of his own State to assure the ministry that, as they always had done, so they should always think it their duty to grant such aids to the crown as were suitable to their circumstances and abilities, whenever called upon for the purpose in a constitutional manner; and that instruction he had communicated to the ministry.  But the Colonies objected to Parliament laying on them such a tax as that imposed by the Stamp Act.  Some duties, they admitted, the Parliament had a right to impose, but he drew a distinction between “those duties which were meant to regulate commerce and internal taxes.”  The authority of Parliament to regulate commerce had never been disputed by the Colonists.  The sea belonged to Britain.  She maintained by her fleets the safety of navigation on it; she kept it clear of pirates; she might, therefore, have a natural and equitable right to some toll or duty, on merchandise carried through that part of her dominions, toward defraying the expenses she was at in ships to maintain the safety of that carriage.  But the case of imposition of internal taxes was wholly different from this.  The Colonists held that, by the charters which at different times had been granted to the different States, they were entitled to all the privileges and liberties of Englishmen.  They found in the Great Charters, and the Petition and Declarations of Right, that one of the privileges of English subjects is that they are not to be taxed but by their common consent; and these rights and privileges had been confirmed by the charters which at different times had been granted to the different States.  In reply to a question put to him, he allowed that in the Pennsylvania charter there was a clause by which the King granted that he would levy no taxes on the inhabitants unless it were with the consent of the Colonial Assembly, or by an act of Parliament; words which certainly seemed to reserve a right of taxation to the British Parliament; but he also demonstrated that, in point of fact, the latter part of the clause had never been acted on, and the Colonists had, therefore, relied on it, from the first settlement of the province, that the Parliament never would nor could, by the color of that clause in the charter, assume a right of taxing them till it had qualified itself to exercise such right by admitting representatives from the people to be taxed.  And, in addition to objections on principle, he urged some that he regarded as of great force as to the working of this particular tax imposed by the Stamp Act.  It was not an equal tax, as the greater part of the revenue derived from it must arise from lawsuits for the recovery of debts, and be paid by the lower sort of people; it was a heavy tax on the poor, and a tax on them for being poor.  In the back settlements, where the population was very thin, the inhabitants would often be unable to get stamps without taking a long journey for the purpose.  The scarcity of specie, too, in the country would cause