this, wonder that you have no weight and no respect in the colonies?
After this are you surprised that Parliament is every day and everywhere
losing (I feel it with sorrow, I utter it with reluctance) that
reverential affection which so endearing a name of authority ought ever
to carry with it? that you are obeyed solely from respect to the
bayonet? and that this House, the ground and pillar of freedom, is
itself held up only by the treacherous underpinning and clumsy
buttresses of arbitrary power?

If this dignity, which is to stand in the place of just policy and
common sense, had been consulted, there was a time for preserving it,
and for reconciling it with any concession. If in the session of 1768,
that session of idle terror and empty menaces, you had, as you were
often pressed to do, repealed these taxes, then your strong operations
would have come justified and enforced, in case your concessions had
been returned by outrages. But, preposterously, you began with violence;
and before terrors could have any effect, either good or bad, your
ministers immediately begged pardon, and promised that repeal to the
obstinate Americans which they had refused in an easy, good-natured,
complying British Parliament. The assemblies, which had been publicly
and avowedly dissolved for _their_ contumacy, are called together to
receive _your_ submission. Your ministerial directors blustered like
tragic tyrants here; and then went mumping with a sore leg in America,
canting, and whining, and complaining of faction, which represented them
as friends to a revenue from the colonies. I hope nobody in this House
will hereafter have the impudence to defend American taxes in the name
of ministry. The moment they do, with this letter of attorney in my
hand, I will tell them, in the authorized terms, they are wretches "with
factious and seditious views," "enemies to the peace and prosperity of
the mother country and the colonies," and subverters "of the mutual