Instead of a standing revenue, you will therefore have a perpetual quarrel.  Indeed, the noble lord who proposed this project of a ransom by auction seems himself to be of that opinion.  His project was rather designed for breaking the union of the Colonies than for establishing a revenue.  He confessed he apprehended that his proposal would not be to their taste.  I say this scheme of disunion seems to be at the bottom of the project; for I will not suspect that the noble lord meant nothing but merely to delude the nation by an airy phantom which he never intended to realize.  But whatever his views may be, as I propose the peace and union of the Colonies as the very foundation of my plan, it cannot accord with one whose foundation is perpetual discord.

Compare the two.  This I offer to give you is plain and simple.  The other full of perplexed and intricate mazes.  This is mild; that harsh.  This is found by experience effectual for its purposes; the other is a new project.  This is universal; the other calculated for certain Colonies only.  This is immediate in its conciliatory operation; the other remote, contingent, full of hazard.  Mine is what becomes the dignity of a ruling people—­gratuitous, unconditional, and not held out as a matter of bargain and sale.  I have done my duty in proposing it to you.  I have indeed tired you by a long discourse; but this is the misfortune of those to whose influence nothing will be conceded, and who must win every inch of their ground by argument.  You have heard me with goodness.  May you decide with wisdom!  For my part, I feel my mind greatly disburthened by what I have done to-day.  I have been the less fearful of trying your patience, because on this subject I mean to spare it altogether in future.  I have this comfort, that in every stage of the American affairs I have steadily opposed the measures that have produced the confusion, and may bring on the destruction, of this Empire.  I now go so far as to risk a proposal of my own.  If I cannot give peace to my country, I give it to my conscience.

But what, says the financier, is peace to us without money?  Your plan gives us no revenue.  No!  But it does; for it secures to the subject the power or refusal, the first of all revenues.  Experience is a cheat, and fact a liar, if this power in the subject of proportioning his grant, or of not granting at all, has not been found the richest mine of revenue ever discovered by the skill or by the fortune of man.  It does not indeed vote you L152,750 11s. 23/4d, nor any other paltry limited sum; but it gives the strong box itself, the fund, the bank—­from whence only revenues can arise amongst a people sensible of freedom.  Posita luditur arca. [Footnote:  68] Cannot you, in England—­cannot you, at this time of day—­cannot you, a House of Commons, trust to the principle which has raised so mighty a revenue, and accumulated a debt of near 140,000,000 in this country?  Is this principle to be true