for members of Parliament can be settled, or until the war is
ended.

In truth the author has little studied this business; or he might have
known, that some of the most considerable provinces of America, such,
for instance, as Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay, have not in each of
them two men who can afford, at a distance from their estates, to spend
a thousand pounds a year. How can these provinces be represented at
Westminster? If their province pays them, they are American agents, with
salaries, and not independent members of Parliament. It is true, that
formerly in England members had salaries from their constituents; but
they all had salaries, and were all, in this way, upon a par. If these
American representatives have no salaries, then they must add to the
list of our pensioners and dependents at court, or they must starve.
There is no alternative.

Enough of this visionary union; in which much extravagance appears
without any fancy, and the judgment is shocked without anything to
refresh the imagination. It looks as if the author had dropped down from
the moon, without any knowledge of the general nature of this globe, of
the general nature of its inhabitants, without the least acquaintance
with the affairs of this country. Governor Pownall has handled the same
subject. To do him justice, he treats it upon far more rational
principles of speculation; and much more like a man of business. He
thinks (erroneously, I conceive; but he does think) that our legislative
rights are incomplete without such a representation. It is no wonder,
therefore, that he endeavors by every means to obtain it. Not like our
author, who is always on velvet, he is aware of some difficulties; and
he proposes some solutions. But nature is too hard for both these
authors; and America is, and ever will be, without actual representation
in the House of Commons; nor will any minister be wild enough even to
propose such a representation in Parliament; however he may choose to
throw out that project, together with others equally far from his real
opinions, and remote from his designs, merely to fall in with the
different views, and captivate the affections, of different sorts of
men.

Whether these projects arise from the author's real political
principles, or are only brought out in subservience to his political
views, they compose the whole of anything that is like precise and
definite, which the author has given us to expect from that
a