[53] 12 Car. II. Chap. 23, and 24.
[54] James II. Chap. 1, and 4.
[55] In the year of the city 428, ""Duo singularia hæc ei viro primum contigere; prorogatio imperii non ame in ullo fucto et acta honore triumphus." Liv. B. 8. Chap. 23. 26.
"Had the rest of the Roman citizens imitated the example of L. Quintus, who refused to have his consulship continued to him, they had never admitted that custom of proroguing magistrates, and then the prolongation of their commands, the army had never been introduced, which very thing was at length the ruin of that commonwealth."
Machiavel's discourses, B. 3. Chap. 24.
[56] I don't know but it may be said with a good deal of reason, that a quick rotation of ministers is very desirable in Great-Britain. A minister there has a vast store of materials to work with. Long administrations are rather favourable to the reputation of a people abroad, than to their liberty.
[57] Demosthenes's 2d Philippic.
[58] Though duties by the late act are laid on some articles, on which no drawbacks are allowed, yet the duties imposed by the act, are so small, in comparison with the drawbacks that are allowed, that all the duties together will not amount to so much as the drawbacks.
[59] The expence of this board, I am informed, is between four and five thousand pounds sterling a year. The establishment of officers, for collecting the revenue of America, amounted before to seven thousand six hundred pounds per annum: and yet, says the author of "The regulation of the colonies," the whole remittance from all the taxes in the colonies, at an average of thirty years, has not amounted to one thousand nine hundred pounds a year, and in that time, seven or eight hundred pounds per annum only, have been remitted from North-America.
The smallness of the revenue arising from the duties in America, demonstrated that they were intended only as regulations of trade; and can any person be so blind to truth, so dull of apprehension in a matter of unspeakable importance to his country, as to imagine, that the board of commissioners lately established at such a charge, is instituted to assist in collecting one thousand nine hundred pounds a year, or the trifling duties imposed by the late act? Surely every man on this continent must perceive, that they are established for the care of a new system of revenue, which is but now begun.