A key element in the character of the Sparrowhawk series—perhaps even of its appeal to readers—is its political speeches. The principal ones are included here, spoken in Parliament and the Virginia House of Burgesses by Henoch Pannell, Colonel Isaac Barré, Dogmael Jones, Hugh Kenrick, Patrick Henry, and William Pitt. Two of these speeches are actual speeches, one by Barré, the other by Pitt. The others, including Patrick Henry’s Stamp Act Resolves speech, I wrote myself. Henry’s was composed around the fragments of that unrecorded speech remembered by men years later. Barré is important because he was one of the few British parliamentarians who understood the American colonists; he warned his fellow legislators not to take the colonists or their loyalty to the mother country for granted; his warning fell on deaf ears. Pitt is important because, while he sided with the Americans, he inadvertently handed Parliament and its career depredators an excuse to continue to pursue policies intended to reduce Americans to servitude.
The best eighteenth–century political speakers, in the colonies and in Britain, were trained in oratory and rhetoric. They could deliver hours-long speeches without so much as a note, and make sense. Even the villains of the time were adept in oratory, and it took a keen mind to see through their sophistry. While I composed sermons, doggerels, the occasional newspaper article, and even sketched two political cartoons for the series, I derived special pleasure in writing the speeches. Early on I realized that if one were going to recreate the British-American culture and politics of the period, political speeches must form an integral part of the epic. If men were moved passionately by the ideas of freedom—or dead set against them—how better to dramatize the passion and the opposition than by showing what was thought and said?
To read these extemporaneous speeches, one cannot help but note an essential difference between them and what passes for oratory today. Most modern politicians cannot speak two complete sentences together from memory without the aid of a written text, extensive notes, or a teleprompter. Most of them do not—in fact, cannot—write their own speeches, but rely on hired speechwriters, whose efforts doubtless are endlessly rewritten to conform to what a speaker wishes his auditors to believe he is saying or what he thinks they wish to hear. Further, their speeches are largely ragouts of “messages”; that is, of unappetizing stews of refried bromides, lubricious principles, and populist claptrap, all calculated to appeal to men’s emotions, not to their minds. Modern speechmaking is a monument to vapidity. I cannot recall the last time I heard a living American politician declaim on individual rights, freedom of speech, or the sanctity of private property.
So, it was with great relief and pleasure that I could retreat to a time when these matters were a common subject of speechmaking.
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Sir Henoch Pannell, member for Canovan, and dedicated enemy of the
American colonies, gives his maiden speech in Parliament, 1755.
“It has been heard in this assembly on a number of occasions that the colonials are unhappy with the means with which this coming war is to be paid for and prosecuted. Oh, how they grumble, those rustical Harries! The means, as we all know, and as they rightly fear, must in the end come out of their own rough, bucolic purses. To my mind, that is but a logical expectation. Yet, you would think, to judge by some of the protestations that have reached our ears, that the Crown was proposing to engage the French over Madagascar for possession of that pirates’ nest, and obliging them to pay the costs of an adventure far removed from their concerns. But—the threat is to their own lives, their own homes and families, their fields, their shops, their seaports, their own livelihoods, and they higgle and haggle over the burden of expense! A very strange state of mind, indeed! I am merely a messenger, sirs. Do not entertain thoughts of murdering me for what I have said, or am about to say.
“And, no doubt, many of these same said colonials will pay with their own skins, too. However, if the reports of officers in His Majesty’s service in the colonies in the past are to be warranted—and I don’t for a minute doubt the substance of their complaints or the truth of their anecdotes—not many colonial skins will be cut by French bayonet or bruised by Indian war club. The colonials, it is commonly said, are uniformly lazy, undisciplined, contentious, quarrelsome, niggardly, presumptuous, and cowardly, amongst themselves as well as amongst our brave officers and troops! It is thought by many in high and middling places that if the colonial auxiliaries under General Braddock’s command had been more forthright and daring with their musketry in that fatal wood near the Ohio, that brave and enterprising officer would be sitting in this very chamber today to receive our thanks, and not buried in some ignominious patch of mud in the wilderness. But—the colonial temperament is a matter of record. Our colonials! Scullions all, the sons of convicts, whores, and malcontents! From the greedy gentry of the northern parts, to the posturing macaronis of the southern, every man Jack of them unmindful of the fact that he is a colonial, a mere plant nurtured in exotic soil for the benefit of this nation! Oh! How ungrateful, our Britannic flora!
