ate war. Never could any argument be more insulting and
mortifying to a people habituated to the granting of their own money.

Taxes for the purpose of raising revenue had hitherto been sparingly
attempted in America. Without ever doubting the extent of its lawful
power, Parliament always doubted the propriety of such impositions. And
the Americans on their part never thought of contesting a right by which
they were so little affected. Their assemblies in the main answered all
the purposes necessary to the internal economy of a free people, and
provided for all the exigencies of government which arose amongst
themselves. In the midst of that happy enjoyment, they never thought of
critically settling the exact limits of a power, which was necessary to
their union, their safety, their equality, and even their liberty. Thus
the two very difficult points, superiority in the presiding state, and
freedom in the subordinate, were on the whole sufficiently, that is,
practically, reconciled; without agitating those vexatious questions,
which in truth rather belong to metaphysics than politics, and which can
never be moved without shaking the foundations of the best governments
that have ever been constituted by human wisdom. By this measure was let
loose that dangerous spirit of disquisition, not in the coolness of
philosophical inquiry, but inflamed with all the passions of a haughty,
resentful people, who thought themselves deeply injured, and that they
were contending for everything that was valuable in the world.

In England, our ministers went on without the least attention to these
alarming dispositions; just as if they were doing the most common things
in the most usual way, and among a people not only passive, but pleased.
They took no one step to divert the dangerous spirit which began even
then to appear in the colonies, to compromise with it, to mollify it, or
to subdue it. No new arrangements were made in civil government; no new
powers or instructions were given to governors; no augmentation was
made, or new disposition, of forces. Never was so critical a measure
pursued with so little provision against its necessary consequences. As
if all common prudence had abandoned the ministers, and as if they meant
to plunge themselves and us headlong into that gulf which stood gaping
before them; by giving a year's notice of the project of their Stamp
Act, they allowed time for all the discontents of that country to fester
a