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CHA P. VIII.

Opportunity given the colonies to offer a compenfation for the ftamp duty, and to establish a precedent for their being confulted, before any tax was impofed upon them by parliament; rejected. Pote of laft jevica for the propriety of laying a ftamp-duty upon them taken up again. Debates concerning the right of the British parliament to tax the British colonies without their concurrence, and the expediency of taxing them in the way now propofed. Bill for laying the ftamp duty on the colonies paffes both houses, and receives the royal affent by commiffion. Act for encouraging the importation of lumber from the British colonies into Great Britain. King's illness.

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HE right hon. gentleman, to whom has been attributed the framing of all the regulations and laws relating to the British colonies, which we treated of in our fifth and fixth chapters, though not aware, it feems, of any injury, with which they could be attended to the mother country, in point of honour, fafety, or fubfiftence, contrived, however, that all further proceedings upon the refolution of laft feffion, for adding a ftamp-duty to them, fhould be poftponed to the prefent, in order that the colonies might have time to of fer a compenfation for the revenue fuch a tax might produce. Accordingly, when the agents of thete colonies waited upon him to thank him for this mark of his confideration, he told them, that he was ready to receive propofals from the colonies for any other tax, that might be equivalent in its produce to the ftamp tax; hinting withal, that their principals would now have it in their power, by agreeing to this tax, to establish a precedent for their being confulted, (by the miniftry, we fuppofe) before any tax was impofed on them by parliament.

Many perfons at this fide of the
VOL. VIII.

water, and perhaps the agents themfelves, looked upon this as a generous and humane proceeding. But the colonies feemed to confider it as an affront rather than a compliment. No doubt, they viewed the minifter in the light rather of a fervant than a protector. At leaft, not one of them authorised its agent to confent to a stampduty, or to offer any compenfation for it; and fome of them went fo far as to fend over petitions, to be prefented to the king, lords, and commons, pofitively and directly queftioning the authority and jurifdiction of parliament over their properties. Two of the agents, indeed, answered for the colonies they ferved bearing their proportion of the ftamp duty by methods of their own; but, when queflioned, confeffed that they had no authority to undertake for any particular fum.

This fullennefs in the colonies fhould alone, one would imagine, have prevented the laying of any additional burthen on them. At leaft fome measures should have been previously taken effectually to prevent the oppofition, which that fullennefs but too plainly indicated, and fave Great Britain the mor[D]

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tification of feeing her laws publicly defpifed, and even her right to make them flatly contradicted, by thofe, whom the world had hitherto confidered as her moft dutiful fubjects.

It must be owned however, to the honour of parliament, that, however fmoothly the vote concerning the propriety of laying a ftamp-duty on the colonies might have paffed the lower houfe in the preceding feffion, the final laying it on in the prefent was attended with no fmall debates, both as to the British legiflature's right to tax the colonies without their concurrence, and the expediency of exercising that right, if any, for the prefent purpofe; though the petitions queftioning the jurifdiction of parliament were not fuffered to be read in the house, and the agents for the colonies refufed to concur in another petition, which might have established a precedent for their being heard in behalf of their refpective colonies against the tax. Poffibly, thefe gentlemen imagined that the petitioning for a fufpenfion of the vote, as a favour, might be deemed an acknowledgment, that their principals had no right to oppofe the execution of it when paffed into a law; or a furrender of that right, allowing they ever had any.

It was urged in favour of the colonies, that those who firft planted them, were not only driven out of the mother country by perfecution, but had left it at their own risk and expence; that being thus forfaken, or rather worse treated, by her, all ties, except thofe common to mankind, were diffolved between them : they abfolved from all duty of

obedience to her, as the difpenfed herself from all duty of protection to them; that, if they accepted of any royal charters on the occafion, it was done through mere neceffity; and that, as this neceffity was not of their own making, thefe charters could not be binding upon them; that, even allowing these charters to be binding, they were only bound thereby to that allegiance, which the fupreme head of the realm might claim indifcriminately from all its fubjects.