“Yes! Ungrateful, their noggins emboldened by a few leagues of water! Now, it is thought here in this hall, and in London, and in all of England, and even in Wales and Scotland, that His Majesty’s government—we here, within these ancient walls, and they across the way, in Lords are the corporate lawgiver and defender of our excellent constitution. Why, the most ignoble knife-grinder and blasphemous fishwife would be able to tell you that! Yet, proposals for new laws, or for the repeal of old ones, or for changes in existing statutes from colonial legislatures—those self-important congresses of coggers, costermongers, and cork farmers—arrive by the bulging barrelful on nearly every merchant vessel that drops anchor at Custom House. These proposals are dutifully conveyed by liveried but sweaty porters to the Privy Council and the Board of Trade, to the Admiralty and the Surveyor-General and the Commissioner of Customs.
“I am not friend to many members of those august bodies, but they truly have my sympathies, for they have the thankless task of sorting through those mountains of malign missives to segregate the specious from the serious. Many of these pleadings and addresses are shot through with a constant harping on the rights of the colonials as Englishmen, and so on with that kind of blather, like a one-tune hurdy-gurdy, a tiresome thing to endure, as many of you can attest. Virginia and Massachusetts are particularly monotonous and noisome in this respect. The planters would like to sell their weed directly to Spain or Holland, without the benefit of our lawful brokerage, while the Boston felt factors wish to fashion their own hats for sale there—or here!—without the material ever crossing the sea to be knocked together by our own artists. Well, sirs! We must needs remind our distant brethren that we are busy bees, too, and that the rights of Englishmen are only as good as the laws we enact allow—here, as well as there!
“Gentlemen, must I ask these questions? Does the beadle instruct the university? Does the postilion choose his employer’s destination? Does the bailiff counsel the magistrate? No! Should the colonials be permitted to advise us of our business? No! This is a custom unwisely indulged and which must be corrected! They must be reminded as civilly but as strenuously as possible that they are residents of that far land at this nation’s leisure, pleasure, expense, and tolerance! This nation’s, and His Majesty’s! They wish us to respect their rights. Well, and why not? We would not deny them those rights. But, if they wish a greater role in the public affairs of this empire, let them repatriate themselves to this fair island, and queue up at the polling places—here!—where they may exercise those native rights on the soil from which they and those rights have sprung!
“Yes! For that is the nub of the matter! Here they will find no special circumstances, no calculated abridgement of their rights! There in New York, and in Boston, in Philadelphia, and Williamsburg, and Charleston, they find themselves in special circumstances that necessitate abridgement, and like it not! But—they elect to be there, and not here! And if they cannot purchase this simple reasoning, if they persist in pelting us with petitions, memorials, and remonstrances, I say it must be the time to forget civility, and chastise the colonials as good parents would wisely chastise wayward and misbehaved children!”
Pannell is interrupted at this point by another member of the House who questions what relevance his ranting has to the question of how to finance the new war with France.
“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.”
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SPEECHES FOR AND AGAINST THE STAMP ACT PARLIAMENT, FEBRUARY 1765
Colonel Isaac Barré, member for Chipping Wycombe, replied with indignation to another member’s speech about the ingratitude of the colonials.
“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…”
Sir Dogmael Jones, member for Swansditch and an ally of Hugh Kenrick, also speaks against Prime Minister George Grenville’s proposed Stamp Act. He rises after Colonel Barré.
“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.”
Sir Henoch Pannell, now a political enemy of Dogmael Jones, rises in answer to Barré and Jones:
“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.”
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SPEECHES AGAINST THE STAMP ACT
The Virginia House of Burgesses, 29-30 May 1765
Hugh Kenrick’s Stamp Act Speeches, the first spoken to prepare the House for the introduction of Patrick Henry’s Resolves, the second spoken after they have been introduced and open to debate.
“Sirs, a man’s powers of persuasion rest not solely in his eloquence, but in how successful his style orders the facts he presents. I ask you, therefore, not to judge my eloquence, but the facts.
“Let us proceed to those facts, and scan some simple arithmetic. It is claimed by the authors and proponents of the Stamp Act, a copy of which is now in the custody of this House, that from these colonies, the levies enumerated in that act will raise some one hundred thousand pounds per annum. It is not denied by these gentlemen that the tax is an internal one, nor that it has been one long in contemplation. They make no distinction between that tax, taxes on our exports and imports, and any passed by this or any other colonial assembly. Nor should we, but that is another matter to be taken up, in future. We are assured by these gentlemen, the authors of this act, that the revenue raised by this new tax—a tax that may be paid in sterling only, let me stress that aspect, neither in kind nor in our own notes, but in rare sterling—that the revenue will remain in the colonies to defray the cost of the army here.
