make this participation of the publick
burden a duty of very uncertain extent, and imperfect obligation, a duty
temporary, occasional, and elective, of which they reserve to themselves
the right of settling the degree, the time, and the duration; of judging
when it may be required, and when it has been performed.

They allow to the supreme power nothing more than the liberty of
notifying to them its demands or its necessities. Of this notification
they profess to think for themselves, how far it shall influence their
counsels; and of the necessities alleged, how far they shall endeavour
to relieve them. They assume the exclusive power of settling not only
the mode, but the quantity, of this payment. They are ready to cooperate
with all the other dominions of the king; but they will cooperate by no
means which they do not like, and at no greater charge than they are
willing to bear.

This claim, wild as it may seem; this claim, which supposes dominion
without authority, and subjects without subordination, has found among
the libertines of policy, many clamorous and hardy vindicators. The laws
of nature, the rights of humanity, the faith of charters, the danger of
liberty, the encroachments of usurpation, have been thundered in our
ears, sometimes by interested faction, and sometimes by honest
stupidity.

It is said by Fontenelle, that if twenty philosophers shall resolutely
deny that the presence of the sun makes the day, he will not despair but
whole nations may adopt the opinion. So many political dogmatists have
denied to the mother-country the power of taxing the colonies, and have
enforced their denial with so much violence of outcry, that their sect
is already very numerous, and the publick voice suspends its decision.

In moral and political questions, the contest between interest and
justice has been often tedious and often fierce, but, perhaps, it never
happened before, that justice found much opposition, with interest on
her side.

For the satisfaction of this inquiry, it is necessary to consider, how a
colony is constituted; what are the terms of migration, as dictated by
nature, or settled by compact; and what social or political rights the
man loses or acquires, that leaves his country to establish himself hi a
distant plantation.

Of two modes of migration the history of mankind informs us, and so far
as I can yet discover, of two only. In countries where life was yet
unadjusted, and policy unformed