Thus ended this unparalleled transaction.  The author, I believe, will not claim any part of the glory of it:  he will leave it whole and entire to the authors of the measure.  The money was the voluntary, free gift of the Company; the rescinding bill was the act of legislature, to which they and we owe submission:  the author has nothing to do with the one or with the other.  However, he cannot avoid rubbing himself against this subject merely for the pleasure of stirring controversies, and gratifying a certain pruriency of taxation that seems to infect his blood.  It is merely to indulge himself in speculations of taxing, that he chooses to harangue on this subject.  For he takes credit for no greater sum than the public is already in possession of.  He does not hint that the Company means, or has ever shown any disposition, if managed with common prudence, to pay less in future; and he cannot doubt that the present ministry are as well inclined to drive them by their mock inquiries, and real rescinding bills, as he can possibly be with his taxes.  Besides, it is obvious, that as great a sum might have been drawn from that Company, without affecting property, or shaking the constitution, or endangering the principle of public credit, or running into his golden dreams of cockets on the Ganges, or visions of stamp-duties on Perwannas, Dusticks, Kistbundees, and Husbulhookums.  For once, I will disappoint him in this part of the dispute; and only in a very few words recommend to his consideration, how he is to get off the dangerous idea of taxing a public fund, if he levies those duties in England; and if he is to levy them in India, what provision he has made for a revenue establishment there; supposing that he undertakes this new scheme of finance independently of the Company, and against its inclinations.

So much for these revenues; which are nothing but his visions, or already the national possessions without any act of his.  It is easy to parade with a high talk of Parliamentary rights, of the universality of legislative powers, and of uniform taxation.  Men of sense, when new projects come before them, always think a discourse proving the mere right or mere power of acting in the manner proposed, to be no more than a very unpleasant way of misspending time.  They must see the object to be of proper magnitude to engage them; they must see the means of compassing it to be next to certain; the mischiefs not to counterbalance the profit; they will examine how a proposed imposition or regulation agrees with the opinion of those who are likely to be affected by it; they will not despise the consideration even of their habitudes and prejudices.  They wish to know how it accords or disagrees with the true spirit of prior establishments, whether of government or of finance; because they well know, that in the complicated economy of great kingdoms, and immense revenues, which in a length of time, and by a variety of accidents have coalesced into a sort