allowed sufficient time to receive and consider
this Act, before another well known by the
name of the Stamp Act, and passed in the fifth
year of this reign, engrossed their whole atten-
tion. By this statute the British Parliament
exercised in the most explicit manner a power
of taxing us, and extending the jurisdiction of
Courts of Admiralty and Vice-Admiralty in the
Colonies, to matters arising within the body of
a county, directed the numerous penalties and
forfeitures, thereby inflicted, to be recovered in
the said Courts.
IN the same year a tax was imposed upon us,
by an Act, establishing several new fees in the
customs. In the next year, the Stamp Act was
repealed; not because it was founded in an er-
roneous principle, but, as the repealing Act re-
cites, because "the continuance thereof would be
attended with many inconveniencies, and might
be productive of consequences greatly detri-
mental to the commercial interest of
Great-
Britain."
IN the same year, and by a subsequent Act,
it was declared, "that his Majesty in Parlia-
" ment, of right, had power to bind the people
" of these Colonies by Statutes IN ALL CASES
" WHATSOEVER."
IN the same year, another Act was passed,
for imposing rates and duties payable in these
Colonies. In this Statute the Commons avoid-
ing the terms of giving and granting "humbly
besought his Majesty that it might be enacted