47. Do not Tax the Colonies
BY BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1766)[121]
Q. WHAT is your name, and place of abode?
A. Franklin, of Philadelphia.
Q. Do the Americans pay any considerable taxes
among themselves?
A. Certainly, many, and very heavy taxes.
Q. For what purposes are those taxes laid?
A. For the support of the civil and military
establishments
of the country, and to discharge the heavy debt contracted in the last
war.
Q. Are not all the people very able to pay those taxes?
A. No. The frontier counties, all along the continent,
having been frequently ravaged by the enemy and greatly
impoverished, are able to pay very little tax. And therefore, in
consideration of their distresses,
our[122] late tax laws do expressly favor
those counties, excusing the sufferers; and I suppose the same is done
in other governments.
Q. What was the temper of America toward Great
Britain before the year 1763?
A. The best in the world. They submitted willingly to
the government of the crown, and paid, in their courts, obedience to the
acts of Parliament. Numerous as the people are in the several old
provinces, they cost you nothing in forts, citadels, garrisons, or armies,
to keep them in subjection. They were governed by this country at the
expense only of a little pen, ink, and paper; they were led by a thread.
They had not only a respect, but an affection for Great Britain;
for its laws, its customs and manners, and even a fondness for its
fashions, that greatly increased the commerce. Natives of Britain were
always treated with particular regard; to be an Old England man was of
itself a character of some respect, and gave a kind of rank among us.
Q. What is their temper now?
A. O, very much altered.
Q. In what light did the people of America use to
consider the Parliament of Great Britain?
A. They considered the Parliament as the great
bulwark and security of their liberties and privileges,
and always spoke of it with the utmost respect and veneration.
Arbitrary ministers, they thought, might possibly, at times, attempt to
oppress them; but they relied on it that the Parliament, on application,
would
always give redress. They remembered, with gratitude, a strong
instance of this, when a bill was brought into Parliament, with a clause
to make royal instructions laws in the colonies, which the House of
Commons would not pass, and it was thrown out.
Q. And have they not still the same respect for
Parliament?
A. No, it is greatly lessened.
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
and 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 duty
reduced to some particulars of small moment?
A. No, they will never submit to it.
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. Are 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 a power on earth that can force them to
erase them?
A. No power, how great soever, can force men to
change their opinions.
Q. Do they consider the post-office as a tax, or as a
regulation?
A. Not as a tax, but as a regulation and conveniency;
every assembly encouraged it, and supported
it in its infancy by grants of money, which they would not otherwise
have done; and the people have always paid the postage.
Q. When did you receive the instructions you
mentioned?
A. I brought them with me, when I came to England,
about fifteen months since.
Q. When did you communicate that instruction to the
minister?
A. Soon after my arrival, while the stamping of
America was under consideration, and before the bill was brought in.
Q. Would it be most for the interest of Great Britain to
employ the hands of Virginia in tobacco, or in manufactures?
A. In tobacco, to be sure.
Q. What used to be the pride of the Americans?
A. To indulge in the fashions and manufactures of
Great Britain.
Q. What is now their pride?
A. To wear their old clothes over again, till they can
make new ones.
[[121]]
When the British government found that the
Stamp Tax was very much resented in America, a committee asked
Benjamin Franklin to tell what he thought about the
circumstance.
[[122]]
"Our," i.e., Pennsylvania.
