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Rules By Which A Great Empire
May Be Reduced To A Small One
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Rules by Which a Great Empire May
Be Reduced to a Small One,
first appeared in The Public Advertiser, September
11, 1773.
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[Presented privately to a late
Minister, when he entered upon his Administration; and now first published.]
An ancient Sage valued himself upon
this, that tho' he could not fiddle, he knew how to
make a great City of a little one. The Science that I, a modern Simpleton, am about to communicate is the very reverse.
I address myself to all Ministers
who have the Management of extensive Dominions, which from their very Greatness
are become troublesome to govern, because the Multiplicity of their Affairs
leaves no Time for fiddling.
- In the first Place, Gentlemen, you are to consider,
that a great Empire, like a great Cake, is most easily
diminished at the Edges. Turn your Attention therefore first to your
remotest Provinces; that as you get rid of them,
the next may follow in Order.
- That the Possibility of this Separation may always
exist, take special Care the Provinces are never incorporated with the Mother
Country, that they do not enjoy the same common Rights, the same
Privileges in Commerce, and that they are governed by severer Laws, all of
your enacting, without allowing them any Share in
the Choice of the Legislators. By carefully making and preserving such
Distinctions, you will (to keep to my Simile of the Cake) act like a wise
Gingerbread Baker, who, to facilitate a Division, cuts his Dough half
through in those Places, where, when bak'd, he
would have it broken to Pieces.
- These remote Provinces have perhaps been acquired, purchas'd, or conquer'd, at the sole Expence
of the Settlers or their Ancestors, without the Aid of the Mother Country.
If this should happen to increase her Strength by their growing Numbers
ready to join in her Wars, her Commerce by their growing Demand for her
Manufactures, or her Naval Power by greater Employment for her Ships and Seamen,
they may probably suppose some Merit in this, and that it entitles them to
some Favour; you are therefore to forget it all,
or resent it as if they had done you Injury. If they happen to be zealous Whigs,
Friends of Liberty,[1] nurtur'd in Revolution
Principles, remember all that to their Prejudice, and contrive to punish
it: For such Principles, after a Revolution is thoroughly established, are
of no more Use, they are even odious and abominable.
- However peaceably your Colonies have submitted to your
Government, shewn their Affection to your
Interest, and patiently borne their Grievances, you are to suppose them
always inclined to revolt, and treat them accordingly. Quarter
Troops among them, who by their Insolence may provoke the rising of Mobs, and by their Bullets and Bayonets suppress them.
By this Means, like the Husband who uses his Wife ill from Suspicion, you
may in Time convert your Suspicions into Realities.
- Remote Provinces must have Governors,[2] and Judges, to represent the Royal Person, and execute
every where the delegated Parts of his Office and Authority. You Ministers
know, that much of the Strength of Government depends on the Opinion of
the People; and much of that Opinion on the Choice of Rulers placed
immediately over them. If you send them wise and good Men for Governors,
who study the Interest of the Colonists, and advance their Prosperity,
they will think their King wise and good, and
that he wishes the Welfare of his Subjects. If you send them learned and
upright Men for Judges, they will think him a Lover of Justice. This may
attach your Provinces more to his Government. You are therefore to be
careful who you recommend for those Offices. -- If you can find Prodigals
who have ruined their Fortunes, broken Gamesters or Stock-Jobbers, these
may do well as Governors; for they will probably be rapacious, and provoke
the People by their Extortions. Wrangling Proctors and petty-fogging
Lawyers too are not amiss, for they will be for ever disputing and
quarrelling with their little Parliaments. If withal they should be
ignorant, wrong-headed and insolent, so much the better. Attorneys Clerks
and Newgate Solicitors will do for
Chief-Justices, especially if they hold their Places during your Pleasure:
-- And all will contribute to impress those ideas of your Government that
are proper for a People you would wish to renounce it.
