Tour ministers, in their own and his Majesty’s name, have already adopted the American distinction of internal and external duties.  It is a distinction, whatever merit it may have, that was originally moved by the Americans themselves; and I think they will acquiesce in it, if they are not pushed with too much logic and too little sense, in all the consequences:  that is, if external taxation be understood, as they and you understand it, when you please, to be not a distinction of geography, but of policy; that it is a power for regulating trade, and not for supporting establishments.  The distinction, which is as nothing with regard to right, is of most weighty consideration in practice.  Recover your old ground, and your old tranquillity; try it; I am persuaded the Americans will compromise with you.  When confidence is once restored, the odious and suspicious summum jus will perish of course.  The spirit of practicability, of moderation, and mutual convenience will never call in geometrical exactness as the arbitrator of an amicable settlement.  Consult and follow your experience.  Let not the long story with which I have exercised your patience prove fruitless to your interests.

For my part, I should choose (if I could have my wish) that the proposition of the honorable gentleman[13] for the repeal could go to America without the attendance of the penal bills.  Alone I could almost answer for its success.  I cannot be certain of its reception in the bad company it may keep.  In such heterogeneous assortments, the most innocent person will lose the effect of his innocency.  Though you should send out this angel of peace, yet you are sending out a destroying angel too; and what would be the effect of the conflict of these two adverse spirits, or which would predominate in the end, is what I dare not say:  whether the lenient measures would cause American passion to subside, or the severe would increase its fury,—­all this is in the hand of Providence.  Yet now, even now, I should confide in the prevailing virtue and efficacious operation of lenity, though working in darkness and in chaos, in the midst of all this unnatural and turbid combination:  I should hope it might produce order and beauty in the end.

Let us, Sir, embrace some system or other before we end this session.  Do you mean to tax America, and to draw a productive revenue from thence?  If you do, speak out:  name, fix, ascertain this revenue; settle its quantity; define its objects; provide for its collection; and then fight, when you have something to fight for.  If you murder, rob; if you kill, take possession; and do not appear in the character of madmen as well as assassins, violent, vindictive, bloody, and tyrannical, without an object.  But may better counsels guide you!