The act of 1767, which grants this tea-duty, sets forth in its preamble, that it was expedient to raise a revenue in America for the support of the civil government there, as well as for purposes still more extensive.  To this support the act assigns six branches of duties.  About two years after this act passed, the ministry, I mean the present ministry, thought it expedient to repeal five of the duties, and to leave (for reasons best known to themselves) only the sixth standing.  Suppose any person, at the time of that repeal, had thus addressed the minister:[2] “Condemning, as you do, the repeal of the Stamp Act, why do you venture to repeal the duties upon glass, paper, and painters’ colors?  Let your pretence for the repeal be what it will, are you not thoroughly convinced that your concessions will produce, not satisfaction, but insolence in the Americans, and that the giving up these taxes will necessitate the giving up of all the rest?” This objection was as palpable then as it is now; and it was as good for preserving the five duties as for retaining the sixth.  Besides, the minister will recollect that the repeal of the Stamp Act had but just preceded his repeal; and the ill policy of that measure, (had it been so impolitic as it has been represented,) and the mischiefs it produced, were quite recent.  Upon the principles, therefore, of the honorable gentleman, upon the principles of the minister himself, the minister has nothing at all to answer.  He stands condemned by himself, and by all his associates old and new, as a destroyer, in the first trust of finance, of the revenues,—­and in the first rank of honor, as a betrayer of the dignity of his country.

Most men, especially great men, do not always know their well-wishers.  I come to rescue that noble lord out of the hands of those he calls his friends, and even out of his own.  I will do him the justice he is denied at home.  He has not been this wicked or imprudent man.  He knew that a repeal had no tendency to produce the mischiefs which give so much alarm to his honorable friend.  His work was not bad in its principle, but imperfect in its execution; and the motion on your paper presses him only to complete a proper plan, which, by some unfortunate and unaccountable error, he had left unfinished.

I hope, Sir, the honorable gentleman who spoke last is thoroughly satisfied, and satisfied out of the proceedings of ministry on their own favorite act, that his fears from a repeal are groundless.  If he is not, I leave him, and the noble lord who sits by him, to settle the matter as well as they can together; for, if the repeal of American taxes destroys all our government in America,—­he is the man!—­and he is the worst of all the repealers, because he is the last.