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against by your Board of Trade, and repealed by the 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 un- 
reasonable 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, when- 
ever 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 bring- 
ing 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 
Luo! 7