1 Benjamin Franklin [* 766 
tion, object to the Parliament’s right of external 
taxation? 
A. They never have hitherto. Many arguments 
have been lately used here to show them that there is 
no difference, and that if you have no right to tax 
them internally, you have none to tax them exter- 
nally or make any other law to bind them. At 
present they do not reason so; but in time they may 
possibly be convinced by these arguments. 
Q. Do not the resolutions of the Pennsylvania as- 
sembly say “all taxes?” 
A. If they do, they mean only internal taxes. 
The same words have not always the same meaning 
here and in the colonies. By taxes they mean inter- 
nal taxes; by duties they mean customs. These are 
their ideas of the language. 
QO. Have you not seen the resolutions of the Mas- 
sachusetts Bay assembly? 
A. 1have. 
0. Do they not say that neither external nor in- 
ternal taxes can be laid on them by Parliament? 
A. 1 don’t know that they do; I believe not. 
Q. If the same colony should say neither tax nor 
imposition could be laid, does not that province hold 
the power of Parliament can lay neither? 
A. Isuppose that by the word émposition they do 
not intend to express duties to be laid on goods im- 
ported as regulations of commerce. 
(Q. What can the colonies mean, then, by imposi- 
tion as distinct from taxes? 
A. They may mean many things, as impressing 
of men or of carriages, quartering troops on private 
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