and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude,
and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what
is vexed by their fisheries. No climate that is not witness to their toils.
Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the
dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most
perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed
by this recent people; a people who are still, as it were, but in the
gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.

When I contemplate these things; when I know that the colonies in general
owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed
into this happy form by the constrains of watchful and suspicious
government, but that through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature
has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon
these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all
the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human
contrivances melt and die away within me. My rigor relents. I pardon
something to the spirit of liberty.
E. Burke.


CXLII.

THE RIGHT OF ENGLAND TO TAX AMERICA.

But Mr. Speaker, "we have a right to tax America." Oh, inestimable right!
Oh, wonderful, transcendent right! the assertion of which has cost this
country thirteen provinces, six islands, one hundred thousand lives, and
seventy millions of money. Oh, invaluable right! for the sake of which we
have sacrificed our rank among nations, our importance abroad, and our