because they pay them out of their superfluous abund ance: Whereas the poor part with some of the neces saries of life, whenever they part with a penny. Besides the poor, not being able to buy meat, live chiefly upo bread, which is the cheapest food. They eat a pounc of it, where the rich eat an ounce. Therefore, wher our wealthy legislators raise the price of bread, by allowing a bounty for the exportation of corn, or by forbidding the importation, or permitting the distilling of it, they reap the principal benefit, and the poor bear the principal burden. You advance, then, a monstrous paradox, when you insinuate, that legislation "can be of no consequence" to the poor: For the capital branch of legislation, which raises or sinks the price of corn, chiefly concerns the lowest class of mankind, by whom corn is chiefly consumed.

This is not all. The legislative power disposes of our life, and locomotive liberty, as well as of our property. I have seen some free-born Englishmen, who never had any share in legislation, put in the stocks, or sent to jail: I have seen others loaded with irons, ready for transportation: And others with a rope about their neck, ready for the gallows. Now, as the poor are as much concerned in the disposal of their locomotive liberty and life, as the rich, do you not betray gross partiality, Sir, when you represent the poor as persons who may be doomed to abject slavery, which your system supposes to be inseparably connected with our having no share in the legislature? Indigence and slavery are not naturally The poor Indians are as jealous of their liberty as you. And when the Lacedæmonians and the Romans were in the lowest circumstances, they valued their liberty most.

connected.

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It is true, you insinuate that all who cannot purchase a freehold, are not absolutely obliged to remain slaves; because a place in the legislature is a privilege extended in a few boroughs to every one that boils a pot." But does not this very argument pour fresh contempt upon your notions of slavery and liberty? Does it not make English liberty, or abject slavery, to turn upon

the boiling, or not boiling of a pot? However, suppose that all who are not able to purchase freeholds, could avoid slavery by crowding with their families into the few boroughs you mention; which many colonists could do with greater ease than thousands of Britons : Or, supposing this peculiar privilege were extended to all the pot-boilers in Great Britain; would you mend the Constitution by these means? No: You would only avoid one inconveniency by running upon another : For the rich would justly complain of a levelling scheme, which would allow every starving cottager to have as good a right of granting their property, as they have themselves.

Again: If Britons, and sons of Britons, must be equally represented," with respect to the disposal of their property, in order to be free men; have not the rich a right to make a Congress, and to enact, that, as the man who has forty shillings a year in land, has one vote; so he who has twice forty shillings, should have two votes; and he who has ten thousand pounds a year, should have five thousand votes: By which means, he might return himself member for any poor borough in the kingdom?-On the other hand, will the poor not have as good a right to rise in their turn, and to form another Congress, under pretence, that rich men have but one body, and one life, any more than the poor : And therefore it is unreasonable, that the rich should have so much greater a part in legislation than they ?— Nor will the mischief stop here: The wise and experienced will rise also, and urge, it is absurd that a young man, or a fool, should have as great a share in the legislature as a wise, aged man; and they will insist on having votes according to their wisdom and years; nor will their claim be, in my judgment, the most unreasonable.

This is not all: Every little market-town, and every ancient village, will insist on sending two representatives to Parliament, as well as Wenlock and Old Sarum. By the rule of proportion, large towns, cities, and po

of members so much greater, as they are larger thar Cornish boroughs, and more populous than Hunting. donshire. Thus we shall have an army of parliament. men, who, like the Polish nobility at their dicts, will not be able to hear one another speak, and will be more ready to draw the sword, than to make laws. And if such a Parliament is to be chosen every year, as you intimate it should, the nation will spend half her time in raising armies of pot-boilers, to raise another army of law-givers.

From these, and many such inconveniences, it appears, Sir, that your scheme of equal representation is absurd and impossible; and that, before you can bring it to bear, you must first get all Britons to be equally wise, rich, noble, learned, experienced, and diligent. Secondly, You must take all of one age and sex: And Thirdly, You must contrive to make them all live in the same place, and at the same time. If you consider the difficulty of such a task, I flatter myself, Sir, that you will be less ready to find fault with the Constitution, and to make the injudicious wish for a revolution productive of equal representation, that is, of an absolute impossibility. Much less will you persuade injudicious patriots, that the King and the majority in Parliament "commit robbery," and "stab our vitals," when they tax the Colonists, as they do two out of three of their subjects in England, that is, without a direct repre

sentation.

