Upon these principles was the act repealed, and it produced all the good effect which was expected from it:  quiet was restored; trade generally returned to its ancient channels; time and means were furnished for the better strengthening of government there, as well as for recovering, by judicious measures, the affections of the people, had that ministry continued, or had a ministry succeeded with dispositions to improve that opportunity.

Such an administration did not succeed.  Instead of profiting of that season of tranquillity, in the very next year they chose to return to measures of the very same nature with those which had been so solemnly condemned; though upon a smaller scale.  The effects have been correspondent, America is again in disorder; not indeed in the same degree as formerly, nor anything like it.  Such good effects have attended the repeal of the Stamp Act, that the colonies have actually paid the taxes; and they have sought their redress (upon however improper principles) not in their own violence, as formerly;[94] but in the experienced benignity of Parliament.  They are not easy indeed, nor ever will be so, under this author’s schemes of taxation; but we see no longer the same general fury and confusion, which attended their resistance to the Stamp Act.  The author may rail at the repeal, and those who proposed it, as he pleases.  Those honest men suffer all his obloquy with pleasure, in the midst of the quiet which they have been the means of giving to their country; and would think his praises for their perseverance in a pernicious scheme, a very bad compensation for the disturbance of our peace, and the ruin of our commerce.  Whether the return to the system of 1764, for raising a revenue in America, the discontents which have ensued in consequence of it, the general suspension of the assemblies in consequence of these discontents, the use of the military power, and the new and dangerous commissions which now hang over them, will produce equally good effects, is greatly to be doubted.  Never, I fear, will this nation and the colonies fall back upon their true centre of gravity, and natural point of repose, until the ideas of 1766 are resumed, and steadily pursued.

As to the regulations, a great subject of the author’s accusation, they are of two sorts; one of a mixed nature, of revenue and trade; the other simply relative to trade.  With regard to the former I shall observe, that, in all deliberations concerning America, the ideas of that administration were principally these; to take trade as the primary end, and revenue but as a very subordinate consideration.  Where trade was likely to suffer, they did not hesitate for an instant to prefer it to taxes, whose produce at best was contemptible, in comparison of the object which they might endanger.  The other of their principles was, to suit the revenue to the object.  Where the difficulty of collection, from the nature of the country, and of the revenue establishment, is so very