In Lord North’s speech on the destruction of the tea in Boston harbor, he said:—­

“We are no longer to dispute between legislation and taxation; we are now only to consider whether or not we have any authority there.  It is very clear we have none, if we suffer the property of our subjects to be destroyed.  We must punish, control, or yield to them.”

And thereupon he proposed to close the port of Boston, just as the representatives of Massachusetts now propose to close the port of Charleston, in order to determine whether or not you have any authority there.  It is thus that, in 1861, Boston is to pay her debt of gratitude to Charleston, which, in the days of her struggle, proclaimed the generous sentiment that “the cause of Boston was the cause of Charleston.”  Who, after this, will say that republicans are ungrateful?  Well, sir, the statesmen of Great Britain answered to Lord North’s appeal, “yield.”  The courtiers and the politicians said, “punish,” “control.”  The result is known.  History gives you the lesson.  Profit by its teachings!

So, sir, in the address sent under the royal sign-manual to Parliament, it was invoked to take measures “for better securing the execution of the laws,” and it acquiesced in the suggestion.  Just as now, a senile executive, under the sinister influence of insane counsels, is proposing, with your assent, “to secure the better execution of the laws,” by blockading ports and turning upon the people of the States the artillery which they provided at their own expense for their own defense, and intrusted to you and to him for that and for no other purpose—­nay, even in States that are now exercising the undoubted and most precious rights of a free people; where there is no secession; where the citizens are assembling to hold peaceful elections for considering what course of action is demanded in this dread crisis by a due regard for their own safety and their own liberty; aye, even in Virginia herself, the people are to cast their suffrages beneath the undisguised menaces of a frowning fortress.  Cannon are brought to bear on their homes, and parricidal hands are preparing weapons for rending the bosom of the mother of Washington.

Sir, when Great Britain proposed to exact tribute from your fathers against their will, Lord Chatham said:—­

“Whatever is a man’s own is absolutely his own; no man has a right to take it from him without his consent.  Whoever attempts to do it attempts an injury.  Whoever does it commits a robbery.  You have no right to tax America.  I rejoice that America has resisted.

“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 whatever, so that we may bind their trade, confine their manufactures, and exercise every power, except that of taking money out of their own pockets without their consent.”