object in the trade of England, as not to be felt, or felt but slightly,
like white lead, and red lead, and painters' colors? Tea is an object of
far other importance. Tea is perhaps the most important object, taking
it with its necessary connections, of any in the mighty circle of our
commerce. If commercial principles had been the true motives to the
repeal, or had they been at all attended to, tea would have been the
last article we should have left taxed for a subject of controversy.

Sir, it is not a pleasant consideration, but nothing in the world can
read so awful and so instructive a lesson as the conduct of ministry in
this business, upon the mischief of not having large and liberal ideas
in the management of great affairs. Never have the servants of the state
looked at the whole of your complicated interests in one connected view.
They have taken things by bits and scraps, some at one time and one
pretence, and some at another, just as they pressed, without any sort of
regard to their relations or dependencies. They never had any kind of
system, right or wrong; but only invented occasionally some miserable
tale for the day, in order meanly to sneak out of difficulties into
which they had proudly strutted. And they were put to all these shifts
and devices, full of meanness and full of mischief, in order to pilfer
piecemeal a repeal of an act which they had not the generous courage,
when they found and felt their error, honorably and fairly to disclaim.
By such management, by the irresistible operation of feeble councils,
so paltry a sum as three-pence in the eyes of a financier, so
insignificant an article as tea in the eyes of a philosopher, have
shaken the pillars of a commercial empire that circled the whole globe.

Do you forget that in the very last year you stood on the precipice of
general bankruptcy? Your danger was indeed great. You were distressed in
the affairs of the East India Company; and you well know what sort of