Added to these, the Americans remembered the act authorizing the most cruel insult that perhaps was ever offered by one people to another, that of _emptying our gaols_ into their settlements; Scotland too having within these two years obtained the privilege it had not before, of sending its rogues and villains also to the plantations--I say, reflecting on these things, they said one to another (their newspapers are full of such discourses) "These people are not content with making a monopoly of us (forbidding us to trade with any other country of Europe, and compelling us to buy every thing of them, though in many articles we could furnish ourselves ten, twenty, and even to fifty per cent cheaper elsewhere;) but now they have as good as declared they have a right to tax us ad libitum, internally and externally; and that our constitutions and liberties shall all be taken away, if we do not submit to that claim.
"They are not content with the high prices at which they sell us their goods, but have now begun to enhance those prices by new duties, and by the expensive apparatus of a new set of officers, appear to intend an augmentation and multiplication of those burthens, that shall still be more grievous to us. Our people have been foolishly fond of their superfluous modes and manufactures, to the impoverishing our own country, carrying off all our cash, and loading us with debt; they will not suffer us to restrain the luxury of our inhabitants, as they do that of their own, by laws: they can make laws to discourage or prohibit the importation of French superfluities: but though those of England are as ruinous to us as the French ones are to them, if we make a law of that kind, they immediately repeal it. Thus they get all our money from us by trade; and every profit we can any where make by our fisheries, our produce, or our commerce, centres finally with them;--but this does not satisfy.--It is time then to take care of ourselves by the best means in our power. Let us unite in solemn resolution and engagements with and to each other, that we will give these new officers as little trouble as possible, by not consuming the British manufactures on which they are to levy the duties. Let us agree to consume no more of their expensive gewgaws. Let us live frugally, and let us industriously manufacture what we can for ourselves: thus we shall be able honourably to discharge the debts we already owe them; and after that, we may be able to keep some money in our country, not only for the uses of our internal commerce, but for the service of our gracious sovereign, whenever he shall have occasion for it, and think proper to require it of us in the old constitutional manner.--For notwithstanding the reproaches thrown out against us in their public papers and pamphlets, notwithstanding we have been reviled in their senate as rebels and traitors, we are truly a loyal people. Scotland has had its rebellions, and England its plots against the present royal family; but _America is untainted with those crimes_; there is in it scarce a man, there is not a single native of our country, who is not firmly attached to his King by principle and by affection. But a new kind of loyalty seems to be required of us, a loyalty to parliament; a loyalty, that is to extend, it is said, to a surrender of all our properties, whenever a house of commons, in which there is not a single member of our chusing, shall think fit to grant them away without our consent, and to a patient suffering the loss of our privileges as Englishmen, if we cannot submit to make such surrender. We were separated too far from Britain by the ocean, but we were united to it by respect and love; so that we could at any time freely have spent our lives and little fortunes in its cause: but this unhappy new system of politics tends to dissolve those bands of union, and to sever us for ever."