stances, with a sudden extinction
of the paper currencies, with a compulsory provision for the quartering
of soldiers,--the people of America thought themselves proceeded against
as delinquents, or, at best, as people under suspicion of delinquency,
and in such a manner as they imagined their recent services in the war
did not at all merit. Any of these innumerable regulations, perhaps,
would not have alarmed alone; some might be thought reasonable; the
multitude struck them with terror.

But the grand manoeuvre in that business of new regulating the colonies
was the fifteenth act of the fourth of George the Third, which, besides
containing several of the matters to which I have just alluded, opened a
new principle. And here properly began the second period of the policy
of this country with regard to the colonies, by which the scheme of a
regular plantation Parliamentary revenue was adopted in theory and
settled in practice: a revenue not substituted in the place of, but
superadded to, a monopoly; which monopoly was enforced at the same time
with additional strictness, and the execution put into military hands.

This act, Sir, had for the first time the title of "granting duties in
the colonies and plantations of America," and for the first time it was
asserted in the preamble "that it was _just_ and _necessary_ that a
revenue should be raised there"; then came the technical words of
"giving and granting." And thus a complete American revenue act was made
in all the forms, and with a full avowal of the right, equity, policy,
and even necessity, of taxing the colonies, without any formal consent
of theirs. There are contained also in the preamble to that act these
very remarkable words,--the Commons, &c., "being desirous to make _some_
provision in the _present_ session of Parliament _towards_ raising the
said revenue." By these words it appeared to the colonies that this act
was but a beginning of sorrows,--that every session was to produce
something of the same kind,--that we were to go on, from day to day, in
charging them with such taxes as we pleased, for such a military force
as we should think proper. Had this plan been pursued, it was evident
that the provincial assemblies, in which the Americans felt all their
portion of importance, and beheld their sole image of freedom, were
_ipso facto_ annihilated. This ill prospect before them seemed to be
boundless in extent and endless in duration. Sir, they were not
mi