- To confirm these Impressions, and strike them deeper,
whenever the Injured come to the Capital with
Complaints of Mal-administration, Oppression, or Injustice, punish such
Suitors with long Delay, enormous Expence, and a
final Judgment in Favour of the Oppressor. This
will have an admirable Effect every Way. The Trouble of future Complaints
will be prevented, and Governors and Judges will be encouraged to farther
Acts of Oppression and Injustice; and thence the People may become more
disaffected, and at length desperate.
- When such Governors have crammed their Coffers, and
made themselves so odious to the People that they can no longer remain
among them with Safety to their Persons, recall and reward them with
Pensions. You may make them Baronets too, if that respectable Order should
not think fit to resent it. All will contribute to encourage new Governors
in the same Practices, and make the supreme Government detestable.
- If when you are engaged in War, your Colonies should
vie in liberal Aids of Men and Money against the common Enemy, upon your
simple Requisition, and give far beyond their Abilities, reflect, that a
Penny taken from them by your Power is more honourable
to you than a Pound presented by their Benevolence. Despise therefore
their voluntary Grants, and resolve to harrass
them with novel Taxes. They will probably complain to your Parliaments
that they are taxed by a Body in which they have no Representative, and
that this is contrary to common Right. They will petition for Redress. Let
the Parliaments flout their Claims, reject their Petitions, refuse even to
suffer the reading of them, and treat the Petitioners with the utmost
Contempt. Nothing can have a better Effect, in producing the Alienation
proposed; for though many can forgive Injuries, none ever forgave Contempt.
- In laying these Taxes, never regard the heavy Burthens those remote People already undergo, in
defending their own Frontiers, supporting their own provincial
Governments, making new Roads, building Bridges, Churches and other public
Edifices, which in old Countries have been done to your Hands by your
Ancestors, but which occasion constant Calls and Demands on the Purses of
a new People. Forget the Restraints you lay on their Trade for your own
Benefit, and the Advantage a Monopoly of this Trade gives your exacting
Merchants. Think nothing of the Wealth those Merchants and your
Manufacturers acquire by the Colony Commerce; their encreased
Ability thereby to pay Taxes at home; their accumulating, in the Price of
their Commodities, most of those Taxes, and so levying them from their
consuming Customers: All this, and the Employment and Support of Thousands
of your Poor by the Colonists, you are intirely
to forget. But remember to make your arbitrary Tax more grievous to your
Provinces, by public Declarations importing that your Power of taxing them
has no Limits, so that when you take from them without their Consent a
Shilling in the Pound, you have a clear Right to the other nineteen. This
will probably weaken every Idea of Security in their Property, and
convince them that under such a Government they have nothing they can call
their own; which can scarce fail of producing the happiest Consequences!
- Possibly indeed some of them might still comfort
themselves, and say, `Though we have no Property, we have yet something
left that is valuable; we have constitutional Liberty both of Person and
of Conscience. This King, these Lords, and these Commons, who it seems are
too remote from us to know us and feel for us, cannot take from us our
Habeas Corpus Right, or our Right of Trial by a Jury of our Neighbours: They cannot deprive us of the Exercise of
our Religion, alter our ecclesiastical Constitutions, and compel us to be
Papists if they please, or Mahometans.' To
annihilate this Comfort, begin by Laws to perplex their Commerce with
infinite Regulations impossible to be remembered and observed; ordain
Seizures of their Property for every Failure; take away the Trial of such
Property by Jury, and give it to arbitrary Judges of your own appointing,
and of the lowest Characters in the Country, whose Salaries and Emoluments
are to arise out of the Duties or Condemnations, and whose Appointments
are during Pleasure. Then let there be a formal Declaration of both
Houses, that Opposition to your Edicts is Treason, and that Persons
suspected of Treason in the Provinces may, according to some obsolete Law,
be seized and sent to the Metropolis of the Empire for Trial; and pass an
Act that those there charged with certain other Offences shall be sent
away in Chains from their Friends and Country to be tried in the same
Manner for Felony. Then erect a new Court of Inquisition among them,
accompanied by an armed Force, with Instructions to transport all such
suspected Persons, to be ruined by the Expence
if they bring over Evidences to prove their Innocence, or be found guilty
and hanged if they can't afford it. And lest the People should think you
cannot possibly go any farther, pass another solemn declaratory Act, that
`King, Lords, and Commons had, hath, and of Right ought to have, full
Power and Authority to make Statutes of sufficient Force and Validity to
bind the unrepresented Provinces IN ALL CASES WHATSOEVER.' This will
include spiritual with temporal; and taken together, must operate
wonderfully to your Purpose, by convincing them, that they are at present
under a Power something like that spoken of in the Scriptures, which can
not only kill their Bodies, but damn their Souls to all Eternity, by
compelling them, if it pleases, to worship the Devil.
