No full text available for this image
	        

12. Benjamin Franklin [1768 the province of New York, which had been the most explicit in its refusal, all the powers of legislation, till it should have complied with that act. The news of which greatly alarmed the people everywhere in America, as (it had been said) the language of such an act seemed to them to be: Obey implicitly laws made by the Parliament of Great Britain to raise money on you without your consent, or you shall enjoy no rights or privileges at all. At the same time, a person lately in high office * projected the levying more money from America, by new duties on various articles of our own manufac- ture, as glass, paper, painters’ colors, &c., appointing a new board of customs, and sending over a set of commissioners, with large salaries, to be established at Boston, who were to have the care of collecting those duties; which were by the act expressly men- tioned to be intended for the payment of the salaries of governors, judges, and other officers of the crown in America; it being a pretty general opinion here, that those officers ought not to depend on the people there for any part of their support. It is not my intention to combat this opinion. But perhaps it may be some satisfaction to your readers, to know what ideas the Americans have on the sub- ject. They say then, as to governors, that they are not like princes, whose posterity have an inheritance in the government of a nation, and therefore an in- terest in its prosperity; they are generally strangers to the provinces they are sent to govern; have no estate, natural connexion or relation there, to give 1 Mr. Charles Townshend. 2