You, Sir, may flatter yourself
you shall sit a state auctioneer, with your hammer in your hand, and knock down
to each Colony as it bids. But to settle, on the plan laid down by the noble
lord, the true proportional payment for four or five and twenty governments
according to the absolute and the relative wealth of each, and according to the
British proportion of wealth and burthen, is a wild and chimerical notion. This
new taxation must therefore come in by the back door of the Constitution. Each
quota must be brought to this House ready formed; you can neither add nor alter.
You must register it. You can do nothing further, for on what grounds can you
deliberate either before or after the proposition? You cannot hear the counsel
for all these provinces, quarrelling each on its own quantity of payment, and
its proportion to others If you should attempt it, the Committee of Provincial
Ways and Means, or by whatever other name it will delight to be called, must
swallow up all the time of Parliament.
Thirdly, it does not give satisfaction to the complaint of the Colonies.
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