The Sparrowhawk Companion (11 page)

“You are so right, sir! Will the House please forgive me my enthusiasm, my passion, and my misfired patriotism? I leave the floor so that the debate on the particulars of finance may continue.”

“They planted by
your
care? No! Your oppressions planted them in America! They fled from
your
tyranny to a then uncultivated and inhospitable country…They nourished by
your
indulgence? They grew up by
your
neglect of them! And as soon as you began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over them, sent to spy out their liberty, to misrepresent their actions and to prey upon them, men whose behavior on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them!…They protected by
your
arms? They have nobly taken up arms in your defense, have exerted a valor amidst their constant and laborious industry for the defense of a country whose frontier and interior parts have yielded all its little savings to your emolument…Remember I this day told you so, that spirit of freedom which actuated that people at first will accompany them still…However superior to me in general knowledge and experience the reputable body of this House may be, yet I claim to know more of America than most of you, having seen and been conversant in that country. The people I believe are as truly loyal as any subjects the king has, but a people jealous of their liberties and who will vindicate them if ever they should be violated…”

“I commend my valued colleague, the member for Chipping Wycombe, for his brave and heart-felt words. They will be remembered, when my own and others’ are not.

“The maxim with which the honorable minister [
Grenville
] concluded his address may have been appropriate and enough for our ancestors, in a distant time when kings were true kings, barons true barons, commoners the dross and drudge of the realm, and when all were ignorant of a larger canvas of things. In point of fact, that maxim applied exclusively to kings and
barons; commoners were never a party to its formulation, limited as they were by law and custom to merely support and obedience, a lesson harshly taught them on numerous occasions.

“But much progress has been made since those ancient and brutal times, and things seen but dimly then are clearly perceived in these. It is neither appropriate nor enough for us to pursue a policy or pass an act founded on that maxim; to attempt it would be a call for a return to dullness and ignorance. After all, the man whose genius ended our dependency on that maxim was Mr. John Locke, and I very much doubt that any of us here today could credibly dispute him in the most carefully prepared disquisition. And while this nation may have so corrupted and compromised his clarity on the issue of rights versus power—or perhaps even repudiated it—we all here today should be mindful that the colonials—those ‘sons of liberty,’ as they were just now so trenchantly knighted by my esteemed colleague—the colonials take Mr. Locke very seriously. The conflict which the honorable minister labored at the beginning to deny exists, is not so much a political one, as a philosophic one, and I feel it my duty to inform the honorable minister and his party that
Nature
is, and will continue to be, on the side of the Americans.

“Nature will rise up and either overturn a corrupt system, or abandon it in a vindication of natural right.

“I had planned, on the opportunity to speak, to review the honorable minister’s record as evidence of his hostility to British liberty, by citing, among so many instances, his purchase of the Isle of Man in order to extinguish the smuggling trade there—a trade born and sustained under the aegis of taxation—his efforts to more efficiently collect land and salt taxes, his frustrated attempts to conquer Jersey and Guernsey, and most especially his campaign against publishers and printers in this very metropolis who evade the same stamp tax.

“But his address was evidence enough of that hostility. The purpose of his proposed tax, he says, is to help defray the costs
of maintaining an army in North America and a navy in its waters. Consequently, that part of the Crown budget would be reserved for its usual outlays. The budget, of course, rests on revenues, and those are derived from taxes. And for what purpose are all those taxes laid and collected in an ever-mounting debt? Why, to sustain an overbearing, conceited stratum of placeholders, receivers of pensions, and beneficiaries of perpetual gratuities. It is for their sake that these laws and taxes are enacted and enforced—and subsequently flouted and evaded. So much money is diverted to sustain so much
nothing
, when it could go to increasing the tangible prosperity of this nation under the shield of genuine liberty, which I hasten to stress is not to be confused with the shallow, corrupted, mockish husk of it that we boast of now. We should blush in contrition when we are complimented by men abroad, and even compliment ourselves, for that vaunted liberty.

