de laws that are useless. Such is the wisdom of our plan in
both its members. They are separately given up as of no value; and yet
one is always to be defended for the sake of the other. But I cannot
agree with the noble lord, nor with the pamphlet from whence he seems to
have borrowed these ideas concerning the inutility of the trade laws.
For, without idolizing them, I am sure they are still, in many ways, of
great use to us; and in former times they have been of the greatest.
They do confine, and they do greatly narrow, the market for the
Americans. But my perfect conviction of this does not help me in the
least to discern how the revenue laws form any security whatsoever to
the commercial regulations,--or that these commercial regulations are
the true ground of the quarrel,--or that the giving way, in any one
instance, of authority is to lose all that may remain unconceded.

One fact is clear and indisputable: the public and avowed origin of this
quarrel was on taxation. This quarrel has, indeed, brought on new
disputes on new questions, but certainly the least bitter, and the
fewest of all, on the trade laws. To judge which of the two be the real,
radical cause of quarrel, we have to see whether the commercial dispute
did, in order of time, precede the dispute on taxation. There is not a
shadow of evidence for it. Next, to enable us to judge whether at this
moment a dislike to the trade laws be the real cause of quarrel, it is
absolutely necessary to put the taxes out of the question by a repeal.
See how the Americans act in this position, and then you will be able to
discern correctly what is the true object of the controversy, or whether
any controversy at all will remain. Unless you consent to remove this
cause of difference, it is impossible, with decency, to assert that the
dispute is not upon what it is avowed to be. And I would, Sir, recommend
to your serious consideration, whether it be prudent to form a rule for
punishing people, not on their own acts, but on your conjectures. Surely
it is preposterous, at the very best. It is not justifying your anger
by their misconduct, but it is converting your ill-will into their
delinquency.

But the colonies will go further.--Alas! alas! when will this
speculating against fact and reason end? What will quiet these panic
fears which we entertain of the hostile effect of a conciliatory
conduct? Is it true that no case can exist in which it is proper for the
sovereign