This essay presents a formidable array of financial figures to assert that imperial defense necessitates the involvement of all parts of the empire for support. Because Britain’s defeated rivals had failed to raise sufficient funds, they have less debt. Having less debt, they require fewer taxes, giving them an advantage which will allow them to recover sooner. Thus “present safety cannot be had without an expensive peace establishment,” and such an “establishment prevents relief from taxes.”

The text presents a distinctive set of views, excoriating both Josiah Tucker and Samuel Johnson, the first for countenancing the idea of setting the colonies free; the second for attempting to enslave them. The argument contends instead for the old “mixed government, or constitution of England,” and a well-regulated commercial policy, rather than Tucker’s proposal of free trade with the world: “Now who is it that reads this…but must suppose you to be the consul elect of Russia?”

This pamphlet is a part of The Pamphlet Debate on the American Question in Great Britain, 1764-1776: A Digital Collection, edited by Jack P. Greene.

Christian Wolff’s The Law of Nations is a cornerstone of eighteenth-century thought. A treatise on the philosophy of human action, on the foundations of political communities, and on international law, it influenced philosophers throughout the eighteenth-century Enlightenment world. According to Knud Haakonssen, general editor of the Natural Law and Enlightenment series, “before Kant’s critical philosophy, Wolff was without comparison the most influential German thinker for several decades as well as a major European figure.”

The central text of this volume, An Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times (1757), is a vigorous attack on the “vain, luxurious, and selfish effeminacy” of England’s higher ranks, in the wake of the loss of Minorca to the French at the opening of the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). Brown repeated the usual complaints of corruption that had been raised during the premiership of Walpole and argued that public virtue had been undermined by a preoccupation with luxury and commerce. Estimate was printed no fewer than seven times within the first year, earning the author the name “Estimate Brown.”

Conceding the fact of virtual representation in England, this pamphlet takes the view that it actually undermines Parliament’s authority to tax the colonies because none of the representatives in Parliament could ever feel the effects of their taxes, as they would from one levied in their own country. Here, the author contends, both the actually and virtually represented must be taxed the same, lest the injustice of “taxation without representation would then be evident and manifest.”

This text argues along lines similar to Burke’s speech on Reconciliation, noting the differences among colonial regions. Americans prize personal liberty from different but reinforcing ways of life. Aristocratic Virginians are bred to genteel pursuits, chief among which is the law, giving them a heightened sense of their legal rights. Among New Englanders, nonconformism in religion makes them especially jealous of local government. To coerce is imprudent, risking all the benefits of their trade.

In this speech, Burke argued that Americans were Englishmen who had carried with them the most ardent sentiments in favor of liberty, and, however contradictory, even those who held slaves, were among the most ardent of all. He made the startling observation that the “chaos” that was assumed would follow the withdrawal of royal government was having the opposite effect than expected. Repeal the Coercive Acts and restore “salutary neglect” because Americans were finding independence tolerable!

One copy of this text contains a note naming a certain “Dr. Sutcliffe” as the author. This text rebuts the idea that legislation is inseparable from taxation, asserting that practices affirmed by general understanding can sustain all such distinctions “for the powers of governors are just so much as, and can be no more than such compact gives them.” Citing the 40 shilling minimum to vote in England, and Locke on the social contract, the writer denies the authority to tax without representation.”

This essay was among the most rhetorically colorful of the responses to the writers in the pay of the British government, Samuel Johnson, John Shabbeare, and John Wesley. Taking a strong moral stance against taxation without representation, the text excoriates those who “prostitute their abilities and belie their consciences for HIRE.” The American colonies were simply resorting to the only means left to them when “kings and governors degenerate into tyrants.”