is more likely to come to pass in reality. I apprehend that the ministry, at least the American part of it, being fully persuaded of the right of parliament, think it ought to be enforced, whatever may be the consequences; and at the same time do not believe there is even now any abatement of the trade between the two countries on account of these disputes; or that, if there is, it is small, and cannot long continue. They are assured by the crown-officers in America, that manufactures are impossible there; that the discontented are few, and persons of little consequence; that almost all the people of property and importance are satisfied, and disposed to submit quietly to the taxing power of parliament; and that, if the revenue-acts are continued, and those duties only that are called anti-commercial be repealed, and others perhaps laid in their stead, the power ere long will be patiently submitted to, and the agreements not to import be broken, when they are found to produce no change of measures here. From these and similar misinformations, which seem to be credited, I think it likely, that no thorough redress of grievances will be afforded to America this session. This may inflame matters still more in this country ; further rash measures there may create more resentment here, that may produce not merely ill-advised dissolutions of their assemblies, as last year, but attempts to dissolve their constitution; more troops may be sent over, which will create more uneasiness; to justify the measures of government, your writers will revile the Americans in your newspapers, as they have already begun to do, treating them as miscreants, rogues, dastards, rebels, &c., to alienate the minds of the people here from them, and which will tend further to diminish their affections to this country. Possibly too, some of their warm patriots may be distracted enough to expose themselves by some mad action to be sent for hither, and government here be indiscreet enough to hang them, on the act of Henry VIII. Mutual provocations will thus go on to complete the separation; and instead of that cordial affection, which once so long existed, and that harmony, so suitable to the circumstances, and so necessary to the happiness, strength, safety, and welfare of both countries, an implacable malice and mutual hatred, such as we now see subsisting between the Spaniards and Portuguese, the Genoese and Corsicans, from the same original misconduct in the superior governments, will take place: the sameness of nation, the similarity of religion, manners, and language not in the least preventing in our case, more than it did in theirs. I hope, however, that this may all prove false pro

phecy, and that you and I may live to see as sincere and perfect a friendship established between our respective countries, as has so many years subsisted between Mr Strahan, and his truly affectionate old friend, B. FRANKLIN.

No. IV.

Rules for reducing a Great Empire to a small one, presented to a late Minister, when he entered upon his Administration.

AN ancient sage valued himself upon this, that though he could not fiddle, he knew how to make a great city of a little The science, that I, a modern simpleton, am about to communicate, is the very reverse.

one.

I address myself to all ministers who have the management of extensive dominions, which, from their very greatness, are become troublesome to govern-because the multiplicity of their affairs leave no time for fiddling.

I. In the first place, gentlemen, you are to consider, that a great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges. Turn your attention therefore first to your remotest provinces; that, as you get rid of them, the next may follow in order.

II. That the possibility of this separation may always exist, take special care the provinces are never incorporated with the mother-country : that they do not enjoy the same common rights, the same privileges in commerce, and that they are governed by severer laws, all of your enacting, without allowing them any share in the choice of the legis lators. By carefully making and preserving such distinctions, you will (to keep my simile of a cake) act like a wise gingerbread baker, who, to facilitate a division, cuts his dough half through in those places, where, when baked, he would have it broken to pieces.

III. Those remote provinces have perhaps been acquired, purchased, or conquered, at the sole expense of the settlers or their ancestors, without the aid of the mothercountry. If this should happen to increase her strength, by her growing numbers, ready to join in her wars; her commerce, by her growing demand for her manufactures; or her naval power, by greater employment for her ships

and seamen, they may probably suppose some merit in this, and that it entitles them to some favour; you are therefore to forget it all, or resent it, as if they had done you an injury. If they happen to be zealous whigs, friends of liberty, nurtured in revolution principles; remember all that to their prejudice, and contrive to punish it: for such principles, after a revolution is thoroughly established, are of no more use; they are even odious and abominable.

IV. However peaceably your colonies have submitted to your government, shown their affections to your interests, and patiently borne their grievances, you are to suppose them always inclined to revolt, and treat them accordingly. Quarter troops among them, who, by their insolence, may provoke the rising of mobs, and by their bullets and bayonets suppress them. By this means, like the husband who uses his wife ill from suspicion, you may in time convert your suspicions into realities.