That it was extremely abfurd, that they fhould be ftill thought to owe any fubmiffion to the legiflative power of Great Britain, which had not authority enough to fhield them against the violences of the executive; and more abfurd ftill, that the people of Great-Britain fhould pretend to exercise over them rights, which that very people affirm they might juftly oppofe, if claimed over themfelves by others.

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That it cannot be imagined, that when the fame people of Great-Britain contended with the crown, it could be with a view of gaining these rights, which the crown might have ufurped over others, and not merely recovering thofe, which the fame crown bitrarily claimed over themfelves; that, therefore, allowing their original charters to be binding, as they had been deprived of them in an arbitrary and tyrannical manner, fuch as the people of Great Britain would not now by any means fuffer, they fhould be confidered as ftill entitled to the full benefit of them; that their being bound by thefe charters to make no laws, but fuch as, allowing for the difference of circumftances,

cumstances, fhould not clash with thofe of England, no more fubjected them to the parliament of England, than their having been laid under the fame reftraint with regard to the laws of Scotland or any other country, would have fubjected them to the parliament of Scotland, or the fupreme authority of any other country; that, by thefe charters, they had a right to tax themselves for their own fupport and defence.

That it was their birth-right, even as the descendants of Englishmen, not to be taxed by any but their own reprefentatives; that, fo far from being actually reprefented in the parliament of Great- Britain, they were not even virtually represented there, as the meanett inhabitants of Great-Britain are, in confequence of their intimate connection with those who are actually reprefented; that, if laws made by the British parliament to bind all except its own members, or even all except fuch members and those actually reprefented by them, would be deemed, as moft certainly they would, to the highest degree oppreffive and unconftitutional, and refifted accordingly, by the rest of the inhabitants, though virtually reprefented; how much more oppreffive and unconftitutional muft not fuch laws appear to thofe, who could not be said to be either actually or virtually reprefented?

That the people of Ireland were much more virtually reprefented in the parliament of Great-Britain, than it was even pretended the people of the colonies could be, in confequence of the great number of Englishmen poffeffed of eftates and places of truft and profit in

Ireland, and their immediate defcendants, fettled in that country, and of the great number of Irish noblemen and gentlemen in both houfes of the British parliament, and the greater number ftill conftantly refiding in Great-Britain; and that, notwithstanding, the Britifh parliament never claimed any right to tax the people of Ireland, in virtue of their being thus virtually reprefented amongit

them.

That, whatever affiftance the people of Great Britain might have given to the people of the colonies, it must have been given either from motives of humanity and fraternal affection, or with a view of being one day repaid for it, and not as the price of their liberty and independence; at leaft the colonies could never be prefumed to have accepted it in that light; that, if given from motives of humanity and fraternal affection, as the people of the colonies had never given the mother country any room to complain of their want of gratitude, fo they never should; if given with a view of being one day repaid for it, they were willing to come to a fair account, which, allowing for the affiftance they themselves had often given the mother country, for what they must have loft, and the mother country muft have got, by preventing their felling to others at higher prices than they could fell to her, and their buying from others at lower prices than they could buy from her, would, they apprehended, not turn out to her advantage fo much as the imagined.

That their having heretofore fubmitted to laws made by the British parliament, for their internal government, could no more be brought [D] 2

as a precedent against them, than against the English themselves their tamenefs under the dictates of an Henry, or the rod of a star-chamber; the tyranny of many being as grievous to human nature as that of a few, and the tyranny of a few as grievous as that of a fingleperfon.

That, if liberty was the due of thofe who had fenfe enough to know the value of it, and courage enough to expofe themselves to every danger and fatigue to acquire it, they were better entitled to it than even their brethren of Great-Britain, fince, befides facing, in the wilds of America, much more dreadful enemies, than the friends of liberty they left behind them could expect to meet in the fields of Great-Britain, they had renounced not only their native foil, the love of which is fo congenial with the human mind, and all thofe tender charities infeparable from it, but expofed themfelves to all the risks and hardships unavoidable in a long voyage; and, after escaping the danger of being swallowed up by the waves, to the ftill more cruel danger of perifhing afhore by a flow famine.

