said revenue." By these words it appeared to the colonies that this act
was but a beginning of sorrows,--that every session was to produce
something of the same kind,--that we were to go on, from day to day, in
charging them with such taxes as we pleased, for such a military force
as we should think proper. Had this plan been pursued, it was evident
that the provincial assemblies, in which the Americans felt all their
portion of importance, and beheld their sole image of freedom, were
_ipso facto_ annihilated. This ill prospect before them seemed to be
boundless in extent and endless in duration. Sir, they were not
mistaken. The ministry valued themselves when this act passed, and when
they gave notice of the Stamp Act, that both of the duties came very
short of their ideas of American taxation. Great was the applause of
this measure here. In England we cried out for new taxes on America,
whilst they cried out that they were nearly crushed with those which
the war and their own grants had brought upon them.

Sir, it has been said in the debate, that, when the first American
revenue act (the act in 1764, imposing the port-duties) passed, the
Americans did not object to the principle. It is true they touched it
but very tenderly. It was not a direct attack. They were, it is true, as
yet novices,--as yet unaccustomed to direct attacks upon any of the
rights of Parliament. The duties were port-duties, like those they had
been accustomed to bear,--with this difference, that the title was not
the same, the preamble not the same, and the spirit altogether unlike.
But of what service is this observation to the cause of those that make
it? It is a full refutation of the pretence for their present cruelty to
America; for it shows, out of their own mouths, that our colonies were
backward to enter into the present vexatious and ruinous controversy.

There is also another circulation abroad, (spread with a malignant