William Gerard Hamilton (1729-96) was the Chief Secretary for Ireland and MP for Killybegs in Donegal. After all of the protests about the 1765 Stamp Act, and then its withdrawal, in 1767 Hamilton wrote a warning letter to John Calcraft:
"As to America, I wish we may not burn our fingers, and do our enemies work for them, by quarrelling among ourselves.
There are, in the different provinces, above a million of people, of which we may suppose at least 200,000 men able to bear arms; and not only able to bear arms, but having arms in their possession, unrestrained by any iniquitous Game Act.
In the Massachusetts government particularly, there is an express law, by which every man is obliged to have a musket, a pound of powder, and a pound of bullets always by him: so there is nothing wanting but knapsacks (or old stockings, which will do as well) to equip an army for marching, and nothing more than a Sartorius or a Spartacus at their head requisite to beat your troops and your custom-house officers out of the country, and set your laws at defiance.
There is no saying what their leader may put them upon; but if they are active, clever people, and love mischief as well as I do peace and quiet, they will furnish matter of consideration to the wisest among you, and perhaps dictate their own terms at last, as the Roman people formerly in their famous secession upon the sacred mount.
For my own part, I think you have no right to tax them, and that every measure built upon this supposed right stands upon a rotten foundation, and must consequently tumble down, perhaps, upon the heads of the workmen."
0 comments:
Post a Comment