by Nathan Allen
Mr. J______s says, “the liberty of an Englishman is a phrase of so various a signification, having, within these few years, been used as synonymous terms for blasphemy, bawdy, treason, libels, strong beer, and cyder, that he shall not here presume to define its meaning.” I commend his prudence in avoiding the definition of English Liberty; he has no idea of the thing.
But your lordship may, if you please, look back to the most infamous times of the Stuarts, ransack the history of all their reigns, examine the conduct of every debauchee who counted for one in that parliament, which Sidney says, “drunk or sober,” passed the five mile act, and you will not find any expressions equal in absurdity to those of Mr. J______s. He sagely affirms, “that there can be no pretence to plead any exemption from parliamentary authority.” I know of no man in America who understands himself, that ever pleaded or pretended any such exemption. I think it our greatest happiness in the true and genuine sense of law and the constitution, to be subject to, and controulable by, parliamentary authority. But Mr. J______s will scribble about “our American colonies.” Whose colonies can the creature mean? The minister’s colonies? No surely. Whose then, his own? I never heard he had any colonies. Nec gladio nec arcu, nec astu vicerunt. He must mean his Majesty’s American colonies. His Majesty’s colonies they are, and I hope and trust ever will be; and that the true native inhabitants, as they ever have been, will continue to be, his Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects. Every garetteer, from the environs of Grub-street, to the purlieus of St. James’s, has lately talked of his and my and our colonies, and of the rascally colonists, and of yokeing and curbing the cattle, as they are by some politely called, at “this present now and very nascent crisis”.
I cannot see why the American peasants may not with as much propriety speak of their cities of London and Westminster, of their isles, of Britain, Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey, Sark, and the Orcades, and of the “rivulets and run lets thereof,” and consider them all but as appendages to their sheepcots and goose-pens. But land is land, and men should be men. The property of the former God hath given to the possessor. These are sui juris, or slaves and vassals; there neither is nor can be any medium. Mr. J______s would do well once in his life to reflect that were it not for our American colonies, he might at this “present crisis”, been but the driver of a baggage cart, on a crusade to the holy sepulchre, or sketching caracatura’s while the brave were bleeding and dying for their country. He gives us three or four sophistical arguments to prove that “no taxes can be exactly equa1.” “If not exactly equal on all, then not just.” “Therefore no taxes at all can be justly imposed.” This is arch. But who before ever dreamt that no taxes could be imposed, because a mathematical exactness or inequality is impracticable.
Having in his odd way, and very confused method considered the right and authority of parliament to tax the colonies, which he takes for granted instead of proving; he proceeds to shew the expediency of taking the present crisis by the fore top, and proceeding in the present manner, lest it should run away. As to the “nascent crisis, or present tense,” it is as good a tense as any in grammar. And misers and politicians will, for their purposes, ever think it the best. If we must be taxed without our consent, and are able to pay the national debt, it is our duty to pay it, which some take for granted; why then I agree we had better pay it off at once, and have done with it. For this purpose, the “present identic very now, is better than any other now, or crisis, begotten, or about to be begotten; nascent, or about to be nascent; born or unborn.” If Mr. J______s pleases, it shall be the great Aera, or TO NUN, of the colony administratrix.
