If the opinion and wish of the landed interest is a motive, and it is a fair and just one, for taking away a real and large revenue, the desire of the trading interest of England ought to be a just ground for taking away a tax of little better than speculation, which was to be collected by a war, which was to be kept up with the perpetual discontent of those who were to be affected by it, and the value of whose produce even after the ordinary charges of collection, was very uncertain;[87] after the extraordinary, the dearest purchased revenue that ever was made by any nation.

These were some of the motives drawn from principles of convenience for that repeal.  When the object came to be more narrowly inspected, every motive concurred.  These colonies were evidently founded in subservience to the commerce of Great Britain.  From this principle, the whole system of our laws concerning them became a system of restriction.  A double monopoly was established on the part of the parent country; 1.  A monopoly of their whole import, which is to be altogether from Great Britain; 2.  A monopoly of all their export, which is to be nowhere but to Great Britain, as far as it can serve any purpose here.  On the same idea it was contrived that they should send all their products to us raw, and in their first state; and that they should take everything from us in the last stage of manufacture.

Were ever a people under such circumstances, that is, a people who were to export raw, and to receive manufactured, and this, not a few luxurious articles, but all articles, even to those of the grossest, most vulgar, and necessary consumption, a people who were in the hands of a general monopolist, were ever such a people suspected of a possibility of becoming a just object of revenue?  All the ends of their foundation must be supposed utterly contradicted before they could become such an object.  Every trade law we have made must have been eluded, and become useless, before they could be in such a condition.

The partisans of the new system, who, on most occasions, take credit for full as much knowledge as they possess, think proper on this occasion to counterfeit an extraordinary degree of ignorance, and in consequence of it to assert, “that the balance (between the colonies and Great Britain) is unknown, and that no important conclusion can be drawn from premises so very uncertain."[88] Now to what can this ignorance be owing? were the navigation laws made, that this balance should be unknown? is it from the course of exchange that it is unknown, which all the world knows to be greatly and perpetually against the colonies? is it from the doubtful nature of the trade we carry on with the colonies? are not these schemists well apprised that the colonists, particularly those of the northern provinces, import more from Great Britain, ten times more, than they send in return to us? that a great part of their foreign balance