
 
 That it may be proper to repeal an act made in the fourteenth 
 year of the reign of his present Majesty, entitled, " An act for the 25 
 better regulating the government of the province of the Massa- 
 chusetts Bay, in New England." 
 
 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, entitled, 
 "An act for the trial of treasons committed out of the king's 30 
 dominions." 
 
 UUKKE ON CONXILIATION — 9 
 
130 Speech on Conciliation 
 
 That from the time when the general assembly, or general court, 
 of any colony or plantation in North America 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 
 5 proper that the said chief justice and other judges of the superior 
 courts of such colony shall hold his and their office and offices 
 during their good behaviour, and shall not be removed therefrom 
 but when the said removal shall be adjudged by his Majesty in 
 council, upon a hearing on complaint from the general assembly, 
 10 or on a complaint from the governor or council or the house of rep- 
 resentatives, severally, of the colony in which the said chief justice 
 and other judges have exercised the said offices. 
 
 That it may be proper to regulate the courts of admiralty or vice- 
 admiralty authorized by the fifteenth chapter of the fourth of 
 15 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; aitd to 
 provide for the more decent maintenance of the judges in the same. 
 
NOTES 
 
 The heavy marginal figures stand for page, and the lighter ones for line. 
 
 37 : I. I hope, Sir, etc. Speeches in the House of Commons 
 are addressed to the Speaker, who is often referred to as the Chair. 
 The Speaker at this time was Sir Fletcher Norton (1716-1789), 
 " a shrewd, unprincipled man, of good abilities and ofi'ensive 
 manners," who held the office from 1770 to 1780. 
 
 37 : 7. My motion. The motion which he was to offer at the 
 conclusion of his speech. 
 
 37 : 8. Grand penal bill. The bill introduced by Lord North, 
 February 10, 1775. 
 
 37 : 10. Returned to us from the other House. The bill had 
 passed the Commons March 8, and been sent to the Lords. The 
 Lords had added an amendment extending the provisions of the 
 bill to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and South 
 Carolina. The bill came back to the Commons for approval in its 
 amended form. 
 
 37 : 13. Once more in possession of our deliberative capac- 
 ity. Once more in a position to discuss the bill. While the bill 
 was before the Lords it could not with propriety be discussed by 
 the Commons. 
 
 37 : 19. First day of the session. The session began Novem- 
 ber 29, 1774. 
 
 38 : 3. Incongruous mixture of coercion and restraint. The 
 bill aimed to break down the resistance to the tea duty at the same 
 time that it restrained the colonial trade. The union of the two 
 objects hardly seems incongruous. 
 
 131 
 
132 Notes 
 
 38 : 9. When I first, etc. See Introduction, page 24. 
 
 38 : 14. A very high trust. Referring to the idea, often em- 
 phasized by Burke, that the powers of government are held by 
 rulers in trust for the people. 
 
 38 : 17. More than common pains to instruct myself. 
 Burke was probably better informed than any Englishman of his 
 time m regard to America. He was the author in part of the 
 Account of the European Settlements in America, written in 1757, 
 and since 1759 had written much about America for the Annual 
 Register. 
 
 38 : 24. Blown about by every wind of fashionable doctrine. 
 Compare Ephesians iv. 14. 
 
 38 : 28, At that period. In 1766, when the Stamp Act was 
 repealed. On Burke's position see Introduction, page 24. 
 
 39 : I. Large majority. The vote on the repeal was 275 to 161. 
 39 : 10. This interval. The period since 1766. 
 
 39 : 10. More frequent changes. See Introduction, pages 
 15-17. The passage and repeal of the Tovvnshend Revenue Act 
 was the most important of these changes. 
 
 39 : 26. A worthy member. Rose P\iller. Burke's Speech on 
 American Taxation was made on a motion brought forward by 
 Fuller to repeal the tea duty. 
 
 39 : 27. Filled the Chair of the American Committee. Pre- 
 sided when the House of Commons sat as a Committee of the Whole 
 on American affairs. 
 
 40 : 3. Our former methods. The methods of the minority, to 
 which Fuller and Burke belonged. 
 
 40 : 5. Public tribunal. Public opinion. 
 
 40 : 22. My honorable friend. Members of the Commons are 
 referred to in debate as " the honorable member," " my honorable 
 friend," etc., and not by name. 
 
 41 : 4. Except from a seat of authority. Important bills are 
 usually brought forward by members of the ministry, not by private 
 members. 
 
Notes 
 
 33 
 
 41:11. Paper government. Burke probably refers, not to any 
 particular plan, but generally to schemes of government which are 
 not or can not be carried into execution. 
 
 41 : 15. An incurable alienation of our colonies. The idea 
 of separation was not general at tliis time, though the possibility of 
 it had been clearly foreseen. 
 
 42 : 4. What you are, etc. Burke is here addressing the 
 House, not the Speaker. 
 
 42 : 17. Discord fomented from principle. Lord North re- 
 tained the tea duty as an assertion of the right of Parliament to tax 
 the colonies ; the colonies resisted the tax on the ground that, as 
 Englishmen, they could lawfully be taxed only by their own repre- 
 sentatives. Each party, therefore, stood upon a principle. 
 
 42 : 25. Unsuspecting confidence. In an address to the in- 
 habitants of the colonies represented in the First Continental Con- 
 gress, agreed to by the Congress, October 21, 1774, it is said: 
 " After the repeal of the Stamp Act, having again resigned our- 
 selves to our ancient unsuspicious affections for the parent state, 
 and anxious to avoid any controversy with her, in hopes of a favor- 
 able alteration in sentiments and measures towards us, we did not 
 press our objections against the above-mentioned statutes made 
 subsequent to that repeal" (^Journals of Congress, i. 47,48). 
 
 43 : 14. Splendor of the project. February 27, 1775, Lord 
 North had unexpectedly laid before the Plouse, in Committee of 
 the Whole, the following resolution : " That it is the opinion of 
 this Committee, that when the Governour, Council, and Assembly, 
 or General Court, of any of his Majesty's Provinces or Colonies in 
 America, shall propose to make provision, according to the condi- 
 tion, circumstances, and situation of such Province or Colony, for 
 contributing their proportion to the common defence, (such pro- 
 portion to be raised under the authority of the General Court, or 
 General Assembly, of such Province or Colony, and disposable by 
 Parliament,) and shall engage to make provision also for the sup- 
 port of the Civil Government, and the Administration of Justice, in 
 
134 
 
 Notes 
 
 such Province or Colony, it will be proper, if such proposal shall be 
 approved by his Majesty and the tv^^o 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 
 Assessment, or to impose any farther Duty, Tax, or Assessment, 
 except only such Duties as it may be expedient to continue to levy 
 or to 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 " (Force, AmejHcan Archives, 4th 
 series, i. 1598). The resolution, though unsatisfactory to the 
 friends of the ministry, w^as agreed to by the House ; July 31, 
 hov^^ever, the proposition it contained was rejected by the Conti- 
 nental Congress. For the report on it see MacDonald, Select 
 Charters, 385-389. 
 
 43 : 15. The noble lord in the blue ribbon. Lord North 
 (1732-1792), prime minister from 1770 to 1782. The eldest son 
 of a peer enjoys, during the lifetime of his father, the courtesy title 
 of Lord, and may sit in the House of Commons. The blue ribbon 
 was the badge of a Knight of the Garter, of which order Lord North 
 was a member. 
 
 43 : 17. Colony agents. Each colony maintained an agent in 
 London to look after its interests. The best-known of the colonial 
 agents was Franklin, who at the time represented Massachusetts, 
 Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Georgia. Burke was for a time agent 
 for New York. 
 
 43 : 18. Mace. The symbol of authority borne by the sergeant- 
 at-arms. 
 
 43 : 20. Auction of finance. Referring to the silence of Lord 
 North's resolution regarding the amount which each colony should 
 pay. 
 
