The distinction, on the other hand, between internal and external taxation as stated by Pitt and Camden was bound to carry its supporters further than they at the moment foresaw. It was indeed possible to argue with Franklin that the distinction was real, "because an external tax is a duty laid on commodities imported, and the duty being added to the first cost and other charges on the commodity when it is offered for sale, makes a part of the price, that if the people do not like it at that price they refuse it, and are not obliged to pay it, while an internal tax is forced from the people without their consent, if not laid by their own representatives; that the Stamp Act said the colonists should have no commerce, make no exchange of property with each other, neither purchase nor grant, nor recover debts, neither marry nor make wills, unless they paid such and such sums, and thus it was intended to extort money from them, or ruin them by the consequences of refusing to pay."[1] But when the question was closely examined it became clear, as Mansfield showed, "that the distinction of internal and external taxes was false and groundless, for it was granted that restrictions upon trade and duties upon the ports were legal, at the same time that the right of the Parliament of Great Britain to lay internal taxes upon the colonies was denied. But what real difference could there be in this distinction? A tax laid at any place was like a pebble falling into and making a circle in a lake, till one circle produced and gave motion to another and the whole circumference was agitated from the centre; for nothing could be more clear than that a tax of ten or twenty per cent laid upon tobacco either in the ports of Virginia or London was a duty laid upon the inland plantations of Virginia 100 miles from the sea wherever the tobacco grows."[2]
It was difficult to controvert the position assumed by the illustrious lawyer, for the whole system, of which the Navigation Act was the foundation, rested on the idea of making the colonies contribute to the wealth, and there-
