susceptible of the spirit of tyranny. A view of these acts of Parliament
for regulation, as it has been affectedly called, of the American trade,
if all other evidences were removed out of the case, would undeniably
evince the truth of this observation. Besides the duties they impose
on our articles of export and import, they prohibit our going to any
markets northward of Cape Finisterra, in the kingdom of Spain, for the
sale of commodities which Great Britian will not take from us, and for
the purchase of others, with which she cannot supply us; and that, for
no other than the arbitrary purpose of purchasing for themselves, by
a sacrifice of our rights and interests, certain privileges in their
commerce with an allied state, who, in confidence that their exclusive
trade with America will be continued, while the principles and power of
the British Parliament be the same, have indulged themselves in every
exorbitance which their avarice could dictate, or our necessities
extort; have raised their commodities called for in America, to
the double and treble of what they sold for, before such exclusive
privileges were given them, and of what better commodities of the same
kind would cost us elsewhere; and, at the same time, give us much less
for what we carry thither, than might be had at more convenient ports.
That these acts prohibit us from carrying, in quest of other purchasers,
the surplus of our tobaccos, remaining after the consumption of Great
Britain is supplied: so that we must leave them with the British
merchant, for whatever he will please to allow us, to be by him
re-shipped to foreign markets, where he will reap the benefits of
making sale of them for full value. That, to heighten still the idea of
Parliamentary justice, and to show with what moderation they are like to
exercise power, where themselves are to feel no part of its weight, we
take leave to mention to his Majesty certain other acts of the British
Parliament, by which they would prohibit us from manufacturing, for our
own use, the articles we raise on our own lands, with our own labor. By
an act passed in the fifth year of the reign of his late Majesty, King
George the Second, an American subject is forbidden to make a hat for
himself, of the fur which he has taken, perhaps on his own soil; an
instance of despotism, to which no parallel can be produced in the
most arbitrary ages of British history. By one other act, passed in
the twenty-third year of the same reign, the iron which we make, we are
forbidden to manufacture; and, heavy as that article is, and necessary
in every branch of husbandry, besides commission and insurance, we are
to pay freight for it to Great Britain, and freight for it back again,
for the purpose of supporting, not men, but machines, in the island of
Great Britain. In the same spirit of equal and impartial legislation, is
to be viewed the act of Parliament, passed in the fifth year of the
same reign, by which American lands are made subject to the demands
of British creditors, while their own lands were still continued
unanswerable for their debts; from which one of these conclusions must
necessarily follow, either that justice is not the same thing in America
as in Britain, or else that the British Parliament pay less regard to
it here than there. But, that we do not point out to his Majesty the
injustice of these acts, with intent to rest on that principle the cause
of their nullity; but to show that experience confirms the propriety of
those political principles, which exempt us from the jurisdiction of the
British Parliament. The true ground on which we declare these acts void,
is, that the British Parliament has no right to exercise authority over
us.
‘That these exercises of usurped power have not been confined to
instances alone, in which themselves were interested; but they have
also intermeddled with the regulation of the internal affairs of the
colonies. The act of the 9th of Anne for establishing a post-office in
America seems to have had little connection with British convenience,
except that of accommodating his Majesty’s ministers and favorites with
the sale of a lucrative and easy office.
‘That thus have we hastened through the reigns which preceded his
Majesty’s, during which the violations of our rights were less alarming,
because repeated at more distant intervals, than that rapid and bold
succession of injuries, which is likely to distinguish the present from
all other periods of American story. Scarcely have our minds been able
to emerge from the astonishment, into which one stroke of Parliamentary
thunder has involved us, before another more heavy and more alarming is
fallen on us. Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental
opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished
period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too
plainly prove a deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery.
[Illustration: Acts of King George and Parliament, page107]
‘That the act passed in the fourth year of his Majesty’s reign, entitled
“an act [ Act for granting certain duties.]
‘One other act passed in the fifth year of his reign, entitled “an act
[Stamp Act.]
‘One other act passed in the sixth year of his reign, entitled “an act
[Act declaring the right of Parliament over the colonies.]
‘And one other act passed in the seventh year of his reign, entitled an
act [ Act for granting duties on paper, tea, &c.
‘Form that connected chain of parliamentary usurpation, which has
already been the subject of frequent applications to his Majesty, and
the Houses of Lords and Commons of Great Britain; and, no answers having
yet been condescended to any of these, we shall not trouble his Majesty
with a repetition of the matters they contained.
