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one branch of trade; since the course and connection of general business may be thereby disturbed to a degree, impossible to be foreseen or imagined. For it appears that the colonies, finding their humble petitions to have this duty repealed, were rejected and treated with contempt; and that the produce of the duty was applied to the rewarding, with undeserved salaries and pensions, every one of their enemies; the duty itself became more odious, and their resolution to share it more vigorous and obstinate. The Dutch, the Danes, and French, took this opportunity thus offered them by our imprudence; and began to smuggle their teas into the plantations. At first this was something difficult; but at length, as all business is improved by practice, it became easy. A coast fifteen hundred miles in length could not in all parts be guarded, even by the whole navy of England; especially where their restraining authority was by all the inhabitants deemed unconstitutional, the smuggling of course considered as patriotism. The needy wretches, too, who, with small salaries, were trusted to watch the ports day and night, in all weathers, found it easier and more profitable, not only to wink, but to sleep in their beds; the merchant's pay being more generous than the King's. Other India goods, also, which, by themselves, would not have made a smuggling voyage sufficiently profitable, accompanied tea to advantage; and it is feared the cheap French silks, formerly rejected as not to the taste of the colonies, may have found their way with the wares of India; and now established themselves in the popular use and opinion.

It is supposed that at least a million of Americans drink tea twice a day, which, at the first cost here, can scarce be reckoned at less than half a guinea a head per annum. This market, that in the five years which have run on since the act passed, would have paid 2,500,000 guineas for tea alone, into the coffers of the Company, we have wantonly lost to foreigners.-Meanwhile it is said the duties have so diminished, that the whole remittance of the last year amounted to no more than the pitiful sum of 851.' for the expense of some hundred thousands, in armed ships and soldiers, to support the officers. Hence the tea, and other India goods, which might have been sold in America, remain rotting in the Company's warehouses; while those of foreign ports are known

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"Eighty-five pounds, I am assured, my lords, is the whole equivalent we have received for all the hatred and mischief, and all the infinite losses this kingdom has suffered during that year, in her disputes with North America." See the Bishop of St. Asaph's speech, intended to have been spoken. 2 At this time they contained many millions of pounds of tea, including the usual stock on hand.

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to be cleared by the American demand. Hence, in some degree, the Company's inability to pay their bills; the sinking of their stock, by which millions of perty have been annihilated; the lowering of their dividend, whereby so many must be distressed; the loss to government of the stipulated 400,000l. a year,1 which must make a proportionable reduction in our savings towards the discharge of our enormous debt: and hence, in part, the severe blow suffered by credit in general,' to the ruin of many families; the stagnation of business in Spitalfields and at Manchester, through want of vent for their goods;-with other future evils, which, as they cannot, from the numerous and secret connections in general commerce, easily be foreseen, can hardly be avoided.

RULES FOR REDUCING A GREAT EMPIRE TO A SMALL ONE; PRESENTED TO A LATE MINISTER, WHEN HE ENTERED UPON HIS ADMINISTRATION.3

[Referred to Part II. of PRIVATE CorrespondeNCE, Letter to Governor

Franklin, Oct. 6, 1773.]

An ancient sage valued himself upon this, that though he could not fiddle, he knew how to make a great city of a little one. The science that I, a modern simpleton, am about to communicate, is the very reverse.

I address myself to all ministers who have the management of extensive dominions, which from their very greatness have become troublesome to govern-because the multiplicity of their affairs leaves no time for fiddling.

1. In the first place, gentlemen, you are to consider, that a great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges. Turn your attention

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Mr. Burke, in his speech in 1774, supposes that America might have given a vent for ten millions of pounds. This seems to have been the greater part of the whole quantity. B. V.

1 On account of a temporary compromise of certain disputes with government. B. V. Seen in certain memorable mercantile failures in the year 1772. B. V.

2

These rules first appeared in a London newspaper, about the beginning of the year 1774, and have several times since been introduced into our public prints.―The minister alluded to is supposed to be the Earl of Hilsborough.

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The causes and motions of seditions (says Lord Bacon) are, innovation in religion, taxes, alteration of laws and customs, breaking of privileges, general oppression, advancement of unworthy persons, strangers, dearths, disbanded soldiers, factions grown desperate, and whatsoever in offending people joineth and knitteth them in a common cause." B. V.

therefore first to your remotest provinces; that, as you get rid of them, the next may follow in order.

2. That the possibility of this separation may always exist, take special care the provinces are never incorporated with the mother-country; that they do not enjoy the same common rights, the same privileges in commerce; and that they are governed by severer laws, all of your enacting, without allowing them any share in the choice of the legislators. By carefully making and preserving such distinctions, you will (to keep to my simile of the cake) act like a wise gingerbread baker; who, to facilitate a division, cuts his dough half through in those places where, when baked, he would have it broken to pieces.

