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What if colonies, as they are called, are worth nothing to you? What if they are worth less than nothing?—If you prefer injustice, (pardon me the supposition) are you so fond of it, as to commit it to your own loss?
What then should they be worth to you, but by yielding a surplus of revenue, beyond what is necessary for their own maintenance and defence? Do you, can you, get any such surplus from them? If you do, you plunder them, and violate your own principles. But you neither do, nor ever have done, nor intend to do, nor ever can, do any such thing.
The expence of the peace establishment, you may know: and I much question whether any revenue you can draw from them, can so much as equal that expence. But the expence of defence in time of war, you do not know, nor ever can know. It is no less than the expence of a navy, capable of overawing that of Britain.
Oh, but the produce of our colonies is worth so many millions a year: it has been, and when quiet is restored will be again: all this,
if