‘But that one other act passed in the same seventh year of his reign,
having been a peculiar attempt, must ever require peculiar mention. It
is entitled “an act [Act suspending Legislature of New York.]
‘One free and independent legislature hereby takes upon itself to
suspend the powers of another, free and independent as itself. Thus
exhibiting a phenomenon unknown in nature, the creator and creature of
its own power. Not only the principles of common sense, but the common
feelings of human nature must be surrendered up, before his Majesty’s
subjects here can be persuaded to believe, that they hold their
political existence at the will of a British Parliament. Shall these
governments be dissolved, their property annihilated, and their people
reduced to a state of nature, at the imperious breath of a body of men
whom they never saw, in whom they never confided, and over whom they
have no powers of punishment or removal, let their crimes against the
American public be ever so great? Can any one reason be assigned, why
one hundred and sixty thousand electors in the island of Great Britain
should give law to four millions in the states of America, every
individual of whom is equal to every individual of them in virtue, in
understanding, and in bodily strength? Were this to be admitted, instead
of being a free people, as we have hitherto supposed, and mean to
continue ourselves, we should suddenly be found the slaves, not of one,
but of one hundred and sixty thousand tyrants; distinguished, too, from
all others, by this singular circumstance, that they are removed from
the reach of fear, the only restraining motive which may hold the hand
of a tyrant.
‘That, by “an act to discontinue in such manner, and for such time as
are therein mentioned, the landing and discharging, lading or shipping
of goods, wares, and merchandise, at the town and within the harbor of
Boston, in the province of Massachusetts Bay, in North America,” [14
G.3.] which was passed at the last session of the British Parliament,
a large and populous town, whose trade was their sole subsistence, was
deprived of that trade, and involved in utter ruin. Let us for a while,
suppose the question of right suspended, in order to examine this act
on principles of justice. An act of Parliament had been passed, imposing
duties on teas, to be paid in America, against which act the Americans
had protested, as inauthoritative. The East India Company, who till that
time had never sent a pound of tea to America on their own account, step
forth on that occasion, the asserters of Parliamentary right, and send
hither many ship-loads of that obnoxious commodity. The masters of their
several vessels, however, on their arrival in America, wisely attended
to admonition, and returned with their cargoes. In the province of New
England alone, the remonstrances of the people were disregarded, and
a compliance, after being many days waited for, was flatly refused.
Whether in this, the master of the vessel was governed by his obstinacy,
or his instructions, let those who know, say. There are extraordinary
situations which require extraordinary interposition. An exasperated
people, who feel that they possess power, are not easily restrained
within limits strictly regular. A number of them assembled in the town
of Boston, threw the tea into the ocean, and dispersed without doing any
other act of violence. If in this they did wrong, they were known, and
were amenable to the laws of the land; against which, it could not
be objected that they had ever, in any instance, been obstructed or
diverted from their regular course, in favor of popular offenders. They
should, therefore, not have been distrusted on this occasion. But that
ill-fated colony had formerly been bold in their enmities against the
House of Stuart, and were now devoted to ruin, by that unseen hand
which governs the momentous affairs of this great empire. On the
partial representations of a few worthless ministerial dependants, whose
constant office it has been to keep that government embroiled, and who,
by their treacheries, hope to obtain the dignity of British knighthood,
without calling for a party accused, without asking a proof, without
attempting a distinction between the guilty and the innocent, the whole
of that ancient and wealthy town, is in a moment reduced from opulence
to beggary. Men who had spent their lives in extending the British
commerce, who had invested in that place, the wealth their honest
endeavors had merited, found themselves and their families, thrown at
once on the world, for subsistence by its charities. Not the hundredth
part of the inhabitants of that town had been concerned in the act
complained of; many of them were in Great Britain, and in other parts
beyond sea; yet all were involved in one indiscriminate ruin, by a new
executive power, unheard of till then, that of a British Parliament.
