voluntary grants. The principle that the right of taxation depends on representation, one of the greatest beauties in the ancient constitution of England, though now reduced almost to a shadow, was disregarded, or the British subject was supposed to have suspended his claim for it, by residence in a distant colony. The chartered rights, which in the reign of the Stuarts had been frequently trampled on, were again set at nought, and a scheme of internal taxation was adopted, which it was supposed might be easily enforced, and would gradually introduce a sysstematic extraction of internal revenue. Stamp duties were imposed on most of the instruments in common use, and were to be paid to officers appointed by the crown. But the people of America were too sagacious not to perceive the danger of submitting to the first inroads upon their rights, and too firm not to resist them. By a simultaneous impulse, from one end of our continent to the other, a concerted abstinence from the use of stamps and the resignation of many of the officers employed, the measure was rendered impracticable.
The common danger suggested the idea of an union for common defence. A precedent for a congress of the provinces was not wanting. In the year 1753, deputies from several of them had assembled at Albany for a different purpose. The apprehensions of a war between France and Great Britain, in which, as we have already observed, the colonies of each would be necessarily involved, led to this assembly, the object of which was to increase the means of defence by forming an union of the provinces. The plan was disapproved by the British ministry, because it was apprehended that it might produce a concert of measures opposing the supremacy
