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ftitution, will be often misled. Those who refort for arguments to the moft refpectable authorities, ancient or modern, or reft upon the cleareft maxims, drawn from the experience of other states and empires, will be liable to the greatest errours imaginable. The object is wholly new in the world. It is fingular it is grown up to this magnitude and importance within the memory of man; nothing in hiftory is parallel to it. All the reafonings about it, that are likely to be at all folid, must be drawn from its actual circumftances. In this new fyftem a principle of commerce, of artificial commerce, muft predominate. This commerce muft be fecured by a multitude of restraints very alien from the fpirit of liberty; and a powerful authority must reside in the principal state, in order to enforce them, But the people who are to be the fubjects of thefe reftraints are defcendants of Englishmen; and of an high and free fpirit. To hold over them a government made up of nothing but restraints and penalties, and taxes in the granting of which they can have no share, will neither be wife nor long practicable. People must be governed in a manner agreeable to their temper and difposition; and men of free character and spirit muft be ruled with, at least, fome condefcenfion to this fpirit and this character. The British colonift muft fee something which will distinguish him from the colonists of other nations.

Thofe

Thofe reafonings, which infer from the many restraints under which we have already laid America, to our right to lay it under still more, and indeed under all manner of restraints, are conclufive; conclufive as to right; but the very reverfe as to policy and practice. We ought rather to infer from our having laid the colonies under many reftraints, that it is reasonable to compenfate them by every indulgence that can by any means be reconciled to our intereft. We have a great empire to rule, compofed of a vaft mafs of heterogeneous governments, all more or lefs free and popular in their forms, all to be kept in peace, and kept out of confpiracy, with one another, all to be held in fubordination to this country; while the spirit of an extenfive and intricate and trading intereft pervades the whole, always qualifying, and often controlling, every general idea of conftitution and government. It is a great and difficult object; and I wish we may poffefs wifdom and temper enough to manage it as we ought. Its importance is infinite. I believe the reader will be ftruck, as I have been, with one fingular fact. In the year 1704, but fixty-five years ago, the whole trade with our plantations was but a few thoufand pounds more in the export article, and a third lefs in the import, than that which we now carry on with the fingle" illand of Jamaica :

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From the fame information I find that our dealing with most of the European nations is but little increased; thefe nations have been pretty much at a ftand fince that time; and we have rivals in their trade. This colony intercourfe is a new world of commerce in a manner created; it ftands upon principles of its own; principles hardly worth endangering for any little confideration of extorted

revenue.

The reader fees, that I do not enter fo fully into this matter as obviously I might. I have already been led into greater lengths than I intended. It is enough to fay, that before the minifters of 1765 had determined to propofe the repeal of the stamp act in parliament, they had the whole of the American conftitution and commerce very fully before them. They confidered maturely; they decided with wisdom let me add, with firmnefs. For they refolved, as a preliminary to that repeal, to affert in the fulleft and leaft equivocal terms the unlimited legislative right of this country over its colonies; and, having done this, to propofe the repeal, on principles, not of conftitutional right,.

but

but on thofe of expediency, of equity, of lenity, and of the true interefts prefent and future of that great object for which alone the colonies were founded, navigation and commerce. This plan, I fay, required an uncommon degree of firmnefs, when we confider that fome of thofe perfons who might be of the greateft ufe in promoting the repeal, violently withstood the declaratory act; and they who agreed with administration in the principles of that law, equally made, as well the reasons on which the declaratory act itself stood, as thofe on which it was oppofed, grounds for an oppofition to the repeal.

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If the then ministry refolved first to declare the right, it was not from any opinion they entertained of its future ufe in regular taxation. Their opinions were full and declared against the ordinary ufe of fuch a power. But it was plain, that the general reafonings which were employed against that power went directly to our whole legislative right; and one part of it could not be yielded to fuch arguments, without a virtual furrender of all the reft. Befides, if that very fpecifick power of levying money in the colonies were not retained as a facred truft in the hands of Great Britain (to be used, not in the first instance for fupply, but in the last exigence for controul), it is obvious, that the prefiding authority of Great Britain, as the head, the arbiter, and director of the whole em

pire,

pire, would vanish into an empty name, without operation or energy. With the habitual exercise of fuch a power in the ordinary courfe of fupply, no trace of freedom could remain to America.* If Great, Britain were ftripped of this right, every principle of unity and fubordination in the empire was gone for ever. Whether all this can be reconciled in legal fpeculation, is a matter of no confequence. It is reconciled in policy; and politicks ought to be adjufted, not to human reasonings, but to human nature; of which the reafon is but a part, and by no means the greatest part.

Founding the repeal on this bafis, it was judged proper to lay before parliament the whole detail of the American affairs, as fully as it had been laid before the miniftry themselves. Ignorance of those affairs had mifled parliament. Knowledge alone could bring it into the right road. Every paper of office was laid upon the table of the two houfes;

*I do not here enter into the unfatisfactory difquifition concerning reprefentation real or prefumed. I only fay, that a great people, who have their property, without any referve, in all cafes, difpofed of by another people at an immense diftance from them, will not think themselves in the enjoyment of freedom. It will be hard to fhew to thofe who are in fuch a ftate, which of the ufual parts of the definition or defcription of a free people are applicable to them; and it is neither pleafant nor wife to attempt to prove that they have no right to be comprehended in fuch a defcription.

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