DEBATES ON AMERICA.
A petition was presented to parliament by the English merchants trading with America, representing that, in consequence of the duties and taxes, the discontents of the Americans, and their combinations to prevent the importation of goods from England, their trade had gone to ruin; and praying for the intervention of the legislature. In consequence of this, a bill was proposed by Lord North, to repeal all the American taxes and duties except tea. In proposing this repeal he censured the Revenue Act only as an inexpedient or unproductive impost, and not as an illegal or impolitic claim. The duty on tea, he said, was continued to maintain the right of taxing the Americans, and it could not be supposed that an impost of three pence per pound on an article from which one shilling was deducted when exported to America, would offend the colonists, unless they were determined upon a rebellion. Mr. Grenville, the parent of the Stamp Act, argued that he had at least acted systematically, and that in imposing the stamp duties he had reason to think that they would be paid. The succeeding ministry, he said, had repealed that act, but had re-affirmed the right of parliament to tax the colonies, by laying duties upon unwise and anti-commercial principles: duties which were far more odious to the colonies than his Stamp Act. His opinion was, therefore, that the ministers must now give up, or stand by the whole. A partial repeal, he added, will not do: the Americans would not rest satisfied with any thing short of the renunciation by parliament of the right to tax them in any way, either externally or internally. In this General Pownall coincided, and he proposed as an amendment, that the repeal should be extended to all articles, as the only way of quieting the colonies. This amendment was supported by General Conway, Colonel Barre, and Sir William Meredith, but it was rejected, and leave was given to bring in North’s bill. A subsequent motion to repeal the duty on tea was also lost, and the act passed according to North’s first proposal.