The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke (Volume 2) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: houfe, and to agree with the honourable gentleman on all the American queftions. My ienti- ments, "I am fure, are well known to him; and I thought I had been perfectly acquainted with his. Though I find myfelf miftaken, he will ftill permit me to ufe the privilege of an old friendfhip, he will permit me to apply myfelf to the houfe under the fanction of his authority; and, on the various grounds he has meafured out, to fubmit to you the poor opinions which I have formed, upon a matter of importance enough to demand the fulleft confideration I could beftow upon it. He has ftutcd to the houfe two grounds of deliberation; one narrow and fimple, and merely sonfined to the queftion on your paper: the other more large and more complicated; comprehending the whole feries of the parliamentary proceedings with regard to America, their caufes, and their confequences. With regard to the latter ground, he ftates it as ufelefs, and thinks ft may be even dangerous, to enter into fo extenfive a field of inquiry. Yet, to my furprife, he had hardly laid down this reftrictive propofition, to which his authority would have given fo much weight, when directly, and with the fame authority, he condemns it; and declares it abfolutely neceffary to enter into the moft ample hiftorical detail. His zeal has thrown him a little out of his ufual accuracy. In this perplexity what mail we do, Sir, who are will- 'ing to fubmit to the Jaw he gives us? He has reprobatedprobated in one part of his fpeech the rule he had laid down for debate in the other; and, after narrowing the ground for all thofe who are to fpeak after him, he takes an excurfion himfelf, as unbounded as the fubject and the extent of his great abilities. Sir, When I cannot obey all his laws, I will do the beft I can. I will endeavour to obe...