- To make your Taxes more odious, and more likely to
procure Resistance, send from the Capital a Board of Officers to
superintend the Collection, composed of the most indiscreet, ill-bred and
insolent you can find. Let these have large Salaries out of the extorted
Revenue, and live in open grating Luxury upon the Sweat and Blood of the
Industrious, whom they are to worry continually with groundless and
expensive Prosecutions before the above-mentioned arbitrary
Revenue-Judges, all at the Cost of the Party prosecuted tho' acquitted, because the King is to pay no Costs.
-- Let these Men by your Order be exempted from all the common Taxes and Burthens of the Province, though they and their
Property are protected by its Laws. If any Revenue Officers are suspected
of the least Tenderness for the People, discard them. If others are justly
complained of, protect and reward them. If any of the Under-officers
behave so as to provoke the People to drub them, promote those to better
Offices: This will encourage others to procure for themselves such
profitable Drubbings, by multiplying and enlarging such
Provocations, and all with work towards the End you aim at.
- Another Way to make your Tax odious,
is to misapply the Produce of it. If it was originally appropriated for
the Defence of the Provinces and the better
Support of Government, and the Administration of Justice where it may be
necessary, then apply none of it to that Defence,
but bestow it where it is not necessary, in augmented Salaries or Pensions
to every Governor who has distinguished himself by his Enmity to the
People, and by calumniating them to their Sovereign. This will make them
pay it more unwillingly, and be more apt to quarrel with those that
collect it, and those that imposed it, who will quarrel again with them, and all shall contribute to your main Purpose of
making them weary of your Government.
- If the People of any Province have been accustomed to
support their own Governors and Judges to Satisfaction, you are to
apprehend that such Governors and Judges may be thereby influenced to
treat the People kindly, and to do them Justice. This is another Reason
for applying Part of that Revenue in larger Salaries to such Governors and
Judges, given, as their Commissions are, during your Pleasure only,
forbidding them to take any Salaries from their Provinces; that thus the
People may no longer hope any Kindness from their Governors, or (in Crown
Cases) any Justice from their Judges. And as the Money thus mis-applied in one Province is extorted from all,
probably all will resent the Mis-application.
- If the Parliaments of your Provinces should dare to
claim Rights or complain of your Administration, order them to be harass'd with repeated Dissolutions. If the same Men
are continually return'd by new Elections,
adjourn their Meetings to some Country Village where they cannot be
accommodated, and there keep them during Pleasure; for this, you know, is
your PREROGATIVE; and an excellent one it is, as you may manage it, to
promote Discontents among the People, diminish their Respect, and increase
their Dis-affection.