“Well, sirs, here is an instance of Punic faith! Britain may rightly abhor a standing army. Britain, so close to her regular enemies France, Spain, and the Netherlands, can exist in security and confidence without the burden and imposition of a standing army! We colonies, however, are spared that abhorrence, even though our close enemies to the west are less a threat to us than a single French privateer! Why are we to be relieved of that just fear? Well, you have all read the Proclamation of two years past. Allow me to read to you the reasons behind that qualification, that ominous exception, written by eminences in London who lay claim to being friends of these colonies.
“Here is what a person in the train of Lord Shelburne wrote in his recommendations of policy: ‘The provinces now being surrounded by an army, a navy, and by hostile tribes of Indians, it may be time, not to oppress or injure them, but to exact a due deference to the just and equitable demands of a British Parliament.’ And, here is what an agent for Georgia wrote in recommendation: ‘Troops and fortifications will be very necessary for Great Britain to keep up in her colonies, if she intends to settle their dependency on her.’
“It is such recommendations that influenced the wording and intent of the Proclamation, sirs. I trust I needn’t repeat the encircling particulars of that document. The records of the Board of Trade, of the Privy Council, of the Secretary of State, are rife with such recommendations, written, for the most part, by subministers and under–secretaries.
“What is the estimated cost of our standing army? Mr. Grenville asserts four hundred thousand pounds per annum. Where will the balance of that estimate come from, other than from the projected one hundred thousand raised by this stamp? In the best conjecture, from here, from there, but mostly from us, by way of all the duties we pay on manufactures and necessities brought into these colonies. Parliamentary trade estimates show that these colonies provide the Crown with a revenue of two millions per annum. That number represents not only our purchases, but all duties, indirect excises, and other charges and levies paid by us. What assurances have we that neither the army nor its subsidy here will not grow? None.
“More arithmetic, sirs. Not all of you have had the opportunity to peruse the tome of taxation now resting on the Clerk’s table. I now read to you some of the new costs to you and your fellow Virginians, when this statute becomes active law—when the trigger is pressed on November first.” (Here, Hugh reads many of the stamp duties for the House.)
“Paltry sums, to be sure, you may be thinking—paltry to His Majesty, who thinks nothing of spending one hundred thousand pounds to guarantee his party’s election to the Commons, or to purchase a party there after an election. Paltry sums, sirs, but are we so prosperous and solvent that we can pay them? If the Crown will not accept our notes, even after discounting, or Spanish or French silver, with what can we pay these duties? With our credit? We have all but exhausted our credit with the mother country and the merchants there. If new credit is to be granted us, on what terms?
“So much for the arithmetic, gentlemen. On to the budget of our liberty, and to what lays ahead for us if we submit humbly to the authority of this statute.
“Firstly, we will have conceded to Parliament the right and power to levy this tax, a tax contrived and imposed in careless violation of precedent, legality, and our liberties. This tax, sirs, if admitted and tolerated by us, will surely serve as an overture to other taxes and other powers. And, having granted Parliament that power in absentia—a power to raise a revenue from us, which was never the object of any of the navigation and commercial laws, burdensome and arbitrary in themselves—we will also have invited Parliament to render this body, and all colonial legislatures, redundant and superfluous! What would be the consequence of that negligence? That we would have representation neither here nor in Parliament! The very purpose and function of this assembly will have been obviated! This chamber, though occupied by men, would become a shell, a mockery! Think ahead, gentlemen. What would then prevent Parliament or the Board of Trade or the Privy Council from concluding that a costly assembly of voiceless and powerless burgesses should be forever dissolved? What would prevent the sages of Westminster from replacing a governor with a lord-lieutenant?
“Ah, sirs! Here is more arrogance in the offing! A lord-lieutenant, he says. What impudence! Impossible! Our charters grant us the right to governors, dependent on our assemblies for their pay! Well, sirs, there is talk in the dank closets of Westminster of revising the charters of all the colonies, in order to exact a ‘due deference’ from them! A lord-lieutenant, may I remind you gentlemen, has neither an assembly to address, nor one to answer to. Such a false ‘governor’ would not be dependent on the benefices of an elected assembly, but would be paid directly by the Crown from our stamped pockets and purses, to ensure enforcement of Crown law.
“And, here is another ominous provision of this Stamp Act, sirs. In any case concerning violation of it, a prosecutor may choose between the venues of a jury court, and a juryless admiralty court in which to try a defendant. I leave to your imaginations, sirs, to think of which court would regularly find defendants so charged at fault, and promote the careers of interested informants and Crown officers.
“What would we be left with, sirs? Nothing that we had ever prided ourselves in. We would become captives of the Crown, paying, toiling captives in a vast Bridewell prison! The one thing will follow the other, as surely as innocuous streams feed great rivers. Mr. Grenville is first minister now. Who will follow him? Another minister with his own notion of ‘due deference’? I shall paraphrase something I heard uttered not long ago. It should matter little to us whether this law and the Proclamation are a consequence of premeditated policy, or of divers coincidences, when the same logical end is our slavery.