Ultima cummoei venit jam carminis aetas
____________________ _ Nascitar Crisis.
But as to the manner and reasons, it may not be amiss to offer a word or two. He asks with the pathos of a stage itinerant, if “any time can be more proper to require some assistance from our colonies, to preserve to themselves their present safety, than when this country is almost undone by procuring it.” That that country, as he calls it, is almost undone, I shall not dispute; especally after I have the sagacious Mr. J______’s opinion, to the same purpose. But he shows his ignorance, weakness, and wickedness, who imputes so tremendous an impending evil to procuring safety for the colonies. The colonies never cost Britain anything till the last war. Even now, if an impartial account was stated, without allowing one penny for the increase of European trade since the discovery of America, or for the employment yielded by the colonists to millions in Britain who perhaps might otherwise starve, the neat revenue that has accrued by means of “our American colonies” alone, would amount to five times the sum the crown ever expended for their settlement, protection, and defence, from the reign of queen Elizabeth to this day. In this calculate the whole expence of the last war is included, and supposed intirely chargeable to America, according to the visionary theorems of the Administrator, and Regulator. I should think, however, that some small part of the national debt might be justly charged to the “procuring the present safety of Hanover, and other parts of high and low Dutchland.” But, waving this, if it were all to be charged to America, the hundred and forty-nine millions were well laid out, and much better than any sum from the time of Julius Caesar, to the glorious revolution, the “nascent” aera of British liberty, glory, and grandeur. It was for the very being of Britain, as a great maritime, commercial, and powerful, state; none of which would she long be without the assistance of her colonies. It requires no penetration to foresee that should she lose these, which God forbid, she would in a few years, fall a sacrifice to France, or some other despotic power on the continent of Europe. The national debt is confessed on all hands, to be a terrible evil, and may, in time, ruin the state. But it should be remembered, that the colonists never occasioned its increase, nor ever reaped any of the sweet fruits of involving the finest kingdom in the world, in the sad calamity of an enormous overgrown mortgage to state and stock jobbers. No places nor pensions, of thousands and tens of thousands sterling, have been laid out to purchase the votes and influence of the colonists. They have gone on with their settlements in spite of the most horrid difficulties and dangers; they have ever supported, to the utmost of their ability, his majesty’s provincial government over them, and, I believe are, to a man, and ever will be, ready to make grants for so valuable a purpose. But we cannot see the equity of our being obliged to pay off a score that has been much enhanced by bribes and pensions, to keep those to their duty who ought to have been bound by honour and conscience. We have ever been from principle, attached to his majesty, and his illustrious house. We never asked any pay: the heart-felt satisfaction of having served our king and country, has been always enough for us. I cannot see why it would not be well enough to go a nabob hunting on this occasion. Why should not the great Mogul be obliged to contribute towards, if not to pay, the national debt, as some have proposed? He is a Pagan, an East Indian, and of a dark complexion, which are full as good reasons for laying him under contribution, as any I have found abroad in the pamphlets and coffeehouse conferences, for taxing the colonists. There are, doubtless, good reasons to be assigned, or it would not be done, by my superiors; but I confess I cannot reach them, nor has Mr. J______s afforded me the least assistance in this matter. Necessity, say the coffee-house politicians has no law. Then say I, apply the sponge at once! A few jobbers had better be left to hang and drown themselves, as was the case after the South Sea bubble, and a few small politicians had better be sent after them, than the nation be undone. This would, in the end, turn out infinitely more beneficial to the whole, than imposing taxes on such as have not the means of paying them. In the way revenue has been sometimes managed, the universe, would not long set bounds to the rapid increase of the national debt. If places, pensions, and dependencies shall be ever increased in proportion to new resources, instead of carefully applying such resources to the clearing off former incumbrances, the game may be truly infinite. I remember that the great duke of Sully, on a revisio
n of the state of his master’s finances; found that of one hundred and thirty millions annually extorted from the poor people, but thirty millions of those livres centred in his majesty’s coffers. He proceeded in a manner worthy himself. Happily for Britain, the papists ruined France and their own cause, by the villainous assassination of one of the greatest, wisest, and best princes, that ever lived. Of course the power and influence of the best minister beyond all comparison, that ever existed, fell with the sovereign. He only lived to explain to France what she might have been. She has ever since been toiling to regain the lost opportunity; God be thanked, it is yet in vain, and if Britain pleases, ever will be.
Mr. J______s asks, if “any time can be more proper to impose taxes on their trade, than when they are enabled to rival us in our manufactures, by the encouragement and protection we have given them?” who are WE? It is a miracle he had not affirmed, that the colonies rival Great Britain in trade also. His not asserting this, is the only glimmering of modesty or regard to truth, discoverable through his notable performance. As the colonists are British subjects, and confessedly on all hands entitled to the same rights and privileges, with the subjects born within the realm, I challenge Mr. J______s or anyone else to give even the colour of a conclusive reason, why the colonists are not entitled to the same means and methods of obtaining a living with their fellow-subjects in the islands.
