peace, good-will, order, and esteem, on the part of the governed. I
would certainly, at least, give these fair principles a fair trial;
which, since the making of this act to this hour, they never have had.

Sir, the honorable gentleman having spoken what he thought necessary
upon the narrow part of the subject, I have given him, I hope, a
satisfactory answer. He next presses me, by a variety of direct
challenges and oblique reflections, to say something on the historical
part. I shall therefore, Sir, open myself fully on that important and
delicate subject: not for the sake of telling you a long story, (which,
I know, Mr. Speaker, you are not particularly fond of,) but for the sake
of the weighty instruction that, I flatter myself, will necessarily
result from it. It shall not be longer, if I can help it, than so
serious a matter requires.

Permit me then, Sir, to lead your attention very far back,--back to the
Act of Navigation, the cornerstone of the policy of this country with
regard to its colonies. Sir, that policy was, from the beginning, purely
commercial; and the commercial system was wholly restrictive. It was the
system of a monopoly. No trade was let loose from that constraint, but
merely to enable the colonists to dispose of what, in the course of your
trade, you could not take,--or to enable them to dispose of such
articles as we forced upon them, and for which, without some degree of
liberty, they could not pay. Hence all your specific and detailed
enumerations; hence the innumerable checks and counterchecks; hence that
infinite variety of paper chains by which you bind together this
complicated system of the colonies. This principle of commercial
monopoly runs through no less than twenty-nine acts of Parliament, from
the year 1660 to the unfortunate period of 1764.