In truth the author has little studied this business; or he might have known, that some of the most considerable provinces of America, such, for instance, as Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay, have not in each of them two men who can afford, at a distance from their estates, to spend a thousand pounds a year.  How can these provinces be represented at Westminster?  If their province pays them, they are American agents, with salaries, and not independent members of Parliament.  It is true, that formerly in England members had salaries from their constituents; but they all had salaries, and were all, in this way, upon a par.  If these American representatives have no salaries, then they must add to the list of our pensioners and dependents at court, or they must starve.  There is no alternative.

Enough of this visionary union; in which much extravagance appears without any fancy, and the judgment is shocked without anything to refresh the imagination.  It looks as if the author had dropped down from the moon, without any knowledge of the general nature of this globe, of the general nature of its inhabitants, without the least acquaintance with the affairs of this country.  Governor Pownall has handled the same subject.  To do him justice, he treats it upon far more rational principles of speculation; and much more like a man of business.  He thinks (erroneously, I conceive; but he does think) that our legislative rights are incomplete without such a representation.  It is no wonder, therefore, that he endeavors by every means to obtain it.  Not like our author, who is always on velvet, he is aware of some difficulties; and he proposes some solutions.  But nature is too hard for both these authors; and America is, and ever will be, without actual representation in the House of Commons; nor will any minister be wild enough even to propose such a representation in Parliament; however he may choose to throw out that project, together with others equally far from his real opinions, and remote from his designs, merely to fall in with the different views, and captivate the affections, of different sorts of men.

Whether these projects arise from the author’s real political principles, or are only brought out in subservience to his political views, they compose the whole of anything that is like precise and definite, which the author has given us to expect from that administration which is so much the subject of his praises and prayers.  As to his general propositions, that “there is a deal of difference between impossibilities and great difficulties”; that “a great scheme cannot be carried unless made the business of successive administrations”; that “virtuous and able men are the fittest to serve their country”; all this I look on as no more than so much rubble to fill up the spaces between the regular masonry.  Pretty much in the same light I cannot forbear considering his detached observations on commerce; such as, that “the system for colony regulations would be very simple,