the colonies, we are as absolute slaves as any in Asia, and consequently in a state of rebellion. If they have no such right, we are acting the noble and virtuous part which every freeman and community of freemen hath a right, and is in duty bound to act. For my own part, I am not acquainted with all that may be said on the one part or the other, and therefore am in some sort obliged to suspend my judgment. But no arguments that have yet come in my way, have convinced me that the Parliament hath any such right. The advocates for the Act, I observe, have alleged both precedents and arguments in support of the Parliament's right of taxation over the colonies. The precedents alleged are two Acts of Parliament; one establishing a Post-Office in America; the other, making some regulations with regard to the British troops sent hither in the late war; which are so very dissimilar from what they have been alleged to support, and therefore so foreign from the point, that instead of producing conviction, they really excite laughter. And of the arguments I have seen urged in behalf of this, till now unheard-of claim, the chief seems to be but a bare ipse dixit, an unsupported assertion that we, as British subjects, are virtually represented in the British Parliament, and consequently obliged by all its Acts. But, how some millions of people here (not a man of whom can, in consequence of his property here, either give a vote for sending a member to, or himself obtain a seat in, your House of Commons) can, in any sense, be said to be represented by that House, is utterly incomprehensible to an American understanding, or to any European understanding I have yet met with, which hath breathed American air. That we are subject to the jurisdiction of Parliament in matters of government that are of a nature purely external; sub-
