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British admiral, she furnished five hundred seamen in the expeditions against Louisburg and Quebec. At several times many others were impressed out of the vessels employed in the fishery. Agreeably to the statement made by governor Bernard, and transmitted to the lords of trade, the colony had expended in the war eight hundred and eighteen thousand pounds sterling.* Of this three hundred and twenty eight thousand pounds had been replaced by parliamentary grants. Four hundred and ninety thousand pounds were expended, for which the colony had no parliamentary compen

sation.

Connecticut exerted herself more beyond her proportion than the Massachusetts. On the commencement of the war, in 1755, she raised a thousand men for the service. After the battle at the lake, in September, she sent on a detachment of two thousand of her militia, as a reinforcement to the army. The next year, supposing that the southern states might fail of furnishing their respective quotas, she sent into actual service two thousand and five hundred men. This was double the number required by the commander in chief. Such was her zeal for his majesty's service and the general good, that she exerted herself in this duplicate proportion, lest the common cause should suffer. As she was called upon, the next year, 1758, to raise all the men in her power, and was encouraged that this would be the last year of the war, she exerted herself beyond all former examples, and sent into service about five thousand men. General Amherst taking advantage of the zeal of the colony this year, made this number the rule of his command annually during the war. This proved a heavy burden on the colony, and was not only far beyond her proportion, but even beyond her ability. The expense of this little colony, in the war from 1755 to 1762 inclusively, after deducting the parliamentary grants, amounted to upwards of four hundred thousand pounds.†

The colonies probably sustained a loss of about five or six and twenty thousand men. These in general were their most firm and hardy young men, the flower of their country. Many others were wounded, maimed, and enervated in the many distant and arduous campaigns during the war. As the New England colonies furnished much the greatest numbers of men, this loss fell with the greatest weight upon them. them. New York and New Jersey were next in their zeal to New England, and consequently had the next share in the expense and loss of the war. The populous and opulent colony of Pennsylvania, by reason of internal dissentions, sometimes did little or nothing; when she did her best, she sent into the field no more than two thousand seven hundred men. Her whole expense very little exceeded the grants made her by parliament. The expense of Maryland was next to nothing.

**Governor Bernard's Letter, August 1, 1764.

Reasons offered, in behalf of Connecticut, against internal taxation of the colonies, printed, New-Haven, 1764.

The employment of such a number of men for so many years, in the war, greatly injured the husbandry of the country, which was its principal, and, in the northern colonies, almost the only resource. The loss of so many young men, and the prevention of marriage, for so many years; with respect to others, very greatly retarded population. At the same time the war was a check to literature, exceedingly destructive of domestic happiness, injurious to piety and the social virtues. The colonies thirsted for peace. A deliverance from these evils, the return of parents, sons, brethren, and friends, from distant countries, captivity, and the dangers of war, to the embraces. of each other, with the countless blessings of peace, diffused a general and uncommon joy. The extent of territory ceded to the colonies, the safety of their commerce and fisheries, the prodigious scope which opened for both, for the extension of settlement, the increase of wealth and population, and a general diffusion of happiness, all united to swell the general tide of joy. That high point of greatness, honour, and magnificence, to which the nation had been elevated, the extension of her empire, the flow of the whole trade and wealth of Canada, and of this great continent into her lap, whom they considered as a parent, and to whom they claimed the relation of children; the honours acquired in so glorious a war, with the advantages of a peace, which gave lustre to the crown and aggrandizement to the reign of a prince whom they loved, were so many circumstances enlivening the joy and increasing the satisfaction, which so universally prevailed. The colonists gloried in their prince, and in their relation to Great Britain. They felt a high degree of satisfaction, and it was no small part of their pride, that with their fellow subjects, of the mother country, they had shared in the labours and enterprises, and with them had mingled their blood in those battles and victories, on the continent and in the Indies, which had given such enlargement to her empire, and such lustre to her arms.

They felt a grateful sense of the royal beneficence and parliamentary goodness, in the grants which had been made for their assistance in defraying the expenses of the war. They were entirely satisfied with the British government, and conceived themselves singularly happy in the protection and privileges which they enjoyed as British subjects. This was the general feeling and happy state of the country on the return of peace.

The extension of settlements, the increase of cultivation, numbers, commerce, and wealth of the colonies, for about ten or twelve years after the pacification of Paris were almost incredible. These, with the conquests made during the war, and the extent of country ceded, in America, by the definitive treaty, were so many great preparatory steps, in the grand series of events, which paved the way to the independence of the United States. These all united their influence in obtaining for them those extensive limits, and that happy establishment which they now enjoy."*

* Trumbull's Hist. U. S. p. 448.

SECTION II.

The prospects at the close of the war disappointed by acts of parliament. The growth of the colonies, and their advantage to Great Britain, while they were allowed to tax themselves. A new system of colonization is adopted, the sugar-act passed and the stamp act proposed. The colonies offer their reasons and petition against it. Debates in parliament on the introduction of the bill. The stamp-act passes; is odious to Americans, and universally opposed. The revenue officers obliged to resign. Mr. Pitt reprobates the act and advises to the repeal of it. The parliament, having asserted their right to tax America, repeal the act. Consequences of the repeal.

THE Success and fortunate termination of the war with France and the Indian nations, not only raised the British empire to a distinguished pitch of national glory, but appeared to establish the tranquillity of her colonies upon a more permanent basis than it had ever been fixed at any preceding period. Unbounded prospects of navigation, commerce, wealth, national aggrandizement and happiness presented themselves both to Great Britain and America. Had the nation been favoured with some happy genius, capable of discerning her great and complicated interests, and of adopting a benevolent plan of administration, consistent with the rights, emolument and happiness of the parent country and of her colonies, it is not easy to describe that point of greatness and splendor to which the empire might have risen. Indeed, had the voice of those illustrious statesmen, who had raised the nation to that renown, which it then boasted, been heard, its union might have been preserved. But a new and fatal plan of colonization was now adopted, which distracted the nation, and terminated in the American Revolution.

