The American Colonies and the British Empire, 1607-1783, Part II 9781851969494

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THE AMERICAN COLONIES AND

THE BRITISH EMPIRE, 1607–1783

Contents of the Edition

PART I

volume 1

General Introduction

Introduction, 1607–1763

1607–75

volume 2

1676–1714

volume 3

1715–52

volume 4

1753–63

PART II

volume 5

Introduction, 1764–83

1764–8

volume 6

1769–75

volume 7

1775–7

volume 8

1777–83

Index

THE AMERICAN COLONIES AND

THE BRITISH EMPIRE, 1607–1783

Editor

Steven Sarson

Consulting Editor

Jack P. Greene

Volume 5

1764–8

First published 2011 by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited

Published 2016 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Taylor & Francis 2011

Copyright © Editorial material Steven Sarson 2011

All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages.

No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form

or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter

invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information

storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and

are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

british library cataloguing in publication data

The American colonies and the British Empire, 1607–1783. Part 2, Volumes 5–8. 1. United States – History – Colonial period, ca. 1600–1775. 2. Great Britain – Colonies – America. I. Sarson, Steven. II. Greene, Jack P. 973.2-dc22 ISBN-13: 978-1-85196-949-4 (set) Typeset by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited

CONTENTS

Introduction, 1764–83 References and Further Reading

vii xxi

[William Bollan], The Mutual Interest of Great Britain and the American Colonies Considered (1765) 1 [Charles Jenkinson], ‘Notes on the Right to Tax the Colonies’ (1765) 15 [William Knox], The Claim of the Colonies to an Exemption from Internal Taxes Imposed by the Authority of Parliament, Examined (1765) 21 [William Knox], A Letter to a Member of Parliament, Wherein the Power of the British Legislature, and the Case of the Colonists, are Briefly and Impartially Considered (1765) 45 [William Bollan], A Succinct View of the Origin of our Colonies, with their Civil State (1766) 65 The Late Occurrences in North America, and Policy of Great Britain Considered (1766) 89 The True Interest of Great Britain, with respect to her American Colonies (1766) 111 Protest against the Bill to Repeal the American Stamp Act (1766) 135 [ Josiah Tucker], A Letter from a Merchant in London to his Nephew in North America, Relative to the Present Posture of Affairs in the Colonies (1766) 147 Two Papers on the Subject of Taxing the British Colonies in America (1767) 175 George Canning, A Letter to the Right Honourable Wills Earl of Hillsborough, On the Connection between Great Britain and her American Colonies (1768) 189 Editorial Notes

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INTRODUCTION, 1764–83

The Reforming and Re-Forming of Colonies and Empire The triumphalism that resulted from the Seven Years War was tempered by pressing concerns. Britain’s national debt was over £130m in 1763, yet subjects clamoured and even rioted for tax reductions. Prime Minister George Grenville, fearing France and Spain would reassert their American ambitions, decided to maintain 10,000 troops there initially and 7,500 thereafter at an expected annual cost of near £250,000. Furthermore, a pre-war sense that the colonies were too autonomous was compounded by a feeling that colonists had failed to contribute their share to the military effort and financial costs of the French and Indian War of 1754–60 that precipitated the Seven Years War. Pre-war concerns and post­ war imperatives conspired to create a sense that the Board of Trade, a creature of the Crown and Privy Council, was no longer a sufficient authority to govern the colonies. As William Knox argued, proposing various imperial reforms in 1763, the ‘interposition of Parliament is absolutely necessary … because no other Authority than that of the British Parliament will be regarded by the colonys, or be able to awe them into acquiescence’.1 Colonists and their British sympathizers, many of whose writings appear in these volumes, felt very differently about colonial conduct in the war and the supposed authority of Parliament. The colonies had provided 60,000 militia­ men and 12,000 regulars for a war that benefited Britain as well as the colonies, compared to 21,000 British troops who fought in the Canadian campaign, and they had spent £2.5m on provisions and equipment. Furthermore, colonists wondered suspiciously why Britain was maintaining troops in the north-west now that their enemies there were defeated, when they had not done so before. Moreover, as Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1766, after Parliament had proved its intention to involve itself in provincial affairs, the colonies were ‘Planted in times when the powers of parliament were not supposed so extensive as they are become since the [Glorious] Revolution … in lands and countries where the parliament had not then the least jurisdiction’. Most were planted without ‘any money granted by parliament’ but by people who had, with ‘permission from the – vii –

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crown, purchased or conquered the territory, at the expence of their own private treasure and blood’. ‘These territories thus became new dominions of the crown’, Franklin continued, ‘settled under royal charters, that formed their several gov­ ernments and constitutions, on which the parliament was never consulted; or had the least participation’. Thus the colonies had their own ‘separate parliaments, called modestly assemblies’.2 Franklin’s words are especially revealing about the processes of founding and forming colonies and empire before 1764 and the new processes of reform­ ing colonies and empire that were becoming evident at the time of his writing. English and after 1707 British colonies were characteristically founded as pri­ vate enterprises either by companies or proprietors acting under licence from the Crown. Most colonies eventually became royal rather than private colonies, although Maryland and Pennsylvania respectively remained proprietorships of the Calvert and Penn dynasties, and Connecticut and Rhode Island retained their private charters up to American Independence. After the civil wars, how­ ever, English and British governments became increasingly concerned with empire and colonies, passing the Navigation Acts and other mercantilist trade measures, and creating various offices to generate and implement policy, most especially a Board of Trade under the Privy Council, a Southern Department in the Cabinet, and a customs service under the Admiralty. As Michael Brad­ dick has argued, empire and colonies were therefore involved in the process of early-modern fiscal-military state formation (as well as in the formation of the patriarchal state as colonies developed into increasingly complex societies). Even then, though, metropolitan interference in imperial and especially in local colonial concerns was intermittent and ultimately limited. A period of increasing intervention began with the 1651 Navigation Ordnance and culmi­ nated with the creation of the Dominion of New England, the amalgamation of eight colonies ruled by James II and his governors without recourse to legislative assemblies. Such intervention tailed off after the Glorious Revolution, however, eventuating in an era of what Edmund Burke would later call ‘wise and salutary neglect’ in the age of Walpole.3 After the War of the Austrian Succession, how­ ever, Britain turned away from Europe and towards a Blue Water policy of trade and imperial expansion. In 1748 George Dunk, Earl of Halifax, was appointed President of the Board of Trade and immediately enacted more interventionist policies. His programme of reform was only beginning to take shape when the French and Indian War broke out, however, and imperial activism only seriously resumed, as noted above, after the end of the Seven Years War.4 Michael Braddick has described the process of state formation as ‘actions without design’ creating ‘patterns without blueprints’.5 That description cer­ tainly fits the early formation of empire. As Edmund Burke put it in 1757, ‘The settlement of our colonies was never pursued upon any regular plan; but they

Introduction, 1764–83

ix

were formed, grew, and flourished, as accidents, the nature of the climate, or the dispositions of private men happened to operate’.6 Chartering private groups or men to found colonies and intermittent and limited imperial governance were all functions of the limits of the fiscal-military state and of various temporary exigencies. The capabilities of that state and its exigencies changed over time, of course, and no more so, in an imperial context, than in the mid-eighteenth cen­ tury. As Braddick has also shown, when government officials wish to change the role of the state, they have to legitimate it to various complex and often conserva­ tive constituencies, and therefore have to make new uses of customary language and traditional practices rather than innovate overtly. That is precisely what members of the government and their supporters did when introducing new taxes and thereby a new mode of imperial governance from 1764. They argued that taxes were not new because they had existed in England before or else Parliament had taxed the colonies before. They argued that as Parliament had legislated for colonies in the past, the new legislation of 1764–5 was only new in detail, not in kind. Above all, they argued that Parliament was the supreme sovereign authority over all British subjects. If Parliament had only exerted that sovereignty lightly in the past, that had no bearing on its right or ability to exert it more vigorously in the future. When George Grenville asked MPs for a resolu­ tion approving a future stamp tax, therefore, he thought it perfectly reasonable to expect ‘that the power and sovereignty of Parliament, over every part of the British dominions, for the purpose of raising or collecting any tax, would never be disputed’.7 Of course, the sovereignty of Parliament from 1764 was disputed in ways outlined in the sketch of revolutionary events given below. If Britons thought that the constitutional settlement established after the Glorious Revolution fixed Parliament as the supreme authority in Britain and its dominions, colo­ nists thought that their histories and that revolution fixed legislatures as the supreme authorities in Britain and its dominions. That is, colonial charters had established local assemblies and other features of self-government within each of the colonies, whose authority had been undermined by James II but restored in 1688–9. The years of ‘salutary neglect’ were not so much neglectful as respect­ ful of traditional constitutional relations between colonies and mother country. While Parliament, the legislature of Britain, had authority over imperial issues such as trade and defence, it had no authority over the internal affairs of colo­ nies. Sovereignty was diffused throughout the empire, with houses of assembly supplanting Parliament within each of the colonies. With customary languages and traditional practices of this nature, British attempts to legitimate new laws and forms of governance from 1764 gained little traction in the colonies. The pamphlets in these four volumes trace out this debate. Some authors argue powerfully and uncompromisingly for the principle of Parliamentary

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authority. The power of this principle is testified to by the fact that many Brit­ ish supporters of the colonists argued that while exercising it was impolitic, it was nevertheless constitutional. Others committed considerable feats of logi­ cal gymnastics to try to argue for exceptions to Parliamentary sovereignty even while claiming that its sovereignty was indivisible and inviolable. Some, such as William Bollan, gradually but eventually decisively abandoned their belief in Parliamentary authority. A few British supporters of the colonies but many more colonists argued more fully for diffused sovereignty based on British historical precedent, colonial chartered rights, natural rights and in some cases all three. This was the key debate of the revolutionary era. Taxes such as those under the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, the Townshend Duties and so on mattered as much as they did because of the issue of where sovereign authority in the empire lay. Other matters debated in these volumes, from the right to trial by jury in one’s vicinage, to the wisdom of fighting the war of independence, to the justice or injustice of the Treaty of Paris ending that war, all followed from debates over Parliamentary prerogative. What follows below is a brief outline of the events of the American Revolution to give those new to the subject a brief contextualiza­ tion of those debates.8 Parliament’s Sugar Act of 5 April 1764 raised duties on various colonial imports, most infamously imposing a 3-pence-per-gallon levy on molasses from the non-British West Indies, replacing the 6-pence duty of the Molasses Act of 1733. The Molasses Act was designed to deter trade with the French sugar islands, but colonists had avoided it by bribing customs officials one to 1½ pence a gallon. Halving the duty, Grenville hoped colonists would pay, but the act also empowered eight warships and twelve armed sloops to board ships to check for papers or contraband. Vice Admiralty Courts would try alleged evad­ ers, sidestepping colonial juries that sympathized with smugglers. Furthermore, a Currency Act forbade circulation of paper money, first in New York and later elsewhere, so British customs officials and merchants would collect duties and debts in specie, not depreciated paper. Colonists complained about these measures in numerous pamphlets, espe­ cially about taxation without representation. This matter was brought into even sharper relief by Grenville’s intention to raise stamp duties, announced the day Parliament passed the Sugar Act. Approved on 22 March the following year, the Stamp Act directed that as of 1 November 1765 all legal documents, includ­ ing private contracts, plus newspapers, pamphlets, broadsides and even cards and dice, had to be written on or accompanied by stamped paper issued from London. However, colonial resistance rendered the measure a dead letter by the time it was supposed to come into effect. On 14 August, a Boston crowd hanged an effigy of Massachusetts stamp officer Andrew Oliver from a ‘Liberty Tree’, paraded it in front of government house, in sight of Governor Francis Bernard,

Introduction, 1764–83

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Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson and the Council, and then destroyed Oliver’s administrative building and burned his house down. Oliver resigned the next day. Eleven days later, a crowd demolished Hutchinson’s mansion too. Sons of Liberty organizations formed throughout the colonies to organize and coor­ dinate similar actions against the Stamp Act and other British measures over the next several years. Also, Virginia and then various other colonies passed resolves against the Stamp Act, and an inter-colonial Stamp Act Congress passed a Declaration of Rights on 19 October. Merchants boycotted British goods, causing British counterparts to petition MPs and raising fears of rioting among distressed workers. Under these pressures and after Grenville’s replacement by Charles Wentworth Watson, Marquis of Rockingham, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act on 16 March 1766. It also later indemnified most protesters against the Stamp Act from prosecution and reduced the still-evaded sugar duty to 1 pence per gallon. Despite MPs backing down on pragmatic grounds, many continued insist­ ing on Parliament’s right to legislate for the colonies. They first rejected the idea that colonists were not represented in Parliament. Grenville’s Treasury Secre­ tary. Thomas Whately, argued that although there were no colonial MPs, ‘All British Subjects … are virtually represented in Parliament; for every Member of Parliament sits in the House, not as Representative of his own constituents, but as one of that august Assembly by which all the Commons of Great Britain are represented’.9 Board of Trade Commissioner Soame Jenyns similarly argued for virtual representation as all British people at home and overseas shared the same interests.10 But this was a technical point in a much bigger argument. For Whately, Jenyns and indeed most Britons, sovereignty was indivisible and lay in Parliament. The principle of Parliamentary sovereignty was so powerful that Rockingham struggled to muster a majority for repeal of the Stamp Act, how­ ever impracticable it had proved to be. He secured one though a Declaratory Act, passed the same day of the Stamp Act’s repeal, asserting Parliament’s right to legislate for the colonies ‘in all cases whatsoever’. Colonists did not react to the Declaratory Act immediately, hoping the Stamp Act’s repeal was the matter of substance. They soon found themselves confronting its implications, however. On 29 June 1767, Parliament passed the first Townshend Act, requiring colonists to pay taxes on a range of imported goods, including glass, lead, paint, tea and every kind of paper. By reintroduc­ ing customs duties rather than a tax on domestic transactions, Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend exploited a distinction some colonists made between internal and external taxes. Townshend also established a Board of Cus­ toms Commissioners comprising Britons who would be less susceptible to local pressure than colonial stamp officials had been. They would, furthermore, be remunerated by commission comprising one-third of revenue raised by duties

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and by fines for evasion, providing an incentive to enforce assiduously. Town­ shend also attempted to diminish imperial officials’ dependence on colonial assemblies by making another third payable to governors, the final third going to the British Treasury. The Townshend Duties clarified for colonists that ‘external’ taxes were still ‘taxation without representation’. Recalling the Declaratory Act, colonists now argued explicitly that sovereignty was diffused throughout the empire and that colonial legislatures supplanted Parliament in all areas except common defence and wider imperial trade. When the Massachusetts General Court endorsed Samuel Adams’s defence of ‘diffused sovereignty’ in his Circular Letter of 1767, which was distributed to other colonial assemblies, theoretical debate turned into constitutional crisis. Colonial Secretary Lord Hillsborough instructed Governor Francis Bernard to order the Court to rescind the letter. The House refused, Bernard dissolved it and voters subsequently re-elected members who had voted against rescinding, and voted out many who had voted for it. The newly elected assembly then met without the governor convening it, foreshad­ owing the unauthorized provincial congresses of the revolutionary crisis of 1774 to 1776. Another constitutional stand-off took place in South Carolina. On 8 December 1769, South Carolina’s Commons House of Assembly authorized a £1,500 donation to London’s Society of Gentleman Supporters of the Bill of Rights in aid of John Wilkes, the radical excluded from Parliament. Hillsbor­ ough ordered Governor William Bull to veto all appropriation bills and the Wilkes fund controversy dragged on until 1775, with the assembly issuing IOUs to keep the government functioning. Parliament took a similar stand against the New York assembly in 1766 in defence of the Quartering Act, which billeted troops on unoccupied dwellings and required New Yorkers to pay towards it. New York initially resisted, finally caving in June 1767, but not before Parlia­ ment passed the New York Restraining Act, directing the governor to veto all assembly legislation until it complied. During this controversy, Colonial Secre­ tary the Earl of Shelburne considered making it ‘High Treason to refuse to obey or execute’ Parliamentary legislation.11 The New York Restraining Act also raised the issue of a standing army in peacetime. Colonists’ suspicions that the army was there not for protection against external enemies but to take away their property and liberty by force were strengthened in 1768. In June, Boston Customs Commissioners seized the sloop Liberty and prosecuted its owner, Son of Liberty John Hancock, for customs violations, provoking the Liberty Riot that forced customs officials to flee to Castle William in Boston Harbour and call for troops to restore order. Hillsborough ordered General Thomas Gage, the British army’s commander-in­ chief in New York, to despatch four regiments to Boston. The first arrived in October 1768 and camped on Boston Common. Trouble brewed over subse­

Introduction, 1764–83

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quent months, heightened by off-duty troops taking part-time jobs in the city, undercutting local wages. On 5 March 1770, the repulsion of an assault on the barracks by citizens attempting to reach soldiers who had beaten two boys was followed by the ringing of meeting house bells that drew hundreds into the streets. Fearing an attack on the King Street Customs House, Captain Thomas Preston, another officer and six men went to assist the lone sentry there. As the crowd pushed the soldiers, Private Hugh Montgomery fell over and fired his gun, causing a panic in which others fired into the crowd, killing five and wound­ ing six. Preston was later acquitted of ordering his men to fire, and enough doubt existed over who shot whom that only Privates Hugh Montgomery and Matthew Kilroy were convicted of shooting respectively Crispus Attucks and Samuel Gray, though it increased colonial bitterness that they claimed benefit of clergy and were branded on the thumb. The shock of the ‘Boston Massacre’ made way for what Samuel Adams later called a ‘period of quiescence’. Disaffected colonists continued agitating, not least with annual 5 March commemorations at which they made angry speeches denouncing the soldiers’ actions and Parliament’s many inequities. Adams and others established inter-colonial Committees of Correspondence to maintain hostility towards Britain. But most simply went about their normal business and British authorities kept a low profile. Parliament repealed all the Townshend Duties except that on tea, explicitly kept to maintain the principle of Parliamen­ tary sovereignty, although it also provided a pretext for the final revolutionary crisis from 1773. Before that, though, the Gaspée incident raised tensions. On 10 June 1772, the eponymous revenue ship ran aground near Providence, Rhode Island, and a crowd of locals burnt it to the waterline. A Parliamentary commis­ sion was unable to find any guilty party, despite a £500 reward for incriminating information. The final crisis began with a seemingly innocuous piece of legislation. The Tea Act of 10 May 1773 exempted the East India Company from the last remaining Townshend duty, making their tea, which could only be sold by com­ pany consignees, cheaper. Despite the prospect of cheaper tea, colonists resented the monopoly and prevented the company landing or selling its produce. Most consequentially, on the night of 16 December, Bostonians dressed as Mohawk Indians boarded the company ships Beaver, Dartmouth and Eleanor, and hurled their 90,000-pound tea cargoes into the water. Parliament, learning little if anything from a decade’s experience, passed the Coercive Acts: the Impartial Administration of Justice Act provided for juryless trials of those involved in the Tea Party in England; the Boston Port Act closed the harbour until the city compensated the East India Company; the Quartering Act billeted troops on people’s homes rather than unoccupied dwellings; and the Massachusetts Gov­ ernment Act annulled the 1691 colonial charter and imposed virtual martial

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law, with General Gage as Governor. Colonists called these the Intolerable Acts, and there was one Intolerable Act that was not a Coercive one. The Quebec Act established a new constitution for the former French colony, with a Crownappointed legislature, a royal veto on its laws, taxation by the British Parliament, French civil law (with no common law rights or liberties) and Catholic tolera­ tion. British Americans feared this would be a model for their own futures, and that, with the southern border of Quebec extended southwards to the Ohio River, on territory that various colonies claimed, it could also be the military basis from which such governance could forced upon the other colonies. Despite the Massachusetts Government Act, the General Court continued meeting, first in Cambridge, then Concord and Salem, and on 7 October 1774 declared itself a Provincial Congress that derived its authority from the towns rather than the Crown, effectively declaring independence. From 5 September to 26 October a quasi-revolutionary, quasi-governmental institution constituted itself as the Continental Congress, with delegates from all thirteen colonies bar Georgia. It warned Massachusetts against aggressive action, but promised aid if attacked and called on colonists everywhere to arm themselves for defence. It also adopted the ‘Declaration and Resolves’, endorsing Massachusetts’ Suf­ folk Resolves, which repeated objections to taxation without representation, reaffirmed commitment to diffused sovereignty and listed objections to the Intolerable Acts. The Congress also adopted the Continental Association, an inter-colonial boycott of British goods enforced by local Committees of Inspec­ tion – another extra-legal form of authority constituted in defiance of Britain. The last thing the Congress did before adjourning was resolve to meet again the following May.12 As pamphlets in this collection illustrate, the crises described above prompted ever more radical responses in the colonies and more strident calls for compro­ mise in Britain. No lesser figures than Edmund Burke, William Pitt and Lord North proposed compromise measures in Parliament, more or less accepting col­ onists’ terms. Instead, Colonial Secretary Lord Dartmouth ordered Gage to take action, while refusing his request to increase British forces in North America from 3,500 to 20,000 men. On 18 April 1775 Gage sent 700 men from Boston to Concord to capture an illegal arms cache and arrest radicals Samuel Adams and John Hancock. Colonists’ communication networks ensured the soldiers were confronted by civil militia at Lexington Green, where the British killed 8, wounded 10, and marched on to be met by militiamen from surrounding towns who killed 14 soldiers at Concord Bridge. Sniping and surprise attacks on the march back to Boston killed 261 more British soldiers, while 101 colonists died that day. American forces then besieged Boston and British reinforcements arrived under William Howe, who replaced Gage as commander-in-chief, Henry Clinton and John Burgoyne. British forces captured Breeds Hill in the misnamed

Introduction, 1764–83

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Battle of Bunker Hill on 17 June, losing 1,054 men to the colonists’ 400: the kind of victory that ultimately helped Britain lose the war. In March 1776 Howe withdrew to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Fighting also broke out elsewhere, with Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys and Benedict Arnold’s Massachusetts militia tak­ ing Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point in northern New York in May 1775. On 17 November 1775, Virginia Governor John Murray, Lord Dunmore, issued a proclamation offering freedom to slaves who would join him and fight against their disloyal masters. He raised a loyalist force but after a defeat in December fled to a battleship off the coast and launched a naval assault on Norfolk, burn­ ing most of the port town on New Year’s Day. In North Carolina, British and loyalist forces lost the Battle of Moore’s Creek on 18 February 1776, failed to capture Charleston, South Carolina, and then abandoned the south for over two years.13 Armed revolt forced the Second Continental Congress to adopt yet more governmental responsibilities and thereby move closer to full-blown revolution. It published a ‘Declaration of the Causes of Taking Up Arms’ and offered the ‘Olive Branch Petition’ calling on George III to persuade Parliament to end hos­ tilities, again reflecting colonists’ rejection of metropolitan constitutional views on relations between King and Parliament. On 23 August 1775, the King pro­ claimed the colonies to be ‘in open and avowed rebellion’, and he confirmed his support for Parliament at its 26 October state opening. In December, Parliament passed a Prohibitory Act, outlawing colonial trade. With diplomacy failing, the Congress carried out military policy, ordering the invasion of Canada, forming the Continental Army, appointing George Washington its commander-in-chief and printing £2,000 in paper notes to pay for its needs.14 Despite years of political conflict and the outbreak of war, it took time to declare independence. After all, nothing like it had ever been done in the mod­ ern era at that time, and the odds of defeating the most powerful nation on earth must have seemed small, especially as many colonists remained loyal to Britain (up to a third remained so even after the Declaration of Independence). Most who turned patriot took time to turn against their former countrymen, and even the most early and ardent supporters of independence recognized the need to wait until they had sufficient support. As Benjamin Franklin said to fellow congressmen, ‘we must all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall hang sepa­ rately’.15 Gradually, though, pressure for independence grew. On 16 May 1775, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress requested that Congress draft a model constitution for all colonies and then radically altered its own, abolishing the office of governor and making its Council appointed by the elected lower house. New Hampshire followed on both counts, but Congress at this time refused to be drawn into effectively sanctioning independence. Several other colonial

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legislatures followed the Massachusetts example, however, declaring them­ selves provincial congresses and reforming their constitutions even before 4 July 1776. Congress was also emboldened by the enormous popularity of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, published on 10 January 1776, stridently calling for an independent republic. On 12 April, North Carolina became the first colony to instruct its delegates in Congress to vote for independence if in concert with others, followed by Virginia on 15 May. On 7 June, Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee proposed that Congress pass a ‘resolution of independence’ asserting that ‘these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independ­ ent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved’. Congress appointed a committee comprising John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston and Roger Sherman to draft a declaration to that effect. Congress voted in favour of Lee’s resolution on 2 July and approved an amended version of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence on the 4th.16 Declaring independence necessitated a shift away from stress upon the liber­ ties of Britons towards a radical Lockean emphasis on natural rights, especially, given the circumstances, the rights to government by consent and the right to revolt. The Declaration famously held as ‘self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’. It also stated ‘That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government’ before listing the ‘his­ tory of repeated injuries and usurpations’ that necessitated revolt. In an implicit but nonetheless clear repudiation of Parliamentary authority, the Declaration did not mention the institution by name, referring to it only obliquely, as when it stated that the King ‘has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation’. The ‘injuries and usurpations’ were the King’s responsibility as he had failed to protect his colonial people from oppres­ sion by the unmentionable British legislature, and indeed had colluded with it. What made George III a scrupulous constitutional monarch in Britain made him a scurrilous tyrant in America.17 The Declaration also transformed what had been an armed rebellion into a full-blown War of Independence. To some, a colonial insurrection against the mightiest empire in history seemed preposterously unlikely to succeed, but oth­ ers were already predicting colonial victory. After all, the territory that British forces needed to subdue was too vast to be conquered, even by the awesome

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manpower at Britain’s command, especially as there was no single vital centre. And so it proved to be. Howe captured New York in late 1776, but Washington escaped to Pennsylvania, crossing the Delaware at Christmas-time to score small but morale-boosting victories at Trenton and Princeton, New Jersey, before wintering at Morristown. The next year Howe achieved notable victories at Brandywine Creek and Germantown, Pennsylvania, and captured Philadelphia, but Washington held on to winter at Valley Forge. Howe’s Pennsylvania cam­ paign left General John Burgoyne exposed in New York. Trying to subdue the north, Burgoyne found himself surrounded at Saratoga between Generals Philip Schuyler and Horatio Gates, who forced him and his 5,700 men to surrender on 17 October. Now sensing a possible American victory, France formally recog­ nized American independence, promised to fight for it and granted the United States trading privileges under the 6 February 1778 Treaty of Amity and Com­ merce and Treaty of Alliance. Aiming to regain Gibraltar and other territories lost in earlier wars, Spain joined with France. The Dutch continued trading with France and the United States, provoking a British declaration of war in 1780. Already overstretched in North America, then, Britain found itself fighting all over the world. The problem was literally brought home to Britons in 1778 and 1779 when John Paul Jones, commander of the Bonhomme Richard, attacked British merchant and naval ships in home waters, and attacked the ports of Whitehaven and Leith. Saratoga also forced Parliament to offer the Americans concessions. On 16 March 1778, Parliament repealed the Tea Act, the Coercive Acts and the Prohibitory Act, and a new Declaratory Act renounced Parliamentary taxation of the colonies. Parliament also despatched a peace commission, but it was too late. Too much had already been sacrificed for independence, and the United States was treaty-bound with France to fight for it. The peace bid failing, Clinton replaced Howe as British commander and was ordered to abandon Philadelphia. He withdrew to New York City, assailed by Washington and Charles Henry Lee along the way, in the vicinity of which British and American forces engaged in sporadic fighting until the end of the war. The patriots made important gains in western Pennsylvania and the regions of Illinois and Kentucky against the British and their loyalist and Native American allies, the latter fighting with the British because American victory would erase the 1763 Proclamation Line that protected their territories west of the Appalachians. But the main theatre of war was in the south, where, once again, the British were fatally overstretched. Initially, American Generals Howe and Benjamin Lincoln suffered losses, respectively and most significantly at Charleston and Camden, South Carolina, on 12 May and 16 August 1780. After that, though, patriots destroyed a 1,000­ stong loyalist force at Kings Mountain, North Carolina, on 7 October 1780, and Banastre Tarleton’s 900 men at Cowpens, South Carolina, on 17 January

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1781. Moreover, Nathanael Greene lured Lord Charles Cornwallis into wasteful chases across the Carolinas until the latter retreated to Charleston and Savannah, back where he started in 1778 only with far fewer men. At the North Caro­ lina Battle of Guilford Courthouse of 15 March 1781 alone, Greene took out a quarter of Cornwallis’s men, 100 killed and 400 wounded. Cornwallis after­ wards attempted to subdue Virginia, and joining with turncoat Benedict Arnold almost captured Governor Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia assembly at Char­ lottesville on 4 June 1781. On 1 August, however, Cornwallis settled his troops at Yorktown, which he presumed was secured by the British navy. Seeing the potential, Washington and French forces under Comte Jean Baptiste, Donatier de Rochambeau and Marie Joseph, Marquis de Lafayette, marched southwards to Virginia, while naval forces under Admiral Comte François Joseph Paul de Grasse sailed northwards from the French West Indies into Chesapeake Bay. Trapped on all sides, Cornwallis surrendered on 19 October.18 The web of war­ time treaties took time to untangle, but Britain formally recognized American independence in the Treaty of Paris of 23 September 1783. Despite the many warnings of American and British pamphleteers, leaders only learned the hard way that they could not govern the colonies without colo­ nists’ consent. In this sense, the loss of the colonies had less to do with American or British wartime strategies and tactics than with the circumstances of colonial development and imperial governance in the preceding century and a half. The colonists, as they and their British supporters repeatedly asserted, had created the American settlements by themselves and had throughout their histories more or less governed themselves. They were not about to sacrifice the property and liberty they created and guarded to the imperial imaginings of a new age of Britons. The British learned the lesson well. In the future, when and where possible, imperial authorities would endeavour to ensure that habits of colonial self-government would not become as entrenched as they did in the American colonies. Notes: 1. Quoted in T. C. Barrow, ‘A Project for Imperial Reform: “Hints Respecting the Settle­ ment of our American Provinces”, 1763’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 24 (1967), pp. 108–26, on p. 118. Knox made numerous contributions to the colonial ques­ tion, two of them reprinted in this volume: The Claim of the Colonies to an Exemption from Internal Taxes Imposed by the Authority of Parliament, Examined (1765), below, pp. 21–43; and A Letter to a Member of Parliament, Wherein the Power of the British Legis­ lature, and the Case of the Colonists, are Briefly and Impartially Considered (1765), below, pp. 45–63. 2. B. Franklin, ‘On the Tenure of the Manor of East Greenwich’ (1766), in J. P. Greene, Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States, 1607–1788 (New York: Norton, 1986), p. 67.

Introduction, 1764–83

xix

3. In a speech to the House of Commons, 22 March 1775, printed in The Works of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, 2 vols (London: Holdsworth & Ball, 1834), vol. 1, p. 186. 4. See the introduction to Volumes 1–4 of this edition, in Volume 1, pp. xxi–xxxi; and M. J. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England, c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 379–419. See also K. R. Andrews, Trade, Plunder, and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480–1630 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); R. Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict and London’s Overseas Traders, 1550–1653 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); D. Loades, England’s Maritime Empire: Seapower, Commerce and Policy, 1490–1690 (London: Longman, 2000); Greene, Peripheries and Center, pp. 7–76; J. P. Greene, ‘Negotiated Authorities: The Problem of Governance in the Extended Polities of the Early Polities of the Early Modern Atlantic World’, ‘The Colonial Origins of American Constitutionalism’ and ‘Metropolis and Colonies: Changing Patterns of Constitutional Conflict in the Early Modern British Empire’, in Greene, Negotiated Authorities: Essays in Colonial Political and Constitutional History (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1994), pp. 1–24, 25–42, 43–77; C. Daniels and M. V. Kennedy (eds), Negotiated Empires: Centers and Peripheries in the Americas, 1500–1820 (New York: Routledge, 2002); D. Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); D. Armitage and M. J. Braddick (eds), The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800 (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); J. P. Greene et al., ‘Colonial History and National History: Reflections on a Continuing Problem’, Roundtable, Wil­ liam and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 64:2 (April 2007), pp. 235–86; D. S. Lovejoy, The Glorious Revolution in America (1972; Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1987); J. M. Sosin, English America and the Restoration Monarchy of Charles II: Transatlantic Politics, Commerce, and Kinship (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1981); J. M. Sosin, English America and the Revolution of 1688: Royal Administration and the Structure of Provincial Government (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1982); J. P. Greene, ‘The Glorious Revolution and the British Empire’, in Greene, Negotiated Authorities, pp. 78–92; S. S. Webb, Lord Churchill’s Coup: The Anglo-American Empire and the Glorious Revolution Reconsidered (New York: Random House, 1995); R. S. Dunn, ‘The Glorious Revolution and America’, in N. Canny (ed.), The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century, Oxford History of the British Empire, 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 445–66; J. A. Hen­ retta, ‘Salutary Neglect’: Colonial Administration under the Duke of Newcastle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972); D. Baugh, ‘Great Britain’s “Blue-Water” Policy, 1689–1815’, International History Review, 10 (1988), pp. 33–58; D. Baugh, ‘With­ drawing from Europe: Anglo-French Maritime Geopolitics, 1750–1800’, International History Review, 20 (1998), pp. 1–32; E. H. Gould, The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). 5. Braddick uses these and similar phrases throughout State Formation in Early Modern England, and his conclusion has that title, pp. 427–37. 6. An Account of the European Settlements in America, 2 vols (London: R. & J. Dodsley, 1757), vol. 2, p. 288. The book’s author was named as William Burke but most historians attribute it to Edmund.

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7. Quoted in E. S. Morgan and H. M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC: Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, VA, 1953), p. 55. 8. For more detailed accounts of the political history of the Revolution, see S. Sarson, British America, 1500–1800: Creating Colonies, Imagining an Empire (London: Hod­ der Arnold, 2005), pp. 222–53; and F. D. Cogliano, Revolutionary America: A Political History, 1763–1815 (London: Routledge, 2000). For a brilliant evocation of the impor­ tance of constitutional issues to the Revolution, see J. P. Greene, The Constitutional Origins of the American Revolution, New Histories of American Law (Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 2010). 9. [ Thomas Whately], The Regulations Lately Made Concerning the Colonies (1765), in H. T. Dickinson (ed.), British Pamphlets on the American Revolution, 1763–1785, 8 vols (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007–8), vol. 1, pp. 1–116, on p. 111. 10. [Soame Jenyns], The Objections to the Taxation of Our American Colonies, by the Legisla­ ture of Great Britain, Briefly Consider’d (1765), in Dickinson (ed.), British Pamphlets on the American Revolution, vol. 1, pp. 117–38. 11. Shelburn to Chatham, 18 March 1767, quoted in S. Conway, ‘Britain and the Revo­ lutionary Crisis, 1763–1791’, in P. J. Marshall (ed.), The Eighteenth Century, Oxford History of the British Empire, 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 325–46, on p. 331. 12. ‘Declaration and Resolves of the Continental Congress’, 14 October 1774, and ‘The Association’, 20 October 1774, in S. E. Morison (ed.), Sources and Documents Illustrat­ ing the American Revolution, 1764–1788, and the Formation of the Federal Constitution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), pp. 118–25. 13. D. Higginbotham, The War of American Independence: Military Attitudes, Policies, and Practice, 1763–1789 (New York: Macmillan, 1971), pp. 57–97. 14. ‘Declaration of the Causes of Taking Up Arms’, 6 July 1775, in Morison (ed.), Sources and Documents Illustrating the American Revolution, pp. 141–5; ‘Royal Proclamation’, 23 August 1775, ‘Address to Parliament’, 26 October, 1775, quoted in Cogliano, Revolu­ tionary America, pp. 61–2. 15. Quoted in H. W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (New York: Anchor Books, 2000), p. 512. 16. ‘Lee Resolution’, 1776, and Jefferson to Lee, 1825, in C. L. Becker, The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (1922, New York: Vintage Books, 1970), pp. 25–6. 17. ‘Declaration of Independence’, 1776, in Morison (ed.), Sources and Documents Illustrat­ ing the American Revolution, pp. 157–61. See also G. Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (New York: Doubleday, 1978); P. Maier, American Scrip­ ture: How America Declared Independence from Britain (London: Pimlico, 1997); and D. Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). 18. S. E. Morison, The Oxford History of the American People (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 265.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

American National Biography, ed. J. A. Garraty and M. C. Carnes, 24 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Andrews, K. R., Trade, Plunder, and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480–1630 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Armitage, D., The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer­ sity Press, 2000). —, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). Armitage, D., and M. J. Braddick (eds), The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800 (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). Barrow, T. C., ‘A Project for Imperial Reform: “Hints Respecting the Settlement of our Amer­ ican Provinces”, 1763’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 24 (1967), pp. 108–26. Baugh, D., ‘Great Britain’s “Blue-Water” Policy, 1689–1815’, International History Review, 10 (1988), pp. 33–58. —, ‘Withdrawing from Europe: Anglo-French Maritime Geopolitics, 1750–1800’, Interna­ tional History Review, 20 (1998), pp. 1–32. Becker, C. L., The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (1922, New York: Vintage Books, 1970). Braddick, M. J., State Formation in Early Modern England, c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 2000). Brands, H. W., The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (New York: Anchor Books, 2000). Brenner, R., Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict and London’s Overseas Traders, 1550–1653 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). Cogliano, F. D., Revolutionary America: A Political History, 1763–1815 (London: Routledge, 2000). Conway, S., ‘Britain and the Revolutionary Crisis, 1763–1791’, in P. J. Marshall (ed.), The Eighteenth Century, Oxford History of the British Empire, 2 (Oxford: Oxford Univer­ sity Press, 1998), pp. 325–46. Daniels, C., and M. V. Kennedy (eds), Negotiated Empires: Centers and Peripheries in the Americas, 1500–1820 (New York: Routledge, 2002).

– xxi –

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Dickinson, H. T. (ed.), British Pamphlets on the American Revolution, 1763–1785, 8 vols (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007–8). Dunn, R. S., ‘The Glorious Revolution and America’, in N. Canny (ed.), The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century, Oxford History of the British Empire, 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 445–66. Gould, E. H., The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). Greene, J. P., Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States, 1607–1788 (New York: Norton, 1986). —, Negotiated Authorities: Essays in Colonial Political and Constitutional History (Charlottes­ ville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1994). —, The Constitutional Origins of the American Revolution, New Histories of American Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Greene, J. P., et al., ‘Colonial History and National History: Reflections on a Continuing Problem’, Roundtable, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 64:2 (April 2007), pp. 235–86. Henretta, J. A., ‘Salutary Neglect’: Colonial Administration under the Duke of Newcastle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972). Higginbotham, D., The War of American Independence: Military Attitudes, Policies, and Prac­ tice, 1763–1789 (New York: Macmillan, 1971). Loades, D., England’s Maritime Empire: Seapower, Commerce and Policy, 1490–1690 (Lon­ don: Longman, 2000). Lovejoy, D. S., The Glorious Revolution in America (1972; Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1987). Maier, P., American Scripture: How America Declared Independence from Britain (London: Pimlico, 1997). Morgan, E. S., and H. M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC: Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, VA, 1953). Morison, S. E. (ed.), Sources and Documents Illustrating the American Revolution, 1764–1788, and the Formation of the Federal Constitution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923). —, The Oxford History of the American People (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Sarson, S., British America, 1500–1800: Creating Colonies, Imagining an Empire (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005). Sosin, J. M., English America and the Restoration Monarchy of Charles II: Transatlantic Politics, Commerce, and Kinship (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1981). —, English America and the Revolution of 1688: Royal Administration and the Structure of Provincial Government (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1982). Webb, S. S., Lord Churchill’s Coup: The Anglo-American Empire and the Glorious Revolution Reconsidered (New York: Random House, 1995). Wills, G., Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (New York: Doubleday, 1978).

[BOLLAN], THE MUTUAL INTEREST OF GREAT BRITAIN AND THE AMERICAN COLONIES

[William Bollan], The Mutual Interest of Great Britain and the American Colonies Considered, with respect to an Act passed last Sessions of Parliament for laying a Duty on Merchandise, &c. Some Remarks on a Pamphlet, intitled, ‘Objections to the Taxa­ tion of the American Colonies. &c. considered’. In a Letter to a Member of Parliament (London: W. Nichol, 1765).

William Bollan was born in England around 1710 and moved to America as a teenager. He trained as a lawyer with Massachusetts attorney Robert Auchmuty and by 1733 had Boston’s King’s Chapel and, despite his Anglicanism, Harvard University as clients. In 1743 he married Frances Shirley, daughter of Massachu­ setts Governor William Shirley, and was appointed colonial agent to London where he successfully sought reimbursement of £183,649 of colonial expendi­ ture on King George’s War (1744–8). He found his position under threat with the accession of Thomas Pownall as Massachusetts governor in 1757, who wished to replace Bollan with his own brother, John Pownall. For five years Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson protected him, alienating Bollan from the James Otis faction in the General Court who finally ousted him in 1762, accusing him of sycophancy and financial greed, and exploiting his frequent complaints of too much work for too little pay and his hypochondria. Unaware of his erstwhile patron’s efforts on his behalf, Bollan blamed Hutchinson for his fall and soon began his gradual alienation from Britain and its American apologists and his eventual radicalization, as is evident in the thirteen pamphlets he published in London before his death in 1774.1 The title of his 1765 pamphlet, The Mutual Interest of Great Britain and the American Colonies, reveals a theme – of unity through recognition of shared interests – that remained a rare constant throughout his writings and intellectual evolution. Bollan’s ideas about the ideological and constitutional foundations of those shared interests changed dramatically, however. The 1765 work begins with a response to Soame Jenyns’s famous pamphlet, The Objections to the Taxation of Our American Colonies, by the Legislature of Great Britain, Briefly Consider’d (London, 1765). Jenyns, a poet, satirist, pamphleteer, MP and –1–

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commissioner on the Board of Trade, defended the Sugar and Stamp Acts of 1764 and 1765 on grounds of necessity for protecting the colonies from attack by the French and Indians and on the grounds of right by the principles of par­ liamentary sovereignty and virtual representation (whereby all MPs supposedly represented all British subjects, at home and overseas, whether those subjects voted or not). Jenyns added that no colonial charters exempted colonies from taxation, and no royal charter could supersede parliamentary authority in any case.2 After mocking Jenyns for confessing to not knowing the founding princi­ ple of virtual representation yet still believing in it, Bollan notes that he immediately after puts Manchester, Birmingham, Albany, and Boston, on the same foot: does he not know that the two former are in Lancashire and Warwickshire, and therefore represented; the latter on the other side of the Atlantick Ocean, and there­ fore not represented? (below, p. 8)

He adds a little later that ‘none of the great names he has quoted, Locke, Sid­ ney, or Selden, have ever said that the colonies were represented in parliament, but that every man in England is’ (below, p. 8). For Bollan, then, colonists were represented in their own assemblies, and he agrees with Jenyns that the colonies should not have MPs. Yet when Bollan gives his own views on the Acts, he offers only limited means of constitutional resolution. He argues first that the Acts (though he only refers specifically to the Sugar Act) are economically inadvisable as they will impoverish colonists, which will in turn hurt British manufacturers, traders and seamen, and encourage colonists to manufacture for themselves or else encour­ age smuggling, especially as payment was required in specie. As well as attacking Jenyns for stating that the tax would help pay off Britain’s national debt when its stated purpose was ‘for defending, protecting, and securing the colonies only’ (below, p. 9), he assails this rationale. He notes, incorrectly, that after the French and Indian War (1754–60) ‘there is not a French subject on that continent’ and, correctly, that ‘the colonies were able and did defend themselves a hundred years since against the Indians’, asking, ‘are they now, all of a sudden become unable’ to do so (below, p. 12)? Bollan, then, was clearly opposed to British parliamentary taxation in practice. In this pamphlet, though, he said nothing about Parlia­ ment’s right in principle to tax or colonists’ right to oppose such taxation. He would take a very moderate position on these issues in A Succinct View of the Origin of Our Colonies (1766), but a much more radical one in The Rights of the English Colonies (1774).3 Notes: 1. R. Lettieri, ‘William Bollan (1710?–1782)’, in American National Biography, ed. J. A. Garraty and M. C. Carnes, 24 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), vol. 3,

[Bollan], The Mutual Interest of Great Britain and the American Colonies

3

pp. 130–1. For a more detailed summary of Bollan’s intellectual evolution, see J. D. Meyerson, ‘The Private Revolution of William Bollan’, New England Quarterly, 41:4 (December 1968), pp. 536–50; and for a full list of his publications, see M. G. Kam­ men, A Rope of Sand: The Colonial Agents, British Politics, and the American Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968), 334–5. 2. The pamphlet and commentary can be found in H. T. Dickinson (ed.), British Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1763–1785, 8 vols (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007–8), vol. 1: 1763–6, pp. 117–38. 3. See below, pp. 65–88, and Volume 6 of this edition, pp. 147–93.

THE

MUTUAL INTEREST OF

GREAT BRITAIN AND THE

AMERICAN COLONIES CONSIDERED, With respect to an Act passed last Sessions of Parliament for laying a Duty on

Merchandise, &c.

Some Remarks on a Pamphlet, intitled, ‘Objections to the Taxation of the

‘American Colonies. &c. considered.’1

In a LETTER to a Member of Parliament.

My Business here is not with Rhetoricians and Orators, but with Lovers of Truth.

Locke.2

LONDON: Printed for W. NICOLL, at the Paper-Mill, in St. Paul’s Church Yard.

MDCCLXV.

[Price SIX-PENCE.] /

THE MUTUAL INTEREST OF Great Britain and the Colonies, &c. SIR, YOUR commands, together with a pamphlet, intitled, Objections to the tax­ ation of our American colonies by the legislature of Great Britain, briefly considered, have made me resolve to give you my thoughts on the act of parliament which passed last sessions concerning the colonies of North America, and which has occasioned so much discontent there, as well as a great deal of uneasiness among the merchants and manufacturers of this kingdom. But to point out the numer­ ous evils which I think will be the consequence of that act, and to set them in a proper light to your view, is a task to which I find myself unequal: however, I shall give you my opinion on some of them, after I have considered the argu­ ments of that writer. He says, that no Englishman is taxed by his own consent. This is a mistake; for he is taxed by and with the consent of his delegate his deputy, that is, his representative: and is not this his own consent? Upon this principle the cyder counties that he mentions were taxed. / He affirms that every Englishman is taxed, and not one in twenty represented; that copyholders, leaseholders, and all men possessed of personal property only, chuse, or have no representatives; so that, according to this writer’s doctrine, nineteen-twentieths of this nation are not represented, and have in course no rights in the laws, or protection from parliament; and then he quotes Manches­ ter and Birmingham, to which he might have added Sheffield, Leeds, &c. But immediately after he quotes Locke, and Sidney on government, as well as Selden, and others, who all declare ‘that every Englishman, whether he has a right to vote for a representative or not, is still represented in the British parlia­ ment’.3 In which opinion he confesses they all agree; and therefore modestly says, he shall, on the authority of such respectable names, acknowledge the truth of it; but says, that on what principle it is founded, he cannot comprehend. –7–

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Now here is a candid confession from his own mouth, that every English­ man is represented, although he does not vote. But he complains that he cannot comprehend it; whose fault is that? Not mine, I am sure, and I am very sorry he is so unhappy and dull in his comprehension. But altho’ he has just confessed his conviction, he immediately after puts Manchester, Birmingham, Albany, and Boston, on the same foot: does he not know that the two former are in Lancashire and Warwickshire, and therefore represented; the latter on the other side of the Atlantick Ocean, and therefore not represented? He asserts that there is not a charter in any of the colonies that pretends to exempt them from taxes. For his better information, I refer him to that of Maryland.4 He talks of compelling the assemblies to settle salaries on governors and judges; what can this arbitrary man mean by compelling the assemblies, and treating the free representatives of the people of the colonies with such unbe­ coming insolence? I am at a loss to know what he means by saying, Have the assemblies shown so much obedience to the orders of the crown, that we could reasonably expect that they would tax themselves on the commands of a minister? I hope it is no crime in me to say, that this is the first time I have ever heard of the crown giving orders to the assemblies, that is, to the representatives of the people. He says we have a right or not to tax the colonies. In this I perfectly agree with him; but he asks if parliament is possessed of such right? why should it be exercised with more delicacy in America than in Great Britain? To which I answer, if the right be the same, there is not the least reason why America should be more delicately treated than Great Britain; and I am sure I shall not dispute that right, or call it in question; but I will take upon me to say, that none of the great names he has quoted, Locke, Sidney, or Selden, have ever said that the colo­ nies were represented in parliament, but that every man in England is. He hints a method, and at the same time ridicules it; I mean that of the col­ onies having representatives in the British parliament: says, he is afraid of the importation of so much American eloquence, lest it might endanger the safety and government of this country; and that if we can avail ourselves on no other condition of taxing them, it will be much cheaper to pay their army than their orators: so that he apprehends a future minister would soon make pensioners of them. I acknowledge I have the same fears and apprehensions; and therefore never wish to see American representatives in the British parliament. This writer, in his great sagacity and knowledge of the commerce of our colo­ nies, says that taxing will not impoverish them, for what one pays, another will receive, and that our army there will want shoes, stockings, hats, our judges peri­ wigs and scarlet robes. He has forgot that the money arising from such taxes and duties is to be remitted to England, and that the judges wear no scarlet robes as

[Bollan], The Mutual Interest of Great Britain and the American Colonies

9

a mark of their legal authority, nor have they ever had a periwig from this king­ dom. / He further says, that the money brought in by taxes from America will enable us to diminish the enormous national debt contracted the late expensive war. He has forgot that those are intended for no such thing; but for defending, protect­ ing, and securing the colonies only; for these are the very words of the act. He next abuses the merchants, in saying that the wealth they get by trade will augment their influence, whereby they will plunge us in new wars, and new debts, for their private advantage. He then concludes with congratulating him­ self, in having very clearly and concisely proved, as he imagines, his assertions; and in this happy situation, and to the discerning opinion of the candid public, I shall leave him. I am now, Sir, to proceed with my remarks on the act, and the consequences that I think will attend it. The duty imposed on foreign sugars imported in the colonies of North America, and none upon British sugars, will totally prevent their consuming any foreign; for not only that English sugars are cleaner and better but the saving a duty of 22 shillings per hundred over and above all former duty will induce them to it; and their consumption, on the best computation is twenty thousand hogsheads of sugar per annum, which will be so much loss to the trade and mar­ ket of Great Britain; as well as about seventy thousand pounds a year loss to the revenue, by the duties which such British sugars would have paid in England. As to the duty of 3d. per gallon on foreign molasses, it will be still worse in its consequences; for that trade not only occasions ship-building in the colonies, but draws from this kingdom great quantities of cordage, sail-cloth, anchors, &c. For such purpose, many hundred sail are employed in this trade, and thousands of able seamen made in consequence, which our fleets in that part of the world have always experienced. Besides these advantages, I must observe to you, that the molasses are distilled into rum for the fishery of Newfoundland and New England, where it is so necessary an article on these cold and foggy banks, that they absolutely cannot live without it, nor be able to carry on that invaluable fishery, which, by the way of Spain, Portugal, Italy, &c. brings so much treasure to this kingdom, as well as the great nursery of our seamen. This molasses also occasions another very considerable trade for Africa; for being distilled into rum, it is sent thither and exchanged for slaves, which are carried to our own West India islands; so that our own islands are benefited by North America trading with the foreign plantations for molasses. Such are some of the advantages accruing from that trade; and if it be con­ sidered, that as about eight pence per gallon is the first cost, three pence per gallon is too great a duty on its importation in our colonies; for their cargoes of fish, lumber, and provisions, amount on an average to not quite 250l. sterling;

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the rates of which being about 80 hogsheads of molasses, on which they are to pay at their return, as the act now stands, near 100l. sterling duties, beside the expence of the voyage, which is very considerable, judge then whether this be not an insupportable duty, and whether the colonies have not great reason to complain? But, Sir, if our own islands were able to supply North America with molas­ ses, it were but just that our fellow subjects should have the preference, and to impose a duty on foreign; but the contrary is well known and admitted, as well as their inability to consume the productions of North America. As to the duties laid on China and India silk, silk stuff, Herba callicoes, and cambrick imported in North America, I believe will be found not to answer the end designed. My reasons are, that officers situated in colonies so distant from the seat of govern­ ment, are very liable to be corrupted, or become negligent in the discharge of their duty: and that as by these duties the goods will in course become dearer, which will lead the Americans to seek those very kind of goods in Holland, Hamburg, and elsewhere, for duties ever occasion illicit and contraband trade; and to prevent it by a few ships of war and cutters on a coast extended / more than two thousand miles, will be found a very fruitless attempt, more especally in winter; it cannot be prevented even in the British Channel. The same reasons hold good against discontinuing or allowing the old sub­ sidy or drawback on German linen exported to our colonies, which is, as it were, exciting them to go directly to Hamburg for them, instead of coming hither, and taking them through England, and thereby enabling the Germans to pay for our numerous manufactures which they consume, which, without our taking their linens, they cannot do; so that, by taking off the drawback, we shall not only lose the supplying our colonies, but in consequence of that our trade to Germany; which, as I said before, cannot pay for our manufactures, unless we take their linen: for these reasons, I cannot help thinking that the act will not only be very pernicious to all the colonies, but extremely detrimental to the true interest of Great Britain, where all the wealth of the colonies center. But as the act now stands. I apprehend they will seek goods in foreign mar­ kets, and find means to follow an illicit trade; to which by the bye they are not more inclined than the people of England, though great pains has been taken to represent them as such; but I will venture to say that it cannot be made appear that ever a North American ordered from any part of Europe any woollen manu­ facture, hard-ware, or wrought leather, except from Great Britain only. But merchants, Sir, are very apt to go to the cheapest market: it would there­ fore be sound policy to render those goods we do not make come as cheap to them as in our power; I mean linen and India goods; so that our people of North America may be attracted by their interest, as well as their duty, to have them through England, and which they certainly would do from inclination, and their

[Bollan], The Mutual Interest of Great Britain and the American Colonies

11

love to this country, which they know to be their protector; nor has his majesty, in any of his dominions, subjects more loyal than they are. In this particular they stand unimpeached and unblemished. But it has often been asserted, that they are rich, and therefore can bear heavy duties. To this I answer, that those are mistaken assertions; for whatever wealth they collect from any trade which they carry on, it immediately finds its way to England, in order to pay their numerous debts, for it is well known that they are ever indebted immense sums to this kingdom; and a proof of their poverty is, that they cannot keep a piece of gold or silver among them, and that all their money consists of paper currency. As this is the truth, the above-mentioned duties will render them still poorer, more unable to pay, and in consequence have fewer goods from hence: but, on the contrary, the richer they are, the more goods they will draw from this king­ dom. But what is most extraordinary is, that the act requires such duties to be paid in sterling money at 5s. 6d. per ounce. It might as well have ordained, that every man in the colonies should be seven foot high, since they are both equally impossible to be inforced, for the people have no money. But, Sir, the greatest evil is still behind. Necessity will teach them to become manufacturers, and for which they want not the materials; they have plenty both of wool and flax; they have many years since made some cloth and linen: it has been increasing, and this act, I think, will give the finishing stroke to it, by bring­ ing them to perfection; for we see that, since the passing it, they have entered into associations and companies of manufactures; and even advertise their own made cloth, inviting spinners, weavers, combers, &c. offering good wages. Many of those people went with our troops thither during the late war, as well as those from Birmingham and Sheffield, and which the peace has left among them. These will teach them every branch of the manufactures of Great Britain, which indeed is already most severely felt in Spittlefields; for as the colonies consider themselves oppressed by this act, every [one] of them have with-held their orders for goods to the merchants here: / and this all those concerned in that trade can testify; but as they cannot immediately make all the goods they want, instead of having English black cloth for mourning, they have substituted a bit of black crape round their arm, and Spittlefields silks and stuffs are almost totally laid aside; the effect of which is severely felt by thousands of poor weavers and oth­ ers, who are absolutely starving for want of employ. So that humanity has called upon many eminent merchants, and others, in this city, to enter into subscrip­ tions for their immediate relief and support: laudable as this resolution is, yet it will prove but a very temporary relief, for their want of employment will soon cause the same poverty and distress to return: the real, the permanent relief for those poor people, is to find them work; and that I apprehend is only to be done

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by reconciling our colonies to us, and by employing the repeal or amendment of the late act, and to render goods as cheap to them as in our power; that only will take off their attention from becoming manufacturers, for it is necessity only that ever made mechanicks in any country; the great body of the people will then follow husbandry as they now do, and to which it seems every man by nature is inclined; land they have enough, and to the cultivating that we ought to keep them. But who can blame them for becoming mechanicks, when they find them­ selves oppressed by the mother country, with duties which they are unable to bear? But, Sir, in the preamble of the act it is said to be just and necessary, that a revenue be raised in his majesty’s dominions in America, for defraying the expences of protecting, defending, and securing the same. I cannot help remark­ ing, that, for one hundred years past, whilst Canada and Louisiana were in the hands of France, the colonies wanted no such defence or security from England; but, on the contrary, they defended themselves, and even in 1746 took Cape Breton without a single soldier from Britain; but strange politicks at present prevail. For now that Louisiana, Cape Breton, and Canada, are all reduced to the obedience of, and possessed by the crown of England; now that there is not a French subject left on that continent, it is thought necessary to keep fifteen battalions of regular troops in the colonies, and for the support of them those grievous duties are imposed: but it is said they are necessary, in order to reduce the Indians; this, though an idle one, I know is the pretext; the colonies were able and did defend themselves a hundred years since against the Indians, and are they now, all of a sudden, become unable, with the addition of several hundred thousand men? This is extraordinary indeed, and can be called no other than a very trifling pretence.5 Indeed we sometimes hear of a person or two being killed by the Indians, and this gives rise to a long paragraph in all the papers which circulate through the kingdom; but I will venture to say we have more people killed within ten miles of London, than on all that continent, and yet we do not keep fifteen battalions on foot to scour the roads. It is the mutual interest of our colonies and the Indians to live in peace; they have done it for twenty or thirty years together, and would again, if we would but take away our soldiers; but if they, the Indians, were otherwise inclined, it would be very hard indeed if the colonies themselves could not bring them to subjection, without the crown keeping a numerous body of troops, and thereby taking men from the plough, in a country where they are so much wanted, and soldiers so very disagreeable; not only so, but to lay heavy duties on merchan­ dize, for the support of such troops, particularly in a country where every man, by beat of drum, is obliged to appear under arms; for all the colonies are formed

[Bollan], The Mutual Interest of Great Britain and the American Colonies

13

in a regular and well-disciplined militia; and they are so sensible of their strength and numbers, that they would be extremely glad to see those red coats embark for England, since they can be of no use to the colonies, whose real defence and protection is received from the British navy, and the valour of their own native militia, nor have they an enemy worth notice within 3000 miles of them. / With the recalling therefore of those troops from among them, the cause of those severe duties and taxes will be removed, and the greatest reason to hope for a repeal of them: the colonies would then resume their trade, which is now lan­ guishing, and their heads, which are at present full of manufacturing, would be employed on schemes of commerce and navigation; the fruits of all their labours would continue to center in Great Britain, and the language which they now hold, that they are treated not as Englishmen, but as aliens and slaves, in being taxed without having representatives, would immediately subside; their affec­ tions and labours would be united in promoting the trade and interest of this kingdom, and all things return to their late happy and prosperous state. For the promoting which I think you will not be wanting; and if any thing here be found consistent with truth and right reason, and of any use to you in your future deliberations, my purpose of writing is answered, being confident that you will invariably pursue those, and make them the rule of your conduct.

[ JENKINSON], ‘NOTES ON THE RIGHT TO TAX

THE COLONIES’

[Charles Jenkinson], ‘Notes on the Right to Tax the Colonies’ (1765). British Library, Add. MS 38339.

Charles Jenkinson was born in Winchester on 26 April 1729 into a well-con­ nected but modest military family. After Charterhouse School and University College, Oxford, he chose politics over the ministry, writing anti-Tory satires in the Oxfordshire elections of 1754. He then became an unpaid aid to Lord Holdernesse, Secretary of State for the Northern Department, gaining his first experience of overseas affairs. In November 1756 he produced A Discourse on the Establishment of a National and Constitutional Force in England in a failed application to be under-secretary to William Pitt, and in 1758 published a Dis­ course on the Conduct of Great Britain with Respect to Neutral Nations which two years later secured him an annual £250 pension. His growing reputation secured him the position of under-secretary to Lord Bute and he became MP for Cockermouth, in Cumbria, in 1761, thanks to James Lowther, another ally of Bute. He remained with Bute after the latter’s appointment as First Lord of the Treasury, but when Bute was replaced by Grenville in 1763 Jenkinson became a secretary to the Treasury and was thus involved in drafting the Sugar and Stamp acts, at which point he produced his ‘Notes on the Right to Tax the Colonies’, the unpublished brief printed here. Jenkinson’s notes provided his superiors with answers and counter-argu­ ments to those of the likes of William Bollan. He begins with a brief iteration of the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, asserting that liberty supersedes property, accusing Locke of confusing parliamentary with popular sovereignty, and citing De Tallagio non concedendo (1297; literally ‘no taxation without representation’), the Petition of Right (1629) and the Bill of Rights (1689) as applying to Parliament’s rights in relation to the king, not colonial rights in rela­ tion to the Mother Country. Virtual representation ensured justice for colonists. He also cites several precedents for parliamentary taxation of the colonies. After establishing these constitutional principles and practices, Jenkinson makes the – 15 –

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practical case for taxation, calculating that Britons at home paid more in taxes than colonists and that, while individual colonists were cash-poor, colonies were resource-rich and indeed had already paid off much of their debt (unlike Brit­ ain). They were therefore perfectly capable of paying their way. He also explicitly counters Bollan’s claim that colonists would turn to manufacturing and that parliamentary taxation usurped local assembly prerogative. He concludes with a specific defence of a stamp duty as it was less liable to fraud than excises, did not affect commerce and did not require collectors to visit people’s homes. After the fall of the Grenville administration during the Stamp Act crisis, Jenkinson remained an MP and made an important but ultimately ineffective House of Commons speech in opposition to repeal of the Stamp Act. Despite his opposition to the Rockingham ministry, he was made a Lord of the Admi­ ralty in December 1766 and appointed to the Treasury Board a year later. His career took a mis-step in 1768 when he attempted to become an MP for Oxford University (after former patron Lowther went into opposition and following a break with Grenville over his taking the Treasury position) and was defeated by former Tory enemies, though in 1772 he found a safer seat in Harwich. In Janu­ ary 1773 he moved from the Treasury in favour of Charles James Fox, but secured a comfortable position as Vice-Treasurer of Ireland, under his long-time patron and Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Harcourt. He was soon back at the centre of metropolitan politics, however, through appointment to the Privy Council in February 1773. Five years later, during the American War of Independence, Lord North made him Secretary at War, and he remained there (refusing the position of American Secrtary) until the North ministry collapsed following the Yorktown surrender of September 1781. During the subsequent lean years he wrote Collection of Treaties between Great Britain and the Powers from 1648 to 1783 (London, 1785). Now allied to Pitt, he made a remarkable recovery, in 1786 becoming a member and very soon president of the new Board of Trade and then chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, posts he held until 1804 and 1803, and as a cabinet member from 1791. In 1786 he was made Baron Hawkesbury and 10 years later Earl of Liverpool by a grateful King George III. In 1769 he had married Amelia Watts, daughter of William Watts, a former governor of Fort William in Bengal. Their son, Robert Banks Jenkinson, who would become the second Lord Liverpool, would serve alongside his father in the cabinet as Foreign Secretary and later become Prime Minister, was born on 7 June 1770. ‘Old Liverpool’ died in London on 17 December 1808. Notes: 1. J. Cannon, ‘Jenkinson, Charles, first earl of Liverpool (1729–1808)’, in Oxford Diction­ ary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 29, pp. 973–6.

The Right of Taxing the Colonies not merely an Act of Power but a Constitu­ tional Act of Legislation founded upon Principle and justified by Precedent. The Principle is that all who are intitled to Protection ought equally to bear the Burthen of It, and that They who have the Management of that Protection can be the only Judges of what that Burthen Should be. This acknowledged with respect to the general Powers of Legislation if it were doubted it could be shewn that no Country ever came under the Domin­ ion of the Crown of Great Britain but that the Parliament had made Laws with respect to It. The Distinction between Laws for raising Taxes and for other Pur­ poses absurd. Property a less sacred Right than Liberty; Property the Creature of Society, and therefore more the Object of Laws of Society. Mr. Locke evidently mistook the Declarations of Parliament in favor of the Rights of Parliament to levy Taxes in Opposition to the Claims of the Crown for Declarations in favor of the People at large.1 / The Statute de Tallagio non concedendo Says, that no Tallage or Aid shall be laid or levied by the King or his Heirs in this Realm without the good will & Assent of the Archbishops, Bishops, Earls, Barons, Knights, Burgesses and other the Freemen of the Commonalty of this Realm & the Petition of Right the 3rd. of Charles the 1st. reciting this and other old Statutes on this Subject declares that no Man hereafter be compelled to make or yield any Gift, Loan, Benevolence, Tax, or such like Charge without common Consent by Act of Parliament: The Facts that gave Rise to this Petition sufficiently shew that it was made in Opposi­ tion to the Power claimed by the Crown and no other.2 The Bill of Rights at the Revolution declares that the levying Money for, or to, the Use of the Crown by Pretence of the Prerogative without Grant of Parlia­ ment for longer Time, or in other manner than the same is or shall be granted is illegal. The Recital to this Instrument clearly expresses that the illegal Acts of Parliament gave Occasion to this Declaration.3 The Idea of the Legislature of this Country is not a compleat Representation. Upon this Principle it is the Doctrine of Parliament that every Member after he is chosen is no longer to be considered as the Representative of any particular / Place but as one of the Representatives of the Dominion of the Crown of Great Britain at large. If the Consent of all the People was necessary to impose a Tax many of the Richest Towns in England would have an equal Right with the Colonies to com­

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plain, but the Legislature of Great Britain have frequently exercised the Right of Taxing the Colonies. By the 25 of Charles the Second. By the Post Office Act the 9 of Queen Anne. By the 2d. Of Geo. 2d. The Greenwich Hospital Act. By the 6th. Of Geo. 2d. The Sugar Act.4 These were all considered as Taxes in their Modes of passing thro’ Parliament; the Revenues arising from Them appropriated and applied as other Revenues &c. The Difference between Internal and External Taxes. The Post Office Act, an Internal Tax. The 29th. Sect. Posts to cross Ferries gratis, a Proof of this. Their Charters also shew that They are in every respects as well with regard to the Right of raising Money as every thing else subject to the Legislature of Great Britain. The Expediency of this Act is evident 1st. from the Distresses of the Mother Country; 2ndly. from the Abilities of the Colonies. Since the 25th. Of Charles the 2d. More than Four additional Subsidies have been imposed on this Country, and an Immense / Number of Internal Taxes, and yet no new Tax has since that Time been laid upon the Colonies except the Post Office Duties and Those of the 6 of Geo. 2d. which were not executed ’till last Year. The People of this Country amounting to about 8 Millions pay annually near £10,000,000 a Year in Taxes, that is about 25 Shillings a Head. The People of the Colonies pay in Taxes for the Expence of Their Establish­ ments by £150,000 P Annum; and if You consider Them as 1,800,000 of People it is at the Rate of 1s & 8d P Head; and if You consider the Continental Colonies alone They pay not more than 9 Pence P Head. The Common Tax in Rhode Island & Connecticut for the Expence of their Establishment is but 2d. In the £; but it is said the Colonies are in Debt.5 The Debt of the Colonies at the End of the War amounted but to £2,097,000 of this They have already discharged £1,409,000, & there remains to be dis­ charged but £688,000 for which Provision is made, so that the Whole will be discharged in 1769, except in the Case of New Jersey only. From whence it is clear that the Colonies are not in Debt, and it is evident from the Expeditious manner in which They have been able to discharge the Debt contracted by the / War that They are able to contribute to the Publick Burthen and have great Resources within Them. But it may be said that the Individuals are poor, if this meant thereby that They have Debts , it may in One Sense be true; It is the Nature of a Country that is rising into Wealth to apply all It’s Cash for the Purchase of Stock, and to exert all its Credit for that Purpose, though They are not therefore rich in

[Jenkinson], ‘Notes on the Right to Tax the Colonies’

19

Money, They are rich in Stock, which are real Riches, and the proper Object of Taxation, but They want Money, This is a Consequence of the former, but any Taxes that have hitherto been proposed will not draw any Money from Them. I believe the most sanguine Person does not expect that this Tax with what has hitherto been proposed will produce the Third Part of what must be annually sent from Great Britain to maintain the Establishments there, and not even so much as the difference between the present Military Establishment there, and that of the last Peace. It may further be said that by imposing Taxes upon the Colonies, We shall drive Them into Manufactures. This can only be true if We Should impose Taxes on Manufactures and thereby make Them Easier to Them, but there is not any one Tax upon British Manufactures that are sent to the Colonies; There are Bounties given to many, and though We last Year laid / a Tax on Foreign Manu­ factures with a View to give a Preference to Our Own, and indeed it was high time considering how much the Price of Labor is increased in this Country by the additional Load of Taxes laid upon It yet the present Tax and every other internal Tax can have no Place in this Objection as it will tend rather to increase the Price of Labor in the Colonies and diminish instead of increase Their Abili­ ties to intermeddle with Manufactures, and as to any Threat the Colonies may fling out, that disgusted with the Proceedings of the Mother Country, They will on That Account engage in Manufactures it may be believed that They will cer­ tainly engage in Them as soon as They can and nothing prevents Them but Their Inability. It will also be said that This will stop Their Increase but Their Increase is of no further Benefit to This Country than as it enables Them to become more usefull to It; Upon this Principle You night never to tax Your Colonies; All the Advan­ tage You have hitherto derived from Them has been commercial: It is Time to endeavour now to derive Revenue from Them Otherwise. They certainly ought never to be taxed so high as this Country, but that is no Reason They ought never to be taxed at all. But it is said that by this Measure You will / render Their Assemblies useless; The Purpose of This Objection is, that the Parliament of Great Britain ought not to exercise it’s full Constitutional Powers, and not to exercise Them when a proper Occasion offers, is in fact to resign Them, least You should interfere with, and diminish, the mighty Powers of the little Assemblies of any One of Your Colonies; but the Truth is, that the present Law does not interfere with the Powers that any of the Assemblies ever have exercised or perhaps ever can exercise: It provides for Their general Defence, the Charge of which has always hitherto been borne by Great Britain and We are going now to exercise a Power which We always had, which We have already frequently exercised, and the Dis­ cretion We use should rather be a matter of Comfort to the Colonies as it clearly

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points out that where Necessity does not call upon Us, where Their own Assem­ blies can sufficiently answer the Purpose, We do not mean to exercise it: But if it had affected the Power of These little Legislatures I will never suppose that the immediate Protection of the Parliament of Great Britain is not more valu­ able, more conducive to the Security of Their Liberty and Their Propertys, than the Protection of Their own Legislatures; I speak the Language of Parliament. In the Address presented to King William against Mr. Molyneux’s / Book, and the Proceedings had in the Irish Parliament for that Purpose. It was declared by Parliament that such Proceedings would prove fatal not only to England but to Ireland itself.6 A Stamp Duty has ever been born with Complaint; It is not subject to the Frauds to which Custom House Duties are liable, nor to the Severities of Excise. It is not a Burthen upon Trade, nor is it necessary to enter any Man’s Doors for the Purpose of collecting It. The true Idea of the Tax is that the Crown has the Monopoly of the Sale of Paper for certain Purposes at a Price fixed by Law; the Profits of which are to be applied to the Publick Benefit, and there is a particular Propriety in this Tax with respect to the Colonies, for as the Colonies need not and perhaps ought not to be supplied with Paper but from Great Britain; Parlia­ ment grants to the Crown the exclusive Right of selling it, and authorizes it to fix the Price. The 25th. of Charles the 2d: certainly a Money Bill. The Post Office Bill was certainly a Money Bill. The Resolutions voted in the Committee of Ways and Means; The Money to be produced by These appropri­ ated to the Publick Service, and for carrying on the War against France; The Bill much controverted, the present Objection never taken. / The 6t. of George 2d. certainly a Money Bill; It was voted in a Committee, and the House rejected a Petition against it in consideration that it was a Money Bill.

[KNOX], THE CLAIM OF THE COLONIES

[William Knox], The Claim of the Colonies to an Exemption from Internal Taxes Imposed by the Authority of Parliament, Examined: In a Letter from a Gentleman in London, to his Friend in America (London: W. Johnston, 1765).

William Knox was born in Monaghan, Ireland, educated in Church of Ireland schools and Trinity College, Dublin, and first experienced politics during the Anglo-Irish political crisis of 1753–6 under the patronage of the Irish House of Commons opposition leader, Sir Richard Cox. Yet he later became a staunch supporter of a more centralized empire, in part due to his American experiences. He was appointed Provost Marshal of Georgia in 1756 and was a member of the colonial Council in 1757–60, and in these roles became alarmed at the autonomy of provincial assemblies. Arriving in London in 1762, in the closing stages of the Seven Years War, he found his experience of colonial administra­ tion much sought after. He was probably the author of the anonymous ‘Hints Respecting the Settlement of our American Provinces’ (1763), found among material relating to the Stamp Act in the papers of Charles Jenkinson and seen by lords Grosvenor and Bute. As well as advocating taxes, the hard-line ‘Hints’ recommended ‘limits of settlement’ not only to keep peace with Amerindians but to prevent an uncontrollable spread of colonists, 8,000–10,000 troops not only to protect colonists but ‘for securing the Dependence of the Colonys on Great Britain’, the royalization of the charter colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island, the purchase of the proprietaries of Maryland and Pennsylvania, and indeed ‘One Mode of Government … for all the Colonys’, with all these reforms to be enacted not merely by the King, as before, but by the full authority of Parliament.1 Besides earning up to £2,000 per year from his rice plantation, Knox was employed by the Georgia assembly as a colonial agent. However, the non-anon­ ymous publication of his defence of the Stamp Act, The Claim of the Colonies to an Exemption from Internal Taxes Imposed by the Authority of Parliament Exam­ ined, earned his immediate dismissal from that post. Knox makes two main arguments: ‘that the parliament of Great Britain has a full and compleat juris­

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diction over the property and person of every inhabitant of a British colony; and that the prosperity and security of the colonies has arisen from, and is connected with that jurisdiction’ (below, p. 27). He points out first that colonial exemption from taxation can only be grounded upon the common law of England, which the settlers carried over with them. The grant of the crown conveyed in their charters; the consent and usuage of parliament; their want of representation in parliament; or upon the mani­ fest impracticability or public inconvenience of parliaments exercising jurisdiction in such a case (below, pp. 27–8)

He proceeds to take each point on in turn, each argument supporting Parlia­ mentary sovereignty. According to Knox, common law, Magna Carta, and the Bill of Rights ‘with one voice declare the subject shall not be taxed by any other authority than that of parliament’ (below, p. 28). Crown charters are subject to legislative control. Parliament had legislated for the colonies previously, and Knox appends the 1732 Act for the More Easy Recovery of Debts in His Majesty’s Plantations and Colonies in America, which overrode colonial laws exempting colonists’ ‘houses, lands, negroes, and other hereditaments and real estates’ (below, p. 43) from liability for debt, denying any distinction between internal taxation and other legislation. The multiplicity of colonies with their own assemblies and interests meant that leaving them to raise their own taxes for the common cause was inexpedient if not impossible. And, finally, he argues that ‘virtual representation’ did not apply to colonists and so Parliament should consult colonists, even after the Stamp Act debacle, about the kind of taxation that Parliament should impose. While he thereby admits an imperfection in the imperial constitution, he nevertheless makes his second point that the colonists’ prosperity and liberty depended on parliamentary sovereignty because only that could guarantee British merchants’ confidence in extending credit and only that could protect colonists effectively from enemies. Knox would extend these arguments in A Letter to a Member of Parliament, Wherein the Power of the British Legislature, and the Case of the Colonists, are Briefly and Impartially Considered (1765)2 and other important imperialist tracts.3 Notes: 1. See C. Ritcheson, British Politics and the American Revolution (Norman, OK: Oklahoma University Press, 1954), p. 10, n. 8; and for a commentary and the full text, see T. C. Bar­ row, ‘A Project for Imperial Reform: “Hints Respecting the Settlement of our American Provinces”, 1763’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 24 (1967), pp. 108–26. 2. See below, pp. 45–63. 3. L. J. Bellot, ‘Knox, William (1732–1810), government official and pamphleteer’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60

[Knox], The Claim of the Colonies

23

vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 32, pp. 52–3; ‘KNOX, William (1732–25 August 1810), in American National Biography, ed. J. A. Garraty and M. C. Carnes, 24 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), vol. 12, pp. 841–3; L. J. Bellot, William Knox: The Life and Thought of an Eighteenth-Century Imperialist (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1977).

THE

CLAIM OF THE

COLONIES TO AN

EXEMPTION FROM INTERNAL TAXES IMPOSED

By Authority of Parliament,

EXAMINED:

In a Letter from a Gentleman in London, to his Friend in America.

LONDON,

Printed for W. Johnston, in Ludgate-street.

MDCCLXV. /

A

LETTER, &c.

SIR,

The obligations I lie under to many gentlemen in your province, and the confidence which you say they repose in me, are motives sufficiently powerful to urge me to take a part in the defence of the rights and privileges of the colonies, whenever they are attempted to be violated; and indeed, if I were incapable of being influenced by such motives, my private interest, as a land-owner in Amer­ ica, would oblige me to hold the same conduct. I therefore flatter myself you will believe me, when I declare that my refusal to support the agent for your prov­ ince, in giving opposition to the intended act of parliament for imposing certain stamp duties in the colonies, as an infringement of the / rights and privileges of the people in America, proceeded from a thorough conviction, that the par­ liament of Great Britain has a full and compleat jurisdiction over the property and person of every inhabitant of a British colony; and that the prosperity and security of the colonies has arisen from, and is connected with that jurisdiction. This opinion I know is not the general opinion of the people in America; at the same time I do not believe the contrary opinion is so generally adopted, as people on this side the water suppose it to be from the writings they have seen of some political zealots. Those who make an outcry for liberty and privileges, will in all countries be the favourites of the populace; and those who at such times should profess to think their liberties and privileges sufficiently secured or unviolated, would be sure to expose themselves to calumny and public odium. Hence it is that cool thinking men equally unwilling to flatter the croud or provoke their resentment upon such occasions, withdraw themselves from the tumult, and wait in silence for the return of reason to the / giddy multitude. This I hope is the case of many men in America, and particularly of some of my friends; and therefore I do not despair of finding advocates for the opinion I have declared: but whether I do or not, it is incumbent on me to vindicate my opinion, and in that to justify my conduct, by giving you the reasons on which I found it. The right of exemption which the colonies claim from any mode of legislative jurisdiction, which the parliament of Great Britain may think proper to exer­ cise over them, can only be grounded upon the common law of England, which – 27 –

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the settlers carried over with them. The grant of the crown conveyed in their charters; the consent and usuage of parliament; their want of representation in parliament; or upon the manifest impracticability or public inconvenience of parliaments exercising jurisdiction in such a case. The common law of England is, I grant, the rightful inheritance of every Brit­ ish subject within the dominions of Great Britain, and protects his property and person from violence or impositions, which might be attempted by authority of the prerogative / of the crown; and whenever such attempts are made, the colonists will, I hope, assert their consanguinity to Englishmen, and apply to the British parliament for redress; and there they may be sure of finding it. But as this is not the case at present, nor ever can be whilst we are blessed with a prince of the glorious line of Brunswick upon the throne of Great Britain; but on the contrary, the tax complained of is to be imposed by parliament; the common law of England, the great charter, or the bill of rights, are so far from justifying any British subject in his claim of exemption, that they with one voice declare the subject shall not be taxed by any other authority than that of parliament. It is the most distant from my intention, to excite the people in the colonies to refuse obedience to any act of assembly, for imposing a tax which their provincial legislatures may at any time think fit to pass. But if the common law of England is to be brought as justifying a claim of exemption in any subject of Great Brit­ ain, from the payment of a tax imposed by legislative authority, it will surely much better serve the adducer’s purpose, if he pleads it against a tax imposed by a provincial assembly, / than against a tax imposed by authority of parliament; for as all the colony assemblies derive their legislative authority from the mere grant of the crown only, it might with some colour of reason be urged that any tax imposed by them is imposed by authority of the prerogative of the crown, and not by full consent of parliament, as the common law of England directs all taxes to be imposed. But, perhaps, we shall find, in the charters of the colonies, some clause of exemption from parliamentary jurisdiction, which may better serve to support their claim than the common law. In the charter granted by the crown to Mr. Penn, the clause of exemption is to this purpose, That the inhabitants of Pensylvania shall not be subject to any taxes or impositions, other than such as shall be laid by the house of assembly, or by the parliament of England. Here is an express reservation of the right of parliament, to impose taxes upon the people of Pensylvania; a right which, in the opinion of a gentleman of that country, the only man whose account of North America, it has been said, ought to be regarded, is equivalent to / an authority to declare all the white persons in that province, Negroes. So little was that gen­ tleman acquainted with the constitution of the very province he was born and resided in.1

[Knox], The Claim of the Colonies

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The charters to the people of Connecticut, Massechusetts Bay, New Hamp­ shire, and Rhode Island, tho’ not so express in the reservation of the right of parliament to impose taxes upon those particular colonies, as the Pensylvania charter; yet contain no expressions on which any claim of exemption from such taxes can be founded: on the contrary, they all limit the legislative power, which they grant the respective assemblies, to the enacting such laws as shall not be repugnant: but as near as may be conformable to, the laws of Great Britain. The charter to lord Baltimore alone contains any clause of exemption which can be pleaded in this case; that charter expressly declares, That the inhabitants of Maryland shall not be subject to any impositions or taxes but such as their house of burgesses shall consent to.2 The exemption, whatever it be intended to be granted in this charter, as it extends no farther than to the people in Maryland, / can be of no advantage to the inhabitants in the other colonies, nor has any of them had reference to it in support of their claim; and it is very remarkable that the people of Maryland are almost the only people in America, who have not set up a claim of exemp­ tion from parliamentary taxation. Their acquiescence furnishes me with a key by which to interpret the meaning of the exemption granted in their charter. It seems as if they understood that exemption to mean only a preclusion of the crown from imposing taxes upon the people in Maryland, by authority of its prerogative. And as this charter was granted by a prince who claimed and actually exercised the power of levying taxes upon the people of England, by authority of his prerogative; the grant of an exemption from such taxes was at that time no inconsiderable boon for a courtier to ask, or the prince to bestow. However, I will take the expressions of exemption in their greatest latitude, and allow them to extend to a full and absolute declaration on the part of the crown, That the inhabitants of Maryland should not be liable to any tax imposed, either by authority / of the king’s prerogative, or by authority of parliament. The ques­ tion then will be, Can the crown grant an exemption to any subject to Great Britain, from the jurisdiction of parliament? Will any descendant of the associ­ ates of Pym or Hamden,3 avow it for his opinion that the crown can do so? If he acknowledges a right in the crown to exempt the subject from the jurisdiction of parliament in the case of taxation, can he deny its power to dispense with acts of parliament, or to deprive the same subject of the benefits of the common law? And then, what becomes of the colonies birth-right as Englishmen, and the glorious securities for their persons and properties which their forefathers obtained and handed down to them? Thank God, the constitution of Great Brit­ ain admits of no such power in the crown; it acknowledges no authority superior to the legislature, consisting of king, lords, and commons. The crown, consid­ ered as the executive power, cannot controul the legislature, nor dispense with its acts. On the contrary, the legislature can controul the crown in the exercise of

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its prerogative, and has frequently done so, particularly in / the circumstance of grants or charters made by the crown. How many instances are there of parlia­ ments interfering in corporations, altering, and in some cases intirely annulling, their charters? Not five years since did the parliament take away from the fishmongers of London the most material and beneficial part of their charter, and destroyed the peculiar privileges the crown had granted them; and yet the charter of that com­ pany stood upon as good authority, as does the charter of any colony in America. The next ground of the colonies’ claim, which I proposed to examine, is the consent and usage of parliament. And here I find almost as many instances of the parliament’s exercising supreme legislative jurisdiction over the colonies, as there have been sessions of parliament since the first settlement of America by British subjects; acts of parliament extending to America; acts of parliament annulling acts of the colony legislatures; restraining their commerce; prohibiting the car­ riage or exportation of their manufactures from one colony to another; taxing the productions of one colony when brought into another; taxing / the produc­ tions of a colony upon their being carried out. And to pass over a great variety of others, in the year 1732, the 5th of the late king, an act of parliament was passed, and is still in force, which abrogates so much of the common law, as relates to descents of freeholds in America, takes from the son the right of inheritance in the lands the crown had granted to the father and his heirs in absolute fee, makes them assets, and applies them to the payment of debts and accounts contracted by the father without the participation of the son. This act goes still further; it sets aside the sort of evidence required by the common law, and established by every court of justice in America, in proof of a debt, and injoins the admission of an affidavit made ex parte by a person in Great Britain, before the chief mag­ istrate of any corporation, and only authenticated by the common seal of such corporation, as evidence equivalent to viva voce evidence in all courts of justice in the colonies.4 Could it now be supposed that any American chief justice, who in the course of his office must have frequently pronounced decrees of his court under the authority of this / act of parliament for seizing upon, and selling the freehold-lands inherited by the son from his father, for the discharge and sat­ isfaction of a book-debt due from the father to a British merchant, and only proved to be justly owing by such evidence as I have mentioned, should doubt of the power of parliament to dispose of the property of any inhabitant of the colo­ nies in the same manner as the provincial legislature of each colony has authority to do? Or can any man who admits the power of parliament to take away the lands of the people in America, (the most sacred part of any man’s property) and dispose of them for the use of private persons, inhabitants of Great Britain, question the parliament’s having sufficient jurisdiction to take away a small part of the products of those lands, and apply it to the public service? Another act of

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parliament which deserves particular notice on this occasion, is the annual bill for preve[n]ting mutiny and desertion, which, since the first years of the late war, has always had inserted in it the following clause. ‘Whereas great mischief and inconvenience may arise, if it should be doubted, / whether troops in pay raised in any of the British provinces in Amer­ ica, by authority of the respective governors or governments thereof, are, while acting in conjunction with his majesty’s British forces, under the command of an officer having a commission immediately from his majesty, liable to the same rules and articles of war, and the same penalties and punishments as the British forces are subject to: To prevent such mischief, and to remove all doubts, Be it declared and enacted by the authority aforesaid, That all officers and soldiers of any troops being mustered and in pay, which are or shall be raised in America, as aforesaid, shall at all times, and in all places, when they happen to join or act in conjunction with his majesty’s British forces, be liable to martial law and discipline in like manner to all intents and purposes, as the British forces are, and shall be subject to the same trial, penalties, and punishments.’5 The penalties and punishments which the British troops are made subject to by this act, con­ sists in a variety of corporal punishments, and even death; and consequently the clause I have recited, / subject the provincial troops in America to the same; and not those only which should be raised after the passing that act, but those also which had been then inlisted and serving under acts of their provincial assem­ blies; some of which acts declared, they should not be subject to severe corporal punishments, much less to death, by any sentence of a court martial. What further evidence is there now necessary to prove the fact, that the par­ liament of Great Britain has exercised supreme and uncontrouled jurisdiction, internally and externally, over the properties and persons of the subjects in the colonies? Yet it is said, all these instances do not go to the point of an internal tax, that has never been imposed by parliament. If the novelty of a tax was to be admitted as an argument to prove a defect of jurisdiction in those who were about to impose it, we should probably have never seen either an excise or a land-tax in England; for there certainly was a time when neither of those modes of taxation were used. When the land-tax was first proposed, after the Revolution, every country-gentleman might then have said with the / same degree of propriety as the American now makes the distinc­ tion between internal and external taxes.6 Tax the products of my lands, tax the commodities I consume, but don’t tax my lands themselves, for that you have never done before, and therefore you have no authority to do it now! Nay, the gentlemen in the cyder counties might avail themselves of the same plea against the late duty upon that commodity; and yet I never heard that such an argument was used against either the land-tax or the excise upon cyder; although I believe there were landed men in England, at the time the first land-tax was imposed, as

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little inclined to pay that tax as any American can now be to pay a stamp-duty; nor are the inhabitants of the cyder counties at this time much more willing to continue under the late duty upon that commodity.7 For my own part, I confess, I cannot clearly understand the distinction said to be between an internal and an external tax, or the just boundary which can limit a jurisdiction to a right of imposing the one and not the other. What are all duties upon the importation of any commodity into the colo­ nies but internal taxes, if their being levied on / shore within the jurisdiction of the courts of justice and provincial legislatures, and their being paid in the first instance by the proprietor of such commodity residing in the colony, and ulti­ mately by the consumers of such commodity; the inhabitants of the colony, be the description of such taxes? And what are duties upon the carrying out a pro­ duction of a colony but internal taxes, if their being levied off a commodity as yet within the limits of the colony, and in the possession perhaps of the person who raised it from his own lands, and by his own labour, can make them so? And is it less than trifling to say, the parliament of Great Britain has jurisdic­ tion over a commodity, and may levy a tax upon it whilst it lies upon a quay, or is in a lighter at a wharf, within the limits of a colony; but has not authority to tax it after it is rolled into the merchant’s warehouses? The right of imposing taxes cannot be separated from, but grows out of the right of disposing of the property of the subject; and wherever the power of disposing of a people’s property is allowed to be, there also must the power of imposing taxes be confessed to reside. A foreign commodity / which I have purchased and got into my possession, is as much my property as is the production of my own lands; and if any power has a right to take any part of it from me, and dispose of it without my consent, within the jurisdiction of the particular country I inhabit; it matters not to me whether such part be taken from my foreign commodity, or that of my own raising; or whether it be taken from my goods on a wharf, or from those in the most interior parts of the country. I should now proceed to examine the next foundation of the colonies’ claim as I have stated it, their want of representation in parliament; but the judicious and well-informed writer upon the Regulations lately made in the colonies, has so fully shewn the weakness of that ground for a claim of exemption, that it is unnecessary for me to say any thing upon it. I cannot, however, intirely agree with that able writer, that the subjects in the colonies are in all respects upon a footing with the nonelectors in Great Britain.8 The difference in their circum­ stances does not, however, in the least affect the right of parliament, or impeach its jurisdiction in the case of the / one more than that of the other; but it offers strong reasons why the parliament, in the article of taxation, should be more ten­ der in the exercise of its jurisdiction over the subjects in the colonies, than over the non-electors in Great Britain. I shall recur to this matter presently, but in

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pursuance of my plan, I must now consider the last ground of the colonies claim; the impracticability, or public inconvenience, of the parliament’s imposing taxes upon the colonies. I do admit, in the fullest manner, the probable inconvenience of the par­ liament’s imposing taxes upon the people of distant countries, with whose circumstances and conditions very few of the members can be supposed to be well acquainted; although, as the colonies are now become so important a part of the British empire, I sincerely hope that the landed gentlemen will think it their duty to inform themselves of colony affairs; but as it is agreed, on all hands, that the colonies should contribute their share to the public charge, the proper consideration is, Whether there be any other means less inconvenient, which may be employed for that purpose; / than that of taxation by parliament? Two methods have been proposed, the one, that the colonies should agree among themselves upon the proportion to be raised by each; the other, that the crown should make a requisition from each colony of a particular sum; in both cases that it should be left to the colony-legislatures to raise the money in what man­ ner they should think proper. To be convinced of the impracticability of the first method, it is only nec­ essary to look upon a map of America, which will shew us that the British dominions in that part of the world are divided into eight or nine and twenty colonies, each of which has its own legislature, and all independent one of the other; their situation, climate, and circumstances, the most different that can be supposed of any countries, and as little known to each other as Indostan is to the people of England; add to this, the continual contests between the conti­ nent-colonies and the islands, and the mutual jealousies and local dislikes which subsist between every colony and its neighbour, from one end of the continent to the other; and then say, what hopes of a general / agreement upon the propor­ tion which each colony should contribute to the public expence; especially as in this case no coercive force could be employed to oblige any colony to take upon it a greater share of the burden than it was willing to bear. The other method of requisition by the crown, has been tried in the course of the war, and has had success in some colonies. But do not those colonies, who then complied with the demands of the crown, complain of the inequality of such a method? Have Virginia and Pennsylvania no complaints to make against Maryland, for availing herself of their protection, and never contributing any thing to the common defence? But if this method was adopted, and some of the colonies, as Maryland has done, refused or delayed to raise their contingent, would not those colonies who furnished theirs think it hard if the other were not obliged to do the like? and if the parliament should interpose for that pur­ pose, and tax the delinquent-colonies, all that the other colonies had done to preserve their claim of exemption from parliamentary taxation, would be of no

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signification, for the parliament’s exercising that / power ever one colony, would be a sufficient proof of its right to the same jurisdiction over all. I have, however, another objection to the method of requisition, which is, that the money so granted by the colonies being for a general service, could not be made liable to account. The sums raised must be paid into the Excheq­ uer; and it could never be expected of the Exchequer to transmit to the several colonies vouchers of the expenditure of the particular sums granted by each; and the parliament could have no right to enquire into the application of such money, because it would neither be granted nor appropriated by parliament. What has happened to the Windward Islands, in the case of the duty of four and a half per cent. granted by them to the crown, for the support of their civil governments and fortifications, ought to make every colony cautious of grant­ ing money, which neither parliament nor its particular legislature has a right to enquire into the expenditure of*; and I cannot conceive a / stronger proof of the purity of any minister’s intentions, than the honourable gentleman now at the head of the Exchequer has given, in preferring a tax imposed and appropri­ ated by parliament, and accountable thereto, to the method of requisition which would have left the money so granted as entirely at his discretion as the produce of the four and a half per cent. duty has been considered to be by his predeces­ sors. In every point of view, therefore, a parliamentary taxation, tho’ attended with inconveniences, appears a much more eligible method for raising money on the colonies, than either of the two other methods which have been proposed.11 And having now / examined the several grounds of the claim of exemption from parliamentary taxation set up by the colonies, and I hope convinced you of their insufficiency; I shall go on to vindicate the opinion I declared, in the beginning of this letter, that the prosperity and security of the colonies has arisen from, and is connected with, the right of parliament to exercise jurisdiction over the properties and persons of every inhabitant there. *

Notwithstanding the acts of assembly which imposed that duty, declared a part of the produce of it should be applied to the use of the fortifications of the several islands which granted it; yet their assemblies have / since found themselves obliged, for their own pres­ ervation, to provide other funds for that purpose; no part of the produce of that duty, (as I have been told) having been applied to the use of their fortifications. The province of Virginia too, is another instance of the advantage which may be made of such grants. That province had always, as it now has, a person of considerable rank for its chief gov­ ernor, who resided in the province; but having been prevailed on to settle a permanent revenue for the support of its civil establishment, by a duty of one shilling a hogshead upon tobacco, the government of that province has ever since been administered by a deputy or lieutenant-governor; and the people of the colony have in no instance had the satisfaction of seeing their governor in chief.9 Felix quem faciunt alieni pericula cautum.10

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It must be confessed, that the most opulent and the most populous of the colonies have never been indebted to parliament for any pecuniary assistance, even at their first settlement; and perhaps I could shew, if it were not beside my present purpose, that those colonies, to whom the most liberal grants were made, have been very little served, or their present prosperity promoted by them, save only insomuch as went to the support of their civil establishments, premiums upon their products, and presents to the Indians in their neighbourhood. But it cannot be said, with equal truth, that individuals in Great Britain have not contributed largely to the aggrandisement of every colony in America. / When the stamp-bill, now under consideration, was first moved in parlia­ ment this session, the agents for the continent-colonies had a meeting of the merchants of London, who traded to their several colonies, to enquire of them the amount of the debts due from the colonies, in order to found an argument of their inability to pay any new tax. The gross estimate these gentlemen gave in, upon that occasion, amounted to no less than four millions sterling; an amazing sum to obtain credit for, upon a capital of only two millions! for, as the whole goods and chattels, Negroes, and fishing-utensils of all the British subjects on the continent are not rated at more than six millions; if four of that be owing to the British merchants, it follows, that no more than two can be the prop­ erty of the colonists. And yet, notwithstanding this prodigious debt, the British merchants are still so willing to give the colonies further credit, that some colony-legislatures have found it necessary to restrain the British merchants from doing so, by enacting laws against it; for such is the avowed purpose of a late act of assembly in South Carolina, which lays a duty equal to a prohibition / upon negroes imported into that province.12 This being the case, may I not venture to affirm, that it is the merchants of Great Britain, who have raised the colonies to their present importance? And if we enquire into their motives for giving the colonies such extensive credit, we shall find them to be the confidence they had in the supreme jurisdiction of parliament, following their property to America, and securing it for them in the deepest recesses of the woods, against any unjust act of a provincial legislature, or any fraudulent investiture of it by the persons in whose hands they confided it. That this is really the case, anyone may convince himself, by only comparing the state of the colonies credit with the British mer­ chants in the year 1732, when the act of parliament, I before took notice of*, was passed, with what it is at this day; or, if he wishes for further satisfaction, let him endeavour to persuade the merchants, that the parliament has no internal jurisdiction over property in the colonies, and that consequently the act which they depend on is void in itself, and cannot be executed; and he will soon have

* Vide Appendix.

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the cries of a million and a half of bankrupts, / and ruined Americans, to clear up his doubts. In proof of the necessity for a parliamentary jurisdiction over the persons of the subjects in the colonies, for their security, it will be sufficient to refer you to the instances in the late war of the superiority of an Indian confederacy to the possible efforts of any single colony against them: and then to ask you, how it would be possible, without having recourse to such a supreme jurisdiction, to draw together a body of men, raised by several colonies; or how discipline could be enforced among the troops of any colony, acting beyond the limits of its par­ ticular jurisdiction? As the legislature of every colony is altogether independent of every other, by what authority could an officer order his men to pass the limits of the colony that raised them? or, if he should prevail on them to march beyond the boundary line, would they not then be free to disband themselves, and go wheresoever they pleased? That this is not an imaginary case, the officers, who served early in the late war in America, all know; and that provincial troops have since taken advantage of the tenderness of the clause I / have recited out of the mutiny bill, the fate of the garrison of Fort Loudon is a melancholy instance.13 The troops raised by the provinces of North Carolina and Virginia, for the relief of that garrison, not being commanded by officers having their commissions immediately from his majesty, nor acting in conjunction with any of the king’s British forces, could not be prevailed on by the officers who commanded them, to march beyond the limits of their respective provinces; and the Cherokee Indi­ ans were so well satisfied that they had nothing to fear from either of those corps, that they scarcely left a watch upon their motions, but brought their whole force to meet the king’s troops that were advancing against them on the side of South Carolina; and obliged the gallant officer who commanded them to retreat, after having done more against an Indian enemy with his handful of men than had been before that time performed by any of the great armies in America. If, there­ fore, there was no supreme authority, which could enforce discipline among the troops of every colony at all times, and in all places, and the several corps could only pursue an enemy as / bailiffs do a debtor to the limits of their respective jurisdictions, as the Indians would soon come to know their circumstances, and consequently could not dread their power, it is beyond a doubt, that the colonies would never be permitted to live in peace; nor could any settler, in the inte­ rior parts of the country, say his life or property were at any time in security: so that, in this view, it seems evident that the supreme jurisdiction of parliament over the persons of the subjects in the colonies is as necessary for giving their enterprizes efficacy, and enabling them to act jointly against their enemies; and consequently for giving them security, as I before shewed the like jurisdiction over their properties, was for giving them credit with the British merchants, and thereby promoting their prosperity.

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Having now said what I thought necessary in support of my opinion, of the right of parliament to a complete jurisdiction over the colonies, and the advan­ tage of it to the people in America, I shall, in justice to my fellow-subjects in that country, state the circumstances wherein their case differs from that of the non-electors in / Great Britain; and offer some reasons why, in my humble apprehension, the parliament should, in the exercise of its power of imposing taxes upon both, be more tender in its proceedings, when the colonies are the object of them, than when it is the people of Great Britain. One material difference, in favour of the non-electors in Great Britain, is the fixed landed property which every member of parliament must have within the kingdom of Great Britain; for as all taxes do ultimately affect the land-owner, the non-electors, from this circumstance, derive a security, that the members of parliament will be careful not to tax them immoderately or unnecessarily, as they would thereby burden themselves also. But no member of parliament, as such, can be immediately or ultimately affected by any tax he imposes on the people in the colonies; on the contrary, his own property must be eased thereby. Another circumstance of security, which the non-electors in Great Britain have, and which the subjects in the colonies do not share in, is, that the justice of parliament would not suffer any tax to be imposed / on them, which would not also affect those of the people who have the right of electing the members of parliament; and as the duration of parliament is limited, the members will always be careful not to lay any burdens on their electors, which may be thought either so heavy or injudicious as to provoke their resentment, and thereby direct their choice to other gentlemen at the next general election. But if we should even suppose the parliament could be so unjust, and so par­ tial to their own members, and their particular constituents, as to devise a tax, which should be paid only by those of the people in Great Britain who were neither members of parliament, or had a right of voting for a member; yet still the non-electors would have a security against the excessive weight of such a tax, which the colonies have not, which is, that the members of parliament and their electors must be relatively affected by it. I will suppose an excessive tax to be imposed on the merchants of London, or the manufacturers of Birmingham, what would be the consequence? The merchants would presently remove from the one place, and the manufacturers from / the other; and then what would become of the freeholders and owners of lands and houses in and near those places? But the industrious North-American, and the opulent West-Indian may have their properties taxed, and no individual in Great Britain participate with them in the burden. On the contrary, the members of parliament would make their court to their constituents most effectually, by multiplying taxes upon the subjects in the colonies, and lessening those imposed upon them. These surely are cogent reasons for a peculiar tenderness to be observed in laying taxes upon

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the colonies; and that rules and orders, which might be proper to be observed with regard to the people of England, should be relaxed of their strictness on behalf of the subjects in America. I confess, with all due deference for the opin­ ions of those who thought otherwise, I could have wished to have seen, upon this first instance of parliament’s imposing an internal tax upon the colonies for the single purpose of revenue, a precedent established, of which the colonies might avail themselves upon any such future occasion; and it is but justice to the gentle­ man at the / head of the Exchequer, to inform you, that it was not owing to him that such a precedent was not made. As I have extracted an account of the whole transaction from the letters writ by one of the agents to his constituents, and can rely upon his veracity, I will relate it, for your and my other friends satisfaction.14 When the house of commons had last year come to the resolution, That it might be proper to charge certain stamp-duties upon the colonies; the agents for the colonies on the Continent understanding that the resolution was conceived in such terms, and the further proceedings thereon suspended till the next ses­ sion, in order to give the colonies an opportunity of making propositions in compensation for the revenue that such a tax might be expected to produce; and understanding also, that not a single member of parliament doubted of the right of parliament to impose a stamp-duty, or any other tax upon the colonies; thought it their duty to wait upon the chancellor of the Exchequer, to thank him for his candor and tenderness to the colonies; and to ask his opinion of the sort of proposition, which would probably be accepted / from them to parliament. That gentleman, with great openness and affability, told them, He had proposed the resolution in the terms the parliament had adopted, from a real regard and tenderness for the subjects in the colonies; that it was highly reasonable they should contribute something towards the charge of protecting themselves, and in aid of the great expence Great Britain put herself to on their account; that no tax appeared to him so easy and equitable as a stamp-duty; and what ought particularly to recommend it to the colonies, was the mode of collecting it, which did not require any number of officers vested with extraordinary powers of entering houses, or in any respect served to extend a sort of influence which he never wished to encrease. He hinted that the colonies would now have it in their power, by agreeing to this tax, to establish a precedent for their being con­ sulted before any tax was imposed on them by parliament; and he recommended it to the agents to represent it properly to their several colonies, and to advise their respective councils, and assemblies to take it under their consideration; and if, upon deliberation, / a stamp-duty appeared to them an eligible tax, to authorize their agents to declare their approbation of it, which being signified to parliament next year, when the tax came to be imposed, would afford a forcible argument for the like proceeding in all such cases. He told them further, that if the colonies thought any other mode of taxation more convenient to them, and

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made any proposition which should carry the appearance of equal efficacy with a stamp-duty, he would give it all due consideration. The agents writ immediately to their respective colonies, and desired instruc­ tions for their direction against the next meeting of parliament. Some of the colony assemblies thought the advice their agents gave them impertinent, and supposing that obstinacy and strong expressions would have the same effect on the British parliament that they found them to have on some American gov­ ernors, instead of sending over to their agents discretionary instructions, they framed petitions themselves, positively and directly questioning the authority and jurisdiction of parliament over the properties of the people in the colonies; and / directed their agents to present them to king, lords, and commons. Others (not all) of the assemblies, less violent, gave instructions to their agents to peti­ tion parliament against the tax, and above all things to insist in their petitions on the right and privilege of the colonies to be exempt from internal taxes imposed by parliament; so that of the whole number, not a single colony authorized its agent either to consent to a stamp-duty, or to offer any precise compensation. Indeed, two of the colonies desired their agents to signify their readiness to con­ tribute their proportion of that duty by methods of their own; but when the other agents asked those gentlemen if they could undertake for any particular sum, they confessed they had no authority to do so. Such of the agents as were left by their constituents to act as their discretion should direct them in opposing this tax, thought the best that could be done for the subjects in America was, for the agents to endeavour at obtaining a prec­ edent for their being heard in behalf of their respective colonies against the tax, since their instructions would not permit them to endeavour / at establishing one for their consent being obtained. A petition for this purpose was accord­ ingly prepared, in which no expressions tending to question the jurisdiction of parliament were inserted. But the agents who had petitions transmitted by their assemblies, did not think themselves at liberty to sign or present any other peti­ tion than those of their colonies; and accordingly they had them offered to the house of commons, which would not suffer them to be read, as upon the open­ ing of them by the gentlemen who offered them, they were found to contain expressions questioning the jurisdiction of parliament. The petition transmitted by one colony was not indeed offered, for it was conceived in such offensive terms, that no member of parliament would carry it in. From this candid account, every impartial man must lay it to the charge of the colonies, that a precedent in favour of the subjects in America was not obtained upon this occasion; and should a tax upon the colonies be proposed hereafter, and carried into effect the same session, the colonies could scarcely complain of a hardship, as it might with justice be said to them, when / the parliament did give them an opportunity of transmitting their sentiments, instead of receiving

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from them any information of their circumstances, they had heard nothing but impeachments of the jurisdiction of parliament over them. I have, however, so good an opinion of the temper and moderation of par­ liament, and such confidence in the candor and paternal regard which some gentlemen bear to the colonies, that I have no apprehensions advantage will be taken of the frowardness of their legitimate offspring; but that their dealings towards them will be like those of parents to their truant children, not rigorously just, but forbearing and affectionate. I hope to see this or some future session of parliament close with some resolutions which shall carry universal satisfac­ tion with them to the subjects in the colonies. I hope to see it declared, that no tax cogit to be imposed on the colonies the same year in which it is proposed in parliament; that the representations of the colonies transmitted to their agents ought to be received before such tax is imposed; and that the revenue arising from such tax should not be applied to any / occasional exigence, but should only be appropriated for the general security and protection of America. I flatter myself something to this purpose will be done, not only for the sake of the colonies, but for a reason which will probably occur to a British member of parliament, and with which he must be more deeply affected. It is one of the many advantages attending the democratic part of the British constitution, that in times of public danger or difficulty no man can continue in the administration, who has not ability to conduct the affairs of government in such a manner as will bear the strictest examination. The greatest difficulty incident to a minister in times of public tranquility is the raising the supplies for the year, and his overcoming that difficulty with reputation is a good test of his ability to serve the nation. But if taxes upon the colonies may be proposed, and laid the same session, it will require no great talents to qualify any mem­ ber of parliament for chancellor of the Exchequer. At every pinch or occasional exigence, when the landed gentlemen are to be eased, or the trading people flat­ tered, a new tax upon / the colonies will be the means proposed: and it will have one great advantage over any tax laid in Great Britain, a most material one to an incapable minister, that the probable produce of it cannot be known to many gentlemen; and therefore, however insufficient it may really be for the purposes for which it is laid, yet the minister escapes reprehension for that year, and the nation may be deeply injured thro’ his incapacity before the next meeting of par­ liament. That every gentleman who wishes well to his country, may convince himself these considerations merit his attention, he will only have to reflect, that had a tax upon the colonies been proposed instead of the late additional duty upon cyder, perhaps Great Britain would not now have the happiness of seeing the most vigilant, upright, and able chancellor of the Exchequer, that ever served her since the days of Sir Robert Walpole.15 /

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APPENDIX. As the act of parliament passed in the year 1732, has been much insisted on in the foregoing letter, it is thought proper to annex a copy of it, together with the petition of the merchants to his late majesty, and an extract from the report of the lords commissioners for trade and plantations thereupon. To the King’s most Excellent Majesty. The humble petition of several merchants of the city of London, in behalf of themselves and others trading to his majesty’s colonies and plantations in America. Sheweth, That the merchants trading to the said colonies and plantations have great sums of money due to them from the / inhabitants, and, as the laws now stand in some of the colonies and plantations, your majesty’s subjects residing in Great Britain are left without any remedy for the recovery of their just debts, or have such remedy only as is very partial and precarious; whereby they are like to be considerable sufferers in their property, and are greatly discouraged in their trade to America: That in several of the said colonies and plantations greater and higher duties and impositions are laid on the ships and goods belonging to your petitioners, and other persons residing in this kingdom, than are laid on the goods and ships of persons inhabiting the said colonies and plantations, to the great discourage­ ment of the navigation of Great Britain: Wherefore your petitioners most humbly beseech your majesty, that your majesty will be graciously pleased to take the premises into your royal consid­ eration, and give your petitioners such relief as to your majesty, in your great wisdom, shall seem meet. / This petition having been referred to the lords of trade, their lordships, in their report thereon, take notice, That the difficulty attending the execution of the law, after a verdict hath been obtained in favour of the plaintiff, consists in a privilege claimed by some of the colonies, particularly that of Jamaica, to exempt their houses, lands, and tene­ ments, and in some places, their negroes also, from being extended for debt; but we conceive it to be highly reasonable, that all lands, tenements, hereditaments, and negroes, throughout the several colonies and plantations, should be made liable to the payment of just debts and demands. These two (alluding to another matter mentioned by their lordships also) last mentioned grievances have been more than once recommended to the gov­ ernors of Virginia and Jamaica for redress. But the assemblies of those colonies could never be induced to divest themselves of these privileges by any act of their own; and therefore, in our humble opinion, these points may be very proper objects

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for a parliament’s consideration in Great Britain, as they are / of importance to your majesty’s subjects trading to America. This report of the lords of trade, together with the Merchants’ petition, were laid before parliament in pursuance of an address from the house of commons, and gave rise to the following act of parliament. An Act for the more easy recovery of debts in his majesty’s plantations and colo­ nies in America. Whereas his majesty’s subjects trading to the British plantations in America lie under great difficulties for want of more easy methods of proving, recovering, and levying debts due to them, than are now used in some of the said plantations: And whereas it will tend very much to the retrieving of the credit formerly given by the trading subjects of Great Britain to the natives and inhabitants of the said plantations, and to the advancing of the trade of this kingdom thither, if such inconveniencies were remedied: may it therefore please your majesty, that it may be enacted, and be it enacted, by the king’s most excellent / majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons, in this present parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, That, from and after the 29th of September 1732, in any action or suit then depend­ ing, or thereafter to be brought, in any court of law or equity in any of the said plantations, for of relating to any debt or account, wherein any person residing in Great Britain shall be a party, it shall and may be lawful to and for the plaintiff or defendant, and also to and for any witness to be examined or made use of in such action or suit, to verify or prove any matter or thing by affidavit or affida­ vits in writing upon oath; or, in case the person making such affidavit be one of the people called quakers, then upon his or her solemn affirmation, made before any mayor, or other chief magistrate of the city, borough, or town corporate, in Great Britain, where, or near to which the person making such affidavit or affirmation shall reside, and certified and transmitted under the common seal of such city, borough, or town corporate, or the seal of the office of such mayor or other chief magistrate; which oath and solemn affirmation / every such mayor and chief magistrate shall, and is hereby authorized and empowered to adminis­ ter. And every affidavit or affirmation so made, certified, and transmitted, shall, in all such actions and suits, be allowed to be of the same force and effect as if the person or persons making the same upon oath or solemn affirmation as aforesaid, had appeared and sworn, or affirmed, the matters contained in such affidavit or affirmation, viva voce, in open court, or upon a commission issued for the examination of witnesses, or of any party, in any such action or suit respec­ tively. Provided, that in every such affidavit and affirmation there shall be expressed the addition of the party making such affidavit or affirmation, and the particular place of his or her abode.

[Knox], The Claim of the Colonies

43

And be it further enacted, by the authority aforesaid, that in all suits now depending, or hereafter to be brought, in any court of law or equity, by or in behalf of his majesty, his heirs and successors, in any of the said plantations, for or relating to any debt or account, that his majesty, his heirs, and successors, shall and may prove his and their debts and accounts, and examine his / or their witness or witnesses, by affidavit or affirmation, in like manner as any subject or subjects is or are impowered, or may do, by this present act. Provided always, and be it hereby further enacted, That if any person making such affidavit upon oath, or solemn affirmation, as aforesaid, shall be guilty of falsely and wilfully swearing or affirming any matter or thing in such affidavit or affirmation, which, if the same had been sworn upon any examination in the usual form, would have amounted to wilful and corrupt perjury, every person so offending, being thereof lawfully convicted, shall incur the same penalties and forfeitures as by the laws and statutes of this realm are provided against persons convicted of wilful and corrupt perjury. And be it further enacted, by the authority aforesaid, That from and after the said 29th of Sept. 1732, the houses, lands, negroes, and other hereditaments and real estates, situate or being within any of the said plantations belonging to any person indebted, shall be liable to, and chargeable with, all just debts, duties, and demands, of what nature or kind soever, owing by any / such person to his majesty, or any of his subjects; and shall and may be assets for the satisfaction thereof, in like manner as real estates are by the law of England liable to the satisfaction of debts due by bond or other specialty; and shall be subject to the like remedies proceedings, and process, in any court of law or equity, in any of the said planta­ tions respectively, for seizing, extending, selling, or disposing of any such houses, lands, negroes, and other hereditaments and real estates, towards the satisfaction of such debts, duties, and demands, and in like manner as personal estates in any of the said plantations respectively are seized, extended, sold, or disposed of, for the satisfaction of debts.

FINIS.

[KNOX], A LETTER TO A MEMBER OF

PARLIAMENT

[William Knox], A Letter to a Member of Parliament, Wherein the Power of the Brit­ ish Legislature, and the Case of the Colonists, are Briefly and Impartially Considered (London, W. Flexney, 1765).

In The Claim of the Colonies to an Exemption from Internal Taxes Imposed by the Authority of Parliament, Examined (1765), William Knox argued that the Chancellor had acted reasonably over the Stamp Act by consulting colonists about methods of taxation and, as Charles Jenkinson also noted, by imposing a tax that ‘did not require any number of officers vested with extraordinary powers of entering houses’.1 By the time he wrote A Letter to a Member of Parliament, however, Knox, like many others, had given up on the Stamp Act. ‘The Weak­ ness and Impropriety of this Tax seem now to be confessed on all Hands’, he notes, although he argues for the principle of ‘the Jurisdiction of the Parliament of Great Britain over the Colonies’ (below, p. 52). The essence of Knox’s argument is the indivisibility of sovereignty. In a ref­ erence to colonial ideas of diffused sovereignty, Knox claims that ‘The Doctrine of the Colonists not only dictates to, but strikes at the very Root and Essence of the Constitution; and indeed the Example might be of the most calami­ tous Consequence to the State’ (below, p. 58). A new testiness, furthermore, is evident in Knox’s reference to colonial legislatures as ‘these Usurpers, these Aspirers to a Co-jurisdiction with that Body which is able, at any Time, to crush their Existence’, adding, more temperately, that ‘It is of the Nature and Essence of all human Governments, that a supreme and absolute Jurisdiction should be lodged some where’ (below, p. 52). For Knox, the estates of monarchy, aristoc­ racy and democracy are mixed perfectly in Parliament. Indeed, ‘To this most puissant Court … we are indebted for the Enjoyment of the invaluable Com­ forts and Blessings of civil and religious Freedom’ (below, p. 53). Knox notes also that colonists had previously accepted Parliamentary legislation and in any case had no ‘right of judging for themselves what Laws they shall obey … a Right incompatible with the Offices of Subjects, and utterly subversive of the End of – 45 –

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all human Institutions’ (below, p. 54). Adding a historical dimension, he argues that migration did not remove colonists from British jurisdiction and that rights conferred by ‘feeble’ royal charters could be overridden by Parliament. He also repeats arguments from The Claim of the Colonies to an Exemption from Internal Taxes that the Glorious Revolution and Magna Carta conferred sov­ ereignty on Parliament, not subordinate legislatures or the people. Revealing once again a growing intolerance of colonial protest, he claims colonists are ‘bordering too nearly upon the worst Species of Treason; – a Treason against the State’ (below, p. 59). While Knox seems to have abandoned his previous concession that colonists were in a different political situation from non-voting residents of the British Isles and therefore ought to be consulted about modes of taxation, he never­ theless thought it a matter of ‘Polity’ that enforcement should be carried out through ‘the constitutional Right of a Trial by a Jury’ rather than through Admi­ ralty Courts (below, p. 62). Knox concludes with an extraordinary attack on ‘an ignorant, or insidious Ministry’ for its ‘very oppressive and repugnant Manner’ of deceiving Parliament into voting for the Stamp Act by not informing mem­ bers of this fact (below, p. 61). Knox had nevertheless hardened in his attitude towards colonists, as William Bollan would harden in his towards Parliament. In The Present State of the Nation (London, 1768), Knox suggested that colonies raise their own levies towards imperial administration, argued for colonial seats in the House of Commons, and for trade concessions to American merchants. Alarmed by the escalation of conflict in Boston’s Liberty Riot, however, he returned to a hard-line on taxation and Parliamentary sovereignty in The Contro­ versy between Great Britain and her Colonies Reviewed (London, 1769). He also wrote tracts defending the 1774 Intolerable Acts. By 1770, furthermore, his rep­ utation secured him a position as under-secretary in the American Department, initially attempting various means of conciliation but eventually, especially dur­ ing the War of Independence, attempting more decisive subjugation. Crucially, his background helped him keep the Irish Parliament from siding with the Americans during the controversy of 1778–80. The end of the war saw his loss of office, with the American Department dis­ mantled by his old political enemy Edmund Burke, though he acted as agent for loyalist New Brunswick. He also had his Georgia property confiscated, though the loyalist claims commission compensated him in 1788. He had married Leti­ tia Ford in 1765, whose fortune helped him retire into a life of further writing. Knox died on 25 August 1810 in Middlesex.2 Notes: 1.

See above, p. 38.

[Knox], A Letter to a Member of Parliament

47

2. L. J. Bellot, ‘Knox, William (1732–1810), government official and pamphleteer’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 32, pp. 52–3; ‘KNOX, William (1732–25 August 1810), in American National Biography, ed. J. A. Garraty and M. C. Carnes, 24 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), vol. 12, pp. 841–3; L. J. Bel­ lot, William Knox: The Life and Thought of an Eighteenth-Century Imperialist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977).

A

LETTER

TO A

Member of Parliament,

Wherein the Power of the

BRITISH LEGISLATURE,

And the Case of the

COLONISTS,

Are briefly and impartially considered.

LONDON: Printed for W. Flexney, near Gray’s-Inn Gate, Holborn. 1765. (Price One Shilling.) /

A LETTER FROM A

GENTLEMAN In London, to another in the Country. Dear Sir, The Behaviour of the North American Colonists upon the Subject of the Stamp Duty, still continues to be the general Topick of political Discussion; many People concurring with them in their Ideas of the Oppression, and the wiser many (in my Opinion) insisting with the Mother Country on it’s Right of prescribing such Laws, and raising such Supplies amongst them, as the Exigence of our own, or their, internal Situation may suggest. For my Part, I really think the / Matter in Dispute to be of much greater Consequence to this Country, than many, whom I have conversed with, affect to consider it: A few Regiments, say they, well appointed and properly distributed amongst them, will soon bring them to a just Sense of their Duty, and the Stamp Act be as familiar there, as the Land Tax is here;1 but I take it to be a Matter of more serious Attention, and to be reconciled by a much nicer Conduct, than any of those tumultuous Assem­ blies and Murmurings which the Cyder Act has occasioned in many Counties,2 may require: Perhaps, at the same Time, I may not be very much mistaken in my Conjecture that this little Specimen of Disobedience to legislative Authority at Home, may have encouraged our Brethren to an Imitation of the same law­ less and undutiful Carriage Abroad: I will not, however, at present, labour the Comparison which would prove the above Assertion, as it would lead me into the Argument of a Subject which ought only to be revolved in a Man’s most secret Thoughts, or agitated in his Majesty’s most secret Councils; for I think that this Question, ‘Whether an Impatience of Parliamentary Authority by the Inhabitants of this Island, or a general Revolting and Disobedience to it by our / Colonists, be of the most dangerous Tendency;’ would, if critically considered, furnish our Enemies with too circumstantial a Knowledge of our domestick and most interesting Derangements.