V. Remote provinces must have governors and judges, to represent the royal person and execute everywhere the delegated parts of his office and authority. You, ministers, know, that much of the strength of government depends on the opinion of the people, and much of that opinion on the choice of rulers placed immediately over them. If you send them wise and good men for governors, who study the interests of the colonists, and advance their prosperity, they will think their king wise and good, and that he wishes the welfare of his subjects. If you send them learned and upright men for judges, they will think him a lover of justice. This may attach your provinces more to his government. You are therefore to be careful whom you recommend for those offices. If you can find prodigals, who have ruined their fortunes, broken gamesters or stock jobbers, these may do as well as governors, for they will probably be rapacious, and provoke the people by their extortions. Wrangling proctors and pettifogging lawyers too are not amiss, for they will be for ever disputing and quarrelling with their little parliaments. If withal they should be ignorant, wrong-headed and insolent, so much the better. Attorneys' clerks and Newgate solicitors will do for chief justices, especially if they hold their places during your pleasure, and all will contribute to impress those ideas of your government that are proper for a people you would wish to renounce it.

VI. To confirm these impressions, and strike them deeper, whenever the injured come to the capital with complaints of mal-administration, oppression or injustice,

punish such suitors with long delay, enormous expense, and a final judgment in favour of the oppressor. This will have an admirable effect every way. The trouble of future complaints will be prevented, and governors and judges will be encouraged to further acts of oppression and injustice, and thence the people may become more disaffected, and at length desperate.

VII. When such governors have crammed their coffers, and made themselves so odious to the people, that they can no longer remain among them with safety to their persons, recall and reward them with pensions. You may make them baronets too, if that respectable order should not think fit to resent it. All will contribute to encourage new governors in the same practice, and make the supreme government detestable.

VIII. If, when you are engaged in war, your colonies should vie in liberal aids of men and money against the common enemy upon your simple requisition, and give far beyond their abilities, reflect, that a penny taken from them by your power is more honourable to you, than a pound presented by their benevolence; despise therefore their voluntary grants, and resolve to harass them with novel taxes.They will probably complain to your parliament, that they are taxed by a body in which they have no representative, and that this is contrary to common right. They will petition for redress. Let the parliament flout their claims, reject their petitions, refuse to suffer even the reading of them, and treat the petitioners with the utmost contempt. Nothing can have a better effect in producing the alienations proposed; for though many can forgive injuries, none ever forgave contempt.

IX. In laying these taxes, never regard the heavy burdens those remote people already undergo, in defending their own frontiers, supporting their own provincial government, making new roads, building bridges, churches, and other public edifices, which in old countries have been done to your hands, by your ancestors, but which occasion constant calls and demands on the purses of a new people.Forget the restraint you lay on their trade for your benefit, and the advantage a monopoly of this trade gives your exacting merchants. Think nothing of the wealth those merchants and your manufacturers acquire by the colony com-. merce, their increased ability to pay taxes at home, their accumulating, in the price of their commodities, most of those taxes, and so levying them from their consuming customers: all this, and the employment and support of thousands of your

poor by the colonists, you are entirely to forget. But remember to make your arbitrary tax more grievous to your provinces by public declarations, importing, that your power of taxing them has no limits, so that when you take from them without their consent a shilling in the pound, you have a clear right to the other nineteen. This will probably weaken every idea of security in their property, and convince them, that under such a government they have nothing they can call their own; which can scarce fail of producing the happiest consequences!

X. Possibly indeed some of them might still comfort themselves and say, "though we have no property, we have yet something left that is valuable, we have constitutional liberty, both of person and conscience. This king, these lords, and these commons, who it seems are too remote from us to know us and feel for us, cannot take from us our habeas corpus rights or our rights of trial by a jury of our neighbours they cannot deprive us of the exercise of our religion, alter our ecclesiastical constitution, and compel us to be papists if they please, or Mahometans." To annihilate this comfort, begin by laws to perplex their commerce with infinite regulations, impossible to be remembered and observed: ordain seizures of their property for every failure, take away the trial of such property by jury, and give it to arbitrary judges of your own appointing, and of the lowest characters in the country, whose salaries and emoluments are to arise out of the duties or condemnations, and whose appointments are during pleasure. Then let there be a formal declaration of both houses, that opposition to your edicts is treason, and that persons suspected of treason in the provinces, may, according to some obsolete law, be seized and sent to the metropolis of the empire for trial; and pass an act, that those, there charged with certain other offences, shall be sent away in chains from their friends and country, to be tried in the same manner for felony. Then erect a new court of inquisition among them, accompanied by an armed force, with instructions to transport all such suspected persons, to be ruined by the expense, if they bring over evidence to prove their innocence, or be found guilty and hanged, if they cannot afford it. And lest the people should think you cannot possibly go any farther, pass another solemn declaratory act, "that king, lords, and commons had, have, and of right ought to have full power and authority to make statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the unrepresented provinces in all cases whatsoever." This will include spiritual with temporal, and taken together must