revenue.

The act indeed provided, that after all fuch minifterial warrants under the fign manual as are thought proper and neceffary fhall be fatisfied, the refidue of the revenue fhall be at the dispofal of Parliament." But who, it was asked, can fuppofe fuch warrants will ever be fatisfied till Minifters have provided for all their friends and favorites? This mockery of an American revenue proves at laft, faid a Member of the Houfe (Mr. Hartley), to be only the crumbs that fall from the Minifter's table-the RESIDUE of a royal warrant counterfigned by the First Lord of the Treasury!" The next step in the progrefs of the new fyftem of American taxation was the eftablishment of an American Board of Commiffioners, which, under the aufpices of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Charles Townfhend, paffed into an act the fame feffion. This Board was fixed at Boston, -where the Commiffioners arrived in the autumn of that year.

The non-importation agreement entered into by the Colonies, in confequence of the rafh and unsadvised measures adopted by England, have been already noticed; but though they confined their spractical oppofition to their commercial combinations, they now began to indulge a boundless and dangerous license of speculative difcuffion on the nature and extent of parliamentary power. Till this period they had, with a cheerfulness which precluded

cluded any deep or accurate inveftigation of right, admitted the exercife of a difcretionary legislative authority in the Parliament of Great Britain. They had admitted the diftinction between raising money as the mere incidental produce of regulating duties, and for the direct purpose of revenue; but now they argued more boldly, and as fpeculatifts more confiftently, in faying, that if the Parliament of Great Britain has no right to tax us internally, they have none to tax us externally; and if they have no right to tax us without our confent, they can have none to govern or to legislate for us without our confent. Thefe reafonings, fo natural and obvious in prefent circumftances, when the power of the Mother Country was, in the apprehenfion of every American, employed to the purposes of oppreffion, prove in a striking manner the unexampled folly of Great Britain, in risquing the difcuffion of a right fo problematic and precarious. The only juft and folid bafis of the authority of Great Britain over the Colonies, was that of common utility fanctioned by long prescription and univerfal acquiefcence. But when the authority of Great Britain was exerted for her own feparate advantage, in a manner unauthorized by cuftom, and unacknowledged by thofe over whom it was exercised by mere dint of fuperior force, it could in nothing be distinguished from tyranny, to which resistance and revolt only can be properly opposed, B 2

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To attempt to govern a whole nation in a mode abhorrent from their feelings, principles, and prejudices, is a complication of folly and wickedness; and the counfels of Great Britain at this period were governed by a fpirit of infatuation, which it is difficult to analyfe into any of the common principles of human action, and which excites our aftonishment at leaft as ftrongly as our indignation or regret.

In January 1768, the Affembly of Maffachusetts Bay tranfinitted, by their Speaker, a circular letter to the different Colonies, in which they recommend to the respective Colonial Legislatures to take into joint confideration the measures it may be proper to adopt for the redress of their common grievances, particularly specifying the late acts imposing duties and taxes on America, and expreffing their firm confidence in the King, their common head and father, that the united and dutiful fupplications of his diftreffed American fubjects will meet with his royal and favorable acceptance. No fooner was this known in England, than Lord Hillsborough tranfmitted inftructions to Governor Bernard, in his Majefty's name, fo foon as the General Court was again affembled, to require of the Houfe of Reprefentatives" to RESCIND the refolution which gave birth to the circular letter from the Speaker, and to declare their disapprobation of, and diffent from, that rafh and hafty proceeding at the fame

time ftrangely affirming the refolution in queftion to be unfair, contrary to the real fenfe of the Affembly, and procuréd by surprise;" although it in fact paffed almost unanimously in a very full House, after the most ample and deliberate difcuffion. In cafe of the refufal of the Houfe to comply with this requifition, the Governor was commanded immediately to diffolve the Affembly, and to tranfinit to his Lordship an account of their tranfactions. This imperious demand was conceived precifely in the fpirit of a mandate of the French King to his Parliaments, but fortunately it could not be enforced by lettres de cachet. If French Parliaments have been known refolutely to refift the will of the defpot with the terrors of imprisonment, exile, and death before their eyes, it will eafily be fuppofed that an affembly of men boafting their defcent from ancestors whofe garments were stained in the blood of tyrants, were little likely to yield this abject fubmiffion. A Committee of the Houfe reported a letter to Lord Hillsborough, in which the egregious misapprehenfion of his Lordship, with regard to the mode in which the refolution had paffed the Houfe, was corrected; and the House then agreed on a meflage to the Governor, in which they faid-"It is to us incomprehenfible that we should be required, on the peril of a diffolution of the General Court, to refcind a refolution of a former Houfe, when it is evident that that refolution

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refolution has no exiftence, but as a mere hiftorical fact. Your Excellency must know that the refolution is, to fpeak the language of the common law, not now executory, but to all intents and purpofes executed. If, as is moft probable, by the word refcinding is intended the paffing a vote in direct and exprefs difapprobation of the measure of the former House, we must take the liberty to teftify, and publicly to declare, that we take it to be the native, inherent, and indefeasible right of the fubject jointly or feverally to petition the King for the redrefs of grievances. If the votes of the House are to be controlled by the direction of a Minister, we have left us but a vain femblance of liberty. We have now only to inform you, that this House have voted NOT to RESCIND; and that, on the divifion on the queftion, there were ninety-two yeas, and feventeen nays." The next day the Governor diffolved the Affembly. In the course of the debate which preceded this refolution, a Member of the Affembly faid, "When Lord Hillsbo rough knows that we will not refcind our acts, he fhould apply to Parliament to refcind theirs. Let Britain refcind her measures, or she will lofe America for ever."

At the fame time that Lord Hillsborough tranf mitted his Majesty's high commands to Sir Francis Bernard, he wrote a circular letter to the Governors of the different Provinces, in which, referring

to