12. Benjamin Franklin [1768 
the province of New York, which had been the most 
explicit in its refusal, all the powers of legislation, till 
it should have complied with that act. The news of 
which greatly alarmed the people everywhere in 
America, as (it had been said) the language of such 
an act seemed to them to be: Obey implicitly laws 
made by the Parliament of Great Britain to raise 
money on you without your consent, or you shall 
enjoy no rights or privileges at all. 
At the same time, a person lately in high office * 
projected the levying more money from America, by 
new duties on various articles of our own manufac- 
ture, as glass, paper, painters’ colors, &c., appointing 
a new board of customs, and sending over a set of 
commissioners, with large salaries, to be established 
at Boston, who were to have the care of collecting 
those duties; which were by the act expressly men- 
tioned to be intended for the payment of the salaries 
of governors, judges, and other officers of the crown 
in America; it being a pretty general opinion here, 
that those officers ought not to depend on the people 
there for any part of their support. 
It is not my intention to combat this opinion. But 
perhaps it may be some satisfaction to your readers, 
to know what ideas the Americans have on the sub- 
ject. They say then, as to governors, that they are 
not like princes, whose posterity have an inheritance 
in the government of a nation, and therefore an in- 
terest in its prosperity; they are generally strangers 
to the provinces they are sent to govern; have no 
estate, natural connexion or relation there, to give 
1 Mr. Charles Townshend. 
2