America hath been one continued scene of
legislative contention from the first king's representative to the
last; and this was unavoidably founded in the natural opposition of
interest between the old country and the new. A governor sent from
England, or receiving his authority therefrom, ought never to have
been considered in any other light than that of a genteel commissioned
spy, whose private business was information, and his public business a
kind of civilized oppression. In the first of these characters he
was to watch the tempers, sentiments, and disposition of the people,
the growth of trade, and the increase of private fortunes; and, in the
latter, to suppress all such acts of the assemblies, however
beneficial to the people, which did not directly or indirectly throw
some increase of power or profit into the hands of those that sent
him.
America, till now, could never be called a free country, because her
legislation depended on the will of a man three thousand miles
distant, whose interest was in opposition to ours, and who, by a
single "no," could forbid what law he pleased.
The freedom of trade, likewise, is, to a trading country, an article
of such importance, that the principal source of wealth depends upon
it; and it is impossible that any country can flourish, as it
otherwise might do, whose commerce is engrossed, cramped and
fettered by the laws and mandates of another- yet these evils, and
more than I can here enumerate, the continent has suffered by being
under the government of England.
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