Has he well considered what an immense operation any change in our constitution is? how many discussions, parties, and passions, it will necessarily excite; and when you open it to inquiry in one part, where the inquiry will stop?  Experience shows us, that no time can be fit for such changes but a time of general confusion; when good men, finding everything already broken up, think it right to take advantage of the opportunity of such derangement in favor of an useful alteration.  Perhaps a time of the greatest security and tranquillity both at home and abroad may likewise be fit; but will the author affirm this to be just such a time?  Transferring an idea of military to civil prudence, he ought to know how dangerous it is to make an alteration of your disposition in the face of an enemy.

Now comes his American representation.  Here too, as usual, he takes no notice of any difficulty, nor says anything to obviate those objections that must naturally arise in the minds of his readers.  He throws you his politics as he does his revenue; do you make something of them if you can.  Is not the reader a little astonished at the proposal of an American representation from that quarter?  It is proposed merely as a project[85] of speculative improvement; not from the necessity in the case, not to add anything to the authority of Parliament, but that we may afford a greater attention to the concerns of the Americans, and give them a better opportunity of stating their grievances, and of obtaining redress.  I am glad to find the author has at length discovered that we have not given a sufficient attention to their concerns, or a proper redress to their grievances.  His great friend would once have been exceedingly displeased with any person, who should tell him, that he did not attend sufficiently to those concerns.  He thought he did so, when he regulated the colonies over and over again:  he thought he did so when he formed two general systems of revenue; one of port-duties, and the other of internal taxation.  These systems supposed, or ought to suppose, the greatest attention to and the most detailed information of, all their affairs.  However, by contending for the American representation, he seems at last driven virtually to admit, that great caution ought to be used in the exercise of all our legislative rights over an object so remote from our eye, and so little connected with our immediate feelings; that in prudence we ought not to be quite so ready with our taxes, until we can secure the desired representation in Parliament.  Perhaps it may be some time before this hopeful scheme can be brought to perfect maturity, although the author seems to be in no wise aware of any obstructions that lie in the way of it.  He talks of his union, just as he does of his taxes and his savings, with as much sang froid and ease as if his wish and the enjoyment were exactly the same thing.  He appears not to have troubled his head with the infinite difficulty of settling that representation on a fair balance of wealth and numbers throughout the several provinces of America and the West Indies, under such an infinite variety of circumstances.  It costs him nothing to fight with nature, and to conquer the order of Providence, which manifestly opposes itself to the possibility of such a Parliamentary union.