id="Page_12" class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="12"/>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 labour, what she was obliged to give up to the necessities of the state. Can America be said to be poorer, to be more scanty of money than Scotland? No. What then follows? America must be taxed.

It is in vain to pretend that the increase of the American territories, and of the commodities, which they furnish to the British markets, has reduced the price of any article; or placed the ancient colonists in a worse situation than before the war; and consequently rendered them incapable of bearing any additional burden.

Europe is still the same as in seventeen hundred and fifty-five, its inhabitants are as numerous; therefore as Britons, with regard to it and America, are, for the most part, but factors, the demand for American goods must be as great, if not greater, than formerly; their value cannot be diminished, nor can the Americans be worse situated than at the commencement of the war.

It is equally idle to pretend that a tax on America must prove prejudicial to Britain.

A tax for defending it must, as hinted above, be levied somewhere; either in Britain or its colonies: and nothing is more manifest than that those, on whom the tax is laid, or who advance the money, must be the only sufferers, as in all dealings between two, what is taken from the one is added to the other; it always requires some time to balance accounts, by raising the price of commodities in proportion to the tax, and to reduce every thing by the course of circulation to a level. What America loses, Britain gains; the expences of the former are a saving to the latter. All the world is sensible of the justness of this maxim, the clamours of the colonists are a striking proof of it. If they were not convinced of this truth, why grumble at the impost? If they did not know that a tax upon them must prove comparatively detrimental to their country, and serviceable to Britain, why exclaim against it? How absurd then, is it to advance that as an argument for the abolition of the tax, which was the principal one for opposing it?