What, then, is the result of this part of the treaty, so wisely, and with so much sincere love on the part of England clamoured against by noble lord… - William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne
" "What, then, is the result of this part of the treaty, so wisely, and with so much sincere love on the part of England clamoured against by noble lords? Why this. You have generously given America, with whom every call under Heaven urges you to stand on the footing of brethren, a share in a trade, the monopoly of which you sordidly preserved to yourselves, at the loss of the enormous sum of 750,000l. Monopolies, some way or other, are ever justly punished. They forbid rivalry, and rivalry is of the very essence of the well-being of trade.
About William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne
William Petty Fitzmaurice, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne KG PC (2 May 1737 – 7 May 1805; known as the Earl of Shelburne between 1761 and 1784, by which title he is generally known to history), was an Anglo-Irish Whig statesman who was the first home secretary in 1782 and then prime minister from 1782 to 1783 during the final months of the American War of Independence, in which he negotiated the Treaty of Paris with the United States. He succeeded in securing peaceful United Kingdom–United States relations and this feat remains his most notable legacy.
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Additional quotes by William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne
I endeavoured to distinguish the real ties by which America might be supposed to hold to this country, in order to obviate objections arising from a thousand false lights thrown out on the subject; acknowledging the power of parliament to be supreme, but referring the expediency of the act to be considered in a commercial view, regard being to be had to the abilities of the Americans to pay this tax, and likewise to the consequences likely to proceed, in any event, from the late violences. The prejudice against the Americans on the whole seemed very great.
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He would tell him what he meant by carrying the English constitution to America, and establishing it there, was the recovering the dependency of that country upon this. Not a corrupt or slavish dependency, calculated to enlarge the influence of the crown, already grown much too formidable for the honest purposes of a limited government, or procuring for ministers new sources of corruption, for dividing the prince and people from each other, and separating their interests, which can never be wisely or safely done, so long as even the forms of the constitution remain; but a fair, honest, wise, and honourable connection, in which the constitutional prerogatives of the crown, the claims of parliament, and the liberties, properties, and lives of all the subjects of the British empire, would be equally secured. Such an union, and no other than this, he would ever endeavour to bring about. Such an union he would ever contend for; and without such an union, he was of opinion, that this country could never exist, as an independent state, in respect of the other powers of Europe, nor as a free one, in respect of its own internal polity.