is and must be remitted to London?  I shall be ready to admit that the colonies ought to be taxed to the revenues of this country, when I know that they are out of debt to its commerce.  This author will furnish some ground to his theories, and communicate a discovery to the public, if he can show this by any medium.  But he tells us that “their seas are covered with ships, and their rivers floating with commerce."[89] This is true.  But it is with our ships that these seas are covered; and their rivers float with British commerce.  The American merchants are our factors; all in reality, most even in name.  The Americans trade, navigate, cultivate, with English capitals; to their own advantage, to be sure; for without these capitals their ploughs would be stopped, and their ships wind-bound.  But he who furnishes the capital must, on the whole, be the person principally benefited; the person who works upon it profits on his part too; but he profits in a subordinate way, as our colonies do; that is, as the servant of a wise and indulgent master, and no otherwise.  We have all, except the peculium; without which even slaves will not labor.

If the author’s principles, which are the common notions, be right, that the price of our manufactures is so greatly enhanced by our taxes; then the Americans already pay in that way a share of our impositions.  He is not ashamed to assert, that “France and China may be said, on the same principle, to bear a part of our charges, for they consume our commodities."[90] Was ever such a method of reasoning heard of?  Do not the laws absolutely confine the colonies to buy from us, whether foreign nations sell cheaper or not?  On what other idea are all our prohibitions, regulations, guards, penalties, and forfeitures, framed?  To secure to us, not a commercial preference, which stands in need of no penalties to enforce it; it finds its own way; but to secure to us a trade, which is a creature of law and institution.  What has this to do with the principles of a foreign trade, which is under no monopoly, and in which we cannot raise the price of our goods, without hazarding the demand for them?  None but the authors of such measures could ever think of making use of such arguments.

Whoever goes about to reason on any part of the policy of this country with regard to America, upon the mere abstract principles of government, or even upon those of our own ancient constitution, will be often misled.  Those who resort for arguments to the most respectable authorities, ancient or modern, or rest upon the clearest maxims, drawn from the experience of other states and empires, will be liable to the greatest errors imaginable.  The object is wholly new in the world.  It is singular; it is grown up to this magnitude and importance within the memory of man; nothing in history is parallel to it.  All the reasonings about it, that are likely to be at all solid, must be drawn from its actual circumstances.  In this new system