the work of a singly person, Mr. Townshend, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, who, in matters of trade and finance, is well known to have consulted more with Merchants and Financiers than with Ministers, because he thought every man knew his own business best; and in whose great talents Parliament put too implicit a confidence in passing the Act.

America again clamoured, and then for the first time objected to the power of external taxation in Parliament. But she went further, and started many new pretensions which we wish not to repeat, and among others the extravagant doctrines that she was not bound by the Navigation Laws, and that she was even independent of Parliament altogether. These clamours were well founded in part; for all the taxes in the Statute, except that upon Tea, had been laid upon British manufactures, which consequently had already paid many taxes in Britain, so that the Statute loaded you both with your tax and ours. Administration and Parliament, therefore, listened with sense and justice to your complaints, and redressed them by repealing those parts of the Act which had imposed that double tax. But it was improper, in point of common prudence, to repeal that part of it which imposed a trifling tax upon Tea; because, by asking that repeal, at the very time when you were not asking the repeal of the many Port Duties imposed by Mr. Grenville's first Act of the fourth of the King, you shewed that you insisted on this trifle as a matter of mere pride, as a mark of your exaltation and of our humiliation, which it was impossible for England to submit to, while the great questions of independence and supremacy were yet unadjusted, however compatible they might seem, when with temper and reason they should come to 'be discussed: If Air. Townshend's Act was a link in the System of this reign to enslave you, the repeal of it affords another instance that it was not very systematically pursued.

Your Congress complains of a Statute, which, during the Duke of Grafton's Administration, suspended the Assembly of New-York, as a continuation of the system of tyranny. We will appeal to your candour against their want of it. Parliament had passed a Statute which made necessary regulations for the Quarters and Provisions of the King's Soldiers in America; regulations to which we, who are as fond of liberty as you are, pay obedience in Britain, because we think that men who submit to lose part of their own freedom for a time, in order to insure it to their countrymen forever, are entitled to all the sensibility which we can show to them; but these regulations were entirely infringed by an Act of the Assembly of New-York. If that Assembly took upon itself to repeal one Act of Parliament, they might have repealed many others; and the subject who obeyed the Legislature of the one country, must have been a Rebel in the eyes of the other. These consequences led directly, unavoidably, and rapidly to a civil war between the inhabitants of New-York and the people of England. There was no way to stop the course of such an Assembly, but to suspend its movements altogether; until it should agree to remedy the mischiefs it had done. The effect answered the design. The Assembly recovered the good humour of Englishmen to Englishmen, and the people their Assembly. Can a law which conferred the common rights of humanity upon the companions of your hazards and glories, who conquered with you and for you, be called a violation of the rights of human nature against you? Can another, which prevented a civil war, be reproached with want of mercy?

When men's minds are irritated, every thing is the source of discontent. Many of the traders in America had long complained of the distance of the London Custom House, which, upon disputes with Revenue Officers, made applications for redress expensive and tedious. Smuggling had gone beyond all bounds in America, from the want of a Board of Customs to keep a strict eye over the conduct of their Officers. A Board of Customs was, upon these accounts, by Act of Parliament, settled at Boston, in the seventh year of the King. But that establishment, which the fair trader had long desired, and the smuggler alone had reason to dread, has been converted, in the representations of your Congress, into a badge of your slavery. As long as we did not establish a Board of Customs in America, we were blamed for neglecting you. When we send it, we are charged with insulting you. If Boards of Revenue be badges of slavery, no Nation that has wealth is free. Should we recall the present Board of Customs, your posterity might tell our posterity that a Board of Customs over the trade of America, at three thousand miles distance from her, was one of the most ignominious badges of her slavery. It is certainly for the interest of the supremacy of England: to place the residence of all the controlling powers in England, in order to keep her Colonies, even by the forms of office, in remembrance of their dependence; and it is not difficult in the Royal Governments, to lodge in the Governour of every Province, with a few of his Council, all the powers of a Board of Customs over the frauds of trade, and all its terrours over the frauds of Officers. And therefore pardon us if we suspect, should any great commercial arrangement ever be the subject of amicable discussion between you and us, that the inspection of the trade of America committed to a Custom House residing in England, is one of the last favours which the fair trader in America would apply for.

But in describing the powers of this Board of Customs, your Congress ought not to have said in their Addresses to their Sovereign, and you, that "the Commissioners of it are empowered to break open and enter houses without the authority of any Civil Magistrate, founded on legal information." We are certain that the Board of Customs in America has no such power by law. We cannot think that their superiours here would direct them to assume it against law. We do not believe they exercise it; but if we are mistaken, point out the offenders. The vengeance of an injured publick will overtake them. But, till you point out these, lay not the offence obliquely upon others who you know must be guiltless.

Your Congress complains of the Statutes passed during former Administrations of the present reign, to regulate the Admiralty and Vice-Admiralty Courts of America, which, they say, extend the jurisdiction of those Courts beyond their ancient limits; deprive you of a Trial by Jury; authorize the Judge's certificate to indemnify the prosecutor in revenue questions from damages; require oppressive security from the claimant of a seizure before he shall be allowed to defend his property, and provide salaries and fees for the Judges from the effects to be condemned by themselves.

This bundle is large, and must be separated. If these be intolerable hardships, your ancestors shared in some, and we share in more of them, without complaining.

Before the date of those Statutes, each, or almost each Province had its own Admiralty Court; but these had so little dignity, and from their local connections were so much liable to be swayed either by the officer or the smuggler, that they were the continual subject of complaint to both. The Americans complained, too, of the circumstance that the salaries of the Judges of those Courts arose from the fines and forfeitures imposed by themselves. Lastly, they complained that a Court of Appeal in England was too distant from America. To relieve their complaints, four great Vice-Admiralty Courts were, in consequence of the Statutes in question, erected in different stations in America; Judges were appointed to them of known abilities and character. Large salaries were settled upon the Judges, to make them independent. These salaries were paid not from the fines and forfeitures, but in the common way; and to save the trouble and expense of appealing to England, a power of receiving appeals was lodged in these Courts. Those are the offences which, in the institution of the new Courts, have been committed. Your Congress complains, then, of the favours granted to the entreaties of their own countrymen. If you think that these Courts are too distant from each other, they can, by the erection of more, be caused to approach. The impropriety in the original Provincial Admiralty Courts, of the Judges receiving their salaries from the fines, can be removed.

With regard again to the mode of Trial without a Jury in those Courts, in Revenue questions, it has subsisted in America since the Statute in the twenty-second and twenty-third of Charles the Second, which established it. Your ancestors submitted to it, because they favoured the fair trader, and did not desire to see an opening given for the trial of a smuggling cargo, by a Jury of smugglers. With