“For nine long years,” Edmund Burke proclaimed, “we have been lashed round and round this miserable circle of occasional arguments and temporary expedients.” In this, his famous Speech on American Taxation before Parliament, April 19 1774, exactly one year before the outbreak of the American War at Lexington, Burke reviewed the history of the growing conflict. Wherever Parliament’s restrictions on the colonies “pressed hard, many individuals, indeed evaded” them.  “This is nothing.  These scattered individuals never denied the law and never obeyed it.” Then came the Stamp Act which left the colonies “no alternative . . but to disobey.” If only Parliament passed reasonable trade regulations, the Americans “will acquiesce,” he assured Parliament, “If they are not pushed with too much logic.”

Burke understood the irreconcilable conflict between those who advocated for Parliamentary supremacy and opponents who saw the British Constitution as guarantees of colonial liberties. He saw the clash of constitutional principles inexorably pushing England and America toward war. In practical arrangements harmony might be restored. But in Constitutional theory, there seemingly was no easy reconciliation available: “I am not here going into the distinctions of rights, not attempting to mark their boundaries. I do not enter into these metaphysical distinctions; I hate the very sound of them.” 

A great thinker, conscious of history and tradition could only “hate the sound” of rights because he understood that clashing theory can sometimes drive people to war.

England should “be content to bind America by laws of trade,” Burke counseled. “Leave the rest to the schools for there only they may be discussed with safety.” If instead “fatally, you poison” relations with America,” by urging subtle deductions . . odious to those you govern, from the unlimited and illimitable nature of supreme sovereignty,” Burke warned, “you will teach them . . to call that sovereignty itself in question. When you drive him hard, the boar will surely turn upon the hunters. If that sovereignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they take? They will cast your sovereignty in your face. Nobody will be argued into slavery.”