John Dickinson

“ In fact, however advantageous the subduing or keeping any of these countries may be to Great-Britain, the acquisition is greatly injurious to these colonies. Our chief property consists in lands. These would have been of much greater value, if such prodigious additions had not been made to the British territories on this continent. The natural increase of our own people, if confined within the colonies, would have raised the value still higher and higher every fifteen or twenty years: Besides, we should have lived more compactly together, and have been therefore more able to resist any enemy. ”

“ It is in vain to hope, that because it is imprudent to lay duties on the exportation of manufactures from a mother country to colonies, as it may promote manufactures among them, that this consideration will prevent such a measure. ”

“ But to have done this, without expresly “asserting and maintaining” the power of parliament to take our money without our consent, and to apply it as they please, would not have been, in Mr. Greenville’s opinion, sufficiently declarative of its supremacy, nor sufficiently depressive of American freedom.
Therefore it is, that in this memorable act we find it expresly “provided,” that money shall be levied upon us without our consent, for purposes, that render it, if possible, more dreadful than the Stamp-Act. ”