any serious hopes at least of its ever being
adopted. If it was adopted, however, Great
Britain would not only be immediately freed
from the whole annual expense of the peace
establishment of the colonies, but might settle
with them such a treaty of commerce as
would effectually secure to her a free trade,
more advantageous to the great body of the
people, though less so to the merchants, than
the monopoly which she at present enjoys.
By thus parting good friends, the natural affection
of the colonies to the mother country,
which, perhaps our late dissensions have well
nigh extinguished, would quickly revive. It
might dispose them not only to respect, for
whole centuries together, that treaty of commerce
which they had concluded with us at
parting, but to favour us in war as in
trade, and instead of turbulent and factious
subjects, to become our most faithful, affectionate,
and generous allies; and the same
sort of parental affection on the one side, and
filial respect on the other, might revive between
Great Britain and her colonies, which
used to subsist between those of ancient Greece
and the mother city from which they descended.
In order to render any province advantageous
to the empire to which it belongs, it ought
to afford, in time of peace, a revenue to the
public, sufficient not only for defraying the
whole expense of its own peace establishment,
but for contributing its proportion to the support
of the general government of the empire.
Every province necessarily contributes, more
or less, to increase the expense of that general
government. If any particular province,
therefore, does not contribute its share towards
defraying this expense, an unequal
burden must be thrown upon some other part
of the empire. The extraordinary revenue,
too, which every province affords to the public
in time of war, ought, from parity of reason,
to bear the same proportion to the extraordinary
revenue of the whole empire,
which its ordinary revenue does in time of
peace. That neither the ordinary nor extraordinary
revenue which Great Britain derives
from her colonies, bears this proportion
to the whole revenue of the British empire,
will readily be allowed. The monopoly, it
has been supposed, indeed, by increasing the
private revenue of the people of Great Britain,
and thereby enabling them to pay greater
taxes, compensates the deficiency of the
public revenue of the colonies. But this monopoly,
I have endeavoured to show, though
a very grievous tax upon the colonies, and
though it may increase the revenue of a particular
order of men in Great Britain, diminishes,
instead of increasing, that of the great
body of the people, and consequently diminishes,
instead of increasing, the ability of
the great body of the people to pay taxes.
The men, too, whose revenue the monopoly
increases, constitute a particular order, which
it is both absolutely impossible to tax beyond
the proportion of other orders, and extremely
impolitic even to attempt to tax beyond that
proportion, as I shall endeavour to show in
the following book. No particular resource,
therefore, can be drawn from this particular
order.
The colonies may be taxed either by their
own assemblies, or by the parliament of Great
Britain.
That the colony assemblies can never be so
managed as to levy upon their constituents a
public revenue, sufficient, not only to maintain
at all times their own civil and military
establishment, but to pay their proper proportion
of the expense of the general government
of the British empire, seems not very
probable. It was a long time before even
the parliament of England, though placed
immediately under the eye of the sovereign,
could be brought under such a system of
management, or could be rendered sufficiently
liberal in their grants for supporting the
civil and military establishments even of their
own country. It was only by distributing
among the particular members of parliament
a great part either of the offices, or of the
disposal of the offices arising from this civil
and military establishment, that such a system
of management could be established, even
with regard to the parliament of England.
But the distance of the colony assemblies
from the eye of the sovereign, their number,
their dispersed situation, and their various
constitutions, would render it very difficult
to manage them in the same manner, even
though the sovereign had the same means of
doing it; and those means are wanting. It
would be absolutely impossible to distribute
among all the leading members of all the colony
assemblies such a share, either of the
offices, or of the disposal of the offices, arising
from the general government of the British
empire, as to dispose them to give up
their popularity at home, and to tax their
constituents for the support of that general
government, of which almost the whole emoluments
were to be divided among people who
were strangers to them. The unavoidable
ignorance of administration, besides, concerning
the relative importance of the different
members of those different assemblies,
the offences which must frequently be given,
the blunders which must constantly be committed,
in attempting to manage them in
this manner, seems to render such a system
of management altogether impracticable with
regard to them.
The colony assemblies, besides, cannot be
supposed the proper judges of what is necessary
for the defence and support of the whole
empire. The care of that defence and support
is not entrusted to them. It is not their
business, and they have no regular means of
information concerning it. The assembly of