[412]The legislature properly interposed for the pur-
pose of a general taxation, as the colonies would never agree to adjust their respective proportions amongst themselves.
chap. XXII.} 1766. Feb.
I do not deny but that a tax may be laid injudiciously and injuriously, and that people in such a case may have a right to complain; but the nature of the tax is not now the question: whenever it comes to be one, I am for lenity. I would have no blood drawn. There is, I am satisfied, no occasion for any to be drawn. A little time and experience of the inconveniences and miseries of anarchy may bring people to their senses. Anarchy always cures itself; but the fermentation will continue so much the longer, while hot-headed men there find that there are persons of weight and character to support and justify them here.
Indeed, if the disturbances should continue for a great length of time, force must be the consequence: an application, adequate to the mischief, and arising out of the necessity of the case; for force is only the difference between a superior and subordinate jurisdiction. In the former, the whole force of the legislature resides collectively, and when it ceases to reside, the whole connection is dissolved. It will indeed be to very little purpose, that we sit here enacting laws or making resolutions, if the inferior will not obey them, or if we neither can nor dare enforce them; for then, of necessity, the matter comes to the sword. If the offspring are grown too big and too, resolute to obey the parent, you must try which is the strongest, and exert all the powers of the mother country to decide the contest.
Time and a wise and steady conduct may prevent
