e inns of
court hero for some years. Will you send out with one breath and recall
with another? This act plainly provides for that intercourse which
supposes the strictest union in laws and policy, in both which the
intended tax supposes an entire separation.

It would be endless to go into all the inconveniences this tax will lead
to, in the conduct of private life, and the use of property. How many
infirm people are obliged to change their climate, whose life depends
upon that change! How many families straitened in their circumstances
are there, who, from the shame, sometimes from the utter impossibility
otherwise of retrenching, are obliged to remove from their country, in
order to preserve their estates in their families! You begin, then, to
burden these people precisely at the time when their circumstances of
health and fortune render them rather objects of relief and
commiseration.

I know very well that a great proportion of the money of every
subordinate country will flow towards the metropolis. This is
unavoidable. Other inconveniences, too, will result to particular parts:
and why? Why, because they are particular parts,--each a member of a
greater, and not an whole within itself. But those members are to
consider whether these inconveniences are not fully balanced, perhaps
more than balanced, by the united strength of a great and compact body.
I am sensible, too, of a difficulty that will be started against the
application of some of the principles which I reason upon to the case of
Ireland. It will be said, that Ireland, in many particulars, is not
bound to consider itself as a part of the British body; because this
country, in many instances, is mistaken enough to treat you as
foreigners, and draws away your money by absentees, without suffering
you to enjoy your natural advantages in trade and commerce. No man
living loves restrictive regulations of any kind less than myself; at
best, nine times in ten, they are little better than laborious and
vexatious follies. Often, as in your case, they are great oppressions,
as well as great absurdities. But still an injury is not always a reason
for retaliation; nor is the folly of others with regard to us a reason
for imitating it with regard to them. Before we attempt to retort, we
ought to consider whether we may not injure ourselves even more than our
adversary; since, in the contest who shall go the greatest length in
absurdity, the victor is generally the g