“‘Traitor,’ did you say, sir? Allow me to read to you the words of another ‘traitor,’ words on which I had planned to end my remarks, but which ought to shame you for having pronounced your one. ‘The people who are the descendents of those, who were forced to submit to the yoke of a government by constraint, have always the right to shake it off, and free themselves from the usurpation, or tyranny, which the sword hath brought in upon them, till their rulers put them under such a frame of government, as they willingly, and of choice consent to.’
“That, sir, was Mr. John Locke, to whom we all owe a debt of thanks, and you, sir, an apology. I do not perceive in this Stamp Act, sirs, either our will, our choice, or our consent!
“The time to say ‘No,’ gentlemen, is now, and to give ambitious, careless men notice that we will not be ruled and bled to feebleness. If we succeed in a new, more vigorous protest, then the stage will be set for us to correct other imbalances, other injustices, other impositions. Better men than those who authored and passed this act are in Parliament now. They spoke for us. They were overwhelmed by the inertia of ignorance and the arrogance of avarice. But, if we stand our ground now, more like them will take heart and come to the fore, men who see in this encroachment jeopardy of liberty in England itself, men who recognize the possibility of a partnership between England and this ad hoc confederation of colonies. We are Britons, sirs, and will not be slaves! We are Virginians, sirs, and should be wise and proud enough to find this tax repugnant to the cores of our souls!
“Let us be known for our Attic faith!”
The next day, in defense of Patrick Henry’s Resolves, and in answer to Attorney-General Peyton Randolph’s remarks, Hugh rises to speak again:
“We who endorse these resolves are neither ignorant of the difference between foolishness and wisdom, nor oblivious to the virtues of those who have trod the earth before many of us came into it. Virtue, said Socrates, springs not from possessions—and I mean here not merely our tangible wealth, but our liberties as well—not from possessions, but from virtue springs those possessions, and all other human blessings, whether for the individual or society. In these circumstances, the virtue which that gentleman accuses us of lacking, has become a vice. Call it moderation, or charity, it will not serve us now. We exercise the virtue of righteous certitude, for it alone has the efficacy that conciliation and accommodation have not. That virtue is expressed—and I believe that the honorable Colonel Bland there will concur with me on this point—that virtue is expressed in one of the original charters of this colony, and in the first charter of Massachusetts, and has merely been reiterated in these resolves, but in clearer language. Moral certitude is a virtue itself, and in this instance is a glorious one, because it asserts and affirms, in all those charters and resolves, our natural liberty and the blessings it bestows upon us!
“Let us not imbibe the hemlock of humility, duty, or deference, sirs! Socrates did not have a choice in that regard. We have. Should we choose to rest on the virtue boasted of and advocated by that more experienced gentleman, that will be a more certain path to the despair, defeat, and regret he fears, and we will have nothing left that we can call our own!”
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PATRICK HENRY’S STAMP ACT SPEECH
29 May 1765
“I wish to introduce a number of resolutions to the committee for its sagacious consideration.
“Sirs, this House’s original entreaties to Parliament and His Majesty in protest of the then contemplated Stamp Act—entreaties written in astonishing deference, but doubtless from a sense of reason and justice—stand as of this day without the reciprocate courtesy of reply, except in the enactment of this Act. We therefore find ourselves in a predicament which will not correct itself, not unless we take corrective actions. Many members of this House are in agreement that stronger and clearer positions must be transmitted to those parties, in order to elicit from them a concern for this matter commensurate with our own, lest Parliament and His Majesty construe our silence for passive concession and submission.
“We propose that this House adopt and forward to those parties, not genuflective beseechments or adulatory objurgations, but pungent resolves of our understanding of the origins and practice of British and American liberty, resolves which will frankly alert them to both the error of their presumptions and our determination to preserve that liberty. These resolves, in order to have some consequence and value, ought not to be expressed by us in the role of effusive mendicants applying for the restitution of what has been wrested from them, but with the cogently blunt mettle of men who refuse to be robbed.
“And, what is it we are being robbed of? The recognized and eviternal right to govern ourselves without Parliamentary interference, meddling, supervision, or usurpation! As another member here has so well explained, the Stamp Act represents not merely the levying of taxes on our goods, but on our actions to preserve our property and livelihoods. This law, he explained, will serve to remove from the realm of most of the freemen in this colony, and in our sister colonies, all moral recourse to justice and liberty.