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During a century and a half, from their first emigration, the colonists were left to tax themselves. If there were any exceptions to this general rule, they were too inconsiderable to be worthy of notice. Great Britain, however, restrained and regulated their trade. She named the ports and nations to which only their merchandize might be carried, and with whom only they might trade. She obliged them to carry to her all their raw materials which might be wrought up for her emolument, and their other productions which she needed, or which might increase her wealth. She prohibited their manufacturing any articles among themselves, which might injure her manufactures or commerce, and their procuring manufactures from any other part of the globe, or even the products of European countries, which were her rivals, until they were first brought into her ports. Notwithstanding the numerous oppressions which the colonists had experienced, under the British government, and though all disrelished, and many, from the pressures which they felt, complained of the restrictions on their manufactures and commerce, yet they were generally disposed to submit to them. It was generally acknowledged that the parent country might exercise a

sovereign dominion over the whole empire, and that while it was guarded by contract, and exercised for the general emolument, it was safe and might not be resisted. Some warm defenders of American liberty conceded, that the supreme legislature represents the whole society, the dominions as well as the realm, and that this was implied in the idea of a supreme power. But the right of taxthe colonies without their consent, was universally reprobated, as inconsistent with their natural charter, and constitutional rights. Ancient usage was pleaded against it as well as the general principles of liberty.

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During a period of more than a century, from 1660, to 1764, the parliament of Great Britain had passed nearly thirty acts restraining and regulating the trade of the colonies in such a manner as was judged most conducive to mutual advantage, and especially to her own particular welfare. In all these acts, the contributions of the colonies to the strength and aggrandizement of the British empire were established solely on the system of commerce. Not a single revenue act had been passed. Until this year they all stood upon a commercial footing, and were designed as regulations of trade, and not sources of a national reveuue.

While Great Britain adhered to this system of colonization, her American colonies increased and flourished beyond all parallel. In the same proportion as the colonies increased, the commerce, opulence, strength and glory of Great Britain increased.

Her whole export trade to the colonies in 1763, exceded half of all her exports, to other countries, sixty years before; and, antecedently to the independence of the American states, equalled her whole export trade at the aforementioned period In the year 1604, the amount of the whole export trade of Great Britain, to America and all other countries, was no more than 6,509,000 pounds sterling: but in 1763, her exports to her American colonies only, amounted to 3,730,900 pounds; and so prodigious was the increase of the colonies, that, in about ten or twelve years after this period, the tonnage of their shipping, the number of their seamen and the amount of their trade was doubled. In the year 1772, the export trade of Great Britain, to them only, was 6,022,132 pounds sterling: and the annual increase during the four succeeding years was very rapid. In the short term of about 70 years the colonies added not less to the export trade of their parent country, than the whole of that to which she had grown by the increasing improvements of 1700 years. As it is evident, from the preceding history, that the settlement and protection of the colonies was not at the expense of Great Britain, so it is equally evident, that this increase of their trade was not at the expense or diminution of the general trade of the kingdom, for this increased during the same period from six, to sixteen millions.

*Otis's rights of the British colonies. The several colonies insisted on this, in the reasons which they offered against the stamp-act. Anonymous history of the war in America, parti. p. 31. Ramsay's Hist. vol. i. p. 49, 50.

The filial submission of the colonies to the sovereignty of the parent country, for so long a period, while it was exercised in superintending their general concerns, and in harmonizing the commercial interests of the empire, gave a clear demonstration, that, without parliamentary taxation, they might have been kept in proper subordination and subserviency to her government and interests. No subjects in the kingdom were more strongly attached to the royal house of Hanover, and to those revolutional principles which placed it on the throne of the British empire, than the colonists. They gloried in the British constitution, in their relation to Great Britain, and rejoiced in her growing commerce, strength and glory. Had that line of colonization been pursued, the benefit of which had been experienced for many ages, the colonies with great cheerfulness would have poured all the profits of their increasing labours and commerce into the lap of their parent.

For several years the British ministry had conceived the idea of a new plan of colonization, and of altering both the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the colonies. Immediately after the pacification of Paris, new scenes were presented. The numbers and resources which the colonies had exhibited during the war, the show of wealth and plenty which had been made, at the entertainments given to some of the British generals and officers, in several of their capitals, the gold, silver and jewels appearing in the dress of the colonists, on these and other occasions, begat, in their fellow subjects of Great Britain, the idea that they were wealthy and powerful. It was said, that their taxes were light; that the whole expense of the civil establishment, in all the colonies in North America, was little more than seventy thousand pounds sterling: That their ecclesiastical constitution was no less economical: That tithes were not known among them: That their clergy were numerous: and that they were generally maintained by moderate stipends, or by the voluntary contributions of the people, &c. The national debt of Great Britain amounted to the enormous sum of a hundred and forty-eight millions. The annual interest of it only was nearly five millions, and the inhabitants of that country already groaned under a grievous load of taxes.

While the British minister, in these partial views, was digesting plans for the diminution of this amazing debt, and for easing the inhabitants of Great Britain, he conceived the idea of raising a substantial revenue in the American colonies by parliamentary taxation.* The British ministry maintained the novel doctrine, That

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*Tudor, in his life of Otis, gives us the following interesting anecdote : President Adams was minister at the court of St. James, he often saw his countryman, Benjamin West, the late president of the royal academy. Mr. West always retained a strong and unyielding affection for his native land. Mr. West one day asked Mr. Adams, if he should like to take a walk with him, and see the cause of the American

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