– 51 –

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I have read all the Remonstrances and Resolutions of the several Colonies, with the Letters that have appeared in Support of, and also most of those Pub­ lications that have been designed as Answers to them:– The Weakness and Impropriety of this Tax seem now to be confessed on all Hands, but the Legality or Illegality of the Measure, neither clearly asserted by the one, nor irrefragably refuted by the other; You therefore, my dear Sir, flatter Me too much, in desir­ ing my Thoughts in a Matter that would do Credit to the most able Pens of Government; but to shew my Readiness in complying with your Request, and at the same Time my Desire of Information, and to have my own Doubts in this Business cleared up, I shall proceed to lay before you my Sentiments, such as they are, with Respect to the Jurisdiction of the Parliament of Great Britain over the Colonies. In this Question I conceive, that neither the Policy or Object of an Act of Parliament, are to be considered as the Means for determining the Legality of the Duty it / enjoins, or the Tax it imposes: I could wish, therefore, to have had all such Considerations thrown out of the Question, and that those, who have severally attempted legally to arraign and justify this Proceeding of the late Ministry, had stuck closely and honestly to this Point; ‘Whether the Parliament of Great Britain hath, or hath not, an inherent Right of including in one general Act, (let the Purport of that Act be what it will) All his Majesty’s Subjects, as well those inhabiting the most distant Dominions of this Realm, as those residing in it, and more immediately the Objects of it’s Statutes in general:’ Every Man in the least conversant in the Nature of our Constitution will, I believe, read­ ily admit and subscribe to this supreme and discretionary Right; a Right which never hath or can be impeached, but when it is unconstitutionally exerted, and tends manifestly to the Subversion and Annihilation of our Liberties, as estab­ lished upon Principles of natural Justice and Society. I would yet inform these Usurpers, these Aspirers to a Co-jurisdiction with that Body which is able, at any Time, to crush their Existence, as a Publick, that the Statutes of Great Brit­ ain may, by special Words, bind even the People of Ireland to an Obedience / of them; notwithstanding as to its private internal Policy, it is a distinct Kingdom of itself, and hath Parliaments of its own; whose Regulations and Ordinances, however, like those of the Colonies, grow up into Laws but at the Discretion of the King and his Council. It is of the Nature and Essence of all human Governments, that a supreme and absolute Jurisdiction should be lodged some where: In some Countries, a despotic and hereditary Power is vested in the Person of one Man; in others, it is delegated to a particular Rank; and in others again, to an inferior elective Number of Men; but the Wisdom of our Ancestors, maturely weighing the genuine Merits and Demerits of monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical Systems, and gleaning from each it’s salubrious, and rejecting it’s noxious Quali­

[Knox], A Letter to a Member of Parliament

53

ties, hath, from this variegated Sample, modelled us into the most admirable Mixture of them all, and intrusted the whole national Power and Authority with a Parliament: To this most puissant Court appertain the Privilege and Office of providing for the Public Weal, by abrogating such old Laws or Customs, or creat­ ing and enforcing such new ones, as the Mutability of all sublunary Affairs may render expedient; and it is to the spirited and most / meritorious Exercise of this Plenitude of Power, (in electing and securing to the Succession of this Crown, the Family of the most amiable Sovereign who now sways it’s Sceptre) that we are indebted for the Enjoyment of the invaluable Comforts and Blessings of civil and religious Freedom. It is to be observed, not without Surprise, that the Colonists have never before absolutely entered their Protest against this Jurisdiction exercised over them by the Parliament of Great Britain; inasmuch as numberless Acts of Parlia­ ment, enacted for the very purpose, have carried with them a Sterling Authority into the Plantations, as often as the Wisdom of the Legislature hath judged so remote an Exertion of its Power essential to the publick Interest:– But it seems the Time is now come, wherein Parents, in Diminution of those Rights naturally vested in them, are no longer allowed to assume the Government of, and project Schemes of Happiness for, their Children; but are to give in to all their little Appetites and Desires, at the Risque of their mutual Welfare and Prosperity: We have seen the Act of the 5th of George the IIId. rebelled against as tyranni­ cal and enslaving, whereas those of his Royal Predecessors (introduced amongst them by the same Authority) have never been considered / as Attempts upon the Rights and Privileges of these free born Englishmen, but have received that uni­ form, unquestioned Obedience due to them, and been attended with all those public Benefits, which the paternal Affection of the British Parliament meant, indiscriminately, to diffuse to all his Majesty’s Subjects.3 But here, say the Gentlemen, our Fortunes are wantonly sported with by an Assembly in which we are not represented, and consequently, by the Constitu­ tion of which we are Members, ought not to be bound by its Decrees. – From this may be discerned the Principles upon which this treasonable Opposition to Government is now justified by the Colonists, as a patriotick Jealousy and Resentment of a Subjugation to foreign and usurped Power, and a laudable Assertion of the Rights and Privileges of Englishmen: That is, so long as the Par­ liament of Great Britain will study and frame Acts for the Emolument of their particular Provinces, they will never complain of their Charters being attacked, or the Privileges of their Assemblies invaded; but the Moment it sends amongst them a Law calculated for the Benefit and Indemnification of the MotherCountry, they instantly take the Alarm, feel for their Liberties, and join in one common Act of Rebellion / against the Jurisdiction acquiesced under by them

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in the first Instance, but which they arrogate to themselves a Right of disputing and disallowing in the second. According to my Notions of the English Constitution in particular, and indeed of all human Governments in general, there can be no qualified partial Allegiance or Obedience to the Laws; they exact from all an implicit Submis­ sion, in toto, and with a sovereign Superintendency watch over the Actions of every Individual: To say then that the Colonists have a right of judging for themselves what Laws they shall obey, and which they may protest against, is, in Effect, to invest them with a Right incompatible with the Offices of Subjects, and utterly subversive of the End of all human Institutions. And yet, extraor­ dinary as it may appear, their Conduct in the Business in Question, so far as it maintains the Illegality of the late Act, doth most certainly bespeak them pos­ sessed of the two heterogeneous Functions of Lawgiver and Subject, and is to be accounted for in no other Manner. From the general Principles of Government, as well as from a long Practice and uninterrupted Course of Proceedings amongst ourselves, may this Jurisdic­ tion of the Parliament be clearly ascertained; the constant / Immemorial Usage of all Nations sanctifies and approves it’s Title to it; and if the Colonists ever really thought themselves independent of this great Council of the Nation, how comes it that they have so long submitted to the Prescription of those many Acts of Parliament, whose Influence hath, for such a Length of Time, been extended over them? And yet the Foundation of their Plea of Non-submission to the late Act, would have obtained and been just as good an one, for the same Reasons, against all those former ones. It is to the highest Degree, therefore, absurd to consider this Question in the Light they have put it; it being to be determined, in my humble Opinion, upon a Consideration of the Relation between the Brit­ ish Parliament and the Colonists, as between It and the Subjects of Great Britain at large, as I cannot find by what Law they have been emancipated from this State of Subordination, in common with the Rest of their Fellow-Subjects. The Liberties of the Colonists, I apprehend, can receive no Diminution from being thus held in the same Point of View and Degree of Estimation, with those of the Mother-Country: on the contrary, I don’t know but I may be told I have been too liberal in the Concession, which I have / thus made them; and indeed, strictly speaking, it may perhaps upon Enquiry appear unwarrantable; for, was it within the Compass of my present Design to enter into a progressive Reca­ pitulation of the different Modes, by which the several Colonies have become Parcel of, and annexed to the Dominions of this Crown, whether by Discov­ ery, Conquest or Treaties; I fear the Law of Nations would point so strongly to the prevailing Distinction, between the Nature of Municipal Laws, and those of a newly acquired Appendage to any Empire, as must exclude them from the advantageous and honourable Fellowship I have assigned them: I chuse, how­

[Knox], A Letter to a Member of Parliament

55

ever, for the Purpose of coming more speedily and directly to the Point in Issue, to wave this Piece of History, and that their own Arguments may be received in the fullest Scope and Latitude they can possibly bear, am willing to admit their Pretensions to be co-equal with those of the People of England in general. It is one of the fundamental Maxims of our Constitution, and that of every civilized State, that ‘Nemo Patriam exuere potest’; by which I would not be thought to understand a personal Emigration or Withdrawing from the Country; but that no Subject can ever shake off or release himself from that indissoluble Bond of Relation and natural / Allegiance he bears to the Laws of his Country, let him be at ever so great Distance from its Seat of Government; so far from it, his Country hath a Right to expect that he always entertains those Sentiments of Attachment and Duty as a Subject, which she, as his natural Sovereign, hath an unquestionable Right to call forth into Action in any Shape, and whenever the Necessities of her Situation may demand it; and which he cannot refuse, without exposing himself to the highest Censures, and a Forfeiture of that Protection under her Government which is the Return for Fidelity and Obedience to it. – The Colonists, by their Actions, seem to be impressed with no such Ideas at the Bottom, notwithstanding their confident Appeals to the English Constitution; which rather seem so many Insults upon, than modest well-founded References to its Principles, for the Rectitude or Illegality of their Proceedings: It will ever cherish and redress them as Members of it, while they conduct themselves as such, but it will be too tenacious of its own Authority and the Respect due to it, not to distinguish betwixt an arrogant Competition for Power and Independ­ ency, and a specious Suggestion of Grievances and Oppression. The Subjects of Great Britain residing in our Colonies, are not content with the / Fruition, as Individuals, of every Immunity and Privilege of native English­ men, but they would attempt to prove themselves entitled to more: As a Body, or aggregate Community of People, they certainly are possessed of none, that can retrench or check the Powers and Pre-eminence of the Parliament: They derive and enjoy the Blessings of the former, in common with us all, from the English Constitution founded upon Principles of common Law and natural Justice; but they owe their Origin and Existence in the latter Capacity, not to any inherent native Privilege as Englishmen, but to the spontaneous royal Indulgence of the Crown; a Power, which can never confer on others that which it hath not in itself – viz. a separate Jurisdiction from, and Independence of, the three Estates of this Kingdom – Considering them in their publick corporate Capacities, the several Colonies and Provinces upon the Continent, can have no legal or constitutional Existence which may entitle them to greater Privileges than all the Corporations in this Kingdom enjoy by their respective Charters of Incorporation: A Licence and Authority, flowing from the royal Prerogative of the Crown, to frame such Laws and Regulations, for the Management of their own domestick / Concerns,

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as may best answer the Ends of their Institution, can never work so as to erect them into that State of Independency as will justify them placing their Indulgen­ cies in Competition with Privileges, or, in other Words, setting up their Bye-Laws in Opposition to Acts of Parliament: For, without Doubt, the Acts of Assembly in all our Colonies, operate only with the Influence of, and are stamped (I hope they will pardon the Phrase) with no greater Dignity than the mere Regulations of so many inferior licenced Corporations. Upon this comparative View of the corporate Character of the Colonies, with that of the several Corporations in this Kingdom, it is manifest they were originally constructed by the same Architect, upon similar Foundations, and are all equally circumscribed in their Powers. Who then can, with the least Degree of Propriety, compliment them with an Independence of the Parliament of Great Britain, when the whole Frame of their Body politick may be brought to a Dissolution, not only by that august Assembly, whenever it shall judge proper, but at any Time be deprived of their boasted Privileges and Immunities, by the ordinary and inferior Operations of a Scire facias, or a Quo Warranto:4 Whether, as a Publick, they have not lately rendered themselves justly obnoxious to this last Method / of Proceeding against them, or in their private individual Capaci­ ties, to a much more severe one, I will at present, in Compassion, forbear to demonstrate. It therefore, as it occurs to me, is impossible to put any other Construc­ tion upon the Charters of the Colonies, without doing the greatest Violence to common Sense, and perverting the sound Policy of their original Institution: It would likewise be working such a Change in all the Corporations of England, as must of Consequence tend to a total Annihilation of Government; it would in Effect be introducing amongst us that ‘divisum Imperium,’ the setting up so many petty Republicks in the Heart of this Kingdom, as must inevitably bring on the Destruction of the imperial Sovereignty of our Constitution and it’s Laws. The high Court of Parliament all Englishmen are taught to look up to, with that implicit Acknowledgment and Veneration of it’s Omnipotence and Jus­ tice, inculcated by the Principles of the Revolution; – that glorious Period and Criterion of human Liberty! To this great Assembly do all inferior, ministerial Jurisdictions bow down; by it they may be annulled, qualified or comptrolled; and under it’s Sanction and from it’s Concurrence alone, are they permitted / to have any Existence at all: From this Point of our Constitution, doth the Parlia­ ment derive that most uncontrovertible Right of comprehending in it’s Statutes, all Orders and subordinate Societies of Men, without any Necessity of previ­ ously rescinding or repealing their Charters of Association: It is possessed of the Power of doing either, and the Non-use of the one, can never invalidate the Exercise of the other.

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57

But, say the Colonists, ‘that not being represented in the British Parliament that Assembly hath no Power to tax us, and for this we rely upon magna Charta.’ As the Authority of the British Parliament is now, for the first Time, called in Question, because it hath presumed to create a Tax amongst them, the Article of magna Charta, which is to bear them out in their Appeal to it, I take for granted must be that which provides, ‘That no Man shall be disseissed of his Freehold, &c. nisi per Judicium Parium vel per Legem Terræ:’ I shall be glad to be informed whether, if the Law of Parliament be considered and allowed as Lex Terræ, (as it most certainly is) an Act of Parliament be not at least of equal Signification and Authority? I can find nothing in magna Charta that will bear a contrary Inter­ pretation to this Inference. / That great Charter, or rather peremptory Assertion and Confirmation of the primitive natural Rights and Liberties of the People of England, was introductory of no new Laws, but in Opposition to the then dangerous and increasing Advances of the Prerogative and kingly Power, only declaratory of the ancient pure and peerless Authority of the common Law; – the Parent and Guarantee of all Statute-Law:– But with such Blindness of Enthusiasm do the Colonists worship their feeble Charters, these Divinities of their own forming, that by them they not only look upon themselves secured in the common Rights of the Mother-Country, but promoted to such transcend­ ently superior ones, as will eclipse and disparage their Lustre and Excellence; in Fact, that because they have been induced, for their own personal Emolument, voluntarily to transport and associate themselves under the King’s Letters Pat­ ent, they not only have carried with them all the Rights and Immunities of their native Country, but are become released from the common Obligation of Obe­ dience to the Laws: Such, however, is the peculiarly happy Nature of the English Constitution, that as the King by no Act of his, can abridge his Subjects of any of it’s Benefits, so cannot he ever elevate them into a Condition to / dispense with, or mutilate the Authority of it’s Supremacy. The Wisdom of that Reign so conspicuous in the Annals of our History for, and the Basis of whose Renown was founded upon, it’s accurate Knowledge and Preservation of the Rights of human Liberty, seems prophetically to have anticipated the Necessity of recognizing the Power now disputed by the North Americans: It was with a View to rescue the British Legislature from all Objec­ tion to it’s Jurisdiction, and to repress a Frowardness which hath since broke out almost into actual Rebellion, that the Act of the 7 and 8 W 3. C. 22.5 hath so expresly declared and reserved the Power of the Parliament over all the Colonies; for, by that Statute, it is enacted, ‘That all Laws, Bye-Laws, Usages and Customs which shall be in Practice in any of the Plantations, repugnant to any Law made or to be made in this Kingdom relative to the said Plantations, shall be void and of none Effect:’ This Clause alone, abstracted from all other Considerations, ought

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surely to be a sufficient Refutation of the very singular Claim of the Colonists:– But to follow them in their own Reasonings. The Exemption from Obedience to the British Parliament insisted on by the Colonists, rests (if I understand them) upon this / single Reason, ‘that they are not represented in it;’ as I have said before, I wonder that this Plea hath so long lain dormant amongst them, as it might have been urged, with as much Pro­ priety, against all those Acts of Parliament which have been so long in Force in the Colonies. But it really is of so novel a Cast, that I am at a Loss to guess from what practical Principles or System of Government they have borrowed it; sure I am tho’ that the English Constitution could never have suggested it to them. It must be confessed that Acts of Parliament are binding and conclusive upon the Subjects of this Island, because, by the Presumption of Law, they are all supposed, by their Representatives, to have had a Share in the framing of them; but this is only one of those Fictions, those nicer Principia of the Laws of Society, which it is utterly impracticable to see literally and minutely adher’d to in the Mechanism and Administration of great and populous Governments; so far as they are capa­ ble of being carried into Execution, those Systems will soonest be adopted, and bid fairest for Duration, that are established upon the most equitable Arrange­ ments of the common Rights and Relations of Mankind: Upon the Wisdom and Equity of this Maxim is the Foundation of our Constitution laid, and it was to obviate / and assist the above Hypothesis of Law, that the Legislature hath so perspicuously prescribed the only feasible Means of attending to it, by regulating the Rights of representing, and being represented, in this great Council of the Nation: And yet, ideal and theoretical as this particular Postulatum (if I may call it one) certainly is in itself, such is it’s Recommendation, that the only possible Method of reducing it into Practice, depends entirely upon the honest Emula­ tion and Industry of the People; and consequently, that as the Attainment of those Qualifications which are to beget in them a Right of Admission into this Share of the Legislature, must be the Fruit of their own Endeavours, so is the Subject hereby rationally foreclosed of all Objection to any Act of Parliament that may, at first Sight, seem liable to it upon this Account. The Doctrine of the Colonists not only dictates to, but strikes at the very Root and Essence of the Constitution; and indeed the Example might be of the most calamitous Consequence to the State, if Englishmen were, at this Time of Day, to be instructed in their Privileges or Duty. And by whom are our Under­ standings to be now illuminated, and this new, unheard of Code of Rights explained? – By a set of Individuals who, before they withdrew themselves / into the Colonies, having no Right of representing in, nor, (most probably) of electing others to, the British Parliament; would now delude us into the Belief of their having, ipso facto, obtained, in a newly acquired Territory, that, which they had not arrived at the Possession of, when in their own: if, by their Charters, they

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are empowered to elect Members to the British Parliament from amongst Themselves; such provincial Representatives may join, and will be admitted into, this great Council; but if their Charters are silent in this Respect, they then certainly stand upon their original Footing, and their Right of Representation is reduced to the same Merits, and is to be adjudged by the same known settled Rules and Qualifications which establish that of the whole Body of the Kingdom. To suppose, therefore, but for a Moment, that this Claim of the Colonists is impregnated with the least Particle of Reason or Justice, must necessarily involve the whole Legislature of this Country in the Guilt of the most gross Injustice and Oppression: To admit their Exceptions to the Legality of the late Stamp Act, wou’d, in Effect, be releasing Millions of Subjects from their Allegiance to the Laws, and, at one Blow, demolishing every Act of Parliament / that was ever hitherto made: They can have no Pretence to this Exemption, that will not hold good and be transferred to above seven-eights of the Subjects of this Island; for certainly those who are neither Freeholders in Counties, nor Burgesses in Towns Corporate (the unrepresented Part of the Nation, in the Sense of the Colonists), will be intitled to the Benefit of the same Plea, whenever they shall be disposed to dispute an Act of Parliament. These, Sir, are my Thoughts upon the Question, how far in Point of Law, the Colonists are bound to an Obedience of every Act of the Parliament of Great Britain, wherein they are expresly named; I have submitted my Notions of it’s Omnipotence, as being, upon the principles of the Revolution, the only natural, constitutional Seat of compleat Jurisdiction in the Kingdom; I have considered the Extent and Diffusiveness of it’s Authority over all our Dominions, upon the Practice of our own, and from that Chain of Connexion and Dependance, which has ever subsisted between the Mother-Countries and Colonies of ancient and modern Times; and I have, for Argument’s Sake, examined into the Plausibility of their Plea of Non-representation: From all which, I think, may be very fairly deduced, that the British Legislature / hath done nothing but what it had full and constitutional Power to do; and that the Colonists, by having denied and resisted this Power, have been unfortunately hurried into a Conduct, tinctured with an Offence, bordering too nearly upon the worst Species of Treason; – a Treason against the State. How far indeed it may be a Step of Polity to lay a Tax upon the Colonies, appears to me to require a Discretion of a much deeper Reach, than the ordi­ nary Business of Administration in raising Supplies amongst ourselves: With Us, the national Ability to pay, and the general Bent of Men’s Dispositions towards a new Tax, are commonly well understood before it receives the Sanction of a Law; the Legislature having ample Opportunity of informing themselves of the Practicability of the former, and of reconciling the Minds of the dissatisfied, to the craving Necessities of the State; but I fear the present Cause of Disquietude

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hath proceeded from an unpardonable Ignorance, and too great a Contempt and Disregard of both. The Word Tax, even to our Ears that have been accustomed to the Sound, hath now lost much of it’s Harmony, and ought but very sparingly to invade those delicate Organs; and altho’ the Americans, from / the Protection afforded them in the last War; have contributed to the Necessity of their listening to it’s unmusical Din as well as ourselves; yet, to soften, and familiarize to them it’s Harshness, it will behove Administration to proceed with the utmost Circum­ spection and Address, lest by the false Policy of a temporary Relief only, we hazard the Accomplishment of our Views, and the Reimbursement of our whole Trouble and Expences incurred upon their Account. How uninformed, precipitate and ill-judged, therefore, must have been those Councils that advised a Measure, which, in it’s Execution, hath proved so grievously burthensome, and exposed the Honour of the British Legislature? In this, however, the late Ministry have but made a fatal Addition to the Blun­ ders of their inglorious Predecessors the Peacemakers – who but a Set of Men utterly unacquainted with, or Enemies to, the real and intrinsic Interests of this Nation, would have given up solid, immediate and permament Advantages, for the speculative, exhausting and precarious Acquisition of so extensive a con­ tinental Territory, the ordinary Provision for whose Government must be so incumbring, and the Cultivation of which every Day more and more endanger our Possession and Dominion / over it? Whereas, if the Rage for an Encrease of Colony was, at all Adventures, to be fed; why was not the Attention of these our notable Negotiators directed to the already settled, and more abundantly profit­ able, Islands in the French and Spanish West Indies; where Property and Loyalty must have gone Hand in Hand together, and the private Riches and Prosperity of Individuals promoted and secured, only by their Reliance upon, and the Pro­ tection of, Great Britain – But this is a Digression. Sanguine as I am in the Cause of the English Constitution and, of Course, zealous for the Honour and Power of the Parliament, I should be very sorry to lay under the Imputation of Acrimony or Malevolence towards my Fellow Sub­ jects of America, or to be suspected of harbouring any Sentiments derogatory to the common Rights and Freedom of Mankind in general; the Importance of the Question, which as I have discussed by the best Light of my Understanding, so did I wish to treat it with Temper and Candour; and altho’ the legal Con­ sideration of it hath unavoidably led me to pass a very heavy Censure upon the Colonists; yet, as a Friend to Impartiality and the Interest of my Country, I can­ not quit this Subject without animadverting, still further, upon those Measures / of the late Ministry,6 which, in my Opinion, have solely given Birth to this com­ plicated Tumult of publick Discontent and Disobedience: The latter of these Evils is most commonly, the Consequence of, and engendered by, the former;

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are not They therefore to the last Degree culpable, who, by a wanton, ill digested and inconsistent Proceeding, administer even the Possibility of an Existence to either? Allowing the Colonists to have been most justly reprehensible, yet Justice and a political Regard to so numerous a Sett of Subjects, should, and I dare say will, dispose the present Administration to a patient and favourable Disquisi­ tion of their Remonstrances; and notwithstanding, in a national Consideration, no personal Hardships can ever operate as a Justification of an Opposition to the legal Acts of Government, yet I am inclined to think, that, upon a candid, dispas­ sionate Review of the several Regulations and Restrictions, laid upon them by the late Ministry, we may trace the Source of this (almost universal) Defection, and be constrained into an Acknowledgement of the Reasonableness of what they alledge, in Extenuation of the Heat and Outrage, into which they have been persecuted. The little Knowledge in the English History that I am furnished with, doth not present so flagrant an Instance of Incapacity / (to say no worse of it) as the late Conduct of those Ministers, that hath thus improvidently started a Question, which the Wisdom of Government ought, most cautiously, to have prevented being ever the Subject of publick Discussion: An injudicious unseasonable Exer­ cise of Authority, will, but at best, extort a forced and temporary Obedience to it, but when the Requisition of a Service, comes accompanied by an Ademption of the very Instruments, by which alone that Service is to be performed; what Symptoms of Indignation will not, immediately, break out upon the Absurdity (not to say latent Mischief ) of the Thought? That Plan of Policy which aims at the Attainment of an End, at the same Time that it proscribes the Means, will be under the Necessity of recurring to more than human Demonstration, to con­ vince the World it hath any Thing, at least any Good, seriously in View: Nay, it is such a Contradiction in Nature, that it can only either be productive of Abor­ tion, or the most monstrous, preternatural Superfoetation.7 The Necessity of some Tax upon the Colonies may, I readily grant, appear from the alarming Situation to which the publick Finances of this Kingdom have been reduced; but the very oppressive and repugnant Manner in which this hath been proposed to be levied, shews how fatally the / Justice of Parlia­ ment may be imposed upon, by a surreptitious Acquisition of it’s Sanction to the Views of an ignorant, or insidious Ministry: Can it be supposed that a Bill of this Nature would ever have passed into a Law, if the Legislature had not been kept from a Knowledge of those secret Machinations, which were to counteract and defeat the Purposes of it? No; the Parliament could never have join’d in the Mockery of such a Transaction, had they surmised the Ministry already had, and at that Time were, industriously devising every possible Method, for the Prohi­ bition and Extermination of a Commerce so highly beneficial to this Country,

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and from whence alone could be derived to the Colonists the Means of affording us that Supply demanded of them: It is too injurious to the Honour of this illus­ trious Body, to conceive that they could ever have united in so ignominious a Conspiracy, or that they would have countenanced the Exaction of a Payment in Money, when the most effectual ministerial Stratagems had been pursued, how to incapacitate the Colonists from getting any. But, as it were, the more efficaciously to bring his Majesty’s Government into Disrepute with these People, and to insure that Alienation from it, which seems to have been the only hellish Purpose of these / treacherous Servants of the Publick; a Jurisdiction is vested in the Admiralty Courts to proceed, in a summary Way, in all Matters relative to the Collection of this Revenue; whereby the Properties of the Colonists, instead of being protected by the constitutional Right of a Trial by a Jury, are thus left to the capricious Mercy of an arbitrary Determination. From all these Circumstances of Repugnancy and Persecution, I wou’d ask any unprejudiced Person, what was reasonably to be expected but that univer­ sal Clamour and Confusion, which they have been actually productive of ? The Event hath shewn, that the Wisdom and Authority of Parliament, instead of having been applied to the Furtherance of the salutary Purposes of Government, hath been wickedly beguiled into the Completion of a Scheme, formed, not only to bring their own Equity and Humanity into Contempt, but pregnant also with the most destructive Consequences to the Peace and Interest of these Kingdoms. Awaken’d to a just Conception of this truly momentous and national Con­ cern, and animated by the most lively and disinterested Attention to the real Welfare and Happiness of these Realms, the present Administration will, I am persuaded, apply themselves diligently to the Investigation and Removal / of these our intestine Troubles and Perplexities; and however arduous and discour­ aging their Predecessors in Office may have contrived to render this Duty, yet they will enter upon this great Work, assured of the hearty Concurrence and Cooperation of all good Men. The Alarm is now become general, and the most generous Emulation will discover itself, amongst all Ranks, who shall express the greatest Abhorrence and Detestation of Schemes, teeming with nothing less than the Propogation of civil Discord, and the final Ruin of our happy Establish­ ment. Let them but revoke those Commissions, which have degraded the British Navy, into Smuggling Cutters and Pirates upon our own Commerce; leave but the Colonists to the Enjoyment and Prosecution of a Trade, not only lucrative to themselves, but, in which the whole Traffick of this Kingdom is so deeply and essentially interwoven; and We shall then, let us hope, experience that chearful Assistance from the Colonists, which their Behaviour, upon former Occasions,

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hath testified their Readiness to contribute, whenever it hath been requested of them, in the Proportion, and within the Compass of their Abilities. By an Adoption of such expedient and emollient Measures, will they restore Unanimity to a divided People, and vindicate / the Moderation and Honour of his Majesty’s Government; from hence likewise will they procure to themselves the heartfelt Satisfaction of an unfeigned, national Praise for having delivered these Kingdoms from the infernal Designs of Paricides: Nor will the glorious Work of Reformation and Redress rest with them alone; the Parliament, justly indignant at the Perfidy with which their Confidence hath been abused, will resent the Practices that have been thus artfully played off upon them; and by totally disclaiming those violent and pernicious Councils, which their Authority hath been betrayed into the Protection of, will proclaim to the World this most excellent Truth, that the Power of the British Senate is to be equalled only by it’s Wisdom and Justice, and an incessant Labour for the Ease and Prosperity of all his Majesty’s Subjects. I am, dear Sir, yours, &c. &c.

[BOLLAN] A SUCCINCT VIEW OF THE ORIGIN

OF OUR COLONIES

[William Bollan], A Succinct View of the Origin of our Colonies, with their Civil State, Founded by Queen Elizabeth, Corroborated by Succeeding Princes, and Confirmed by Acts of Parliament; whereby the Nature of the Empire Established in America, and the Errors of various Hypotheses formed thereupon, may be Clearly Understood. With Observations on the Commercial, Beneficial and Perpetual Union of the Colonies with this Kingdom. Being an Extract from an Essay lately published, Entitled The Freedom of Speech and Writing, &c. (London, 1766).

William Bollan’s The Mutual Interest of Great Britain and the American Colonies Consider’d (1765) opposed the taxation measures of 1764 and 1765 on prac­ tical grounds but said little about ideological or constitutional principles.1 By contrast, A Succinct View of the Origin of our Colonies addresses these issues head on. Yet the erstwhile colonial agent made himself few friends among the radicals back home in Massachusetts or elsewhere in America, because on constitutional if not always on ideological grounds he found himself closer to metropolitan than provincial opinion. Bollan notes how Spain’s ‘political errors; through prejudice, with its consequents injustice and cruelty’ included war against rather than incorporation of Amerindians and had led to the loss of Portugal and the Netherlands (below, p. 72). He warns that a similar ‘sudden change of British policy, and a strange series of errors and events’, since the French and Indian War had ‘plunged’ Britain’s American colonies ‘into a state of distress, difficulty and danger, from which it is desirable in so many respects to deliver them as soon as possible’ (below, p. 73). The concept of ‘prejudice’ was crucial to Bollan. Elimi­ nating it, he felt, was the solution to the current crisis. He thus aimed to correct ‘writers on both sides of the Atlantic’ who ‘treat of the political structure of the colonies, or some of its parts, without either knowing or enquiring into its real proper and solid foundation, the right understanding whereof might prevent innumerable mischiefs’ (below, p. 72). Yet he offers colonists no constitutional means of resolution that would be satisfactory to them if he proved unable to

– 65 –

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persuade British ministers to abandon taxation. Indeed, while he disagreed with recent British policy, his constitutionalism was decidedly metropolitan. Bollan outlines seven broad foundations on which he believed the imperial constitution rested. First: common ‘allegiance to the king’. Second, crucially, that ‘necessity requires in every state for its welfare and preservation the exist­ ence and occasional exercise of a supreme legislative jurisdiction … That by the British constitution this supreme jurisdiction is vested in the British parliament’ (below, p. 74). There is therefore no room in Bollan’s argument for the kind of ‘diffused sovereignty’ that colonists increasingly argued for in the wake of the Declaratory Act that claimed Parliament’s rights to legislate for the colonies ‘in all cases whatsoever’. As Bollan continues, the state admits but of one supreme direction, equals have no power over equals, and two or more supreme jurisdictions cannot be erected without forming two or more different states … The colonies from their situation, nature, and necessary political existence possess subordinate powers of legislation, but the sole summum imperium of the Brit­ ish parliament remains firm, immutable and universal (below, p. 74)

Third, Parliament should ‘declare and enact what is right, equal and just’, although if legislators partake of prejudice, passion, improvidence, or other infirmity … nevertheless it is the duty of the parties concerned to obey such erroneous or improper law as far as pos­ sible, until its review and repeal by the legislators shall take place, to whose wise, equal and just consideration and decision all reasons respecting its real or supposed errors, improprieties or defects, must be properly and entirely submitted (below, p. 76)

Bollan then shows, by citing charters beginning with that of Humphrey Gilbert in 1584 and various acts of legislation, that colonists had the rights of freeborn Britons. His fifth point elaborates the arguments against virtual representation and against actual colonial representation in Parliament that he had rehearsed in The Mutual Interest of Great Britain and the American Colonies. His sixth point reiterates the earlier pamphlet’s economic arguments against Parliamentary tax­ ation, although in his seventh he uses his notion of an imperial commonwealth to criticize ‘sons of violence’ (below, p. 85), a dig at American Sons of Liberty, in the colonies as well as misguided governance in London. Bollan ends by reiterating that metropolis and provinces have ‘one common interest to support against our competitors, adversaries and enemies, and all being members of the same body, laying aside our prejudicies, divisions and ani­ mosities, we should unite our endeavours for the advancement of the common good’ (below, p. 87). Subsequent events would disprove and destroy his opti­ mistic conviction that persuasion could resolve imperial conflict. As his 1774 The Rights of the English Colonies2 would show, he consequently grew ever more radical.

[Bollan], A Succinct View of the Origin of our Colonies

Notes: 1. 2.

See above pp. 1–13. See Volume 6 of this edition, pp. 147–93.

67

A

SUCCINCT VIEW OF THE

Origin of our Colonies,

WITH

Their CIVIL STATE,

Founded by QUEEN ELIZABETH,

Corroborated by Succeeding Princes,

AND

Confirmed by Acts of Parliament;

WHEREBY

The Nature of the Empire established in AMERICA, And the Errors of various Hypotheses formed thereupon,

MAY BE CLEARLY UNDERSTOOD. WITH

Observations on the Commercial, Beneficial and Perpetual Union of the Colo­ nies with this Kingdom.

BEING

An Extract from an Essay lately published,

Entitled

The Freedom of Speech and Writing, &c.

Qui non libere veritatem pronunciat, proditor veritatis est.1

LONDON

MDCCLXVI /

A

SUCCINCT VIEW

OF THE

Origin of our Colonies, &c. Notwithstanding the great utility of the liberty of the press it is certainly liable to manifold injurious abuses, sometimes pregnant with great mischiefs; without enumerating others, instead of being helpful to preserve, it may be employed by our enemies to divide and destroy us; wherefore just and proper bounds are to be observed. Every considerate and sincere friend to the freedom of writing, laments these abuses perpetrated by the various enemies of the public weal. Libertas non est licentia says Tacitus,2 the great friend of liberty, / railing is not reasoning, nor are invectives arguments; vague and general reproaches, charges and criminations may injure, provoke, and inflame, but they neither rightly inform, nor reform. The cause of truth and justice is not promoted by obloquy and detraction, the decus & tutamen3 of the commonwealth is not to be assailed by petulance and impertinence; yet, instead of proper examination and represen­ tation, such a licentious use of the press hath taken place, that neither the highest public stations, nor the greatest public services, nor public nor private virtues, nor the absence of the sufferers, are sufficient guards against these abuses. All personal, provincial and national abuse is the prostitution of the press, and may sometimes produce great and mischievous effects. Juncta juvant, and in interest­ ing cases the errors of politicians, with the errors and incentives of pamphleteers, encreased and diffused by the cacoethes scribendi & male dicendi4 which delights in defaming, aggravating and inflaming, instead of duly considering, informing, and composing, and, as the seeds of social as well as natural diseases generate apace, spreading / far and wide a political pestilence, prejudice begeting preju­ dice, and error begeting error, and the whole producing violence, opposition, division and confusion, may, without the co-operation of the dangerous devices suggested by others to effectuate their deep and malignant designs, subject the most powerful state to great difficulties. Of this we have at present an instance so alarming in its nature, and uncertain in its consequences that it calls, in my poor opinion, for the closest examination, and the most calm just and equal con­ sideration, so that being understood in its origin, progress, and present state, all – 71 –

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future evils may as far as possible be prevented, for the accomplishment whereof every good subject, I presume, will chearfully contribute what lies in his power. I need not explain myself by naming the colonies, whose nature, rights, and interests, considered in themselves, and in their connection with their mother country, have been so egregiously misrepresented by numerous public writers in this metropolis, and in the colonies, many of whom have advanced proposi­ tions utterly incompatible with the nature of the British empire, and subversive of it, some oppugning / the supreme authority of the state, and others the just rights of British subjects. And having perhaps taken more pains than any of my fellow citizens to understand the nature and rights of colonies, ancient and modern, and of the English colonies in particular, so that my defects in point of natural abilities are in some measure supplied by my diligence, I shall in order to illustrate this important subject, with the best intentions for the public ser­ vice, submit some few things to public consideration, with all due deference to my superiors in every sense, proceeding, as far as may be with convenience, by way of proposition, in order that the truth may be more clearly comprehended, and readily embraced, and my involuntary errors more easily refuted, whereby I shall hope to avoid encreasing the number of those who enter and traverse the field of controversy without the direction of any certain principle. All arguments destitute of proper principles are mere empty sophisms; they may captivate and delude, but they can neither duly inform nor promote the public welfare; and yet we daily see writers on both sides of the Atlantic proceeding with an air of sufficiency to treat of / the political structure of the colonies, or some of its parts, without either knowing or enquiring into its real proper and solid foundation, the right understanding whereof might prevent innumerable mischiefs. Truth is simple and uniform, and ever attended with a happy coincidence of all its parts, whereas error is infinite. And, in order to ascertain the best mode of investi­ gating the truth, thereby cutting off many delusive arguments, I shall cite the excellent rule delivered and maintained by the learned and judicious Placcius,5 viz. Demonstraturum quid de re aliqua, eandem in perfectissimo gradu considerare debere. ‘That he who would demonstrate any thing relative to any subject, ought to consider that in the most perfect degree.’ America, since discovered by the Europeans, hath suffered greatly by vari­ ous political errors; through prejudice, with its consequents injustice and cruelty, Spain slew her millions, of whom she might, to the great encrease of her honour, wealth and strength, have made good subjects, or profitable allies. Continu­ ing under the dominion of prejudice, and transfering her pernicious policy to Europe, by her injustice and severity she lost / the Netherlands, and by her mani­ fold breaches of faith, and oppressions, she lost the kingdom of Portugal, with all its foreign dominions, every colony, fort and settlement (adhering firmly, as was natural, to their mother country) revolting with her, Ceuta, and some of

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the islands of the Azores, garrisoned by Spanish soldiers, only excepted. Spain, if influenced by the sole dictates of justice and equity, would have preserved the Americans, and held the Netherlands, with all the dominions of Portugal, firmly united to her by the strongest bonds, faith and love, whereby, with suitable policy, she might have raised the most glorious empire, exceeding all modern example, and common conception. Rational liberty, and equal justice, plenty and safety, being the chief ends of all lawful government, the misconduct of Spain, with its consequences, will, to all ages and nations, irresistibly prove against a thousand authors, who join hand in hand to countenance dark devices, and promote iniq­ uity, that the principle of universal felicitation is the best mean of preservation and aggrandizement. And now, without visiting the American dominions of other European princes, coming persaltum6 / to British America, whose present and future state so nearly concerns the commonweal, it presents a most unpleas­ ing scene. It was lately the seat of a sharp and cruel war, waged by those enemies who never give us farther rest than their inability inforces, with intent to wrest from us one of the chief sources of our commercial and naval empire, during the course whereof several colonies raised a larger proportion of men than any other part of his majesty’s dominions; and since, while labouring to restore the broken state of their affairs, and to prosecute that trade which is so necessary to the commerce of this kingdom, through the sudden change of British policy, and a strange series of errors and events, the whole are now plunged into a state of distress, difficulty and danger, from which it is desirable in so many respects to deliver them as soon as possible, and to shew their true political foundation, in order to their complete and perpetual union with this kingdom, for the com­ mon good. The establishment, corroboration and preservation of this union, considered in its most perfect degree, will appear, I presume, to every impartial and considerate person worthy of the / greatest attention. The distant situa­ tion of the colonies, with their cantonment and distinct civil administrations, though placed under the wise and provident care which presides over all parts of the state, raises insensibly in the minds of many worthy persons partial notions discordant with this union; but its greatest enemy, I conceive, is prejudice, that malady of the mind, and powerful director of its motions; and in this case, as well as in that of superstition, unfortunately wise men frequently follow fools, and our insular and continental prejudices are become so numerous and violent, that I who am so feeble an advocate for the principles of truth, universal justice, and public welfare, the sole proper and firm foundation, in my poor opinion, of that lasting and profitable union that is so much to be desired by all good citizens, dare not enter the lists against so formidable an enemy; and therefore adhering to my principle of peace, and that uniting, conciliating and strength­ ening system which I have ever held, after observing that common justice is the common debt due to and from all persons and societies. and the common cause

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of all honest men, and that nothing / can be more reasonable than for a man to make one law in his mind for himself, and another for other persons, I shall desire the favour of him who on reading what has been said respecting this per­ fect union shall perceive the least prejudice to arise in his mind against it, that he will he pleased calmly to consider this divine precept of the Saviour of the world, ‘all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this the law and the prophets,’ (Mat. vii. 12.) And if this shall not suffice to efface the impressions of prejudice, that he will lay aside this little essay until he come to such a temper of mind that he shall be willing to do as he would be done unto; in the mean time, accompanied by the favour of the candid reader, I shall proceed to observe. I. That his Majesty’s regal authority extends to all persons, and over all parts of the public territory – that every subject by the law and the duties of his birth is obliged to be faithful, and bear true allegiance to the king – That allegiance and protection being correlatives, every subject is entitled to protection. / II. That the nature of human government, in order to its completion, of necessity requires in every state for its welfare and preservation the existence and occasional exercise of a supreme legislative jurisdiction, over all and singular the parts, persons natural corporate or compound, causes, matters and things whatsoever – That by the British constitution this supreme jurisdiction is vested in the British parliament – That the entire collective dominion, state, or chief body politic, composed of all its members, admits but of one supreme direction, equals have no power over equals, and two or more supreme jurisdictions cannot be erected without forming two or more different states; and it is evident this division ministers to destruction. The colonies from their situation, nature, and necessary political existence possess subordinate powers of legislation, but the sole summum imperium of the British parliament remains firm, immutable and universal – That the king’s just prerogative was ever parcel of the law of the land; and, to use the words of lord Bacon, who, with other able lawyers and statesmen, was much consulted and concerned in the settlement of some of the colonies – / The king’s prerogative and the law are not two things’ – ‘There is not in the body of man one law of the head and another of the body; but all is one entire law.’7 And it is certain that none of his Majesty’s predecessors had it in their power by any act made de industria in any manner whatever to diminish the jurisdiction of parliament, or to divide that body politic of which they were the head, thereby making a change nearly affecting the royal prerogative together with the whole common-wealth. Nil dat quod non habet8 is a maxim of law, philosophy and com­ mon sense, and no colonie or other politic body can by force of any charter claim any power, privilege or jurisdiction exempt from parliamentary cognizance, the king having no authority to raise or create the same. Every charter is the creature of the law, and necessarily subject to the law and the law makers; and we have too

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much reason to remember the ancient and just observation, Ordo confunditur si unicuique jurisdictio non servetur.9 III. That the nature and intent of parliamentary jurisdiction, I presume, are to declare and enact what is right, equal and just, / giving to the common-wealth and its various parts their due. Ancient authors declare verity and justice to be the proper foundation of parliamentary proceedings. Jurisdictio est potestas de publico, introducta cum necessitate juris dicendi*; and lord Coke says jurisdictio is derived of jus & ditio, i.e. potestas juris.10 And although through prejudice, passion or other infirmities men may not in particular cases, especially when their minds are moved by self-interest, discern and distinguish between truth and error, justice and injustice; yet truth, justice and equity are in their nature immutable, and no more subject to annihilation, inversion, or variation, than any geometrical proposition – That no prince, potentate, state or order of men can by any means whatever acquire a right of doing what is wrong. An author whose exquisite learning, knowledge and judgment have done so great honour to human nature, as well as to this kingdom, Dr. Cudworth, hath clearly shewn that even in positive laws and commands it is not meer will that obligeth, but the nature of good and evil, just and unjust, really existing. In the course of his reasoning / he writes thus, ‘every thing is what it is by nature, and not by will; for though it will be objected here that when God or civil powers command a thing to be done that was not before obligatory or unlawful, the thing willed or commanded doth forthwith become obligatory, that which ought to be done by creatures and subjects respectively; in which the nature of moral good or evil is commonly conceived to consist; and therefore if all good and evil, just and unjust be not the creatures of meer will (as many assert) yet at least positive things must needs owe all their morality, their good and evil to meer will without nature; yet notwithstanding, if we well consider it, we shall find that even in positive commands themselves meer will doth not make the thing commanded just or obligatory, or beget and create any obligation to obedience; but that it is natural justice or equity which gives to one the right or authority of commanding, and begets in another duty and obligation to obedience†.’11 – According to Dr. Cum­ berland’s excellent rule,12 approved, or rather applauded / by the most eminent foreign authors, ‘Nothing can be deemed the law of nature in which all men can­ not agree’; and the most able jurists have united in declaring that positive social laws should inforce the natural, or conform to them as far as possible. Mr. Locke says, ‘the obligations of the law of nature cease not in society, but only in many cases are drawn closer, and have by human laws known penalties annexed to them to inforce their observation. Thus the law of nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others. The rules they make for other mens actions * †

See the proem to Coke’s 4th Instit. Treat, concerning eternal and immutable morality, p.17, 18.

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must, as well as their own and other mens actions, be conformable to the law of nature, i.e. to the will of God, of which that is a declaration.’ And that ‘the first and fundamental positive law of all common-wealths is the establishing the leg­ islative power, as the first and fundamental natural law, which is to govern even the legislative itself, is the preservation of the society, and (as far as will consist with the public good) of every person in it *.’13 – That good and perfect laws are the dictates / of perfect reason relative to their subject known in all its parts; and positive laws, so far as they partake of prejudice, passion, improvidence, or other infirmity, or are formed on the partial knowledge of their respective subjects, are imperfect; the wisest legislators cannot judge aright, or rather not at all, of that which was never exposed to their judgment, and a law made upon the best con­ sideration of some parts only of its subject matter, with an exclusion or inscience of other proper and material or essential parts, from the nature of legislation, and its objects, is apparently an improper or imperfect law. Considered with respect to the case stated and supposed, if the same had subsisted, it might have been just and proper; but the true and real case, composed of all its parts, materially differing from it, required either a different law, or none at all; and consequently the law thus made through error, according to the immutable principles of truth, justice and legislation, I presume, is to be discontinued, the continuance of any error when known differing widely from its first commission when unknown; nevertheless it is the duty of the parties concerned to / obey such erroneous or improper law as far as possible, until its review and repeal by the legislators shall take place, to whose wise, equal and just consideration and decision all reasons respecting its real or supposed errors, improprieties or defects, must be properly and entirely submitted. – That the ablest politicians have held it difficult for one country to make laws for another; and the greater their distance the greater their difficulty. The Roman councils were frequently embarrassed by this business, although their political wisdom so far exceeded in many respects that of other nations. The nature of the British empire, divided by the situation of its several parts, with the necessary unity of the supreme power over the whole, is inevita­ bly accompanied with this difficulty. All the freeholders in England worthy of notice in this behalf are represented in parliament by persons chosen by them for that purpose, who, with the representatives of the cities and boroughs, and the representatives of Scotland, form the house of commons, or an order of men well acquainted with the nature, condition and interest of the whole kingdom, and its respective parts; and yet / when interesting laws are depending how oft do we see special communications take place between these representatives and their constituents, for the sake of better information; and notwithstanding the use of these, the best means of knowledge, an improper or imperfect law has been some *

Treatise of Government, Chap. 11.

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times made: and when the principal or dominant part of a state makes a law relative to its distant parts it seems desirable to use every mean of investigating the truth respecting all the subject matters of it, so that the numerous additional difficulties unavoidably arising from distance may, as far as possible, be counter­ vailed by the most diligent comprehensive enquiry and thorough examination, without which provident care laws made for the advancement of commerce may cause its diminution, and other laws may operate contrary to the intent of the legislators; and it is needless to say that when such dominant part makes a law for the distant parts in ease of itself the most liberal just and equitable consid­ eration becomes more especially requisite, in order to countervail the natural dictates of self-interest. With respect to the political state of our colonies, there seems to be no bounds to / the errors of minor politicians and pamphleteers, which with other errors relating to their commercial state, joining and increasing the prejudices and tempestuous passions of numbers, have caused so great vio­ lence and grievous outrages. In truth many of Britannia’s sons seem to have lost the proper sense of their duty to their mother and to each other, brother would bastardize brother, some would unnaturalize others, and others would unnatu­ ralize themselves, without duly considering their own conduct in its nature and consequences. To check these mischiefs, and restore all things into order, the chief strength and safety, as well as beauty, of the civil state, I know no means so useful as having recourse to truth, the common friend of all honest men, and of all just measures; and therefore returning to my former course of proceeding I shall farther observe, IV. That the English colonies are the legitimate off-spring image and part of the common-wealth, and well entitled to the rights, liberties, and benefits of it, or, in other words, they have good title to jus publicum and jus privatum, and to both optimo jure, the enlargement of the empire, in pursuance of proper regal / authority, at the toil and peril, and the expence of the blood and treasure of the planters – That these rights entitle them of course to every proper and practicable mean of preserving them, rights without the means of their preservation being defeasible and illusory – That by the first leading grant made for the discovery and settlement of the English part of America to Sir Humphrey Gilbert by queen Elizabeth, on the 21st. day of June, in the 20th. year of her reign, after directing that the same should be made by her English and Irish subjects; for uniting in more perfect league and amity such countries ‘with her realms of England and Ireland and for the better encouragement of men to this enterprize;’ she granted and declared that all such countries so to be possessed and inhabited should thenceforth be of the allegiance of her, her heirs and successors, and did thereby grant to Sir Humphrey, his heirs and assigns, and to all other persons of her alle­ giance, who should, in pursuance of the directions therein contained, proceed and inhabit within any such countries, that they and their heirs ‘should have and

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enjoy all the privileges of free denizens and persons native of England / and within her allegiance, in such like ample manner and form as if they were born and per­ sonally resiaunte within the said realm of England.’14 – That the grant made to Sir Walter Ralegh, under which the first settlement was made in Virginia, was in these respects similar to this; and it is altogether unnecessary, I apprehend, to cite the several succeeding royal grants which were grafted upon these, and co-operated with them in establishing the English empire in America, every sub­ sequent grant being made by the king of England to his subjects, whether to an individual or to numbers, to persons natural or politic, as well those which have lost their force as those which continue in force, in their nature and tenor suppos­ ing, confirming, and establishing this empire, and strengthening the connection of these distant countries, and all their inhabitants, with the realm of England, the king holding the whole under the same allegiance15 – That by the stat. 15 Car. II. cap. vii. which provided that the European commodities imported into the plantations should be shiped in England, whose policy and provision I have heretofore laboured to preserve, it is thus recited / and declared, ‘in regard his majesties plantations beyond the seas are inhabited and peopled by his subjects of this his kingdom of England: for the maintaining a greater correspondence and kindness between them, and keeping them in a firmer dependence upon it, and rendring them yet more beneficial and advantageous unto it, in the further employment and increase of English shiping and seamen, vent of English wool­ len and other manufactures and commodities, rendring the navigation to and from the same more safe and cheap, and making this kingdom a staple not only of the commodities of those plantations, but also of the commodities of other countries and places, for the supplying of them; and it being the usage of other nations to keep their plantation trade to themselves: Be it enacted’ &c. Here we have an express declaration made by parliament, per verba de prœsenti; that his majesty’s plantations beyond the seas were inhabited and peopled by his subjects of this his kingdom of England, whose political state hath questionless ever since continued the same16 – That by the stat. 13 Geo. II. cap. vii. it was enacted that from / and after the 1st. day of June, in the year 1740, all persons born out of the ligeance of the king, his heirs and successors, who had inhabited, or should inhabit for the space of seven years, or more in any of his majesty’s colonies in America, and should take the oaths, and make the declarations therein directed, ‘should be deemed, adjudged, and taken to be his majesty’s natural born subjects of this kingdom, to all intents, constructions and purposes, as if they and every of them had been or were born within this kingdom.’17 – That it is impossible, I conceive, for any prince or state intending to enlarge their public territory by the acquisition of any distant lands or countries, to take more proper and effi­ cacious means for making the same parcel of their empire than have from the foundation of the colonies been taken by the kings and parliaments of England

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to unite them with their mother country, and form one empire of the whole; so that considering their nature, notoriety and importance, it is matter of great surprize as well as concern, to see such manifold pertinacious mistakes made in this kingdom and the colonies touching their political nature by numberless / writers and other persons, who being strangers to their true foundation, form erroneous and injurious hypotheses concerning them. V. With respect to the question when in a state wherein the laws are made by the prince, the nobles, and persons chosen by the people, the greater part live in one quarter of the world, and the lesser part in another; and the greater part chuse those persons who make part of the legislative, and who are, by the English lawyers and other authors, called the representatives, attornies or advocates of their constituents, and in foreign states ambassadors, or by other names denot­ ing the persons elected and deputed by many others, to represent and act for them, the lesser part having no vote or voice in this choice, whether the persons thus chosen by the greater part can be truly, justly and properly said to be the representatives of the lesser part; in which case I desire leave to hold the nega­ tive, and pray the favour of him who is enclined to the affirmative, that he will consider himself as one of the lesser part, and then declare his approbation or disapprobation of this representation; for in truth it seems to me that / impar­ tial consideration might suffice to resolve this question; nevertheless I shall endeavour to illucidate this particular. It is said that the English colonies, which are the lesser part of the state, though not actually, are virtually represented in parliament by the members chosen by the greater part. The mischiefs, divisions, difficulties and dangers which attend the state, whose primary source apparently was the conduct of ministers unprovided with proper and necessary knowledge, with an exclusion of wiser counsels, and better information, have several times brought to my mind Pandoras box, out of which the maladies and calamities of mankind took their flight. And truth being an immutable entity and intel­ ligibility, and error a meer phantasy or figment of the imagination, this notion of virtual representation being as incomprehensible by my mental faculties as transubstantiation, or the pope’s representation of the Deity, hath brought to my mind the opinion of those among the ancients who held that there was no cer­ tainty in the human intellect, or its objects: but on due consideration, I am fully convinced to use the words of Dr. Cudworth, that ‘Truth is the most unbend­ ing and uncompliable, / the most necessary, firm, immutable, and adamantine thing in the world;’ and in case this notion of virtual representation be true, it is capable of being so clearly and distinctly represented and evinced as to force the assent of the equal and intelligent mind; wherefore I hope that its advocates will be pleased to explain, support and complete their new system of representa­ tion, observing that equal rights require equal means of preservation. That the inequalities in the representation of one country are no reason for rejecting the

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representation of another. That according to the excellent rule of Placcius, and the sentiments of Mr. Locke in this particular, we are not to reason from defect to defect, thereby making the political system still more and more defective; but to keep the right line or state of perfection in view, making our approaches towards it, and that one plain simple principle of universal justice and public welfare is, in my poor opinion, worth a thousand such refinements or temporary expedients – That Mr. justice Doddridge,18 that learned antiquary and able lawyer, supposes that the opinions of Polydore Virgil19 and Paladine are reconcileable with / the ‘manuscript of Canterbury, that the first parliament wherein the commons were called, as well as the peers and nobles, was 16 H. I.; for it is true that after the con­ quest until this time the commons were not called; and so at this time they will have it first called by the name of a parliament.’ This learned judge calls Edward I. the founder of our civil state, and lord chief justice Hale says that he ‘is well stiled our English Justinian; for in his time the law quasi per saltum obtained a very great perfection.’20 And the following record will manifest his sense of representation. Claus de Anno Regni regis Edwardi Vicessimo tertio.

Parliamento tenendo.

‘Rex venerabili in Christo patri R. The king to the venerable father in eadem gratia Cantuar archiepiscopo Christ R. by the same grace archbishop totius Angliæ primati Salutem. Sicut of Cant. primate of all England, greet­ lex justissima provida circumspec­ ing. As the most just law by provident tione sacrarum principium stabilita circumspection of sacred princes estab­ hortatur, & statuit, ut quod lished adviseth and hath appointed, omnes tangit ab omnibus that what toucheth all men approbetur, sic et innuit evi­ be approved of all, so it likewise denter ut communibus periculis per evidently intimateth that common dan­ remedia provisa communiter obvi­ ger be obviated by / remedies provided etur sane satis nostris et jam est ut with common consent. Truly we have credimus p’ universa mundi climata as we think already sufficiently divulged divulgatum qualiter rex Francie through all climates of the world how de terra nostra Vasconie nos cau­ the king of France hath craftily deceived telose decipit eum nobis nequlter us touching our territory of Gascoine, detinendo nunc vero predictis fraude wickedly detaining it from us, and now, & nequicia non contentus ad expug­ not content with the fraud and wick­ nationem regni nostri classe maxima edness aforesaid, hath prepared a very & bellatorum copiosa multitudine great fleet, with a powerful army for the congregatis cum quibus regnum assaulting our kingdom, with which he nostrum & regni ejusdem incolas hath already hostilely invaded our king­ hostiliter jam invasit linguam Angli­ dom, and the inhabitants of the said cam si concepte iniquitatis proposito kingdom, the English tongue, if power

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de testabili potestas correspondeat quod Deus avertat omnino de terra delere proponat Quia igitur previsa jacula minus ledunt et res vestra max­ ima sicut ceterorum regni ejufdem concinium agitur in hac parte vobis mandamus in fide & dilectioni quibus nobis tenemini firmiter injungentes quod die dominica proxime post ses­ tum Sancti Martini in hyeme proxim’ futur’ apud Westmonasterum person­ alit’ intersitis premunientes priorem & capitulum ecclesie vestre archidiac­ onos totumque clerum vestre diocesis Facientes quod iidem prior & archi­ diaconi in propriis personis suis & dictum capitulum per unum idemque cleros per duos procuratores idoneos plenam & sufficientem potestatem ab ipsis capitulo & cleris habentes una vobiscum intersint modis omnibus tunc ibidem ad tractandum ordinan­ dum & faciendum nobiscum & cum ceteris prelatis & proceribus et aliis incolis regni nostri qualiter sic hujus­ modi periculis & ex cogitatis maliciis obviandum. Teste rege apud Wenge­ ham tricesimo die Septembris’

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correspond with the detestable purpose of the conceived iniquity, which God avert, he purposeth entirely to abolish. Because therefore darts foreseen hurt less, and your greatest interest, with that of your fellow citizens of the said king­ dom is herein concerned, We charge you in the faith and love by which ye are held unto Us, strictly enjoining that on the Lords day next after the feast of St. Martin, in the winter next ensuing, ye be personally present at Westminster, forewarning the prior and chapter / r of your church, the archdeacons, and all the clergy of your diocese, causing that the said prior and archdeacons in their own persons, and the said chapter by one, and also the clergy by two fit proc­ tors having full and sufficient power from them the chapter and clergy, be present, together with you, by all ways then and there to consult, ordain, and take such effectual measures, with us, and with the other prelates, and nobles and other inhabitants of our king­ dom, as will obviate such dangers and malicious devices. Witness the king at Wengeham, the thirty-first day of Sep­ tember.

That the right of representation in parliament hath in other cases been allowed, in consequence of the enlargement of the public territory, Wales was conquered by Edward I. by the stat. of Rutland (12 Edw. I.) it was annexed to England; but their close, firm and perfect union was made by the stat. 27. Hen. VIII. cap. 25. wherein it is recited that ‘Albeit the dominion, principality, and country of Wales justly and righteously was, and ever had been incorporated, annexed, / united, and subject to and under the imperial crown of this realm, as a very member and joint of the same;’ and yet, from certain causes therein-mentioned, ‘some rude and ignorant people had made distinction and diversity between the king’s subjects of this realm, and his subjects of the said dominion and princi­ pality of Wales, whereby great discord, variance, debate, division, murmur, and

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sedition had grown between his said subjects;’ wherefore, among other reasons, ‘to bring his said subjects of this his realm, and of his said dominion of Wales to an amicable concord and unity,’ among other things, provision was made for its representation in parliament.21 And the first English colony having been planted at Calais, the same parliament, in the same session, provided for its representa­ tion in parliament also. The first writ thereupon issued, that I have seen, bears date the 2d day of August, in the first year of the reign of Edward VI. whereby the king commanded the mayor and burgesses to cause to be elected a discreet inhabitant of the said borough, to be a burgess for his parliament for the same, according to the form of an / act made by the parliament held the 27th of Hen. VIII. aforementioned; ‘so that the said burgess should have full and sufficient power for himself and the said community to do and consent to what should be ordained by the common council of his kingdom. VI. That where religion, liberty, order, and good government are, there will be numbers, plenty, strength and safety, with a proper union of all the parts for the good of the whole – That as the declension and dissolution of so many differ­ ent states irresistibly prove the difficulty of perpetual preservation, so it is likewise certain that commercial and naval empires are unavoidably attended with special difficulties respecting their duration and flourishing condition. For proof of this we need not have recourse to the ancients, Europe having within these three hundred years given us so many examples, that it would be tedious as well as unnecessary and unpleasant to compare their present with their former state. – That commerce when she takes her flight leaves a country in a worse condition than she found it, and knowing no return, the inhabitants may in vain lament / that loss which their improvidence or unkind usage caused – That although strength be ever preferable to wealth, yet when the state is greatly infected by luxury, whose natural offspring are dissipation, folly, fraud, distress, and danger, with mental enervation, which united, with or without concomi­ tant causes, have so often occasioned dissolution or destruction, greater attention is paid to those trades and traders which minister to luxury, and weaken the state, than to those which strengthen it. Of this we have given the world a mem­ orable example. What a stir do we from time to time make about the East India trade, not to mention others, which never raised the seamen it destroys, and pro­ motes luxury so many different ways, while we pay such a disproportionate regard to the trade with and of our colonies, which, including the fisheries, to use the naval expression of an intelligent friend, is the main stay of the British com­ merce; so that although trade be in its nature so intricate and delicate that human wisdom, even after the strictest enquiry into facts, is frequently unequal to the difficulty of forming salutary regulations for it, instead of close attention, exam­ ination and comprehension, / we are sometimes inclined, even on great occasions, to confide in the specious and erroneous representation of others,

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who make a parade of their knowledge in those subjects to several of whose essential parts they are utter strangers – That our foreign trade collectively con­ sidered hath declined apace, and that depending on the changeable minds and circumstances of other princes and states, they are in effect contending various ways for its farther diminutions, our colony trade having in the mean time so far encreased as to have exceeded all these diminutions, and while prosecuting to the utmost by the spirit of the colonists, who employed herein all their stock and domestic credit, with a large credit given by the British merchants, and when labouring under various difficulties, a project was formed of raising a revenue upon it, with the traders and other inhabitants – That to carry on a general trade a proportionate stock of money is requisite; and when this project was formed there was in the continent colonies scarcely money sufficient, even with the aid of the paper currency used by several, to carry on their trade – That the money proposed to be raised by way of revenue being to be collected / from the old and principal trading colonies, and wholly, or chiefly spent upon new and distant acquisitions, the execution of this project must of necessity diminish and embar­ rass their trade, to the prejudice of the trade of this kingdom, and all the real money then remaining in the continent colonies probably amounting to about an eight or tenth part of what was due from the traders there to the British mer­ chants, and which being suffered to remain there as the necessary means of driving about the wheels of trade would assist the traders in the discharge of their debts, and in the continuance of that large trade which they have so long carried on for the common benefit – That in a country dependant on commerce the primary object of political consideration relative to it is presumed to be the increase and exports of its manufactures, the benefits whereof are diffused through all parts; and therefore raising a revenue upon their diminution is in effect making a dangerous stroke at the root of that which ought to be cherished, or proceeding like him who cut the bough whereon he stood – That the colo­ nies, supposing the annual exports of British commodities to them to amount / to the value of two millions sterling have thereby probably paid yearly one mil­ lion of the British taxes, or considerably more. To illustrate this particular, it is to be observed that every manufacturer charges all the taxes paid by him upon his manufacture. A clothier for instance who employs a thousand persons, whose taxes, together with those of his own family, amount to £10000, he being reim­ bursed by the sale of his cloth, each piece bears of course its proportion of the whole, and is paid finally by the wearer. The amount of the public demands are by the intelligent variously estimated. An old friend, who in many respects is extremely acute in his discernment touching the interior state of the kingdom, as well as exact in his calculations, and who by the way had hard measure in one of our late ministerial revolutions, some time before the commencement of the last war mentioned to me with approbation an estimate made with diligence by

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other judicious persons, whereby it was supposed that the same amounted to fourteen shillings in the pound; so that according to this calculate the accumula­ tive part of the price of manufactures in proportion to the natural is as / fourteen to six. Being no competent judge of all the particulars of this affair, I leave them to those who are; but taking the lowest estimates of the amount of the British exports to the colonies, and of the public charges, through various circulations resting on them, and finally on their consumers, and considering the same together with the entire commercial and pecuniary state of the colonies, it clearly appears to me that this revenue-project, if peaceably carried into execution, as far as the nature of things would permit, would by its natural operations certainly have caused so great a diminution in the exports of British commodities that for every penny collected in the colonies by way of revenue this kingdom would very soon have lost six pence, and probably in a short time considerably more. The history of commerce fully proves that it cannot be preserved without consulting its nature, with all its connections, and trade will sometimes, like water, only bear its own weight, and the trade of the colonies having been strained to the utmost, and its products collected from all parts constantly leaving the traders there immensely in debt to the British merchants, its continuance was incompatible / with new burthens, and the application of that money to other purposes which was necessary to carry it on – that the most judicious persons have in time past thought it advisable by every proper method to encrease the trade of the colo­ nies, keeping it under due regulations, and to assist in providing for them such profitable employment as might enable them to pay for large quantities of Brit­ ish manufactures; whereas this new project hath a direct tendency to drive the inhabitants out of trade, and from the sea coast into the inland parts of the coun­ try, where every man living upon his freehold will eat his own mutton, and cloath himself with the skin and the wool. – That the colonies, like this and other countries, animated by the spirit of trade, would as they encreased their ability, as they have in times past, continue to encrease their trade, and distress­ ing this trade with the traders is starving the hen that lays the golden egg. – That the cherishing and regulating is so far preferable to the impoverishing system, that there is not a political truth, even that which declares honesty to be the best policy, that appears more clear to / me than this, That the flourishing trade and condition of the colonies will ever best secure and augment their commercial and beneficial connection with this kingdom. By their nature and original settle­ ment they are unquestionably part of the family of England, and their comfortable condition will not only enable them to prosecute trade in time of peace, but invigorate their defence in time of war, of which it is not improbable they may again be the seat. There is no end of vulgar errors relative to this par­ ticular; our enemies attack our colonies as essential parts of that commercial and naval empire which they would reduce; and if, instead of promoting and

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strengthening the most desirable union, our errors and theirs, with consequent divisions, should make them more vulnerable, they will of course become the object of the enemies policy and force, and lamenting our divisions considered in every light, I am sorry that some of our politicians have not been enclined to such treatment of them, that, to use the words of a worthy patriot, spoken to the king on the throne, it might be their inclination as well as duty to be obedient to his majesty and the laws. On the / other hand it behoves the colonies to consider that their honour and their interest, their safety and happiness consist in their continuing proper and useful members of the common-wealth, to take care that the spirit of liberty be accompanied with a due sense of government; to maintain their rights and interests in a proper manner, and to pay the same reverence to the king and the parliament as if placed nearer to them, remembering what was said by an author whose credit they will not question (Mr. Milton) ‘this is not the liberty which we can hope, that no grievance ever should arise in the common­ wealth; that let no man in this world expect; but when complaints are freely heard, deeply considered, and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty attained, that wise men look for.’22 And it may not be improper for others as well as the colonists on this occasion, to recollect, not only the saying of Vopiscus,23 but likewise the words of the judicious Dr. Fleetwood. ‘The present designs of men have, it may be, no eye or tendency to such and such a consequence; but, however, men must look to it; for when we are once out of the right / way, every step we take leads us but into farther wanderings; and we know not whither we are going.’24 VII. With respect to the reasons relative to the repeal of the stamp-act, extraneous to the real merits of the case, I shall not presume to express my own sentiments; but, under favour, shall insert the words of Mr. Milton, in his Areop­ agitica, addressed to the parliament of England, wherein, after taking notice that there were abundant examples of private persons giving their counsel by speech or writing to sundry free states, in those ages to whose polite wisdom and letters we owe that we are not yet Goths and Jutlanders, he wrote thus; ‘and how far ye excel them, be assured, Lords and Commons, there can no greater testimony appear, than when your prudent spirit acknowledges and obeys the voice of rea­ son, from what quarter soever it be heard speaking; and renders ye as willing to repeal any Act of your own setting forth, as any set forth by your predeces­ sors.’ And shall observe that in several countries ruled by absolute princes an appeal lies from the decree of the prince, that is, à se male informato, ad se bene / informatum; and I have ever understood that the honour of the prince was more concerned in giving a just decree upon the appeal and review of the case, than in pronouncing his first decree. As to those sons of violence who, without taking notice of others, have to the dishonour of that colony whose merits with respect to its mother country, all

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things considered, exceed those of any one of an hundred Roman colonies, not to name a greater number, have risen up in its capital, and, under the pretence of reformation, have committed such outrages, I exhort every man of them, for his own sake, as well as that of others, that leaving the care of the common rights to those to whom it belongs, and renouncing his offences he continue to be quiet, and by his peaceable and proper behaviour prepare himself to partake of the clemency of a gracious prince who delights in the exercise of his mercy. And, in order to mollify the minds of those who seem as great strangers to humanity as they are to sound policy, I shall, in the words of Lipsius, set forth the mild con­ duct of an excellent prince.25 / ‘Shall I omit thee Alphonsus? who being all goodness and beneficence hast represented to us Titus, but with long continuance. Thou besieging Caieta, which had obstinately rebelled against thee, the besieged appeared to be pressed for want of provisions, which themselves declared by putting forth old men, boys, women, and all the useless multitude. In council it was advised that they should be rejected and driven back, for that so the city would soon surrender, he through commiseration chose rather to dismiss them, and continue the siege: but, upon his not taking the place, some dared to object, that if he had not let them go the city would have been his; he nobly answered. But the safety of so many persons, is more to me than an hundred Caietas. However he was not long without it, for the citizens, admonished by such extraordinary virtue, and repenting, voluntarily surrendered themselves. His conduct was similar towards Anthony Caldora, the most powerful man of the Neapolitan kingdom, and his obstinate enemy, whom having at length in a great battle subdued, and taken, when all persuaded / to put to death so troublesome a man, and who was ever at enmity with the Arragoni­ ans, he alone withstood, and not only pardoned, but restored his estate to him, and gave to his wife all his elegant and valuable furniture and other moveables, which he had in his hands, reserving to himself only one crystal cup. Such were his actions, with which his expressions accorded. Being asked why he was mild towards all, even the wicked. Because, said he, justice conciliateth the good, clem­ ency the bad. Again, when his ministers complained of his too great lenity, as not becoming a prince. What, said he, would you have bears and lions to reign? For clemency is the peculiar of men, cruelty of wild beasts. He said what was true. By how much the greater, and more, as I may say, of a man any one is, so much the more is he inclined to this virtue, which is therefore termed humanity.’ Scotland in consequence of two rebellions raised there,26 in order to destroy, or drive away the present royal family, happily placed on the throne for the pres­ ervation of our / common liberties, hath by the wisdom and equity of the British parliament been made more free, whereas the end and intension of every action being to be considered, in justice to the colonies, whose distance lays them under manifold difficulties, it may be said, if I am not wholly mistaken, that their inten­

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tion is to defend their rights according to their sense of them, and how far that is erroneous, or its defence improper, is not my province to declare. As to these politicians who seem to delight in blood, and are so sollicitous to introduce a social war, whereby after so narrowly escaping the sword of our enemies we should employ our own swords in destroying ourselves, every stab destroying a subject, and diminishing that commerce which gives bread to so many oth­ ers, their policy, instead of being the result of any wise consideration suitable to the occasion, seems to be the dictates of their prejudice, their passions, or something worse. If these advocates for destruction had been pleased fully to explain their own proposition, considered with respect to its nature, operations, and conclusion, without which all proposals are vain, its impropriety / propriety and dangers, I presume, would evidently appear. Rome when in her flourishing estate was brought to the brink of ruin by the social war, occasioned by her refusal to communicate the Roman right. After suffering so much by her various errors and corruptions she granted it to all the nations of which her empire was composed, and for this grant her praises in verse and prose will endure to all ages, Claudian says, Hœc est in gremium victos qua sola recepit, Humanumque genus communi nomine fovit, Matris, non dominœ, ritu: civesque vocavit Quos domuit, nexuque pio longinqua revinxit.27 And Rutilius, Fecisti patriam diversis gentibus unam, Profuit injustis the dominate capi, Dumque offers victis proprii consortia juris, Urbem fecisti quod prius Orbis erat.28 Upon taking a view of all parts of the public territory, and considering them in their nature, situation and mutual relations, with / the relation of the whole to other states, including our debts, which all the money in Europe probably could not discharge, whereof the principal or interest due to foreigners is to be paid by the balance of our trade, and how far our credit is exhausted, together with the ordinary course of human affairs respecting war and peace, it does not, I presume, require the foresight of Themistocles29 to discern that our future welfare and safety require the present exercise of great wisdom; and that the whole hav­ ing one common interest to support against our competitors, adversaries and enemies, and all being members of the same body, laying aside our prejudicies, divisions and animosities, we should unite our endeavours for the advancement of the common good, ever remembering that justice is an architectonic virtue,

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and what we learn from Æsop,30 and that wise and great emperour and philoso­ pher Antoninus,31 that the bundle of sticks given by the father to his sons while united is not to be broken, and that what is not good for the hive is not good for the bee; and moreover what was said to the Lords and Commons in Par­ liament, (4 Hen. VI.) Eritis insuperabiles, is fueritis inseparabiles. Explosum / est illud diverbium: Divide & impera; cúm radix & vertex imperii in obedientium consensu rata sint.32 Having for the advancement of truth, liberty, universal justice, and the public welfare, subjects worthy of a much abler pen, written with that freedom which becomes the member of a free state, I shall now cheerfully submit the whole to the candour and correction of the judicious and impartial, and to the pleasure of those who delight in censure. With respect to the former I shall ever say blessed be the amending hand, and of the latter I pray this favour, that they will for the common good be pleased to write better on these important subjects.

FINIS.

THE LATE OCCURRENCES IN NORTH

AMERICA

The Late Occurrences in North America, and Policy of Great Britain Considered (Lon­ don: J. Almon, 1766).

While William Knox, Charles Jenkinson, William Bollan and others wholly supported the principle of Parliamentary sovereignty, even while disagreeing about the propriety of the Stamp Act, others were more flexible on the issue. The anonymous author of The Late Occurences in North America, and Policy of Great Britain Considered hedged his support of parliamentary sovereignty, a principle perhaps too powerful to be denied completely, with various qualifications. He notes first that colonists were ‘Englishmen, who fled thither from the enthusi­ asm, tyranny, usurpation and bigotry’ and ‘as Englishmen, they had a right to the liberties of this nation’, as confirmed by crown charters (below, p. 93). Answering the argument that charters were ‘beyond the power of the crown to grant’, the author urges that ‘we must carry our thoughts back to former times, when the crown had, or pretended to have, all power of government, even of this kingdom, vested in itself ’. Besides, ‘the nature of America was such, that no encouragement could be too great to allure people to those countries’ and, furthermore, echoing an argument many colonists made, emigrants ‘embarked their lives and fortunes, and, taking up their residence in the wilds of America, established colonies, and extended thereby the trade of Great Britain to its present greatness’ (below, p. 93). The colonists’ chartered ‘independance of the crown’, however, meant the necessity of a dependance on some other power; – sound policy, the nature of gov­ ernment and modern colonization require it. – This power must be the parliament of Great Britain, which hath, and ought to have, the full and absolute sovereignty over all the British dominions. (below, p. 93)

Yet, after arguing that colonists’ claims for independence from Parliament were ‘errors which the best-intentioned men sometimes fall into’ (below, p. 93), he nevertheless concedes that

– 89 –

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The American Colonies and the British Empire, Volume 5 If then the sovereignty of the parliament of Great Britain over the colonies is founded on policy of government, and not on the principles which demand the submission of the inhabitants of Great Britain, to the laws, namely, their consent to them, as either actually or virtually represented in the making of them, it behoves those who have this right to be particularly attentive in the exercise of it. (below, p. 95)

Countering anti-colonial hostility triggered by the Stamp Act riots, the author urges that ‘The critical situation we are in demands deliberation and tenderness, and not rashness and violence’ (below, p. 97). He thus embarks on a long histori­ cal observation, focusing on the Revolt of the Netherlands, of how tyrannical policies destroyed Spain’s power. He concludes his account with a direct com­ parison of Spain’s situation and Britain’s and a clear lesson for the latter: That the imposing taxes and introducing troops into the country, when a general peace made both unnecessary, were the first grounds of discontent, which was fer­ mented by establishing bishopricks and judicatures, unknown to the antient laws and customs, and questioning at the same time those rights and charters which the people claimed from their former princes; but that the general uneasiness, occasioned by this conduct, might have been easily appeased, if the mistakes in government had been corrected in time (below, p. 103)

The Late Occurrences concludes with the author’s idea of what empire ought to be about. ‘The duties of a mother country and its colonies are reciprocal; the one expects encouragement and protection, and the other claims and secures to itself every advantage that an extensive commerce can produce’, he writes, and in that spirit Britons should pay for the French and Indian War (below, p. 105). The purpose of colonization was to spread Christianity, which had been satisfactorily done, and ‘increase of dominion’ (below, p. 107). The latter, ‘cannot mean an uncontrouled power over slaves, but a dominion founded on freedom’ (below, p. 108), and, as its colonies are composed of Englishmen and freemen, they ought to be treated as such – the interests of the mother countries, and its colonies, are inseperable – no partiality for the benefits of one to the prejudice of the other ought to be admitted; and their mutual advantage can only be obtained by the sources of trade, enriching the several channels through which it flows. (below, p. 108)

‘It is then’, he continues, ‘by trade alone that Great Britain, acting in a spirit of true policy, will endeavor to draw the wealth and produce of America to herself; all other methods will destroy the object for which the colonies were established’ (below, p. 108). As for sovereignty, the writer concludes that the act of navigation … though it has reduced them to a kind of political slavery, yet being founded on the soundest policy, they have submitted to it with cheerfulness and affection to this country; and so long as they do so, you need no other evidence of your sovereignty over them (below, p. 109)

THE LATE

OCCURRENCES IN

NORTH AMERICA, AND

POLICY OF

GREAT BRITAIN, CONSIDERED. Tantane vos generis tenuit Fiducia Vestri?

Iam Cœlum Terramq: meo sine numine, Venti,

Miscere, et tantas auditis tollere Moles?

Quos Ego, Sed Motos præstat componere Fluetus.

Virg.1

LONDON:

Printed for J. Almon, opposite Burlington-House in Piccadilly.

M.DCC.LXVI. [PRICE ONE SHILLING.] /

THE OCCURRENCES, &c. The British colonies in North America were originally established by English­ men, who fled thither from the enthusiasm, tyranny, usurpation and bigotry, which at different times distracted this kingdom; as Englishmen, they had a right to the liberties of this nation, and were under the bond of allegiance to it, wheresoever they went. The charters granted to them by several of our kings, reserve the one, and confirm the other. These charters appear to some people illegal, and beyond the power of the crown to grant; but, to judge rightly of them, we must carry our thoughts back to former times, when the crown had, or pretended to have, all power of govern­ ment, even of / this kingdom, vested in itself; and had an undoubted sovereignty over, and right of disposition, of all conquests or acquisitions whatsoever; and besides, the nature of America was such, that no encouragement could be too great to allure people to those countries and climates, which were then so inhospitable; but, whether these charters are legal or not, ought by no means be questioned now; for upon the faith of them many people embarked their lives and fortunes, and, taking up their residence in the wilds of America, established colonies, and extended thereby the trade of Great Britain to its present greatness. The colonies are secured by these charters from the despotism of the crown, of whom they are perhaps as independent, as the inhabitants of Great Britain can be. But from this claim of independance of the crown, which the colonists insist on, results the necessity of a dependance on some other power; – sound policy, the nature of government and modern colonization require it. – This power must be the parliament of Great Britain, which hath, and ought to have, the full and absolute sovereignty over all the British dominions. If this sovereignty seems lately to have been called in question, it ought by no means to be imputed to the spirit of disloyalty / or independence, but to those errors which the best-intentioned men sometimes fall into; for evidently seeing the futility of those reasons, which are generally thrown out to prove the right of the sovereignty of parliament, they have been unhappily led to doubt the right itself. They protest against the principles of the writers on the laws of nature and nations, as destructive of all liberty; the writers on the civil law they consider as – 93 –

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the tools of power; and the writers and expositors of the common law of this land had not, they say, the colonies of Great Britain in contemplation, when they delivered those dicta, which are disingenuously made use of against them. They acknowledge, that the people of Great Britain may be either actually or virtually represented in parliament, but deny that the colonies can in any manner be considered in that light: the putting them on the same footing with Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds, rich and flourishing towns, when an argu­ ment is to be raised against their liberties, and denying them in the same breath, the right of Old Sarum, Aldborough, and fifty other impoverished boroughs, is most ridiculous and unfair. The comparing them to copy holders, formerly in the vilest bondage, and therefore particularly excluded the least share in government, / they consider as an insult; the treating them as women, as infants, and the dregs of the city of London, is a plain declaration of your opinion, that they are without property and integrity, will or capacity, to reconcile them to the want of repre­ sentation. You tell them, not one third of the kingdom is represented; but they deny it, and insist with Mr. Blakstone, in his late masterly performance, ‘that such only are entirely excluded from the right of voting, as can have no will of their own, and that there is hardly a free agent to be found, but what is entitled to a vote in some place or other in this kingdom.’2 Have we, say the Americans, no wills of our own? Are we not free agents? but could it be proved, that not one third part of the kingdom have a right of voting, yet it would not avail, unless you shewed at the same time, that the interests of all the kingdom was not the same; that the representatives of the third part of the kingdom had no knowl­ edge of, and therefore neglected or injured the interests of the other two; you must shew likewise, that the interests of minors and women, copy holders and the lowest handicraft man in the kingdom, are not interwoven with the interests of every family and man in the kingdom; you must shew too, that minors and women / have no relations, and that their estates give them no influence; that the same man who was a copyholder, might not have freehold lands; and that a tax upon trade is not felt by any but the merchant and manufacturer. The comparing them to Jersey and Guernsey, the miserable remains of your Norman dominion, and mere appendages of the crown, cannot subject them to the same laws; and that even Ireland itself, which is looked upon as a conquered country, ought not to be mentioned as a rule for your conduct towards the colo­ nies, which were originally established by Englishmen, with assurances of the fullest enjoyment of liberty. But that, with regard to Ireland itself, tho’ the sov­ ereignty of the parliament of Great Britain over it is plainly asserted, yet you are very cautious in the exercise of it, particularly with respect to internal taxation. These reasons, which are generally urged as a sufficient ground for estab­ lishing the right of the supremacy of the parliament of Great Britain over the colonies, not being quite satisfactory to the Americans, they have been led to

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question the right itself, and considering the grounds thereof, and the principles of the British constitution, they have taught themselves to think, That whatever affects all, should be debated by all, so that knowledge and mutual / interest will prevent mistakes and partiality; that it is not to be imagined every representative of the people of Great-Britain has a knowledge of America, for tho’ they may have taken much pains in crossing the Alps, and had much pleasure in conversing with the Ciceroni of Rome, yet it is possible they may be entirely unacquainted with the condition of New England, and the nature of lumber. That if a tax is laid on any branch of business, or upon a particular part of Great Britain, a knowledge can be soon had of the propriety and expediency of it: that the interests and condition of America is but little known: that no imposition can be laid on one part of the kingdom, without affecting the rest: that the taxing America falls solely upon that country, without affecting Great Britain, which assumes that power for its own peculiar ease and emolument, which is not a very delicate light to consider this country in. That countries and places, which have particular interests to support, ought to be represented in parliament: that it was on this principle the two Universities had the power given them of electing members; and that if a body of people are to be taxed by laws, which they have actually no share in making, the same mischiefs will ensue which are marked in the preamble to 34 and 35 H. viii. c. 13. which gave a right to the city of Chester of chusing representatives, / ‘That the inhabitants thereof have been oftentimes touched and grieved with acts and statues made within the said court of parliament, as well derogatory unto the most ancient jurisdiction, liberties, and privileges thereof, as prejudicial unto the common weal, quietness, and peace, of his Majesty’s subjects.’3 If then the sovereignty of the parliament of Great Britain over the colonies is founded on policy of government, and not on the principles which demand the submission of the inhabitants of Great Britain, to the laws, namely, their con­ sent to them, as either actually or virtually represented in the making of them, it behoves those who have this right to be particularly attentive in the exercise of it. And for that purpose, it is their essential duty not to despise the colonies, but to attain the best knowledge of them in their power: not to consider them as a set of vagabonds and transports, but an industrious, honest, and free people. And in a word, not to adopt any system of partiality or prejudice, of suspi­ cion or contempt, the marks of a wicked and weak ministry, but in all instances to treat them with tenderness and liberality as fellow subjects, and be convinced and act accordingly, that the interests of Great Britain, and its American colo­ nies, are inseparable, and that / the advantages of the one will not be eventually promoted, if the interests of the other are sacrificed to low and temporary expe­ dients, and on the spur of particular occasions.

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Should this ever be the case, we ought not to be surprised they should loudly complain and boldly protest against being made the property of an unpopular minister, who, unable to raise the necessary supplies in Great Britain, should seize on the friendless and unsupported Americans, and proposing plans of æonomy to this country, and pretending an extraordinary sagacity into future events, should form a system destructive of public confidence, and the commer­ cial interests of both countries. But it is urged, that however this right of parliament is founded, the Ameri­ cans openly declare against it; and insolently claiming an independency, they are guilty of treason, and ought to be treated as rebels. But nothing can be more unadviseable than the making use of opprobri­ ous expressions, and the utmost exertion of power against supposed action, the nature and complexion of which we have no authoritative judgment of: the late occurrences in North America are of that kind, we neither can, nor ought to give a particular name to them, until we have information of their motives: / for should we rashly and falsely brand the conduct of any part of his Majesty’s sub­ jects with odious appellations, it will appear to every one as proceeding from the malice and indignation of party: but should we act so very injudiciously, as not only to call, but treat our American brethren as seditious, revolting, and rebel­ lious, at a time when nothing can be farther from their thoughts, we must expect our want of charity in speech and violence of conduct will be resented by that spirit, which virtue and loyalty, once questioned, cannot help shewing. And how much would they have to answer for, whose blindness and obstinacy brought on an actual defection of as beneficial and as loyal a part of the dominions of this kingdom as his Majesty can glory in? But should the colonies be really averse to this government, and should we have full proof of their inclination to fall off from that duty and affection they have hitherto shewed, severity and rigour would be exerted even then too soon, if we heard not their grievances, and cor­ dially endeavoured to give a reasonable satisfaction to their just complaints; for tho’ we live in society, we must attend to the feelings of nature; and as we live in a land of liberty, we must make some allowances even for the groundless resent­ ments of freemen. – Our news papers and coffee-house politicians have been lately full of invectives / against the disposition and conduct of the Americans, and using foul mouthed reproach, and instigating the most violent methods, seem to be endeavouring to drive matters to the worst and last extremity, a civil war: and yet the same news papers and coffee-house politicians, not long since, made use of every plausible turn, and every palliative, to excuse, nay, to justify the chicanery of the French, in not paying the Canada bills; and the want of honour and humanity of the Spaniards, in refusing to discharge the ransom of Manilla. These two nations were lately declared enemies to Great Britain, and will ever be the opposers of her interests; and yet we treated both with tenderness, polite­

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ness, and condesention, because we were by all means to avoid a war, though nothing can be worse policy than to preserve the public repose by yielding any point of interest or honour. What can we think of such men and such politics? they pass over unnoticed the open violations of solemn treaties, and blacken with scurrility and ignominy actions and men, whose motives and temper they are grossly ignorant of. A war is to be carefully avoided, in their opinion, with aliens, and the eternal enemies and rivals of this kingdom, but to be immediately entered into, and pursued with rigour and vengeance against its descendants and subjects. A civil war is perhaps / in their notions less injurious to the happiness and interests of a people than a national one; but I hope Great Britain will never be governed by such men, and such politics; the present times, I am sure, do not require such councils. The critical situation we are in demands deliberation and tenderness, and not rashness and violence; we ought to act dispassionately for the mutual interests of both countries, and not in a spirit of party to the public confusion. We ought to consider the object for which our colonies were established, and how far it has been pursued and encouraged, or neglected and ruined; we ought to be fully acquainted with the temper and condition of those who compose them, and of what benefit they have been, and what disposition they have had hitherto to this kingdom; but we ought above all things to weigh in our minds, over and over again, the probable and possible consequences of treating those as enemies who have it in their power to be our most beneficial friends: we must consider, whether the terror of arms ever convinced the judgment, and conciliated the affections, and whether the Americans can, or will, ever be cordially united to you, if moderation, the best means of governing, is called pusillanimity, and looked upon as below the dignity of authority. / Should compulsory means be determined on as absolutely necessary to quiet the Americans, the die is cast, aut Cæsar aut nullus. Every man of the least experience in Great Britain knows the consequence; every man in American trembles at it; it will be the ruin of both countries. It is probable indeed, considering the weakness of the Americans, that Great Britain will come off triumphant in the contest, but the victory will be truly deplorable. Should it be doubtful for any time, that alone will make you repent your recourse to violence; but should you succeed at last, all confidence and cordiality being interrupted, you neither can, nor will, treat the Americans for the future as subjects, but will reduce them to the most implicit obedience. But remember, that though the Americans are naturally good subjects, they will ever be bad slaves, the difficulty will be great to keep them in the irksome state of servility, and the expence and watchfulness necessary for it will entirely exhaust you: for though the English, as it is said, will, when they cease to be freemen, be the most abject slaves the Americans, on the contrary, should they now be reduced to that miserable state, will ever retain a spirit for, and longing after

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liberty; and the difference between the temper of the two people in this deplor­ able event, will be owing to the different causes / which produce it. Whenever the people of this island cease to be free, it will be when they are so thoroughly corrupted, as basely to betray their own rights, and become willing slaves; but the Americans now have the independance which a bountiful nature gives, and the strongest sense of liberty; and therefore force alone can deprive them of their enjoyment of it. I said it was probable that Great Britain would at last be triumphant, but it is possible that her most vigorous efforts may be baffled; not­ withstanding the greatness of her power, and the weakness of America. Every war is doubtful, power has frequently ruined itself by confidence, and weakness grown strong by despair. History affords many examples to prove the truth of this observation: the establishment of the United Provinces, about two hundred years ago, is an incontestable one; and is well worthy of our particu­ lar attention at this time; for it will enable us to observe the consequences of weak or violent councils, of corrupt or ill conduct, of faction or obstinacy, which weakens and dissolves the firmest government; and if our condition is so critical, as to confound even the best heads and best hearts in the kingdom, in deter­ mining what ought to be done, to extricate us from our difficulties; the rise and progress of the disturbances in the Low / Countries will instruct us at least in the negative kind of knowledge, of what ought not to be done. Some people may, perhaps, imagine, that the wisdom, thus attained, is at best very uncertain; for tho’ all things are possible, and what has been, may be; yet hardly any one thinks he is liable to the same misery another has fallen into, because a change in time, fortune, condition, and a variety of other circumstances, make him an exception to the former rule. But the truth is, that so long as human nature continues what it is, the same causes will generally produce the same effects; at least it will be consistent with human prudence, to conduct ourselves as if they would, when the circumstances of the times are such, as to leave us no other rule to go by. The Spanish monarchy was, about the year 1559, when the peace of Cambray was made, the most respected power in Europe. Spain, the Milanese, the Two Sicilies, the Low Countries, and the new discovered World, were the for­ midable members of it: the ambition of France was checked, it held Italy in awe, and England was subservient to its purposes; considerable acquisitions were made by the peace, besides the particular objects of the war. Thus circumstanced, Spain had nothing to do but, by cultivating the arts of peace, establish its extensive empire on the firmest / foundation. But, unfortu­ nately, the peace of Cambray, which restored quiet to all the declared enemies of Spain, produced animosities, civil dissentions, and open ruptures amongst her own subjects, to the misery of individuals, and dismemberment of the empire. The means by which this signal ruin was brought about, may be worth inves­ tigating. The first blow given to it, came from a quarter the least expected, from

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its weakness and former loyalty of conduct towards Spain. But there is noth­ ing so unlikely, which particular accidents may not produce; and the greatest empires have fallen, by means apparently the most contemptible. The Low Countries, which were divided with many states, with distinct governments, were over-run by the northern nations, who ravaged the great­ est part of Europe, particularly the Saxons, who, fierce in arms, established and maintained freedom wheresoever they went; for, fighting without pay, and not for the ambition of another, they conquered for themselves, and were therefore attentive to secure the public liberty against the artifice or violence of those who might claim a superiority over them. As they were bred to arms, they never for­ got the use of them, and kept themselves free thereby from open insults; and, lest cunning and time should injure / their rights, they claimed and exercised the greatest liberties; and, amongst the rest, the right of determiding disputes about the succession of their princes, when doubtful or controverted; and deciding those between the several towns, of raising a militia for defence of their coun­ tries, in a war amongst their neighbours; of advising, in time of danger abroad, or discontents at home; and upon any new imposition that was necessary upon the people: the use of the free assemblies was another of those liberties, whereof the inhabitants of those provinces were fond and tenacious. These rights seem to be essential to contribute them freemen, but there were other concessions and graces from their princes who ruled over them, which, being once granted, they had a full and complete title to. Their wars, which were generally short, were with princes and competitors of their own size and strength, unless indeed they fell into the quarrels of England and France, and then they were engaged on the skirts only, the gross of it being waged between the two kings, and their smaller states were made use of for the commodiousness of a diversion, rather than any great weight they might have in the main of the affair. The mighty growth of the commerce of this extensive country (attributed by Commines to the goodness of the princes; and / the ease and safety of the peo­ ple) enabled Spain, into whose hands it came, to be a match for France. Philip of Burgundy especially was a wise and good prince, loved by his subjects, and esteemed by his enemies; and taking his measures so well upon the decline of the English greatness abroad, by their dissentions at home, ended his quarrels in France, by a safe and honourable peace; ‘so that he took,’ Sir William Temple says, ‘no pretence from his greatness, or his wars, to change any thing in the form of his government;’4 but Charles, the Hardy, asked frequent and heavy contri­ butions, which, gained at first by the credit of his father’s government, and his own great designs, but at length rendered his people discontented, and himself disesteemed and unfortunate. In the time of Maximilian, several bodies of Ger­ man troops were brought down into Flanders for their defence against France;

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and in the time of Charles V. a much greater number of Spaniards and Italians were introduced on the same account; but these demands of money, and these grievances by the introduction of soldiers, gave occasion to no disturbances at first, for Charles was of a generous and gentle nature, and dying, left to Philip the Second the Seventeen Provinces, in a condition as peaceable and loyal as either prince or subject could desire; but / being soon treated with various marks of contempt and distrust, and the foreign soldiers and those exactions which the war had made necessary, and therefore readily submitted to, being continued, the inhabitants of the Provinces withdrew that affection and attachment they had hitherto shewed upon all occasions. The government of the Low Countries being beneath the immediate con­ sideration of the Austrian greatness, the whole was devolved on the Dutchess of Parma, assisted by the Cardinal de Granville, who being the adviser of the continuation of the foreign troops and exactions of money for their support, was looked upon as the chief promoter or instrument of their oppressions, and not of their defence, when a general peace had left them no enemies to fear. The people complained with a general consent and passion, and the States enforced their complaints by concurring with them; but all uneasiness and remonstrances being disregarded, the provinces first contriving various delays, absolutely refused at last to raise any more money for the pay of the Spanish troops; and such was the universal despair, that, neglecting their dikes, they declared they had rather be drowned by the sea, than held in subjection by the foreign forces. / This spirit of the people, alarming the court, the troops were recalled, and thereby the public tranquility restored. But it was interrupted in the year 1565, by the resolution that was taken to annul all the laws, impose arbitrary taxes, create new bishops, with their spiritual courts, and judges, at the will of the king, or pope, and above all to establish the Inquisition, that extraordinary court of judicature, contrary to the ancient laws and customs of the country, and which they could not introduce into Milan or Naples; and, to sum up the whole, all these violations of public and private liberty, of temporal and spiritual rights, were to be asserted aud maintained by the hangman and foreign troops; means which, Sir William Temple says, ‘are commonly made use of to suppress civil commotions, but were, in this instance, the occasion of their breaking out in Flanders.’ For the principal lords meeting together at Brussels, represented their rights and infringements thereof to the Governess. – ‘This congress,’ says Voltaire, ‘was called a conspiracy at Madrid, but was considered in the Low Countries as a most lawful act; and it is certain the confederates were not rebels.’5 – Their petitions being listened to, and the rigour of the edicts about religion and the

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Inquisition / being remitted, all noise of discontent and tumult was appeased, and the governess was both obeyed and honoured. But it being soon after discovered, that the blackest designs were formed by the court of Madrid, who disavowed the former moderation and justice, the provinces were struck with astonishment; but that soon gave way to rage, which began to appear in their looks, their speech, their bold meetings and libels, and was increased by the miserable spectacle of innumerable executions. And what added insult to oppression was, Philips insisted that he was absolved from those oaths, whereby he confirmed their liberties, by the supreme power of the Pope. ‘This reason (says Voltaire) might possibly have great weight with Roman Catholics, but naturally enraged the Protestants, and confirmed them in their disaffection.’ In the beginning of the year 1566, there appeared in the citizens an open contempt of authority; executions were hindered, officers abused, and prisons forced. This was followed by a confederacy of the Lords never to suffer the inqui­ sition in the Low Countries, as contrary to all laws, sacred and prophane, and exceeding the cruelty of former tyranny. Upon which, all resolution of force or rigour growing unsafe for government, the Duchess of Parma was / obliged to use gentle methods, and promise, with the concurrence of the court of Spain, a full redress of grievances; but whether a redress was never intended, or from the dilateriness of Spanish councils was deserted too long, it certainly came too late; the flame broke out, and the revolt appeared universal. But the richer and more prudent men of the provinces, particularly the Prince of Orange, and the Counts Egmont and Horne, feeling the ill effects, and abhorring the rage of popular tumults, as the worst mischief that can befall any state, exerted their utmost vigour, loyalty, and that influence which the public affection gave them, to appease the general discontent; by which means, and the prudent and moderate management of the governess, all the provinces were restored to their former peace, obedience, and appearance at least of loyalty. But scarce was this happy event brought about, when the arrival of the Duke of Alva, with ten thousand of the best Spanish and Italian soldiers, under the command of the choicest officers which the late war had bred up, struck all the Low Countries with astonishment, submission, and despair. The trading part of the town and country retired out of the provinces in such vast numbers, that in a few days one hundred thousand people, taking their money and / effects, abandoned their country. ‘So great antipathy ever appears (says Sir William Temple) between merchants and soldiers, the first pretending to be safe under laws, which the other makes subject to his sword and his will.’ The Dutchess of Parma, who was always for the mildest measures, thought the public tranquility ought not to be disturbed by new oppressions, nor the royal authority lessened by being made a party to a war against its subjects,

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constantly dissuaded against the present conduct; but her advice being disre­ garded, she retired from the government of the Low Countries, not chusing to be answerable for measures so pernicious to the public interest. The provinces had demanded, some time before, the recall of the Cardinal de Granville, who returning to Madrid, hated by, and hating the country he came from, influenced the court in all its measures, and the Duke of Alva, invested with unusual powers, exercised them accordingly with the utmost rigour in vio­ lation of the laws of the country and humanity, and to the dishonour of the King, and the ruin of the Austrian greatness. The misery which these councils introduced are so shocking, that we cannot read of them, even at this day, without horror and detestation. / ‘The towns (says Sir William Temple) stomached the breach of their char­ ters; the people of their liberties; the Knights of the Golden Fleece the charter of their order; all complain of the new and odious courts of judicature; of the disuse of the states, and introduction of the forces; but all in vain, the King was constant to what he had determined, the Duke of Alva was in his nature cruel and exorable; the new army was fierce, brave, and desirous of nothing more than a rebellion in that country; the people were in a rage, but awed and unheaded; all was seizure and process, confiscation and punishment, blood and horror, inso­ lence and dejection, punishments executed, and meditated revenge.’ The council of Blood, which Alva had established, soon lopt off the lesser branches, but the greater took longer time in hewing down; but at length the Counts Egmont and Horne, notwithstanding their merits to the crown of Spain, and earnest sollicitations from all quarters in their favour, were sacrificed to the spirit of pride, cruelty, and distrust. – Their blood was the first cement of the republic of the united provinces. William Prince of Orange, an ancestor of our great deliverer, finding his life sought after, fled into Germany, being unable, without one foot of land, and without men / or money, to oppose his country’s enemy – but persecution sup­ plied him with every thing, it collected friends, it raised contributions, it gave resentment, and that inveterate courage called despair, but being weak he was hardly ever successful against his potent enemies, who insulted over the liberties of his country in the grossest manner, and moved with no remorse, and terri­ fied by no threats from a broken, divided, and unarmed people, and thinking forms and measures were not now necessary to be observed, demanded a general tax of the hundredth part of each man’s property to be raised immediately, and for the time to come the twentieth of all immoveables, and the tenth of what was sold. – ‘It was wonderful (says Voltaire) that the master of Mexico and Peru should be thus impoverished, as to stand in need of such taxes.’ – This rapacity and injustice compleats the general dissatisfaction, the popular fury is almost incredible, the sluices are opened regardless of themselves, so that the enemy is

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over-whelmed, the women list in companies, repair breeches, give alarms, and beat up quarters; the Duke of Alva in return slaughters innocent persons of both sexes without remorse, and both sides give into the most horrid practices and returns of ignomy, cruelty, and scorn – the unavoidable consequences of civil dissention – but this is / a scene too dreadful to be long dwelt on. In short, there­ fore, the Austrian greatness, after having tried every method which force, policy, and wickedness could suggest to reduce its revolted subjects, was obliged at last to treat with, and acknowledge them, in the most humiliating manner, as a free and independent people. It is not to be imagined however, that natural courage, or even despair, could have brought the affairs of the united provinces to this fortunate conclusion, if they had not been sometimes underhand and at other times openly assisted and supported by the other powers of Europe, who envied or dreaded the greatness, which Spain had attained to by the peace of Cambray. Many observations might be made on this detail of the rise and progress of the disturbances in the Low Countries; one is most obvious, which is: That the imposing taxes and introducing troops into the country, when a general peace made both unnecessary, were the first grounds of discontent, which was fer­ mented by establishing bishopricks and judicatures, unknown to the antient laws and customs, and questioning at the same time those rights and charters which the people claimed from their former princes; but that the general uneasiness, occasioned by this conduct, might have been easily appeased, if the mistakes in government had / been corrected in time: The dutchess of Parma, wise and mod­ erate in her disposition, advised it; but the cardinal de Granville, thinking his reputation for integrity, sagacity and knowledge, depended on the prosecution of those measures he had formerly advised, strenuously opposed every mitiga­ tion, and insisted on the vigorous execution of the edicts – This violence the times would not bear – and therefore the loss of the United Provinces, with their extensive and beneficial trade, must be imputed to this one man. A serious consideration of this remarkable event in history ought to alarm those, who now seem eagerly bent to drive things to extremities. But perhaps, however passionate they may appear in speech, they are in their own natures timorous, and would be fearful of answering for the effects and consequences of those violent councils which they give to others. Should this be the case, their conduct must be imputed to the rage and indignation of party and disap­ pointed ambition. It is in vain then we trouble ourselves with such men, but let us rather apply to those whose principles are founded on liberty, and are guided by moderation; and those who have inclination as well as abilities to extricate this kingdom and its dominions from their present confusion and miserable condition. /

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The discontent and uneasiness, so universal amongst his Majesty’s subjects in North-America, cannot but have the worst effects on the interests of both coun­ tries; it would therefore be the honest part of all the subjects, on both sides of the Atlantic, to endeavour to appease the present ferment: For should it be increased, or even be kept up to the pitch it now is at, the consequences will be most ruin­ ous. If it arises from the spirit of absolute independance, that spirit ought to be checked; but if from an injudicious conduct and hard and undeserved treatment from this country, that conduct and treatment ought to be changed. The loyalty of the American colonies, has, till very lately, been unimpeached; they have diligently laboured for you in peace, and zealously co-operated with you in war; descended from this country, they have the strongest attachment to it; and closely connected with it, all their produce centers here; they glory in the same king, have the same religion, and claim a right to the same liberties. These are strong motives of affection to you, but should these ties be loosened, the difficulty of succeeding in the attempt of independency is so great, that nothing but the most unhappy times can force them to venture on it; but, I must confess, the best security this country can have of the obedience of the Americans, is their conviction / of your good intentions towards them; for despair will give supernatural strength. Weak as they really are, should ever their fidelity be shaken, they will soon become strong by the malicious assistance of your rival neighbours, who will offer their service with eagerness to your revolting subjects, and then contending with the powers of Europe, and with enemies still more hostile, because, actu­ ated by despair, the event will be doubtful. However, the imagination of those people, who think that America will one day or other be independant of Great-Britain, is certainly not groundless. But this is no sufficient reason for fear, for this independance can hardly be brought about until some general calamity falls on Europe, or the protection which the colonies now claim from their several mother countries, is denied, or unable to be given from the particular distresses at home, power is subject to change; it is the natural course of things. The grandeur of the Roman empire is annihilated, and this island, and, formerly a province to it, and looked upon as almost out of the world, has a greater dominion than Rome ever prided itself in, and is now the centre of riches and authority. May it ever continue so! Nothing but its own bad policy can prevent it, the fear / of evils may produce them, as the dread of death frequently puts a period to life. There are indeed a set of men, who from dullness being totally ignorant of the colonies, or from pride, ashamed to have a knowledge of them, talk of what we, for such is their language, have done for them; what money we have spent; what blood we have lavished; and what trouble we have had in establishing and protecting them to this day; and after a thousand such self applauses, declaim­

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ing against the baseness ingratitude and rebellion of an obstinate, senseless and abandoned set of convicts, declare, if they had the government, they would – they know not what they would – These therefore so presuming and unin­ formed, it must be confessed, the Americans acknowledging only the authority of the parliament of Great-Britain, disclaim even now all subordination. The duties of a mother country and its colonies are reciprocal; the one expects encouragement and protection, and the other claims and secures to itself every advantage that an extensive commerce can produce. I will not make any comparison between Great-Britain and her American settlements, or say which of them has been most attentive to the discharge of their several duties. It would irritate perhaps one side or other; and this is not my inclination or design, but / the Americans ought not to be accused of ingratitude, the exports and imports of Great-Britain will free them from that charge. If it is expected they should for the future protect themselves, it will, I am afraid, give them at least that inde­ pendance of mind, which a man, who hopes for no favours, generally has. It is possible indeed they may feel your coolness towards them in a worse light: for recollecting the immense sums of money you have spent in the defence of the Germans, Dutch, and Portuguese, and indeed of almost all the other nations of Europe they think they have an equal right to your protection. You have entered, say they, into the wars of these aliens to support a fanci­ ful balance of power, and that too with a profusion of blood and money which has astonished Europe; but repine at, and grudge the expence of defending your brethren, and your essential commercial interests in America. It is perhaps diffi­ cult for an Englishman to account for this conduct upon the common principles which actuate the world; but the Americans imagine they see the grounds of it. The ministry of Great Britain, they say, being taken up with the more arduous affairs of Germany, and the struggles of parties at home, neglected America; the value of which was unknown until France gave / you an idea of it, by endeavor­ ing to take it from you. This roused the British nation, who, immediately seeing its importance, thought ea neglecta civitas stare non possist. The war, thus under­ taken for the defense of your essential interests, was prosecuted with vigor, and its consequential success gave you a right to demand much more than the origi­ nal objects of it. The Americans, who had exerted themselves to the utmost, as in a public cause they were bound to, flattered themselves that the peace would have enabled them to recover their strength, by establishing and extending their trade, which had been almost ruined during the course of the war; but unhap­ pily for them, scarce had hostilities ceased against France and Spain, the declared enemies of Great Britain, but the cry was – Intus est Hostis. We at once became seized with fear and jealousy of our fellow subjects in America; for, viewing a map made on a large scale, we found them seated on an extensive continent, which, we heard, nature had done much for, and which we

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dreaded, least time should establish into an empire of dangerous consequence: we said we had ruined ourselves for the sake of America, which would one day or other be the scourge of Europe; and that the blood we had shed would nour­ ish a viper, which would sting us to death. Thus, jealous of our fellow subjects, we repented / of what we had done; and, fearful of the strength which security from future encroachments would naturally increase, it was determined, say the Americans, to keep the colonies in that kind of dependence which is occasioned by weakness and poverty, and not in that subordination and obedience which arises from gratitude and the voluntary duties of children to parents. It is this system of policy, founded on our jealousy and distrust, that is the ground of the present discontent in America; for nothing can be more natural, than that jealously and distrust on one side, should produce on the other the same bad and liberal qualities, to the interruption of the most cordial friendship, and breach of the strongest duties. It is to this policy they impute the ruin of the Spanish trade, by the royal navy of Great Britain acting in the spirit of the Guarda Costas of Spain. It is true indeed the impropriety of this conduct was seen when we found it must ultimately affect ourselves; and, therefore, though the act is still in force, the execution of it is suspended; but the condition of the Americans is bad indeed, for the blow aimed at them, took place! and the dagger remaining rankles in the wound. The rumour of quartering soldiers on private houses, on the stale plea of necessity, / which may be urged, and generally is so, to justify the worst actions, the erecting of civil law courts; the establishing of an army, when all danger of an enemy is removed; the reasons which are generally urged for laying taxes on the colonies, namely, that the war was undertaken on their account, that Great Britain is exhausted, and that America is enriched by it, and therefore ought to pay its proportionate share, have alarmed them greatly, and given them fears which make them jealous of every step you take. They insist, if ever Great Britain had a war peculiarly her own, the last was; her essential and not fanciful interests being deeply concerned in it; and that it was as little undertaken for America, as that you sent forces to Portugal for the sake of that kingdom: they deny that Great Britain was exhausted by it, notwithstanding her pretended, or even real want of money: the pretended want was raised by the glamour of party and stock-jobbers, and the real one was owing, not to a decay, but increase of trade, which your unparalleled success occasioned, demanded greater capitals than usual. They declare they exerted themselves to the utmost they were able; that their public and private debts, and the destruction of their inhabitants, shew it; and that as they are obliged to consume the manufactures of Great Britain, they actually, though not named by / the parliament, pay every tax which is laid on Great Britain.

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I mention these grounds of their present uneasiness without any endeavor to shew their reasonableness; but I must beg leave to insist, though it should be allowed, the war was undertaken merely for the sake of the Americans, and that they had not contributed one earthing to its expense, yet that laying taxes on them is contrary to sound policy, and the object Great Britain had in view in establishing colonies. The first conquests and acquisitions made by the Romans, were made, like those of the Tartars, in a spirit of union, who adopting or blending themselves with those whom they had lately subdued, fixt their foundation on the firm basis of one inseparable interest. But as soon as the Romans found their empire sufficiently strengthened to enable them to act offensively, to the disturbance of the whole world, they poured their armies into all quarters, and conquered it, for the purposes of avarice and ambition. The objects they had in their view were, the glory of the Roman name, and the plunder of the rest of mankind, for the sole benefit of the Roman people. The colonies established by the modern European nations, in uncultivated and uncivilized countries, have had two apparent / views; the establishment of the Christian religion, and increase of dominion. These objects are generally set forth in all their commissions and charters, and the first of them was impiously asserted by the Spaniards, to sanctify the most dreadful inhumanity; the rest of the European nations have had more religion, than to make use of the sword, to inculcate the doctrine of the true God. England in particular hath acted in this respect with real wisdom and piety. The extension of dominion, the other object which the European nations had in view in establishing colonies, seems, considering the times when they were undertaken, to imply the extension of arbitrary power; for the kings of Europe then possessed, or claimed, the most absolute authority; all acquisitions there­ fore, however made, belonged peculiarly to them; colonies in particular, being undertaken by commissions from them, seem to have been originally established for their use and benefit; and so perhaps, considering the spirit of our laws at that time, they really would have been, even in this country, if the nature of our government had not changed, or our sovereigns had not divested themselves of those powers, which the common laws of the land gave them over new acquisi­ tions. / But as Englishmen could not be allured to leave their native homes, to labour in uncultivated countries, without a full security for the enjoyment of those liberties, which they had a right to from birth, the fullest assurances and most ample concessions were made to the adventurers, for their encouragement in so arduous an undertaking. By these charters and grants the settlers of the New World were as free, when they crossed the Atlantic, as they had been in this island; but as new-dis­

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covered countries and acquisitions were the immediate property of the crown, and consequently subject to its immediate government, the liberties which the inhabitants of them enjoyed, it is pretended, must be considered as mere conces­ sions from the crown, and not as they are in this country, independent thereof, and coeval with prerogative itself; but should this be the case, the liberties of the colonies cannot be infringed, for the crown has parted with all means of oppres­ sion, by granting them every right for the support of civil liberty, which this country enjoys; and as these grants and supposed concessions have been made voluntarily, for the encouragement of a brave and laborious people, they must have at least as much force and validity, as those which have been extorted and demanded in the field of battle. / The extension of dominion therefore, which is one of the expressed objects of our establishing colonies, cannot mean an uncontrouled power over slaves, but a dominion founded on freedom; and not founded for the purposes of ambition and vain glory of a monarch, or a partial regard to this or that country, but for the establishment and extension of the commerce of the British dominions. Here then is an essential difference, between the colonies established by the English, and the countries, which were conquered by the Romans; the first were composed of freemen, leaving their native homes to extend its commerce for the public good; the latter went over nations for the sake of plunder and vain glory: the returns which one country claimed from those, which were subject to it, were tribute and servility; but that which the other hath generally expected, are a lib­ eral obedience, filial affection, and those advantages which the balance of trade gives, for the benefit of both countries; I say for the benefit of both countries, because Great Britain being enriched and strengthened by it, is better enabled to give that protection which the colonies have a right to expect from her. The Romans acted consistently when they treated the conquered provinces with rapacity / and insolence for not being composed of Romans, but of aliens and enemies to the Roman name; they were subject to the will of the conquer­ ors; Rome was itself alone; and therefore, disregarding the common rights of mankind, she endeavoured to subdue and plunder the rest of the world for her sole aggrandizement. But the conduct of Great Britain ought to proceed on different principles; for as its colonies are composed of Englishmen and freemen, they ought to be treated as such – the interests of the mother countries, and its colonies, are insep­ erable – no partiality for the benefits of one to the prejudice of the other ought to be admitted; and their mutual advantage can only be obtained by the sources of trade, enriching the several channels through which it flows. It is then by trade alone that Great Britain, acting in a spirit of true policy, will endeavor to draw the wealth and produce of America to herself; all other methods will destroy the object for which the colonies were established. If the

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Americans indeed, possessed of valuable mines of gold and silver, or a lucrative commerce, still retained more than the balance of trade drew from them, Great Britain might, perhaps, consistently with self-interest, take the over-plus. But the fact is otherwise, all their gains and produce now centers here in the / way of trade, and therefore the system of taxing them is diametrically opposite to the real benefit of the nation in general, though it may serve the purpose of a tem­ porary expedient. – The Treasury may swell a little, but commerce will shrink to nothing. But it is better for the nation, that the riches of the Americans (if they have any) should pass through the accompting-houses of the merchants of Lon­ don, than be paid in at his Majesty’s Exchequer at Whitehall. A minister will propagate a different doctrine; he may, perhaps, wish to make the colonies a con­ venient property, to supply his want of popularity or knowledge in the resources of the kingdom; and reasons may be given by him for this kind of policy, suffi­ cient to impose on the generality of the nation; but it is probable the Americans will never be satisfied with the exertion of this kind of power, and submitting to it with reluctance, will reject it whenever they are able. And, indeed, however ready we may be to ease ourselves by taxing them, and reaping apparent emolu­ ment at their expense, we shall soon repent of our partiality; for however weak and wicked a future minister may be if this system is adopted and pursued, the spirit of liberty will exert itself in vain against him; for pretending hereby to secure the dependency of America, he will himself become independent of the / Commons of Great Britain, by the ease and facility with which he will raise the necessary supplies. Cromwell, though an arbitrary ruler, and Charles the IId, a necessitous Prince, pursued, in this respect, the true interests of Great Britain; for not­ withstanding the extravagance of the one, and despotism of the other, they plainly saw, that real power, and substantial and permanent wealth, could only be attained through the channels of commerce, and that there would be a suf­ ficient fund established for dissipation and corruption, and the highest power exercised, by rendering the trade of the colonies subservient to Great Britain; and therefore Cromwell had the sagacity to plan, and Charles the good sense to adopt the famous act of navigation, which the British colonies have to this time dutifully and implicitly obeyed: for though it has reduced them to a kind of political slavery, yet being founded on the soundest policy, they have submit­ ted to it with cheerfulness and affection to this country; and so long as they do so, you need no other evidence of your sovereignty over them; for let any one consider the nature of it, and he will find it the strongest mark and badge of subserviency and dependence. Let then the mutual, which is the real interest of Great Britain and her colo­ nies, be promoted, by constantly pursuing / the true object for which the latter

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were established, and let us not cut down the tree to get at the fruit. Let us stroke and not stab the cow, for her milk, and not her blood, can give us real nourish­ ment and strength; and for this purpose, let the spirit of the act of navigation (for sound policy has long since varied from the letter) be strictly adhered to; and then, however flourishing the commerce of America may become, either by its own efforts, or by the judicious encouragements and bounties given by this country, the whole advantage thereof must ultimately center here, and that with­ out discontent and disturbances, to the honour and satisfaction of his Majesty, and promotion of the public good.

FINIS.

THE TRUE INTEREST OF GREAT BRITAIN

The True Interest of Great Britain, with respect to her American Colonies, Stated and Impartially Considered. By a Merchant of London (London: G. Kearsley, 1766).

The anonymous author The Late Occurrences in North America1 may have been a merchant, judging by the emphasis placed on commerce in the British Empire. The also anonymous author of The True Interest of Great Britain, with respect to her American Colonies styles himself ‘a merchant of London’ and his views equally reflect mercantile interests. Indeed, so mercantile are his interests that he eschews discussing constitutional concerns, focusing exclusively on economic issues. The merchant divides North America ‘into three parts’ (below, p. 115). The ‘North’, New York and New England provided Britain with ‘excellent masts, and other timber’, furs, and fish. The ‘Midlands’, ‘the Jerseys, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina’, furnished ‘tobacco … corn, grain, and pulse; live cattle … iron and copper’ and potentially wine. The ‘South’, South Carolina and Georgia, produced ‘silk, coffee, cacao, cochineal, indigo, cotton, rice, olives, fruit and wine’. All three provided ‘hemp, flax, naval stores, paltry, pot-ash, and lumber’ (below, p. 116). Furthermore, ‘they receive from Great Britain not only every necessary (except provisions) but almost every luxury of life’ and ‘they continually are in arrears to us, and ever will be so’ as long as they remain primarily farmers and are not encouraged to manufacture for themselves by high taxes on British imports, and thereby ‘be a continual source of wealth to these kingdoms’ (below, pp. 116–17). The merchant’s economic geography prefaces his theme: that while taxation is necessary for protecting these assets, the ‘chief question is, whether the share laid upon them be too great, or whether it is not rather injudiciously placed?’ (below, p. 117). The merchant details bad economic policies, beginning with duties on ‘India goods, and German linens’ that might encourage American textile manufactur­ ing and 18-month bonds on ships’ masters that would ‘probably force them to quit’ the Africa trade, in which voyages could take over two years, especially when ‘ships lay seven, eight, and even twelve months, before they are compleatly slaved’ (below, p. 118). Moreover, colonists’ wealth and ability to pay taxes were

– 111 –

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undermined ‘by stopping the export to strangers of great part of their produce … thereby preventing them from taking such commodities, in payment for it, as they were accustomed to do, and which they might advantageously send to Europe’, sugar and timber in particular (below, p. 118). Though he declares himself agnostic about the Sugar Act, putting arguments from both sides, he nevertheless concludes that a tax of ‘fifty per cent. upon the prime cost’ would encourage smuggling, so that ‘One-penny per gallon … will produce a much more considerable sum, than what has been collected under the present duty’ of three pence (below, p. 124). After criticizing proscriptions on corn exports and duties on tobacco, he denies blaming particular ministers for policies, claiming instead to reproach ‘the system which has been invariably pursued by every set of ministers for a great length of time’ (below, p. 128). In other words, the mer­ chant is attacking nothing less than the whole navigation system. He begins his attack on the Stamp Act in the same way, stating that ‘though the stamp-duty has been the ostensible cause of the late riots and disturbances in that country, yet that, in reality, is but a small part of their grievance’ (below, p. 128). It was nonetheless significant, especially as colonists, while rich in land, ‘have no silver and gold’ to pay taxes on top of debts to British merchants. Fur­ thermore, whatever they pay in tax, ‘they must of consequence take so much less of your manufactures as would amount to that sum’ (below, p. 129). It is there­ fore ‘my sincere wish the late act of parliament may be repealed’ (below, p. 130). The merchant concludes with a fascinating proposal. He observes that ‘for many centuries, all the taxes paid, or services performed, were in kind … It there­ fore involves no absurdity in it to propose a tax upon the North Americans upon that footing’ (below, p. 131). He suggests ‘hemp and flax, as the articles most wanted by us, and which will be soonest raised and brought to perfection in the colonies’ (below, p. 131). Thus, a tax should be laid upon every white man, of the age of sixteen to fifty, and upon every black man or woman of the same ages; or in other words, upon every tithable person of 28lb. or one quarter of a hundred of clean well dressed merchantable hemp or flax; to be collected by the sheriff or proper officers in each parish (below, p. 132)

Each person, furthermore, would receive ‘receipts to pass in payment at the rate of 20s. current money’, for every hundredweight handed over that ‘will supply the place of a paper currency, which will have a permanent and intrinsic value’ (below, p. 132). Notes: 1.