“The establishment of the sustained and the entitled do not object to prosperity, and they have a mean, grudging regard for liberty, so long as the prosperity guarantees their causeless incomes, so long as liberty does not impinge upon or threaten to deprive them of their lucre. I ask this question, not queried by the honorable minister: Can we expect the colonials to grow in prosperity under the insidious burden he proposes to lay upon them, and can the obdurate stratum of the idle expect to profit from their certain poverty?

“I ask this House—or that half of it who deign to attend today—not to rush to oblige the honorable minister until they have devoted some hard thought to this tax. I invite the proponents of these resolutions to set aside some time to ponder the contradictions inherent in their policies, actions, and desires. I likewise invite my colleagues in opposition to consider the folly of their concessions to the honorable minister’s principal arguments. If his administration derives any strength at all on this matter, it comes not from his party, but from the fatal confusion of the well-meaning of
our
party, one not dissimilar from that of
a thirsty, shipwrecked man who, out of desperation, drinks sea water for want of a purer, uncontaminated elixir.

“I end here with my own warning, sirs. I do not expect the Americans—for let us refer to the colonials as Americans, and not mistake them, as the honorable minister will not, for Englishmen—I do not expect them to submit to this tax except at the prodding of a bayonet or legislative extortion, and, perhaps, not even then. If you contrive to humble them, you should not expect that they shall long remain in the thralldom of humility, for perhaps we are all mistaken, and they are not Englishmen at all, but the inhabitants of another kingdom.

“Colonel Barré is correct when he warns that the Americans will not surrender their birthright—and I refer to that expounded by Mr. Locke—for a mess of pottage, no matter how much you dulcify the bowl with bounties, rate reductions, and similar bribes for them to remain on their knees. I am confident they will tire of the business and assert their full freedom.

“In conclusion, I am grateful that a man of subtler persuasion is not at the helm of this matter, for that man may at least depend on the esteem in which the Americans hold him, and thus be able to persuade them to concede and capitulate. But we all know that he would possess the wisdom not to pursue the folly.”

“I had not planned to speak today, sirs, but late, offensive words make it my duty to. I commend the honorable minister on so clear a presentation of his bill. I will say at the beginning that I may be relied upon to support his resolutions now before this committee to be discussed, and any amendments to them in future, for such are surely to occur in this contentious House. And, I oppose Sir William’s motion to postpone a vote on the resolutions. They are a simple, uncomplex matter to be simply disposed of.

“I will say further that the honorable minister’s scheme is an ingenious one that will relieve this nation of some of the expense of victory, by obliging our colonies to contribute their equitable—and, may I say,
tardy
—share of that expense, for, as the honorable minister so aptly pointed out, the greatest part of that expense went to the preservation of those colonies, and of their liberties. In brief, I concur with every reason and sentiment offered by the honorable minister that this should be so—but for one or two trifling ones.

“The honorable minister contends that if the colonials were not subject to this proposed tax, ‘they are not entitled to the privileges of Englishmen.’ With all modesty, and with the greatest deference to his experience, and only seeming to agree with the member for Swansditch, may I point out to the House an error in cogitation here?
I
say that the colonials have
never
been Englishmen, for they have
never
been burdened by the proposed tax, which, it is a matter of common knowledge, is simply an extension of the one we pay there, and have paid since the time of Charles the Second. That fact constitutes an onerous kind of
privilege
. And, on that point, I will carry the honorable minister’s assertion one step further, and contend that if they wish to be Englishmen, let the colonials submit to this and other taxes, and praise this body and His Majesty for the opportunity. It is
they
who have been negligently privileged all these decades. It is time for them to earn the glorious appellation of Englishmen.

