The East India contest, that necessarily took up so much of your
paper, being now abated, I hope you will find room for the
following answer to the paper intitled, Right, Wrong, and
Reasonable, according to American Ideas, inserted in
the Gazetteers of March 5, and 9. I flatter myself that the
impartiality of your readers will concur with yours, in liking to
see something on the other side of the question, in every
attack made upon the Colonies.
It is right, O ye Americans, when we
discourage the importation of those raw materials from foreign
countries that we can have from you, and do it for this sole
reason, that foreigners drain us of our money for those
articles, while you take only our manufactures, yet we should
charge this upon you as a favour, for which you are under
the greatest obligations.
Secondly, It is right, O ye Americans!
that when knowing the dearness of labour in your country, we do, to
enable you to furnish us with those commodities, and take our
manufactures in return, give you a better price than we did use to
give to foreigners, which we can well afford, considering the
saving of money to our nation, the profit on our manufactures, and
the encreased demand for them: We are, nevertheless, to call this
by the name of Bounty, the better to express our
Goodness to you, and the more clearly to intimate the
great obligation you are under for such Goodness; and also
to make manifest the ungratefulness of your tempers, if you
do not, in return for such Bounty, take upon yourselves some
burden ten hundred times greater than the Bounty amounts
to.
Thirdly, It is right, O ye Americans!
that we, having called all these regulations in commerce by the
name of “Indulgencies and Favours,” and considered them as
“Privileges” granted to you, do also, whenever you point out to us
the regulations of the same nature, that may be equally
advantageous to us, call the advice you give, “Clamour for more and
greater Indulgencies. Favours and Privileges.” And it is further
right, O ye Americans! though it is well known you clubbed
man for man with us in the American war, and fought side by side
with us in extending by conquest the whale, and other fisheries,
that you should not conceive yourselves equally intitled to the use
of them with other British subjects; but the share allowed you is
to be considered as flowing from the mere Grace and Favour of the
Gentle Shepherd. And tho’ the permitting you to carry rice to
foreign markets, directly without the burthensome, useless expence,
and loss of time occasioned by coming out of your way to land and
re-ship it here, has enabled you to make greater remittances to
Britain, and purchase greater quantities of our manufactures, yet
if experience in this case prompts you to hint the advantage it
would be to us to extend the permission to some other articles, it
is right in us to charge you with Ingratitude, and to tell
you that you would never have been so unreasonable, if we had not
repealed the “cooly deliberated, well digested,” and wonderfully
useful measure of the Gentle Shepherd, called his Stamp-act.
Fourthly, Though it is a certain truth that we
went to war with the French in America, merely on a dispute between
the two Crowns, concerning the bounds of wilderness lands,
belonging to no American, and to secure the Indian trade carried on
there with our manufactures, and therefore solely an interest of
ours; and though you yourselves told us “you were in no danger from
the French, for that you were near twenty to one,” yet it is
right, O ye Americans! for us to declare we went there for
your defence, at your request, and charge you
with all the millions spent in that war, giving you no credit for
the millions you spent in maintaining a number of troops equal to
ours, and yet our taking the whole territory conquered, which is
now daily granting in large tracts, to the gentlemen of this
country, while we allow, in a case precisely the same, that the
acquisitions made by the East India Company, with our assistance,
are their own indubitable property.
Fifthly, it is right, O ye Americans!
for us to charge you with dreaming that you have it in your
power to make us a bankrupt nation; by engaging us in new wars;
with dreaming that you may thereby encrease your own
strength and prosperity; with dreaming that the seat of
government will then be transported to America, and Britain dwindle
to one of its provinces. And, because Joseph’s brethren hated him
for a dream he really dreamed, we, for a dream you never
dreamed, and which we only dream you dreamed,
are to hate you most cordially.
First, From the above state of the case, It is
wrong, O ye Americans! for you to expect hereafter, any
protection or countenance from us, in return for the loyalty and
zeal you manifested, and the blood and treasure you have expended
in our cause during that war; or that we will make any acts of
parliament relating to you, from the time we, the Gentle Shepherd,
and his flock, get into power, “but such as are calculated for
impoverishing you and enriching us.”
Secondly, It is wrong, O ye Americans!
for you to imagine, that we will henceforth give you a preference
to foreigners, in purchasing raw materials from you, because,
“forsooth, you stupidly give the preference to all the modes and
manufactures” of Britain, and consume all your labour in the
superfluities of this country. And, when you have foolishly run in
our debt for them, it is wrong in you to hint to us any new
regulations of trade, by which you may be better enabled to pay us.