That, if in the first years of their exiftence one of them was guilty of fome intemperate fallies, and all expofed to enemies which required the interpofition and affiftance of an English parliament, they were now most of them arrived at fuch a degree of maturity in point of polity and ftrength, as in a great measure took away the necefity of fuch interpofition and affiftance for the future. At least, that interpofition and affiftance would not be the lefs effectual for the colonies

being reprefented in the British parliament, which was all the indulgence those colonies contended for.

That, allowing the British parliament's right to make laws for the colonies, and even tax them without their concurrence, there lay many objections against all the duties lately imposed on the colonies, and more ftill and weightier against that of the ftamps now propofed to be laid upon them; that whereas thofe ftamp-duties were laid gradually on the people of Great Britain, they were to be faddled all at once, with all their increased weight, on those of the colonies; that, if thofe duties were thought fo grievous in England, on account of the great variety of occafions in which they were payable, and the great number of heavy penalties to which the beft meaning perfons were liable for not paying them, or not ftrictly conforming to all the numerous penal claufes in them, they must be to the last degree oppreffive in the colonies, where the people in general could not be fappofed fo converfant in matters of this kind, and numbers did not underfland even the language of these intricate laws, fo much out of the courfe of what common fenfe alone might fuggeft to them as their duty, and common honefty engage them to practife, the almoft only rule of action, and motive to it, compatible with that encouragement, which it is proper to give every new fettler in every country, efpecially foreigners, in fuch a country as America.

Such were the principal arguments now urged in Great-Britain, most of them within doors, against

the

the juftice of laying any tax at all, and the inconveniency of laying the ftamp-tax in particular, upon the British colonies in America. And they must be owned to carry great weight with them. At least, little or nothing worth notice, except what we have added to every argument, and the abfurdity of their pretending to be exempt. be exempt from the taxation of parliament, because authorized by charter to tax themselves, fince at that rate, all the corporations of Great-Britain might claim the fame exemption, was faid, as far as we have been able to learn, to invalidate them; unless we are to admit claims for titles, affertions for proofs, fictions in law for fubftantial arguments, the ftatutes of England for the dictates of nature, and the private opinions of the gentlemen of Westminster-hall for the general fenfe of mankind; and even allow conveniency to be the only measure of right and wrong; a doctrine, which the inhabitants of Great-Britain fhould of all people be the laft to adopt, fince of all people they are thofe who would fuffer moft by its being enforced against themfelves. Nay, conveniNay, conveniency itself feemed to dictate other measures, as muft appear but too obvious from what we have already faid ourfelves upon the fubject; and which the enemies to this measure did not fail to urge against it.

When we fay, that we have not heard of any thing material being brought to invalidate the arguments alledged against the British parliament's right to tax the British colonies without their concurrence, we are very far from meaning, that nothing was or could be brought to invalidate thefe argu

ments.

We are fill further from admitting the claim of the British colonies to be reprefented in the British parliament, at leaft as fully as the people of Great-Britain are. Common fenfe, nay felf-prefervation, feem to forbid, that those who allow themselves an unlimited right over the liberties and lives of others, thould have any fhare in making laws for thofe, who have long renounced fuch unjust and cruel diftinctions. It is impoffible that fuch men fhould have the proper feelings for fuch a task. But then we could with, that, fince it was refolved to make the colonies contribute to their defence by taxes impofed on them without their concurrence, inftead of abiding by the good old methods heretofore purued for that purpose, thefe difqualifications in them to be fully reprefented in a British parliament had been affigned as the reafon for the mother country's taxing them unreprefented. Then her doing fo, inftead of carrying an appearance of arbitrarinefs, confidering her own claims to liberty, would manifeft her beft title to that invaluable bleffing, and even of abfolute empire over her colonies. For though a strict regard to private independence may not be fuch a title to political dominion, as to juftify an attempt to acquire that dominion by force, it must certainly be allowed a fufficient reafon for the holding of it when af long ftanding, and never controverted, like ours over our colonies, coeval with their exiftence, and never before difputed by them.

But though nothing of this kind was, we believe, faid to forward the bill, it made its way through both houfes, with the fame difagreeable [D] 3

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