This, if it be not ingenious, I am sure is safe.
[Footnote: 57]
There are indeed words expressive of grievance in this second Resolution, which
those who are resolved always to be in the right will deny to contain matter of
fact, as applied to the present case, although Parliament thought them true with
regard to the counties of Chester and Durham. They will deny that the Americans
were ever "touched and grieved" with the taxes. If they consider nothing in
taxes but their weight as pecuniary impositions, there might be some pretence
for this denial; but men may be sorely touched and deeply grieved in their
privileges, as well as in their purses. Men may lose little in property by the
act which takes away all their freedom. When a man is robbed of a trifle on the
highway, it is not the twopence lost that constitutes the capital outrage. This
is not confined to privileges. Even ancient indulgences, withdrawn without
offence on the part of those who enjoyed such favors, operate as grievances. But
were the Americans then not touched and grieved by the taxes, in some measure,
merely as taxes? If so, why were they almost all either wholly repealed, or
exceedingly reduced? Were they not touched and grieved even by the regulating
duties of the sixth of George the Second? Else, why were the duties first
reduced to one third in 1764, and afterwards to a third of that third in the
year 1766? Were they not touched and grieved by the Stamp Act? I shall say they
were, until that tax is revived.
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