ENGLAND AND THE AMERICAN COLONIES EDMUND BURKE "Conciliation Taken from the peroration of Burke's speech on with the Colonies," delivered in the House of Commons, March 22, 1775. My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties, which, though light as air, yet are as strong as the links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government, they will cling and grapple to you; and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood that your government may be one thing, and their privileges another; that these two things may exist without any mutual relation,-the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened; and everything hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, wherever that chosen race-the sons of England-worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends will you 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. soil. 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 TAXATION OF AMERICA 13 the commodity of price, of which you have the monopoly. This is the true act of navigation, which binds to you the commerce of the colonies, and, through them, secures to you the wealth of the world. It is the spirit of the English constitution, which, infused through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of the empire, even down to the minutest member. Is it not the same virtue which does everything for us here in England? Do you imagine that it is the Land-tax Act which raises your revenue? that it is the annual vote in the Committee of Supply which gives you your army? or that it is the Mutiny Bill which inspires it with bravery and discipline? No! surely no! It is the love of the people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber. TAXATION OF AMERICA EDMUND BURKE From Burke's famous speech on "American Taxation," delivered in the House of Commons, April 19, 1774. Let us embrace some system or other before we end this session. Do you mean to tax America, and to draw a productive revenue from thence? If you do, speak out; name, fix, ascertain this revenue; settle its quantity; define its objects; provide for its collection; and then fight when you have something to fight for. If you murder, rob; if you kill, take possession and do not appear in the character of madmen, as well as assassins, violent, vindictive, bloody, and tyrannical, without an object. But may better counsels guide you ! Again and again, revert to your old principles,seek peace and ensue it; leave America, if she has taxable matter in her, to tax herself. I am not here going into the distinctions of rights, nor attempting to mark their boundaries. I do not enter into these metaphysical distinctions; I hate the very sound of them. Leave the Americans as they anciently stood, and these distinctions, born of our unhappy contest, will die along with it. They and we, and their and our ancestors, have been happy under that system. Let the memory of all actions in contradiction to that good old mode, on both sides, be extinguished forever. Be content to bind America by laws of trade; you have always done it. Let this be your reason for binding their trade. Do not burthen them with taxes; you were not used to do so from the beginning. Let this be your reason for not taxing. These are the arguments of states and kingdoms. Leave the rest to the schools; for there only they may be discussed with safety. But if, intemperately, unwisely, fatally, you sophisticate and poison the very sources of government, by urging subtle deductions, and consequences odious to those you govern, from the un DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 15 limited and illimitable nature of supreme sovereignty, you will teach them by these means to call that sovereignty itself in question. When you drive him hard, the boar will surely turn upon the hunters. If that sovereignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled, what will they take? They will cast your sovereignty in your face. Nobody will be argued into slavery. A PLEA FOR THE DECLARATION OF RICHARD HENRY LEE An extract from a speech delivered in the Continental Congress, June 5, 1776, in favor of the Declaration of Independence. Why do we longer delay? Why do we still de. liberate? Let us complete the enterprise already so well commenced; and since our union with England can no longer consist with that liberty and peace which are our chief delight, let us dissolve these fatal ties and conquer forever that good which we already enjoy,— an entire and absolute independence. Let this most happy day give birth to the American republic. Let her arise, not to devastate and conquer, but to reëstablish the reign of peace and of law. The eyes of Europe are fixed upon us. She demands of us a living example of freedom, that may contrast, by the felicity of the citizens, with the ever-increasing tyranny which desolates her polluted shores. She invites us to prepare an asylum where the unhappy may find solace, and the persecuted repose. She entreats us to cultivate a propitious soil, where that generous plant which first sprung up and grew in England, but is now withered by the poisonous blasts of tyranny, may revive and flourish, sheltering under its shade all the unfortunate of the human race. This is the end presaged by so many omens, by our first victories, by the present ardor and union, by the flight of Howe and the pestilence which broke out among Dunmore's people, by the very winds which baffled the enemy's fleets and transports, and that terrible tempest which engulfed seven hundred vessels upon the coasts of Newfoundland. If we are not this day wanting in our duty to our country, the names of the American legislators will be placed by posterity at the side of those of Theseus, of Lycurgus, of Romulus, of Numa, of the three Williams of Nassau, and of all those whose memory has been and will be forever dear to virtuous men and good citizens. BRITISH RULE IN AMERICA PATRICK HENRY From a speech delivered at Richmond, Va., March 28, 1775, before the second Revolutionary Convention, in support of the resolution that "the Colony of Virginia be immediately put into a posture of defense." This extract and the following one include all but the two introductory paragraphs of this famous "Call to Arms." I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know |