Falmouth,[23] 6 July, 1774.
Mobs are the trite topic of declamation and invective among all the
ministerial people far and near. They are grown universally learned in
the nature, tendency, and consequences of them, and very elegant and
pathetic in descanting upon them. They are sources of all kinds of
evils, vices, and crimes, they say. They give rise to profaneness,
intemperance, thefts, robberies, murders, and treason. Cursing,
swearing, drunkenness, gluttony, lewdness, trespasses, maims, are
necessarily involved in them and occasioned by them. Besides, they
render the populace, the rabble, the scum of the earth, insolent and
disorderly, impudent and abusive. They give rise to lying, hypocrisy,
chicanery, and even perjury among the people, who are driven to such
artifice and crimes to conceal themselves and their companions from
prosecutions in consequence of them.
This is the picture drawn by the Tory pencil; and it must be granted to
be a likeness. But this is declamation. What consequence is to be drawn
from this description? Shall we submit to Parliamentary taxation to
avoid mobs? Will not Parliamentary taxation, if established, occasion
vices, crimes, and follies infinitely more numerous, dangerous, and
fatal to the community? Will not Parliamentary taxation, if established,
raise a revenue unjustly and wrongfully? If this revenue is scattered by
the hand of corruption among the public officers and magistrates and
rulers in the community, will it not propagate vices more numerous, more
malignant and pestilential among them? Will it not render magistrates
servile and fawning to their vicious superiors, and insolent and
tyrannical to their inferiors?
Are insolence, abuse, and impudence more tolerable in a magistrate than
in a subject? Are they not more constantly and extensively pernicious?
And does not the example of vice and folly in magistrates descend and
spread downwards among the people?
Besides, is not the insolence of officers and soldiers and seamen, in
the army and navy, as mischievous as that of porters, or of sailors in
the merchant service? Are not riots raised and made by armed men as bad
as those by unarmed? Is not an assault upon a civil officer, and a
rescue of a prisoner from lawful authority, made by soldiers with swords
or bayonets, as bad as if made by tradesmen with staves?
Are not the killing of a child by R.,[24] and the slaughter of half a
dozen citizens by a party of soldiers, as bad as pulling down a house or
drowning a cargo of tea, even if both should be allowed to be unlawful?
Parties may go on declaiming, but it is not easy to say which party has
excited most riots, which has published most libels, which has
propagated most slander and defamation? Verbal scandal has been
propagated in great abundance by both parties; but there is this
difference, that one party have enjoyed almost all public offices, and
therefore their defamation has been spread among the people more
secretly, more maliciously, and more effectually. It has gone with
greater authority, and been scattered by instruments more industrious.
The ministerial newspapers have swarmed with as numerous and as
malicious libels as the antiministerial ones. Fleet's paper, "Mein's
Chronicle," etc., etc., have been as virulent as any that was ever in
the province. These bickerings of opposite parties, and their mutual
reproaches, their declamations, their sing-song, their triumphs and
defiances, their dismals and prophecies, are all delusion.
We very seldom hear any solid reasoning. I wish always to discuss the
question without all painting, pathos, rhetoric, or flourish of every
kind. And the question seems to me to be, whether the American colonies
are to be considered as a distinct community so far as to have a right
to judge for themselves when the fundamentals of their government are
destroyed or invaded, or whether they are to be considered as a part of
the whole British empire, the whole English nation, so far as to be
bound in honor, conscience, or interest by the general sense of the
whole nation. However, if this was the rule, I believe it is very far
from the general sense of the whole nation, that America should be taxed
by the British parliament. If the sense of the whole of the empire could
be fairly and truly collected, it would appear, I believe, that a great
majority would be against taxing us against or without our consent. It
is very certain that the sense of parliament is not the sense of the
empire, nor a sure indication of it.
But, if all other parts of the empire were agreed unanimously in the
propriety and rectitude of taxing us, this would not bind us. It is a
fundamental, inherent, and unalienable right of the people, that they
have some check, influence, or control in their supreme legislature. If
the right of taxation is conceded to Parliament, the Americans have no
check or influence at all left.
This reasoning never was nor can be answered.