| APPENDIX TO CHAPTER X. |
1.—FRANKLIN'S LETTER TO W. ALEXANDER.
PASSY, March 12th, 1778.
Dear Sir,
In the pamphlet you were so kind as to lend me, there is one important fact mis-stated, apparently from the writer's not having been furnished with good information; it is the transaction between Mr. Grenville and the colonies, wherein he understands that Mr. Grenville demanded of them a specific sum, that they refused to grant any thing, and that it was on their refusal only that he made a motion for the Stamp Act. No one of these particulars is true. The fact was this:—
Some time in the winter of 1763-4, Mr. Grenville called together the agents of the several colonies, and told them that he purposed to draw a revenue from America, and to that end his intention was to levy a stamp duty on the colonies by act of Parliament in the ensuing session, of which he thought it fit that they should be immediately acquainted, that they might have time to consider, and if any other duty equally productive would be more agreeable to them, they might let him know it. The agents were therefore directed to write this to their respective Assemblies, and communicate to him the answers they should receive: the agents wrote accordingly.
I was a member in the Assembly of Pennsylvania, when this notification came to hand. The observations there made upon it were, that the ancient, established, and regular method of drawing aids from the colonies was this. The occasion was always first considered by their sovereign in his privy council, by whose sage advice, he directed his secretary of state to write circular letters to the several governors, who were directed to lay them before their Assemblies. In those letters the occasion was explained for their satisfaction, with gracious expressions of his majesty's confidence in their known duty and affection, on which he relied, that they would grant such sums as should be suitable to their abilities, loyalty, and zeal for his service. That the colonies had always granted liberally on such requisitions, and so liberally during the late war, that the king, sensible they had granted much more than their proportion, had recommended it to Parliament, five years successively, to make them some compensation, and the Parliament accordingly returned them two hundred thousand pounds a-year to be divided among them. That the proposition of taxing them in Parliament was therefore both cruel and unjust.[1] That by the constitution of the colonies their business was with the king in matters of aid; they had nothing to do with any financier, nor he with them; nor were the agents the proper channels through which requisitions should be made; it was therefore improper for them to enter into any stipulation, or make any proposition to Mr. Grenville about laying taxes on their constituents by Parliament, which had really no right at all to tax them, especially as the notice he had sent them did not appear to be by the king's order, and perhaps was without his knowledge; as the king, when he would obtain any thing from them, always accompanied his requisition with good words; but this gentleman, instead of a decent demand sent them a menace, that they should certainly be taxed, and only left them the choice of the manner. But all this notwithstanding, they were so far from refusing to grant money, that they resolved to the following purpose: That they always had, so they always should, think it their duty to grant aid to the crown, according to their abilities, whenever required of them in the usual constitutional manner." I went soon after to England, and took with me
- ↑ "There is neither king, nor sovereign lord on earth, who has beyond his own domain, power to lay one farthing on the subjects, without the grant and consent of those who pay it; unless he does it by tyranny mid violence."—Philippe de Commines, Chap. 108.