“Surely, some here will counter: That is not the intent of this law and those duties. But, nevertheless, wisdom prescribes that consequence. And, in the abstract, even should every man in this colony have the miraculous means to pay these duties, the question would remain: Ought they? For if submission is an imperative, then they ought to submit as well to laws that would assign them their diets, arrange their marriages, and regulate their amusements and diversions.
“I am certain that in the vast woodwork of British government, there lurks an army of interlopers and harpies whose notions of ‘due deference’ and an ordered, dutiful, captive society fancy that direction in the matter of governing these colonies, an army that, until now, has been kept in check by its fear of ridicule and by the regular, bracing tonic of reason. The Stamp Act alone will not prompt that army to forget its proper inhibitions. But, our submission to it will, and invite it to emerge from that worm-eaten woodwork like locusts to further infest our lives by leave of a Parliamentary prerogative that we failed to challenge.
“Challenges, sirs, not remonstrances, are in order today! Resolutions, not memorials!
“Look around you, gentlemen. This is our forum, our legislature. It is a living, honorable thing, this hall, because we may meet in it to conduct our own business. But, neglect to challenge this law, and I foresee the day when this hall of liberty will become a mausoleum, redolent with the fading echoes of a distant, glorious freedom which from shame you may be reluctant to remember, and of which your children will have no notion, because we failed. Posterity will not look kindly upon us, should we fail. What might happen to this chamber? Well, in one of the many inglorious chapters that comprise the downfall of ancient Rome, it is noted that the Hall of Liberty was made to serve as a barracks for the mercenaries of an emperor. But, perhaps events will be merciful, and this place will be burned and leveled by our wardens to prevent us from ever again presuming to conduct our own business without fear of offense or penalty.
“Here are some resolves.
“Whereas, the honorable House of Commons in England have of late drawn into question how far the General Assembly of this colony hath the power to enact laws for laying of taxes and imposing duties payable by the people of this, His Majesty’s most ancient colony; for setting and ascertaining the same to all future times, the House of Burgesses of this present General Assembly have come to the following resolves.
“Resolved, that the first adventurers and settlers of this His Majesty’s colony and dominion of Virginia brought with them, and transmitted to their posterity, and all other of His Majesty’s subjects since inhabiting in this His Majesty’s said colony, all the privileges and immunities that have at any time been held, enjoyed, and possessed by the people of Great Britain.
“Resolved, that by two royal charters, granted by King James the First, the colonists aforesaid are declared entitled to all the privileges, liberties, and immunities of denizens and natural-born subjects, to all intents and purposes, as if they had been abiding and born within the realm of England.
“Resolved, that the taxation of the people by themselves, or by persons chosen by themselves to represent them, who can only know what taxes the people are able to bear, and the easiest mode of raising them, and who must themselves be equally affected by such taxes—an arrangement,” interjected Henry, “which is the surest security against burdensome taxation by our own representatives”—then continued to read from the page, “is the distinguishing characteristic of British freedom, and without which, the ancient Constitution cannot subsist.
“Resolve the fourth, gentlemen: That His Majesty’s liege people of this his most ancient and loyal colony of Virginia, have without interruption enjoyed the precious right of being thus governed by their own Assembly in the article of their taxes and internal police, and that the same hath never been forfeited or in any other way given up or surrendered, but hath been constantly recognized by the kings and people of Great Britain.
“Those, sirs, are the premises of a uniquely extended syllogism. Here is its conclusion.
“Resolved, that the General Assembly of this colony have the only and sole exclusive right and power to lay taxes and impositions upon the inhabitants of this colony, and that every attempt to vest such power in any person or persons whatsoever, other than the General Assembly of this colony, has a manifest tendency to destroy British as well as American freedom!
“There are two more resolves to be read, sirs, but these five are their foundation, and must be adopted before the sixth and seventh can have any meaning or force.”
The next day, in reply to criticisms of the “violence” of the Resolves, Henry answers:
“If this House elects to wait on Parliament, sirs, may I ask in what capacity? Ought we to wait idle in the foyer of those eminences’ concerns, in the mental livery of a menial, while they complete the latest business of oppressing the good people of England, not daring to whisper the persecution of their own brethren, lest it some how insinuate our own? Some men in this chamber may prefer to approach the bar of Parliament, hats in hand, on raw knees, as humble supplicants, in search of redress and restitution. I, sirs, prefer to wait for Parliament to call on me, to beg my forgiveness for that body’s attempt to dupe and enslave me and this my country!”
Given a second chance to speak, Henry rises and verbally accosts the Attorney-General, Peyton Randolph, who had delivered a speech advocating conciliation.
