If we adopt this mode, if we mean to conciliate and concede, let us see of what nature the concession ought to be.  To ascertain the nature of our concession, we must look at their complaint.  The colonies complain that they have not the characteristic mark and seal of British freedom.  They complain that they are taxed in a Parliament in which they are not represented.  If you mean to satisfy them at all, you must satisfy them with regard to this complaint.  If you mean to please any people, you must give them the boon which they ask,—­not what you may think better for them, but of a kind totally different.  Such an act may be a wise regulation, but it is no concession; whereas our present theme is the mode of giving satisfaction.

Sir, I think you must perceive that I am resolved this day to have nothing at all to do with the question of the right of taxation.  Some gentlemen startle,—­but it is true:  I put it totally out of the question.  It is less than nothing in my consideration.  I do not indeed wonder, nor will you, Sir, that gentlemen of profound learning are fond of displaying it on this profound subject.  But my consideration is narrow, confined, and wholly limited to the policy of the question.  I do not examine whether the giving away a man’s money be a power excepted and reserved out of the general trust of government, and how far all mankind, in all forms of polity, are entitled to an exercise of that right by the charter of Nature,—­or whether, on the contrary, a right of taxation is necessarily involved in the general principle of legislation, and inseparable from the ordinary supreme power.  These are deep questions, where great names militate against each other, where reason is perplexed, and an appeal to authorities only thickens the confusion:  for high and reverend authorities lift up their heads on both sides, and there is no sure footing in the middle.  This point is the great Serbonian bog, betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, where armies whole have sunk.  I do not intend to be overwhelmed in that bog, though in such respectable company.  The question with me is, not whether you have a right to render your people miserable, but whether it is not your interest to make them happy.  It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do, but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.  Is a politic act the worse for being a generous one?  Is no concession proper, but that which is made from your want of right to keep what you grant?  Or does it lessen the grace or dignity of relaxing in the exercise of an odious claim, because you have your evidence-room full of titles, and your magazines stuffed with arms to enforce them?  What signify all those titles and all those arms?  Of what avail are they, when the reason of the thing tells me that the assertion of my title is the loss of my suit, and that I could do nothing but wound myself by the use of my own weapons?