Edmund Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America, 1775Scott, Foresman, 1898 - 159 pages |
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act of navigation acts of parliament ancient argument assemblies authority blue riband Boston Port Bill British Burke Burke's burthen Chester colonies and plantations colonists commerce confess constitution county palatine crown dispute duties empire England English experience freedom give Grand Penal Bill grant grievance House of Commons ideas inhabitants intituled Ireland JOHN MORLEY judge justice King knights and burgesses legislature liberty Lord Dunmore Lord North's Massachusetts Bay mean ment mode nation nature noble lord North America obedience object opinion peace political preamble present Majesty previous question principle privileges proper to repeal proposed proposition province of Massachusetts province or colony quarrel radical Whigs reasons reign repeal an act representation resolution revenue sentence Serbonian bog slaves Speech on Conciliation spirit Stamp Act tax the colonies taxation things thought tion touched and grieved trade laws vote Wales Whigs whole wholly
Popular passages
Page 119 - My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government; they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance.
Page 72 - The question with me is not whether you have a right to render your people miserable, but whether it is not your interest to make 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.
Page 49 - Their love of liberty, as with you, fixed and attached on this specific point of taxing. 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 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...
Page 50 - The people are Protestants; and of that kind which is the most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a persuasion not only favorable to liberty, but built upon it. I do not think, Sir, that the reason of this averseness in the dissenting churches from all that looks like absolute government is so much to be sought in their religious tenets, as in their history.
Page 61 - Mountains. From thence they behold before them an immense plain, one vast, rich, level meadow; a square of five hundred miles. Over this they would wander without a possibility of restraint; they would change their manners with the...
Page 119 - 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.
Page 43 - And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it? Pass by the other parts, and look at the manner in which the people of New England have of late carried on the whale fishery.
Page 121 - We ought to elevate our minds to the greatness of that trust to which the order of Providence has called us. By adverting to the dignity of this high calling, our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire ; and have made the most extensive, and the only honourable conquests ; not by destroying, but by promoting, the wealth, the number, the happiness of the human race.
Page 61 - 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 herds to another.
Page 52 - 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 their education. In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study.