17 Benjamin Franklin [1768 
“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 shali 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 burdens that shall still be more grievous to us. 
Our people have been foolishly fond of their super- 
fluous modes and manufactures, to the impoverishing 
enumerated commodity, and therefore could be carried to Great 
Britain only. 
“‘The enumeration was obtained’ (says Mr. Gee, on Trade, p. 32,) 
‘by one Cole, a captain of a ship employed by a company then trading 
to Carolina; for several ships going from England thither, and pur- 
chasing rice for Portugal, prevented the aforesaid captain of a loading. 
Upon his coming home, he possessed one Mr. Lowndes, a member of 
Parliament (who was frequently employed to prepare bills), with an 
opinion, that carrying rice directly to Portugal was a prejudice to the 
trade of England, and privately got a clause into an act to make it an 
enumerated commodity; by which means he secured a freight to him- 
self. But the consequence proved a vast loss to the nation.’ 
“I find that this clause, ‘privately got into an act, for the benefit of 
Captain Cole, to the vast loss of the nation,’ is foisted into the 3d Anne, 
ch. sth, entitled, ‘An Act for granting to her Majesty a further subsidy 
on wines and merchandises imported’; with which it has no more 
connexion, than with 34th Edward I, 34th and 35th of Henry VIIL, 
or the 25th Charles II., which provide that no person shall be taxed 
but by himself or his representatives.” 
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