See above, pp. 89–110.

THE

TRUE INTEREST OF

GREAT BRITAIN, WITH RESPECT TO HER

AMERICAN COLONIES, Stated and Impartially Considered.

BY A MERCHANT OF LONDON. __________ Distat, sumasne prudenter. An rapias. ___________Hor.1

LONDON,

Printed for G. Kearsely, in Ludgate-Street.

M, DCC, LXVI. /

THE

TRUE INTEREST

OF

GREAT BRITAIN, &c. The behaviour of the colonies in North America, on account of the late act of parliament, commonly called the Stamp-act, seems to be of so extraordinary a nature, as to demand the most immediate and attentive consideration of the leg­ islature. The author hopes, therefore, any attempt to investigate the causes of the conduct the Americans have pursued, will not be received with displeasure by the public; and if any hints in the course of it be found useful, he flatters himself, whatever imperfections and improprieties may be observed in it, will be par­ doned, as not intended to mislead? he will with readiness receive the correction of candor, and own his mistakes / the moment they shall be pointed out to him. The importance of the American colonies to Great Britain, seems to be so well understood, that it would be misspending time to endeavour to convince any body of a truth which is universally acknowledged; but it may not be improper, for the information of those who only consider the fact as indisputa­ ble in general, without being acquainted with the particular advantages resulting from the several different parts of that immense territory to Great Britain, if a short account be given of the nature of the traffic carried on by the colonies, on the continent in particular, and the grievances they have of late complained of; and which, perhaps, may be found to be the occasion of the late disturbances. I shall be easily pardoned for saying no more of the trade of the islands than is absolutely necessary, on account of their connection with the continent; their interest with respect to the mother-country having already been pointed out by many abler pens than mine, and being at present perfectly well understood. / North America, in the point of view in which I am desirous of considering it at present, ought to be divided into three parts, North, Midland, and South. The first comprehending all the country north of the Jerseys; the second, the Jerseys, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina; and the third consisting of South Carolina and all those countries which we are in possession of to the southward.

– 115 –

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The whole of this immense region, (whose boundaries to the westward have not hitherto been ascertained) extends from the 50th to the 25th degree of north latitude; and consequently the temperature of the air, and quality of the soil, must be extremely different in different parts of it. In the first division are produced excellent masts, and other timber; the animals furnish us with plenty of very rich furs, and the seas and rivers abound with prodigious quantities of fish, both of the greater and lesser kinds. The midland parts produce tobacco, all kinds of corn, grain, and pulse; live cattle of all sorts, both for burthen and pro­ visions; the country abounds in iron and copper mines; and, if the inhabitants can be induced to make / the attempt, there is not the least doubt but the best of wines may be produced in a country, where most delicious grapes grow wild on vines of a size hardly to be credited by those who have not been eye-witnesses of the fact. The third, or southern division, is capable of producing silk, coffee, cacao, cochineal, indigo, cotton, rice, olives, fruit and wine; and there are some arti­ cles common to each division, viz. hemp, flax, naval stores, paltry, pot-ash, and lumber. The exports of the northern provinces, to Great Britain, consist of sperma­ ceti and train oils, fish, furs, masts, ships, and some articles of lesser consequence. The greatest part indeed of the fish which are taken, are immediately carried to foreign markets; but the remittances made for that article to Great Britain, upon a moderate computation, are supposed to be not less than 300,000l. annually. Many of the ships built in North America are sold to foreigners, which is another means of bringing a large sum of money into the kingdom. Provisions, the most staple commodities of the countries immediately / southward of those last-men­ tioned, are likewise exported to advantage to foreigners, and the greatest part of their produce visits Great Britain in specie. Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina, in the single article of tobacco*, produce the sum of 500,000l. sterling, at least, from France, Germany, Flanders, Italy, and other parts of Europe. – The provinces of South Carolina and Georgia are of no small advantage to us: we are now in a great measure supplied from thence with our indigo: Europe has very little rice which is not brought to it from those colonies; and the large sums of money which we pay to France, Spain, Italy, Turkey and China, for silks, both raw and wrought, will be saved, if the southern provinces are properly encour­ aged to raise that article, and their value be almost inestimable. – Such are the exports of North America to Europe; / and, in return for them, they receive *

I do not here take any notice of the great advantage the revenue receives from the duty paid on tobacco consumed here, because I consider the money as raised upon the con­ sumers in England; but I only beg leave just to put the reader in mind that it is principally consumed by labourers and mechanics, who are enabled to purchase great part of it by the colonists purchasing the produce of their labours.

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from Great Britain not only every necessary (except provisions) but almost every luxury of life. In order to pay for which, they send the whole produce of their land, which will find a sale with us; but as that is much insufficient for that pur­ pose, they also send every thing else, which is the production of their country, to every place we will permit them to traffic, in order, thereby, to enable them to make up the deficiency, but in vain: they continually are in arrears to us, and ever will be so, while such immense tracts of fine land tempt the possessors of those which are adjoining to them to make new settlements, the effecting which will ever keep them from amassing other riches, and be a continual source of wealth to these kingdoms, as it insures us a constant supply of raw materials, and an increasing market to return them to, when wrought up. This short view of the nature of our trade with the North American colonies sufficiently points out from whence we are enabled to support that burthen of taxes / which our very existence, as a free people, obliges us to raise, in order to put ourselves upon a respectable footing in Europe, and to impower us to afford our colonies that protection and liberty they have so lately experienced, and still continue to enjoy. But, while we are straining every sinew in order to make that protection effectual, and that liberty permanent, it is not to be wondered at that we call upon them to sustain a part of that weight with which we are oppressed. The chief question is, whether the share laid upon them be too great, or whether it is not rather injudiciously placed? It is apparent, from what has been before said of the produce and imports of North America, that they have not endeavoured to enter into any kind of cultivation which will be prejudicial to the produce or manufactures of Great Britain; but let it not be from thence imagined, that it is not in their power: no person, who is the least acquainted with North America, but must be sen­ sible, that the wool of their sheep is as well adapted for all the uses to which it is applied in England, as any / in the world*. The only method to prevent their making any attempts of tha[t] kind, is, by encouraging them to turn their force to other objects, which we cannot so properly attend to, and making it as much their interest as ours, to seek a different employment from that of their fel­ low subjects in England. In order to do this, it is most certainly sound policy to *

About thirty years ago, when the produce of the tobacco colonies was at a very low price, the distress of the inhabitants obliged them to manufacture great part of their own wool, cotton, and flax; and there are merchants now in England, who remember most of the common people of those provinces cloathed in the cloth and linen manufactured amongst themselves. No longer ago than the year 1757, the same happened again in the province of Virginia, where it was disgraceful for a gentleman not to appear in a cotton coat made in his own family, – As soon however as the price of their commodities rose in Europe, they immediately sent home, (for such is the tender appellation Great Britain is known by in the colonies,) for all those articles which a necessary oeconomy obliged them before to make for themselves.

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make every thing, demanded by them from Great Britain, come to their hands as cheap as possible; as thereby every temptation will be removed, to their endeav­ ouring to produce, or make it amongst themselves; and every facility ought also to be / given to their exports, in order to enable them to pay for what they receive from us. If I am right, in this principle, there has certainly been a mistake com­ mitted in the late regulation, which directs the additional sums to be retained on the India goods, and German linens, exported to the colonies; as it obliges them to pay more money for the same goods than they used to do; which not being in their power, must, of consequence, prevent their demanding so large a quantity; by which means the nation loses, without the revenue being benefited. It is not only from this additional duty, that the American colonies are hurt, but they are prevented also from receiving slaves at so cheap a rate as heretofore; for in order to prevent the goods, which on exportation are to leave this additional part of the duty, charged on them at importation, from being clandestinely reimported, a new difficulty has been thrown in the way of the merchant trading to Africa, who is obliged to cancel his bond, given for the exportation of sundry sorts of India goods necessary for the trade of that quarter of the world, / within eight­ een months after the date thereof; by the oath of the master of the ship, who probably may not be able to finish his voyage in two years, as it often happens, (particularly upon the Gold Coast) that ships lay seven, eight, and even twelve months, before they are compleatly slaved. The restriction, last-mentioned, has given so much uneasiness to many principal merchants trading to Africa, as well as to the gentlemen who are concerned in supplying such merchants with the India goods, for which such bond must be given; that the first difficulty they are brought into by it, will probably force them to quit the business; and the loss of our African trade may be the fatal consequence. The obliging the Americans to pay more for the goods they receive from us, than heretofore, is not all that they have reason to complain of; we have done our endeavour, to prevent their being able to pay for them at all, by stopping the export to strangers of great part of their produce, which we cannot receive from them ourselves, thereby preventing them from taking such / commodities, in payment for it, as they were accustomed to do, and which they might advan­ tageously send to Europe: this we have done, by laying such a tax upon them as amounts to a prohibition: thus the following goods cannot be imported into North America without paying Foreign Sugar – Coffee – Indico –

£

1 2 0

2 19 0

0 per cwt. 9 per cwt. 6 per lb.

The duty of foreign molasses, is indeed reduced to three-pence per gallon; but I doubt whether any great advantages have resulted from this alteration.

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I am well aware, I shall be told, that such tax upon the importation of the articles above-mentioned, from the foreign American Islands to our settlements in North America, has been imposed in order to the advantage and emolument of our own islands, and not with any view to raise money upon the North Amer­ icans. I have too great a regard for the islanders, as fellow-subjects, to wish North America any advantages at their expense; but I have also the same regard for the inhabitants of North America; and cannot / without concern, see laws made to the prejudice of the latter, which are not only of no advantage to the islands, but manifestly prejudicial to the interest, both of North America and Great Britain: such must every law be, which prevents the export of those commodities from N. America to strangers, which cannot be exported by them to advantage to G. Britain, or the British American islands, or of which they have more than either, or both the last-mentioned countries can purchase from them; except the goods received in payment, should be such as manifestly tend to destroy the trade of some other part of the British empire; the contrary of which, I hope to be able to prove, will be the case with respect to the articles above-mentioned, of sugar, coffee and indigo. The forests of North America afford such an inexhaustible fund of lumber, that the inhabitants are able to supply not only our islands, but the whole world, with it; and therefore a freedom of exportation ought to be permitted, not only to the American, French and Spanish islands, / but also to Europe*. Flour, corn, horses, rice, and such other produce, as North America abounds with, ought also to be permitted a freedom of export to such of the islands of America (not sub­ ject to Great Britain) as shall be in want of, or willing to receive the same. Some people, indeed, are of opinion, with respect to the latter, that they ought not to be permitted to receive any thing, in payment, but cash; (for there are many object to their being allowed to import foreign molasses;) but I hope I shall have no great difficulty in shewing that such opinion is very erroneous: It must arise from one or other of these two reasons; either, that the payment to the North Americans of such commodities, injures our own islands, by / making their pro­ duce of less value, or, that it is much to the advantage of our rivals, in trade, to permit them such an opportunity of vending theirs; without which, they could *

Staves and heading, for the making of Casks, are much demanded at Bourdeaux, Porto, Lisbon, &c. but the colonies, from whence those articles can be exported of the best quality, and at the cheapest rate, are not only prohibited carrying them to those markets, in common with the rest of North America, but if that prohibition should be taken off, they are deprived of the advantage of any back freight, as they are not allowed to carry back even a load of salt, to cure their provisions with; nor are they permitted to load wine from Porto or Lisbon, or any part of the Spanish dominions, or even from the Canary islands.

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not cultivate their lands; or if they did cultivate them, it would be at so great a disadvantage, as to give our sugar colonies a great superiority over them. It was, I believe, upon a supposition the former objection was well founded, that the restriction complained of was laid upon the North American com­ merce: I dare say the question has been very maturely considered, and I therefore am fearful of being thought too hardy in asserting, that the fact would not prove so; but this I am sure of, a remedy would be very easily found, and might as eas­ ily be applied; though I own myself of opinion, such commerce between North America and the French and Spanish islands would in no wise affect the price of such commodities (either in our own islands or in Europe.) It has been asserted, that the British islands in America do not produce sugar sufficient to supply the demands of the British subjects; and as a proof of it, an account / of imports and exports has been produced from the Custom-house books for ten years, from 1745 to 1755*, the latest period that can with any propriety be pitched upon, as ever since the year 1755, there is no possibility / of distinguishing what was really the produce of the British colonies, and what was clandestinely imported as such, but which were in reality either the produce *

An account of the raw sugar imported from Christmas 1745, to Christmas 1755, distin­ guishing each year.

C. qr. lb. To Christmas 1746 – 753,449 0 17 1747 – 608,462 2 14 1748 – 981,449 1 6 1749 – 933,296 2 5 1750 – 914,044 2 23 1751 – 825,947 1 27 1752 – 837,083 0 5 1753 – 1,117,939 3 1 1754 – 859,131 2 12 1755 – 1,177,369 0 25 9,008,173 1 3 An account of the quantity of raw sugar exported from Christmas 1745 to Christmas 1755, distinguishing each year. To Christmas 1746 1747 1748 1749 1750 1751 1752 1753 1744 1755

– – – – – – – – – –

C. qr. lb. 93,244 0 22 51,885 1 1 115,727 1 11 128,107 2 6 107,964 0 22 43,769 3 6 35,712 2 16 55,687 2 6 42,818 2 17 105,030 0 24 779,947 1 19

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of prizes taken in America, or obtained by contraband trade with the French and Dutch islands: And by that account it appears, that no more than 900,817 cwt. of sugar was annually imported upon an average, and the average of the export was only 77,994 cwt. which is a quantity not sufficient for the consump­ tion of Ireland only, which used to supply the deficiency from Lisbon. And it is notorious, that notwithstanding the duty of five shillings which formerly was charged upon all foreign sugars imported into North America, more than half of what was consumed there was clandestinely imported from the French islands. Should this be the fact, it is very apparent, that however the price of sugar may be reduced by the North Americans having permission to use as well as import foreign sugars, there would be no disadvantage to the British empire in general, as the whole consumption of the produce of our islands is amongst ourselves; and therefore is like / an inland commerce, which very little affects the public, though the balance may be much more in favour of one part than of the other. But should I be mistaken in my opinion, that a much greater freedom of com­ merce with the French and Spanish islands than is at present allowed the North Americans, would by no means be injurious to the interest of the British Ameri­ can islands; yet there is an easy means of preventing such inconveniences, if it be apprehended; by obliging all such sugars, coffee, &c. to be re-exported to Great Britain, under such restrictions as shall render them unsaleable but for exporta­ tion: and there needs but very little argument to prove, that such permission to the North Americans to bring the commodities of the French and Spanish islands to markets, where our own are seldom or ever sent, can in no wise injure the latter in price; more especially as there is not the least reason to suppose, but that if the subjects of Britain did not bring them to market, other carriers would be found for them, if they could not bring them themselves. The last observa­ tion may serve in part for an answer to the other objections / made by some to this traffick, viz. that unless it was permitted, the French would have great dif­ ficulty in vending their produce, or could not cultivate their land, at least to the same advantage as at present, for want of lumber for their casks, and timber for houses, mills, &c. which they would not easily get elsewhere. I should be happy, if I could congratulate my countrymen upon the truth of that observation; but, alas! experience convinces us of the contrary. – The French and Spanish islands are large and fertile, and capable of producing almost every thing they have occasion for: the inhabitants having more valuable commodities to culti­ vate, are willing to deal with the British colonies for those they cannot obtain, unless employing their slaves to a less advantage than they do by purchasing of the North Americans; such, as without they bought them, would be so far from being of advantage to the owners, that they would really become burthensome to them; and it therefore must certainly appear very strange, that we ourselves should lay any obstacles in the way of the North Americans, that may obstruct their exchanging / the superfluous part of the produce of their country for sugar,

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cotton, coffee, indigo, &c. by which we in reality make the later commodities, in a sort, the produce of North America; and by permitting (if not compelling) the re-exportation of them to foreigners, we not only prevent that commerce from being injurious to our own American islands, but furnish the North Americans with a means of paying for those goods which they purchase of us, for which they have no other way of making remittances. It is the more to be wondered at, that such false notions of commerce should prevail in this instance, when a glaring example of the impropriety of it is before our eyes; it was under the same pretences of supporting our own sugar colonies, and distressing those of France, that English ships were prohibited loading sugars home to England from the French islands, by the very heavy duty which they still are liable to; it was urged, if we did not bring them home, the French could not; but what was the con­ sequence of the experiment? the French merchants either freighted or bought ships from other nations, and we not only lost the / freight, but a nursery for a great number of seamen, which is now a very considerable source of the French naval strength. I pretend not to say, that the French and Spanish islands do not receive a benefit from this intercourse with the British subjects in North America. I am sure if they do not, there is no reason in the world we should expect they will per­ mit it; for what commerce can long subsist where there is not a mutual benefit arising from it? All we have to consider is, whether, upon the whole, it is more advantageous to us than to forego it intirely. If any disadvantage would result from this commerce to the prejudice of our own sugar colonies, I hope I have proved it would not be from liberty given to the North Americans of importing the articles at present prohibited. I am not so well convinced of the propriety of their importing foreign molas­ ses; I will therefore state the arguments both for and against, as fairly as in my power, and leave my reader to determine for himself. On the one hand it is urged, ‘the North Americans have a necessity for that commodity, in order to carry on their trade to the / coast of Africa, and their fishery on the coast of New England and the banks of Newfoundland. With respect to their Affrican commerce, it is the sole article which they carry to the coast, where they dispose of it to the ships of the different nations trading there; from which they receive in payment all the different species of goods necessary to form a compleat cargo for trading with the natives; of whom, having purchased a cargo of slaves, &c. they return to America, from whence they remit the produce of their cargo to Great-Britain. That if they are prevented importing such foreign molasses, this branch of their commerce will be entirely lost. The use of it in the fishery is after it is distilled into rum, but it is also brewed into beer, with the assistance of spruce; which is the common drink of the peo­ ple employed in the fishery, who pay for it with the refuse of their fish, which are

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used by the French and Spaniards for the provision of their negroes; and which, unless disposed of to them, would remain on the hands of the fishermen for want / of other purchasers. It is further alledged that provided the importation of it into North-America be not permitted, or a heavy duty be laid upon it, no advantage can result therefrom; because the fishery at Newfoundland occasions such an intercourse between our fishermen and those of France, it will be impos­ sible to prevent our ships from being supplied by those belonging to the French islands, and that at an advanced price, proportioned to the difficulty they will be put to in obtaining it. – That unless we consent to take molasses in exchange for our lumber and other goods sent to the French islands, they will intirely prohibit the intercourse; and as a proof of that fact it is urged, that the duty of three­ pence per gallon, which is now imposed (but very partially collected) upon the importation of that article into North-America, has occasioned a duty of eight shillings per quintal to be imposed in the French islands on all British fish, which is extremely prejudicial to our fishery in America. ‘Another argument for the liberty of importing this commodity is, that a cargo / of lumber is of so small value, that the amount of it is not sufficient to purchase a compleat lading of any other articles.’ Allowing the above arguments, it ought to be considered, whether the injury done to the commerce of the British sugar islands does not counterballance the advantages gained by North-America, from the permitting such foreign molas­ ses to be imported and used, without restriction, not only for the purposes for which its utility is acknowledged, but likewise for the consumption of the inhab­ itants of North-America, and in their trade with the Indians. It is notorious the French have a much larger share of the sugar trade than ourselves; their islands being much more capacious, must certainly have greater quantities of good land, which consequently may be purchased on easier terms; and the inhabitants being less burthen’d with taxes than those of our islands, may certainly make sugar at a cheaper rate. But as the British sugar colonies have a market for their rum in Europe, and for their rum and molasses in America, they have thereby an advantage which in some measure ballances those the / French enjoy: And every interruption which can be given to the French in the disposal of those articles, tends to put the British sugar planter nearer upon a footing with their rivals than heretofore; as, unless we purchase them, it is hardly possible they can make any other use of them than in feeding their cattle; it not being the interest of France to suffer the distillation of molasses into rum, to the prejudice of the consumption of brandy. This therefore is a very strong motive for our dis­ couraging such importation of foreign molasses, particularly as we may expect that a considerable addition to what our own islands used to produce, will in all probability be made in the islands ceded to us by the late treaty of peace.2 The settlement of which will occasion a great demand for lumber, frames of houses,

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sugar works, mills, &c. and the canes planted on new land grow so luxuriant as to afford little else but molasses; it is but reasonable therefore to restrain the North-Americans from trading with foreigners, for any commodities which will particularly interfere with the produce of these new acquisitions. / It is also to be considered, whether the taking off the duty of eight shillings per quintal, which the French have laid upon the British fish imported into their islands, will be a consequence of our permitting the free importation of their molasses; because, if not, the duty charged by them upon our fish amounting to a prohibition, I see no way our fishermen can dispose of it but in exchange for the French rum and molasses at sea. – But if, notwithstanding what is before urged, the necessity of the North-Americans, for the supply of their fisheries and their African trade, renders it expedient for them to be permitted the importation of foreign mollasses, it will be worth consideration, whether it ought to be charged with the present duty of three-pence per gallon, or indeed with any duty at all. If it be necessary to permit the importation of it, for the sake of the two branches of commerce above mentioned, every impost upon it will in some degree be an injury to them. But there is another reason, which perhaps may appear more conclusive to those who expect to raise money by the duty: it is, that when any tax is laid upon a commodity / nearly equal to the present, which is fifty per cent. upon the prime cost, it is such a temptation, that even in England there is the utmost difficulty, nay, an absolute impossibility, totally to prevent smuggling, although the number of supervisors, tide and land waiters, riding officers, &c. are almost as numerous as the traders: What chance is there then of collecting so heavy a duty in a country like America, where not more than a dozen officers are appointed to superintend and guard the commerce of that coast, from Cape Charles to Rhode island? If therefore there be a propriety in laying any tax upon the importation of this commodity, it ought not to be so heavy as to lay the trader under any temptation to engage in a clandestine commerce. One-penny per gallon is certainly as much as it ought to be charged with; and I will venture to foretell, without the spirit of prophecy, that it will produce a much more con­ siderable sum, than what has been collected under the present duty. I own however, that I should think the northern colonies would be extremely benefitted, if the consumption of the rum distilled / from such molasses could be restrained to the purposes for which they are allowed to be necessary, as the use of it amongst themselves is become so immoderate as to call aloud for some restriction; and with respect to their commerce with the Indians, the want of it may be supplied, as usefully at least, by spirit distilled from their corn, to say nothing of the produce of their vines, provided they would be induced to cul­ tivate them. – If there is a practicability of restraining the use of such rum to the purposes of commerce, it will most certainly very considerably lessen the demand for it, and will, in some measure, answer the purpose of distressing the

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French sugar planter. In hopes an expedient will be found for this purpose, it will be necessary to examine the remaining reasons urged for an unlimitted per­ mission to import the article in question, viz. that a cargo of lumber is of so small value, molasses is the only lading they can purchase in return; and unless they are allowed to receive that, they must come back dead freighted. The other is, that unless they agree to receive molasses in payment, the French, &c. will not purchase their commodities at / all. The first objection I hope will, in a great measure, be obviated, if they have liberty of loading those commodities on board, which are not at present in their power to do; as there appears to me no reason whatever (provided my principle is a good one) why they may not purchase with cash, or bills of Exchange, sufficient to compleat their lading of the more valuable commodities, provided the purchase so to be made be not at a higher price than it ought to be, to leave the purchaser a freight for his proffit; because, if such commodities are obliged to be re-exported, the cash will be again sent back into the kingdom, with an addition of all that shall be gained by the carriage of them. Indeed I do not see why such ships may not be permitted to proceed directly with their cargoes to Great-Britain,* where such part of them as they shall not be allowed to dispose of may be landed for exportation, and put under the king’s locks, and each particular package be made its own warehouse, as is at present, the case with respect to tobaccos. Bond may also be given for re-exportation within a limited time, / upon pain of paying such duty as shall be thought proper, which will be expressed in the bond. This would effectually prevent a possibility of its interfering with the produce of our own islands. The other objection seems at first sight to have greater weight; for to be sure, if the getting a market for their molasses is the only advantage resulting to the French and Spanish islands in the West Indies, from their intercourse with the North Americans, they would be much to blame to permit it on any other terms. But they certainly receive other benefits, which render the commerce desirable to them; though, perhaps, the ballance would be rather in favour of the North Americans, as they have no other market for the goods they dispose of there. It may, however, with propriety be said, in a commerce where no cash passes in payment of a ballance, but the whole is carried on by way of barter, that the trade is mutually advantageous. For although it be allowed the French islanders have provisions and lumber sufficient for the maintenance of their people, and the supply of their necessities, yet the North Americans can afford to sell these commodities / to them for much less than they can afford to raise them at; or, to explain myself more clearly, one slave employed in producing sugar, cotton, cacao or indico, will be able to produce enough of such articles to purchase a much *

Though there is no law to prevent their importation into Great-Britain, yet there is so heavy a duty paid at landing as renders it impracticable. Vide p. 121.

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greater quantity of those the North Americans carry to them, than his labour could procure, and, whatever the difference is, will be gain to them; so that there is no reason to dread a suppression of that trade, unless it be from an imagina­ tion that they can thereby induce you to trade with them upon their own terms. And, as a farther proof that such trade will be connived at (if not permitted) the Dutch, from St. Eustatia and Curaçoa, trade with the French islands for sugar, indico, &c. for which they give North American produce in exchange. And the opulence of the inhabitants of those barren Dutch islands, shew they carry on the trade to advantage, although they first purchase those very commodities of our Northern colonists themselves, and consequently trade under the disadvan­ tage of a double freight, which in such bulky articles is of vast importance. I do not pretend to say the commerce carried / on by the Dutch is altogether allowed of; but if they can carry on such a clandestine trade, cannot we do the same? and the North Americans will deserve much less reproach for carrying on a con­ traband trade with foreigners, to the emolument of the whole nation, than for smuggling upon their own coasts, to the manifest injury of Great Britain. After what I have said, I leave it to better judgments, whether any, and what restriction ought to be laid on the importation of foreign molasses into North America: but, whatever may be determined on that head, it is certain, that the trade of the N. Americans have, in other instances, been exceedingly interrupted by the restrictions it has lain under from the late regulations; and I am apt to believe the difficulties we have put them to, have produced no one advantage, either to Great Britain or its revenues, while the inconvenience they have felt, has ill dis­ posed their minds towards us, and, in a great measure, been the source of their late misbehaviour. As I have so freely given my opinion upon this subject, it may perhaps be imagined, I mean to reflect upon / the gentleman principally con­ cerned in forming the regulations complained of, I should be extremely sorry, if that was the case; on the contrary, I profess myself to have a very high opinion both of his abilities and integrity; and I consider the late regulations, as the suite of a system that has been long adopted, for the government of the colonies; and the inconveniences now complained of are not so great as they have heretofore sustained, with a most admirable patience. I could give a variety of instances, but a few may suffice: in the late war, when North America was blest with the most plentiful harvests ever known there, a general was empowered to lay an embargo on provisions all over the continent, which prevented the exportation of such a quantity of corn, that, I speak within compass when I say, as much was destroyed by vermin as would have brought the owners upwards of 500,000 l. sterling; nor was this the only ill consequence resulting from this injudicious and ill-timed step; for the vast quantities of corn, obliged thereby to be stored, bred such a multitude of those vermin / as destroyed great part of their succeeding crop; and years elapsed before the inhabitants of Maryland, and the southern parts

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of Pennsylvania were freed from that particular kind, called the wolfe; and it is to be observed, that this kind of fly was not known before that period, in any part of the continent north of South Carolina. Since then no want of corn in Great Britain has ever occasioned a particular permission in favour of the colo­ nies to import it; but they have only been allowed such permission in common with other nations, whose proximity have given them an opportunity to reap the advantage, to the utter exclusion of the colonies, except in one instance*, although thereby a considerable sum is carried out of the kingdom; when, if the colonies alone were allowed to send corn to us when we wanted it, it would be sent in payment of part of the debt they owe us. The tobacco colonies have suffered much from the heavy duty laid upon their produce, which has vastly lessened its consumption, / and the consequence will soon be severely felt, in the loss the revenue will thereby sustain. Every body must remember when that article was given gratis by the publicans to their cus­ tomers, which prodigiously encouraged the consumption, as it was generally called for; and, if very little of it used, was probably destroyed; now, amongst the common people, whoever takes tobacco, generally carries it in his own box: multitudes have left off taking it; and, as it is notoriously nauseous at first, it will probably be more disused, especially as it is in a sort banished polite company; and even in the form of snuff, is not half so much made use of as heretofore. It is not indeed to be supposed people, even of the middling rank, will deprive themselves of any gratification, of the kind I mention, from the consideration of the increase of its price, which to be sure is very trifling, when put in competi­ tion with what use has in some measure made, if not a necessary, an amusement, we should not willingly be deprived of: but it is not so with the lower people; if they find the price advance upon them, / they must content themselves with a less quantity; and, finding that expensive, they will endeavour to prevent their children accustoming themselves to the use of it, which they will the readier do, as they will not be induced to it from the ridiculous, though constant practice of aping their superiors. The tobacco planters would not however have reason to complain, provided the imposts charged upon that commodity were proportionable to what was paid by others; but the contrary is so much the case, that when a duty is laid, ad valorem, upon dry goods, that article, by being rated at ten times† more than its value, pays ten times more in proportion than any other goods which are taxed at the same time. Another hardship which the colonists have long complained of likewise, and which is not only an injury to them, but to Great Britain, is, that many spe­ * The year 1758; when there was no corn in Europe. † Tobacco, though upon an average it is not worth more than two-pence per pound, is rated it twenty-pence per pound.

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cies of goods which are intended for exportation (even tobacco, which is put under the king’s / locks) and bond given for that purpose, are obliged to pay the old subsidy, or perhaps other duties upon the landing of them,* without which they cannot be carried to the market they are intended; by which means the merchant is not only disabled from giving his correspondent a larger credit, or extending his correspondence, by being forced to keep a large part of his capital unemployed, for the purpose of making such deposit, but is obliged to export such goods immediately, in order to get the sum of money thereby locked up at liberty again, although such immediate exportation may be a means of glutting the market they are sent to, and loses to the nation a considerable sum in ware­ house rent, which we pay to Holland, Hamburg and other places. I could give many other instances of the like kind, but hope the foregoing will be sufficient to shew the necessity of an inspection into, and alteration of such particular laws, as shall be found injurious to the commercial interests of Great Britain; and at the same time my mentioning them will shew, / that I do not mean to blame any particular man, or set of men, for the late regulations; but that my arguments are levelled at the system which has been invariably pursued by every set of ministers for a great length of time. Nor have I the least doubt, but if any plan had been proposed to them, for the advantage of the colonies, consistent with the good of the whole British empire, they would have readily put it in execution, of which the many bounties, and other encouragement, given to the colonies from time to time, are sufficient evidence. I have still a further view in pointing out the oppression the commerce of North America has for a long time lain under; to shew, that though the stampduty has been the ostensible cause of the late riots and disturbances in that country, yet that, in reality, is but a small part of their grievance; and, however warm and heated imaginations may call the occurrences in America by the name of insurrections or rebellion, yet, I hope, no sober-thinking man will consider what has passed there, as the act of the people of America in general. I doubt not there is a general repugnance / to the tax, but am sure the opposition to it, which will be made by the colonies, will be such as is consistent with that obedience and attachment they have always shewn to their King and their fellow subjects in Great Britain. If any individuals have committed outrages, let them be punished; but let that kind of mercy temper justice, which always ought to be shewn to persons who are mistaken. Many gentlemen of great abilities in North America have thought the colonists, by their charters, or for other reasons, exempt from internal taxes, imposed on them by any other authority than that of their own assemblies. Persons acting under such a supposition may be allowed to plead it in extenuation of crimes, which might otherwise, with more propriety, be called *

Particular foreign sugars, which are liable to a duty of 1l. 17s. 6d. per C. upon importa­ tion.

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by the harsh epithets which some have given them. As I am not a judge myself of the claim made by the colonists to such exemption, and it is now to be consid­ ered by the highest authority of the kingdom, I shall decline giving my opinion, and only endeavour to shew, that though there may neither be an impropriety / in Great Britain’s imposing internal taxes upon the colonies, or inability in the inhabitants to pay the taxes imposed, it deserves the utmost attention on our part, that their share of the burthen may be proportioned to their strength, and so disposed, as to render the remainder easier to be born by us. If they are inju­ diciously taxed, the consequence will be fatal in proportion to the amount of the sum raised; and every tax seems to be an improper one, which shall tend to take bullion from the North American colonies. I do not pretend to say, that the North Americans ought, from their poverty, to be exempt from bearing a proportion of taxes, for they are not poor, their riches are however of the patriar­ chal sort; they have large tracts of land, and ‘flocks and herds, even much cattle,’ but they have no silver and gold; at least what little they have is not sufficient for their most necessary purposes; and a paper currency has been substituted in their stead, by which means they are enabled, when their industry procures them a small addition, to ship it home in payment of part of their debts due to the merchants of Great Britain, / with whom they deal annually for more than the amount of their whole produce; nor have they been hitherto able to procure, from their commerce with other nations, sufficient to pay the over plus, but, on the contrary, are at present much in arrear, several millions being computed to be now due from North America to these kingdoms. It is therefore evident, that if we raise any money upon the colonies, it will be much to the disadvantage of the inhabitants of Great Britain. We at present have their all, and can we have more? Nor will such tax (be it what it will) at all increase the revenue. Suppose, for instance, the sum of 20,000l. sterling, levied on the inhabitants of Virginia and Maryland, they must of consequence take so much less of your manufactures as would amount to that sum, and must also employ so many hands in making such as they would not receive from you as would enable them to make good that deficiency, by which means the revenue would lose at least as much by its decrease in another branch as the 20,000l. amounts to. – But let us examine this matter a little more attentively. The labour of / a negro in the tobacco colonies is worth about 5l. sterling; or say he can maintain himself in food, and make the value of 15 cwt. of tobacco. Thus it will require the labour of 4000 men to raise the sum required to be levied. The consequence of this sum raised and paid to government will be, that the planters will be disabled from remitting so much to the merchants, to whom they are in debt in England, who will thereby be prevented from sending them cloathing, and other manufactures to the same amount, the want of which will necessarily oblige them to employ other of their slaves in manufactures, the number of which I will suppose to be only half of

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those who were employed to pay the tax, as I compute the annual expence of cloathing for a negro, plantation utensils, &c. exported from Great Britain, to amount to about 2l. 10s. – Two thousand people being thus employed in mak­ ing British manufactures, will naturally occasion the growth of tobacco to be less by 3000 hhds than it would otherwise be, and consequently so much less will be imported into Great Britain. / It is supposed Great Britain consumes about one-fourth of all the tobacco grown in the British colonies; and the duty upon an hogshead of tobacco, for home consumption, amounts, upon an average, to upwards of 25 l. sterling, which upon 750, being the fourth part of 3000 hogsheads, amounts to 18,750 l. to say nothing of the loss to the revenue in the branches of beer, soap, candles, &c. which would have been consumed by the British manufactures in making the goods which the sum of money raised by the tax would have paid for. At the same time I consider the disadvantage resulting from an attempt to raise money on the North Americans, I can’t help lamenting the apparent incon­ sistency such a step shews in the councils of Great Britain, which cannot fail of reflecting great dishonour upon them. It is but a very short time since the legislative power of these kingdoms gave the most public proofs of their senti­ ments with respect to the inability of the inhabitants of North America to pay taxes, by sending them a considerable sum of money, in order to pay the neces­ sary expences incurred by them in the / late war. This money was sent when they were much more able to sustain any burthen of that kind than they have ever been since. And there can be no doubt that inability will not be removed by the restrictions their commerce has lately been laid under. What then must have been their surprize! when they found the public opinion so soon changed as to require back not only the money so sent them, but a much greater annual sum? I have already shewn, in the instance of tobacco, how little it will assist the revenue to lay taxes upon a people who have nothing but labour to pay you with, and which they have already mortgaged to you for many years to come: and though perhaps it may be said, that tobacco is the only article which the truth of my assertion can be demonstrated from, yet that alone will evince the impro­ priety of raising money upon the colonies, as it cannot be doubted but it will operate in the same manner upon every other article, though perhaps not in the same degree. I own, if money is to be raised upon the colonies at all, I am ready to acknowledge the propriety of that sort of tax / which has been lately imposed in preference to any other, as it least affects the persons of the least property. But at the same time I acknowledge a stamp duty to be a tax which is less felt than almost any other, yet I cannot help expressing my sincere wish the late act of parliament may be repealed, as I am convinced it will never answer the intent for which it was passed; nor is there a practicability of carrying it into execution in many parts of North America, even if no opposition should be made to it. If

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the stamps are to be paid for in specie, the inhabitants of the provinces of North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland, are in a deplorable situation, for I believe 1000l. sterling cannot be found in all the three. If in paper currency, what can be the advantage resulting from the receipt of it? when such currency is of no use beyond the limits of the province in which it shall have been respectively passed. As I have asserted the impropriety of raising money upon the North Ameri­ cans, and at the same time acknowledged the expediency of their contributing towards the support of the government of Great Britain, / it may be looked upon as a kind of paradox, but I hope to explain myself satisfactorily. Without entering into a critical disquisition, how, and in what manner, and for what purpose, government was first instituted amongst mankind, it will not, I believe, be doubted, but that wherever the supreme power has been lodged (whether in one or many) the inhabitants of each nation have held their pos­ session by a kind of feudal tenure, and for many centuries, all the taxes paid, or services performed, were in kind; and it is but of late years that money has been made use of amongst us as a kind of universal medium, either for rent, taxes, or the common services performed by feudal tenants. It therefore involves no absurdity in it to propose a tax upon the North Americans upon that footing. And though they cannot, without great prejudice both to themselves and Great Britain, pay a tax in money, yet they will not be injured, or indeed oppressed, by being obliged to pay a tax in such kind of commodities as will be beneficial to Great Britain, at the same time it is of advantage / to themselves. I flatter myself also, that the charge, of innovation, or novelty, will not be against me, when it is considered, that the Windward islands have long since adopted this plan, and actually at present pay a duty of 4 1-half per cent. of all their sugars to the King, which sugars are shipped home, and disposed of by the Commissioners of the Customs. – Nor does any ill consequence seem to have ever resulted, or to be apprehended from that method. Indeed the fact is, that almost all the parochial and other taxes, for the support of the internal police of the several governments in America, have been collected in produce; in many provinces the custom still continues; and many merchants, now living in London, must remember, that not many years ago all commerce was carried on by way of barter, and the price of one species of goods regulated by another, instead of by money: there cannot therefore be any objection to laying such a tax upon the colonies, and I hope it may be done so as not be burthen some to them, while it may be highly beneficial to us. – If the expediency / of such a tax be approved, I need take very little pains to point out what are the kinds of produce the Americans ought to pay it in, every one will be ready to mention hemp and flax, as the articles most wanted by us, and which will be soonest raised and brought to perfection in the colonies; and I believe there is not a district on the whole continent where great quanti­ ties of ground cannot easily be found fit for the purposes of one or both these

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valuable materials; but that such tax may not be oppressive to the inhabitants, or by any means distress them in their circumstances, which would prevent their increase, and be therefore productive of consequences infinitely more disadvan­ tageous than would be ballanced by any immediate increase of the revenue, I would propose, whatever quantity they are obliged to furnish shall be paid for at a fixed price. But to explain myself more at large, I would propose that, in lieu of the present stamp-duties, a tax should be laid upon every white man, of the age of sixteen to fifty, and upon every black man or woman of the same ages; or in other words, upon every / tithable person of* 28lb. or one quarter of a hundred of clean well dressed merchantable hemp or flax; to be collected by the sheriff or proper officers in each parish, (in the same manner as the public dues are in Maryland), which should once or twice in a year be brought in the king’s ware­ houses, and there delivered to the collector of his Majesty’s customs for the port or district which shall be appointed for that purpose; thence to be shipped to Great-Britain, to the consignation of the commissioners of the navy for his Maj­ esty’s use. Upon the first collection of this duty, by the sheriff or parish officers, I would propose, that receipts should be given for the amount of the quantity of hemp or flax delivered by each person, such receipts to pass in payment at the rate of 20s. current money, for every 1 cwt. mentioned therein to be received; and which receipts, being carried to the collector of the customs, after the hemp and flax shall have been delivered to him as / abovementioned, shall by him be received, and bills upon the treasurer of the navy given in their stead, at the rate of, one hundred thirty-three, pounds six shillings and eight-pence currency, for 100l. sterling, payable within a limited time in Great-Britain, so as to prevent the government being in any actual advance for the said commodities; which, if they should not be wanted for the use of the navy, might be sold by a public sale in the same manner the four one-half per cent. sugars now are sold by the com­ missioners of the customs. I apprehend, that the price above-mentioned will on the one hand be thought fully sufficient as on the other. I am fully convinced, the crown would gain suf­ ficiently, even after deducting the expences of package, freight, warehouses, &c.† And I apprehend the utility of this plan is too apparent to need any comment. The payment for it in those kinds of negociable receipts will supply the place of a paper currency, which will have a permanent and / intrinsic value, and which, being every year renewed, will continue to augment the riches of the country in *

An acre of tolerable ground will produce from four hundred to seven hundred and an half of hemp or flax, besides the seed; and one negroe will more than tend five acres of land; so that one quarter of a hundred is no very considerable part of a man’s labour. † Perhaps it may not be thought improper in times of peace, that the King’s ships in the American station might annually return to Great Britain, armed en flute, with the hemp and flax on board, which would be a further saving to the nation.

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proportion as the number of inhabitants shall increase, and supply them with a new staple commodity, for a great part of which they will be sure of a market at home, and are thereby furnished with a new means of making remittances to Great Britain. It is not my intention to form a plan for this kind of tax which shall not be liable to objections, I only mean to trace the outlines; nor do I, by mentioning the arti­ cles of hemp and flax, pretend to say, there may not be other articles which may in some parts be substituted to greater advantage in their stead, as silk, cotton, &c. but I have mentioned hemp and flax as the primary objects of our regard, not more on account of their utility, than with respect to the ease and facility with which they may be cultivated in every part of N America; and I should apprehend, that the advantages to our fellow subjects in that part of the world will, by this mode of taxation (if such a name may with propriety be applied to it) be as great as to the inhabitants of Great Britain, as it / not only brings a mar­ ket home to their doors, which will supply them with a paper currency of equal value with Exchequer bills, but also encourages so useful a mode of cultivation, as, while it tends to enrich them, insures to the mother country the means of fit­ ting out a fleet whenever the interests of any part of the British empire demand that exertion of our strength, when we may otherwise be prevented from doing it at a time of our greatest necessity.

FINIS.

PROTEST AGAINST THE BILL TO REPEAL THE

AMERICAN STAMP ACT

Protest against the Bill to Repeal the American Stamp Act, of last Session (Paris: Chez J. W., 1766).

This Protest against the Bill to Repeal the American Stamp Act was written anony­ mously and published in Paris. But its signatories are all famous political figures, some of them heavily involved in imperial administration. These include three of the most influential orchestrators of new imperial policies. The fourth Duke of Bedford, Lord John Russell (1710–71), was First Lord of the Admiralty and Privy Councillor from 1744 and Secretary of State for the Southern Depart­ ment from 1748 to 1751, when he resigned in protest at the Duke of Newcastle’s sacking of his Admiralty successor, the Earl of Sandwich. After Newcastle resigned in 1756, he became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and Lord Privy Seal. He was a negotiator and a signatory of the 1763 Peace of Paris and that year became Lord President of the Council. The fourth Earl Sandwich, John Mon­ tagu (1718–92), was a Patriot Whig protégé of Bedford. He returned to the Admiralty in 1763 and again from 1771 to 1782, and was Secretary of State for the Northern Department in 1763–5 and 1770–1. ‘Dunk Hallifax’ was George Montagu-Dunk (1716–71), second Earl of Halifax, President of the Board of Trade, 1748–61, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1761–3, First Lord of the Admi­ ralty, 1762, Secretary of State for the Northern Department, 1762–3 and 1771, for the Southern Department, 1763–5, and Lord Privy Seal, 1770–1. The Protest is similar in form to Charles Jenkinson’s ‘Notes on the Right to Tax the Colonies’ (1765).1 The writing is more suitable for publication, but it is a brief iteration of arguments for parliamentary sovereignty and taxation. Its lack of analytic elaboration suggests how far arguments over these issues had come in a very short time and how familiar they had become. The first argument is that to repeal the Stamp Act ‘would in effect, surrender [Parliament’s] antient, unalien­ able rights of supreme jurisdiction, and give them exclusively to the subordinate Provincial Legislatures established by prerogative; which was never intended … and is not in the power of prerogative to bestow’ (below, p. 140). Second, the act – 135 –

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‘was passed in the other House with very little opposition, and in this without one dissentient voice’ (below, p. 140). Also, the act ‘might have been altered by a Bill to explain and amend it, without repealing the whole’ (below, p. 140). Furthermore, taxation must ‘extend itself to all the members of the state in pro­ portion to their respective abilities’ (below, p. 140). Fifth, colonists could afford taxation of £60,000 a year between 1.2 million people, amounting to ‘only one shilling per head a year … but a third of the wages usually paid to every labourer or manufacturer there for one day’s labour’, especially as they had already paid £1,755,000 of their war debts, with the remaining £760,000 to ‘be paid in two years more’ (below, p. 141). Britons, meanwhile, paid the ‘vast expence of almost a shilling in the pound land tax’ while ‘labouring under a debt of seventy mil­ lions, contracted by them to support a very dangerous war, entered into for the interest and security of those Colonies’ (below, p. 141). It was also expedient for the singular institution of Parliament to tax the colonies because ‘every Province being separate and independent on the others, and having no Common Council impowered by the constitution of the Colonies to act for all, or bind all’ (below, pp. 141–2). Seventh, the claim not to be represented in Parliament must logi­ cally extend ‘to all other laws, of what nature soever, which that Parliament has enacted, or shall enact, to bind them in times to come, and must (if admitted) set them absolutely free from any obedience to the power of the British Legislature’ (below, p. 142). Next, the appearance of weakness and timidity in the Government and Parliament of this kingdom, which a concession of this nature may too probably carry with it, has a manifest tendency to draw on further insults, and by lessening the respect of all his Majesty’s subjects to the dignity of his Crown, and authority of his Laws, throw the whole British empire into a miserable state of confusion and anarchy (below, p. 143)

Ninth, the Declaratory Act would not counteract the effects of repeal of the Stamp Act ‘as men will always look more to deeds than words’ (below, p. 143). Finally, the Protest concludes, ominously, that we are convinced from the unanimous testimony of the Governors, and other officers of the Crown in America, that if, by a most unhappy delay and neglect to provide for the due execution of the law, and arming the Government there with proper orders and powers, repeatedly called for in vain, these disturbances had not been continued and encreased, they might easily have been quieted (below, p. 144)

Notes: 1.

See above, pp. 15–20.

PROTEST AGAINST THE

BILL TO REPEAL THE

AMERICAN STAMP ACT, OF

LAST SESSION.

A PARIS,

Chez J. W. Imprimeur, Rue du Colombier Fauxbourg St. Germain, à l’Hotel de

Saxe. M.DCC.LXVI.

Prix, dix huit Sous.

Avec Approbation, & Privilege. /

SPEAKERS.

Against the Repeal. 1 Earl of Coventry 3 Earl of Sandwich 5 Earl of Hallifax 9 Lord Botetourt 10 Earl of Suffolk 12 Lord Lyttleton 14 Lord Mansfield 16 Ld. Vis. Townshend 17 Earl Temple 18 Duke of Bedford /

For the Repeal. 2 Duke of Newcastle 4 Duke of Grafton 6 Duke of Richmond 7 Earl Powlett 8 Earl of Pomfret 11 Lord Chancellor 13 Earl of Shelburne 15 Lord Camden

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The Order of the Day being read for the second reading of the Bill, entitled, An Act to repeal an act made in the last session of parliament, entitled, An Act for granting and applying certain Stamp duties and other duties in the British Colonies and Plantations in America, towards further defraying the expences of defending, protecting, and securing the same, and for amending such parts of the several acts of parliament relating to the Trade and Revenues of the said Colonies and Plan­ tations, as direct the manner of Determining and Recovering the Penalties and Forfeitures therein mentioned. Then the said Bill was read a second Time, and it being proposed to commit the Bill, the same was objected to. After a long Debate thereupon, the Question was put, Whether the said Bill shall be com­ mitted? It was resolved in the Affirmative. Contents Proxies

73 32

105

Not Contents 61 Proxies 10 Majority

71 34

First. Dissentient, Because as this House has, in this Session by several resolutions, most solemnly asserted and declared, first, ‘That the King’s Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, / and Commons of Great Britain, in Parliament assembled, had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority, to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the Colonies, and people of America, subjects of the Crown of Great-Britain, in all cases whatsoever:’ Secondly, ‘That tumults and insurrec­ tions of the most dangerous nature have been raised and carried on in several of the North American Colonies, in open defiance of the power and dignity of his Majesty’s Government, and in manifest violation of the laws and legislative authority of this Kingdom:’ Thirdly, ‘That the said tumults and insurrections have been encouraged and inflamed, by sundry votes and resolutions passed in several of the Assemblies of the said Provinces, derogatory to the honour of his Majesty’s Government, and destructive of the legal and constitutional depend­ ency of the said Colonies, on the imperial Crown and Parliament of Great Britain:’1 Which resolutions were founded on a full examination of the papers on our table, manifesting a denial of the legislative authority of the Crown and Parliament of Great Britain, to impose duties and taxes on our North American Colonies; and a criminal resistance there made to the execution of the commer­ cial and other regulations of the Stamp Act, and of other acts of parliament: we

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are of opinion, that the total repealing of that law, / especially while such resist­ ance continues, would (as Governor Barnarde2 says is their intention) ‘make the authority of Great Britain contemptible hereafter;’ and that such a submission of King, Lords, and Commons, under such circumstances, in so strange and unheard of a contest, would in effect, surrender their antient, unalienable rights of supreme jurisdiction, and give them exclusively to the subordinate Provincial Legislatures established by prerogative; which was never intended or thought of, and is not in the power of prerogative to bestow; as they are inseparable from the Three Estates of the Realm assembled in Parliament.

Secondly. Because the law, which this Bill now proposes to repeal, was passed in the other House with very little opposition, and in this without one dissentient voice, dur­ ing the last session of Parliament, which we presume, if it had been wholly and fundamentally wrong, could not possibly have happened; as the matter of it is so important, and as the intention of bringing of it in, had been communicated to the Commons by the first Commissioner of the Treasury the year before, and a resolution relating and preparatory to it, was then agreed to in that House, without any division. /

Thirdly. Because, if any particular parts of that law, the principle of which has been expe­ rienced and submitted to in this country, without repining, for near a century past, had been found liable to just and reasonable objections, they might have been altered by a Bill to explain and amend it, without repealing the whole. And, if any such Bill had been sent to us by the Commons, we should have thought it our duty to have given it a most serious consideration, with a warm desire of relieving our countrymen in America from any grievance or hardship; but with proper care to enforce their submission and obedience to the law so amended, and to the whole legislative authority of Great Britain, without any reserve or distinction whatsoever.

Fourthly. Because, it appears to us, that a most essential branch of that authority, the power of Taxation, cannot be properly, equitably or impartially exercised, if it does not extend itself to all the members of the state in proportion to their respective abilities; but suffers a part to be exempt from a due share of those burthens, which the public exigencies require to be imposed upon the whole: a partiality which is directly and / manifestly repugnant to the trust reposed by

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the people in every legislature, and destructive of that confidence on which all government is founded.

Fifthly. Because, the ability of our North American Colonies, to bear without incon­ veniency the proportion laid on them by the Stamp Act of last year, appears to us most unquestionable, for the following reasons: First, that the estimated produce of this Tax, amounting to sixty thousand pounds per Annum, if divided amongst twelve hundred thousand people (being little more than one half of the subjects of the Crown in North America) would be only one shilling per head a year; which is but a third of the wages usually paid to every labourer or manu­ facturer there for one day’s labour: Secondly, That it appears by the accounts that have been laid before this House from the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, that of the debt contracted by those Colonies in the last war, above 1,755,000l. has already been discharged during the course of three years only, by the funds provided for that purpose in the several Provinces; and the much greater part of the remaining incumbrance, which in the whole is about 760,000 pounds, will be paid in two years more: We must likewise observe, that the / bounties and advantages given to them by Parliament in 1764 and 1765, and the duties thereby lost to Great Britain for their service, and in order to enable them the more easily to pay this Tax, must necessarily amount, in a few years, to a far greater sum than the produce thereof. It is also evident, that such produce being wholly appropriated to the payment of the army maintained by this kingdom in our Colonies, at the vast expence of almost a shilling in the pound land tax, annually remitted by us for their special defence and protection; not only no money would have been actually drawn by it out of that country, but the ease given by it to the people of Great Britain, who are labouring under a debt of seventy millions, contracted by them to support a very dangerous war, entered into for the interest and security of those Colonies, would have redounded to the benefit of the Colonies themselves in their own immediate safety, by con­ tributing to deliver them from the necessary expence, which many of them have hitherto always borne, in guarding their frontiers against the savage Indians.

Sixthly. Because, not only the right, but the expediency, and necessity of the supreme legislature, exerting its authority to lay a general / tax on our American Colo­ nies, whenever the wants of the public make it fitting and reasonable, that all the Provinces should contribute in a proper proportion to the defence of the whole, appear to us undeniable, from these considerations: First, That every Province being separate and independent on the others, and having no Common Council

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impowered by the constitution of the Colonies to act for all, or bind all, such a tax cannot regularly, or without infinite difficulty, be imposed upon them at any time, even for their immediate defence or protection, by their own provin­ cial assemblies; but requires the intervention and superintending power of the Parliament of Great Britain. Secondly, That in looking forwards to the possible contingency of a new war, a contingency perhaps not far remote, the prospect of the burthens which the gentry and people of this Kingdom must then sustain, in addition to those, which now lie so heavy upon them, is so melancholy and dreadful, that we cannot but feel it, a most indispensable duty to ease them as much as is possible, by a due and moderate exertion of that great right, which the constitution of this realm has vested in the Parliament, to provide for the safety of all, by a proportionable charge upon all, equally and indifferently laid. We likewise apprehend, that a partial exemption of / our Colonies from any exercise of this right by the British Legislature, would be thought so invidious, and so unjust to the other subjects of the Crown of Great Britain, as to alienate the hearts of these from their Countrymen residing in America, to the great det­ riment of the latter, who have on many occasions received, and may again want assistance, from the generous warmth of their affection.

Seventhly. Because, the reasons assigned in the public resolutions of the Provincial Assem­ blies, in the North American Colonies, for their disobeying the Stamp Act, viz. ‘That they are not represented in the Parliament of Great Britain,’ extends to all other laws, of what nature soever, which that Parliament has enacted, or shall enact, to bind them in times to come, and must (if admitted) set them absolutely free from any obedience to the power of the British Legislature; we likewise observe, that in a letter to Mr. Secretary Conway, dated the 12th of October 1765; the commander in chief of his Majesty’s forces in North Amer­ ica3 has declared his opinion, ‘That the Question is not of the inexpediency of the Stamp Act, or of the inability of the Colonies to pay the Tax; but that it is unconstitutional and contrary to their / Rights, supporting the independency of the Provinces, and not subject to the legislative power of Great Britain.’ It is moreover affirmed, in a letter to Mr. Conway, dated 7th of November, ‘That the people in general are averse to Taxes of any kind; and that the merchants of that place think they have a right to every freedom of trade which the subjects of Great Britain now enjoy.’ This opinion of theirs strikes directly at the Act of Navigation, and other subsequent laws, which from time to time have been made in the wise policy of that Act; and should they ever be encouraged to pro­ cure for themselves that absolute freedom of trade, which they appear to desire, our plantations would become, not only of no benefit, but in the highest degree

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prejudicial to the commerce and welfare of their Mother-country; nor is it easy to conceive a greater encouragement, than the repealing of a law opposed by them on such principles, and with so much contempt of the Sovereignty of the British Legislature.

Eighthly. Because, the appearance of weakness and timidity in the Government and Parlia­ ment of this kingdom, which a concession of this nature may too probably carry with it, has / a manifest tendency to draw on further insults, and by lessening the respect of all his Majesty’s subjects to the dignity of his Crown, and authority of his Laws, throw the whole British empire into a miserable state of confusion and anarchy, with which it seems by many symptoms to be dangerously threatened; and this is the more to be feared, as the plea of our North American Colonies, that not being represented in the Parliament of Great Britain, they ought not to pay Taxes imposed or levied upon them by the authority thereof, may by the same reasoning be extended to all persons in this Island, who do not actually vote for Members of Parliament; nor can we help apprehending, that the opin­ ion of some countenance being given to such notions by the Legislature itself, in consenting to this Bill, for the Repeal of the Stamp Act, may greatly promote the contagion of a most dangerous doctrine, destructive to all Government, which has spread itself over all our North American Colonies, that the obedience of the subject is not due to the Laws and Legislature of the Realm, farther than he in his private judgment shall think it conformable to the ideas he has formed of a free constitution. /

Ninthly. Because, we think it no effectual guard, or security against this danger, that the Parliament has declared in the resolutions of both Houses, passed during this session, and now reduced into a Bill, That such notions are ill founded; as men will always look more to deeds than words, and may therefore incline to believe, that the insurrections in our Colonies, excited by those notions, having so far proved successful, as to attain the very point, at which they aimed, the immedi­ ate repeal of the Stamp Act, without any previous submission on the part of the Colonies; the Legislature has in fact submitted to them, and has only more grievously injured its own dignity and authority, by verbally asserting that Right, which it substantially yields up to their Opposition. The reasons assigned for this concession render it still more alarming, as they arise from an illegal and hostile combination of the people of America, to distress and starve our Manu­ facturers, and to with-hold from our Merchants the payment of their just debts: the former of which measures has only been practised in open war between two

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States; and the latter, we believe, not even in that situation, either by the publick or by individuals, among the civilized nations of Europe, in modern times. / If this unprecedented plan of intimidation shall meet with success, it is easy to foresee, that the practice of it for other and still greater objects will frequently be renewed, and our manufacturers and merchants reduced to the like, and more permanent distress; we cannot therefore but wish, that some more eligible method, consistent with their future safety and our dignity, had been taken by Parliament, to shew our tender concern and compassion for their sufferings, and to discourage any other such unwarrantable attempts; which we are fully per­ suaded would have been very practicable, with due care and attention, and at an expence very inferior to the importance of the object.

Lastly. Because, we are convinced from the unanimous testimony of the Governors, and other officers of the Crown in America, that if, by a most unhappy delay and neglect to provide for the due execution of the law, and arming the Govern­ ment there with proper orders and powers, repeatedly called for in vain, these disturbances had not been continued and encreased, they might easily have been quieted before they had attained to any dangerous height; and we cannot, with­ out feeling the most lively sense of grief and indignation, hear arguments drawn from the / progress of evils, which should and might have been stopped in their first and feeble beginnings, used for the still greater evil of sacrificing to a pre­ sent relief the highest permanent interests, and the whole Majesty, Power, and Reputation of Government: This afflicts us the more deeply, because it appears from many letters, that this law, if properly supported by Government, would from the peculiar circumstances attending the disobedience to it, execute itself without bloodshed. And it is said in one of the letters to Mr. Secretary Conway, ‘That the principal view is to intimidate the Parliament; but that if it be thought prudent to enforce their authority, the people dare not oppose a vigor­ ous resolution of the Parliament of Great-Britain.’ That vigorous resolution has not yet been found in the Parliament; and we greatly fear, that the want of it will certainly produce one of these two fatal consequences; either that the repeal of this law will in effect annul and abrogate all other laws and statutes relating to our Colonies, and particularly the Acts that restrain or limit their Commerce, of which they are most impatient; or, if we should hereafter attempt to enforce the execution of those laws against their will, and by virtue of an authority, which they have dared to insult with impunity and success, that endeavour will bring upon us all those evils and inconveniencies, / to the fear of which we now sac­ rifice the Sovereignty of the Realm; and this at a time when the strength of our Colonies, as well as their desire of a total independence on the Legislature and

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Government of their Mother-country, may be greatly augmented, and when the circumstances and dispositions of the other powers of Europe, may render the contest far more dangerous and formidable to this Kingdom. Bedford Coventry Bridgewater Temple Buckingham Wentworth Sandwich Bolingbroke Marlborough W. Gloucester Ker Leigh Bangor Waldegrave Aylesford Gower Weymouth

Scarsdale Lyttleton Dunk Hallifax Eglintoun Suffolk and Berkshire Abercorn Vere Trevor Thomas Bristol Ferrers Grosvenor Townshend Dudley and Ward Charles Carlisle Powis Hyde.

FINIS.

[TUCKER], A LETTER FROM A MERCHANT IN

LONDON

[ Josiah Tucker], A Letter from a Merchant in London to his Nephew in North America, Relative to the Present Posture of Affairs in the Colonies; in which the Supposed Viola­ tion of Charters, and the several Grievances Complained of, are particularly Discussed, and the Consequences of an Attempt towards Independency set in a True Light (Lon­ don: J. Walter, 1766).

Josiah Tucker was born in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, in December 1713 and educated at St John’s College, Oxford, BA (1736), MA (1739) and DD (1755). He moved to Bristol where, a protégé of Bishop Joseph Butler, he became curate of St Stephen’s in 1737 and vicar in 1750, a canon of Bristol Cathedral in 1742 and dean of Gloucester Cathedral in 1758, though he continued at St Stephen’s as well. The earliest of his 44 works were attacks on Methodism, though he later argued for religious toleration and Jewish naturalization. He moved more fully into economics and politics with A Brief Essay on the Advantages and Disadvan­ tages, which Respectively Attend France and Great Britain (London, 1749 and later editions), dedicated to Lord Halifax, which attacked monopolies and some trade restrictions, advocated government encouragement of commerce, argued that economic success was best measured by employment rather than bullion stores, promoted taxes on alcohol to encourage temperance and work amongst the poor, limited franchise, and constitutional union with Ireland. The third edi­ tion (1753) addressed colonial trade and recommended bounties on production of various raw materials and lower customs duties to discourage smuggling. He was not usually friendly to colonial causes, however. In letters to newspapers (as ‘Cassandra’) and to friends, he opposed the French and Indian War and BritishAmerican territorial expansion as costly ways of encouraging colonial economic and political autonomy, though he only published these views with The Case of Going to War for the Sake of Procuring, Enlarging or Securing of Trade, Considered in a New Light (London: R. & J. Dodsley, 1763). His Letter from a Merchant in London to a fictional nephew elaborated some of these themes.

– 147 –

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After praising his notional nephew, Tucker proceeds on an often sarcas­ tic attack on American objections to taxation, beginning with familiar points about how the English liberties colonists claimed were housed in Parliament and guaranteed by virtual or ‘implied’ representation, and that royal prerogative never extended to granting chartered exemptions from legislation. He further argued that parliamentary policy frequently favoured colonists and that Ameri­ cans were much better placed to pay for their own protection than were heavily indebted and taxed Britons. But what was novel about Tucker’s tirade was the discussion of his accusation that ‘you want to be independent’ (below, p. 169). To that possibility he offered three potential responses: ‘shall we now compel you, by Force of Arms, to do your Duty? – Shall we procrastinate your Compul­ sion? – Or shall we entirely give you up[?]’ (below, p. 170). The first option he considered possible but inadvisable as ‘a Shop-keeper will never get the more Custom by beating his Customers’ (below, p. 171). Procrastination would ‘be interpreted by you as a Mark of Fear, and not as an Instance of Lenity’ (below, p. 171), leading to further and stronger assaults on British authority. He implies therefore that Britain would be best off ‘to give you entirely up’, although he then predicts inter-colonial conflict, external threats and higher taxes for their own government and defence, leading to civil ‘Anarchy’ (below, pp. 172, 173). Tucker reiterated the political and economic potentials of separation as the American crisis escalated in Four Tracts with Two Sermons (London: J. Rivington, 1774); argued that separation was inevitable in The Respective Pleas and Arguments of the Mother Country and her Colonies (London: T. Cadell, 1775), which also attacked American treatment of slaves and Amerindians; and coun­ ter-attacked pro-American radicals in A Letter to Edmund Burke (London: T. Cadell, 1775), yet praised Thomas Paine in A Series of Answers to Certain Popular Objections against Separating from the Rebellious Colonies (London: T. Cadell, 1776). His 1780 Dispassionate Thoughts on the American War advocated ending hostilities and starting commerce with an independent North America.1 The Notions of Mr. Locke and his Followers (n.p., 1778) and A Treatise concern­ ing Civil Government (London: T. Cadell, 1781) attacked doctrines of natural rights, argued for the divine origins of civil society and government, and alleged a republican plot to revolutionize British politics with catastrophic consequences. Cui bono? (London: T. Cadell, 1781) predicted a Franco-American victory in the War of Independence, followed by a break-up of their alliance, huge trade benefits for Britain and the destruction of France. Ageing and increasingly frail, his productivity declined notably in his later years, though he still volubly sup­ ported Anglo-Irish union. Tucker died on 4 November 1799 and was interred in Gloucester Cathedral, which he had done much to restore.2

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Notes: 1. See Volume 8 of this edition, pp. 101–14. 2. R. T. Cornish, ‘Tucker, Josiah (1713–1799) economist and political writer’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 55, pp. 497–500.

A

LETTER FROM A

MERCHANT IN LONDON TO HIS

NEPHEW IN NORTH AMERICA, RELATIVE TO THE

Present Posture of Affairs in the Colonies; IN WHICH

The supposed Violation of Charters, and the several Grievances complained of,

are particularly discussed, and the Consequences of an Attempt towards Inde­ pendency set in a true Light.

And it is farther enacted and declared by the Authority aforesaid, That all

Laws, By-Laws, Usages, or Customs, at this Time, or which hereafter shall be

in Practice, or endeavored, or pretended to be in Force, or Practice, in any of

the said Plantations, which are in any-wise repugnant to the before-mentioned

Laws, or any of them, so far as they do relate to the said Plantations, or any of

them, or which are any-wise repugnant to this present Act, or to any other Law

hereafter to be made in this Kingdom, so far as such Law shall relate to and men­ tion the said Plantations, are illegal, null, and void, to all Intents and Purposes

whatsoever. 7 and 8 W. III. Cap. 22. Sect. 9.1

LONDON: Printed for J. Walter, at Homer’s Head, Charing Cross:

M DCC LXVI. /

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A LETTER FROM A MERCHANT in LONDON TO HIS Nephew in NORTH AMERICA. Dear Cousin, Your Letters gave me formerly no small Pleasure, because they seem to have proceeded from a good Heart, guided by an Understanding more enlightened than is usually found among young Men. And the honest Indignation you express against those Artifices and Frauds, those Robberies and Insults, which lost us the Hearts and Affections of the Indians, is particularly to be commended: for these were the Things, as you justly observed, which involved us in the most bloody and expensive War that ever was known: and these, by being repeated, will stimulate the poor injured Savages to redress their Wrongs, and retaliate the Injury as soon as they can, / by some Means or other. You did thereforefore exceedingly right, in manifesting the utmost Abhorrence and Detestation of all such Practices. But of late I cannot say, that I receive the same Satisfaction from your Cor­ respondence. For you are vastly altered from what you were; your Mind seems to be in a continual Agitation: you assert and deny in the same Breath; and, instead of maintaining any one regular, coherent System, you blend opposite Systems together, not reflecting on the palpable Contradictions resulting from such a Conduct. – Discontented you, and your Countrymen, certainly are to a great Degree: but whether your Discontent arises from a Desire of Change, and of making Innovations in your Form of Government, – or from a mistaken Notion, that we are making Innovations in it, is hard to say. Give me leave therefore to expostulate with you, on this strange Alteration in your Conduct. I have a right to do it on every Account: and you know me well to be the invariable Friend to the Rights and Liberties, civil and religious, of all Mankind. You indeed talk loudly of Chains, and exclaim vehemently against Slavery: but surely you do not suspect, that I can entertain the most / distant

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Wish of making any Man a Slave, much less my own Brother’s Son, and my next of kin. – So far from it, that whether I can make you a Convert to my way of thinking or not, I shall still act by you as my nearest Relation: being always desirous of allowing that Liberty to others, which I hope ever to enjoy myself, viz. of letting every Man see with his own Eyes, and act according to his own Judgment:– This, I say, I would willingly indulge every Man in, as far as ever is consistent with good Government, and the public Safety. For indeed Govern­ ments there must be of some Kind or other; and Peace and Subordination are to be preserved; – otherwise, there would be no such Thing as true Liberty subsist­ ing in the World. In pursuance therefore of this rational Plan of Liberty, give me Leave to ask you, young Man, What is it you mean by repeating to me so often in every Let­ ter, The Spirit of the Constitution? I own, I do not much approve of this Phrase, because its Meaning is so vague and indeterminate; and because it may be made to serve all Purposes alike, good or bad. And indeed it has been my constant Remark, That when Men were at a Loss for solid Arguments and Matters of Fact, in their political Disputes, they then / had recourse to the Spirit of the Constitu­ tion as to their last Shift, and the only Thing they had to say. An American, for Example, now insists, That according to the Spirit of the English Constitution, he ought not to be taxed without his own Consent, given either by himself, or by a Representative in Parliament chosen by himself. Why ought he not? And doth the Constitution say in so many Words, That he ought not? – Or doth it say, That every man either hath, or ought to have, or was intended to have a Vote for a Member of Parliament? No, by no Means: the Constitution says no such Thing. But the Spirit of it doth; and that is as good, perhaps better. Very well: See then how this same Spirit will presently wheel about, and assert a Doctrine quite repugnant to the Claims and Positions of you Americans. Magna Charta, for Example, is the great Foundation of English Liberties, and the Basis of the English Constitution. But, by the Spirit of Magna Charta, all Taxes laid on by Parliament are constitutional, legal Taxes; and Taxes raised by the Prerogative of the Crown, without the Consent of Parliament are illegal. Now remember, young Man, That the late Tax or Duties upon Stamps was laid on by Parliament; and therefore, according to your own Way / of reasoning, must have been a regular, constitutional, legal Tax. Nay more, the principal End and Intention of Magna Charta, as far as Taxation is concerned, was to assert the Authority and Jurisdic­ tion of the three Estates of the Kingdom, in Opposition to the sole Prerogative of the King: so that if you will now plead the Spirit of Magna Charta against the Jurisdiction of Parliament, you will plead Magna Charta against itself. Leaving therefore all these shifting, unstable Topics, which, like changeable Silks, exhibit different Colours, according as they are viewed in different Lights; let us from the Spirit of the Constitution, come to the Constitution itself. For

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this is a plain, obvious Matter of Fact; and Matters of Fact are said to be stub­ born Things. Now the first Emigrants, who settled in America, were certainly English Subjects:– subject to the Laws and Jurisdiction of Parliament, and con­ sequently to parliamentary Taxes, before their Emigration; and therefore subject afterwards, unless some legal, constitutional Exemption can be produced. Now this is the Question, and the sole Question between you and me, reduced to a plain, single Matter of Fact. Is there therefore any such Exemption, as here pretended? / And if you have it, why do you not produce it? – ‘The King, you say, hath granted Charters of Exemption to the American Colonies.’ This is now coming to the Point: and this will bring the Dispute to a short Issue. Let us therefore first enquire, Whether he could legally and constitutionally grant you such a Charter? And secondly, Whether he did ever so much as attempt to do it? And whether any such Charters are upon Record? Now, upon the first settling of an English Colony, and before ever you, Amer­ icans, could have chosen any Representatives, and therefore before any Assembly of such Representatives could have possibly met, – to whose Laws, and to what legislative Power were you then subject? To the English most undoubtedly; for you could have been Subject to no other. You were Englishmen yourselves; and you carried the English Government, and an English Charter over along with you. This being the Case, were you not then in the same Condition, as to Constitutional Rights and Liberties, with the rest of your Fellow-subjects, who remained in England? Certainly you were. – I most cordially agree, that you ought not to have been placed in a worse: and surely you had no Right to expect a better. Suppose / therefore, that the Crown had been so ill advised, as to have granted a Charter to any City or County her in England, pretending to exempt them from the Power and Jurisdiction of an English Parliament; – what would the Judges? what would the Lawyers? nay, what would you Americans have said to it? Apply this now to your own Case: for surely you cannot wish to have it put upon a fairer footing: try therefore, and see, and then tell me; is it possible for you to believe, that the King has a Power vested in him by the Constitution of dividing his Kingdom into several independent States, and petty Kingdoms, like the Heptarchy in the Times of the Saxons? Or can you really imagine, that he could crumble the Parliamentary Authority and Jurisdiction, were he so minded, into Bits and Fragments, by assigning one Parliament to one City or County, – another to another, – and so on? Is it possible, I say, for you to believe an Absurdity so gross and glaring? And yet gross and palpable as this Absurdity is, you must either believe it, or adopt a still greater, viz. that, though the King cannot do these strange things in England, yet he can do them all in America; because his Royal Prerogative, like Wire coiled up in a Box, can be stretched and drawn out to almost / any Length, according to the Distance and Extent of his Dominions. Good Heavens! what a sudden Alteration is this! An American

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pleading for the Extension of the Prerogative of the Crown? Yes, if it could make for his Cause; – and for extending it too beyond all the Bounds of Law, of Rea­ son, and of Common Sense! But though I have for Argument’s sake, and merely to confute you in your own Way, here supposed, that the Crown had been so ill advised, as to grant Charters to the Colonies so unconstitutional and illegal, as these undoubtedly must have been; – yet the Fact itself is far otherwise*; for no such Charters were ever granted. Nay, many of your Colony Charters assert quite the contrary, by containing express Reservations of / Parliamentary Rights, particularly that great one of levying Taxes. And those Charters which do not make such Provisoes in express Terms, must be supposed virtually to imply them; because the Law and Constitution will not allow, that the King can do more either at home or abroad, by the Prerogative Royal, than the Law and Constitution authorize him to do. However, if you are still doubtful, and if you would wish to have a Confir­ mation of this Argument by some plain Fact, some striking Proof, and visible Example; – I will give you one; and such an one too, as shall convince you, if any thing can, of the Folly and Absurdity of your Positions: the City of London, for instance, – a Body Politic as respectable, without Offence, as the greatest of your Colonies with regard to Property, and superior to many of them with respect to Numbers; – this great City, I say, the Metropolis of the whole Brit­ ish Empire, hath long enjoyed, before the Colonies were ever thought of, the threefold Power of Jurisdiction, – Legislation, – and Taxation in certain Cases: but no Man in his Senses ever yet supposed, that the City of London either was, or could be exempted by these Charters from Parliamentary Jurisdiction, or Parliamentary Taxes; and if any Citizen should / plead the Charters in Bar to Parliamentary Authority, or refuse to pay his Quota of the Land-Tax, because that Tax is not laid on by an Act of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council; – I do not say indeed, that the Judges would commit him to Newgate; – but I do verily believe, that they would order him to another Place of Confine­ ment, much fitter for a Person in his unhappy Situation. *

Our former Princes claimed a Right, and frequently exercised the Power of levying Taxes, without the Consent of Parliament. But upon settling the Colonies, this supposed Right, which cost Charles I. his Crown, and his Life, was not insisted on in any of the Charters, and was expressly given up in that which was granted to Lord Baltimore for Maryland. Now this Clause, which is nothing more than the Renunciation of obsolete Prerogative, is quoted in our News Papers, as if it was a Renunciation of the Rights of Parliament to raise Taxes. Whereas the King in that Charter stipulated only for himself, his heirs, and Successors, not to raise Taxes by virtue of the Prerogative Royal: which certainly he might do; and which was very proper to be done for the Encouragement and Security of a new Colony. But he could not stipulate for the Parliament; and indeed he did not attempt to do it.

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And now, my good Friend, what can you say to these things? – The only thing which you ought to say, is, – that you did not see the Affair in its true Light before: and that you are sincerely sorry for having been so positive in a wrong Cause. Confuted most undoubtedly you are beyond the Possibility of a Reply, as far as the Law and Constitution of the Realm are concerned in this Ques­ tion. But indeed it seems to me by certain Passages in your Letters, that, though you raise a terrible Outcry against the supposed Violation of your Charters; you yourself would not rest the Merits of your Cause upon the Proof of such a Vio­ lation; and that you would rather drop that Point, than attempt to justify the Charge, if called upon to do it. What then is it, which you have next to offer? Oh! ‘The Unreasonableness! the / Injustice! and the Cruelty of taxing a free People, without permitting them to have Representatives of their own to answer for them, and to maintain their fundamental Rights and Privileges!’ Strange, that you did not discover these bad things before! Strange, that though the British Parliament has been, from the Beginning, thus unreasonable, thus unjust, and cruel towards you, by levying Taxes on many Commodities out­ wards and inwards, – nay, by laying an internal Tax, the Post-Tax for Example, on the whole British Empire in America; – and, what is still worse, by making Laws to affect your Property, viz. your Paper Currency, and even to take away Life itself, if you offend against them; – Strange and unaccountable, I say, that after you had suffered all this so long, you should not have been able to have discovered, that you were without Representatives in the British Parliament, of your own electing, till this enlightening Tax upon Paper opened your Eyes! And what a pity is it, that you have been Slaves for so many Generations, and yet did not know, that you were Slaves until now. But let that pass, my dear Cousin; for I always choose to confute you in your own way. Now, if you mean any thing at all / by the Words unreasonable, unjust, and cruel, as used in this Dispute; you must mean, that the Mother Country deals worse by you, than by the Inhabitants of Great Britain; and that she denies certain Constitutional Rights and Privileges to you abroad, which we enjoy here at home. Now pray what are those Constitutional Rights and Liberties, which are refused to you? Name them, if you can. – The things, which you pretend to alledge are, ‘The Rights of voting for Members of the British Parliament; and the Liberty of choosing your own Representatives.’ But surely you will not dare to say, that we refuse your Votes, when you come hither to offer them, and choose to poll: you cannot have the Face to assert, that on an Election Day any Differ­ ence is put between the Vote of a Man born in America, and of one born here in England. Yet this you must assert, and prove too, before you can do any thing to the present Purpose. Suppose therefore, that an American hath acquired a Vote (as he legally may, and many have done) in any of our Cities or Counties, Towns,

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or Boroughs; suppose, that he is become a Freeman, or a Freeholder here in Eng­ land; – on that State of the Case, prove if you can, that his Vote was ever refused, because he / was born in America:– Prove this, I say, and then I will allow, that your Complaints are very just; and that you are indeed the much injured, the cruelly-treated People, you would make the World believe. But, my good Friend, is this supposed Refusal the real Cause of your Com­ plaint? Is this the Grievance that calls so loudly for Redress? Oh! no, you have no Complaint of this sort to make: but the Cause of your Complaint is this; that you live at too great a Distance from the Mother Country to be present at our English Elections; and that in Consequence of this Distance, the Freedom of our Towns, or the Freeholds in our Counties, as far as voting is concerned, are not worth attending to. It may be so; but pray consider, if you yourselves do choose to make it inconvenient for you to come and vote, by retiring into distant Countries, – what is that to us? And why are we to be reproached for commit­ ting a ‘Violation on the Birth-rights of Englishmen, which, if it be a Violation, is committed only by yourselves?’ It seems, you find it to be your particular Inter­ est to live in the Colonies; it seems, that you prefer the Emoluments of residing there to your Capacity, or Capability (take which Word you please) of residing and voting here. Now this is your / own free Choice; and we leave you at full Liberty to act as you think proper: but then, are we obliged to alter our Political System merely to accord with your Convenience? Are we to change and new model our fixed and ancient Constitution, just as you shall see fit to command us? and according as it shall please you to remove from Place to Place? and is this the Complaisance, which you expect the Mother Country should shew to her dutiful Children? Yes, it is; and you demand it too with a loud Voice, full of Anger, of Defiance, and Denunciation. However, the Lion is not always so fierce as he is painted; – and till we are beaten into a Compliance, it is to be hoped, that we may be allowed to expostu­ late with you in a few harmless, unbloody Words. Granting therefore, that the Colonies are unrepresented in the British Parliament: Granting that two Mil­ lions of People in America have, in this respect, no Choice, nor Election of their own, through the Necessity of the Case, and their Distance from the Place of Election:– What would you infer from this Concession? And wherein can such Kind of Topics support your Cause? For know, young Man, that not only two Millions, which are the utmost, that your / exaggerated Accounts can be swelled to:– I say, not only two Millions, but six Millions at least of the Inhabitants of Great Britain, are still unrepresented in the British Parliament. And this Omis­ sion arises, not from the Necessity of the Case, not from consulting Interest and Convenience as with you, but from original Ideas of Gothic vassalage, – from various Casualties and Accidents, – from Changes in the Nature of Property, – from the Alteration of Times and Circumstances, – and from a thousand

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other Causes. Thus, for Example, in the great Metropolis, and in many other Cities, landed Property itself hath no Representative in Parliament; Copyholds and Leaseholds of various Kinds have none likewise, though of ever so great a Value. This you yourself very well know; because when you were here last, you knew, that I was possessed of considerable landed Property in London, and of several Copyholds and beneficial Leaseholds in the Country, and yet that I never had a Vote. Moreover, in some Towns neither Freedom, nor Birth-right, nor the serving of an Apprenticeship, shall entitle a Man to give a Vote, though they may enable him to set up a Trade: In other Towns the most numerous, the most populous, and flourishing of any, there are no / Freedoms or Votes of any Sort; but all is open; and none are represented. And besides all this, it is well known, that the great East India Company, which have such vast Settlements, and which dispose of the Fate of Kings and Kingdoms abroad, have not so much as a single Member, or even a single Vote, quatenus a Company, to watch over their Inter­ ests at home. What likewise shall we say in regard to the prodigious number of Stock-holders in our public Funds? And may not their Property, perhaps little short of One hundred Millions Sterling, as much deserve to be represented in Parliament, as the scattered Townships, or straggling Houses of some of your Provinces in America? yet we raise no Commotions; we neither ring the AlarmBell, nor found the Trumpet; but submit to be taxed without being represented; – and taxed too, let me tell you, for your Sakes. Witness the additional Duties on our Lands, Windows, Houses; – also on our Malt, Beer, Ale, Cyder, Perry, Wines, Brandy, Rum, Coffee, Chocolate, &c. &c. &c. for defraying the Expences of the late War, – not forgetting the grievous Stamp-Duty itself. All this, I say, we submitted to, when you were, or at least, when you pretended to be, in great Distress: so that neither Men, / almost to the last Drop of Blood we could spill, – nor Money, to the last Piece of Coin, were spared: but all was granted away, all was made a Sacrifice, when you cried out for Help. And the Debt which we con­ tracted on this Occasion, is so extraordinary, as not to be parallelled in History. – It is to be hoped, for the Credit of human Nature, that the Returns which you have made us for these Succours, and your present Behaviour towards us, which perhaps are still more extraordinary, may not be parallelled likewise. But as you Americans do not chuse to remember any thing, which we have done for you; – though we, and our Children shall have Cause to remember it till latest Posterity; – let us come to the Topic, which you yourselves do wish to rest your Cause upon, and which you imagine to be the Sheet Anchor of your State Vessel. ‘You are not represented; and you are Two Millions: therefore you ought not to be taxed.’ We are not represented; and we are Six Millions: therefore we ought not to be taxed. Which now, even in your own Sense of Things, have most Reason to complain? And which Grievance, if it be a Grievance, deserves first to be redressed? Be it therefore supposed, that an Augmentation / ought to

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take place in our House of Commons, in order to represent in Parliament the prodigious Numbers of British Subjects hitherto unrepresented. In this Case the first Thing to be done, is to settle the Proportion. And therefore if Two Millions (the Number of Persons actually represented at present) require Five hundred and Fifty-eight Representatives (which I think is the Number of our modern House of Commons) how many will Six Millions require? – The Answer is, that they will require One thousand Six hundred and Seventy-four Representatives. Now this is the first Augmentation, which is to be made to our List of Parlia­ ment Men. And after the Increase, we are to be furnished, by the same Rule of Proportion, with Five hundred and Fifty-eight more from the Colonies. So that the total Numbers will be Two thousand Seven hundred and Ninety Representatives in Parliament! A goodly Number truly! and very proper for the Dispatch of Business! Oh, the Decency and Order of such an Assembly! The Wisdom and Gravity of Two thousand Seven hundred and Ninety Legisla­ tors all met together in one Room! What a Pity is it, that so hopeful a Project should not be carried into immediate Execution! / But, my noble Senator; – for certainly you yourself must figure away in such an august Assembly; – permit an old Man to reveal one Secret to you, before you proceed any farther in your representing Scheme: viz. That the Complaint itself of being unrepresented, is entirely false and groundless. For both the Six Mil­ lions at home, and the Two Millions in the Colonies, are all represented already. This perhaps may startle you: but nevertheless this is the Fact. And though I have hitherto used a different Language merely to accommodate myself to your Ideas, and to confute your Folly in your own Way, I must now tell you, that every Member of Parliament represents you and me, and our Interests in all essential Points, just as much as if we had voted for him. For though one Place, or one Set of Men may elect, and send him up to Parliament, yet, when once he becomes a Member, he is then the equal Guardian of all. And he ought not, by the Duty of his Office, to shew a Preference to his own Town, City, or County, but in such Cases only, where a Preference shall not interfere with the general Good. Nay, he ought in Conscience to give his Vote in Parliament against the Sense, and against the Instructions of his Electors, if he should think in his Conscience, / that what they require, is wrong in itself, is illegal or injurious, and detrimental to the public Welfare. This then being the Case, it therefore follows, that our Birminghams, Manchesters, Leeds, Halifaxes, &c. and your Bostons, New-Yorks, and Philadelphias, are all as really, though not so nominally represented, as any Part whatsoever of the British Empire:– And that each of these Places have in Fact, instead of one or two, not less than Five hundred and Fifty-eight Guardians in the British Senate. A Number abundantly sufficient, as far as human Prudence can suggest, or the present imperfect State of Things will permit, for the Security of our Rights, and the Preservation of our Liberties.

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But perhaps you will say, That though it may be a Senator’s Duty to regard the Whole rather than a Part, and to be the equal Protector of all; – yet he will, in fact, regard that most, which can best promote his own Interest, and secure his Election another Time. It may be so:– For who can guard against all Possibility of Danger? And what System can there be devised, but may be attended with Inconveniences and Imperfections in some Respect, or other? – Nevertheless, if your general Objection proves any / Thing, it proves a great deal too much: For it proves, that no Man ought to pay any Tax, but that only, to which the Member of his own Town, City, or County hath particularly asserted:– because all other Members being chose by other Persons, and not by him, and perhaps by Persons of an opposite Interest, are therefore not his Representatives, and consequently not the true Guardians of his Property. – Being therefore without a Representa­ tive in such a Parliament, he is under no Obligation to obey its Laws, or pay any of its Taxes, Where now, my Friend, will you turn? And what can you do, to extricate yourself from the Difficulties which arise on all Sides on this Occasion? You cannot turn about, and say, that the other Representatives, whom this Man never chose, and for whom he had no Vote to give, and against whom perhaps he had particular Exceptions, have nevertheless a Right of taxing him, because he makes a Part of the Body Politic implied in, and concluded by the rest; – you cannot say this, because the DOCTRINE of IMPLICATION is the very Thing to which you object, and against which you have raised so many Batteries of popular Noise and Clamour. Nay, as the Objection is entirely of your own making, it must / go still further: for if your Argument is good for any thing, it is as good for North America as it is for Great Britain: and consequently you must maintain, that all those in your several Provinces who have no Votes (and many Thousands of such there are) and also all those Votes, whose Representa­ tives did not expresly consent to the Act of your Assemblies for raising any of your own provincial Taxes, – ought not to be compelled to pay them. These now are the happy Consequences of your own Principles, fairly, clearly, and evidently deduced: Will you abide by them? But however, not to push you into more Absurdities of this Kind, let us wave the present Point, and come to another. For, after all your doleful Complaints, what if it should appear, that these Five hundred and Fifty-eight Parliamentary Guardians, who represent you only by Implication, have, in Fact, been kinder and more bountiful to you Americans, than they have been to their own British Voters, whom they represent by Nomination? And, what if even this Argument, so full of Sorrow and Lamentation, should at last be retorted upon you, and made to conclude, like all the rest, the very Reverse of what you intended? This, I believe, is what you little expected: / but nevertheless, this is the Case. For if there be any Partiality to be complained of in the Conduct of the British Par­

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liament, it will appear to be a Partiality in Favour of the Colonies, and against the Mother Country. – Do you demand my Authority for this Assertion? I will give it you: The Statutes of the Realm are my Authority; and surely you cannot demand a better. By these then it will appear, that a Colonist, and consequently subordinate to the Mother Country in the very Nature of Things, is neverthe­ less put upon a better Footing, in many Respects, than an Inhabitant of Great Britain. By these it will appear, that the Parliament, like an over indulgent Parent to a favourite, forward Child, hath been continually heaping Favours upon you, which we were not permitted to taste. Thus, for Example, you have your Choice, whether you will accept of my Price for your Tobacco, – or after bringing it here, whether you will carry it away, and try your Fortune at another Market: but I have no alternative allowed, being obliged to buy yours at your own Price; or else to pay such a Duty for the Tobacco of other Countries, as must amount to a Prohibition. Nay, in order to favour your Plantations, I am not permitted / to plant this Herb on my own Estate, though the Soil should be ever so proper for it. Again, the same Choice, and the same Alternative are allowed to you, and denied to me, in regard to Rice; with this additional Advantage, that in many Respects you need not bring it into England at all, unless you are so minded. – And what will you say in Relation to Hemp? The Parliament now gives you a Bounty of 8l. per Ton for exporting your Hemp from North America; but will allow me nothing for growing it here in England; nay, will tax me very severely for fetching it from any other Country; though it be an Article most essentially necessary for all the Purposes of Shipping and Navigation. Moreover in respect to the Culture of Raw Silk, you have an immense Parliamentary Premium for that Purpose; and you receive farther Encouragements from our Society for Arts and Sciences, which is continually adding fresh Rewards:– but I can receive no Encouragement either from the one, or from the other, to bear my Expences at first setting out; – though most undeniably the white Mulberry-Trees can thrive as well on my Grounds, as they can in Switzerland, Brandenburgh, Denmark, or Sweden, where vast Quantities are now raising. / Take another instance: Why shall not I be permitted to buy Pitch, Tar, and Turpentine, – without which I cannot put my Ships to Sea; – and Indigo, so useful in many Manufactures; – why shall not I be permitted to purchase these Articles wherever I can, the best in their kind, and on the best Terms? – No, I shall not; for though they are all raw Materials, which therefore ought to have been imported Duty free, yet I am restrained by an heavy Duty, almost equal to a Prohibition, from purchasing them any where, but from you:– Whereas you on the contrary, are paid a Bounty for selling these very Articles, at the only Market, in which you could sell them to Advantage, viz. the English.* *

Those who have not the Statutes at large, may see the Things here referred to, and many others of the like Sort, in Crouche’s or Saxby’s Book of Rates.2

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Much more might have been said on this Subject: and the like Observations might have been extended to the Sugar Colonies. But I forbear. – For indeed enough has been said already (and as it exposes our Partiality and Infatuation a little severely, perhaps too much) – in order to prove to the World, that of all People upon Earth, you have the least Reason to complain. – But complain you will: And no sooner / is one Recital of imaginary Griev­ ances silenced and confuted; but, like the Hydra in the Fable, up starts another. Let us see therefore, what is your next Objection, which I think, is the last, that with all your Zeal, and Good-will, you are able to muster up. – ‘The Inexpedi­ ency and Excessiveness of such a Tax! a Tax ill-timed in itself, and ill digested! unseasonably laid on! and exceeding all Rules of Proportion in regard to the Abilities of those, who are to pay it!’ Now, my Friend, had there been any Truth in these Assertions, which I shall soon make to appear, that there is not; – but had there been; – the Plea itself comes rather of the latest, and out of Place, from you; – from you, I say, who per­ emptorily object to the very Power and Authority of the British Parliament of laying any internal Taxes upon the Colonies, great or small, or at any Time sea­ sonable, or unseasonable. And therefore, had you been able to have proved the Illegality of such a Tax, it would have been quite superfluous to have informed us afterwards, that this Usurpation of your Rights and Liberties was either an excessive, or an unseasonable Usurpation. But as you have failed in this first Point; nay, as all your own Arguments have proved the / very reverse of what you intended; – and very probably, as you yourself was not originally quite satisfied with the Justice of your Cause; – and must have seen abundant Reason before this Time to have altered your former hasty, and rash Opinion; – I will therefore wave the Advantage, and now debate the Point with you, as though you had acknowledged the Parliamentary Right of Taxation, and only excepted to the Quantum, or the Mode, the Time, or the Manner of it. Now two Things are here to be discussed; first, the pretended Excessiveness of the Tax; and secondly, the Unseasonableness of it. As to the Excessiveness of the Stamp Duties, the Proof of this must depend upon the Proof of a previous Article, viz. the relative Poverty, and Inability of those, who are to pay it. But how do you propose to make out this Point? And after having given us for some Years past such displays of your growing Riches and increasing Magnificence, as perhaps never any People did in the same Space of Time; how can you now retract and call yourselves a poor People? Remember, my young Man, the several Expostulations I had with your deceased Father on the prodigious Increase of American Luxury. And what was his Reply? / Why, that an Increase of Luxury was an inseparable Attendant on an Increase of Riches: And that, if I expected to continue my North American Trade, I must suit my Cargo to the Taste of my Customers; and not to my own old-fashioned Notions of the Parsimony of for­

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mer Days, when America was a poor Country. Remember therefore the Orders given by him, and afterwards by you, to have your Assortment of Goods made richer, and finer every Year. And are your Gold and Silver Laces; – your rich Bro­ cades, Silks, and Velvets; – your Plate, and China, and Jewels; – your Coaches and Equipages; – your sumptuous Furniture, Prints, and Pictures. – Are all these Things now laid aside? Have you no Concerts, or Assemblies, no Play Houses, or Gaming Houses now subsisting? Have you put down your Horse Races and other such like Sports and Diversions? And is the Luxury of your Tables, and the Variety and Profusion of your Wines and Liquors quite banished from among you? – These are the Questions, which you ought to answer, before an Estimate can be made of your relative Poverty, or before any Judgment can be formed concerning the Excessiveness of the Tax. But I have not yet done with you on / this Head. For even though you were poor (which you know, you are not, compared with what you were Thirty Years ago) it may nevertheless happen, that our relative Poverty may be found to be greater than yours. And if so, when a new Burthen is to be laid on, the proper Question is, which of these two Sorts of poor People, is the best able, or, if you please, the best unable to bear it? – especially if it be taken into the Account, that this additional Load is an American Burthen, and not a British one. Be it therefore granted, according to what you say, that you are Two Millions of Souls: be it also allowed, as it is commonly asserted, that the Public Debt of the several Provinces amounts to about 800,000l. Sterling: and in the next Place, be it sup­ posed, for Argument’s sake, that were this general Debt equally divided among the Two Millions, each Individual would owe about the Value of Eight Shillings. Thus stands the Account on one side. Now we in Britain are reckoned to be about Eight Millions of Souls; and we owe almost One hundred and forty-four Millions of Money: which Debt, were it equally divided among us, would throw a Burthen upon each Person of about 18l. Sterling. This then being the State of the Case on both sides; / would it be so capital an Offence? would it be HighTreason in us to demand of you, who owe so little, to contribute equally with ourselves, who owe so much, towards the public Expences; – and such Expences too as you were the Cause of creating? Would it be a Crime of a Nature so very heinous and diabolical, as to call forth the hottest of your Rage and Fury? Surely no:– And yet, my gentle Friend, we do not so much as ask you to contribute equally with ourselves, we only demand, that you would contribute something. – And what is this something? why truly it is, that when we raise about Eight Millions of Money annually upon Eight Millions of Persons, we expect, that you would contribute One hundred thousand Pounds (for the Stamp Duty upon the Continent alone, without comprehending the Islands, cannot possibly amount to more) I say, we expect, that you should contribute One hundred thousand

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Pounds to be raised on Two Millions: that is, when each of us pays, one with another, Twenty Shillings per Head, we expect, that each of you should pay the Sum of One Shilling! Blush! blush for shame at your perverse and scandalous Behaviour! – Words still more keen, and perhaps more just, are ready to break forth, through an honest. Indignation:– but I suppress them. / – Perhaps you will say, and I think, it is the only thing left for you to say in excuse for such Proceedings, that you have other Public Taxes to pay, besides those which the British Parliament now requires. Undoubtedly you have, for your Provincial and other Taxes are likewise to be paid: But here let me ask, is not this our Case also? and have not we many other Taxes to discharge besides those which belong to the Public, and are to be accounted for at the Exchequer? – Surely we have: Witness our County Taxes, Militia Taxes, Poor Taxes, Vagrant Taxes, Bridge Taxes, High Road and Turnpike Taxes, Watch Taxes, Lamps and Scavenger Taxes, &c. &c. &c. – all of them as numerous and as burthen-some as any that you can mention. And yet with all this Burthen, yea, with an additional Weight of a National Debt of 18l. Sterling per Head, – we require of each of you to contribute only One Shilling to every Twenty from each of us! – yes; and this Shilling too to be spent in your own Country, for the Support of your own Civil and Military Establishments; – together with many Shillings drawn from us for the same Purpose. – Alas! had you been in our Situation, and we in yours, would you have been content with our / paying so small, so inconsiderable a Share of the Public Expences? And yet, small and inconsiderable as this Share is, you will not pay it. – No, you will not! and be it at our Peril, if we demand it. Now, my Friend, were Reason and Argument, were Justice, Equity, or Can­ dour to be allowed by you to have any concern in this Affair; I would then say, that you Americans are the most unfortunate People in the World in your Man­ agement of the present Controversy. Unfortunate you are; because the very Attempts you make towards setting forth your Inability, prove to a Demonstra­ tion, that you are abundantly able, were you but truly willing to pay this Tax. For how? and in what Manner do you prove your Allegations? Why truly, by breaking forth into Riots and Insurrections, and by committing every kind of Violence, that can cause Trade to stagnate, and Industry to cease. And is this the Method, which you have chosen to pursue, in order to make the World believe, that you are a poor People? Is this the Proof you bring, that the Stamp Duty is a Burthen too heavy for you to bear? Surely, if you had really intended our Conviction, you would have chosen some other Medium:– and were your Inability, or Poverty the single Point / in question, you would not have taken to such Courses, as must infallibly render you still the poorer. For in fact, if, after all your Complaints of Poverty, you can still afford to idle away your Time, and to waste Days, and Weeks, in Outrages and Uproars; what else do you prove,

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but that you are a prodigal, and extravagant People? For you must acknowledge, that if but half of this Time were spent, as it ought to be, in honest Industry and useful Labour, it would have been more than sufficient to have paid double the Tax which is now required. But you will still say, that though the Tax may be allowed (nay indeed it must be allowed) to be very moderate, every thing considered, and not at all excessive; ‘It may nevertheless be laid on, very unseasonably; it may be wrong-timed, and ill-digested.’ Now, here I must own, that I am somewhat at a loss how to answer you, because I am not quite certain that I understand your Meaning. If, for Exam­ ple, by the Term ill-digested, you would insinuate, that the American Stamp Duty would grind the Faces of the Poor, and permit the Rich to escape; – that it would affect the Necessaries, and not the Superfluities of Life; – / that it would prevent the Building of Houses, or the Clearing of Lands, or the Cultivation of Estates already cleared; – or lastly, that it would diminish the Number of your Shipping, or stop the Pay of your Sailors; – if these, or any of these are the Evils, which you would lay to the Charge of the Stamp Duty; nothing upon Earth could be a falser Charge: and you could not give a stronger Proof either of your Defect of Judgment, or Want of Integrity than by uttering such Assertions as these; – Assertions, which both daily Experience and the Nature of Things evidently demonstrate to be void of Truth. – We in Britain have been subject to a Stamp Duty for many, very many Years; – a Duty much higher than that which is intended for America: and yet we know by long Experience, that it hath not been attended with any of the dreadful Consequences which are here supposed. Again, as to the wrong-timing, or the Unseasonableness of this Tax:– If by this you mean to say, that it was laid on, at a Time, when you were poorer, and less able to bear it, than you were before; – that is false also. For you never were richer, and you never were more able to contribute your Quota towards the gen­ eral Expences, than / at the Juncture of laying on this Tax. To prove this, let it be observed, that just before this Event, you had not only been draining the Mother Country dry by the immense Sums drawn from us to pay our Fleets and Armies, when acting in Defence of America; – and that your Jobbers and Con­ tractors had not only been sucking our Blood and Vitals by their extortionate Demands; – but you had also been enriched by the Spoils, and by the Traffic of the numerous Colonies of France and Spain. For you were continually acting the double Part either of Trade, or War, of Smuggling, or Privateering, according to the Prospect of greater Gain. And while we at home were exerting our utmost to put a speedy End to the War by an honourable Peace; – you on the contrary were endeavouring to prolong it as much as possible; and were supplying our Enemies

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with all Manner of Provisions, and all Sorts of warlike Stores for that Purpose. Nay; because forsooth a Part of these ill-gotten Riches were laid out in English Manufactures (there being at that Time hardly a Possibility of purchasing any but English, when our Fleets were absolute Masters of the Sea) your Advocates and Authors trumpeted aloud the prodigious Profits of this North American Trade; – / not considering, or rather not willing that we should consider, that while a few Individuals were getting Thousands, the Public was spending Mil­ lions. Once more: If by the Epithet unseasonable, you would be understood to mean, that there was no need of taxing you at all at that Juncture; because the Mother Country was still as able to carry the additional Load, which you had brought upon us, as she had been to bear all the rest: if this be your Meaning, I must tell you once for all, that you are egregiously mistaken. For we can bear no more: we cannot support ourselves under heavier Taxations, even were we ever so willing: we have strained every Nerve already, and have no Resources left for new Impositions. Therefore let what will come of the present Affairs, let the Stamp Duty be repealed, or not; still the Expences of America must be borne by the Americans in some Form, or under some Denomination or other. But after all; perhaps you meant none of these Things; perhaps you meant to insinuate (though it was Prudence in you not to speak out) that the late Act was ill-contrived and ill-timed; because it was made at a Juncture, when neither the French, nor Indians were in your Rear to frighten, / nor the English Fleets and Armies on your Front to force you to a Compliance. Perhaps this was your real Meaning: and if it was, it must be confessed, that in that Sense, the late Act was not well-timed; and that a much properer Season might have been chosen. For had the Law been made five or six Years before, when you were moving Heaven and Earth with your Cries and Lamentations; not a Tongue would then have uttered a Word against it; all your Orators would have displayed their Eloquence on other Topics; and even American Patriotism itself would at that Season have made no Difficulty in acknowledging, that the Mother Country had a Right to the Obedience of the Colonies in Return for her kind and gener­ ous Protection. Upon the whole therefore, what is the Cause of such an amazing Outcry as you raise at present? – Not the Stamp Duty itself: all the world are agreed on that Head: and none can be so ignorant, or so stupid, as not to see, that this is a mere Sham and Pretence. What then are the real Grievances, seeing that the Things which you alledge are only the pretended ones? Why, some of you are exasperated against the Mother Country, on the Account of the / Revival of certain

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Restrictions laid upon their Trade:– I say, a* Revival; for the same Restric­ tions have been the standing Rules of Government from the Beginning; though not enforced at all Times with equal Strictness. During the late War, you Ameri­ cans could nor import the Manufactures of other / Nations (which it is your constant Aim to do, and the Aim of the Mother Country always to prevent) so conveniently as you can in Times of Peace: and therefore, there was no Need of watching you so narrowly, as far as that Branch of Trade was concerned. But immediately upon the Peace, the various Manufactures of Europe, particularly those of France, which could not find Vent before, were spread, as it were, over all your Colonies, to the prodigious Detriment of your Mother Country: And therefore our late Set of Ministers acted certainly right, in putting in Force the Laws of their Country, in order to check this growing Evil. – If in so doing, they committed any Error; or, if the Persons to whom the Execution of these Laws were intrusted, exceeded their Instructions; there is no Doubt to be made, but that all this will be rectified by the present Administration. And having done that, they will have done all that in Reason you can expect from them. But alas! the Expectations of an American carry him much farther: For he will ever com­ plain and smuggle, and smuggle and complain, till all Restraints are removed, and till he can both buy and sell, whenever, and wheresoever he pleases. Any thing short of this, is still a Grievance, a Badge / of Slavery, – an Usurpation on the natural Rights and Liberties of a free People, and I know not how many bad Things besides. But, my good Friend, be assured, that these are Restraints, which neither the present, nor any future Ministry can exempt you from. They are the standing *

Ever since the Discovery of America, it has been the System of every European Power, which had Colonies in that Part of the World, to confine (as far as Laws can confine) the Trade of the Colonies to the Mother Country, and to exclude all others, under the Pen­ alty of Confiscation, &c. from partaking in it. Thus, the Trade of the Spanish Colonies is confined by Law to Old Spain. – the Trade of the Brazils to Portugal, – the Trade of Martinico and the other French Colonies to Old France, – and the Trade of Curacoe and Surinam to Holland. But in one Instance the Hollanders make an Exception (perhaps a wise one) viz. in the Case of Eustatia, which is open to all the World. Now, that the English thought themselves entitled to the same Right over their Colonies, which other Nations claim over theirs, and that they exercised the same Right by making what Regu­ lations they pleased, may be seen by the following Acts of Parliament, viz. 12 of Car. II. Chap. 18. – 15 of Car. II. Ch. 7. – 22 and 23 of C. II. Ch. 26. – 25 of C. II. Ch. 7. – 7 and 8 of Will. III. Ch. 22 – 10 and 11 of W. III. Ch. 22. – 3 and 4 of Ann. Ch. 5 and 10. – 8 of Ann. Ch. 13. – 12 of Ann. Ch. 9. – 1 of G. I. Ch. 26. – 3 of G. I. Ch. 21. – 8 of G. I. Ch. 15 and 18. – 11 of G. I. Chap. 20. – 12 of G. I. Ch. 5. – 2 of G. II. Ch. 28 and 35. – 3 of G. II. Ch. 28. – 4 of G. II. Ch. 15. – 5 of G. II. Ch. 9. – 6 of G. II. Ch. 13. – 8 of G. II. Ch. 28. – 11 of G. II. Ch. 29. – 12 of G. II. Ch. 30. – 15 and 16 of G. II. Ch. 33.3 – With many others of a later Date. I might also mention the Laws made in the Reign of his present Majesty; but as these Laws are now the Point in controversy, I forbear. –

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Laws of the Kingdom; and God forbid, that we should allow that dispensing Power to our Ministers, which we so justly deny to our Kings. In short, while you are a Colony, you must be subordinate to the Mother Country. These are the Terms and Conditions, on which you were permitted to make your first Settlements: they are the Terms and Conditions, on which alone you can be entitled to the Assistance and Protection of Great Britain; – they are also the fundamental Laws of the Realm; – and I will add farther, that if we are obliged to pay many Bounties for the Importation of your Goods, and are excluded from purchasing such Goods, in other Countries (where we might purchase them on much cheaper Terms) in order to promote your Interest; – by Parity of Reason you ought to be subject to the like Exclusions, in order to promote ours. This then being the Case; do not expect, from the present Ministry that, / which is impossible for any Set of Ministers to grant. All that they can do, is to connive a while at your unlawful Proceedings. But this can be but of short Duration: For as soon as ever fresh Remonstrances are made by the British Manufacturers, and British Merchants; the Ministry must renew the Orders of their Predecessors; they must inforce the Laws; they must require Searches, and Confiscations to be made: And then the present Ministers will draw upon themselves, for doing their Duty, just the same Execrations, which you now bestow upon the last. So much as to your first Grievance. And as to your Second, it is, beyond Doubt, of a Nature still worse. For many among you are sorely concerned, That they cannot pay their British Debts with an American Sponge. This is an intoler­ able Grievance: and they long for the Day, when they shall be freed from this galling Chain. Our Merchants in London, Bristol, Liverpool, Glasgow, &c. &c. perfectly understand your many Hints and Inuendoes to us, on this Head. But indeed, left we should be so dull as not to comprehend your Meaning, you have spoken out, and proposed an open Association against paying your just Debts. Had our Debtors in any other Part of the / Globe, had the French or Spaniards proposed the like, (and surely they have all at least an equal Right,) what Name would you have given to such Proceedings? – But I forget: You are not the faith­ less French or Spaniards: You are ourselves: You are honest Englishmen. Your third Grievance is the Sovereignty of Great Britain. For you want to be independent: You wish to be an Empire by itself, and to be no longer the Prov­ ince of another. This Spirit is uppermost; and this Principle is visible in all your Speeches, and all your Writings, even when you take some Pains to disguise it. ‘What! an Island! A Spot such as this to command the great and mighty Conti­ nent of North America! Preposterous! A Continent, whose Inhabitants double every five and twenty Years! Who therefore, within a Century and an Half will be upwards of an hundred and twenty Millions of Souls! – Forbid it Patriotism, forbid it Politics, that such a great and mighty Empire as this, should be held in subjection by the paultry Kingdom of Great Britain! – Rather let the Seat

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of Empire be transferred: And let it be fixt, where it ought to be, viz. in Great America!’ Now, my good Friend, I will not stay / to dispute with you the Calculations, on which your Orators, Philosophers, and Politicians have, for some Years past, grounded these extravagant Conceits; (tho’ I think the Calculations themselves both false, and absurd;) but I will only say, that while we have the Power, we may command your Obedience, if we please:– And that it will be Time enough for you to propose the making us a Province to America, when you shall find your­ selves able to execute the Project. In the mean time, the great Question is, What Course are we to take? And what are we to do with you; before you become this great and formidable Peo­ ple? – Plain and evident it is by the whole Tenor of your Conduct, that you endeavour, with all your might, to drive us to Extremities. For no Kind of Out­ rage, or Insult is omitted on your Part, that can irritate Individuals, or provoke a Government to chastise the Insolence, not to say, the Rebellion of its Subjects; and you do not seem at all disposed to leave Room for an Accommodation. In short, the Sword is the only Choice, which you will permit us to make; – unless we will chuse to give you entirely up, and subscribe a Recantation. Upon those Terms indeed, you will deign to acknowledge the Power / and Authority of a British Parliament:– That is, you will allow, that we have a Right and a Power to give you Bounties, and to pay your Expences; – but no other. A strange Kind of Allegiance this! And the first that has ever yet appeared in the History of Mankind! However, this being the Case, shall we now compel you, by Force of Arms, to do your Duty? – Shall we procrastinate your Compulsion? – Or shall we entirely give you up; and have no other Connections with you, than if you had been so many Sovereign States, or Independent Kingdoms? One or other of these three will probably be resolved upon. And if it should be the first, I do not think, that we have any Cause to fear the Event, or to doubt of Success. For though your Populace may rob and plunder the naked and defenceless; this will not do the Business, when a regular Force is brought against them. And a British Army, which performed so many brave Actions in Germany, will hardly fly before an American Mob; not to mention, that our Officers and Soldiers, who passed several Campaigns with your Provincials in America, saw nothing either in their Conduct, or their Courage, which could inspire them with a Dread of seeing the Provincials a / Second Time. – Neither should we have the least Cause to suspect the Fidelity of our Troops, any more than their Bravery – notwithstanding the base Insinuations of some of your Friends here; (if indeed such Persons deserve to be called your Friends, who are in reality your greatest Foes, and whom you will find to be so at the last;) notwithstanding, I say, their Insinuations of the Feasibility of corrupting his Majesty’s Forces, when sent over,

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by Means of large Bribes, or double Pay. This is a Surmise, as weak as it is wicked: For the Honour of the British Soldiery, let me tell you, is not so easily corrupted. The French in Europe never sound it so, with all their Gold, or all their Skill for Intrigue, and insinuating Address. What then, in the Name of Wonder, have you to tempt them with in America, which is thus to overcome, at once, all their for­ mer Sense of Duty, all the Tyes of Conscience, Loyalty and Honour? – Besides, my Friend, if you really are so rich, as to be able to give double Pay, to our Troops, in a wrong Cause; do not grudge, let me beseech you, to give one third of single Pay (for we ask no more) in a right one:– And let it not be said, that you com­ plain of Poverty, and plead an Inability to pay your just Debts, at the very Instant that you / boast of the scandalous Use which you intend to make of your Riches. But notwithstanding all this, I am not for having Recourse to Military Operations. For granting, that we shall be victorious; still it is proper to enquire, before we begin, How are we to be benefited by our Victories? And what Fruits are to result from making you a conquered People? – Not an Increase of Trade: that is impossible: For a Shop-keeper will never get the more Custom by beat­ ing his Customers: And what is true of a Shop-keeper, is true of a Shop-keeping Nation. We may indeed vex and plague you, by stationing a great Number of Ships to cruize along your Coasts; and we may appoint an Army of Custom­ house Officers to patrolle (after a Manner) two thousand Miles by Land. But while we are doing these Things against you, what shall we be doing for ourselves? Not much, I am afraid: For we shall only make you the more ingenious, the more intent, and the more inventive to deceive us. We shall sharpen your Wits, which are pretty sharp already, to elude our Searches, and to bribe and corrupt our Officers. And after that is done, we may perhaps oblige you to buy the Value of twenty, or thirty thousand Pounds / of British Manufactures, more than you would otherwise have done; – at the Expence of two, or three hundred thousand Pounds Loss to Great Britain, spent in Salaries, Wages, Ships, Forts, and other incidental Charges. Is this now a gainful Trade, and fit to be encouraged in a commercial Nation, so many Millions in Debt already? And yet this is the best, which we can expect by forcing you to trade with us, against your Wills, and against your Interests. Therefore such a Measure as this being evidently detrimental to the Mother Country; I will now consider the Second Proposal, viz. to procrastinate your Compulsion. – But what good can that do? and wherein will this Expedient mend the Matter? For if Recourse is to be had at last to the military Power; we had better begin with it at first; – it being evident to the whole World, that all Delays on our side will only strengthen the Opposition on yours, and be inter­ preted by you as a Mark of Fear, and not as an Instance of Lenity. – You swell with too much vain Importance, and Self Sufficiency already; and therefore, should we betray any Token of Submission; or should we yield to these your ill­

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humoured and petulant Desires; this would only serve to confirm you in your present Notions; / viz. that you have nothing more to do, than to demand with the Form of Authority, and to insist with Threatenings, and Defiance, in order to bring us upon our Knees, and to comply with every unreasonable Injunction, which you shall be pleased to lay upon us. So that at last, when the Time shall come of appealing to the Sword, and of deciding our Differences by dint of Arms, the Consequence of this Procrastination will be, that the Struggle will become so much the more obstinate, and the Determination the more bloody. Nay, the Merchants themselves, whose Case is truly pitiable for having confided so much to your Honour, and for having trusted you with so many hundred thousand Pounds, or perhaps with some Millions of Property, and for whose Benefit alone such a Suspension of the Stamp Act could be proposed; they will find to their Costs, that every Indulgence of this Nature will only furnish another Pretence to you for the Suspending of the Payment of their just Demands. In short, you declare, that the Parliament hath no Right to tax you; and therefore you demand a Renunciation of the Right, by repealing the Act. This being the Case, nothing less than a Repeal can be satisfactory; because nothing else can amount to a / Confession, that the Parliament has acted illegally and usurpingly in this Affair. A bare Suspension is no Acknowledgment of Guilt; nay it supposes quite the contrary; and only postpones the Exercise of this usurped Power to a more con­ venient Season. Consequently if you think you could justify the Non-payment of your Debts, till a Repeal took place; you certainly can justify the Suspension of the Payment during the Suspension of the Act. So that after all, the Question must come to this at last, viz. Shall we repeal the Act, and maintain you as we have hitherto done? or shall we give you intirely up, unless you will submit to be governed by the same Laws as we are, and pay something towards maintaining yourselves? – The first, it is certain we cannot do; and therefore the next Point to be con­ sidered is (which is also the third Proposal) Whether we are to give you entirely up? – and after having obliged you to pay your Debts, whether we are to have no farther Connection with you, as a dependent State, or Colony. Now in order to judge properly of this Affair, we must give a Delineation of two Political Parties contending with each other, and struggling for Superior­ ity:– And then / we must consider, which of these two, in the Nature of Things, must be first tired of the Contest, and obliged to submit. Behold therefore a Political Portrait of the Mother Country; – a mighty Nation under one Government of a King and Parliament, – firmly resolved not to repeal the Act, but to give it time to execute itself, – steady and temperate in the Use of Power, – not having Recourse to sanguinary Methods, – but enforc­ ing the Law by making the Disobedient feel the Want of it, – determined to protect and cherish those Colonies, which will return to their Allegiance within

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a limited Time (suppose Twelve or Eighteen Months) – and as determined to compel the obstinate Revolters to pay their Debts, – then to cast them off, and to exclude them for ever from the manifold Advantages and Profits of Trade, which they now enjoy by no other Title, but that of being a Part of the British Empire. Thus stands the Case; and this is the View of Things on one side. Observe again a Prospect on the other; viz. a Variety of little Colonies under a Variety of petty Governments, – Rivals to, and jealous of each other, – never able to agree about any thing before, – and only now united by an Enthusiastic Fit of false / Patriotism; – a Fit which necessarily cools in Time, – and cools still the faster in proportion, as the Object which first excited it is removed, or changed. So much as to the general Outlines of your American Features; but let us now take a nearer View of the Evils, which by your own mad Conduct you are bringing so speedily upon yourselves. – Externally, by being severed from the British Empire, you will be excluded from cutting Logwood in the Bays of Campeachy and Honduras, – from fishing on the Banks of New foundland, on the Coasts of Labrador, or in the Bay of St. Laurence, – from trading (except by Stealth) with the Sugar Islands, or with the British Colonies in any Part of the Globe. You will also lose all the Bounties upon the Importation of your Goods into Great Britain: you will not dare to seduce a single Manufacturer or Mechanic from us under pain of Death; because you will then be considered in the Eye of the Law as mere Foreigners, against whom these Laws were made. – You will lose the Remittance of 300,000l. a Year to pay your Troops; and you will lose the Benefit of these Troops to protect you against the Incursions of the much injured and exasperated Savages; moreover, in / case of Difference with other Powers, you will have none to complain to, none to assist you: For assure yourself, that Holland, France, and Spain, will look upon you with an evil Eye; and will be particularly on their Guard against you, lest such an Example should infect their own Colonies: not to mention that the two latter will not care to have such a Nest of professed Smuglers so very near them. And after all, and in spite of any thing you can do, we in Britain shall still retain the greatest Part of your European Trade; because we shall give a better Price for many of your Commodities than you can have any where else: and we shall sell to you several of our Manufactures, especially in the Woollen, Stuff, and Metal Way, on cheaper Terms. In short, you will do then, what you only do now; that is, you will trade with us, as far as your Interest will lead you; – and no farther. – Take now a Picture of your internal State. When the great Power, which combined the scattered Provinces together, and formed them into one Empire, is once thrown off ; and when there will be no common Head to govern and protect; all your ill Humours will break forth like a Torrent: Colony will enter into Bickerings / and Disputes against Colony; Faction will intrigue and cabal against Faction; and Anarchy and Confusion will every where prevail. The Lead­

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ers of your Parties will then be setting all their Engines to work, to make Fools become the Dupes of Knaves, – to bring to Maturity their half-formed Schemes and lurking Designs, and to give a Scope to that towering Ambition, which was checked and restrained before. In the mean time, the Mass of your People, who expected, and who were promised Mountains of Treasures upon throwing off, what was called, the Yoke of the Mother Country, will meet with nothing but sore Disappointments: Disappointments indeed! For instead of an imaginary Yoke, they will be obliged to bear a real, an heavy, and a galling one:– instead of being freed from the Payment of 100,000l. (which is the utmost that is now expected from them) they will find themselves loaded with Taxes to the Amount of at least 400,000 l. instead of an Increase of Trade, they will feel a palpable Decrease: and instead of having Troops to defend them, and those Troops paid by Great Britain, they must defend themselves, and pay themselves. Nay, the Number of the Troops to be paid, will be more than doubled: for some must be stationed / in the back Settlements to protect them against the Indians, and others on each Frontier to prevent the Encroachments of each Sister Colony. – Not to mention, that the Expences of your Civil Governments will be necessarily increased; and that a Fleet, more or less, must belong to each Province for guard­ ing their Coasts, ensuring the Payment of Duties, and the like. Under all these Pressures and Calamities, your deluded Countrymen will certainly open their Eyes at last. For Disappointments and Distresses will effec­ tuate that Cure, which Reason and Argument, Lenity and Moderation could not perform. In short, having been severely scourged and disciplined by their own Rod, they will curse their ambitious Leaders, and detest those Mock-patri­ ots, who involved them in so many Miseries. And having been surfeited with the bitter Fruits of American Republicism, they will heartily wish, and petition to be again united to the Mother Country. Then they will experience the Difference between a rational Plan of Constitutional Dependence, and the wild, romantic, and destructive Schemes of popular Independence. And you, my Boy, after you have played the Hero, and spoke all your fine Speeches; / – after you have been a Gustavus Vasa,4 and every other brave Deliv­ erer of his Country; – after you have formed a thousand Utopian Schemes, and been a thousand times disappointed; – perhaps even you may awake out of your present political Trance, and become a reasonable Man at last. And assure yourself, that whenever you can be cured of your present Delirium, and shall betray no Symptoms of a Relapse, you will be received with Affection by your old Uncle, your true Friend, and faithful Monitor, A. B.

