Dunlap's Pennsylvania packet , The general advertiser — Philadelphia, Pa., 1775-03-27 00:00:00, page 2

The Speech of Edmund BukKE, Esq; on Ame
rican taxation, April 19, 1774.
DURING the last session of the late Parlia
ment, on the 19th of April, 1774, Mr+
Rufe Fuller, Member for Rye, made the follow
ing motion ; that an a& made in the 7th year of
the reign of his prelent Majesty, intitled, " an
" a& for granting certain dutiesin the British Co
“ lonies 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 difeontinuing the drawbacks
" payable on chinaearthen ware exported to Ame
“ rica ; aid for more effe^uary preventing the
" clandeftir.e running of goods in the said Coio
“ nies and Plantations ;" might be read.
And the fame being read accordingly, Ke mo
ved, " That this House will, upon this day fe'en
“ night, resolve itfelf into a Committee of the
" whole House, to takeiito consideration thedu
“ ty of 3d. per pound Weight upon tea, payable
" in all his Majesty's dominions in America, im
" posed by the said ad ; and also the approbati
" on of thefaid duty."
On this latter motion a warm and interesting
debate arose, in which Mr. Edmund Burke spoke
as follows:
SIR,
I agree with the Honourable Gentleman* who
spoke last, that thb Aibje& is not new in this House.
Very disagreeable to this House, very unfortu
nately to this nation, and to the peace and pros
perity 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. lam sure our heads must,
tirn, and our Rortacks nauseate, with them. We
have had them in every (hape; we have looked at
them in every point of view. Invention is exhau
sted: reason is fatigued ; experience has given
judgment ; but obdinacy is not yet conquered.
The Hon. Gentleman has made one endeavour
more to diverfify the form of this distinguishing
argument. He has thrown out a speech composed
a most entirely of challenges. Challenges are feri-
OJS things; and as heis a manof prudence as well
as resolution, I dare fay he has very well weighed
those challenges before he delivered them. I had
long the happiness to fit at the fame fide of the
House, and to agree with the Hon. 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 myfelf mistaken, he will Rill permit me to ire
the privilege of an old friendship; he will permit
me to apply myfelfto the House under the fandion
of his authority; and, on the various grounds he
has measured out, to submit to you the poor opi
nions which I have formed, upon a matter of im
portance enough to demand the fulleft confiderati
-01 I could bestow upon it.
He had stated to the House two grounds of de
liberation ; one narrow and simple, and merely
confined to the question on your paper: The other
more large and more complicated ; comprehend
ing the whole series of the Parliamentary proceed
ings 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
held of enquiry. Yet, to my furprize, he had
hardly laid down Ids rest idive proportion to which
his authority would have given so much weight,
when directly, and with the fame authority, he
condemns it; and declares it absolutely necessary to
enter into the most ample hittdrical detail. His zeal
lias thrown him a little out of the usual accuracy,
this perplexity what shall we do, Sir, who are
willing to submit to the law he gives us ? He has
reprobated in one part of his speech the rule he
had laid down for debate in the other; and, after
narrowing the ground for all those who are to
speak after him, he takes an excursion himfelf,as
unbounded as the fabjed and the extent of his great
abilities. Sir, when I cannot obey all his laws,
I will do the best I can. I will endeavour to obey
such of them as have the fandion of his example;
and to flick to that rule, which, though not con-|
fiftent with the other, is the most rational. He
was certainly in the right when he took the
matter largely. Icannot prevail on myfelf to agree
with him in his censure of his own conduct. It is
not, he will give me leave to fay, either useless
or dangerous. He asserts, that retrofped is not
wife; and the proper, the only proper, fubjed of
enquiry is “ not how we got into this difficulty,
but how we are to get out ofit." In other words,
we are, according to him, to consult our inventi
on, and to reject our experience. Tile mode of
deliberation he recommends is diametrically oppo
site to every rule of reason, and every principle
of good sense established amongst mankind. For,
that sense and that reason, I have always under
stood, absolutely to prescribe, whenever we are
involved in difficulties from the measures we have
pursued, that we shall take a Aria review of those
measures, in order to correct our errors if they
should be corrigible; or_at least to avoid a dull
uniformity in mifehief, and the unpitied calamity
it being repeatedly caught in the fame snare.
