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Britain over the colonies, an authority so liable Bоок to abuse, so justly, therefore, the subject of jealousy, and which had maintained its full weight 1764. and energy chiefly by the utility and propriety of its occasional exertions, it was now determined to put wildly and wantonly to the hazard, by an attempt to exercise it in a mode absolutely unprecedented, and in the highest degree alarming, unconstitutional, and dangerous *.

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BOOK On the 10th of March, 1764, the house of commons, at the motion of the minister, passed a variety of resolutions, respecting certain new duties on foreign goods imported into the British colonies in America; which being primarily of the nature of commercial regulations, passed without any distinct or particular notice in the British parliament, though their equivocal complexion rendered them very distasteful to the Americans. But in the series of parliamentary resolutions was one of such peculiar importance, that Mr. Grenville himself declared his intention to reserve the execution of it till the next year. This resolution imported, that it would be proper to impose certain STAMP DUTIES in the said colonies and plantations, for the purpose of raising an American revenue payable into the British exchequer. The prospect of being relieved, by the taxation of America, from a portion of the national burdens, was so agreeable to the interest, and the unlimited exercise of authority so flattering to the pride, of this assembly, that the resolution in question passed the house with

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no violent or unusual opposition. The dire BOOK effects of this measure it will be but too soon ~ necessary to explain. In the mean time it is ma1764. terial to remark, that, according to the true principles of the constitution, even the produce of the duties imposed for the regulation of commerce ought, in order to guard against possible and eventual abuse, to have been paid, not into the British exchequer, but into the colonial treasuries. The act of the 6th George II. imposing duties of a similar kind on foreign rums, molasses, &c. contained no clause of appropriation; and so trivial was the produce of these duties, and so evidently remote from any design of raising a revenue, that no political alarm was in fact excited in consequence of that act. But the apprehensions of the Americans were at this period completely awakened by the declarations of the minister; and even this exercise of authority, founded on recent precedent, was now the cause of jealousy and uneasiness. But still the greater share of the discontent attached to this measure, arose from the extreme commercial inconvenience and embarrassment they immediately felt from the operation of the new duties; in consequence of which, the trade from time immemorial carried on with the Spanish and French colonies, though legalized to a certain degree, was loaded with such burdens as virtually amounted to the an

BOOK nihilation of an intercourse, which, however XIII. hitherto irregular, had been found by experi1764. ence highly beneficial. As the heavy duties

now imposed rendered, on the one hand, all legal commerce impracticable, on the other, the excessive rigor of the regulations accompanying them, the innumerable certificates, cockets, clearances, and affidavits required by the new revenue acts, suddenly reduced the contraband traffic to a mere nullity. And the colonies, who had been accustomed to make a very large proportion of their returns to England in specie received from the Spaniards, now found themselves reduced to a situation which left them utterly destitute of the means of pursuing the routine of the established system. The grand machine of commerce was disordered in one of its main springs, and its curious and complicated movements were all at once alarmingly suspended. Also, as the act imposing the new duties required payment in specie, the colonies must be in a short time inevitably drained of that small proportion of the precious metals which they now possessed. And the same law restraining the issue of paper currency as a legal tender, no medium of commerce seemed to remain. The English minister, positive, conceited, and conversant only in the detail of business, thus discovered, amidst the very success of his pro

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jects, that original poverty of genius, which no Book acquisitions of knowledge, no experience, no industry, can disguise or compensate.

1764.

On the 5th of October, 1763, died, after a reign of thirty years, Augustus III. king of Poland and elector of Saxony; and the election of a new monarch immediately engrossed the attention of the neighbouring powers. Although the elec-State of tor, son of the late king, immediately offered parties. himself as a candidate for the vacant throne, it appeared that the interests of the house of Saxony were on this occasion abandoned by those who had formerly so efficaciously supported them. The empress of Russia *, whose ambitious and enterprising spirit now began to develop itself, espoused with great warmth the pretensions of count Poniatowski, a Polish nobleman, who had resided for some time at Petersburg, and whom her Imperial majesty had distinguished by