A property of the value of many millions of money was sacrificed
to revenge, not to repay, the loss of a few thousands. This is
administering justice with a heavy hand indeed! And when is this tempest
to be arrested in its course? Two wharves are to be opened again when
his Majesty shall think proper: the residue which lined the extensive
shores of the bay of Boston, are for ever interdicted the exercise of
commerce. This little exception seems to have been thrown in for no
other purpose, than that of setting a precedent for investing his
Majesty with legislative powers. If the pulse of his people shall beat
calmly under this experiment, another and another will be tried, till
the measure of despotism be filled up. It would be an insult on common
sense, to pretend that this exception was made in order to restore its
commerce to that great town. The trade which cannot be received at two
wharves alone, must of necessity be transferred to some other place; to
which it will soon be followed by that of the two wharves. Considered
in this light, it would be an insolent and cruel mockery at the
annihilation of the town of Boston. By the act for the suppression of
riots and tumults in the town of Boston, [14 G.3.] passed also in
the last session of Parliament, a murder committed there, is, if the
Governor pleases, to be tried in the court of King’s Bench, in the
island of Great Britain, by a jury of Middlesex. The witnesses, too, on
receipt of such a sum as the Governor shall think it reasonable for them
to expend, are to enter into recognisance to appear at the trial. This
is, in other words, taxing them to the amount of their recognisance; and
that amount may be whatever a Governor pleases. For who does his Majesty
think can be prevailed on to cross the Atlantic, for the sole purpose
of bearing evidence to a fact? His expenses are to be borne, indeed, as
they shall be estimated by a Governor; but who are to feed the wife and
children whom he leaves behind, and who have had no other subsistence
but his daily labor? Those epidemical disorders, too, so terrible in a
foreign climate, is the cure of them to be estimated among the articles
of expense, and their danger to be warded off by the almighty power of a
Parliament? And the wretched criminal, if he happen to have offended on
the American side, stripped of his privilege of trial by peers of his
vicinage, removed from the place where alone full evidence could be
obtained, without money, without counsel, without friends, without
exculpatory proof, is tried before Judges predetermined to condemn. The
cowards who would suffer a countryman to be torn from the bowelss of
their society, in order to be thus offered a sacrifice to Parliamentary
tyranny, would merit that everlasting infamy now fixed on the authors
of the act! A clause, for a similar purpose, had been introduced into an
act passed in the twelfth year of his Majesty’s reign, entitled, “an
act for the better securing and preserving his Majesty’s dock-yards,
magazines, ships, ammunition, and stores;” against which, as meriting
the same censures, the several colonies have already protested.
‘That these are the acts of power, assumed by a body of men foreign to
our constitutions, and unacknowledged by our laws; against which we do,
on behalf of the inhabitants of British America, enter this our solemn
and determined protest. And we do earnestly entreat his Majesty, as
yet the only mediatory power between the several states of the British
empire, to recommend to his Parliament of Great Britain, the total
revocation of these acts, which, however nugatory they be, may yet prove
the cause of further discontents and jealousies among us.
‘That we next proceed to consider the conduct of his Majesty, as holding
the Executive powers of the laws of these states, and mark out his
deviations from the line of duty. By the constitution of Great Britain,
as well as of the several American States, his Majesty possesses the
power of refusing to pass into a law, any bill which has already passed
the other two branches of the legislature. His Majesty, however, and his
ancestors, conscious of the impropriety of opposing their single
opinion to the united wisdom of two Houses of Parliament, while their
proceedings were unbiased by interested principles, for several ages
past, have modestly declined the exercise of this power, in that part of
his empire called Great Britain. But, by change of circumstances, other
principles than those of justice simply, have obtained an influence on
their determinations. The addition of new states to the British empire,
has produced an addition of new, and sometimes, opposite interests.
It is now, therefore, the great office of his Majesty, to resume the
exercise of his negative power, and to prevent the passage of laws by
any one legislature of the empire, which might bear injuriously on the
rights and interests of another. Yet this will not excuse the wanton
exercise of this power, which we have seen his Majesty practise on the
laws of the American legislatures. For the most trifling reasons, and
sometimes for no conceivable reason at all, his Majesty has rejected
laws of the most salutary tendency. The abolition of domestic slavery is
the great object of desire in those colonies, where it was, unhappily,
introduced in their infant state. But previous to the enfranchisement of
the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations
from Africa. Yet our repeated attempts to effect this, by prohibitions,
and by imposing duties which might amount to a prohibition, have
been hitherto defeated by his Majesty’s negative: thus preferring the
immediate advantages of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests
of the American States, and to the rights of human nature, deeply
wounded by this infamous practice. Nay, the single interposition of an
interested individual against a law, was scarcely ever known to fail
of success, though in the opposite scale were placed the interests of
a whole country. That this is so shameful an abuse of a power, trusted
with his Majesty for other purposes, as if, not reformed, would call for
some legal restrictions.