 44 : 2. Menacing front of our address. On the 7th of February 
 the two houses of Parliament had voted an address to the king, call- 
 ing attention to the rebellious conduct of Massachusetts, declaring 
 ^hat no part of the sovereign authority over the colonies ought to 
 
Notes 
 
 ^3S 
 
 be relinquished, promising that " whenever any of the colonies shall 
 make a proper application to us, we shall be ready to afford them 
 every just and reasonable indulgence," and pledging support to the 
 king, " at the hazard of our lives and properties," in measures to put 
 down the rebellion. Eighteen members of the Lords protested, 
 declaring the address a virtual declaration of war. See the Parlia- 
 mentary History, xviii. 265-298. 
 
 46:10. Two millions of inhabitants. ^2>.x\cxq{\. {History of the 
 United States, iv. 128) gives the following table of estimates, show- 
 ing the rapid increase as well as. the number of the population : — 
 
 
 WHITE 
 
 BLACK 
 
 TOTAL 
 
 1750 
 
 1,040,000 
 
 220,000 
 
 1,260,000 
 
 1754 
 
 1,165,000 
 
 260,000 
 
 1,425,000 
 
 1760 
 
 1,385,000 
 
 310,000 
 
 1,695,000 
 
 1770 
 
 1,850,000 
 
 462,000 
 
 2,312,000 
 
 1780 
 
 2,383,000 
 
 562,000 
 
 2,945,000 
 
 It is to be remembered that all the figures for the population of 
 America prior to the first census of the United States, in 1790, rest 
 upon estimates only. 
 
 46 : 12. 500,000 others. Negro slaves. 
 
 46:18. Strength with which population shoots. The rapid- 
 ity with which population grows. Franklin and others had already 
 called attenticui to the rapid increase of numbers in the English 
 colonies. 
 
 47 : I. No partial . . . system. Such as Parliament has 
 hitherto followed. 
 
 47 : 4. One of those minima. An allusion to the legal maxim, 
 De mitiimis non curat lex, the law takes no account of trifles. 
 
 47 : 20. This ground . . . has been trod. This part of the 
 subject has been considered. 
 
136 
 
 Notes 
 
 47:22. A distinguished person. Richard Glover (171 2-1 785), 
 then widely popular as a poet. He had appeared before the House, 
 March 16, on behalf of the West India planters, who petitioned 
 Parliament for relief from the injury threatened by the non-impor- 
 tation agreement, known as the "Association," adopted by the 
 American Congress the previous October. For the text of the 
 Association see MacDonald, Select Charters, pp. 362-367. 
 
 47 : 22. At your bar. The entrance to the Commons chamber 
 is closed by a rod, beyond which only members and officers of the 
 House may go. Persons, not members, who are examined or heard 
 by the House stand at the bar. 
 
 47 : 23. Thirty-five years. Burke is in error here. It was in 
 1742 — thirty-three years before — that Glover appeared before 
 the House on behalf of some three hundred London merchants, 
 who had petitioned for better protection for their commerce 
 against Spanish privateers. 
 
 48 : 22. Vouchers. Used here in the sense of authorities or 
 sources. 
 
 48 : 22. Accounts on your table. Accounts officially presented 
 to the House. 
 
 48 : 24. Davenant. Charles Davenant (1656-17 14). He was 
 made inspector general of exports and imports in 1705. He 
 wrote on economic subjects, his best-known work being his Dis- 
 course on Revenue and Trade. 
 
 48 : 28. Terminating ... in the colonies. English manu- 
 factured goods were sent to Africa and exchanged for slaves, who 
 were sold almost exclusively in America. 
 
 49 : 2. North American. Often applied collectively to all the 
 English colonies in America except those in the West Indies. 
 
 51 : 3. Mr. Speaker, etc. Notice the skillful transition 
 from a statistical exhibit to the highly rhetorical passage which 
 follows. 
 
 51 : 4. It is good for us to be here. Compare Matthew xvii. 
 1-4. 
 
Notes 137 
 
 51 : 12. My Lord Bathurst. Allen Bathurst (1684-1775). 
 He became Earl Bathurst in 1772. He was on terms of intimacy 
 with Congreve, Swift, Prior, Addison, Pope, Gay, and other literary 
 men of his time. He died about six months after the delivery of 
 this speech. 
 
 51 : 14. Of an age ... to comprehend. Lord Bathurst 
 entered Parliament in 1705. 
 
 51 : 15. Acta parentum, etc. To be able to study the deeds 
 of his forefathers, and to learn what virtue is. Altered from Virgil, 
 Eclogues, iv. 26, 27. 
 
 51 : 20. In the fourth generation the third prince. George 
 in, the third prince of the House of Brunswick to become king 
 of England, was the grandson of George H, whom he succeeded. 
 
 51 : 22. Twelve years. The reign of George III began in 
 1760. 
 
 51 : 24. Was to be made Great Britain. The union of Eng- 
 land and Scotland in Great Britain did not take place until 1707. 
 
 51 : 25. His son. Henry, Baron Apsley, made lord chancellor 
 in 1771. 
 
 52 : II. Taste of death. See Mattheiv xvi. 28; John viii. 52; 
 Julius Ccesar, ii. 2. Tj'i) '• " The valiant never taste of death but 
 once." 
 
 53 : 3. The export. The value of the exports. 
 
 53 : 14. Detail the imports. Give in detail the list of articles 
 imported. 
 
 53 : 23. Feeding plentifully their own growing multitude. 
 Americans were probably much better fed at this time than English- 
 men. There was little poverty, and the standard of living, though 
 simple, was higher for the middle and lower classes than in England. 
 
 53 : 28. Corn. Not Indian corn, but wheat, barley, and other 
 grains used for making bread. 
 
 54 : 5. The full breast. A reference to the story of a Roman, 
 who, condemned to death by starvation, was visited in prison by 
 his daughter, who nourished him with milk from her own breast. 
 
138 Notes 
 
 54 : 10. Excite your envy. In 1764 Grenville "adopted the 
 plan of gradually giving up the bounty to the British whale fishery, 
 which would be a saving of thirty thousand pounds a year to the 
 treasury, and of relieving the American fishery from the inequality 
 of the discriminating duty, except the old subsidy, which was 
 scarcely one per cent. This is the most liberal act of Grenville's 
 administration, of which the merit is not diminished by the fact 
 that the American whale fishery was superseding the English 
 under every discouragement. ... So this valuable branch of 
 trade, which produced annually three hundred thousand pounds, 
 and which would give employment to many shipwrights and 
 other artificers, and to three thousand seamen, was resigned to 
 America" (Bancroft, History of the United States, y. 185). This 
 important industry would be cut off by the bill now before 
 ParHament. 
 
 54 : 23. Serpent. The Hydrus, or Water Serpent, a small 
 constellation within the Antarctic Circle. 
 
 54 : 23. Falkland Island. The Falkland Islands, discovered 
 in 1592, and occupied successively by France and Spain, passed 
 into' the control of England in 1771. Whalers resorted to the 
 island's for provisions and water. 
 
 55 : I. Run the longitude. An expression of uncertain mean- 
 ing. Apparently it means to run east or west, though the direction 
 here is south. 
 
 55 ' 3- Vexed. "The still-vex'd Bermoothes," Tempest, i. 2. 
 229. " As mad as the vex'd sea," King Lear, iv. 4. 2. 
 
 55 : II. Owe little or nothing to any care of ours. The sen- 
 tence recalls the famous speech of Isaac Barre against the Stamp 
 Act: "They [the colonies] planted by your care! No; your op- 
 pression planted them in America. . . . They nourished up by 
 your indulgence ! They grew by your neglect of them." 
 
 55 : 23. In the gross. As a whole. 
 
 56 : 2. Wield the thunder. An allusion to Jove and his 
 thunderbolts. 
 
Notes 139 
 
 57 : 2. Caught by a foreign enemy. It was widely feared, 
 and with good reason, that, notwithstanding the peace of 1763, 
 P'rance and Spain would seize the first favorable opportunity to 
 renew the war. 
 
 57 : 6. Break the American spirit. The Americans had been 
 referred to in the debates as rebels who must be compelled to 
 submit. 
 
 57 : II. Our ancient indulgence. General Burgoyne had said, 
 April 19, 1774, in the debate on the repeal of the tea duty : " I look 
 upon America to be our child, which I think we have already spoiled 
 by too much indulgence." Until 1764 no serious attempt was made 
 to enforce the Navigation Acts, nor had the internal affairs of the 
 colonies as a whole been much interfered with. 
 
