have been more confident have not been more
successful. However, the arm of public benevolence is not shortened; and
there are often several means to the same end. What Nature has
disjoined in one way wisdom may unite in another. When we cannot give
the benefit as we would wish, let us not refuse it altogether. If we
cannot give the principal, let us find a substitute. But how? where?
what substitute?

Fortunately, I am not obliged, for the ways and means of this
substitute, to tax my own unproductive invention. I am not even obliged
to go to the rich treasury of the fertile framers of imaginary
commonwealths: not to the Republic of Plato, not to the Utopia of More,
not to the Oceana of Harrington. It is before me,--it is at my feet,--

"And the rude swain
Treads daily on it with his clouted shoon."

I only wish you to recognize, for the theory, the ancient constitutional
policy of this kingdom with regard to representation, as that policy has
been declared in acts of Parliament,--and as to the practice, to return
to that mode which an uniform experience has marked out to you as best,
and in which you walked with security, advantage, and honor, until the
year 1763.

My resolutions, therefore, mean to establish the equity and justice of a
taxation of America by _grant_, and not by _imposition_; to mark the
_legal competency_ of the colony assemblies for the support of their
government in peace, and for public aids in time of war; to acknowledge
that this legal competency has had a _dutiful and beneficial exercise_,
and that experience has shown _the benefit of their grants_, and _the
futility of Parliamentary taxation, as a method of supply_.

These solid truths compose six fundamental propositions. There are three
more resolutions corollary to these. If you admit the first set, you can
hardly reject the others. But if you admit the first, I shall be far
from solicitous whether you accept or refuse the last. I think these six
massive pillars will be of strength sufficient to support the temple of
British concord. I have no more doubt than I entertain of my existence,
that, if you admitted these, you would command an immediate peace, and,
with but tolerable future management, a lasting obedience in America. I
am not arrogant in this confident assurance. The propositions are all
mere matters of fact; and if they are such facts as draw irresistible
conclusions even in the stating, this is the po