You try, indeed, to obviate this difficulty, by intimating that the vast body of free-born Englishmen, who have no right to choose their representatives, or who, through absence, cannot exercise their right, may "consent to the disposal of their property, because they have always this security, that those who take an active part in the disposal of their property, must, at the same time, dispose of an equal proportion of their own."Whereas," the American can have no voice in the disposal of his property; and what is worse, those who are to have the power of disposing of it, are under every

possible temptation to abuse that power, because every shilling they take out of the pocket of an American, is so much saved in their own.”

As this is your capital argument, I shall give it a full answer.—(1.) It is improbable that our law-givers would save a dirty shilling in their pockets, by oppressively taking one out of an American's pocket. If I am rightly informed, they are so far from abusing their power in this respect, that when they take sixpence for the use of Government out of an American's pocket, they take sixteen shillings out of their own.-(2.) Our excellent Constitution obviates your ungenerous suspicion, by ordering, that the legislators, who compose the lower house of parliament, shall all be men of fortune, raised by their circumstances above the felonious trick you speak of.-(3.) You mistake, when you say that "the American can have no voice in the disposal of his property;" for as many of the Colonists as choose to purchase a freehold in England, may become electors; and as many as have a sufficient fortune, may become candidates at the next election. You speak yourself of yourlate American candidate, who was a friend to America." If I mistake not, we have American members in the house; and the papers inform us that

Sayer, Esq., who is a native of Boston, claims a seat in the parliament; and, if he obtain it, he will not only represent his borough, but also in connection with his fellow-members, he will represent the Commonalty of all the British empire. Hence it is, that the minority in parliament, though they are not the special representatives of the Colonists, plead their cause so warmly, even against the privileges of the electors whom they particularly represent.-(4.) Supposing these American members have no estates beyond the Atlantic; are there not several members in both houses of parliament, who have a large--a very large property in America; and who, when they tax the Colonists, take far more money out of their own pockets, than they probably do out of the pockets of Messrs. Adams and Hancock ?-(5.) If

than the rule of proportion allows, should they no have humbly requested the parliament, that, before they were taxed at all, their jealousies might be removed by an act drawn up in such a manner as to set bounds tc their taxes, in proportion to the bounds which are set to their commercial privileges? And would not our lawgivers have granted them so reasonable a request? But, to rise absolutely against all taxation by act of parliament, merely because it is taxation by the legislative power of Great Britain; to destroy the property of our fellow-subjects, by raising riotous mobs against them; and to take up arms against the Sovereign to defend such proceedings, argues, in my judgment, a temper which you may call patriotism, but looks too much like the sin forbidden in Rom. xiii. 2.-Lastly, If pleading that our superiors may abuse their power over us, were a sufficient reason to shake off the yoke of lawful authority; all apprentices (though ever so well used) might directly emancipate themselves; for they might adopt your argument, and say, My master, indeed, uses me well; but "he is under every possible temptation to starve me;" since every meal which he will save, in denying me proper food, will be a meal saved for himseif or his own children; and therefore I will cut and carve for myself, or I will acknowledge him as a master no

more.

I shall be less prolix in my answer to the rest of your arguments. You appeal to the Irish, who are taxed by their own Parliament:* But their case is very different from that of the Colonists; for Ireland was annexed to the dominions of the King of England, not as a colony or a kingdom naturally and originally subjected to England, but as a sister-kingdom; and, as such, she has enjoyed the supreme power of making her own laws, and (in part) of coining her own money. This was the case with Scotland also; and therefore the Scots were allowed to send a number of representatives to both houses of parliament, when the two kingdoms were

N. B.-This was written in the latter end of the year 1775, or in the beginning of the year 1776.