Act, to lay internal taxes. She asserted both rights; and from this conflict of the exactions of dominion and the resistance of liberty, arose the discussions which preceded the war, and the war itself. Now, what I ask you particularly to remark is, that, in all the stages and in all the forms of this controversy; a controversy extending over twenty years; a controversy which addressed the reason and exasperated the feelings of all America, and made everybody familiar with its topics and its vocabulary, all the disputants on both sides agreed exactly on the nature of a commercial regulation, and of the acts which might be done under the power to make such a regulation. Grenville, Lord North, Lord Chatham, and Burke, in England; and in the colonies, John Dickinson the Pennsylvania farmer, Benjamin Franklin the Boston mechanic, John Adams the Massachusetts lawyer, whose energy and eloquence brought up a hesitating congress to the Declaration of Independence, Sewall, the champion of parliament and the crown, Jefferson, who first denied the right of England to exert either of the powers she claimed - these and a hundred others, some of whose names we know, while some have perished — stant nominum umbræ !—all who took part for you or against you in that, your "agony of glory," concur in this. All of them agreed that the long series of legislation by which England had laid duties on imports of the colonies, for the purpose bringing out and sustaining her domestic industry of all kinds, were regulations of trade; all of them agreed that, if she had power to regulate the trade of the colonies, her protecting tariffs were clearly within the exercise of the power; and all of them at first, and most of them, even on the American side, down nearly to the Declaration of Independence, conceded to her that precise power. Taking their stand upon the nature of this power, and of the acts it authorized, those who sustained the claim of England argued that her right to lay internal taxes followed of course, while those who espoused the cause of liberty denied that it followed at all; but upon the nature of that power, and of the acts it authorized, if it existed, there was no diversity of opinion, and there was nearly a unanimous concession that it did exist. Every speech, every address, every public act, every essay, every pamphlet, all the written remains of that anxious and momentous controversy,

of

which employed so many eloquent tongues and pens, and went, at last, to the arbitrament of war, prove this. It is wholly indisputable that if, in the year 1783, it were written or said that England, before the Revolution, and the States after it, had the power to regulate the trade of America, the writer or speaker meant to declare that England first, and subsequently the States, had the power, among other things, to tax imports in order to protect manufactures, the arts, navigation, and agriculture; and that he was understood to mean so by all England and all America.

Mr. President, I could not exhibit in a day all the evidence of this which breaks forth from every page of our Revolutionary and ante-Revolutionary political literature. You know how considerable a body of writing it is. It is familiar to the earlier and the maturer studies of senators. You have not been inattentive to a class of compositions, some of which the masculine taste of Chatham did not refuse to rank with the best political writings of the master States of antiquity.

Let me read a few selections, however, in proof and illustration of the currency and the meaning of this language prior and down to 1783. Some of them, I know, have been accumulated and arranged for this purpose by others; and, indeed, the principle of this whole mode of argument, and the nature of the investigations by which it should be conducted, are suggested by Mr. Madison's letter. But I have not thought it proper to omit any for this reason; and some of them, I think, have not been adverted to at all.

In an anonymous pamphlet, published as early as August, 1765, entitled "Considerations on the propriety of imposing taxes in the British colonies, for the purpose of raising a revenue, by act of Parliament," of which I know only that it was one of the numerous and effective contributions of Virginia to the cause of colonial liberty, the writer, (page 33,) says:

"It appears to me that there is a clear and necessary distinction between an act imposing a tax for the single purpose of revenue, and those acts which have been made for the regulation of trade, and have produced some revenue in consequence of their effect and operation as regulations of trade." And again, (page 34): "It is a common, and frequently the most proper method, to regulate trade by duties on imports and exports. The authority of the mother-country to regulate the trade of the colonies

being unquestionable, what regulations are the most proper are to be of course submitted to the determination of the Parliament; and, if an incidental revenue should be produced by such regulations, these are not, therefore, unwarrantable."

I ought to have reminded you that before this, in 1761, even James Otis, in that great argument upon the subject of writs of assistance which breathed (I may use the vivid expression of John Adams) "the breath of life into America," admitted, upon the ground of necessity, the power of England to pass her whole series of acts of trade "as regulations of commerce," while he utterly denied their validity as laws of revenue. Let me refer you to the glowing and remarkable analysis of that argument, contained in the letters of Mr. Adams to Mr. Tudor, written in 1818.