Sir, 4 will freely follow the Hon. Gentleman
in his hifterieal difcuflion, without the least ma
hagemeot for men or measures, further than as
shall seem to me to deserve it. But before Igo
into that large consideration, because I would
omit nothing that can give the House fatisfaAion,
I wifli to tread the narrow ground to which alone
the Hon. Gentleman in one part of his speech has
so llrialy confined us.
He desires to know, whether, ifwe were to re
peal this tax, agreeable to the portion of rhe
Hon. Gentleman who made the motion, the Ame
ricans would not take the post on this concession,
in order to make a new attack on the next body
of taxes; and whether they would not call for a
repeal of the duty on wine as loudly as they do
* Charles HTfrau Cornwall, Est, lately appointed
tz, :,.e Le^ of the Treafurj.
now for the repeal of the dutyon tea? Sir, i can
give no security on this fubjedl.
But I will do all that I can, and all that can be
fairly demanded. To the experience which the
Hon. Gentleman reprobates in one instant, and
reverts to in the next; to that experience, with
out the least wavering or helitation on my part,
I ftcadily appeal, and would to God there was no
other arbiter to decide on the vote with which the
House is to conclude this day.
When Parliament repealed the Stamp-AA, in
1766, I affirm, firft, that the Americans did not
in conference of this'meafu&e call upon you to
'give up the former Parliamentary Revenue which
subsisted in that county; or even any one of the
articles which compose it. I affirm also, that
when, departing from the maxims of that repeal,
you revived the scheme of taxation, and thereby
filled the minds of the Colonies with new jealou
sy, and all forts of afprehenfions, then it was that
they quarelled with the old taxes, as well as the
new; then it was, and not till then, that they
• questioned all the parts of your legislative power;
and by the battery of such questions, have shaken
the solid ftrudure of this empire to its deepest foun
dations.
Of those two proportions I shall, before I have
done, give such convincing, such datrining proof,
that however the contrary may be whifpe'red in
ciicfes, or bawled ir. news-papers, they never more
will dare to raise their voices in this House. 'I
speak with great confidence, I have reason for it.
The ministers arewith me. They at least are con
vinced that the repeal of the ftampad had not,
and that no repeal can have, the consequences
which the Hon. Gentleman, who defends their
measures, is so much alarmed at. To their con
dud I refer him for a conclusive answer to his
objection. I carry my proof irrefiftably into the
very body of both Ministry and Parliament; not
on any general reasoning growing out of colateral
matter, but on the condud of the honourable
Gentleman's Mi'nifterial friends on the new revenue
itfelf.
The ad in 1767, which grants this tea duty,
sets forth, in its preamble, that it was expedient
to raise a revenue in America, for the support of
the civil government there, as well as for purpo
ses still more extensive. To this support the ad
assigns fix branches of duties. About two years
after this ad passed, the Ministry, I mean the pre
fect Ministry, thought it expedient to repeal five
of the duties, and to leave (for reasons best known
to themselves) only the sixth standing. Suppose
any person, at the time of that repeal, had thus
addressed the Ministers, " Condemning, as you
do, the repeal of the stamp-ass, why do you ven
ture to repeal the duties upon glass, paper, and
painters colours ? Let your pretence for the repeal
be what it will, are you not thoroughly convinced
that your concessions will produce, not fatisfadi
on, but insolence in the Americans ; and that the
giving up these taxes will necessitate the giving up
of all the rest ?" this objedion was as palpable
then as it is now; as it was as good for preserving
the five duties as for retaining the fi*th. Besides,
the Minifler will recolled, that the repeal of the
slump-ad had but just preceded his repeal ; and
the ill policy of that measure (had it been so im
politic as it had been reprefehted) and the mifchiefs
it produced, were quite recent. Upon the princi
ples therefore of the Honourable Gentleman, up
on the principles of the Minister himfelf, the Mi
nifter has nothing at all to answer. He Rands
condemned by himfelf, and by all his associates,
old and new, as a destroyer, in the firft trtift of
finance of the revenues; and in the firft rank of
honour, as a betrayer of the dignity ofhis country.
Most men, especially great men, do not always
know their well-withers. I come to refeue that
noble Lord out of the hands of those he calls his
friends; and even out of his own. I will do him
the justice he is denied at home, he has not been
this wicked or imprudent man. He knew that a
repeal had no tendency to produce the mifchiefs
which gave so much alarm to his honourable friend.
