The burning of the _Gaspee_ schooner near Providence, has given the chief rise to “an act for the better securing his majesty’s dock yards, magazines, ships, ammunition and stores.” If the button of a marine’s coat, the oar of a cutter’s boat, or the head of a cask belonging to the fleet, are included under the comprehensive term _stores_, then according to the act, a person wilfully and maliciously destroying, or aiding and assisting in destroying the same, is to suffer death on being convicted. But what will affect you more than all the rest is that the act is extended to the colonies, and subjects a person to a trial at the pleasure of his majesty, his heirs or successors, in any shire or county in Great-Britain. Your own feelings will furnish you with the best comment on this new extension of parliamentary power. The supporting of the authority of parliament was the only cause assigned by the minister himself, for retaining the tea-duty, at the very time when he acknowledged it to be as anti-commercial a tax, as any of those which he had repealed upon that principle. It now appears that government had something more in contemplation. The East-India Company, feeling the bad effects of the colonial smuggling trade, (occasioned by the retention of the duty) in the large quantities of tea which remained in their warehouses unsold, requested the repeal of the three-pence per pound in America, and offered that, upon its being complied with, government should retain six-pence in the pound on the exportation. Thus the company presented the happiest opportunity which could have offered, for honorably removing the cause of difference with America. Here was an opening for doing right, without infringing the claims on either side. The company asked, and their situation required relief. It could not be alledged, that it was done at the instance of American discontent. The minister was requested and intreated, by a gentleman of great weight in the company, and a member of parliament, to embrace the opportunity; but it has been rejected. New contrivances have been set on foot to introduce the tea, attended with the three-penny duty into all the colonies. Various intrigues and solicitations have been used to induce the chairman and deputy chairman, to undertake this rash and foolish business. It has been protested against as contrary to the principles of the company’s monopoly; but the power of ministry has prevailed; and the insignificant three-penny duty on tea, is doomed to be the fatal bone of contention between Great-Britain and America. A bill has been passed into an act, [May 10.] for enabling the company to export their own teas. In consequence of it they have adopted the system, and are become their own factors. They have come to a resolution of sending 600 chests of tea to _Philadelphia_, the like quantity to _New-York_ and _Boston_, beside what is designed for other places; several ships are accordingly