Then, Sir, you keep up revenue laws which are mischievous, in order to preserve trade laws that are useless.  Such is the wisdom of our plan in both its members.  They are separately given up as of no value, and yet one is always to be defended for the sake of the other; but I cannot agree with the noble lord, nor with the pamphlet from whence he seems to have borrowed these ideas concerning the inutility of the trade laws.  For, without idolizing them, I am sure they are still, in many ways, of great use to us; and in former times they have been of the greatest.  They do confine, and they do greatly narrow, the market for the Americans; but my perfect conviction of this does not help me in the least to discern how the revenue laws form any security whatsoever to the commercial regulations, or that these commercial regulations are the true ground of the quarrel, or that the giving way, in any one instance of authority, is to lose all that may remain unconceded.

One fact is clear and indisputable.  The public and avowed origin of this quarrel was on taxation.  This quarrel has indeed brought on new disputes on new questions; but certainly the least bitter, and the fewest of all, on the trade laws.  To judge which of the two be the real radical cause of quarrel, we have to see whether the commercial dispute did, in order of time, precede the dispute on taxation?  There is not a shadow of evidence for it.  Next, to enable us to judge whether at this moment a dislike to the trade laws be the real cause of quarrel, it is absolutely necessary to put the taxes out of the question by a repeal.  See how the Americans act in this position, and then you will be able to discern correctly what is the true object of the controversy, or whether any controversy at all will remain.  Unless you consent to remove this cause of difference, it is impossible, with decency, to assert that the dispute is not upon what it is avowed to be.  And I would, Sir, recommend to your serious consideration whether it be prudent to form a rule for punishing people, not on their own acts, but on your conjectures?  Surely it is preposterous at the very best.  It is not justifying your anger by their misconduct, but it is converting your ill-will into their delinquency.

But the Colonies will go further.  Alas! alas! when will this speculation against fact and reason end?  What will quiet these panic fears which we entertain of the hostile effect of a conciliatory conduct?  Is it true that no case can exist in which it is proper for the sovereign to accede to the desires of his discontented subjects?  Is there anything peculiar in this case to make a rule for itself?  Is all authority of course lost when it is not pushed to the extreme?  Is it a certain maxim that the fewer causes of dissatisfaction are left by government, the more the subject will be inclined to resist and rebel?

All these objections being in fact no more than suspicions, conjectures, divinations, formed in defiance of fact and experience, they did not, Sir, discourage me from entertaining the idea of a conciliatory concession founded on the principles which I have just stated.