Page:Letters from a farmer in Pennsylvania - Dickinson - 1768.djvu/31

[&emsp;25&emsp;] from them; for all their difficulties and distresses in fixing themselves, what was the recompence made them? A communication of her rights in general, and particularly of that great one, the foundation of all the restthat their property, acquired with so much pain and hazard, should be disposed of by none but themselves---or, to use the beautiful and emphatic language of the sacred scriptures, “that they should sit every man under his vine, and under his fig-tree, and .”

any man of candor and knowledge deny, that these institutions form an affinity between Great-Britain and her colonies, that sufficiently secures their dependence upon her? Or that for her to levy taxes upon them, is to reverse the nature of things? Or that she can pursue such a measure, without reducing them to a state of vassalage?

any person cannot conceive the supremacy of Great-Britain to exist, without the power of laying taxes to levy money upon us, the history of the colonics, and of Great-Britain, since their settlement, will prove the contrary. He will there find the amazing advantages arising to her from themthe constant exercise of her supremacy---and their filial submission to it, without a single rebellion, or even the thought of one, from their first emigration to this momentAnd all these things have happened, without one instance of Great-Britain’s laying taxes to levy money upon them.

many British authors have demonstrated, that the present wealth, power and glory of their country, are founded upon these