Burke, Edmund

Autograph letter signed ("Edm Burke"), 4 pages (9 3/8 x 7 1/4 in.; 237 x 186 mm), Westminster, 12 January 1775 to the Marquis of Rockingham; completely separated at page fold, splits to horizontal folds, some light browning, more pronounced on fourth page.

Restraint of trade and Stamp Act in the American Colonies. Burke writes to his friend and sponsor, the Marquis of Rockingham, on the subject of the restraint of trade and Stamp Act in the American Colonies. Succinctly, Burke reports: "The alarm among the American Merchants is strong; but as yet not strong enough to get the better of their habitual deference to administration. Even the fears of several dispose them to submission to the authors of their Calamities, lest they should be provoked to make them more intolerable. This is a very mean spirit & if possible meaner policy."

Burke further elaborates: "This petition is far, & far enough, even now, from what in common sense it ought to be; for by putting the whole on the sufferings of Trade from the resistance of America; it sets the Nation in a very humble, & in Truth, an abject state in Case of Concession. Had indeed the Ministry been disposed, to overturn the obnoxious acts, as being fundamentally unjust & impolitical, the Merchants might come with great weight and propriety to speak of their Effect upon trade. At present we have no reason assigned, by those who have any strength either within or witht. doors, for giving way, but the opposition our acts have met with . . . ."