January 30, 1775

The intention of the junto was, to procure a revenue to be raised in America by act of parliament.  Nothing was further from their designs and wishes, than the drawing or sending this revenue into the exchequer in England, to be spent there in dis­charging the national debt, and lessening the burdens of the poor people there.  They were more selfish.  They chose to have the fingering of the money themselves.  Their design was, that the money should be applied, first in a large salary to the governor. This would gratify Bernard's avarice; and then, it would render him and all other governors, not only independent of the people, but still more absolutely a slave to the will of the minister.  They intended likewise a salary for the lieutenant-governor.  This would appease in some degree the gnawings of Hutchinson's avidity, in which he was not a whit behind Ber­nard himself.  In the next place, they intended a salary to the judges of the common law, as well as admiralty.  And thus, the whole government, executive and judicial, was to be rendered wholly independent of the people, (and their representatives rendered useless, insignificant, and even burthensome) and absolutely dependent upon, and under the direction of the will of the minister of state.  They intended, further, to new-model the whole continent of North America; make an entire new division of it into distinct, though more extensive and less numerous colonies; to sweep away all the charters upon the continent with the destroying besom of an act of parliament; and reduce all the governments to the plan of the royal govern­ments, with a nobility in each colony, not hereditary indeed, at first, but for life.  They did indeed flatter the ministry and people in England with distant hopes of a revenue from America, at some future period, to be appropriated to national uses there.  But this was not to happen, in their minds, for some time.  The governments must be new-modelled, new-regulated, reformed, first, and then the governments here would be able and willing to carry into execution any acts of parliament, or measures of the ministry, for fleecing the people here, to pay debts, or support pensioners, on the American establishment, or bribe electors, or members of parliament, or any other purpose that a virtuous ministry could desire.

But, as ill luck would have it, the British financier, was as self­ish as themselves, and, instead of raising money for them, chose to raise it for himself.  He put the cart before the horse.  He chose to get the revenue into the exchequer, because he had hungry cormorants enough about him in England whose cawings were more troublesome to his ears than the croaking of the ravens in America.  And he thought, if America could afford any revenue at all, and he could get it by authority of parlia­ment, he might have it himself, to give to his friends, as well as raise it for the junto here, to spend themselves, or give to theirs.  This unfortunate preposterous improvement of Mr. Grenville, upon the plan of the junto, had well nigh ruined the whole.