there be a more proper time to force them to maintain an army at their
expence, than when that army is necessary for their own protection, and
we are utterly unable to support it? Lastly, can there be a more proper
time for this mother country to leave off feeding out of her own vitals
these children whom she has nursed up, than when they are arrived at
such strength and maturity as to be well able to provide for themselves,
and ought rather with filial duty to give some assistance to her
distresses?"

Americans, after all, were not the only ones who might claim to have a
grievance!

It was upon a lighter note, not to end in anticlimax, that Mr. Jenyns
concluded his able pamphlet. He had heard it hinted that allowing the
colonies representation in Parliament would be a simple plan for making
taxes legal. The impracticability of this plan, he would not go into,
since the plan itself had nowhere been seriously pressed, but he would,
upon that head, offer the following consideration:

"I have lately seen so many specimens of the great powers of speech
of which these American gentlemen are possessed, that I should be much
afraid that the sudden importation of so much eloquence at once would
greatly endanger the safety of the government of this country.... If we
can avail ourselves of these taxes on no other condition, I shall never
look upon it as a measure of frugality, being perfectly satisfied that
in the end, it will be much cheaper for us to pay their army than their
orators."

Mr. Jenyns's pamphlet, which could be had for sixpence, was widely read,
with much appreciation for its capital wit and extraordinary common
sense; more widely read in England than Mr. James Otis's "Rights of
the British Colonies Asserted and Proved" or Daniel Dulaney's
"Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes on the British
Colonies"; and it therefore did much more than these able pamphlets to
clarify English opinion on the rights of Parliament and the expediency
of taxing America. No one could deny that Government had yielded in
the face of noisy clamor and forcible resistance. To yield under the
circumstances may have been wise or not; but Government had not yielded
on any ground of right, but had on the contrary most expressly affirmed,
in the Declaratory Act, that "the King's Majesty, by and with the advice
of the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons of Great Britain, in
Parliament assembled, had, hath, and of right oug