The
feelings of the colonies were formerly the feelings of Great Britain.
Theirs were formerly the feelings of Mr. Hampden, when called upon for
the payment of twenty shillings. Would twenty shillings have ruined Mr.
Hampden's fortune? No! but the payment of half twenty shillings, on the
principle it was demanded, would have made him a slave. It is the weight
of that preamble, of which you are so fond, and not the weight of the
duty, that the Americans are unable and unwilling to bear.
It is, then, Sir, upon the _principle_ of this measure, and nothing
else, that we are at issue. It is a principle of political expediency.
Your act of 1767 asserts that it is expedient to raise a revenue in
America; your act of 1769, which takes away that revenue, contradicts
the act of 1767, and, by something much stronger than words, asserts
that it is not expedient. It is a reflection upon your wisdom to persist
in a solemn Parliamentary declaration of the expediency of any object,
for which, at the same time, you make no sort of provision. And pray,
Sir, let not this circumstance escape you,--it is very material,--that
the preamble of this act which we wish to repeal is not _declaratory of
a right_, as some gentlemen seem to argue it: it is only a recital of
the _expediency_ of a certain exercise of a right supposed already to
have been asserted; an exercise you are now contending for by ways and
means which you confess, though they were obeyed, to be utterly
insufficient for their purpose.
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