iest times chiefly upon the question of taxing. Most of the
contests in the ancient commonwealths turned primarily on the right of
election of magistrates, or on the balance among the several orders of
the state. The question of money was not with them so immediate. But in
England it was otherwise. On this point of taxes the ablest pens and
most eloquent tongues have been exercised, the greatest spirits have
acted and suffered. In order to give the fullest satisfaction concerning
the importance of this point, it was not only necessary for those who in
argument defended the excellence of the English Constitution to insist
on this privilege of granting money as a dry point of fact, and to prove
that the right had been acknowledged in ancient parchments and blind
usages to reside in a certain body called an House of Commons: they went
much further: they attempted to prove, and they succeeded, that in
theory it ought to be so, from the particular nature of a House of
Commons, as an immediate representative of the people, whether the old
records had delivered this oracle or not. They took infinite pains to
inculcate, as a fundamental principle, that in all monarchies the people
must in effect themselves, mediately or immediately, possess the power
of granting their own money, or no shadow of liberty could subsist. The
colonies draw from you, as with their life-blood, these ideas and
principles. Their love of liberty, as with you, fixed and attached on
this specific point of taxing. Liberty might be safe or might be
endangered in twenty other particulars without their being much pleased
or alarmed. Here they felt its pulse; and as they found that beat, they
thought themselves sick or sound. I do not say whether they were right
or wrong in applying your general arguments to their own case. It is not
easy, indeed, to make a monopoly of theorems and corollaries. The fact
is, that they did thus apply those general arguments; and your mode of
governing them, whether through lenity or indolence, through wisdom or
mistake, confirmed them in the imagination, that they, as well as you,
had an interest in these common principles.

They were further confirmed in this pleasing error by the form of their
provincial legislative assemblies. Their governments are popular in an
high degree: some are merely popular; in all, the popular representative
is the most weighty; and this share of the people in their ordinary
government never fails to i