favors, operate as grievances.  But were the Americans, then, not touched and grieved by the taxes, in some measure, merely as taxes?  If so, why were they almost all either wholly repealed or exceedingly reduced?  Were they not touched and grieved even by the regulating duties of the sixth of George the Second?  Else why were the duties first reduced to one third in 1764, and afterwards to a third of that third in the year 1766?  Were they not touched and grieved by the Stamp Act?  I shall say they were, until that tax is revived.  Were they not touched and grieved by the duties of 1767, which were likewise repealed, and which Lord Hillsborough tells you (for the ministry) were laid contrary to the true principle of commerce?  Is not the assurance given by that noble person to the colonies of a resolution to lay no more taxes on them an admission that taxes would touch and grieve them?  Is not the resolution of the noble lord in the blue riband, now standing on your journals, the strongest of all proofs that Parliamentary subsidies really touched and grieved them?  Else why all these changes, modifications, repeals, assurances, and resolutions?

The next proposition is,—­“That, from the distance of the said colonies, and from other circumstances, no method hath hitherto been devised for procuring a representation in Parliament for the said colonies.”

This is an assertion of a fact.  I go no further on the paper; though, in my private judgment, an useful representation is impossible; I am sure it is not desired by them, nor ought it, perhaps, by us:  but I abstain from opinions.

The fourth resolution is,—­“That each of the said colonies hath within itself a body, chosen, in part or in the whole, by the freemen, freeholders, or other free inhabitants thereof, commonly called the General Assembly, or General Court, with powers legally to raise, levy, and assess, according to the several usages of such colonies, duties and taxes towards defraying all sorts of public services.”

This competence in the colony assemblies is certain.  It is proved by the whole tenor of their acts of supply in all the assemblies, in which the constant style of granting is, “An aid to his Majesty”; and acts granting to the crown have regularly, for near a century, passed the public offices without dispute.  Those who have been pleased paradoxically to deny this right, holding that none but the British Parliament can grant to the crown, are wished to look to what is done, not only in the colonies, but in Ireland, in one uniform, unbroken tenor, every session.  Sir, I am surprised that this doctrine should come from Rome of the law servants of the crown.  I say, that, if the crown could be responsible, his Majesty,—­but certainly the ministers, and even these law officers themselves, through whose hands the acts pass biennially in Ireland, or annually in the colonies, are in an habitual course of committing impeachable offences.  What habitual offenders have been all Presidents of the Council, all Secretaries of State, all First Lords of Trade, all Attorneys and all Solicitors General!  However, they are safe, as no one impeaches them; and there is no ground of charge against them, except in their own unfounded theories.