Page:An account of a voyage to establish a colony at Port Philip in Bass's Strait.djvu/134

( 109 ) With respect to the political relations of the colony and the mother-country, we may safely assert, that the bonds of dependence have been drawn so tight that they are almost ready to break. The restraints on trade, the income-tax of ten per cent, levied with the greatest rigour, (a tax unknown in the English colonies,) and the venality of those in office, are glaring evils, which absolute mental blindness could alone prevent the Brasilians from seeing. The spirit of discontent, which had been long silently fermenting, openly shewed itself a few months ago, upon an attempt to introduce a stamp act into the colony: this measure met with universal resistance from the colonists, who, to avoid the penalties arising from non-compliance, transacted all their money cerns