you. We give vast bounties on the importation of your Flax, Hemp, Timber, and Naval Stores, to the detriment of those who raise them at home, to whom we give none. Our Merchants are restrained by prohibitions, or duties equivalent to prohibitions, from importing Rice, Indigo, and many other articles of the produce of your estates, in order to give you a monopoly of those articles, although they could bring them much cheaper from other Nations.

We give a bounty upon the importation of Indigo, and continue it upon exportation, by which accumulated favour, we first give you a premium to import, and then enable you, by the advantage of a double market, to raise the price upon us afterwards. Our West India Islands were restrained from taking Provisions or Timber from other countries, in order to secure a monopoly of those articles to you, at their expense, who complained not of restraints which they shared with their mother country for your good. Our own Merchants are subject to duties on the importation of foreign commodities; but it is you who draw them back; so that they pay a tax, and you receive a premium in this exchange of commodities. If we lately imposed a trifling tax upon you, to be spent among yourselves, we have taxed ourselves to an hundred times the value of it, to pay bounties to you. These bounties hurt our Revenue not only in the loss of the money paid out, but by stopping the importation from other Nations of the articles on which they are granted, and consequently, the taxes which would have been paid on those articles. In some instances, we hurt both our Revenue and our Trade to serve you. Thus, in the present reign, the duties were taken off American Whale Fins, by which those duties were lost to Government, and the interest of the British Whale Fishing sacrifice? to that of America. Nay, it is notorious, that Mr. Grenville intended to have taken the bounties off the British Whale Fishing altogether, in order to secure the superiority of the Whale Fishing to yon, although the British Whale Fishery produces three hundred thousand Pounds a year, and maintains three thousand Seamen, and a great number of Shipwrights and other artificers. The only thing that stopped the project, was the disorders which arose in America; for these led men naturally to reflect how imprudent it would be, to confer favours which were repaid with ingratitude, or perhaps looked upon as indignities. But we yield to those monopolies, restraints, taxes, and preferences, because we know they are necessary to fasten the vast chain of commerce which is thrown across the Atlantic between, America and England. Those restraints are not peculiar to you in dealing with us, nor to us in dealing with you. We impose them on ourselves in dealing with ourselves: for example, the whole landed interest, and that of every inhabitant who wears suit of clothes, is sacrificed to the mercantile and manufacturing interests in the regulations of Parliament concerning Wool; for the landlord cannot export the Wool of his Sheep, nor the inhabitant import the Woollen Cloths of other countries, though the one could sell his Wool to foreigners much dearer than to those have who have thus got a monopoly of it, and the other buy Cloth much cheaper from them than from his countrymen. In some of those regulations which affect ourselves only. Parliament sometimes commits mistakes; but they are remedied as soon as felt and pointed out. Perhaps in some of those regulations which affect you relatively to us, or us relatively to you, mistakes in commercial principles have also been committed; in some instances, you are perhaps restrained too much, and in others too lit-tie; but in the great act of state which we allude to these; mistakes can by commercial principles be corrected. For it is your and our solid security, that your Assemblies and our Parliaments cannot injure those whom they represent, without hurting themselves; nor injure you without hurting us; nor us without hurting you. It will not be difficult for Merchants on both sides to suggest favours which we ought not to refuse to you, and limitations which you ought not to refuse to us. And we pray for some great and liberal commercial arrangement, which may remain a monument future ages, that though there was once, there was but once, the appearance of a quarrel between Great Britain and her Colonies.

The next ground of your complaints, in point of consequence, is that the King and Parliament interfere in other objects of your internal legislation, new-model your Assemblies, and alter your Charters.

Here, again, it will be your own fault if, in adjusting the terms of the act of state, we have mentioned order shall not arise out of disorder, and a great judicial and legislative arrangement accompany a commercial one. In Virginia the Justices of the Peace and your Governour and Council are your only Judges. The former sit only once a month; from them there lies an appeal to the Governour and Council, formed into a Court of Judicature, which sits only in April and October, and only twenty days at each time, and which it is not unknown to us, is at this day in arrears above six years in its law business. It is no affront to either of these bodies of men to say that, however upright or able they may be, they can know little of law. In the infant state of your society this administration of justice was, perhaps, the best; but it is not applicable to a state of society in which the modifications of the actions of man-kind, and consequently of rights and delinquencies founded on these, are infinite in extent. This impotant state of law has given room not only to the present disorder in Virginia, but for their appearing greater than they are; for the Justices dare not officiate at all, even although they were willing; and the mob are turned the governours instead of the governed. It has been so in every country since this world began, in which dignity, independence, power, and even splendour has not been thrown around the seats of justice, to strike with awe the imaginations of the meanest, and with the necessity of obedience even the highest. A similar imperfection in the state of law and police pervades, we are afraid, many of your other Provinces. In few of them are your Judges for life, or supported by appointments which can give even rank to their officers; the inevitable consequence of which cannot fail to be that they must be the slaves either of those who appoint them, or of the mob, instead of the masters of both. These are the very rocks on which the Grecian were shipwrecked; for the spirits of freemen are high, and therefore mutinous, and are to be kept from disorder only by the laws. But where the administration of these is weak, there is no security for the property, person, or honour of any one. In lamenting this defect in the condition of your society, we plead the cause of human nature, not our own. You of inferiour orders need the protection of independent and. powerful Courts of Justice, to defend you against the high, and you of superiour stations need it to defend you against the low. Both of you best know how far it is safe and honourable to depend upon jurisconsults of the tar and feather order. You have tried the experiment and smarted by it. You will be told we mean to enslave you by law. We scorn to answer the insinuation. It is our pride as Britons to be slaves to the law, but free in every thing else. If your suspect us, appoint your own Judges, pay them your own salaries, or share the appointment and payment with the Crown. To us these points are immaterial, but let your Judges be for life, with incomes suited to their stations; and in their independence your own will be secured.

On this head it is your interest more than ours to correct all errours in the constitutions of your General Assemblies and of your Charters. Most of your Constitutions were formed by accident, not by fore-thought; some of your Charters hardly deserve the name. If we are in the wrong in thinking so, let them stand as they are; but if we are in the right, correct them like men. Common sense sense will show you, without our doing it, that they should be modelled by the rules of common sense. The best of Princes will contribute his part, and Parliament theirs, to comply with your, desires for every alteration which can lead to justice, order, and your own interest; and we the people of England, will applaud them when they do.

When you shall thus have obtained a regular administration of Law. Police, and Government amongst you, we shall not be afraid of your holding your estates and trade, and we the debts clue to us out of both, by the uncertain tenure of chance, or of democratical anarchy, which is worse than chance; and we shall have little occasion to interfere in your Internal, Judicial, or Legislative arrangements. The great rule, which you do not dispute, that your laws are not to be incompatible with the law of England, and that the Crown has, or ought to have, a negative