Page:Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America.djvu/142

 alter. You must register it. You can do nothing further, for on what grounds can you deliberate either before or after the proposition? You cannot hear the counsel for all these provinces, quarrelling each on its own quantity of payment, and its proportion to others If you should attempt it, the Committee of Provincial Ways and Means, or by whatever other name it will delight to be called, must swallow up all the time of Parliament.

Thirdly, it does not give satisfaction to the complaint of the Colonies. They complain that they are taxed without their consent, you answer, that you will fix the sum at which they shall be taxed. That is, you give them the very grievance for the remedy. You tell them, indeed, that you will leave the mode to themselves. I really beg pardon—it gives me pain to mention it—but you must be sensible that you will not perform this part of the compact. For, suppose the Colonies were to lay the duties, which furnished their contingent, upon the importation of your manufactures, you know you would never suffer such a tax to be laid. You know, too, that you would not suffer many other modes of taxation, so that, when you come to explain yourself, it will be found that you will neither leave to themselves the quantum nor the