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Two Speeches on Conciliation with America
Two Speeches on Conciliation with America Author:Edmund Burke Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: defraying the expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the said dominions. You have heard this pompous performance. Now, where is the revenue which is ... more »to do all these mighty things ? Five-sixths repealed—abandonedsunk —gone—lost for ever. Does the poor solitary tea duty support the purposes of this preamble ? Is not the supply there stated as effectually abandoned as if the tea duty had perished in the general wreck ? Here, Mr. Speaker, is a precious mockery—a preamble without an Act—taxes granted in order to be repealed—and the reasons of the grant still carefully kept up! This is raising a revenue in America ! This is preserving dignity in England ! If you repeal this tax in compliance with the motion, I readily admit that you lose this fair preamble. Estimate your loss in it. The object of the Act is gone already; and all you suffer is the purging the Statute-book of the opprobrium of an empty, absurd, and false recital. It has been said again and again, that the five taxes were repealed on commercial principles. It is so said in the paper in my hand ; a paper which I constantly carry about; which I have often used, and shall often use again. What is got by this paltry pretence of commercial principles I know not: for if your government in America is destroyed by the repeal of taxes, it is of no consequence uponwhat ideas the repeal is grounded. Repeal this tax, too, upon commercial principles if you please. These principles will serve as well now as they did formerly. But youknow that, either your objection to a repeal from these supposed consequences has no validity, or that this pretence never could remove it. This commercial motive never was believed by any man, either in America, which this letter is meant to soothe, or in England, which it is meant to deceive...« less