es, Parliament having thought it necessary to reimburse them;
secondly, that they had acted legally and laudably in their grants of
money, and their maintenance of troops, since the compensation is
expressly given as reward and encouragement. Reward is not bestowed for
acts that are unlawful; and encouragement is not held out to things that
deserve reprehension. My resolution, therefore, does nothing more than
collect into one proposition what is scattered through your journals. I
give you nothing but your own; and you cannot refuse in the gross what
you have so often acknowledged in detail. The admission of this, which
will be so honorable to them and to you, will, indeed, be mortal to all
the miserable stories by which the passions of the misguided people have
been engaged in an unhappy system. The people heard, indeed, from the
beginning of these disputes, one thing continually dinned in their ears:
that reason and justice demanded, that the Americans, who paid no taxes,
should be compelled to contribute. How did that fact, of their paying
nothing, stand, when the taxing system began? When Mr. Grenville began
to form his system of American revenue, he stated in this House that the
colonies were then in debt two million six hundred thousand pounds
sterling money, and was of opinion they would discharge that debt in
four years. On this state, those untaxed people were actually subject to
the payment of taxes to the amount of six hundred and fifty thousand a
year. In fact, however, Mr. Grenville was mistaken. The funds given for
sinking the debt did not prove quite so ample as both the colonies and
he expected. The calculation was too sanguine: the reduction was not
completed till some years after, and at different times in different
colonies. However, the taxes after the war continued too great to bear
any addition, with prudence or propriety; and when the burdens imposed
in consequence of former requisitions were discharged, our tone became
too high to resort again to requisition. No colony, since that time,
ever has had any requisition whatsoever made to it.

We see the sense of the crown, and the sense of Parliament, on the
productive nature of a _revenue by grant_. Now search the same journals
for the produce of the _revenue by imposition_. Where is it?--let us
know the volume and the page. What is the gross, what is the net
produce? To what service is it applied? How have you appropriated its
surplus?--What! can no