- Convert the brave honest Officers of your Navy into
pimping Tide-waiters and Colony Officers of the Customs. Let those who in
Time of War fought gallantly in Defence of the
Commerce of their Countrymen, in Peace be taught to prey upon it. Let them
learn to be corrupted by great and real Smugglers, but (to shew their Diligence) scour with armed Boats every
Bay, Harbour, River, Creek, Cove or Nook
throughout the Coast of your Colonies, stop and detain every Coaster,
every Wood-boat, every Fisherman, tumble their Cargoes, and even their
Ballast, inside out and upside down; and if a Penn'orth of Pins is found un-entered, let the
Whole be seized and confiscated. Thus shall the Trade of your Colonists
suffer more from their Friends in Time of Peace, than it did from their
Enemies in War. Then let these Boats Crews land
upon every Farm in their Way, rob the Orchards, steal the Pigs and
Poultry, and insult the Inhabitants. If the injured and exasperated
Farmers, unable to procure other Justice, should attack the Agressors, drub them and burn their Boats, you are to
call this High Treason and Rebellion, order Fleets and Armies into their
Country, and threaten to carry all the Offenders three thousand Miles to
be hang'd, drawn and quartered. O! this will work admirably!
- If you are told of Discontents in your Colonies, never
believe that they are general, or that you have
given Occasion for them; therefore do not think of applying any Remedy, or
of changing any offensive Measure. Redress no Grievance, lest they should
be encouraged to demand the Redress of some other Grievance. Grant no
Request that is just and reasonable, lest they should make another that is
unreasonable. Take all your Informations of the
State of the Colonies from your Governors and Officers in Enmity with
them. Encourage and reward these Leasing-makers; secrete their lying
Accusations lest they should be confuted; but act upon them as the
clearest Evidence, and believe nothing you hear from the Friends of the
People. Suppose all their Complaints to be invented and promoted by a few
factious Demagogues, whom if you could catch and hang, all would be quiet.
Catch and hang a few of them accordingly; and the Blood of the Martyrs
shall work Miracles in favour of your Purpose.
- If you see rival Nations rejoicing at the Prospect of
your Disunion with your Provinces, and endeavouring
to promote it: If they translate, publish and applaud all the Complaints
of your discontented Colonists, at the same Time privately stimulating you
to severer Measures; let not that alarm or offend you. Why should it? since you all mean the same Thing.
- If any Colony should at their own Charge erect a
Fortress to secure their Port against the Fleets of a foreign Enemy, get
your Governor to betray that Fortress into your Hands. Never think of
paying what it cost the Country, for that would look, at least, like some Regard
for Justice; but turn it into a Citadel to awe the Inhabitants and curb
their Commerce. If they should have lodged in such Fortress the very Arms
they bought and used to aid you in your Conquests, seize them all, 'twill
provoke like Ingratitude added to Robbery. One admirable Effect of these
Operations will be, to discourage every other Colony from erecting such Defences, and so their and your Enemies may more
easily invade them, to the great Disgrace of your Government, and of
course the Furtherance of your Project.
- Send Armies into their Country under Pretence of
protecting the Inhabitants; but instead of garrisoning the Forts on their
Frontiers with those Troops, to prevent Incursions, demolish those Forts,
and order the Troops into the Heart of the Country, that the Savages may
be encouraged to attack the Frontiers, and that the Troops may be
protected by the Inhabitants: This will seem to proceed from your Ill will
or your Ignorance, and contribute farther to produce and strengthen an
Opinion among them, that you are no longer fit to govern them.
- Lastly, Invest the General of your Army in the
Provinces with great and unconstitutional Powers, and free him from the Controul of even your own Civil Governors. Let him
have Troops enow under his Command, with all the
Fortresses in his Possession; and who knows but (like some provincial
Generals in the Roman Empire, and encouraged by the universal Discontent
you have produced) he may take it into his Head to set up for himself. If
he should, and you have carefully practised
these few excellent Rules of mine, take my Word for it, all the Provinces
will immediately join him, and you will that Day (if you have not done it
sooner) get rid of the Trouble of governing them, and all the Plagues
attending their Commerce and Connection from thenceforth and for ever. Q. E. D.
Notes:
- See also Sons of Liberty
- For further information on the role of Governors in
Colonial America see The Governor