3. Those remote provinces have perhaps been acquired, purchased, or conquered, at the sole expense of the settlers or their ancestors; without the aid of the mother-country. If this should happen to increase her strength, by their growing numbers, ready to join in her wars; her commerce, by their growing demand for her manufactures; or her naval power, by greater employment for her ships and seamen, they may probably suppose some merit in this, and that it entitles them to some favor: you are therefore to forget it all, or resent it as if they had done you injury. If they happen to be zealous whigs, friends of liberty, nurtured in revolution principles; remember all that to their prejudice, and contrive to punish it: for such principles, after a revolution is thoroughly established, are of no more use; they are even odious and abominable.

4. However peaceably your colonies have submitted to your government, shown their affection to your interests, and patiently borne their grievances; you are to suppose them always inclined to revolt, and treat them accordingly. Quarter troops among them, who by their insolence may provoke the rising of mobs, and by their bullets and bayonets suppress them. By this means, like the husband who uses his wife ill from suspicion, you may in time convert your suspicions into realities.

5. Remote provinces must have governors and judges, to represent the royal person, and execute everywhere the delegated parts of his office and authority. You ministers know that much of the strength of government depends on the opinion of the people; and much of that opinion on the choice of rulers placed immediately over them. If you send them wise and good men for governors, who study the interest of the colonists, and advance their prosperity; they will think their king wise and good, and that he wishes the welfare of his subjects. If you send them learned and upright men for judges, they will think him a

lover of justice. This may attach your provinces more to his government. You are therefore to be careful who you recommend for those offices. If you can find prodigals who have ruined their fortunes, broken gamesters or stockjobbers; these may do well as governors; for they will probably be rapacious, and provoke the people by their extortions. Wrangling proctors and pettifogging lawyers too, are not amiss; for they will be for ever disputing and quarrelling with their little parliaments. If withal they should be ignorant, wrong-headed and insolent, so much the better. Attorneys' clerks and Newgate solicitors will do for chief-justices, especially if they hold their places during your pleasure:-and all will contribute to impress those ideas of your government that are proper for a people you would wish to renounce it.

6. To confirm these impressions, and strike them deeper, whenever the injured come to the capital with complaints of mal-administration, oppression, or injustice; punish such suitors with long delay, enormous expense, and a final judgment in favor of the oppressor. This will have an admirable effect every way. The trouble of future complaints will be prevented, and governors and judges will be encouraged to farther acts of oppression and injustice; and thence the people may become more disaffected, and at length desperate.

7. When such governors have crammed their coffers, and made themselves so odious to the people that they can no longer remain among them with safety to their persons, recal and reward them with pensions. You may make them baronets too, if that respectable order should not think fit to resent it. All will contribute to encourage new governors in the same practice; and make the supreme government detestable.

8. If, when you are engaged in war, your colonies should vie in liberal aids of men and money against the common enemy, upon your simple requisition, and give far beyond their abilities,-reflect that a penny taken from them by your power, is more honorable to you than a pound presented by their benevolence; despise therefore their voluntary grants, and resolve to harass them with novel taxes. They will probably complain to your parliament that they are taxed by a body in which they have no representative, and that this is contrary to common right. They will petition for redress. Let the parliament flout their claims, reject their petitions, refuse even to suffer the reading of them, and treat the petitioners with the utmost contempt. Nothing can have a better effect in producing the alienation proposed; for though many can forgive injuries, none ever forgave contempt.

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9. In laying these taxes, never regard the heavy burthens those remote people already undergo; in defending their own frontiers, supporting their own provincial government, making new roads, building bridges, churches, and other public edifices; which in old countries have been done to your hands, by your ancestors; but which occasion constant calls and demands on the purses of a new people. Forget the restraint you lay on their trade for your own benefit, and the advantage a monopoly of this trade gives your exacting merchants. Think nothing of the wealth those merchants and your manufacturers acquire by the colony commerce; their increased ability thereby to pay taxes at home; their accumulating in the price of their commodities, most of those taxes, and so levying them from their consuming customers: all this, and the employment and support of thousands of your poor by the colonists, you are entirely to forget. But remember to make your arbitrary tax more grievous to your provinces, by public declarations importing that your power of taxing them has no limits; so that when you take from them without their consent a shilling in the pound, you have a clear right to the other nineteen. This will probably weaken every idea of security in their property, and convince them, that under such a government they have nothing they can call their own; which can scarce fail of producing the happiest consequences!

10. Possibly indeed some of them might still comfort themselves, and say, "Though we have no property, we have yet something left that is valuable; we have constitutional liberty both of person and of conscience. This king, these lords, and these commons, who it seems are too remote from us to know us and feel for us, cannot take from us our Habeas Corpus right, or our right of trial by a jury of our neighbors: they cannot deprive us of the exercise of our religion, alter our ecclesiastical constitution, and compel us to be Papists, if they please, or Mahometans." To annihilate this comfort, begin by laws to perplex their commerce with infinite regulations, impossible to be remembered and observed: ordain seizures of their property for every failure; take away the trial of such property by jury, and give it to arbitrary judges of your own appointing, and of the lowest characters in the country, whose salaries and emoluments are to arise out of the duties or condemnations, and whose appointments are during pleasure. Then let there be a formal declaration of both houses, that opposition to your edicts is treason, and that persons suspected of treason in the provinces may, according to some obsolete law, be seized and sent to the metropolis of the empire for trial; and pass an act, that those there

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