His work was not bad in its principle, but imper
fed in its execution; and the motion in your pa
per presses him only to complete a proper plan,
which, by some unfortunate and unaccountable
error, he had left unfinished.
I hope, Sir, the Honourable Gentleman, who
spoke last, is thoroughly fatisfied, and fatisfied
out of the proceedings of the Ministry on their
own favourite aft, that his fears from a repeal are
groundless. If he is not, I leave him and the
noble Lord'who fits by him, to fettle the matter,
as well as they can, together; for if the repeal of
American taxes destroys all our government in
America—heis the man! and he is the worst of
all the repealers, Qecaufe he is the last.
But I hear it'rung continually in my ears, now
and formerly, “ The preamble! what will become
of the preamble, if you repeal this tax?" I am
sorry to be compelled so often to expose the ca
lamities and'difgraces of Parliament. The pre
amble of this law, standing as it now stands, has
the lie dired given to it by the provifionary part
of the ad; if that can be called provifionary which
makes no provision. I should be afraid to express
myfelf in this manner, especially in the face of
such a formidable array of ability as is now drawn
up before me, composed of the ancient houffiold
troops of that fide of the House, and the new re
cruits from this, if the matter were not clear and
indisputable. Nothing but truth could give me
this firmnefs; but plain truth and clear evidence
can be beat down by no ability. The Clerk will
be so good as to turn to the aft, and to read this
favourite preamble.
Whereas it is expedient that a Revenue flsbu!d he
raised in „ fe r Majesty's dominions in America, for
making a s±re certain and adequate provision for
defraying the charge of the administration ofjuftice,
and support of civil government, in such provinces
where it floall be found necessary ; and towards fur
ther defraying the expences ^defending, protesting
and securing the said dominions.
You have heard this pompous performance.
Now where is the revenue which is to do all these
t herd North, then Chancellor of the Exchequers
You did so, foo^ after the last war; when, upon
this principle, you ventured to impose a duty on
coals. In all the articles of American contraband
trade, who ever heard of the smuggling of red
lead, and white lead? You might, therefore, well
enough, without danger of contraband, and with
out injury to commerce (if this were the whole
consideration) have taxed these commodities. The
fame may be said of glass. Besides, some of these
things taxed were so trivial, that the loss of the
objeds themselves, and their utter annihilation
out of American commerce, would have been com
paratively as nothing. But is the article of tea
such an object in the trade of England as not to be
felt, or felt but slightly, like white lead, and red
lead, and painters colours? Tea is an object of
far other importance. Tea is perhaps the most
important object, taking it with its necessary con
nections, of any in the mighty circle of our com
merce. If commercial principles had been the
true motives to the repeal, or had they been at all
attended to, tea would have been the last article we
should have left taxed for a fubjed of controversy.
Sir, it is not a pleasant consideration; but no
thing in the world can read so awful and so instruc
tive a lesson, as the conduct of ministry in this
business, upon the mifehief of not having large
and liberal ideas in the management of great af
fairs. Never have the servants of the state looked
at the whole of your complicated interests in one
connected view. They have taken things by bits
and scrapes, some at one time and one pretence,
and some at another, just as they prefled, without
any fort of regard to their relations or depen
dencies. They never had any kind of system,
right or wrong; but only invented occasionally
some miserable talc for the day, in order meanly
to sneak out of difficulties, into which they had
proudly strutted. And they were put to all these
fllifts and devices, full of meanness and full of mif
ehief, in order to pilfer, piece-meal, a repeal of
an ad, which they had not the generous courage,
when they found and felt their error, honourably
and fairly to disclaim. By such management, by
the irrefiftable operation of feeble councils, so pal
try a sum as three pence in the eyes of a financier,
so infignificant an article as tea in the eyes of a
philosopher, have shaken the pillars of a commer
cial Empire that circled the whole globe.
Do you forget that, in the very last year, you
flood on the precipice of general bankruptcy?
