stand out against the law? to encourage their obstinacy with the expectation of support here? Ungrateful people of America! The nation has run itself into an immense debt to give them protection; bounties have been extended to them; in their favor the Act of Navigation, that palladium of British commerce, has been relaxed; and now that they are called upon to contribute a small share towards the public expense, they renounce your authority, insult your officers, and break out, I might almost say, into open rebellion!"
The insinuation was not to be borne for an instant. Every one yielded at once to Pitt, who repelled the attack with characteristic intrepidity. "Sir, a charge is brought against gentlemen sitting in this House of giving birth to sedition in America. The freedom with which they have spoken their sentiments against this unhappy Act is imputed to them as a crime; but the imputation shall not discourage me. It is a liberty which I hope no gentleman will be afraid to exercise; it is a liberty by which the gentleman who calumniates it might have profited. He ought to have desisted from his project. We are told America is obstinate—America is almost in open rebellion. Sir, I rejoice America has resisted; three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest. I came not here armed at all points with law cases and acts of Parliament, with the statute book doubled down in dogs-ears, to defend the cause of liberty; but for the defence of liberty upon a general constitutional principle, it is a ground on which I dare meet any man. I will not debate points of law; but what, after all, do the cases of Chester and Durham prove, but that under the most arbitrary reigns Parliament were ashamed of taxing a people without their consent, and allowed them representatives? A higher and better example might have been taken from Wales; that principality was never taxed by Parliament till it was incorporated with England. We are told of many classes of persons in this kingdom not represented in Parliament; but are they not all virtually represented as Englishmen within the realm? Have they not the option, many of them at least, of becoming themselves electors? Every inhabitant of this kingdom is necessarily included in the general system of representation. It is a misfortune that more are not actually represented. The honorable gentleman boasts of his bounties to America. Are not these bounties intended finally for the benefit of this kingdom? If they are not, he has misapplied the national treasures. I am no courtier of America. I maintain that Parliament has a right to bind to restrain America. Our legislative power over the colonies is sovereign and supreme. The honorable gentleman tells us he understands not the difference between internal and external taxation; but surely there is a plain distinction between taxes levied for the purpose of raising a revenue and duties imposed for the regulation of commerce, 'When,' said the honorable gentleman, 'were the colonies emancipated?' At
