Does the poor
solitary tea-duty support the purposes of this preamble? Is not the
supply there stated as effectually abandoned as if the tea-duty had
perished in the general wreck? Here, Mr. Speaker, is a precious
mockery:--a preamble without an act,--taxes granted in order to be
repealed,--and the reasons of the grant still carefully kept up! This is
raising a revenue in America! This is preserving dignity in England! If
you repeal this tax, in compliance with the motion, I readily admit that
you lose this fair preamble. Estimate your loss in it. The object of the
act is gone already; and all you suffer is the purging the statute-book
of the opprobrium of an empty, absurd, and false recital.
It has been said again and again, that the five taxes were repealed on
commercial principles. It is so said in the paper in my hand:[3] a paper
which I constantly carry about; which I have often used, and shall
often use again. What is got by this paltry pretence of commercial
principles I know not; for, if your government in America is destroyed
by the _repeal of taxes_, it is of no consequence upon what ideas the
repeal is grounded. Repeal this tax, too, upon commercial principles, if
you please. These principles will serve as well now as they did
formerly. But you know that either your objection to a repeal from these
supposed consequences has no validity, or that this pretence never could
remove it. This commercial motive never was believed by any man, either
in America, which this letter is meant to soothe, or in England, which
it is meant to deceive.
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