British Constitution.  She had the substance.  She was taxed by her own representatives.  She chose most of her own magistrates.  She paid them all.  She had in effect the sole disposal of her own internal government.  This whole state of commercial servitude and civil liberty, taken together, is certainly not perfect freedom; but comparing it with the ordinary circumstances of human nature, it was an happy and a liberal condition.

I know, Sir, that great and not unsuccessful pains have been taken to inflame our minds by an outcry, in this House, and out of it, that in America the Act of Navigation neither is or never was obeyed.  But if you take the colonies through, I affirm that its authority never was disputed,—­that it was nowhere disputed for any length of time,—­and, on the whole, that it was well observed.  Wherever the act pressed hard, many individuals, indeed, evaded it.  This is nothing.  These scattered individuals never denied the law, and never obeyed it.  Just as it happens, whenever the laws of trade, whenever the laws of revenue, press hard upon the people in England:  in that case all your shores are full of contraband.  Your right to give a monopoly to the East India Company, your right to lay immense duties on French brandy, are not disputed in England.  You do not make this charge on any man.  But you know that there is not a creek from Pentland Frith to the Isle of Wight in which they do not smuggle immense quantities of teas, East India goods, and brandies.  I take it for granted that the authority of Governor Bernard in this point is indisputable.  Speaking of these laws, as they regarded that part of America now in so unhappy a condition, he says, “I believe they are nowhere better supported than in this province:  I do not pretend that it is entirely free from a breach of these laws, but that such a breach, if discovered, is justly punished.”  What more can you say of the obedience to any laws in any country?  An obedience to these laws formed the acknowledgment, instituted by yourselves, for your superiority, and was the payment you originally imposed for your protection.

Whether you were right or wrong in establishing the colonies on the principles of commercial monopoly, rather than on that of revenue, is at this day a problem of mere speculation.  You cannot have both by the same authority.  To join together the restraints of an universal internal and external monopoly with an universal internal and external taxation is an unnatural union,—­perfect, uncompensated slavery.  You have long since decided for yourself and them; and you and they have prospered exceedingly under that decision.