And though you have not, and never had any mines of gold and silver
in your country, yet it is wrong in you to complain when we
restrain your trade with foreign money-countries by which you used
to procure cash for us, when we even hinder your using paper-money
among yourselves, that enabled you to spare your cash to us, and
when dry, as we have drawn you, we want to squeeze blood out of you
by new taxes, in the laying of which you have no participation.
Thirdly, It is wrong, O ye Americans,
“to expect a reciprocation of good offices between us and you; for
our standing maxim is, that you exist only for our sakes. We know
no other end of colonization but this; nor will we acknowledge any
other connection or relation between us and you,” than those
between a master and his slaves. Your lords we are, and slaves we
deem ye, or intend to make ye. “But the dear ties of that relation
we will acknowledge and maintain” as long as we can, and, if
possible, after you “are tired of them.”
Thus much as to the Gentle Shepherdian Ideas of
Right and Wrong. We shall now shew their notions of
what is Reasonable. British Ideas of
what is Reasonable in American affairs,
according to the genuine meaning of some late pamphlets, &c.
These principles of right and
wrong being established, It is reasonable, O ye
Americans! that we should oblige you to bring your coarse sugars to
England to be refined, and carry them back again when refined, that
so you may pay two freights and two insurances, to no other purpose
than wasting a shilling that we may get a groat. “Otherwise you
will grow able to pay your debts.”
2. It is reasonable, O ye Americans!
that when one of your ways of raising money to pay for our
manufactures, is by cutting logwood, with immense labour, in the
unwholesome swamps of Honduras, and selling to foreigners what the
demand here cannot take off, remitting hither the nett proceeds,
yet you should be obliged first to bring the same into some British
port, land, and re-ship it, at so great an expence, with the loss
of time, and hindrance of voyage, as to devour all the profits;
“otherwise we cannot keep you so poor, but that you will pay your
debts.”
3. It is reasonable, O ye Americans!
that when, for the produce of your lands, you have obtained wines,
at Madeira, and have paid the duty on importing them into America,
you shall, nevertheless, when you send them to England, by way of
remittance, pay the full duty here, without any drawback of what
you have already paid; “otherwise you may, in that way, pay some of
your debts.”
4. It is reasonable, O ye Americans!
that though you fought bravely, in conjunction with us, to obtain
and secure the fisheries of Newfoundland and Labrador, yet you
shall not enjoy a freedom of fishing there in common with other
British subjects, or even the freedom allowed by the peace, to our
enemies. And though, by your situation, you can carry on the
fishery at less expence than the French, and, of course, could
undersell them in the Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian markets, and
remit the money from thence to Britain, for manufactures, yet we
are not to permit this, but chusing rather to fight against nature,
will contend with the French ourselves, who are sure, in this
article, to outdo us—“otherwise you might pay your debts.”
5. It is reasonable for us, O ye
Americans! to send custom-house officers over to you, of our own
chusing, with starving salaries, that lay them under the
temptation, and almost under the necessity of conniving at
smugglers, or sharing their profit, and then to charge you with
their want of conscience or neglect of duty. And though there is
scarce a family in Britain honest enough to refuse purchasing
smuggled cambricks, India goods, French silks, lace, brandies
&c. if a pennyworth, we are, nevertheless, to esteem it
the greatest of crimes in you, to smuggle even the necessaries of
life. For, if you buy any thing you want, cheaper of others than we
can sell it to you, “we are afraid you will, by lessening you
expenses, be enabled to pay your debts.”
6. It is reasonable for us, O ye
Americans! tho’ we know the fond preference you give to the
manufactures of your mother-country is so great, that a piece of
French cloth, or silk, was never worn among you, but even
when taken in prizes, has been sent away to the French islands, as
unsaleable with you, yet, to make you odious here, draw severities
upon you, and wean that affection you have for this country, which
is so advantageous to our commerce, we are to charge you with a
fondness for French manufactures, without the least
foundation of truth. In fine, It is reasonable for us to
deprive you even of the common privilege of Englishmen, trials by
Juries; to restrain, by every means, your procuring money from
foreigners, to refuse you even the use of paper money, whereby you
might better spare your cash to us, and, after all, to “wonder that
you do not pay your debts.”