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 clew 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 burden those whom upon every principle you ought to
exonerate.
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