Q. Are all parts of the colonies equally able to pay taxes?
A. No, certainly; the frontier parts, which have been ravaged by the enemy, are greatly disabled by that means; and, therefore, in such cases, are usually favoured in our tax-laws.
Q. Can we, at this distance, be competent judges of what favours are necessary?
A. The Parliament have supposed it, by claiming a right to make tax-laws for America; I think it impossible.
Q. Would the repeal of the stamp-act be any discouragement of your manufactures? Will the people that have begun to manufacture decline it?
A. Yes, I think they will; especially if, at the same time, the trade is open again, so that remittances can be easily made. I have known several instances that make it probable. In the war before last, tobacco being low, and making little remittance, the people of Virginia went generally into family manufactures. Afterward, when tobacco bore a better price, they returned to the use of British manufactures. So fulling-mills were very much disused in the last war in Pennsylvania, because bills were then plenty, and remittances could easily be made to Britain for English cloth and other goods.
Q. If the stamp-act should be repealed, would it induce the assemblies of America to acknowledge the rights of Parliament to tax them, and would they erase their resolutions?
A. No, never.
Q. Are there no means of obliging them to erase those resolutions?
A. None that I know of; they will never do it, unless compelled by force of arms.