Page:American History Told by Contemporaries, v2.djvu/438

410 Q. To what cause is that owing?

A. To a concurrence of causes ; the restraints lately laid on their trade, by which the bringing of foreign gold and silver into the colonies was prevented ; the prohibition of making paper money among themselves ; and then demanding a new and heavy tax by stamps ; taking away at the same time, trials by juries, and refusing to receive & hear their humble petitions.

Q. Don't you think they would submit to the stamp-act, if it was modified, the obnoxious parts taken out, and the duties reduced to some particulars, of small moment? A. No; they will never submit to it. . ..

Q. Was it an opinion in America before 1763, that the parliament had no right to lay taxes and duties there?

A. I never heard any objection to the right of laying duties to regulate commerce ; but a right to lay internal taxes was never supposed to be in parliament, as we are not represented there. . ..

Q. Would the repeal of the stamp-act be any discouragement of your manufactures? Will the people that have begun the manufacture decline it?

A. Yes, I think they will ; especially, if, at the same time, the trade is opened again, so that remittances can be easily made. I have known several instances that make it probable. In the war before last, tobacco being low, and making little remittance, the people of Virginia went generally into family manufactures. Afterwards, when tobacco bore a better price, they returned to the use of British manufactures. So fulling mills were very much disused in the last war in Pennsylvania, because bills were then plenty, and remittance could easily be made to Britain for English cloth and other goods.

Q. If the stamp-act should be repealed, would it induce the assemblies of America to acknowledge the rights of parliament to tax them, and would they erase their resolutions?A. No, never.

Q. Is there no means of obliging them to erase those resolutions?

A. None that I know of; they will never do it unless compelled by force of arms.

Q. Is there no power on earth that can force them to erase them?

A. No power, how great soever, can force men to change their opinions. . . . Q. Would it be most for the interest of Great-Britain, to employ the hands of Virginia in tobacco, or in manufactures?