Complete Works. Hamilton Alexander
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general laws for our good, and yet our affairs have been conducted much to our ease and satisfaction. If any discord has sprung up among us, it is wholly imputable to the incursions of Great Britain. We should be peaceable and happy, if unmolested by her. We are not so destitute of wisdom as to be in want of her assistance to devise proper and salutary laws for us.
The legislative power of Parliament would at any rate be useless to us; and as utility is the prime end of all laws, that power has no reason for which it should exist. It is not even requisite for preserving the connection between Great Britain and the colonies, for that is sufficiently secured in two ways: by being united under the same king, and by the important privilege of regulating our commerce, to which we have submitted.
That it may be prejudicial to us no reasonable man can deny. We may trace the evils of it through the whole administration of justice. Judicial proceedings may be so ordered as to render our lives and properties dependent on the will and caprice of court favorites and tools. A wide field for bribery and corruption of every kind would be opened, and the most enormous exactions would take shelter under the garb of law. It is unnecessary to enter into a particular detail of the different methods in which all this might be effected; every man's own imagination will suggest to him a multiplicity of instances.
Rigorous, oppressive, and tyrannical laws may be thought expedient as instruments to humble our rebellious tempers, and oblige us to submit to further exactions of authority, till the claim to bind us in all cases whatsoever be fully complied with. This, no doubt, would be a work of time. The steps would be gradual, and perhaps imperceptible; but they would be sure and effectual. That thirst of power which influenced the Parliament to assert an unlimited authority over us, without the least plausible foundation for it (as I have clearly proved), will authorize us to apprehend the worst.
The power of legislating for us, and of raising a revenue upon the articles of commerce, would be a sufficient degree of slavery. It is absurd to say that Great Britain could not impose heavy burthens on our commerce, without immediately feeling the effect herself. She may enrich herself by reducing us to the most lamentable state of penury and wretchedness. We are already forbid to purchase the manufactures of any foreign countries. Great Britain and Ireland must furnish us with the necessaries we want. Those things we manufacture among ourselves may be disallowed. We should then be compelled to take the manufactures of Great Britain upon her own conditions. We could not, in that case, do without them. However excessive the duties laid upon them, we should be under an inevitable necessity to purchase them. How would Great Britain feel the effects of those impositions, but to her own advantage? If we might withdraw our custom and apply to other nations, if we might manufacture our own materials, those expedients would serve as a refuge to us, and would indeed be a security against any immoderate exactions. But these resources would be cut off. There would be no alternative left us. We must submit to be drained of all our wealth, for those necessaries which we are not permitted to get elsewhere.
As to our trade with foreign countries, the burthens imposed on that, however grievous, would in like manner affect Great Britain only by increasing her public treasure. Her own inhabitants would pay no part of them; they would fall solely upon ourselves. There is no immediate connection between her trade and ours, of this kind; they are separate and independent; and, of course, the incumbrances on the one would not injure the other. The superfluity of our products must be exported, to enable us to pay our debts to her; and we must submit to be loaded at her discretion. If we look forward to a period not far distant, we shall perceive that the productions of our country will infinitely exceed the demands which Great Britain and her connections can possibly have for them; and, as we shall then be greatly advanced in population, our wants will be proportionately increased. These circumstances will open an ample field for extortion and oppression.
The legislative authority of Parliament would always be ready to silence our murmurs by tyrannical edicts. These would be enforced by a formidable army, kept up among us for the purpose. The slightest struggles to recover our lost liberty would become dangerous, and even capital. Those hated things, Continental Conventions, by which there might be a communion of councils and measures, would be interdicted. Non-importation and non-exportation agreements would, in effect, be made seditious, illegal, and treasonable. . No remedy would be left, but in the clemency of our oppressors; a wretched one, indeed, and such as no prudent man would confide in! In whatever light we consider the matter, we shall find that we must effectually seal our bondage by adopting the mode you recommend.
Agreeably to your concessions, Great Britain is abundantly recompensed for the naval protection she affords, by the principal profits of our trade. It can therefore, with no color of justice, be urged upon us to permit her to raise a revenue through that channel.
But, after all, let us suppose that the emolument which arises from the simple and abstracted regulation of our trade is inadequate to the protection we derive from the parent State: does it follow that her just demands cannot be satisfied, unless we put it in her power to ruin us? When did the colonies refuse to contribute their proportion toward defraying the expenses of government? During the war our contributions were so liberal and generous that we were thought to have done more than our part, and restitution was accordingly made. Massachusetts, that injured, insulted, and calumniated country, was foremost in displaying its loyalty, and was parsimonious neither of its men nor money. But notwithstanding this no confidence, it seems, is due to our virtue or fidelity; but every thing is to be trusted to the wisdom and disinterestedness of a British Parliament.
We do not expect, nor require, that all should depend upon our integrity or generosity, but only a part; and this, every rule of equity entitles us to. We have assented to the exercise of a power which gives a certainty to Great Britain of a vast annual income; any further aids that may be necessary ought to be intrusted to our fidelity. When the circumstances of two parties will not admit of precise boundaries to the duty of each, it is not a dictate of justice to put one entirely into the power of the other. If the mother country would desist from grasping at too much, and permit us to enjoy the privileges of freemen, interest would concur with duty, and lead us to the performance of it. We should be sensible of the advantages of a mutual intercourse and connection, and should esteem the welfare of Britain as the best security for our own. She may, by kind treatment, secure our attachment in the powerful bands of self-interest. This is the conduct that prudence and sound policy point out; but, alas! to her own misfortune as well as ours, she is blind and infatuated.
If we take futurity into the account, as we no doubt ought to do, we shall find, that in fifty or sixty years, America will be in no need of protection from Great Britain. She will then be able to protect herself both at home and abroad. She will have a plenty of men, and a plenty of materials, to provide and equip a formidable navy. She will, indeed, owe a debt of gratitude to the parent State for past services; but the scale will then begin to turn in her favor; and the obligation for future services will be on the side of Great Britain. It will be the interest of the latter to keep us without a fleet, and, by this means, to continue to regulate our trade as before. But, in thus withholding the means of protection which we have within our own reach, she will chiefly consult her own advantage, and oblige herself much more than us. At that era, to enjoy the privilege of enriching herself by the direction of our commerce, and, at the same time, to derive supports, from our youthful vigor and strength, against all her enemies, and thereby to extend her conquests over them, will give her reason to bless the times that gave birth to these colonies.
By enlarging our views and turning our thoughts to future days, we must perceive that the special benefits we receive from the British nation are of a temporary and transient nature; while, on the other hand, those it may reap from us by an affectionate and parental conduct will be permanent and durable, and will serve to give it such a degree of stability and lasting prosperity as could not be expected in the common fluctuating course of human affairs. Such reflections will teach us that there is no propriety in making any concessions to Great Britain, which may be at all inconsistent with our safety.
You employ several contemptible artifices to varnish and recommend your scheme. Your conduct, in every respect, affords a striking instance of the depravity of human nature. You insinuate that the Pennsylvania Farmer admits the right of Parliament to regulate our trade in the same sense you do. The very letter your extracts