Here this extraordinary man, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, found himself in great straits.  To please universally was the object of his life; but to tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.  However, he attempted it.  To render the tax palatable to the partisans of American revenue, he made a preamble stating the necessity of such a revenue.  To close with the American distinction, this revenue was external or port-duty; but again, to soften it to the other party, it was a duty of supply.  To gratify the colonists, it was laid on British manufactures; to satisfy the merchants of Britain, the duty was trivial, and (except that on tea, which touched only the devoted East India Company) on none of the grand objects of commerce.  To counterwork the American contraband, the duty on tea was reduced from a shilling to three-pence; but to secure the favor of those who would tax America, the scene of collection was changed, and, with the rest, it was levied in the colonies.  What need I say more?  This fine-spun scheme had the usual fate of all exquisite policy.  But the original plan of the duties, and the mode of executing that plan, both arose singly and solely from a love of our applause.  He was truly the child of the House.  He never thought, did, or said anything, but with a view to you.  He every day adapted himself to your disposition, and adjusted himself before it as at a looking-glass.

He had observed (indeed, it could not escape him) that several persons, infinitely his inferiors in all respects, had formerly rendered themselves considerable in this House by one method alone.  They were a race of men (I hope in God the species is extinct) who, when they rose in their place, no man living could divine, from any known adherence to parties, to opinions, or to principles, from any order or system in their politics, or from any sequel or connection in their ideas, what part they were going to take in any debate.  It is astonishing how much this uncertainty, especially at critical times, called the attention of all parties on such men.  All eyes were fixed on them, all ears open to hear them; each party gaped, and looked alternately for their vote, almost to the end of their speeches.  While the House hung in this uncertainty, now the hear-hims rose from this side, now they rebellowed from the other; and that party to whom they fell at length from their tremulous and dancing balance always received them in a tempest of applause.  The fortune of such men was a temptation too great to be resisted by one to whom a single whiff of incense withheld gave much greater pain than he received delight in the clouds of it which daily rose about him from the prodigal superstition of innumerable admirers.  He was a candidate for contradictory honors; and his great aim was, to make those agree in admiration of him who never agreed in anything else.

Hence arose this unfortunate act, the subject of this day’s debate:  from a disposition which, after making an American revenue to please one, repealed it to please others, and again revived it in hopes of pleasing a third, and of catching something in the ideas of all.