“The honorable gentleman there spoke now, not of the rightness or wrongness of the resolve in question, but of ominous consequences, should this House adopt it. I own that I am perplexed by his attention to what the Crown can and may do, and by his neglect to speak to the propriety of the resolve and the impropriety of this Stamp Act. Should he have examined for us the basis of his fears? Yes. But, he did not. Perhaps he concluded that they were too terrible to articulate. So, I shall examine them, for I believe that he and I share one well-founded fear: The power of the Crown to punish us, to scatter us, to despoil us, for the temerity of asserting in no ambiguous terms our liberty! I fear that power no less than he. But, I say that such a fear, of such a power, can move a man to one of two courses. He can make a compact with that power, one of mutual accommodation, so that he may live the balance of his years in the shadow of that power, ever-trembling in soul-dulling funk lest that power rob him once again.
“Or—he can rise up, and to that power say ‘No!’, to that power proclaim: ‘Liberty cannot, and will not, ever accommodate tyranny! I am wise to that Faustian bargain, and will not barter piecemeal or in whole my liberty!’
“Why are you gentlemen so fearful of that word? Why have not one of you dared pronounce it? Is it because you believe that if it is not spoken, or its fact or action in any form not acknowledged, it will not be what it is? Well, I will speak it for you and for all this colony to hear!
“Tyranny! Tyranny! Tyranny! There! The horror is named Tyranny! There is its guise, sirs! What a Janus-faced object it is, smirking at you on one side of its mask, shedding tears for you on the other! What a contemptible set of men who authored it, but whom you wish to accommodate! What a disgraceful proposition! And what a travesty you ask us to condone! ’Tis only a mere pound of flesh we propose to remove from you, they tell you in gentle, proper language, and we promise that you will not bleed. Hah! You will recall how the Bard proved the folly and fallacy of that kind of compact! Are not accommodation and compromise another but greater form of it? He proved it in a comedy, sirs! You propose to prove it in a tragedy, and if you succeed in penning finis to your opus, you may rue the day you put your names on its title page!
“You gentlemen, you have amassed vast, stately libraries from which you seem to be reluctant to cull or retain much wisdom. Know that I, too, have books, and that they are loose and dog-eared from my having read them, and I have profited from that habit.
“History is rife with instances of ambitious, grasping tyranny! Like many of you, I, too, have read that in the past, the tyrants Tarquin and Julius Caesar each had his Brutus, Catiline had his Cicero and Cato, and, closer to our time, Charles had his Cromwell! George the Third may—”
It is here that many burgesses rose and accused Henry with speaking treason.
“—may George the Third profit by their example!…If this be treason, then make the most of it!”
* * *
SPEECHES FOR REPEAL OF THE STAMP ACT
Parliament, March 1766
William Pitt, member for Bath in the Commons, but virtual Prime Minister over Rockingham (Pitt would form his own government the same year, and also be elevated to Lords, a move meant to diminish his political influence), spoke for repeal of the Stamp Act, but in terms that left open to Parliament the rationale to enact more oppressive legislation against the American colonies.
“I hope a day may soon be appointed to consider the state of the nation with respect to America. I hope gentlemen will come to this debate with all the temper and impartiality that His Majesty recommends and the importance of the subject requires; a subject of greater importance than ever engaged the attention of this House, that subject only excepted when, near a century ago, it was the question whether you yourselves were to be bond or free. In the meantime, as I cannot depend upon my health for any future day—such is the nature of my infirmities—I will beg to say a few words at present, leaving the justice, the equity, the policy, the expediency of the act to another time.
“I will only speak to one point—a point which seems not to have been generally understood. I mean to the right. Some gentlemen seem to have considered it as a point of honor. If gentlemen consider it in this light, they leave all measures of right and wrong, to follow a delusion that may lead to destruction. It is my opinion that this kingdom has no right to lay a tax upon the colonies. At the same time, I assert the authority of this kingdom over the colonies to be sovereign and supreme, in every circumstance of government and legislation whatsoever. They are the subjects of this kingdom, equally entitled with yourselves to all the natural rights of mankind and the peculiar privileges of Englishmen; equally bound by its laws and equally participating in the Constitution of this free country.
“The Americans are the sons, not the bastards, of England! Taxation is no part of the governing or legislative power!
“The taxes are a voluntary gift and grant of the Commons alone. In legislation the three estates of the realm are alike concerned; but the concurrence of the peers and the Crown to a tax is only necessary to clothe it with the form of a law. The gift and grant is of the Commons alone.
