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316 whole I think it appears the rule had not been deviated from, for about forty years last past. The Reason of the Rule is said to be ye Manifest inconvenience that used to arise by Having so much of the time taken up in Hearing the various & allmost innumerable Claims, Reasons & pretentions of ye many Subjects against being Taxed—& that there was the less reason for hearing Em, against laying a Tax, as it is at the same time an invariable rule that the Subject may Petition for the repeal of a Law Imposing a tax after that tax is laid & Experience had of the Effects, & finally that however reasonable it might be to hear the Americans themselves, there could be no reason for hearing the London Merchants in their behalf.

On the other side it was said, that the rule was not any Order of the House, but merely a practice as founded on Experience & to prevent inconvenience:—that however unreasonable it would be to Admit English Subjects upon every Imposition of a tax to come & be heard upon Petitions against the same, yet even in England it appeared by precedents produced, that when any new species of taxation had been set on foot, particularly the matter of funding, so called, i. e. borrowing of the Subject & paying Interest by various taxes, that Petitions had been admitted against the measure, and also on some other particular and extraordinary Occasions formerly, & that this Case as to America was quite new & particularly hard as they had no Members in the House to speak for them.

Upon the whole the Question being about to be put, Mr. Fuller seeing pretty plainly which way it would be carried, withdrew his Petition. Next Sr. William Meredith presented one in behalf of the Colony of Virginia; this was drawn up here by their Agent Mr. Montegue, but had interwove in it some Expressions of the Assembly of Virginia contained in their Votes & which at least strongly implied their denial of the right of Parliament to tax the Colonies. This drew on a pretty warm debate. Mr. Yorke the late Attorney General Delivered himself in a very long Speech in which he endeavoured to evince that the Kings Grants contained in the Charters to some, & in the Commissions to the Governors in the other Colonies, could,