 58 : 9. Descendants of Englishmen. Probably nine-tenths of 
 the American colonists outside of Canada were of English descent. 
 The principal foreign admixtures were the Dutch in New York, the 
 Germans in Pennsylvania, and the Scotch-Irish in North and South 
 Carolina. The population of Canada, on the other hand, was pre- 
 dominantly French. 
 
 58 : 12. Emigrated from y(ftl. The great period of emigration 
 to America was the first half of the seventeenth century, when the 
 people were struggling against James I and Charles I. 
 
 58 : 13. Took this bias and direction. Virginia after 1625, and 
 Massachusetts from the beginning, were largely free from English 
 control. 
 
 58 : 16. Liberty according to English ideas. The first charter 
 of Virginia (1606) declares "that all and every the persons, being 
 our subjects, which shall dwell and inhabit wilhin every or any 
 of the said several colonies and plantations, and every of their 
 children which shall happen to be born within any of the limits and 
 precincts of the said several colonies and plantations, shall have 
 and enjoy all liberties, franchises, and immunities, within any of 
 our other dominions, to all intents and purposes as if they had been 
 abiding and born within this our realm of England, or any other 
 
140 Notes 
 
 of our said dominions." Similar guarantees are found in later 
 charters. 
 
 58 : 18. Sensible object. A tangible object, one that may be 
 perceived by the senses ; not theoretical or abstract. There was 
 a good deal of talk at this time about abstract liberty. 
 
 58 : 22. Great contests for freedom. For example, the struggle 
 which ended in the grant of Magna Charta, and those which con- 
 cerned subsidies, benevolences, monopolies, ship money, etc. 
 
 58 : 24. Ancient commonwealths. Particularly in Rome. 
 
 58 : 26. Several orders. Social classes, as patricians and 
 plebeians. 
 
 59 : 7. Parchments. Documents. Statutes and important 
 documents were written on parchment. 
 
 59 : 7. Blind usages. Usages which were established imper- 
 ceptibly, and to which no definite origin could be assigned. 
 
 59 : 10. In theory it ought to be so. A rare instance with 
 Burke of resort to theoretical proof. 
 
 59 : 20. Fixed and attached. Supply " itself." The meaning 
 is that the colonies regarded the right of self-taxation as the chief 
 test of liberty. • 
 
 59 : 29. Your mode of governing. The colonies had never, 
 until 1765, been taxed directly by England. 
 
 60 : 6. Popular. Controlled by the people, either directly, as in 
 the town meeting, or indirectly, as in government by a legislature 
 elected by the people. 
 
 60 : 7. Merely popular. Wholly popular, as in the New Eng- 
 land towns. 
 
 60 : 10. Aversion from. Aversion to is now used. 
 60 : 18. That kind. Dissenters. 
 60 : 20. Persuasion. State of mimd. 
 
 60 : 28. Authority. The secular government, or state. 
 
 61 : 6. All Protestantism ... is a sort of dissent. An 
 allusion to the original meaning of Protestant as " one who 
 protests," 
 
Notes 141 
 
 61. : 7. The religion most prevalent. Puritanism, in the form 
 of Congregationalism, with the theology of Calvin. 
 
 61 : 9. Dissidence of dissent. Dissent carried to an extreme. 
 
 62 : 8. Freedom is to them, etc. Burke here touches upon one 
 of the chief characteristics of Southern society. 
 
 62 : 10. Freedom . . . may be united. The presence of slave 
 labor early operated to discourage free w^hite labor in the South. 
 
 62 : 22. Gothic. In the sense, common in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, of "Teutonic" or "Germanic." The Goths, properly so 
 called, w^ere not the ancestors of the English, 
 
 62 : 23. Were the Poles. Until 1772, when the first partition 
 of the country was made by Russia, Austria, and Prussia. Nine 
 tenths of the population were serfs. 
 
 63:3. Numerous and powerful. One of the papers laid before 
 Parliament, in 1766, relating to the disturbances over the Stamp 
 Act, says of New York: "The gentlemen of the law, both the 
 judges and the principal practitioners at the bar, are either owners 
 or strongly connected in family interest with the proprietors in 
 general. The gentlemen of the law some years since entered into 
 an association, with intention among other things to assume the 
 direction of government upon them by the influence they had in 
 the assembly, gained by their family connection and by the profes- 
 sion of the law, whereby they are unavoidably in the secrets of 
 many families. Many court their friendship, and all dread their 
 hatred ; by this means, though few of them are members, they rule 
 the house of the assembly in all matters of importance " (^Parlia- 
 mentary History, xvi. 125). 
 
 63 : 5. The Congress. The First Continental Congress, which 
 met at Philadelphia September 5, 1774. 
 
 63 : 10. Plantations. A common synonym at this time for 
 " colonies." 
 
 63:12. Blackstone's Commentaries. Sir William Blackstone 
 ( 1 723-1 780) published his Coninientaries on the Laws of England 
 between 1765 and 1769. The work at once became popular, and 
 
142 Notes 
 
 long held its place as the best introduction to the study of English 
 law. 
 
 63 : 13. General Gage. Thomas Gage (i 721-1787). In 1763 
 he was made commander in chief of the English forces in America, 
 and in 1774 governor and captain general of Massachusetts. He 
 arrived in Boston in May, 1774. 
 
 63 : 14. A letter on your table. January 19, 1775, Lord North 
 had laid before the House a letter from Gage, dated August 27, 
 1774, describing his unsuccessful attempts to enforce the pro- 
 visions of the Massachusetts Government Act which forbade town 
 meetings. 
 
 63 : 17. By successful chicane. The Massachusetts Govern- 
 ment Act went into effect August I, 1774, and after that date no 
 town meetings could legally be held. The Boston town meeting 
 held in July was adjourned until August 9, and again until October. 
 The selectmen claimed that an adjourned meeting was not a new 
 meeting, but a continuation of a former one, and therefore not in 
 violation of the act. 
 
 63 : 22. My honorable and learned friend. Lord Thurlow, 
 the attorney general, and as such a member of the ministry. 
 
 63 : 23. On the floor. The members of the House of Commons 
 sit on benches, which are arranged in tiers, the lowest, that on the 
 floor at the right of the Speaker, being reserved for members of the 
 ministry. There is no provision of chairs and desks as in an Ameri- 
 can legislature or in Congress. 
 
 63 : 24. Mark ... for animadversion. Thurlow was taking 
 notes, and was the first to speak in reply to Burke. 
 
 64 : 2. Abeunt, etc. One's pursuits become habits. 
 64 : 5. Mercurial cast. Active character or nature. 
 64:19. Winged ministers of vengeance. The navy. 
 
 64 : 2T^. So far shalt thou go, and no farther. Compare 
 Job xxxviii. 1 1. Hume, the first volume of whose History of Eng- 
 land liad been published in 1754, had popularized the legend of 
 Canute and his courtiers. 
 
Notes 143 
 
 65 : 9. Spain in her provinces. In Central and South 
 America. The Spanish system of colonial administration was 
 rapidly breaking down. 
 
 65 : 12. Detached empire. Empire whose parts or colonies 
 are separated from the parent state. 
 
 65 : 16. First mover of government. An allusion to the 
 Ptolemaic system of astronomy, in which the heavenly bodies are 
 represented as forming a series of spheres, with the earth as the 
 common center. The outermost sphere was called the primum 
 mobile, or " first moved," and communicated its movement to the 
 others. The " first mover " here is Great Britain. 
 
 65:18. Grown with the growth, etc. '^oYo^t, Essay on Man, 
 ii, 136 : " Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength." 
 
 65 : 21. However lawful. The precise extent of the power of 
 Parliament over the colonies had never been defined, but the better 
 opinion of lawyers was that the power was absolute, and to be 
 exercised at the discretion of Parliament. 
 
 65 : 24. This excess. The violent proceedings in the colonies. 
 
 66 : 7. With all its imperfections. Compare Hamlet, i. 5. 
 
 78, 79. 
 
 66:16. Untractable. Now usually " intractable." 
 