FINIS.

TWO PAPERS ON THE SUBJECT OF TAXING

THE BRITISH COLONIES IN AMERICA

Two Papers on the Subject of Taxing the British Colonies in America. The First entitled, ‘Some Remarks on the most Rational and Effectual Means that can be used in the Pre­ sent Conjuncture for the Future Security and Preservation of the Trade of Great-Britain, by Protecting and Advancing her Settlements on the North Continent of America’. The Other, ‘A Proposal for Establishing by Act of Parliament the Duties upon Stampt Paper and Parchment in all the British American Colonies’ (London: J. Almon, 1767).

Advocates of all arguments regarding the politics and constitutionalism of empire relied heavily on history to make their various cases. The unknown per­ son or people who published Two Papers on the Subject of Taxing the British Colonies in America in 1767 went a step further, supporting their case for parlia­ mentary taxation by publishing historical documents dating from 1739. As the introduction states, the original papers were published by ‘a Club of American Merchants’, including Sir William Keith, Joshua Gee, ‘and many other eminent Persons’ (below, p. 180). Gee, a Quaker merchant famous for The Trade and Navigation of Great Britain Consider’d (London 1729, and other editions) died in 1730 and may have been wrongly associated with these Two Papers, as he was probably misidentified as author of two works on the wool trade published in 1742.1 Born in Boddam Castle, near Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, around 1669, Keith was in exile at the Jacobite court near Paris until Queen Anne’s 1702 amnesty, but was then involved in the ‘Scotch Plot’ of 1703–4 and arrested on suspicion of treason. By July 1704, though, he entered the Middle Temple in London and, swearing loyalty to Queen Anne, made a failed bid to be MP for Aberdeenshire in 1710. In 1714 he moved to Virginia as surveyor-general of the customs for the southern colonies. Though he lost that post in July 1715, by May he had secured appointment as Governor of Pennsylvania and the Lower Counties (Delaware). He eventually alienated the proprietors and Quakers by governing Delaware as if it were a Crown colony rather than a proprietorship and by allying with Philadelphia merchants, especially with issuing paper cur­ rency in 1723. After his dismissal in 1726, he was elected to the assembly and

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helped consolidate the Philadelphia interest by forming the ‘tiff ’ or ‘leather apron club’ and a gentleman’s club. By the mid-1720s, however, he was heavily in debt. His father was exiled after the 1715 Jacobite uprising and though he inherited the baronetcy the family’s fortunes were lost. He left Philadelphia for England in 1728 to escape creditors, lobbied unsuccessfully for the governorship of New Jersey and of a putative western colony to be called ‘Georgia’, spent time in debtors’ prison, and died in the Old Bailey on 18 November 1749. In 1728 Keith produced A Short Discourse on the Present State of the Colonies in America with respect to the Interest of Great Britain in which he first wrote about French threats to British-American settlement and trade and first advo­ cated a stamp tax to finance a military presence in North America. He later produced A History of Virginia (London, 1738), the first and only volume in an intended history of the colonies, and in 1739 published a weekly newspaper, The Citizen. Or, The Weekly Conversation of a Society of London Merchants on Trade, and other Publick Affairs. Some old and new publications were printed in A Collection of Papers and Other Tracts, Written occasionally on Various Subjects. To which is prefixed, by Way of Preface, an Essay on the Nature of a Publick Spirit (London: J. Mechell, 1740).2 The precise provenance of the Two Papers is obscure, but they reflect views Keith expressed in other publications. The author begins by outlining the Span­ ish and French threats to British trade and territorial expansion, citing on the latter Keith’s own 1718 report as governor. It was specifically to finance armed forces in North America for which Keith proposed a stamp tax. The second of the two papers details how it would be administered and then tries to anticipate objections, believing colonists would ‘chearfully comply with any moderate and easy Tax that could be laid on them for so good and necessary a Purpose’ (below, p. 182). The author took care to mention too that the tax should be ‘by Act of Parliament’ (below, p. 185). While recognizing the colonies as ‘distinct Incor­ porations’, colonists were nevertheless, he argued, ‘virtually’ and therefore ‘truly represented’ in the ‘supreme Legislature’ (below, p. 186). The final paragraph, which must have been added by the later publishers, refers to William Douglass’s Summary, Historical and Political, of the First Planting, Progressive Improve­ ments, and Present State of the British Settlements in North-America (Boston, MA: Rogers & Fowle, 1747–52), which argued for a stamp tax as a deterrent against vexatious lawsuits. Notes: 1. P. Groenewegen, ‘Gee, Joshua (1667–1730), writer on trade and merchant’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 21, p. 716.

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2. W. A. Speck, ‘Keith, Sir William, fourth baronet (c.1669–1749), colonial governor’, in ibid., vol. 31, pp. 81–2; R. N. Lokken, ‘Sir William Keith’s Theory of the British Empire’, Historian, 25:4 (1963), pp. 403–18.

TWO PAPERS, On the SUBJECT of

TAXING THE

BRITISH COLONIES

IN

AMERICA. The First entitled, ‘Some Remarks on the most rational and effectual Means that can be used in the present Conjuncture for the future Security and Preservation of the Trade of Great-Britain, by protecting and advancing her Settlements on the North Con­ tinent of America.’ The Other, ‘A Proposal for establishing by Act of Parliament the Duties upon Stampt Paper and Parchment in all the British American Colonies.’

LONDON: Printed for J. ALMON, opposite Burlington-House, in Piccadilly.

1767.

[Price Six-Pence.] /

TO THE

READER. The following Papers were drawn up by a Club of American Merchants; at the Head of whom were Sir William Keith, Governor of Pensylvania; the cel­ ebrated Mr. Joshua Gee, and many other eminent Persons. They were printed and published in the Year 1739, and are now re-printed and re-published entire, that the World may see what were the Sentiments and Doctrines, at that Time, of the greatest Friends to America, and of those who were best acquainted with the Rights and Commercial Interest of the Colonies; particularly with regard to the Establishment of Stamp-Duties in America, by the Parliament of GreatBritain, and the Application of the Revenue arising therefrom; in both which Respects, the Plan contained in these Papers agrees / exactly with the Stamp-Act repealed during the last Session of Parliament. By comparing these Papers, which were printed near thirty Years ago, with the Doctrines lately broached in Amer­ ica, and now publicly avowed here by Ministers of State for the first Time, the Reader may be enabled to form some Judgment of the Merit or Demerit which those who have supported or resisted them have had to the King, the Parliament, and the People of Great-Britain; and it is therefore hoped, that the Publication of them cannot be thought improper at this Juncture. /

Some Remarks on the most rational and effectual Means that can be used in the present Conjuncture for the future Security and Preservation of the Trade of Great Britain, by protecting and advancing her Settlements on the North Continent of America. The Incroachments and considerable Advantages which of late Years have been made, especially by France, on the British Commerce every where, but more particularly in the West Indies, by Means of that Nation’s having the Preference to furnish the Spaniards with all they want in those Parts, and consequently to ingross an immoderate Share of that Wealth or Bullion which is the Support of all European Trade, is a Matter of such Consequence, as calls for our immediate and most sedate Deliberation; because, unless we can either bring the Spanish Nation into that Freedom of Commerce / with us again, as they have formerly been accustomed to, and would naturally chuse, or by some particular Industry secure to Ourselves all those Advantages which can be made in Trade, by care­ fully protecting and encouraging our many extensive and valuable Settlements in America, it will in all Appearance be impossible for Great Britain much longer to sustain that Rank, which she has now held for almost two Centuries amongst her European Neighbours. With great Deference and Submission therefore to whatever the Councils of Great Britain may think fit in the present Juncture of Time to determine, with regard to Peace or War, it is humbly proposed only, that some little Care should be immediately taken to put our Colonies, especially in the Continent of North America, in a proper Condition either to defend themselves against any Attacks that can be made on them in War, or to protect and duly encourage their lawful Commerce in Time of Peace. For this Purpose, if we please to consider first the Situation of the British, / Colonies*, with respect to their Rivals in America, and how the French have most indefatigably carried on their Friendship and Correspondence with the Natives all along bordering upon and behind our Settlements, from Quebeck to the Mouth of the River Mississippi in the Gulf of Mexico; so that our Indian Traders are continually obstructed from travelling Westward on the Lakes by a Multi­ tude of little Forts, erected at proper Distances, and filled with French Soldiers to protect their own, and interrupt our Commerce that Way; by which Means the vast and numerous Nations of Indians to the Westward are wholly deprived from the Opportunity of dealing with the English, notwithstanding that we can *

`Vid. A Report to the Lords of Trade from the Governor of Pensylvania, February 1718.

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afford all the Commodities they want at above 150 per Cent. cheaper than what they pay to our Rivals: And next, if we do but examine the vast Disproportion of Numbers between Us and Them, as well as the much greater Variety of Com­ modities wherewith We / can more readily supply that Trade, and the prodigious Spirit and Inclination in our People to carry it on, nothing surely but infatuation can suffer us to delay one Moment in raising such a small Number of Regular Troops, to be constantly employed there, as would maintain our unquestion­ able Right to the vacant Lands on the Back of our own Settlements, encourage the Progress of our Plantations Westward, and thereby easily open to Ourselves a free Correspondence with those vast and populous Nations of Indians, to whom, merely for lack of the common Means of Access to them, we are at pre­ sent altogether Strangers. So very important is the Nature of this Subject just now, that in case of a War, if our Settlements should continue in that weak and helpless Condition they are now, to lie exposed to the Insults and Attacks of the Enemy, without the Protec­ tion of any Kind of Fortifications either before or behind them, and without the Aid of any other Troops but a loose, disorderly, and insignificant Militia, surely we can expect nothing / else but such Desolation and Ruin, as the Industry of many Years to come will not be able to repair. Wherefore it is humbly proposed, that a small Body of Regular Troops be immediately raised for that Service on the North Continent of America, to be commanded and disposed of all along the Western Frontier of our Settlements there, by an experienced General Officer under the Crown, independent on the particular Orders of the respective Governors, yet to be assisted by them in Council on every emergent Occasion: The Resolutions from Time to Time, and whole Proceedings of which General Council to be constantly transmitted and laid before the King in his Privy Council, as the dernier Resort and supreme Authority in all Affairs relating to the Plantations; some such Regulation as this, it is humbly conceived, would effectually prevent all or most of the Dangers and Losses, we have, as Matters now stand, but too just Cause to apprehend, and at the same Time it would give such Protection and Encouragement / to all man­ ner of Business in the Plantations, as would greatly please the People Abroad, and likewise bring considerable Profit to the Merchant at Home; so that there is good Reason to expect the British Subjects in America, for whose immediate Advantage and particular Service this Scheme is chiefly designed, would on that Account chearfully comply with any moderate and easy Tax that could be laid on them for so good and necessary a Purpose; on Condition however that all the Money to be so levied amongst them should be punctually and strictly applied to this Service, and no other: From all which we presume to affirm, that if the Duty on Stamps was, by Act of Parliament, now established in all the British Colonies, and that the Product of that Revenue was, by the same Authority, strictly appropriated

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to the Service of those Plantations only, it would most certainly answer the pro­ posed End, for the Encouragement and Protection of Commerce, and, thereby, the true Service and Honour of the British Nation; all which is most humbly submitted to the / Consideration and Judgment of our Superiors. Much has been said and wrote of late about the Decay of the Woollen Manu­ factory; but, without entering into the particular and various Reasons, how that Staple has suffered, and been reduced from the very flourishing Condition it was in a few Years ago, it will certainly be more prudent, and therefore eligible, to dis­ cover and encourage a new Vent for the Woollen Manufactory of Great Britain, than to strain our Invention otherways, by contending with those Advantages, which our Rivals have obtained by such Industry and Management, as we can neither interrupt nor prevent. Supposing, then, that by due Encouragement to the Colonies, especially on the Continent of America, we should proportionably increase a constant Demand for our coarse Woollens, which is allowed to be the Bulk of that Manu­ facture, we shall thereby secure a certain and profitable Vent for that valuable Staple, independent of all Foreign / Nations, and in Despite of any Arts they can possibly use to obstruct us; which Consideration alone is sufficient to dem­ onstrate the important Advantage, which must accrue to Britain by protecting, encouraging, and extending her Plantations on the Continent of America. /

Proposal for establishing by Act of Parliament the Duties upon Stampt Paper and Parchment in all the British American Colonies. The Contiguous Situation of the British Colonies on the Coast of the Northern Continent of America, is not only a very great Advantage to the Trade of Britain, but likewise has of late Years produced such an Increase of Inhabit­ ants, as has rendered them vastly Superior in Strength of People, when compared either with the French or Spanish Settlements on the same Continent; so that under a wise and good Regulation of Government, Britain has little to fear from her Rivals in America, and may easily provide for the Safety and Protection of her Dominions there without the Trouble of frequent Equipments, or expensive Expeditions from Europe. / But as the Policy of the British State has wisely divided those Settlements into many separate Governments independent on one another, whereby they cannot be forced into any Union of Councils, or otherways deprived of that Lib­ erty which is peculiar to the Subject of Great-Britain, some other Method must be contrived, in Case of any Breach with France or Spain, to raise a public Fund in America for the Maintenance and Support of any Military Force, which may be found useful and necessary to be kept up in those Parts, in order to preserve the Ballance of Power, and protect the Trade of Britain. For this Purpose it is proposed, that without obstructing in the least any Branch of Commerce, or affecting the Property of Lands in that Part of the Brit­ ish Dominions, the Duties on Stamps may be extended by Act of Parliament to all the Colonies, and the Produce applied to answer the Expence of Land Forces and other Public and necessary Services in the American Plantations, to the great Ease of the Mother State, and / without the Trouble of applying to the several Assemblies in so many Distinct and Independent Provinces, who never could be brought in voluntarily to raise such a Fund by any general and equally propor­ tioned Tax among themselves. It is likewise proposed, that the several Kinds of Stamps to be struck for America shall be different, and bear a remarkable Distinction from those used in Great-Britain; and that there shall be one Commissioner added to the present Commission for the Stamp Office, who shall be a Member of that Board, and accountable to the same for all such Quantities of Stamps as he shall call for and receive out of that Office for the Use of the Plantations. That the said Commissioner for America shall receive his Instructions from the Board at London, and be directed forthwith to proceed to every one of the

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Colonies in America, and there to depute such and so many Persons in each Colony, as he shall judge needful, to reside at the most convenient Places for the delivering out all such Stamps as the Peoples / Occasions may require, and are called for from Time to Time, he taking good and sufficient Security for the Fidelity of the Officers so by him deputed, giving them at the same Time Instructions how and in what Manner the Money or Value of the Stamps so by them delivered out shall be returned to the Stamp Office at London, where all Accounts of that Revenue are to be regularly made up, and returned every Quarter, and the whole Management thereof submitted to the Direction of that Board from Time to Time. That the Commissioner for America shall have Power to settle the yearly Allowance or Salary to be given to the Officers his Deputies and Clerks abroad, and he be allowed for his own Trouble and Expence, which will be very consider­ able in travelling from Place to Place, the Sum of per Annum.1 / Reasons, humbly offered in Support of the above Proposal to extend the Duties on Stampt Paper and Parchment all over the British Plantations. The Author of the above Proposal disclaims, all Views of depriving the British Subjects in the Plantations, of any of those Rights and Privileges which are derived to them as natural-born Subjects of Great-Britain; but on the other Hand, he can­ not consider that Part of his Majesty’s Subjects Abroad to be invested with any Sort of Rights or Privileges, that are of a higher and more independent Nature than what their Brethren of Great-Britain can claim at Home. For he considers all the American Provinces as so many distinct Incorporations, who, from the Accident of their distant Situation, are invested with various Privileges, essentially necessary to their Society in separate independent Governments. But he conceives that the Subjects there, are under no other supreme Legislature but that of Great-Britain; / insomuch that every Subject in America, as often as his Occasions require, has an indubitable Right to make his humble Application to a British Parliament, where he virtually conceives himself to be truly represented; because the common Inter­ est of the British State or Commonwealth, most certainly includes the Subjects of America, equally with those of every other Part of the Dominion, and so we find it to be understood by the Tenor of the famous Act of Navigation, as well as other restrictive Acts relating to Commerce and the public Revenue. When People therefore pretend to distinguish between the Interest of the Plantations and that of Great-Britain, they do not advert that these two, from the Nature of Things, must always be the same, even so when the particular Interest or Advantage of any one Colony is placed in Opposition to that of all the rest; it is quite from the Purpose, and cannot in that Light be supposed to merit the Consideration of a legislative supreme Power. / The Grounds of the present War with Spain sufficiently declare, that it is the Interest of the British State to maintain and defend her Settlements in America.

Two Papers on the Subject of Taxing the British Colonies in America

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And the Condition of many Branches of the public Revenue, as well as of the national Trade, for some Time past, in like Manner demonstrate, that to promote the Interest of the Plantations in general, to extend their Settlements Westward, and protect their Trade with the Natives, is a very considerable public Concern, worthy the Attention of the Legislature. And it being not only a received Maxim in Policy, but the peculiar Badge of a free Constitution, that every Member of a Com­ monwealth ought to bear his just Proportion of whatever public Taxes are needful to be raised for supporting the Rank, or improving the Interest of the State, we may equitably conclude, that since it is evidently become necessary for Britain to erect Forts, and maintain a reasonable Number of Troops for the Defence of her Dominions in America, the Subjects there will have no just Cause to complain, / if, for that particular Service, one of the easiest and least burthensome Taxes, which the Wisdom of Parliament has thought fit to impose on the Subjects of GreatBritain at Home, be now extended to the Plantations in America. Some of the Advantages that would accrue to Britain, as well as to her Colo­ nies, by such an Act of Parliament, are conceived to be as follows, viz. I. All the Colonies, but especially those on the Continent, would immedi­ ately and most sensibly feel the warm Influence of such a Protection and Support in carrying on their industrious Commerce, and extending their Settlements, as they have not hitherto had any Experience of; and it would be a mighty Encour­ agement for them to have annually the Occasion of observing, that the Money raised amongst themselves for this Service, was strictly accounted for to Parlia­ ment, and duly applied for their proper Benefit. / II. It would put an entire Stop to all those Complaints and Disputes daily arising between the People of the Colonies and their respective Governors, about raising Forces, and otherwise complying with the Royal Instructions, in Matters which are truly beyond their Capacities, and always contradictory to their selfish and narrow Dispositions. III. It would gradually, with Time, introduce amongst them a more just and favourable Opinion of their Dependency on a British Parliament, than what they generally have at present; and as it would intitle them, on many Occasions, to seek Redress in Parliament, it would keep the superior and arbitrary Officers amongst them in some Awe, and prevent a Multitude of injurious, oppressive Practices, which would perhaps be thought too invidious to enumerate here. IV. The Expence of Stamps would be a very proper and easy Cheque to that immoderate Quantity of Paper Bills / struck in many of the Colonies, to the Discouragement of fair Trade, especially from Europe, and which no Method yet tried has been found sufficient to regulate within due Bounds. V. It would place the united Strength of all the Colonies together into the Hands of the Crown, without affecting their constant and necessary Independ­ ency on one another.

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Douglas, in his Summary of America, written and published at Boston, in the Year 1749, says, ‘As vexatious Suits in Law are a great Nuisance in all Countries, and the smaller the Charges of Courts, the greater is the Encouragement to such Suits; therefore there should be a Stamp-Duty upon all Writings, or Instruments, used in Law Affairs.’2 Vide Vol. I. p. 259.

FINIS.

CANNING, A LETTER TO THE RIGHT

HONOURABLE WILLS EARL OF

HILLSBOROUGH

George Canning, A Letter to the Right Honourable Wills Earl of Hillsborough, On the

Connection between Great Britain and her American Colonies (London: T. Becket and

J. Almon, 1768).

In 1768, Chancellor Charles Townshend introduced duties on various goods imported into the American colonies in an attempt to raise revenue in the wake of the failed Stamp Act. The Townshend Duties were specifically on imports, in answer to colonial objections that stamp duties represented ‘internal’ taxation on domestic transactions, implying that ‘external’ taxation was legitimate. In A Let­ ter to the Right Honourable Wills Earl of Hillsborough, George Canning addresses this issue as well as others that had arisen since Parliament began taxing colonists directly since 1764. Canning employs the literary technique of inventing a dia­ logue between ‘two sober and sensible men, the one an Englishman, the other a Colonist’ (below, p. 194) to represent the issues raised in the preceding four years. Canning (1736–71) was the son of Stafford Canning, an Irish Protestant landowner from Londonderry. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin (BA, 1754), before his father sent him to England to foil an unacceptable marriage, though George later married Mary Ann Costello (c. 1747–1827), of whom Stafford also disapproved. He entered the Middle Temple in 1764, though he preferred politics, literature and theatre to law and ran up debts that his father paid off on condition he renounce his inheritance. George died on 11 April 1771, the first birthday of his second child, also George, the future Prime Minis­ ter. The letter was addressed to Wills Hill (1718–93), Viscount and from 1772 Earl of Hillsborough and later first Marquess of Downshire, who was President of the Board of Trade (1763–5, 1766 and 1768–72), Secretary of State for the Colonies, 1768–72, and later for the Southern Department, 1779–82.1 Canning presents himself as an iconoclast, claiming to ‘bring no other weapon into the field of ratiocination than plain good sense, supported by a gen­ eral information as to facts, and a tolerable insight into the topicks of argument’ – 189 –

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(below, p. 196), as ‘Reason, abstracted from fact and experience, will always degenerate into fancy and caprice’ (below, p. 197). He reveals his ideology, even while affecting anti-intellectuality, however. In defending ‘common sense and experience’ and claiming that ‘I entirely wave the authority of great names, and will as confidently undertake to support right reason, sound policy, and truth, against a Locke, as against a Filmer’ (below, p. 200), he stakes out his ground as an inegalitarian and authoritarian libertarian. Canning gave his American protagonist a fair if only a brief speech, rehears­ ing colonial claims about the both the injustice and the inexpediency of parliamentary taxation: that Man has no native superiority over Man … an Englishman can claim no superi­ ority over an American … [that colonists] have lavished their blood and treasure in the quarrels of that parent, who now seeks to oppress them … that they are freeborn Britons, as the Descendants of Britons, and have never yet forfeited or impaired their title to the glorious immunities and privileges of their Ancestors … that Property is inviolable under the influence of that spirit … that Taxation and Representation must ever go hand in hand; that all the inhabitants of Britain are either actually or virtually represented in the British Senate, but not one single inhabitant of America … that the Colonies in fact have Assemblies of their own, constituted in every respect like the British Parliament (below, pp. 196–7)

Canning calls these arguments ‘the Siren Song of false Liberty’ (below, p. 195), however, and his Briton, whom he gives his own voice, begins his oration by undermining the philosophical underpinnings of the above: ‘Would to God that all mankind enjoyed freedom and happiness, in the highest, most perfect, and permanent degree!’ (below, p. 197). ‘Mankind never met in an oecumenical assembly, either collectively in their persons, or virtually by their representatives, to make at once a grand division of the lands of the earth’ (below, p. 199). ‘The Freedom of every man, born in the lap of a Community’, he continues, ‘is by no means an absolute, unrestrained, savage Freedom; but limited by, and amenable to, the laws’ (below, p. 199). He reasons that colonists would be no less free for obeying Parliament because they were as adequately represented in it as most Britons and that there was no meaningful distinction between internal and exter­ nal taxation or indeed between taxation and other legislation. As for arguments of expediency, Canning argues that failing to enforce British authority now, when in time colonists would only gain in power and in sense of entitlement, was coun­ ter to the ‘cardinal law of Nature, Self-preservation’ (below, p. 202). Notes: 1. D. Beales, ‘Canning, George (1770–1827), prime minister and parodist’, in Oxford Dic­ tionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 9, pp. 911–12; P. Marshall, ‘Hill, Wills first mar­ quess of Downshire (1716–1793), politician, in ibid., vol. 27, pp. 207–11.

A

LETTER TO THE

RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLS

EARL OF HILLSBOROUGH, ON THE

CONNECTION BETWEEN

GREAT BRITAIN AND HER

AMERICAN COLONIES. Imperat.

– A—m rege:– nisi paret, Hor.1

LONDON:

Printed for T. Becket, in the Strand; and

J. Almon, in Piccadilly.

MDCCLXVIII. /

A

LETTER, &c.

My Lord,

It is the way of the world to bestow favours more liberally on those who do not, than on those who do, want them. Nor is this universally acknowledged propension, when fairly canvassed, so very illaudable as it seems at first blush. Possessions, of whatever kind, must always imply a presumption, at least, of some sort of merit. From the most sordid crumenal, to the noblest literary and senato­ rial acquirements, we may trace in the possessors a spirit, or habit, beneficial to the publick; / for the publick subsists by the labours and exertions of its indi­ viduals. The possessor of the greater proportion of talents has even the express sanction of heaven for the acquisition of more: while the dull forlorn wretch, whose indolence and ignorance have either dissipated his store, or preserved barely the poor pittance which nature had granted, without fruit or increase, is deservedly stripped of even that which he hath. Prompted by this principle, I presume to address a few scattered thoughts, (meriting notice, or not, as your judgment will determine,) on the subject of the relation between Great Britain and her Colonies, to your Lordship, as the man perhaps in the world who want advice and information on this topick the least; but who, at the same time, from principle, ability, and station, can make the best use, and the most salutary for your country, of the smallest mite thrown into that treasure of commercial and political knowledge, which / by attention and experience you have accumulated already. The grand question respecting a parliamentary taxation of our Colonies in America has been aptly and generally divided into two parts; the one relative to the Right of the Legislature of Great Britain to impose taxes upon them at any time whatever, the other relative to the Expediency of exercising such Right in the present conjuncture. The legislative Right of this kingdom over every most distant parcel of the British empire, though solemnly affirmed by a declaration of the highest, and most authoritative nature, is still doubted by many, who scru­ ple not to express their doubts in strong terms. The Expediency of exercising such Right at present, by levying a tax on the American Colonies, has, after long debate, been determined in the negative by the supreme legislature. /

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Upon this state of the case, both questions are, in my opinion, still open to discussion. The former, because many men may lend a patient ear to private reason, which offers itself with the conciliating air of equality, who revolt at once from the authority of parliamentary decision: and it is surely more eligible to convince than to compel. Compulsion extends only to acts, not to thoughts: and such thoughts as the people of this country entertain, it would be extremely difficult, nor is it desireable, to prevent their expressing. They are a generous spir­ ited people, fond of freedom to enthusiasm, and would maintain that of others at the hazard of their own; but, I hope, not madly at the certain loss of it. The latter question, that, I mean, of Expediency, is still open to discussion; because, from its nature, it can admit of no more than a temporary determi­ nation. What is not expedient to day may become so to-morrow, but natural Rights are of stable duration. Thus the Expediency / must ever be free to debate; the Right only so far as may tend to convince the prejudiced and uninformed. The two questions seem to me, in many points of view, so closely, and, I may say, cunningly, interwoven together, that the same thread of argument suits the texture of both. Though the division, therefore, be clear, I profess not to treat them always as separate, but to blend, or distinguish, as occasion may require. At the head of that army, which ostensibly ranges itself under the banners of liberty, there proudly steps forth a gigantick phantom, plumed with the arro­ gance of imaginary vigour, who hurls defiance against all opponents, himself truely invulnerable, because a mere goblin of air. I mean the monstrous idea of a Virtual Representation. Grant this phantom, for one moment, a possible exist­ ence, and he militates equally, in the present contest, for Great Britain, and her Colonies. If / he makes but one step from Manchester to London, he may as easily stride Colossus-like across the Atlantick. If any one town in England be but virtually represented, her Colonies have surely no good cause to murmur, if they be included within the same predicament. So that all the boasted reasoning that Eloquence has drawn from the strange proposition of a Virtual Representa­ tion labours obviously under the fatal objection of proving too much – a fatality attendant upon almost every argument worth a moment’s consideration, which the Advocates of America have lately adduced. Suppose, my Lord, two sober and sensible men, the one an Englishman, the other a Colonist, sat down to reason together, coolly and deliberately, on the popular subject of an American taxation by a British legislature. As to the point of Expediency, it is pretty clear, I think, and certain, they can never agree. Wav­ ing other considerations, this single bar to / harmony will keep them always at variance: namely, the good Englishman, with all his generosity, having a rooted aversion to the payment of (eo nomine) Taxes, will ever think it expedient, if he be satisfied of his Right, to lighten his own burden, by laying a part of it on American shoulders; an idea of Expediency, to which the spirited Colonist can

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never subscribe, while he preserves that desire, so natural to man, of chusing rather to dispose of his property himself, than suffer it to lie at the disposal of another. The Right, however, opens a more ample field of argument; the reasoning on it is more abstracted, and comes not home so soon or so closely to the Indi­ vidual. I can well conceive the Englishman, upon general theoretical notions of Liberty, to whose cause he is always so warmly attached, upon notions of Equal­ ity amongst all the sons of men, very fine in speculation, and very false in fact, I can conceive him, I say, on the naked question of Right, / to be led away by plausible and conciliatory propositions, pressed much more strongly upon his heart than his head, offered, not to the man’s reason, but rather to the man, ren­ dered pleasingly insidious by compliments artfully paid to the glorious struggles of Englishmen in all ages for Liberty, I can conceive him so enraptured with this Dulcinea of his imagination, as to sacrifice his senses at her visionary shrine, and while he combats aërial castles for her honour, to desert his patrimony, and abdicate his birthright. – But, my Lord, I ask pardon: I had forgot that my Eng­ lishman was a man of calmness and good sense. He sets a just and true value on his birth-right; and, although not absolutely predetermined on the question, resolves to be on his guard against the sophistry of his antagonist, whose interest he sees deeply concerned in the issue. But, before my two champions enter the lists of debate, give me leave to shew that, on the topick of Right, as I have / already endeavoured to demonstrate that they may agree, by the Briton’s attachment to the Siren Song of false Liberty, so their sentiments may likewise be brought to coincide, by a concession of the Right on the part of the Colonist. But such concession would be temporary and delusive, not flowing from conviction, but extorted by fear. The power of Great Britain might justly alarm: Opposition, it might be apprehended, would irri­ tate and inflame: an insolent or obstinate denial of the Right might provoke a sudden exertion of Power to enforce it. Policy would suggest that the self-same arguments, which at this day support Colonial Independence, might be urged with far greater security and efficacy, when their numbers are become double, and when their wealth is augmented in, perhaps, a tenfold proportion, chiefly by means of the supineness of Britain, in resting satisfied with empty declarations of one of her most important and essential Rights; which, if not speedily and efficiently asserted, will soon sound / as ridiculous, as the Cham of Tartary’s2 gracious permission to the potentates of the earth to sit down to their dinners. Thus, I say, my Lord, it is possible that, on the topick of Right, the Briton and the Colonist may smoke the calumet of peace: with only this difference respect­ ing their motives – that, if the agreement arises from the Briton’s acceding to the sentiments of the Colonist, and disclaiming his supremacy as incompatible with freedom, he acts from the benevolent simplicity of his heart, and the coin­

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cidence of opinion is cordial and sincere. If this agreeable concurrence, on the other hand, should spring from a concession on the part of the American, such acquiescence is politick, temporary, and delusive, calculated merely to amuse, and suspend the dreaded exertion of power, till strength be acquired to support argument with force. / But my two sober Disputants, whom, as men of my own creation, I have a right to model according to my fancy, shall bring no other weapon into the field of ratiocination than plain good sense, supported by a general informa­ tion as to facts, and a tolerable insight into the topicks of argument. To make them Men, each must have his foible: it shall be an amiable one, and the same in both – namely, a tender predilection for the countries which respectively gave them birth, implanted deeply by nature in the bosom of each, and branching out imperceptibly under cover of their reasonings, but not with such pressure as to diminish their force. It is not my intent to frame a regular colloquy, or to embarrass the discourse by marking precisely every answer and reply. Let us suppose the first forms of disputation adjusted; let us pass over each previous question in silence; let us endeavour, as soon as may be, to lay hold on the point. It is urged by the Ameri­ can, with great / plausibility, and with a glow of eloquence, which even the semblance of Liberty always inspires, (but which, to avoid the transgression of epistolary limits, it is my duty to restrain,) that Man has no native superiority over Man; that, not only by virtue of this general principle, but by virtue of the most express and particular stipulations, an Englishman can claim no superiority over an American, except that of a Father over a Son at full age, which, if circum­ stances are easy*, amounts to nothing more than a claim of honour and respect; that such homage the Americans are ever willing to pay; that in the payment of such homage they have never yet been deficient; that they have proceeded much farther, and, as became children zealously devoted to their duty, have lavished their blood and treasure in the quarrels of that parent, who now seeks to oppress them; that they are still ready to expend their treasure to the last mite, and / their blood to the last drop, in defence and support of the rights of their parent; but that, while they remain free, the mode of exertion must be left to themselves; that they themselves are the only competent judges of the strength of their own sinews; that they are freeborn Britons, as the Descendants of Britons, and have never yet forfeited or impaired their title to the glorious immunities and privi­ leges of their Ancestors, but by the whole tenor of their conduct have rather strengthened their claim; that the volatile spirit of English Liberty transfuses its sacred flame through every remotest branch of the Empire of Great Britain; that Property is inviolable under the influence of that spirit; that an extortion of *

Easy, I mean, on the part of the Father.

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money from the meanest individual by colour of law would be such a fatal viola­ tion of Property, as must wound the very vitals of the whole collective system; that such extortion means nothing more than a taking of it from the individual, without his express or implied, without his actual, or at least his virtual consent; / that external prohibitions or restrictions upon commerce may be vindicated by the extent of the naval power of Great Britain, by her confessedly paramount dominion at sea, but that internal taxation rests on a quite different basis; that the levying taxes in America by the sole authority of a British legislature, where of America constitutes not one single member, would be the grossest violation of American Property; that Taxation and Representation must ever go hand in hand; that all the inhabitants of Britain are either actually or virtually represented in the Brit­ ish Senate, but not one single inhabitant of America bears, as an American, the minutest part in either such actual or virtual representation; that the Colonies in fact have Assemblies of their own, constituted in every respect like the British Parliament, and fully adequate to every purpose of taxation amongst themselves; that those Assemblies are the only power which can or ought to tax them; that these principles and sentiments are not the luxuriant growth / of American opu­ lence and wantonness, now factiously aiming at a novel independence, but were imported from Great Britain by their British Ancestors, who brought along with them into those inhospitable wilds the spirit of the Law and Constitution of their Country, which have been at various times, then and since, confirmed to them, by the same high sanction, which stamps the Fiat on every British Act of Parliament, namely, by the sanction of the Crown of Great Britain. I hope, my Lord, I have not been a niggard to my Colonist: if his best rea­ soning proves defective, he must blame the weakness of his cause: if I have not placed it in its fullest light, it was no error of intention: if I have been deficient in my representation of it, I must take shame to the imbecillity of my own under­ standing, which, I fairly acknowledge, did for some time acquiesce under the weight of those very arguments, which I now have urged freely, though con­ cisely, for him. / Attention and deliberation have changed my opinion: and, to vary my style, and throw off the aukwardness of a dialogue in the third person, I will proceed to urge my Englishman’s answer as my own. Would to God that all mankind enjoyed freedom and happiness, in the highest, most perfect, and permanent degree! Would to God there were no pain, or other evil in the world! – But how vain are such wishes! How futile are the dreams of the Philosopher in his study, where he creates worlds by his fancy, and models systems by his caprice – for Reason, abstracted from fact and experience, will always degenerate into fancy and caprice. How long did the natural world lie enveloped in darkness, while Hypothesis was deified, and Experiment despised! while the reins hung loose about the neck of Reason, and Fact was trampled upon, as unworthy of regard! – Reasoning à priori is in every respect as false, and

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leads as certainly to error, in the moral, and political, / as it is now universally confessed that it did, for a series of ages, in the natural world. There are, indeed, in Ethicks, as well as in Physicks, and likewise in Politicks, as well as in both, cer­ tain grand first principles, which serve as polar stars, to give light and direction for the discovery of the true system: but, though we take them as guides, they are by no means the sources whence our reasonings should flow. The tendency of argument should be upwards to them from facts, not downwards from them at random. The rays of ratiocination should arise severally from the scattered multitude of experiments, and then in their progress converge to a point: but, if they are forced absurdly to dart from that point towards which they should tend, diverging through their whole course, they will dissipate their lustre, nor preserve sufficient radiance, when they have reached the sphere of reality, to elu­ cidate a single fact which experience offers to our view. – Such has been the fate of all Hypothetical, Platonick, and Utopian / systems! such must ever be their fate, till Man advances to perfection – a period, indeed, most devoutly to be wished; but, if we may judge from the past, and, I fear I may add with strict truth, from the present, not likely to be accomplished, at least in our time. The subordination of Colonies, wherever planted, to their Mother Coun­ try, is as universally acknowledged, as it is variously defined. To argue from experience, as well as from reason, we must presume that every such established subordination partakes in nature, as well as in degree, of the constitution of that particular Country, from which the Colony that owns it took its rise. The Colo­ nies of monarchical and aristocratical Despotism, will in vain sigh for freedom, while they pay homage to their Parent; the Colonies of every popular, mixed, and free Government, preserving their duty, have a right to be free. A sudden fit of phrenzy, though mischievous, may be pardoned. But should such / free Colo­ nies, with deliberation and perseverance, make riotous, tumultuous, or rebellious opposition to the legal appointments of that power whence they sprung, it might become necessary, perhaps, not only to reduce them, by compulsory measures, to a just sense, or at least an ostensible practice of duty; but by binding their hands, to secure the Parent from a repetition of outrage. Thus, I trust, it will clearly and readily be granted, that no Colony can ever pretend to a greater proportion of liberty, than the Country from which it derives existence enjoys, while it continues to profess a duty to that Country; and that every Colony is liable, by a gross and flagrant abuse of indulgence, to a reduction below the fixed standard of liberty, as primarily and constitutionally erected by law. I am well aware that, on a larger scale of abstract reasoning, All Men are at all times universally free. – But the laws of Nature are applicable only to its state. / Its state, and its laws have been found alike inconvenient. Mankind, in exact proportion to their civilization, over the whole face of the earth, have abro­ gated both, and substituted others at discretion in their room. The particular

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exigencies of every Society, as from time to time they arose, and the operation of those exigencies upon the genius, spirit, and temper of the major part of the members of every such Society, or, if not democratical, upon its leading man, or leading men, have given occasion to the framing of particular ordinances, which are so many encroachments on, or at least restrictions of, the universal law of Nature, and upon their multiplication have swelled to a Code, which becomes the municipal law of the Country, and gives equally the tone to its constitution, and its manners. It is thus, in effect, that every political state has been gradually formed. Mankind never met in an oecumenical assembly, either collectively in their persons, or virtually by their representatives, to make at once a grand divi­ sion of the lands / of the earth, and by such agrarian law to affix permanent boundaries to each respective Nation, within which its posterity should be for ever inclosed. Nor have the legal constitutions, any more than the legal limits, of the several Nations, been settled at one æra, and confirmed by the sanction of universal assent. Both are in fact, and always have been, in every part subject to perpetual fluctuation. As they stand at the present moment, it is both our moral duty, and our interest, to pay them respect and obedience; though we know that, even at the very next moment, they are liable to every possible alteration, from that supreme legislative power, which has gradually gained pre-eminence and ascendancy, and must be omnipotent in every state. Were all human Society by some sudden stroke dissolved, and men thereby left free to form new associa­ tions, during such interregnum the law of Nature would rule. But till that event happens, it behoves us to submit to the regulations of that country, where we chuse or chance / to reside, as we find those regulations already established. Ref­ ormation, where requisite, must be of gradual growth, and abuses, as they arose, be removed, by degrees. The Supreme Legislature alone can be the Reformer of political evils. Individuals may address, remonstrate, and complain; but are bound to obey, till the Supreme Power grants redress. An establishment of gradual rise is certainly much firmer, and probably more just, than one of sud­ den, creation, however generally assented to: because the same authority that has passed an Act, can as readily repeal it; but where time is an ingredient in the composition of its force, time should likewise conspire to work its dissolution. Few men are born to new-model Governments: All are born within the sphere of some particular form, to which they are morally obliged to yield homage and obedience. The Freedom of every man, born in the lap of a Community, is by no means an absolute, unrestrained, savage Freedom; but limited by, and amenable to, the laws / of that Community, wherein he drew his first breath, and after­ wards to the laws of such other Communities, amongst whom he may happen from time to time to reside. However shadowy the idea of a virtual representa­ tion, every Heir is the actual representative of his Ancestors, as his Ancestors were by anticipation the representatives of him. This is a Representation formed

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by Nature herself. As the Heir is undoubtedly a part of his Ancestors, those Ancestors were reciprocally so many parts of the Heir: as they were his repre­ sentatives, he is bound by their acts; as he is their representative, he is bound to fulfill their engagements. To apply to the subject matter this political doctrine, which I hold to be that of common sense and experience – for I entirely wave the authority of great names, and will as confidently undertake to support right reason, sound pol­ icy, and truth, against a Locke, as against a Filmer; however conscious of the weakness of my / own abilities, however respectable I think the one, however contemptible I think the other, of those two jarring names. – To apply, I say, to the subject matter this political doctrine, I will only beg permission to ask a few questions, and leave the answers and their consequences to candour and common sense. Are not the British Colonists in America the Descendants of British Ancestors, and is not this postulatum the very foundation, upon which they lay claim to the immunities of Britons? Can the Descendants of British Ancestors, merely as being so descended, arrogate to themselves, by any colour of right, a greater proportion of freedom, than those very Ancestors actually enjoyed, or than such of the Posterity of those very Ancestors, as remain in Great Britain, now actually enjoy? Had any one of those Ancestors, under whom they derive their claim, the least share in constituting that legislature, whose supremacy he was bound in all things to obey, unless / as a Freeholder of lands or tenements in Great Britain, or as a Freeman of some corporate town within the realm? Have the Posterity of those Ancestors, still remaining in Brit­ ain, any share in constituting the supreme legislature, unless as such Freeholders, or as such Freemen? Have the major part of the inhabitants of Great Britain any actual share in constituting the supreme legislature? Are not all, however, bound to obey its power, equally with those who are its actual constituents? Will the Colonists, by obeying the legislature of Britain be one jot less free than those of her sons who have no share in constituting it? Have the moneyed men of Great Britain, merely as moneyed men, the copyholders, as copyholders, or lessees for years, as lessees for years, the least share in constituting the supreme legislature, any more than the Colonists have, as Colonists? May not all those persons, however, by becoming Freeholders of lands or tenements, or Freemen of corporations / within the realm of Great Britain, acquire a right to be con­ stituents of the legislature, and may not the Colonists acquire the same right, precisely by the same means? Are not Representative and Constituent relative terms? Can I have a Representative, unless I am a Constituent? Though pos­ sessed of every million accumulated in the funds, though tenant by copy of all the lands in England which are held by such tenure, though lessee for a term of ninety-nine years of every acre which may be so lett, am I, in consequence of such an immense mass of property, a Constituent of the legislature in the minutest degree? Have I a Representative? Yet do I not pay taxes? Do Taxation

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and Representation then go hand in hand? Am I not taxed by the Legislature, though I have no Representative? Is not then the boasted inseparable alliance between Taxation and Representation founded on fiction, and overthrown by fact? Are not Taxation and Legislation the truely inseparable / allies? Do not the Colonists acquiesce under restrictions upon their commerce, and a levy­ ing of such duties as they call external taxes, by the sole authority of the British legislature? Can common sense find a difference, except in the name, between external and internal taxation? Are not such commodities as may lie in a chest on board the vessel of an American trader, as much his property as the money in his purse? Does it require a greater stretch of the arm of civil power to take a shilling from the one than an ounce from the other? Should I not feel as sensibly the loss of my cash, if taken from my agent, my factor, or my servant, as if taken immediately from my own proper person? – Can those boasted Charters, by virtue whereof the several Colonies claim a royal exemption from parliamentary authority, operate one degree farther than the Charters granted by the Crown to the several corporations within the realm of Great Britain? Are not the privileges of / each entirely confined to the making of bye-laws, and the raising of duties within themselves, to answer their own private purposes respectively, abstracted from such exigencies as regard the whole publick weal? Did the Crown in fact mean to grant them larger powers, or could the Crown constitutionally have granted them larger powers, had it meaned so to do? Can the Crown place a single subject of the realm beyond the reach of the Legislature of Great Britain? – If I, as a moneyed man, copyholder, or lessee, having no right to vote in the election of a member of parliament, am yet virtually represented by such persons as are chosen without my concurrence, do not the Colonies fall equally within the imagined line of such virtual representation? Or if, (as the case really stands,) I am taxed by the sole authority of all-ruling Legislation, without my having the shadow of a Representative in parliament, shall I tamely submit to the payment of such tax, which is levied / without, that is, against my consent, and shall my American Cousin murmur at bowing before the same aweful sceptre, which is swayed constitutionally by the hand of Supreme Power over all his Kinsmen indiscriminately in the Mother Country? I must ask your Lordship’s pardon, if on some of the topicks I have been too diffusive, on others too concise. Yet to you, my Lord, I should apologize only for tediousness, brevity cannot stand in need of an excuse; for, by neither could I hope to give your Lordship information, by one I must certainly intrude on your time. But, in truth, though I have chosen to address myself to your Lord­ ship, I have had it in view to write for the People. A good and free People are always worthy of conviction, and conviction may flow from the homeliest pen. My aim, however, has rather been to put the good sense of the Publick upon the true scent of the argument, / than to presume to hunt down the game for them myself.

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I cannot conclude, without retouching a point, which I have as yet barely glanced at, but which deserves the most mature and most solid attention; I mean, the necessity of enforcing the right of the supreme legislature to frame Money-bills, as well as other laws, for America, upon the primary grand princi­ ple, the cardinal law of Nature, Self-preservation. It grieves me to consider the interests of Britain in a light of opposition to those of her Colonies: but the Colonies themselves extort the distinction. Are they not at this moment taking every harsh measure, by conventions, combinations, provincial compacts, and lawless associations – I had almost added, by solemn leagues and covenants, to distress our manufacturers, and set up an avowed Independence for themselves? and this too at a time when they have just received the tenderest proofs of / parental indulgence! – Is this their duty? this their affection? – Is it not rivalship and opposition in the most rancorous degree? If there can be found an Englishman, so unnaturally disaffected to the Country that gave him birth, as to applaud those efforts, which aim shafts at her vitals, as to cry out enthusiastically, Hos utinam inter Heröas natum tellus me nova tulisset!3 – In the name of God let him fly there: what stops his migration? Let him settle amongst his Favourites: let him dwell with his Elect. But while he lives in Old England, it is his interest, nay more, it is his duty, to view every thing through the medium of her welfare and prosperity, and not to seek for new lights in a new quarter of the globe. One objection is urged by some well-meaning people, which I had like to have passed over, as from its futility scarce meriting / a serious refutation; but, as I recollect to have heard it more than once much insisted on by men of good hearts, though but weak understandings, I will give it an answer. Such men I shall ever be studious to set right, to the best of my poor ability and informa­ tion, while Sophistry deserves only to be detected and despised. The objection is this, ‘that the Colonists must either be Freemen or Slaves; that no medium can be found between Freedom and Slavery; and, consequently, that if Dependence be enforced in the least degree, the Chains of Slavery are rivetted about their necks.’ This plea rests solely on the infirm basis of a false proposition; which once overturned, the superstructure is demolished. Freedom is by no means an abso­ lute idea, but clearly susceptible of diminution and increase: or, as the Logicians would phrase it, Libertas recipit magis et minus. To instance at once in our own happy Constitution – Since the late solemn judicial condemnation / of General Warrants, we are certainly become a freer people than we were before; yet it will scarcely follow that such condemnation formed the glorious æra of British Lib­ erty, and that till that propitious moment every Briton was a slave. Let not the generous Friends of Freedom entertain an apprehension that they revolt from her cause, in reducing within the legal bounds of their natural duty these Mock-Champions of Liberty, who plead exemption from the author­ ity of a popular legislature, by a Royal Diploma, by a Fiat of One Man; who in

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the same breath contend for a licentious emancipation from constitutional Gov­ ernment, and proclaim themselves Charter-formed Creatures of the Crown! Great Britain can never be otherwise respectable, than as a centre of power, be the circumference of her dominion ever so widely extended. Aut Cæsar, aut nullus / should be this Island’s motto. It is by strength of constitution, and policy of law, that we have risen above the gulph we were plunged in by nature, and can no longer be treated with contemptuous neglect, no longer be pointed at as outcasts of the world, as miserable borderers on the ultima Thule, as penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos. Our Liberty we owe to the virtue of our ancestors, our Empire must be maintained by the virtue of ourselves. Nay, even our very Liberty must fall with our Empire, and I hope our Existence will not outlast our Liberty. We have gloriously defended it against the open assaults of foreign ene­ mies, against the open assaults of foreign arts of domestick traytors. And shall we tamely and pusillanimously suffer it to be wrested from us, by a long-cherished, ungrateful, refractory offspring? That we have Right to support us has, I trust, been demonstrated: that we have Power to enforce it, we feel, and they know. And shall we hesitate for ever upon petty scruples / of Expedience? – Will not Obstinacy gather strength from continued indulgence? Does not the Offspring of America increase every day? Does not every day add to the number of her sons by adoption? Does not the vigour of every Country spring immediately from its population? Do not Freedom and Independence give sinews to that vigour? Are the Children of Great Britain multiplied in proportion? Are her naturalized Renegadoes from Asia, Africa, and the Continent, at all comparable, as militants for a free Constitution, to the genuine nurselings of these Islands of Liberty, who migrate to America by hundreds every year? Have we purchased Canada at the expence of our best blood and treasure, to serve as a forge to prepare chains for our posterity? – There can be no doubt but that the self-same sources, which pour in riches and plenteousness upon a Country, if suffered to run over, by their luxuriance may destroy it. Our American / Colonies are copious springs of our treasure; but should their streams overflow those channels our Supremacy has prescribed, they would deluge that land which they now fertilize. I have the Honour to be, with the greatest Respect, Esteem, and Regard, My Lord, Your Lordship’s most obedient, and most humble servant, George Canning. Middle Temple, March 15th, 1768.

EDITORIAL NOTES

[Bollan], The Mutual Interest of Great Britain and the American Colonies 1. ‘Objections to the Taxation … considered’: Soame Jenyns, The Objections to the Taxation of Our American Colonies, by the Legislature of Great Britain, Briefly Consider’d (London, 1765), in H. T. Dickinson (ed.), British Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1763– 1785, 8 vols (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007–8), vol. 1: 1763–6, pp. 117–38. Jenyns (1704–87) was a poet, essayist, MP for Cambridgeshire, 1741–54, Dunwich, 1754–8 and Cambridge, 1758–80, and a long-time commissioner for the Board of Trade. His first published poem was The Art of Dancing (London, 1729), followed by the collec­ tions Poems. By **** (London, 1752), Miscellaneous Pieces, in Two Volumes (London, 1761) and Miscellaneous Pieces, in Verse and Prose (London, 1770). He published five essays in the World in 1755, followed by Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil (London, 1756) and View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion (London, 1776). 2. My Business here … Truth. Locke: John Locke (1632–1704), English physician and philosopher, ‘Conduct of Understanding: Similes, 32’, in Book II of his An Essay Con­ cerning Human Understanding (London, 1690). 3. Locke, and Sidney … British parliament: John Locke, Two Treatises on Civil Government: In the Former, the False Principles of Sir Robert Filmer, and his Followers, are Detected and Overthrown. The Latter is an Essay concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil-Government (London, 1689). Algernon Sidney (1623–1783), republican writer, politician and civil war parliamentarian colonel, executed for involvement in the Rye House Plot against Charles II, author of Discourses Concerning Government, published posthumously in 1698. John Selden (1584–1654), English MP, jurist, and legal and con­ stitutional historian, author of Mare Clausum seu De Domino Maris (1635), translated by Marchamont Needham as Of the Dominion, or, Ownership of the Seas (London, 1652) (see Meadows, ‘Observations Concerning the Dominion and Soveraignty of the Seas’ in Volume 1 of this edition, pp. 137–76) and many political histories emphasizing English rights under the ancient constitution. The reference here is probably to Privileges of the Baronage of England when they sit in Parliament and Discourse concerning the Rights and Privileges of the Subject (London, 1642). 4. I refer him to that of Maryland: The Charter of Maryland was granted to Caecelius (Cecil) Calvert, second Baron Baltimore, by Charles I on 20 June 1632. The charter granted the proprietor and his heirs extraordinary powers and immunities. Clause IV

– 205 –

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granted all ‘Rights, Jurisdictions, Privileges, Prerogatives, Royalties, Liberties, Immuni­ ties, and royal Rights, and temporal Franchises whatsoever, as well by Sea as by Land, within the Region, Islands, Islets, and Limits aforesaid, to be had, exercised, used, and enjoyed, as any Bishop of Durham, within the Bishoprick or County Palatine of Dur­ ham, in our Kingdom of England, ever heretofore hath had, held, used, or enjoyed, or of right could, or ought to have, hold, use, or enjoy’. More specifically, that meant ‘free, full, and absolute Power, by the Tenor of these Presents, to Ordain, Make, and Enact Laws, of what Kind soever, according to their sound Discretions whether relating to the Public State of the said Province, or the private Utility of Individuals, of and with the Advice, Assent, and Approbation of the Free-Men of the same Province, or the greater Part of them, or of their Delegates or Deputies, whom We will shall be called together for the framing of Laws, when, and as often as Need shall require, by the aforesaid now Baron of Baltimore’ (clause VII). As the later part of that clause implied, and as was the case with most charters, settlers would retain ‘all Privileges, Franchises and Liberties of this our Kingdom of England, freely, quietly, and peaceably to have and possess, and the same may use and enjoy in the same manner as our Liege-Men born, or to be born within our said Kingdom of England, without Impediment, Molestation, Vexation, Impeachment, or Grievance of Us, or any of our Heirs or Successors; any Statute, Act, Ordinance, or Provision to the contrary thereof, notwithstanding’ (clause X). The clause on taxation to which Bollan refers specifically reads as follows: ‘XX. We will, and do, by these Presents, for Us, our Heirs and Successors, covenant and grant to, and with the aforesaid now Baron of Baltimore, His Heirs and Assigns, that We, our Heirs, and Successors, at no Time hereafter, will impose, or make or cause to be imposed, any Impositions, Customs, or other Taxations, Quotas, or Contributions whatsoever, in or upon the Residents or Inhabitants of the Province aforesaid for their Goods, Lands, or Tenements within the same Province, or upon any Tenements, Lands, Goods or Chattels within the Province aforesaid, or in or upon any Goods or Merchandizes within the Province aforesaid, or within the Ports or Harbors of the said Province, to be laden or unladen; And We will and do, for Us, our Heirs and Successors, enjoin and command that this our Declara­ tion shall, from Time to Time, be received and allowed in all our Courts and Praetorian Judicatories, and before all the Judges whatsoever of Us, our Heirs and Successors, for a sufficient and lawful Discharge, Payment, and Acquittance thereof, charging all and singular the Officers and Ministers of Us, our Heirs and Successors, and enjoining them under our heavy Displeasure, that they do not at any Time presume to attempt any Thing to the contrary of the Premises, or that may in any wise contravene the same, but that they, at all Times, as is fitting, do aid and assist the aforesaid now Baron of Baltimore, and his Heirs, and the aforesaid Inhabitants and Merchants of the Province of Maryland aforesaid, and their Servants and Ministers, Factors and Assigns, in the fullest Use and Enjoyment of the Charter’. However, clause XV introduced an ambiguity by stating that colonists ‘be bound to pay for the same to Us, our Heirs and Successors, such Customs and Impositions, Subsidies and Taxes, as our other Subjects of our Kingdom of England, for the Time being, shall be bound to pay, beyond which We will that the Inhabitants of the aforesaid Province of the said Land, called Maryland, shall not be burdened’. Maryland became a royal colony after the Glorious Revolution, but the proprietors were restored after Benedict Calvert converted from Catholicism to Anglicanism and became fourth Baron Baltimore on the death of his father, Charles, in 1715. 5. For now that Louisiana … a very trifling pretence: Bollan made some factual errors here. Only a small part of Louisiana, east of the Mississippi River, including Baton Rouge

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but not New Orleans, was conveyed to Britain under the 1763 Peace of Paris. The large region to the west remained French, according to the 1763 treaty, although it had been conveyed by France to Spain according to the 1762 Treaty of Fontainbleau, though that was not publicly announced until 1764. He might have intended to write Louisbourg, in reference to the fort on Ile Royale, now Cape Breton Island, captured from the French in 1758, although his claim that ‘there is not a French subject left on that continent’ is also inaccurate. Many French colonists remained in Louisiana, and indeed many French Arcadians who were expelled from Nova Scotia during the French and Indian War moved there. Their descendants have since been known as ‘Cajuns’. The relevant section of the Peace of Paris reads as follows: ‘VII. French territories on the continent of America; it is agreed, that, for the future, the confines between the dominions of his Britannick Majesty and those of his Most Christian Majesty, in that part of the world, shall be fixed irrevocably by a line drawn along the middle of the River Mississippi, from its source to the river Iberville, and from thence, by a line drawn along the middle of this river, and the lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain to the sea; and for this purpose, the Most Christian King cedes in full right, and guaranties to his Britannick Majesty the river and port of the Mobile, and everything which he possesses, or ought to possess, on the left side of the river Mississippi, except the town of New Orleans and the island in which it is situated, which shall remain to France, provided that the navigation of the river Mississippi shall be equally free, as well to the subjects of Great Britain as to those of France, in its whole breadth and length, from its source to the sea, and expressly that part which is between the said island of New Orleans and the right bank of that river, as well as the passage both in and out of its mouth: It is farther stipulated, that the ves­ sels belonging to the subjects of either nation shall not be stopped, visited, or subjected to the payment of any duty whatsoever. The stipulations inserted in the IVth article, in favour of the inhabitants of Canada shall also take place with regard to the inhabitants of the countries ceded by this article.’

[ Jenkinson], ‘Notes on the Right to Tax the Colonies’ 1. Mr. Locke … People at large: for Locke, see note 2 to [Bollan], The Mutual Interest of Great Britain and the American Colonies, above, p. 205. The reference here is to his Two Treatises on Civil Government. 2. The Statute de Tallagio … Crown and no other: The Statute de Tallagio Non Concedendo, 1297; Petition of Right, 1629. 3. The Bill of Rights … to this Declaration: The Bill of Rights, the full title of which is An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown, was passed in December 1689 and is the statutory form of the Declaration of Rights passed by the Convention Parliament in March the same year. 4. By the 25 of Charles the Second … The Sugar Act: The Third Navigation Act, or An Act for the Incouragement of the Greeneland and Eastland Trades, and for the Better Secure­ ing the Plantation Trade, 1672, taxed enumerated articles transported from colony to colony. The British Post Office Act of 1710 took effect in North America on 1 June 1711, but its rates were lowered in October 1765. The Greenwich Hospital Act of 1728 concerned funding of the naval hospital for sailors established by royal charter in 1694. The Molasses Act of 1733 imposed a tax of six pence per gallon on sugar products from non-British colonies and was replaced by the Sugar Act, also called the American Rev­ enue Act or the American Duties Act, of 1764.

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5. The Common Tax … Colonies are in Debt: Connecticut and Rhode Island remained private charter colonies (as Maryland and Pennsylvania remained private proprietary colonies), rather than becoming royal colonies, until Independence. They continued to be governed under their original charters respectively of 1662 and 1663. 6. In the Address presented to King William … to Ireland itself: William Molyneux (1656– 98) was an Anglican Irish political administrator, philosopher, political writer, scientist and founder of the Dublin Philosophical Society. He wrote The Case of Ireland being Bound by Acts of Parliament in England, Stated (Dublin, 1698), objecting to a Febru­ ary 1698 Act of the English Parliament forbidding exportation of Irish woollens, in the fashion of the Navigation Acts, to anywhere except England, other similar acts passed since 1641, and supporting the appellate jurisdiction of the Irish House of Lords in prop­ erty disputes, which had recently been denied by the English House of Lords. Though Molyneux affirmed the loyalty of Protestant Irishmen to the King, he denied that Irish people should be subject to the English Parliament in which they had no representa­ tion. The House of Commons debate of May–June 1698 concluded that his book was ‘of dangerous consequence to the crown and people of England by denying the authority of the king and parliament of England to bind the kingdom and people of Ireland’. Moly­ neux’s The Case of Ireland nevertheless went on to be highly influential during imperial constitutional debates over Ireland and the American colonies in the eighteenth century.

[Knox], The Claim of the Colonies 1. In the charter granted … born and resided in: The seventeenth paragraph of the Pennsyl­ vania charter, granted to William Penn by Charles II on 4 March 1681, read as follows: ‘AND FARTHER our pleasure is, and by these presents, for us, our heires and Succes­ sors, Wee doe covenant and grant to and with the said William Penn, and his heires and assignee, That Wee, our heires and Successors, shall at no time hereafter sett or make, or cause to be sets, any impossition, custome or other taxation, rate or contribution whatso­ ever, in and upon the dwellers and inhabitants of the aforesaid Province, for their Lands, tenements, goods or chattells within the said Province, or in and upon any goods or mer­ chandise within the said Province, or to be laden or unladen within the ports or harbours of the said Province, unless the same be with the consent of the Proprietary, or chiefe governor, or assembly, or by act of Parliament in England’. The tenth paragraph further­ more, said this: ‘AND Wee doe further appoint and ordaine, and by these presents, for us, our heires and Successors, Wee doe grant unto the said William Penn, his heires and assignee, That he, the said William Penn, his heires and assignee, may from time to time for ever, have and enjoy the Customes and Subsidies, in the Fortes, Harbours, and other Creeks and Places aforesaid, within the Province aforesaid, payable or due for merchan­ dises and wares there to be laded and unladed, the said Customes and Subsidies to be reasonably assessed upon any occasion, by themselves and the People there as aforesaid to be assembled, to whom wee give power by these presents, for us, our heires and Succes­ sors, upon just cause and in due p’portion; to assesse and impose the same; Saveing unto us, our heires and Successors, such impositions and Customes, as by Act of Parliament are and shall be appointed’. 2. The charter to lord Baltimore … shall consent to: The relevant section of the Maryland charter is XX; see note 4 to [Bollan], The Mutual Interest of Great Britain and the Ameri­ can Colonies, above, pp. 205–6.

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3. Pym or Hamden: John Pym (1584–1643), critic of James I and Charles I, and leader of the Long Parliament; John Hampden (c. 1595–1643), another politician and also a parliamentarian soldier who died on 24 June 1643 after being wounded fighting Prince Rupert at Chalgrove Field six days earlier. 4. in the year 1732 … justice in the colonies: An Act for the More Easy Recovery of Debts in His Majesty’s Plantations and Colonies in America. The Act was actually passed in 1731, the fifth year of George II’s reign. 5. ‘Whereas great mischief … penalties, and punishments’: This Annual Bill for Prevent­ ing Mutiny and Desertion first passed Parliament and received royal assent in February 1757. 6. When the land-tax … internal and external taxes: The first land tax in England and Wales of 1693 actually comprised a national poundage duty on real and personal property, which in 1698 became a local quota rate, but in the eighteenth century evolved into a tax on land, buildings and rents. 7. in the cyder counties … duty upon that commodity: An act for taxing cider production at four shillings per hogshead passed Parliament in 1763 and caused riots, particularly in the West Country. 8. the judicious and well-informed writer … in Great Britain: The reference here is most likely to Soame Jenyns’s famous pamphlet, The Objections to the Taxation of Our American Colonies. See note 1 to [Bollan], The Mutual Interest of Great Britain and the American Colonies, above, p. 205. 9. The province of Virginia … governor in chief: The Virginia Assembly first raised the export duty on tobacco in 1658, and re-enacted it in 1662, though from 1680 the royal gover­ nor controlled its appropriation. 10. Felix quem faciunt aliena Pericula cautum: ‘Fortunate the man who learns caution from the perils of others’ (Latin). 11. the Windward Islands … which have been proposed: The Barbadian Assembly agreed to pay a 4.5 per cent sugar duty from September 1663, as did the Leeward Islands of Anti­ gua, Montserrat, Nevis and St Kitts. 12. a late act of assembly … into that province: The South Carolina Duty Act of 1764 raised a tax of £100 per head on imported slaves. To get around British trade laws, the duty was levied on first purchasers, not on importers. 13. the fate of the garrison of Fort Loudon is a melancholy instance: Fort Loudon or Loudoun, named after John Campbell, fourth Earl of Loudoun, in modern-day Pennsylvania, was built by South Carolinians to secure their relations with the Overhill Cherokee nation. In August 1760, after relations broke down, the Cherokee captured the fort and later destroyed it. 14. the gentleman at the head … other friends satisfaction: The Chancellor of the Exchequer responsible for the Stamp Act was George Grenville (1712–70). He had previously been Treasurer of the Navy, Secretary of State for the Northern Department and First Lord of the Admiralty. He became Chancellor and First Lord of the Treasury and therefore Prime Minister, taking over from Earl Bute, on 16 April 1763, and was succeeded after the Stamp Act fiasco by the Marquis of Rockingham on 16 July 1765. For more on this letter, on Knox’s biases and other accounts of the same events, see E. S. Morgan, ‘The Postponement of the Stamp Act’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 7:3 ( July 1950), pp. 353–92, esp. pp. 362–3, 371, 377–81. 15. Sir Robert Walpole: Sir Robert Walpole (1676–1745), Britain’s first Prime Minister, in office from 4 April 1721 to 11 February 1742, then first Earl of Orford.

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Notes to pages 51–74

[Knox], A Letter to a Member of Parliament 1. familiar there, as the Land Tax is here: see note 6 to [Knox], The Claim of the Colonies to an Exemption from Internal Taxes, above, p. 209. 2. Murmurings which the Cyder Act has occasioned in many Counties: see note 7 to [Knox], The Claim of the Colonies to an Exemption from Internal Taxes, above, p. 209. 3. the Act of the 5th of George the IIId. … all his Majesty’s Subjects: This refers to the Stamp Act or Duties in American Colonies Act that passed Parliament on 22 March 1765 to come into effect on 1 November. By that time it had already been rendered unenforce­ able by, among other things, threats and crowd actions that forced stamp duty officials to resign throughout the colonies. 4. Scire facias, or a Quo Warranto: A scire facias (‘to know the causes’) was issued by a court and a writ of quo warranto (‘by what right’) was issued by the crown or its agents under prerogative power. 5. the Act of the 7 and 8 W 3. C. 22: The Act of Trade, another Navigation Act that updated the ordnance and acts passed since 1651, was passed in 1696. 6. the late Ministry: That is the Grenville ministry, after George Grenville; see note 14 to [Knox], The Claim of the Colonies to an Exemption from Internal Taxes, above, p. 209. 7. Superfoetation: Superfoetation or superfetation is the development of two or more embryos in the same uterus but which are at different stages of development.

[Bollan], A Succinct View of the Origin of our Colonies 1. Qui non libere … veritatis est: ‘He who does not freely speak the truth is a betrayer of the truth’; a common Latin maxim. 2. Libertas non est licentia says Tacitus: ‘Liberty is no licence’. Publius (or Gaius) Cor­ nelius Tacitus (ad c. 56–117), senator and historian of the Roman Empire, author of The Annals and The Histories, among other works, which cover the Roman Empire from the death of Augustus ad 14 to the death of Domitian in ad 96, though large portions of each text are lost. 3. decus & tutamen: ‘ornament and safeguard’; an inscription on the edge of British coins, first used in the seventeenth century, to guard against clipping for precious metal. 4. Juncta juvant … scribendi & male dicendi: Juncta Juvant: ‘Strength in Unity’; a common Latin phrase. Cacoethes scribendi refers to compulsive writing, the phrase originating with Juvenal’s Satires, ‘insanabile scribendi cacoethes’ (‘incurable itch for scribbling’). Juve­ nal, or Decimus Junius Juvenalis, was a satirist active in the late first century and early second century ad. Male dicendi means malediction and is usually associated with the common Latin phrase ‘est ars etiam male dicendi’, ‘there is an art even to malediction’. 5. Placcius: Vincent Placcius (1642–99) was chair of rhetoric and ethics at the Univer­ sity of Hamburg and author of De Scriptis & scriptoribus anonymis atque pseudonymis syntagma (Hamburg, 1674) and De morali scientia augenda: commentarium in Francisci Baconi (Frankfurt, 1677), and of the collection Theatrum anonymorum et pseudonymo­ rum, posthumously published in Hamburg in 1708 by the successor to his chair, the great classicist Johann Albert Fabricius (1668–1736). 6. persaltum: by leaps and bounds or by fits and starts. 7. lord Bacon … one entire law: Francis Bacon (1561–1626), English politician, phi­ losopher, lawyer and scientist, author of The Elements of the Common Law of England (London, 1630) referred to here.

Notes to pages 74–80

211

8. Nil dat quod non habet: ‘Nil [or Nemo] dat quod non habet’: ‘no one gives what he does not have’ (Latin). 9. Ordo confunditur … non servetur: ‘[Rerum] ordo confunditur, si unicuique jurisdictio non servetur’: ‘the order of things is confused if everyone does not give heed to his juris­ diction’ (Latin). 10. lord Coke … potestas juris: Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634), jurist and MP, opponent of Charles I, co-author of the 1628 ‘Petition of Right’, and author of the 13-volume Reports on the common law and the four-volume Institutes of the Lawes of England (London, 1628–44). ‘Jurisdictio est potestas de publico, introducta cum necessitate juris dicendi’: ‘jurisdiction is a power introduced for the public good, on account of the necessity of administering justice’; this comes from Coke’s fourth Institute. 11. Dr. Cudworth … obligation to obedience: Ralph Cudworth (1617–88), English theolo­ gian, philosopher, Cambridge Platonist and opponent of Thomas Hobbes. He published The True Intellectual System of the Universe: The First Part, wherein all the Reason and Philosophy of Atheism is Confuted and its Impossibility Demonstrated in London in 1678. A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, from which this quote is taken, was published in London in 1731. 12. Dr. Cumberland’s excellent rule: Richard Cumberland (1631–1718), English philoso­ pher, and bishop of Peterborough from 1691, another opponent of Hobbes, and author of De legibus naturae [On Natural Laws] (London, 1672). 13. Mr. Locke … every person in it: for Locke, see note 2 to [Bollan], The Mutual Interest of Great Britain and the American Colonies, above, p. 205. The reference here is from chap­ ter 11 of the ‘Second Treatise’ of his Two Treatises on Civil Government. 14. the first leading grant made … realm of England: Sir Humphrey Gilbert (c. 1539–83), English MP, soldier, explorer and erstwhile colonist who received charters to settle in America in 1578 and 1583, the latter being an attempt to create a neo-feudal colony and haven for Catholics by the Norumbega River in Newfoundland. Both ventures ended in failure, the latter with Gilbert being lost at sea. Gilbert’s charters and voyages nevertheless provided a basis for later English claims to North American territories and arguments over the nature of empire. 15. the grant made to Sir Walter Ralegh … under the same allegiance: Sir Walter Ralegh (or Raleigh) (c. 1552–1618), English writer, soldier and explorer, who received a royal char­ ter to settle what he was first to call Virginia after Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen (and which then was conceived to cover much of North America, not just modern-day Vir­ ginia). Ventures in 1584 and 1587 led to short-lived settlements on Roanoke Island, off the North Carolina coast. 16. the stat. 15 Car. II. cap. vii. … continued the same: An Act Regulating Commerce, 1663. 17. the stat. 13 Geo. II. cap. vii. … within this kingdom: the Naturalization Act, 1739. 18. Mr. justice Doddridge: Sir John Doddridge (or Doderidge, Dodderidge) (1555–1628), English lawyer, judge and MP, author of the legal manual The English Lawyer (London, 1631) and the constitutional work Law of Nobility and Peerage (London, 1658), as well as Of the Dimensions of the Land of England and A Consideration of the Office and Duty of the Heralds in England which appeared in Thomas Hearne’s A Collection of Curious Discourses by Eminent Antiquaries (Oxford, 1720). He was also purportedly the author of Opinions of sundry Learned Antiquaries touching the Antiquity, Power, &c. of the High Court of Parliament in England (London, 1658), although his authorship of this and some other constitutional texts is now uncertain.

212

Notes to pages 80–7

19. Polydore Virgil: Polydore Vergil (c. 1470–1555), also known as Virgil, or PV Castellen­ sis, Italian court historian of Henry VIII, author, among other works, of Historia Anglica (Basle, 1534, updated editions in 1546 and 1555). 20. Hale … very great perfection: Sir Mathew Hale (1609–76), Lord Chief Justice of England, The History and Analysis of the Common Law of England (London: J. Walthoe, 1713), though it was widely know and circulated before that date. For persaltum, see note 6 above. 21. the stat. of Rutland … representation in parliament: The Statute of Rutland of 3 March 1284 that established English law in Wales is better known as the Statute of Rhuddlan, after one of Edward I’s ‘iron-ring’ castles used to conquer the country. The ‘statute’ was in fact a royal proclamation. An Acte for Laws & Justice to be ministred in Wales in like fourme as it is in this Realme, 1536, and An Acte for certaine Ordinaunces in the Kinges Majesties Domynion and Principalitie of Wales, 1543, introduced English civil law and administration into Wales and more thoroughly integrated Wales into the English state, in particular by ensuring Welsh members of Parliament. 22. (Mr. Milton) … wise men look for: John Milton (1608–74), English poet, polemicist and Commonwealth civil servant, most famously the author of Paradise Lost (London, 1667) but also of the free-speech prose polemic cited here, Areopagitica: A Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England (London, 1644), among many other works. 23. Vopiscus: Flavius Vopiscus of Syracuse was one of the authors of Historia Augusta, or Augustan Histories (of Roman Emperors from ad 117 to 284). 24. Dr. Fleetwood … whither we are going: William Fleetwood (1656–1723), English min­ ister, Bishop of St Asaph and Bishop of Ely, most famous for his price index, Chronicon Preciosum: or An Account of English Money, the Price of Corn and Other Commodities, for the Last 600 Years (London, 1707) and other economic works. These and his sermons appeared in a collected works in 1737. 25. Lipsius … an excellent prince: Justus Lipsius (1547–1606), also known as Joose Lips or Josse Lips, Flemish humanist, neo-Stoicist, advocate of a rationalized state and autoc­ racy, and author of Politicorum sive civilis doctrinae libri sex (Leiden, 1589), translated into English by William Jones as Sixe Bookes of Politickes or Civil Doctrine (London, 1594); and of De Constantia libri duo, qui alloquium praecipue continent in publicis malis (Antwerp, 1584); Manuductionis ad Stoicam philosophiam libri tres, L. Annaeo Senecae, aliisque scriptoribus illustrandis (Antwerp, 1604); Annaei Senecae philosophi opera, quae exstant omnia, a Iusto Lipsio emendata, et scholiis illustrata (Antwerp, 1605). 26. Scotland … two rebellions raised there: Bollan is presumably referring here to the most serious of the Jacobite uprisings, those of 1715 and 1745, though there were others. 27. Claudian … longinqua revinxit: Claudian, or Claudius Claudianus, Roman poet of the late fourth and early fifth centuries ad. ‘Tis she alone who has received the conquered into her bosom and like a mother, not an empress, protected the human race with a common name, summoning those whom she has defeated to share her citizenship and drawing together distant races with bonds of affection.’ De Consulato Stilichonis, or On Silichio’s Consulship, III. 28. Rutilius … prius Orbis erat: Rutilius Claudius Namatianus, Roman poet of the fifth cen­ tury ad. ‘For nations far apart thou hast made a single fatherland; under thy dominion captivity hath meant profit even for those who knew not justice: and by offering to the vanquished a share in thine own justice, thou hast made a city of what was erstwhile a world.’ De Reditu Suo, Liber Primo, or A Voyage Home to Gaul, I.63–6. 29. Themistocles: Themistocles (c. 524–459 bc), Athenian politician and general.

Notes to pages 88–123

213

30. Æsop: Aesop (c. 620–564 bc), known for Aesop’s Fables. 31. Antoninus: Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus (ad 86–161), also known as Antoninus or Antoninus Pius, Roman Emperor from 138 to 161. 32. Eritis insuperabiles … consensu rata sint: ‘You would be insuperable if you were insepa­ rable. This proverb, Divide and rule, has been rejected, since the root and the summit of authority are confirmed by the consent of the subjects’ (Latin).

The Late Occurrences in North America 1. Tantane vos generis … Virg.: Publius Virgil Maro (70–19 bc), also known as Virgil or Vergil. ‘Did such great faith of your race hold you? Do you now dare the stir up heaven and earth without my divine will, winds, and to raise so great a mass? You whom I –! but it is better to calm the moved waves.’ Aeneid, I.132–5. 2. Mr. Blakstone … in this kingdom: Sir William Blackstone (1723–80), English judge and jurist, author of Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1765–9), the quote is from Book 1, p. 172 of the original. 3. 34 and 35 H. viii. c. 13. … his Majesty’s subjects: The Chester and Cheshire (Constit­ uencies) Act of 1542 gave Chester and Cheshire representatives in the Parliament of England, and replaced the County palatine of Chester, ruled by the earls of Chester and a local Parliament made up of barons, first established by William the Conqueror. 4. Sir William Temple … form of his government: Sir William Temple (1628–99), Eng­ lish diplomat and historical and political writer who negotiated the fateful marriage of Prince William of Orange and Mary Stuart and the Triple Alliance of 1668. He was author of many essays, collected in several volumes and several editions of Miscellanea, first published in London in 1680, including ‘Essay upon on the Original and Nature of Government’; and also author of Observations upon the United Provinces (London, 1673), cited here. 5. Voltaire … confederates were not rebels: François-Marie Arouet, known by his nom-de­ plume, Voltaire (1694–1778), French Enlightenment philosopher and prolific author of many plays and works of political and historical scholarship, many of which were trans­ lated into English, including History of Charles XII, King of Sweden (London, 1731); The Age of Louis XIV (London, 1739); The Age of Louis XV, 2 vols (1770); Annals of the Empire, 2 vols (London, 1755); ‘Essay on the Manners of Nations’ (or ‘Universal His­ tory’) (1756); and History of the Russian Empire under Peter the Great, 2 vols (Berwick, 1759–63).

The True Interest of Great Britain 1.

istat, sumasne … Hor.: Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65–8 bc), also known as Horace, D Roman poet, Epistles, I.17.44–6. The full phrase here is ‘Coram rege suo de paupertate tacentes, plus poscente ferent; distat, sumasne prudenter, an rapias; atqui rerum caput hoc erat, hic fons’: ‘Those who keep quiet about their own needs in front of Their patron, win more than those who beg: that’s the aim. It does matter whether you receive, humbly, or snatch.’ 2. the islands ceded to us by the late treaty of peace: Under the 1763 Peace of Paris the ‘Ceded Islands’ referred to here are Dominica, Grenada, St Vincent and Tobago. Britain also acquired the Floridas, Quebec, St John’s Island, Cape Breton and the trans-Appalachian west as far as the Mississippi from France.

214

Notes to pages 139–74

Protest against the Bill to Repeal the American Stamp Act 1. ‘That the King’s Majesty … Parliament of Great Britain’: the Declaratory Act of 16 March 1766. 2. Governor Barnarde: Sir Francis Bernard (1712–79) was Governor of New Jersey from January 1758 to July 1760 and of Massachusetts from August 1760 to August 1769. 3. Mr. Secretary Conway … forces in North America: General Thomas Gage (1719/20–87) was commander-in-chief of British forces in North America from 1763 until shortly after the outbreak of the War for Independence in 1775. Field Marshal Henry Seymour Conway (1721–95), British soldier and politician, was appointed Secretary of State for the Southern Department by Rockingham in 1765, though he moved to the Northern Department in 1766, resigning two years later.

[Tucker], A Letter from a Merchant in London 1. And it is farther enacted … 7 and 8 W. III. Cap. 22. Sect. 9: Plantation Trade Act, 1695, or 1696 according to the Gregorian calendar. 2. Crouche’s or Saxby’s Book of Rates: Henry Crouch, A Complete View of the British Customs (London, 1745) and Henry Saxby, The British Customs: Containing an Historical and Practical Account of each Branch of that Revenue (London, 1757). 3. the following Acts of Parliament … 15 and 16 of G. II. Ch. 33: 12 Car. II, c. 18 (Navigation Act, 1660); 15 Car. II, c. 7 (Encouragement of Trade Act, 1663); 22 and 23 Car. II, c. 26 (Tobacco Planting and Plantation Trade Act, 1670); 25 Car. II, c. 7 (Trade Act, 1672); 7 and 8 Will. III, c. 22 (Plantation Trade Act, 1695, 1696 by the Gregorian calendar); 10 and 11 Will. III, c. 22 (10 Will. III, c. 22 is the Posthumous Children Act, 1698, and 11 Will. III, c. 22 is River Lark Act 1698, although Tucker probably intended to refer to either 10 Will. III, c. 14, Trade to Newfoundland Act, 1698, or 11 Will. III, c. 12, Governors of Plantations Act, 1698); 3 and 4 Anne, c. 5 and 10 (Mutiny Act, 1704 and Recruiting Act, 1704); 8 Anne, c. 13 (Recruiting Act, 1709); 12 Anne, c. 9 (Importation Act, 1712); 1 Geo. I, c. 26 (Continuance of Laws, etc. Act, 1714); 3 Geo. I, c. 21 (Expor­ tation, etc. Act, 1716); 8 Geo. I, c. 15 and 18 (Silk Subsidies, Various Duties, Import of Furs, etc. Act, 1721, and Customs, etc. Act 1721); 11 Geo. I, c. 20 (Bedfordshire Roads Act, 1724, although Tucker may have meant 11 Geo. I, c. 7, Customs Act, 1724); 12 Geo. I, c. 5 (Leicestershire Roads Act, 1725, though Tucker may have meant 12 Geo. I, c. 28, Customs etc., Revenue Act, 1725, or 13 Geo. I, c. 5, Importation Act, 1726); 2 Geo. II, c. 28 and 35 (Unlawful Games Act, 1728, though Tucker probably meant 2 Geo. II, c. 18, Customs etc., Act, 1728 and Preservation of Woods, America Act, 1728); 3 Geo. II, c. 28 (Colonial Trade Act, 1729); 4 Geo. II, c. 15 (Importation Act, 1730); 5 Geo. II, c. 9 (Importation Act, 1731); 6 Geo. II, c. 13 (Trade of Sugar Colonies Act, 1732, better known as the Molasses Act of 1733, Gregorian calendar); 8 Geo. II, c. 28 (Highgate and Hampstead Roads Act, 1734, though Tucker probably meant 8 Geo. II, c. 19, Colo­ nial Trade Act, 1734); 11 Geo. II, c. 29 (Shoreditch to Stamford Hill Road Act, 1737, though Tucker may have meant 11 Geo. II, c. 24, Parliamentary Privileges Act, 1737); 12 Geo. II, c. 30 (Colonial Trade Act, 1730); 15 and 16 Geo. II, c. 33 (Starr and Bent Act, 1731, though Tucker probably meant 15 Geo. II, c. 31, Plantation Trade, etc. Act, 1741). 4. Gustavus Vasa: Gustav I of Sweden, born Gustav Eriksson and later known as Gustav Vasa (1496–1560), King of Sweden from 1523 until his death, known as the father of

Notes to pages 174–202

215

his country after leading a rebellion against King Christian II of Denmark and gaining Swedish autonomy from the Kalmar Union.

Two Papers on the Subject of Taxing the British Colonies in America 1. the Sum of per Annum: left blank in the original. 2. Douglas, in his Summary of America … used in Law Affairs: William Douglass’s Sum­ mary, Historical and Political, of the First Planting, Progressive Improvements, and Present State of the British Settlements in North-America, 2 vols (Boston, MA, 1747–52), vol. 1, p. 259.

Canning, A Letter to the Right Honourable Wills Earl of Hillsborough 1. A—m rege:– nisi paret … hor.: Horace (see note 1 to The True Interest of Great Britain, above, p. 213), Epistles, I.2.62. The full phrase here is ‘Ira furor brevis est: animum rege, qui nisi paret’: ‘anger is momentary madness: control your passion, or it will control you’. 2. Cham of Tartary’s: Tartary is an archaic term for the Mongol Empire of northern and central Asia, from the Caspian Sea and the Urals to the Pacific Ocean. Cham means Khan, Lord or Prince. 3. Hos utinam … me nova tulisset!: Horace, Satires (Sermonum or Sermones), II.2.2.92–3.

THE AMERICAN COLONIES AND

THE BRITISH EMPIRE, 1607–1783

Contents of the Edition

PART I

volume 1

General Introduction

Introduction, 1607–1763

1607–75

volume 2

1676–1714

volume 3

1715–52

volume 4

1753–63

PART II

volume 5

Introduction, 1764–83

1764–8

volume 6

1769–75

volume 7

1775–7

volume 8

1777–83

Index

THE AMERICAN COLONIES AND

THE BRITISH EMPIRE, 1607–1783

Editor

Steven Sarson

Consulting Editor

Jack P. Greene

Volume 6

1769–75

First published 2011 by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited

Published 2016 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Taylor & Francis 2011

Copyright © Editorial material Steven Sarson 2011

All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages.

No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form

or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter

invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information

storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and

are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

british library cataloguing in publication data

The American colonies and the British Empire, 1607–1783. Part 2, Volumes 5–8. 1. United States – History – Colonial period, ca. 1600–1775. 2. Great Britain – Colonies – America. I. Sarson, Steven. II. Greene, Jack P. 973.2-dc22 ISBN-13: 978-1-85196-949-4 (set) Typeset by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited

CONTENTS

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Present Disputes between the British Colonies in America and their Mother Country (1769) [Sir Hercules Langrishe], Considerations on the Dependencies of Great

Britain. With Observations on a Pamphlet, Intitled The Present State of the Nation (1769) [Thomas Pownall], State of the Constitution of the Colonies ([1769]) Observations on Several Acts of Parliament, Passed in the Fourth, Sixth

and Seventh Years of his Present Majesty’s Reign (1770) Rev. John Lathrop, Innocent Blood Crying to God from the Streets of

Boston. A Sermon (1770) [Rev. John Allen], An Oration on the Beauties of Liberty, or The

Essential Rights of the Americans (1773) [William Bollan], The Rights of the English Colonies Established in

America Stated and Defended (1774) [ John Cartwright], A Letter to Edmund Burke, Esq; Controverting the

Principles of American Government, Laid Down in his Lately Published Speech on American Taxation (1775) Editorial Notes

1

33

73

83

101

115

147

195

255

AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES

OF THE PRESENT DISPUTES

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Present Disputes between the British Colo­ nies in America and their Mother Country; and their Reciprocal Claims and just Rights Impartially Examined, and Fairly Stated (London: J. Wilkie, 1769).

The Liberty Riot, following the seizure of John Hancock’s sloop, Liberty, on 10 June 1768 for customs violations, forced Customs Commissioners to retreat to Castle William to save their skins. There they called for British troops to restore order in Boston. On 1 October 700 arrived and 500 more came six weeks later. The arrival of troops confirmed for many colonists that the presence of a standing army in America since the peace of 1763 threatened their liberties. Furthermore, the dispute about Parliament, colonial assemblies and the imperial constitu­ tion escalated dangerously. In February 1768, the Massachusetts General Court passed Sam Adams’s Circular Letter, to be distributed to other colonial assem­ blies, attacking the Townshend Duties and Declaratory Act. Colonial Secretary Lord Hillsborough responded in April by instructing Massachusetts Governor Francis Bernard to order the assembly to rescind the letter and other governors to order their assemblies not to endorse it on pain of dissolution. If Britons doubted the seriousness of the situation, in January 1769 MP Isaac Barré pre­ dicted that British policies may provoke full-scale colonial revolt. Where ‘the interests of mankind are so nearly concerned, and their passions and prejudices so deeply engaged’, the author of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Present Disputes worries that ‘to suppose that the still voice of reason and of truth stands any great chance to be heard, would indicate no small inexperience of the world’ (below, p. 5). He also notes, however, that Peace, harmony and friendship, especially between kingdoms, and more emphati­ cally still between the different parts and members of the same kingdom, are certainly objects of the highest consequence, never to be despaired of, and always to be pre­ served and cultivated with the utmost application. (below, p. 5)

He goes on to detail his prescriptions for peace, harmony and friendship. –1–

2

The American Colonies and the British Empire, Volume 6

The Inquiry asks three questions: First, Whether the colonies should not be allowed to enjoy the same political privi­ leges and advantages with the mother-county? Secondly, Whether the frame and model of the British constitution is such, as practically to admit thereof in respect of America? And Thirdly, Whether, in case that should be found impracticable, such a form of government should not be established there, as shall appear most unexcep­ tionable, and will best secure to the colonies their just rights and natural liberties? (below, p. 6)

On the first issue, the author believes that it is ‘mistaken’ to consider colonies as ‘factories, who are only to contribute to our wealth and aggrandisement, and are wholly to be regulated and controuled by ourselves’. Rather, ‘The increase of dominions and subjects, should only be a proportionable increase of wealth and power to the whole empire, and not the aggrandisement of one part of it at the expence of the other’ (below, pp. 6–7) and to ‘dispute or deny’ their inher­ itance of British ‘privileges, indulgences and advantages’ would be ‘ridiculous and absurd’ (below, p. 8). The author begins answering the second question by advocating a Roman model of ‘liberal and comprehensive’ imperialism (below, p. 9) wherein the colonized shared in governance. Although there could be ‘one only supreme assembly of representatives’ without ‘actually dismembering the British empire’ (below, pp. 11–12), Parliament nevertheless could not rightly rule America ‘while those parts of our dominions are not fairly represented in it’, as that would make them ‘subject to laws and regulations not of their own mak­ ing, which is the very definition of slavery’ (below, p. 12). While acknowledging the practical problems of having colonial MPs, and offering some solutions to them, the Inquiry thus recommends ‘a parliament partly from Europe and partly from America’ (below, p. 13). Should the practicalities prove insurmountable, however, colonists would retain ‘a right of chusing what mode of government they should best like’ (below, p. 21). The author anticipates some obvious objections to his proposals: ‘if I seem to be an advocate for the Americans’, he writes, it is for no other reason but purely because I think myself an advocate for truth … the question with me is not so much what the rights of the Americans are in particular, as what the just and natural rights of all mankind are? (below, p. 17)

In any case, he argues, the ‘liberal and Christian’ approach to empire is ‘the most politic. For the most lasting empires are always founded in principles the most agreeable to justice. And their dissolution is as invariably the consequence of a deviation therefrom’ (below, p. 14). He concludes with a lengthy reminder, mainly for those whose political pride and prejudice render them blind to their own economic interests, of the general benefits of trade with the colonies.

AN

INQUIRY

INTO THE

NATURE and CAUSES

OF THE

PRESENT DISPUTES

BETWEEN THE

BRITISH COLONIES

IN

AMERICA

AND THEIR

MOTHER-COUNTRY;

And their reciprocal Claims and just Rights

impartially examined, and fairly stated.

QUID NOSTRAM CONCENTUM DIVIDAT, AUDI. Hor.1

LONDON. Printed for J. Wilkie, in St. Paul’s Church-yard.

M.DCC.LXIX. /

AN

INQUIRY INTO THE

NATURE and CAUSES, &c. The disputes at present subsisting between our Colonies in America and their Mother Country, are as weighty and important in their nature, as they are alarming and formidable in their effects, and of so long standing, that every true friend to either cannot help ardently wishing they were amicably adjusted and fairly determined. If the following remarks upon this subject, wherein I shall endeavour to place it in a new, and, I presume, a clear point of view, will any way contribute to this end, it will give me real pleasure; although to conceive the most distant expectations of success from any thing that can be said upon it, will perhaps be a much stronger argument / of my benevolence and good wishes, than of my prudence or sagacity. For in a cause wherein the interests of mankind are so nearly concerned, and their passions and prejudices so deeply engaged, as the present, to suppose that the still voice of reason and of truth stands any great chance to be heard, would indicate no small inexperience of the world. But, on the other hand, to suppose that a whole nation, however generally under the above unhappy predicaments, is altogether void of candour and ingenuity, would no less indicate the same inexperience, or else, what is much worse, a great deal of self-depravity. Peace, harmony and friendship, especially between kingdoms, and more emphatically still between the different parts and members of the same king­ dom, are certainly objects of the highest consequence, never to be despaired of, and always to be preserved and cultivated with the utmost application. Who­ ever promotes these deserves well of his country, and whoever disturbs or acts in opposition to them, is an enemy to it. And even in the pursuit of liberty itself, the most valuable of blessings in this world, certain measures are to be observed; and / decency, as it generally is, not wholly to be forgotten or trampled on. For by this means matters are very often pushed on to extremities, which might oth­ erwise be very honourably and equitably adjusted. To discuss this subject as it stands upon the footing of charters and statute laws, is what I do not at present intend. For this has been already very copiously –5–

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and solemnly done, by persons no less distinguished for their abilities than sta­ tion, with equal precision and judgment. But, in my humble opinion, they did not allow themselves, in handling it, the latitude it would have admitted of, nor consider it in some points of view, which it seems to require. But this perhaps was then beside their purpose, and, as the case was then circumstanced, not alto­ gether necessary; although to me, in the present state of things, a more ample discussion of it appears indispensible. Charters may be again explained, statutes enacted, and parliamentary decla­ rations made fifty times over, and yet the public grievances still remain, if their true cause is not well understood. I do not say that this is really the case at pre­ sent; but I think the fundamentals / of legislation, in what has been hitherto said upon the subject, have not been properly attended to, nor examined. To supply this defect, therefore, is what I propose in the sequel; not to point out what measures we are authorized to take, in virtue of charters, statutes and parliamen­ tary declarations, or even of received customs, but rather to inquire what in this matter ought to be done, and what prudence and sound policy dictate, upon the footing of the most approved maxims, and true principles of Legislation. We live in an age when the sciences, in every kind, are arrived at a perfection unknown to former times; it is therefore but reasonable to expect that our public and most solemn acts should be proportionably dignified with authentic marks of these boasted improvements. But the misfortune is, where our interest is con­ cerned, we meet with such a narrowness both of thinking and acting upon every occasion, as is far from distinguishing us from the most barbarous period of antiquity, or at least from ages that were almost perfect strangers to our present advantages. If this were not the case, the national spirit of Great Britain / would appear quite different in regard to the matter in debate, from what we now find it. And her infant colonies would observe a more obliging and dutiful demeanor towards her, than they seem at present inclined to do. But directly to the point. The following essay shall be founded upon the three following inquiries; First, Whether the colonies should not be allowed to enjoy the same politi­ cal privileges and advantages with the mother-county? Secondly, Whether the frame and model of the British constitution is such, as practically to admit thereof in respect of America? And Thirdly, Whether, in case that should be found impracticable, such a form of government should not be established there, as shall appear most unexceptionable, and will best secure to the colonies their just rights and natural liberties? The affirmative, in regard to the first of these queries, requires, one would think, no proof. And yet it is, I believe, what a great majority among us would be very unwilling to admit of in fact, whatever they might pretend to. Colonies we are apt to consider in the light of factories, / who are only to contribute to our wealth and aggrandisement, and are wholly to be regulated and controuled

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by ourselves, in such manner as we think will best answer our present designs and purposes. But herein we are certainly mistaken. The increase of dominions and subjects, should only be a proportionable increase of wealth and power to the whole empire, and not the aggrandisement of one part of it at the expence of the other. A large empire, well connected, and equitably governed, has indeed many advantages; not only as it is best able to defend itself against injuries and encroachments from its neighbours, and as it affords a more ample supply of the necessaries and conveniences of life within its own boundaries, but also upon many other accounts, too tedious here to enumerate. But if the different coun­ tries or nations which form it, are distinguished, from no reasonable, or, as it often happens, from the most unjust motives, with a partiality in the laws by which they are governed, divisions and murmurings, if not actual rebellions, are evidently unavoidable. The more extensive such an empire is, the weaker it is. For the divisions and parties in it are the more numerous, / and consequently its dissolution will be the more signal and speedy. An empire therefore should pay equal attention to all its parts; and, if there is any difference, the most distant demand the greatest, at least in point of policy, if not of justice. For abuses, more or less, will inevitably creep into all governments; and it is in the remotest provinces they generally harbour with most impunity. And as these provinces are always the first to revolt, when an opportunity offers, frequently after a series of ill usage; they therefore most certainly ought not to be the last attended to, or worst regulated. Kingdoms and empires are often styled bodies politic, intimating that every part or member thereof should be so connected together, to form the whole, as we see they are in natural bodies. The same attention and impartiality which is invariably observed in guarding or guiding the latter, should no less invariably be exercised towards the former. And it is from hence they derive their harmony, strength and vigour. And one cannot help wishing there were the same invol­ untary sympathy between the several / members of bodies politic, as there is between those of natural ones, since moral equity has generally so little force to produce it. It is therefore wholly the effect of the illiberal notions, and partial views of government here complained of, that the trade and manufactures of different provinces are laid under the restraints we often see them. And, in short, from the same unhappy source, spring most of the inequitable laws and inhibitions, to which colonies and the more remote parts of an empire are frequently sub­ jected. It would require but a small share of knowledge in the nature of trade and manufactures, fully to prove, and even demonstrate that, in general, they should lie under as few restrictions as possible, and, for the same reasons, should be freely allowed to retire and settle in whatever provinces of the empire they may be carried on to most advantage. But this is a maxim which would be almost

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universally contested, if not absolutely rejected in England, as often at least as her interest should seem to come into competition with that of her colonies. But why they should be denied or envied the natural advantages / of their situation, I cannot see. If Britain herself is not immediately thereby benefited, the British empire, which ought to be considered as the same thing, most evidently is. But we are continually, in this matter, mistaking our true point of interest. Instead of seeking to collect into this island the specie of the whole empire, every channel should be laid open to diffuse it equally throughout it, which would naturally, in a short time, divest the colonies of their present superiority, in the article of cheapness, over their mother-country. But while money is accumulating in England, in a proportion beyond that of its neighbour nations, our trade must inevitably decline. And it is the French, and not our colonies, that we ought to be jealous of. But this may be thought rather a digression, though I cannot view it altogether in that light, if it helps, as I presume it does, to point out the folly and injustice of not treating all the parts and provinces of an empire, with the exactest impartiality. This, upon the foot of nature, is undeniable. For why should not the Ameri­ cans, though / born in another part of the globe, be entitled, while subject to the same government, to all the privileges, indulgences and advantages, which are considered as the birth-right of those who first breathe the air in Great Britain? To dispute or deny this would be equally ridiculous and absurd. And in point of policy, as well as equity, I can discover no reason why they should be abridged of any of them. And even if their loyalty was, upon good grounds, suspected, what­ ever vigilance or severity might become necessary, they ought to be only such as should be agreeable to the practice of England, upon like occasions; but the cur­ rent of the laws should not be diverted, or made to run opposite to the spirit and fundamentals of our constitution. To accumulate proofs, in support of what I here assert, may justly be deemed unnecessary, and therefore I shall immediately proceed to my second proposition, which was, To inquire whether the frame and model of the British constitution is such, as practically to admit of securing to the colonies the same political rights and privileges with the mother-country. / This to me appears a very material inquiry, although it seems but very little attended to, if not wholly overlooked. That it is the nature of some governments not to admit of an enlargement of dominions, is clear beyond all doubt. Of this the Spartan constitution, in particular, is a noted instance. The design of Lycurgus2 in framing it, was only that it should maintain its own independency amongst the states of Greece, without in the least aiming at the reduction of any of its neighbours. And this end, so long as it was preserved inviolable, it very effectually answered. And not only so, but it gave the Spartans, while contented with their original limits, a kind of superiority over their neighbours, which, when they attempted to extend them, they were not able to preserve. It was, in

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its fundamental principles, notwithstanding whatever might be vicious or defec­ tive in it, one of the freest and most perfect forms of government in all antiquity. It was composed of the three estates, not unlike that of Great Britain at present; only the constitution of the Ephori, whose power was not very different from that of the Tribunes at Rome, was annexed to it about / an hundred and thirty years after it was first founded by Lycurgus. But, as free and perfect as it was within itself, it was the most illiberal in the world for an extension of empire. Nothing could be more impracticable, upon the plan and principles of it. Nor could it ever be attempted without actual vio­ lation of so material a part thereof, as brought on, at length, its final ruin and dissolution, together with the absolute reduction and conquest of that once brave and heroic people. Nor was the Athenian constitution much better calculated for this purpose. By a very impolitic decree, ascribed to Pericles,3 it was rendered, in its views and nature, perfectly confined. For by this decree it was declared, that none should be held for natural and true Athenians, but such as had both Athenian fathers and mothers. Through this fatal measure the state was not only extremely weak­ ened at home, above one quarter of the citizens being thereby excluded, but was likewise quite disabled from annexing or incorporating any of its conquests; / and was therefore obliged to hold them only upon the footing of allies, or of tributary provinces. And the consequence of this was, as might have been easily foreseen, that all of them, in their turn, seized the first opportunity that offered, to assert their liberty and independence. So long as they were distinct people, they had still different and distinct views, which could only have been con­ tracted by an actual union with the Athenian commonwealth. And this, in all probability, if it had been seasonably effected, and the nature of the constitution had admitted of it, would have rendered her sovereignty over them lasting and permanent. This very capital error was likewise common to the Thebans, and all the Grecian states. But the Roman government was of a genius more liberal and comprehensive. The colonies and conquests of this wonderful empire, were, to a considerable extent, naturalized and incorporated, and had their proper share of weight in the legislature. This constitution, it is true, when first founded by Romulus, was extremely defective and imperfect, as consisting only of / two estates, the popu­ lar one being wholly excluded. In length of time, however, it became so much improved, by the addition of the third estate, and other alterations, as to admit, when arrived at the highest pitch of perfection, of as much freedom and liberty, as perhaps almost any form of government that we read of in ancient history. This constitution, notwithstanding, however excellent in itself, could not operate with the same vigour, and to as good purpose beyond a certain sphere. The more distant provinces, how much so ever of the Roman laws and customs

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they might adopt, or were actually introduced and established among them could not possibly enjoy all the privileges and advantages of a citizen of Rome. It was in Italy alone that the people, with the tribunes at their head, could arrest the consuls, confirm or abolish the decrees of the senate, deliberate of peace and war, and decide alliances, treaties of peace, and conventions with foreign states and princes. This was a power which could not possibly, in the nature of things, be vested in different provinces. Nor could it, with any propriety or / conveni­ ence, fall to the share of any other, than that only where the seat of empire was fixed. And yet it was upon the full enjoyment and exercise of this prerogative, that their freedom and liberty must in a great measure depend. Besides, it was in Italy alone they were sole masters and arbiters of rewards and punishments, and could fix pecuniary mulcts upon such as had been possessed of the highest employments. And, above all, it was here alone they had the sole right of con­ demning Roman citizens capitally. In the provinces and more remote parts of the empire, the governors and presidents were invested with large and extensive powers, which they very often most shamefully abused. And though in many of them the taxes, levied by the Romans, were frequently much less than had been raised in them in the time of their independence, yet we find them sometimes demanded and collected by these and other superior officers, in a manner extremely unequal and irregular. These practices, however, were by no means warrantable upon the principles of the constitution, which in its frame and model had / abundantly guarded against all oppressions of this nature. For, ever since the reign of Servius Tullius, their sixth and last king but one, they had established among them a regular and equitable method of raising and collecting taxes, which they called a census, or enrolment, whereby they were required upon oath to register their estates, according to their value in money, and likewise their names, quality, and employment, together with the name of their parents, their own age, and the names of their wives and children. To this they were also required to add the number of their servants or slaves, specifying the work or service they were employed in; an exact estimate of the true value and profits of all which was to be made out, and finally settled by the censors. And it was agreeable to the amount of this estimate the taxes were to be raised and collected. This form of levying taxes, which was the ancient and constitutional one, was likewise the same that was usually observed in the provinces. But an order of the senate, or edict / of the emperor, were the measure of these levies: and sometimes even the base will and direction of the president. The people’s consent for this purpose was not at all thought requisite; nor were they herein ever consulted. The Roman liberty could here be but little boasted of. It was not their preroga­ tive, nor yet their privilege to make laws, but humbly to obey. And whenever

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they thought themselves injured or aggrieved, they could only prefer their com­ plaints to the senate. For it was only from the senate, and not from themselves, they could hope for redress. They were notwithstanding, in general, governed with great equity and moderation; and complaints of this kind were much fewer, than might have been expected from so large and extensive an empire. They were not however considered as aliens to the commonwealth, but as the children and friends of the republic. And they were allowed, upon the whole, perhaps the best conditions which the nature of their government would admit of. Offices and preferments, both civil and military, were alike open to all; / and none were precluded the highest dignities in the state. Rome and her provinces were in this respect upon a level: for to secure them from revolting, they rightly judged it the best means to take into their service the most active and ambi­ tious therein, and to reward the most deserving with suitable preferment. Thus both the Gauls, in particular, were filled with consular families. And in this con­ duct indeed, both their justice and their policy, it must be acknowledged, were equally conspicuous. The wise maxim of uniting and incorporating, as much as possible, all parts of the empire, which they had received from Romulus, they ever afterwards continued. And to this may be justly imputed, in a great measure, the stability and duration of it, where of they themselves were perfectly sensible. These few, succinct and cursory remarks, upon the nature of the Grecian governments, may serve to shew us that some constitutions are of that kind, as to render colonization or any extension of empire, in a manner, wholly imprac­ ticable: and those also upon that of the Roman, to convince us, that even the most / liberal and comprehensive form thereof, cannot operate with equal vig­ our beyond a certain sphere. For all the privileges and prerogatives of the citizens of Rome, could not possibly, in the nature of things, be vested in the provinces, without an actual subversion of the state. For all governments must be drawn to some certain point wherein the whole is to centre. Supreme power and author­ ity must not, cannot reside equally every where throughout an empire. For this would rather suppose absolute confusion and anarchy, than any imaginable mode of government. However, as in all free states supreme authority is derived from, so it ultimately resides in, the people. For the laws by which they are governed must necessarily derive their very existence from them, through the medium of their representatives; kings and princes being only the chief magistrates chosen and appointed to superintend the execution of those laws, whereby they themselves are no less bound than their subjects. Now the bottom on which a free government is founded, is in its nature just as extensive as the utmost limits of the / empire itself, from the several parts whereof one only supreme assembly of representatives, for making laws, can regularly be formed. If we admit more such assemblies than one, the power and authority of all but one must necessarily be abridged, and brought

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in subordination to one only as supreme. For if each assembly, in this case, were absolute, they would, it is evident, form not one only, but so many different gov­ ernments perfectly independent of one another. These are, I grant, obvious and known truths; but known truths are not always as generally so as they ought to be, much less are they as duly weighed and considered. And obvious as they are, it was necessary for me in this place to premise them, in order to set my argu­ ment in a just and proper light. Now that of Great Britain being exactly the kind of government I have been here speaking of, the absolute impracticability of vesting the American assemblies with an authority, in all respects equal to that of the mother coun­ try, without actually dismembering the British empire must naturally occur to / every one. For all government is founded alike in a subordination as well as union of all its constituent parts; of which notwithstanding none can be justly excluded its natural and due weight in regulating, as it necessarily has in form­ ing the whole. Thus although the British parliament may indeed with propriety make laws for Britain, yet it cannot with the same propriety exercise the like power with respect to America, while those parts of our dominions are not fairly represented in it. Nor, on the other hand, can our colonies make laws for them­ selves in their own assemblies, without thereby actually declaring themselves independent states, unless what they enact is only of force, so long as it is not inhibited or reversed by the parliament of Great Britain. And while their power stands thus limited by a superior authority, whereof they themselves have no share, they cannot be considered as a free people. For they are subject to laws and regulations not of their own making, which is the very definition of slavery. That they may notwithstanding be governed with equity, and treated with mild­ ness, in a degree not at all inferior to England, is very possible, and on / some accounts, by no means improbable yet still, upon the above footing, their consti­ tutional rights and liberties must be precarious and uncertain. And here I cannot help making this remark, that the more free a constitution is in its nature, the less extensive it is in its views. For the larger the empire, the more numerous and unwieldy the democratic branch of it necessarily becomes. And therefore where divers remote and distant countries are united under one government, an equal and fair representation becomes almost impracticable, or, at best, extremely inconvenient. But inconveniences, arising purely from extent of dominions, where they all lie contiguous upon a continent, are nothing comparable to those where they are divided and parted by seas, especially wide oceans like that between us and America. A parliament or diet might be convened from all parts of Germany, for example, at any particular city therein, without any extreme difficulty, even on a few weeks notice, notwithstanding the / vast extent of that country. Nor, should we suppose France also annexed thereto, would the thing be at all impracticable.

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But should we carry our supposition much farther, the inconveniences attending such long journeys would be very great, although not interrupted by water. This, however, would not be nearly so difficult as to convene a parliament partly from Europe and partly from America, which yet, in the present case, is certainly nec­ essary to render government equal to all the subjects of the British crown. For the nature of our constitution is evidently such as absolutely requires a general and impartial representation; which, notwithstanding, cannot be supposed to exist, so long as American members are not admitted to sit in the British senate. Hence therefore appears the stubbornness and inflexibility, if I may so call it, of the genius of our constitution, although in itself the most complete and perfect of any in the whole world. An arbitrary or military government would have laboured under no diffi­ culties of this kind at all. France would have ruled over the whole continent of North-America, with more / ease and less ceremony, than we can over one single province of it. A few brief and succinct forms, together with a good standing army there, would have readily done the business. But the English constitution is quite of another nature, and proclaims to all a liberty and freedom unknown in other countries. And it is this peculiar excellence of it, which constitutes the gen­ uine and true cause from whence the present difficulties in adjusting the rights and privileges of our colonies arise. To point out, therefore, the most effectual and consistent means, for compromising the disputes and differences result­ ing from these difficulties, is what we should next attempt, but that I must first proceed, agreeably to the order I have laid down, to inquire, in the third place, whether, although it should be found impracticable, from the nature of our con­ stitution, to admit the Americans to the full possession of all the prerogatives and privileges of Englishmen in the mother country, they should not be allowed such a form of government, as will best secure to them their just rights and natu­ ral liberties? / But this very inquiry will possibly appear quite unnecessary, if not absurd to many; yet I cannot help thinking it much more absurd, to hold that the British parliament, as it now stands, hath an undeniable right to make laws for NorthAmerica. Were people considerate and impartial enough to make this inquiry for themselves, it would certainly be quite needless for me to make it here for them. For barely to put the question, one might reasonably expect, to most men, a sufficient answer to it. Indeed to maintain this position, that it is just and equi­ table for one half of a kingdom, to hold the other half in chains, is what, I believe, few among us are hardy enough openly to attempt, although three parts in four, perhaps, of the whole island, are very forward to embrace tenets and maxims scarcely more liberal. And it is not unlikely but most of those, if not all, who are strenuous advocates for one side of the question in England, would immediately veer about, and espouse quite the opposite in America. Besides, what would they

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say, were it put in supposition that the seat of empire were shifted over and fixed in America, and England was to be governed upon the footing / of a colony? it is very easy to conceive, I think, what in this case would be their language. And jus­ tice requires that we should do by others, as we would, in similar circumstances, be done by ourselves. Nay, is it not, let me ask, most egregious folly, so loudly to condemn the Stuart family, who would have governed England without a parlia­ ment, when at the same time we would, almost all of us, govern America, upon principles not at all more justifiable? And though they were tied down by their charters to the most servile and dependent state imaginable, it would, I think, be extremely ungenerous now to make that an argument for continuing them upon the same footing. For in my opinion the question should be, not how low we can depress them, but how high we can raise them without making them absolute or independent, and consist­ ently with our rights of sovereignty over them. This certainly is by far the most liberal and Christian way, both of thinking and acting in this matter. And what­ ever is so, is ultimately the most politic. For the most / lasting empires are always founded in principles the most agreeable to justice. And their dissolution is as invariably the consequence of a deviation therefrom, either in mode or practice. But those founded in violence and oppression are seldom durable. Besides, it can never be deemed a wise measure by men of the least thought or reflection, to make slaves of the Americans, were it a thing ever so practicable. So large a body of men, at the devotion of a wicked minister, would be very formidable to England. And a people long habituated to servitude, and in whom the love of liberty as well as all sense of the just value of it, was extinguished, would certainly be the most proper instruments to reduce others to the like condition. In some things indeed we seem jealous of our liberty, and even of what we apprehend has the most distant tendency to undermine it, almost to a degree of enthusiasm; and yet in others our apprehensions on this head are perfectly dormant. Where prejudice, passion, or seeming interest are concerned, we are no longer English­ men, wise, circumspect, just and generous, but the blind dupes of our own folly; of which our conduct, / upon the present occasion, is too glaring an instance. But to return – Now as some truths are so clear and obvious, that to go about to prove them, is only taking pains to render them suspected, or, what is worse, if possible to obscure them. Among these the object of the present inquiry should, I think, be considered, I shall therefore change the state of it, and proceed to examine in the sequel, what that form of government is which will best answer the purposes above specified. But, in the first place, I must beg leave to observe that, in my opinion, the Americans found their complaints upon a narrower bottom, than the nature of the subject would admit of. For the only grievance they seem to be sensible of, is the right of taxation, claimed over them by the British parliament.

