The _New-England_ spirit of patriotism and œconomy was greatly approved of at _Philadelphia_: and it was said, that “If America is saved from its impending danger, New-England will be its acknowledged guardian.” Periodical pieces were published at Boston on the nature and extent of British parliamentary power. Hints were thrown out about independency, and intimations given, that freemen were not to be governed any more than taxed but by their own consent, in real or virtual representatives. The power of British legislation over the Americans was questioned, and virtually denied. Matters were brought to this length, by broaching a new dispute that should never have been moved again; and which might happily have lain dorment for half a century or more had no fresh attempt been made to tax the Americans. Before the stamp act they allowed the mother country a certain prerogative over them. They acquiesced in the parliament’s right to make many acts, binding them in divers internal matters, and regulating their trade. They did not reason neither then nor immediately after the repeal, “if the parliament has no right to tax us _internally_, they have none to tax us _externally_, or to make any other law to bind us.” They admitted the distinction between internal and external taxation, and between raising money from the regulation of trade, and raising it for the purpose of a revenue. The wisdom of parliament should have abode by their concessions, and have adopted and confirmed their distinction. But being obliged to enter afresh the field of political controversy, great numbers began to think, that the want of representation in parliament, freed them absolutely from any obedience to the power of the British legislature; and that there was no real, and only a nominal difference between internal and external taxation, agreeable to what was insisted upon by the party opposing the repeal of the stamp act. _John Dickinson_, esq. began so early as in November, 1767, to employ his pen against the act which had been passed, in a series of _Letters from a farmer in Pennsylvania to the inhabitants of the British Colonies_. They amounted to twelve; and in them he ably maintained the rights of the colonists. He closed with a postscript in these words: “Is there not the greatest reason to hope, if the universal sense of these colonies is immediately exprest by _resolves_ of the assembles in support of their rights, by _instructions_ to their agents on the subject, and by _petitions_ to the crown and parliament for redress, that those measures will have the same success now that they had in the time of the stamp act?” The inhabitants of Boston were so sensible of the eminent service he did to the common cause, that they wrote to him upon the occasion. It his answer, April the eleventh, he said, “Never will my heart become insensible till insensible of all worldly things, of the unspeakable obligation I owe to