ys coming up about which the governor and
the legislature could not agree, because the legislature represented the
views of the people who had chosen it, while the governor represented
his own views or the views which prevailed three thousand miles away
among the king's ministers, who very often knew little about America and
cared less. One of these disputed questions related to the governor's
salary. It was natural that the governor should wish to have a salary of
fixed amount, so that he might know from year to year what he was going
to receive. But the people were afraid that if this were to be done the
governor might become too independent. They preferred that the
legislature should each year make a grant of money such as it should
deem suitable for the governor's expenses, and this sum it might
increase or diminish according to its own good pleasure. This would keep
the governor properly subservient to the legislature. Before 1750 there
had been much bitter wrangling over this question in several of the
colonies, and the governors had one after another been obliged to
submit, though with very ill grace.

Sometimes the thoughts of the royal governors and their friends went
beyond this immediate question. Since the legislatures were so froward
and so niggardly, what an admirable plan it would be to have the
governors paid out of the royal treasury and thus made comparatively
independent of the legislatures! The judges, too, who were quite poorly
paid, might fare much better if remunerated by the crown, and the same
might be said of some other public officers. But if the British
government were to undertake to pay the salaries of its officials in
America, it must raise a revenue for the purpose; and it would naturally
raise such a revenue by levying taxes in America rather than in England.
People in England felt that they were already taxed as heavily as they
could bear, in order to pay the expenses of their own government. They
could not be expected to submit to further taxation for the sake of
paying the expenses of governing the American colonies. If further taxes
were to be laid for such a purpose, they must in fairness be laid upon
Americans, not upon Englishmen in the old country.

Such was the view which people in England would naturally be expected to
take, and such was the view which they generally did take. But there was
another side to the question which was very clearly seen by most people
in America. If