," or any other of
the usual titles to revenue acts, was to be found in any of them till
1764; nor were the words "give and grant" in any preamble until the
sixth of George the Second. However, the title of this act of George the
Second, notwithstanding the words of donation, considers it merely as a
regulation of trade; "An act for the better securing of the trade of his
Majesty's sugar colonies in America." This act was made on a compromise
of all, and at the express desire of a part, of the colonies themselves.
It was therefore in some measure with their consent; and having a title
directly purporting only a _commercial regulation_, and being in truth
nothing more, the words were passed by, at a time when no jealousy was
entertained, and things were little scrutinized. Even Governor Bernard,
in his second printed letter, dated in 1763, gives it as his opinion,
that "it was an act of _prohibition_, not of revenue." This is certainly
true, that no act avowedly for the purpose of revenue, and with the
ordinary title and recital taken together, is found in the statute-book
until the year I have mentioned: that is, the year 1764. All before this
period stood on commercial regulation and restraint. The scheme of a
colony revenue by British authority appeared, therefore, to the
Americans in the light of a great innovation. The words of Governor
Bernard's ninth letter, written in November, 1765, state this idea very
strongly. "It must," says he, "have been supposed _such an innovation as
a Parliamentary taxation_ would cause a great _alarm_, and meet with
much _opposition_ in most parts of America; it was _quite new_ to the
people, and had no _visible bounds_ set to it." After stating the
weakness of government there, he says, "Was this a time to introduce _so
great a novelty_ as a Parliamentary inland taxation in America?"
Whatever the right might have been, this mode of using it was absolutely
new in policy and practice.

Sir, they who are friends to the schemes of American revenue say, that
the commercial restraint is full as hard a law for America to live
under. I think so, too. I think it, if uncompensated, to be a condition
of as rigorous servitude as men can be subject to. But America bore it
from the fundamental Act of Navigation until 1764. Why? Because men do
bear the inevitable constitution of their original nature with all its
infirmities. The Act of Navigation attended the colonies from their
infancy, grow with