 66 : 24. The popular part. The representative assemblies of 
 
 the colonial legislatures. 
 
 66 : 25. Constitution. System of government. 
 
 66 : 26. Its first vital movement. The colonial legislatures 
 were summoned by the governor, who in most colonies was ap- 
 pointed by the crown. 
 
 67 : 3. None but an obedient assembly should sit. The New 
 York Assembly had been suspended in 1767 for refusing to comply 
 fully with the provisions of the Quartering Act (see MacDonald, 
 Select ChaTters, 31 7-320). Many of the assemblies had been dis- 
 solved in 1 768-1 769 for expressing approval of the Massachusetts 
 Circular {ibid., 330-335). There had been numerous other in- 
 stances since. 
 
144 Notes 
 
 67 : 8. Formed a government. In the several colonies com- 
 mittees of correspondence had assumed practical direction of 
 affairs. The enforcement of the "Association" was in the hands 
 of committees. The formation of provincial congresses was also 
 going on. 
 
 67 : 12. Lord Dunmore. John Murray, fourth Earl of Dun- 
 more ( 1 732-1 809). He became governor of Virginia in 1772. 
 His hostility to the popular party in the colonies made his testi- 
 mony paiticularly valuable. 
 
 67 : 13. The fragments on your table. A letter from Dun- 
 more, dated December 24, 1774, was laid before the House Febru- 
 ary 15, 1775. It was in part as follows: "As to the power of 
 government which your lordship . . . directs should be exerted 
 to counteract the dangerous measures pursuing here, I can assure 
 your lordship, that it is entirely disregarded, if not wholly over- 
 turned. There is not a justice of peace in Virginia that acts, save 
 as a committee man {i.e., as a member of one of the committees 
 appointed to execute the Association) : the abolishing the courts 
 of justice was the first step taken, in which the men of fortune and 
 pre-eminence joined equally with the lowest and meanest. The 
 general court of judicature of the colony is much in the same pre- 
 dicament; for though there are at least a majority of his Majesty's 
 council who, with myself, are the judges of that court, that would 
 steadily perform their duty, yet the lawyers have absolutely refused 
 to attend, nor indeed would the people allow them to attend, or 
 evidences to appear. Independent companies, &c. so universally 
 supported, who have set themselves up superior to all other au- 
 thority, under the auspices of their congress, the laws of which 
 they talk of in a stile of respect, and treat with marks of reverence, 
 which they never bestowed on their legal government, or the laws 
 proceeding from it, I can assure your lordship, that I have dis- 
 covered no instance where the interposition of government, in the 
 feeble state to which it is reduced, could serve any other purpose 
 than to suffer the disgrace of a disappointment, and thereby afford 
 
Notes 145 
 
 matter of great exultation to its enemies, and increase their influ- 
 ence o/er the minds of the people " (JPa}'lia7nentary History, xviii. 
 
 3H, 315)- 
 
 68 : 2. Wholly abrogated the ancient government of Mas- 
 sachusetts. By the Massachusetts Government Act, May 20, 1774. 
 The important parts of the Act are in MacDonald, Select Charters, 
 
 343-350- 
 
 68 : 4. Anarchy. Not in the sense of disorder, but of the 
 absence of an estal)lished government. It had been frequently 
 predicted in the debates that the act would restore quiet and 
 secure obedience. 
 
 68 : 6. Anarchy is found tolerable. The act was generally 
 disregarded, but the colony continued without disorder under the 
 committees of correspondence, the Provincial Congress, and the 
 officials of the town governments. 
 
 68 : 9. Without public council, etc. Most of the members of 
 the council who had been chosen under the new system had resigned, 
 as had also the judges, whose salaries were to be paid by the crown. 
 The resignations were not all voluntary. 
 
 69 : 20. Giving up the colonies. Proposed in 1774 by 
 Dr. Josiah Tucker (1711-1799), Dean of Gloucester, in a tract 
 entitled, The Triie Interest of Great Britain set forth in regard to 
 the Colonies, and the only Means of living itt Peace and Harinony 
 with them. The work attracted much attention, and was reprinted 
 in America. On the plan see Lecky, History of England, iii. 421- 
 424. Burke minimizes the importance of the suggestion. 
 
 70 : 8. No further grants of land. The region between East 
 and West Florida and the great lakes, and the Appalachian Moun- 
 tains and the Mississippi, was crown land, and might be granted to 
 individuals or companies at discretion. 
 
 70 : 25. Back settlements. The frontier, often referred to as 
 the " back country." 
 
 71:6. Hordes of English Tartars. An allusion to the invasion 
 of Europe by the Goths and Huns in the fourth and fifth centuries. 
 
 BURKE ON CONCILIATION — lO 
 
146 Notes 
 
 71 : 9. Collectors. Of customs rather than of taxes, the latter 
 being chosen by the people. 
 
 71 : 10. Slaves. Minor officials, whose continuance in office, in 
 the then corrupt state of politics, depended on slavish obedience to 
 those above them. 
 
 71 : 13. Increase and multiply. Compare Genesis \x. i. 
 
 71 : 16. Express charter. Compare Psalm cxv. 16. Grants 
 of land were set forth in written documents known as charters or 
 patents. 
 
 71 : 22. Wax and parchment. *' The observance of legal 
 forms and modes of procedure." 
 
 71 : 22. Thrown each tract . . . into districts. Indicated its 
 boundaries and extended government over it. 
 
 72 : 4. A system of this kind. The Navigation Acts or Acts 
 of Trade. 
 
 72 : 25. Spoliatis arma, etc. Arms still remain to be plun- 
 dered. 
 
 73 : 5. Your speech would betray you. See Matthew xx\\. 73. 
 
 73 : 16. Burn their books. See Aas xix. 19. 
 
 74 : I. Advocates and panegyrists. Dr. Johnson, in Taxa- 
 tion no Tyraiiny, lately published, had commended it. 
 
 74 : 2. Into any opinion of it. Into thinking well of it. 
 
 74 : 4. Would not always be accepted. Governor Dunmore 
 tried it in Virginia in November, 1775, when freedom M'as prom- 
 ised to all negro slaves and indented servants who should join his 
 force ; but few responded. See Bancroft, History of the United 
 States, viii. 223-225. 
 
 74 : 17. That very nation which has sold them. England 
 was at this time the principal slave-trading nation, and a large 
 amount of capital was invested in the trade. 
 
 74 : 19. Refusal. The second article of the Association read: 
 " We will neither import nor purchase any slave imported after the 
 first day of December next [1774] ; after which time we will wholly 
 discontinue the slave trade, and will neither be concerned in it 
 
Notes 1 47 
 
 ourselves, nor will we hire our vessels nor sell our commodities or 
 manufactures to those who are concerned in it." There had al- 
 ways been a strong opposition in America to the slave trade, 
 but Great Britain forced slaves on the colonies notwithstanding. 
 Up to this time more than thirty acts of the Virginia Assembly 
 imposing restrictions on the trade had been set aside by the king 
 in council. 
 
 74 : 22. An African vessel. An English or colonial vessel 
 from x\frica. 
 
 74 : 23, Carolina. North and South Carolina were separate 
 colonies, but the old name of Carolina was still often applied to 
 them. 
 
 74 : 24. Angola. A district on the west coast of Africa from 
 which large numbers of slaves were shipped. 
 
 74 : 25. Guinea captain. An English captain of a ship trad- 
 ing with Guinea. 
 
 75 : 3- " Ye gods." From Martinus Scriblerus, or the Art of 
 Sinking in Poetry, the joint work of Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot, 
 chiefly the latter. See Pope, Works (Edition 1753), vi, 165- 
 223. 
 
 75 : 14. Prosecute ... as criminal. The notion of treat- 
 ing the colonists as criminals had frequently been brought forward 
 in the debates. 
 
 75 : 21. Bands of men. Such as the Sons of Liberty, and the 
 organized mobs which had compelled the resignation of judges 
 and other officers. 
 
 76 : 2. Sir Edward Coke. An eminent lawyer, 1552- 1634. 
 At the trial of Ralegh for treason, in 1603, Coke denounced the 
 prisoner in a most scandalous manner. "The confidentist traitor 
 that ever came at a bar," " the most vile and execrable traitor that 
 ever lived," " thy vituperous treasons," were some of the expressions 
 used. 
 
