Burke's Speech on Conciliation with AmericaBurke, Edmund
History
Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Colonies -- America -- Early works to 1800; United States -- Politics and government -- 1775-1783
"To the King, our Sovereign Lord, in most hunible wise
shewen unto your excellent Majesty the inhabitants of
your Grace's County Palatine of Chester: (1) That where
the said County Palatine of Chester is and hath been always
hitherto exempt, excluded, and separated out and
from your High Court of Parliament, to have any Knights
and Burgesses within the said Court; by reason whereof
the said inhabitants have hitherto sustained manifold
disherisons, losses, and damages, as well in their lands,
goods, and bodies, as in the good, civil, and politic governance
and maintenance of the commonwealth of their said
county; (2) And forasmuch as the said inhabitants have
always hitherto been bound by the Acts and Statutes
made and ordained by your said Highness and your most
noble progenitors, by authority of the said Court, as far
forth as other counties, cities, and boroughs have been,
that have had their Knights and Burgesses within your
said Court of Parliament, and yet have had neither Knight
ne Burgess there for the said County Palatine, the said
inhabitants, for lack thereof, have been oftentime touched
and grieved with Acts and Statutes made within the said
Court, as well derogatory unto the most ancient jurisdictions,
liberties, and privileges of your said County Palatine,
as prejudicial unto the commonwealth, quietness,
rest, and peace of your Grace's most bounden subjects
inhabiting within the same."
What did Parliament with this audacious address?--Reject it as a libel?
Treat it as an affront to Government? Spurn it as a derogation from the
rights of legislature? Did they toss it over the table? Did they burn
it by the hands of the common hangman?--They took the petition of
grievance, all rugged as it was, without softening or temperament,
unpurged of the original bitterness and indignation of complaint--they
made it the very preamble to their Act of redress, and consecrated its
principle to all ages in the sanctuary of legislation.
Here is my third example. It was attended with the success of the two
former. Chester, civilized as well as Wales, has demonstrated that
freedom, and not servitude, is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and
not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition. Sir, this pattern of
Chester was followed in the reign of Charles the Second with regard to
the County Palatine of Durham, which is my fourth example. This county
had long lain out of the pale of free legislation. So scrupulously was
the example of Chester followed that the style of the preamble is
nearly the same with that of the Chester Act, and, without affecting the
abstract extent of the authority of Parliament, it recognizes the equity
of not suffering any considerable district in which the British subjects
may act as a body, to be taxed without their own voice in the grant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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