Your danger was indeed great. You were dif
trefied in the affairs of the East-India Company;
and you well know what fort of things are involved
in the comprehensive energy of thkt fignificant ap
pellation. lam not called upon to enlarge to you
on that danger, which you thought proper your
selves to aggravate, and to display to the world
with all the parade ofindifereet declamation. The
monopoly of the most lucrative trades, and the
possession of imperial revenues, had brought you
to the verge of beggary and ruin. Such was your
representation—such, in some measure, was your
case. The vent of ten millions of pounds of this
commodity, now locked up by the operation of
an injudicious tax, and rotting in the warehouses
of the Company, would have prevented all this
distress, and all that series of desperate measures
which you thought yourselves obliged to take in
consequence ofit. America would have furnifhed
that vent which no other part of the world can
furnifh but America; where tea is next to a neces
sary of life; and where the demand grows upon
the supply. I hope your dear-bought East-India
Committees have done us at least so much good,
as to let us know, that without a more extensive
sale of that article our East-India revenues and ac
quisitions can have no certain connexion with this
country. It is through the American trade of tea
that your East India conquests arc to be prevented
§ Lord Hilfoorough's Circular Letter to the Go
vernors of the Colonies, concerning the repeal of some
of the duties laid in the aG of 1767 s
Mighty things? five sixths repealed, abandoned,
funk, gone, loft for ever. Does the poor solitary
tea-duty support the purposes of this preamble?
Is not the supply there stated as effectually aban
doned as if the tea duty had perished in the gene
ral wreck? Here, Mr. Speaker, is a precious
mockery, a preamble without an aft, taxes granted,
in order to be repealed, and the rcafons of the
grant still carefully kept up ! This is raising a re
venue in America ! This is preserving dignity in
England ! If you repeal this tax incompliance with
the motion, I readily admit that you lose this
fair preamble. Estimate your loss in it. The
object of the aft is gone already; and all you fuf
fer is the purging of the statute book of the oppro
brium of an empty, absurd, and falfe recital.
It has been said Qgain and again, that the five
taxes were repealed bn commercial principles. It
is so said in the paper in my hand § ; a paper which
I constantly carry about me; which I have often
used, and shall often use again.
What is got by this paltry pretence of com
mercial principles, I know not; for, if your go
vernment in America is destroyed by the repeal of
taxes, it is of no consequence upon what ideas the
repeal i? grounded. Repeal this tax too upon
commercial principles if you please. These prin
ciples will serve as well now as they did formerly.
But you kriow that, either your objection to a
repeal from these supposed consequences, has no
validity, or that this pretence could never remove
it. This commercial motive never was believed
by ahy man, either in America, which this letter
is meant to soothe, br in England, which it is
meant to deceive. It was impossible it should;
because every man, in the least acquainted with
the detail of commerce, must know, that several
of the articles on which the tax was repealed,
were fitter objects of duties than almost any other
articles that could pebbly be chosen; without
comparison more so, than the tea that was left
taxed; as infinitely less liable to be eluded by
contraband. The tax upon red and white lead
wa^ of this nature. You have, in this kingdom,
an advantage in lead, that amounts to a mono
poly. When you find yourfelf in this situation of
advantage, you sometimes venture to tax even
your own export.
from crufbing you with tb^ir burthen. They v e
ponderous indeed; and they must have that g< < ,t
country to lean upon, or they tumble upon your
head. It is the lame folly that has loft you at
once the benefit of the Weft and of the EaR.
This folly has thrown open folding doors to con
traband; and will be the means of giving the pro
fits of the trade of your Colonies, to every nation
but yourselves. Never did a people foffer so much
for the empty words of a preamble. It must be
given bp. For on what principle does it flar.d?
This famous revenue stands, at this hour, on all
the debate, as a description of revenue not as yet
known in all the comprehensive (but too compre
hensive !) vocabulary of finance— a preambular,
tax. It is indeed a tax of sophistry, a tax of pe
dentry, a tax of disputation, a tax of war and re
bellion, a tax of any thing but benefit to the im
posers, or fatisfadion to the fubjeft.
Well ! but whatever it is, Gentlemen will force
the Colonists to take the teas. You will force
them ? has seven years struggle been yet able to
force them? 0 but it seems we are in the right.—
The tax is trifling—in efFed it is rather an exono
ration than an imposition ; three-fourths of the duty
formerly payable on teas exported to America is
taken off; the place of collection is only fhifted;
instead of the retention of a Billing from the draw
back here, it is three-pence custom paid in Ameri
ca." All this, Sir, is very true.