“Allow me, patient sirs, to point out not so much as another error in the honorable minister’s assumptions, as an oversight. As I do not regard the colonials—and I mean those on the continent, I do not include our West Indian colleagues here today—as I do not regard those persons as true Englishmen, I say that the colonies ought
not
to be represented in this House, and for two reasons.

“The first is that historians of my acquaintance record that the colonies of ancient Greece and Rome were not represented in the legislatures of their capitals. They were
administered
, not
represented! At times wisely, at other times, not so. That is beside the point. I do not believe that any colonial has been so foolish as to request representation, nor do I believe that the honorable minister has seriously contemplated the notion even in the abstract. Still, the question to ask is: Why should we make precedent and depart from that policy?

“The second reason I must broach at the risk of confounding my first. I wish to offer my shoulder with others in the sad but necessary duty of pallbearer in the funeral of the colonial complaint of taxation without representation in this House. The colonies
are
represented—as the honorable minister explained—even though their populations are not even counted among the one-tenth or one-twentieth of the enfranchised populace of this nation who are directly represented. That is the way the Constitution and custom have arranged matters, and that is that. Now, we hear no similar complaints of non-representation from those towns and regions of this isle that do not send members here. That is because those people
know
they are represented, in spirit, in the abstract, in kind—
virtually
, as that oft-heard word describes their situation. And, they submit with happiness to Parliament’s authority.

“The colonies, however, exist by grace of the Crown and His Majesty and for the benefit of this nation, and I have always questioned the folly of allowing them the leave to determine expenditures and their own methods of allocation and collection. The colonies have of late been especially hard-mouthed over the reins of supervision from this House and the Board of Trade. They have not been properly
lunged
, sirs, and they will never be ridden unless a commanding hand takes them under training.

“I believe I made a speech on this vexatious colonial matter some time ago—why, at the beginning of the late war! I believe I warned this House, then sitting in a Committee of Supply, that this colonial pestering and posturing over the twin mooncalves of taxation and representation would not abate, would not cease
until Parliament scolded its children and banished all discussion of the matter. My remarks were dismissed then, not without good cause, for I had, in the heat of my concerns, digressed from the business then before the committee. I will not belabor the points I made then, but only repeat that if these colonials wish to be represented, let them come
here
and take up residence, so that they may be properly represented! Some of them have done so. There is Mr. Huske, born and reared in New Hampshire. And there is Mr. Abercromby, who, although born here, spent so much time in the southern plantations, that he acquired a unique but not unpleasant pattern of speech. Now, they are not only represented—they represent!

“Have patience with my support, sirs. I come to a close here. Having been curious about the origins of the word that has given us so much pother, I availed myself of the wisdom of some notable wordsmiths—etymologists, I believe they are called—and my consultations allowed me to discover that two possible meanings may be had from the word
colony
. Friends of the resolutions may adopt either meaning with no prejudice to their good sense and regard for truth. The first meaning is indeed ancient, for our word
colony
, coming down to us from the Romans and Greeks without loss of implication, means to
coloniate
with husbandmen and tenants on a property. And, indeed, what are our own colonists, or colonials, but husbandmen and tenants of His Majesty’s estates? They must be that, or why do we impose quitrents on them? Keep that fact in mind, sirs, when you think upon the justice of the honorable minister’s proposed tax.

“The other meaning can be taken to suggest—and the House will please forgive the indelicate but necessary reference, for there is no other way to talk of it—the route of egress of the
bile
and
waste
of the kingdom, with which these same estates have been notoriously populated and
manured
for so many years. Of course, sirs, I appropriate the first meaning in strictest decorum, while I leave the second to be caricatured in private conversation for deserved levity.

“Well, sirs, that is the gist of my thoughts. Mr. Townshend there made relevant reference to the ingratitude of distempered children and the grief they bring to their parents.
Our
colonial children are wayward and profligate, and it is time that they were bled so that they may be cured of their outlandish distemper. The honorable minister’s tax can but only cure them of it, and then this kingdom and its colonies will again be a happy family.”