f money in any way which
they liked better. The burden of what was asked would be light. Why
should not they agree to bear it? Why this talk, repeated by the Whigs
in the British Parliament, of brutal tyranny, oppression, hired minions
imposing slavery, and so on. Where were the oppressed? Could any one
point to a single person who before war broke out had known British
tyranny? What suffering could any one point to as the result of the tax
on tea? The people of England paid a tax on tea four times heavier than
that paid in America. Was not the British Parliament supreme over the
whole Empire? Did not the colonies themselves admit that it had the
right to control their trade overseas? And if men shirk their duty
should they not come under some law of compulsion?

It was thus that many a plain man reasoned in England. The plain man in
America had his own opposing point of view. Debts and taxes in England
were not his concern. He remembered the recent war as vividly as did the
Englishman, and, if the English paid its cost in gold, he had paid his
share in blood and tears. Who made up the armies led by the British
generals in America? More than half the total number who served in
America came from the colonies, the colonies which had barely a third
of the population of Great Britain. True, Britain paid the bill in money
but why not? She was rich with a vast accumulated capital. The war,
partly in America, had given her the key to the wealth of India. Look
at the magnificence, the pomp of servants, plate and pictures, the parks
and gardens, of hundreds of English country houses, and compare this
opulence with the simple mode of life, simplicity imposed by necessity,
of a country gentleman like George Washington of Virginia, reputed to be
the richest man in America. Thousands of tenants in England, owning no
acre of land, were making a larger income than was possible in America
to any owner of broad acres. It was true that America had gained from
the late war. The foreign enemy had been struck down. But had he not
been struck down too for England? Had there not been far more dread in
England of invasion by France and had not the colonies by helping to
ruin France freed England as much as England had freed them? If now the
colonies were asked to pay a share of the bill for the British army that
was a matter for discussion. They had never before done it and they
must not be told that they had to meet the demand within a year or