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therefore, the sum to be obtained by the late act, had been the sole object in forming it, there would not have been any occasion for “the commons of Great-Britain, to give and grant to his Majesty rates and duties for raising a revenue in his Majesty’s dominions in America, for making a more certain and adequate provision for defraying the charges of the administration of justice, the support of civil government, and the expence of defending the said dominions;”---nor would there have been any occasion for an [1]expensive board of commissioners, and all the other new charges to which we are made liable.
Upon the whole, for my part, I regard the late act as an experiment made of our disposition. It is a bird sent out over the waters, to discover, whether the waves, that lately agitated this part of the world with such violence, are yet subsided. If this adventurer gets footing here, we shall quickly find it to be of the [2]kind described by the poet.------
“Infelix vates.”
A direful foreteller of future calamities.
- ↑ 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 in 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 sum 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, demonstrates 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.
- ↑ “Dira cælæno,” &c. Virgil, Æneid 3.
