This revenue act of 1767 formed the fourth period of American policy.  How we have fared since then:  what woful variety of schemes have been adopted; what enforcing, and what repealing; what bullying, and what submitting; what doing, and undoing; what straining, and what relaxing; what assemblies dissolved for not obeying, and called again without obedience; what troops sent out to quell resistance, and, on meeting that resistance, recalled; what shiftings, and changes, and jumblings of all kinds of men at home, which left no possibility of order, consistency, vigor, or even so much as a decent unity of color, in anyone public measure—­It is a tedious, irksome task.  My duty may call me to open it out some other time; on a former occasion[12] I tried your temper on a part of it; for the present I shall forbear.

After all these changes and agitations, your immediate situation upon the question on your paper is at length brought to this.  You have an act of Parliament stating that “it is expedient to raise a revenue in America.”  By a partial repeal you annihilated the greatest part of that revenue which this preamble declares to be so expedient.  You have substituted no other in the place of it.  A Secretary of State has disclaimed, in the king’s name, all thoughts of such a substitution in future.  The principle of this disclaimer goes to what has been left, as well as what has been repealed.  The tax which lingers after its companions (under a preamble declaring an American revenue expedient, and for the sole purpose of supporting the theory of that preamble) militates with the assurance authentically conveyed to the colonies, and is an exhaustless source of jealousy and animosity.  On this state, which I take to be a fair one,—­not being able to discern any grounds of honor, advantage, peace, or power, for adhering, either to the act or to the preamble, I shall vote for the question which leads to the repeal of both.

If you do not fall in with this motion, then secure something to fight for, consistent in theory and valuable in practice.  If you must employ your strength, employ it to uphold you in some honorable right or some profitable wrong.  If you are apprehensive that the concession recommended to you, though proper, should be a means of drawing on you further, but unreasonable claims,—­why, then employ your force in supporting that reasonable concession against those unreasonable demands.  You will employ it with more grace, with better effect, and with great probable concurrence of all the quiet and rational people in the provinces, who are now united with and hurried away by the violent,—­having, indeed, different dispositions, but a common interest.  If you apprehend that on a concession you shall be pushed by metaphysical process to the extreme lines, and argued out of your whole authority, my advice is this:  when you have recovered your old, your strong, your tenable position, then face about,—­stop short,—­do nothing more,—­reason not at all,—­oppose the ancient policy and practice of the empire as a rampart against the speculations of innovators on both sides of the question,—­and you will stand on great, manly, and sure ground.  On this solid basis fix your machines, and they will draw worlds towards you.