shire be ten times more populous than Rutlandshire, the representation of a Yorkshire freeholder is by ten degrees weaker or less direct, than the representation of a Rutlandshire freeholder. And, suppose the city of Bristol contains a thousand times more freemen than the decayed borough of Old Sarum, the Constitution allows, that a burgess of Old Sarum shall be a thousand times more directly, or particularly represented than a freeman of Bristol.-(6.) On the same plan, some flourishing and populous towns are not allowed to send any representative, when some poor and deserted Cornish or Welsh boroughs, send as many members as some of the greatest cities in the kingdom.-(7.) The Constitution allows that the present members shall represent all those who are absent; and that the majority of the present members shall indirectly represent the minority; and that the parliament shall determine the affairs of all the British settlements in Europe, Asia, Africa, and in the West-Indies; although the Colonists settled in those parts have no direct representatives in parliament: I say no direct representatives, because the Constitution supposes, that as the men indirectly represent all the women; the burgesses, all that are not burgesses; and the freeholders, all that have no freehold; and as the majority in parliament indirectly represents the minority, and the members who are in the house indirectly represent those who are absent; so the three branches of the legislature indirectly represent all the political body which is called the British empire, just as the head, the heart, and the breast, indirectly represent all the natural body; whether the hands and feet touch each other, or whether they are widely extended towards the East and the West.-(8.) The prosperity of the mother-country being as closely connected with the prosperity of the Colonies, as the welfare of parents is connected with that of their children, Great Britain has as rational and natural a right to represent the Colonies, as parents have to represent their children; present burgesses, those that are absent; and voting free

more remote.

holders, those that have no vote.-Lastly, Matter of fact demonstrates, that the American Colonies are indirectly represented in parliament, and matter of fact bears down ten thousand sophisms. I have already made appear, that the Constitution allows of various degrees of indirect representation, some proximate, and others And, that the Colonists are represented in one of the degrees which the Constitution allows, is evident by the following remark: As a lawyer who pleads your cause in a court of judicature, is indirectly your representative, whether you choose him or not: So the members, who plead the cause of the Colonists in the high court of parliament, shew themselves the indirect representatives of the Colonists, whether the Colonists choose them or not. And, therefore, to deny that the provincials are indirectly represented in parliament, is as bold an imposition upon the good sense of the public, as to deny that the minority, in both houses of parliament, opposes the claims of Great Britain, and votes for the Colonies: For reason, conscience, and the constitution agree to decide, that if the Colonists are not indirectly represented in parliament, the members who plead their cause have no more right to vote for them than you and I have. My demonstration is short: A considerable number of parliament-mea vote in both houses, that parliamentary taxation is unjust with respect to the Colonies; all the members have a right to vote in their favour, and would do it, if their conscience permitted, and therefore the Colonists are incontestably, though indirectly, represented in the parliament. Nor can one of the members, who compose the minority, give his vote for the Americans, without confuting himself, if he denies that they are indirectly represented in the parliament; and if they are indirectly represented in parliament, they may be constitutionally taxed by the parliament. On this ground, which is firm as matter of fact, the majority are ready to stand the minority and you, in all the courts of reason, which are or can be erected in Great Britain or America.

Consider we now what you object to this constitutional doctrine. Page 37, you say, "The non-voters here can point out their virtual representatives, as clearly as the voters can point out their direct representatives. But who are the specific virtual representatives of America? Who are appointed to represent the property there?" I reply :—(1.) The whole body, in which the legislative power is lodged, is appointed by the Constitution to protect the property of all the subjects of Great Britain. (2.) Your ideas of representation are far too much circumscribed. Though the members of a Cornish borough directly represent the burgesses of that borough, yet they indirectly represent the Commons of all England, and of all the British dominions. If it were not so, they could have no voice in the house, except when the petty concerns of their borough are debated. Now, Sir, by the same constitutional rule, by which the members of a Welsh borough are appointed to manage the affairs of all England; the members of Middlesex are appointed to manage the affairs of all British America. If you want me to point out some of the indirect, virtual representatives of the Americans, I take up the first newspaper, and point at the names of the members, who distinguish themselves by their zeal to support what they judge to be the rights of the Americans. And I ask, if these lords and gentlemen do not indirectly represent the rich and the poor in our Colonies, what right have they to vote for the Colonists more than the members of the Irish parliament ?