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This certainly is a very important branch of legislation, and may be called one of the three principal objects of government. For to this number these may in some sort be reduced, the security of person, property, and religion, and whoever, there­ fore, claims a right to dispose of any one’s property, / without his consent either directly or indirectly, claims at the same time a right to rob him of the protection of government in one of its principal objects, and indeed consequentially in two. For an unlimited power to dispose of a person’s goods may, through wantonness or cruelty, be exercised to that degree of severity, as actually to cause both him and his family to perish. And though government itself, which yet necessarily is absolute, should claim such an authority, under the above predicaments, it would evidently be a government founded in injustice. Hence then it appears what alarming consequences a right of imposing taxes involves in it. Can it there­ fore surprise any one that the colonies should be jealous of this right? or rather would it not be much more surprising, were they not jealous of it? However, a right of legislation in general over them, they certainly may with equal justice and propriety dispute, so long as they continue unrepresented in our parliament, or some other way are not admitted to a due share of power, in making those laws to which they / are subject. For people may be harassed or injured an infinite number of ways besides only in the article of taxing them. But this not being the case at present, their complaints seem to be wholly confined to this one article. To this therefore I shall entirely confine my subsequent inquir­ ies, and more especially since it is not improbable, if a point so very material could be adjusted to mutual satisfaction, but it would be less difficult to settle any other that should ever come to be disputed. That every government should support itself, is a truth too obvious to be contested. And that England has an undeniable right to consider America as part of her dominions, is a fact, I presume, which can never be questioned. For few empires can produce as just a claim to half their provinces, as that of England to her’s in America. I will only observe at present, that it was England, in some sense, which at first gave them being (excepting only that part of them which was ceded to us by the French) and ever since has defended them with her arms, and governed them with her laws. It is therefore but just and equitable that they / should, in return, contribute a reasonable proportion for the support of that government, by which they are protected. This they have not as yet the effrontery openly to deny. But the manner of levying such supplies is the subject in debate. Now all the ways of raising them, which at present occur to me, are chiefly four; though each of these may perhaps be variously modeled. The first is by a requisition, made by the king and his council, of a certain sum by them fixed, to be raised in each province, in such manner as their own assemblies shall think fit. The second is by a like requisition made by parliament, and to be raised in like manner. The third is by a tax imposed in the British parliament, upon its present

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footing. And the fourth is by the same authority in conjunction with a general representation therein of the Americans. The first of these, however acquiesced in on the part of the colonies, is, in my opinion, by far the most exceptionable. For if only a few men, who consti­ tute the ministry, have a right / to appoint what sums they shall raise, and their requisition is to be indispensibly complied with, they must evidently in this case be wholly subject to ministerial government, and of course to ministerial tyr­ anny. And that such a requisition should without reserve be complied with, is altogether obvious. For should the Americans be allowed herein a discretionary power, they will in fact be perfectly independent, and the sovereignty of England over them will be only a nominal one: because if they are at liberty to chuse what sums to raise, as well as the manner of raising them, it is scarcely to be doubted but their allowance will be found extremely short. And it is evident they may, upon this footing, absolutely refuse to pay any taxes at all. And if so, it would be much better for England, if it were consistent with her safety, to disclaim all further connection with them, than to continue her protection to them wholly at her own expence. However, should such a requisition as I have here described be acquiesced in, I know no reason we have to object to it. / The second method I took notice of, was by a like requisition made by the British parliament, and to be raised and collected in such manner as the provin­ cial assemblies shall like best. This method, however inadequate upon the whole, appears to me much preferable to the former, as in so large a body of men, both justice and the true interest of the empire are more likely to be duly regarded; and therefore they may reasonably expect the burden will be more equitably laid upon them. Besides, it is not improbable but some who have property among them may sit in this assembly. And it may farther be observed, that their pro­ ceedings are not quite so rapid and precipitate as those of the privy-council, so that should it be found unnecessary, they will have more time to petition or make remonstrances. For this privilege, the least which a subject can enjoy, is not to be denied them, however an ultimate compliance may be insisted on as indispensable. And it is likewise, let me add, much more probable that their abil­ ity to pay taxes, and the true state of their finances, will be better understood, as well as their petitions and remonstrances more solemnly canvassed: on all / which accounts, and several others not mentioned, I cannot help giving it much the preference to the former, although I cannot pretend to recommend either. And of the impropriety of the third method above pointed out, the Ameri­ cans seem abundantly sensible, as appears from their conduct on occasion of the late stamp-act, the repeal whereof looks somewhat like an acknowledgement of the same thing on the part of the British parliament. For if that act was in itself just and equitable, though in its circumstances not quite convenient, means might have been easily discovered to remove these difficulties, without a total

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repeal of it. For if it was only oppressive, as imposing too heavy a tax, or pro­ ductive in its consequences of some unnecessary trouble; to these surely proper remedies might have been applied, and yet its essence still preserved. But here the chief stress of the complaints made against it was not laid; but the inequi­ tableness of it in its full extent, is what the colonies principally objected to it. The British parliament, they urged, exercised an authority they had naturally and constitutionally / no right to. And a law, deriving its existence from such an authority, must necessarily, in respect of those it is imposed upon, be inequitable and arbitrary. And this the parliament, in repealing it, notwithstanding all their declarations and resolutions to the contrary, seem tacitly to have acknowledged. But this still is the grand point in debate, which I fear cannot be very easily adjusted. That there are a great many persons of integrity, worth, and character on both sides of the question, cannot be doubted. But the misfortune is, they are not all quite so cool and dispassionate in their inquiries as might be wished. Moral truth, upon which justice is founded, is generally obvious to the meanest capacity, and never lies more out of sight, than when concealed by prejudice or passion. And to have their judgments biassed by either of these, or both, is what falls sometimes to the lot of all men; and is therefore what all men ought to be the more ready to excuse or pardon in each other. My own sentiments, touching this point, are sufficiently evident from what I have already / said upon it. And whoever considers it with the same impar­ tiality and disinterestedness, will not, I believe, find himself in the result widely to differ from me. For, as to my opinion herein, I would obtrude it upon no one, but only desire it may be fairly examined, and as fairly confuted before it is rejected or condemned. And if I seem to be an advocate for the Americans, it is for no other reason but purely because I think myself an advocate for truth. For surely I stand as unconnected, with respect to that people, as any man in the kingdom. I know of no other interest to influence me in this cause, but the interest of humanity. And the question with me is not so much what the rights of the Americans are in particular, as what the just and natural rights of all man­ kind are? and liberty in the utmost latitude that government can secure it, is the undoubted birthright, my reason tells me, of every man, till he has forfeited it. And this forfeiture, on the part of a whole nation, it is quite impossible to incur. For at least children, whereof all nations in part are composed, while too young to violate any law, must necessarily be exempted. Besides, to suppose, that of those grown to / maturity none at all, or only few are innocent, is to put a case so extravagant, as not to be paralleled in history, if I am not mistaken. But to think that any people can be free, while subject to laws they are no way consulted in making, is such an absurdity as few, I believe, in their own case, would not readily discover: and common honesty requires that we should as readily acknowledge in the case of others. Let us, though but for a moment, con­

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sider ourselves Americans, and I more than presume we shall be of this opinion. For as nothing will better assist us to view each side of the question in the strong­ est light, so nothing will better assist us in forming an impartial judgment of it. Nor, again, is it at all more rational to maintain that that people are represented in the British parliament as it now stands. An equal representation, indeed, is a thing scarcely practicable, and what England herself cannot boast of; but the Americans cannot properly be said to have the smallest share in it. The weight their trade and commerce with us may give them, deserves not to be mentioned on this occasion. For that is no more than / what any country in Europe, in some degree might have. And who durst say, that Holland, for instance, is represented in England? But those who maintain our right of legislation over them, do it chiefly, if not wholly, I suppose, because they see the necessity there is, in order to an unity of government, that such a right should be vested in us. An unity of government, it is true, is necessary to an unity of empire. But besides that this perhaps may be otherwise effected, than at the expence of the just birth-right of our fellowcreatures; yet were it only to be accomplished by such a violation, I am perfectly at a loss how to demonstrate the equity of such a procedure, unless it can be fully proved that the safety of the state can be secured by no other means. For noth­ ing less can justify it. And the present case, I think, includes no such extremity. For whatever reasons we have to consider the retention of our sovereignty over them as indispensable; yet with me it is by no means a maxim, that we cannot otherwise secure that sovereignty, than at the expence of their natural rights. And if this may be really done, it most certainly / ought. For I see no reason why conscience, truth and justice should be less regarded in national acts than private ones. And I do not at all think myself the only casuist that would argue in this manner. Nor is the practice of other states, on similar occasions, nor yet our own of whatever standing, by any means sufficient to justify an action in itself wrong. And surely to claim and exercise an authority we have naturally no right to, is an action in itself as wrong as any, I think, that we can put in supposition. But this, I presume, in general, will be granted, and yet perhaps denied in the particu­ lar case before us. Our right of legislation over the Americans, unrepresented as they are, is the point in question. This right is asserted by most, doubted of by some, and wholly disclaimed by a few. But to put the matter in a stronger light, the question, I think, should be, Whether we have a general right of making slaves, or not? the affirmative of it I solemnly protest against, although I should be reputed for it the very worst politician that ever presumed to make his senti­ ments public. / But, on the other hand, it must be confessed, that under governments, in themselves very imperfect, justice may be duly administered, and order pre­ served. For, were not this the case, there would be little either of justice or order

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in the world. And the Americans may be treated with as much equity, and even tenderness, by the parliament of Great Britain, as by their own assembles. This at least, is possible, although perhaps not very probable. Besides, our distance from them is such, as must inevitably disqualify us to be altogether as good judges of what grievances they may labour under, or of what supplies they can afford to raise, as they themselves. It is every one’s own feelings can best inform him wherein he is aggrieved or distressed. And this is the case of every nation, as well as of every individual; and therefore none should be excluded a proper share in their own government. And it may be further observed, that the dissolution of an empire, is not always to be considered as inevitable, where some parts thereof are possessed of a power, by no means consistent with that unity of government I have been / speaking of. Nay it is possible that such a power may never be found productive of any great inconvenience. To this purpose the case of Ireland, as forming a part of the English dominions, may be readily instanced. For the power of parlia­ ment in that kingdom, to reject and throw out money-bills, as well as their very extensive authority on other accounts, must certainly be acknowledged as not quite consistent with this unity. Here, most undoubtedly, is a great defect in point of theory; and yet the inconveniences arising therefrom, in practice, have been hitherto by no means considerable. Nor can it be denied but most govern­ ments, in some respect or other, are extremely defective, although perhaps not very many in the particular now mentioned; as despotic ones, which are by far the most numerous, are seldom exceptionable on this account. But the truth of the matter is, it is not so much the best form of government, as the most exact and regular administration of justice, that most effectually fastens together the different parts of an empire, whereon the stability and duration of it must ever necessarily depend. And it is seldom that the people abuse / the power they are possessed of to their ruin, but only when they have received very heavy provoca­ tions to enrage them, from the excesses of their governors. And the most perfect model of government in the world, where according to it justice is not duly administered, is no security against the outrages of the people. But, after all, it must be confessed, that the most perfect form thereof is ever the most eligible. For the rights of mankind can never be too well guarded. And it is under this sort of government they certainly stand the best chance to be least invaded. I know no reason therefore why we should think so very hard of the Americans, only because they are so strenuousto have theirs established upon this footing, and because they are so unwilling to submit to the mode of taxa­ tion here proposed, which several, even among ourselves, have not the highest opinion of. I could therefore most heartily wish, that the fourth and last above-men­ tioned, was as convenient and practicable, as it is just and equitable. To convene

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indeed our colonial representatives / at London, would certainly be attended with very great, though I dare not say quite insurmountable, difficulties. To the equity of this measure the Americans themselves, I presume, could have nothing fairly to object. However, it would not be extremely easy perhaps to settle the number of members to be sent by each province. But yet this business, I make no doubt, might in time be adjusted. But the inconveniences, arising from the distance they lie from us, are perpetual, various and complicated. As to those, indeed, which attend only the chusing a new parliament, they may perhaps, by proper means, be considerably lessened, although not wholly removed. It is true, if our parliaments were annual, as they ought to be, they would rather increase; but even then they might, I believe, be in a great measure remedied. But should the king, at any time, be disposed to dissolve his parliament, and convene a new one, as hath been often done, only on a few weeks notice, this, upon the above footing, could not be effected. And yet, I believe, a variety of cases might occur, wherein this may be proper, if not necessary. / But were the duration or dissolution of parliaments fixed wholly to stated times, a thing, by the bye, not at all to be wished for, the difficulties upon these occasions would not certainly be quite insuperable. The method however of examining and deciding contested elections when necessary, must undoubtedly, with respect to America, be set, in a great measure, upon a different footing from that at present practised in this kingdom. But to sketch out a plan for removing these or the like difficulties, is not within my present design, as it is not in the least, at this time, probable, that an American representation will ever be con­ vened in England. But there are other difficulties, which, in my opinion, form a much more considerable objection to this scheme; that whenever the colo­ nies shall have occasion to have a recourse to parliament, for their intervention in more particular provincial business, as from the nature of things they often must, their distance from it will render it in a manner impracticable. They will be almost wholly excluded the benefit of private acts, by reason of the immoder­ ate expence, both of time and money they must be at to procure them. / And yet applications to parliament for such purposes may often become necessary. Besides, there may be an infinite number of occasions, respecting matters of a more public nature, such as the repairing of high-ways, making rivers naviga­ ble, and cutting canals, with a variety of other things of the like kind, wherein recourse must be had to parliament, and yet the expence be supported chiefly, if not wholly, by private persons. But in either case it will be a considerable burden, and as considerable an objection to all undertakings of that sort. And the delays in business occasioned by such long voyages, as those from America to England, must greatly retard it, and no less discourage those who are concerned in it. Besides, when at any time it should become necessary, as it often happens, to produce witnesses, in support or prosecution of any cause, America lies at such a

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distance as scarcely to admit of it. Therefore, upon all these, and many other very similar accounts, I can only consider this scheme as barely practicable. However, should the Americans prefer it to any other, as it is an establishment they have, I think, an undoubted right to, I know not / how we can, in conscience, debar them of it. But if they could be otherwise satisfied, with any conditions that we can safely grant them, this mode of compromise, which may be justly termed the dernier resort, may as well be waved, as it cannot be effected, it is evident, without immense trouble. And now, since each of the methods above proposed, is pregnant, as we have seen, with a variety of difficulties, hardships and inconveniences, it may here be asked, what measure then upon the whole is most eligible, and fittest to be pursued on the present occasion? But to give a plain and decisive answer to this question, is, perhaps, the greatest difficulty of all. And though I may not be able rightly to solve it, I cannot consider the above remarks as wholly useless, if they only serve to point out, and convince the public of this very difficulty by a proper explanation of it, and so dispose them, at least, to be a little less censori­ ous towards all parties concerned in this very intricate business. For it really is, in my opinion, as arduous and important a question, as over the English govern­ ment was engaged in. / And if they should be divided in their sentiments upon it, and uncertain what measures to adopt and follow, it cannot be matter of just wonder or censure. But it must be confessed that in all our transactions with the world, the tem­ per and dispositions of those we have to deal with, is generally the best index to point out the measures most proper to be pursued upon any occasion. But that they should never be in themselves unjust, I need not here observe; and the tru­ est policy, I am very certain, is ever founded in the soundest morality. Besides, the Americans, as they must inevitably lie under some very considerable incon­ veniences, have, I think, if they are not permitted to be represented in our senate, a right of chusing what mode of government they should best like, provided it be not inconsistent with the sovereignty of England over them. For what England seems chiefly to have a right to dictate is, that they shall continue in subjection to her, and form a part of her dominions, upon the footing of her own laws and constitution. The one, I think, she has a right to / command; and the other they have a right to claim. But if less rigid terms are agreed or consented to on either side, it must be considered as matter of favour and indulgence. As for example, if England should grant the Americans the same conditions as the Irish now enjoy, in respect to the article of levying taxes, it should be deemed only as matter of grace, to be resumed at pleasure. And custom, of however long a standing, can never convert it into matter of undeniable claim. And again, should the Ameri­ cans consent to be taxed in the British parliament upon its present footing, it is such a submission as cannot be equitably insisted on, they having always a right

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to be represented in the assembly they are taxed by, or which forms the popular branch of their legislature. These appear to me to be true limits of right and equity on either side. And here may easily be found a criterion, whereby to judge of the claims and con­ cessions of both parties. To be placed upon a level with the rest of the subjects of the British crown, is the utmost the colonies can challenge. And to / refuse them this, is more, I believe, than can be rightly justified upon the principles of common honesty. But supposing this were quite impracticable, and either party must necessarily make abatement, several reasons, and very plausible if not solid ones, may be urged, why this should be done on the part of the colonies. For although the common rights of mankind should, with the utmost tenderness, be preserved inviolate: yet there may be occasions whereon they may be fairly and justifiably abridged. Indeed something of this kind, with respect to indi­ viduals, is congenial to the very essence of all government. For every member of a regular society is supposed voluntarily, for the sake of the common good thereof, to resign some portion of the rights and privileges wherewith nature has invested him, into the hands of those, who may be expected to use them with more impartiality and discretion. Thus every man is naturally constituted sole judge in his own cause; a prerogative which yet government permits no one to exercise, as it would be destructive of the very existence of it, as well as of that of society. In the same manner and for the same reasons, / the Americans might be justly divested of some portion of their natural claims, if government cannot be supported upon more equitable terms, or at least if it should be dangerous to England, to allow them the enjoyment of a more unlimited power. I do not say that we have a right to subjugate any people, only because they are troublesome; but if they are truly dangerous we certainly have. Nor yet is it at all warrantable to abridge the just liberties of any country we may possess ourselves of, merely because we cannot otherwise maintain our sovereignty over it, unless our safety were actually at stake, and absolutely required it. But the case, perhaps, may be in some degree altered, when such country is planted by our own natives, and especially at our own expence; or indeed by any people whatever, who were previously well informed of the nature of the grant, and the terms whereon they were to occupy it. Thus they who first migrated from England to settle in America well knew, I presume, they were still to continue the subjects of the same government. And if / their charters were not so explicit as they should have been, in regard to some particulars they believed they had a right to; yet still they could only claim the most favourable conditions the nature of things would admit of. They knew they were not to be independent: but if they were really more strictly tied down by them than there now seemed to be occasion for, I fairly confess, that ought to be no argument, in my opinion, for debarring them of better terms. For no one, I imagine, would doubt, if their

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charters granted them an inconsistent power, but they might be justly cancelled, as no government can be supposed to alienate prerogatives necessary to its safe existence. Therefore equity, at least, would dictate to us the like procedure in the opposite case, it being just as reasonable to abolish all unnecessary limitations on the one hand, as it would be to augment and multiply them on the other. How­ ever, a right of sovereignty in this case, we may undeniably claim and vindicate: and though we might safely grant them absolute independency, yet whatever generosity might suggest, justice does not seem to require it; notwithstanding the terms of submission might / be somewhat hard. But this, in acquisitions of another nature, would not, perhaps, be quite so defensible. Now, our title and pretensions to all our American provinces are of that sort that seem fairly to justify our asserting and preserving our sovereignty over them, although at the expence of some portion of their natural prerogatives. They partly consist of our own plantations, and partly of the conquests we have made from a nation, in whose hands it would have been dangerous for us to have them continued. In both which cases we have the most unexceptionable right to keep them upon such a footing as will best consist with, and support our gov­ ernment. And had we, indeed, the generosity to declare them independent, as finding that our keeping them must inevitably superinduce a necessity of abridg­ ing their natural liberty, yet this would not be consistent with our safety. They would immediately fall a prey to the French, and, of course, would be such a weight in their scale, as might contribute not a little to endanger, if not overturn the liberty of all Europe. For it would help / to give them the mastery of the seas, which seems to be the only thing that more peculiarly humbles, and keeps them within their present bounds. Our very being, therefore, at least as a free people, depends upon our retention of them: nor is it the interest of any one nation whatever, who have the French for their neighbours, that it should be otherwise. Much less then is it the interest of the Americans themselves, as they would soon be made sensible of the difference of the two governments. The Gallic yoke they would experience to their cost, is not so easily borne. They are now treated as children; their complaints are heard, and grievances redressed; but then they would be treated rather as slaves, having the swords of their masters perpetu­ ally held at their throats, if they should presume to offer half the indignities to the officers of the French crown, which they have often, with impunity, done to those of the British. At present they enjoy, in general, the full benefit of the English laws and constitution. Nay, they have assemblies of their own to redress their grievances, and regulate their polity. / Therein they exercise an authority little inferior to that of the British parliament. And indeed what they seem to struggle for is, to be set upon a footing equal to it. And if that should be done, what marks of sovereignty will they allow us to enjoy? What sort of claim will they indulge us

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with? Only, I suppose, a mere titular one. And, if so, would they then expect that we should still protect them with our forces by sea and land? Or will they themselves maintain an army and navy sufficient for that purpose? This they cer­ tainly at present are not able to do, if they were not sheltered by the wings of Great Britain. And to contribute a reasonable proportion for this purpose is all we require of them. This, indeed, they will say, perhaps, they are not unwilling to do, if they are allowed to do it as an act of their own; nor should that privilege, in my opinion, be refused them, if they are not permitted to be represented in England: for this alternative should certainly be left to their option: and for such a measure I have been all along an advocate. For as the inconveniences, arising from such a representation must almost wholly fall to their share, / it is what we may with the less reluctance grant, as we can with the less propriety refuse them: nor is there any reason to apprehend that they should be at all formidable to England, as their number might be properly limited, as those of Scotland were at the union. But here I am arguing upon a supposition of the absolute impracticability of this measure. Upon this view of the point in question, I still insist that the Americans, no less than the English, should contribute a due proportion for the support of government; yet this again they may possibly affirm that they actu­ ally do. But here, in order to an impartial decision of this case, we want a proper criterion to judge by: for an exact estimate can scarcely be made of what expence their protection stands in to Great Britain. Besides, we can certainly afford to protect them at less expence than they could afford to protect themselves, were they either so many independent states, or only one general community. For the same forces it, would be necessary for us to keep on foot, upon our own proper account, may serve in a great measure to guard them likewise. However, it / is not a very inconsiderable addition thereto we are obliged to make, merely for their defence. And this, at least, they ought to maintain. But if they should argue that these forces may be safely reduced, and consequently the expence of sup­ porting them; this is little to the purpose. For though their remonstrances, upon all occasions, should be candidly heard, and duly regarded, yet, in the last result, England is still to form her own judgment, and is not to be dictated to by her colonies: for should that be the case, it is no longer England, but has colonies, that govern. And, besides, they are justly chargeable with a certain portion of the civil list; for this most indubitably constitutes a part of government. How this article, at present, is managed in England, is not now my business to inquire: but certain it is, that is all regal governments it is indispensable, unless an equivalent provision is otherwise made, for the king’s maintenance and private charges, by an allotment in lands, or some such other property; which, by the bye, would give him such a weight in the state, over and above that necessarily resulting from his prerogatives, as in the estimate of many, perhaps, were scarcely to be /

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wished for. And even in commonwealths the pomp of government, if I may so call it, is unavoidably attended with expences, and not inconsiderable, of a simi­ lar nature. It is therefore but reasonable that the colonies, as they are part of the state, should bear their share of these, as the necessary charges of it. Were they obliged to do so, I see no reason they should justly have to complain. The immense taxes which England pays are known to all. It is not indeed very easy to calculate what proportion of a man’s labour, or how much of his wages should be considered in this light; but certainly it is extremely large. America, however, is not in a condition to pay the taxes that England does, as not having the same advantages; yet surely if an Englishman works one day in the week, let us suppose, for the public; an American, I should imagine, may afford to work on the same account, at least one day in a fortnight. There are obvious reasons for a considerable lenity in favour of the Americans; because an infant colony, circumstanced as ours is, lies under many disadvantages. For they have land / to clear, houses to build, roads to make, fences to erect, trees to plant; and, in short, everything that can be imagined for converting a wilderness into a habitable country. And besides, all this is to be done in opposition to a variety of difficul­ ties, which, though each by itself may seem scarcely to merit notice, yet taken collectively, are by no means inconsiderable. Tools and engines, for instance, are seldom so conveniently fabricated there, as in a country antiently inhabited, wherein generally artificers, in all the more necessary branches are commodi­ ously situated. The distance of their residence likewise, as it often happens, from the spot they cultivate, is another impediment to their dispatch of business. But it would be endless to enumerate them all. This, however, is by no means the universal state of our plantations. In many parts they are little, perhaps, or noth­ ing at all inferior in respect of these conveniences, to the mother-country. Yet after all, if it appears right to us to extend our colonies, it ought to appear no less right to us to give them all due encouragement. And one way of doing this, most certainly is, not to be over-rigorous in taxing them. For heavy / taxes are heavy oppressions, although, as far as they are absolutely necessary, however burden­ some, they scarcely deserve the appellation; for their being necessary is sufficient to justify them. Yet they should not be wantonly accumulated, as nothing more emphatically depresses a state, or discourages improvements. In Molesworth’s history of Denmark,4 I think, it is said, that in a certain northern province of that kingdom, the lands were so highly charged, that the peasants petitioned the king’s acceptance of them fully and wholly to himself, rather than pay the taxes imposed upon them; which, however, he did not care to do, as well knowing they could not possibly be of any use to him, any farther than they were culti­ vated. And thus any country may be equally distressed by excessive taxes. How far this would have been really the case, in respect of America, if the late stamp-act had taken place, is more than I can tell. It was indeed complained of as

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enormous, although it was not here the capital objection against it was grounded. But this, perhaps, is / not quite clear. For although, on the one hand, the Eng­ lish may be considered rather as incompetent judges; all that the Americans are pleased to say on the other is scarcely to be admitted always for fact, especially in a matter where interest may justly be supposed to have so much influence. Yet it must be granted, that they know best the state of their own finances, and what taxes they can afford to pay; in the imposing whereof there are some cir­ cumstances which merit attention, that, in regard to the act above-mentioned, may not perhaps have been properly considered. And, in particular, due respect should be had, to the difference of the value of money in both countries. Of this difference I do not pretend to be a perfect master, although it may be easily ascer­ tained. Indeed what quantity of specie they have circulating among them I know not; but from a variety of circumstances, I have reason to conclude they are, in this point, by no means upon a level with England. And therefore it is possible that six-pence additional duty upon any article among them, may be equal to a much larger sum with us. But, admitting the difference / were only as one to ten, or even less; yet I still think that, in cases of this nature, it is a consideration that should not be left wholly unregarded. But there is an advantage to be derived from this very difference, were the point carried to all the nicety it would admit of. For were it really material, a pro­ portionable reduction might be made in the pay of the forces stationed in that country; – but this is a saving I would by no means recommend. It would, on many accounts, be cruel to attempt it, unless it were only among the provincials. But even among them, it is probable it would prove a measure highly imprudent, if not worse; for I know of no greater folly than to render, as it might, any part of our forces disaffected. – But, to proceed. Whatever lenity her colonies may be entitled to from England, whether on the above accounts or any other, it is very certain that England is entitled to a great deal of gratitude from her colonies. They cannot be ignorant that if it had not been for the English they must / have been long since swallowed up by the French; and what their condition must then have been, they may easily judge. That the late war was chiefly kindled, and carried on upon their account, can scarcely be denied: and the many millions of debt which we have thereby con­ tracted, as well as the immense number of lives therein sacrificed, are not matters of so very little moment as not to deserve to be considered. But they will object, perhaps, that all this while it was our own safety and benefit we had ultimately in view. Yet this very objection, it is not impossible to convert into an argument in our favour. For if it were only or chiefly our own ends we had in view, and they, knowing that, joined with us in the same cause, is it not an evident proof how favourable an opinion they, at that time, entertained of them? If then our views were really unjust, why did they co-operate in support of them? But if

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they were just, why will they now go about to frustrate them, by the steps they seem to take to shake off our sovereignty? For if this should happen, these views will be abundantly defeated: and our peace and safety, instead of being secured, will become / even more precarious than ever. For as soon as they are no longer dependant upon England, they may be assured they will immediately become dependant upon France. And their weight in that scale is what all Europe besides have reason to dread. But could they really support their own independancy, we are by no means sure whose friends they would be in case of a rupture. And whatever reasons there might exist to dispose them in our favour, in preference to the French; yet how far these would operate, no one can pretend to say. For we have seen the Dutch, very lately, siding with the French, their inveterate enemies, from whom they have every thing to fear, against the English their ancient allies; to whom in some degree they owe their very being. And this alone is sufficient reason for us to be jealous of our sovereignty. But evident it is, that, whatever benefit England might propose to herself in the prosecution of the late war, the colonies themselves have been incomparably the principal gainers by it. Now they enjoy a peace and tranquillity, which / they scarcely ever knew before. And if they have any thing to fear, it is chiefly from the Indians, their neighbours, whose outrages they have often too justly provoked. And the diligence wherewith our government has protected them from insults and rapine, as well from that as every other quarter, seems, in theory at least, to demand some degree of gratitude. But as I have all along in the former part of this essay, allowed and defended the justice of their claims, it may here be queried, wherein then are they to be condemned? It is not indeed for their jeal­ ousy of their rights and liberties, but for their riotous and seditious manner of asserting them. Besides, England, on her part, has much to say on this occasion, to justify her conduct. She is conscious she has a right of sovereignty over them, which perhaps may not be quite so easy to maintain, when the point in dispute is given up. And this sovereignty she well knows to be a matter of the last conse­ quence for her to support. Nor am I very clear how much less she has at stake, in the decision, than the Americans themselves; only it is probable that they would be the first sufferers, should their connection with her cease. / And therefore she may well be jealous in her turn, and as tenacious of her prerogatives. For she has a right, and a weighty one, to assets, as well as they. And if she had not thought proper to center almost all her care, as she has done, upon making the late peace, in procuring them a safe establishment, and to sacrifice to it in a manner every other object, the might, at least, expect from them a more decent and dutiful demeanor. Firmness and outrage are two very different things; and they might easily have shewn the former without being guilty of the latter. Nor would they

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have been at all, I would hope, the less likely to be heard for it in the British par­ liament. And it seldom happens that any one fares the better for his insolence. But if they should think it their interest to set us wholly at defiance, and were able thereby to secure some points, which England might rather chuse to give up than contest, yet I can hardly consider it as the most consummate prudence. For if their insolence should continue to increase, as it seems to do, in proportion to her concessions to them, and nothing / less than absolute independency should content them, it will probably force her upon quite other measures; and they themselves will be the first, that shall have cause most signally to repent of their conduct. For should matters on all sides, as I hope they never will, be carried to extremities, I cannot take upon me to say but England may yet produce both a ministry and a parliament that would rather share them once more with the French, than totally relinquish her present pretensions, from a very just convic­ tion that such a step would be much more politic than to suffer them to throw themselves wholly into the arms of that nation; and such a measure, under such circumstances, would be abundantly defensible, however aukward it may sound at the first mention. But I hope they will never be so egregiously infatuated as to render it inevitable; for if they do, they may very soon find themselves again involved in the same scenes of bloodshed and horror, out of which they have but lately emerged. But such an event is dreadful even to think of at a distance: nor is it by any means graceful to me to suggest the idea of it to the imagination, but that, if / duly and seasonably reflected on, it may dispose them to more temper and moderation, without which it is impossible for them to act with reason and propriety. It would not be amiss, perhaps, to ask them, what bounds they would be content to fix to their claims and demands upon us, as hitherto they seem to be at a loss where to stop. And it is but very lately they were pleased to make dis­ tinctions and describe barriers, which they have since not thought fit to admit of. It was only their own produce they then objected to our right of taxing; but now, our’s likewise, it seems, is entitled to the same exemption in their ports. All this, for my own part, I have candour enough to grant, under the predicaments I have more than once mentioned. For the positions I advance are, First, that the Americans, no less than the English, have a right to be represented in the assembly they not only are taxed by, but wherein the laws in general they are gov­ erned by are enacted: Secondly, that the legislative power of every kingdom or empire, should center in one supreme assembly: Thirdly, that, as a consequence / of both these positions, the Americans should be allowed, if they should chuse it, to be represented in the British senate: and, Fourthly, that in case that should be found impractionable, they should be allowed such an establishment, in sub­ ordination to the sovereignty of England, as should appear most favourable to their rights and liberties. This is the system, and these are the principles I have

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Present Disputes

29

all along argued upon and supported; but, that they will be objected to by some of both parties, I can easily foresee. However, I think they are in themselves just, which to me is sufficient. And, certain it is, that, in order to a right understand­ ing in this debate, it were much to be wished that some fixed principles were on all sides agreed to and established, whereupon to ground the whole superstruc­ ture of their subsequent reasoning. But this is only to be wished, and not to be expected in cases of this nature; nor, indeed, were they actually adjusted, would it probably much mend the matter. For it is not unusual to see people, as inter­ est inclines them, draw quite opposite conclusions from the same premises; or, what is still worse, if possible, what is granted at one time, is totally disavowed or / denied at another, as seems to be the case of the New Englanders in particular, in relation to the business above-mentioned. And I must freely own, that whatever opinion I may have of their right, I certainly have not quite as favourable a one of their conduct, which often is nei­ ther consistent nor prudent. If they are really willing we should exercise any acts of sovereignty among them at all, the imposition they have so riotously resisted, might not improperly, perhaps, have been allowed better quarter; for it could have occasioned no further hardship than was voluntary, they having it always wholly left to their own choice to buy the commodities so charged, or not. Had they quietly submitted to an imposition of this nature, while they were allowed the full enjoyment of their more important privileges, it would, not improbably, have proved such a compromise of matters, as they might never have had cause to be sorry for. Of this, however, I have but little to say, only that I am very certain the resistance they have made to it was absolutely inconsistent with the demea­ nor usually expected from subjects towards their / governors. Less tumultuous proceedings would, undoubtedly, in most mens opinions, have been deemed much more becoming: and our government, I should humbly hope, would have paid full as favourable an attention to their just remonstrances. But unless the reciprocal claims and rights, on both sides, are more duly regarded, and better established, little else than disorder and confusion are to be expected; and if they are not seasonably put a stop to, it is impossible to for-see what may be the issue. The proper bounds and limits of these should therefore be fairly adjusted, as the most direct means to redress grievances, and to intro­ duce harmony and good intelligence. And were that done as it ought, we might then hope that the colonies, on the one hand, should no longer have cause to complain of incroachments on their liberties, on the part of the English, nor yet the English, on the other, to complain of the unequal payment of taxes on the part of the colonies; both being equally obliged to do justice by each other. And this, were it only attempted with that temper and coolness that would permit people to / distinguish right from wrong, might be totally, effected; although indeed, from the untoward nature of things, not with all the impartiality and

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exactness one could wish. Nor should mere custom, nor any charter or law in being, be allowed any great weight in the decision of this point; for truth and jus­ tice, whereon government should ever be founded, and not in power, are prior to all these, and therefore ought chiefly, if not solely, to be consulted. Prudence, however, which includes nothing thereto contrary, should no doubt be duly regarded: for upon all occasions, not only what is in itself just, but also what on each in particular is directly proper, should always be done. And in the determi­ nation of this point, prudence seems principally concerned; the dictates whereof more especially should be attended to, in framing our conduct in regard to what I am here going to mention, I mean the possibility, or rather probabily [sic] there is, that the Americans may insist upon the same rights, privileges, and exemp­ tions as are allowed the Irish, because of the similarity, if not identity, of their connections with us. Hence it may be thought hard, perhaps, that in a case, in appearance / circumstanced so much alike, our conduct should not be alike too. Indeed were this real fact, there might still exist very solid reasons for a differ­ ence of conduct; but the truth is, their case, in my humble opinion, is, on some accounts, far from being so very similar. I will say nothing of our original claim to either country, but that it is full as good as the world in general, in matters of this kind, can produce. But if any distinction were to be made, most certainly, of the two nations, the Americans are least entitled to any lenity on that store; and yet I believe most people are of opinion, they have been hitherto, by far, the most favoured. But, in matters of this nature, England seems to have a discretionary power, which, however, she has no just power to exercise inequitably, as I hope she never will; and the terms she may think safe and proper to grant the Irish, she may judge full as dangerous and imprudent to grant the Americans: for as they lie at such a distance from us, they may have it much more in their power to create disturbances with impunity; because, long before we could send among / them any considerable number of forces, they might do a great deal of mischief, if not actually overturn all order and government. But this is not so very exactly the case with respect to Ireland, which lies almost contiguous to us. These, and several other reasons might be offered, why the same measures, in regard to both nations, might not be altogether alike convenient and adviseable. I do not, however, deliver it as my fixed opinion, that they should be placed upon a less advantageous footing than the Irish, if their conduct doth not evidently render that unsafe. But I only mention these as obvious arguments why such seem­ ing partiality may possibly, in fact, be no more than what strict justice admits, and sound policy requires. Rigorous measures I certainly am no advocate for, in matters of government more particularly, excepting only when they become altogether indispensable: for nothing less than absolute necessity can justify them.

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Present Disputes

31

And if the Americans, at this time, would, in any tolerable proportion, con­ tribute their quota of taxes, and otherwise should demean / themselves as dutiful and loyal subjects, I am not the only person, I suppose, that would chuse rather to suffer their antient establishment, however imperfect, to remain undisturbed, than oblige them to any innovations, at the expence of an open rupture. But government, however, is not to be trampled on; and a proper degree of firmness is no way inconsistent with the most perfect lenity. Yet while we expect every thing from them, we ought carefully to see that we, on our part, are not wanting. Whatever justice is due to us, is due to them too. If they ought to support the expence of government, as well as we, they ought also, as well as we, to enjoy the full benefit of that government; and, if we insist upon the former, they, in their turn, may justly insist upon the letter. And the utmost of their claim, upon this ground, can amount only to a proper representation in the British senate. This, I believe, if they are to obey the laws enacted there, they have a clear right and title to, unless it can be fairly proved they are unworthy the / same privileges and advantages, as we of this nation enjoy. But this, I presume, cannot very easily be made to appear; and therefore I conclude this claim to be good. But if they should wave it, as impracticable, it would not, I conceive, be improper to grant them the benefit of their own assem­ blies, upon their present footing, allowing their acts to be only of force, while not declared otherwise in that superior one of Great Britain. Hereby an union of government might perfectly be preserved, and the colonies, at the same time, allowed all the advantages the nature of their situation would admit of. But, if nothing less than absolute independency should content them, I am ready, for the most important reasons, to join in whatever measures shall appear most jus­ tifiable and proper for frustrating their views, and asserting our own claims; for England must either maintain her sovereignty, or hazard her safety. With these brief observations, I shall at once close this short essay, and take leave of my reader, to whom, I presume, my sentiments in general, upon this subject, will appear, if not / altogether just, yet perfectly humane, liberal, and friendly to the common interests of mankind. For I am not conscious to have advanced a single position throughout the whole of a different tendency. How­ ever, if I should be found to be mistaken, I desire no better quarter than the humane reader may think I merit.

FINIS.

[LANGRISHE], CONSIDERATIONS ON THE

DEPENDENCIES OF GREAT BRITAIN

[Sir Hercules Langrishe], Considerations on the Dependencies of Great Britain. With Observations on a Pamphlet, Intitled The Present State of the Nation (London: J. Almon, 1769).

Like the anonymous author of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Pre­ sent Disputes between the British Colonies in America and their Mother Country,1 Sir Hercules Langrishe took a pro-colonial point of view. His opinions might have been shaped by his background. He was born in Knocktopher, County Kilkenny, around 1729, gained a BA from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1753, and was MP for Knocktopher from 1761 until the seat was abolished with the 1800 Act of Union. Though a Protestant, he supported economic rights for Catho­ lics and repeal of the penal laws against them, although that helped him rent land to Catholics who could not vote and thereby allowed him to retain politi­ cal control of his borough. His support for British efforts to rein in Protestant power through Catholic relief also gained him political preferment, including the offices of Commissioner of Barracks (1766–74), Supervisor of Accounts (1767–75), Commissioner of Revenue (1774–1802), Commissioner of Excise (1780–1802), his baronetcy from 1777, and membership of the Irish Privy Council from 1786. On the other hand, his colonial status was more evident as an opponent of the viceroyalty of George, Viscount Townshend from 1767 to 1772. He anonymously satirized the administration in ‘The history of Barataria continued’ in the Freeman’s Journal (April–May 1771), republished in 1773 with additional material from Henry Flood and Henry Grattan as Baratariana: A Select Collection of Fugitive Political Pieces, Published during the Administration of Lord Townshend in Ireland. Langrishe’s principal target in Considerations on the Dependencies of Great Britain is fellow Irishman William Knox, the radical imperialist reformer who authored The Present State of the Nation (London, 1768) and other pro-British writings, including The Claim of the Colonies to an Exemption from Internal Taxes Imposed by the Authority of Parliament, Examined and A Letter to a Mem­ – 33 –

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ber of Parliament, Wherein the Power of the British Legislature, and the Case of the Colonists, are Briefly and Impartially Considered.2 In the current text, Langrishe uses his government administrative knowledge to provide a detailed refutation of Knox’s claim in The Present State of the Nation that Ireland could afford to pay an extra £100,000 per annum to the British Treasury. Calculating ‘the annual supply raised on the kingdom of Ireland at one Million’ against Britain’s near £8,000,000, he asks ‘whether England has more or less than eight times the ability of Ireland to pay’ (below, p. 39). On real estate alone he shows that England was 10 times more able to pay taxes, and with per­ sonal property included some 16 times more able. Individually, the English could afford four times what the Irish could afford, but only paid twice as much each. Furthermore, Englishmen paid taxes on luxuries, Irishmen on essentials. He may undermine his argument by modern readers’ standards, however, by claiming that ‘taxes are particularly oppressive in Ireland, because they are paid by about one-fourth of the community, three-fourths living without the use almost of any one taxable article’ (below, p. 46). In other words, he complains that Protestants had to pay taxes on property they had appropriated from Catholics. That said, Catholic relief would have enabled them to pay taxes. He does not make that point in this essay, however, arguing instead that only freer trade would enrich Ireland and allow for taxation. Later in the essay, Langrishe counters Knox’s argument that the Ameri­ can colonies could contribute an additional annual £200,000 to the Treasury. Knowing less about colonial economies than Irish and British ones, however, his argument rests on ‘the indispensability of representation to legislation, and more especially to taxation’ (below, p. 64) while rubbishing the notion of colonial representation in Parliament. As for colonial responses to British measures: ‘dis­ obedience and anarchy ever have been, and ever will be, the fruits of oppression’, and he lays blame for imperial controversies squarely with those ‘who advised the first violation of American liberty, by imposing the stamp-duties’ (below, p. 67). His solution is the same as that for Ireland: ‘the only effectual method of taxing America is to make her rich. – The only method of making her rich, is to make her free’ (below, p. 68). Langrishe repeated his support for the American colonists at the beginning of the War of Independence in 1775 and supported Irish legisla­ tive independence from 1782, although nine years later he gave his support to legislative union of Ireland and Britain. He died in Dublin on 1 February 1811.3 Notes: 1. See above, pp. 1–31. 2. Both reprinted in Volume 5 of this edition, pp. 21–43, 45–63. 3. T. G. Fewer, ‘Langrishe, Sir Hercules, first baronet (c.1729–1811), politician’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 32, pp. 505–6.

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE

DEPENDENCIES OF

GREAT-BRITAIN. WITH

OBSERVATIONS ON A

PAMPHLET, INTITLED

The Present State of the Nation.1 LONDON: Printed for J. ALMON, opposite Burlington House, in

Piccadilly.

MDCCLXIX.

[Price Two Shillings] /

Considerations, &c.

The Pamphlet, intitled, ‘The present State of the Nation,’ is certainly worthy of public attention; and tho’ I am far from agreeing with the author in several of his leading principles, I am very ready to admit the merit which he may claim as a man of abilities, improved by industry. I do not mean to combat, but animad­ vert; and whilst I alledge that this Pamphlet suggests some schemes contrary to justice, and others inconsistent with practicability, I am willing to allow, that it also communicates useful information; and I beg leave to express my entire approbation of such a detail of our circumstances for the consideration of the public, at a time when a course of mismanagement, and a state perplexed by a multitude of difficulties, require some interposition, above that of temporary expedient. And indeed, from the state this author gives of the weight of taxes in England, and the insufficiency of the ordinary revenues to defray the ordinary expences, / without annually breaking in upon that fund appropriated for dis­ charge of the debt, it is evident, that something more than the qualifications of High Birth, Fortune, or even Virtue itself, is necessary to regulate the great con­ cerns of the British Empire: some improvement of Discipline, some restoration of Oeconomy, some discovery of Resources must take place, in order to prevent the destruction of England. It appears that the regular expences of government at this time of tranquil­ ity, amount (exclusive of the interest of the national debt) to little less than four millions; and that the standing Ways and Means produce about 2,322,000l. con­ sequently that to make up the supply for the year, it is necessary to borrow above a million and an half from the Sinking Fund, which certainly ought to be sacred to the payment of our immense debt. That the debt of the nation (after the reduction of the seven millions since the peace) amounts to about 141,000,000l. the annual interest of which is about 4,500,000l. That the last war encreased the debt no less than seventy-five millions; the annual / interest of which is stated at about 2,600,000l. which added to an encrease in the peace establishment of 1,500,000l. makes an annual additional charge on the nation of above four millions, in consequence of the last war; and

– 37 –

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therefore on the plainest principles of calculation, another war, under a continu­ ance of the present mode of management, must end in the ruin of England. That of this debt 52,000,000l. are due to foreigners, the interest of which is above 1,500,000l. this sum is to be deducted from the balance of trade, which is not, according to this author, above two millions and an half in favour of England. These great national points are stated in this pamphlet with great clearness, and I do believe on good grounds. I agree therefore with the author, that this view of things calls for the most serious attention; but I disagree with him in his plan of remedy, as inadequate to the end, and inconsistent with policy, justice, or indeed practicability. / The state of Great-Britain is this. The peace establishment, with a little reformation, may be reduced to The national debt is 141 Millions, the interest of which is

3,300,000 4,500,000 £7,800,000

This 7,800,000l. is the sum to be provided annually for the expences of Eng­ land. To the accomplishment of which the author of the state of the nation proposes, that Ireland should contribute 100,000l. and the Colonies 200,000l. making together 300,000l. which is just the difference between 7,800,000l. and 7,500,000l. per annum. This extra-British contribution to the British Establishment, is the principal object which I propose to consider. First, then, as to Ireland, let us enquire whether this would be reasonable or practicable; and examine how far the relative condition and abilities of Ireland have been justly stated by this author; even supposing this 100,000l. per annum an object of weight enough in the scale of British expence to demand such con­ sideration, or justify such an expedient. I have this moment before me the national accounts of Ireland, which were / laid before parliament the last session, and shall from them state the annual sum raised on that kingdom in taxes; and then examine into its means, its resources, and the proportion it bears to Great-Britain, in its ability and its exertion. In the year ending Lady-day 1766,2 the produce of the l. Hereditary revenue was 671,649 The additional duties 245,954 The loan and other appropriated duties} 73,141 £990,745

s. 13 8 1 4

d. 5 11 ¼ 11 3¼

The amount of the whole is nearly one million of money, actually raised every year on Ireland. And when I add to this, that on comparing the expences of government with this produce of the revenues, it was apprehended by the Irish parliament, that this sum might turn out inadequate to the expences, and there­

[Langrishe], Considerations on the Dependencies of Great Britain

39

fore they passed a Clause of Credit in the bill of supply, empowering government to borrow 100,000l. if it should be found necessary, in the interval between that and the next session of parliament; – and this, tho’ some additional taxes were granted; and all the old ones continued; tho’ Ireland already owes a debt / of near 700,000l. which not only has not been diminished since the peace commenced, but has been every session encreasing in consequence of votes and acts of credit, beside paying a pension list equal to the interest of a debt of 2,275,000l. All this being considered, I shall not be accused of sacrificing much of accuracy, if, for the sake of perspicuity and facility of comparison, I state the annual supply raised on the kingdom of Ireland at one Million; and when we take into our calculation the new tax on absentees, and probable increase of the revenue from the reduction of duty on tea, by which that commodity will be restored to the Custom-house, from whence it has been banished by excessive duties, I am convinced, if I state the revenues at a Million, I do not exceed the actual produce of this present year. It appears from the full calculation of this author, that the sum to be raised annually in England is 7,800,000l. which for expence of management, and ease of calculation, I shall call 8,000,000l. Thus we see Great-Britain pays eight times as much in taxes as Ireland. Let us now examine, whether England / has more or less than eight times the ability of Ireland to pay; then we shall be able to judge, whether Ireland pays more or less than her proportion to the general cause. England contains thirtysix millions of acres; of which those who have taken the latest surveys, admit twenty millions to be in perfect cultivation, and well worth one pound per acre; which with the other 16,000,000 under pasture, sheep, wood, &c. valued only at 8s. per acre, make a rental of 26,400,000l. to which in consideration of the infinitely advanced value of land and ground-rent in and about London, York, Bristol, and all the other cities and trading towns of England, we must at the lowest computation add 3,600,000l. more; and this brings the rental of England to thirty millions. I have frequently known it stated at 40, and sometimes at sixty millions? therefore I am certain of not exceeding in my valuation at thirty millions. As for Ireland, it is by nature in so great a proportion marshy and mountain­ ous, and so far deficient in culture and population, that the eleven millions of Irish plantation acres which it contains cannot possibly be / estimated at more than three millions. Thus England is in this respect ten times as great as Ireland; notwithstand­ ing the taxes of the former are only eight times as great as those of the latter. As for the personal property of England, it exceeds that of Ireland still in a much greater proportion, including many articles, which that country either has not at all, or in a proportion below all comparison with the superior country; such as plate, jewels, furniture, ships of war, merchant-ships, &c. &c. so that, at the low­ est computation of the wealth of England by any political arithmetician, it will,

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I believe, be universally admitted, that the real and personal property of Great Britain united, are sixteen times as much as those of Ireland; and yet it pays but eight times as much. There is another method of comparing the wealth of the two countries, namely, by the expences of each individual. The expences of every inhabitant of Great Britain, from the king to the beggar, are estimated at 10l. per head. Those of Ireland do not exceed 2l. 10s. – Computing then Great Britain at eight millions of inhabitants, and Ireland at two, the consumption of the one / is eighty millions, of the other only five; so that Great Britain spends (and consequently has) sixteen times as much as Ireland. Thus there results a recipro­ cal confirmation from the agreement of these two mediums of computation; each individual of England having four times as much as each person in Ireland, ought to pay four times as much: otherwise they are not taxed proportionally. But, as England pays only eight millions, whilst Ireland pays one, each person in England pays only twice as much as each person in Ireland, and consequently but half as much as he ought. And here I cannot avoid subjoining an observa­ tion on this subject, made by a person of the greatest eloquence and abilities: Bread and beer are the necessaries ‘of life in England, milk and salt the luxuries of Ireland; and it is their luxury, and not their poverty, that disables the people of England to bear more taxes; for if they would live but as the inhabitants of Ireland, and reduce their annual expence from 10l. to 2l. 10s. each, their annual expence would decrease from eighty millions to twenty; which would make a saving of sixty millions each year. / So that the whole national debt of England would be paid off, if the people would consent to live but two years and a half, as the people of Ireland are condemned to live perhaps for ever.’ These disproportions are amazing, yet they certainly subsist; and if it be in a great degree difficult for the people of England utterly to alter their manner of living, let them retrench, in some degree, or at least let them cease to call on fru­ gality and indigence to supply, not their wants, but their luxuries. It may indeed be irksome to men to substract any thing from superfluities, to which they have been accustomed, but to substract from the necessaries of life is impossible. Fru­ gality is a resource, which has not yet been tried in England – in Ireland it has been tried as far as it will go. If lands in Ireland have of late risen in their value, it is in a great measure owing to the avidity of the landlord, and the parsimonious habits of the tenant, who pays the former the whole of the advance, and still reserves no more than existence to himself. Provisions too are growing very nearly as dear in Ireland, as in England; but in the latter, as this dearness proceeds from / the plenty of money, in Ireland it is the consequence of the scarcity of provision. – For let a country be ever so fertile in itself, if it have not a resource against superfluity by foreign trade, it never will be able to supply itself; – and accordingly, with all its natural advantages, Ireland has always been obliged to import from other countries a great proportion of her consumption of Corn; and at this day, with all her boasted improvement, industry, and salutary laws, she is yet unable to feed

[Langrishe], Considerations on the Dependencies of Great Britain

41

her own inhabitants, but is obliged to send near 150,000l. per annum out of the kingdom for different kinds of grain. And by a paper lately published by the Dublin society, it appears, that of two millions of money sent abroad, for foreign articles, one million is for commodities which Ireland might provide for itself. Is there not almost a rebellion in England when the people cannot easily get the best white bread? How different is the case of Ireland! The tumults which lately were raised in that kingdom, were the irregular discontents of a desperate people, who, through the rapacity of landlords, and variety of extortion exercised by dealers in tythes, found it almost impossible by the hardest labour to procure / potatoes. This was downright rebellion! The common people of England generally feed on wheaten bread, butter, cheese, bacon, and beer; whereas in Ireland, the northern people live on oaten bread and milk; those of the south and west universally on potatoes; to which scarcely any of them aspire to add milk, the whole year round, but really and truly (however improbable it may be to an Englishman) do frequently support them­ selves by nothing but potatoes and water. The wages given throughout Ireland to labourers are as universal at 6d. per day, as they are throughout England at a shilling. What is the reason of this dif­ ference? Is it that 6d. in Ireland will produce as much as one shilling in England? that is impossible! For I have this moment the English and Irish News-Papers before me; by which I find, that the medium price of meat and Corn is not much above one-twentieth higher in England than in Ireland, and the commodities are certainly one-twentieth better, which makes the prices in fact equal.* The / case *

There is no particular in which the people of England are more mistaken, than in the prices at which they rate the several articles of Irish consumption; they think Ireland the cheapest, whereas the fact is, that it is the most frugal country in Europe; the / generality of things are as cheap in England, and very many are and must, from the nature of their trade and restrictions on the Irish commerce, be much cheaper than in Ireland; of which I shall mention such as occur to me, tho’ I shall not be able in my catalogue to comprehend every article. Woollen-drapery almost of all kinds, iron, tin, copper, coals, hops, bark, earthen­ ware, hard-ware, all kind of mechanical-tools, gold, silver, Brussels and all kind of laces, lamp-black, white and red lead, liquorice, saffron, sugars, tobacco, cotton, indigo, ginger, speckle-wood, Jamaica-wood, fustick, and other dying-woods, rice, molasses, beaver-skins, and other furs, pitch, far, turpentine, tea, coffee, chocolate, sego, pepper, cloves, cinna­ mon, and all manner of spices, stamped and stained linens, madder, needles, linseed and train-oil, paper, pewter, toys, timber of several kinds, all manner of drugs both for manu­ facture and medicine, china-ware, porcelain-earth, pearls and all precious-stones, ivory, taffatees, and in short every thing which is brought either from the East or West-Indies; and finally, as to the great article of human subsistence Corn, let me observe, that there is no year in which a great quantity is not imported into Ireland from England, which would not be the case if Corn bore in any great degree an higher price in England; for tho’ there is a bounty of five shillings per quarter paid on exportation of wheat, and so in proportion for other grains, yet hazard, freight, damage, insurance, commission and delay, are all such deductions from this bounty, that they would scarcely be at the trouble of exporting their Corn, to sell it at a price much lower than that which their own markets afford.

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is, the English labourer will not be satisfied unless he feeds on white bread, cheese, bacon, and beer, which he cannot do for much less than a shilling; whereas the Irish labourer is contented to subsist on potatoes and water, or esteems himself happy, if he can procure himself potatoes and milk; and all this he can do for six-pence. Thus the grievance / of England does not subsist in the high price, but the high use of provisions; and if the time shall ever come, in which the labouring man shall change his bread and cheese for roast-beef, there must then be an end of the trade of England; for no commodity can be merchantable, manufactured at the expence which that must induce. Thus the wants of England are artificial, or the effects of extravagance; the necessities of Ireland are natural, and proceed from meer poverty. When Mr. Postlethwayt3 says, that labour is cheap in Ireland in consequence of the cheapness of provisions, he mistakes the cause; and when the people of England complain, that the price of provisions is exhorbitant, they mean (as the author of the farmer’s letters4 observes) by provisions the superflui­ ties of life. And the same excellent author has made an exact calculation of the expence at which a labouring man, his wife, and three children, can subsist com­ fortably, at the present price of things, provided he is industrious and lives as a labouring man ought. He is not allowed the best wheaten bread, nor does his wife drink tea, yet twice in the week he has meat made into a good soup, good bread, / beer, cheese, or rice milk at the worst. The whole expence of this œconomy being deducted from their earnings, and allowing one pound for sickness or casualty, there remains a balance at the end of the year to this family of 13l. 13s. The extravagant manner in which the labouring people actually do live, reduces that balance to 3l. 10s. It is not then the high price of provisions or taxes that really do render them oppressed: this they may see by turning their eyes to their neighbours the Dutch. With them the manufacturer must pay, if he will consume it, for such bread as the Englishman would eat, 3d. per pound; and for flesh-meat 9d. He pays one-third of his earnings in taxes, and the Englishman not much above one-tenth; yet the Dutchman’s wages are only 14d. per day, which is at a medium about the price paid in England, and yet this frugal and industrious people manufacture the products of various countries, and undersell them all, at their own markets. In France, the taxes are peculiarly oppressive on the poor, yet labour is there three times as cheap as in England; and, on the other hand, we may see that Bir­ mingham, / notwithstanding the high price of provisions, has not only rivalled Geneva, the most plentiful and frugal part of Europe, but has entirely taken from her the enamelled and lacquered trade, which she was in possession of. And as for Ireland, what an Englishman would call the necessaries of life, are within a very small degree as dear there as in England; yet as I before observed, the price of labour is but one half as high. But the author of the State of the Nation says, the people of Ireland may afford to make this annual contribution of 100,000l.

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because they do not pay Land Tax, Malt Tax, House or Window Tax, no duties on Soap, Candles, Salt, or Leather. Good God! what matters it under what titles or denominations it is that money be raised on the people, if it be actually levied? There are abilities and disabilities to bear particular taxes peculiar to every country. A tax upon bread would be the most oppressive tax in England, upon potatoes in Ireland; the Hearth-money was discontinued in England soon after the Revolution, / as a badge of subjection; and the extensive Land Tax, which this author recom­ mends, is a judicious tax for England, but would be an oppressive one in Ireland. Almost the whole lands of Ireland being in the hands of the Protestants, and two-thirds of the inhabitants being Papists, a Land-Tax so far as it operated would be, at least in the first instance, partial, and therefore injurious: For tho’ I would not wish on account of religious differences to subject men to any severi­ ties, I would not, on the other hand, confer immunities on non-conformity, or give two-thirds of the community an exemption from a tax, to lay a penalty as it were on the established religion. The sum raised on the people of Ireland is one million; on England eight millions. As the consumption of England and Ireland is different, the object of their respective taxes must be different. – The revenues in England are raised by Customs, Excise, Land Tax, Malt Tax, Window, Stamp, Salt, Candle, Leather Duties, &c. In Ireland by Customs, Excise, Quit, Crown and Composition Rents, Hearth-money, Ale and Wine Licences, Casual Revenues, &c. &c. The question is on the sum raised; the means must always differ according to the circumstances of the country: otherwise Ireland might retort the argument of this author and say, ‘the people of England can / bear still more taxes, because they do not pay Hearth-money, or Quit-rent.’* Let us however make a close examination into the reality of those exemp­ tions from taxation, which have been attributed to Ireland. – And first as to the Land-Tax. This tax, when it is stated at three shillings in the pound, does not an equal and exact assessment exceed† one shilling in the pound, on every acre of land in England; in Scotland not three-pence in the pound. Ireland, it is true, does *

†

The author of the Present State of the Nation says, ‘the net produce of the public rev­ enues of Ireland in 1766, arose altogether from Port-duties or Customs, an Inland duty or Excise upon Beer, Ale, or strong Waters, made for sale, and a tax upon Fire-Hearths.’ Was it by accident that this author, who seems so intimately acquainted with the state of Ireland, has omitted to mention in his recital of Irish Taxes, Quit-Rents, Crown-Rents, Composition-Rents, Port-Corn-Rents, Wine-Licences, Ale-Licences, Cyder-Licences, CyderExcise, duties on Hawkers and Pedlars, on Cards and Dice, on Coaches and other Carriages, prizage of Wines, Light-house duties, Casual-revenue, &c. &c. &c. If the rental of England be 30,000,000l. one shilling in the pound is 1,500,000l. which is the exact amount of the Land-Tax when stated at three shilling in the pound.

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not pay a Land Tax, at least under that denomination, but it pays a Quit Rent of about 2d. ½ per acre. Now allowing throughout the kingdom three acres to the value of a pound annual, which every one who knows the country knows is as little as can be allowed, there is an actual / Land-Tax of 7d. ½ in the pound; which is not so very much inferior to what England really pays, and almost three times as much as Scotland pays. But without having been at the trouble of mention­ ing a corresponding imposition, or concealed Land-Tax, I might have stated the prohibitions of Irish trade as a Series of Land Taxes, as so many discouragements to cultivation, which alone makes land valuable, and actual deductions from the value of whatever the land does produce. Is it to be imagined, that so little as 3s. in the pound is deducted from the landed property of Ireland, by depriving it of the market of universal commerce? Would not an Irish farmer readily advance his rent 3s. in the pound to his landlord, if he could in return give him every market in the world open to what he has to dispose of ? He certainly would. But the case is in Ireland, that home consumption being in the general the ultimate resource, superfluity is the terror and the scourge of the farmers; and the consequence of universal plenty, may be with them universal poverty, Let us only consider, so far as the tillage lands of England extend (which are twenty millions of acres) what a repeal or indemnification of the Land Tax is the / liberal bounty on exportation of Corn. Whilst wheat even bears an advantageous price to the farmer until it be 48s. per quarter, there is a bounty paid of no less than 5s. on exportation of a quarter, which is not above 32 stone: so that when the year is so plentiful as to produce six of those quarters per acre, there will be a bounty received of thirty shillings on the produce of each acre of wheat. This law not only gives this great bounty to corn lands, but must, if not defeated by mismanagement, convert all the lands of England into such. – There is an humble imitation of this law in Ire­ land, but it is utterly ineffectual; the bounty not taking place until wheat be of so low a price as 30s. per quarter, which quarter consists of forty stone. If that plenty should ever happen, the bounty to be paid on exportation is only 3s. 4d. for every 40 stones of wheat, which is little more than half the bounty England would pay at the same time. This law therefore never has been, nor probably ever shall be executed in Ireland. – I do however think, that much acknowledgement is due to those who procured that law, tho’ at present inoperative, as it is founded on the / best principles of cultivation, and may be the object of future improvement.* It is true, that for these two or three years past, artifice, or the terrors of imaginary want, have frequently su[s]pended the operation of those admirable bounties, by utterly prohibiting the exportation of grain. – But these are tem­ porary cautions, the wisdom of which is controvertible; or rather (if I were to speak my opinion) the absurdity of which is incontrovertible; for nothing will *

That law was passed when the Earl of Hertford was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.5

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produce uniform plenty but uniform demand; and farmers will by degrees cease to till the ground, if they find they are not at any event to derive from foreign necessities indemnifications of their several losses by bad harvests. Besides, there is not any manufacture so profitable to the nation as agriculture; it is, as Montes­ quieu calls it, ‘a manufacture which must be established before any other can.’6 And it appears, that in five years from 1745 to 1750, there was exported out of England corn to the amount of 7,405,786l. so that I am entirely convinced that the exportation of corn, under the bounty, if it were not so frequently to yield to the impatience / and ill policy of the populace, would be more advanta­ geous to England, than almost all the other trade of that country; their superior skill and superior encouragement, join’d to the regularity of their seasons, would enable them to supply several countries with grain cheaper than they could raise it themselves, and fifteen millions of uncultivated acres would be improved and enclosed; population would encrease in a great degree, and the people would be employed in the manufacture of a commodity, every article and rudiment of which is British; – the immense demand would produce plenty, and the prices at home would be lower than they are at this moment, tho’ the exportation of corn is prohibited. And the truth of this assertion is proved by a view of the Windsor table of grain, by which it appears, that notwithstanding the universal advance in the value of all other things, yet wheat has been cheaper for these last 75 years than it was before; and the price had been regularly rising before the bounty was granted, and has as regularly been on the decline ever since. If this be not a proof, there is no certainty in nature. In short, if, upon the failure of any foreign harvest, there is regularly to be a prohibition / at the English market, every country will be under a necessity at all events of applying themselves to agriculture for their own existence, as they can no longer hope to be supplied in their scarcity from England. But what I have endeavoured to urge on this occasion is not, it seems, the fashionable doc­ trine at present. If a few drunken artificers in London cannot procure by the labour of three days, as much of the best wheaten bread as they can consume in six, they are up in rebellion; and then must be bribed by a shortsighted admin­ istration into peace by an embargo; the natural fruits of which are future wants and future rebellions. In short, it is now the policy to sacrifice the farmer to the mechanick, which must end in the ruin of both; for it is laid down by a judicious writer as an invariable maxim, ‘that whatever encreases the sale of a production, encreases the quantity of it; and therefore if you would have the bread cheap for your manufacturer, you must suffer the exportation of corn to be certain and unobstructed.’ I shall, in addition to this, only remind England, that she formerly supplied Sweden with corn, but that this supply became so precarious from wanton prohibitions, / that self-preservation forced them into agriculture, and at present not one ship-load of corn goes from England to Sweden. And

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here I cannot but lament the present prohibition, which in its operation extends to Ireland as well as England, and that to its great injury. In short the continent are told, once for all, ‘You must apply yourselves to agriculture, for you shall see, that whenever you are in scarcity, we shall stop our ports, let our plenty be what it may. You must either follow the example of the Swedes, and at all events raise corn for yourselves, or apply yourselves, to some other market, more regular and rational.’7 The consequence to England will be, that foreigners must do so. Eng­ land will lose this most valuable of all her branches of trade; and when corn is no longer to be exported as a commodity, it will not be to be found as a necessary. And the peculiar misfortune of Ireland is, that tho’ she is now possessed of more grain than ever she had before, yet the English redundance will, for the sake of the bounty, and convenience of navigation, be sent to Ireland in great quantities, to the destruction of their farmers and agriculture. And this is not mere surmise. / I have this moment a letter in my possession, from the most eminent corn merchant in Ireland, informing me, that great cargoes of corn are daily expected from England. The next tax under consideration, from which Ireland is exempted, is the Window tax. But let it be remembered, that Ireland pays Hearth-money, a tax more oppressive, and on a more indispensable necessary, and one which, in pro­ portion to the circumstances of the two kingdoms, is of much greater amount. They have not a stamp duty in Ireland; yet even that I cannot say they are totally exempted from, as the ultimate decision of all law proceedings has been transferred to England; and great is the tax which Ireland pays in defraying the various expences of solicitation, and attendance on appeals and writs of error in England: and whatever proportion of this English tax necessarily falls on the subjects of Ireland, is an addition to the taxation of Ireland, and a deduction from the taxation of England. In short, whether the taxes of Ireland be considered collectively or in detail, they will be found heavier than those in England; / for however people disagree, as to the minute materials of calculation, yet it must be admitted, that Ireland pays one-eighth of the sum that England pays, and it is impossible to doubt, that England is ten times as rich. These are two facts, upon which there can be no difference of opinion, and the conclusion is certain and obvious. Let me likewise add, that the taxes are particularly oppressive in Ireland, because they are paid by about one-fourth of the community, three-fourths living without the use almost of any one taxable article, for potatoes are not yet excised; and hearth-money and tobacco duties are the only taxes to which they can be liable: whereas the taxes in England are not only in quantity lighter, but in equality more impercep­ tible. We must, however, acknowledge, that the proposition, which this author makes to Ireland, is conceived in terms of liberality, and, I really believe, with fair intentions towards that kingdom: but he argues from a remote view of a

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country under circumstances of depression, which are inconceivable to him; and the advantageous enlargement of commerce, which he would confer on Ireland, both justice / and policy require that she should possess, merely to enable her to support her present contribution. But when she is already strained beyond her strength, when England, with all her complaints, is diminishing her national debt, and Ireland encreasing hers; when the former is mending, tho’ slowly, in her circumstances, and the latter not slowly growing worse, even in a time of peace, of laying up, or at least of recovering, it would be somewhat hard to expect that she should purchase, by a certain incumbrance, a probable alleviation; and for a precarious rivalship with France in the woollen trade, or some such commercial lottery, send away so great a proportion, (even one-fifth) of the current cash of the kingdom, over and above the immense sums already remitted to England from that country. Ireland is an Island, which may certainly boast of natural advantages, but they have hitherto been generally either unimproved or unemployed; with fine harbours, but little commerce, and a fruitful soil, but little assisted as yet by cul­ tivation. It contains about eleven millions of Irish plantation acres; not above two-thirds of which are inhabited, / and not one-half under any reasonable degree of cultivation, which is evident, from its never yet having been able to produce corn nearly equal to the consumption of a country, which has the fewest inhabitants, and those too a people who consume less than any people perhaps in the world; taxed in a greater proportion than Britain, with a great majority of its inhabitants too miserable from their poverty to contribute to the supplies, and about two-thirds debarred by religious policy, from almost every opportunity of contributing to the wealth, or strength of the country. Who, because they are not supposed to be attached to the government by principle, are not to be bound to it by interest; and by the evil construction of well designed laws, are not suf­ fered to deposite with the state, even hostages for their loyalty. – Who are not allowed either incitements to industry, or pledges of fidelity, by being precluded from enjoying security for their money, or any valuable possession in their land. – Who are kept by the laws in a state of preparation for revolt, with their proper­ ties as transferable as their persons, without hazard, attachment or obligation to restrain them; in short, / without any interest in the public preservation. There is one branch of trade, which Ireland enjoys in a very perfect degree, that is the linen manufacture. This is infinitely advantageous to Ireland, and, let me add, highly so to England too; for the money she sends thither for linens only takes a progress speedily to return again; whereas the money sent to pur­ chase foreign linens never returns. This I do admit to be a valuable branch of trade; however, the utmost attention of the legislature of that country has not been able to extend it, in any degree of consideration, beyond one of the four provinces, and it seems impossible in the nature of things that it should be made

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universal in that kingdom. – And when we examine the Custom-house entries, we are much deceived as to the value of the exportations under this head. – As linen pays no duty, ostentation and exaggeration of capital induce the merchant to make his entry greater than his exportation. And still this manufacture is of so narrow extent, and bears so small a proportion to the demands of England, that over and above what she imports from Ireland (which / is valued at 500,000l. per annum) she imports Flax, linen, thread, lace, cambrick, lawn, and linen, from Russia, Silesia, Switzerland, Hambourgh and Bremen, to the annual amount of a million and a half. It is however a flourishing and advantageous branch of commerce, so far as it extends; but it is, as I before observed, almost entirely confined to one-fourth part of the kingdom. – The sole commerce almost of the other three parts, is the victualling trade. – As that country is circumstanced and restrained, this trade is certainly profitable; it brings a good deal of money into the south of Ireland, and is certainly better than no trade at all, or the live-cattle trade; and at present there is no other trade for which to commute it; therefore it is an object of Irish regard. – I must however say (tho’ I combat local advantages and private partialities) that of all kinds of trade it is the least advantageous; it operates against population and tillage, which are particularly defective in that island; for half the country is really inhabited only by cattle; and a great major­ ity of those who inhabit the remainder, live in extreme poverty, and are obliged to other countries for a great / proportion of their corn. Thus they export those commodities which employ the fewest hands to prepare, such as Beef, Pork, But­ ter, Hide, and Tallow; and they import Corn, which of all commodities employs the greatest number of hands. – A ruinous exchange! – I do not say, that the exportation of Corn is always prohibited in Ireland, or that the importation is enjoined; but the great bounty in England in so great a proportion exceeds that of Ireland, that whenever exportation is allowed, England must undersell Ireland, not alone in foreign markets; but as the great and populous towns in Ireland lie on the eastern and southern sea coasts, the convenience of navigation and greatness of the bounty enable England to undersell Ireland in Corn at her own markets. Having examined the great objects on which the commerce of Ireland can be employed, let us enquire into the objects upon which it cannot be exercised; and that appears from a review of the several restrictions which have from time to time been imposed upon it by the English parliament. – By the English statute of the 15th of Ch. II. no production of Europe is to be exported / to the Colonies, unless the same be shipped in England, Wales, or Berwick on Tweed, except salt for New Foundland, wine from Madeiras and Azores; from Scotland and Ireland provisions, servants and horses. – This act was amended, in favour of Ireland, by the act of 3d and 4th of Q. Anne, by which that kingdom was allowed to send white or grey linen cloth directly to the plantations.8

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By the 7 and 8th of King William, ‘no plantation goods can be landed in Ireland, unless first landed in England.’9 By the 10 and 11th of W. III. no manufactured wool is to be exported from Ireland, nor wool, under an heavy Fine, unless to England.10 By the 7th of Geo. I. no commodity, the produce of the East Indies, is to be imported into Ireland, but from England.11 An act was passed in the 4th of Geo. I. in some little degree of alleviation of the 7th and 8th of King William; by which Ireland is permitted to import directly from the plantations any goods, not particularly enumerated. – But I cannot avoid mentioning the articles exempted by name from this indulgence. ‘Sugars, tobacco, cotton, / wool, indigo, ginger, speckle, and Jamaica wood, fustick, or other dying-wood, rice, molasses, beaver-skins and other furs, copperore, pitch, tar, turpentine, masts, yards, bowsprits.’ They are not by another act to import from thence hops,’ and by another to export ‘glass or silk,’ &c.12 Does this great indulgence amount to much more than this! ‘The former act said, Ireland shall import nothing; this act permits her to import every thing from the Colonies, except what the Colonies have to export of any value.’ For really after the before-mentioned exceptions the plantations do not produce any thing of very great value except Corn and timber; the first whereof is imported to the discouragement of agriculture, and the second is better imported from Norway; beside some denominations of that are prohibited. It appears then, from a review of these laws, that the only trade of any degree of consideration which is to support the million annually raised by taxes, and the several drains and incumbrances which I shall hereafter in part mention, is the linen Manufacture, which only extends to one-fourth / of the kingdom – and the Victualling trade chargeable with the objections I before made to it. What the profits of this trade are to the kingdom, let us in the next place enquire. Upon examining the Custom-house books it appears, that the value of the exports of Ireland for the year ending Lady-day 1767, (a remarkable year of exportation) amount to, £. 2,842,599 Imports for the same time, 2,147,079 Balance that year in favour of Ireland, £. 695,520 But on a medium of six years last past by the most accurate calculation, the bal­ ance in favour of that country amounts only to 485,925 l. I will however state the balance of trade one year with another at 500,000 l. As for the illicit trade, whatever it may be, it is all against the kingdom, except the wool smuggled to France, which is a pernicious trade, and some camblets, serges and coarse stuffs run from the west of Ireland to Portugal. But the latter have for some time been reduced to so small a quantity, as scarcely to deserve

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consideration; and the / whole of those exportations are far from being equal to counterbalance the illicit importations of tea, spirits, tobacco and such like. Let the balance then stand at 500,000 l. which is above 14,000 l. higher than it appears on the books; and consider on the other hand, what various deductions, and ruinous drains are operating against this trade of 500,000 l. per annum value. Every article, as I before observed, that the East Indies or America produce, must be purchased in England; and all the profits of commerce, freight, insurance, and several exaggerations of value, are added to them when the Irish purchase them. Whatever they buy, they buy at the dearest rate; and they have nothing to sell (linen excepted) but the simple, native commodities of beef, pork, hide, tallow, and butter – simple commodities I call them, for the operations they undergo to prepare them for exportation, do not deserve the name of manufacture. It has been observed in ‘the State of the nation,’ that fifty-two millions of the national debt of England are due to foreigners, so that the interest, being 1,500,000l. annually remitted to the several creditors, must / be deducted from the balance of trade. – This is very true! Let us then examine similar deductions from the small balance of Irish trade. A pamphlet has lately been published in Ireland under the direction of the Dublin society, specifying each particular person and article from whence the general conclusion is drawn – by which it appears, that the sums remitted annually to England out of the Irish estates of persons who live there, amount to – £. 381,900 Out of the pension list, the whole of which amounts to 91,207l. 70,275 From places and employments, 143,000 Travelling expences of merchants and traders, who annually 8,000 go to England to buy and sell various commodities, Education and inns of court, 35,000 Law-suits and solicitation, 19,000 Military contributions of several denominations as therein 142,207 particularly specified Adventures to America, 40,000 Insurance of ships, 30,000 £. 869,382 / If we were to attempt deducting this sum from the balance of trade, we should not only annihilate this balance, but create one against that country of 369,382l. per annum. In Mr. Prior’s publication, about thirty years ago,13 he stated his absentee list at 621,000l. per annum. But I shall be contented, to avoid all possible controversy, with the authority of Mr. Postlethwayt,14 one of the greatest names in commerce, who cannot be supposed a very partial advocate for Ireland; who only spoke from what he knew,

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but who could not possibly know all. He, in his dissertations on the British commerce, states the expence of Absentees, Pensions, Employments, and Troops abroad, at 486,000l. per annum against Ireland. Even if this were the amount of that charge, which it certainly is not, deduct it from the balance of 500,000l. and it reduces the real national balance to 14,000l. per annum. Thus I am con­ tented to state the balance as high as possible; and contrary to the testimony of their own evidence to take the authority of an English writer. When the author of the State of the Nation has considered the several materials / that I have laid before him, he will, I am convinced, have candour enough to confess, that there is not a country in Europe, so unimproved and unpeopled – of so small a capital and limited a commerce, which is so heavily taxed as the kingdom of Ireland; – and that it is a matter of astonishment how she contributes as much as she does, rather than of reproach that she does not contribute more; especially, as half of the cash of Ireland is brought up to the metropolis, and there spent in foreign luxuries, upon foreign guests; who are thereby taught to conceive an erroneous opinion of the condition of Ireland; and imagine the magnificence and plenty of Dublin extend themselves over the whole country. But they are mistaken – the splendor of the city is not so much the sign of Wealth, as the cause of poverty: and this must be obvious, not only to every man who has travelled through the coun­ try, but who has been at the trouble of making calculations on the commerce, manufactures, and population of it. However, under all theses disadvantages, a national loyalty, and fortunate situation have rendered Ireland a more profitable appendage / to the British monarchy, than Gaul, and Spain, and Germany united were to Rome, when they were provinces of that Empire. The situation of Ireland is such that whatever defence England affords her is eventual, and consequential to her defending her­ self; there are no ships of war regularly stationed in, her ports, nor fleets cruizing along her coasts; nor is England at any extraordinary expence in the protection of that kingdom. And tho’ Ireland derives a security from the alliance, it costs the country that confers it nothing, and is recompenced and requited by ten thousand advantages to England. – Her internal defence (such as it is) composed of an army of officers, is supported at her own expence; the modification of it is the work of English councils, and every body knows it is the weakest imagina­ ble; the payment belongs to Ireland, and that is exorbitant. But besides this, she furnishes six entire regiments, and pays them for the protection of those very colonies with which she is scarcely permitted to trade; and remits the money for their pay regularly to London. The civil contributions of that country are very considerable. The representative of / the king is maintained there in great splendor, propagating the influence, and encreasing the dependancies of British authority; all at the national expence. And above two-thirds of the sums granted for the civil list are remitted to England under different heads. For the support of the Royal Family, in pensions of all denominations, and salaries to absent place­

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men, of which there are not a few. Add to this, that Ireland is not only a nursery but a college of soldiers for England; from whence they relieve their garrisons by entire regiments, and replenish their army by perpetual drafting. But this is not all. From the laws I have recited, all that the East and West produce must be bought at London market, so that two-thirds of the whole imports of Ireland, are from England; and the currents which carry money from Ireland to England are so powerful and uniform, that not so little as one-third of their acquisitions, be they great or small, must ultimately center in England: and it is very remarkable, that the actual current cash of Ireland (which, independent of paper, does not very much exceed 500,000l.) was of as great amount soon after the revolution, as it is at present. / Another important article is, the accession to the British navigation, which results from Ireland. Mr. Postlethwayt, who made his calcula­ tion some years ago, computes that the tonnage of ships employed in the Irish trade was 286,594, of which so great a proportion were English and Scotch, as 236,634; Irish only 33,312. And the same author not only asserts but proves, that from the revolution to this day England has not profited by Ireland in a less annual sum than a million and a half; and it must be remembered, that the ‘State of the Nation’ proves, the whole ballance of trade in favour of England to be no more than two millions and a half. Beside these several pecuniary advantages; the patronage of promotions, ecclesiastical and civil in that country, is in a great proportion applied to English purposes; as appears from a review of the present occupancy of some of their principal offices. The heads of the Church, the State, the Army, and the Law, in that kingdom have for a course of years been of another country; of the 22 right reverend Prelates, the natives only furnish seven; and their connections must necessarily direct several of the / benefices in their disposal into foreign channels – of the seven chief judicial offices, two only are occupied by Irishmen – of the forty two regiments on the establishment, seven only are commanded by Irishmen. Of the fourteen great officers on the staff, five only are of that country; and beside all this, several of the principal employments are granted in reversion, out of the Kingdom. So that wheresoever you turn your eyes, or direct your observation, you find Ireland administering to the advantage of England. When we have summed up the catalogue of benefits (many of which I have omitted) how dif­ ferent do we find the present from the antient relative situation of Ireland to England! At a time in which Ireland could scarcely make any one return, it was thought worth while to send over great sums from England for the preservation of that kingdom to the British empire. In the reign of Henry VI. Richard Duke of York was sent Lord Lieutenant to Ireland; we have the conditions transmitted down to us on which he would accept that government: they are as follow. ‘That he should be Lord Lieutenant for ten years, and have the whole revenues / at his disposal without account. That he should likewise receive out of England

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4000 marks the first year, and 2000 every year after. That he might let or farm any of the King’s places; levy what men he pleased, and appoint his own deputy.’ In the reign of Edward III. Sir William Windsor Lord Lieutenant engaged and indented with the King to govern Ireland for 11,213l. 6s. and 8d. per annum; and Sir John Davies observes, that Queen Elizabeth sent over to Ireland for the suppression of the three great rebellions of O’Neal, Desmond, and Tyrone, a million of money.15 It is likewise certain, that Lord Strafford was the first, who attempted to support the government of Ireland, without being a charge to England. Can it be imagined, that those expenses were sustained thro’ knight errantry, or from proximity, or any relation of that nature? By no means! Eng­ land could not justify it, nor was Ireland intitled to it. It was on principles of sound policy, and national advantage. If Ireland then in times of barbarism was thought of such moment to the British monarchy, what care and cultivation / is she at this day intitled to, in consideration of the infinite benefits she confers on England? I am aware that it may be said (for indeed any thing may be said) that in reciting the great expences England has formerly incurred for the preservation of Ireland, I have established to England a just title of indemnification from Ireland. If that were really the case, has she not had already an indemnification ample beyond the utmost extent of her hopes? Could she have formed an imagination that her efforts should have been rewarded by a million and a half of money every year, and the enjoyment of the benefits which I have before recited, without interruption for almost a century. It would be ridiculous to call this only indemnification. But the fact is, that from the situation of Ireland, it was worth to England the application of all her powers, to annex it to her empire; for as it has been observed by the judi­ cious Sir Francis Brewester in his essays on trade, ‘since Ireland is above water, England cannot be safe, if that kingdom should be in any hands but her own.’16 And therefore the Kings of England, who are likewise Kings of Ireland, without having the least idea / of the immense commercial and pecuniary advantages which have since resulted to them, must have used their utmost endeavours to preserve the connection and cooperation of Ireland. No title then can be founded in those several expences which England has incurred for that purpose, except only that of obedience to the mutual sovereign, for which they on the other hand are intitled to protection and liberty. And let me further observe, that the defence of Hanover in the last war,* cost England *

We may form some Idea of the magnitude of this expence by considering the immense fortunes made by the several contractors in the last war. Sir L. D—s whose contract was made on the most advantageous terms to the publick, and fulfilled with the utmost fidel­ ity, is notwithstanding, said to have made by it near half a million sterling. I mention this just to give some idea of the German expences: far from intending the least disrespect to that gentleman, who has acquired a great fortune by abilities and integrity, and enjoys it in generosity and beneficence.

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more, than the protection of Ireland has done for almost an hundred years; and yet in that time Ireland has conferred on England not less than an hundred mil­ lions of money. It has not however been proposed, that Hanover should make a contribution to the British Establishment. I do not talk of obligations* between *

When the people of Ireland speak on the subject of obligations, they state them thus. – ‘When England received nothing from Ireland except the allegiance of her inhabitants, she expended her treasure, and her blood, to secure that allegiance to herself, and to protect her from her enemies: and in doing so, she acted according both to policy, and justice; for by retaining the dominion of Ireland, she purchased her own strength and her own security; and by protecting her, she but paid a debt which she owed; protection being always due where allegiance is paid. In protecting Ireland she cannot be said actu­ ally to have conferred an obligation upon / her, supposing even that protection to be the most expensive, and the most vigilant; for as Ireland neither makes war for her own account, nor peace for her own advantage, but follows the fortunes of England without partaking of her councils, so it is just that Ireland should be protected in a danger to which for the sake of England she is exposed. And as Ireland by the allegiance which she pays is exposed to injury, if she has not a right to indemnification and reward, she has at least a right to be protected.’ It may be objected, ‘If Ireland were separate from England would she not be exposed to injury – would she not have wars upon her own account?’ The answer is obvious, ‘then they would be upon her own account.’ If we engage in a con­ test at our own discretion, and for our own advantage, we have no right to the protection of others. But if we engage for the sake and at the pleasure of another person, that person should protect us from injury to the utmost of his powers. Therefore the national alle­ giance of Ireland may be stated as an equivalent for the national protection of England. And to prove that it is an equivalent, we have great authorities in our favour – the policy of the whole world and of all ages: even France pays the establishment of her colonies, and Rome protected, not only her provinces, but every nation that bore the name of ally to the Romans. Let us now consider what Ireland gives to England, besides her allegiance; and what England gives to Ireland, besides her protection. First then Ireland has a large demand against England on this account, that she pays the principal expence of her own protection – she pays the army that is to defend her: she even pays a part of the army that protects the dominions of England; and exhibits the first instance that is to be found in the annals of mankind from the beginning of his­ tory to this day, of a dependent nation giving protection, instead of receiving it. Let us / then consider the advantages which England receives from the application of the Irish revenue, from pensions, employments, &c. Let us consider her profits by the restrictions of the trade, and the abridgment of the natural rights of Ireland; or rather let us compute what Ireland suffers, than what England gains by them: for the charge against a person who deprives us of any things, is to be rated not at the amount of his gains, but of our losses; and if, added to this, any injuries have been done to our liberty and our constitu­ tion, at what shall we estimate them? Of all these articles the ballance due to Ireland is composed; for we do not take into our estimate the blood which she has expended, the loss of all the rights of sovereignty, the absentees which drain her of her riches; all these are the fair and natural consequences of her national allegiance to England; and if England gives her perfect protection in return, we esteem them to have been paid for. But on the other hand, if at any time England has

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countries; they are often / chimerical, and almost always transitory. Nations of their own free will seldom / do any thing but for their own advantage. The contributions of Ireland to England, / I will suppose consequential to their reciprocal relations, and in many instances more the fruits of circumstance than of liberality: the protection England afford in return costs her little, and is in a great degree the result of protecting herself. Mutual advantage is the union of nations. And private communication the bond of affection. These in the nature of things are the only relations that can be permanent between bodies of men. And thus may Great Britain and Ireland be to the latest times united, by the indissoluble ties of general interest, and a constant communication of good offices: and he deserves to be esteemed an enemy to both, who should attempt to weaken that constitutional dependance subsisting between them. Whatever may be the original and incontrovertible rights of Ireland as a kingdom, she, with the other appendages of Britain yields to the circumstances of the times, and complication of the British empire; by which it has in some measure become nec­ given her no protection whatsoever, but what the security of her own coasts required, the blocking up the harbours of the enemy, and the intercepting fleets of uncertain destina­ tion. If England not only did not provide for the internal defence of Ireland, but when she had provided for it at her own expence, has deprived her of apart of her defenders. – If even when invasion was threatened, she has applied the army of Ireland to the defence of other territories, not other equal in their importance, nor exposed to equal danger. – If this has been the case, it must certainly be taken into the account, in stating the national ballance. What on the other hand has England to counterballance this demand? ‘She has per­ mitted Ireland to adopt her laws and constitution. But it would be absurd to state this an obligation; had Ireland no connection with / England, she might have done so. Any nation may imitate the constitution of England, that purchases a correct edition of her statutes, and chuses to adopt them. To suffer a nation to adopt our laws is no benefit, but to prevent their doing so if they please would be an injury. But the king of England made a charter of a compact with Ireland conferring freedom, and therefore advantageous. He was king of Ireland as well as of England; but state it as you please, in that compact the interest of England was consulted at least as much as that of Ireland: but being a compact, whilst it is observed on both sides, nothing is due by either; but if England at any time has invaded that freedom, she is then the debtor of Ireland. Thus much for the benefits which England has conferred. If she protected to the utmost of her power, she has received an equivalent in the allegiance of Ireland, and a large account remains yet unballanced. But if she has omitted to do so, we shall find nothing but an imperfect pro­ tection where a perfect one was due, and a compact conferring a free constitution, which compact has frequently been violated. But let this be forgotten, Ireland feels no resent­ ment, demands no recompence; she acknowledges as much dependance as is consistent with liberty; but with such a ballance in her favour, she has at least a title to use the words of a poor French nobleman to his monarch, ‘All that a poor subject asks of your Majesty is – that your majesty would ask nothing of him. Or to be still more moderate, she makes this request, ‘do not do me an injury, when by doing so, you do yourselves no service.’

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essary, that ‘a / general superintending power should be somewhere deposited, for the arbritation of commerce, and for directing, restraining, and regulating the external relations between the different members of the empire.’ This power cannot reside any where with such propriety, as in the British legislature. It is indeed a great power! Tho’ it cannot abridge the internal liberty of a single man, it can restrain the external operations of whole kingdoms, and if it were to be exercised to the utmost extent, would in many instances effect the purposes even of internal coertion. The Legislature of Great Britain will I dare say make a pru­ dent, and just use of it; in former times they did not. It is most true that their first and greatest object should be, the commerce of the principal country; and no trade should be permitted to any part of his Majesty’s dominions, injurious to England: but where they have prohibited the trade of a whole nation for the partial benefit of a particular county, town or village, they have been unwise and unjust. Of the laws that I have recited relative to the Irish trade, several have been framed in this principle. There was a law passed formerly / in England prohibiting the exportation of live-cattle from Ireland, lest that trade should interfere with some breeding farms in the west of England. This law turned out (contrary to the intentions of those who made it) advantageous to Ireland: the consequence was, that immediately the breeding-lands were converted into sheepwalks, and wool was cultivated. England then, pursuing the progress that she had begun, prohibited the exportation of that wool manufactured, or the wool itself, unless to England. The result of which has been, that Ireland being deprived of the woollen-trade, and a competition arising in that branch between France and England, by the establishment of a great manufacture at Abbeyville, the frugality of France has enabled her to give an higher price for Irish wool than England can, and yet undersell her at foreign markets. It cannot then be doubted that Ireland, unable to manufacture her own wool, would sell it to the highest bidder; and accordingly they have smuggled into France every year so consider­ able a quantity as 26,250 stones, which have enabled France to work up 78,750 stones of / wool; for one third of wool is necessary to the working up two thirds of theirs. In short the fact is at this day, that the convenience of getting wool from Ireland (which no law can prevent) and the cheapness of labour in France, have concurred entirely to deprive England of a most valuable part of the woollen trade; yet still, to use the words of Mr. Postlethwayt, ‘this fear, or rather infatu­ ation in regard to the value of our lands, makes us persist in a prohibition, that not only injures the Irish and ruins ourselves, but enriches and aggrandizes the French; for as the case stands, Ireland or France must have the woollen manu­ facture. The same policy takes place with regard to Molasses and sugar. Ireland cannot import them from the plantations directly, but must first enter them in England;

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wherefore the Irish, to avoid the costs, danger, and loss of time of two voyages, sail directly to the French ports, and furnish themselves with their brandies and sugars, without attempting to meddle with the produce of the British planta­ tions, and this to the amount of a sum, which, so long ago as Sir Matt. Dicker’s time,17 was 150,000l. per / annum. All this being the worst policy imaginable, why is it not altered, if it were only for the sake of England? Ireland desires no advantage over England in commerce, but over France; and is she to pay England a stipend for obtaining that? Would it be reasonable of England to say to Ireland, ‘The French, our natural enemies and rivals in trade, have, from the cheapness of their labour, beat us out of the woollen trade. You, from your frugality and industry, are certainly, on the other hand, able to undersell them; to withhold from them the material by which they work, and finally to wrest this trade out of their hands. However, notwithstanding that whatever you acquire would be an acquisition from the enemy, and an addition to the wealth and navigation of the British empire; and a great proportion of it must immediately center in England; though we have, to all intents and purposes, lost this trade ourselves, – in short, though retaking this prize from France would be to the last degree advantageous to us, yet you shall not be permitted to do so, unless you / pay us, in return, a large sum of money yearly for it.’ Can any thing be imagined more absurd, or more unjust? No power has a right to impose a prohibition, except for the good of the whole; what can we say then of that prohibition, which does an injury to ourselves and our friends, to do a benefit to our enemies? Yet such is the inference on The State of the Nation, and such is the policy of England on this subject. But whilst it is an incontrovertible fact, that withdrawing the prohibition on certain woollen manufactures from Ireland would be injurious to France, and therefore advantageous to England, it is not a matter instantly to be deter­ mined, in what course of time Ireland should so far profit by this trade, as to be able to pay out of the kingdom any thing near 100,000l. per annum for it; for, though this is not the sole, yet as it is the principal object of commercial indulgence proposed by this author, as an indemnification for this annual con­ tribution. I shall make it a principal object of my examination. And here let me observe, that all that France would lose, Ireland would / not gain. Suppose the wool heretofore exported to France amounted, as has been said, to 26,250 stone. If this were manufactured in Ireland, Ireland would gain the manufacture of 26,250 stone of wool. But it must be remembered, that France would thereby lose the manufacturing of 78,750 stone; for France cannot work without one third mixture of ours. By this it is evident, that France would loose exactly three times as much as Ireland would gain, which is at least as much the concern of England as Ireland; or, if the French were after this to manufacture, they must purchase their wool at so high a price, that England might reassume a share of

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this trade. Every circumstance in the laws and policy of Ireland has, for some years, tended to diminish the quantity of wool in that kingdom. The propaga­ tion of the linen manufacture, the several laws for encouragement of tillage, and the great profits of the Victualling trade, have all had so great an operation, that above one third of the quantity is diminished since the year 1711. To which must be added the increase of people; which, estimating them as the author / of ‘Dissertations on the British commerce’ has done, only at 1,666,000, the quantity of manufactured wool necessary for their cloaths, furniture, and burials, would amount, according to that author, to 1,061,250l. per annum. Now this author says, that if Ireland were to manufacture fully every stone of wool over and above that employed in their own consumption, and not send as they now do, yarn or worsted to England, it would amount in value to only 378,750l. per annum. Now if the generally received computation be just, that the people of Ireland amount to two millions the consumption of 334,000 persons must be deducted out of this 378,750l. According to the calculation which he has laid down with respect to the other million six hundred and sixty-six thousand, of about 12s. 9d. per head, this consumption amounts to 212,925l. which being deducted out of 378,750l. would reduce the value of the whole possible exports by this trade to 165,825l. provided, as I before observed, we admit the usual and most accurate computation of the numbers at two millions; a computation which I admitted / when it was unfavourable to me. But as it always shall be my object to investigate truth, rather than to avail myself of an authority favourable to my argument; I will not therefore allow the full extent of Mr. Postlethwayt’s calculation, altho’ it be in my own favour; but I will admit the consumption of every inhabitant of Ireland to be only at ten shillings per head; two shillings and nine-pence less than he supposed it. In this I am certain that I have not over-stated; and if this be admitted, the consumption of the inhabitants of Ireland will be one million only; consequently, as he computes it at 1,061,250l. I deduct 61,250l. from the consumption of Ireland, and add it to her export. But as this 61,250 pounds worth is to be exported, I suppose it to be highly manufactured, which I would not suppose it to be, were it to be consumed in Ireland. This superior degree of manufacturing being conferred upon it, it would be encreased in its value one third, and would therefore be worth 81,666l. 13s. 4d. I add therefore this 81,666l. 13s. 4d. to the sum of 378,750l. at which Mr. Postlethwayt computes the value of all the / wool of Ireland that could be exported, if manufactured fully; the sum then of 460,416l. 13s. 4d. is the utmost value of the wool that could be exported from Ireland, supposing that every fleece of wool, not made use of by the inhabitants themselves, were compleatly and fully worked up, that is to say, made up into fine dyed cloth. Thus 460,416l. 13s. 4d. is the value of that whole commodity highly wrought up for exportation. From whence you must

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deduct the value of the wool, which before was a vendible commodity, and the proportion of that is one-fifth. Take then from this sum of One-fifth Dye-Stuffs of all denominations, oil, and drugs, necessary for this quantity of cloth All the possible profits to the nation,

l. 460,416 92,083 368,333

s. 13 6 6

d. 4 8 8

10,000

0

0

£.358,333

6

8/

It appears then to a certainty that this sum of 358,333l. 6s. 8d. is the greatest possible profit to the nation from this exportation, supposing every article of it fully manufactured. Now that it should be so manufactured, is impossible; the competition of England in fine Spanish cloths would make that impracticable, and indeed Ireland could not reasonably expect it. But even tho’ the laws and rivalship of England did not interpose (which they certainly would) the manufacture for exportation would not, under a course of years, make such a progress, as to exceed in any considerable proportion coarse cloths, serges, camblets, &c. And this degree of manufacturing diminishes the value of what I stated before by one-third at least, which one-third making 119,444l. 8s. 10d. being deducted from 358,333l. 6s. 8d. reduces the highest possible balance in favour of Ireland to 238,888l. 17s. 9d. / But in stating the whole possible balance to the nation on the woollen trade at £. 238,888 17s. 9d. ½ per annum, I have supposed every fleece of wool not consumed at home, to be wrought up in the manner I before described for exportation; which is really supposing an absolute impossibility: Factors would still be employed to purchase wool, woollen yarn, and worsted, for English use, which England will always have an interest in purchasing, and which, accord­ ing to Mr. Postlethwayt, would very little diminish, though the exportation of manufactured wool were allowed. His words are these.* ‘There will be always in England and Ireland as many people on the trade of buying the wools and yarns, for which we (meaning the English) pay ready money, as there will be purchasers of their wools fully manufactured, which if sent here to be sold for exportation, must be on long credit; and, if sent abroad on their own accounts, will be subject to uncertain sales, and as uncertain payments.’ This consideration induces him to deduct from his balance in favour of Ireland, which he states at £ 378,750, no less a sum than £ 300,000 / and finally concludes (page 843, vol. II.) That all the woollen goods Ireland can fully manufacture for exportation, will amount to no more than £ 78,750.’ *

Dict. Vol. II. Page 844.

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That the greatest liberty of exportation which Ireland could enjoy, would not entirely prevent England from purchasing raw wool, worsted and yarn, is certain: For though to manufacture fully is more a national object, yet to the person who has the wool or yarn to sell, it is a matter of indifference, whether he sells it to an Irishman, to manufacture himself, or to an English factor to carry to England; it is the price that must determine with him, and that will be generally in favour of the latter. However, though it would serve my argument, I will not agree with that author in stating the export of wool and woollen yarn to England on that contingency, as great as it is at this day; on the contrary, I think it is not to be imagined, that England should purchase as much from Ireland, when she has competitors in that market, as at present when she has none. But I am sure if this judicious writer has, on account of the wool and yarn, that would continue to be sent to England, deducted 300,000l. / from his Irish balance, I shall be within all bounds of moderation if I suppose it 100,000l. which is three times as little as that author supposes it, and this sum being deducted from the balance which I have calculated of 238,888l. 17s. 9d ½. will reduce the whole possible balance in favour of Ireland by the exportation of manufactured wool, to 138,888l. 17s. 9d ½. But to prove beyond the possibility of doubt that the liberty of exporting woollen cloths, &c. would not prevent the Irish from selling to England great quantities of wool, yarn, and worsted; let us look into the custom-house books, and we shall find, that though a great linen manufacture is established in Ire­ land, yet she sells England annually, above 30,000 Hundred weight of linen yarn; which, as some of it is fine working thread, cannot, at a medium, be valued at less than 16d. per pound; at which price it amounts to 240,000l. If then Ireland sends so great a quantity of the material of an established manufacture to England, where that manufacture is in its infancy, is it not cer­ tain that she will send in a greater proportionable quantity of wool and woollen yarn, the materials of a / manufacture yet in its infancy in Ireland, but estab­ lished in England? It is incontrovertible. And after all these deductions from this branch of commerce, I must observe, that the efforts of France to procure wool from Ireland, rather than make a total resignation of this trade, would be so vigorous, that neither national advantage, nor legal restriction, neither policy nor penalty would prevent (at least for some years) the farmer from selling his wool to the highest bidder, who will certainly be the French merchant; and it must be remembered, that for every stone of wool sent to France, there must be a deduction from this 138,888l. 17s. 9d ½. of no less a sum than forty shillings. I will now suppose, for the sake of argument, that the 200,000l. which is proposed as an indemnification to Ireland for paying a tax of 100,000l. were immediately to be received by the individuals of that kingdom, in consequence

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of the free exercise of the woollen trade, which I think I have proved to be impos­ sible. The advantages arising to a nation from the introduction of a new manufac­ ture, are / of two kinds: First, it employs the idle, and by finding employment for them, it is a cause of its population; but this effect is not felt immediately, and though it will in time encrease the numbers of a nation, and consequently its ability to bear taxes, yet that encrease must be the work of years. The other advantage is, that it occasions to the nation either a saving of money, which it otherwise would export, or a greater return of money from for­ eign nations; and thus in proportion to the extent of its operation, it turns the balance of trade in favour of the nation; and this effect is felt more immediately. If Ireland were to manufacture her wool, so as to add 200,000l. to the value of the commodity, it does not follow from thence that she would receive 200,000l. of clear benefit or accession to her wealth; or that the balance of trade would be turned in her favour in so large a sum as 200,000l. For though some would be employed, in that manufacture, who before its introduction, were entirely, or almost entirely idle, yet many would be employed in it, who before were industrious, though possibly not employed in so profitable an industry. / Now, whatever was gained by their former industry, was a benefit to the nation, and upon their industry being converted to the manufacturing of wool, that former benefit ceases: whatever they earn by agriculture, or by other manufactures less profitable than the woollen, from which they are diverted, is as certainly lost to the nation, as what they gain by the woollen, is gained to it: consequently the former must be deducted out of the latter, in computing the national benefit, and the clear gain to the nation, is only the exceeding of the profits of the one, over the profits of the other. If the hands, who earn 200,000l. in the woollen trade, did before earn 50,000l. in agriculture, the clear profits of the woollen amount to but 150,000,l. because by its introduction, that 50,000l. which was before gained to the nation, is gained no more. Thus it appears, that though Ireland should encrease the value of her wool 200,000l. by manufacturing it, she would not really gain 200,000l. but a large deduction must be made in our computation, of the benefit arising from it to the nation: It is impossible to compute / before-hand, how great that deduction should be, but it is evident that it must be considerable. I will now suppose that Ireland were immediately to gain by the woollen trade, or any other additional branch of commerce, 200,000l. free from all man­ ner of deductions; that her inhabitants should receive it quite clear, and should actually have 200,000l. to spend, more than they had before, and that every farthing should be spent in Ireland; it does by no means follow from thence, that she would be thereby enabled to pay 100,000l. more of taxes, or revenue. Were indeed the whole of this 200,000l. to go immediately into the Excheq­

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uer, it would then enable the state to pay 200,000l. more than it did before; but the fact is, it would not – it would go into the pockets of individuals, to be spent by individuals. Now, from the money which individuals spend, there can be extracted but a certain proportion, and that a small one, for the revenue. Every thing almost is taxed, and therefore, in almost every thing which he pur­ chases, he pays something to the state; but this is a small proportion, not above one-fifth: for, in Ireland, the proportion / of the money spent by the people, and of the money extracted from their expenditure, for the purposes of the state, is about five to one, – the first, five millions; the latter, one* If, therefore, there should be an accession to the individuals of the clear sum of 200,000l. which, I have proved, they could not possibly have by the woollen trade. If that accession were to happen in an instant, and if it were to be all spent in Ireland, it would not enable the state to pay above 40,000l. per annum of revenue, more than it pays at present. Thus I have proved that this manufacture never can arrive at the highest degree of perfection in Ireland; that if it did, it could not possibly add 200,000l. per annum to the wealth of the nation; and that, if by this, or any other indul­ gence, they could acquire this addition, it would not enable them to pay an additional 100,000l. per annum in taxes. – But though these facts were dubita­ ble, which they certainly are not, can any thing equal the absurdity of imposing a tax, at the time you are only / sowing the seeds of its support? It is like laying a burden on the shoulders of an infant, because, when he becomes a man, he may be able to bear it. I have stated, with the utmost care and fidelity, the proportionable powers of Ireland to England; its exertion and its abilities; the benefits it confers, and the returns it receives; and I think it is, on the whole, impossible to deny, that Ireland does, at this moment, pay at least as great a proportionable tax, as any nation, under disadvantages which no other people experience. The ordinary revenues of France are – 11,600,000l. Of Spain – 5,092,400 Of England 8,000,000 Of Ireland – 1,000,000 Thus proportioned and circumstanced in burdens and disabilities, it is impossi­ ble that Ireland can engage for any new grant, of a considerable amount at least, until she shall have for some years reaped the fruits of future acquisitions. With a balance of trade in favour of that country so ridiculously low, as that every *

This is a greater proportion than England pays, England, substracting from her expendi­ ture for taxes, at the highest, not above one-eighth.

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concession that can be made, cannot raise it above 14,000l. / per annum, and which, in all human calculation, has been greatly exaggerated, by artifice or van­ ity, by the arbitrary entries of linen merchants, to propagate their own credit. With such a balance, I say, and a currency of little more than 500,000l. Ireland cannot try experiments, the introduction of which is to be, the annual remit­ tance of 100,000l. into another country, an additional revenue to be raised on its inhabitants. As for the Colonies, it is easy to say, ‘they are abundantly able to contribute to the expences of England 200,000l. per annum;’ but, I am sure, at this time, it is not easy to determine in what manner; and, by the accounts we have of the revenues lately collected by the commissioners of the customs in America, it is evident, that this is not the harvest-time there for a rapacious minister. If the Colonists incurred a debt of 2,600,000l. during the last war, it is, at least, as strong a token of their liberality, as of their wealth, and rather more, as this was an anticipation only of their revenues, among themselves, a great part of which was not raised in money, nor liable / to interest, nor to be paid by funds. But, be that as it may, this is not a time to ring new impositions in their ears: when they shall be restored to order and tranquility, then, if we may judge from the testimony of this 2,600,000l. they will not be deficient in their contribu­ tions. And certainly every part of his Majesty’s dominions ought to contribute to the general preservation of the British Empire; at the same time proportioning their contributions to their abilities, in the first place; in the next, to the advan­ tages they derive. For, as it is impossible that men can exceed their means, so it is unreasonable to expect they should make the same exertion in support of a good or a bad constitution, to confirm bondage, or defend their liberty. ‘Burdens, says Montesquieu,18 are willingly borne, as the price of freedom; under any other condition, men will not support them, unless they be com­ pelled; and if they be compelled, they cannot support them long. For why should they pay, when they receive no consideration in return; or how shall they exert themselves, when even victory shall not / leave them free? For what have people to fear, or to defend, who do not possess an inviolable right in their liberties and properties? As for wealth, the great article of contribution, it must flow from human industry; and will human industry be ever exerted, if the fruits of it be rendered precarious? And, in truth, if the case of these Colonists were as some persons have stated it, it would be in vain to expect either zeal for government, or attachment to acquisition amongst them. – What are they to be solicited to by this address? ‘You shall, as the prize of adventure, and reward of industry, enjoy the British birth-right of granting away as much of your property, in free­ will offerings, as you please; but others shall have the right of taking away the remainder, or such part as they shall think proper.’ Yet this is the import of sev­

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eral laborious compositions on this subject; which seem to me, as if they were framed but to weaken and distract the British empire. If the Americans were really under these circumstances, what mockery would it be to remind them of the excellence of their constitution, or call on them to exert themselves / in defence of their country? What have they in such a constitution to admire, or, in such a country, to defend? It would be but to insult them with their subjection, and call on them to assert their chains. The author of The State of the Nation, whilst he imposes a tax of 200,000l. per annum on the Colonists, admits that it is reasonable they should send repre­ sentatives to parliament. – Not by any means as necessary to give the parliament a right to dispose of their property, their lives, or their liberty. – That the parlia­ ment have already power so consummate, as to be capable of no augmentation by that acquisition: ‘But the prodigious extent of the British dominions in Amer­ ica, the rapid increase of the people there, and the great value of their trade, all unite in giving them such a degree of importance in the empire, as requires that more attention should be paid to their concerns by the supreme legislature, than can be expected from it, so long as the Colonies do not elect any of the members, of which the House of Commons is composed.’ Here indeed the author states the very principle of legislation, / among freemen, and the indispensability of representation to legislation, and more especially to taxation; for that is one of the most important of all concerns: And if, from the considerations this author has mentioned, it is reasonable the Colonists should have representatives; – to tax them without such, would be unjust; and what is unjust no body of men have a right to do. Justice limits, (if I may use the expression,) even the omnipotence of the omnipotent. But I am sure that the English parliament will decide these weighty matters, according to wisdom and justice. I do not therefore mean to expatiate on the infinity of their powers, nor on constitutional rights, which England may assert, and the colonists deny – These points of law and policy have already been stated to the public in a pamphlet, intitled ‘The Case of Great Britain and America,’19 (3d. edition) with such weight, precision, and depth of thought, as must have convinced every unprejudiced man; the prejudiced nothing can convince. I only add on this part of the subject, that no body of men, descended in a twentieth degree from Britons, will live con­ tentedly under this maxim of government ‘That persons / distant from them a thousand leagues, are to tax them to what amount they please, without their consent. – Without knowing them or their concerns, – without any sympathy of affection or interest towards them, – without even sharing themselves in the taxes they impose, – On the contrary, diminishing their own burdens exactly in the degree in which they encrease theirs.’ Power may enforce this doctrine, but the declarations of an oracle could not make it compatible with liberty. – Yet writers have been found to support it; and even the infirmity of human institu­

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tions, and the imperfection of the British representation, have been urged to prove that America should have no representative at all. But let them consider that imperfect as the representation of that country may be, yet there is not a spot in Britain, which is not within the pale and comprehen­ sion of representation. The principal towns and cities send their members, and the lesser towns and villages, not incorporated, are each a part of some county which chuses representatives. And there is not / almost in the whole kingdom one man so inconsiderable, as not to have some share or influence in a general election; though the modes of elections prescribed by parliament may withhold him from the very act of voting. – But if representation in England be partial, does it follow from thence that America should have no representation at all? And, as the above author observes, if England have not the best constitution human invention could form, is it a reason that America should have the worst? And let the author of ‘The State of the Nation’ consider, the declaration of the statute of James the first, which he quotes as a foundation of the power of the parliament. – ‘The whole body of the realm, and every particular member thereof, either in person, or by representation by their own free election, are by the laws of the realm deemed to be present in the high court of parliament.’ Can the people of America be supposed to be present in person, or by representation by their own free election? It would be an absurdity to say so. And his quotation, in the same note, as to the County Palatine of Chester,20 imports / nothing more than this, that the parliament did, without proving they had any right) in former times bind that country before it was represented. That, in the reign of Henry VI. in, probably, the very first instance wherein they had been taxed, they petitioned the king against it; who did agree with them that it was a violation of their privi­ leges: and though, perhaps, it was not immediately after, yet it has long since been rejected, as unconstitutional; and at this day, in common with every other part of England, Cheshire sends members to represent her in parliament. This author admits that the several Colonies should enjoy the privilege of adjusting the ways and means, by which they should raise their different pro­ portions of the 200,000l. per annum, which he, in the name of the British legislature, imposes on them in the gross. And why is this indulgence granted? Undoubtedly, because they must be supposed best to know the conditions and resources of their respective countries. And is not this a stronger reason why the quantity of this gift, as well as the mode of raising it, should exclusively belong to / them? Otherwise this indul­ gence would amount to no more than that of first condemning a man to death, and afterwards leaving to his choice the mode of his execution.

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But the author proceeds,

‘Whilst eight millions of subjects inhabiting Great Britain are made to pay four millions on account of a war, one great object of which was the safety and pros­ perity of the Colonies; it surely is not too much to require of the two millions of subjects residing there, 200,000l. per annum for the general service.’ But if the doctrines with regard to the Colonies, laid down by this author, and sev­ eral others, be admitted, this expostulation is rather insult than argument; for according to them, the safety and prosperity of the colonies, to which they contrib­ ute, is nothing more than ‘The liberty of procuring money by their industry, that it may be taken from them at the discretion of the state which protects them.’ – who are they afraid shall take from them these valuable privileges? Or is there a nation under heaven, to which the colonies could be united, which / would not permit the inhabitants to labour for wealth, if they were to retain to themselves the power of taking it from them without their consent. The great object of the war should be stated, as it was. – It was to vindicate from France the colonies of America, and to make them the great source of commerce, strength, and navigation to Great-Britain. And a glorious object it was! Not to do merely a piece of courtesy, or kindness to the descendents of Britons who happened to be settled in America, or to get a trifling tribute of 200,000l. per annum from them: But for preventing that inexhaustible fund of strength and riches from falling into the hands of an enemy, and applying it to the everlasting power of Great-Britain. And an everlasting source of advantage will they prove, if her policy shall make friends of those, whom fortune has made subjects. Let her wisdom keep them dependent in every external relation, but let them experi­ ence internal liberty, and a security in their acquisitions. And England can, by her superior power and incontroverted superintendency, ever provide that their property shall not be increased, without / at the same time encreasing the ben­ efits they confer on the mother country. The original formation of society was for the general advantage of all who compose it; and conformity to its laws can only be maintained by a preservation of those advantages. Tell the Colonists that you have spent seventy-five millions in a war, by which England is confirmed in the advantageous possession of the Colonies, and by which the Colonies have been rescued from slavery. – Tell them, that whilst you have ensured the returns of their industry to yourselves, you have made them subjects of a state, in which to be a subject, is to be a free­ man:– tell them this, and you will solicit their gratitude, and may rely on their co-operation; for then their interest and their duty, their obligations and affec­ tions, will be all engaged in support of their allegiance. Let them see that they are freemen, and shew them the advantages of being members of a free state, and

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then you will make them, though they had neither virtue nor gratitude, unalien­ able friends to the British government. / But if after all – after you had really conferred these benefits upon them, they should yet turn out factious or disobedient, (which is to the last degree improbable) – be but once sure, but be very sure, that the constitution is on your side, – that you erect not your standard against law and justice, – I say in that case, with such a cause and such an alliance, you may laugh at the opposition of America to the mother country. – But it is a formidable thing to enforce by arms a violation of right, and draw the sword against the liberties of a people. – And I lay it down once for all as a maxim, which neither the subtilty of genius, the authority of senates, or the terror of the sword can overturn, ‘That any people, whose property is at the discretion of others, are in a state of slavery, – and that the very idea of property is destroyed, if it may be taken without the consent of the owner.* This is a principle which I am sure is enthroned in the heart of the best of kings; and will for ever be vindicated by the British parliament. – On the late occasions of disagreement, the people of America may possibly have / misbehaved, and directed their opposition in some particulars in a mode that was exceptionable; but if that be the case, it is little to be wondered at; for dis­ obedience and anarchy ever have been, and ever will be, the fruits of oppression. Let those answer for this, who advised the first violation of American liberty, by imposing the stamp-duties. / This, however, the British parliament speedily redressed, – not because the people resisted, but because the measure was repugnant to the principles of the constitution. – If it were not, it is to be presumed their opposition had been ineffectual. – It must however be confessed that exertion discovers to a people their strength, and injuries will ever produce that exertion. *

But what would be the Condition of the Americans, if added to this Claim over their Property, obsolete Laws should be revived to deprive them of their Lives too? If the Colonists be told, on their opposing what they think an Invasion of their Rights, – tho' their Resistance be the Resistance of Humiliation and Loyalty – of Prayer and Suppli­ cation, not of Force or Arms; – / yet we shall not only consider them as Traitors, but call forth from Obscurity a dangerous Statute, the Reproach of the worst of Reigns; a Statute, which has been buried in Oblivion 250 Years; in order not only to deprive them of the common Right of being try’d by their Peers, but to substitute in the place of it a Trial by their Enemies – at least their opponents – in the contest; without a possibility of having the assistance of Friends, or the Testimony of Witnesses to defend them. A Law so dangerous, that when whole Countries became Rebels, and that for the Purpose of destroying the present happy Establishment, and placing the Pretender on the Throne; – when Preservation required that some Examples should be made, there was not, how­ ever, to be found an Empson or a Dudley to advise the Revival of this Statute; but a particular Act was passed for that particular occasion.

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I smile when I hear it said, ‘There have been good accounts from America, all things are quiet there.’ – The fact is, the people there seem to be sober and deter­ mined. – But no good news can ever come from America, except by the return of the ship that carries them good news from England. – The colonists at present are unable, in any considerable degree, to / contribute to the regular establish­ ment of Britain, – they are at present unwilling too, for both their abilities and their attachments depend on the good treatment they receive. – Give them by your indulgence a capacity, and you will by that give them an inclination too. – The strength of all the colonies united, is weakness when opposed to Great-Britain: yet even Great-Britain should tremble, if they were united against her in a just cause. – Let us not say we do not feel the discontent of America. – We do not feel it, ’tis true, in her opposition, or from her arms; but we feel it in the insults of our natural enemies; we feel it in our impotence or our fear to check the progress of their usurpation, and the extension of their empire; – we feel it in the sacrifice of our generosity and of our glory, – we feel it in the wounds of an illustrious people, and the contempt of all Europe. The superior power and legislative preeminence of England, without vio­ lating a law of justice, or reducing America to slavery, can for ever enforce her dependence; and raise on the Colonies wholesale / supplies for the benefit of England; supplies by which the giver would be enriched. – Let England then cherish the Colonies, let her make them happy and free, and they will be industrious and rich: and the nature of dependencies co-operat­ ing with the wisdom of parliament, shall turn the tide of their acquisitions into the mother-country. – Let them have a constitution and they will love it, – give them a property and they will defend it; give them freedom, and they will adhere to you; give them commerce, and they will enrich you. It has been observed by Montesquieu, that countries are not cultivated in proportion to their fertility, but their liberty; the most fruitful parts of the earth are desarts, when the most barren are cultivated. This is an observation suggested by wisdom, and established by experience. And we may be assured that as the only effectual method of taxing America is to make her rich. – The only method of making her rich, is to make her free. – For do not imagine you will be intitled to the gratitude of the Colonists for defending them from the French, unless you make / your government better than theirs; and it will not be better, if you take their money from them without their consent. Place not such reliance in the strength of armies, or the authority of assemblies, as to imagine they can alter the stated and immutable relations of things. – All the armies that formerly conquered the enemies of America, and now may be employed to conquer her friends, and all the councils that directed them, though they may enforce a tem­ porary subjection, are unable to make slavery the law of the land. – And whatever

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may be the efforts of interested declamation, or mercenary abilities, they never can overthrow the doctrines advanced in that constitutional pamphlet intitled The State of Great-Britain and America. And I wish every line of it were engraved in the breast of the ministry; then should we see the colonies restored to free­ dom, allegiance, and industry; and England reaping the fruits and returns of the benefits she has conferred. This must be the conduct of Great-Britain towards her dependencies. – And the most rapacious minister, if he were wise and permanent, would from avarice adopt / it. When the restitution of their rights, and revival of their com­ merce shall make them wealthy, they will probably be able to support the whole expence of their defence; and certainly, if they be well treated, that expence will be diminished. But I am sure the minister, who begins his work by imposing a foreign taxation on them to the amount of 200,000l. per annum, would render the colonies unable to become really useful to England, and thereby defeat the great object of the war: – And all this would be hazarded for a consideration so ridiculously minute, that together with the Irish contribution, if England were tottering, it could not prop that mighty fabrick for one day. – Narrow exactness and official calculation may be subservient, but should never be predominant in the English ministerial character. To keep the accounts of an office, and to regulate the government, the policies, and the commerce of a great empire, are indeed provinces of different extent. The man who, to live a year longer of administration, would patch up a sup­ ply by a little American plunder, and then / tell the nation ‘That to support their own dignity, they must assert this outrage, – that subordination and slavery are synonimous, – that the omnipotence of parliament must be displayed in an act of injustice, – that they must be wicked, left they appear to be weak.’ – Who for the sake of an expedient, would alienate the affections of two millions of loyal subjects, and condemn to military execution all who should be found in the rebellion of self-defence. Who, if from the short duration of his authority, there yet remained one amongst the dependencies not actually alienated by publick oppression, would endeavour to disgust it by degrading, offensive, and unnecessary declarations. – If such a man there be, – let him not offer his perni­ cious counsels to the best of kings; – but rather let us remember, that one of the greatest of the Romans, Tiberius Graccus,21 called a prætor to publick judgment, because he had alienated from Rome the affections of the provinces! – If such a man there be, – let him never be minister of England. For such an appointment would throw all the dependencies of Great-Britain into despair; / and though he might be a sacrifice, he could never be an atonement! I have now concluded the course I intended to pursue:– happy, if what I have offered may tend to advance the interests of any part of the empire; – and surely a knowledge of the circumstances of each, is necessary to the government of the

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whole. – Happy, if I can for a moment recal the sentiments of the times from those pernicious doctrines, which have spread discontent, if not disaffection, to the extremities of his Majesty’s dominions; which have relaxed the bonds of union and brotherly love, that make the weak strong, and the strong invinci­ ble. – For we may be assured it is by the co-operation of interests and affections alone, that this stupendous fabric can long be united and maintained. – And it is impossible that its union can be permanent, unless all be slaves, or all be free; for if freedom be the principle of the empire, every member must think it is his birth-right; and Britons can never call slaves their fellow-subjects. – Let not then the fundamental principles of the constitution be on any / account relaxed, or sacrificed, to trifling expedients; nor suffer a precedent of slavery to be estab­ lished even for England herself – For if the time shall ever come in which British liberty shall be devoted, her dissolution will not begin in the center of the empire; but (to use the words of a person of the first abilities) ‘She will feel subjection like the coldness of death, creeping upon her from all her extremities.’ Long may she remain at the head of the empire, superintending, restraining, consolidating! – Which she may for ever do, without disturbing a single shade of internal liberty. May she have every power necessary to her prosperity; – but it can never tend to her prosperity, to make slaves of fellow-subjects. – Commerce and virtue would accompany their freedom in her flight, and little would be the boast of an idle territory. If England be overburdened by taxes, – let her at least begin with reducing some of her unnecessary expences, – let her establish some œconomy, – let her regulate her land tax, – which is in its disposition the / most unequal, and in itself the most unexceptionable tax, for the policy of England. – Let not 180,000l. annually be raised by lottery on the subject, more than the state receives, nor other articles of supply be warped to gratuities. – Let not the public treasure be perverted to private favours, or the public good betrayed to popular prejudices. – Let the taxes on necessaries be transferred to superfluities, or at least suffer not the habits of luxury to confound the two terms, as convertible or synonimous; – and, above all, establish agriculture on a regular and uniform exportation; and that will produce not only plenty, but wealth. – If, however, after this, England should feel distress; let her dependencies, if they be able, assist her:– But the first step is, to make them so. Let Ireland and the Colonies enjoy every degree of com­ merce, compatible with the trade of England. – I wish for no more: and their acquisitions, after a progress conferring benefits as they flow, will finally settle in England. – This will result from the natural course of things: if it did not, it might / be so directed by the external superintendency and commercial policy of the Brit­ ish legislature. – And this is the utmost extent of taxation, that one people can exercise over another.

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If there were any such minister in England as that great Sully,22 whom this author celebrates, he would feel the excellence of this reflection, ‘That the best means of making the dependencies of the empire useful, are to make them happy, and the best way to tax them, is to confer benefits upon them.’ This is not a vain use of words, but it is good policy and national wisdom. And if ever the day shall come, in which these sentiments shall direct the British councils, then shall we see the Colonies look up to their mother country, not as to a parent who gave them birth, only to defraud them of their birthright; but as one intitled to their support in her infirmity, for she protected them in their infancy, and cultivated them in their maturity. – Then we shall see the trade, navigation, and prosperity of the empire flourish, and every one of his Majesty’s subjects contending / with his neighbour, who shall best maintain the general good, and do most in support of the greatest monarch in the world, whose dominion is founded in the affections of a free people.

FINIS.

[POWNALL], STATE OF THE CONSTITUTION

OF THE COLONIES

[Thomas Pownall], State of the Constitution of the Colonies ([London], [1769]).

Thomas Pownall was born in Lincoln in 1722, obtained a BA from Trinity Col­ lege, Cambridge, in 1743, and became a clerk on the Board of Trade, where his younger brother, John, was secretary.1 Like his brother, Thomas Pownall favoured imperial reform while sympathizing with colonists. The elder Pownall spent several years in the colonies. He arrived in America on 6 October 1753 as pri­ vate secretary to Sir Danvers Osborne, newly appointed governor of New York. Osborne’s suicide, however, soon left Pownall free to visit various colonies, attend the 1754 Albany Congress, and network with influential Americans, including Benjamin Franklin. Pownall sided with William Johnson, superintendant of Indian affairs, in his dispute with Massachusetts Governor Sir William Shirley, facilitating Shirley’s February 1756 dismissal as British commander in North America. From May 1755 Pownall was lieutenant-governor of New Jersey, but in early 1756 he returned to England and secured himself the position of ‘sec­ retary extraordinary’ to John Campbell, Earl Loudon, Shirley’s replacement as military commander. In February 1757 he was appointed Shirley’s replacement as Massachusetts Governor. In that role he successfully defended local interests and managed to raise men and money for the French and Indian War. He even­ tually fell foul of Shirley’s ‘court party’, however, and the Board of Trade disliked his alliance with the ‘popular party’, including John Hancock. He was appointed Governor of South Carolina in November 1759, but returned to Europe, became commissary for British forces in Germany and made a profitable marriage to Harriet Churchill. He was subsequently MP for Tregony, Cornwall (1767–74), and Minehead, Somerset (1774–80), and became a parliamentary champion of American liberties while recognizing a need for imperial reform that he had first perceived as Massachusetts Governor. An acknowledged expert on empire, his most famous work was Administration of the Colonies, first published in 1765 and then in five revised editions over thirteen years. He argued that while colo­

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nists ought to pay towards the costs of their defence, they retained all the rights of freeborn Englishmen, including, most especially, the right to a hand in gov­ erning themselves through their own representatives. His eventual solution, in the fourth edition (1768), perhaps harking to his experience at Albany, was an inter-colonial legislature, although that idea was attacked by many colonists, not least in John Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1768). Dickinson would have agreed, however, with much of Pownall’s State of the Constitution of the Colonies, which begins as a series of straightforward statements about British-Americans’ constitutional rights. Englishmen overseas, he begins, retain all their rights as Englishmen. That means that Common Law and all stat­ ute law that affect the whole nation apply to all subjects ‘as if they and every of them were born within the Realm’ (below, p. 77). However, ‘Statutes and Cus­ toms which respect only the special and local Circumstances of the Realm do not extend to and operate within said Colonies and Plantations’ (below, p. 78), and ‘No Statutes made since the Establishment of said Colonies and Plantations … operate within said Colonies and Plantations’, with some specified exceptions (below, p. 78). He then details which constitutional liberties apply to the colonies, including those in Habeas Corpus, the Petition of Right and the Bill of Rights. He does not specify whether those rights inhere in Parliament or in colonial legisla­ tures. He does, however, argue that colonial executives, legislatures and judiciaries should be fully constituted local civil governments whose powers could not be constitutionally usurped by the military. Pownall’s first parliamentary speech had warned against forcibly billeting troops on New York, and this document simi­ larly warns about the limits of what troops in Boston could legally do. Pownall later attacked the ‘Intolerable Acts’, which effectively reduced Mas­ sachusetts to martial law (though he did not attack the Boston Port Act, which did not concern governance and which his brother had a hand in drafting), and in December 1777 Pownall became one of the first to favour recognizing the independence of the United States. After that he advocated Atlantic trade amongst free sovereign nations throughout Europe and the Americas, and argued for crown takeover of administrative responsibilities in the Mughal provinces from the East India Company. Increasingly suffering from gout and rheumatism, Pownall died taking the waters at Bath on 25 February 1825.2 Notes: 1. John Pownall is the author of ‘General Propositions: Form and Constitution of Gov­ ernment to be Established in the New Colonies’ (1763), reprinted in Volume 4 of this edition, pp. 227–30. 2. E. H. Gould, ‘Pownall, Thomas (1722–1805), colonial governor and politician’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 45, pp. 164–7; J. A. Schutz, ‘Pownall, Thomas (4 Sep­ tember 1722–25 February 1805)’, in American National Biography, ed. J. A. Garraty and M. C. Carnes, 24 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), vol. 17, pp. 798–9.

