If all the Colonies do not appear at the outcry, what is the condition of those
assemblies who offer, by themselves or their agents, to tax themselves up to
your ideas of their proportion? The refractory Colonies who refuse all
composition will remain taxed only to your old impositions, which, however
grievous in principle, are trifling as to production. The obedient Colonies in
this scheme are heavily taxed, the refractory remain unburdened. What will you
do? Will you lay new and heavier taxes by Parliament on the disobedient? Pray
consider in what way you can do it. You are perfectly convinced that, in the way
of taxing, you can do nothing but at the ports. Now suppose it is Virginia that
refuses to appear at your auction, while Maryland and North Carolina bid
handsomely for their ransom, and are taxed to your quota, how will you put these
Colonies on a par? Will you tax the tobacco of Virginia? If you do, you give its
death-wound to your English revenue at home, and to one of the very greatest
articles of your own foreign trade. If you tax the import of that rebellious
Colony, what do you tax but your own manufactures, or the goods of some other
obedient and already well-taxed Colony? Who has said one word on this labyrinth
of detail, which bewilders you more and more as you enter into it? Who has
presented, who can present you with a clue to lead you out of it? I think, Sir,
it is impossible that you should not recollect that the Colony bounds are so
implicated in one another,--you know it by your other experiments in the bill
for prohibiting the New England fishery,--that you can lay no possible
restraints on almost any of them which may not be presently eluded, if you do
not confound the innocent with the guilty, and burthen those whom, upon every
principle, you ought to exonerate.
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