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that necessity we thought confined to the regulation of trade, and to such matters as concerned all the colonies together. We never allowed them any authority in our internal concerns.
This writer says, acts of parliament for regulating our internal polity were familiar. This I deny. So far otherwise, that the hatter's act was never regarded; the act to destroy the Land Bank Scheme raised a greater ferment in this province, than the stamp-act did, which was appeased only by passing province laws directly in opposition to it. The act against slitting mills, and tilt hammers, never was executed here. As to the postage, it was so useful a regulation, so few persons paid it, and they found such a benefit by it, that little opposition was made to it. Yet every man who thought about it called it an usurpation. Duties for regulating trade we paid, because we thought it just and necessary that they should regulate the trade which their power protected. As for duties for a revenue, none were ever laid by parliament for that purpose until 1764, when, and ever since, its authority to do it has been constantly denied. Nor is this complaisant writer near the truth, when he says, "We know that in all those acts of government, the good of the whole had been consulted." On the contrary, we know that the private interest of provincial governors and West India planters, had been consulted in the duties on foreign molasses, &c. and the private interest of a few Portugal merchants, in obliging us to touch at Falmouth with fruit, &c. in opposition to the good of the whole, and in many other instances.
The resolves of the house of Burgesses of Virginia, upon the stamp act, did great honor to that province, and to the eminent patriot Patrick Henry, Esq. who composed them. But these resolves made no alteration in the opinion of the Colonies, concerning the right of parliament to make that act. They expressed the universal opinion of the continent at that time, and the alacrity with which every other Colony, and the congress at New York, adopted the same sentiment in similar resolves, proves the entire union of the Colonies in it, and their universal determination to avow and support it.
What follows here, that it became so popular that his life was in danger, who suggested the contrary, and that the press was open to one side only, are direct misrepresentations and wicked calumnies.
Then we are told, by this sincere writer, that when we obtained a partial repeal of the statute imposing duties on glass, paper, and teas, this was the lucky moment, when to have closed the dispute. What? With a Board of commissioners remaining the sole end of whose creation was to form and conduct a revenue--with an act of parliament remaining, the professed design of which expressed in the preamble, was to raise a revenue, and appropriate it to the payment of governors' and judges' salaries, the duty remaining too upon an article, which must raise a large sum, the consumption of which would constantly increase? Was this a time to retreat? Let me ask this sincere writer a simple question. Does he seriously believe that the designs of imposing other taxes, and of new modelling our governments, would have been bid aside, by the ministry or by the servants of the crown here? Does he think that Mr. Bernard, Mr. Hutchinson, the commissioners and others, would have been content then to have desisted? If he really thinks so, he knows little of the human heart, and still less of those gentlemen's hearts. It was at this very time that the salary was given to the governor, and an order soliciting for that to the judges.