HKB
These are the three consequential propositions I have thought of two or three more, but they come rather too near detail, and to the province of executive government, which I wish Parliament always to superintend, never to assume. If the first six are granted, congruity will carry the latter three. If not, the things that remain unrepealed will be, I hope, rather unseemly incumbrances on the building, than very materially detrimental to its strength and stability.
Here, Sir, I should close, but I plainly perceive some objections remain which I ought, if possible, to remove. The first will be that, in resorting to the doctrine of our ancestors, as contained in the preamble to the Chester Act, I prove too much, that the grievance from a want of representation, stated in that preamble, goes to the whole of legislation as well as to taxation, and that the Colonies, grounding themselves upon that doctrine, will apply it to all parts of legislative authority.
To this objection, with all possible deference and humility, and wishing as little as any man living to impair the smallest particle of our supreme authority, I answer, that the words are the words of Parliament, and not mine, and that all false and inconclusive inferences drawn from them are not mine, for I heartily disclaim any such inference. I have chosen the words of an Act of Parliament which Mr. Grenville, surely a tolerably zealous and very judicious advocate for the sovereignty of Parliament, formerly moved to have read at your table in confirmation of his tenets. It is true that Lord Chatham considered these preambles as declaring strongly in favor of his opinions. He was a no less powerful advocate for the privileges of the Americans. Ought I not from hence to presume that these preambles are as favorable as possible to both, when properly understood; favorable both to the rights of Parliament, and to the privilege of the dependencies of this Crown? But, Sir, the object of grievance in my Resolution I have not taken from the Chester, but from the Durham Act, which confines the hardship of want of representation to the case of subsidies, and which therefore falls in exactly with the case of the Colonies. But whether the unrepresented counties were de jure or de facto [Footnote: 64] bound, the preambles do not accurately distinguish, nor indeed was it necessary; for, whether de jure or de facto, the Legislature thought the exercise of the power of taxing as of right, or as of fact without right, equally a grievance, and equally oppressive.