 76 : 6. Upon the very same title that I am. Elected by 
 popular vote as I am. 
 
148 Notes 
 
 76 : 24. Ex vi termini, from the force of the term. 
 
 78 : 14. Those very persons. The majority in Parliament. 
 
 78 : 16. Declaring a rebellion. The address to the king, 
 Feb. 9, 1775, had asserted "that a part of your Majesty's subjects 
 in the Province of the Massachusetts Bay have proceeded so far to 
 resist the authority of the supreme Legislature that a rebellion at 
 this time actually exists within the said Province." Eighteen 
 Lords entered a protest against the address. The protest, proba- 
 bly drawn up by Burke, declared that " no legal grounds were laid 
 in argument or in fact to show that a rebellion, properly so called, did 
 exist in Massachusetts Bay, when the papers of the latest date, and 
 from whence alone we derive our information, were written. The 
 overt acts to wliich the species of treason, affirmed in the address, 
 ought to be applied, were not established, nor any offenders marked 
 out. But a general mass of the acts of turbulence, said to be done 
 at various times and places, and of various natures, were all thrown 
 together to make out one general constructive treason. Neither was 
 there any sort of proof of the continuance of any unlawful force 
 from whence we could infer that a rebellion does now exist. And 
 we are the more cautious of pronouncing any part of his Majesty's 
 dominions to be in actual rebellion, because the cases of construc- 
 tive treason under that branch of the 25th of Edward the 3rd, which 
 describes the crime of rebellion, have been already so far extended 
 by the judges, and the distinctions thereupon so nice and subtle, 
 that no prudent man ought to declare any single person in that 
 situation, without the clearest evidence of uncontrovertible overt 
 acts, to warrant such a declaration. Much less ought so high an 
 authority as both Houses of Parliament, to denounce so severe a 
 judgment against a considerable part of his Majesty's subjects, by 
 which his forces may think themselves justified in commencing a 
 war, without any further order or commission " {^Parliainentary 
 History, xviii, 294, 295). 
 
 78 : 17. Formerly addressed. In February, 1769, the two 
 Houses of Parliament had presented an address to the king urging 
 
Notes 149 
 
 that Governor Bernard be directed " to take the most effectual 
 methods" for apprehending the persons responsible for the recent 
 disorders in Massachusetts, " with a view to sending them to Eng- 
 land for trial, under a statute passed in the reign of Henry VIII 
 for the trial of treasons committed out of the kingdom." Burke 
 discussed the proposal in his Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, 1777. 
 79 : 4. Penal laws. Burke enumerates them in one of his 
 resolutions, pp. 106, 107. 
 
 79 : 24. The colonies complain. See the Declaration and 
 f?esolves of the First Continental Congress, Oct. 14, 1774 (MacDon- 
 a\d, Select Charters, 356-361). The fourth resolution declared: 
 "That the foundation of English liberty, and all free government, 
 is a right in the people to participate in their legislative council : 
 and as the English colonists are not represented, and from their 
 local and other circumstances, cannot properly be represented, in 
 the Biitish Parliament, they are entitled to a free and exclusive 
 power of legislation in their several provincial legislatures, where 
 their right of representation can alone be preserved, in all cases of 
 taxation and internal polity, subject only to the negative of their 
 sovereign, in such manner as has been heretofore used and accus- 
 tomed." 
 
 80 : 12. Profound learning. The question of the right of 
 Parliament to tax the colonies had been for more than ten years 
 the subject of earnest and learned discussion in both England and 
 America. For a summary by Burke of the arguments, see the 
 Anmml Register, 1766, pp. 37-44. 
 
 81 : I. Serbonian bog. From Paradise Lost, ii. 592-594. 
 
 81 : 22. Unity of spirit. See / Corinthians xii. 4 ; Ephe- 
 sians iv. 3. 
 
 82 : 27. American financiers. Men interested in taxing the 
 colonies merely for the sake of revenue. 
 
 83 : 6. Further views. It had been frequently urged that, 
 if the assertion of the taxing powder were given up, the colonies 
 would be encouraged to demand further concessions. 
 
150 Notes 
 
 83 : 7. Trade laws. Navigation Acts. 
 
 83 : II. A gentleman of real moderation. George Rice 
 (1742-1779), in a speech, April 19, 1774, on the repeal of the tea 
 duty. 
 
 83 : 22. Futile and useless. The enforcement of the Acts of 
 Trade as a whole had in fact been very lax, and in consequence the 
 interference with the natural growth of colonial trade had not 
 been great. 
 
 84:17. The pamphlet. By Dean Tucker. 
 
 84 : 27. True ground of the quarrel. The primary objection 
 of the colonies was to taxation, not to the regulation of their 
 trade. 
 
 85 : 8. Not a shadow of evidence. The statement is, in a way, 
 too strong. There had been occasional protests against the Acts 
 of Trade. The systematic evasion, however, of such acts as bore 
 heavily on American trade made the protests of little general im- 
 portance. 
 
 85 : 25. Will go further. Will demand further concessions. 
 
 86 : 24. Austrian family. Charles I of Spain, grandson of the 
 Emperor Maximilian, became the Emperor Charles V in 15 19. 
 The dynasty ended with the death of Charles II, in 1700. 
 
 86 : 27. Philip the Second, 1 527-1 598. 
 
 87 : I. Not chosen the most perfect standard. " He (Philip) 
 lived to see the vast strength which fell to him as a legacy slip out 
 of his hands, and to see Spain sink to a condition of comparative 
 weakness" (Fisher). 
 
 87 : 9. English conquest. By Henry II, in 1172. 
 
 87 : 10. No Parliament. The Irish were divided into tribes 
 or clans, with a chief at the head of each. 
 
 87 : 14. Such as England then enjoyed. The Great Council 
 of barons and representatives of the church. Representatives from 
 cities and boroughs were first summoned to Parliament in 1265. 
 
 87 : 21. Magna Charta, The Great Charter extorted from 
 John in 1215. 
 
Notes 1 5 1 
 
 87 : 27. Not at first extended. It was not until 1494, in the 
 reign of Henry VII, that "it was enacted that all English laws in 
 force at that time should be obeyed in Ireland " (Gardiner, SUi- 
 denis' History of England, 351). 
 
 88 : 2. Your privileges. The privileges of the English Pale — 
 the region about Dublin to which English authority was for many 
 years restricted. 
 
 88 : 2. Sir John Davies. 1569-1626. He published in 1612 
 the Discovery of the trice Causes why Ireland was never entirely 
 Stibdued nor brought under Obedience of the Crown of England 
 until the Beginning of his Majesty's happy Reign. 
 
 88 : 5. Military government. The Earl of Essex and Lord 
 Mountjoy had been sent to Ireland in 1599 and 1600 to put down 
 rebellion. 
 
 88 : 20. Glorious Revolution. The English Revolution of 1688. 
 " Glorious " because a victory for Whig principles, in which Burke 
 believed. 
 
 88 : 21. This has made Ireland, etc. The picture is over- 
 drawn. The treatment of Ireland by England had for centuries 
 been discreditable, and the relations between the two countries 
 were almost always strained, but Ireland could hardly be called a 
 "great and flourishing kingdom " at this time. 
 
 89 : 8. Irish pensioners. Pensioners, many of them English- 
 men, paid out of the revenue from Ireland. Lecky characterizes 
 the system at this time as " scandalous." 
 
 89 : 15. Henry the Third. There was intermittent war be- 
 tween England and Wales throughout the first half of the thirteenth 
 century. After the defeat and death of Simon de Monlfort at Eves- 
 ham, in 1265, Llewellyn, Prince of Wales, who had joined Earl Simon 
 against Henry III, submitted and did homage. 
 
 89 : 16. Edward the First. War was renewed in 1277, and 
 resulted in the conquest of the country by the English. The Stat- 
 ute of Wales, a body of laws established in 1284, provided for the 
 government of the country. 
 
152 Notes 
 
 8g : 17. Not looked upon. The union of Wales and England 
 was not completed until 1536. 
 