Can anyone tell me why trade, commerce, arts, sciences and manufactures, should not be as free for an American as for an European? Is there any thing in the laws of nature and nations, any thing in the nature of our allegiance that forbids a colonist to push the manufacture of iron much beyond the making a horse-shoe or a hob nail? We have indeed “files for our mattocks, and for our coulters, and for our forks, and for our axes, to sharpen our goads,” and to break our teeth; but they are of the manufacture of Europe: I never heard of one made here. Neither the refinements of Montesquieu, nor the imitations of the servile Frenchified half thinking mortals, who are so fond of quoting him, to prove, that it is a law of Europe, to confine the trade and manufactures to the mother state, “to prohibit the colonists erecting manufactories,” and “to interdict all commerce between them and other countries,” will pass with me for any evidence of the rectitude of this custom and procedure. The Administrator has worked these principles up to “fundamental maxims of police at this crisis.” The Regulator hath followed him, and given broad hints that all kinds of American manufactures will not only be discountenanced, but even prohibited, as fast as they are found to interfere with those of Britain. That is, in plain English, we shall do nothing that they can do for us. This is kind! ... And what they cannot do for us, we are permitted to do for ourselves. Generous! ... However, I can never hear American manufactures seriously talked of, without being disposed to a violent fit of laughter. My contempt is inexpressible, when I perceive statesmen at home amusing the mob they affect to despise, with the imminent danger, from American manufactories.
Mr. J______s complains that the plantation governors have broke all their instructions to procure a handsome subsistence, and betrayed the rights of their sovereign. Traitors, villains! Who are they? I never before heard of any such governors. I have had the honour to be acquainted with not a few governors, and firmly believe they would in general sooner break their own necks than their instructions. If Mr. J______s has discovered such a knot of traitors and betrayers of their sovereign’s rights, as he represents the plantation governors to be “they one and all”, for he makes no discrimination, it is his duty to give the proper information that they may be brought to condign punishment, and he himself stand unimpeached for misprision of treason. I promise him aid enough in most provinces to apprehend and secure such atrocious offenders as the betrayers of the rights of the best of kings. He may also rest assured, there is no colony but what would rejoice in seeing its governor rewarded according to his works, and duly exalted or depressed as he may deserve. But this man cannot, by any figure in any logic or rhetoric, but his own, justify the position that the colonists ought to suffer for the perfidy and treachery of such governors as he says have betrayed the rights of their sovereign. That the colonies have eventually suffered and may again, by the faults of some governors is not impossible. But punishing the colonists in their stead, would be a sample of justice like that of hanging the weaver for the cobbler, according to Butler.
The reverend, honourable and grave, our American judges, are also lugged in head and shoulders, and scandalously abused by Mr. J ______s. He has the audacity even to flout and sneer at those who wear long robes and full bottomed wigs, instead of greasy hats, shaggy hair, and ragged coats, as the manner of some yet is. He has the impudence to mention “costly perriwigs and robes of expensive scarlet,” “as marks of the legal abilities of the American judges.” What an ungentleman-like insinuation is this? as if he apprehended them to be destitute of all other law-like qualifications. What a reflection is this on those who appoint American judges? They are chosen by the people no where but at Rhode Island or Connecticut. There they never expect any salaries. Their judges have been in general men of fortune, honour, integrity, and ability, who have been willing to give a portion of their time to the public. For the judges in other colonies, the people are not answerable; if they are any of them weak or wicked, it is a sore calamity on the people, and needs no aggravation.—He says the judges are “so dependent on the humors of the assemblies, that they can obtain a livelihood no longer than quamdiu se male gesserint.” This makes the judges as bad as the governors, who for a morsel of bread, or a mess of pottage, he makes mercenary enough to “betray the rights of their sovereign.” I would have Mr. J______s, for his own sake, a little more careful of his treatment of American judges. I once knew an American chief justice take it into serious consideration, and consult the attorney-general of the province where he lived, whether his late majesty’s attorney and sollicitor-general had not been guilty of a libel upon his court, in stating a favourite case before the king and counsel, in a manner that bore a little hard upon the provincial judicatory. I would also ask good Mr. J______s if he certainly knows that any of our plantation governors and judges have lately complained home, that they cannot get a “livelihood” in America, but by breaking their instructions and oaths, and basely “betraying the rights of their sovereign”? Dare any of them openly avow such a complaint on either side the atlantic? If any of them have given such reasons, among others, in a sedulous application to the ministry, that America should have heavy duties and taxes imposed, let them come forth and declare it, and they will soon receive their reward. If there have been any complaints of this kind, to my great consolation, the authors are like to be sadly disappointed: for I cannot find my intention of applying any part of the new American revenue to the discharge of the provincial civil list. The present palliative indeed seems to be the appointing a number of influencial Americans to be STAMP masters; but I suspect this will be but a temporary pro-vision, and as a kind of reward to some who may have been but too active in bringing about the measure. When the present set shall die off, or be suspended, there can be no objection to the appointment of Europeans, as I wish it had been at first. Here I must make a general reflection that will not affect the good, the just, and the worthy, all others are at liberty to apply it to themselves. In many years experience in American affairs, I have found that those few of my more immediate countrymen the colonists, who have been lucky enough to obtain appointments from home, have been either gentlemen of true American quality, or of no quality or ability at all. The former have generally the pride of a Spaniard without his virtue, the latter are often as ignorant and impudent as the Scotch writers of the Critical Review.—Hence ‘tis easy to see the colonists, as they ever have been, would be in general better treated, less subjected to the insolence of office from Europeans, than from colonists. I will go one step further, and venture to affirm, that if we look carefully into the history of these provinces, we shall find that in every grievance,
every hardship in the restriction of our trade and commerce, some high or low dirty American has had a hand in procuring it for us.
