The Colonies draw from you, as with
their life-blood, these ideas and principles. Their love of liberty, as with
you, fixed and attached on this specific point of taxing. Liberty might be safe,
or might be endangered, in twenty other particulars, without their being much
pleased or alarmed. Here they felt its pulse; and as they found that beat, they
thought themselves sick or sound. I do not say whether they were right or wrong
in applying your general arguments to their own case. It is not easy, indeed, to
make a monopoly of theorems and corollaries. The fact is, that they did thus
apply those general arguments; and your mode of governing them, whether through
lenity or indolence, through wisdom or mistake, confirmed them in the
imagination that they, as well as you, had an interest in these common
principles.
They were further confirmed in this pleasing error by the form of their
provincial legislative assemblies. Their governments are popular in an high
degree; some are merely popular; in all, the popular representative is the most
weighty; and this share of the people in their ordinary government never fails
to inspire them with lofty sentiments, and with a strong aversion from whatever
tends to deprive them of their chief importance.
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