given you a revenue, whenever he can point out

to you where you may have money, if you can contrive how to get at it; and this feems to be the master-piece of his financial ability. I think however, in his way of proceeding, he has behaved rather like an harsh step-dame, than a kind nurfing mether to his country. Why stop at £.300,000? If his state of things be at all founded, America and Ireland are much better able to pay £.600,000, than we are to fatisfy ourselves with half that fum. However, let us forgive him this one inftance of tendernefs towards Ireland and the colonies.

He fpends a vaft deal of time *, in an endeavour to prove, that Ireland is able to bear greater impofitions. He is of opinion, that the poverty of the lower clafs of people there is, in a great meafure, owing to a want of judicious taxes; that a land tax will enrich her tenants; that taxes are paid in England which are not paid there; that the colony trade is increased above £. 100,000 fince the peace; that the ought to have further indulgence in that trade; and ought to have further privileges in the woollen manufacture. From thefe premifes, of what he has, what she has not, and what the ought to have, he infers that Ireland will contribute £.100,000 towards the extraordinaries of the American establishment.

I fhall make no objections whatfoever, logical or financial, to this reafoning: many occur; but they would lead me from my purpofe, from which I do not intend to be diverted, because it feems to me of no finall importance. It will be just enough to hint, what I dare fay many readers have before obferved, that when any man proposes new taxes in a country with which he is not perfonally converfant by refidence or office, he ought to lay open its fituation much more minutely and critically than this author has done, or than perhaps he is able to do. He ought not to content himself with faying that a fingle article of her trade is increafed £100,000 a year; he ought, if he argues from the increase of trade to the increase of taxes, to state the whole trade, and not one branch of trade only; he ought to enter fully into the ftate of its remittances, and the courfe of its exchange; he ought likewife to examine whether all its establishments are increafed or diminished; and whether it incurs or difcharges debt annually. But I pafs over all this; and am content to ask a few plain questions.

Does the author then seriously mean to propose in parliament a land tax, or any tax for £.100,000 a year upon Ireland? If he does, and if fatally, by his temerity and our weakness, he fhould fucceed; then I fay he will throw the whole empire from one end of it to the other into mortal con

vulfions.

vulfions. What is it that can fatisfy the furious and perturbed mind of this man; is it not enough for him that fuch projects have alienated our colonies from the mother country, and not to propofe violently to tear our fifter kingdom alfo from our fide, and to, convince every dependent part of the empire, that, when a little money is to be raifed, we have no fort of regard to their ancient customs, their opinions, their circumftances, or their affections? He has however a douceur for Ireland in his pocket; benefits in trade, by opening the woollen manufacture to that nation. A A very right idea in my opinion; but not more strong in reason, than likely to be opposed by the most powerful and moft violent of all local prejudices and popular paffions. First, a fire is already kindled by his schemes of taxation in America; he then proposes one which will fet all Ireland in a blaze; and his way of quenching both is by a plan which may kindle perhaps ten times a greater flame in Britain.

Will the author pledge himself, previously to his propofal of fuch a tax, to carry this enlargement of the Irish trade; if he does not, then the tax will be certain; the benefit will be lefs than problematical. In this view, his compenfation to Ireland vanishes into fmoke; the tax, to their pre- judices, will appear ftark naked in the light of an act of arbitrary power and oppreffion. But, if he VOL. II. fhould

I

fhould propofe the benefit and tax together, then the people of Ireland, a very high and fpirited people, would think it the worft bargain in the world. They would look upon the one as wholly vitiated and poifoned by the other; and, if they could not be separated, would infallibly refift them. both together. Here would be taxes indeed,

amounting to an handsome fum; £.100,000 very effectually voted, and paffed through the beft and most authentick forms; but how to be collected?This is his perpetual manner. One of his projects depends for fuccefs upon another project, and this upon a third, all of them equally vifionary. His finance is like the Indian philofophy; his earth is poised on the horns of a bull, his bull ftands upon an elephant, his elephant is fupported by a tortoife; and fo on for ever.

As to his American £.200,000 a year, he is fatisfied to repeat gravely, as he has done an hundred times before, that the Americans are able to pay it. Well, and what then? does he lay open any part of his plan how they may be compelled to pay it, without plunging ourfelves into calamities that outweigh tenfold the propofed benefit? or does he fhew how they may be induced to fubmit to it quietly? or does he give any fatisfaction concerning the mode of levying it, in commercial colonies one of the most important and difficult of all confiderations? Nothing like it. To the ftamp act,

whatever

*

whatever its excellencies may be, I think he will not in reality recur, or even choose to affert that he means to do fo, in cafe his minifter fhould come again into power. If he does, I will predict that fome of the fafteft friends of that minifter will defert him upon this point. As to port duties, he has damned them all in the lump, by declaring them "contrary to the first principles of colonization, and not lefs prejudicial to the interests of "Great Britain than to thofe of the colonies." Surely this fingle obfervation of his ought to have taught him a little caution; he ought to have begun to doubt, whether there is not something in the nature of commercial colonies, which renders them an unfit object of taxation; when port duties, fo large a fund of revenue in all countries, are by himself found, in this cafe, not only improper, but deftructive. However he has here pretty well narrowed the field of taxation. Stamp act, hardly to be refumed. Port duties, mifchievous. Excifes, I believe, he will fcarcely think worth the collection (if any revenue fhould be fo) in America. Land tax (notwithstanding his opinion of its immenfe ufe to agriculture), he will not directly propofe, before he has thought again and again on the fubject. Indeed he very readily recommends it for Ireland, and feems to think it not improper