The main object of the American revenue, according to Mr. J______s, the Administrator, the Regulator and others, seems to be for the maintenance of a standing army here. For what? To protect and defend us, poor souls. Against whom? Why a few ragged Indians, thousands and ten thousands of whose fathers, without any European aid, when we most wanted it, were sent to the infernal shades. But “filial duty”, the moral Mr. J______s thinks will “require that we give some assistance to the distresses of our mother country.” Dear mother, sweet mother, honored mother-country, I am her most dutiful son, and humble servant! But what better assistance can be given to madam, than by yielding, as her American sons have, for more than a century, subsistence for half Britain? Take my word for once, my lord, every inhabitant in America maintains at least two lazy fellows in ease, idleness, or luxury, in mother Britain’s lap. We have nothing we can call our own, but the toil of our hands and the sweat of our brows. Every dollar that is exported hence to lodge in madam’s great pocket, returns no more to us, jacilis descensus Averni. The coarsest coat of the meanest American peasant, in reality contributes towards every branch of our gracious and ever adored sovereign’s revenue. The consumer ultimately pays the tax, and ‘tis confessed on all hands, and is the truth, that America, in fact or eventually, consumes one half the manufactures of Britain. The time is hastening when this fair daughter will be able, if well treated, to purchase and pay for all the manufactures her mother will be able to supply. She wants no gifts, she will buy them, and that at her mother’s own price, if let lone. That I may not appear too paradoxical, I affirm, and that on the best information, the Sun rises and sets every day in the sight of five millions of his majesty’s American subjects, white, brown and black. I am positive I am within bounds, let the Administrator and Regulator compute as they please in their rapid flight thro’ our western hemisphere. The period is not very remote when these may be increased to an hundred millions. Five millions of as true and loyal subjects as ever existed, with their good affections to the best civil constitution in the world, descending to unborn miriads, is no small object. God grant it may be well attended to! Had I the honor to be minister to the first, the best monarch in the universe, and trustee for the bravest people, except perhaps one, that ever existed, I might reason in this manner, “the Roman Eagle is dead, the British Lion lives! strange revolutions! the savage roving Britons who fled before Julius Caesar, who were vanquished by his successors Hengist and Harsa, who cut the throats of the Lurdanes, and fell under the Norman bondage, are after all the masters of the sea, the lords of the ocean, the terror of Europe, and the envy of the universe! can Britain rise higher? Yes, how? Never think yourself in your zenith, and you will rise fast enough. Revolutions have been; they may be again; nay, in the course of time they must be. Provinces have not been ever kept in subjection. What then is to be done? Why it is of little importance to my master, whether a thousand years hence, the colonies remain dependant on Britain or not; my business is to fall on the only means to keep them ours for the longest term possible. How can that be done? Why in one word, it must be by nourishing and cherishing them as the apple of your eye. All history will prove that provinces have never been disposed to independency while well treated. Well treated then they shall be.” To return, the colonists pride themselves in the real riches and glory their labours procure for the best of kings: liberty is all they desire to retain for themselves and posterity.