The other position is, that "the crown," if this laudable opposition
should not be successful, "will have the power of taxing America at
pleasure." Surely they think rather too meanly of our apprehensions,
when they suppose us not to know what they well know themselves, that
they are taxed, like all other British subjects, by parliament; and that
the crown has not, by the new imposts, whether right or wrong, obtained
any additional power over their possessions.
It were a curious, but an idle speculation, to inquire, what effect
these dictators of sedition expect from the dispersion of their letter
among us. If they believe their own complaints of hardship, and really
dread the danger which they describe, they will naturally hope to
communicate the same perceptions to their fellow-subjects. But,
probably, in America, as in other places, the chiefs are incendiaries,
that hope to rob in the tumults of a conflagration, and toss brands
among a rabble passively combustible. Those who wrote the address,
though they have shown no great extent or profundity of mind, are yet,
probably, wiser than to believe it: but they have been taught, by some
master of mischief, how to put in motion the engine of political
electricity; to attract, by the sounds of liberty and property; to
repel, by those of popery and slavery; and to give the great stroke, by
the name of Boston.
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