Page 31. You intimate, that it is "perfectly unconstitutional, to exclude the Americans from having a voice in the disposal of their property, whose estates may amount to thirty-nine pounds per annum ;" though you grant, that "a man in England can have no voice in the disposal of his property, whose estate amounts to no more than thirty-nine shillings per annum." But have you forgot that the Constitution allows "the pot-boilers in the despicable hovels of some boroughs" to have votes for parliament-men, while some "freeholders in

1

Gloucester, Hereford, and London, have no votes for town or country," because they are neither freemen nor liverymen: On this important concession, which you make, page 98, I rest the following queries: If the Constitution allows the taxation of some Freeholders in the cities of Gloucester, Hereford, and London; although such freeholders, through an accidental cause, have no votes for town or country; why can it not allow the taxation of some freeholders, who, through an accidental cause, have no votes for England or America? And if you grant, that the Constitution permits, that some men, who possess a freehold in the centre of Great Britain, are constitutionally taxed by the parliament, though they have no vote; do you not expose your prejudice before all the world, if you say that the Colonists cannot be constitutionally taxed by the parliament, merely because they have no vote?

I have pressed you with the case of some members of parliament, who are constitutionally taxed with or without their consent, so long as they choose to live abroad. P. 31, 32, you reply, " The Americans are at home." You insinuate, that my doctrine supposes they

are never at home," and you humourously say, "Were I a Colonist, the prerogative I would humbly sue for, should be that of being permitted to be at home; for home is home, says the old proverb, be it ever so homely." I answer, Lord Pigot, a member of parlia ment who is in the East Indies, and Mr. Hancock, a member of the Congress, have the full leave of the Constitution to be at home. Only it must be remem bered, that by emigration, they have their home in two places; as the gentlemen who have a house in London, and another in the country. They have their legis. lative home in Great Britain, and their actual home, Lord Pigot, in Bengal, and Mr. Hancock, in Philadelphia. If they will enjoy the prerogatives of their legislative home, they must return to England, just vas the gentlemen who fill their seats in the parliament, and enjoy their honours at court, must leave their country seats and repair to London. Nor say that the distinc

tion I make between our actual and our legislative home is frivolous; for Dr. Price, your oracle, says, “They [the Colonies] gloried in their relation to us;-and they always spoke of this country and looked to it as their home." Now, as the Colonists were never so destitute of good sense, as to look on England as their actual home; it remains, that your oracle has spoken nonsense, or that England is their principal, legislative home. And would to God, they were not grown so uneasy, as to despise this " 'home, be it ever so homely!"

You hint indeed at the inconvenience and impossibility of the Colonists coming back to their legislative home; but this objection makes as much against your scheme of representation as against ours; for you insinuate, that all the non-voters in England may go and settle in the few boroughs, where the Constitution allows every pot-boiler to be a voter; and you give us a hint, that if they do not, "it is their own fault." But is it not more practicable for all the freeholders in America, to crowd into Great Britain; than for all the non-voters in Great Britain, to crowd into such privileged boroughs as you speak of; or for all the women, who have freeholds in England, to change their sex, that they may have a vote at the next election?

You reply, p. 38, "The representation in England is unequal; owing to a great variety of casual circumstances, which it would be useless to enumerate." Now, Sir, applying to all the British empire, what you say of England, I answer, The representation, with respect to America, is unequal; owing to a great variety of casual circumstances," such as emigration, distance, interposing seas, and the impropriety of multiplying§

Mr. Evans wants each American assembly to be invested with supreme power in conjunction with the King, after the model of the Irish parliament; but I wish the British Empire too well to be of his sentiment. The same rule holds in po lities and in mechanics; the more a government and a machine are needlessly complicated, the weaker are their motions, and the greater the danger of their being out of order. It is the glory and strength of our Constitution to be