But this is the very folly and mifehief of the
a&. Incredible as it may seem, you know, that
you have deliberately thrown away a large duty
which you held secure and quiet in your hands,
for the vain hope of getting one three-fourths less,
through every hazard, through certain litigation,
and possibly through war.
The manner of proceeding in the duties on pa
per and glass imposed by the fame a&, was exactly
in the fame spirit. There are heavy excises 02
those articles when used in England.
[To be Continued.]
^.4.^.-L.g„£Q+Q+g+<frb±.+#-ft.fo
PHILADELPHIA, March 27.
EXTR ACTS front the proceedings of the Com
mittee of Observation at Baltimore, March 6th,
1775. Present 42 Members.
CA PT. William Meat of the brig Sally, from
Bristol, appeared and reported his cargo on
oath, confining of 100 tbps of British salt, and 24
indented servants. The Capt. further reports,
that he took in his salt before the 12th day of
December, and on or about that day he fell down
the river with his vessel to a place called Rowland-
Ferry,there to take in his servants ; that he con
tinued there until the 23d, and failed from King-
Road the 24th of December.
On motion made by Do&or John Stevenson
(to whom Capt. Moat's vessel and cargo were ad
dressed) that he might have liberty, from the
Committee, to land the said cargo of salt, alledg
ingit ought only to be considered as ballast, and
was not intended to be prohibited by the associa
tion of the Continental Congress.
The Committee took into consideration the state
of the said brig Sally, Capt. William Moat.—
Resolved unanimously, That the salt imported id
the said brig be not landed.
Extra's from the Proceedings of said Committee, at
Baltimore, March 13th, 1775. Present 48
Members.
Capt. Henry Tickle of the brig Henry and Jo
seph, from Liverpool (addressed to Mr. George
Woolfey) appeared and reported on oath his car
go, confiding of 5133 bushels of British salt, fix
half crates of earthen ware, and one hogshead of
rum for ships stores; and further, made oath,
that he had not broken bulk, or landed any part
of his cargo since his arrival in this province.
Capt. George Woolfey, the consignee of the
aforefaid vessel, made oath, that he had not, nor
hath any person, by his order or with his privitw
or consent unladen or taken out any part of the
cargo imported in said vessel since her arrival.
Ordered, That notice be given to Doflor John
Stevenson, that the Committee request his atten
dance, with Capt. William Moat, of the brig Sal
ly, at 2 o'clock, P. M.
The Committee proceeded to confider the state
of the brig Henry and Joseph and of the cargo
imported in the fame, whereupon Resolved unani
mously, That the said cargo be not landed.
Upon motion made by Capt. Woolfey to the
Committee for leave to re-ship the cargo of the
brig Henry and Joseph, and on Capt. Woolley's:
engaging, that the said cargo shall not be landed
in any part of North America between Nova-
Scotia and Georgia, and on his further engage
ment, that the mailer of the vessel in which the
said cargo is to be re-shipped, shall engage, on
oath, that he will not (unless compelled so to do
by stress of weather) land the fame within the
parts before limited, and he will produce a certi
ficate from the place where the said cargo shall be
landed, ofthe landing of the fame.
Refolded, 1 hat leave be given agreeable to the
above.
'''• John Stevenson, with Capt. William Moat
attending, agreeable to notice, the Chairman ac
quainted them, that information was made to the
Com ^.ttee, that the cargo of salt imported in the
btig Saily, or part thereof, had been unladen,
contrary to the resolutions of the Committee,
made the 6th inst.
Dr; Stevenson declared, that, apprehending the
resolution entered into by the Committee, on thq
6th inst. did not prohibit him from flipping the
salt to any other part of this province, or Virgi
nia, he had, in consequence of such opinion, Grip
ped a quantity on board four Bay crafts, to be
difyofed of for his account; that no part of the
said salt had been landed in Baltimore county ;
that he will deliver in to the Committee the names
of the fleippers ofthe several craft, and will return
an account of the proceeds of the salt, and the
fame will freely give for the relief of the poor of
Boston.
And that the remainder ofthe salt now on board
the said brig shall not be landed in any part of
America between Nova-Scotia and Ge<tya. And
Capt. William Moat having declared; cu oath,