Q. Supposing the stamp act continued and enforced, do you imagine that ill-humour will induce the Americans to give as much for worse manufactures of their own, and use them, preferably to better of ours?
A. Yes, I think so. People will pay as freely to gratify one passion as another, their resentment as their pride.
Q. Would the people at Boston discontinue their trade?
A. The merchants are a very small number compared with the body of the people, and must discontinue their trade, if nobody will buy their goods.
Q. What are the body of the people in the colonies?
A. They are farmers, husbandmen, or planters.
Q. Would they suffer the produce of their lands to rot?
A. No; but they would not raise so much. They would manufacture more, and plow less.
Q. Would they live without the administration of justice in civil matters, and suffer all the inconveniencies of such a situation for any considerable time, rather than take the stamps, supposing the stamps were protected by a sufficient force, where every one might have them?
A. I think the supposition impracticable, that the stamps should be so protected as that every one might have them. The act requires sub-distributors to be appointed in every county town, district, and village, and they would be necessary. But the principal distributors, who were to have had a considerable profit on the whole, have not thought it worth while to continue in the office; and I think it impossible to find sub-distributors fit to be trusted, who, for the trifling profit that must come to their share, would incur the odium, and run the hazard that would attend it; and if they could be found, I think it impracticable to protect the stamps in so many distant and remote places.