A pause ensued as he ceased, when Conway rose[387] she ever could have done if her arms in the last war
had been victorious.1 I never shall own the justice of taxing America internally until she enjoys the right of representation. In every other point of legislation, the authority of parliament is like the North star, fixed for the reciprocal benefit of the parent country and her colonies.2 The British parliament, as the supreme governing and legislative power, has always bound them by her laws, by her regulations of their trade and manufactures, and even in a more absolute interdiction of both. The power of parliament, like the circulation from the human heart, active, vigorous, and perfect in the smallest fibre of the arterial system, may be known in the colonies by the prohibition of their carrying a hat to market over the line of one province into another; or by breaking down a loom in the most distant corner of the British empire in America;3 and if this power were denied, I would not permit them to manufacture a lock of wool, or form a horse-shoe, or a hob-nail.4 But I repeat, the house has no right to lay an internal tax upon America, that country not being represented. I know not what we may hope or fear from those now in place; but I have confidence in their good intentions. I could not refrain from expressing the reflections I have made in my retirement, which I hope long to enjoy,5 beholding, as I do, ministries changed one after another, and passing away like shadows.
chap. XXI.} 1766. Jan.
Ibid, and Walpole, II. 262.
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