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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