" Clearly, it was no mere question of taxation but the
larger question of legislative independence that now confronted
Americans.
A more skillful dialectic was required to defend American rights
against the Townshend duties than against the Stamp Act. It was a
somewhat stubborn fact that Parliament had for more than a
hundred years passed laws effectively regulating colonial trade,
and for regulating trade had imposed duties, some of which had
brought into the Exchequer a certain revenue. Americans, wishing
to be thought logical as well as loyal, could not well say at
this late date that Parliament had no right to lay duties in
regulation of trade. Must they then submit to the Townshend
duties? Or was it possible to draw a line, making a distinction,
rather more subtle than the old one between internal and external
taxes, between duties for regulation and duties for revenue? This
latter feat was undertaken by Mr. John Dickinson of Pennsylvania,
anonymously, under the guise of a simple but intelligent and
virtuous farmer whose arcadian existence had confirmed in him an
instinctive love of liberty and had supplied him with the leisure
to meditate at large upon human welfare and the excellent British
Constitution.
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