On American Taxation

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"On American Taxation" was a speech given by Edmund Burke in the British House of Commons on April 19, 1774, advocating the full repeal of the Townshend Revenue Act of 1767. Two years after its passing, Parliament repealed five of the six established duties of this revenue tax on America. Burke, in this speech, argues for the removal of the remaining tax, which was on tea.

[edit] Notable quotations

"Could anything be a subject of more just alarm to America, than to see you go out of the plain high road of finance, and give up your most certain revenues and your clearest interests, merely for the sake of insulting your Colonies? No man ever doubted that the commodity of Tea could bear an imposition of three-pence. But no commodity will bear three-pence, or will bear a penny, when the general feelings of men are irritated, and two millions of people are resolved not to pay. The feelings of the Colonies were formerly the feelings of Great Britain. Theirs were formerly the feelings of Mr. Hampden when called upon for the payment of twenty shillings. Would twenty shillings have ruined Mr. Hampden’s fortune? No! but the payment of half twenty shillings, on the principle it was demanded, would have made him a slave. It is the weight of that preamble, of which you are so fond, and not the weight of the duty, that the Americans are unable and unwilling to bear."
"Whether you were right or wrong in establishing the Colonies on the principles of commercial monopoly, rather than on that of revenue, is at this day a problem of mere speculation. You cannot have both by the same authority. To join together the restraints of an universal internal and external monopoly, with an universal internal and external taxation, is an unnatural union; perfect uncompensated slavery."
"Again, and again, revert to your own principles — Seek Peace, and ensue it — leave America, if she has taxable matter in her, to tax herself."