“In ancient days, the Crown, the barons, and the clergy possessed the lands. In those days, the barons and the clergy gave and granted to the Crown. They gave and granted what was their own! At present, since the discovery of America, and other circumstances permitting, the Commons are become the proprietors of the land. The Church—God bless it!—has but a pittance. The property of the Lords, compared with that of the Commons, is as a drop of water in the ocean; and this House represents those Commons, the proprietors of the lands; and those proprietors virtually represent the rest of the inhabitants. When, therefore, in this House we give and grant, we give and grant what is our own. But in an American tax, what do we do? ‘We, your Majesty’s commons for Great Britain, give and grant to Your Majesty’—what? Our own property? No! ‘We give and grant to Your Majesty the property of your Majesty’s Commons of America!’ It is an absurdity in terms!
“The distinction between legislation and taxation is essentially necessary to liberty. The Crown and the peers are equally legislative powers with the Commons. If taxation be a part of simple legislation, then the Crown and the peers have rights in taxation as well as yourselves; rights which they will claim, which they will exercise, whenever the principle can be supported by power.
“There is an idea in some that the colonies are virtually represented in the House,” said Pitt with a wryness that almost produced a grin on his face. “I would fain know by whom an American is represented here.
“Is he represented by any knight of the shire, in any county in this kingdom?” asked Pitt. “Would to God that respectable representation was augmented to a greater number! Or will you tell him that he is represented by any representative of a borough?—a borough which, perhaps, its own representatives never saw!” Pitt laughed once in dismissal of the idea. “This is what is called the rotten part of the Constitution! It cannot continue a century! If it does not drop, it must be amputated. The idea of a virtual representation of America in this House is the most contemptible idea that ever entered into the head of a man. It does not deserve a serious refutation.
“The Commons of America, represented in their several assemblies, have ever been in possession of the exercise of this their constitutional right of giving and granting their own money. They would have been slaves if they had not enjoyed it! At the same time, this kingdom, as the supreme governing and legislative power, has always bound the colonies by her laws, by her regulations, and restrictions in trade, in navigation, in manufactures, in everything, except that of taking their money out of their pockets without their consent.
“Gentlemen, sir, have been charged with giving birth to sedition in America. They have spoken their sentiments with freedom against this unhappy act, and that freedom has become their crime. Sorry I am to hear the liberty of speech in this House imputed as a crime. But the imputation shall not discourage me. It is a liberty I mean to exercise. No gentleman ought to be afraid to exercise it. It is a liberty by which the gentleman who calumniates it might have profited. He ought to have desisted from his project. The gentleman tells us America is obstinate; America is almost in open rebellion. Well, I rejoice that America has resisted! Three millions of people, so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to makes slaves of the rest!
“Since the accession of King William, many ministers, some of great, others of more moderate abilities, have taken the lead of government. None of these thought, or even dreamed, of robbing the colonies of their constitutional rights. That was reserved to mark the era of the late administration. Not that there were wanting some, when I had the honor to serve His Majesty, to propose to me to burn my fingers with an American stamp act. With the enemy at their back, with our bayonets at their breasts, in the day of their distress, perhaps the Americans would have submitted to the imposition; but it would have been taking an ungenerous, an unjust advantage.
“The gentleman boasts of these bounties to America! Are not these bounties intended finally for the benefit of this kingdom? If not, he has misapplied the national treasures!
“I am no courtier of America, I stand up for this kingdom. I maintain that the Parliament has a right to bind, to restrain America! Our legislative power over the colonies is sovereign and supreme. When it ceases to be sovereign and supreme, I would advise every gentleman here to sell his lands, if he can, and embark for that country. When two countries are connected together like England and her colonies, without being incorporated, the one must necessarily govern. The greater must rule the less. But she must so rule as not to contradict the fundamental principles that are common to both.
“If the gentleman does not understand the difference between external and internal taxes, I cannot help it. There is a plain distinction between taxes levied for the purposes of raising a revenue and duties imposed for the regulation of trade, for the accommodation of the subject; although, in the consequences, some revenue may incidentally arise from the latter. The gentleman asks, when were the colonies emancipated? I desire to know, when were they made slaves?
“A great deal has been said without doors of the power, of the strength of America. It is a topic that ought to be cautiously meddled with. In a good cause, on a sound bottom, the force of this country can crush America to atoms. I know the valor of your troops, I know the skill of your officers. There is not a company of foot that has served in America out of which you may not pick a man of sufficient knowledge and experience to make a governor of a colony there. But on this ground, on the Stamp Act, which so many here will think a crying injustice, I am one who will lift up my hands against it! In such a cause, your success would be hazardous. America, if she fell, would fall like the strong man; she would embrace the pillars of the state, and pull down the Constitution along with her.
