ADDRESS TO THE BRITISH COLONISTS IN NORTH AMERICA. 178 A LETTER TO John Farr and John Harris, Esors., on the BURKE'S SPEECHES AMERICAN TAXATION (1774) DURING the last session of the last Parliament, on the 19th of April 1774, Mr. Rose Fuller, member for Rye, made the following motion: That an Act made in the seventh year of the reign of his present Majesty, intituled, " 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 exportation from this kingdom of coffee and cocoa nuts, of the produce of the said colonies or plantations; for discontinuing the drawbacks payable on china earthenware exported to America; and for more effectually preventing the clandestine running of goods in the said colonies and plantations," might be read. And the same being read accordingly, he moved, "That this House will, upon this day sevennight, resolve itself into a committee of the whole House, to take into consideration the duty of 3d. per pound weight upon tea, payable in all his Majesty's dominions in America, imposed by the said Act; and also the appropriation of the said duty." 1 " On this latter motion a warm and interesting debate arose, in which Mr. Burke spoke as follows: SIR,-I agree with the honourable gentleman who spoke last that this subject is not new in this House. Very 110 Geo. III. c. 17. The Act repealing Townshend's taxes. It should be noticed that the Government, although retaining the 3d. on tea payable in America, hoped, even here, to conciliate America by reducing the duty of rs. in the pound to which tea was liable in England by three-fifths on re-exportation to the colonies. 'Charles Wolfran Cornwall, Esq., lately appointed one of the lords of the treasury. disagreeably to this House, very unfortunately to this nation, and to the peace and prosperity of this whole empire, no topic has been more familiar to us. For nine long years, session after session, we have been lashed round and round this miserable circle of occasional arguments and temporary expedients. I am sure our heads must turn and our stomachs nauseate with them. We have had them in every shape; we have looked at them in every point of view. Invention is exhausted; reason is fatigued; experience has given judgment; but obstinacy is not yet conquered. The honourable gentleman has made one endeavour more to diversify the form of this disgusting argument. He has thrown out a speech composed almost entirely of challenges. Challenges are serious things; and as he is a man of prudence as well as resolution, I dare say he has very well weighed those challenges before he delivered them. I had long the happiness to sit at the same side of the House, and to agree with the honourable gentleman on all the American questions. My sentiments, I am sure, are well known to him, and I thought I had been perfectly acquainted with his. Though I find myself mistaken, he will still permit me to use the privilege of an old friendship; he will permit me to apply myself to the House under the sanction of his authority, and, on the various grounds he has measured out, to submit to you the poor opinions which I have formed upon a matter of importance enough to demand the fullest consideration I could bestow upon it. He has stated to the House two grounds of deliberation; one narrow and simple, and merely confined to the question on your paper: the other more large and more complicated, comprehending the whole series of the parliamentary proceedings with regard to America, their causes, and their consequences. With regard to the latter ground, he states it as useless, and thinks it may be even dangerous to enter into so extensive a field of inquiry. Yet, to my surprise, he had hardly laid down this restrictive proposition, to which his authority would have given so much weight, when directly, and with the same authority, he condemns it, and declares it absolutely necessary to enter |