128 Benjamin Franklin [1768 
numbers of men, as were suitable to their respective 
circumstances. 
The colonies being accustomed to this method, 
have from time to time granted money to the crown, 
or raised troops for its service, in proportion to their 
abilities; and during all the last war beyond their 
abilities, so that considerable sums were returned 
them yearly by Parliament, as they had exceeded 
their proportion. 
Had this happy method of requisition been con- 
tinued (a method that left the King’s subjects in 
those remote countries the pleasure of showing their 
zeal and loyalty, and of imagining that they recom- 
mended themselves to their sovereign by the liber- 
ality of their voluntary grants), there is no doubt but 
all the money that could reasonably be expected to 
be raised from them in any manner might have been 
obtained, without the least heart-burning, offence, 
or breach of the harmony of affections and interests 
that so long subsisted between the two countries. 
It has been thought wisdom in a government exer- 
cising sovereignty over different kinds of people, to 
have some regard to prevailing and established opinions 
among the people to be governed, wherever such 
opinions might, in their effects, obstruct or promote 
public measures. If they tend to obstruct public 
service, they are to be changed, if possible, before we 
attempt to act against them; and they can only be 
changed by reason and persuasion. But if public 
business can be carried on without thwarting those 
opinions; if they can be, on the contrary, made sub-