HKB
with each other, like two independent states, that are doing themselves justice, and acknowledge no person upon earth, who in a sovereign manner, can determine the disputes between them, &c.
If there is any thing in these quotations, which is applicable to the destruction of the tea, or any other branch of our subject, it is not my fault; I did not make it. Surely Grotius, Puffendorf, Barbeyrac, Locke, Sidney, and LeClerk, are writers, of sufficient weight to put in the scale against the mercenary scribblers in New York and Boston, who have the unexampled impudence and folly, to call these which are revolution principles in question, and to ground their arguments upon passive obedience as a corner stone. What an opinion must these writers have of the principles of their patrons, the lords Bute, Mansfield and North, when they hope to recommend themselves by reviving that stupid doctrine, which has been infamous so many years. Dr. Sachevaril himself tells us that his sermons were burnt by the hands of the common hangman, by the order of the king, lords and commons, in order to fix an eternal and indelible brand of infamy on that doctrine.
In the Gazette of January the 2d, Massachusettensis entertains you with an account of his own important self. This is a subject which he has very much at heart, but it is of no consequence to you or me, and therefore little need be said of it. If he had such a stand in the community, that he could have seen all the political manoeuvres, it is plain he must have shut his eyes, or he never could have mistaken so grossly, causes for effects, and effects for causes.
He undertakes to point out the principles and motives upon which the blockade act was made, which were according to him, the destruction of the East India Company's tea. He might have said more properly the ministerial tea; for such it was, and the company are no losers; they have received from the public treasury compensation for it.
Then we are amused with a long discourse about the nature of the British government, commerce, agriculture, arts, manufactures, regulations of trade, custom-house officers, which, as it has no relation to the subject, I shall pass over.
The case is shortly this. The East India Company, by their contract with government, in their charter and statute, are bound in consideration of their important profitable privileges to pay to the public treasury, a revenue, annually, of four hundred thousand pounds sterling, so long as they can hold up their dividends, at twelve per cent. and no longer.