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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 evidences 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, 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 operate wonderfully to your purpose; by convincing them, that they are at present under a power something like that spoken of in the Scriptures, which can not only kill their bodies, but damn their souls to all eternity, by compelling them, if it pleases, to worship the devil.

11. To make your taxes more odious, and more likely to procure resistance, send from the capital a board of officers to superintend the collection, composed of the most indiscreet, ill-bred, and insolent you can find. Let these have large salaries out of the extorted revenue, and live in open grating luxury upon the sweat and blood of the industrious; whom they are to worry continually with groundless and expensive prosecutions before the above-mentioned arbitrary revenue-judges; all at the cost of the party prosecuted, though acquitted, because the king is to pay no costs. Let these men, by your order, be exempted from all the common taxes and burthens of the province, though they and their property are protected by its laws. If any revenue officers are suspected of the least tenderness for the people, discard them. If others are justly complained of, protect and reward them. If any of the under officers behave so as to provoke the people to drub them, promote those to better offices; this will encourage others to procure for themselves such profitable drubbings, by multiplying and enlarging such provocations, and all will work towards the end you aim at.

12. Another way to make your tax odious, is to misapply the produce of it. If it was originally appropriated for the defence of the provinces, and the better support of government, and the administration of justice where it may be necessary; then apply none of it to that defence; but bestow it where it is not necessary, in augmenting salaries or pensions to every governor who has distinguished himself by his enmity to the people, and by calumniating them to

VOL. III.

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their sovereign. This will make them pay it more unwillingly, and be more apt to quarrel with those that collect it and those that imposed it; who will quarrel again with them; and all shall contribute to your own purpose, of making them weary of your government.

13. If the people of any province have been accustomed to support their own governors and judges to satisfaction, you are to apprehend that such governors and judges may be thereby influenced to treat the people kindly, and to do them justice. This is another reason for applying part of that revenue in larger salaries to such governors and judges, given, as their commissions are, during your pleasure only; forbidding them to take any salaries from their provinces; that thus the people may no longer hope any kindness from their governors, or (in crown cases) any justice from their judges.--And as the money thus misapplied in one province is extorted from all, probably all will resent the misapplication.

14. If the parliaments of your provinces should dare to claim rights, or complain of your administration; order them to be harassed with repeated dissolutions. If the same men are continually returned by new elections; adjourn their meetings to some country village, where they cannot be accommodated, and there keep them during pleasure; for this, you know, is your prerogative; and an excellent one it is, as you may manage it to promote discontents among the people, diminish their respect, and increase their disaffection.

15. Convert the brave honest officers of your navy into pimping tide-waiters and colony officers of the customs. Let those who in time of war fought gallantly in defence of the commerce of their countrymen, in peace be taught to prey upon it. Let them learn to be corrupted by great and real smugglers; but (to show their diligence) scour with armed boats every bay, harbour, river, creek, cove, or nook throughout the coast of your colonies; stop and detain every coaster, every wood-boat, every fisherman; tumble their cargoes and even their ballast inside out, and upside down; and if a pennyworth of pins is found un-entered, let the whole be seized and confiscated. Thus shall the trade of your colonists suffer more from their friends in time of peace, than it did from their enemies in war.-Then let these boats' crews land upon every farm in their way, rob their orchards, steal their pigs and poultry, and insult the inhabitants. If the injured and exasperated farmers, unable to procure other justice, should attack the aggressors, drub them, and burn their boats; you are to call

this high treason and rebellion, order fleets and armies into their country, and threaten to carry all the offenders three thousand miles to be hanged, drawn, and quartered.-O! this will work admirably!

16. If you are told of discontents in your colonies, never believe that they are general, or that you have given occasion for them; therefore do not think of applying any remedy, or of changing any offensive measure.-Redress no grievance, lest they should be encouraged to demand the redress of some other grievance. Grant no request that is just and reasonable, lest they should make another that is unreasonable.-Take all your informations of the state of the colonies from your governors and officers in enmity with them. Encourage and reward these leasing-makers; secrete their lying accusations, lest they should be confuted; but act upon them as the clearest evidence ;-And believe nothing you hear from the friends of the people. Suppose all their complaints to be invented and promoted by a few factious demagogues, whom, if you could catch and hang, all would be quiet.—Catch and hang a few of them accordingly; and the blood of the martyrs shall work miracles in favor of your purpose.'

17. If you see rival nations rejoicing at the prospect of your disunion with your provinces, and endeavoring to promote it; if they translate, publish and applaud all the complaints of your discontented colonists, at the same time privately stimulating you to severer measures; let not that alarm or offend you; Why should it? since you all mean the same thing.

