A. I think they may very well do without them.
Q. Is it their interest not to take them?
A. The goods they take from Britain are either necessaries, mere conveniences, or superfluities. The first, as cloth, &c. with a little industry they can make at home; the second they can do without, till they are able to provide them among themselves; and the last, which are much the greatest part, they will strike off immediately. They are mere articles of fashion, purchased and consumed, because the fashion in a respected country; but will now be detested and rejected. The people have already struck off, by general agreement, the use of all goods fashionable in mournings, and many thousand pounds worth are sent back as unsaleable.
Q. Is it their interest to make cloth at home?
A. I think they may at present get it cheaper from Britain, I mean of the same fineness and neatness of workmanship: but when one considers other circumstances, the restraints on their trade, and the difficulty of making remittances, it is their interest to make every thing.
Q. Suppose an act of internal regulations connected with a tax, how would they receive it?
A. I think it would be objected to.
Q. Then no regulation with a tax would be submitted to?
A. Their opinion is, that when aids to the crown are wanted, they are to be asked of the several assemblies, according to the old established usage; who will, as they always have done, grant them freely. And that their money ought not to be given away, without their consent, by persons at a distance, unacquainted with their circumstances and abilities. The granting aids to the crown is the only means they have of recommending themselves to their sovereign; and they think it extremely hard and unjust, that a body of men, in which they have no representatives, should make a merit to itself of giving and granting what is not its own, but theirs; and deprive them of a right they esteem of the utmost value and importance, as it is the security of all their other rights.
Q. But is not the post-office, which they have long received, a tax as well as a regulation?