 89 : 21. Lords Marchers. Lords of the marches, or border 
 territories, to whom had been given authority to conquer and 
 govern so much of the country as they were able. Around the 
 castles of the marchers the towns of Wales grew up. The system 
 was not established by Edward I, but had been in existence since 
 1090, in the reign of William II. After the conquest of Wales, in 
 1284, no more marches were created. 
 
 90 : 10. Prohibit by proclamation. The consuls and agents of 
 England in Europe had been specially charged to prevent, if pos- 
 sible, the shipment of arms and military supplies to the colonies. 
 
 90:14. Disarm New England. Gage had made several seizures 
 of powder and stores in the vicinity of Boston. A letter reporting 
 his action had been laid before the House, January 19, 1 775. 
 
 go : 17. With more hardship. Because of the greater distance, 
 
 91 : 14. Twenty-seventh year. 1535-1536. English statutes 
 are designated as the statutes of such and such a year of the sover- 
 eign. Each statute is called a chapter. The act referred to here 
 would be cited as 27 Henry VIII, chapter 26. 
 
 91 : 29. Day-star. Compare 2 Peter i. 19. 
 
 92 : 3. Simul alba, etc. 
 
 " When mariners their white star see, — 
 Drops from the rocks the refluent spray, 
 The clouds disperse, the winds subside, 
 While threatening waves their will obey 
 And slumber on the tranquil tide." 
 
 — Horace, Odes, i. 12 (Sargent's translation). 
 
 92 : 9. County Palatine. Latin palatiwn, a palace. A county 
 palatine was one whose head had virtually the powers of an 
 independent sovereign. Chester was granted by William I, being 
 designed to serve as a barrier against the Welsh. Like the other 
 palatine counties, it had its own parliament and system of courts. 
 The eldest son of the sovereign is still given the title of Earl of 
 
Notes 1 53 
 
 Chester. The county was given representation in Parliament in 
 1541. 
 
 92 : 14. Richard the Second. 1377-1399. 
 
 93 : 6. Knight ne burgess. The former represented counties 
 or shires, and the latter boroughs or towns, in Parliament. 
 
 93 : 8. Touched and grieved. Affected to their disadvantage 
 or injury. 
 
 93 : 14, Libel. Perhaps referring to Gage's rejection, in June, 
 1774, of an address from the council of Massachusetts reflecting on 
 the conduct of two of his predecessors. Gage characterized the 
 address as a " libel," an " insult " to the king, and an " affront " to 
 himself. 
 
 93 : 28. Charles the Second. 1 660-1685. 
 
 93 : 29. Durham. Durham was given representation in Parlia- 
 ment in 1675, but remained a palatine county under a bishop until 
 1836. 
 
 94 : 18. Judge Harrington. Daines Barrington (1727-1800). 
 He was appointed justice of the Welsh counties of Merioneth, 
 Carnarvon, and Anglesey in 1757. 
 
 95 : 15. Opposuit natura, nature opposed. Juvenal, Satires x, 
 152. 
 
 95 : 17. I do not know to be possible. The Resolutions of 
 the Stamp Act Congress and the Declaration and Resolves of the 
 First Continental Congress had both declared such representation 
 to be impracticable. 
 
 95 : 20. Those . . . more confident. Franklin seems to have 
 thought it feasible in 1754. In 1769 he still thought it "by no 
 means impracticable," but confessed that the time for such a sug- 
 gestion had passed, and that the colonies were indifferent to it. 
 
 95 : 21. Arm ... is not shortened. Compare Isaiah lix. i. 
 
 96 : 4. Republic . . . Utopia . . . Oceana. Three works out- 
 lining the constitution and government of an imaginary republic. 
 The Republic, in form an elaborate dialogue, is one of the best 
 known works of Plato (428-347 B.C.) Sir Thomas More (1478- 
 
154 Notes 
 
 1535) published his Utopia in 15 16. The Oceana of James 
 Harrington (1611-1677) appeared in 1656. On More's work see 
 Kaufman, Utopias, chap. i. 
 
 96 : 7. Rude swain. From Milton, Conius, 634, 635, but in- 
 accurately quoted. 
 
 96 : 8. Clouted shoon. Shoes with clout nails, i.e. short nails 
 with large heads. 
 
 96 : 17. Grant. A voluntary contribution, in this case voted by 
 a colonial assembly. 
 
 96 : 18. Imposition. A tax imposed by Parliament. 
 
 96 : 20. Aids. In the sense of additional grants. 
 
 97 : 3. Temple of British concord. An allusion to the Temple 
 of Concord at Rome. 
 
 97 : 17. Fourteen . . . governments. Besides the thirteen con- 
 tinental colonies which were soon to revolt, Burke may have had 
 specially in mind Quebec, acquired from France in 1763. Nova 
 Scotia also had a government like that of the other colonies, 
 
 97 : 23. Description. The parties named — in this case the 
 colonies and plantations — as distinct from the facts alleged. 
 
 97 : 28. Given and granted. Supplies voted by Parliament are 
 conceived of as granted to the Crown, as was long the case in 
 fact. 
 
 98 : 14. Nonmeus. Misquoted from Horace, Satires, ii. 2, 2-3. 
 "Nor is it I that speak, but Ofellus, that plain, simple sage, wise 
 without precepts." (Patrick's translation, ii. 112.) 
 
 98 : 20. Touch with a tool. Compare Exodus xx. 25. 
 98 : 28. Wise beyond what was written. Compare / Corin- 
 thians iv. 6. 
 
 98 : 29. Form of sound words. Compare 2 Timothy i. 13. 
 
 99 : 28. Sixth of George the Second. The so-called Molasses 
 Act of 1733, imposing practically prohibitory duties on rum, sugar, 
 and molasses imported into the colonies. The important sections 
 of the act are in MacDonald, Select Charters, 249-251. 
 
 100 : 4. Duties of 1767. . The Townshend Revenue Act, 
 
Notes 155 
 
 100 : 5. Lord Hillsborough. 1718-1793. He was secretary 
 of state for the colonies from 1768 to 1772. The reference is to a 
 circular letter to the governors, May 13, 1769, in which Hillsborough 
 declared "that his Majesty's present administration have at no tmie 
 entertained a design to propose to Parliament to lay any further 
 taxes upun America for the purpose of raising a revenue ; and that 
 it is at present their intention to propose the next session of Par- 
 liament to take off the duties upon glass, paper, and colors, upon 
 consideration of such duties having been laid contrary to the true 
 principles of commerce." 
 
 100 : 10. The resolution of the noble lord. Lord North's 
 conciliatory resolution. 
 
 100 : 19. On the paper. In the text of the resolution itself. 
 
 100 : 26. Freemen. Those who enjoy all the rights of citizens. 
 The word is often used in American colonial history as synonymous 
 with voters. 
 
 100 : 26. Freeholders. Those holding land to which they have 
 absolute title. A property qualification for voting was universal in 
 the colonies. 
 
 loi : 5. Acts of supply. Acts for raising revenue. 
 
 loi : 6. Style. Form of words, usually referring to the title 
 of the Act. Article i of the Articles of Confederation reads : 
 "The style of this confederacy shall be 'The United States of 
 America.' " 
 
 loi : 7. Aid. An aid was originally a free grant of money for 
 some particular purpose, and the idea of freedom in the grant con- 
 tinued after occasional aids had given place to regular taxes. 
 Burke emphasizes the original meaning of the word. 
 
 loi : 8. Passed the public offices. Been approved by the 
 proper ofiicers. 
 
 101 : 15. Law servants of the crown. Lord Mansfield, the 
 chief justice and a supporter of the Stamp Act, had declared in 
 1766, in a debate in the Lords, that no money could be raised by 
 taxation without the consent of Parliament. 
 
