from two and a half to fifteen per cent, and some articles, such as that
of spirits, a great deal higher. You did not think it uncommercial to
tax the whole mass of your manufactures, and, let me add, your
agriculture too; for, I now recollect, British corn is there also taxed
up to ten per cent, and this too in the very head-quarters, the very
citadel of smuggling, the Isle of Man. Now will the noble lord
condescend to tell me why he repealed the taxes on your manufactures
sent out to America, and not the taxes on the manufactures exported to
the Isle of Man? The principle was exactly the same, the objects charged
infinitely more extensive, the duties without comparison higher. Why?
Why, notwithstanding all his childish pretexts, because the taxes were
quietly submitted to in the Isle of Man, and because they raised a flame
in America. Your reasons were political, not commercial. The repeal was
made, as Lord Hillsborough's letter well expresses it, to regain "the
confidence and affection of the colonies, on which the glory and safety
of the British empire depend." A wise and just motive, surely, if ever
there was such. But the mischief and dishonor is, that you have not done
what you had given the colonies just cause to expect, when your
ministers disclaimed the idea of taxes for a revenue. There is nothing
simple, nothing manly, nothing ingenuous, open, decisive, or steady, in
the proceeding, with regard either to the continuance or the repeal of
the taxes. The whole has an air of littleness and fraud. The article of
tea is slurred over in the circular letter, as it were by accident:
nothing is said of a resolution either to keep that tax or to give it
up. There is no fair dealing in any part of the transaction.

If you mean to follow your true motive and your public faith, give up
your tax on tea for raising a revenue, the principle of which has, in
effect, been disclaimed in your name, and which produces you no
advantage,--no, not a penny. Or, if you choose to go on with a poor