After this letter, the question is no more on propriety or dignity.  They are gone already.  The faith of your sovereign is pledged for the political principle.  The general declaration in the letter goes to the whole of it.  You must therefore either abandon the scheme of taxing, or you must send the ministers tarred and feathered to America, who dared to hold out the royal faith for a renunciation of all taxes for revenue.  Them you must punish, or this faith you must preserve.  The preservation of this faith is of more consequence than the duties on red lead, or white lead, or on broken glass, or atlas-ordinary, or demy-fine, or blue-royal, or bastard, or fools cap, which you have given up, or the three-pence on tea which you retained.  The letter went stamped with the public authority of this kingdom.  The instructions for the colony government go under no other sanction; and America cannot believe, and will not obey you, if you do not preserve this channel of communication sacred.  You are now punishing the colonies for acting on distinctions held out by that very ministry which is here shining in riches, in favor, and in power, and urging the punishment of the very offence to which they had themselves been the tempters.

Sir, if reasons respecting simply your own commerce, which is your own convenience, were the sole grounds of the repeal of the five duties, why does Lord Hillsborough, in disclaiming in the name of the king and ministry their ever having had an intent to tax for revenue, mention it as the means “of reestablishing the confidence and affection of the colonies?” Is it a way of soothing others, to assure them that you will take good care of yourself?  The medium, the only medium, for regaining their affection and confidence is that you will take off something oppressive to their minds.  Sir, the letter strongly enforces that idea:  for though the repeal of the taxes is promised on commercial principles, yet the means of counteracting the “insinuations of men with factious and seditious views” is by a disclaimer of the intention of taxing for revenue, as a constant, invariable sentiment and rule of conduct in the government of America.

I remember that the noble lord on the floor, not in a former debate to be sure, (it would be disorderly to refer to it, I suppose I read it somewhere,) but the noble lord was pleased to say, that he did not conceive how it could enter into the head of man to impose such taxes as those of 1767:  I mean those taxes which he voted for imposing, and voted for repealing,—­as being taxes, contrary to all the principles of commerce, laid on British manufactures.