Sir, here is the repeated acknowledgment of Parliament, that the colonies not only gave, but gave to satiety.  This nation has formally acknowledged two things:  first, that the colonies had gone beyond their abilities, Parliament having thought it necessary to reimburse them; secondly, that they had acted legally and laudably in their grants of money, and their maintenance of troops, since the compensation is expressly given as reward and encouragement.  Reward is not bestowed for acts that are unlawful; and encouragement is not held out to things that deserve reprehension.  My resolution, therefore, does nothing more than collect into one proposition what is scattered through your journals.  I give you nothing but your own; and you cannot refuse in the gross what you have so often acknowledged in detail.  The admission of this, which will be so honorable to them and to you, will, indeed, be mortal to all the miserable stories by which the passions of the misguided people have been engaged in an unhappy system.  The people heard, indeed, from the beginning of these disputes, one thing continually dinned in their ears:  that reason and justice demanded, that the Americans, who paid no taxes, should be compelled to contribute.  How did that fact, of their paying nothing, stand, when the taxing system began?  When Mr. Grenville began to form his system of American revenue, he stated in this House that the colonies were then in debt two million six hundred thousand pounds sterling money, and was of opinion they would discharge that debt in four years.  On this state, those untaxed people were actually subject to the payment of taxes to the amount of six hundred and fifty thousand a year.  In fact, however, Mr. Grenville was mistaken.  The funds given for sinking the debt did not prove quite so ample as both the colonies and he expected.  The calculation was too sanguine:  the reduction was not completed till some years after, and at different times in different colonies.  However, the taxes after the war continued too great to bear any addition, with prudence or propriety; and when the burdens imposed in consequence of former requisitions were discharged, our tone became too high to resort again to requisition.  No colony, since that time, ever has had any requisition whatsoever made to it.

We see the sense of the crown, and the sense of Parliament, on the productive nature of a revenue by grant.  Now search the same journals for the produce of the revenue by imposition.  Where is it?—­let us know the volume and the page.  What is the gross, what is the net produce?  To what service is it applied?  How have you appropriated its surplus?—­What! can none of the many skilful index-makers that we are now employing find any trace of it?—­Well, let them and that rest together.—­But are the journals, which say nothing of the revenue, as silent on the discontent?—­Oh, no! a child may find it.  It is the melancholy burden and blot of every page.