Sir, I think you must perceive that I am resolved this day to have nothing at all to do with the question of the right of taxation.  Some gentlemen start—­but it is true; I put it totally out of the question.  It is less than nothing in my consideration.  I do not indeed wonder, nor will you, Sir, that gentlemen of profound learning are fond of displaying it on this profound subject.  But my consideration is narrow, confined, and wholly limited to the policy of the question.  I do not examine whether the giving away a man’s money be a power excepted and reserved out of the general trust of government, and how far all mankind, in all forms of polity, are entitled to an exercise of that right by the charter of nature; or whether, on the contrary, a right of taxation is necessarily involved in the general principle of legislation, and inseparable from the ordinary supreme power.  These are deep questions, where great names militate against each other, where reason is perplexed, and an appeal to authorities only thickens the confusion; for high and reverend authorities lift up their heads on both sides, and there is no sure footing in the middle.  This point is the great

“Serbonian bog, Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have sunk.” [Footnote:  42]

I do not intend to be overwhelmed in that bog, though in such respectable company.  The question [Footnote:  43] with me is, not whether you have a right to render your people miserable, but whether it is not your interest to make them happy.  It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do, but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.  Is a politic act the worse for being a generous one?  Is no concession proper but that which is made from your want of right to keep what you grant?  Or does it lessen the grace or dignity of relaxing in the exercise of an odious claim because you have your evidence-room full of titles, and your magazines stuffed with arms to enforce them?  What signify all those titles, and all those arms?  Of what avail are they, when the reason of the thing tells me that the assertion of my title is the loss of my suit, and that I could do nothing but wound myself by the use of my own weapons?

Such is steadfastly my opinion of the absolute necessity of keeping up the concord of this Empire by an unity of spirit, though in a diversity of operations, that, if I were sure the Colonists had, at their leaving this country, sealed a regular compact of servitude; that they had solemnly abjured all the rights of citizens; that they had made a vow to renounce all ideas of liberty for them and their posterity to all generations; yet I should hold myself obliged to conform to the temper I found universally prevalent in my own day, and to govern two million of men, impatient of servitude, on the principles of freedom.  I am not determining a point of law, I am restoring tranquillity; and the general character and situation of a people must determine what sort of government is fitted for them.  That point nothing else can or ought to determine.