STATE OF THE

CONSTITUTION OF THE

COLONIES. /

STATE OF THE

Constitution OF THE Colonies.

I. Whenever any Englishmen go forth without the Realm, and make Settlements in Partibus exteris – ‘These Settlements, as English Settlements, and these Inhab­ itants, as English Subjects, carrying with them the Laws of the Land, wherever they form Colonies, and receiving his Majesty’s Protection by virtue of his Royal Charter*,’ or Commissions of Government, ‘have and enjoy all Liberties and Immunities of Free and Natural Subjects, to all Intents, Constructions, and Pur­ poses whatsoever, as if they and every of them were born within the Realm†;’1 and are bound by the like Allegiance as every other Subject of the Realm. II. Therefore the Common Law of England, (except as hereafter excepted) and all such Statutes as were Enacted and in Force at the Time in which such Set­ tlers went forth, and such Colonies and Plantations were established, together with all such Alterations and Amendments as the said Common Law may have received, is from Time to Time, and at all Times, the Law of those Colonies and Plantations. III. Therefore all Statutes touching the Right of the Succession, and Settle­ ment of the Crown, with the Statutes of Treason relating thereto;‡ All Statutes * † ‡ 

Pratt and York. General Words in all Charters. All Statutes respecting the general Relation between the Crown and the Subject; not such as respect any particular or peculiar Establishment of the Realm of England; as for Instance: By the 13th and 14th of Car. II. c.2. the supreme Military Power is declared to be in general, without Limitation, in his Majesty, and to have alway been of Right annexed to the Office of King of England, throughout all his Majesty’s Realms and Dominions – Yet the enacting Clause, which respects only the peculiar Establishment of the Militia of England, extends to the Realm of England only – So that the supreme Military Power of the Crown in all other his Majesty’s Realms and Dominions stands, as to this Statute, on the Basis of its general Power, unlimited: However, the several Leg­ islatures of his Majesty’s Kingdom of Ireland, of his Dominions of Virginia, and of the several Colonies and Plantations in America, have, by Laws to which the King hath given his Consent, operating within the Precincts of their several jurisdictions, limited the Powers of it, and regulated the Exercise thereof.2

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regulating or limiting the general Powers and Authority of the Crown, and the Exercise of the Jurisdiction thereof; All Statutes declaratory of the Rights and Liberty of the Subject; do extend to all British Subjects in the Colonies and Plantations, as of common Right, and as if they and every of them were born within the Realm. IV. All Statutes enacted since the Establishment of Colonies and Plantations do extend to and operate within the said Colonies and Plantations in which Statutes the same are specially named. V. Statutes and Customs which respect only the special and local Circum­ stances of the Realm do not extend to and operate within said Colonies and Plantations where no such special and local Circumstances are found. – Thus the Ecclesiastical and Cannon Law, and all Statutes respecting Tithes – The Laws respecting Courts Baron and Copyholds – The Game Acts – The Statutes respecting the Poor, and Settlements; and all other Laws and Statutes having special Reference to special and local Circumstances and Establishments within the Realm – do not extend to and operate within these Settlements in Partibus exteris, where no such Circumstances or Establishments exist. / VI. No Statutes made since the Establishment of said Colonies and Planta­ tions, except as above described in Articles III. and IV. do extend to and operate within said Colonies and Plantations. Quere. – Would any Statute made since the Establishment of said Colonies and Plantations, which Statute imported to annual and abolish the Powers and Jurisdiction of their respective Constitutions of Government, where the same was not contrary to the Laws, or any otherwise forfeited or abated; or which Statue imported to take away, or did take away, the Rights and Privileges of the settlers, as British Subject – Would such Statute, as of Right, extend to and oper­ ate within said Colonies and Plantations? Upon the Matters of Fact, Right, and Law, as above stated – it is – That the British Subjects thus settled in Partibus exteris without the Realm, so long as they are excluded from an intire Union with the Realm as Parts of and within the same, have a Right to have, as they have, and to be governed by, as they are, a distinct intire Civil Government, of the like Powers, Pre-eminences, and Juris­ dictions, (conformable to the like Rights, Privileges, Immunities, Franchises, and Civil Liberties,) as are to be found and are established in the British Govern­ ment, respecting the British Subject within the Realm. Hence also it is, That the Rights of the Subject, as declared in the Petition of Rights – That the Limitation of the Prerogative, by the Act for abolishing the Star-Chamber, and for regulating the Privy Council, &c. Hence it is, That

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the Habeas Corpus Act – The Statute of Frauds – The Bill of Rights – do of common Right extend to and are in Force within said Colonies and Plantations. Hence it is that the Freeholders within the Precincts of these Jurisdictions have, as of Right they ought to have, a Share in the Power of making those Laws which they are to be governed by – by the Right which they have of sending their Representatives to act for them and to consent for them in all Matters of Legisla­ tion; which Representatives, when met in general Assembly, have, together with the Crown, a Right to perform and do all the like Acts respecting the Matters, Things, and Rights, within the Precincts of their Jurisdiction, as the Parliament hath respecting the Realm and British Dominions. Hence also it is that all the Executive Offices, from the supreme Civil Magistrate, as Locum Tenens3 to the King, down to that of Constable and Headborough, must of Right be established with all and the like Powers, neither more nor less than as defined by the Constitution and Law, as in Fact they are estab­ lished. Hence it is that the Judicial Offices and Courts of Justice, established within the Precincts of said Jurisdictions, have, as they ought of Right to have, all those Jurisdictions and Powers ‘as fully and amply to all Intents and Purposes whatso­ ever, as the Courts of King’s Bench, Common Pleas, and Exchequer, within his Majesty’s Kingdom of England, have, and ought to have, and are empowered to give Judgment and award Execution thereupon.’ Hence it is that by the Possession, Enjoyment, and Exercise of his Majesty’s Great Seal delivered to his Majesty’s Governor – there is established within the Precincts of the respective Jurisdictions all the same and like Powers of Chancery (except where by Charters specially excluded) as his Majesty’s Chancellor within his Majesty’s Kingdom of England hath, and of Right ought to have, by Delivery of the Great Seal of England. – And hence it is that all the like Rights, Privileges, and Powers, follow the Use, Exercise, and Application of the Great Seal of each Colony and Plantation within the Precincts of / said jurisdiction, as doth, and ought of Right to follow the Use, Exercise, and Application of the Great Seal. Hence also it is that Appeals in real Actions, ‘whereby the Lands, Tenements, and Hereditaments of British Subjects may be drawn into Question and dis­ posed of*,’ do not lie, as of Right and by Law they ought not to lie, to the King in Council. Hence also it is that there is not any Law now in being, whereby the Subject within said Colonies and Plantations can be removed from the Jurisdiction to which he is amenable in all his Rights, and through which his Service and Alle­ giance must be derived to the Crown, and from which No Appeal lies in criminal

*

Law in New England, confirmed by the Crown, Oct. 22, 1700.

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Causes, so as that such Subject may become amenable to a Jurisdiction foreign to his natural and legal Resiancy, to which such foreign Jurisdiction he may be thereby transported, and under which he may be brought to Trial, and receive Judgment, contrary to the Rights and Privileges of the Subject, as declared by the Spirit and Intent, and especially by the 10th*, of the Habeas Corpus Act. And if the Person of any Subject within the said Colonies and Plantations should be seized or detained by any Power issuing from any Court without the Jurisdiction of the Colony where he then had his legal Resiancy, it would become the Duty of the Courts of Justice within such Colony (it is undoubtedly of their Jurisdic­ tion so to do) to issue the Writ of Habeas Corpus†. Hence also it is that in like Manner as ‘the Command and Disposition of the Militia, and of all Forces by Sea and Land, and of all Forts and Places of Strength, is, and by the Laws of England ever was, the undoubted Right of his Majesty, and his Royal Predecessors, Kings and Queens of England, within all his Maj­ esty’s Realms and Dominions‡,’ in like Manner as the supreme Military Power and Command (so far as the Constitution knows of and will justify its Estab­ lishment) is inseparably annexed to, and forms an essential Part of, the Office of supreme Civil Magistrate, the Office of King; in like Manner, in all Govern­ ments under the King, where the Constituents are British Subjects, and of full and perfect Right entitled to the British Laws and Constitution, the supreme Military Command, within the Precincts of such Jurisdictions, must be insepa­ rably annexed to the Office of supreme Civil Magistrate, his Majesty’s Regent, Vice-gerent, Lieutenant, (or Locum Tenens, in what Form soever established)

* †

‡

16th Car. I.c.10.4 By referring to an old Act made for the Trial of Treasons, committed out of the Realm, by such Persons as had no legal Resiancy but within the Realm and who were of the Realm – By applying the Purview of that Statute which was made to bring Subjects of the Realm who had committed Treason out of the Realm (where there was no criminal Jurisdic­ tion to which they could be amenable) to Trial within the Realm, under that criminal Jurisdiction to which alone by their legal Resiancy and Allegiance they were amenable – By applying this to the Case of Subjects whose legal Resiancy is without the Realm, and who are by that Resiancy and their Allegiance amenable to a Jurisdiction authorized and empowered to try and give Judgment upon all capital Offences whatsoever without Appeal – By thus applying this Statute so as to take up a Proceeding for which there is no legal Process either by Common or Statute Law, as now established, but in Defiance of which there is a legal Process established by the Habeas Corpus Act – would be to disfranchise the Subject in America of those Rights and Liberties which by Statute and Common Law he is now intitled to. 13th and 14th Car. II. c.2.5

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so that the King cannot by any* Commission of Regency, by any / Commis­ sion or Charter of Government, separate or withdraw the supreme Command of the Military from the Office of supreme Civil Magistrate, either by reserving this Command in his own Hands, to be exercised and executed independent of the Civil Power – nor by granting a distinct Commission to any Military Commander in Chief, so to be exercised and executed – But more especially not within such Jurisdictions where such supreme Military Power (so far as the Constitution knows and will justify the same) is already annexed and granted to the Office of supreme Civil Magistrate. – And hence it is that the King cannot erect or establish any Law Martial, or Military Command, by any Commis­ sion which may supercede, and not be subject to, the supreme Civil Magistrate, within the respective Precincts of the Civil Jurisdictions of said Colonies and Plantations, otherwise than in such Manner as the said Law Martial and Military Commissions are annexed or subject to the supreme Civil Jurisdiction within his Majesty’s Realms and Dominions of Great Britain and Ireland – And hence it is that the Establishment and Exercise of such Commands and Commissions would be illegal.

*

If the King was to absent himself, for a Time, from the Realm, and did, as usual, leave a Regency in his Place, his Locum Tenens as supreme Civil Magistrate, Could he authorize and commission any Military Commander in Chief to command the Militia, Forts, and Forces, independent of such Regency? Could he do this in Ireland? Could he do this in the Colonies and Plantations, where the Governor is / already by Commission, or Charter, or both, under the Great Seal, Military Commander in Chief, as Part of (and inseparably annexed to) the Office of supreme Civil Magistrate, his Majesty’s Locum Tenens within said Jurisdictions? If he could – Then while openly, by Patent, according to Law, he appeared to establish a free British Constitution – he might, by a Fallacy, establish a Military Power and Government.

OBSERVATIONS ON SEVERAL ACTS OF

PARLIAMENT

Observations on Several Acts of Parliament, Passed in the Fourth, Sixth and Seventh Years of his Present Majesty’s Reign (Boston, MA: Edes and Gill; London: G. Kearsly and J. Almon, 1770).

These Observations on the Sugar, Stamp and Townshend Acts were published and probably written by Bostonian merchants. The knowledge displayed in the text of colonial trades means it was almost certainly the result of a collaboration of experts. Furthermore, like the ‘merchant of London’ who authored The True Interest of Great Britain, with respect to her American Colonies,1 also printed by G. Kearsley (spelled here Kearsly), these Observations declare that The representative body of this people having very fully and repeatedly remonstrated against these acts, as unconstitutional, and as infringing the rights and privileges of the subject … we shall confine our remarks to such parts of these acts as affect the trading interest. (below, p. 87)

However, ‘trading interest’ is defined very broadly. The authors stress not only the ‘embarrassments’ on trade caused by duties on goods and increased number of articles enumerated under the Navigation Acts, but also, appealing to British interests, their knock-on effects on colonists’ ability to purchase British manu­ factures, the fact that a good deal of trading profits end up in Britain, plus the financial costs to Britain of administering new and old trade laws. The authors first address ‘the fishery carried on to the Banks, in which there are upwards of three hundred vessels employ’d, besides a great number of boats in the Bay, and about ninety sail in the mackarel fishery’, worth ‘upwards of one hundred and sixty thousand pounds sterling per annum’ (below, p. 87). Some produce goes to Britain, southern Europe, and the British West Indies, but ‘two-fifths … together with three quarters of the mackarel and pickled fish, is carried to the French and other foreign islands, in return for which we receive molasses and some ordinary sugars’ (below, p. 88). The Sugar Act means that ‘it will be lost if not sent to the foreign islands, and this loss must entirely destroy – 83 –

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the whole Bank fishery’ (below, p. 88). The merchants note next the ‘lumber … provisions, horses, and many other articles suitable for the West-India markets’ which employ ‘upwards of an hundred and eighty vessels annually’ and are a great encouragement to ship-building … wherein there have been upwards of three hundred sail built in a year, before the late embarrassments were laid on the trade, since which this number has been reduced at least two-thirds, and the tradesmen formerly employ’d in this branch of business are now obliged to procure a livelihood in some manufacture, or starve. (below, p. 88)

Furthermore, the new measures would destroy the Africa trade: where we send large quantities of New-England rum, not only for our own trade, but to supply the traders in ships from Great-Britain, with whom we exchange this commodity for other European articles brought out by them suitable for that trade (below, pp. 88–9)

The authors note also that the ‘duty on molasses, tho’ reduced to one penny per gallon, which at first fight may appear but small, yet, as it is one tenth part of the value (when brought to market) is really large’ (below, p. 89). In addition to taxes, the merchants detail the burdens created by ‘the mul­ tiplicity of bonds’ required for compliance with the Navigation laws and ‘a sufferance and cocket for every article laden on board’ (below, p. 91). They also complain of ‘the unlimited power given to officers of the customs’ and ‘the power and extension of the courts of Vice-Admiralty’ (below, p. 92). Furthermore, ‘Since the appointment of a board of customs commissioners to reside in America, the restrictions and embarrassments on the trade have been greatly increased’ by costly delays for certified clearances to be given for loading and unloading ships and due to the ‘appointment of an almost incredible number of inferior officers, as tidesmen, boatmen, waiters and others, and … Some of those wretches are persons of such infamous characters, that the merchants cannot possibly think their inter­ est safe under their care’ (below, pp. 93–4). The pamphlet then details a number of specific outrages committed against merchants by these officers, including the famous case of John Hancock, who with others was ‘libell’d for £9000 sterling’ and bailed for £3,000, for allegedly ‘landing a few pipes of wine, imported in the sloop Liberty, from Maderia’ (below, p. 96). A ‘great part of the winter was taken up in attending on the court of admiralty’ before ‘Mr. Hancock was discharg’d from this vexatious and unprecedented libel’ (below, p. 96). That is the case, of course, that sparked the hugely consequential Liberty Riot, leading to the deploy­ ment of troops, leading in turn to the ‘Innocent blood crying to God from the streets of Boston’ written of in the next document. Notes: 1.

See Volume 5 of this edition, pp. 111–33.

OBSERVATIONS ON

SEVERAL Acts OF Parliament, PASSED

In the Fourth, Sixth and Seventh Years

of

His Present Majesty’s Reign.1

Published by the Merchants of Boston.

BOSTON: Printed by Edes and Gill.

LONDON: Reprinted for G. Kearsly, in Ludgate-Street, and J. Almon, opposite

Burlington-House, in

Piccadilly.

M.DCC.LXX.

[Price One Shilling.] /

OBSERVATIONS

ON

Several Acts of Parliament, &c. The representative body of this people having very fully and repeatedly remon­ strated against these acts, as unconstitutional, and as infringing the rights and privileges of the subject, it is unnecessary to add any thing upon that head; but we shall confine our remarks to such parts of these acts as affect the trading inter­ est. / By these acts certain rates and duties are imposed on molasses, sugars, wine, tea, glass, paper, and many other articles commonly imported into the British colonies in America, and several leading articles which procured remittances to Great-Britain, are now either brought into the class of enumerated articles, or subjected to the duty, risque and expence of being landed in Great-Britain; which embarrassments on the trade of the colonies must greatly diminish, if not wholly destroy, several branches of it, and so far lessen the demand for British manufactures, great quantities of which are annually imported into this prov­ ince (more than the amount of our exports to Great-Britain) for the payment of which we depend not only upon what is produced among ourselves, but also upon what is caught out of the sea, or is obtained by a circuity of commerce abroad. To collect this revenue the government is at a very great expence, equal at least (and, including the charge of men of war and cutters to guard the coast, vastly superior) to all the revenue that could be collected, had our trade been as extensive as it / was before those acts were made; which is not the case now, and never will be, while they remain in force. One principal branch of the trade of this province is the fishery carried on to the Banks, in which there are upwards of three hundred vessels employ’d, besides a great number of boats in the Bay, and about ninety sail in the mackarel fish­ ery. The amount the fish these vessels cure, with the pickled fish and liver oil, is upwards of one hundred and sixty thousand pounds sterling per annum: about two-fifths of the Bank fish turns out merchantable, and is sent to Spain, Portugal and Italy, and the nett proceeds remitted to Great-Britain; the other three-fifths, – 87 –

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being unfit for any market in Europe, is sent with the pickled fish and mackarel to the islands in the West-Indies: And as the English islands do not consume more than is made by the boats in the Bay, being about one-fifth, and one-fourth of the mackarel and pickled fish, the remaining two-fifths made by the Bankers, together with three quarters of the mackarel and pickled / fish, is carried to the French and other foreign islands, in return for which we receive molasses and some ordinary sugars. – This valuable branch of our trade, the fishery, almost, if not wholly, depends on our trade to the foreign islands in the West-Indies – As we cannot cure fish for the European markets separate from the other sort sent there, and as we have no other market for what is made by the Bankers, it will be lost if not sent to the foreign islands, and this loss must entirely destroy the whole Bank fishery. Another considerable branch of the trade of this province is lumber of all kinds, also provisions, horses, and many other articles suitable for the WestIndia markets, in which trade there are upwards of an hundred and eighty vessels annually employed, most of which make two voyages in a year: These vessels call first at the English islands, and when they are supplied, the remainder is carried to the foreign islands. – A quantity of oak timber, staves, and other lumber is sent to Ireland, some to Madeira and the Western Islands, to purchase / wines, and some few cargoes are sent to Spain, Portugal and England, but none to any foreign port to the northward of Cape Finister. – The first cost of these cargoes of lumber being very small, the whole profits are not more than a bare freight for the vessels; but this freight is a great encouragement to ship-building, which is another considerable branch of trade in this province, wherein there have been upwards of three hundred sail built in a year, before the late embarrassments were laid on the trade, since which this number has been reduced at least two-thirds, and the tradesmen formerly employ’d in this branch of business are now obliged to procure a livelihood in some manufacture, or starve. – Some of these ships went directly to Europe with fish, oil, pot and pearl ash, naval stores and lumber, but the greatest part went to the West-Indies with lumber, fish, and other articles of our produce, the proceeds of which, with the freights from thence to England, together with the vessels, were remitted to Great-Britain, to pay for the goods we received from thence; and, by having timber plenty, and building so many / vessels, we became carriers for other parts of America. Besides the trade to the West-Indies, many of our ships formerly went to Virginia, North and South Carolina, where they carried large quantities of rum, to purchase rice, tobacco and naval stores, and took in freight for Great-Britain, where the proceeds of the whole (and indeed of all our trade) centers. Another considerable branch of our trade is that carried on to Africa, where we send large quantities of New-England rum, not only for our own trade, but to supply the traders in ships from Great-Britain, with whom we exchange this

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commodity for other European articles brought out by them suitable for that trade, by means of which they are enabled to carry on their trade to greater advantage than they would otherwise do without this necessary article – And as the slaves purchased there are chiefly sold in the West-Indies for bills on London, the proceeds of this trade consequently are remitted to Great-Britain. / All these several branches of trade are greatly obstructed by the duties imposed, and the restrictions to which they are subjected by the aforementioned acts. – The duty on molasses, tho’ reduced to one penny per gallon, which at first fight may appear but small, yet, as it is one tenth part of the value (when brought to market) is really large, and will be a discouragement to a trade which has insinuated itself into, and is a great spring to every branch of business among us. – The fishery, the lumber trade and ship-building, are greatly promoted by the importation of molasses, and distilling it into rum, and the trade to Africa wholly depends on this article; so that any act which hath a tendency to obstruct the importation of molasses, must be prejudicial to Great Britain. – The former acts, imposing duties on molasses, were intended only as a regulation of trade, and to encourage our own islands, and the duty was only on foreign molasses; but by these acts it is imposed on all molasses, and expressly for the purpose of raising a revenue. / The duty of five shillings per hundred on brown, and twenty-two shillings on white sugars, is a great burden on our trade to the foreign islands: If we confine ourselves to molasses, a sufficient return’d cargo cannot always be obtained; and the aforesaid duties upon sugars are so heavy, as to render the import of them so uprofitable, that we cannot pursue a trade by which we disposed of the of the superfluous produce of our country. By these acts we are restrained from exporting sugars to a foreign market, without first landing them in Great-Britain, or obtaining a licence from thence to carry them directly to a foreign market. – If we go first to Great-Britain, and land them there, it will prove so expensive, by the delay and charges of unloading and reshipping, and also of a double freight and insurance, that the trade cannot be carried on to any advantage, especially in a time of war. – If we carry these sugars directly to a foreign market, by licence from Great-Britain, the difficulties and embarrassments are still greater, as the vessel in which any sugars / are to be shipt must first go to Great-Britain, and the master enter into bonds there, before a licence can be procured, during which the sugars are to remain in the King’s stores here; and after they are delivered in a foreign port, the vessel must return to Great-Britain to cancel the bonds, before she can proceed on any other voyage. – Tho’ the liberty granted to carry these sugars directly to foreign ports by licence, might be intended as an encouragement to the trade, the regulations and restrictions are such as will effectually defeat this very design: Whereas, if we were allowed to export these sugars (after being stored here under the care of cus­

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tom-house officers) to foreign markets in our own vessels, free of duty, it would encourage the bringing them here, and in time might become a very consider­ able branch of trade; and in particular would enable us to employ our fish-ships to better advantage, as they carry no fish between decks, and consequently might be partly laden with sugars. But under the present regulations, none will ever be brought here in order to be exported to a foreign / market in Europe, either in our own vessels or any other. Here it may be proper to observe, that should we be allowed the free impor­ tation of foreign sugars, even for own consumption, the trade of Great-Britain would not be injured, but greatly benefitted; for in this case, more of the sugars made in the English islands might be carried to Great-Britain, and what they did not consume would be exported from thence to foreign markets, which would employ a greater number of ships, and thereby increase the commerce of GreatBritain, without lessening that of the colonies – and all the sugars we procured from the French islands, and carried to foreign markets in Europe, must neces­ sarily lessen their navigation, and increase that of Great-Britain. Formerly we made considerable remittances to Great-Britain with sugars, the produce of the English islands, which we received in return for our own pro­ duce sold there: But by the act of the 6th of his present Majesty, we / find such a distinction made in favour of our fellow subjects in the islands, that while they may import British plantation sugars into Great-Britain as such, that which is imported from North-America must be deemed French; by which means we are cut off from an article of export which hath been heretofore considerable, and might be so still, were it not for this regulation. Logwood and mahogany have been, by a circuity of trade, the means of large remittances to Great-Britain – these we have obtained by small cargoes of provi­ sions produced among ourselves, together with some British manufactures, by which many of our vessels have been employ’d; but now, by being obliged to carry them first to England, such heavy expences will be incurred, by reason of their bulk, and the smallness of their value, as must put an end to this branch of business, and consequently the trade must fall into the hands of foreigners. / The reasons given for these regulations, as mentioned in the act of the 6th of George the Third, were ‘the more effectually to prevent enumerated goods being privately carried from the British colonies, into foreign parts of Europe, in vessels that clear’d out with non-enumerated goods; and also to the prevent the clan­ destine importation of foreign European goods into said British colonies.’ Upon the first of these reasons we would observe, that the great care and vigilance of the custom-house officers here might answer the purpose, and effectually pre­ vent any such enumerated goods from being exported to foreign parts. – With respect to the second, it is difficult to conceive how the obliging a vessel to stop at England, upon an outward-bound voyage, can have any influence in prevent­

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ing the importation of illicit goods upon her return, especially when sufficient care was before taken to prevent such illicit importation, by obliging all vessels that have any foreign goods on board, to stop at Great-Britain on their return. / Another great embarrassment to the trade of the colonies, is the multiplic­ ity of bonds required by the aforesaid acts of his present Majesty, in addition to the bond for enumerated goods, required by an act made in the 12th year of the reign of Charles the Second, the condition of which bond is, That such enumer­ ated goods shall be landed either in Great-Britain, or some part of his Majesty’s dominions: And by an act of the 4th of George the Third, coffee, piemento, cocoa, hides, skins, pot and pearl ash, and several other articles, are added to the list of enumerated goods – besides which, no master of a vessel is allowed to take in any nonenumerated goods, without first giving another bond, with one surety, the condition of which is, That none of said non-enumerated goods shall be landed in any port of Europe to the northward of Cape Finisterre, except in Great-Britain; by which we are excluded from carrying even non-enumerated goods to Ireland, without first calling at some port in Great-Britain. If any iron, or lumber, are laden on board any vessel, the master must / give a third bond, on the same condition as that required for non-enumerated goods; and in case any rum is laden on board, a fourth bond is required, the condition of which is, That such Rum shall not be landed in the Isle of Man.2 These bonds the officers of the customs, in this port, require for all vessels loading any of these articles, not only for such as are going to Europe, the WestIndies, and other colonies on the continent, but even for coasters going from one town to another in the same province, and sometimes for vessels under twenty tons, going to another town within the district of the same custom-house where the bonds are given; so that no lumber can be brought from the place of its growth, in the eastern parts of this province, to this, or any other market, for exportation, until such bond is given, though no customhouse officer reside within forty or fifty, and sometimes one hundred miles of the place where the coaster takes in his lumber: This is a very great embarrassment to the trade of / this province, in which there are a great number of vessels employ’d in the coast­ ing business, and upwards of one thousand sail are annually enter’d and cleared at the several offices. This restriction appears the more unaccountable, as it is not known that one single vessel ever carried a cargo of lumber to any foreign port to the northward of Cape Finisterre. Had such a trade formerly been carried on, the coasting vessels are not capable of prosecuting such a voyage, and the charge of these bonds, and certificates to cancel them, amount annually to a very large sum. – Besides these several bonds, every master of a vessel, even a coaster, is obliged to take out a sufferance and cocket for every article laden on board; and in case he takes in any goods for which bond is required, he must have a certificate from the collector, of his having given bond for those articles; and in

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case he neglects taking such certificate, not only the goods for which bonds are required, but even the vessel and the rest of the cargo, are forfeited. This has been severely felt by some Traders here, who have lost both vessel / and cargo, to a very considerable value, only for want of such certificate, tho’ the cocket for those goods mentioned that bonds were taken; but the certificate was either mislaid, or never delivered by the collector. – The sureties in these bonds are likewise greatly exposed, should the master neglect to send a certificate of the landing the goods for which he has given bonds, or should the collector refuse or disapprove of the certificate he may send, as being improper (tho’ there should be no reason to suspect the goods were carried to any port they were excluded from) the sure­ ties may be prosecuted in the court of admiralty, and obliged to pay considerable costs at least, if not the whole penalty, as has heretofore been experienced in that court, and is such an insupportable burden on trade, as will prevent many from engaging in it. Before a cocket can be taken out for any goods, and some even of British manufacture, oath must be made, when, by whom, and in what vessel, the article intended to be exported / was imported; This, in many cases, is impossible, and will prevent some towns from being supply’d with such goods as they want, and induce others to set up manufactures of their own, and thereby lessen the con­ sumption of British manufactures in the colonies, which must be severely felt by the manufacturers in Great-Britain. Another great discouragement to the trade of America, is the unlimited power given to officers of the customs. – The act passed in the 4th year of George the Third ordains, That in case any information shall be commenced and brought to tryal in America, on account of the seizure of any ship or goods as forfeited, wherein a verdict shall be given for the claimer, the defendant, if the judge certifies that there was a probable cause of seizure, shall not be intitled to any costs of suit whatsoever – and further, in case an action shall be brought against any officer, for seizing any ship or goods, where no information shall be commenced, or brought to tryal to condemn the same, and a verdict / shall be given against the defendant, the plaintiff, besides his ship or goods so seized, or the value thereof, shall not be entitled to above two-pence damages, nor to any cost of suit: But if the plaintiff shall be non-suited, or discontinue his action, or if judgment shall be given, upon any verdict or demurrer, against the plaintiff, the defendant shall recover triple costs. By these clauses in this act, and the power and extension of the courts of Vice-Admiralty, the whole trade of America lies at the mercy of the officers of the customs and judge of said court, the former being impower’d to seize the ships or goods of the American merchants at their pleasure; and though they never prosecute the same, or act ever so arbitrarily or unjustly, the merchant has no remedy, the officer not being subject to any damage, or even to cost of suit, while the distressed claimant, tho’ ever so much

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injured, if he should be non-suited, or discontinue his action, must pay triple costs: And as the governor, as well as the officers of the customs and judge of the admiralty, / are interested in those seizures, it is natural to conclude they will always encourage and promote the same; and many instances may be produced, where both vessel and goods have been condemned as forfeited, only for a small mistake or neglect of the master, and the industrious trader thereby ruined; which severities are not exercised towards our fellow-subjects in Great Britain. Since the appointment of a board of commissioners to reside in America, the restrictions and embarrassments on the trade have been greatly increased, by the attendance and delay in entering and clearing of vessels at the collector’s office, where some masters have been obliged to wait two or three days; before they could obtain an entry or permit to unload: The many oaths and certificates required, before any vessel can be cleared out, have occasioned the same delay to our outward-bound vessels. Another difficulty attending the entry of vessels, particularly from the WestIndies, is / the master’s being required to make an exact report of their cargoes on their first arrival (even at any out-ports they may put into by contrary winds) and denying them liberty to make a post-entry. – In Great-Britain, the masters are allow’d to make reports from day to day, as they find any goods omitted; but this justice is denied the Americans, and the board of commissioners have publicly advertised, That no allowance, for the future, shall be made for mistakes or omis­ sions in the first report, even for adventures belonging to the seamen. This is an hardship, or rather a cruelty, as the seamen frequently get aboard more than the masters are acquainted with, and as the masters purchase their molasses on shore in tierces,3 and shift it into other casks of their own when brought on board the vessel, and are often filling up those casks, it is sometimes difficult for them exactly to ascertain the number and contents of the casks they have filled. – The fees taken at the collector’s office, particularly for coasters, and obliging them to enter and clear in the same manner as vessels bound on foreign / voyages, and to give bonds for every trifling article they carry for private families, even for a few pounds of tea or sugar, or a few gallons of rum or molasses purchased of retail­ ers, for which they must produce certificates, on oath, in what vessel these trifles were imported, and by whom the duties were paid, which is often impossible, are such embarrassments on this branch of business, as, if continued, it must entirely destroy it. – Formerly the coasters were not required to take cockets for every trifling article, and the fees, both entering and clearing, was only one shilling sterling, whereas the expence now is from ten shillings to sixteen shil­ lings, which is more ready money than they sometimes receive for their whole freight; and as they frequently take in only a few articles, the charge of clearing those articles at the custom-house is more than the freight. – The appointment of an almost incredible number of inferior officers, as tidesmen, boatmen, wait­

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ers and others, and requiring the master to receive and lodge them under deck (without any authority to support it) is another cause of complaint – Some of / those wretches are persons of such infamous characters, that the merchants can­ not possibly think their interest safe under their care. – The liberty these fellows take, of searching vessels before they are discharged, and sometimes before the master’s have reported at the custom-house, is not only illegal, but impudent, and contrary to the practice in Great-Britain, where the officers never search the hold of any vessel till the master says she is discharged, and desires the waiter to certify the same to the custom-house. Another intolerable grievance is the appointment of officers of the customs on board the men of war, cutters, and other armed vessels; the arbitrary, unlawful and wanton manner in which they have exercised this authority in this province, is unprecedented in any other part of the British dominions. Some of these officers, by force of arms, have enter’d vessels on the high seas, and in the harbours, insolently demanded of the masters their papers, broke open their hatches, and search’d the hold with lighted candles; / even ships from London, with hemp and powder on board, have been treated in this manner, and both the lives and properties of his Majesty’s loyal subjects thereby greatly endanger’d. – Some vessels coming into this harbour, before the masters could reach the custom-house to make report, have been boarded by armed boats from the Romney, commanded by Captain Corner: One vessel, from the West-Indies, had her hatches open’d, and twenty hogsheads of molasses hoisted upon deck, to search the hold: Another vessel, with lumber, was carried along-side the Rom­ ney, her hold unstowed, and the boards taken on board the king’s ship, before the master was permitted to go to the custom-house to report: A vessel from Lisbon, bound to Marblehead, was boarded on the high seas by Mr. Panton, lieutenant of the Rose (who was likewise an officer of the customs) with a design to impress the seamen, who concealed themselves in the hold; upon which Mr. Panton assumed the custom-house officer, and pretended / that he was going to search the vessel for uncustomed goods, and, under this pretence, enter’d the hold, and endeavour’d to impress the seamen, who stood upon their defence, and told the officer, upon his peril, not to enter the fore-hold; upon which they were fired upon, and one of the seamen was shot thro’ his arm, and another wounded: This brought on an engagement, in which the lieutenant was killed, and the ves­ sel brought out of her way, to Boston, by the man of war. – Several other vessels have been seized in the Bay, at the Vineyard, and other ports, (where they have been obliged, by contrary winds, to make a harbour) sent into ports they were not bound for, and there detain’d at a great expence, on the trifling pretence that

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some article (not on cargo, but belonging to the mariners) was found on board, not specified in the cockets. Upwards of twenty sail of men of war, cutters, and other armed vessels, pur­ chased by the board of Commissioners, have been / employed this year to cruize on the trade of this province, without discovering one vessel in an illicit trade, tho’ their expectations were raised in hopes of plunder, by the unjust and cruel misrepresentations made by wicked and designing men. Some of the command­ ers of the king’s ships purchased small vessels on their own accounts, and sent them into the little harbours and coves, where the men of war could not cruise; and some of these have been disguised as coasters, and every other method has been used, to detect a supposed contraband trade; even the master of a little cutter purchased a fishing boat, on his own account, for the same purpose: But being disappointed of the advantages which were expected to be reaped from the condemnation of illicit traders, or the prizes (as they call’d them) they have been induced to take advantage of the mistakes and omissions of the masters of coasting vessels, several of whom have been seized by those guarda costas, and two actually condemned for some trifles found on / board, without being in the clearance. – They have indeed seized twenty-three other vessels, upon some tri­ fling pretences, all of which have been dismiss’d, after being detain’d some time, at a considerable expence. – The fishery has likewise been greatly distressed by the guarda costas. – Many of our fishermen cure their fish at Canso, and other places in Nova Scotia, at a great distance from any custom-house, and when the fishing season is over, they take in the fish they have cured on shore, and return home: This has been the practice ever since the fishery was carried on, till the passing of the late acts, and the appointment of officers of the customs on board the King’s vessels, since which many of the fishing vessels have been seiz’d by these avaricious officers, and condemn’d in the court of admiralty, for taking in their dry fish without first having a permit from the custom-house, and giving the bond required for non-enumerated goods; and the skippers of those vessels are now obliged to make two trips to Halifax or / Louisbourg, first to give bond and take a permit to load, and when they have taken in their fish, to procure a clearance to screen their vessels and fish from the jaws of these devouring mon­ sters. The Commissioners themselves (tho’ by act of parliament they are not intit­ uled to any share of the forfeitures) appear, by the whole tenor of their conduct, to have been more intent upon making seizures, than upon promoting the rev­ enue; nor have they shewn the least disposition to serve the trade, but have taken every method in their power to embarrass it, by their directions to the collectors

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and other officers of the customs*, and by their employing persons of the most abandoned characters / under them, some of whom have acted in open violation of the laws; and one in / particular, without the least provocation, fired upon the inhabitants, and by force of arms rescued a prisoner, taken by the King’s writ, from the hand of justice. The merchants and traders in the northern colonies, and more particularly in this province, have been greatly abused by the representations that have been made to Great-Britain, of their importing large quantities of the manufactures of France, Holland, Hambro’ and other parts of Europe, in a clandestine man­ ner, which are false and malicious: The merchants in this province carry on no trade with any part of France, except to their islands in the West-Indies; and no instance can be produced / of any quantity of manufactures being brought from thence. The goods imported from Holland and Hambro’ are all enter’d in Eng­ land, and the duties, to a considerable amount, annually are paid there. – When the duty upon molasses was six pence sterling a gallon, as there was no appropria­ tion made of that duty, it was well known in England the officers of the customs connived at the importation, and their conduct was not disapproved: How far this will justify such representations, is submitted to the impartial public – but *

On the 27th of October 1768, John Hancock, Esq; Mr. Lewis Gray, Capt. Daniel Mal­ com, Capt. John Matchet, and others, were libell’d for £9000 sterling each, and held to bail in £3000 sterling each, to appear at the court of Vice-Admiralty, on suspicion of their aiding and assisting at the landing a few pipes of wine, imported in the sloop Liberty, from Madeira, more / than were reported at the custom-house. The libel against Mr. Hancock came on the 7th of November, when a vast number of witnesses were exam­ ined upon interrogatories in the tedious method of the civil law, and no proof appearing against him, the court was adjourn’d to the next week, and a new set of witnesses were produced and examined in the same manner, and to as little purpose; after which the court was several times adjourn’d, and other witnesses summoned, even Mr. Hancock’s most intimate friends and acquaintance, so that a great part of the winter was taken up in attending on the court of admiralty, and examining those witnesses; and after every method had been tried, and no proof could be procured against him, in the spring 1769, on the publication of the new judge of admiralty’s commission, Mr. Hancock was discharg’d from this vexatious and unprecedented libel. The libels against Mr. Gray, and others, on the same account, were dismiss’d at the same time, without examining any witnesses in the case. About the same time Capt. Malcom, Capt. Dorrington, and others, were libell’d for £2400 sterling each, and held to bail in £800 sterling, on suspicion of their assisting at the landing a few pipes of wine, suppos’d to be imported in the schooner Friendship, from the Western Islands; and as no evidences could be / produced to support the charge in these libels, they were all dismissed at the same time Mr. Hancock’s was. Other instances of the same kind of proceedings might be produc’d, but these will be sufficient to shew in what a cruel and vexatious manner the inhabitants of this province are treated by the Board of Commissioners.

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since the duty on molasses has been reduced, the whole, tho’ grievous, has been regularly paid. The merchants do not desire liberty to import any kind of goods that are prej­ udicial to the manufacturers of Great-Britain, nor have they ever yet complain’d of their trade being confin’d to Great-Britain for such goods as are manufactured there, so long as they might be imported duty free. / What the Colonists have a right to expect and hope for, is a repeal of all the acts imposing duties on any kind of goods imported into the British colonies for the purpose of raising a revenue in America, as being inconsistent with their rights as free subjects – the removal of every unnecessary burden upon trade, and that it be restor’d to the same footing it was upon before the act of the 6th of George the Second, commonly call’d the sugar-act4 – particularly. That molasses, so necessary to promote every branch of trade, and likewise sugars, be admitted free of duty. That the importation of wines from Madeira and the Azores may be permit­ ted, agreeable to the act of the 15th of Charles the Second.5 And as the free importation of fruit, wine and oil, direct from Spain and Portugal, would be a great encouragement of the fishery, and will no ways inter­ fere with / the manufactures of Great-Britain, and the obliging all vessels with those articles on board to call at some port in Great-Britain, being attended with great expence and delay; and as the acid of lemons and oranges is become almost necessary for the health and comfort of the inhabitants of North-America, and these fruits not being able to endure repeated transportation, it is hoped the direct importation of wine, oil, and fruit of all kinds, may also be permitted. The taking off the duties on tea, paper, glass and colours, will not relieve the trade of the burdens it labours under – But should all the revenue acts be repealed, and the trade relieved from all unnecessary restrictions, and restor’d to the footing it was upon before the act of the 6th of George the Second, and the indulgencies now mentioned be granted, it would have a happy tendency to unite Great-Britain and her colonies on a lasting foundation – all clandes­ tine trade would then cease – the great / expence of men of war, cutters, of the commissioners, and other custom-house officers lately appointed to secure the revenue, might be saved – The trade, navigation and fishery would not only be revived, but greatly extended; and, in that case, the growth of these colonies would be very rapid, and consequently the demand for British manufactures proportionably increased. The foregoing observations relate wholly to the revenue acts, and the con­ duct of the custom-house officers; but we cannot conclude without mentioning the great expence and needless trouble accruing to the trade by means of the Naval Office.

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Since the establishment of custom-houses, and the appointment of custom­ house officers, this office is altogether unnecessary, and answers no valuable purpose. Upon this head it is proper to observe, that soon after the settlement of these colonies, / the parliament thought it necessary to take some measures for the regulation of the plantation trade. The act of the 12th of Charles the Second, for encouraging and increasing shipping and navigation, ordains what qualifications shall be necessary for vessels trading to the colonies, and enjoins the Governor, or persons by him appointed, to inspect and take care that the same be observed, and to take bonds for all vessels lading any of the commodi­ ties in said act enumerated.6 Three years after, by the act of the 15th of the same reign, further regulations and restrictions were made, and every person or persons importing goods into the colonies obliged to deliver to the Governor of such colony, or to such person or officer as shall be by him thereunto authorized or appointed, a true inventory of all such goods, &c.7 At this time, and until ten years after, no duties were laid, by act of parliament, upon any commodities in the plantations, and of consequence no custom-houses had been / erected, or collectors or other custom-house officers appointed or thought of in the colonies, but the whole care and inspection of trade remained with the Governor, or the person be appointed Naval-Officer. – Afterwards, by the act of the 25th of the same reign, chap. 7. sect. 3. duties being laid on sugars and sundry other articles, to be paid in the plantations, when car­ ried from one plantation to another, the several duties so imposed were to be levied and paid to such collector or other officer, in said plantations, as should thereafter be appointed by the commissioners of the customs in England; who did accordingly appoint collectors, and such other officers as occasion required, for that purpose, who ever since their appointment, it is well known, have had the chief care and inspection of the trade.8 From this account of the matter, it appears that, as formerly there were no custom-houses or custom-house officers in America, the government thought proper to devolve the care and inspection of the / trade upon the Governor of each colony, or such persons as they should appoint under them for that purpose, who have been called Naval Officers; that, upon the establishment of custom-houses and custom-house officers, the establishment of a naval-office, or the appoint­ ment of naval-officers, was rendered altogether needless. The original design of government, in the establishment or appointment of either, was, that the trade might be duly taken care of and inspected, that frauds might be prevented, and that abuses in trade might be regulated: All these purposes may be, and are, effectually answered by the appointment of collectors and other officers of the customs; therefore the naval-office is altogether useless. As it is a grievous burthen, and tends greatly to retard business, and is a needless expence, without any

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benefit to the government, or answering any one valuable purpose, we have just grounds of complaint, and cannot but hope this office will be dispensed with. Upon the whole, the trade of America is really the trade of Great-Britain herself; the / profits thereof center there: It is one grand source from whence money so plentifully flows into the hands of the several manufacturers, and from thence into the coffers of landholders throughout the whole kingdom: It is, in short, the strongest chain of connection between Britain and the colonies, and the principal means whereby those sources of wealth and power have been, and are, so useful and advantageous to her. The embarrassments, difficulties, and insupportable burdens under which this trade has laboured, have already made us prudent, frugal and industrious, and such a spirit in the Colonists must soon, very soon, enable them to subsist without the manufactures of Great-Britain, the trade of which, as well as its naval power, has been greatly promoted and strengthened by the luxury of the colonies; consequently any measures that have a tendency to injure, obstruct and diminish the American trade and navigation, must have the same effect upon that of Great-Britain, and, in all proba[bi]lity, prove her ruin.

FINIS.

LATHROP, INNOCENT BLOOD CRYING TO

GOD

Rev. John Lathrop, Innocent Blood Crying to God from the Streets of Boston. A Ser­ mon Occasioned by the Horrid Murder of Messieurs Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick, James Caldwell, and Crispus Attucks, with Patrick Carr, since Dead, and Christopher Monk, Judged Irrecoverable, and Several Others Badly Wounded, by a Party of Troops under the Command of Captain Preston: On the Fifth of March, 1770, and Preached the Lord’s-Day Following (London: E. and C. Dilly, and J. Almon, 1770).

The presence of troops in Boston from October 1768, after the Liberty Riot, was seen by some as proof of a design to strip colonists of their liberties. Also, off­ duty soldiers took work in the city, as they had in New York, depriving locals of employment and undercutting wages, uniting colonists of all classes against the British, even slaves who worked in their spare time to buy themselves or family members out of bondage. The Boston massacre was the culmination of a series of incidents beginning on Friday, 2 March when one of the victims, Samuel Gray, a rope-maker at John Hancock’s wharf, insulted a trooper by offering him the job of cleaning his privy. Fighting followed over the next three days, including an assault on the barracks by citizens attempting to reach several soldiers who had beaten two boys aged 11 and 14. After being repelled, some of the crowd broke into the meeting house and rang its bell, drawing hundreds into the street, signs that Captain Thomas Preston believed heralded an attack on his men. Preston, another officer and six soldiers then went out to protect the lone sentry outside the customs house on King Street. As the crowd pushed the soldiers, taunting and daring them to fire, Private Hugh Montgomery was hit by a stick, which caused him to fall or slip. He then fired his weapon, and allegedly shouted at the others to fire. A number of the soldiers did so, killing three, mortally wounding two more and injuring six others. John Lathrop (1740–1816) was the Congregationalist minister of Boston’s Second Church from 1768. His sermon was part of a concerted effort to portray these events in a certain way. The most famous part of that effort was the much reproduced engraving by Boston silversmith Paul Revere of hard-faced soldiers

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firing on innocents entitled ‘The Boston Massacre’, which remains perhaps the most vivid and recognized image of the American Revolution. Lathrop’s con­ sciousness of the story’s significance and potential historical resonance is clear in his confidence that ‘The now lisping child will rehearse the tragical story to his attentive offspring, when revolving years have covered his head with silver locks. Future generations will read the account with sorrow, indignation, and surprize’ (below, p. 107). To ensure they get the right picture, he notes that ‘our most public streets were deeply dyed with innocent blood … our fellow-citizens shot to death – their garments rolled in blood, and corpses wallowing in gore’ (below, p. 107). Lathrop also hints at the possibility of revolution based on principles of natural rights, arguing that the whole world may be convinced of the infinite impropriety of quartering troops in a well-regulated city under a notion of assisting the civi[l] magistrate, or strengthen­ ing government … And that government which, rejecting the foundation of the law, would establish itself by the sword, the sooner it falls to the ground the better, that in its stead another might be established, more agreeable to the nature of man, and consistent with the great ends of society. (below, pp. 107–8)

For Lathrop, ‘natural notions were planted in our breasts by the God who made us’ and his sermon mostly addresses the massacre ‘in a religious manner’ (below, pp. 108, 107). His sermon’s title thus borrows from Cain’s confession in Genesis after the murder of Abel: ‘The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground’ (below, p. 107). According to Lathrop, The cry of innocent blood cannot be allayed, but by the death of the guilty! There is no evading this law where the murder is indubitably proved – no liberty to acquit the criminal – God, the supreme legislator, has given the magistrate no authority to alter or dispense with his law, or mitigate the punishment in any manner or degree. He shall surely be put to death! (below, pp. 109–10)

Lathrop would be disappointed. Preston was acquitted of ordering his men to fire, and enough doubt existed over who shot whom that only Montgomery and Private Matthew Kilroy were convicted of shooting respectively Crispus Attucks and Samuel Gray. Their defence also argued provocation by what John Adams later called ‘a motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes and mulattoes, Irish teagues, and outlandish jack tars’.1 They were thus convicted of manslaughter, after which they pleaded benefit of clergy and were branded on the thumb and freed. Notes: 1.

See H. B. Zobel, The Boston Massacre (New York: W. W. Norton, 1970), p. 292.

INNOCENT BLOOD CRYING TO GOD FROM THE

STREETS OF BOSTON.

A

SERMON OCCASIONED BY THE

HORRID MURDER OF Messieurs Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick, James Caldwell, and Crispus Attucks, with Patrick Garr, since dead, and Christopher Monk, judged irrecoverable, and several others badly wounded, by a Party of Troops under the Command of Captain Preston:

ON THE FIFTH OF MARCH, 1770,

AND PREACHED THE LORD’s-DAY FOLLOWING:

By JOHN LATHROP, A.M.

Pastor of the Second Church in Boston.

Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it was cruel – Gen. xlix. The remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain – Psal. lxxvi. 10.

LONDON:

Printed for E. and C. Dilly, in the Poultry, and J. Almon, in Piccadilly.

M.DCC.LXX. /

INTRODUCTION.

Mr. Lathrop says, That this sermon, wrote while innocent blood was fresh in view, was not designed for publication; and is now only yielded to, on earnest solicita­ tion. He is not conscious that it contains sentiments in anywise unjustifiable, or such as are unfit for any Briton or British American to have inculcated upon his mind in the present alarming situation of public affairs: but sentiments which he is well assured are peculiarly grateful to the people with whom the kind providence of God has placed him: sentiments adopted by all who are upon principle friends to the glorious Revolution: sentiments which gave the crown to the house of Hano­ ver: sentiments which brought our fathers into this new world; which were urged and defended with boldness and fervor by his predecessors, particularly the worthy and venerable Doctors Increase and Cotton Mather,1 and which he doubts not his brethren of the clergy in this country will be ready on all proper occasions to assert, however displeasing they may be to persons disposed to rob men of / that Liberty which the God of nature designed his rational creatures should enjoy. He observes, that some few among us were displeased with the notice the minis­ ters of this town thought themselves bound in duty to take of the late murders; but exclaims, Can it be thought that the heralds of the Almighty, whose commission obliges them to cry aloud, and not to spare! to reprove, rebuke, and proclaim on divine authority that the wages of sin is death; can it be supposed, be asks, that they will be silent when the blood of the people of their charge is spilled as water, and their carcases strowed in the streets? Verily no! For to do this were a great evil, and such as could not escape the righteous judgment of Almighty God! /

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INNOCENT BLOOD CRYING TO GOD FROM

THE GROUND.

GENESIS III. 10. – The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.

I Need not inform you, my hearers, that the bloody and most cruel action of last Monday evening led me to the choice of the words which have now been read, for the theme of the following discourse. We should be criminal to let such an awful affair pass over without taking notice of it in a religious manner. The unparalleled barbarity of those who were lately guilty of murdering a number of our innocent fellow-citizens will never be forgot. / The now lisping child will rehearse the tragical story to his attentive off­ spring, when revolving years have covered his head with silver locks. Future generations will read the account with sorrow, indignation, and surprize: sorrow for the dead, who fell victims to the merciless rage of wicked men: indignation against the worst of murderers, and surprize that any rational beings could be so destitute of every human feeling, as wantonly to destroy those who never did, or thought of doing them any hurt. But we have seen the gloomy time when our brethren were murdered before our eyes, and our most public streets were deeply dyed with innocent blood. How affecting, unutterably affecting, to see our fellow-citizens shot to death – their garments rolled in blood, and corpses wallowing in gore, upon our Exchange, the place of general concourse, where our most respectable inhabitants meet every day! But such a scene has been acted – yea the blood of the slain is but now washed from the pavements. A noble spirit indeed has appeared on this occasion, not only in securing the presumed murderers that they may be brought to trial; but insisting that all the troops should be removed from among us. / From this violent out-breaking, and innumerable disorders that might be mentioned, the whole world may be convinced of the infinite impropriety of – 107 –

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quartering troops in a well-regulated city under a notion of assisting the civi[l] magistrate, or strengthening government. I pray God we may never behold a like appearance on a like pretence! It is time for that magistrate to resign, who cannot depend on the assistance of his neighbours and fellow-citizens in the administra­ tion of justice. And that government which, rejecting the foundation of the law, would establish itself by the sword, the sooner it falls to the ground the better, that in its stead another might be established, more agreeable to the nature of man, and consistent with the great ends of society. But we shall leave these considerations to the improvement of the politicians of the day, and pursue the thoughts which the words read seem naturally to sug­ gest. What I design, is to shew particularly when it may be said, that innocent blood crieth unto God in the sense of our text, and then make some reflections suitable to the occasion. / First then, Human blood crieth unto God, when it is shed in a wanton or cruel manner, without warrant from the law of the land or law of nations, founded upon and consistent with the law of nature written upon the heart by God him­ self, to speak in the language of inspiration. Before there was any such thing as civil government, which is founded on compact or the agreement of a number of people upon some plan to secure their general happiness, every individual had a perfect right to his own person, life, and limbs, and a clear sense of his duty and interest in preserving and defending them against the attacks of any one. These natural notions were planted in our breasts by the God who made us, and would for ever lead us to determine that the life of man is sacred, and his blood not to be shed, unless forfeited by some atrocious crime. In the yet uncultivated wilds of America, so strong are these moral notices, that the man who is conscious of having murdered another, does not pretend to resist the surviving relation, who takes upon himself the office of an avenger of blood, but calmly bows his head to receive the fatal blow. Hence well observes St. Paul, that the heathen, which have not the (written) law, are a law unto themselves: their understandings and consciences witnessing / the jus­ tice of the divine decree, that, he who sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed. To refuse, or unreasonably delay doing justice upon the murderer, is to let the blood of the innocent, like that of Abel, cry unto God for vengeance. The murderer forfeits his right to life even in a state of nature, where there is no civil authority: in that case every man is in some sense a minister of justice, and may execute the law which God has written upon his heart. And whether that universal practice which obtains among the savages, of the nearest kinsman pursuing and slaying the murderer of his relation, is not strictly justifiable upon principles of natural law, will I think scarce admit of a question.

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Thus much is plain, we have no security for life in the neighbourhood of a person having a disposition and power to destroy us: self-preservation therefore obliges us, on failure of other expedients, to cut off such a common and danger­ ous enemy. And it seems as if all who found him, whether related to the slain or not, might fall upon and dispatch him. / How strong a sense of this appears in the sad expostulation of guilty, selfcondemned Cain? – Every one that findeth me shall slay me. From the case of Abel, who was murdered before the promulgation of any law in that behalf, it is sufficiently evident that the blood which was unjustly shed called aloud to God for vengeance, whether it was his will that the shedder should be destroyed by a relation of the slain, or by whoever met with him; or whether, acting as Supreme Judge, he reserved the execution to himself. We add secondly, The blood which is shed contrary to the revealed law of God calls to him from the ground. God shewed his absolute abhorrence of murder from the beginning: he denounced a tremendous curse against him who was first guilty of it. From the nature of the crime, and the fear which Cain expressed, it is more than prob­ able that murder was punished by death in the most early ages, though we find no express law requiring it till after the flood, when the solemn declaration, in part cited before, was made. And surely your blood of your lives will I require: at the hand of every beast will I require it; and / at the hand of a man, at the hand of every man’s brother, will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man. In these words the value of human life is fixed; a guard is set upon it by God himself, and that penalty is fully expressed which the Author of Life is pleased should be incurred by him who unjustly dares to take it away. The life of man is highly valued – for in the image of God made he man. This value was set upon the life of man, even when he was a sinner; for notwithstand­ ing the depravity of human nature, none of God’s works in this part of the system are worthy to be compared with the children of men. They are capable of higher services and more refined enjoyments than the beasts that perish. They are therefore protected with more care. Even the irrational creature, who is capable of neither moral good nor evil, must be killed if by a wild ungov­ ernable rage he should destroy a man. No less excusable is the rage of man if he really intended to kill, unless in defence of his own life under absolute necessity, he shall surely be put to death, according to the immutable sentence of the great Jehovah! / The cry of innocent blood cannot be allayed, but by the death of the guilty! There is no evading this law where the murder is indubitably proved – no liberty to acquit the criminal – God, the supreme legislator, has given the magistrate no authority to alter or dispense with his law, or mitigate the punishment in any

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manner or degree. He shall surely be put to death! And if that punishment is not inflicted, innocent blood will cry from the ground – it will cry for vengeance to fall not only on the murderer wherever he is, but upon those, whoever they are, that divert the course of justice, and cause the murderers to go unpunished. These capital punishments are doubtless very disagreeable services – to put an end to the life of one of our fellow-men is shocking. The tender feelings of human nature strongly, strongly plead in behalf of the criminal, and beseech the judges if possible to shew mercy. But should any degree of tenderness – should the strongest inclination to mercy – or should all the horrors of an execution influence a conduct so contrary to the law of God? When the Lord of heaven has declared he shall surely die, and moreover added, thou shalt not pity him, but thou shalt put away the / guilt of innocent blood, shall any pretend to pity – shall any, at the expence of incurring the vengeance due to blood-guiltiness, dare to acquit, to spare, or solicit a pardon! Thirdly, Human blood crieth from the ground, when it is shed contrary to the laws of the community within which it is spilled. Civil government, if good, is founded upon the law of nature, or the revealed law of God – the divine pleasure is an universal law, eternally binding upon all rational creatures; whether this pleasure be known by certain notions of right and wrong, which all men have within them – by the declarations of holy men who have been favoured with intimate acquaintance with God – or by immedi­ ate revelations from the Deity himself. That he who formed the universe should be lord and king, is a conclusion few, if any, will deny. This only absolute Monarch has an indisputable right to make such laws, and establish such rules of government, as he knows will best suit the nature and mutual relations of all his / subjects, and serve best to promote and secure the general happiness of all. – That it is the will of God his creatures should be happy, is very evident from his own most solemn declarations. It is also in a good degree evident from the unextinguishable thirst after it, placed by God in every sensitive being. All wish for it; and however diverse our notions of happiness may be, ‘the eternal sigh’ covets it with most ardent desire and steady attention. It is utterly unworthy, and inconsistent with every idea of infinite wisdom and power, of inexhaustible fullness and unbounded beneficence, to suppose the Creator of man designed him only a composition of appetites, wants, and desires, for the reasonable gratification of which he has made no provision. Infi­ nitely more shocking would be the presumption, that he had left him open to all invasions from beasts of prey, and men more savage than the beast, and neglected to furnish him with means of defence or escape. One of the strongest affections or inclinations of the human mind is that for society. – The Lord God said, It / is not good that Man should be alone. The whole

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species, indeed every order of creatures, seem designed as meet helpers to each other. All the difficulty in civil and social life is, righteously to determine how much help we have a right to expect or demand of each other, and what shall be a just consideration for such assistance. The Author and Finisher of our faith has graciously solved this grand question, in a divine axiom, as copious and descrip­ tive, as plain and suitable to the human understanding. All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is the law – the eternal and immutable reason of things constituted to promote and secure the happiness of all. Government, in whatever form it may be established, can rightly aim at no other, and possibly at no higher end. Even the government of the Supreme Ruler of the universe is not pretended to aim at any thing more or greater! – The general good is therefore the end of all just government; and all the rules of conduct, agreed upon, all the statutes, laws, and precepts, enacted and promulged, are made with a view to promote and secure the / public good: and therefore the very nature and design of government require new laws to be made whenever it is found that the old ones are not sufficient; and old ones to be repealed, whenever they are found to be mischievous in their operation. Yea, if the essential parts of any system of civil government are found to be inconsist­ ent with the general good, the end of government requires that such bad system should be demolished, and a new one formed, by which the public weal shall be more effectually secured. – And further, if under any constitution of government the administration should vary from the fundamental designs of promoting and securing the common good; in such case the subjects are in duty bound to join all their strength to reduce matters to their original good order, whatever may be the fate of those wicked men who for ends of their own would subvert the RIGHTS of the people. – As no right is more sacred than that of every innocent man to enjoy his own life, and the law of nature authorizes every individual to defend his life, that sys­ tem which was given by God to his people contains a number of very particular laws to secure the lives of the innocent, and most positive injunctions for the extirpation of such as / are guilty of innocent blood, as has been mentioned in the former part of this discourse. In no point are the laws of our excellent consti­ tution more express; for what peace can be more sacred than the peace of God and the King, which every quiet subject has a right to; which nothing can destroy? From all the foregoing considerations it is plain, if any one by design slay another, or any-way cause an innocent person to be put to death, that innocent blood crieth unto God from the ground: it crieth for vengeance. It crieth to all who see it, or hear of its being shed. It crieth to the murderer himself, and requires him to submit to justice, and receive his punishment. It crieth to those that are witnesses, and requires them to give faithful testimony of what they know. Who­

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ever knows of murder and does not give information thereof, that the guilty may be brought to justice, will have innocent blood crying for vengeance to fall upon him. Innocent blood crieth to the magistrate, that the murderer be secured and brought to trial; it crieth to the judges, and requires that they see it avenged. And if innocent blood is not heard and avenged according to the strict requirements of the law of God and the laws of every good system of civil government, / it will continue to cry, not only against the murderer, but the government and land, which suffers murderers to go unpunished. Thus have I mentioned, as particularly as seemed necessary, when it may be said that human blood crieth unto God in the sense of the text. And what a solemn cry of innocent blood is now going up to heaven from our streets! The scene lately acted among us is on many accounts the most afflict­ ing that ever this place beheld! When consuming fires have repeatedly swept down a great number of our houses, the inhabitants escaping the flames viewed the loss of their substance as chargeable to the malevolence of no one: but in the late dreadful affair we saw the agents, and had nothing but destruction to expect from their unbounded and unbridled rage, had they happened to have force enough to have put their horrid designs in execution. The barbarous murder of young Snider on the 22d of last Month2 was dis­ tressing to all who had any feelings of humanity; but how aggravated was the horrid affair of last Monday night! / It is pretty evident from several plain testimonies, and a variety of circum­ stances, that a number of the troops, with other sons of Belial,3 were determined to murder the inhabitants – They began in several parts of the town – The alarmed people rang the bells to collect an aid for their security; and when they had obliged the first riotous soldiers to retire, and were dispersing, not expecting any further disturbance, a party of the troops fired upon a number of innocent people, unarmed and under no apprehension of such cruel treatment! Were our brethren killed by avowed enemies in time of open war, we should be grieved, it is true, but we could not complain; death and slaughter may then be expected: but in a time of profound peace, to have troops quartered among us on pretence of supporting government, where government has ever been sup­ ported as well as in any part of the known world – to be abused by common soldiers – to be assaulted by them in some or other part of the town almost every evening – to be wounded with the instruments of death – yea, finally, to see our brethren killed in cold blood – to behold their mortal gasps, and hear their dying groans – but I desist – the rehearsal of these things is too much for me. Who can reflect on the / horrors of that night without shuddering! What were our fears, when the inhabitants, roused by the murder of their brethren, were hurrying together – When the troops were all paraded, and with fire arms pre­ sented stood ready to attack or defend, from the just indignation of an enraged

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multitude, and nothing less than a general slaughter could be expected! To God alone be praise, that in this critical moment his divine power was displayed, and the remainder of wrath in so signal a manner restrained! No less conspicuous was the good hand of God in moving the hearts of those in power to exert themselves for the immediate relief of the people from further fears and dangers, to which a longer continuance of the troops in town would have subjected them. The wisest of men has well observed, and too sensibly have we found it verified, that persons cannot well dwell together unless they are agreed. The human heart must undergo a strange revolution before it can look kindly on the instruments of its ruin and destruction! We trust in God’s unerr­ ing Providence, that so unnatural a society will never be the subject of another experiment – That the civil magistrate will never again be furnished with such a band of assistants, as will rescue criminals out of his hands, and even / put his life in danger in the execution of his office – That the lower and looser part of our youth may never again have such additional temptations to forsake the paths of virtue and religion. Finally, that we may be allowed to live in the full enjoyment of all those important rights and privileges, both of a civil and religious nature, with which the God of our fathers has been pleased to favour this part of his heritage; let us take heed to our ways, let us by a pious and exemplary behaviour persuade men that Liberty and Religion are worth contending for – Let us chearfully conspire with our Lord and Master to do good unto all, even to the evil and unthankful. Let justice flow down our streets as a river, and righteousness as an overflowing stream – Let the sabbaths of the Lord, which have been too long profaned by the noise of drums and other martial instruments, be now sanctified by the reverent and peaceful exercises of religion. Let the late affecting spectacles of mortality – the awful pomp of so uncommon a funeral, excite us all to preparation for our own dissolution. Though we hope not to be murdered and cut off by the hand of violence, we are yet mortal. We must all die, it may be suddenly. Let us then seriously engage / and unweariedly persevere in the service of the Lord, that whenever we are called from this very precarious state, we may be found doing the will of our great God and Redeemer, and at last be admitted into eternal glory.

FINIS.

[ALLEN], AN ORATION ON THE BEAUTIES OF

LIBERTY

[Rev. John Allen], An Oration on the Beauties of Liberty, or The Essential Rights of the Americans. Delivered at the Second Baptist-Church in Boston, upon the last Annual Thanksgiving, Dec. 3d, 1772. Dedicated to the Right Honourable the Earl of Dartmouth. Published by the Earnest Request of Many, 4th edn, corrected (Boston: E. Russell, 1773).

After the Boston Massacre, troops withdrew to Castle William and enforce­ ment of taxes grew less rigorous. However, this ‘period of quiescence’, as Samuel Adams described it, ended with the 10 June 1772 Gaspée incident. HMS Gaspée ran aground in the shallows of north-western Narragansett Bay while chasing a Rhode Island packet boat, Hannah. Members of the Providence Sons of Lib­ erty, including John Brown, Joseph Bucklin and Abraham Whipple, rowed out to the ship and at dawn overwhelmed the crew and burnt the HMS Gaspée to the waterline. Bucklin shot and wounded Lieutenant William Dudingston. In August 1772, William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth and Colonial Secretary, established a Royal Commission of Inquiry to bring the perpetrators to trial in England for treason, although the Commission failed to find sufficient evidence to make any formal accusations. British reaction to the incident alarmed colonists immensely. Hence John Allen’s An Oration, upon the Beauties of Liberty had seven editions published in four different cities between 1773 and 1775, although its strident and emo­ tive defence of American liberty also helped it become one of the best-selling pamphlets of its time. Allen’s origins are obscure, but in the early 1760s he was a Baptist minister in Salisbury and in 1764 at the Particular Baptist Church in Petticoat Lane, London. His draper’s business failed, however, leading to confine­ ment at the King’s Bench for debt. He was then dismissed from his Broadstairs church, near Newcastle, for bad behaviour, and in 1768 was teaching in London. In January 1769 he was accused of forgery and, though acquitted, his reputation was ruined. He moved to New York in 1770 and Boston 1772. Echoing John Lathrop’s sermon,1 Allen noted that ‘Abel’s blood, which cried to Heaven for

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vengeance, is still heard in Boston streets’ (below, p. 127), but his main concern was with the Gaspée incident. Allen agreed that natural rights were also ‘divine rights’, though his work was less theological and more political. Allen dedicated the sermon to Lord Dartmouth, debating where responsibility lay for Britain’s attack on American liberties after the incident, although he clearly blamed the minister himself. However, it hardly mattered constitutionally whether Brit­ ain’s response was orchestrated by the King, ministry or Parliament, for none of them had the right to exercise power over the citizens of Rhode Island. Also, the argument that the charge of treason was overblown mattered less than the fact that for Allen no British judicial authority existed in Rhode Island. He begins the pamphlet by noting that Rhode Island’s charter guaranteed liberties. Yet his arguments for colonial liberties apply to royal as much as to chartered colonies. Allen urged readers, foreshadowing Thomas Jefferson’s Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), to Consider what English tyranny their Forefathers fled from; what seas of distress they met with; what savages they fought with; what blood-bought treasures, as the dear inheritance of their lives, they have left to their children. Without any aid from the King of England (below, p. 125)

They were therefore in effect independent, linked to Britain only by common allegiance to the King as protector of their liberties. Also, foreshadowing Jeffer­ son’s Declaration of Independence but citing the revolutions of 1649 and 1688, Allen claimed ‘that the right and fountain of power and authority originate in’ the people, who therefore retain the right to withdraw any authority they confer on ‘their trustees’ (below, p. 123). For Allen, furthermore, ‘it is no rebellion to oppose any King, Ministry, or Governor, that destroys by any violence or authority whatever, the Rights of the people’ (below, p. 139). In a second section Allen compares biblical ‘oppression’ and ‘evil’ with contemporary examples and explores the rights and wrongs of characters of princes and judges, cleverly built around quotes from Micah 7:3. The fourth edition also contains ‘A few Stric­ tures on Liberty of Conscience, part of which was delivered at a Public School in Boston, and were left out in all the former editions’ (below, p. 140) and ‘Remarks on the Rights and Liberties of the Africans’ (below, p. 143), attacking enslavement as ‘evil’ and un-Christian. The pamphlet ends with a transcription of a famous slave petition of 1773 to the Massachusetts General Assembly requesting liberty and relocation to Africa. Despite the success of this and other publications, including his theological Spirit of Liberty (1770) and (as ‘Junius junior’) political The Watchman’s Alarm (1774), which denounced slavery, Allen’s psychological and perhaps alcoholic problems remained with him. He disappeared alone to New Hampshire in 1774 where he died sometime between 1783 and 1788.2

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Notes: 1. See above, pp. 101–13. 2. J, Benedict, ‘Allen, John [pseud. Junius junior] (d. 1783x8), Particular Baptist Minister and Writer’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 1, pp. 801–2.

AN

ORATION ON THE

Beauties of LIBERTY, OR THE ESSENTIAL

RIGHTS OF THE AMERICANS. DELIVERED At the Second Baptist-Church in Boston,

Upon the last Annual Thanksgiving, Dec. 3d, 1772.

Dedicated to the Right Honorable the Earl of Dartmouth.1

Published by the earnest Request of many.

The Fourth Edition, carefully corrected by the Author, in which are many Additions, particularly those four Pages which were left out of the last Editions. With some Strictures on the Eternal Right of Mankind, Liberty of Conscience. And Remarks on the Rights and Liberties of the Africans, inserted by particular Desire.

By a British Bostonian. BOSTON: N.E. Printed and Sold by E. Russell, next the Cornfield, Union-street, near the

Market.

M, DCC, LXXIII. /

TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE THE EARL OF

Dartmouth.

My Lord, WHEN I view the original right, power, and Charter confirmed, sealed, and ratified to the province, or inhabitants of Rhode-Island, and its standing in full force, and unrepealed for more than an hundred years;2 surely your Lordship will not blame them, if they stand fast in the Liberty wherein they were made free: The words of their Charter are, ‘Be it enacted, that no freeman, shall be taken, or imprisoned, or deprived of his freehold, or liberty, or free custom, or be out-lawed, or exiled, or otherwise destroyed; nor shall be oppressed, judged, or condemned, but by the laws of this colony. – And that no man, of what state or condition soever, / shall be put out of his lands or tenements, nor taken, nor imprisoned, nor disinherited, nor banished (observe this my Lord) nor any way destroyed, or molested, without being, for it, brought to answer, by a due course of law of this COLONY.’ As a fly, or a worm, by the law of nature, have as great a right to Liberty and Freedom, (according to their little sphere in life) as the most potent monarch upon earth: And as there can be no essential difference between your Lordship and myself in the kingdom of Liberty, but what is political, I therefore, without any further apology, take leave to ask your Lordship, Whether any one that fears God and loves his neighbor as himself, (which is the true scripture-mark of a Christian) will OPPRESS his fellow-creatures? If he does, where are the beauties of christianity? Not to be seen in this life, however they may be in the next. / I have seen an authenticated copy of your Lordship’s letter to the Governor of Rhode-Island,3 in which are such dictations, directions, and positive commands, to oppress with tyranny, a free people, as are inconsistent with a good man or a Christian to have any concern or agency in. The law of God directs us to do unto others, as we would they should do unto us. And know­ ing that your Lordship is well acquainted with the divine oracles, having had the honor to dine at your Lordship’s seat in Staffordshire; and being, when in England, personally acquainted with Mr. Wright, your Lordship’s Steward, and with the good and pious character which your Lordship bears, with submission – 121 –

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to a person in your exalted station, may I take leave (as a fellow-christian, as one that loves, as the highest happiness of his existence, the beauties, spirit, and life of christianity) to ask whether your Lordship would like to have an English­ man’s birth-right, Liberty and / Freedom taken away by his King, or Ministry, or both? Would not your Lordship immediately say, it is tyranny, oppression, and destruction, by a despotic power? Would not your Lordship be ready to alarm the nation, and point out the political hapiness of the people upon the eve of destruction. My Lord, Are not the Liberties of the free-born American Rhode-Islanders as dear to them as those of Britons? Have they not their own laws, judges, and juries to defend and determine their rights? Suppose a Nobleman had broke the laws of his King and country; would he not be willing, nay, has he not an undoubted right to expect to be tried by a jury of his peers, according to the laws of the land? How would he like to be fettered with irons, and dragged three thousand miles in a hell upon water (a man of war) to take his trial? Is not this contrary / to the spirit of the law, and the rights of an Englishman? Yet, my Lord, have you not given direction, as the King’s agent, or the agent of the Ministry, to destroy the rights and laws of the Americans? If great men, and good men, and Christians can do such things as these, when in power, heaven grant that the oppressed may be relieved from their iron yoke and cruel bondage in this world: For, I think, my Lord, that such men, who take away the rights of any people are neither fit for heaven or earth, neither fit for the throne or the dunghill. Your Lordship lets us know that the case of burning the Gaspee Schooner has been laid before the Law Servants of the Crown, and that they make the crime of a deeper dye than piracy; namely, ‘an act of high treason, and levying a war against the King.’ My Lord, supposing this to be the case, are not the Rhode-Islanders subjects to the King of Great-Britain?4 / Has not the King his Attorney and Courts of Judicature to decide matters between the King and the subjects? Why then must there be new Courts of Admiralty erected to appoint and order the inhabitants to be confined and dragged away three thousand miles from their families, from their laws, rights, and liberties to be tried by their enemies? Do you think, my Lord, this is right in the sight of God and man? If the Rhode-Islanders suffer this infringement of their liberties, granted them by their Charter from the King of England, let them never complain of any hardships they may suffer from any tyranny: For was there ever such cruelty, injustice, and barbarity united against a free people before? and my Lord Dartmouth to direct in this matter! from whom we might have expected mildness, mercy, and a defence of the rights and liberties of the people.

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Your Lordship’s letter frequently / reminds us that this destructive author­ ity to deprive the people of their invaluable privileges, is his Majesty’s will and pleasure. How far his Majesty may be influenced and dictated by his Ministry I will not take upon me to say; but surely his Majesty is a person of more tender­ ness and understanding than to aim of his own heart at such tyranny: Besides, his attempting to infringe the Rights of the people on a bare supposition of offence at once destroys his Right, on revolution principles, to reign over them as their King: For, according to his coronation oath, he has no longer a right to the British Crown or Throne, than he maintains inviolably firm the Laws and Rights of the people: For violating the people’s Rights, Charles Stewart, King of England lost his head. I reverence and love my King; but I revere the Rights of an Englishman before any king on earth. I would greatly distinguish between a righteous King and a reigning Despot: / The one is the guardian and trustee of the Rights and Laws of the people; but the other destroys them. Besides, my good Lord, the inhabitants of America know as well as the peo­ ple of England, that the right and fountain of power and authority originate in them as the seat of Majesty, the authors of laws, and the creators of officers to execute them: And if at any time they shall find the power they have conferred, abused by their trustees; their majesty violated by tyranny or usurpation; their authority prostituted to support violence, or skreen corruption; the laws grown pernicious through accidents unforeseen, or rendered ineffectual through their infidelity: Then it is their right (and what is their right is undoubtedly their privilege) and duty as their essential Power and Majesty, to resume that delegated authority which they intrusted them with, and call their trustees to an account; / to resist the usurpation, and extirpate the tyranny; to restore their injured Right and essential majesty, and their prostituted authority; to suspend, alter, or abrogate those laws; and punish the unfaithful and corrupt officers. Nor is it the duty only of the united body; but every member of it ought, according to his respective rank, power, and weight in the community, to concur in advancing those glorious designs. This is, my Lord, the happy constitution of England, the power, right, and majesty of the people, which has been frequently recognized and established: By which majesty, right, and power, Kings are made and unmade by the choice of the people; and laws enacted and annulled only by their own consent; in which none can be deprived of their property, abridged of their freedom, or forfeit their lives, without an appeal to the laws and the verdict of their peers or equals. My Lord, as this is according / to the laws of England, the liberty, privilege, and power of his Majesty’s subjects in Great-Britain, why not then the privilege of his Majesty’s subjects in America? Has his Majesty (as it seems to be laid upon him) two kind of laws, one for Eng­ land, the other for America? Your Lordship says it is his Majesty with his Privy Council; I suppose the latter. Be it who it will, whether the King, Ministry, or

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Parliament, they have no more right to do it than they have to take your Lord­ ship’s life. Has not your Lordship a right to oppose any power that may assault your Lordship’s person, right, or privilege, without its being deemed rebellion against the King and State? Then surely, my Lord, an American has the same undoubted right to oppose every usurping power, let it be from whom it may, that assaults his person, or deprives him of his own law or Liberty as an Ameri­ can. Has he offended? Yes. Is he willing to be tried by his own / laws? Yes. Then that man, that King, that Minister of State, (be he who he will) is worse than a Nero-Tyrant,5 that shall assume to drag him three thousand miles to be tried by his enemies. What is rebellion, my Lord? If I understand it right, Rebels are persons ris­ ing up, with an assumed authority and power to act, dictate, and rule, in direct violation to the laws of the land. I believe, my Lord, I am right, for this rea­ son, because your G— F—g,6 and your G—r T—n,7 when in North-Carolina, thought so; and like cruel, blood-thirsty savages, murdered mankind for uniting to oppose that bloody power who attempted to destroy their lives and Liber­ ties. This was, my Lord, a cruel barbarous slaughter of mankind. – However, if it was deemed rebellion in them, and they were treated as rebels, because they (as the ministry said) broke the laws of the government / of the Province. Then surely it follows, that the K—g, M—y, and P—t are Rebels to God and man­ kind, in attempting to overthrow, [(]by guns, by swords, and by the power of war) the laws and government of Rhode-Island. Have not the Rhode-Islanders as much right to the privileges of their own laws, as the King of England has to his Crown? Sure they have. Then surely that man must be a Tyrant in his soul that deems it rebellion in the Rhode-Islanders if they kill every man that attempts to destroy their lives, laws, rights, or liberties. It is true, my Lord, the Gaspee Schooner is destroyed, and thereby the laws of England are violated, as you apprehend, either by Indians out of the woods, or by Rhode-Islanders, I cannot say who; but it is a query with me, my Lord, whether there be any law broke in burning the Gaspee Schooner. If it was done by the Indi­ ans (which is the / current report) then there is no law broke; for the Scripture says, where there is no law, there is no transgression. And it is well known that the Indians were never under any law to the English. Did I say they were never under any law to the English? Heaven forgive me! I mean, my Lord, no other law than English tyranny –; the same law that some would fain bring the Americans under now. But suppose, my Lord, that this deed was done by the Rhode-Islanders, the query is still with me, whether there be any transgression committed, according to the above citation. For the question is, do the Rhode-Islanders receive their laws from England? If so, there is a transgression committed against those laws; but if not, there is no transgression; for it is said, where there is no law, there is no transgression. For my part, I cannot see how any man in America can be said

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to break the laws of England. The whole lies here; the laws of America only are / broke; let the offender then be tried by the law which he has broke: What can justice, (I had almost said tyranny) desire more? However, my Lord, there is another idea arises in my mind, (and it is no wonder, for the Bostonians are very notional) which is, if there is any law broken, is it not the King and Ministry who have broke it. Some persons would be glad to know what right the King and Ministry have to send an armed schooner to Rhode-Island, to take away the priv­ iledge of the people, any more than they have to send an armed schooner into Brest, and demand the property of France. You know that the King of England has no right, according to the laws of God and nature, to claim the property of the Americans without their consent. Liberty, my Lord, is the native right of the Americans; it is the blood-bought treasure of their Forefathers; and they have the same essential right to their native laws as they have to the air they breath in, or / to the light of the morning when the sun rises: And therefore they who oppress the Americans must he as great enemies to the law of nature, as they who would be, if it were in their power, vail the light of the sun from the universe. My Lord, the Americans have a privilege to boast of above all the world: They never were in bondage to any man, therefore it is more for them to give up their Rights, than it would be for all Europe to give up their Liberties into the hands of the Turks. Consider what English tyranny their Forefathers fled from; what seas of distress they met with; what savages they fought with; what blood-bought treasures, as the dear inheritance of their lives, they have left to their children, and without any aid from the King of England; and yet after this, these free-born people must be counted Rebels, if they will not loose every right to Liberty, which their venerable Ancestors purchased at / so great expence as to lose their lives in accomplishing; and shall not their descendants be strenuous to maintain inviolate those sacred Rights, which God and Nature have given them, to the latest posterity. O America! America let it never be said that you have deserted the Grand Cause, and submitted to English ministerial tyranny. My Lord, I hope I need not remind your Lordship of the enquiry that the divine Messiah made to Peter, when they required a tax, or tribute from him. Of whom, says Christ to Peter, do they gather tax; of the children or of strangers? And Peter said, of strangers; Then, says Christ, the children are free.8 Now, the Gaspee Schooner, my Lord, was a stranger, and they should, if it was in their commission, have gathered tax from strangers; but instead of which they would gather it from the children. They forgot that the children were free: Therefore, my Lord, it must certainly / be, that the Gaspee Schooner has committed the trans­ gression and broke the laws of the freedom of this country. No doubt, my Lord, but they have a right to tax the strangers who come to dwell in their country; but to tax the children which are free in their own native country, nature forbids it; the law of God condemns it; and no law, but that of tyrants can desire it.

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Therefore, it was, my Lord, that the children (who are by the laws of God and nature free) looked upon the Gaspee Schooner as a stranger, and as such they treated her: But when the stranger attempted to gather tax of the children who are free, then they looked upon her, as a Pirate, who took away their prop­ erty without their consent, by violence, by guns, by oaths and damning power. This they thought looked so like piracy, they did not like it: They thought the behavior of the strangers was very unpolite; as they / could not so much as pass by them, but must bow to them, and come to them: This the children, who were free, did not like, but thought it best for themselves and the strangers all to be free: And therefore, one night, my Lord, they, it is said, set the strangers (who by the way were all prisoners) free – free upon the face of the whole earth; and to preserve them free, they burnt their prison. Now, my Lord, would it not be hard to hang these poor men for it? However, if there is any law broke, the Gaspee Schooner, by the power of the English Ministry and Admiralty, have broke it, by taking away the Liberties of the Americans. And yet must the Americans be punished for it contrary to their own laws. O! amazing! Some would be glad to know, my Lord, what right the King of England has to reign over America? It cannot be an hereditary right that lies in Hanover: It cannot be a parliamentary right that lies in Britain; nor a victorious right, / for the King of England never conquered America. Then he can have no more right over America than what the people have, by com­ pact, invested him with, which is only a power to protect them, and defend their rights civil and religious; and to sign, seal, and confirm, as their King, such laws as the people of America shall consent to. If this be the case, my Lord, then judge whether the Admiralty or the Ministry are not the transgressors in this affair, by sending armed Schooners to America, to take by power and sword the people’s property. And if any are to be tried for law-breaking, it surely ought, in justice, to be those who broke them. But the people of America act, my Lord, very honest in the affair; they are willing to give and take; to give the English offenders the liberty to be tried by their own laws, and to take the same liberty, if they have offended, to be tried by their own laws. They surely have as much right to the privileges of their own laws as the / King of England has to his Crown, or as the natives of Britain have to the rights of an Englishman. My Lord, how cruel, how unjust, how unanswer-before God and man must it be, by any violence and power to destroy the rights and laws of the Americans. The close of your Lordship’s letter is enough to make nature shudder and stand stagnated as a testimony against ministerial bloody power. It not only gives a right to every American to be angry, but to be exceeding angry with your Lordship, wherein you tell the Governor of Rhode-Island, that it is his Majesty’s pleasure, that General Gage9 hold the troops in readiness to assist this assumed Court of Admiralty to destroy the rights of the people. What, my Lord, are

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bloody Bonner’s10 days so near America? O America! O America! What the bloody power of the sword and death to aid Civil Magistrates to destroy the people’s rights? Stay a little, my Lord, / give a little breathing time, for it is a solemn thing to die. What man – what good man, more especially what Chris­ tian can he be, that can give and seal a testimony as an agent, not only to destroy the rights of a people, but oppress them with the military power of blood and death, is enough to make the Earth to reel, and all Heaven to mourn. Be aston­ ished, O ye Heavens at this! I hope, my Lord, never to see that bloody, barbarous assassination in America, which I saw the Scotch barbarian troops, through the orders of Lord B—n and Lord W—h spread in St. George’s fields.11 Remember the blood of young Allen cries to Heaven for vengeance in their face; and a louder voice than that of Abel’s blood, which cried to Heaven for vengeance, is still heard in Boston streets, against a bloody military power; and though the murderers escaped by a scene well known to some, but too dark to explain, yet the God of truth and justice stands at the door. Supposing, / my Lord, that the Rhode-Islanders, for the sake of the blood-bought Liberties of their Forefathers; for the sake of the birthrights of their children, should shew a spirit of resent­ ment against a tyrannical arbitrary power that attempts to destroy their lives, liberties, and property; would it not be unsufferably cruel for their doing what the law of nature and nations teaches them to do to be butchered, assassinated, and slaughtered in their streets by their own King? Consider, my Lord, that we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that it would be a cold cor­ dial for your Lordship, at the bar of God, to have thousands of Americans rise up in judgment: Yet I would rather this should be the case, though I suffer death with them, than they should lose their essential rights as Americans. But it may be meet to let your Lordship know, that if the Americans unite (as there seems a good prospect) to / stand, as a band of brethren for their Liber­ ties. They have a right, by the law of God, of nature, and of nations, to reluct at, and even to resist any military or marine force. But surely the exile troops in their Castle, and the marine force in their harbour must be intended in readiness for the French, not for Americans; for can it ever enter into the heart of a mother to murder her children? of a King to kill his subjects? of an agent to destroy the rights of the Colonies he represents? But suppose, my Lord, that it should be the bloody intent of the Ministry, to make Americans subject to their slavery; what can the Ministry expect but blood for blood, life for life, and death for death to decide the contention. This bloody scene is infinitely far from being desired, nor can it ever be executed but at the expence of the destruction of England. And you will find, my Lord, that the Americans will not submit to be Slaves: They know the use of the gun, and the millitary art / as well as any of his Maj­ esty’s troops at St. James’s: And where his Majesty has one soldier, America can produce fifty free men, and all volunteers; and raise a more potent army of men

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in three weeks, than England can in three years. But God forbid that I should be thought to aim at rouzing the Americans to arms, without their rights, liber­ ties, and oppression call for it. For they are unwilling to beat to arms: As loyal subjects they love their King: They love their Mother-Country: They call it their Home, and wish nothing more than the prosperity of Britain, and the glory of their King. But they will not give up their rights, nor be slaves to any power upon earth. Therefore, my Lord, as a peace-maker; as their agent; as their friend, lay their grievance before their King. Let the Americans enjoy their birthright blessings, and Britain her prosperity. May there be a mutual union between the mother and her children, in all the blessings of life, / trade, and happiness: Then, my Lord both Britons and Americans, will call you blessed. Wishing from my heart, the inviolable preservation of the Rights and Liberties of the Americans, and the growing happiness of England. For this end, the following ORATION on the Divine Rights of the People, is, with permission and reverence, put into your Lordship’s hands, By your Lordship’s most obedient, humble Servant, A British Bostonian.

INTRODUCTION TO THE

ORATION. LIBERTY, my dear Hearers, is the life of life, it is the soul of man, the breath of the divine Being – Liberty, it shines with the light of / the morning – the rising Sun, as the herald of Heaven proclaims it – Angels adore it – sun, moon, and stars in their course praise it. The Heavens sing of it – the worm seeks it – fire and hail, snow and vapour, stormy winds and raging seas, waves and billows, moun­ tains and all hills, fruitful trees and cedars, beasts and the cattle upon a thousand hills, the waving corn and flying fowl, in the Heavens aloud declare it, and all the trees of the field, says the Prophet, clap their hands. Liberty! who would not prize it? Who would not adore it? It is the finished work of Heaven! the glory of omnipotence! the majesty of a God! the display of his power, wisdom, and perfection. All nature bespeaks it! and the whole Creation, in its primevial state celebrates its praise. The Heavens declare thy glory, O God, and the firma­ ment sheweth thy handy work. The Heavens – as the word denotes to expand, open, or spread abroad. O this is Liberty / divine, the unoriginated glory of the Deity. What is Liberty in all its beauties? Is it not the image of Jehovah? the resemblance of the God whom we adore? The brightness of his power, and the first blessings of love to mankind, from the womb of the morning. Hence that

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phrase among the Poets, the goddess Liberty; from its being so near a-kin to the Deity, as the eternal right of nature, and breath of every being. Where is the man that would not spread her banner, shout her victory – reside beneath her wings, and proclaim with the Gentile Champion of the Lord of Host, Stand fast in the Liberty wherein Christ hath made you free, and be not entangled in the yoke of bondage. What are the wings of the morning, the glories of the creation, the beau­ ties of redemption, but the expansion of Liberty? If I take, (says the Prophet) the wings of the morning.12 How grand the thought! How sublime the expression! What are these wings but the / chariots of Liberty – the kingdom of the mind – the path that Angels walk – the way that man desires; the blessing that the God of Heaven has given. Therefore nature put forth her hand, and took it as her right: God said, Let there be light and there was light; let the dry land appear and it was so: And he breathed into man the breath of life, and man became a liv­ ing soul. The beauties of redemption – Here let me make a solemn pause – The word redemption denotes it, the Prophets declare it, the Apostles preached it, and Christ has sealed it. This is the subject, my dear Hearers, of our present meditation – the theme of our thoughts – the orb of our bliss – the hemisphere of our happiness. Liberty, it invites me, nay it more than invites me, it com­ mands me with her dying looks, languishing in your arms to speak, however little I may say for her before she dies – from the words of the inspired Prophet. /

MICAH VII. 3. That they may do evil with both hands earnestly, the Prince asketh, and the Judge asketh for a reward; and the great Man he uttereth his mischievous desire: So they wrap it up.

FIDELITY, zeal, and faithfulness for the inviolable preservation of the beauties of Liberty, both civil and sacred, when tyranny reigns by authority, is what every man of soul and sentiment will admire: This the Prophet Micah appeared to be replete with, as one who revered the laws of his God, the rights of the peo­ ple, and the liberties of his brethren, above any arbitary authority of the King, or despotic power of the Senate. Liberty has in all ages had her friends, her vota­ ries; the law that binds Kings in fetters, protects her kingdom as her strength and power in the face of death and dangers. For this end was the Prophet Micah raised by God / in the days of that wicked King, Ahaz, 2 Chron. xxviii. 1–19, 22. And Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem; but he did not that which was right in the fight of the Lord, like David his father. Ver. 19. For the Lord brought Judah low, because of Ahaz, King of Israel; for he made Judah naked, and transgressed sore against the Lord, ver. 22.

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And in the time of this distress did he trespass yet more against the Lord – this is that King Ahaz. Hence it was that the Prophet, like a Son of Liberty in the day of adversity told the oppressors of the people, That the best of them was as a brier, and the most upright of them sharper than a thorn hedge. By this figure the Prophet makes the people feel as well as hear. That those Princes, Rulers, and Judges who destroyed the Rights of the subjects were as great a curse to the state, and likewise to / the people as briers and thorns are to the earth. Behold with what majesty and com­ mand the Prophet speaks! As an herald of the Lord of Host, who had received his commission from the God of Heaven. His words command attention; he speaks with energy divine, Micah i. 1. The word of the Lord that came to Micah, the Morasthite in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, Kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem. And in ver. 2, with what spirit, power, and pathos, like an Orator in Israel – like a Poet as well as a Prophet does he deliver himself to the people. Methinks I see the Prophet as it were take the wings of the morning, the free unbounded thoughts of his soul, and survey the distant globe, brings the inhabitants of the earth before him, and place them as his audience at his feet. Then, like a Master, a Prophet, a sweet singer in Israel, he said, Hear all ye people, hearken O earth and all that therein is. How / poeti­ cal and sublime! How solemn does the Prophet declare the message of Heaven to the people! Where is the ear that can now be deaf ? Where is the heart that does not feel? Behold, says the Prophet, the Lord cometh! Well may the universe move, and all the earth obey, when Jehovah comes, before whom all nations are as nothing, who supports all nature with his arm! and commands Heaven with a look, and worlds unnumbered with a word. Here we may borrow the grand ideas of the royal Prophet, Psa. cxiv. 7. Tremble thou earth at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob! How grand and majestic, how heavenly and sublime does the inspired Penmen of Israel speak! Their oratory is divine! their words are omnipotent; the figures they use are transcendent, – their ideas are like those of Angels. Hab. iii. 3, &c. Here Homer’s thoughts, and Virgil’s ideas,13 so much admired, perish with poverty, coldness, and death, before the majesty / and sublimity of the Orators in Israel. These are the Chariots! These are the horsemen thereof ! Hence, says the Prophet Micah, Hear ye now what the Lord saith: Arise, contend thou before the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice. This is language divine! and confirms the Bible to be a revelation from Heaven: Hence the Prophet proceeds to deliver his embasy in such lofty images to the people, Hear O mountains the Lord’s controversy. And what this contro­ versy is, that the mountains, and the hills, that the earth and all therein are called to hear, the Prophet expresseth in the words preceeding our text. The good man is perished out of the earth, and there is none upright among men; they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net. How beautiful a descrip­

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tion is this of mankind. Is the good man perished? What is he in the grave? Yes. Then you see the reason why mankind are so miserably mistaken in / seeking for the good man. The good man is perished, says the Prophet: But mankind are seeking the living among the dead; and it seems nothing will prevent them, (it may be with a good desire) if the irony has not too much steel in it. The words of a rich man in a very unhappy place, occurs at this time, Luke xvi. 30. And he said, Nay, Father Abraham, but if one went to them from the dead they will repent; nothing less than this can excuse them. Does not the Prophet tell them, that there is none upright among men? Why will not mankind then believe? Does the Prophet speak a word more then men and mortals daily find, and feel, either reli­ giously or politically, that there is no man of perfection. – Therefore he adds, they hunt every man his brother with a net. By this metaphor the Prophet beautifully describes the surrounding, entangling snares, and catching designs of mankind, of Priest and people, that it is hard to escape the / net; but it is much harder to get out of it. Take it politically, How is the net spread? Does not an arbitary M—y, a pensioned G—r, a blocked up Harbour, a Castle secured, with a voice like an Arch-angel, tell you? If not, let the voice of the blood of your brethren in Kingstreet speak.14 But it said, in vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird; which gives a chearful hope that the eagle-eyed Americans will prove, by their love to Liberty, that it is in vain, notwithstanding the united powers against them, as they are expressed in the words of my text; That they may do evil with both hands earnestly, the Prince asketh, and the Judge asketh for a reward; and the great Man he uttereth his mischie­ vous desire: So they wrap it up. Which words are the subject of our present thought, and, in their natural branches, are as follow; That they may do evil. / Evil is the essence of sin, and the dismal consequence of it: It is a sham guilt, or the ponderous weight of guiltiness before God and man. Hence we see the beauty and blessing of that direction in our Lord’s Prayer, deliver us from evil, and the happiness of our Lord’s intercession for us, Joh. xvii. 15. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. Likewise we now see the important request of Jabez, who was more honourable than his brethren, who prayed to the Lord and said, Keep me from evil that it may not grieve me, and God granted him the thing that he requested; and likewise the beauty of David’s petition, Let not any sin or evil have domin­ ion over me.

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This shews if evil be the essence and guilt of sin, how wicked must it be to commit it – to do it with both hands. And yet how much more to do it earnestly. To do evil then is dreadful to / mankind; it wounds their consciences; it stains their names and reputation before God and man – it is dismal to a family, as it often plunges them in affliction, to mourn in sackloth and ashes – it is dismal to a congregation, as it breaks the beauties of peace and the happy bonds of love – It is yet more dismal in a Minister to commit or continue in any evil, as he thereby in a great measure vailes the beauties of the blessings of salvation. But it is dreadful in a political sense, which is at present more immediately our theme and thought, when the King’s Ministry, Senates, and Judges of the land unite to destroy the Rights and Liberties of the people. O what an evil is this! But to do it with both hands, namely, with all their princely power, arbitary authority, and united strength, this is dreadful indeed; but to do this evil ear­ nestly, as tho’ their heart was set upon it with all the intentness of desire, feeling no tear – hearing no prayer – seeing no sorrow – harkening to no petition – / regardless of every remonstrance from the people. What are their hearts ada­ mant? their breasts brass? their nature iron? What, can nothing awaken them? Does not the kingdom tremble, the Crown shake, while the pillars of Liberty totter? What, do they want an Alexander15 to move them? a Cæsar16 to conquer them? Are not the prayers and petitions of the people, especially the united mil­ lions of America, and Great-Britain, more powerful to persuade than the arms of the universe to conquer? Are the beauties of nature, safety and security, left the bosom of the King? Or are the guardian Angels of honour, feeling and fidelity left the Senate? What do the people ask, that their King will not hear them? Is it any thing unreasonable? Does it exceed the bounds of the prayer of inspiration? And they spake unto him, namely King Rehoboam, saying, If thou wilt be a Serv­ ant unto this people, and wilt serve them, and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they will be thy servants forever. / If they ask no more, they have the same right to be heard as the King has to the dignity of his Crown – and what may not the King fear, if he has Rehoboam’s heart, by the advice of his young Counsellors, he will surely find the same revolu­ tion in his people that Rehoboam did. So when they saw that the King hearkened not unto them, the people answered the King, saying, What portion have we in David? Neither have we inheritance in the Son of Jesse, &c. For as it is the people’s power that gives the King a right to reign over them, so the same power binds him upon oath to redress their grievances. Knowing this, that he receives all his power and majesty from them, and that he is only the appointed or royal Guard­ ian of their Laws, Rights, and Liberties – called by some great Lawyers, the nation’s Chief Judge. This makes those sayings of the pious Bishop Burnet17 (the man who turned the key of nations, and brought Kings to the throne) worthy the remembrance of the best / of Princes, ‘There is not any thing more certain

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than this, that Kings are made for the people, and not the people for them: That perhaps there is no nation under Heaven more sensible of this than the English nation; so that if the Prince does not govern by this maxim, the people will soon grow very unkind to him: That a Prince who would command the praise and affection of the nation should not aim to stretch his prerogative. This will lay such a degree of confidence in him that he will ever be safe in the people while they feel they are safe in him, and no longer.’ This Charles Stewart severely felt, who instead of ruling by the royal standard (the laws of the people) destroyed their Rights; for which he fell into the hands of such men who cut off his head. In this case how striking is the Prophet Micah’s speech, Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and Princes of the house of Israel, that abhor judg­ ment and pervert all equity. / But this leads us to the second branch of the text, which is, [The Prince asketh.] The character of a Prince is very exalted, majestic, and superlative among men. Some say it is sacred: Hence you have that phrase, his sacred Majesty; but however majestic or sacred the name of the King may be, it is well known, that he derives and enjoys as King all his majestic character from the majesty of the peo­ ple. How beautiful to this purpose is that poetic description of the sweet singer in Israel, Psal. lxviii. 27. There is little Benjamin with their Rulers, the Princes of Judah with their council, the Princes of Zebulun, and the Princes of Naphtali. Hence we read, of the Princes of Israel, Heads of the house of their fathers, who were Princes of their tribe. [The Prince asketh.] What is the request of the Prince? If it be the love, duty, affection, and / loyalty of his people, they are ready to dedicate their persons, lives, and fortunes for his Majesty’s safety, dignity and crown, and to say, O King live forever! if their King will restore their injured Rights, and preserve inviolably sure, the enjoyment of their Charter Liberties. Let them but pay their Governor and their Judges – make their own laws – settle their taxations – fix their own courts – have their Castles free – and their harbour open – then the Prince may ask, and it will be given him, to the half of the kingdom, until the British streets are paved with American gold. But if the Prince asketh an authority over the government of Rhode-Island to fix a new court of Admiralty, authorized to seize and confine suspected persons, guilty or not, and drag them away three thousand miles – the husband from his wife, his children, his home, his friends, his all, through a scene more dismal than Pluto’s horrid kingdom, to be confined and tried / for life by a jury of strangers,

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if not enemies, on the accusation of a Negro. The law of God, the law of nature, and the soul of man forbids it – justice cannot desire it – it can only be tyranny that can assume it. Is it not all that equity can ask, if they have broke the law, to be tried by their own law, and a jury of their own peers? This particularly is the Charter Right of the Rhode-Islanders, whereby the Governor of the province, the Judges of the Superior Court, the House of Representatives, are solemnly bound by oath to maintain, to rule, govern, decide cases, and determine only by their own laws, and will the Rhode-Islanders lose this Right, the standard of their Liberties? This leads me to the third branch of the text, which is, [The Judge asketh for a reward.] The character of a Judge is a very exalted one, and in some respects it is more solemn and sacred than that of a King, and aught therefore to be held / in high esteem, reverence and respect, as it bears such a figurative resemblance of the Judge of all the earth, who will do right. But, as the text says, The Judge asketh for a reward. If it be for his fidelity in his high office, for his honorable support, according to the dignity of his charac­ ter, you are bound in duty, in affection, and in obedience to let him have it. Shew your affection and gratitude to your Judges by a readiness to reward them as the Guardians of your Rights, as those who from their hearts should protect and hand forth the Liberties of their brethren to them. This is the way to become a band of brethren, from the Governor, to the meanest subject. Is not the whole of your complaint in this respect owing to your not taking an earlier opportunity to settle such salaries as their merit labour, and expense deserve. But if the Judge ask for a reward from the Crown of Britain, let them not have it by any means: For if once the Judges of the courts of Judicature / of this province become dependent on the favour of the Crown or Ministry at Home for their support or salaries, you will become a nation of slaves to ministerial power. For thereby you submit the key of all your essential Rights as Americans to be in the hands of your enemies. If you suffer the Judges to become dependent for their pay upon the Ministry of England, what are they then but the Ministry’s servants? If so, it is natural to suppose, they must act as the Ministry directs them: If not they will be unfaithful servants; and if faithful to the Ministry, where then are your Rights? Where then is the security of your lives or your property? For a more bold, daring innovation upon your right of power, decision and determina­ tion by your own laws, respecting your liberty and property between man and man, between the Crown of England, and the Rights of America cannot possibly be made, or attempted to be made, than to make your Judges dependent upon the British Ministry. It is in effect, giving up your right to all you have, to all that

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you / or your children can ever possess. For the possession of a person’s right, whether hereditary, or by purchase, depends much upon the determination of the Judges. And if the Judges are wholly to be dependent upon the Crown of England, for nomination and support, then you may easily judge whose servants and slaves you are to be: His servant ye are, says St. Paul, whom ye obey. The Judges have the key of the laws, the hearts of the Lawyers, and the power of Juries much in their own hands. But the lives of the people, the rights of the subject, and the disposal of their property was originally intended to be deter­ mined by Juries only: And as the Judges have assumed by custom, a power of dictating to Lawyers even at the bar, and directing the Jury; it then becomes them the more to be men fearing God and hating covetetousness; for be that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. This leads us to the third branch of the text, which is, [And the Great Man he uttereth his mischievous desire.] / This great man must be some Ahitophel; but are there no Davids in America? Or are you not all Davids, 2 Sam. xv. And David said, O Lord, I pray thee, turn the council of Ahitophel into foolishness. It is a self-evident observation, that when the Rights and Liberties of a people are destroyed, it is commonly by the mis­ chievous design of some Great Man; I do not mean by this Great Man, a man of a great soul. No! So far from it, that I rather think as to greatness of soul, ten thousand such may dance a minuet or a country dance on the point of a cambrick needle, and not justle each other. I remember a story, but whether it was in Europe or America, I cannot say, but think it was in America: However the purport of it is this, A Tradesman brought in a bill to a great Gentleman, so called; the Gentleman found, as the Tradesman said, a thousand faults with the bill. This was too much charged; that was too much, and he would not pay it. The Tradesman says, Sir, I will never wait upon you more, and I believe the D—l / will not, for you are a man of so little soul, that he will be at a loss where to find you. Is not this mischievous man such a one? But who this Great Man is, whether Lord B—e,18 the Duke of G—n,19 Lord H—h,20 or Lord N—h21 is not so material; it is not the man, but the actions of the man which are said to be mischievous: This is what the Americans feel, as the text says. [He uttereth his mischievous desire] Or as the words import the mischief of his soul – That his soul, time, thoughts and talents are intensely engaged to promote, secure, and establish his mischie­ vous design, either by bribing the Ministry with pensions, the Majority with places of profit, the ears of the King with bad advise, the closet and the cabi­ net councils with arbitary directions: Thus he uttereth his mischievous desire to

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establish in the King’s mind a divine right of authority to command his subjects, and the obligation of the people passively to obey, with this great authoritative argument, It is his Majesty’s will / and pleasure, with the advice of his Majesty’s council, when in reality it is only the great man uttering his mischievous design, if not of overthrowing the state, yet of destroying the Rights of the people. This attempt in Charles’s reign rouzed the people to arms, to recover those Charter Rights they first obtained sword in hand. What design can possibly be more mischievous than this to his Majesty’s person, family, crown and dignity. His Majesty’s person can only be safe in the hearts of his people, while the people find their Liberties are safe in him: His fam­ ily’s safety is the people’s affection to them, and their royal supply is the people’s generosity. His crown is in the hands of his people, therefore to be continued or removed only by their authority and power: His dignity can only be maintained by them, as their rights and priviledges are maintained by him. O then what a mischievous design must it be in this Great Man to alienate the affections of his Majesty’s subjects, by assuming with the King or / in the Ministry, a despotic power over the Rights of the people. This is the great cause of all our national misery, the bane of our distress, and the source of unhappiness both to the King and the people – a people who are remarkable for their loyalty, and are willing to make their King the most happy Monarch upon the earth, provided he will but prevent this Great Man’s, or the Ministry’s mischievous design of the ruin of their essential Rights and Liberties; then the King may chuse his own happiness and enjoy it. Therefore, it must be the most mischievous design that can possibly be known or heard of, that carries in it such plain aspects of distress to the King and State, as well as destruction to the people, to find that by this mischievous desire, neither their lives, liberties, or properties are safe which is always the case when an arbitary Man or Ministry rule over the people. Would it be unchari­ tably kind to leave this Great Man, for his mischievous design against King and State, a dying legacy, if not he may have mine, which is, ‘That / he may be ten thousand years in passing through space – to pass ten thousand times swifter than the rays of light – to be ten thousand years in going – live there ten thou­ sand years on bread and water, and when he comes back to be ten thousand times thinner than the edge of a razor.’ It is rather a hard legacy I own, but not so hard as to send a soul to Hell to all eternity, which you know good men frequently do. It is only fifty thousand years punishment for uttering his mischievous desire; by that time I hope that all mankind will forgive him, and let the Great Man go free. But this leads me to the last branch of the text:

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[So they wrap it up.] These words are figurative, and are taken from a Merchant or Tradesman’s wrapping up of parcels, or goods he sells, by way of safety, completeness, or sat­ isfaction to the buyer: Or it may be a metaphor taken from wrapping or folding up a letter by way of secrecy. / [So they wrap it up.] Take it in a political sense by way of safety – The Ministry admires the Great Man’s mischievous desire – ‘It will do they say – it will be very safe for us – let us keep our power and make the people obey, and then nothing can hurt us – let us keep our place and pension, and let the people know our authority: If they will not submit, we will make them; What is the King’s army for? What are his Maj­ esty’s fleets for? What is all the military force of the kingdom for? We will order General Gage to be in readiness with his troops at Rhode-Island. The people of America, say we, have no right of power to tax them, or appoint Judges and their salaries – we will let them know, that the King has a right to appoint Judges, Courts of Admiralty, impose revenues, lay taxes upon them, send military forces, block up their harbours; let us command them, compel them, and get the key of their laws and power of their Rights and Liberties into our own hands, then all will be safe.’ So they wrap it up. / But if we take it for completeness – or a thing well done, then it completely sets forth the design of the Ministry to inslave the Americans? It completely answers, say they, every end. By this design the King’s power is maintained, the prerogative of Parliament is kept up, our authority is preserved, our interest is secured, and our power in America will be enlarged, only let us establish this design of making the provinces of America submit to the power and taxation of the English Parliament, this will do completely: So they wrap it up. Or if we take the words wrapped up by way of satisfaction to the Seller – that the purchaser is pleased with his bargain – what metaphor can more nobly describe the satisfaction that an arbitary man or ministry take, in compelling the people, as it were with a rod of iron, tamely to submit to their arbitary meas­ ures. ‘This, say they, is a pleasing, satisfactory plan – we have brought them to pay duties for teas – to submit to custom-house officers to search their vessels, to make seizures, to pay imports, clearances, and entries, so / that they cannot import a hat, nor carry a pound of wool across a bay, nor take a box of Lisbon lemmons, nor a pipe of wine, nor a puncheon of rum, nor any sugars or molasses to America, without our leave, and their paying duty for it; this will do; this is agreeable, and gives us satisfaction.’ So they wrap it up. But if we take the words, from the similitude of a letter being folded or wrapped up, as it contains a secret. This idea of the words no doubt will open

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the whole Arcana of the mischievous design; at present it is wrapped up, like a letter, and remains a secret; but when it is open, then your Gentlemen, Farmers, and Landholders will know the secret it contains, however unfeelingly insensible many of them now are, that every acre of land they enjoy must pay a tax of one, two, or three shillings sterling annually – every apple they rear – every barrel of cyder they make – the soap they use – the candles they burn – the shoes they wear – the light of Heaven they enjoy must all pay tax quickly to the King of England. To tax your / blessings you may think it is hard, but when they come to tax the only curse of the land, New-England Rum, what will you then think of that? But I close with an address. First, this shews, that an arbitary despotic power in a Prince, is the ruin of a nation, of the Crown, and of the subjects; therefore it is to be feared, abhorred, detested and destroyed, because the happiness of the King, and the prosperity of the people are thereby not only in danger, but upon the brink of destruction. Every age and every history furnishes us with proofs, as clear as the light of the morning, of the truth of this. And was not this lately the case in Sweeden, when the King with a few of his Senators and ministry about him destroyed the Rights of the people, by the power of the sword, and established his despotic will as the law of the land, by the tyranny of death?22 And has not an unjust arbitary power over the Rights of the people been the cause of shedding so much blood, and of the distresses in England, since the conquest of Julius Cæsar? / But it is the singular happiness of the Americans, according to their own laws, not to be in bondage to any power upon the earth. The King of England has no power to enact, or put in force any law that may oppress them; his very attempting to do it, at once destroys his right to reign over them. For the bright­ est gem which the King of England wears in the British Crown, is that majesty, trust, and confidence, which the Americans invest him with, as the King and Guardian of their Rights and Liberties. The Parliament of England cannot justly make any laws to tax the Ameri­ cans; for they are not the Representatives of America; and therefore they are not legislative power of America. The House of Lords cannot do it, for they are Peers of England, not of America; and if neither King, Lords, nor Commons have any right to oppress or destroy the Liberties of the Americans, why is it then that the Americans do not stand upon their own strength, and shew their power and importance, when the life of life, and every Liberty that is dear to them is in danger? / Therefore, let me advise you with all the power of affection, with all the pathos of soul, (as one who esteems the full possession of Rights of the Ameri­ cans, as the highest blessing of this life) to stand alarmed. See your danger – death is near – destruction is at the door. – Need I speak? Are not your harbours block­

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aded from you? Your castle secured by captives – your lives destroyed – revenues imposed upon you – taxation laid – military power oppressing – your Char­ ter violated – your Governor pensioned – your constitution declining – your Liberties departing, and not content with this, they now attack the life, the soul and capitol of all your Liberties, to create your Judges, and make them independ­ ent upon you for office or support, and erect new Courts of Admiralty, to take away by violence, the husband from his family, his wife, his home, his friends. Such cruelty and tyranny ought ever to be held in the most hateful contempt, the same as you would a banditti of slave-makers on the coast of Africa. Has not the voice of your Father’s / blood cried yet loud enough in your ears, ‘Ye Sons of America scorn to be Slaves?’ Have you not heard the voice of blood in your streets, louder than that which reached Heaven, that cried for vengeance. That was, saith the Lord to Cain, the voice of thy brother’s blood, but this is of many brethren. Therefore, if there be any vein, any nerve, any soul, any life, or spirit of Liberty in the Sons of America, shew your love for it; guard your freedom, prevent your chains; stand up as one man for your Liberty; for none but those, who set a just value upon this blessing are worthy to enjoy it. Second Remark, That it is not rebellion. I declare it before God, the con­ gregation, and all the world, and I would be glad if it reached the ears of every Briton, and every American: That it is no rebellion to oppose any King, Ministry, or Governor, that destroys by any violence or authority whatever, the Rights of the people. Shall a man be deemed a rebel that supports his own Rights? It is the first law of nature; and he must surely forget the laws of nature, in his own con­ science, who will not / do it. A right to the blessing of freedom, we do not receive from Kings, but from Heaven, as the breath of life, and essence of our being? Do not the birds of the air expand their wings? The fish of the sea their fins? and the worms of the earth turn again when they are trod upon? And shall this be deemed rebellion? Heaven forbid! Shall Naboth’s disputing with King Ahab, respecting his vineyard, be deemed rebellion? Or the people sending home their Governour in irons some years ago, be deemed rebellion?23 It is no more rebel­ lion for the people to stand up for, and maintain their rights than it is to breath in the free air. Finally. Let all lovers of Liberty, truth and justice now unite as one man in recovering and firmly establishing the Liberties of America: That the American Parliament may enjoy every power and priviledge the English Parliament enjoys: This will invigorate and brace up all the and nerves of the state, while every joint member is held to its proper place by the indissoluble bond of interest. – In this way the British nation may be come the / most glorious that ever existed since time began, and continue increasing in glory and triumphing in the arms of free­ dom, and be matter of thanksgiving until time shall end.

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A few Strictures on Liberty of Conscience, part of which was delivered at a Public School in Boston, and were left out in all the former editions, but is inserted in this by particular desire. [Liberty of Conscience.] WHAT is it? Is it not the most noble blessing of life, the birth-right of Angels, the morning of mercies, and the happiness of mankind as the eternal right of nature. Liberty, is it any thing less than salvation? Did not the silver trumpet, under the Mosaic law, proclaim it? the year of Jubilee sounds it? the day of atone­ ment sings of it? and the feast of tabernacles feast upon it. Shall man then be ashamed of it when Angels proclaim it – all nature seeks it, and the / Messiah has divinely sealed it as the grand embassy and message of his love to mankind, which was, to proclaim Liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. Liberty! how noble the thought! How grand the idea! It is the kingdom of Seraphs, the sublime felicity the Gospel declares. If the Son make you free, then are you free indeed. Liberty, it is coeval with the Sun, its birth is the dawn of the morning – its happiness are the beauties of creation – its blessings are unnumbered like the drops of the morning dew – it is a kingdom to itself – and but few dwell therein; O mournful happiness! What shall I call it, a happy misery, to be almost alone in love with Liberty of Conscience in all its beauties and branches? Sol­ emn solitude this indeed! How few are the minds that are inspired above fear: Where are they that do not couch beneath a frown? Where is the man that dares to feel every piercing dart in his bosom for Liberty of Conscience? that / will venture to make a vigorous stand, and dare the enemy boldly to the face, until death shall put a period to his existence? O who is it that makes this Liberty his care? Which ought to be the concern of all men, as it is the benefit of all. For myself, rather than give it up, I will stand single in its defence, I can but lose my life, with my resolution to maintain Liberty of Conscience, even for those, who, according to nation, are my brethren, my kinsmen, according to the flesh, and they are welcome to every sacrifice, to every power, and every talent. I look upon them, having it signed by many witnesses, that they are distressed in their Persons, in their Properties, and in their Consciences, by the laws of the province, for which reason I have represented their distresses feelingly and plainly, and have spoke boldly for their Liberty;* for as the consciences of mankind are only answerable to God, they ought to have no other ruling power but the word of God: Though they are a distressed people, yet / so dark are mankind, in general, respecting Liberty of Conscience, that there are but few who see any beauty in it, and I expect no thanks for what I have said on this head, but am sure of ample *

American Alarm.

