yself fully on that important and
delicate subject: not for the sake of telling you a long story, (which,
I know, Mr. Speaker, you are not particularly fond of,) but for the sake
of the weighty instruction that, I flatter myself, will necessarily
result from it. It shall not be longer, if I can help it, than so
serious a matter requires.

Permit me then, Sir, to lead your attention very far back,--back to the
Act of Navigation, the cornerstone of the policy of this country with
regard to its colonies. Sir, that policy was, from the beginning, purely
commercial; and the commercial system was wholly restrictive. It was the
system of a monopoly. No trade was let loose from that constraint, but
merely to enable the colonists to dispose of what, in the course of your
trade, you could not take,--or to enable them to dispose of such
articles as we forced upon them, and for which, without some degree of
liberty, they could not pay. Hence all your specific and detailed
enumerations; hence the innumerable checks and counterchecks; hence that
infinite variety of paper chains by which you bind together this
complicated system of the colonies. This principle of commercial
monopoly runs through no less than twenty-nine acts of Parliament, from
the year 1660 to the unfortunate period of 1764.

In all those acts the system of commerce is established as that from
whence alone you proposed to make the colonies contribute (I mean
directly and by the operation of your superintending legislative power)
to the strength of the empire. I venture to say, that, during that whole
period, a Parliamentary revenue from thence was never once in
contemplation. Accordingly, in all the number of laws passed with regard
to the plantations, the words which distinguish revenue laws
specifically as such were, I think, premeditately avoided. I do not say,
Sir, that a form of words alters the nature of the law, or abridges the
power of the lawgiver. It certainly does not. How ever, titles and
formal preambles are not always idle words; and the lawyers frequently
argue from them. I state these facts to show, not what was your right,
but what has been your settled policy. Our revenue laws have usually a
_title_, purporting their being _grants_; and the words "_give and
grant_" usually precede the enacting parts. Although duties were imposed
on America in acts of King Charles the Second, and in acts of King
William, no one title of giving "an aid to his Majesty