Having passed this strange eulogium on that body, Chatham
next called upon ministers to retract now that they might do it with a
good grace, and asserted that they had derived their information from
wrong sources, from selfish merchants, packers, and factors, and such
servile classes of Americans, whose strength and stamina were not worthy
to be compared with the cultivators of the land, in whose simplicity
of life was to be found the simpleness of virtue, and the integrity of
courage and freedom. He continued: "These true genuine sons of the earth
are invincible. They surround and hem in the mercantile bodies, and if
it were proposed to desert the cause of liberty, they would virtuously
exclaim, 'If trade and slavery are companions, we quit trade; let trade
and slavery seek other shores; they are not for us!' This resistance to
your arbitrary taxation might have been foreseen: it was obvious from
the nature of things and of mankind; but above all, from the Whiggish
spirit flourishing in that country. The spirit which now resists
your taxation in America, is the same which formerly opposed loans,
benevolences, and ship-money in England: the same spirit which called
all England on its legs, and by the Bill of Rights vindicated the
constitution; the same principle which established the great fundamental
and essential maxim of our liberties, that no subject of England shall
be taxed but by his own consent. This glorious spirit of whiggism
animates three millions in America, who prefer poverty with liberty, to
gilded chains and sordid affluence, and who will die in defence of their
rights as men--as freemen.
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