18. If any colony should at their own charge erect a fortress to secure their port against the fleets of a foreign enemy, get your governor to betray that fortress into your hands. Never think of paying what it cost the country, for that would look, at least, like some regard for justice; but turn it into a citadel, to awe the inhabitants and curb their commerce. If they should have lodged in such fortress the very arms they bought and used to aid you in your conquests, seize them all; it will provoke like ingratitude added to robbery.-One

1 One of the American writers affirms, That there has not been a single instance in which they have complained, without being rebuked; or in which they have been complained against, without being punished.'-A fundamental mistake in the minister occasioned this. Every individual in New England (the peccant country) was held a coward or a knave, and the disorders which spread abroad there, were treated as the result of the too great lenity of Britain! By the aid of this short and benevolent rule, judgment was ever wisely predetermined; to the shutting out redress on the one hand, and enforcing every rigor of punishment on the other. B. V.

admirable effect of these operations will be, to discourage every other colony from erecting such defences, and so their and your enemies may more easily invade them; to the great disgrace of your government, and of course the furtherance of your project.

19. Send armies into their country under pretence of protecting the inhabitants; but, instead of garrisoning the forts on their frontiers with those troops, to prevent incursions, demolish those forts; and order the troops into the heart of the country, that the savages may be encouraged to attack the frontiers,' and that the troops may be protected by the inhabitants: this will seem to proceed from your ill-will or your ignorance, and contribute farther to produce and strengthen an opinion among them, that you are no longer fit to govern them.* 20. Lastly, invest the general of your army in the provinces, with great and unconstitutional powers, and free him from the control of even your own civil governors. Let him have troops enow under his command, with all the fortresses in his possession; and who knows but (like some provincial generals in the Roman empire, and encouraged by the universal discontent you have produced) he may take it into his head to set up for himself? If he should, and you have carefully practised these few excellent rules of mine, take my word for it, all the provinces will immediately join him; and you will that day (if you have not done it sooner) get rid of the trouble of governing them, and all the plagues attending their commerce and connexion, from thenceforth and for ever.

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' I am not versed in Indian affairs, but I find that in April 1773, the assembled chiefs of the western nations told one of our Indian agents, that they remembered their father, the king of Great Britain's message, delivered to them last fall; of demolishing Fort Pittsburg [on the Ohio] and removing the soldiers with their sharp-edged weapons out of the country;-this gave them great pleasure, as it was a strong proof of his paternal kindness towards them.' (See Considerations on the Agreement with Mr. T. Walpole for Lands upon the Ohio, p. 9.) This is general history: I attempt no application of facts, personally invidious. B. V.

2

As the reader may be inclined to divide his belief between the wisdom of ministry, and the candor and veracity of Dr. Franklin, I shall inform him that two contrary objections may be made to the truth of this representation. The first is, that the conduct of Great Britain is made too absurd for possibility; and the second, that it is not made absurd enough for fact. If we consider that this writing does not include the measures subsequent to 1773, the latter difficulty is easily set aside. The former, I can only solve by the many instances in history, where the infatuation of individuals has brought the heaviest calamities upon natious. B. V.

[PAPER written in England by Benjamin Franklin, to discourage the intended Act for preventing Emigration.]

SIR,

TO THE PRINTER OF THE PUBLIC ADVERTISEr.

You give us in your paper of Tuesday the 16th of November, what is called "the Plan of an Act to be proposed at the next meeting of Parliament to prevent the Emigration of our People." I know not from what authority it comes, but as it is very circumstantial, I suppose some such plan may be really under consideration, and that this is thrown out to feel the pulse of the public. I shall therefore, with your leave, give my sentiments of it in your paper.

During a century and half that Englishmen have been at liberty to remove if they pleased to America, we have heard of no law to restrain that liberty, and confine them as prisoners in this island. Nor do we perceive any ill effects produced by their emigration. Our estates, far from diminishing in value through a want of tenants, have been in that period more than doubled; the lands in general are better cultivated; their increased produce finds a ready sale at an advanced price, and the complaint has for some time been, not that we want mouths to consume our meat, but that we want meat for our number of mouths.

Why then is such a restraining law now thought necessary? A paragraph in the same paper from the Edinburgh Courant, may perhaps throw some light upon this question. We are there told, "that 1500 people have emigrated to America from the shire of Sutherland within these two years, and carried with them 7,500% sterling; which exceeds a year's rent of the whole county; that the single consideration of the misery which most of these people must suffer in America, independent of the loss of men and money to the mother-country, should engage the attention not only of the landed interest, but of administration." The humane writer of this paragraph, may, I fancy, console himself with the reflection, that perhaps the apprehended future sufferings of those emigrants will never exist; for that it was probably the authentic accounts they had received from friends already settled there, of the felicity to be enjoyed in that country, with a thorough knowledge of their own misery at home, which induced their removal. And, as a politician, he may be comforted by assuring himself, that if they really meet with greater misery in America, their future

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