Q. Do not the resolutions of the Pennsylvania assemblies say, all taxes? A. If they do, they mean only internal taxes; the same words have not always the same meaning here and in the colonies. By taxes they mean internal taxes; by duties they mean customs; these are the ideas of the language. Q. Have you not seen the resolutions of the Massachusetts Bay assembly? A. I have. Q. Do they not say, that neither external nor internal taxes can be laid on them by parliament? A. I don't know that they do; I believe not. Q. If the same tax should say neither tax nor imposition could be laid, does not that province hold the power of parliament can lay neither? A. I suppose that by the word imposition, they do not intend to express duties to be laid on goods imported, as regulations of commerce. Q. What can the colonies mean then by imposition as distinct from taxes? A. They may mean many things, as impressing of men, or of carriages, quartering troops on private houses, and the like; there may be great impositions that are not properly taxes. Q. Is not the post-office rate an internal tax laid by act of parliament? A. I have answered that. Q. Are all parts of the colonies equally able to pay taxes? A. No, certainly; the frontier parts, which have been ravaged by the enemy, are greatly disabled by that means, and therefore, in such cases, are usually favoured in our tax laws. {3201} Q. Can we, at this distance, be competent judges of what favours are necessary? A. The parliament have supposed it, by claiming a right to make tax laws for America; I think it impossible. Q. Would the repeal of the Stamp Act be any discouragement of your manufactures? Will the people that have begun to manufacture decline it? A. Yes, I think they will; especially if, at the same time, the trade is opened again, so that remittances can be easily made. I have known several instances that make it probable. In the war before last, tobacco being low, and making little remittance, the people of Virginia went generally into family manufactures. Afterwards, when tobacco bore a better price, they returned to the use of British manufactures. So fulling mills were very much disused in the last war in Pennsylvania, because bills were then plenty, and remittances could easily be made to Britain for English cloth and other goods. Q. If the Stamp Act should be repealed, would it induce the assemblies of America to acknowledge the right of parliament to tax them, and, would they erase their resolutions? A. No, never. Q. Is there no means of obliging them to erase those resolutions? A. None, that I know of; they will never do it, unless compelled by force of arms. Q. Is there a power on earth that can force them to erase them? A. No power, how great soever, can force men to change their opinions.