to enable them to dispose of such articles as we forced upon them, and for which, without some degree of liberty, they could not pay.  Hence all your specific and detailed enumerations; hence the innumerable checks and counterchecks; hence that infinite variety of paper chains by which you bind together this complicated system of the colonies.  This principle of commercial monopoly runs through no less than twenty-nine acts of Parliament, from the year 1660 to the unfortunate period of 1764.

In all those acts the system of commerce is established as that from whence alone you proposed to make the colonies contribute (I mean directly and by the operation of your superintending legislative power) to the strength of the empire.  I venture to say, that, during that whole period, a Parliamentary revenue from thence was never once in contemplation.  Accordingly, in all the number of laws passed with regard to the plantations, the words which distinguish revenue laws specifically as such were, I think, premeditately avoided.  I do not say, Sir, that a form of words alters the nature of the law, or abridges the power of the lawgiver.  It certainly does not.  How ever, titles and formal preambles are not always idle words; and the lawyers frequently argue from them.  I state these facts to show, not what was your right, but what has been your settled policy.  Our revenue laws have usually a title, purporting their being grants; and the words “give and grant” usually precede the enacting parts.  Although duties were imposed on America in acts of King Charles the Second, and in acts of King William, no one title of giving “an aid to his Majesty,” or any other of the usual titles to revenue acts, was to be found in any of them till 1764; nor were the words “give and grant” in any preamble until the sixth of George the Second.  However, the title of this act of George the Second, notwithstanding the words of donation, considers it merely as a regulation of trade; “An act for the better securing of the trade of his Majesty’s sugar colonies in America.”  This act was made on a compromise of all, and at the express desire of a part, of the colonies themselves.  It was therefore in some measure with their consent; and having a title directly purporting only a commercial regulation, and being in truth nothing more, the words were passed by, at a time when no jealousy was entertained, and things were little scrutinized.  Even Governor Bernard, in his second printed letter, dated in 1763, gives it as his opinion, that “it was an act of prohibition, not of revenue.”  This is certainly true, that no act avowedly for the purpose of revenue, and with the ordinary title and recital taken together, is found in the statute-book until the year I have mentioned:  that is, the year 1764.  All before this period stood on commercial regulation and restraint.  The scheme of a colony revenue by British authority appeared, therefore, to