ether, 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. Sir, I can give no security on this subject. But I will
do all that I can, and all that can be fairly demanded. To the
_experience_ which the honorable gentleman reprobates in one instant and
reverts to in the next, to that experience, without the least wavering
or hesitation on my part, I steadily appeal: and would to God there was
no other arbiter to decide on the vote with which the House is to
conclude this day!

When Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in the year 1766, I affirm,
first, that the Americans did _not_ in consequence of this measure call
upon you to give up the former Parliamentary revenue which subsisted in
that country, or even any one of the articles which compose it. I affirm
also, that, when, departing from the maxims of that repeal, you revived
the scheme of taxation, and thereby filled the minds of the colonists
with new jealousy and all sorts of apprehensions, then it was that they
quarrelled with the old taxes as well as the new; then it was, and not
till then, that they questioned all the parts of your legislative power,
and by the battery of such questions have shaken the solid structure of
this empire to its deepest foundations.

Of those two propositions I shall, before I have done, give such
convincing, such damning proof, that, however the contrary may be
whispered in circles or bawled in newspapers, they never more will dare
to raise their voices in this House. I speak with great confidence. I
have reason for it. The ministers are with me. _They_ at least are
convinced that the repeal of the Stamp Act had not, and that no repeal
can have, the consequences which the honorable gentleman who defends
their measures is so much alarmed at. To their conduct I refer him for a
conclusive answer to his objection. I carry my proof irresistibly into
the very body of both Ministry and Parliament: not on any general
reasoning growing out of collateral matter, but on the conduct of the
honorable gentleman's ministerial friends on the new revenue itself.

The act of 1767, which grants this tea-duty, sets forth in its preamble,
that it was expedient to raise