wonder, what would you desire? Every farthing raised by
the stamps, and a great deal more from Britain, is necessary for your
defence, and is to be applied solely to that purpose: what more would
you ask? Would you, preferably to all the parts of the British
dominions, be exempted from taxes?

Do you murmur because Britain is not taxed for you, or because you are
not allowed to lay the tax on what commodities you please? If the former
be the source of your discontent, you are very unnatural, and very
ungrateful: very unnatural, because you have no compassion, no
fellow-feeling for the distresses of your exhausted parent; very
ungrateful, because, after Britain has done so much for you, after she
has nourished and reared you up, from your sickly infancy to a vigorous
state of adolescence, or rather manhood, after she has conquered your
enemies, and placed you, if now you be not wanting to yourselves, beyond
the reach of French perfidy and fraud, you will not stretch forth your
hand to ease her, sinking under her burden, nor contribute to her
security, or more properly your own.

But if the latter gave rise to your disaffection, you are very ill
informed, very short sighted, in not perceiving, that a general tax, for
the general defence of all America, could not be raised by
_peace-meal_, in every province separately. How could the quota of every
colony be ascertained; and, if it could be ascertained, how were the
colonists to be persuaded to grant it? We remember with what difficulty
they were induced to advance money for their own defence in the late
war, when the enemy was at their gates, when they fought _pro aris &
focis_, for their religion and property. Some of them have not, to this
day, contributed a single shilling. Are we to imagine, that they will be
more forward, more lavish now, when the danger is distant, and perhaps
imperceptible to the dull senses of most of them, than when it stared
them in the face, and threatened immediate ruin. Whoever thinks so, must
be a very weak politician, and ought to be sent to catch flies with
Domitian.

Each assembly among you, forsooth, pretends to an equality with the
British parliament, and allows no laws binding but those, which are
imposed by itself. But mark the consequence. Every colony becomes at
once an independant kingdom, and the sovereign may become, in a short
time, absolute master, by playing the one against the other.

But were the sovereign always virtuou