Evolution of Expression Volume Ii Part 3

5. "Whereas it is expedient that a revenue should be raised in your Majesty's dominions in America, for making a more certain and adequate provision for defraying the charge of the administration of justice and support of civil government in such provinces where it shall be found necessary, and towards further defraying the expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the said dominions."

6. You have heard this pompous performance. Now, where is the revenue which is to do all these mighty things? Five-sixths repealed,--abandoned,--sunk,--gone,--lost forever. 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 Speaker, is a precious mockery:--a preamble without an act,--taxes granted in order to be repealed,--and the reason of the grant carefully kept up! This is raising a revenue in America! This is preserving dignity in England!

7. Never did a people suffer so much for the empty words of a preamble.

It must be given up. For on what principle does it stand? 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 comprehensive!) vocabulary of finance--a preambulary tax. It is, indeed, a tax of sophistry, a tax of pedantry, a tax of disputation, a tax of war and rebellion, a tax for anything but benefit to the imposers or satisfaction to the subject.

8. 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? Oh, but it seems "we are in the right. The tax is trifling,--in effect rather an exoneration than an imposition; three-fourths of the duty formerly payable on teas exported to America is taken off,--the place of collection is only s.h.i.+fted; instead of the retention of a s.h.i.+lling from the drawback here, it is three-pence custom paid in America."

9. All this, sir, is very true. But this is the very folly and mischief of the act. 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.

10. Could anything be a subject of more just alarm to America, than to see you go out of the plain high-road of finance, and give up your most certain revenues and your clearest interest, merely for the sake of insulting the colonies? No man ever doubted that the commodity of tea could bear an imposition of three pence. But no commodity will bear three pence, or will bear a penny, when the general feelings of men are irritated, and two millions of people are resolved not to pay.

11. 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 s.h.i.+llings. Would twenty s.h.i.+llings have ruined Mr. Hampden's fortune? No! but the payment of half twenty s.h.i.+llings, 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.

12. 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 a.s.serts 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, a.s.serts 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 provision.

13. And pray, sir, let not this circ.u.mstance 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 right supposed already to have been a.s.serted; 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. You are, therefore, at this moment in the awkward situation of fighting for a phantom,--a quiddity,--a thing that wants not only a substance, but even a name,--for a thing which is neither abstract right nor profitable enjoyment.

14. They tell you, sir, that your dignity is tied to it. I know not how it happens, but this dignity of yours is a terrible inc.u.mbrance to you; for it has of late been ever at war with your interest, your equity, and every idea of your policy. Show the thing you contend for to be reason, show it to be common sense, show it to be the means of attaining some useful end, and then I am content to allow it what dignity you please.

But what dignity is derived from the perseverance in absurdity is more than ever I could discern.

15. The honorable gentleman has said well, that this subject does not stand as it did formerly. Oh, certainly not! Every hour you continue on this ill-chosen ground, your difficulties thicken around you; and therefore my conclusion is, remove from a bad position as quickly as you can. The disgrace, and the necessity of yielding, both of them, grow upon you every hour of your delay.

EDMUND BURKE.

MY HEART LEAPS UP.

My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began, So is it now I am a man, So be it when I shall grow old Or let me die!

The Child is father of the Man: And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.

WORDSWORTH.

AS YOU LIKE IT.

ACT III. SCENE II.

_Ros._ [_Aside to Celia._] I will speak to him like a saucy lackey and under that habit play the knave with him. Do you hear, forester?

_Orl._ Very well: what would you?

_Ros._ I pray you, what is't o'clock?

_Orl._ You should ask me what time o' day: there's no clock in the forest.

_Ros._ Then there is no true lover in the forest; else sighing every minute and groaning every hour would detect the lazy foot of Time as well as a clock.

_Orl._ And why not the swift foot of Time? had not that been as proper?

_Ros._ By no means, sir: Time travels in divers paces with divers persons. I'll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, who Time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal.

_Orl._ I prithee, who doth he trot withal?

_Ros._ Marry, he trots hard with a young maid between the contract of her marriage and the day it is solemniz'd; if the interim be but a se'nnight, Time's pace is so hard that it seems the length of seven years.

_Orl._ Who ambles Time withal?

_Ros._ With a priest that lacks Latin and a rich man that hath not the gout, for the one sleeps easily because he cannot study, and the other lives merrily because he feels no pain, the one lacking the burden of lean and wasteful learning, the other knowing no burden of heavy tedious penury; these Time ambles withal.

_Orl._ Who doth he galop withal?

_Ros._ With a thief to the gallows; for though he go as softly as foot can fall, he thinks himself too soon there.

_Orl._ Who stays it still withal?

_Ros._ With lawyers in the vacation; for they sleep between term and term, and then they perceive not how Time moves.

_Orl._ Where dwell you, pretty youth?

_Ros._ With this shepherdess, my sister; here in the skirts of the forest, like fringe upon a petticoat.

_Orl._ Are you native of this place?

_Ros._ As the cony that you see dwell where she is kindled.

_Orl._ Your accent is something finer than you could purchase in so remov'd a dwelling.

_Ros._ I have been told so of many: but indeed an old religious uncle of mine taught me to speak, who was in his youth an inland man; one that knew courts.h.i.+p too well, for there he fell in love. I have heard him read many lectures against it, and I thank G.o.d I am not a woman, to be touch'd with so many giddy offences as he hath generally tax'd their whole s.e.x withal.

_Orl._ Can you remember any of the princ.i.p.al evils laid to the charge of women?

_Ros._ There were none princ.i.p.al; they were all like one another as half-pence are, every one fault seeming monstrous till his fellow-fault came to match it.

_Orl._ I prithee, recount some of them.

_Ros._ No, I will not cast away my physic but on those that are sick.

There is a man haunts the forest, that abuses our young plants with carving Rosalind on their barks; hangs odes upon hawthorns and elegies on brambles, all, forsooth, deifying the name of Rosalind: if I could meet that fancy-monger, I would give him some good counsel, for he seems to have the quotidian of love upon him.

_Orl._ I am he that is so love-shak'd: I pray you, tell me your remedy.

_Ros._ There is none of my uncle's marks upon you: he taught me how to know a man in love; in which cage of rushes, I am sure, you are not prisoner.

_Orl._ What were his marks?

_Ros._ A lean cheek, which you have not; a blue eye, and sunken, which you have not; an unquestionable spirit, which you have not; a beard neglected, which you have not; but I pardon you for that, for simply your having in beard is a younger brother's revenue: then your hose should be ungarter'd, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unb.u.t.ton'd, your shoe unti'd and every thing about you demonstrating a careless desolation; but you are no such man; you are rather point-device in your accoutrements, as loving yourself than seeming the lover of any other.