“TYRANNY IS A POOR PROVIDER”: 1775 EDITION OF BURKE'S LEGENDARY SPEECH ON… AMERICAN TAXATION, 1775, TOGETHER IN ONE VOLUME WITH FIRST EDITION OF SHEBBEARE’S "SCANDALOUS" ANSWER TO… EDMUND BURKE, 1775
BURKE, Edmund. Speech of Edmund Burke, Esq. On American Taxation, April 19, 1774.. London: J. Dodsley, 1775. BOUND WITH: (SHEBBEARE, John) An Answer to the Printed Speech of Edmund Burke, Esq; Spoken in the House of Commons, April 19, 1774. London: Printed for T. Evans… and J. Bew, 1775. Octavo, period style full speckled calf gilt, red morocco spine label.
First edition, octavo issue, preceded by the same month's quarto issue, of Burke’s famed speech urging Britain to repeal the notorious Tea Act that triggered the Boston Tea Party, invoking the crisis of the Stamp Act in urging Britain to “reflect how you are to govern a people… after wading up to your eyes in blood you could only end just where you begun [sic]," rare together in one volume with the first edition of Shebbeare’s incendiary attack on Burke and that “set of miserable outcasts, part rebels, part felons” leading America's rebellion.
First elected to Parliament in 1765, the year of the Stamp Act, "Edmund Burke passionately urged Britain to desist from what the Americans considered Britain's oppressive taxation of the colonies." Burke would later write, "'I think I know America—and if I do not, my ignorance is incurable, for I have spared no pains to understand it" (Bogus, Rescuing Burke, 33). But following the 1766 repeal of the Stamp Act and passage of the 1773 Tea Act, "few could have foreseen the repercussions" when the Boston Tea Party became "floodlit into a great drama of national resistance" (Schama II:469). "On April 19, 1774, Burke rose again in support of a proposal to repeal the tea tax and gave what has become one of his most famous speeches" (Bogus 35). Along with his lucid history of parliamentary taxation, Burke counsels Britain to "reflect how you are to govern a people, who think they ought to be free, and think they are not… After wading up to your eyes in blood you could only end just where you begun; that is, to tax where no revenue is to be found… Tyranny is a poor provider" (89-94). Despite his eloquence Parliament "did not heed Burke, and the effort to repeal the tea tax failed" (Bogus, 6).
By September the Continental Congress had convened in Philadelphia and "opinion inside Britain in the winter of 1774-5 was bitterly and frantically divided" (Schama II:472). That fierce contest is especially clear in John Shebbeare's
Answer… to Burke. Though to some "Shebbeare's writings… go little, if at all, beyond those of the chief polemical writers of the day" (DNB), the
London Monthly Review singled out
Answer as rife with "slanderous invectives, coarse witticisms, vulgar obscene allusions and scandalous epithets" (Allibone II:2064). Having previously "defended the American policy of George III against…. Burke in the
Public Advertiser and elsewhere"(DNB), here Shebbeare confronts Burke point by point, attacking his rhetoric and reasoning. Though seeming to praise most in the colonies, Shebbeare only distinguishes them from that "set of miserable outcasts, part rebels, part felons… thrown out from hence, and into the Massachusetts and Virginia" (108), and he ridicules the notion that "Americans can defeat our troops" (46). His
Answer echoes what many in Britain wished, to "inflict on the wicked and ungrateful children across the Atlantic a hiding they would never forget" (Schama II:472).
Burke: first octavo edition published the same month as the quarto first edition, both advertised in January 1775, both preceding the first American editions: stated Second Edition: "two states noted, one with price on title page in upper case [this copy] and the other in upper and lower case," no priority established (Adams 75-16b).
Shebbeare: first edition: with "Price Three Shillings and Sixpence" on title page.
Burke: ESTC T49646. Adams 75-16b; 156b. Goldsmiths I:11281. See Adams 75-16a; Sabin 9295; Howes B980.
Shebbeare: ESTC T2811; Adams 75-127a; Sabin 80039.
Text very fresh and crisp.