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satisfaction arising from having discharged my duty. Why should I expect any more reward than the Prophets in Israel had? Moses, the great deliverer of the people, found what others feel; ‘Lord, says he, these people are ready to stone me.’ And Elijah, the man who found the nearer way to glory, said, when he had exerted himself for the divine and sacred Liberty of Conscience, I only am left, and they seek my life. Solomon has a beautiful similitude to this purpose, Eccl. ix. 24, 25; and the prophet Isaiah says, though in a more sublime sense, Who hath believed our report. But O the power of prejudice! the blindness of the mind! the misery of mortals, especially those who lately, not contended with the polution of their own consciences, would not suffer others to be refined, but have stretched the rules of honesty to bar the door of Liberty, and / would, had it been in their power, have locked up the whole creation from the blessings of salvation: Let them see Luke xi. 52. And yet O amazing! these persons have the ignorance to impose upon the authority of the word of God, upon mankind and their con­ sciences, by calling themselves Christians, to take away their reproach. Such men, according to the present mode of making Christians, may do for Saints in this life, but I think, if Paul is right, they would do much better for Devils in the next; for it is far better for us to have no Devil at all, if he does not take all such envious beings as these home to himself. But if such men, Ministers or Members are Christians, then Paul’s Gospel must be a Fable, his preaching vain, and man­ kind are yet in their sins: But shall, says Paul, their unbelief make void the faith of God’s elect? No! God forbid. But this leads me to the Remarks taken from the first Liberty Sermon, preached at the Public School, from Judges v. 9. My heart is towards the Governors in Israel, that offered themselves / willingly among the people: Bless ye the Lord: Inserted by desire. Remark I. That it is the duty of Kings Governors, Judges and Ministers, to offer themselves willingly among the people – to take charge of their persons – to preserve their rights – stand boldly against every danger – secure their privi­ leges – restore them when they are lost – be affectionate to the people – redress their grievances – and convey to them every blessing of life and liberty. Secondly. The dignity of the King, the safety of the Governor – the honour of the Judges – and especially the beauty of Gospel Ministers is to offer them­ selves willingly among the people: Says Peter, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind. Thirdly. That only such Kings, Governors, Judges, and Ministers, who thus offer themselves willingly can expect to engage the hearts of the people – This only will engage them to honour their King – to obey their Governor – to rever­ ence their Judges – to love their Ministers, / and esteem them highly for their works sake – but Ministers are not to give them chaff for wheat – a stone for

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bread – a remedial law for the gospel – works for rich grace – terms for promises – conditions for absolute salvation; for this is taking away the sacred rights of the people, and true Liberty of Conscience from them. O that they were wise, that they understood this. Fourthly. This shews that a purified mind, or perfection of Liberty of Conscience, can only arise from, and be only enjoyed by what the Lord Jesus Christ has done, as their King and Governor in Israel: He only has engaged his heart to God for them; and has offered himself willingly among the people, to become their Surety, Sufferer, and Saviour, to live and die for them, to take the charge of their persons, as his portion, his inheritance, and treasure, saying, The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places, and I have a goodly heritage – to face every danger for them, even when sin, death, wrath, and hell were in the way of their peace of mind and Liberty / of Conscience, he removed it for them: Mine own arm, says he, has brought salvation. He trod the wine-press alone, and has thereby secured, firmly secured every blessing of life, liberty, and salvation, peace with God, pardon of sin, righteousness and redemption for the people; although they have lost by sin their original perfection of nature, their enjoyment of para­ dise, and their perfect righteousness by creation, yet the Lord Jesus Christ has restored that which he took not away, namely, a more glorious righteousness for them – a greater perfection of nature to them – a nearer union to God – a more exalted enjoyment – higher obligations of praise – and a more glorious inheritance than ever they lost by sin. Likewise the Lord Jesus Christ has by his person and promise – by his oath and power – by his death and righteous­ ness – by his resurrection and intercession, for ever secured these blessings for the people who love his name; nor is there any danger of the loss of them while Jesus lives to maintain their right unto them; it is the Magna Charta of the / heavenly kingdom, the rights of the citizens of Zion, and royal gift of the King of glory, who is tender over the people, for his laws are love; he is kind to them, as their friend and brother, who loves them as his brethren, as his flesh and as his bone. O who would not but honour this King, obey his laws, adore his name, and give him all the glory, by whom we have peace and liberty of conscience, access into the grace wherein we stand – liberty to enter into the holy of holies – by whose precious blood our consciences are purged from dead works to serve the living God in righteousness and true holiness all the days of our lives. This is sacred to Liberty – or the Christian’s life. [Bless ye the Lord.] The obligations we are under to bless and praise the name of the Lord are many, as well for his providential mercies, as for the blessings of salvation; more especially when the people enjoy the scepter of such a King, the happiness of

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such a Governor, the blessings of such Judges, and the privileges of such Gospel / Ministers as are described, then let every thing that has breath praise the Lord. In order to enjoy this blessing – in Jehovah’s name set up your banner – unite in prayer – walk in peace, and through God you may yet do valiantly, for the secure enjoyment of all your Rights and Liberties. Which brings me to the Remarks on the Rights and Liberties of the Africans. [Personal Liberty.] Here let me claim your attention. Every tie of nature, every sensation of human­ ity, every bowel of pity, every compassion as a Christian, engages me to speak for the Personal Liberty and Freedom of those, who are the most distressed of all human beings, the natives of Africa. Were they thus distressed by Indians, Mahometans, or Turks with respect to their Liberty, they would have a right to be redressed and set free; but for mankind to be distressed and kept in Slavery by Christians, by those who love the Gospel of Christ; for such to buy their Brethren (for of one blood he has made all nations) and bind them to be Slaves to them and their heirs for life. Be astonished, ye Christians, at this! / And what is more shocking even to the tenderness of nature, is to export them, for filthy lucre into the hands of Men-tyrants. But what is more alarming yet, and exceeds all bounds, is, for one Christian, and Member of a Church, to export another, and banish her to be a Slave, when in full communion in the Church.* Was ever such a thing heard of in the house of God before! Tell it not in Gath!25 Publish it not in the streets of Boston! Shall no plea be heard? Shall no argument prevail to let these oppressed ones go free. Have Christians lost all the tenderness of nature, the feelings of humanity, or the more refined sensations of christianity? Or have the Ministers in silence forgot to shew their people this iniquity? O could they bear to see – to see did I say? nay to feel their children rent from their arms, and see them bound in irons and banished to be Slaves! O killing thought! But for Christians to encourage this bloody and inhuman Trade of Man-stealing, or Slave-making, O how shocking it is! while it may be, their nearer kindred want employment, if not bread to eat. This unlawful, inhuman practice is a / sure way for mankind to ruin America, and for Christians to bring their children, and their children’s children to a morsel of bread. Much has been wrote, and well wrote to dissuade the Americans from the practice of so great an evil; many begin to listen to the laws of humanity and the force of the argument: But surely what the Prophet Isaiah says will be sufficient with every true Minister of the Gospel, and with every Christian and Son of Liberty in America; Isa. 1viii. 6. *

Phillis, an African Christian, who was a member of Dr. Cooper’s Church.24

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Loose the bands of wickedness, undo the heavy burdens, let the oppressed go free, that ye break every yoke. What follows is desired to be published with the Oration, having been offered to one of the Publishers of a News-Paper, but was refused a place; but as the Printer is determined, even at the hazard of his life, to maintain inviolable, that inestimable Priviledge of mankind, Liberty of the Press, which can never be wanted more than at this time, when near one sixth part of the inhabitants of America are held in real Slavery, under the different pretences of interest and religion, however well grounded the former may be, sure I am the latter / must be very vague, as the conduct of the Buyers of these People serve daily to confirm every thinking person in this opinion: For reasons above, shall comply with the request of an Advocate for a multitude of these distressed People, who are unjustly held in Bondage by those who profess to act on principles of Liberty and Religion, by inserting the following Piece, with the Circular Letter which was sent with the same. Christian Brethren, SHOULD I attempt to delineate the dire effects which the iniquitous and cruel Trade of Slave-making has occasioned, both in Africa and America, I should paint out such scenes of distress, havock, and detestation, as must not only serve to shock human nature, but would swell my piece to a volume much larger than ever was published in the universe. Let it suffice, kind Reader, (and may I be permitted to address myself in particular to you, my Reverend Fathers and Brethren, who are employed in preaching the glorious Gospel of Liberty, and who must shortly give an account of your Stewardship) to lead you to the distant clime / of Africa. Look ye into the native country of the distressed Africans! Who would not shudder at viewing the tender parent weeping for the loss of a favorite son! A daughter whose plighted vows, perhaps, have been given in the conubial state! Dutiful children, with a filial piety bewailing their irretrievable misfortune by losing an affectionate, tender, and loving father, brother, sister, neighbour, or companion! These being torn from the bosoms of each other must certainly break the strongest bonds of nature and friendship. Think! O think of this! if not totally lost to all sense of feeling, you whose hearts are adamant! I mean the Buyers and Sellers of Africans, however you may gloss your practice with the Pretence of christianizing these People. I need not mention the recent proofs we have of the ill consequences arising by peopling our Islands with these Africans, as their frequent revolts so often occasion streams of blood to be shed, as well on the side of the Whites as Blacks. But may it not with truth be said, these revolu­ tions are occasioned by the cruel treatment they meet with from their Masters? But allowing they were used in the kindest manner, is it reasonable to think they / can be satisfied with their condition, as their minds must ever be imbittered with the melancholy reflection, that let their behaviour be what it may, they and

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their children are to be held in Bondage so long as they live! Nature trembles at such a thought, much more to experience it! What Christian, in this practice, who would not shudder at viewing our Saviour’s eternal rule of righteousness! Conscience. The following Circular Letter, accompanied with Mr. Swan’s Piece, entitled a Dissuasive to Great-Britain and her Colonies from the Slave-Trade,26 were lately presented to the Gentlemen who are chosen Representatives for this Province. BOSTON, April 20, 1773. Sir, THE efforts made by the Legislative of this province in their last sessions to free themselves from Slavery, gave us, who are in that deplorable state, a high degree of satisfaction. We expect great things from men who have made such a noble stand against the designs of their fellow-men to enslave them. We cannot but wish and hope, Sir, that you will have the same grand object, we mean civil and religious Liberty, in view in your next / session. The divine spirit of Freedom seems to fire every humane breast on this Continent, except such as are bribed to assist in executing this execrable plan. We are very sensible that it would be highly detrimental to our present Masters, if we were allowed to demand all that of right belongs to us for past services; this we disclaim. Even the Spaniards, who have not those sublime ideas of Freedom that English men have, are conscious that they have no right to all the services of their fellow-men, we mean the Africans, whom they have pur­ chased with their money; therefore they allow them one day in a week to work for themselves, to enable them to earn money to purchase the residue of their time, which they have a right to demand in such portions as they are able to pay for, (a due appraizment of their services being first made, which always stand at the purchase money.) We do not pretend to dictate to you, Sir, or to the honor­ able Assembly, of which you are a member: We acknowledge our obligations to you for what you have already done, but as the people of this province seem to be actuated by the principles of equity and justice, we cannot but expect your House will again take our deplorable / case into serious consideration, and give us that ample relief which, as men, we have a natural right to. But since the wise and righteous Governor of the universe has permitted our fellow men to make us slaves, we bow in submission to him, and determine to behave in such a manner, as that we may have reason to expect the divine approbation of, and assistance in, our peaceable and lawful attempts to gain our freedom. We are willing to submit to such regulations and laws, as may be made rela­ tive to us, until we leave the province, which we determine to do as soon as we can from our joynt labours procure money to transport ourselves to some part of

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the coast of Africa, where we propose a settlement. We are very desirous that you should have instructions relative to us, from your town, therefore we pray you to communicate this letter to them, and ask this favor for us. In behalf of our fellow Slaves in this Province, and by order of their Com­ mittee, Peter Bestes, Sambo Freeman, Felix Holbrook, Chester Joie.

FINIS

[BOLLAN], THE RIGHTS OF THE ENGLISH

COLONIES

[William Bollan], The Rights of the English Colonies Established in America Stated and Defended; Their Merits and Importance to Great Britain Displayed; with Illustra­ tion of the Benefit of their Union, and of the Mischiefs and Dangers of their Continued Dissention (London: J. Almon, 1774).

William Bollan lost his position as Massachusetts colonial agent in London in 1762, after which he took up pamphleteering for the American cause. His early works, The Mutual Interest of Great Britain and the American Colonies Considered and A Succinct View of the Origin of our Colonies, argued against the propriety of metropolitan taxation but for obedience to the principle of Par­ liamentary sovereignty and endeared him neither to radical colonists nor to British imperialist reformers.1 Subsequent pamphlets, however, saw him move more decisively towards an anti-imperialist and pro-colonial position. An Epis­ tle from Timolean to all the Honest Freeholders, and other Electors of Members of Parliament (London, 1768) was a pro-Wilkesite attack on British electoral corruption and Continued Corruption, Standing Armies, and Popular Discontent Considered (London, 1768) attacked the Townshend duties not only as unwise but as unconstitutional. Bollan’s radicalization continued to follow developments in his adminis­ trative career. His failure to obtain compensation for Thomas Hutchinson’s losses in the Stamp Act controversy saw his already damaged connection with the Lieutenant Governor dissolve completely. He subsequently failed to obtain employment from the Duke of Newcastle, further alienating him from the Brit­ ish cause. In 1769, back in favour with radicals at home, he was re-employed by the Council as Massachusetts colonial agent, though Hutchinson refused to acknowledge his appointment and withheld his £300 salary while Parliament refused to accept him as anything more than a representative of the Council. Bollan then forwarded the infamous 33 letters between Governor Francis Bernard and General Thomas Gage, inflaming American radicals further. By this time, Bollan was a radical himself. In The Free Britons Memorial to all the – 147 –

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Freeholders, Citizen and Burgesses, who Elect Members of the British Parliament (London, 1769) and The Free Britons Supplemental Memorial (London, 1770) he finally abandoned the idea of Parliamentary sovereignty and hinted at a Lock­ ean concept of ‘state revolution’ and natural rights theory more generally. Bollan made that latter position more explicitly, even flagging it in the title, in The Peti­ tions of Mr Bollan … lately Presented to the Two Houses of Parliament; with a Brief Introduction Relating to the Law of Nature, the Authority of Human Rulers, and the Subjects Common Right of Defence (London, 1774), in response to the Intolerable Acts. Bollan’s final pamphlet, The Rights of the English Colonies (London, 1774), largely constitutes a long historical dissertation, ‘History being the chief source of civil wisdom’ (below, p. 154), illustrating good and bad imperial governance by principle and in practice. Relying on ancient and recent historians from Dio­ nysius of Halicarnassus to Georg Fabricius and Johann Heinrich Boecler, Bollan relates first how within the space of eighty-five years from this dissolution the free state of Rome, the mistress of the world, was by dissention, corruption of the senate, the soldiery, and the people in their elections, faction, the lust of dominion, guile, and the power of the sword, entirely subverted, and the Romans subjected to the absolute rule of Julius Cæsar. (below, p. 155)

He subsequently recounts the misgovernment of Augustus. Bollan balanced his accounts of tyranny with the advice and counsel tyrants ignored and with exam­ ples of good governance by other emperors from Trajan to Marcus Aurelius, before returning to the calamitous misrule and murderous end of Commodus in ad 192. Section IV recounts later Roman imperialism and V and VI respectively cover the Dutch Revolt and England’s involvement in it, for the latter relying largely on William Temple’s account, as did the anonymous author of The Late Occurrences in North America, and Policy of Great Britain Considered (London, 1766).2 Section VII outlines the origins of colonies and empire, stressing how crown charters to Humphrey Gilbert, Walter Raleigh, the Virginia Company and later colonizers guaranteed in each instance ‘all liberties, franchises and immunities within any of his other dominions, to all intents and purposes as if they had been abyding and born within his realm of England, or any other of his said dominions’ (below, p. 176). Bollan also transcribes his own ‘memorial’ to the King as agent for Massa­ chusetts on the threat posed by France in 1754 as part of an argument that the subsequent French and Indian War was ‘a great national cause, and the expense of it consequently a national charge’ rather than a colonial one (below, p. 188). He concludes by arguing that Britain gains more from the general benefits of colonial trade than it ever would from counterproductively tyrannous taxes.3

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Notes: 1. See Volume 5 of this edition, pp. 1–13, pp. 65–88. 2. See Volume 5 of this edition, pp. 89–110. 3. For further information see Volume 5 of this edition, pp. 1–3, 65–7; and R. Lettieri, ‘William Bollan (1710?–1782)’, in American National Biography, ed. J. A. Garraty and M. C. Carnes, 24 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), vol. 3, pp. 130–1. For a more detailed summary of Bollan’s intellectual evolution, see J. D. Meyerson, ‘The Pri­ vate Revolution of William Bollan’, New England Quarterly, 41:4 (December 1968), pp. 536–50; and for a full list of his publications, see M. G. Kammen, A Rope of Sand: The Colonial Agents, British Politics, and the American Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni­ versity Press, 1968), pp. 334–5.

THE

RIGHTS

OF THE

ENGLISH COLONIES

ESTABLISHED IN

AMERICA

STATED AND DEFENDED;

THEIR

MERITS AND IMPORTANCE

TO

GREAT BRITAIN

DISPLAYED;

With Illustration of the Benefit of their Union, and of the Mischiefs

and Dangers of their continued Dissention.

There are in all governments many things done by and with the consent of the people; nay all government so much depends upon the consent of the people, that without their consent and submission it must be dissolved. That prince who thinks his power so great that his subjects have nothing to give him, will be very unhappy if he hath ever need of their hands, or their hearts. Lord Clarendons Survey of the Leviathan.1 – peragit tranquilla potestas Quod violenta nequit, mandataque sortius urger Imperiosus amor. Claud.2 Liberty should reach every individual of a people, as they all share one common nature; if it only spreads among particular branches there had better be none at all, since such a liberty only aggravates the misfortune of those who are deprived of it, by seting before them a disagreeable subject of comparison. Spectator.3

LONDON Printed; and sold by J. Almon, opposite Burlington-House, Piccadilly.

MDCCLXXIV. /

THE

RIGHTS

OF THE

ENGLISH COLONIES ESTABLISHED IN AMERICA

STATED AND DEFENDED, &c.

SECTION I. Upon the most careful researches and consideration it appears to the author that the lands in America, acquired, planted, and settled by the English under the authority of their princes, were thereby, with their meritorious proceedings, firmly annexed to the crown and kingdom of English, being a most beneficial augment of that kingdom, and great ornament of its imperial crown, and acces­ sorily united to both; and all the adventurers, settlers, and inhabitants there, and their posterity, well entitled to the English right, divine providence, quæ in sui dispositione non fallitur,4 having by this accession of dominion, with the dispensa­ tion of other favours, raised the noblest naval empire, capable of making the best defence against foreign foes, and of protecting all those branches of commerce that are the great sources of naval strength, useful labour, and general affluence, which in point of lasting public benefit so far excel other modes of acquiring and possessing, and whose prosperity is necessary for the safety and welfare of all its component parts. – That by reason of their insular or other advantageous situation, and the number of the inhabitants, with their spirit, the fruit of their liberty, their amicable conjunction, wisdom, and public vertue might, thro’ the favour of the sovereign disposer of all things, who approves public observance of the divine principle of justice, the sole foundation of solid union, render this empire ever glorious and invincible – That the true permanent interest of the king, kingdom, / and colonies is inseparable, and their cordial union, so griev­ ously wounded of late, the proper object of all sound policy, altho’ their local separation, so beneficial in point of trade and navigation, may induce the unwary to think otherwise, and injurious improvident measures, may unhappily have caused, or encrease, their dissention. It is observed by the Gallic Polybius, that ‘it is a true sign of the destruction of a country when those who ought to hold

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together separate, and abandon each other.’5 – That divide et impera being a maxim proper for the use of our enemies, we cannot take too much care to avoid its adoption. Human affairs are so mutable that it is impossible Europe should always continue in the same state, and the recent war in a free kingdom, to its great grievance introduced by discord and violence, with all the subsequent injuri­ ous proceedings of mighty princes, which have spread the miseries or terrour of arms so far and wide, and, with the vast encrease of oppressive standing armies, brought Europe into its present suffering or alarming condition, and the general state of our own affairs in America, Asia and Europe, with the utter uncertainty what enemies may rise up against us, or what mischiefs our continued dissen­ tions may cause, unite in calling upon us to forbear taking advice of our passions, to exercise our wisdom and provident foresight, and to promote and secure that strength which the unun of all parts of the empire can only give. Omnia sunt hominum tenui pendentia filo,

Et subito casu qua valuere ruunt*.7

This was philosophically as well as elegantly said by the poet; and it is certain there is nothing so firm and stable that division will not destroy; yet so numerous are those princes and states who never became sensible of this truth in season, that to relate their story would be to write a great part of the history of the world, shewing how nation after nation, or their rulers, came to utter ruin by their incautious pursuit of discordant measures, regardless of all example, and the advice of those sages whose wisdom is founded in nature, reason and expe­ rience. ‘Wise men,’ saith Sir Walter Ralegh, in his arts of empire,8 ‘have long observed, that whoso will know what shall be must consider what is / past, for all worldly things hold the same course they had at first; the reason is, that as long as men are possessed with the same passions with former ages, consequently, of these doings the same effects ensue.’ The author of the Royal Politician9 makes the following remark. ‘Plato used to say nothing was so pernicious to common­ wealths as division’: then adds, ‘Concord is the ornament of a city, its walls and guard; even malice itself cannot long stand without it. Domestic dissentions are so many victories for the enemy, as those of the Britains, Galgacus10 said, were to the Romans.’ Polybius, whose counsel would have saved his country, if followed, and who comforted her in her distress, saith, duo sunt quibus omnis respublica servatur, in hostes fortitudo, et domi concordia.11 History being the chief source of civil wisdom, and the Romans having been the most illustrious free people, a due consideration of their rise, grandeur, *

Dies, hora, momentum, evertendis dominationibus sufficent quæ adamantinis credebantur radicibus esse fundatæ. – Casaubon6

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declension, and ruin of their common-weal, with the introduction of imperial power, would be profitable to other free states. That excellent historian Dyonisius of Halicarnassus*12 informs us, that the harmony which owed its birth to the insti­ tutions of Romulus was so firmly established among the Romans, ‘that altho’, as it often happens in all cities, both great and small, many great political contests have arisen between the people, and their magistrates, they never within the course of six hundred and twenty years proceeded to bloodshed, and mutual slaughter; but by persuading and informing one another, by submitting in some things, and receiving a voluntary submission in others, they put an end to their disputes in such a manner as became fellow citizens: but from the time that Tiberius Grac­ chus while tribune of the people dissolved the harmony of the government they had been perpetually destroying and banishing one another, and refraining from no excess to gain the superiority.’ – And within the space of eighty-five years from this dissolution the free state of Rome, the mistress of the world, was by dissention, corruption of the senate, the soldiery, and the people in their elections, faction, the lust of dominion, guile, and the power of the sword, entirely subverted, and the Romans subjected to the absolute rule of Julius Cæsar. / The great dissention, combinations, wars, cruelties, and revolutions sub­ sequent to Cæsars death having in conclusion given the sole command of the Roman empire to Octavius, his nephew and adopted son, he resolved to take counsel respecting his laying down arms, and resigning his power to the sen­ ate and people; whereupon he considered the matter at large with Agrippa and Mæcenas, to whom he usually communicated all his private affairs. Agrippa, to whom Augustus owed the empire of the world, began his advice thus. ‘Wonder not, Cæsar, that I should dissuade you from monarchy, after enjoying much good from your possession of it: if it would likewise be advantageous to you I should earnestly contend for it; but as the condition of its possessors and their friends differ so widely, these reaping the fruit of their inclinations without envy and danger, while those are subjected to both, I thought it behoved me not to con­ sult my own advantage, as I am not wont to do in other affairs, but your and the public good. Let us now placidly view its appendages, and incline to the guid­ ance of reason; for no man will say that we ought by all means to choose it, altho’ inexpedient; for so we shall seem to have been rendered worse by good fortune, and to have been infatuated by success; or that from the begining having desired it, the name of your father, with piety towards him, and the right of the people and senate, were used as a pretence, not to free them from their enemies, but to subject them to ourselves, each of which is blameable; for who would not be moved with indignation observing our professions to differ from our designs? *

is author came into Italy immediately after Augustus had put an end to the civil war. Th He spend 22 years at Rome in learning their language, acquainting himself with their writings, and preparing materials for his history.

Year of Rome 705.

Year of Rome 725.

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How should they not rather hate us now than if at first we had discovered our desire, and had openly grasped at the monarchy? For violent attempts, altho’ they appear to be the fruit of insatiate desire, are in some sort esteemed human failings, because whoever excelleth in any thing thinks himself worthy of more than his inferiours, and ascribes his notable atchievements to the power of for­ tune, but a failure in his attempts to the influence of the deity; whereas he who doth the like insidiously and maliciously is forthwith esteemed to be fraudulent, perverse, and of an evil disposition (which, I well know, you could not bear any should say or think of you, even tho’ you should / obtain the empire of the world by such means) then having accomplished his purpose he is accounted to have fulfilled his desires unjustly, or failing therein to have suffer’d deservedly.’ And afterwards, censuring those who make an ill use of good fortune, he saith, ‘they who are not of a candid mind, nor use the good things offered to them with moderation, how is it to be expected they will govern others well, or rightly bear calamities.’ Then exhorting to a careful observance of the dictates of reason, he saith, ‘I will speak freely, being unable to speak otherwise, and well knowing it is not agreeable to you to hear lies seasoned with flattery. Now equality of right is delightful in name, and really most just, for they who have received the same nature, are of the same people, educated in the same manners, instituted in the same laws, and yield a common use of bodies and souls to their country, is it not just they should partake of all other things? Is it not best that none should be preferred but for vertue; for they who are of the same condition by birth vehemently desire equality, which having obtained they rejoice, but grieve when deprived of it: and human race being descended from the gods, and to return to them, look upwards, and will neither be governed at all times by the same person, nor will bear to par­ take of labours, dangers, and expenses, and yet be deprived of the participation of better things; and if compel’d to sustain such usage, hate him who is the cause of it, and, when opportunity offers, will be revenged of the person hated.’ Afterwards this great man saith, ‘no one believes that they who can use force, if they perform the office of judges, will act uprightly; but this is the opinion of all, that they, instead of the truth, displaying, thro’ shame, a form, or shadowy draught of the common­ weal, under the name of legitimate judgment, accomplish their own desire.’ When coming towards the conclusion of his speech, which is lost, in answer to the sup­ posed objection, that in consequence of restoring the power of the people some would excite seditions, he saith, ‘much less would they bear the government of one man; and therefore, if we preconsider the mischiefs that have attended it, it would be most absurd to fear rather the dissention incident to democracy than the tyrannies that spring from monarchy, the evils whereof I have not under­ taken to describe; for my intention was not to inveigh against that which is so easy to be accused, but to shew the nature of it to be such that good men’**** Here Agrippas advice being broken off Fabricius13 remarks as follows. ‘He insists

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that the nature of single / government is such, that neither good nor bad men bear it patiently’: but Frienshemius understands the words otherwise, supplying what is wanting to Agrippas speech thus. ‘This I have endeavour’d to shew, that the nature of princely rule is such, that tho’ it lighteth on good men it suffereth them not long to continue so, but soon either by licentiousness changeth them, or oppresseth them with troubles, cares, and dangers: therefore, Cæsar, avoid so doubtful and horrible a danger while you may. This I M. Agrippa persuade, who you being prince have obtained, and still retain whatever is next to the supreme station; in a free common-wealth, among so many illustrious men, adorned with the most antient glory of their ancestors, I shall with difficulty preserve equality; but I should be unworthy these benefits were I not ready to part with them for the welfare and tranquility of him from whom I have received them.’ Fabricius laments the loss of the begining of Mæcenas advice, being fraught with wife admonitions, and which Augustus happily followed for the more part, adding that the illustrious J. H. Bœccler14 scruples not to say it may rightly be called a compendium of monarchic policy. Mæcenas earnestly advised Augustus to reduce his country into another state, with harmony and good order, because the state wherein it is lawful for some to do and say what they will, if consider’d in a wise man is found to be the cause of public felicity; but if in a fool of com­ mon mischief; wherefore if any concede that power to an unreasonable man he giveth a sword to a child or madman; but when given to the wise it causeth safety to their adversaries as well as all others; and that restraining the boldness of the common people he should assume to himself and other the best men the admin­ istration of the common-wealth. And afterwards he saith, ‘the more excellent men you shall have with you the more easily will you administer all things as is siting, and will induce your subjects to believe that you do not esteem them as servants, or of a worse condition than ourselves, but that you will communicate to them not only the other good things we enjoy, but the government also, which they will then regard as their own. And so far am I from thinking I should retract what I have now said, as not right, that I rather think the citizenship ought to be given to them all, that partaking equally of this also they may be faithful allies, as inhabiting one city with us, esteeming this their true city, but their own fields and villages.’ – After the inter­ vention of various matters, exhorting the emperour to set the / best example, he saith, ‘those things which you wou’d have your chief officers think and do, say and do yourself; thus you will better teach them their duty, than enforce their obedience by terrour of laws, the one exciting emulation, the other fear; for every man rather imitates better things when he sees them existing in fact, than avoid­ eth worse seeing them prohibited by words: and do you every thing accurately, never pardoning yourself, well knowing that all men will immediately learn whatever you say, and whatever you do, for you will live as in a theatre of the whole world, neither will it be possible for you to conceal the least offense, for

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you will never act alone, but under the observation of many, for all men curiously examine the conduct of their rulers, and if they once find you do those things which you interdict to others, they will not fear your threats, but imitate your actions’ – When recommending to the emperour his avoidance of the external monuments of glory, among other things, he saith, Suffer not statues of gold or silver to be erected to you, for they not only require great expense, but are subject to insidious attempts, and of short continuance. By beneficence erect to yourself other statues in the very minds of men, not to be corrupted or destroyed. Suffer not any temple to be erected to you, for in things of this kind much money is vainly expended, which were better bestowed on things necessary, because afflu­ ence is acquired not so much by large receipts as by frugal expenses; and things of this kind do by no means encrease glory; for vertue indeed equaleth many to the gods, but no man ever became a god by mortal suffrage. Therefore if you be good, and govern rightly, the whole earth will be your temple, and all cities; all men statues, in whose minds you will ever be fixt with glory; but they who hold supreme government unworthily are so far from being adorned by those orna­ ments, tho’ placed in every city, that they rather expose them to reprehension, being certain trophies of their iniquity, and monuments of their injustice, which the longer they shall continue the longer their infamy endureth.’ Afterwards he saith, ‘It behoves you to be most peaceable, and content with your own posses­ sions; but to be well prepared for war, so that no one may be either inclined or attempt to injure you, but if he doth he may be easily and presently punished.’ In the conclusion of his advice he saith, ‘These and such like actions I wou’d recom­ mend to your practice; for I omit many things, it being impossible to mention them / all together. One thing I shall mention, which is the chief of all that hath been or remains to be said; for if yourself shall spontaneously act in the same manner as you would another should under whose government you were you will not offend in any matter, but will conduct yourself rightly in all things, and by this means will pass your life pleasantly without danger; for how should not all men esteem and love you as a father, as a preserver, when they see you modest, of unspotted life, and well disposed for either peace or war, neither contemning nor injuring any, acting under an equal right with them, neither enriching your­ self, nor impoverishing them by exactions; not devoting yourself to luxury while you are making others wretched; not giving way to your own passions whilst you are correcting others; but in all respects living in a similar manner with them; so that having this bulwark of defence, the injuring none, have confidence; and, believe me when I say that you will neither be hated nor conspired against, which being the case you will consequently pass your life pleasantly; for what more delightful, what more happy, than, together with a vertuous enjoyment of all human comforts, to be able also to impart them to others?’

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Mæcenas advice determined Augustus to retain the sovereign power, regard­ less of his public professions of making the war whereby he gained it for the sake of the common-wealth, in case he had any real doubt herein, being capable of so great duplicity, that when he requested the senate to discharge him from the care of public affairs they understood him very well, and gave their refusal, which was the real object of his desire. While aspiring to the sovereignty he manifested a restless, factious, enterprising spirit, with dissimulation, ready to make every sacrifice to his ambition, without sparing even Cicero his faithful friend, whom he devoted to the malice of Anthony, in return for the like con­ cession. During the triumvirate formed by them and Lepidus, he was so severe, that many worthy persons became the victims of his cruelty. When possessed of the sovereign power his severe vindictive temper was gradually mollified and changed to a milder and much better disposition, differing in this respect from the fell tyrants his successors, whose subtil or flagrant wanton cruelty, and horrid grievous trespasses upon all the rights of mankind, if attended to, might suffice, without having recourse to other innumerable examples, to deter all freemen from investing their princes with absolute power. This / change in the conduct of Augustus was in no small part probably owing to the advice of his faithful friends. Julius Cæsar when he became sovereign, esteeming the peoples affections his best guards, rejected the use of those which were proposed by his friends; and Augustus, his successor, ‘paid great court to the people: the very name that cov­ ered his usurpation was a compliment to them: he affected to call it the power of the tribuneship, an office first created purely for their protection, and as the strongest effort and barrier of popular liberty. It was for their sake and security he pretended to assume this power, though by it he acted as absolutely as if he had called it the dictatorial power; such energy there is in words! The office itself was erected as a bulwark against tyranny; and by the name of it tyranny is now supported. In the same manner he used and perverted the consulship, another magistracy peculiar to the common-wealth, but by him abused to the end of his monarchy.’

SECT. III. Having briefly stated the fall of the Roman free state, and its causes, with the introduction and establishment of imperial absolute power, disguised as far as possible to secure its continuance, the authors purpose is to collect a few histori­ cal flowers in his passage to the sixteenth century. Trajan, who excelled in justice and integrity, as well as military accomplish­ ments, was adopted and associated into the empire by Nerva, on advice of whose death when at Cologne, among other things, he wrote with his own hand to the senate that he would neither put to death nor dishonour any honest man. He

A. C. 99.

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assured them of this upon oath, and repeated the same at other times. This he faithfully performed, tho’ attempts were made to deceive him; for in his nature he was averse to duplicity, guile, or asperity. Good men he loved, kindly received, and honoured, and disregarded others, his vertue encreasing with his age. His friends, with whom he lived in great familiarity, blaming him for being too courteous to all, he answer’d he would be such an emperour to private persons as he would have wished emperours to be to him if a private man. During the common-wealth when a dictator was chosen he appointed a master of horse for his second in command. Under the emperours this officers place was supplied / by one named prefectus prætorio. He commanded the emperours guards, and in process of time had much greater power than the former. When chosen by the emperour the custom was to deliver to him a sword with a girdle, the ensign of his power, and Trajan having chosen a person for this office, when the time for completing his appointment came, he drew the sword, and reaching it to him used these memorable words: Take this sword, that if I govern well you may use it for me, but if ill against me. Pliny, in his oration to the senate, made in honour of this prince, presumes the excellence of his conduct was so great and conspicuous, that it seemed to the conscript fathers he meditated on this noble action day and night. Antoninus Pius, adopted by Adrian, succeeded to the empire, having before been one of the four proconsuls of Italy, and afterwards proconsul of Alia, in which office he surpassed all his predecessors in the equity of his government, attracting thereby the esteem and love of the people. When emperour he had for his subjects the tenderness of a father, and commonly used the expression of Scipio Africanus, that he would rather save the life of one citizen than slay a thousand enemies. He willingly hearkened to those who complained against his officers and receivers; the imperial dignity he deduced to the greatest civility, whereby it was more magnified: he did nothing by the mediation of others; so that his courtiers could neither terrify his subjects, nor make sale of their pre­ tenses; seditions wheresoever they happened he repressed, not with cruelty, but with modesty and gravity: multa de jure sanxit. Mæcenas, we have seen, advised Augustus to give the Roman citizenship to all the subjects of the empire: this Antoninus did, as appears from the Digests, and the Novel’æ of Justinian. Dig. lib. 1. tit. 5. l. 17. In orbe Romano qui sunt, ex constitutione imperatoris Antonini, cives Romani effecti sunt. This noble constitution is in effect celebrated in the elegant poem of Rutilius, who sustained the offices of consul, præfect of the city, military tribune, and prætorian præfect, in his address to Rome, in the following words. Fecisti patriam diversis gentibus unam,

Profuit injustis te dominante capi:

Dumque offers victis proprii consortia juris,

Urbem fecisti quod prius orbis erat.15

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Theodosius the younger, who began his reign in the east in the year 408, the divi­ sion of the empire taking place in the year 364, by his / constitution gave the requested right of children in common to the subjects. To encourage matrimony the standing laws of the empire had given several great advantages to married per­ sons who had children, respecting their inheritance, their acquests, or exemption from offices, being regulated by their number, and the place of their birth. Con­ siderable, but different, benefits attended their having one, three, or five children: great benefits accrued to those who had three children at Rome, which could not be enjoyed by the parents in Italy without having four, nor by the parents in the provinces without their having five. Those who had and reared children were the proper objects of the laws; but the emperours frequently granted the right of children to particular persons who had none. The value of the privilege attend­ ing the right of three children at Rome will appear from the following letter of Pliny to Trajan.*16 ‘You have occasioned me, Sir, an inexpressible pleasure, by thinking me worthy of enjoying the privilege which the laws confer on those who have three children; for tho’ it was an indulgence to the request of your very affectionate and worthy friend Servilius that you granted this favour; yet I have the satisfaction to find by the words of your rescript, that you complied the more willingly as his application was on my behalf. I cannot but look upon myself as in possession of my utmost wish after having thus received, at the entrance of your auspicious government, so distinguishing a mark of your peculiar favour, at the same time that it considerably heightens my desire of leaving a family behind me. I was not without this inclination even in those wretched times, as my two marriages will easily encline you to believe: but the Gods decreed it better, by reserving every valuable privilege to the bounty of your generous dispensations: and indeed the pleasure of being a father will be so much more acceptable to me now that I can enjoy it in full freedom and security.’ Justinian, who began his reign in the year 527, conceiving that he ought to render the condition of servants freed by their masters pure, unsullied and per­ fect, will’d that the sole Roman citizenship should prevail, undistinguished by place, age, or any thing else, because he was always inclined to make the condi­ tion of his subjects better;’ and therefore enacted, ‘if any person in making his man or maid servant free shall have declared them Roman citizens (for it is not otherwise lawful) let him know by this law, that he who hath / received liberty shall have immediately following it the right of gold rings, and new birth, and that he shall not henceforth require it from the prince of necessity, all sollicitude herein being needless.’ After making proper regulations respecting freed men and their patrons, marriages of masters with their servants, and masters having children by their servants, this emperour expresseth himself thus, ‘We have to *

Lib. 10. ep. 2.

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the utmost endeavour’d to give force and prevalence to liberty, and to make it flourish and encrease in our government; and, influenced by this desire, we have chearfully sustained so great wars in Lybia, and in the west, for the advance­ ment of true religion, and the subjects liberty.’ Justinian adds, ‘We do nothing strange, but follow the best emperours; for as Antoninus Pius gave in common to all the subjects the right of Roman freedom, before by them singly requested, thus deducing strangers to the Roman ingenuity; and Theodosius the younger the right of children, formerly requested, gave in common to the subjects; so also this right of regeneration and gold rings*, given formerly upon request, and attended with loss and trouble, we give in like manner to all the subjects by this law; for we have restored to nature persons worthy of ingenuity, not sin­ gly for the future, but to all henceforth worthy of liberty from their masters, that we may also add this great and general bounty to our subjects.’ – Hereupon Gothofred17 saith, ‘Thus good princes are wont usually to surpass each other in governing their subjects with equal right, and bestowing benefits upon them.’ Antoninus Pius dying M. Aurelius Antoninus the philosopher succeeded him. Herodian,18 a worthy author of the third century, among other things, saith he was endued with all princely vertues, and of such exquisite knowledge as not to be surpassed by any of the Greeks or Romans; of so sweet a temper and courteous behaviour towards all men, that he would give his hand to every one that came to him, commanding his guards to put back none. Being weakened with age, and spent with incessant toil and care, he fell into a grievous disease in Pannonia†. When he saw himself past recovery he was sore afraid lest his son, for whose better instruction he had sent far and near for many / noble philosophers, giv­ ing them great pensions to train him up in vertue and learning, who was then but young (about 18) should in his youth, thro’ the incitements of uncontrollable imperial power (when he was gone) quit the pursuit of knowledge, and practice of vertue. Being well versed in history, and of profound judgment, he was much terrified with the remembrance of many princes who came to their sovereignty when they were young (instancing several grievous tyrants:) revolving in his mind those images of tyranny he was greatly agitated by hope and fear: moreover considering the unsettled dangerous state of Germany; in these perplexities he commanded his kinsmen and principal lords to come to him, who being assem­ bled he set the young prince before them, and lifting up himself a little on his couch made this speech unto them. ‘That you should be grieved to see me in my present state is nothing strange, for men are led by nature to compassionate their relations miseries, and these which we have before us excite greater commisera­ *

†

Asconius, who lived under Augustus, saith gold rings were the signs of ingenuity; and Isi­ dore, the last of the fathers in point of time, though not of learning, saith that it was lawfull for the ingenui only to wear gold rings. Now Austria.

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tion; but between you and me there is a more special bond, for, my disposition towards you consider’d, I have justly expected benevolence in return, and now is the fitest juncture for me to perceive that I have not thus long in vain honour’d and preferred you, and for you to shew yourselves grateful, and that you are not unmindful of the benefits received; you see here my son, whom you have edu­ cated, now in his early youth, and needing as in a stormy and tempestous sea governours to direct him, lest being misled, thro’ unskilfulness of what is right he be precipitated into a depraved conduct: be you therefore as so many fathers unto him, accompanying and advising him the best things; for no treasure in the world can so assure a prince, nor the strongest guard so well preserve him, as the good will and love of his subjects. The way to reign long and securely is not to purchase fear by cruelty, but to win love by mildness and clemency; for they are the best servants, and furthest from jealousy and flattery, not which are compel’d by necessity, but led by their affection, nor will they ever decline doing what is required, unless they be unjustly and violently oppressed; now it is difficult for a prince to moderate himself and bridle his appetite; wherefore advising him such things, and reminding him of what he now heareth, you will render him an excellent prince to yourselves and all others, and make the best gratification to my memory; for by this way only you will / be able to immortalize it.’ On concluding this speech the emperour swooned, and became speechless, all pre­ sent being o’erwhelmed with grief, and some unable to forbear breaking out into loud lamentations: he languished a day and night, and then died, leaving to his A. C. 181. contemporaries love inexpressible, and to future ages an everlasting memorial of his vertue. His death being known the army and people were all seized with the deepest concern, every nation in the empire with many tears received the mes­ sage, and deplored their incomparable loss, some calling him the most indulgent father, others the most of princes, others the most noble commander, and others the most temperate and accomplished ruler, all their expressions according with the truth. Every absolute government being a tyranny in posse, the tyranny in posse of to day may be a tyranny in esse to morrow; and the most excellent prince cannot by seting the best example, and by making the best provision possible, secure the good behaviour of his successor. Commodus succeeding, for a short time, followed the prudent counsels of his fathers friends; but his delusive courtiers using all means to corrupt him enflamed his mind so far with a desire to return and enjoy the delights of Rome, instead of prosecuting the war for the honour and safety of his empire, that the best coun­ sels could not defeat the designs of these deceitful sycophants, whose continual studied devices combining with the malignity of his nature, exceeding all the fears of his excellent father, he at length became a most capricious, wanton, cruel tyrant, who seemed to delight in collecting and improving all the vices of human nature; no dignity, sex, age, or nearness of blood could preserve the objects of

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his lust, or cruelty. He made the companions of his crimes, or their favorites, governours of provinces, commited the chief care of the empire successively to two most avaricious, impious, and traiterous ministers, and having brought on himself the hatred and contempt of the senate, in revenge he purposed their destruction; but at length himself became the victim of his intended cruelty to others. He was extremely dextrous in things unfit for his station, had great delight in openly killing wild beasts, and in the company of gladiators and other the most profligate persons. Having resolved on the approaching festival of Janus19 to issue out of a fencing-school armed like a master of defence, with a train of gladiators, instead of going from his palace, and appearing in his / princely robes to the people, he communicated this design to Marcia, his favorite mistress, who falling on her knees, with tears besought him not to prophane the majesty of the Roman empire in that manner, nor to hazard his person among such lewd and desperate ruffians; being unable to prevail she went away weeping. Then sending for Lætus, general of his armies, and Eclectus his chamberlain, he commanded them to prepare a lodging for him that night in the fencing-school, that he might go from thence the next morning to sacrifice on that solemn festival, and shew himself in arms to the Romans. They humbly desired him to desist from his purpose of doing what was so unworthy an emperour; whereupon in great rage he commanded them out of his presence, and returning to his bed-chamber to repose, as he was wont at noon, he writ in his table-book those whom he doom’d to death that night, among whom were Marcia, Lætus, Eclectus, and very many nobles and senators, being fully resolved to cut off all the ancient counsellors and others that were his fathers friends, lest his black deeds should be checkt by their grave censures, intending to divide their estates among the soldiers and sword players, that the former might defend, the other delight him. Having thus done he laid down the table-book, not imagining any would enter his chamber; but a little child, scarce able to speak, of whom he was exceeding fond, going into the bed-chamber took away the book to play with, and Marcia meeting him took the book from him, and on reading the deadly contents found she was to be first kill’d, and that Lætus and Eclectus were to follow, with such a number of noble persons; she immediately sent for Eclectus, and giving him the book, said, see what a banquet we are to have this night, who having read it, seal’d it up, and sent it to Lætus; he perceiving their danger instantly repaired to Marcia, pretending he was to speak with her about preparing the fencing-school for the emperour; when all met they agreed they must do or suffer without delay, and concluded to dispatch him by poison, which Marcia undertook to give him; and Commodus returning exceeding thirsty from bathing, and chasing wild beasts, she gave him the poison in a cup of aromatic wine, which he usually drank at such times. He soon fell into a slumber, which was imputed to his violent exercise; wherefore Eclectus and Marcia ordered all to depart, lest he should be disturbed. Having

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rested awhile, and the poison now working, he vomited extremely. His contin­ ued vomiting / made the conspirators afraid he should discharge the poison, and put them all to the sword; whereupon, for a great reward, they prevailed upon a desperado to strangle him, having reigned thirteen years.

SECT. IV. The rescript of Dagobert, the first king of the Francs, of the nobles, and A. C. 395.

people of the kingdom, to Valentinian emperour of the Romans, requiring

tribute, asserting the liberty of the Francs.

The sempeternal liberty of the Francs hath been accustomed to impose trib­ ute on other nations, not to pay it; but you who, the strength of the Francs being absent, fought with an unarmed few, and overcame by guile, not fortitude, if you are confident you have a right of requiring tribute from the Francs, come when you will, and with the sword we will convince you we are, and ever have been, most free, and that you are a servant. We certify these things to you, lest you should send any unarmed person to us respecting this matter, as we contend rather to give life than to lose liberty. Imperial Constitutions of the Germanic-Roman Empire, Tom. I. P. 4.20 The speech of Totila, king of the Goths, to his soldiers, after taking, and A. C. 547. entering the city of Rome. Being desirous of repressing the minds of the Goths, elated with victory, hav­ ing assembled them the following day, he spake thus. Doth any of you, fellow soldiers, beholding such changes as have happened in these late years, not dread the fragility of human affairs, and not easily discover whence these changes arise? I omit Rome, once the mistress of the world, having fallen into your hands, for these things are more ancient, and the ruin of this city is not now first begun; I have chosen rather to commemorate what concerns us. What more powerful before this war than the Gothic nation thro’ Italy? She brought 200000 warriors into the field, plentifully furnished with arms, horses, wealth, gold and silver, possessed all Italy, with Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and Damatia. Who would ever have thought this / so great power should be overthrown by seven* Greek sol­ diers, for no more came at first into Italy? Afterwards, when the Greeks held and had domination over all things, who would ever have thought that you, being very few and needy, should recover Italy against 20000 Greeks, when at first you were but 4000 horse, and, except Pavia, Verona, and Tarvisium, held nothing in Italy, and now at length take Rome, which Vitigis, with an army of 200000, and a years siege, could not subdue. These are, fellow soldiers, the greatest things, and worthy no small admiration: but the causes of these changes, if we attend, are most evident, for whilst the Goths cultivated equity and justice with each other *

Procopius, in his third book of the Gothic wars, saith 7000.21

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their affairs and power florished; but when a desire of having more corrupted them, then domestic seditions, intestine murders, and clandestine treacher­ ies arising among them produced ruin. But again, when these depravities were overcome by the justice of your leader, you being amended have easily overcome them. Wherefore considering these things ye ought by no means to be elated with your victory, but to reverence God, and dread the mutability of fortune; and to understand that empires, and all powers are very easily lost, unless they be conserved by justice, foresight and industry. Know therefore, fellow soldiers. that the greatest part of your labour still remains; for to preserve acquests is harder than to acquire, because in acquiring the possessors sloth often confers more than a mans own vertue; but no man can preserve what is acquired with­ out his own vertue. These things Totila then spake, and the Goths extoll’d the wisdom of their king. Imper. Constitutions of the Germanic-Roman Empire. Tom. I. p. 10. Constantine, son of Leo the wise, ascended the throne at the age of seven years, under the tutelage of his mother Zoa. He reigned 48 years. For the use of his son Romanus he wrote a book which treated of various nations, alliances, and affairs of the empire, and contained important instruction and advice, of which Casaubon, librarian to Henry 4th of France, in his celebrated preface to Polybius, addressed to that king, speaks thus to his majesty. ‘There is, Sir, in your most ample and truly royal library, a book of Constantine Aug. Porphyrogeni­ tus, not yet publicly known, which the pious parent writ for the sake of his son Romanus when partner in the empire. The / experienced prince knew that for the management of affairs wherein the public welfare is contained it was chiefly desirable that the dispositions of men with whom they are concerned be well known; whether subjects, friends, allies, or enemies; whether dwelling near or at the utmost boundaries, it is of great importance, or rather, I had almost said, the whole consists in knowing their nature, manners, institutions, form of religion, inclinations or aversations; the emperour therefore having partly by use, partly by reading, most accurately learnt the origins, manner of life, institutions of war and peace of all people between whom and the empire there was any commerce, formed on that subject a truly learned and useful commentary, and left to his son this most excellent monument of paternal affection, a work worthy to be some time published by your majesty’s command.’ In the year 1611 this book was pub­ lished by Meursius at Leyden, in the proeme whereof the emperour invokes the divine protection of his son, with grace to reign for the sake of truth.

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SECT. V.

Charles 5th at Brussels, having sent for his son Philip out of England, resigned to him in the presence of the States the sovereignty of the Low-countries: in Janu­ ary following he resigned to him the dominions of Spain, and transfered the empire of Germany to his brother Ferdinand; having foreseen how much the keeping of Flanders well united to the rest of the monarchy of Spain did conduce to his sons greatness, he made Philip come thither when yet very young, that he might be sworn his successor after his death, as he was. Cardinal Bentivoglio, in his history of the wars of Flanders,22 after observing that never any war afforded more copious matter of human instructions, among other things saith, that ‘the states representing each of the provinces were generally formed of three sorts of persons, ecclesiastics, nobles, and the more common sort of people; that the people there had always enjoyed many prerogatives and privileges in the form of their government, and therefore yielded to their princes an obedience mixt with liberty – that very great was the love which the emperour Charles shewed towards those countries, the people whereof forgot not his great affability to them in his tender years, and how graciously he always heard and received them; which caused them always to shew all requisite obedience and constant devo­ tion toward / him, unless in that little commotion in Gaunt, which was quieted as soon as begun. Flanders after this enjoy’d full and perfect felicity as long as he lived; for except in the frontiers toward France, which sometimes suffered by taking up of arms, all the rest of the provinces enjoyed a flourishing peace and perpetual tranquility; so as it cannot be exprest how much the inhabitants plenty, frequency of traffic, beauty of cities, and abundance of all things requi­ site therein were augmented: particularly you would have thought that Europe had chosen Antwerp for the universal staple town of her traffic, in so great num­ bers, and with such varieties of merchandize, did all foreign nations, even from the remotest regions, flock thither; which was much occasioned through the moderate and wise government of two princesses whose names will for ever be celebrated in Flanders, the lady Margaret, aunt to the emperour, and her sister the lady Mary, queen of Hungary, the one or the other whereof governed all those provinces almost all the while the emperour lay in the field.’ King Philip, after his fathers resignation continued in Flanders, without returning to his queen, until the year 1559, when resolving to go into Spain he appointed his natural sister the dutchess of Parma governess of the Low-countries, with certain persons for her privy council, of whom the chief in his confidence was the bishop of Arras, afterwards cardinal Granville, a Burgundian, who hav­ ing been secretary to the emperour, from the arcana of this prince had much better learnt the art of absolute than of limited government, whom after the kings departure she chiefly consulted; and to him two of the gravest counsellors

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did openly adhere, Vighlio, a lawyer of great esteem, and president of this coun­ cil, and Barlemont one of the chief of the treasury, who being both absolutely resolved to follow the kings sentiments, wou’d acknowledge no other interpreter thereof than Granville, in whose breast they knew the king had chiefly deposited them, whence jealousys and factions arose, so that, according to our historian, Orange, Egmont, and Horne, three members of this council of state, ‘scandal­ ized at the continuance of a cabinet council wherein many things of weighty consequences were resolved on without their acquaintance, murmured publicly against it in all places. Was this the reward of their past services and merits, that the king, under the name of the dutchess of Parma, should make their country be governed and / domineered over by the cardinal Granville? that the king did only confide in him, and made him only acquainted with his true intentions; that they were allowed votes in the council, and places in the provinces, only as insignificant cyphers; that the weightiest affairs were treated of in secret unknown to the council, and that such laws were given to Flanders as best liked an imperious Burgundian; that the inquisition was chiefly the off spring of his advice; that he wou’d thus bring in the government of Spain and Italy into Flanders, and rule over their consciences as well as persons; that the estates, honours, nay even lives of the most innocent among them, were exposed to the rigour of the inquisition upon any appearance, any report how false or slight soever. Let Spain and Italy groan under such a burden, the one so infected with the Moors, and the other so often overrun by Barbarians; that Flanders enjoyed the purity of its ancient blood, and the moderation of its peculiar laws.’ Sir William Temple23 informs us, that in the year 1565 ‘letters came from king Philip to the dutchess of Parma, declaring his pleasure was that all her­ etics should be put to death without remission, and’ (with other matters) ‘commanding that the utmost assistance of the civil power should be given to the inquisition. When this was divulged, at first the astonishment was great throughout the provinces; but that soon gave way to their rage, which began to appear in their looks, their speeches, their bold meetings, and libels; and was encreased by the miserable spectacles of so many executions upon account of religion – In the beginning of the year 1566 began an open mutiny of the citi­ zens in many towns, hindering executions, and forcing prisons and officers; and this was followed by a confederacy of the lords, never to suffer the inquisition in the Low-countries, as contrary to all laws both sacred and prophane, and exceed­ ing the cruelty of all former tyrannies; upon which all resolutions of force or rigour grew unsafe for the government, now too weak for such a revolution of the people; and on the other side Brederode, in confidence of the general favour, came at the head of two hundred gentlemen thro’ the provinces to Brussels, and in bold terms petitioned the governess for abolishing the inquisition, and edicts about religion, and that new ones should be framed by a convention of the states.

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The governess was forced to use gentle remedies to so violent a disease; to receive the petition without shew of the resentment she had at heart, and to promise a representation of / their desires to the king; which was accordingly done: but tho’ the king was startled with such consequences of his last commands, and at length induced to recall them; yet, whether by the slowness of his nature, or the forms of the Spanish court, the answer came too late; and as all his former con­ cessions, either by delay, or testimonies of ill-will or meaning in them, had lost the good grace, so this lost absolutely the effect, and came into the Low-countries when all was in flame by an insurrection of the meaner people thro’ many great towns of Flanders, Holland and Utrecht.’ King Philip being apprized of these disorders took the advice of his council, among whom the dukes of Alva and Feria were in great esteem both with the king and council, Feria chiefly for civil affairs, and Alva for military. Feria was for reducing the Flemish to their duties by fair means, and Alva by force; and when the king was in council to resolve what was to be done in this important business they gave their several reasons for their opinions. The duke of Feria speaking first, after entering deeply into the consideration of the whole matter, earnestly recommended the princely vertue of clemency, and foretold in great measure the evils that follow’d upon using military force. The duke of Alva, who had gained great renown in war, being by nature enclined to severity, and by force to overcome rather than sweeten difficulties, contended for the use of the army, to enforce rigorous punishment of past offenses, and to compel obedience to the kings edicts and commands respecting religious and civil affairs, regardless of the ancient rights and privileges of the people. The council were divided, and the king some time waver’d in opinion, but at length resolved to send the army proposed by the duke of Alva, whom he appointed to command it. The duke proceeded with ten thousand the best Spanish and Italian soldiers which the wars of Charles 5th, or Philip 2d, had bred up in Europe; this measure being taken contrary to the advice of the dutchess of Parma. On his arrival in Flanders, in the latter end of the year 1567, being join’d by 2000 Germans, raised by the dutchess in the last tumults, she retiring into Italy, he had the sole command, and for some time prevailed over all opposition, and thereupon daily became more haughty and imperious; but thro’ the management of queen Elizabeth, and otherwise, becoming distressed by the want of money to pay his troops, with the expense of citadels he was building in Antwerp and other places, he demanded of the / states the hundreth part of every mans estate to be raised at once, and for the future the 20th of all immoveables, and the 10th of all that was sold. ‘The states with much reluctance consented to the first, as a thing that ended at once, but refused the others, alledging the poverty of the provinces, and the ruin of trade. On the dukes persisting they petitioned the king, but without redress; then spending the time in contests, until the duke impatient of further delay causes the edict,

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without consent of the states, to be published at Brussels; the people refuse to pay, the soldiers begin to levy by force; the townsmen all shut up their shops; the people in the country for bear the market, so as not so much as bread or meat is to be bought in the town; the duke is enraged, and calls the soldiers to arms, and commands several of the inhabitants who refused the payments to be hanged that very night upon their sign-posts; which nothing moves the obstinacy of the people: and now the officers of the guards are ready to begin the executions, when news comes to town of the taking of the Briel by the Gueses*, and of the expectation that had given of a sudden revolt in the province of Holland. This unexpected blow struck the duke of Alva, foreseeing the consequences of it, because he knew the stubble was dry: and now he found the fire was fallen in he thought it an ill time to make an end of the tragedy in Brabant whilst a new scene was opened in Holland; and so quiting for the present his taxes and executions applies his thoughts to the suppression of this new enemy that broke in upon him from the sea.’ Cardinal Bentivoglio saith that Flanders had never formerly been wont to suffer the grievances of taxes and impositions as used in Spain, Italy, and other places. The ancient custom was for the prince to desire such assistance from the people in his necessities as was thought needful, and the often denying thereof shewed that the granting it lay in the people free-will: when they were resolved to / grant any, every province imposed upon itself such a proportion as was fit for that purpose: these contributions were demanded by the prince, and granted by the people but for a certain prefixt time, and as oft as the one was necessitated to make new desires, as oft was the other to renew again their consents.’ Grotius, in his annals and history of Belgic affairs,24 saith that ‘the two states, of nobles and town commonalty, had anciently the care of the common-wealth – nor was it lawful, without the consent of all, to impose tributes, or change the present state of affairs; so cautious were they that even their good princes might not become bad – that they had no fortresses, or soldiery in time of peace, except a few garrisons in the extreme borders – that the Spaniards, accustomed to govern Italy, and depopulate America, sought the same right or cause of war against the Dutch, who in a succession of princes had united as it were in equal league – that Philip, whose youth had passed among kingdoms and flatterers, had moreover an austere gravity, was of few words, affected solitude; and being formed after the manners of the Spaniards, was not to be accosted but in that *

Upon Brederodes delivering a petition to the dutchess of Parma, the persons who attended him being meanly attired were called by Barlemont as they entered the palace Gueses, or beggars, which name, tho’ raised by chance or scorn, was affected by the party, as an expression of humility and distress, and used ever after by both sides, as a name of distinction, comprehending all who dissented from the Roman church, how different soever in opinion among themselves.

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language: he therefore governing on his fathers retirement, by his inherent desire of domination, not yet curbed by experience, did not easily suffer any bounds or measure, and doubtless thought the faith and bravery of the Spaniards the fairest instrument of government. How great the desire is in royal dispositions to subvert the laws which break the force of power, the signal ruin of princes or people afford examples both old and new – that when Philip was about to depart, he was for leaving a garrison of above 3000 Spanish soldiers, under pre­ tense of defending the borders from the French, but in reality that he might arbitrarily restrain religious licence, encreased by foreign alliances in war. Orange and Egmont, whom, to lessen envy, he had designed to command them, refused the office, as averse to the laws. Upon his departure, the convention of the states, whom he had convoked only to take his leave of them, had requested him to remove the hated soldiery, adding an admonition, not to use other than Belgic councils for the government of the Belgic provinces. The kings hatred arising hence became on this account more implacable, that they seemed to have appre­ hended the approaching domination, and arts of empire.’ / Sir Walter Ralegh, in the preface to his history of the world,25 saith king Philip 2d, not satisfied to hold Holland and Zealand (wrested by his ancestors from Jaqueline, their lawful princess) and to possess in peace many other prov­ inces of the Netherlands, persuaded by that mischievous cardinal of Granville, and other Romish tyrants, not only forgot the most remarkable services done to his father the emperour by the nobility of those countries; not only forgot the present made him upon his entry of 4000000 florens, called the novelle aide; nor only forgot that he had twice most solemnly sworn to the general states to maintain and preserve their ancient rights, privileges and customs, which they had enjoyed under their thirty and five earls before him, conditional princes of those provinces; but begining first to restrain, and enthral them by the Spanish inquisition, and then to impoverish them by many new devised and intolerable impositions, he lastly by main force attempted to tread under his feet all their natural and fundamental laws, privileges, and ancient rights: to effect which, after he had easily obtain’d from the pope a dispensation of his former oaths (which dispensation was the true cause of the war and blood-shed since then) and after he had tried what he could perform by dividing of their own nobility, under the government of his base sister Margaret of Austria and the cardinal Granville, he employed that most merciless Spaniard Don Ferdinand Alvarez of Toledo, duke of Alva, followed with a powerful army of strange nations, by whom he first slaughtered that renowned captain the earl of Egmont, prince of Gavare, and Philip Montmorency earl of Horn, made away Montigue and the marquis of Bergues, and cut off in those six years that Alva governed of gentlemen and oth­ ers 18600 by the hands of the hangman, besides all his other barbarous murthers and massacres; by whose ministry, when he cou’d not yet bring his affairs to their

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wished ends, having it in his hope to work that by subtilty which he had sail’d to perform by force, he sent for governour his bastard brother Don John of Austria, a prince of great hope, and very gracious to those people: but he, using the same papal advantage his predecessors had done, made no scruple to take oath upon the holy evangelists to observe the treaty made with the general states, and to dis­ charge the Low-countries of all Spaniards and other strangers therein garrisoned, toward whose pay and pasport the Netherlands strained themselves to make a payment of 600000 / pounds; which monies received he suddenly surprised the citadels of Antwerp and Namures, not doubting (being unsuspected by the states) to have possess’d himself of all the mastering places of those provinces; for whatsoever he overtly pretended, he held in secret a contrary counsel with the secretary Escovedo, Rhodus, Barlemont and others, ministers of the Spanish tyr­ anny formerly practised, and now again intended. But let us now see the effect and end of this perjury, and of all other the dukes cruelties. First, for himself; after he had murther’d so many of the nobility, executed, as aforesaid, 18600 in six years, and most cruelly slain man woman and child, in Mecklin, Zutphen, Narden, and other places; and after he had consumed 3600000 of treasure in six years, notwithstanding his Spanish vaunt, that he would suffocate the Hol­ landers in their own butter-barrels and milk-tubs, he departed the country no otherwise accompanied than with the curse and detestation of the whole nation, leaving his majestys affairs in a tenfold worse estate than he found them at his first arrival. For Don John, whose haughty conceit of himself overcame the great­ est difficulties, though his judgment were over weak to manage the least, what wonders did his fearful breach of faith bring forth, other than the king his broth­ ers jealousy and distrust, with the untimely death that seized on him, even in the flower of his youth? And for Escovedo his sharpwited secretary, who in his imagi­ nation had conquered for his master both England and the Netherlands, being sent into Spain upon some new project, he was at the first arrival, and before any access to the king, by certain ruffians, appointed by Anthony Perez (though by better warrant than his) rudely murthered in his own lodging. Lastly, if we con­ sider the king of Spains carriage, his counsel and success in this business, there is nothing left to the memory of man more remarkable; for he hath paid above an hundred millions, and the lives of above 400000 christians, for the loss of all those countries which for beauty gave place to none, and for revenue did equal his West-Indies; for the loss of a nation which most willingly obeyed him, and who at this day, after forty years war, are, in despight of all his forces, become a free estate, and far more rich and powerful than they were when he first began to impoverish and oppress them. Oh! by what plots, by what for-swearings, betray­ ings, oppressions, imprisonments, tortures, poisonings, and under what reasons of state and politic subtilty, / have kings pulled the vengeance of God upon themselves, upon theirs, and upon their prudent ministers! and in the end have

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brought those things to pass for their enemies, and seen an effect so directly con­ trary to all their own counsels and cruelties, as the one could never have hoped for themselves, and the other never have succeeded if no such opposition had ever been made. God hath said it, and performed it ever: Perdam sapientiam sapientum; I will destroy the wisdom of the wise.’

SECT. VI. Queen Elizabeth in the year 1585, published a declaration of the causes moving her to give aid to the defence of the people afflicted and oppressed in the Lowcountries, which seems to have been formed with great deliberation, wherein she sets forth the just and reasonable grounds which induced her to give aid to these neighbouring countries, being by long wars and persecutions lamentably afflicted, and in danger to be brought into a perpetual servitude; she states the long-continued alliances, and profitable commerce between the two countries, and their conventions to shew mutual favours and duties; that the king of Spain departing from his Low-countries had been, as it was to be thought, counseled by his counselers of Spain to appoint Spaniards foreigners and strangers, men more exercised in wars than in peaceable government, to be their chiefest governours, contrary to their ancient laws and customs; that these Spaniards being exalted to absolute government by ambition, and for private lucre, had violently broken their ancient laws and liberties; that she had often, again and again, most friendly warned him, that if he did not by his wisdom and princely clemency restrain the tyranny of his governours, and cruelty of his men of war, his sovereignty would be endangered; that she had found the general disposition of all her own faithful people very ready in this case, and earnest in offering to her, both in parliaments and otherwise, their services with their bodies and blood, and their aids with their lands and goods, to withstand and prevent this common danger to her realm and themselves. This declaration her majesty concludes thus. ‘We hope our intention herein, and our subsequent actions will be by Gods favour both honorably and charitably interpreted of all persons (saving of the oppres­ sors themselves, and their partizans) in that we mean not hereby, either for / ambition or malice (the two roots of all injustice) to make any particular profit hereof to ourself, or to our people, onely desiring at this time to obtain by Gods favour for the countries a deliverance of them from war by the Spaniards and foreigns, a restitution of their ancient liberties and government by some christian peace, and thereby a surety for ourselves and our realm to be free from invading neighbours, and our people to enjoy in those countries their lawful commerce and entercourse of friendship and merchandise.’ Don Ferdinand Vasquez,26 a most eminent Spanish lawyer, one of the chief judicial officers of king Philip, began the dedication to that prince of his three

1564. Jan. 28th.

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books of illustrious controversies, and of other things frequent in use, by saying, ‘It is Platos opinion, most christian and most powerful monarch, that all princes who govern a common-wealth should carefully observe two precepts. The first is that they prefer the utility of the citizens to their own emoluments; for as the tuition of minors, so likewise the administration of the common-wealth is to be conducted for the benefit of those who are governed, not of their governours. The other is, that they regard, succour, and take care of the whole people, left while having respect to some one part or other only they forsake the care of the rest.’ This illustrious author saith, b. 1. ch. 1.§. 1. ‘There is a three-fold difference of princes; for some are meer and simple and legitimate; some legitimate, but not simple or meer; some neither meer nor legitimate. The meer and legitimate are those who are chosen by a free people, to govern the people, than which principality there cannot be any more just or grateful; and it hath respect to the meer utility of the citizens, not also of the rulers, as we shall shortly shew.’§. 10. he saith, ‘We shall set forth as a foundation a certain as it were elementary rule, whence near 200 definitions very arduous, useful and excellent will be derived. Let the rule be this, That all lawful principalities, kingdoms, empires, powers of laws and men were devised, created, received, and admited for the public util­ ity of the citizens themselves, not also of the rulers, is asserted and testified by the common and most frequent opinion of philosophers and legislators, holy men and doctors, in the same manner as other magistracies; so Plato writeth, whom Cicero citeth and followeth.’ Ch. 8.§. 1. 2. he saith, ‘We / deny that a meer prince can once impose subsidy on his citizens, far less twice, or oftener, is it law­ ful for him to do it, as Bocrius disputeth, decis. 131, which controversy will be juster in vassals receiving fief from such a lord, wherein the conventional law of the fief is to be observed. 2. It appeareth that such a prince cannot encrease the ancient subsidy of such citizens against their wills.’ The year 1566 is assigned by Sir William Temple for the date of the revolt of the Low-countries, altho’ great dissention and complaints had arisen several years before; wherefore the pre­ ceding excellent documents were at such time laid before king Philip, that his due observance thereof, with the indispensable obligation of his duty and oaths, instead of following the dictates of domination, bigotry, and cruelty, would have prevented his prosecution of those grievous measures which in conclusion cut off this important part of his empire, and thereby caused so great declension of the Spanish monarchy.

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SECT. VII. Queen Elizabeth, to enlarge her dominion, and encrease its commerce, by obtaining and securing part of America, by letters patent under the great seal, which is clavis regni, granted to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and to his heirs and assigns, licence to discover such remote heathen and barbarous lands and coun­ tries not actually possessed of any christian prince or people, as to him or them should seem good, the same to hold to him and his heirs and assigns for ever; to be holden of her, her heirs and successors by homage; and moreover granted to him and them licence at all times to encounter, repel, and resist by sea and land all persons who should without his and their licence, attempt to inhabit within any of the said countries, or within 200 leagues of any of the settlements they or their associates should make within six years, if not before inhabited by the subjects of any christian prince in amity with her majesty: and for the bet­ ter encouragement of men to this enterprize, ‘thereby granted and declared that all such countries so thereafter to be possessed and inhabited from thenceforth should be of the allegiance of her, her heirs and successors: and granted to Sir Humphrey, his heirs and assigns, and to all and every of them, and to all and every other person and persons, being of her allegiance, whose names should be noted or entered / in some of her courts of record within her realm of England, and that with the assent of the said Sir Humphrey, his heirs or assigns, should in that journey for discovery, or in the second journey for conquest, travel to such lands and countries as aforesaid, and to their and every of their heirs, that they and every or any of them, being either born within her realms of England or Ireland, or in any other place within her allegiances, and which thereafter should be inhabiting within any the lands and countries with such licence as aforesaid, should and might have and enjoy all the privileges of free denizens and persons native of England, and within her allegiance, in such like ample manner and form as if they were born and personally resiaunt within her said realm of England.’ Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in pursuance of this grant, sailed with five ships, man’d with about 260 men, for North America, and on the third of August took posses­ sion of the harbour of St. John in Newfoundland, and of 200 leagues every way, comprizing all those lands which in part surround and form the great bay or gulph, as well as the gulph, with the island of Newfoundland, and all the adjacent islands and seas, extending so as to comprise Nova Scotia as afterwards granted to Sir William Alexander; and in the most notorious manner invested the queens majesty with the title and dignity thereof. – At the time of this proceeding, or at any other during the reign of queen Elizabeth, no other christian prince had possession of any part of the lands thus comprised – Sir Humphrey, after making divers regulations of the fishery, sailed for England, but was lost in his passage.

1579. June 11th.

1583.

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1606. April 10th.

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Queen Elizabeth made a similar grant in all respects to Sir Walter Ralegh, his heirs and assigns. In vertue of this grant possession was taken of the country afterwards called Virginia; but the three settlements begun in her majestys reign were broken up, the first being abandoned by reason of the extreme miseries and dangers to which the settlers were subjected; the settlers of the next were slain by the savages; and those who were carried in 1587 to form the third settlement, could not be found in 1589 when captain White went to relieve them; and this settlement was discontinued till the reign of king James. King James, with intent to secure the sea coast of Virginia, and of other lands, with all the inland countries lying within 34 and 45 degrees of north latitude, by his letters patent made proper grants to / Sir Thomas Gates and others, for planting two distinct colonies within the limits aforesaid, each containing 100 miles fronting the coast, with the like inland extent, each colony to be planted by the proprietors within their several limits thereby appointed; and to be dis­ tinguished by the names of the first and second colony in Virginia; and thereby declared that ‘all and every the persons being his subjects who should dwell and inhabit within every or any of the said several colonies and plantations, should have and enjoy all liberties, franchises and immunities within any of his other dominions, to all intents and purposes as if they had been abyding and born within his realm of England, or any other of his said dominions.’ King James, by his letters patent, after reciting the grant last mentioned, incorporated the earl of Salisbury and twenty other nobles, Sir Humphrey Wild, lord mayor of London, and ninety five other knights; five hundred and eleven divines, squires, merchants, military and other gentlemen, and tradesmen; fifty five companies of the city of London, and twenty eight more merchants, gentle­ men and tradesmen, ‘by the name of the treasurer and company of adventurers and planters of the city of London for the first colony in Virginia;’ and thereby ‘granted to them and their successors all those lands, countries and territories situate and lying in that place of America called Virginia, from the point of land called Cape Comfort all along the sea coast to the northward 200 miles, and from the said point all along the sea coast to the southward 200 miles, and all that space and circuit of land lying from the sea coast of the precinct aforesaid, up into the land throughout from sea to sea west and north-west. To hold all and singular the said lands, countries and territories to them, their successors and assigns, to their sole and proper use; to be holden of him, his heirs and succes­ sors, as of his manor of East Greenwich, in free and common soccage, and not in capite;’ and by the said letters patent declared that ‘all and every the persons being his subjects, which should go and inhabit within the said colony and plan­ tation, and every of their children and posterity which should happen to be born within the lymites thereof, should have and enjoy all liberties, franchises and ymmunities of free denizens and natural subjects within any of his other domin­

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ions, to all intents and purposes as if they had been abiding and born within his kingdom of England, or in any other of his dominions.’ / King James by his letters patent, for the several reasons therein assigned, incorporated Henry earl of Northampton, keeper of the privy seal, Sir Lau­ rence Tanfield knight, chief baron of the Exchequer, Sir John Doddridge knight, serjeant at law, Sir Francis Bacon knight, solicitor general, Sir Daniel Dun, Sir William Cope, Sir Percival Willoughby, and Sir John Constable Knights, John Weld esquire, and thirty nine gentlemen and others, and their associates, by the name of the treasurer and company of adventurers of the city of London and Bristol, for the colony or plantation in Newfoundland; and did thereby grant to the said treasurer and company, and to their successors, all the lands lying to the southward of the parallel line passing by cape Bonaviste, and also to the eastward of the meridian line passing by cape St. Mary, together with the seas and islands lying within ten leagues of any part of the sea coast of the country aforesaid; and also all the lands and islands commonly called Newfoundland, situate between 46 and 52 degrees of north latitude. To hold and enjoy all and singular the said lands, countries and territories, to the sole and proper use of the said treasurer and company, their successors and assigns. To be holden of him, his heirs and successors, as of his manor of East Greenwich in the county of Kent, in free and common soccage, and not in capite; and did thereby grant and declare that ‘all the persons being his subjects which should go and inhabit within any colony or plantation, within any the precincts aforenamed, and every of their children and posterity which should happen to be born within the lymits thereof, should have and enjoy all liberties, franchises and ymmunities of free denizens and natural subjects within any of his other dominions, to all intents and purposes as if they had been abiding and born within his realm of England, or in any other of his dominions.’ King James, to stretch out his dominions, did by his letters patent grant and ordain that all the continent lying between 40 and 48 degrees of north lati­ tude, and extending from sea to sea, should be the limits of the colony thereby established, to be called by the name of New England in America; and for the better planting, ruling and governing of the same ordained, that there should be for ever in the town of Plymouth in the county of Devon, one body politic and corporate, consisting of forty persons, to be called by the name of the coun­ cil established at Plymouth in the county of Devon, for the planting, ruling, ordering and governing of New England in America; and thereby granted and ordained that Lodowick duke of Lenox, and twelve / other nobles, Sir Edward Seymour knight and baronet, and eighteen other knights, Matthew Sutcliffe dean of Exeter, Robert Heath, and six other esquires, should be the first council; and did thereby absolutely give and grant unto the said council, and their successors, all that part of America lying from 40 to 48 degrees of north latitude inclusively,

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and in length of and in all the breadth aforesaid throughout the main lands from sea to sea. To hold to them and their successors and assigns for ever, to their sole and proper use. To be holden of him, his heirs and successors, as of his manor of East Greenwich in his county of Kent, in free and common soccage, and not in capite, nor by knights service; and thereby granted and declared that ‘all and every persons being his subjects, which should go and inhabit within the said colony and plantations, and every of their children and posterity which should happen to be born within the limits thereof, should have and enjoy all liberties and franchises and immunities of free denizens and natural subjects within any of his other dominions, to all intents and purposes as if they had been abiding and born within his kingdom of England, or any other his dominions.’ King Charles by his letters patent granted to the earl of Carlisle, his heirs and assigns, the islands of St. Christopher, Granado, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Dominico, Antigoa, Monserrat, Barbado, and sundry other the Caribbe islands, with ample rights and jurisdictions, to be enjoyed in like manner as they were held and enjoyed by any bishop of Durham in the county palatine of Durham, forming of the whole one province, by the name of Carliola, and constituted him, his heirs and assigns lords and proprietors thereof. To be holden of him his heirs and successors kings of England in capite by knights service; and thereby ‘appointed, ordained, and commanded that the said province should be of his ligeance; that all and singular the subjects and lieges of him, his heirs and succes­ sors, deduced, or to be deduced into the province aforesaid, and their children there either already born, or thereafter to be born there, were and should be indi­ geni and lieges of him, his heirs and successors, and in all things be held, term’d, reputed, and accounted as faithful lieges of him, his heirs and successors, within his kingdom of England descended; and also freely and peaceably inherit, pos­ sess, use and enjoy all liberties, franchises and privileges of his kingdom as his lieges within his / kingdom of England born, or to be born, without impedi­ ment, molestation or grievance of him his heirs or successors.’ The amount of the expenses of making the first settlements within the limits of the several grants made by the preceding letters patent may in some measure be known by the account given of the expenses of settling the Massachusetts col­ ony, by the reverend Mr. Cotton Mather, in his New-English history, published at London in the year 1702.27 This settlement, begun in the year 1628, was carried on for twelve years together by gentlemen of worthy families, divines, mer­ chants, husbandmen, and artificers, whose expenses, according to our author, were as follow. ‘The passage of the persons by computation cost at least 95000 l. the transportation of their first stock of cattle great and small no less than 12000 l. besides the price of the cattle; the provisions laid in for subsistence till tillage might produce more cost 45000 l. the materials for their first cottages 18000 l. their arms, ammunition, and great artillery 22000 l. besides which 192000 l. the

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adventurers laid out in England what was not inconsiderable. About 198 ships were employed in passing the perils of the seas in the accomplishment of this renowned settlement.’ To encourage so great numbers of noblemen, eminent and worthy persons of various degrees, with their associates and other adventurers, to undertake with all the expense, risque, pain and peril necessary to make so great acquests of dominion, in the inhospitable parts of a distant quarter of the globe, then little known, without charge to the crown, by the preceding letters patent the equal and beneficial nature of this new dominion thus to be acquired was ascertained, and provision made that all the adventurers, settlers, and their posterity, should enjoy all the public rights in these new dominions which they would have enjoyed if abiding or born in England. The wise, just, and proper foundation of accessional empire to be acquired by the adventurers and settlers being thus laid by the crown, their entire confidence in the perpetual endurance thereof, for the benefit of themselves and their descendants, in case their manifold labours and dangers should be crowned with success, so far inspirited them to persecute this great enterprize, that by their numerous and vigorous efforts, patience and perseverance under their manifold great sufferings in war and peace, at length overcoming all difficulties, they so far prevailed, that they acquired several exten­ sive, hostile or dangerous, unprofitable territories, / converted several parts into useful possessions, and reduced the whole to the obedience of the crown of Eng­ land, with a continual encrease of the manufactures, trade and navigation of the kingdom, to the great advance of its wealth and naval strength, thereby clearly manifesting the great wisdom and national benefits of these establishments, with the merits of the colonists, which, in the authors poor opinion, sufficed, upon the principles of reason and found policy, to have obtained for them, if wanted, a good title to the English right; for what greater benefit could accrue to that kingdom than she received from those proceedings which so far augmented the dignity, wealth, and strength of her naval empire? The colonies being from their establishment held of the crown of England optimo jure, and the subjects entitled to the right of the natural born subjects in England, the inhabitance of foreigners in any of these colonies was, under certain regulations, in process of time considered by the king and parliament reason sufficient for deeming them natives of Great Britain, thereby giving the strongest confirmation possible of the free state of the natural born subjects in the colonies. The stat. 13 Geo. 2. cap. 7. entitled ‘an act for naturalizing such foreign prot­ estants and others therein mentioned, as are settled, or shall settle, in any of his majestys colonies in America,’ after reciting thus. ‘Whereas the increase of people is a means of advancing the wealth and strength of any nation or country: and whereas many foreigners and strangers from the lenity of our government, the

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purity of our religion, the benefit of our laws, the advantages of our trade, and the security of our property, might be induced to come and settle in some of his majestys colonies in America, if they were made partakers of the advantages and privileges which the natural born subjects of this realm do enjoy; therefore enacts that from the first day of June 1740, all persons born out of the ligeance of his majesty, his heirs or successors, who have inhabited and resided, or shall inhabit and reside, for the space of seven years, or more, in any of his majestys colonies in America, and shall not have been absent out of some of the said colo­ nies for a longer space than two months at any one time during the said seven years,’ and shall take the oaths, and make the declarations, or affirmations, with the subscriptions, therein specified and required, ‘shall be deemed, adjudged and taken to be his majestys natural born subjects of this / kingdom, to all intents, constructions and purposes, as if they, or every of them, had been or were born within this kingdom.’ – From what precedes, in the authors opinion, it clearly appears that the subjects in the colonies from their settlement were well entitled to the English right, to be held in common with their fellow subjects in Eng­ land, the whole making one public family, the king being their common father, entitled to enjoy one common law of liberty, and thereby forming one common cause proper for their mutual defence*, the several modes of their enjoying this common liberty by reason of their respective situation, institution, or other mat­ ters, by no means diminishing its substance. – The more numerous the faithful possessors of liberty are, the more secure will be the free state of all.

SECT. VIII. The Romans, by adopting their allies, strangers, persons destitute of settlement, and their brave enemies when conquered, into their state, raised themselves from the smallest nation to the greatest, and from the most obscure to the most illus­ trious; but their policy changing with their manners, the senates haughty refusal of the Roman right to their allies occasioned the social war, begun in the year of Rome 662, which within two years exhausted the Roman treasury, containing at its commencement 1620829 pounds weight of gold, with all that cou’d be spared from their vast annual revenue; so that the questors were forced to turn the priests and sacrifices out of the houses allowed them round the capitol, and to let them out for public use. – A war which subjected Rome to extreme misery, and in no small degree depopulated Italy, and which, before its conclusion, gave to the allies the rights they justly claimed; for, to use the words of Florus,28 jus civ­ itatis, quam viribus auxerant, socii justissime postularunt, the senate and people, *

The inhabitants of Lavinium, when besieged, thought themselves obliged to suffer any extremity, rather than break their faith with the Romans, whom they esteemed their descendants.

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who opposed this claim, after discerning their error thro’ their sufferings, having the wisdom to reform it, which had brought their state into so great danger, that, according to the sentiments of intelligent authors, if the powerful Mithridates had in season joined the allies, it would probably have been overthrown, and the new / common-wealth intended by them raised, in imitation of the Roman, when free from corruption, domestic violence, and confusion; but that great prince neglecting the opportunity proper for securing himself and his dominions, after many noble efforts, with several instances of success, was wholly overcome by the victories of Sylla, Lucullus, and Pompey, who thus compleated the Roman grandeur, for he thereby ‘united to the body of its empire countries of a bound­ less extent, which, however, heightened the Roman magnificence rather than encreased its power; and tho’ it appeared by the titles carried in his triumph that he had encreased the revenue of the public treasury above a third, there yet was no augmentation in power; and the public liberty was thereby only exposed to the greater danger:’ whereas our colonies are a constant encreasing source of industry and labour, the best support of mankind, employed in manufactures, trade, and navigation, whereby great collections of wealth are daily making, accompanied with the most beneficial means of its participation by innumer­ able well deservers in this kingdom, and the continual augmentation of its naval strength, whereon the safety and glory of the empire do so far depend. Among other errors attending the unhappy controversy with our colonies, the great expense of the last war having been upon several occasions charged to their account, this war is to be consider’d in its commencement, causes, and relations to former wars and treaties, and to the unjust claims, injurious encroachments, and dangerous designs of France, with their hostile invasions prior to the open declaration of it. The war begun in 1744 was concluded by treaty at Aix la Chapelle the 18th of October N.S. 1748, and the marquis of Galis­ soniere, commandant general of New France, having before his knowledge of its conclusion divised fresh claims and encroachments upon important parts of the British empire, as appear’d in part from his letter to Mr. Mascarene, commander in chief of Nova Scotia, dated at Quebec January 15th, 1749, after his master had got the expected possession of Cape Breton, he dispatched an officer to the Ohio for the purpose mentioned in the following account of his own proceed­ ing. ‘In the year 1749, of the reign of Lewis 15th, king of France, we Celeron commandant of a detachment sent by the marquis of Galissoniere, commandant general of New France, to reestablish tranquility in some savage villages / of these cantons, have buried this plate at the confluence of the Ohio and Tchadakoince the 29th of July near the river Ohio, otherwise Fair-river; for a monument of the renewal of possession, which we have taken of the said river Ohio, and of all those which fall thereinto, and of all the lands on both sides, as far as to the springs of the said rivers, in like manner as the preceding kings of France have, or ought to

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have, enjoy’d them, and as they have maintained them by arms and by treaties, especially by those of Reswick, Utrecht, and Aix la Chapelle.’ And Nova Scotia continuing, as it had been in times past, the great object of the desire of France, the marquis began the invasion of it by another detachment, which enter’d, and made their repeated advances into it. The other injurious and hostile proceed­ ings of France, will appear from the memorial presented to his late majesty in council in April 1754. To the Kings most excellent majesty in council. The memorial of William Bollan, Esq; agent for your majestys province of Massachusetts Bay, in New England, Most humbly shews, That the English having by the treaty concluded at Utrecht given up to the French the island of Cape-Breton, together with a large part of the cod fishery, to the diminution of the English dominions, and the great prejudice of their fishery, commerce, and naval power, it is humbly apprehended it thereupon became nec­ essary for the English to secure effectually those countries which were confirm’d to them by that treaty, and that the avowed importance and public complaints of the concessions thus made to the French, contain’d in the impeachment of the earl of Oxford for advising those concessions, fully manifested this necessity; and it is humbly conceived that if this necessary measure had been taken the safety of your majestys American empire would thereby have been so far com­ pleted, that, in all human prohability, it would never afterwards have been in the power of France to make any great and permanent breach in it, and her utmost efforts would have amounted to transitory annoyances only. It is true that by allowing to the French such a large share of the cod fishery they acquired their principal nursery of sea-men, and, together with a great part of the fishing trade, they carried off other trades depending thereon, thereby greatly diminishing the fishing trade of the English, who would otherwise / have enjoyed that inexhaust­ ible source of commerce and naval strength wholly to themselves, to whom it originally belonged: and it is also true that the French by possessing Cape-Breton were enabled not only to protect the fishery thus yielded up to them, but to distress the English fishery, and to annoy all their navigation in those seas; yet nevertheless inasmuch as all Accadie or Nova Scotia, with its ancient boundaries, which it is well known comprise all that part of the continent lying between the river Canada on the north, and the Atlantic ocean on the south, and extending westward from the mouth of Canada river and the gulph of Canada on the east till it meets with your majestys other territories, was by this treaty yielded and made over to the crown of Great Britain for ever, and the five nations or can­ tons of Indians were thereby expressly declared by both crowns to be subject to the dominion of Great Britain, whereby the sovereignty over all their country

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was established in your majestys crown against all the pretensions of France; if the situation and extent of these countries, and your majestys other territories on the continent of America be considered, together with all their advantages, it is humbly apprehended the whole will plainly appear to have formed such a dominion as when strengthened by properly securing Nova Scotia, and the coun­ try of the five nations, might have been for ever protected from all the deep and dangerous designs of France. That this dominion thus strengthened and secured, according to the ordi­ nary course of human affairs, would have become so formidable, that the English by means of this and their other force must in time have had the command of the French colonies; and it having been declared in the councils of France as a notorious truth, that the navigation of that kingdom owes all its encrease and splendour to the commerce of its colonies, and that it cannot be kept up and enlarged otherwise than by that commerce, it is apprehended that the English being thus by an apt and sufficient force enabled to command the French colo­ nies, this must have given them very great advantages at all times. That on the other hand the preservation of your majestys colonies is necessary to the being of your majestys kingdom as a maritime power superiour or equal to France – The large proportion of the whole English navigation employed in carrying on the commerce of the colonies, and the present proportionate naval forces of the two kingdoms / being considered, it is humbly apprehended this point will appear indubitably clear and certain. That the preservation of your majestys sugar-islands depends on the preser­ vation of your majestys colonies on the continent, and the security of the latter depends on the preservation of Nova Scotia, and the country of the five nations – These points, it is humbly conceived, will manifestly appear considering the situation of the English and French colonies, and their mother-countries, the course of all their American navigation, with the policy and forces of the two states, especially that firm policy of the French which leads them by means of encreasing fisheries, trade and colonies to enrich their country, and raise a pow­ erful naval empire. And, under your majestys favour, your memorialist would farther particularly observe that the preservation of the country of the five nations is necessary in order, 1st. to give a proper breadth, or sufficient inland extent to your majestys colonies on the continent; 2d. to prevent the junction of the French settlement on the rivers of Canada and Mississippi; and, 3d. to secure the fidelity of the five nations, whose martial disposition, and firm attachment to the English, has made them a long time a great bulwark and defence of divers of the English colonies against the French and their Indians, and who have been a great check to the growth of the French power on the continent of America, and whose defection from the English, and attachment to the French, would render in time of open war all the outer settlements at least in the English colonies a

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general scene of slaughter and desolation; and that the French by gaining and holding Nova Scotia would acquire these advantages: 1st. they would be able directly to deprive the English of a great part of their cod-fishery, and greatly to distress the rest; 2d. they would thereby gain the command of the chief part at least of the English mast country; 3d. they would be enabled to distress all the English navigation both in passing and repassing between England and divers of the English colonies, and likewise to distress all the English shiping on their return home from the other colonies, as the course of navigation makes all the English shiping in their return from the English colonies pass before Nova Scotia, so that this acquisition to France would make a long extended hostile shore to all the English American navigation, that is, to the greatest part of all the English shiping; 4th. this acquisition would in time greatly strengthen and facilitate the enterprises and dangerous designs / of France upon any of your majestys other colonies; so that it is with great reason, as it is humbly apprehended, that the French look upon Nova Scotia as the principal point which must in time deter­ mine the power and dominion on the continent of America to the English or French. That notwithstanding the interest of the English so plainly required their especial care upon concluding the treaty of Utrecht to secure Nova Scotia, and the country of the five nations, yet it is unhappily certain that an adequate and sufficient care was not taken by them of that matter: on the contrary during the late peace they permited the French to enter the country of the five nations, and to erect and maintain in the heart of it a fort at the great pass of Niagara, and suffer’d them moreover to make a large advance upon another part of the same country, directly towards the English settlements, and to seize Crown-point at the southerly end of the lake of the five nations, by the French call’d lake Champlain, and there to erect and continue a strong fort, the French having by their encroachments in this quarter seized about one third part of the whole breadth of your majestys American empire. They raised this fort for the defence of these encroachments, and to be a means of making others, and to facilitate in time of open war their attacks upon the English settlements. And as to Nova Scotia, it being provided by the treaty of Utrecht that in all the places and colonies that were to be yielded and restored by the French king in pursuance of the treaty, the French subjects might have liberty to remove themselves within a year to any other place, as they should think fit, together with all their moveable effects, and that those who were willing might remain there, and be subject to the kingdom of Great Britain, there was no oath of allegiance proper for such subjects taken by them, but they were suffered to continue without taking any such oath, and in a state rather independent and lawless than proper for such subjects, until the year 1726, when some of them very unwillingly took an oath of allegiance to his late most excellent majesty, and about three or four years afterwards the inhabit­

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ants in general took the like oath, wherein it was mentioned that your Britanic majesty had granted them the privileges and liberties of your natural-born sub­ jects; but this oath they took upon their own terms of being neuters, and not to carry arms upon any pretense whatsoever, which it is said was granted them by an instrument apart, for the oaths which they took make no / mention of this mat­ ter. These oaths taken on these terms, and after such long delay, added very little to the security of the country; and there being no civil government established and exercised over it, the small hold gain’d by the English upon the minds of the inhabitants by these oaths was in a little time lessen’d, if not entirely lost, thro’ the arts and management of the French, who had from the beginning watched the conduct of the English, and taken their advantage of it, employing for that purpose their priests, whom they from time to time dispatched from Canada as their principal engines, and who under proper directions conducted themselves with such dexterity and address, that they form’d a close union between these inhabitants and the several Indian tribes in the country, and attached both par­ ties to the interests of France; so that by means of the conduct of the English on one hand, and the natural disposition of the inhabitants cooperating with the constant designs, vigilance, and dextrous management of the French on the other hand, this province before the commencement of the late war was brought into such a dangerous and wonderful condition, that it wou’d be tedious as well as difficult to give it a particular description; and, under your majestys favour, it may be said in a word that the French had form’d the whole into one masked battery, ready, when they should see occasion, to be played off with other force against the small strength which the English had there, to the utter loss of that province, and the great danger of the adjacent English countries. That the French opened the war in America by taking Canceau, a part of Nova Scotia, where a considerable fishery used to be carried on by your majestys sub­ jects. They then directly laid siege to Annapolis, by which alone the province of Nova Scotia was held for your majesty, and they prosecuted that siege until they had made very great advances with the garrison in a capitulation for an actual surrender, when the succour raised by your majestys province of Massa­ chusetts Bay interposed and saved it, whereupon Mons. Duvivier, who had taken Canceau, and commanded the siege against Annapolis, proceeded to France, to concert measures with the ministry there for the conquest of Nova Scotia, and the further prosecution of the war in that quarter, for which purposes Mons. Duvivier was dispatched the next spring with five sail of ships of war: but while this armament was preparing, and proceeding, your majestys province of Mas­ sachusetts Bay made an expedition / against Cape-Breton, whereby that place was taken, Nova Scotia was saved, the French fishery destroyed, the English fishery preserved, and the whole designs of the French for a time defeated. The next year the French, to indemnify themselves for these losses, and to carry their great

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point of conquering Nova Scotia, and returning upon the inhabitants of Mas­ sachusetts Bay the severe blows which they had received from them by an attack upon Boston its metropolis, prepared and dispatch’d a large armament under the command of duke d’Anville. This armament, consisting of twelve sail of line of battle ships, with a great number of other vessels, was intended to have been join’d by a squadron of men of war from Martinique, in order to secure effectu­ ally their main purposes; but by the special favour and interposition of divine providence, the great hopes formed by the French from this powerful armament were entirely blasted, and Nova Scotia again saved, notwithstanding duke d’ Anvilles arrival there. The year following the French having a party from Canada lodged in Nova Scotia ready for action, they dispatched from France a smaller armament to join their forces there, hoping by the speed and spirit of their con­ duct to make that conquest with a lesser force which they had failed of making the year before with a greater; but by the divine favour likewise this armament was delivered into your majestys hands. After this Mons. Ramsay with the party from Canada continued in Nova Scotia, and had for some time the command of a considerable part of the country, having by surprise gained an advantage over a part of the troops raised by your majestys province of Massachusetts Bay; but upon the whole this French party was so discomfited that before the end of the war they were forced to retreat, and entirely quit the country. That notwithstanding the right of sovereignty over all the country of the five nations appertains to your majestys crown, and his most christian majesty expressly acknowledged that right by the treaty of Utrecht, which treaty was renewed and consumed by the late treaty of peace concluded at Aix la Chapelle, the French have, since the conclusion of the latter treaty not only continued and maintained the aforementioned sorts and encroachments, which they unjustly erected and made within the said country during the late peace, but they have moreover erected in different parts of this country three other new and additional forts, by means of all which forts the French continue daily to gain strength, and make other encroachments, whereby the security / of those parts o[f ] this valuable country which they have not already seized is greatly weakened, and the attachment of the five Indian nations to the English is much lessened, to the great danger of all your majestys colonies on the continent. That since the conclusion of the treaty of peace at Aix la Chapelle, the French have also, in open violation of your majestys undoubted right, invaded your maj­ estys province of Nova Scotia, and entering it with an armed force on the north side they have march’d across the country, and seized your majestys ancient fort of St. John, and repaired and strengthened it, and proceeded to make a settlement, and build a strong fort higher up on the river of St. John; and have moreover erected two other forts in the heart of this province, viz, one at the bottom of the bay of Fundy, and the other at the bottom of bay Verte; and they have for

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a considerable time past held, and now hold, the main body of this important province, leaving only to the English such part as, it is humbly apprehended, will unquestionably fall into the hands of the French likewise, in case they are suffered to continue in possession of what they have without any colour of right already seized, and now hold. That your majestys province of Massachusetts Bay labour’d with an indefat­ igable zeal to prosecute the late war to your majestys glory, and the common good of your dominions, and with a proper intent to defeat the design formed by France of geting such hold of the eastern part of the continent of North America, as must in time give her the command of the whole; and for the effectual pros­ ecution of these purposes, and the necessary defence of their own frontiers, near one third part of all the inhabitants of Massachusetts Bay, able of body to bear arms, became your majestys soldiers: and altho’ at the close of the war this loyal and dutiful province found itself much weaken’d by the loss of a great number of its inhabitants, occasioned various ways by the war; yet, thro’ the favour of heaven granting success to its zealous endeavours for your majestys services, this province had then the comfort of seeing your majesty hold the island of CapeBreton, to be disposed of at your majestys pleasure; and also to hold the province of Nova Scotia free and entire, to the general safety of your majestys colonies; and it is with the deepest concern they have since, in a supposed time of peace, seen the French seize, and from year to year hold, the far greater part of Nova Scotia, continuing daily to strengthen / and fortify it against your majesty; and moreover by seizing and securing the principal passes, and every other practical method, proceed to establish a chain of empire extending from the sea coast of Nova Scotia to the mouth of the river Mississippi, thereby encompassing your majestys colonies on the land side, and lessening the English name and interest among all the Indian nations, forming several of the principal links of this chain out of your majestys territories. All which, on behalf of your majestys most dutiful and affectionate subjects the inhabitants of Massachusetts Bay, is most humbly submited to your majesty’s royal and paternal consideration; and it is most humbly prayed that your maj­ esty will be graciously pleased to consider whether the safety of your majestys American empire does not require that the French be removed from their unjust possessions therein. W. BOLLAN. During the war begun in 1744 proposals for effectually securing Nova Scotia were made, considered, and agreed to by the government, but never executed. Massachusetts colony saw the invasion of this neighbouring province with con­ cern from the begining, but, without special authority, they could not repel the invaders; all that lay in their power they did, which was to sollicit their repul­

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sion from time to time by their agent. The war therefore being caused by the hostile injurious proceedings, and dangerous designs of France (uncontrollable by the colonies, herein blameless) formed for the distress, diminution, division, and final subversion of the British American dominion, so great a source of her naval empire, thereby to enlarge her own dominion, and raise a superiour naval power, this war was, I conceive, plainly a great national cause, and the expense of it consequently a national charge. It is farther to be considered that all the parts of an empire are entitled to public protection against a public enemy at the pub­ lic expense; and when a part, by reason of its national importance, becomes the great object of the enemies designs, and thereby more exposed to the operations of the war, this strengthens their claim to public protection upon the common principle of national justice and policy. This charge of the expense of the war to the account of the colonies moreover supposes them to be in a state of separation from this kingdom, in relation to the great article of war and common defence, one of the most essential parts of their conjunction, which tends to / promote their farther severance, with the consequent introduction of all the mischiefs and dangers that attend division in the greatest empires, instead of restoring and strengthening that cordial union which their mutual comfort and safety require, for which there is no equivalent; wherefore this and all other arguments drawn from division are extremely prejudicial to the whole. The former war, after being attended with losses on the continent of Europe, and the loss of Madrass in India, was concluded with the restitution of Cape Breton to France, and giving noble hostages to secure it. The reduction of this island, formerly part of Nova Scotia, having been made by Massachusetts Bay, with the aid of the neighbouring colonies, with intent to preserve Nova Scotia, to encrease and secure the British fishery, and by completing the British posses­ sion of the sea coast to encrease the security of her American navigation, with a power of annoying that of the enemy; these purposes being defeated by the res­ titution without complaint of those who made the unexampled acquisition; yet before payment of the expense of making and securing it the late kings ministers attempted to obtain an act of parliament* for enforcing the kings orders and instructions thro’out all the colonies, without the least qualification or limita­ tion, thereby to erect an absolute dominion over them, in manifest repugnance to the constitution of the kingdom and the colonies. Having shewn that the colonies were in no wise chargeable with causing the last war, so dishonourable in its beginings, and so glorious in its progress, it is to be remember’d that during its continuance they made the most acceptable and strenuous efforts to promote its success, wherein the present suffering province

*

A bill for this purpose being brought in March 3d, 1748–9.

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–f Massachusetts Bay at different times, according to its conduct in former wars, distinguish’d itself. Mutual confidence begets mutual content and benefit, whose enemy is dis­ trust; and since the colonies became of so great importance a suspicion, wholly devoid, in the authors firm and constant opinion, of the least foundation, of their having a real desire to unite, and make themselves independent, hath at dif­ ferent times in different degrees to their dishonour and prejudice taken place. / Trifles light as air

Are to the jealous confirmations strong

As proofs of holy writ.29

But on the principles of justice and candour no presumption of guilt can be admited without proper evidence: however, in addition to the common, legal, and equitable presumption of innocence, it may be observed that upon the approach of the late open war commissioners from the colonies being assembled at Albany, to concert proper measures for their best defence, a plan of a proposed union of the several colonies of Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire, Connecti­ cut, Rhode-Island, New York, New-Jersys, Pensylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, was formed, and prepared by Mr. Hutchinson, since governour of Massachusetts Bay, appointed on behalf of that province, and Dr. Franklin appointed for Pensylvania, whereby, under the authority to be granted by act of parliament, one general government was proposed to be formed in America, including all those colonies, consisting of a president, appointed and supported by the crown, and a grand council to be chosen every three years by the representatives of the people in their assemblies in the several colonies, with power to hold or direct all Indian treaties respecting the general interest of the colonies; to make peace or declare war with Indian nations; to make laws for regulating all Indian trade, with other powers respecting them; to make tempo­ rary laws for new settlements; to raise and pay soldiers, and build forts for the defence of any of the colonies, and equip vessels of force to guard the coasts and protect the trade on the ocean, lakes, or great rivers, with power for these pur­ poses to make laws, and lay and levy general duties, imposts, or taxes, appearing to them most equal and just; to appoint one general treasurer, and a particular treasurer in each government, with directions for the disposal of the money col­ lected, their laws to conform as near as might be to the laws of England, and to be transmited to the king in council for approbation or disallowance; with power to appoint civil and military officers, under different regulations, with various other provisions, regulations and limitations. This plan of a general and perpetual government being drawn up in July 1754, according to the authors information, was at first disliked by the other commissioners; but on debate and consideration approved; nevertheless, when this plan of union was laid before

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the several general assemblies / of the colonies, it was rejected by all, who pre­ ferred their continuance under their respective constitutions. In the two houses of the Massachusetts assembly it was almost unanimously disapproved, altho’ they had suffer’d so much from the weight of the preceding war falling chiefly upon that province. – This election of the colonies to continue in the enjoyment of their several constitutions was much approved by the late kings ministers. The cordial union of the kingdom and the colonies at the close of the late war surely deserved great care to preserve it for their mutual welfare; but our minis­ ters, instead of continuing the colonies in the enjoyment of those public rights which had so far advanced the welfare of both, divised and introduced a revenue system, grievous to the colonies, and prejudicial to the commercial interest of the kingdom, for which reasons it was in its principal part reversed, whereupon public quiet ensued; nevertheless it was afterwards more strangely revived, with new grievances to the colonies respecting essential parts of their government; and extremes, often dangerous in all forms of government, but altogether unsuitable to the nature of mild and equal government, proper to free commercial states, ever producing extremes; and the extremes of institution in this case being accom­ panied with extremes in execution, a principal part whereof, pregnant with great discord, mischief and danger, ensued upon a trespass commited by several of the kings officers, this new mode of government, by its various effects, hath brought the empire into a state of invitation of foreign war, to commence so soon as the distress caused by the continuance of the present unhappy division shall farther excite its prosecution; whereas if our ministers had favour’d, or even suffered, the continuance of this beneficial union of the kingdom and the colonies, without disturbing it by their innovations, it would questionless, as it had in times past, have caused the daily encrease of commerce, wealth and naval strength, with the dignity and security of the empire, whose enemies may be excited to arm, by considering that a house divided against itself cannot stand against their united forces, well prepared to maintain their competition for naval empire. In farther illustration of the benefits accruing to the kingdom from the colonies, it may be observed that the free trade which they enjoyed a consid­ erable time in their imports and exports being by various restrictions, made at different times, chiefly confined to this kingdom, / their trade with it was so far gradually advanced, that in the proceedings to obtain the repeal of the stampact, it appeared that the colonies owed to the merchants in our principal ports 4600000 l. the sums due to the merchants in the lesser ports being computed to amount to 400000 l. and upwards; and an intelligent merchant concern’d in geting the proofs of what was then due to the principal ports, and who not long since quited the American trade, lately informed me that the debts of the colo­ nies were now greater, and that our annual exports to them amount in value to a sum between 2700000 and 3000000 l. their various products of great value,

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enumerated in our laws, fit for our use, and exports to other countries, thereby forming numerous connections with other trades, being imported here, the ben­ efits of their circuitous trade with other nations likewise centering here. After seting forth the several preceding benefits received from our colonies, now so far embarrassed and endanger’d various ways by the system of revenue, let us consider what benefits would have arisen from that if not opposed. Upon considering it in all its relations, it hath ever appear’d to me that instead of prov­ ing beneficial it would have been so detrimental to this kingdom, that for every shilling raised by taxation it would have lost ten, or more in its commerce, by daily drawing out of trade the money much wanted to carry it on, wherein there hath been so great deficience for a long time past in the colonies, caused by the balance being against them, that many of them have had recourse to paper bills of credit to pass in small as well as large payments. We are moreover to add to the several important public benefits attendant on the continuance of public union, the cordial disposition and readiness of the colonies in future wars, aris­ ing from the changes and revolutions incident to all empires, to raise and unite their forces with our own, in order to advance the kings honour and service; wherefore, after collecting and placing all the preceding benefits of union in one scale, the revenue system, I conceive, hath provided nothing for us to put into the other but dissention, mischief, and danger; whereas, in my poor opinion, no plainer point of British policy can be presented to the human mind than to keep the kingdom and the colonies well united. Concordiâ res parva crescunt, discordiâ maxuma dilabuntur.30 /

The celebrated Gozliski,31 senator and chancellor of Poland, saith ‘equality or equity is one of the first-rate vertues, that contributes to the preservation of a government, and is a constant attendant upon, assistant to, and follower of justice, from whose dictates and directions she never varies the least point what­ soever.’ Here we have solid grounds of permanent union; and if our late policy had conform’d to the free spirit of the nation, and its constitution; to the free spirit of the institution and rights of our brethren in America, our associates in this constitution; to the natural, inherent, irreversible right of defence, the guard of all others, whence we might have received the best information; to the principle of universal justice, incapable of human rescission; to the free spirit of commerce, in its nature dependant on voluntary purchases, ever flying from force, and leaving the countries where unkindly used in a much worse condition than she found them; and to the most noble maxims and examples of governing a free people, we might have continued in tranquility, and the daily encrease of naval strength, and thereby have deter’d the enterprizes of our competitors for naval empire, who doubtless rejoice at our advances towards a civil war with the colonies, which heaven avert! from which, instead of receiving the least good,

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I am unable to forsee any thing but difficulty, distress, impoverishment and danger, numerous parts of our commercial and fiscal supplies fail, innumerable manufacturers and merchants suffer; and, in short, great part of the foundations of our naval empire shaken, and war in effect made upon the commerce of the kingdom. Augustus said that battle or war was never to be undertaken, unless there appear’d greater hope of emolument than fear of loss. A double dubloon is not to be ventured against a single penny; whereas by a war upon our colonies we venture the safety of our all against nothing at all; the utmost success which the warmest advocate for this war may expect wou’d neither encline the colonists to buy our manufactures, nor to fight our battles. We have already driven them into the use of their own manufactures, and are now in effect making sumptuary laws for their benefit. Before we devised our adverse measures we had from them all we desired, and from past experience assurance that we might have what we could in reason desire; and I am fully persuaded may have it again, in case we shall now observe the indispensable divine precept obligatory upon all men; To do as we would / be done unto. Humanum est errare;32 and Comines33 saith ‘it is not to be thought there is any prince so wise but he must sometimes err, and if he lives long often; and so it will be found perpetually, if one may be allowed to speak the truth. The greatest senates, and the greatest governments in the world have erred, and do and will err, as is known by experience’; and when their errors become visible reason requires their reformation of them. A late intelligent French author, who, from personal motives, chose to pub­ lish at Leyden his ‘Remarks on the advantages and disadvantages of France and Great Britain with respect to commerce,’34 and other subjects, under the disguise of a translation, when speaking of the British parliament, and the subject matters of their consideration, with their mode of proceeding, saith, ‘In a free assembly entitled to decide on such important objects, talents, merit, probity, have a fair stage on which to display themselves in the fullest light. Emulation, patriotism, will raise and form great men in all kinds, give them reputation, and reproduce new subjects every seven years. It is easy to conceive, to feel the advantage of such a government over the administration of one man for all the parts or for one part alone. Yet the judgments even of a nation may not be exempt from error; but it will be easier to reform that error than the error of a single person, because a nation has neither the interest, nor the false pride of defending its errors: besides a single man is enough to open the eyes of a whole nation, and any one of those seven hundred members has a chance to be that man.’ Louis quatorze, I presume, had a sufficient portion of the principle of high value; yet Mons. Colbert,35 his great minister, speaking to him of the love which a prince ought to have for his subjects, and of taxes*; after observing that a perfect *

Political Testament, Chap. 9th.

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harmony ought to subsist between a prince and his subjects, and censureing the excessive avarice of his farmers, he likewise censures the conduct of his council, as follows. ‘The care they have to please your majesty makes them, as soon as a thing seems to be for your interest, not much to examine that of your people. I have seen them at some junctures make blind compliances, and which might be called criminal, because it is to violate the justice of which they ought to be the defendants. Your majesty / knows that I have opposed myself to them very often; and that as much firmness as I have for the things which I think are just, I am as much grieved to assent to the establishment of those which are not so. Let your majesty call to mind what pass’d at the time that the affair of excess in drinking was before the council-board. I opposed it with all my power; and if the thing had but depended upon me it had never been done. I knew really the injustice of it, altho’ they (the farmers) had endeavoured to give it all the colours one could possibly imagine: and so it made such disturbance in the consequence that your majesty thought it convenient to revoke that new tax.’ Every positive law, with the reasons of making it, subsists in the mind of the legislators before written and enacted, and if their conceptions are erroneous enactment cannot change their nature, and when the preparatory proceedings suitable to the proper method of making laws are observed, ‘the matter of laws meerly human being any thing which reason doth but probably teach to be fit and convenient,’ this probability is to submit to the certainty of experience: but that question respecting the right of others can be duly determined without being duly consider’d, and that it cannot be duly considered without hearing the parties concerned, is an axiom which appears to the author as certain as any in Euclid,36 differing only herein, that this affects the heart as well as the head: and as no man, or order of men can judge of that which was never exposed to their judgment, when the important question de statu hominum37 residant in a far distant coun­ try, wherein all their invaluable rights are involved, comes under consideration, the exclusion of their defence tends directly to the introduction of other numer­ ous and grievous errors and hardships; and in the present case misrepresentation, partial consideration, and exparte declaration, presumption, and precipitation, by their various operations and advances have, to the great concern of every good man, brought the state to the brink of a dangerous precipice, et non regredi est progredi.38 It behoves us now, I conceive, to exercise a free judgment respect­ ing our present condition, and its causes, to reverence the immutable laws of God, and the architectonic principles of our free government suited to them, to consider our present protestant brethren in America as men of the same nation, blood, manners, religion, and civil liberties with ourselves, and that the safety and welfare of the state is the supreme law.

FINIS.

[CARTWRIGHT], A LETTER TO EDMUND

BURKE, ESQ

[ John Cartwright], A Letter to Edmund Burke, Esq; Controverting the Principles of American Government, Laid down in his Lately Published Speech on American Tax­ ation, Delivered in the House of Commons, on the 19th of April, 1774 (London: J. Wilkie, 1775).

After a distinguished naval career from 1758 until invalided in 1769, John Cart­ wright, the ‘Father of Reform’ (1740–1824), educated himself in politics and from 1774 published over eighty books and pamphlets as well as numerous let­ ters to the press. One of his first publications was American Independence: The Glory and Interest of Great Britain (London, 1774), some of which was repeated and much of which was expanded on in A Letter to Edmund Burke. Burke’s April 1774 speech, published in January 1775, argued that Parlia­ ment had the constitutional right to tax the colonies, but it was impolitic to exercise it. Cartwright avoided a personal attack, though he launched a major one on Samuel Johnson for Taxation No Tyranny (1775), considering Burke ‘one of our great national “lights”’ (below, p. 201), but for that reason considered his pronouncements all the more dangerously misleading. Cartwright thus focuses in the first section of his tract on the 1766 Declaratory Act. He asks three ques­ tions, invoking both constitution and natural rights. First, Doth not the British constitution, and the law of nature, which may in no wise be overturned by any human constitution whatsoever … absolutely require that the people, those at least who are proprietors of, and are thereby permanently attached to, the soil, shall actually share in the powers of legislation; by giving their consent either personally or by representatives of their own choosing, to all laws which are to be the rules of their actions[?] (below, p. 205)

Then, he asks, What share or participation in the powers of the British parliament is possessed by any American, as an American? 3. If no individual then, in America, by sharing in, be subject to, the powers of the British parliament; how can all of them, in their collective capacities as states and civil communities, be subject to this power? (below, p. 205) – 195 –

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Much of the rest of this section comprises familiar historical, constitutional and natural rights justifications of American freedom from Parliamentary authority, denouncing the Navigation Acts as well as more recent legislation, and refut­ ing the notion of virtual representation. He cites authorities from John Locke’s Two Treatises on Government (1690) to John Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1767–8), adding his own extended and extravagant rhetorical flourishes, including Shakespearean and biblical allusions and analogies. One interesting aspect of Cartwright’s literary experimentation is his attempt to subvert the familiar imperial ‘mother country’ paradigm. He offers at one point that ‘America may now be considered, as an industrious and intel­ ligent youth just arriving at man’s estate; who, having chearfully served a long apprenticeship under us, must now, if not admitted into partnership, become our rival in trade’ (below, p. 208). He also proposes, ‘that America shall become the wife of Great-Britain … [although] I do not mean she shall therefore obey his arbitrary will, nor that he shall have a direct power to rule over her’ (below, p. 217). But Cartwright’s most original contribution to the American debate comes in the form of ‘A draught for a bill, proposed to be brought into parliament, for restoring peace and harmony between Great-Britain and the British colonies in North-America’ (below, p. 241). This proposed a treaty creating ‘The Grand British League and Confederacy’ of eighteen North American ‘free and inde­ pendent states, owing no obedience or subjection whatsoever to the parliament of Great-Britain, which doth hereby … relinquish all claims and pretensions to sovereignty’ but would be obliged to protect each state’s liberty and sovereignty (below, pp. 244, 242). Each state would owe allegiance to the crown, and the crown would have sovereignty over the seas, lakes, rivers and unsettled territo­ ries (Cartwright identifies nineteen such territories north, west and south of the already existing colonies) until their populations reached 50,000 whereupon each could apply for full membership of the ‘grand league and alliance’ (below, p. 243). He also proposed a ‘monopoly of the North American commerce’ with ‘use of British money only’ (below, p. 246). American Independence saw Cartwright embark on a lifelong mission to reform Parliament, beginning with Take Your Choice! (London 1776), his bestremembered work, advocating abolition of property qualifications for voters and MPs, payment of MPs to reduce corruption, annual elections, secret ballots and abolition of rotten boroughs. He also helped found the Society for Constitu­ tional Information and the Society of Friends of the People to popularize these causes, undertook nationwide speaking tours, organized reformist petitions and became MP for Nottinghamshire in 1780, though he later lost an election to represent Boston, Lincolnshire. His support for American independence ended his naval career, but he became a major in the Nottinghamshire militia.1

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Notes: 1. R. T. Cornish, ‘Cartwright, John (1740–1824), political reformer’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 10, pp. 400–3.

A

LETTER TO

EDMUND BURKE, Esq; Controverting the Principles of

AMERICAN GOVERNMENT, Laid down in his lately published

SPEECH ON

AMERICAN TAXATION, Delivered in the

HOUSE of COMMONS, On the 19th of April, 1774.

LONDON: Printed for the Author, by H.S. Woodfall.

Sold by J. Wilkie, No. 71, St. Paul’s Church-yard.

M.DCC.LXXV. /

ADVERTISEMENT. ‘It may not be improper to inform the public that this letter was ready for the press when Lord Chatham’s conciliatory proposal made its appearance. In hopes that some feasible plan of accommodation with the colonies would thereupon have taken place, and such measures have ensued as might have made it unnec­ essary for the advocates of American freedom any longer to have kept up in its full force their contention against an overstrained and unjustifiable authority, the author thought proper to with-hold it awhile from the public eye: but being totally disappointed in his wishes, and now despairing that any good conse­ quences whatever can result from the measures determined to be pursued by government (notwithstanding the late attempt of administration to amuse us by making a shew of taking new ground) he now humbly submits it to the perusal of his fellow-citizens; in hopes that, small as may be its comparative weight, it yet may prove a mite not unacceptable in the scale which the good genius of Britain and of British America is anxious should preponderate. In saying that he despairs of any good consequences from administration’s pertinacious oppression of the colonies, he begs to be understood as meaning only those good consequences which the authors of the present measures esteem to be such, and which they propose to bring about. / ‘Indeed he hopes, and will venture to prophecy, that, odious and shocking as are the means by them to be made use of, yet the end will be the same as himself hath proposed to obtain by a very different way of proceeding; and that, take which course we will, the present dispute cannot possibly terminate in any thing short of American Independence. Whether it will prove better to have severed the colonies from this country by the hellish sword of war, or by the generous hand of equity; whether it will prove better to have inspired them with revenge and deadly hatred, or with gratitude and warm affection; and whether one or the other will prove most beneficial to us, time alone must finally determine.’ /

TO E. B. ESQ;

SIR,

February, 1775. When my twelfth letter to the Legislature, proposing the independency of America, went to the press (see Public Advertiser, Jan. 23, 24,) I thought I had taken a final leave of the subject; but several passages in your late published speech tending, as I fear, to mislead the public judgment, teach me that it lies too near my heart for me to suffer them to pass altogether unnoticed. It is the con­ vincing argumentation with which you demonstrate the folly, as well as injustice, of taxing America; together with the persuasive powers of eloquence there dis­ played, powers which can sometimes charm us into a belief of what we do not comprehend, that make your error, with regard to the sovereignty of Great-Brit­ ain, the more dangerous at this crisis, when all good men are anxious for the rights of America, though few of them are free from your own mistake, and when even the dissipated triflers of the age have a wish at least, if not a thought, to bestow in their favour. The multitude in this kingdom, when they become serious, and take a thing up in earnest, are too formidable for a minister to con­ tend with; but alas! they believe only as they are taught by some great authority: and even men of knowledge and reflection pay it sometimes too much respect. For my own part, Sir, I look up to you as to one of those ‘guide-posts and land­ marks of state whose credit in the nation’ gives general currency to your opinions; I consider you as one of our great national ‘lights.’ I wish therefore, as a matter of the last importance to the public, that you may ever hold on your course with regularity and truth: and not, like the changeful ‘luminary*’ you so happily describe, misguide your observers. / Believe me, Sir, I am not one of those who can, without a painful reluctance, withdraw my admiration from the glories of the sun, in order to contemplate his spots. But it is by an accurate observation of them, that we correct erroneous science; causing, as I may say, by these means, even the darknesses of that brilliant orb to throw light upon objects of impor­ tance to mankind. Had I a bad opinion of your heart, I would not make the vain attempt to argue you into the right; nor would I provoke you to exert your supe­ *

Charles Townshend. – 201 –

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rior talents still more, in order to destroy the truth. ’Tis not as you are ingenious, but ingenuous, that I mean to dispute with you. Nor is it for me to take the large field of discussion; to lay open all history, or to unfold the legitimate laws of our constitution. I leave these deep and capacious reservoirs of knowledge and pol­ icy to be ransacked by those who are my superiors in learning and eloquence; and are better able to take a laborious part in the great cause we are now engaged in; contenting myself to draw from the fountain head, a small portion of the waters of truth; which, like a dew from heaven, have, I believe, the most kindly influence upon the production and growth of true wisdom. It is to the pure, the genuine principles of our perfect constitution, and the unalterable law of nature, that I will refer; it is to your reason and your conscience I will appeal. This will bring the question within a very small compass, and to a short issue. But be apprized, Sir, that it is not to any creature of your own imagination, an ideal ‘constitution of the British Empire [94.],’ (for I totally deny its existence, and believe that a faith and hope in it lead to perdition,) which I now mean to refer to; but to the constitution of Great-Britain; whose existence, divinity, and powers of salvation, are known to us all. This is the only compass that ever proved a sure guide upon the tempestuous sea of politics. It is a sure guide, because it is a com­ pass without variation. It points not to any earthly loadstone, jostled by some convulsion of nature out of the true axis of our crazy planet, but the cause of its magnetism is the rock of truth, fixed in the pole of heaven from all eternity; immoveable as the throne, immutable as the nature of God. He who shall imag­ ine that the British constitution is a compass adapted only to / one latitude and longitude; and when he arrives with it at a distant shore, depending on delusive observations, shall suppose a very considerable variation; and then, like the igno­ rant skipper of some little coasting bark, shall go about to adjust it, to the imaginary occasion, by giving the needle a corresponding deviation from its rep­ resentative on the card, or rather chart; shall soon find himself in a most dangerous, if not a fatal error. Happy if he make not shipwreck of the political vessel. Great knowledge and practical experience may be necessary to those who hold the command, who guide the helm, and direct all the manœuvres in the ship; but the very cabin-boy knows his compass; and when the port is in sight, and all the dangers of the navigation are above water and in view, he can tell, as well as the pilot, how to steer for the one or from the other. When out of sight of land, he knows equally well, that in order to arrive safe in America, he must steer to the Westward; nor could all the sophistry of the pilot, though he spoke with the tongue of an angel, nor the authority of the captain, though aided by the logic of the cat-o’-nine-tails, ever convince him, that it would be possible to secure a prosperous voyage by steering either East, South, or North. So when the British constitution, whose form is so manifest to the eye of common sense, and whose principles by their self-evidency are so simple and so obvious, lies before us, ’tis

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in vain for ministers, for statesmen, or even for orators, to endeavour to impose upon our understandings, by representing that we must hold one course in Brit­ ain, and another in America, for attaining civil security and happiness; when it is impossible to arrive at them, but by keeping the prow in a true direction for lib­ erty, whose star, like as the rock of truth, is in the pole and fast by the throne of heaven. It is true indeed, and for the reasons you have [91] assigned, that the nearest course we can keep is but ‘an approximation towards the right one;’ yet we shall run into a most ruinous error, if, to the unavoidable deviations caused by the intestine motion and tempestuous agitations of the political element, we make any intentional one, by playing tricks with our needle, and departing from that course which our compass, if faithfully consulted, shews to be the true one. You desire / Great-Britain to ‘be content to bind America by laws of trade; because she hath always done it: and not to burthen her with taxes, because she was not used to do so from the beginning. These,’ you add, ‘are the arguments of states and kingdoms.’ [89, 90.] But, with your leave, Sir, these are the arguments of Egyptian task-masters, of Carthaginian blood-suckers, of Roman monsters and Spanish tyrants; for silencing the murmurs of their fleeced, pardon me, I mean flead provinces and miserable bond-men. What! Sir; are prescripts and precedents, be they natural or unnatural, be they good or bad, be they just or unjust; the proper arguments of states and kingdoms? So then, nothing is want­ ing to reconcile us to the most infernal way of governing, but that our tyrant hath always done so; that he was used to act the tyrant from the beginning! – Fie, fie! What a lesson for a young Telemachus to learn from the lips of his Mentor!1 ‘You may be as great a tyrant as you please, provided you only establish your precedents in the beginning.’ Should murmurs afterwards arise, or the accu­ mulating weight of your power in length of time become so intolerable as to cause your right to be called in question; – ‘reason not at all – oppose the ancient policy and practice of the empire, as a rampart against the speculations of inno­ vators, – and you will stand on great, manly, and sureground.’ – Excellent doctrine! O Locke,2 thou reputed sage, ‘hide thy diminished head!’ What are all thy refinements, [94] thy ‘metaphysical distinctions [89,’] to maxims such as these! – You expressly acknowledge, Sir, [41] that ‘you think the commercial restraint is full as hard a law for America to live under, as the schemes of American revenue: and, if uncompensated, to be a condition of as rigorous servitude as man can be subject to. But America bore it from the fundamental act of navigation until 17643 – Why? Because,’ you add, ‘men do bear the inevitable constitution of their original nature with all its infirmities.’ Now, that I cannot attain knowledge with­ out study, or happiness without wisdom; that I cannot preserve my health without exercise, or my freedom without courage; nor penetrate with my eye the *

(94) ‘Refining speculatists.’

