l the benefits and
evils of health and disease; liable, in dangerous maladies, to sharp
applications, of which the body, however, must partake the pain; and
exposed, if incurably tainted, to amputation, by which the body,
likewise, will be mutilated.

The mother-country always considers the colonies, thus connected, as
parts of itself; the prosperity or unhappiness of either, is the
prosperity or unhappiness of both; not, perhaps, of both in the same
degree, for the body may subsist, though less commodiously, without a
limb, but the limb must perish, if it be parted from the body.

Our colonies, therefore, however distant, have been, hitherto, treated
as constituent parts of the British empire. The inhabitants incorporated
by English charters are entitled to all the rights of Englishmen. They
are governed by English laws, entitled to English dignities, regulated
by English counsels, and protected by English arms; and it seems to
follow, by consequence not easily avoided, that they are subject to
English government, and chargeable by English taxation.

To him that considers the nature, the original, the progress, and the
constitution of the colonies, who remembers that the first discoverers
had commissions from the crown, that the first settlers owe to a charter
their civil forms and regular magistracy, and that all personal
immunities and legal securities, by which the condition of the subject
has been, from time to time, improved, have been extended to the
colonists, it will not be doubted, but the parliament of England has a
right to bind them by statutes, and to bind them in all cases
whatsoever; and has, therefore, a natural and constitutional power of
laying upon them any tax or impost, whether external or internal, upon
the product of land, or the manufactures of industry, in the exigencies
of war, or in the time of profound peace, for the defence of America,
for the purpose of raising a revenue, or for any other end beneficial to
the empire.

There are some, and those not inconsiderable for number, nor
contemptible for knowledge, who except the power of taxation from the
general dominion of parliament, and hold, that whatever degress of
obedience may be exacted, or whatever authority may be exercised in
other acts of government, there is still reverence to be paid to money,
and that legislation passes its limits when it violates the purse.

Of this exception, which, by a head not fully impregnated with
poli