“Is this your boasted peace—not to sheathe the sword in its scabbard, but to sheathe it in the bowels of your countrymen? Will you quarrel with yourselves, now the whole house of Bourbon is united against you; while France disturbs your fisheries in Newfoundland, embarrasses your slave trade to Africa, and withholds from your subjects in Canada their property stipulated by treaty; while the ransom for the Manilas is denied by Spain, and its gallant conqueror basely traduced into a mean plunderer—a gentleman whose noble and generous spirit would do honor to the proudest grandee of that country?
“The Americans have not acted in all things with prudence and temper; they have been wronged; they have been driven to madness by injustice. Will you punish them for the madness you have occasioned? Rather let prudence and temper come first from this side. I will undertake for America that she will follow the example. There are two lines in a ballad of Prior’s, of a man’s behavior to his wife, so applicable to you and your colonies, that I cannot help repeating them:
‘Be to her virtues very kind.
Be to her faults a little blind’
“Upon the whole, I will beg leave to tell the House what is my opinion. It is that the Stamp Act be repealed absolutely, totally, and immediately! And that the reason for the repeal be assigned—because it was founded on an erroneous principle. At the same time, let the sovereign authority of this country over the colonies be asserted in as strong terms as can be devised, and be made to extend to every point of legislation whatsoever; that we may bind their trade, confine their manufactures, and exercise every power whatsoever, except that of taking money from their pockets without consent.”
Dogmael Jones’s speech in Parliament for repeal of the Stamp Act answers objections to repeal and particularly William Pitt’s pragmatic speech for repeal and tolerance.
“It is the anxious concurrence among the advocates of repeal and the defenders of the colonies here that some form of declaration of supremacy must accompany any act of repeal, for otherwise it is imagined, and not entirely without truth in the notion, that it would appear that the Crown, in such an act, would implicitly grant the colonies a unique state of political and economic independence not enjoyed by other Crown dominions.
“I join in that concurrence. For if the colonies are exempted from ‘internal’ legislative authority by Parliament, in little time it is supposed, also not entirely without justification, that they would begin to chafe under the proscriptions of the navigation laws and other constraints, and subsequently question that authority as well, and press for the immediate removal of those fetters.
“This is a true fear which I have often heard spoken in hushed words or delicate insinuations amongst both friends and foes of the colonies in this chamber. This fear may be credited, I am sorry to say, not to honest foresight, but to the natural apprehensions of frustrated and foiled political ambition and avarice.
“But, what have these gentlemen and lords to fear? I do not believe that the consequences of repeal by itself have occurred yet even to the most eloquent colonials, for, if the reports and testimony in this chamber are any guide, the most vocal and robust opposers of the Sugar and Stamp Acts there do not have political independence in mind so much as a fair and just regard by the Crown for their rights under our excellent constitution. An accompanying declaration of Parliamentary authority, if it comes to pass, will not much be noted by our fellow Britons over there. Only a few of them, and fewer of us, will see in such a sibling act the foundation of a more ruinous and angry contention than they believe the Crown is capable of handling, except in the manner of Turks.
“So, rather than seek to defend the temple of liberty, as many here purport to do, we will instead decide to prop up a moldy, half-collapsed, vine-smothered gazebo, which is infested with vermin and home to numerous rude and spiteful insects.
“Bind and confine the colonials? Should we not be honest about what this House intends to do? It is to bind and confine the colonials as captive felons, but take niggling, fussy care not to invade their pockets and appropriate what pittance is left to them after we have charged them the costs of their binding and confinement! What generosity! What kindness! What fairness! We propose to grant them the sanctity and liberty of their pockets, but not of their lives! But, should anyone in this House ever call this mode of supremacy tyranny, would he then be accused of treason?
“I wish to dwell for a moment on the unacknowledged, unspoken but common premise among all the speakers here, pro-repeal and anti-repeal alike, past and present, that the colonies are already ‘another kingdom,’ and that the alternatives open to them are mutually grim. Be warned: When that realization has occurred to our colonial brethren, the logic of their binding and confining circumstance must lead them inexorably to a choice, which is to decide whether to fight for their liberties as Englishmen, or as Americans for an independence that will better secure them those liberties, and not leave them to the invidious mercies of legislators across an ocean, as we propose to do here.
“I say again: For the Americans, the alternatives to repeal of the navigation laws, as well, beginning with repeal of the Stamp Act, ultimately will be war and independence, or war and conquest. Then the Americans must decide to fight, or to submit. If to fight, and possibly to win, this nation should feel no shame in having lost, for it will be credited with having birthed a giant. If to fight and be conquered by us, then they will simply rise up in another decade. And if to submit, then they will do so ignobly, bitterly, and shamefully, after all the stirring, memorable, and defiant words they had spoken. Then we will have won by default, we will have the colonies in thrall, and we will have a dubious revenue from them, but we should feel no pride whatsoever in that triumph.
“Fiat lux.”