Needless to say, this proviso severely diminished the appeal to Parliament of Shirley’s suggestion. What was the point of having colonies if not to be able to discriminate against them in trade, manufacture, or otherwise? Franklin knew this. Yet his stricture allowed him to explicate a larger argument: that the American colonists were and ought to be considered full members of the English nation. “I should hope too, that by such an union, the people of Great Britain and the people of the Colonies would learn to consider themselves, not as belonging to different communities with different
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