Every proposition made in your Parliament to remove the original cause of these troubles, by taking off taxes obnoxious for their principle or their design, has been overruled,--every bill brought in for quiet rejected, even on the first proposition.
Burke highlights the repeated rejection of proposals to alleviate the causes of colonial unrest.
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If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular.
Let us imitate their caution, if we wish to deserve their fortune or to retain their bequests.
They come from one who has been no tool of power, no flatterer of greatness, and who in his last acts does not wish to belie the tenor of his life.
Whatever they are, I wish my countrymen rather to recommend to our neighbors the example of the British Constitution than to take models from them for the improvement of our own.
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