156 
 
 Notes 
 
 loi : i6. If the crown could be responsible. The sovereign 
 is not responsible to Parliament, but the ministers are. The for- 
 mer, however, is bound to act in accordance with the advice of the 
 latter in all save foreign affairs. 
 
 loi : 20. Impeachable offences. Impeachment is a method of 
 trying and punishing persons for political offenses. The charges 
 are preferred by the House of Commons, and the case is tried 
 before the House of Lords. 
 
 loi : 21. Council. The Privy Council, formerly a body of ad- 
 visers to the Crown, but now a formal body which " meets for the 
 purpose of making orders, issuing proclamations, or attending at 
 formal acts of State." Cabinet ministers are members of the Council. 
 
 loi : 22. Secretaries of state. There were at this time three 
 such officials, one being the Secretary of State for the Colonies. 
 
 loi : 22. Lords of trade. The usual short designation of the 
 Lords of the Committee of Trade and Plantations, a committee of 
 the Privy Council to whom the oversight of colonial affairs and 
 trade was intrusted. The committee became the Board of Trade 
 in 1786. See Hart, Conlefnporaries, ii, 129-131. 
 
 loi : 22. Attorneys and all solicitors-general. The first is 
 the chief legal adviser of the government. The second is a legal 
 official associated with the attorney-general. 
 
 102 : 9. Great expenses. Franklin, in his examination before 
 the House of Commons, in January, 1766, said: "The colonies 
 raised, clothed, and paid, during the last war, near 25,000 men, and 
 spent many millions. . . . We were only reimbursed what, in your 
 opinion, we had advanced beyond our proportion, or beyond what 
 might reasonably be expected from us; and it was a very small part 
 of what we spent." Works (Sparks's edition), iv, 167. 
 
 102 : II. 1695. The date seems to have no special significance. 
 The first of the four wars between the French and English colonies 
 was then going on. 
 
 102 : 12. 1 710. The year in which Port Royal was taken by an 
 Enghsh force composed in part of New England men. 
 
Notes 
 
 57 
 
 I02 : 13, Journals. Of Parliament. The journal is the legal 
 record of proceedings. 
 
 102 : 16. 1748, The date of the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 
 closing tlie War of the Austrian Succession, — the war known in 
 America as King George's War. 
 
 102 : 22. Cape Breton. Taken by the English during the war, 
 but restored to France by the treaty of peace. 
 
 103 : 25, Legally. An allusion to the extreme view that money 
 for the Crown could be raised only by authority of Parliament, and 
 could not be granted by the colonies even as a free gift without 
 permission. 
 
 104 : 8. Miserable stories. Many false and exaggerated reports 
 of what had taken place in America, and of the refusal of the culo- 
 nies to bear any part of the expense incurred in their defense, were 
 current in England. 
 
 104 : 13. Paid no taxes. A common argument. 
 
 104 : 16. Mr. Grenville. George Grenville (1712-1770). 
 He was prime minister from 1763 to 1765. 
 
 104 : 23. Funds given for sinking the debt. The taxes 
 raised by the several colonies for the payment of their debts. 
 
 106 : 21. An act for granting certain duties, etc. The Town- 
 shend Revenue Act. The duties imposed by this act, except the 
 duty on tea, had already been repealed by an act of 1770. 
 
 106 : 23. Drawback. A rebate, in whole or in part, of the 
 import duties paid on articles subsequently exported. 
 
 107 : I. An act to discontinue, etc. The Boston Port Act, 
 
 1774- 
 107 : 7. An act for the impartial administration of justice, 
 
 etc. The Administration of Justice Act, 1774. 
 
 107 : 12. An act for the better regulating, etc. The Massa- 
 chusetts Government Act, 1774. 
 
 107 : 20. During the king's pleasure. Section viii of the 
 act provided "that whenever it shall be made .to appear to his 
 Majesty, in his privy council, that peace and obedience to the laws 
 
158 Notes 
 
 shall be so far restored in the said town of Boston that the trade of 
 Great Britain may safely be carried on there, and his Majesty's 
 customs duty collected, and his Majesty, in his privy council, shall 
 adjudge the same to be true," commerce might be resumed. 
 
 107 : 23. Boston was not heard. Persons or corporations 
 affected by proposed legislation are usually entitled to a hearing, 
 either by petition or through representatives. The Boston Port 
 Act was rushed through Parliament, being introduced March 14, 
 1774, and receiving the royal assent March 31. 
 
 108 : 4. Crown has far less power. The charters of Rhode 
 Island and Connecticut were the most liberal of all the colonial 
 charters. In neither case did the Crown reserve any direct 
 authority over the colony. 
 
 108 : 6. Abuses have been full as great. Massachusetts was 
 certainly the greater offender, but resistance and violence had 
 characterized proceedings in the other colonies as well. 
 
 108 : 16. At his pleasure. The statement is not quite accu- 
 rate. The act vested the appointment of sheriffs in the governor, 
 without the consent of the council, but the consent of the council 
 was necessary to their removal. 
 
 108 : 16. Returning officer. The sheriff, who under the act 
 was to return to the court the names of jurors. Jurors had hitherto 
 been chosen by the towns. 
 
 108 : 21. Temporary. The act was to continue in force for 
 three years from June i, 1774. 
 
 108 : 29. Original intention. The title of the act was : " An 
 Act concerning the Trial of Treasons committed out of the King's 
 Majesty's Dominions." 
 
 109 : 14. Good behavior. Until the outbreak of the dispute 
 with the mother country, the higher judicial officers in the colonies 
 had held office during good behavior, thus being made independ- 
 ent of political control. In December, 1 761, however, the colonial 
 governors had been instructed " to grant no judicial commissions 
 but during pleasure." The change created widespread alarm in 
 
Notes 159 
 
 the colonies. The Massachusetts Circular Letter of 1768 questioned, 
 among other points, " Whether any people can be said to enjoy any 
 degree of freedom if . . . while the judges of the land, and other 
 civil officers, hold not their commissions during good behavior, their 
 having salaries appointed for them by the Crovv^n, independent of 
 the people, hath not a tendency to subvert the principles of equity, 
 and endanger the happiness and security of the subject." 
 
 109 : 20. Courts of admiralty. These courts had jurisdiction 
 of maritime cases, including smuggling, and as they sat without a 
 jury, subjection to their authority was felt by the colonists to be an 
 especial grievance. Offences against the Stamp Act had also been 
 placed within the jurisdiction of the admiralty courts concurrently 
 with other courts. The resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress pro- 
 tested that this had " a manifest tendency to subvert the rights and 
 liberties of the colonists." 
 
 log : 24. More commodious. Held at more convenient or ac- 
 cessible places. 
 
 109 : 26. Decent maintenance. The first edition of the speech 
 has the following footnote : " The solicitor-general informed' Mr. B., 
 when the resolutions were separately moved, that the grievance of 
 the judges partaking of the profits of the seizure had been redressed 
 by office ; accordingly the resolution was amended." 
 
 no : 8. Congress complain. The extension of the jurisdiction 
 of the admiralty courts had been condemned in the Declaration 
 and Resolves of the First Continental Congress as " subversive of 
 American rights." In an "Address to the People of Great Britain " 
 the Congress had said : " It was ordained that whenever of- 
 fenses should be committed in the colonies against particular acts 
 imposing various duties and restrictions upon trade, the prosecutor 
 might bring his action for the penalties in the courts of admiralty ; 
 by which means the subject lost the advantage of being tried by an 
 honest, uninfluenced jury of the vicinage, and was subjected to 
 the sad necessity of being judged by a single man, a creature of the 
 crown, and according to the course of a law which exempts the 
 
1 60 Notes 
 
 prosecutor from the trouble of proving his accusation, and obliges 
 the defendant either to evince his innocence or to suffer. To give 
 this new judicatory the greater importance, and as if vi^ith design to 
 protect false accusers, it is further provided that the judge's certifi- 
 cate of there having been probable causes of seizure and prose- 
 cution shall protect the prosecutor from actions at common law for 
 recovery of damages" {/oto'iials of Congress, \. 41). 
 
 no : 23. Prove too much. This had been urged in the House 
 of Lords at the time of the repeal of the Stamp Act. 
 
 Ill : 5. Disclaim any such inference. Burke, it should be 
 remembered, always defended the settlement made in 1766. 
 
 Ill : 9. Moved to have read. In a speech of January 14, 
 1766. 
 
 Ill : 10. Lord Chatham. William Pitt (1708- 17 78), first Earl 
 of Chatham, and the foremost champion of the American cause in 
 Parliament. 
 
