the assertion and demonstration of some positive duty,
but by the futile and meaningless doctrine that we had a right to do
something or other, if we liked.

The alleged compromise of the national dignity implied in a withdrawal
of the just claim of the Government, instead of convincing, only
exasperated him. "Show the thing you contend for to be reason; show it
to be common sense; show it to be the means of attaining some useful
end; and then I am content to allow it what dignity you please."[1]
The next year he took up the ground still more firmly, and explained
it still more impressively. As for the question of the right
of taxation, he exclaimed, "It is less than nothing in my
consideration.... My consideration is narrow, confined, and wholly
limited to the policy of the question. I do not examine whether the
giving away a man's money be a power excepted and reserved out of the
general trust of Government.... _The question with me is not whether
you have a right to render your people miserable, but whether it is
not your interest to make them happy._ It is not what a lawyer tells
me I _may_ do, but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I
_ought_ to do. I am not determining a point of law; I am restoring
tranquillity, and the general character and situation of a people must
determine what sort of government is fitted for them." "I am not here
going into the distinctions of rights," he cries, "not attempting
to mark their boundaries. I do not enter into these metaphysical
distinctions. _I hate the very sound of them_. This is the true
touchstone of all theories which regard man and the affairs of man:
does it suit his nature in general?--does it suit his nature as
modified by his habits?" He could not bear to think of having
legislative or political arrangements shaped or vindicated by a
delusive geometrical accuracy of deduction, instead of being entrusted
to "the natural operation of things, which, left to themselves,
generally fall into their proper order."

[Footnote 1: "Speech on American Taxation."]

Apart from his incessant assertion of the principle that man acts from
adequate motives relative to his interests, and not on metaphysical
speculations, Burke sows, as he marches along in his stately argument,
many a germ of the modern philosophy of civilisation. He was told that
America was worth fighting for. "Certainly it is," he answered, "if
fighting a people be the best way of gaining them." Every ste