In October, 1765, the first congress of the colonies assembled at New York to confer on the means of preserving the liberties of America, menaced by that new system of imperial policy of which the Stamp Act was the most palpable, most alarming, but not the only manifestation. Of the proceedings of this congress we know little. Tradition has preserved something of the impression which the genius and eloquence of James Otis, and his profound knowledge of the interests, and his deep comprehension of the rights and unappeasable resentment for the wrongs of the colonies, produced on the assembly; but his words of fire are perished forever. There survive, however, of the labors of that body, a general declaration of rights, an address to the king, a petition to each house of parliament, and a report of a committee on the subject of the colonial rights. I read you a sentence from the address to the king, which is repeated, almost in the very same words, in the report of the committee. You may find it in Pitkins's "Civil and Political History," first volume, pages 185 and 458.

"It is also humbly submitted whether there be not a material distinction, in reason and sound policy at least, between the necessary exercises of parliamentary jurisdiction in general acts, for the amendment of the common law, and the regulation of trade and commerce through the whole empire, and the exercise of that jurisdiction by imposing taxes on the colonies."

In February, 1766, Dr. Franklin underwent his celebrated

examination "before an august assembly," as the colonial writers of the day called the house of commons; and to the question "was it an opinion of America, before 1763, that parliament had no right to lay duties and taxes there?" he answered, "I never heard an objection to the right to lay duties to regulate commerce." See how fully this is confirmed by John Dickinson, in the second of the "Farmer's Letters," written in 1767:

"The Parliament," he observes, (page 4,) "unquestionably possesses a legal authority to regulate the trade of Great Britain and all her colonies. Such an authority is essential to the relation of a mother-country and her colonies, and necessary for the common good of all."

He then adverts to the legislation of England for the colonies before the Stamp Act, makes extracts from the several statutes, beginning with 12 Car. II., and then adds:

"All before the Stamp Act are calculated to regulate trade, although many of them imposed duties on it." "Great Britain," he proceeds in the same letter, (page 9,) "has prohibited the manufacturing iron and steel in these colonies without any objection being made to her right of doing it. The like right she must have to prohibit any other manufacture among us. Our great advocate, Mr. Pitt, in his speeches on the debate concerning the repeal of the Stamp Act, acknowledged that Great Britain could restrain our manufactures. His words are these: This kingdom, as the supreme governing and legislative power, has always bound the colonies by her regulations and restrictions in trade, in navigation, in manufactures in everything, except that of taking their money out of their pockets without their consent.' Again he says: 'We may bind their trade, confine their manufactures, and exercise every power whatever, except that of taking their money out of their pockets without their consent."" "External impositions, (this is Mr. Dickinson's language, letter 4, page 17,) for the regulation of our trade, do not grant to his Majesty the property of his colonies."

"There is a plain distinction," Lord Chatham had said the year before, in one of those glorious efforts of his eloquence which so much endeared him to our fathers, and stirred their hearts like the sound of a trumpet "there is a plain distinction between taxes levied for the purpose of raising a revenue and duties imposed for the regulation of trade, although some revenue might arise from the latter." We may regulate trade, such was his argument, we may regulate it by the imposition of duties; we may do it for the purpose of giving

direction and development to the whole industry of the empire. But we cannot levy an internal tax for revenue.

Burke, whose long series of exertions for the rights of the colonies do him as much honor as the marvellous affluence of his genius, proceeds everywhere upon the same distinction, and uses everywhere the same language. "Without idolizing the trade laws," he says, in his speech on conciliation with America in 1775, "I am sure they are still, in many ways, of great use to us. But my perfect conviction of this does not help me in the least to discern how the revenue laws form any security whatsoever to the commercial regulations, or that these commercial regulations are the true ground of quarrel." And the year before, in his speech on American taxation: "This is certainly true, that no act avowedly for the purpose of revenue, and with the ordinary title and recital, taken together, is found in the statute book till the year 1764. All before this period stood on commercial regulation and restraint."

Nearly at the same time the congress which declared our independence, in a grave and lofty paper, in which they claimed for the colonies "the free and exclusive power in all cases of taxation and internal policy," avowed nevertheless, —

"That, from the necessity of the case, we cheerfully consent to the operation of such acts of the British Parliament as are bona fide restrained to the regulation of commerce for the purpose of securing the commercial advantages of the whole empire to the mother-country, and the commercial benefits of its respected members, excluding every idea of taxation for raising a revenue on the subjects of America without their consent."

In 1774 and 1775, John Adams, in a series of papers, under the signature of Novanglus, vindicated the cause of American liberty against the king's attorney-general, Sewall, with a vigor and ability which gave assurance of the future champion of independence. These papers and those of his antagonist discussed all the points of controversy between England and her colonies, and reviewed the whole history of their original and their altered relations; and, exasperated and soured as the colonists had become, clearly and far as the eagle glance of the orator of independence already saw into the future, it is remarkable that then, even almost down to the