a revenue in America for the support of
the civil government there, as well as for purposes still more
extensive. To this support the act assigns six branches of duties. About
two years after this act passed, the ministry, I mean the present
ministry, thought it expedient to repeal five of the duties, and to
leave (for reasons best known to themselves) only the sixth standing.
Suppose any person, at the time of that repeal, had thus addressed the
minister:[2] "Condemning, as you do, the repeal of the Stamp Act, why do
you venture to repeal the duties upon glass, paper, and painters'
colors? Let your pretence for the repeal be what it will, are you not
thoroughly convinced that your concessions will produce, not
satisfaction, but insolence in the Americans, and that the giving up
these taxes will necessitate the giving up of all the rest?" This
objection was as palpable then as it is now; and it was as good for
preserving the five duties as for retaining the sixth. Besides, the
minister will recollect that the repeal of the Stamp Act had but just
preceded his repeal; and the ill policy of that measure, (had it been so
impolitic as it has been represented,) and the mischiefs it produced,
were quite recent. Upon the principles, therefore, of the honorable
gentleman, upon the principles of the minister himself, the minister has
nothing at all to answer. He stands condemned by himself, and by all his
associates old and new, as a destroyer, in the first trust of finance,
of the revenues,--and in the first rank of honor, as a betrayer of the
dignity of his country.

Most men, especially great men, do not always know their well-wishers. I
come to rescue that noble lord out of the hands of those he calls his
friends, and even out of his own. I will do him the justice he is denied
at home. He has not been this wicked or imprudent man. He knew that a
repeal had no tendency to produce the mischiefs which give so much alarm
to his honorable friend. His work was not bad in its principle, but
imperfect in its execution; and the motion on your paper presses him
only to complete a proper plan, which, by some unfortunate and
unaccountable error, he had left unfinished.

I hope, Sir, the honorable gentleman who spoke last is thoroughly
satisfied, and satisfied out of the proceedings of ministry on their own
favorite act, that his fears from a repeal are groundless. If he is not,
I leave him, and the noble lord who sits by him, to settle