17 Essays 3
against by your Board of Trade, and repealed by the
crown); I say, while these circumstances continue,
and while there subsists the established method of
royal requisitions for raising money on them by their
own assemblies on every proper occasion; can it be
necessary or prudent to distress and vex them by
taxes laid here, in a Parliament wherein they have no
representative, and in a manner which they look upon
to be unconstitutional and subversive of their most
valuable rights? And are they to be thought unreasonable
 and ungrateful if they oppose such taxes?
Wherewith, they say, shall we show our loyalty to
our gracious King, if our money is to be given by
others, without asking our consent? And, if the
Parliament has a right thus to take from us a penny
in the pound, where is the line drawn that bounds
that right, and what shall hinder their calling, whenever
 they please, for the other nineteen shillings and
eleven pence? Have we then any thing that we can
call our own? It is more than probable, that bringing
 representatives from the colonies to sit and act
here as members of Parliament, thus uniting and
consolidating your dominions, would in a little time
remove these objections and difficulties, and make
the future government of the colonies easy; but, till
some such thing is done, I apprehend no taxes, laid
there by Parliament here, will ever be collected, but
such as must be stained with blood; and I am sure
the profit of such taxes will never answer the expense
of collecting them, and that the respect and affection
of the Americans to this country will in the struggle

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