I wou’d not trouble you with these reveries of mine, were I not assured of your readiness to forgive the communication, although you could apply it to no good purpose.
Mr. Spooner sent me a pamphlet under a blank cover, intituled, “the state of the nation”. I run over it by myself before I had heard any one mention it, and tho’t I cou’d evidently mark the sentiments of some of my friends. By what I have since heard and seen, it looks as if I was not mistaken. Your right honorable friend I trust will not be offended if I call him mine—I am sure you will not when I term you such—I have settled it for a long time in my own mind that without a representation in the supreme legislature, there cannot be that union between the head and the members as to produce a healthful constitution of the whole body. I have doubted whether this union could be perfected by the first experiment. The plan here exhibited seems to be formed in generous and moderate principles, and bids the fairest of any I have yet seen to be adopted. Such a great design may as in painting require frequent touching before it becomes a piece highly finish’d; and after all may require the miliorating hand of time to make it please universally. Thus the British constitution consider’d as without the colonies attain’d its glory. The book I had sent me is in such request, that I have not been able to keep it long enough by me, to consider it in all its parts. I wish to hear how it is receiv’d in the house of commons. I find by the publications both of governor Pownall and Mr. Bollan, that they each of them adopt the idea of an union and representation, and I think it must more and more prevail. The argument against it from local inconveniency, must as it appears to me be more than balanc’d by greater inconveniencies on the other side the question, the great difficulty will be in the terms of union.—I add no more, as I fear I have already trespass’d much on your time and patience, but that I am,
Sir, your obliged and most
obedient humble Servant,
ANDW. OLIVER.
New-York, 12th August, 1769.
SIR,
I have been in this city for some time past executing (with others) his Majesty’s commission for settling the boundary between this province and that of New-Jersey. I left Boston the 11th July, since which my advices from London have come to me very imperfect; but as my friend Mr. Thompson writes me that he had drawn up my case and with your approbation laid it before the D. of Grafton, I think it needful once more to mention this business to you.
There was a time when I thought the authority of government might have been easily restored; but while it’s friends and the officers of the crown are left to an abject dependance on these very people who are undermining it’s authority; and while these are suffered not only to go unpunished, but on the contrary meet with all kind of support and encouragement, it cannot be expected that you will ever again recover that respect which the colonies had been wont to pay the parent state. Government at home will deceive itself, if it imagines that the taking off the duty on glass, paper and painter’s colors will work a reconciliation, and nothing more than this, as I can learn, is proposed in Ld. H’s late circular letter. It is the principle that is now disputed; the combination against importation extends to tea, although it comes cheaper than ever, as well as to the other forementioned articles. In Virginia it is extended lately to wines; and I have heard one of the first leaders in these measures in Boston say, that we should never be upon a proper footing ’till all the revenue acts from the 15th Charles 2d were repealed. Our assembly in the Massachusetts may have been more illiberal than others in their public messages and resolves; yet we have some people among us still who dare to speak in favor of government: But here I do not find so much as one, unless it be some of the King’s servants; and yet my business here leads me to associate with the best. They universally approve of the combination against importing of goods from Great-Britain, unless the revenue acts are repealed, which appears to me little less than assuming a negative on all acts of parliament which they do not like! They say expresly, we are bound by none made since our emigration, but such as for our own convenience we choose to submit to; such for instance as that for establishing a post-office. The Bill of Rights and the Habeas Corpus Acts, they say are only declaratory of the common law which we brought with us.