ust be done? America must be taxed. By no means, says
America; I am sufficiently taxed already; the many restrictions and
prohibitions, under which I labour in point of trade, are an ample tax.
You gain of me by way of balance about half a million a year; let this
be applied to the defence of America, and it will be found an abundant
provision for all her wants.

But why, good America, dost thou not also desire us to apply to the
defence of Spain and Turkey all that we gain by them annually? The
argument will hold equally good, and cannot be absurd in the latter case
without being so in the former.

Why likewise, do'st thou not throw into the opposite scale the many
millions, which we have already laid out for thy preservation, and see
whether they do not make all, that we have ever drawn from thee, mount
up and kick the beam.

Thou sayest indeed, that we receive in the general course of trade all
the specie, which thou can'st spare; and that it is cruel, nay,
impolitick, to exact more than thou can'st afford; as excessive imposts
always damp industry, create a despondency in merchants, and
incapacitate a state for furnishing its ordinary quota of taxes.

But let me tell thee that the money raised by the stamp act, being all
necessary for paying the troops within thy own territories, must center
wholly in thyself, and therefore cannot possibly drain thee of thy
bullion.

It is true, this act will hinder thee from sucking out the blood of thy
mother, and gorging thyself with the fruit of her labour. But at this
thou oughtest not to repine, as experience assures us that the most
certain method of rendering a body politick, as well as natural,
wholesome and long-lived, is to preserve a due equilibrium between its
different members; not to allow any part to rob another of its
nourishment, but, when there is any danger, any probability of such a
catastrophe, to make an immediate revulsion, for fear of an unnatural
superfetation, or of the absolute ruin and destruction of the whole.

All countries, unaccustomed to taxes, are at first violently
prepossessed against them, though the price, which they give for their
liberty: like an ox untamed to the yoke, they show, at first, a very
stubborn neck, but by degrees become docile, and yield a willing
obedience. Scotland was very much averse to the tax on malt; but she is
so far from being ruined by it, that it has only taught her to double
her industry, and to supply, by lab