‘With equal inattention to the necessities of his people here, has
his Majesty permitted our laws to lie neglected in England for years,
neither confirming them by his assent, nor annulling them by his
negative: so that such of them as have no suspending clause, we hold on
the most precarious of all tenures, his Majesty’s will; and such of them
as suspend themselves till his Majesty’s assent be obtained, we have
feared might be called into existence at some future and distant
period, when time and change of circumstances shall have rendered them
destructive to his people here. And, to render this grievance still more
oppressive, his Majesty, by his instructions, has laid his Governors
under such restrictions, that they can pass no law of any moment, unless
it have such suspending clause: so that, however immediate may be the
call for legislative interposition, the law cannot be executed till it
has twice crossed the Atlantic, by which time the evil may have spent
its whole force.
‘But in what terms reconcilable to Majesty, and,at the same time to
truth, shall we speak of a late instruction to his Majesty’s Governor
of the colony of Virginia, by which he is forbidden to assent to any law
for the division of a county, unless the new county will consent to
have no representative in Assembly? That colony has as yet affixed no
boundary to the westward. Their Western counties, therefore, are of
indefinite extent. Some of them are actually seated many hundred miles
from their Eastern limits. Is it possible, then that his Majesty can
have bestowed a single thought on the situation of those people, who, in
order to obtain justice for injuries, however great or small, must, by
the laws of that colony, attend their county court at such a distance,
with all their witnesses, monthly, till their litigation be determined?
Or does his Majesty seriously wish, and publish it to the world, that
his subjects should give up the glorious right of representation, with
all the benefits derived from that, and submit themselves to be absolute
slaves of his sovereign will? Or is it rather meant to confine the
legislative body to their present numbers, that they may be the cheaper
bargain, whenever they shall become worth a purchase?
‘One of the articles of impeachment against Tresilian and the other
Judges of Westminster Hall, in the reign of Richard the Second, for
which they suffered death, as traitors to their country, was, that they
had advised the King that he might dissolve his Parliament at any time:
and succeeding Kings have adopted the opinion of these unjust Judges.
Since the establishment, however, of the British constitution, at the
glorious Revolution, on its free and ancient principles, neither his
Majesty nor his ancestors have exercised such a power of dissolution in
the island of Great Britain;* and, when his Majesty was petitioned by
the united voice of his people there to dissolve the present Parliament,
who had become obnoxious to them, his Ministers were heard to declare,
in open Parliament, that his Majesty possessed no such power by the
constitution. But how different their language, and his practice, here!
To declare, as their duty required, the known rights of their country,
to oppose the usurpation of every foreign judicature, to disregard
the imperious mandates of a Minister or Governor, have been the avowed
causes of dissolving Houses of Representatives in America. But if such
powers be really vested in his Majesty, can he suppose they are
there placed to awe the members from such purposes as these? When the
representative body have lost the confidence of their constituents, when
they have notoriously made sale of their most valuable rights, when they
have assumed to themselves powers which the people never put into their
hands, then, indeed, their continuing in office becomes dangerous to the
state, and calls for an exercise of the power of dissolution. Such being
the causes for which the representative body should, and should not, be
dissolved, will it not appear strange, to an unbiassed observer, that
that of Great Britain was not dissolved, while those of the colonies
have repeatedly incurred that sentence?
* On further inquiry, I find two instances of dissolutions
before the Parliament would, of itself, have been at an end:
viz. the Parliament called to meet August 24, 1698, was
dissolved by King William, December 19, 1700, and a new one
called, to meet February 6, 1701, which was also dissolved
November 11, 1701, and a new one met December 30, 1701.
But your Majesty or your Governors have carried this power beyond every
limit known or provided for by the laws. After dissolving one House of
Representatives, they have refused to call another, so that, for a great
length of time, the legislature provided by the laws has been out of
existence. From the nature of things, every society must at all times
possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation. The feelings
of human nature revolt against the supposition of a state so situated,
as that it may not, in any emergency, provide against dangers which
perhaps threaten immediate ruin. While those bodies are in existence
to whom the people have delegated the powers of legislation, they alone
possess, and may exercise, those powers. But when they are dissolved, by
the lopping off one or more of their branches, the power reverts to the
people, who may use it to unlimited extent, either assembling together
in person, sending deputies, or in any other way they may think proper.
We forbear to trace consequences further; the dangers are conspicuous
with which this practice is replete.