uceur_ for Ireland in his pocket; benefits in trade, by opening the
woollen manufacture to that nation. A very right idea in my opinion; but
not more strong in reason, than likely to be opposed by the most
powerful and most violent of all local prejudices and popular passions.
First, a fire is already kindled by his schemes of taxation in America;
he then proposes one which will set all Ireland in a blaze; and his way
of quenching both is by a plan which may kindle perhaps ten times a
greater flame in Britain.

Will the author pledge himself, previously to his proposal of such a
tax, to carry this enlargement of the Irish trade? If he does not, then
the tax will be certain; the benefit will be less than problematical. In
this view, his compensation to Ireland vanishes into smoke; the tax, to
their prejudices, will appear stark naked in the light of an act of
arbitrary power and oppression. But, if he should propose the benefit
and tax together, then the people of Ireland, a very high and spirited
people, would think it the worst bargain in the world. They would look
upon the one as wholly vitiated and poisoned by the other; and, if they
could not be separated, would infallibly resist them both together. Here
would be taxes, indeed, amounting to a handsome sum; 100,000_l._ very
effectually voted, and passed through the best and most authentic forms;
but how to be collected?--This is his perpetual manner. One of his
projects depends for success upon another project, and this upon a
third, all of them equally visionary. His finance is like the Indian
philosophy; his earth is poised on the horns of a bull, his bull stands
upon an elephant, his elephant is supported by a tortoise; and so on
forever.

As to his American 200,000_l._ a year, he is satisfied to repeat
gravely, as he has done an hundred times before, that the Americans are
able to pay it. Well, and what then? does he lay open any part of his
plan how they may be compelled to pay it, without plunging ourselves
into calamities that outweigh tenfold the proposed benefit? or does he
show how they may be induced to submit to it quietly? or does he give
any satisfaction concerning the mode of levying it; in commercial
colonies, one of the most important and difficult of all considerations?
Nothing like it. To the Stamp Act, whatever its excellences may be, I
think he will not in reality recur, or even choose to assert that he
means to do so, in case his minister shoul