 Ill : II. In favor of his opinions. He had cited the cases of 
 Chester, Durham, and Wales in a speech in reply to Grenville. 
 
 111 : 23. De jure or de facto, in law or in fact. 
 
 112 : I. The demand of immunity. This had been the chief 
 demand of the colonies up to this time. 
 
 112 : 26. The immediate jewel of his soul. Compare Othello, 
 iii. 3. 155, 156. 
 
 112 : 26. Great house. Compare Juvenal, Satires, v. 66 : " Every 
 great house is full of haughty slaves." 
 
 113 : 12. The cords of man. Compare Hosea xi. 4. 
 
 113: 14. Aristotle . . . cautions us. " In pursuing this study 
 [ethics], we shall have done enough if we attain such precision as 
 the subject permits of. For it is a mistake to look for the same ex- 
 actness in ail kinds of reasoning, just as it would be in all kinds 
 of manufacture. . . . We must be satisfied, therefore, in reason- 
 ing upon these subjects, to give only a rough sketch of the truth, 
 and when our premises are not universal laws but statements 
 of what generally or probably occurs, to draw only probable cm- 
 
Notes i6i 
 
 elusions. In the same spirit tlie reader must accept all that is here 
 stated, for no one who pretends to education will look for more 
 exactness in the treatment of any subject than the nature of the 
 subject admits of. To ask mathematical demonstrations from an 
 orator is as absurd as to accept probable reasoning from a mathe- 
 matician" (Aristotle, Nico77iacJiean Ethics, Bk. i, chap, iii, Muir- 
 head's translation). 
 
 115 : 9. The committee. The House sitting as a Committee 
 of the Whole, February 20. 
 
 115 : 15. Experimentum, etc. Let the experiment be made 
 on something worthless. 
 
 115 : 21. Taxing . . . in the ante-chamber. Taxing by deci- 
 sion of the cabinet instead of by vote of Parliament. The paragraph 
 that follows is a keen exposition of the way in which Lord North's 
 plan of conciliation might very possibly work. 
 
 117 : 9. General powers. The colonial agents acted under in- 
 structions from the assemblies. 
 
 117 : 16. What is the condition. The report of Congress on 
 Lord North's proposition, July 31, 1775, says: "We are of the 
 opinion that the proposition contained in this resolution is unrea- 
 sonable and insidious: unreasonable, because, if we declare we 
 accede to it, we declare, without reservation, we will purchase the 
 favor of parliament, not knowing at the same time at what price 
 they will please to estimate their favor ; it is insidious, because 
 individual colonies, having bid and bidden again till they find the 
 avidity of the seller too great for all their powers to satisfy, are 
 then to return into opposition, divided from their sister colonies, 
 whom the minister will have previously detached by a grant of 
 easier terms, or by an artful procrastination of a definitive answer." 
 The whole report should be read in connection with this portion of 
 the address. The report is in MacDonald, Select Charters, 385-389. 
 
 117 : 26. Perfectly convinced. Since the repeal of the Stamp 
 Act there had been no serious thought of taxing the colonies save 
 by the imposition of customs duties. 
 
 BURKE ON CONCILIATION — II 
 
1 62 Notes 
 
 ii8 : 6. English revenue. England derived a large revenue 
 from the import duties on tobacco, and the trade in this commodity 
 had been the subject of repeated regulation by Parliament. 
 
 ii8 : 19. Confound the innocent with the guilty. The argu- 
 ment had been advanced in debate. The active resistance of the 
 colonies was still the work of a minority. 
 
 119 : I. Quota. The amount apportioned to each colony. 
 
 119 : 14. Empire of Germany. Not to be confounded vi^ith 
 the kingdom of Prussia. 
 
 119 : 24. Wot be to their taste. In introducing his concilia- 
 tory resolution, Lord North had said that " it is very probable the 
 propositions contained in this resolution may not be acceptable to 
 the Americans in general," 
 
 120 : 15. Long discourse. The speech occupied three hours 
 in delivery. 
 
 120 : 22. Mean to spare it. "Before the year 1775 closed, 
 Burke must have spoken at least a dozen times more on America ; 
 and on November 16 he offered another bill for conciliating the 
 colonies" (Lamont). 
 
 121 : 1 1. Posita luditur area, the chest {i.e. the pubHc revenue) 
 is put at stake. From Juvenal, Satires, i. 90. 
 
 121 : 15. Debt. Cited as proof of the financial strength of the 
 kingdom. 
 
 122:22. Ease would retract. yi\%q}ioiedixom Paradise Lost, 
 iv. 96, 97. 
 
 122 : 26. The immense, ever-growing, eternal debt. Com- 
 pare Paradise Lost, iv. 53. 
 
 123 : II. Bengal. "An arrangement was, in 1769, made be- 
 tween the Administration and the East India Directors. The 
 Company were to hold the territorial revenues of India for five 
 years, they paying ^^400,000 annually into the Exchequer. But in » 
 1770 the resources of India materially failed. There was a terrible 
 famine in Bengal, in which it is supposed that one third of the 
 inhabitants perished. In 1772 the Company declared a deficiency 
 
Notes 163 
 
 124 ; 
 
 ; 6. 
 
 124 ; 
 
 ' 7- 
 
 124 ; 
 
 ; 9. 
 
 124 : 
 
 ; 19. 
 
 124 ; 
 
 : 27. 
 
 125 ; 
 
 : 10. 
 
 125 ; 
 
 ; 10. 
 
 of above a million ; obtained loans from the Bank of England to a 
 large amount ; and at last went to Parliament for aid. ... In 1773 
 an act was passed by which ;i^ 1,400,000 was lent to the Company ; 
 the payment of ;i^400,ooo per annum was postponed ; and the divi- 
 dend of the proprietors was restricted to 6 per cent, until the loan 
 should be repaid" (Knight, History of Etrgland, vi. 334). 
 
 123 : 18. Foreign sale. Sale in foreign countries. Under the 
 Navigation Acts colonial trade with Europe, Asia, and Africa had 
 been compelled to pass through England. 
 123 : 26. Enemies. France and Spain. 
 
 Light as air. Compare Othello, iii. 3. 322-324. 
 Links of iron. Compare //^////^ Ccesar, i. 3. 94, 95. 
 Grapple. Compare Hamlet, i, 3. 63. 
 Turn their faces. See / Kings viii. 44, 45. 
 Commodity of price. Compare Matthew xiii. 46. 
 Letters of office. Official letters. 
 Instructions. Governors and other crown officials in 
 the colonies were constantly in receipt of instructions from the 
 Lords of Trade or the Secretary of State. 
 
 125 : II. Suspending clauses. Clauses or sections in statutes 
 authorizing the suspension of the act, in whole or in part, under 
 certain circumstances. 
 
 125 : 22. Land Tax Act. The land tax was one of the most 
 important sources of revenue in England. The reduction of the 
 tax from4J. to 3^. in the pound, in 1766, created a deficiency in the 
 revenue which the Townshend Revenue Act aimed to make good 
 in part. 
 
 125 : 23. Annual vote. Appropriations for the support of the 
 army are made annually. 
 
 125 : 24. Mutiny Bill. An act, also passed annually, provid- 
 ing for the maintenance of discipline by military law. 
 
 126 : 4. Profane herd. Compare Horace, Odes, iii. i. i : "I 
 hate and banish hence the crowd profane " (Sargent's translation, 
 113). 
 
164 ' Notes 
 
 126 : 13. All in all. Compare / Corinthians xv. 28. 
 
 126 : 17. Auspicate. Seek favor for in beginning. A refer- 
 ence to the Roman auspices. 
 
 126 : 19. Sursum corda. Lift up your hearts. A phrase used 
 in the mass, and in the communion service of the Church of Eng- 
 land, as the priest proceeds to the consecration of the elements. 
 
 126 : 22. High calling. Compare Philippinns iii. 14. 
 
 127 : 3. Quod felix, etc. May it be happy and prosperous ! 
 127 : 12. Previous question. A formal motion, not debatable, 
 
 used to end debate and bring about an immediate vote. The prac- 
 tice is often referred to as the closure. 
 
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