on tea four times heavier than that paid in America. Was not the
British Parliament supreme over the whole Empire? Did not the
colonies themselves admit that it had the right to control their
trade overseas? And if men shirk their duty should they not come
under some law of compulsion?

It was thus that many a plain man reasoned in England. The plain
man in America had his own opposing point of view. Debts and
taxes in England were not his concern. He remembered the recent
war as vividly as did the Englishman, and, if the English paid
its cost in gold, he had paid his share in blood and tears. Who
made up the armies led by the British generals in America? More
than half the total number who served in America came from the
colonies, the colonies which had barely a third of the population
of Great Britain. True, Britain paid the bill in money but why
not? She was rich with a vast accumulated capital. The war,
partly in America, had given her the key to the wealth of India.
Look at the magnificence, the pomp of servants, plate and
pictures, the parks and gardens, of hundreds of English country
houses, and compare this opulence with the simple mode of life,
simplicity imposed by necessity, of a country gentleman like
George Washington of Virginia, reputed to be the richest man in
America. Thousands of tenants in England, owning no acre of land,
were making a larger income than was possible in America to any
owner of broad acres. It was true that America had gained from
the late war. The foreign enemy had been struck down. But had he
not been struck down too for England? Had there not been far more
dread in England of invasion by France and had not the colonies
by helping to ruin France freed England as much as England had
freed them? If now the colonies were asked to pay a share of the