I shall leave him to show how a nation can claim an authority which they have not by right, and support it by fire and sword, and yet be generous and just. The nation I believe is not vindictive, but the minister has discovered himself to be so, in a degree that would disgrace a warrior of a savage tribe.
The wily Massachusettensis thinks our present calamity is to be attributed to the bad policy of a popular party, whose measures, whatever their intentions were, have been opposite to their profession, the public good. The present calamity seems to be nothing more nor less, than reviving the plans of Mr. Bernard and the junto, and Mr. Grenville and his friends in 1764. Surely this party, are and have been rather unpopular. The popular party did not write Bernard's letters, who so long ago pressed for the demolition of all the charters upon the continent, and a parliamentary taxation to support government, and the administration of justice in America.
The popular party did not write Oliver's letters, who enforces Bernard's plans, nor Hutchinson's, who pleads with all his eloquence and pathos for parliamentary penalties, ministerial vengeance and an abridgement of English liberties.
There is not in human nature a more wonderful phenomenon; nor in the whole theory of it, a more intricate speculation; than the shiftings, turnings, windings and evasions of a guilty conscience. Such is our unalterable moral constitution, that an internal inclination to do wrong, is criminal; and a wicked thought, stains the mind with guilt, and makes it tingle with pain. Hence it comes to pass that the guilty mind, can never bear to think that its guilt is known to God or man, no, nor to itself.
|
———Cur tamen hos tu Evasisse putes, quos diri conscia facti Mens habet attonitos, et surdo verbere cædit Occultum quatiente animo tortore flagellum? Pœna autem vehemens ac multo sævior illis, Quas et Cædicius gravis invenit et Rhadamanthus, Nocte dieque suum gestare in pectore testem. Juv. Sat. 13. 192. |
Massachusettensis and his friends the tories, are startled at the calamities they have brought upon their country, and their conscious guilt, their smarting, wounded mind, will not suffer them to confess, even to themselves, what they have done. Their silly denials of their own share in it before a people, who they know have abundant evidence against them, never fail to remind me of an ancient fugitive, whose conscience could not bear the recollection of what he had done. "I know not, am I my brother's keeper?" He replies, with all the apparent simplicity of truth and innocence, to one from whom he was very sensible his guilt could not be hid. The still more absurd and ridiculous attempts of the tories, to throw off the blame of these calamities from themselves to the whigs, remind me of another story, which I have read in the Old Testament. When Joseph's brethren had sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver, in order to conceal their own avarice, malice and envy, they dip the coat of many colours in the blood of a kid, and say that an evil beast had rent him in pieces and devoured him.
However, what the sons of Israel intended for ruin to Joseph, proved the salvation of the family; and I hope and believe that the whigs, will have the magnanimity, like him, to suppress their resentment, and the felicity of saving their ungrateful brothers.
This writer has a faculty of insinuating errors into the mind, almost imperceptibly, he dresses them so in the guise of truth. He says "that the revenue to the crown, from America amounted to but little more than the charges of collecting it," at the close of the last war. I believe it did not amount to so much. The truth is, there was never any pretence of raising a revenue in America before that time, and when the claim was first set up, it gave an alarm, like a warlike expedition against us. True it is that some duties had been laid before by parliament, under pretence of regulating our trade, and by a collusion and combination between the West India planters, and the North American governors, some years before, duties had been laid upon molasses, &c. under the same pretence, but in reality merely to advance the value of the estates of the planters in the West India Islands, and to put some plunder, under the name of thirds of seisures into the pockets of the governors. But these duties, though more had been collected in this province, than in any other in proportion, were never regularly collected in any of the Colonies. So that the idea of an American revenue for one purpose or another had never, at this time, been formed in American minds.
Our writer goes on, "She, (Great Britain,) thought it as reasonable that the Colonies should bear a part of the national burdens, as that they should share in the national benefit."
Upon this subject Americans have a great deal to say. The national debt before the last war, was near an hundred millions. Surely America had no share in running into that debt. What is the reason then that she should pay it? But a small part of the sixty millions spent in the last war, was for her benefit. Did she not bear her full share of the burden of the last war in America? Did not the province pay twelve shillings in the pound in taxes for the support of it; and send a sixth or seventh part of her sons into actual service? And at the conclusion of the war, was she not left half a million sterling in debt? Did not all the rest of New England exert itself in proportion? What is the reason that the Massachusetts has paid its debt, and the British minister in thirteen years of peace has paid none of his? Much of it might have been paid in this time, had not such extravagance and speculation prevailed, as ought to be an eternal warning to America, never to trust such a minister with her money. What is the reason that the great and necessary virtues of simplicity, frugality and economy cannot live in England, Scotland and Ireland, as well as America?