I cannot prevail on myself to agree with him in his
censure of his own conduct. It is not, he will give me leave to say,
either useless or dangerous. He asserts, that retrospect is not wise;
and the proper, the only proper subject of inquiry, is "not how we got
into this difficulty, but how we are to get out of it." In other words,
we are, according to him, to consult our invention, and to reject our
experience. The mode of deliberation he recommends is diametrically
opposite to every rule of reason and every principle of good sense
established amongst mankind. For that sense and that reason I have
always understood absolutely to prescribe, whenever we are involved in
difficulties from the measures we have pursued, that we should take a
strict review of those measures, in order to correct our errors, if they
should be corrigible,--or at least to avoid a dull uniformity in
mischief, and the unpitied calamity of being repeatedly caught in the
same snare.
Sir, I will freely follow the honorable gentleman in his historical
discussion, without the least management for men or measures, further
than as they shall seem to me to deserve it. But before I go into that
large consideration, because I would omit nothing that can give the
House satisfaction, I wish to tread the narrow ground to which alone the
honorable gentleman, in one part of his speech, has so strictly confined
us.
He desires to know, whether, if we were to repeal this tax, agreeably to
the proposition of the honorable gentleman who made the motion, the
Americans would not take 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 now for the repeal of
the duty on tea.
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