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France, taxed in order to pay the rich for eating it. Necessaries abridged for the support of luxury. The burthen falls upon the rich and poor in common: the benefit is shared exclusively by the rich.
The injustice is not such in appearance only: as it would be, if what is thus taken or meant to be taken from the colonists went to make revenue: it would then be only a mode of taxation. In France (it might then be said) people are taxed one way, in the colonies another: the only question would then be about the eligibility of the mode. But revenue is here out of the case: nothing goes to the nation in common, every thing goes to individuals: if it is a tax, it is a tax the produce of which is squandered away before collection; it is a tax the produce of which, instead of being gathered into the treasury, is given away to sugar-eaters.
But even as to sugar-eaters the profit, I say, is an illusion. For does the monopoly you give yourselves against the growers of sugar so much as keep the price of sugar lower than it would be otherwise?—not a sixpence. Lower than the price at which the
commodity