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opaqueness of a stone, or the complicated folds of my / neighbours heart; may possibly be all reckoned among the defects and infirmities of my ‘original nature:’ – but that it is ‘the inevitable constitution of any one man, or of any one nation, to submit to the tyranny of another, I must positively deny; as the contrary hath been long since proved by the United Provinces, and lately by the law of Eng­ land, in the case of a negroe slave when brought into this free country.4 Nor do I in the least doubt, but that America will very shortly give a convincing refutation to this curious proposition: which, Sir, if you will review it with candour, you may possibly perceive to be much worse than a ‘metaphysical distinction,’ or the ‘refinement of a speculatist;’ since it tends to debase, not to refine; to confound, and not to distinguish. Is it for man, arrogantly to lord it over his brother, to impose upon him restraints and bonds, and then to aggravate his sufferings by the insult of a proffered compensation! – a compensation, such alone, and such in degree, as he, the impious imposer, shall judge expedient for insuring his power and advancing his own interest? If restraint and bonds, even thus compensated, be not rigorous servitude, I know not what is. ’Tis not the present suffering under, but the being subject to, the power of another, which constitutes slavery. Give us but the slavery, and the suffering will not fail to follow in due time. Now, Sir, from the whole of what you advance, with regard to the supremacy of parliament over the legislatures of the several states of America; as well as from your express and repeated declarations of stedfastly abiding by the minister and the system of 1766*, when parliament, in its folly, assumed a right of repealing the irrevocable laws of God, by enacting, that his majesty in parliament, of right, had power to make white men black men; to oblige the Antipodes to hear, see, and feel, by the senses of Englishmen; and to transform millions of the human species, into calves and camels; – or what is no less absurd (meaning the right not the fact) ‘to bind the people of the American colonies by statutes in all cases whatsoever;’5 – I say, from the whole of these opinions and assertions, it is but too evident, Sir, that your political compass, / how true and safe soever to steer by in Britain, hath lost its rectitude when removed to America. Correct it, Sir, I beseech you, are it be too late; because I fear that thousands will confide in it; and probably the first peace-making minister, availing himself of this confidence, and the general error of the people, will steer by one adjusted to the same imaginary variation; to the inevitable distress, if not, in the end, to the shipwreck of the state. Do not, Sir, imitate the modern ministerial dignity, of persisting in wrong; nor the bed-rid­ den parental dotage, which talks of pap, of leading-strings, and the rod, for that child, which, did it but retain its senses, it might perceive to be in a state of manly vigour and independence; parent himself of a numerous offspring, lord of a mighty household, and master of immense possessions; and yet the filial, though *

‘I honestly and solemnly declare, I have in all seasons adhered to the system of 1766,’ pag. 96.

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not the slavish; the voluntary, not the servile, prop of its declining age and decrepitude. Lay, then, Sir, your hand upon your heart, and answer me, or rather answer to God and to America, the three following plain questions: 1. Doth not the British constitution, and the law of nature, which may in no wise be over­ turned by any human constitution whatsoever*, (malgre all the qualifications, reservation, and subtle evasions that sophistry can devise) absolutely require that the people, those at least who are proprietors of, and are thereby permanently attached to, the soil, shall actually share in the powers of legislation; by giving their consent either personally or by representatives of their own choosing, to all laws which are to be the rules of their actions: – Not only those of taxation, but those equally which limit the exercise of executive power, which erect national tribunals, and which establish any other regulation (be it even of / their foreign trade,) that may affect their properties, their liberties, or their happiness in any particular:– And doth not the constitution, in requiring all this, as absolutely pronounce that, where there is no such participation, no subjection is due? 2. What share or participation in the powers of the British parliament is possessed by any American, as an American? 3. If no individual then, in America, by sharing in, be subject to, the powers of the British parliament; how can all of them, in their col­ lective capacities as states and civil communities, be subject to this power? Surely that circumstance which sinketh an individual below the level of freedom, must equally debase a nation into a condition of slavery. – The ‘superintending power’ of Great-Britain which [92] you propose her ‘to dispense, as from the throne of heaven,’ perhaps I might not so strongly object to; could I be tolerably well assured, it would not in time degenerate (as human magisterial power uncon­ trouled hath ever done since the beginning of the world,) into a power that the Americans would rather suppose to be dispensed from the dark council of Pan­ demonium; or could I be certain that it was not equally to be dreaded, as necessarily tending to the destruction of our own liberties. But, presuming, Sir, you will not become her surety in that respect, since you very prudently tell the minister [10] ‘you can give no security,’ that the colonists shall not rise in their demands, upon a concession of justice being made them, which you esteem it infa­ mous to with-hold; I can by no means agree with you to put into her hands this weighty sceptre, for ‘coercing the negligent, restraining the violent, and aiding the weak and deficient, by the over-ruling plenitude-of her power;’ especially since you tell me in plain terms, (not, I am sure, adverting to the blasphemous *

This law of nature, being co-eval with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original. Blackstone’s Com. Vol. I. p.40.

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nature of the expression) ‘this power must be boundless;’ [93] because I verily believe, that without the other boundless attributes and infinite perfections of the Deity, to whom alone boundless power belongs, to direct its operations, it would infallibly bruise the head of America, and crush her into a Sardinian servitude*. I hope, Sir, it / was not at the time when you were yourself connected with a very noble person at the head of the Treasury department [56] that you first affixed to the words British Empire, those magnificent ideas you give us of it, page 92, 93; nor that any hope or persuasion of mind that the system of 1766, together with its framers, shall one day be restored, which attaches you so firmly to it. I hope this, Sir, from the opinion I have of the goodness of your heart, and from my natural unwillingness to believe that the man, who, besides being an assiduous and distinguished labourer in the public cause, is no less the amiable example of virtuous privacy and the charm of domestic society, can ever become so egre­ giously sottish, as to cast away such happiness and true glory, for aught that Mammon or Lucifer hath to offer him. Unjust as the declaratory act of 1766 was in its principle, I know not, but at that period, it might have been quietly acqui­ esced in by the Americans, provided our taxing schemes had not been revived; but I cannot believe, even in that case, it could have operated so contrary to the nature of things, as to have preserved concord and mutual advantages to the two countries for any considerable length of time to come; except the assumption of this unlimited power had, like the splendid titular assumptions of a Chinese Emperor, been universally considered as mere empty words without any meaning, and Great-Britain had totally abstained from the smallest attempt towards an exer­ cise of it. These being my sentiments, I cannot but look on the passing of such an act as a most unpardonable folly. Conscious as you seem to be [87, 90,] that the discussion of such a question had a direct tendency to destroy, even that degree of authority (and no small one) which the blind affection and superstitious rever­ ence of the colonies for their mother country had established, by habit and undisputed precedents, from the beginning; had it not been wiser to have totally abstained from starting it at all; and to have invariably acted towards the colo­ nies, as we should have done towards states that knew full well, and jealously maintained, their independency of us; but yet of whose fidelity towards us we were well assured, by an unexampled national attachment and union of interests, together / with all the influences of one common language, religion, and consti­ tution; the same manners, customs, and sentiments? Had we thus, in the year 1766, sagaciously avoided ‘going into the distinction of rights, and attempting to mark their boundaries [89];’ (that is, on the part of the poor Americans; for the rights of Great-Britain we modestly declared to be boundless;) we had done well; we had done wisely. It was your own minister, Mr. Burke, it was Lord Rocking­ *

Farmer’s Letters.

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ham,6 and possibly, Sir, advised by yourself, who, in a more especial manner, brought into discussion these ‘metaphysical distinctions;’ who thus ‘intemper­ ately, unwisely, fatally sophisticated and poisoned the very source of government,’ and attempted ‘to argue the colonies into slavery:’ and that too, by what court reasoners seem to plume themselves upon as a very ‘subtle deduction, from the unlimited and illimitable nature of supreme sovereignty;’ though in truth it is a dogma fit only to pass in the sublime Divan, or from the infallible lips of his holi­ ness, towards Turkish and Italian toe-kissers and lickers of the dust; whereas his lordship’s doctrine of ‘binding in all cases whatsoever,’ was preached to an intel­ ligent and free people, having legislatures of their own, and who owed not the smallest obedience whatever to such sovereignty. To suppose that king, lords, and the house of commons for the time being, conjointly have authority to do any wrong or injury to the rest of the state, is as ridiculous as to admit, that the head and hand may contrive and execute any mischief or mutilations upon the rest of the body. Nor, until some great christian casuist hath demonstrated suicide to be justifiable, shall we ever be brought to acquiesce in the absurd, though very sol­ emn decision of the learned Judge Hale,7 and recited, with no small parade, as an indubitable authority by his more learned brother Blackstone,8 in his Com. p. 161. in order to prove that one’s hand may plunge a dagger into one’s heart, or one’s head by the denying of nourishment, may starve one’s body to death; and for this wise and wonderful reason that the heart and the body cannot help themselves. – Here indeed my allusion fails me; as their reasoning, had they rec­ ollected how many supreme sovereigns have been / punished for their ‘mis-government*,’ did them: and I trust that the body of the people of these free kingdoms, the heart and the rest of the faithful members, will either restrain or punish that hand or that head which shall ever conspire or attempt any thing against its life or well being. This illimitability may be an ingenious law fiction, and well calculated, as such, to answer certain useful purposes in dispatching the business of the law courts: but when offered to our understandings for a fact, it must be rejected with disdain as a most abominable dogma; either the legitimate child of ignorance or a cunning bastard of tyranny, but certainly the natural par­ ent of slavery. I would therefore beg leave to propose, that in the next edition of your speech, there be made to every precondition stating ‘the illimitable nature of supreme sovereignty,’ the small addition of these three words, ‘to do good,’ by way of amendment; which, from a fallacy and a treasonable assertion, will con­ vert it into a truth, and a constitutional maxim. Had these ‘subtle deductions,’ in favour of the ‘boundless power’ of parliament, been the ‘metaphysical distinc­ tions’ you meant, p. 89, I should most heartily have accorded with you in ‘hating the very found of them:’ but when the enormous, the odious pretensions of the *

Comment. p. 161.

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Declaratory Act, preceded and succeeded by a train of grievous oppressions under other administrators, had rouzed the unmindful colonists and their Eng­ lish friends to an exertion of their thinking faculties, in order to shew the just distinctions of the sacred rights of human nature, and to mark their boundaries, I should not have expected from any, but the sophistical advocates of tyranny, a condemnation of such a proceeding: as I esteem it a most generous task, and one of the most indubitable marks of genuine patriotism. Milton9 and Locke10 were respectively stigmatized, by the tools of despotism, as ‘refining speculatists;’ and Sydney11 paid the forfeit of his blood for opposing, to the absurd and impious dogmas of Filmer,12 (the champion of illimitable sovereign and powers for binding in all cases whatsoever,) his metaphysical distinctions:’ but posterity hath done them all justice. Whatever might have been the prospects of / advantage in the year 1766, from establishing an unjust sovereignty over America, it is evident, that even then, the actual exercise of it would have been scarcely practicable with the most extreme caution and tenderness: but now, in the year 1775, after all that hath passed during nine irritating years to awaken the sleeping colonists, and to exasperate them to the last degree their patience is capable of bearing; but now, I say, the attempt is a slight of madness not to be accounted for, but from an appre­ hension that God sees it is high time to humble our pride, by leaving it to baffle its own vicious designs by its folly; or, for the sins of the nation, is pleased to suffer it, by infatuation, to cast itself headlong into destruction. America may now be considered, as an industrious and intelligent youth just arriving at man’s estate; who, having chearfully served a long apprenticeship under us, must now, if not admitted into partnership, become our rival in trade. Like other juniors, he will be content to share the profits in a subordinate degree, proportioned to the inferiority of his capital and connections; but he will acknowledge no other dependence; he will no longer be our bond-servant. Too well doth he remember the hardships he hath suffered in our service, to enter into new indentures of servitude, now that his legal term is drawing towards its expiration. Indeed, had we been possessed of any portion of that wisdom which belongeth to ‘the chil­ dren of this world,’ we might, for a long time to come, have kept him in ignorance of this secret; his indentures being in our own keeping, and he being easily satis­ fied with whatever interpretation of them we thought fit to make: until, swelling with the flatulent ideas of our own dignity and importance; debauched and impoverished by luxury and extravagance; we imposed upon him too severe a drudgery, and began to starve and to scourge him rather too unmercifully. By this folly we have literally scourged him into a necessity of asserting his inde­ pendency, for we have driven him, not only from his relaxations and play, but from his work; and forced him to deny himself even common repose, in order to seek in the schools for forms of language, in which to express his sense of our ill usage, and the natural feelings of his soul, which taught him to / know that there

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was something incompatible, between our treatment of him and what he was intitled to. Nor hath he sought in vain: but, supported in his own mind by a consciousness of his just rights, and justified by ‘the refinements’ of those ‘specu­ latists,’ Locke, Milton, and Sydney: and by the ‘metaphysical distinctions’ which the volume of nature hath unfolded to his own researches, he is now ready, Sir, in your own expressive words, to ‘cast your sovereignty in your face.’ Nay, the Amer­ ican is become both by precept and example your most faithful monitor, your best instructor, in the only possible means of preserving your own liberties; and of recovering from that state of corruption, of which the constitution is sick at heart; by maintaining his own rights on the undeniable principles of truth and justice; opposing tyranny with a manly temper, firmness and dignity; and, above all, by intrusting the guardianship of them to unplaced, unpensioned, and uncor­ rupted delegates. Doth it not behove us then, either as ‘children of this world,’ or as ‘children of light,’ no longer to injure or insult him with the exercise, or the claim, of any power incompatible with his absolute liberty, his perfect freedom? Your ‘subordinate liberty,’ take my word for it, (and I hope I am not a ‘refining speculatist,’ as I am certain I am no ‘factious demagogue,’) will not now be thought by him, ‘enough for the ease and happiness of man;’ [94] because the reserved part is to be with-held from him by injustice and force; and lodged in the very hands which do him this wrong; and therefore not very fit to be intrusted with so sacred a deposit. No, Sir, he will demand perfect freedom, – British freedom – that very freedom you yourself enjoy, and which alone is the legitimate issue of the British constitution: he will be content with nothing short of a participation in that power which frames all the laws he is to be subject to as the rule of his actions. – I beg pardon, Sir; – my zeal in the cause of America, and the irresistible impressions of justice on my mind, have carried me one step too far: for, such is the moderation of America, such her desire to ‘seek peace and ensue it,’ that the tells you, in her 4th Resolve in Congress, that ‘from the neces­ sity of the case, and a regard to the mutual / interests of both countries, she chearfully consents to the operation of such acts of the British parliament, as are bona fide, restrained to the regulation of her external commerce, for the purpose of securing the commercial advantages of the whole empire to the mother coun­ try.’ Here, Sir, she shews that no contemptuous slights nor injuries; not a ten-years series of oppression and insult; nor even the sight of the uplifted Brit­ ish axe aimed directly at the root of her liberties, can provoke her to forego her rivetted attachment to this country. This single instance of her unabated affec­ tion, her voluntary humiliation and subserviency to the welfare of the parent state, effectually gives the lie to the charge of ingratitude, and the design of breaking through all the commercial restraints which secure us the monopoly of her trade; that have been so loudly and so indefatigably trumpeted forth by the diabolical agents of tyranny, and have exercised so many prostitute pens. This

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proves that, anxious and irritated as she is, it is pure justice and wisdom, not resentment, by which she is actuated: and in this it is that she confirms, under her own hand and seal, what I undertook to engage for on her part, when last spring I proposed a parliamentary declaration of her independency, and the form­ ing with her an effectual union of interests, by means of a league, in which she should be a free, voluntary contracting party. These are my words: ‘Not being able to pay Great-Britain in subsidies of ready money for her protection and friend­ ship, they (the American states) will grant her an equivalent in exclusive trade*.’ – What more, in the name of common sense would we have? – Will nothing satisfy us, but her liberties at our feet? – Shall we ‘wade up to the eyes in blood’ for only the chance of the shadow, when she offers us the substance, the reality? – Will the high-sounding word sovereignty, or millions of sterling gold, best fill the treasury and support the dignity of Great-Britain? Possibly I may be some­ what singular in opinion; but I cannot help being much inclined to consider the tyranny and perverseness of administration towards America for ten years past, as one of those / gracious and benevolent dispensations of Providence towards a chosen people, which, though a present calamity, is nevertheless, according to the established order of things, a necessary one; and productive of great, solid and lasting blessings in future. Such is the imperfection of our nature, that for the most part, and nationally considered, we are incapable of understanding, of valuing or enjoying, any state of extraordinary prosperity and happiness, that hath not been preceded by one of adversity; by a comparison with which we can estimate its felicities. In order to enjoy, we must not merely possess: but it is requi­ site that our minds, by activity and exercise, perceive all the causes, connections, relations and dependencies of that which we possess; the noble faculties of our souls must be called forth by trials, hardships, and struggles; losses, disappoint­ ments and dangers, together with every species of discipline which, in this state of probation, is necessary to the perfecting of virtue. Had not God, in his pater­ nal anger, permitted this chosen nation to have been visited by the detested race of Stewarts and a long afflicting civil war, ’tis certain the succeeding chain of events had not taken place: and ’tis more than probable, that the seeds of dissolu­ tion which lay lurking in the bowels of the state before their advancement to the throne, had they been nourished by an uninterrupted calm and the treacherous sunshine of apparent prosperity, would long since have spread their poison to the immediate sources of life, and destroyed the constitution. But it was that dreadful night of tempest and darkness, that season of severe adversity, which rouzed the genius and spirit of the nation; and to which we were indebted for the succeeding beauty and vigour of the constitution, by purging off the greater part of those soul impurities and seeds of death. Heaven grant that its now fad­ *

American Independence the interest and glory of Great-Britain, p. 66.

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ing bloom and failing strength, those sure symptoms of inward disease, may be again restored ere it be too late! – It was, I say, during the very term of that visita­ tion of God’s anger, that he was providing for the future unparalleled felicities of this nation; and literally causing good to grow out of evil, by raising up within that period those great and excellent men, who, feeling the feverish and alarming state of the times, contemplating the scene / around them, and steering by the compass of the British constitution, have by their writings done more service to the cause of liberty and the rights of mankind, than ever had been done before by all the boasted patriots of Greece and Rome, together with those of every other nation in the world collectively. – As those unhappy times produced Syd­ neys, Lockes and Miltons; so we find the present, daily bringing forth Shipley,13 Dickensons,14 and many other ‘truly noble, honourable, and patriotic advocates of civil and religious liberty, who generously and powerfully espouse and defend the cause of America, both in and out of parliament*.’ I do not therefore repine at the distressful contest which hath so long existed between these kingdoms and the colonies, since by God’s mercy it hath as yet been bloodless; and since, still relying on the goodness of his Providence, Trust it will terminate in adjusting their true, their natural and most beneficial relation to each other, which is that of an independent friendship and alliance; in perpetuating their harmony; and in radically curing those latent distempers, which might otherwise have proved fatal to the liberties of both. Such I think no man of foresight can doubt would have been the sad event, had either the supineness of America, or the cunning moderation of the ministers of Great-Britain, kept her in what you call [87] ‘her old, her strong, her tenable ‘position,’ long enough to have fixt her immoveably on that ‘sure ground,’ on whose solid basis her machines once fixed, she might, as you inform her, ‘have drawn ‘worlds towards her.’ But worlds, Sir, are not to be drawn towards each other, or fettered with chains and unnatural bonds, but to their mutual destruction. Their general well-being; and the benefits reciprocally to be derived, from light and genial warmth reflected on each other respectively, are only to be preserved by their keeping their appointed distances, by moving each in its own orbit, and by being kept from flying off from their centers into chaos, by the sweet influences of attraction, that best, that universal, that stupen­ dous law of nature, by which the material, the moral and the divine worlds are all upheld and preserved in harmony. Trusting, as I say, that / our present contest will finally terminate in the independency of America, and stop us short in the mad career of dominion; that it will teach us to know that any imperial posses­ sion† beyond the British seas, except a few scattered islands, factories and sorts for the ends of trade, would ever be a mill-stone at the neck of the constitution; in as much as it would encumber it with extrinsical powers it could not manage, * †

Concluding resolve of the congress. American Independence, p.23.

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or exert but in a way inimicable to internal health; and as it would most obviously add enormous weight to court influence; against which, the other balancing powers are already little more than a feather; as the unavailing wisdom and elo­ quence of yourself and others, in both houses of parliament, must long since have convinced you; I cannot but congratulate with my country on the very error of Mr. Grenville,15 which hath been thought so prolifick of mischief, and kiss with reverence the rod of our chastisement. A Hercules with many bodies under one head, would have been an impotent, unwieldy monster; not an invincible hero and demi-god:– it would have been a more preposterous fiction, than that of the hydra with many heads to one body. But a monster with a multitude of bodies, all of which except one are feigned to be three thousand miles from its head, was a monster reserved for an abortive conception in the wild imagination of modern policy in its delirious reveries. Believe me, Sir, there is no sterling sense in the words, ‘British Empire,’ when signifying unbounded dominion with unbounded power over the immeasurable space of the North American Conti­ nent; and that, so applied, they are no better than sounding brass or a tinkling ‘symbal,’ to charm a proud, deluded nation to its ruin. In the warmth of a senato­ rial debate, and the rapid flow of your imagination, which resembles the Amazonian torrent, the collected force of ten thousand streams, breaking irre­ sistibly a glorious inroad through the frontier of the vast Atlantic, and scornfully beating back his embattled waves, it might indeed have been allowed you to have cravoned out for Great-Britain a fanciful ‘imperial character; in which, as from the throne of heaven, she should superintend all the several inferior legislatures / of America; guiding and controlling, without annihilating any; – coercing the negligent, restraining the violent, and aiding the weak and deficient, by the over­ ruling plenitude of her boundless power; and when her requisitions were not implicitly obeyed, saying to the delinquents, – tax yourselves for the common supply, or parliament will do it for you;’ [92] – all this, I say, as well as to pass by ‘nice distinctions,’ and to trespass a little on the ‘boundaries of right,’ might have been very allowable, while flying before the wind on the flood-tide of eloquence, and by way of declamation; but when you coolly, and deliberately, sat down to write for the instruction of the public; when it was of the last importance not to give currency to any opinions; not to excite any vain, proud, ambitious and mis­ guiding passions in the people; nor to afford any countenance for the ministerial tyranny you profess to oppose; and which is all supported on the very principle you admit, and, if it be admitted, is clearly justifiable, since legal authority with boundless power, if indeed it may be supplicated, may in no wise be withstood:– when, I say you acted with this deliberation, surely, Sir, you ought to have omitted, in your transcript all such erroneous, fallacious and fatal doctrines! That the ‘imperial rights of Great-Britain as stated in the declaratory act of 1766, and the privileges which the colonists ought to enjoy are just the most

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reconcileable things in the world,’ you tell us indeed in so many words [92]; and indeed, Sir, to do you justice, you also, by the aid of your heavenly allusion, reconcile them very glibly to your own imagination, and, I have no doubt, to the entire satisfaction of administration. While Lewis the XIVth was intoxi­ cated with the drunken fancy of universal monarchy, his courtiers did not fail to satisfy him that ‘the imperial rights’ of France and the privileges which the dependent states of Europe ought to enjoy (wondrous condescension!) were just the most reconcilable things in the world:’ and that he had an undoubted right, clear as that two and two make four, ‘to superintend, to guide, and control them, as from the throne of heaven;’ though they humbly / hoped his divine Majesty would not in his displeasure ‘annihilate any of them.’ Yet, Sir, there unluckily remains one omission, one small defect in your argument, which the ‘refining speculatist’ and the ‘metaphysician,’ nay I fear even the dull American, will never be able to get over:– you have forgot the proof of your proposition; you have totally omitted the legality, the moral rectitude of your well-sounding proposal. These are considerations, trifling enough, God knows, in the opinions of some statesmen; but they are nevertheless by a free people, thought absolutely necessary to be attended to, before obedience and authority can be reconciled. Thanks, Sir, to the native honesty of your heart, which, though it incautiously suffered you to pronounce the aforesaid words, ‘imperial rights of Great-Britain,’ hath kept you uniformly from attempting to explain them; or in any than this and other equivalent and synonimous expressions throughout your whole speech, from so much as hinting at their existence: nay you have given hints, and broad ones too, that she hath not these rights, if her title-deeds come to be well perused and examined into; or why should she have any reason to ‘apprehend’ that any ‘metaphysical process’ whatever, could ‘argue her out of her whole authority?’ [87] Why admonish her to ‘reason not at all?’ – to oppose ‘policy and practice to ‘truth and justice?’ – Besides, you remark [87, 88.] that ‘the distinction of inter­ nal and external duties,’ or taxes, ‘is as nothing with regard to right;’ in which, Sir, you say most justly; and perfectly agree with me when I assert that, ‘to acknowl­ edge their independency, and to form with them a friendly league, is therefore the only method, on the principles of equity, of laying them under restrictions in trade and manufactures, for the exclusive advantage of their protectors; but continuing to impose these restrictions by our own authority, and by force, as it deeply affects them in their property, by preventing money coming into their pockets, (which is very nearly allied, when done unjustly, to taking it out of their pockets without their consent) is undoubtedly tyrannical*.’ And, again; [89] inter­ rogating the minister, / you say – ‘Do you mean to tax America, and to draw a productive revenue from thence? If you do; speak out:– If you murder – rob! *

American Independence, p.77.

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If you kill; take possession: and do not appear in the character of, madmen as well as assassins.’ Here again, Sir, I intirely agree with you, that taxing where no revenue is to be got, is madness; that taxing those who are unrepresented, is rob­ bing; and that they who assume legislative authority where there is no right, are murderers and assassins; if it be true that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, is indeed an adulterer; as upon divine authority we are informed he is; (Matt. iv. 28.) and moreover, that to claim a ‘boundless power,’ is a presumptuous invasion, an impious usurpation on the prerogative of the Omnipotent. Thanks, once more, to ‘the abundance of your heart out of which your mouth speaketh,’ for these honest acknowledgments, that Great-Britain, on your own principles, and according to your own system of 1766, is at present no better than a murder­ ous assassin. You may see then, Sir, clearly enough, ‘What is to become of the declaratory act asserting the entireness of British legislative authority.’ [92] It ought to be sacrificed to justice, wisdom, and concord. As for those men who are at once base enough to assert in direct terms, and silly enough to attempt to demonstrate, that subjection and tyranny are not only reconcileable but right; to offer them conviction would be casting pearls before swine; or I would beg leave, in order to save them the trouble of turning over the folios of the Sydney of the last century,16 to refer them to three letters of his more concise name-sake, which I read, with infinite pleasure and the highest esteem for the honest author, in the Gazetteer of Jan. the 5th and 26th, and Feb 23d: but, Sir, to your attentive perusal I will recommend them; and request you also to review once more what myself, the feeblest advocate in the cause of liberty, and others have advanced in favour of American Independence; – or rather, Sir, with candour and upright­ ness consult your own very superior understanding and feeling heart. Your serious reflection, Sir, must convince you of your error: and that all your argu­ ments, without exception, in favour of / Great-Britain’s sovereignty, are nothing better than a flimsy string of sophisms – a mere rhetorical rope of sand which, not to fear that it might dissolve like a morning vapour as you stretched it across the wide Atlantic, would assuredly prove no more powerful, nor fit to ‘bind America in all cases whatsoever,’ than the well-twisted wreath ascending from the profound politician’s solemn pipe. And would you, Sir, if it were possible, by contributing towards the foundations of such a power, ‘stand answerable to God for embracing a system that tends to the destruction of some of the very best and fairest of his works?’ [96.] Reflect then, Sir, for heaven’s sake! – and be consistent in your pleadings for the colonists. When there shall no longer appear in your politicks any leaven of subordination to sour their ‘liberty;’ any reservations whatever of imperial rights, in diminution of the privileges of nature; any sophistical arguments concerning requisitions, which, in spite of every plausible pretext, involve in them the claims of an inadmissible arbitrary power; or any unjust, because imposed, restrictions

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on their freedom; – but you shall become, Sir, their generous advocate, and demand for them a truly British liberty, that liberty which you yourself enjoy: then, Sir, you will be their friend indeed; then, Sir, every good man will give you praise; and I will venture to foretel that your eloquence, thus breathing pure truth, wisdom and patriotism, will then be attended with the powers of persua­ sion, and obtain a sure ascendancy over many minds that are now unmoved by it. It will no longer be stopped by the closing valves of suspicion, and held back as a tuneful song to please the ear; but will be allowed a free passage to the heart, and received there as a cordial, invigorating balm; congenial with all its generous feelings, its noblest emotions, its dearest hopes. How shall you see to remove the beam from the ministerial eye, without first at least plucking out the mote from your own! – I conjure you then, Sir; you, who are not wont to deal in soph­ istry, or to elude the force of truth by subtlety, subterfuge, or wilful deafness; you, whose penetrating genius hath enlarged the bounds of / true science; whose luminous eloquence is dreaded as the detector of falsehood and the certain foe of all dishonest darkness; you, who have greatly distinguished yourself as a friend to the British constitution; you, who are not amongst the wise ones who wear morality as a cloak, nor the wits who scoff at religion and all its sacred obliga­ tions; you, Sir, I conjure by all these considerations, to reflect seriously on what, with the honest freedom which becomes every man who hath the public good at heart, I have pointed out to you; and then obey the truth-speaking dictates of that monitor which God hath given you for your moral guide. I want you not, Sir, to break through your attachment to Lord Rockingham; or to dissolve any honorable connection that may enable you to serve your country the more effec­ tually. But let it be apparent that it is your country, and not a party, you mean to serve; that you are truly and wholly actuated by public spirit, and not by private interest. Flatter no man’s weakness; defend no man’s errors; minister to no man’s ambition, at your country’s expence. Lay aside every party prejudice, and every ill founded system; especially that which gave birth to the tyrannical and absurd declaratory act of 1766. Prove yourself, by purity of principle and consistency of conduct, to be unbiassed, uninfluenced and independent: and leave us not to lament that faction and corruption are at the bottom of every presence of serving the deserted and deluded public; and to repeat, with a melancholy, a mournful emphasis; ‘Caesar hath friends; and Pompey hath friends: but none are friends to Rome.’ I have repeatedly denied the legality, as we all deny the expediency, of the late and present British system of American government: and the fields of allusion are well-nigh exhausted in order to illustrate these truths. There are however a few allusions more, which, if they have been made use of, I do not remember to have observed. But before I proceed to them, let me remark, that when we speak of Great-Britain and America as mother and daughter, it is rather a delusion than

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an allusion as it tends to obscure, not to illustrate their real relation to each other. For ’tis not the country of the new world, / brought as it were into existence by late discovery, the inanimate earth, the trees, the stocks, which in old England are the objects of our thoughts when we dispute about the government of it; but it is the people, the inhabitants of that new world, which are, or ought to be, the objects concerning which we reason. Now it is evident that the present genera­ tion in this same old England, can with no propriety be esteemed the parents of the present generation in America; and therefore are not intitled, on that plea, to any authority over them. It is evident also, that their true relation by blood, is the same as that of two descendants from the same family stock; whose respective progenitors long since separated, and branched into two distinct families. We may therefore with the strictest propriety, and with a clear illustration of the principles I maintain, consider Great-Britain (the nation, not the country; the people, not the soil;) as the male descendant, representative, and heir, of the elder, while we regard America as the blooming heiress, of the younger branch. How lovely, how desirable an object of enjoyment to Great-Britain, let every one judge! But shall he, like an Eastern despot, doom her to a splendid wretchedness in his seraglio; never more to hold a social commerce with any but her hated lord; nor to taste the sweets, the pure delights of liberty; and though mocked with the soothing title of Sultana, knowing too well she is no better than the slave of his lustful appetites? Or, like a still worse Barbarian, a very banditti ruf­ fian, unmoved at her tears and entreaties, and deaf to her cries, shall he brutishly think to strike her to the earth, and while deprived of the powers of resistance, to become her impious ravisher? But let him not forget, that she hath a noble and indignant soul; and that the poignard, with which the hath been taught to arm herself, was he to make the soul attempt, might possibly, in the moment of her despair, be plunged with a deep and deadly stab into his guilty heart, and preserve her honour unviolated. – No! – ‘Better counsels shall guide ‘him.’ – Recovering from the state of inebriation, in which the base sycophants who fed his pride, and the vile pandars of his unlawful pleasures, had artfully kept / this noble youth, for their own wicked purposes; and with a stern, majestic countenance, commanding them from his presence; he shall view with his own eyes the lovely virgin; and recollecting their mutual tenderness from earliest infancy, and the inseparable nature of their interests; acknowledging her native charms, and all her intrinsic worth; his fierceness in a moment shall melt into fondness; when, leaving her to her just liberty and rightful independency, he shall court her to his embrace with a manly and generous frankness; with sincere love, honour and respect: while she, wiping away the last falling tear, and giving to the winds all the anxieties with which his lately estranged affections had filled her aking bosom, all her pre­ sent suspicions, all her future fears and apprehensions, shall, with angelic loveliness and heart-felt rapture, fly into his protecting arms; when instantly the sacred hymeneal rates and plighted vows shall seal between them an indissoluble

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union. An union agreeable to nature, to justice, and to freedom; and surely the fittest that can be imagined for promoting their mutual interests! The nuptial contract, with the voluntary consent of America; and not a British statute, doing violence to justice and her inclinations must be the Declaratory Act to limit their reciprocal duties, and the respective degrees of control and subordination neces­ sary between them. But though I propose that America shall become the wife of Great-Britain, be it remembered, that I do not mean she shall therefore obey his arbitrary will, nor that he shall have a direct power to rule over her: because she hath hitherto always behaved towards him as an affectionate kinswoman, ren­ dering him every good office in her power; and because she cannot yet, the nuptials not being solemnized, have forfeited that natural independency which God hath given her, by listening to the suggestions of the devil, and causing her husband’s ruin, as Eve did that of Adam; and for which alone it was, that she was made subject to his will, by the curse of obedience. America therefore, not being subject to this curse, will be entitled to all the benefits of marriage at its original institution; when God in his bounty bellowed ‘the dominion and property in and / over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, and every thing on the face of the earth upon husband and wife jointly,’ Gen. I 28, 29. Nor, prior to the curse, did he make any distinction between them, but what he hath also made between Great-Britain and America. The former was prior in existence, and hath superior wisdom at I strength; not for the purpose of tyrannic rule, but of guidance and protection: the latter is ‘an help meet for him;’ not in the abject condition of a slave, but in that of a loving, respectful, and prudent wife, a faithful friend, a social companion. And herein are laid, by the laws of nature, the true founda­ tions for all the superior influence and control that is proper or desirable for the husband; and in which America, as a dutiful and faithful wife, will ever acqui­ esce with pleasure. Let Great-Britain then say; ‘This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called British America, because she was taken out of Britain: and therefore I will leave father and mother, and will cleave unto my wife; and we will be one flesh,’ Gen. ii. 23.24. As you so frequently, Sir, resort to holy writ, as to the genuine source of the sublime and beautiful, you will not, I flatter myself, be displeased with these references to it; nor to the following quo­ tation with which I shall close this letter: nor will the very singular, and most remarkable aptness with which it may be applied to British America, of whom, as the wife of Great-Britain, it might well pass for a prophecy, be lost upon you. ‘Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies*. ‘The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her; so that he shall have no need of spoil†. She *

As British America is in value far above Spanish and Portugueze America, abounding with precious stones and metals. † We had better cultivate our laborious North American commerce, than debauch and corrupt ourselves with the spoils or the malt.

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will do him good and not evil all the days of his life. She seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands. She is like the merchant ships; she / bringeth her food from afar. She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household and a portion to her maidens. She considereth a field and buy­ eth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard*. She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms†. She perceiveth that her merchan­ dize is good‡: her candle goeth not out by night. She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff. She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; year, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy§. She is not afraid of the snow for her household; for all her household are clothed with double garments¶. She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk|. and purple. Her hus­ band is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land. She maketh fine linen, and selleth it; and delivereth girdles|| unto the merchant. Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come. She openeth her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness**. She looketh well to the ways of her household††.; and eateth not the bread of idle­ ness. Her children arise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. Many daughters have done virtuously‡‡, and have gotten riches; but thou excellent them all,’ Prov. xxxi. / It is with great respect, and a sincere desire that you may both merit and attain the name of patriot, that greatest of all earthly appellations, regal and imperial titles not excepted, that I subscribe myself,

SIR, Your obedient Servant,

CONSTITUTIO. /

* † ‡ § ¶ | || ** ††

The cultivation of vines hath been attended to for some years in North America. Her militia is numerous and well disciplined. The non-importation agreements shew this.

She seedeth and cloatheth thousands of our poor manufacturers.

See the margin to the text.

The southern provinces of Georgia and the Carolinas produce fine silk.

Belts of wampum.

Journal of the Proceedings of the Congress.

She has not a court-kalendar quite so well filled with the names of placemen and pen­ sioners as Great-Britain. ‡‡ See the margin to the text.

POSTSCRIPT.

April, 1775. Although the foregoing parts of this work were all written with an earnest desire to serve the public, yet they have not been published with an expectation of their being either well received or much attended to, by those to whom they were immediately addressed:– until matters between Great-Britain and her col­ onies should, through the rashness of our counsels, be brought to extremities; and that, no longer having choice in our power, we should be reduced to act from necessity alone. Perhaps there hath seldom been a cause less popular in this country, nor one that ought to have been more so, than that which the writer hath endeavored to plead. That our colonies have a right to be independent, is a conclusion which I am well persuaded must inevitably result from the question; whenever discussed with temper and patience, and with a liberal, candid and honest turn of mind. Of the truth of this observation I can aver, in the most solemn manner, that I have had personal experience; and that too, in instances where the persons entered into the enquiry under the common prejudices of Britons in favour of the British sovereignty over them. It was once my own preju­ dice. Like the rest of my countrymen not immediately concerned in the government, I had never reflected deeply on the subject; nor indeed had the new matter with which it abounded, been ever treated of and committed to books. But the cries of America pierced my ears, and her complaints sunk into my heart. I was moved, and I determined to try the cause of this / appellant in my own breast. I found it a good one, and that she was really much aggrieved. The respondent denied not the facts; but attempted to justify them. To this end he produced a large collection of charters, statutes and precedents, as the authori­ ties upon which he had acted. ‘Don’t these,’ says he, ‘remove every doubt? ‘Don’t they prove that I have a right to impose according to my sovereign will and pleas­ ure, burthens and services, restraints and regulations upon this discontented ungrateful wretch? That I have a power in short ‘to bind her in all cases whatso­ ever*?’ – And bind her I will. – Is not this law? and is not law justice? – Can any thing be plainer?’ – ‘Alas,’ replied she, ‘those are the laws of your country, not of *

Declaratory Act. – 219 –

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mine. My legislators had no share in making them. And those bonds which you produce against me I never signed: how then, in any case, can they bind me? Much less can they bind me in all cases whatsoever. – These very writings, put­ ting in force against me all my wrongs, are what I have most reason to complain of. They were all dictated, and signed and sealed by you alone: how then can they constitute a reciprocal engagement between us? How can the sole act of one party lay another under an obligation? And besides, I have from time to time, as my sufferings or my apprehensions prompted me, and in the most humble man­ ner, pleaded, petitioned, appealed and remonstrated against their unkindness, severity, injustice and cruelty; but all to no purpose. And they are now become so abominably tyrannical, so totally devoid of humanity, that they are absolutely intolerable: and rather than degrade myself below the dignity of my nature by submitting to them, I am reduced to the necessity of open resistance*:– and I *

Mr. Bull,17 in his speech on the third reading of the American Restraining Bill, as printed in the Public Ledger of the 7th of April, 1775, says as follows: ‘Mr. Speaker, ‘I shall take up but very little of the time of the house; I will only mention some facts relating to one very important / article, because it has been the occasion of the unhappy disputes with, and the violent persecution of, the Americans. I mean the article of tea. ‘At the time the East-India Company had in contemplation the sending a quantity of tea to different parts of Europe as well as to America, and to apply to parliament for an act for that purpose, I had the honour to be called upon for my opinion of the measure by a very respectable person in the direction of the East-India Company, whose name I am ready to mention, if called upon by the house. ‘My opinion then was, and I still think it not ill-founded, that the scheme was so extrav­ agantly wild, that it was impossible it should ever be carried into execution; but if it could, it would injure, not benefit, the company, as they could not send their tea to any market where it would bring so good a price as at home. Besides, it would be an act of great injustice to the merchants here, who have always been used to buy for exportation at their sales. As to sending tea to America, from a knowledge of their disposition, the gentleman was informed they would not receive it; they would look upon it as sent there, not to serve them but to ensnare them; they would be exceedingly irritated; they would most certainly destroy it.’ Then after going through a very perspicuous and satisfactory detail, in order to prove his positions, he thus concludes: ‘I will not trouble the house with any observations on these facts; but I own I cannot be brought to believe that the tea was sent to Boston to raise money for the company, to get rid of their load of tea, or to prevent smuggling, because each of those salutary ends might have been answered without injustice, or offence to any individual. ‘The purpose for which the tea was sent to America, and the consequences, are evident now to every man’s understanding. ‘For these reasons, amongst others very forcible and important, which have been men­ tioned in this house, I hitherto have, and shall continue, to the utmost of my power, to support the Americans, thus injured and oppressed by the cruel and vindictive measures of an administration, whose whole conduct breathes the spirit of – persecution and popery.’ See also the notes to the ninth Letter, justifying the destruction of the tea at Boston.

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must add too, / that I am determined to endure, even unto death, rather than shamefully submit to wear the chains intended / me. – But it is with reluctance and with grief of heart I utter this declaration. ’Tis an overflowing of anxiety and anguish of soul. ’Tis not the language of revenge: for in spite of your injustice and barbarity, I cannot but recollect with fondness the time when, as kinsfolks and friends we were united by the closest, the strictest and most delightful ties of love and mutual benefits. My heart bleeds at the recollection; and at this moment I would submit to any hardship or restraint short of the base condition of a slave, in order to be reconciled to my mistaken and hard hearted persecutor, and to be restored to his once-friendly arms.’ ‘This is all mighty well,’ rejoins the respond­ ent;’ ‘but I thought thou hadst known me better than to think of talking me out of my purpose. I have shewn thee the law: I have told thee my right. – I will have the whole of it: I will not abate an iota. – Silence then to thy saucy tongue! I equally despise thy flatteries and thy threats. Is it not written in the law, that, ‘of right I have power to bind thee?’ I have bound thee ‘from the beginning*;’ and I will bind thee still. In contempt of thy vain struggles, I tell thee, ingrate! ‘I will have my bond†;’ or thy blood shall pay the forfeit’ – But a little patience, and temper, good Sir, said I: ought you not first to prove the right you had to make such a law, before you plead its authority? It would be greatly for the advantage of your cause, would you but condescend to demonstrate this single proposition by fair argument. Nay indeed, such a demonstration would at once determine the cause in your favour. – ‘What! exclaims the lordly respondent, prove, argue and demonstrate! My honour, my dignity forbid! – No – that nonsense is the frivo­ lous business of ‘the schools‡,’ and to them I leave it. – Here are my proofs; – here are my arguments and demonstrations.’ Pardon me, Sir, replied I, all that is only paper and parchment – except there were two contracting parties, which there were not; and except they be all signed and sealed interchangeably, upon equita­ ble conditions, mutually and reciprocally / advantageous and obligatory, and binding upon both parties; which all the world knows they are not. There is a certain constitutional maxim, which says, that a quid pro quo is indispensably requisite for giving validity and obligatory virtue to any and to every contract between two parties, otherwise it is nullus pactus, a void covenant. All these deeds are, to be sure, legible enough; and sure enough also, have for their con­ tents what you are pleased to recite; – the writing is very fair, and they bear plenty of seals and signatures, royal and official:– ‘Be it enacted,’ and other bind­ ing forms, stand in their accustomed places; and they wear withal, to say truth, a consequential and respectable appearance. But this appearance alone will not be sufficient for your purpose. If, as the appellant urged, and as indeed you boast, * † ‡

Burke’s Speech, pag. 89. Shylock. Burke’s Speech, pag. 90.

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they were all of your own fabricating and imposing, this alone, were they even unexceptionable in their conditions, renders them absolutely nugatory. But if, besides this, many of them are totally subversive of justice and equity, utterly repugnant to the law of nature, and shocking to humanity, as upon the very face of them appears, how, Sir, can you forget what is due to your own character, and so far depart from all that is right and respectable, as to plead, any longer, acts which are not only null and void for want of the essential principles of validity, but specifically criminal; and which it would be equally criminal not to oppose and resist! Besides, Sir, I fear that, should you remove this cause once more, and put it at issue upon the last appeal, that even then, with all your supposed advan­ tages, it might not terminate to your advantage. ‘The race is ‘not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong;’ but sometimes ‘the mighty are put down, and the proud are scattered in the imagination of their hearts.’ – My deeds,’ says he, ‘upon my head! I stand here for law; I stand here on my bond*’ – Be not obsti­ nate, Sir, in a wrong cause; peruse, I beseech you, these nugatory deeds (nugatory so far as relates to the point now in dispute) without a prejudice to your own side of the question, and examine with equal attention and candour all that hath been urged against them, by your own friends / as well as your enemies: you will then think differently, depend upon it; you will chearfully cast them all aside, and resuming your wonted frankness and good-nature, will treat with the appel­ lant as your equal: for all are equals in acts of contract and convention, and in the scales of justice. Be wise, Sir, and be happy. Your future intercourse will, I prom­ ise you, be mutually honourable, pleasing and beneficial, provided it be regulated by justice, temper and right reason. – ‘No,’ – exclaims the haughty respondent, ‘I will make no concessions; I will not condescend to listen to her pleadings, but at my feet. I am not disposed to stoop so low as to treat, when I have power to com­ mand. – I reject with disdain all obligations reciprocally binding, while I have power to bind the appellant, and to keep myself free to loosen or to tighten those bones as it may suit my caprice or my convenience. – On this point I ‘reason not at all†.’ – They who have neither fleets nor armies, nor – , nor a treasury at com­ mand, may treat and reason if they please: but for myself – ‘By my soul I swear

There is not pow’r in the tongue of man

To alter me‡.’

‘I will have the law – I will have my bond,’ I say; or the ‘rebellious blood of that traitress!’ Since then, Sir, rejoined I for the last time, you reject alike all concilia­ tory propositions, and, rashly making the last appeal, you trust the issue of this * † ‡

Shylock. Burke’s Speech, pag.87. Shylock.

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cause to the sword, why, be it so! – Your deeds be upon your head! – And may the God of battles be a shield unto the feeble and oppressed! Although, as I have said above, that I did not expect the foregoing sheets would for a season be either well received or much attended to, by those to whom they were more immediately addressed; as indeed I had little better expectations from the public in general, until the failures of all other expedients than that which is there proposed, should open their eyes a little more; yet I trust, that a / discern­ ing and upright few have read them with approbation; and, if I do not deceive myself, I think there is to be discovered a daily alteration of public sentiment, which tends, though slowly, yet with certainty, to terminate in the conclusion I have long since drawn from the premises which our American contest hath furnished us with. Those who have given a careful attention to the whole of the literary altercation in pamphlets and other publications, and viewed the ques­ tion also as agitated by the able speakers in the houses of parliament, and have moreover deeply meditated upon it in their own minds, pursuing every material argument to its legitimate result, must I am persuaded have discovered that it ultimately turns upon this one point of dependency or independency. While this capital point remains undetermined, it appears to me quite a frivolous waste of time to debate upon any other part of the question, which is infinitely complex, while each part refers to this point: it is therefore this, as a leading principle on which all the rest depends, that ought primarily to be considered and decided upon, before any other can be discussed with propriety or advantage. I know not whether the American advocates have paid due attention to the fundamental principles which have given such authority and success to their several plead­ ings in favour of their injured clients: but all of them, they may depend upon it, when faithfully traced up to their source, and allowed their full operation, will as necessarily and incontestably prove the rights of independency to belong to the British Americans, as they do support the constitutional rights of Englishmen. He who means to shew that those people are not intitled to independence, and yet would argue in support of their freedom, will soon contradict or confound himself; for in order thereto, he must derive that freedom from other principles than those of the British constitution; which however no one has yet been silly enough to attempt. Now I do assert and will maintain, that, by the pure and genuine principles and the indispensible maxims of that constitution, they are as much entitled to legislative independence as Englishmen are entitled to rep­ resentation in parliament, to trial by jury, or any other the most indisputable constitutional benefit whatsoever, / because their self-preservation requires it. Would but their many able and patriotic friends amongst us advert to this truth, possess themselves of it clearly and fully, and speak it out boldly, they would find it give a strength and consistency to their arguments, which at present they evidently want and must want without it, as it is the very soul of the cause, and

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which would not fail to impress an irresistible conviction on the generality of their hearers and readers. For my own part, I solemnly protest, that the main arguments in favour of the colonies, if not resting on the foundation of their right to independence as a principle taken for granted, appear to my judgment very inconclusive and unsatisfactory. They prove indeed to demonstration the impolitic and absurd conduct of administration; and they expose in strong colours their inhumanity, which the principles of tyranny itself will not justify: but still they leave the foundation of their arbitrary power unmoved – untouched:– and so long as nature itself doth not revolt at the excesses of their cruelty, they may, on these gentlemens own principles, continue tyrants, and plead the sanc­ tions of law and justice against the constitutional rights of the colonists. – So long as they admit that the British Empire, as we proudly phrase it, comprehends within it the states of America; so long do they afford the minister all the means he wants for the arbitrary government of those states; arbitrary I say, because it cannot be otherwise in our hands. If those states be truly and rightfully parts of this empire, they undoubtedly must submit to British government; but British government, agreeable to the constitution, it is impossible, as hath been shewn, to administer them from hence. What is the obvious result? I am well aware, that by some I shall be thought needlessly to speculate and refine, and be warned against calling in doubt the authority of government with too nice a scrutiny. But to such I answer, that no man would be more backward than myself to risk the peace of society, by bringing unnecessarily into discus­ sion latent and nice distinctions in favour of public liberty, which the governing powers were wise and honest enough to leave dormant and at rest as they found them. But when mistaken, / designing or violent ministers avail themselves of the passive inattention of the people to these distinctions in their favour, and thereupon ground a hope of successfully innovating upon the wholesome guards and defences of the constitution; when they make novel demands, introduce new and unsound precedents, cause them hastily and indecently to be passed into laws, and then, under the pretence, and alas! under the sanction of law, proceed to numberless and unheard-of oppressions, which the feelings of a Hot­ tentot would inform him were contrary to reason and to justice; and when they shut their ears against complaints of these wrongs, treat humble petitions with contempt, dutiful remonstrances as acts of disobedience to lawful authority, and constitutional opposition as rebellion; reiterating all the while their tyrannical mandates with more and more severity every time they are not slavishly obeyed; – when, I say, they do all this, and throughout the whole rest their justification on the letter of the law, let me ask if it be not high time to speculate, to refine, and have recourse even to metaphysical distinctions*, provided they be fairly deducible *

Burke’s Speech, pag. 89, 94.

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from truth:– in short, to scrutinize their pretensions to the marrow, to fathom them to the very bottom; in order to detect those covered rocks and sand-banks which are the true causes of all that disturbance we behold on the surface of our present political navigation; and to warn the people against suffering the anchor to be cast in such foul ground at the peril of shipwreck; or trusting any longer the guidance of the vessel to helmsmen who have brought themselves into such a dilemma, that they know not which way to steer for safety; and yet, through pride, shame and vexation, still perversely refuse to have recourse to the compass of the constitution, which alone can set them right and bring them into port. We must either do this, or resign our American kindred to absolute slavery as by law established. And on this occasion I must take leave to say, that to the advice of those who recommend the suppressing of truth, we should ever listen with much caution or much jealousy, according to their respective characters. Some there are whom a pardonable timidity, and some whom an amiable humanity and benevolence of mind, incline, / and often no doubt with reason, to this cir­ cumspect and preventive conduct: but, for the far greater part, it is the artful and insidious suggestion of crafty and ambitious men, who have gotten the power of the state into their own hands; friends to all that mystery, ignorance and super­ stition on which the keeping of their abused authority depends, and by which their odious vices are to be gratified at the expence of the credulous people. Whereas it is in the divine constitution of things that fallacy in itself, though not perhaps immediately hurtful, hath ever a necessary tendency to introduce evil into the moral and political systems of the world; while truth, on the contrary, tends as naturally and necessarily to the final, though not perhaps to the present, introduction of good. Where indeed there is no attempt to establish fallacies for wicked purposes, it may often be more for the peace and welfare of society that we do not too curiously search after every hidden truth; but when that diaboli­ cal attempt is once made, we cannot easily go too deep in our enquiries after it, nor can we place it in too strong a light. Happy will it be for future generations, if their princes and ministers should profit themselves of the wise reflections on this delicate subject which they may find in the excellent Considerations on the measures carrying on with respect to the British colonies in North America, p. 22–27.18 Were we not carefully to distinguish between general maxims and their exceptions, the writer might, under the authority of the foregoing one, have been totally silent on the subject of these essays: but we trust that the reasons assigned for the part acted on this occasion, will not only acquit us of the base and wicked designs of an incendiary, an unnatural child of Great-Britain, or a traiterous fomentor of rebellion; (charges very liberally bestowed by a certain class of persons on even those champions of American freedom, who have not however as yet given utterance to that horrible word – independence) but that

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we shall in time be allowed to have spoken with the warning voice of a faithful, though unwelcome monitor; of a sincere, affectionate and determined friend, though no flatterer. Conscious of no other motives than what are becoming of this character, we shall proceed to deliver somewhat more / fully what at first we rather hinted than explained. Though now indeed it is not our intention to say more than is absolutely necessary to prevent cavils, and in order to furnish materials for thinking upon, to those who are disposed to think: for, from those to whom even thinking is too great a trouble, we must not expect the still greater effort of acting in the public cause; wherefore it is needless to spend our time in voluminous writing for their information. And after all, those, alas! who are most capable of judging, and whose duty it is to judge of, and to conduct, the public affairs, are the last it should seem from whom attention is to be expected. But notwithstanding the people, for want of those informations obtained by ministers and statesmen, are less able to judge accurately, yet it is their just praise that they are disposed to judge as well as they can, and have a real desire that things should be conducted for the best, the good of the whole being alone consulted. It is therefore that the judgment of the people, with all its defects, is to be respected; that every assistance is to be afforded it by those who mean well; and that its flow progress in arriving at ripeness and maturity is to be allowed and waited for with patience. Like the nut, when most ripe it is the most solid. The people, though slow indeed to receive instruction, will however in the end listen to reason and learn wisdom. With them, the best arguments and most upright plans will ever be finally approved; and through them alone it is that the friends of public liberty must hope to influence the decisions of the cabi­ net and the most essential measures of administration, where even two or three virtuous men, though ever so responsible to the public from the nature of their offices, cannot, it is presumable, guide and direct as they would wish; but find themselves under the necessity of either abandoning the helm wholly to bad men, or else of carrying into execution measures which they often in their hearts condemn and sometimes abhor. Sad alternative! And unhappy that state where wisdom and virtue are thus of necessity obliged to vail to vice and insufficiency! But such the alternative must ever be in this country, until the people shall exert themselves to purify the fountain of government: or until the individual / who hath alone the power of doing it himself, shall greatly undertake the noble, the god-like task; and for that purpose select about him and resolutely support a few counsellors or an unfashionable virtue and sterling patriotism, wise and intrepid enough to work so thorough and so necessary a reformation, in contempt and despite of the servile and adulatory, the interested and artful, the ambitious and treacherous counsels of those sycophants and devouring locusts that are the gen­ eral curse of courts and of their country. Whatever may have been suggested to him by those in his bosom confidence, he will find this the surest road to hap­

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piness and glory; and the only road to an extraordinary degree of power, which would then be a unbounded as Britain and British America in close union, actu­ ated by one soul, and moving in one direction, could confer. That such a glory, eclipsing all the glories of antiquity would transcend whatever hath irradiated any earthly diadem, that such a power would in the comparison reduce to mere littleness the boasted power of imperial Rome, and cause that proud mistress of the then feeble and barbarous world to hide her diminished head, is a proposition as undeniable, in my humble opinion, as that health, vigour and length of days are the natural effects of temperance; honour and happiness the usual offspring of virtue. When I first undertook to publish my sentiments on the critical situation of this country with her colonies, I was far from despairing that others ‘would come after me ‘mightier than I*;’ and it is with infinite satisfaction I have observed to arise, one after another, several excellent and most respectable writers on the subject, ‘the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to loose*.’ I, indeed, with a feeble voice, warned a heedless generation to flee from the evil to come, or more properly to prevent its coming; but there are those who have succeeded me, of whom to an infatuated people I might with much verity say (I hope without pro­ phaneness, for though I adopt the emphatical language of holy writ, I mean no comparison between the persons spoken of ), ‘there stand some among you whom ye know not†;’ preachers of peace and prophets:– / hear them:– Would to heaven that mistaken ministers and a misguided prince would, after the example of the conscious publicans, say unto them, ‘Masters, what shall ‘we do?’ And that ‘the soldiers likewise would demand of them, and what shall we do?’ Because the for­ mer must receive for answer, ‘Exact no more than that which is appointed you;’ and the latter would be taught to ‘Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely‡.’ While these greater teachers continue to enforce their admonitions with superior eloquence and argument, and with many an instructive reference to the page of history, it being mine to pursue a different path in the same pilgrimage, I mean still to keep within the sphere I first allotted myself. I shall continue to avoid as much as possible all recitals of statutes and authorities, all references to facts and precedents, all appeals to records and histories, as things too often uncertain, vague, indeterminate and contradictory one of another; leading to disputation rather than to truth and happiness, except comprehensively understood, exam­ ined and compared with unbiassed candour, and treated of in the most masterly manner. My references are to a law and a constitution which at all times past, pre­ sent and to come, have spoken, do speak, and ever will speak the same language without any alteration or ambiguity. My appeals are to the common sense, the * † ‡

St Luke, chap. iii. St. John, chap. i. ver. 26. St. Luke, chap. iii.

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hearts and consciences of my countrymen. If they mean honestly to themselves and to one another, it will not be necessary for their friends to be at the trouble of writing in a large and voluminous way for their instruction. But such indeed is the real way of the world, that the writings of honest men of every species will be of use, and those of the kind I do not pretend to, if well executed, the most so. However, on the subject now under consideration, they seem to have been car­ ried nearly to their full length; all in a manner that can be said in that way, hath been said; and for the present the subject seems to be exhausted. On the contrary, the line which I have ventured on, I fear with too much presumption, appears to have been neglected: and surely there is field enough for the display of knowledge, the proof of genius, and the exercise of / judgment. I have but as it were passed through it, gathering only a slender specimen of its productions, a few of its spon­ taneous fruits and flowers which offer themselves to the hand of every traveller: but to him who hath strength and talents for the culture, there is an assurance of a golden harvest. – But until this wished-for husbandman shall arrive, and while we have yet a moment’s breathing time ere the bill of famine shall have driven the insulted colonists to desperation, and the fatal consequences shall come upon us like a whirlwind; and with ardent, anxious hopes for the best, I return once more and for the last time to my post. It is not in order to dispute, for to that there is no end; it is not to recapitulate the endless errors of administrations since 1763, for that too would be a tedi­ ous task: neither is it to represent what might have been the happy effects had we invariably proceeded in our ancient course of policy towards the colonies, before the scheme of taxation made the first breach between us; not yet is it to play the state-tinker by pretending to beat out the bruises of a battered vessel, to solder up its cracks, and once more to unite by cramps and rivets its separating parts, when these very superadditions would only, like the new cloth in the old garment*, rend to pieces its worn-out substance, and hasten the more rapidly its final destruction. No; it is not any one of these impracticable and useless labours I am about to undertake; but, since this same crazy vessel is of the purest metal, yet not well adapted to our future use by reason of its very unwieldy magnitude, and having out-lived the fashion of the times in which it was wrought, I mean that we should act the part of the judicious goldsmith and cast it anew†. Instead * †

St Matt. chap. ix. ver. 16. In order that the dangerous language of allusion may not mislead, let it be observed that it is not the constitution of state either in Great-Britain or the colonies I mean to cast anew; but their relationship, their mutual dependence and the terms of their intercourse. Instead of the impracticable endeavour to prove them to be, and the equally vain attempt for holding them together as, one empire; I would have us open our eyes / to truth, and follow the dictates of wisdom, by confessing they are not, ought not to be, and cannot be one empire; and then use the best means in our power for forming a conjoint and beneficial confederacy of them, as separate, free, and independent states.

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of one out-sized vessel, consisting / of two parts ill joined to each other, like the bulky extremities of a wasp held together by a too-feeble waist, and ever liable to be wounded and even to break asunder at the point of contact, I would have us mould it into two separate and distinct parts or members, which yet, like the ball and socket, should intimately correspond and harmonize throughout their whole extent, wholly filling and embracing each other respectively. Thus would they be inseparably united; yet their union such as to leave each free to move and act, independent of the other, in every respect but that of a capacity to fall away from and desert its companion; and thus would they be perfectly fitted for co-operation one with the other. By these means too the strength, solidity and durableness of both would be improved and increased, in proportion to the reduction of surface and contraction of dimensions in each. Hereby also we should perfectly remedy all those defects in their original construction, which neither were nor could be foreseen by those persons, who through a great variety of different and jarring designs and motives, and at many different periods of time without any kind of concert or conjoint plan, put their several successive hands to this imperfect work: and all apprehensions of future breaches, divisions or total separation, would be for ever removed; at least to a period too far distant in the infinity of time to be foreseen. While almost the whole legislature, for aught that I know to the contrary, are unanimous in maintaining the grand principle on which administration acts, namely, that the colonies are subject to the supreme legislative power of Great-Britain, and acts consistently enough so long as it has that foundation to go upon; and while a great majority of the people are of the same way of think­ ing, and still believe themselves intitled, though they know not how, to the very flattering distinction and glory of having a share in this same supreme legislative power; that is to say, while the ministers have the popular voice in support / of the fundamentals of their American system of government; surely they must be thought to have managed ill in pursuing measures that meet with general dis­ like and condemnation, as arbitrary in an extreme, and directly subversive of the constitution. Whence this inconsistency and contradiction in public sentiment? Must we not learn to account for it by considering the difference of acting upon false principle, and of merely entertaining them as speculative notions in our own minds? Is not the unreflecting and man affecting youth continually professing a wish that he could debauch the sister or the daughter of his friend or acquaint­ ance, and is there not sophistry enough in the flattering language of his passions to persuade him ‘tis a meritorious, or at least a harmless act: although we often know that he is the farthest from being rascal enough coolly to premeditate and unfeelingly to perform all the wiles and villainy necessary to carry his idle profes­ sions into action; and that the first act of baseness in his progress, touching with self-contempt his feeling heart, would open his eyes, and cause him to look with

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horror and detestation upon what he so lately considered as fair and reputable. So it is not to be wondered at that the speculative notions, the youthful opinions of an uninstructed and unreflecting people, flattered and misled by national pride and vanity, and moreover duped into a belief that the fruition of American delights is not to be had without British sovereignty, should on this occasion be favourable to the support of that very ministerial violence and injustice which however shocks them in the exercise. But did a true sense of the political guilt of administration strike home upon their hearts, we may be very certain they would no longer contribute to it by a heedless declaration of such sentiments; but with one voice confess their error and express their unanimous disapproba­ tion of measures so contrary to the constitution. – While so considerable a party thus do mischief by suffering their reason and their virtuous principles to sleep, there is much more harm done by those, who for the sake of popularity and their own purposes, profess in a great measure that which is right, while we know they have no principles at all, and are the mere slaves of interest and a traitorous ambi­ tion. These are the professed libertines and confirmed / debauchees in politics; who, while they laugh at the plain orthodox doctrines in government, hold yet a certain latitudinarian, pliable, free-thinking kind of a faith, which may very conveniently be interpreted either this way or that, as shall be necessary to con­ demn a rival or to justify themselves for the self-same actions. These men, when ministers, will commit adultery with a state in wedlock, violate the virginity of a colony, or hold an incestuous commerce with the mother-country without one feeling of compunction; and can produce you their philosophical creed with many a nice distinction, many a subtle stroke of casuistry, which, though it is impossible to understand, they will most religiously assure you not only affords them a justification, but enjoins on them what they have done as a positive and indispensable duty. But then, let the wheel of court-fortune give but a single turn, and topple them out of the seat of power, this same creed shall instantly be produced to prove the clean contrary. Nay, their piety is now shocked to such a degree at deeds so foul and enormities so gross, and their zeal for the true faith runs so high, they lift up their voices and cry aloud, that the present perpetrators of their own crimes are not men but monsters, not sound political divines but state dæmons, and that nothing less than their blood can make atonement for their crimes. Of this stamp I fear are too many of those who are now ready to tear the minister in pieces for coercing the colonies into obedience to that very authority which they themselves contributed to establish, and even now (in order to preserve the means of acting the tyrant themselves when it shall again come to their turn) maintain they are subject to. After concurring to lodge in any man’s hands an unjust and arbitrary power, ’tis ridiculous to talk of his abusing it. We might with as much reason cut a breach in our bank, and complain of the river for overflowing our lands. It is not, in my opinion, by carping and cavilling at this

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proposal and that plan of the minister, or running counter to all his measures, that his opponents are to shew their patriotism at this crisis; but first, by making a conquest within their own breasts over all the pride, ambition and inordinate love of rule which they shall find there; and then by contending like / men for the grand constitutional principles and fruit, not the empty forms and husks of government. Before I can compliment these gentlemen with my suffrage for the minister’s power being transferred to their better keeping, they must convince me that they differ with him in essentials. I must perceive that they allow and maintain that the colonist’s title to liberty is as good and as extensive as their own; and that they strive with all their strength to procure them such a liberty. When they do this, they will have the suffrages of most reflecting, dispassionate and upright men to favour their then honest ambition. But here, alas! is the stum­ bling block. They can reproach the minister with a design against the liberties of America; they can talk, and talk, and say abundance of fine things in favour of freedom: but, once mention to them the word independence, they shrug their shoulders and cry, ‘that is carrying things too far; – American freedom is very consistent with a parliamentary legislative supremacy’ (this indeed is coming to the point, would they but give us their proof of this proposition; but that I believe they will find cannot be given.) ‘The colonists, say they, are certainly enti­ tled to liberty; but (according to Mr. Burke’s language) it must be a ‘subordinate liberty:’ it must not be allowed more than the ample range of a parliamentary managerie, which is ‘enough surely for the ease and happiness of man*;’ or its wings must be properly clipped, in order to keep it within the bounds prescribed it by the superintending and controlling power of the present state.’ The plain English is, that not being the minister, they are not disposed to sympathize with him in his inordinate love or extravagant exercise of power; but when it is their own dearly-beloved power, as members of the British legislature, which is to be parted with, they are then all sensibility and shrink at the very thought. ‘Here’s the rub that makes tyranny of so long ‘life†.’ A change of measures only in Ameri­ can affairs, would probably be more satisfying to the public than any change of men which could be made in the American, or chief responsible department. / Perhaps there cannot in nature be so strong a refutation of the senseless posi­ tion that, ‘the colonies are virtually (that is actually, for the terms are as nearly as possible synonymous) represented in the parliament of Great-Britain,’ as the general facings (of which are born the general opinions,) of the bulk of the people on the two sides of the Atlantic. The people of Great-Britain, notwithstanding how greatly they are abused in this particular, do feel that they enjoy an actual and virtual representation, such as it is; and they do firmly believe it, nay they * †

Burke’s Speech, pag. 94. Hamlet’s Soliloquy.

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know it of a certainty. But, with regard to their American friends being so rep­ resented as themselves, and that the very men whom they alone have deputed are the representatives of the said Americans, it not coming home to their feelings, nor being level with their understandings, some think one way, some another, as information, attention or clearness of intellect enables them to judge: whereas on the contrary, there is not an American on the whole continent who can be such and ideot as to believe he is represented in a parliament composed of men, in the electing and deputing of whom not one American, as an American, did or could give a suffrage; because the certainty of the ill consequences, the self-evidence of the point, his common sense, and every feeling of his mind, all give the lie direct to the impudent assertion. How it can be demonstrated therefore, that they are subject to the authority of such a parliament*, and that ‘of right it should have a power of ‘binding them in all cases whatsoever,’ I confess once more I am totally unable to conceive. This is not the doctrine of the constitution; for that doth in every volume, in every line, in every letter, teach and inculcate the very contrary. / I never before knew that any state of being would admit of two different defi­ nitions repugnant to each other; and I am curious to see this new phenomenon in logic, – a definition to prove liberty to be one thing under the rising, and quite a different thing under the setting sun: and the more so, as it seems to have an immediate relation to another matter, which is one of the grand desiderata in science, and a point of higher importance to the maritime world. Should but this new-discovered liberty be found to vary from the liberty of Great-Britain in any certain regular proportion as we go eastward or westward, which no doubt ill be as clearly demonstrable as its own existence, we shall then have nothing more to do than to calculate the exact difference of liberty between any two meridians, those for instance of London and Boston in New-England, and this will give us at once their difference of longitude, and save the philosophers a world of trou­ ble. What a happy discovery! How the sciences cast lights upon one another! Who could have thought we should be at once indebted to the same benefactors for a new species of, I had like to have said a new invented liberty and a discovery of the longitude? After this hint, they will be much to blame if they do not push on their researches and perfect their discovery; since such solid rewards will now await the success of their labours. I promise them I will take no advantage of the ladder they have provided, by running up before them and snatching away the golden prize. – *

The enemies of liberty may save themselves the fruitless trouble of endeavoring to per­ suade us, that there is any mysterious virtue in the nature of the legislature on account of its consisting of a king and lords, as well as representatives of the people, to rule over and bind the colonists; for the constitution knows of no legislative powers whatever which are not partaken of by the people, who are to submit their actions to their authority.

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The reader will have perceived that I am of opinion, the present political agi­ tation of things, where all is fermention and turbid ebullition will either refine itself into a happy solution, where all shall again be transparent and serene; and wherein British commerce, wealth, dignity and strength shall all be suspended and sustained by affinity and the sweet influence of attraction in the rectified spirit of American liberty and independence, without injury to its clearness, beauty or relish; or else, that it will sluggishly subside into an undefined and undefinable mixture of liberty and tyranny, of partial benefits and reciprocal injuries, with the putrid dregs of corruption ever at the bottom for increasing this muddiness on every motion by / its foul contaminations, in order to prevent the people from discovering the specific ingredients which are the nauseous and baneful components, or at lest from being able to ascertain their quantities and proportions so at to know how to provide themselves with a proper and suf­ ficient antidote. He will likewise have perceived that this is a mixture I am not very willing to have poured down the throat of America, or administered to this country as the proper remedy in her present vital decay. Indeed, so far as relates to the future health and preservation of the colonies, I have much more faith in the healing virtues of the following excellent simples – legislative separation and independence, provincial separation and independence one of another, an exclu­ sion of all military policy, except that of self-defence by militia, constant jealousy and watchfulness for the perpetuation of liberty, together with a particular and a general commercial and protective maritime alliance with Great-Britain: as on our own part, my only hope lies in parliamentary, and consequently national reformation, which however I fear nothing but some severe calamity will bring us to; in our thirst for dominion being moderated and restrained within natural bounds; in public integrity, public oeconomy, public industry and public spirit. These are the best, and I verily believe the only preservatives of their constitu­ tions and restoratives of our own. Did but these become the general opinions of those who are really friends to their country, and American independence the first immediate object of their joint labours, I should hope there is yet right­ eousness of enough left to save our city: and I am persuaded, even to conviction, that this wholesome regimen would infuse such new life, spirit and vigour into the constitution of Great-Britain, as in its political effects should exceed in the intrinsic value and transcend in lustre all that ever hath been experienced by any nation upon earth. Even America, whole portion would be the smallest, would find herself in true and permanent happiness, if not in splendor, superior to the most renowned empire of ancient or modern times; and perhaps not inferior to Great Britain, her august husband himself, if I may be indulged in that adopted term. / But, yet I am aware, that I have the old and the grand objection to my proposal still to contend with. It will still be urged, that when you shall have acknowl­

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edged and sealed this independency to the colonies, and done your best to secure for yourselves the beneficial monopoly of their trade and other advantages, by the general league of perpetual amity and alliance, of protection and compensa­ tion, they will pay no sort of regard to such engagements on their parts; and then you will no longer, for want of your sovereign legislative authority, have power to compel their compliance. I have already spoke, as the reader will recollect, to this question. I have already observed, that we shall still have the same force for awing America into a faithful observance of her treaties that we now have to enforce obedience to a disputed and odious sovereignty*, which is growing more and more odious everyday; and this with many obvious advantages that do not attend the exertions of our present authority: so that I will only farther request a suspension of judgment until the reader shall have examined and scrutinized the proposal itself; as it stand in its new and improved dress towards the close of this postscript, in the form of a draft for a declaratory and conciliatory act of parlia­ ment. Let it speak for itself. It will at least, I flatter myself, give better security for the grand colonial benefits which, I presume, are the proper objects of our care and policy, than the present red-hot system of coercion to we know not what, should it even succeed to the utmost with and desire of administration; of which however we may very reasonably doubt. And should it fail, what have we then to look for! – It may be well with us in that day if nothing worse than national bankruptcy and beggary shall befall us. Now the utmost failure of the policy recommended in these essays, which, without violating all credibility, it is possible to conceive, cannot at the worst make the Americans our enemies, and thereby invite other rival states to make war upon us; neither can it produce any other important ill consequences, or greatly diminish the trade and strength of this kingdom. That the commercial restraints to which the league shall bind them, may be frequently / evaded by the Americans, I am very ready to grant. And when this is granted, let me ask if I have not granted all that we have to apprehend as disadvantageous to us from that system. Has the possession of our sovereignty, I pray, hitherto been found sufficient to prevent smuggling and elicit commerce; or is there any newly dis­ covered virtue in that kind of authority by which it will more effectually operate in those cases hereafter? Doth the sovereign power in this island, where it is perfect, prevent these practices on any part of our own coasts, and even daily under the very nose of government in the capital? Let the objectors only say by what rule, while we continue to govern America by parliamentary authority, their clandestine trade is to be prevented; and I will undertake to provide regula­ tions among the conditions of the general league and the separate treaties full as effectual for answering the same ends. In short, the objection that the American *

American Independence, pag. 65.

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states will not observe the proposed treaties with Great-Britain, merely because of their being in a state of freedom, appears to me, when it comes from the wellmeaning, to be an objection of timidity, of narrow comprehension and error; as I am sensible it is, from too many others, an objection of national pride and prejudice that hath nothing to do with national dignity: while there is another still, and that I fear the most powerful, though not the most numerous party, from whose ready lips and restless pens it is an objection of servility, baseness, treachery, filthy avarice, boundless ambition, and every other vice which in con­ federacy with a despotism, is found to be eternally at enmity with liberty and public happiness. By men whose souls for ever dwell in the darkness and chaos of contending passions, whose minds are over-gorged with an indigestible load of reading, and whose experience hath all lain in the hollow ways and beaten tracks of official business, or in the crooked and under-ground paths of corrupt policy, the pro­ posal I make will in all probability the rejected without consideration, merely because ‘the file affords no precedent*:’ and the rule I have observed, of argu­ ing somewhat abstractedly; and referring only to that best criterion of good government, the three-fold / mirror composed of the constitution of England, the law of nature, and the religion of Christ, is not I know more likely to meet with their approbation. But men of intrinsic worth, of liberal natures, of great and independent fouls, who have searched into books and men more with the mental eye than the bodily organ, and who, taking an enlarged view of things, have reconnoitered well the geography of the moral and political world from the eminences of exalted genius and wisdom; men who know how to strike out new paths and to open new communications as new occasions shall require; men of this stamp, I say, will be indulgent to my mode of proceeding, and give at least a candid examination to what is laid before them. While deeply engaged in comprehensive and complicated plans, while marshalling and ordering the vast array of a nation’s affairs, and occupied in active services to their country, they will be thankful for any hint which may serve to correct the little oversights and irregularities of their movements, and for the occasional communications of those discoveries which their less occupied attendants, even the meanest of them, may accidentally have made before them. But though we talk of new discoveries, and recommend to practice untried expedients in policy, it is to thence to be inferred that we are wandering ourselves without a guide, or shall mislead others who may incline to follow us. While we steadfastly keep our eye upon our unvarying compass†; while we refer others also to that alone, and appeal in every step we take to the heart of every candid and unbiassed person, we may safely venture farther than any have yet dared to * †

Burke’s Speech, pag. 48. Foregoing Letter to Mr. Burke.

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go before us, and we doubt not to lead the way to reconciliation, harmony and happiness, provided our intimations be not too long disregarded. Our ideas are rather suggested or hinted than enlarged upon, wishing everyone to trace them to their necessary conclusions of his own way: which is a mode of proceeding not to be relied upon by any except those whose principles are founded I truth, whose intentions are honest, and whose advice is free from the suspicion of any indirect views or designs. Should our suggestions furnish the seed / of any useful matter, we trust it will not all ‘fall by the way-side, and be devoured by the fowls of the air*;’ who are so ready to execute the will of ‘the prince of the powers of the air;’ nor yet that it will not wholly ‘fall upon stony ground or amongst thorns;’ but that some part at least shall fall into the kindly and generous soil of true British bosoms, and bring forth plenteously the fruits of liberty and prosperity. We do not aim at any reputation from these essays: we wish only to see the tree we have endeavoured to produce shoot up vigorously, thrive and flourish under the culture and protection of more masterly hands, and become the object of desire and admiration; while the little kernel from which it sprang shall be no more thought of. Our ambition is that which lives not by the breath of princes, nor hangs upon the world’s opinion; but is supported and gratified by the inter­ nal consciousness of a sincere desire to serve the public, and therefore can feel no mortification or disappointment but in public failures or misfortunes. And our aim, while too many well meaning men are spending themselves in arguing where argument is thrown away, is to put forth once more a hand, feeble as it is, in the actual attempt; by endeavouring to give a real being and permanent existence to some rational plan, which, when the mist of our infatuation shall be swept away before the storm that is gathering, and not a moment allowed us for deliberation, may be had recourse to as the ready means, perhaps the only means, of saving the state. With the same public views which we believe were those of Lord Chatham,19 when he offered his Conciliatory Bill to the House of Lords, we have made the following draft of a bill for the same examination, be found to contain in it such unconstitutional materials as his Lordship’s. Although we have the highest respect for that Lord’s political abilities, yet we cannot understand why, or by what divine right, the British parliament, in which the people of our colonies making many flourishing states in America with legislatures of their own fully competent / for procuring them all the ends of civil government have no partici­ pation whatever, should or can possibly, without a violation of the law of nature, enact, that ‘those colonies of right ought to be dependent upon the imperial (imperial is a fine word) crown of Great-Britain, and subordinate unto the said British parliament.’ Nor will our understanding, although we have given it very *

St. Mark, chap. iv. ver. 3.

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severe discipline for that purpose, be brought by any means to acknowledge that this said British parliament hath of right any power whatever ‘to make laws and statutes to bind the said people in all matters touching the general weal of the whole dominion of the said imperial (imperial is a great word) crown of GreatBritain;’ not even in that ‘indubitable and indispensable’ point, as his Lordship thinks it, of ‘regulating navigation and trade throughout the complicated (com­ plicated indeed, if this reasoning holds good) system of British commerce.’ And we believe that the guardian navy of the whole British Empire (whole British Empire is a grand expression) will be upheld’ by adhering to strict justice, to equal liberty, and the plain and obvious principles of the British constitution, rather better and more securely than by any ‘deep policy’ whatever. The chief use which hath ever been made of deep policy in any age or country, hath been that of introducing into government an oracular mysteriousness, in order to give the administers of it a sacerdotal power, and to render the people a credulous man­ ageable herd of dupes. Could we have any doubt of the in admissibility of the aforesaid pretensions of the British parliament, while they stood by themselves, surely our eyes must be opened, and the fallaciousness of that reasoning on which they are supported be exposed to our view, when we find that they are brought to prove a right in his Majesty to keep up a standing-army in the colonies; and, if he thinks proper, the whole of that army, which is annually voted by parlia­ ment for the service of the whole British Empire, the same by his prerogative being under his absolute command. When reasoning fails to convince, we may frequently with good success appeal to people’s feelings. – What would Eng­ lishmen feel to have an immense standing / army of Americans quartered upon them at the king’s pleasure, for no one purpose which they could possibly divine but to enforce his minister’s will? – What must the people of New-England at this moment feel? – Indignation denies utterance. – Those quibbles and soph­ isms which are intended to inculcate it as a doctrine, that any people or nation (and by what exception to the general providence of God and the laws of nature are the Americans to be reckoned neither nations nor people?) may be rightfully subjugated to such a complete state of slavery as that of having no participation in making even their own laws of defence, as if inferior to the very brute animals they were void of the first principle of nature, that of self-preservation, are so very contemptible, that I must confess it pains me with a mortifying sense of human infirmity, that they should escape from the venerable lips of a man renowned for wisdom, magnanimity and nobleness of sentiment. After asserting the right of the crown to quarter troops upon the colonies at discretion, of what avail the following gentle ditty of a clause? ‘Nevertheless, in order to quiet and dispel groundless jealousies and fears, be it hereby declared, that no military force, how­ ever raised, and kept according to law, can ever be lawfully employed to violate and destroy the just rights of the people.’ – Is this a clause to curb the pride of

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arbitrary kings and ministers? – Why are the means of preserving themselves, – Heaven’s best gift and the prerogative of human nature! – to be denied to the British Americans? – If these, O Britons, are your principles of colonial govern­ ment, ye are most execrable tyrants, unworthy the freedom yourselves enjoy and so ingloriously boast of ! What are the means of your own self-preservation as a people, a civil community? – Are they not the having a participation in all the laws by which ye are governed; and a controlling power over the crown and its ministers by your commons holding the purse-strings, and having the sole giv­ ing and granting to the government its revenues? – Why then are the people of America to be deprived of the same means of self-preservation, the same control­ ling power, over the crown and other branches of their respective governments? This is the grand, the fundamental / principle on which I maintain the right and the necessity of independence being given to the British Americans; – this is the vital principle of the British constitution – Deprive it of this one principle, and it is that moment a dead letter. – Not one word hath been advanced by the legions of ministerial hireling speakers and writers, nor by the many hollow pretend­ ers to patriotism throughout the almost innumerable speeches and productions that have for eleven years past being poured upon the public, that hath in the smallest degree invalidated this principle: as indeed it is utterly impossible that it should be invalidated, for it is written in the book of eternal truths by the finger of the Almighty. – I do therefore repeat, that unless the British Americans be in a condition to act upon this principle, they are in a state of slavery: and except there shall be some way found (which I believe is impracticable) for effecting an union of their several assemblies with our parliament, so as to enable the grand confederated legislature to act as one body, and to dispense equally to the people on both sides the Atlantic, the ends and benefits of good government; except, I say, these provisions be made, I do continue to maintain my original position, that the British American states, call them colonies, provinces, or what you will, do not owe any subjection to the single legislature of Great-Britain; nor are they under any legal obligation, or necessity, upon the principles of natural law, to acknowledge any dependency on the British parliament. – If this were so in fact, surely there is ingenuity enough amongst us to frame a syllogism that would demonstrate it. – But it is an undeniable fact, that no such demonstration hath been given. It is equally certain that no such demonstration can be given. Having no occasion to accompany Lord Chatham regularly through the whole of his bill, I will now, after making an observation or two more, take my leave of it. Could I from my heart make a full ‘recognition of the supreme leg­ islative authority and superintending power of parliament over the colonies,’ I should esteem the remaining part of this bill as a display of much wisdom and humanity: but utterly rejecting that supremacy and superintending power, as I do from a thorough conviction / of mind, I cannot discover, nor have I ever

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observed a satisfactory reason to have been given, why the prudent and frugal colonists should contribute one farthing towards the relief of burthens brought upon ourselves by our own folly, extravagance, and corruption. The notoriety of the fact, that we voted them, of our own mere motion, considerable sums for relief of their burthens in the war, when we were convinced they had contributed more than their quota, is, I should have thought, a full answer to all the arguments made use of on the part of the people of Great-Britain, for having willingly taken a burthen too heavy to be borne ‘upon ourselves and posterity, which in no incon­ siderable part was for the defence, extension, and prosperity of the colonies*,’ as his Lordship, following therein the ministerial writers, expresses himself. But the most sanguine in this expectation upon the liberality of the colonists, should in reason wait until they have wholly discharged their own national debts, before they require their contributory aid towards the relief of ours. Indeed a little patience would be sufficient upon this occasion; for though the expences of the war did run them in debt, yet by the prudent and faithful use and application of their public money or taxes (for they really pay taxes in abundance, which many of the good people of Great-Britain, who are for ever crying ‘tax them, tax them,’ do not I presume suppose, but imagine that they live in a manner at free-cost, and put all the profits of their trade in their pockets) they have got themselves nearly out of debt again. Had we not better follow their wise exam­ ple, than expect them and their posterity to pay for our and our predecessors stupidity and folly? – ’Tis enough surely to entail the curse of our debt upon our own innocent posterity! – With regard to the provision which his Lord­ ship recommends for the personal security of the American subject, and the due administration of justice in criminal prosecutions, that he shall not ‘be deprived of a ‘trial by the peers of the vicinage,’ it is to be observed, that the idea of the judg­ ment of the vicinage, for the security / and protection of the subject, pervades the whole system of English jurisprudence, and is an essential principle of the con­ stitution. Hence it is, that in both criminal and civil cases we have a right to put ourselves upon our country; and even the jury which hath the disposal of our life or property in its hands, is subject to a most extensive right of challenge on our part of the persons it is composed of, in order that we may exclude all such as we have reason to suppose prejudiced against us. And this judgment of the vicinage is equally our right in respect of taxation; for the constitutional idea in this case is, that the subject shall be taxed only through his own delegate sent from his vici­ nage, and who knows what he is able to pay, and in what mode the payment will be most convenient to him. If I be on this occasion referred to the present house, and other late houses of commons, and desired to count over the numbers of *

See American Independence, pag. 20, where this argument is more fully refuted: as indeed it hath been by various writers.

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those who come from the vicinage of their constituents, I am ready to reply, that they ought to come from thence; that the representatives of the people always did come from thence, till corruption found its way into our government, and threw the whole frame into disorder; and that whenever the purity of parliament and annual elections shall be restored, they will once more come from the vicinage of their constituents; at which time, and not till then, we may look for many necessary reformations, and to have the taxes so levied and so applied as to leave the labourer a comfortable subsistence, and to relieve the state of the burthen it groans under with so much anguish. This pervading principle in our inestima­ ble constitution, of the judgment of the vicinage for security of life, liberty and property, shews us in a moment what are the principles of those who contend for the right of the parliament of Great-Britain taxing the people of America. So late in the controversy as appeared the writer of Taxation no Tyranny, and so universally acknowledged as are the great abilities of the reputed author, I was led to infer that he, no doubt, must have thrown some new light on the point of American representation in the British parliament, and of virtual representa­ tion in general; but, alas! how great my disappointment! And how great also must be the credulity of those who can believe, that such an indecent scrap / of trash is really the production of a pen that hath formerly done so much honour to literature, and so much service to the cause of morality as that of Dr. Johnson!20 It is impossible that such an impudent attempt as this is upon the understandings of the public should have been made by any one who had that gentleman’s reputa­ tion and moral character to have preserved. If indeed an imitation of the capital defects observable in the Doctor’s stile, like the mimickry of an aukward attitude or ridiculous gesture, could at first sight strike the reader with a resemblance; yet the total want of argument, and candour, which this pamphlet betrays, in so lam­ entable a degree, must satisfy him, after the smallest share of attention, that the real writer of this wretched piece cannot possibly rank any higher in the literary, political, or moral world, than some unprincipled parish pedagogue, in hopes by selling his vote to the pensioned squire of being made an exciseman; and from the air of self-importance, insolence, and contempt which runs through every turgid line, he might very naturally suppose this pamphlet to be the substance of an oration, delivered by the affectedly-sententious declaimer over a mug of porter, amidst a circle of pot-house admirers. The reader must pardon some little repetition of what he found in my tenth letter, in order that the whole of my present conciliatory plan may lie together; as I will leave as much of it as I can possibly dispense with, to be filled up by his judgment and the obvious inferences from the leading propositions. /

A draught for a bill, proposed to be brought into parliament, for restoring peace and harmony between Great-Britain and the British colonies in North-America; and for perpetuating the same on the solid foundations of national affection, natural justice, reciprocal benefit and mutual security.

Whereas, at the time of the original planting and settling of colonies on the continent and the islands of North-America by the people and the crown of these kingdoms; and afterwards, during the infancy of the said colonies, the future ill consequences of their submission to, and acquiescence under the authority of parliament were not, by reason of their then infant and dependent state, and the general inexperience in matters of that kind, either foreseen or duly attended to: And whereas, through the growing of these once small and helpless colonies more or less to maturity, and their having now become, for the far greater part popu­ lous, opulent and respectable states, having each within itself the natural rights and proper powers of legislation, the exercise of parliamentary authority hath been found to clash in the most essential points with their respective internal legislatures, and hath tended, for a considerable time past, but more especially of late years, to create dissatisfactions and disagreements between the said internal legislatures and parliament, and between the people of the said colonies and the people of these kingdoms, to the great grief of his Majesty, his parliament, and all his good and faithful subjects; as well as that it will be to the irreparable hurt and damage (should these misunderstandings continue) of the good / people in general, and the states of both countries, by tending to abate their mutual affection and confidence, and by interrupting their wonted harmony and longestablished commerce. And whereas the colonies of New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, in Congress assembled in the months of September and October last, did by their delegates draw up an hum­ ble petition, which was since presented to his Majesty, for redress of sundry grievances therein set forth; and came to many other resolutions on the subject of the unhappy differences still subsisting between them and this the parent state; all which have been laid before us for our inspection, together with various other papers of information transmitted from the American governors and oth­ ers: And whereas these weighty matters, pregnant with the most important consequences to these kingdoms and the said colonies, have been taken into our most serious consideration; and after the most full and mature deliberation – 241 –

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thereupon, it appears to us that, agreeable to the law and the constitution of England, the established maxims of civil government, the principles of natural justice, the obvious rules of good policy, and the benign spirit of our most holy religion, their representations and allegations set forth in the said petition to this Majesty, are in the main just and true, and consequently their complaints well founded, and that their desires and requests are reasonable: And moreover we think it is and will be inconsistent with the welfare of the people of the said colonies, and prejudicial to their inherent rights as men, to be any longer gov­ erned or controlled by any superintending legislative power in the parliament of Great-Britain, or any other power foreign to themselves respectively: And there­ fore, that to treat with the said colonies in a free and amicable manner towards healing the present divisions, adjusting their future relationship to these king­ doms, and promoting as far as may be the common quiet and prosperity on the surest and most solid foundations, will well become the wisdom and dignity of parliament: Now in order to effect these good purposes, and to avert the many / and sad evils and calamities which must necessarily ensue, should their com­ plaints be unredressed, should the powers of parliament as set forth in a Declaratory Act of the 6th of George III. continue to be insisted on and enforced, and the present unhappy differences between them and us be left unreconciled and permitted to cause an actual breach and hostile contention between us; And in order no less to manifest unto the said colonies and to all the world that jus­ tice, magnanimity, a love of liberty, and a sacred regard for the rights of mankind are still, as they have ever been, the peculiar characteristics of the British parlia­ ment; May it please your most excellent Majesty, that it may be declared, and be it declared by the king’s most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and temporal and commons in this present parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, that the afore-mentioned colonies of New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina; and also the several colonies of East Florida, West Florida, Geor­ gia, Nova-Scotia, St. Johns the Island, and Quebec as limited by his Majesty’s Royal Proclamation bearing date the 7th day of October 1763, are all and each of them to be henceforth held to be free and independent states, owing no obedience or subjection whatsoever to the parliament of Great-Britain, which doth hereby in the most explicit, determinate, and ample manner and form renounce and relin­ quish all claims and pretensions to sovereignty, legislative supremacy, and controlling power over the respective legislatures of all and every of the said free and independent states of North-America; together with all rights and titles of dominion on the said continent of North-America, other than as hereafter in this act are claimed and specified. And it is hereby farther declared, that of each and every of the said free and independent states, his Majesty is and shall be held

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to be the true and lawful sovereign head, and in the said sovereignty and the just exercise of the powers thereunto belonging, shall be maintained and supported by the whole power of the parliament and people of Great-Britain; and that his successors in the British / throne, shall in like manner succeed to and be sup­ ported in the regal title, rights and powers in and over each and every of the said free and independent states; And it is also hereby farther declared and proclaimed, that the parliament of Great-Britain will be the guardian and protector of all and every of the said free and independent states, collectively and individually, against every foreign power whatsoever; as well as the guarantee of the inde­ pendence of the said several states, one of another respectively; as well also of the rights and independencies of the several tribes or nations of Indians in amity with or under the protection of the British crown, until these points shall be more particularly adjusted by treaty. And farther, each one and every of the said free and independent states are hereby invited to nominate and send over to England, as soon as may be, after the month of September next, each of them one plenipotentiary delegate, duly commissioned and authorized to attend the par­ liament at Westminster, in order, at the most convenient time after their first meeting or setting in the year of our Lord 1776, and before a joint-committee of the lords and commons of this realm to be appointed for the occasion, to express in due form their hearty and grateful acceptance of this declared and guaranteed independence and protection; and to accede to, and make a full and satisfactory acknowledgment and recognition of, the several rights of sovereignty and dominion claimed by the crown of Great-Britain in and over the seas, lakes and great rivers of North-America, as in this act are hereafter particularly declared and specified: and moreover with the said committee, to enter into a solemn, perpetual, and joint confederation, or general and grand league and alliance, offensive and defensive, for maintaining entire and in its full force that cordial and warm affection which hath heretofore so closely bound together and united Great-Britain and British America; and which, in consideration of the near and strong ties of kindred; of the community of laws, language, manners and reli­ gion; of the reciprocalness and inseparable nature of their commercial interests; as well as in consideration also of their natural and necessary connection as pro­ tectors and protected; ought for ever most sacredly and inviolably to be / preserved between them, in preference to every other political connection, alli­ ance, confederacy, treaty or engagement, whatsoever and with whomsoever. Now in order to maintain the undoubted rights of sovereignty and dominion belonging to the crown of Great-Britain in North-America, and the seas, lakes, great rivers and creeks thereof; and for preserving undiminished the rights and dignity of the British flag, and the honour and respect due to the same, may it also please your most excellent Majesty, that it may be farther declared, and it is hereby farther declared, that the dominion of the sea from the mouth of the river

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Mississippi to the northern extremity of the continent of North America, and all admiralty jurisdiction within the same, did and doth of right solely belong and appertain unto, and depend upon the crown and kingdom of Great-Britain; And also, that the island of Newfoundland and its dependencies, together with the Great and Lesser fishing Banks of the same, extending from latitude 41. 00 to lititude 48. 30 N. together with that other called St. Peter’s Bank, do also of right solely belong and appertain unto and depend upon the said crown and kingdom; excepting the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, together with certain liberties of taking and curing fish on the said banks and coasts of Newfoundland, ceded and granted under certain restrictions unto the subjects of the French king by the late treaty of peace between the two crowns; And also, that the entire country of Labrador, bounded to the south-west by Quebec, as limited by his Majesty’s royal proclamation bearing date the 7th day of October, 1763, aforesaid; that is to say, beginning at the river St. John’s in the gulph of St. Lawrence, and extend­ ing to Hudson’s Straits, together with all the islands and fisheries of the same, doth in like manner of right solely belong to and depend upon the said crown and kingdom; As well as all those countries, coasts and fisheries granted by a conditional charter to the exclusive occupation of the Hudson’s Bay Company: And it hereby also farther declared, that all the great lakes of North America, viz. Lake Iroquois or Champlain, Lake Ontario or Catarakui, Lake Erie or Oswego, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, and Lake Superior, together with the great rivers Mississippi and / St. Lawrence, all the navigable communications between lake and lake, and every other navigable lake, river and creek in and throughout the said continent of North America, are of right subject to the naval sovereignty and dominion of the said crown and kingdom alone; and that the said crown hath a right also to the free use of all the customary carrying-places between one navigation and another: And it is hereby farther declared and made known, that the said crown of Great-Britain will not suffer any other power or state whatso­ ever, to navigate any of the said seas, lakes, rivers, communications or creeks, with ships or vessels of war of any kind; nor to carry on war or commit hostilities in any-wise against any other people, nation or state within or upon any of the said navigations, except they be legally authorized so to do by especial commis­ sion under the great seal of the admiralty of Great-Britain: Nor will the said crown consent to or suffer any of the aforementioned free and independent states of North America, to navigate the seas thereof, with ships or vessels of war; nor to carry on war or commit hostilities in any-wise against any other people or state by sea, except authorized thereto as above; And moreover, by the authority aforesaid, it is also declared, that in order to preserve inviolate and in full effi­ ciency the above proposed alliance, which shall be known and distinguished by the title of The Grand British League and Confederacy, the said crown of GreatBritain will not, at any time hereafter, suffer or permit the trading or fishing-ships

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or vessels of any kingdom or state whatsoever, such kingdom or state not being a party to the said grand British league and confederacy, to navigate, fish or trade in any of the said North American seas, lakes or rivers other than is at present allowed to foreign states in general, and by treaty to France and Spain in particu­ lar: nor to anchor upon the said coasts, nor to approach them within two leagues of the land any where between the aforesaid boundary of the river Mississippi and the northern extremity of the said American contitent, under pain of confiscation of ship and cargo to his Majesty, as king of Great-Britain and sovereign of the North American seas. Neither shall it be lawful for the subjects of any of the said free and independent states of / North America, to fish upon the great fish­ ing-banks of Newfoundland, or of St. Peter afore-mentioned, or upon the coasts of the island of Newfoundland, or upon the coasts of Labrador, except only for whale; nor to enter the ports of the same for trade, or for any other purpose than what immediately relates to the business of whaling and the sheltering and refit­ ment of their whaling-ships or vessels, on pain of confiscation of ship and cargo as above. Provided nevertheless, that no claim of sovereignty or dominion, made by this act, or hereafter to be made on the part of the crown of Great-Britain, in and over the aforementioned lakes, rivers, communications and creeks, lying between the gulph of St. Lawrence and river Mississippi, or any of them, shall be understood or construed to extend to any right, property or interference in the fisheries, or other liberties or appropriations therein, to the prejudice of any pri­ vate right, privilege or property whatsoever; but shall always be understood to be confined solely and wholly to such a free use of the same, as is necessary to all the purposes of navigation of every fort, and the maintenance of naval dominion merely. And may it please your Majesty, that it may be also enacted, and be it enacted by the authority aforesaid, that it shall not be lawful, after the signing and final executing of the aforementioned Grand British League and Confed­ eracy, for any public monies whatsoever, being part of the revenues of the crown in the dominions of Great-Britain, or in any of the said free and independent states of British America respectively, to be either paid or remitted from the said British dominions unto America, or from any of the said free and independent states unto the British dominions, for the use of his Majesty, his heirs or succes­ sors, as sovereign of that kingdom or state in which it shall be intended to be received: excepting only such monies as it may be requisite at any time hereafter to remit to America for defraying the necessary expences of his Majesty’s British navy there. And now in order that no possible cause of doubt may remain, touching the validity or sincerity of the above declaration of freedom and independence, but that it may he clear, full and satisfactory, and thereby lay a sure and / solid foundation for such perpetual concord, amity, alliance and mutually beneficial commerce between the states and people of Great-Britain and British America,

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as, under the good providence of Almighty God, who shall behold this act of national justice and good-will with an eye of pleasure, and will doubtless bless and further such benevolent designs for the maintenance of peace and happi­ ness, and the prevention of discord and bloodshed between kindred states, and fellow-christians, no length of time shall impair or diminish; nor the arts or intrigues of foreign powers be able to disturb or interrupt, may it please your most excellent Majesty, that it may be enacted, and it is hereby enacted by the king’s most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons, in this present parliament assembled, That all and every of such acts of parliament as have at any time heretofore been particularly made, or intended to declare or maintain a supreme legisla­ tive power and authority over the people of the British American colonies as subjects of this realm, or for binding in any manner or degree the said people as subjects of this realm; and so much of all and every other act of parliament as extends to exercise supreme legislative power over any of the people of the said colonies, shall be and are, in virtue of this present act, fully and finally repealed and annulled from and after the day of before which time all his Majesty’s British forces in North America shall be recalled from thence, and also all civil officers and servants of the British crown, shall be commanded and caused to resign their respective offices, posts, places and employments, and to withdraw from thence, except such as his Majesty, in virtue of his prerogative as sovereign of any of the said free and independent states shall appoint, or cause to be appointed anew to the like or other offices or employments in any of the said states respectively. / In addition to what the reader would find in my tenth Letter and the notes subjoined, (to which I beg leave to refer him) as heads for the materials of the grand league and confederacy, by which I propose to secure our monopoly of the North American commerce, and to improve to the utmost of what they are capable, the various advantages of that connection; I shall now add, for the satisfaction of those not deeply conversant in subjects of this kind, but whose opinions in the general mass may nevertheless be of importance, a few more hints of such matters as would obviously become the proper objects of treaty and subjects of stipulation on this great occasion. It might perhaps be right to establish the use of British money only as the lawful, current coin throughout British America; with a condition that each state should send in its proportion of bullion to the Mint, or grant Great-Britain an equivalent for the use of her money. – It might perhaps be proper and neces­ sary that some small central island or district, lying on the Atlantic sea, should be ceded to Great-Britain for the residence of the British ambassador-general and plenipotentiary to the said states, and the head-quarters of the admiral; for the establishing a British court of admiralty for the more convenient dispatch of naval business upon the spot; and for other purposes of a like nature, apper­

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taining to the naval dominion and umpireship of the crown of Great-Britain: as well as a well-situated port upon the lakes for the same purpose; such as Lake St. Claire lying between the Lakes Erie and Huron. – Would it not be reasonable for the British American states, as in a manner the political wards of GreatBritain and relying wholly on her for external protection, totally to incapacitate themselves for entering into any treaties or alliances with any foreign powers whatsoever? – Might it not be eligible to admit of and join in constituting a general continental congress, to which each state should send one delegate, and which should never assemble but on the summons of the British ambassador general? The business of this congress to be treaty not government, and only to deliberate on peace and war, and such other occasional / matters as might be of general concernment; in order to the facilitating and dispatch of general business, and easing the British ambassador general of the trouble of personally consulting with, or the inconvenience attending the entrusting such affairs to his deputy the resident consul in, each separate state. – For the ease and conveni­ ence of the respective states, they might permit subordinate courts of admiralty to be held by Great-Britain, under due restrictions, in such of their sea-port towns along the coast as might be convenient. – As it would be impossible to prevent an indiscriminate mixture of British and of British American seamen in the ships of either country: so it might be proper for the said states to consent that seamen for the royal navy should be raised promiscuously from amongst the mariners of both, according to the present customs of the service; but not however to suffer impressing by land. – Consistently with our rights of naval dominion as set forth in the above draught, and in order that it may answer the beneficial purposes proposed by the grand league and confederacy, we ought to insist that no sea-port, or other place along the sea-coasts, or the shores of the rivers or lakes, shall have any fortifications within the reach of cannon-shot from the shore. But in a case of necessity in time of war, it might be agreed in general congress that temporary batteries or other fortifications should be erected, pro­ vided they were put into the possession and under the command of the British flag. – Quere, Whether it might not be for the general peace and welfare of, and preserve the balance of power between, the several states, should it be agreed also in general congress, that no interior fortifications of any kind should ever be erected within any of them? – In order to prevent all suspicions to the prejudice of Great-Britain’s equitable dealing with the confederated states and her faith­ ful guardianship of them, she should not be entitled to make any extraordinary demand upon them for any cautionary or preparatory naval armament: but from the time when war was actually declared against any maritime power until the same should be concluded, they should contribute subsidies in such proportions to their ability as should be regulated in general congress, the whole bearing an established proportion to / the extraordinary naval expences of Great-Britain as

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originally settled in forming the Grand British League and Confederacy. – In case any two or more of the said states should, in contempt of the umpireship of Great-Britain and the interposition of the British ambassador-general, go to war or carry on hostilities one against the other, the admiral of North America and all other British naval commanders should have orders to make prize of all ships, vessels and merchandize, (all fishing shallops, boats and skiffs having no decks, together with their fish and fishing implements excepted) belonging to that state or those states which should be previously deemed and pronounced by the parliament of Great-Britain, in a Declaratory Act for that express purpose, to be the offending state or states; and the said naval commanders should continue to distress the trade of the same by sea to the utmost of their power, until the said state or states should be brought to reason; of which his Majesty in council should be the temporary judge, and have power to stay all farther prizals until parliament should, in another declaratory act, restore the said offending state or states, having made due satisfaction, to its or their former beneficiary situ­ ation as a party in the Grand British League and Confederacy. – And for the more effectually preserving the future balance of power between all the states of that immense continent, might it not be expedient that the limits and bounda­ ries of each, which they should never hereafter pass, should be newly defined by the Grand British League and Confederacy; and some of their nominal interior boundaries now lying very far within the wilderness, be changed for others at a nearer distance? – For the same good purpose and other apparent good reasons, might not the remainder of the wilderness be partitioned out into certain deter­ minate and limited tracts, according to soil and situation; each of which should be considered as the territory of some future state which in process of time might be therein erected. And I would propose that no interruption should be given to the growing of such new states (other than every government has a right to give by wholesome laws within itself to prevent as much as may be a spirit or practice of emigration;) but that until the settlers within any such / partitioned tract of the wilderness should be increased and multiplied to the number of fifty thousand souls, they should be considered as incapable of forming an independ­ ent political state, and be subject for the intermediate time to the government of Great-Britain. But as soon as their numbers should amount to fifty thousands souls as aforesaid, they should be entitled and free to erect themselves into an independent political state, and to constitute for their own government such a legislative power as they should judge most proper; provided only that they acknowledged the king of Great-Britain as their lawful sovereign, that they made the protestant faith the established religion of the country, and consented to become a party to the Grand British League and Confederacy. During the short space of time indeed that remains of that winter’s day to the evening of which we may hope to continue the despotic lords of North America,

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those immense divisions of country we have affected to make by our charters and by act of parliament on a late memorable occasion, may, like all other arbitrary compendiums, be convenient to us, so long as we determine to continue arbitrary rulers; or it might hereafter be favourable to the ambition of some one American state hungering to swallow up its neighbours, to have its territory like that of the ambitious Catherine reaching from the salt ocean to the fresh-water seas in mid­ land, and thence to the salt ocean again quite across the vast continent; but in neither case would it be desirable or good for the people of those countries. Nations are most free and happy when their extremities are near enough to the vital seat of government to feel its pervading principle in its full warmth and activity, and by the spring of their own re-action to pour into the heart again full-flowing tides of health, life and vigour. On these principles I should wish to see the North American states aranged back to back like habitations in a well-built city, leaving those yet to rise into being to front the lakes and great rivers St. Lawrence and Mississippi, as the present ones do the Atlantic sea. We have already enumerated in the foregoing draught for an act of parliament eighteen states already formed; and by such a division of the remaining country by the grand confederacy as we / have proposed, provision might be made for the future gradual and quiet establishment of nineteen more at least, all of ample extent, and every one having a very considerable frontier accessible to shipping and upon waters which are at this time navigated by the British navy. Thus each of these numerous states, by the same means that would enable it through commerce to become a respectable member of the grand British confederacy, would be effectually subject to the controul and influence of Great-Britain their common maritime protector and umpire, so necessary for preserving the harmony of the whole. According to this system no state adjoining to the two great rivers should possess the shores on both sides; as navigations of such magnitude and importance should be always boundaries and frontier. The reasons are obvious. If we cast our eyes over an American map, and view attentively the singular distribution of land and water, and the directions of the two capital rivers; and if we then consider what hath already taken place in the establishment of a long range of narrow-fronted states along the sea-coast throughout its whole extent; we shall possibly be led to conclude that the plan we recommend is the plain sug­ gestion of Providence, who from the first hath hitherto wrought according to it himself, and seems to have made its future observance and completion an obvi­ ous dictate of nature to all parties concerned, but most so to Great-Britain. In order to illustrate what I have said to this effect, let me just mention such altera­ tions of boundaries and trace out such districts of future dominion as strike my own eye, and carry an appearance of equality and propriety well adapted to the nature of the supposed confederacy so far as they can be judged of by the map; this being sufficient for all present purposes; that is for those of explanation.

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To begin then with Quebec, I should not content myself with reducing it to the same size as before its late enormous extention; but I would propose that it should be bounded to the N. E. at the river Saguenay, and to the S. W. by the river Atawas: it would then have a maritime frontier of two hundred miles. And making the lakes of St. John, St. Peter, Beauharnois, Abitibis and / Temiscaming its respective interior limits westward and northward, it would be about 360 miles in length. There would then be left a country of about equal surface, though with a larger frontier to the water, between Quebec and Labra­ dor, which latter commences at the river St. John in the gulph of St. Lawrence, as one of those districts to be appointed as above-mentioned for the seat of a future nation. This country for the present by way of distinction may be called Tadousacaia [1], after the name of one of its ancient tribes of Indians. Montreal [2] might be the capital of another state which should extend from that city and the aforesaid river Atawas up the river St. Lawrence and Catarakui as far as Lake Ontario; the chain of streams and small lakes lying between Fort Frontenac and the east-end of Lake Huron being its limit to the S.W. Lake Huron itself from the little Lake Huron to French River its western confine; and Lake Nipissin together with River Atawas its boundary to the north. The ancient Huronia [3] having Montreal to the N.E. and for the rest completely in circled by the waters of the Ontario, the Oswego and Huron Lakes, is by nature formed into another territory. The next will extend along the whole north-shore of Lake Huron from French River to the falls of St. Mary, and bordering on Montreal and Quebec might retain the appellation of Canada [4]. The shores of Lake Superior will furnish ample frontier to four states more. The first, or Mensisipia [5], beginning at the aforesaid falls of St. Mary and terminating at the river which forms the discharge of Lake Alemipigon; the second, or Camanestigonia [6], at Long Lake which receives the overflowings of the Lake of the Woods; the third, or Missi­ sagania [7], at the Bay of St. Charles; and the fourth, or Puania [8], will pass the strait and reach as far as the River Outagamis at the bottom of the Bay of Puans. The two latter will also have other navigable frontiers on the Mississippi, Missi­ sagania being watered by that river from the rivulet of Ouabaougetan to the falls of St. Anthony, / and Puania from the said falls to the river Ouisconsin. Then again Mascoutcnia [9] having the Mississippi to the S.W. from the River Ouis­ consin to the Illinois river, might also have a maritime frontier from the bottom of the Bay of Puans above-mentioned to the River St. Joseph at the south-end of Lake Michigan; while Miamisia [10] like Huronia would be washed by the [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Tadousacaia. Montreal. Huronia. Canada. Mensisipia.

[6] [7] [8] [9] [10]

Camanestigonia. Missisagania. Puania. Mascoutenia. Miamisia.

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waters of three lakes, Michigan, Huron and Erie as far as the river Miamis. The south shores of Lake Erie or Oswego, and as they incline N.E. until they reach Ochureni, might be allotted to Erieland [11]; from thence to Oswego Fort and Bay in Lake Ontario, to Senekania [12]; and Catarakua might take in the rest of the lake, all the river Catarakui [13] N.E. to La Prairie, then turning south again all Richlieu river and the west shore of Lake Champlain as far as Crown Point. The east shore of this lake and the said river Richlieu, together with the south-east shore of the St. Lawrence as far as Wolf River opposite the Saguenay, would belong to Champlania [14]; and the remainder of the river St. Lawrence together with the coast of the gulph as far as the river Ristigouchi in Miram­ ichi Bay, (which I would also propose for the confine of Nova-Scotia) would give a very extensive maritime frontier to Gaspesia [15]. Again, we shall find still remaining upon the Mississippi below the river Illinois, which we made the southern boundary of Mascoutenia, sufficient frontier for three extensive terri­ tories: the first, or Wauwautania [16], reaching as far as the Ohio; and the other two, Chicaswria [17] and Chactawria [18] divided into equal districts, will bring us to the present boundary of West Florida lying in 31° of north latitude. And it might not be amiss perhaps to set apart the Province of Sagadahock from New England and make it an independent state. From the point of confluence between the waters of the Great Miomee with those of the Ohio, as a center, / might diverge several lines of interior separation, thus; – Suppose one line to run due south till it should intersect the northern limit of East Florida; this would divide all the lower nations on the Mississippi from Virginia and the southern colonies fronting the Atlantic. A second line from the same point north-west-ward to the junction of the two rivers Illinois and Theakiki called the Fork, would separate Wauwautania and Miamisia. A third in the direction of the courses of the Great Miomee and Miamis rivers, would divide Miamisia from Erieland. And a fourth being formed by the wind­ ing course of the Ohio itself as high as the site of the late fort called Du Quesne would separate Virginia and Pennsylvania from Erieland. Then a new division line might begin at the said site of fort Du Quesne, and leaving the Ohio to the westward, and passing along the Allegany Mountains, might take a pretty strait course to Lake George, and thence to the south end of Lake Champlain; thence again N.E. to the northern bend of the river St. John on the present confines of New England and Nova Scotia; forming the interior confine of all the northern colonies on the Atlantic to that point, as well as of the above-mentioned districts [11] Erieland. [12] Senekania. [13] Catarakua. [14] Champlania. [15] Gaspesia.

[16] Wauwautania. [17] Chicasawria. [18] Chactawria. [19] Sagadahock.

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bordering on Lake Ontario, the Catarakui and St. Lawrence. Then a line from Ochureni to Du Quesne would part Erieland from Senekania. A line also from the Bay of Oswego on Lake Ontario that should intersect at the nearest point the grand division line running N.E. and S.W. would separate Senekania from Catarakua. And another line to come from Wolfe River which empties itself into the St. Lawrence opposite the river Saguenay to the termination of the last-men­ tioned one at the said bend of the river St. John, and thence falling into the river Ristigouchi which hath its discharge into the gulph at the Bay of Miramichi, would bound Gaspesia towards Nova Scotia, Sagadahock and Champlain, and complete the general sketch of our proposed divisions. – Thus, as I have said before, to the eighteen states already enumerated, we might by a prudent foresight cause all future additions to the number to be so made as that none should be too large or too small, all having an ample surface and an extensive maritime frontier, and being thereby / every way calculated for being hereafter joined with the rest of the free and independent states in the grand British confederacy. And thus, by acknowledging and guaranteeing to the colonies a legislative independence, provision would be made that the whole of the immense continent of North America, so far as it is yet known, should be all kept with great ease and little expence in a voluntary and therefore a sure commer­ cial dependence upon Great-Britain. But if she persist in the folly or rather the insanity of thinking to effect the same end by making her own parliament the general fountain of legislative authority and government to such a swarm of far distant and hardy nations, I fear it is high time that she were let blood, severely purged, and kept for a while on low diet as the only cure of her unhappy distem­ per. I wish even those remedies may be in time to save her life. / Even these rude deficient draughts of an Emancipating Act and Grand Brit­ ish League and Confederacy, and a new division of country, would, I should hope, when duly weighed by the candid and sincere friends of this country, be enough to convince them that we may grant even more than the colonists ask at our hands, and yet be in no danger of losing that influence (which is only another word for sovereignty, so far as it can be really beneficial to Great-Britain) over them, from which we have hitherto while in their infancy only derived such immense advantages. Those brave men who now shudder at the thoughts of imbruing their hands in the blood of fellow-citizens and fellow-subjects nobly con­ tending for liberty, would not have a scruple of drawing their swords against the subjects of a foreign independent state which had been guilty of breaking through the solemn engagements of a treaty it had expressly bound itself to observe. But supposing the wisdom of parliament after mature deliberation to proceed upon these hints and on the same principles to frame a finished work, how noble a production it would appear! The colonists would hereby enjoy civil freedom and legislative independence to their hearts content; and yet remain in a state of

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absolute commercial dependence to this kingdom. But what commercial coun­ try is independent? Not Great-Britain herself. She is absolutely dependent, in a commercial sense, upon every country that favours her with a market. She is more particularly dependent upon her own colonies, as they contribute the most largely to the means of her preservation. Commerce in its very idea signifies a voluntary intercourse and exchange of commodities for the mutual benefit of the parties: and nothing can be more certain than that the sword and sceptre are the worst of all instruments for carrying it on to advantage, though necessary indeed for its guard and protection. Let us then no longer convert them into implements of mischief, nor degrade them into instruments of punishment, but apply them to their right use! Supposing we should be able to hold the colonies / in subjection for half a century longer (which is not a supposition that many will grant me); they would always be discontented and factious, and consider their obedience as an act of mere political necessity. Thinking themselves injured, and therefore morally free from the obligation of complying any farther than they needs must, they would undoubtedly seize the first opportunity in some time of our weakness or embarrassment to revolt, and then of course, as of necessity, would become our enemies. Whereas, supposing them emancipated and to have entered into the proposed League and Confederacy, they would entertain no jealousy of our having designs against their liberties, they would have nothing to interrupt or disturb their domestic peace and industry, no temptation to quarrel with us, no power to hurt us: and the protective alliance and confederacy entered into with us being a voluntary, a beneficial, formal and solemn covenant on their part, they would feel all the consciousness of a moral obligation of the most binding nature to abide by and fulfil the conditions of them; and could not but view the breach of them as an act of guilt, baseness and ingratitude for which, as there would be no temptation, so there could be no excuse. In the latter case all good men, even amongst themselves, would be against them; in the former, they would be sure of their pity, their goodwill and secret aid, if not their open support and assistance, as we may behold at this day. How much these consid­ erations are to be esteemed worthy of attention; and how powerful an influence full persuasions in the minds of men of right or of wrong have upon the affairs of civil society, I leave to every wise man and sound politician to determine. Now, was it not that it might be artfully urged against me and resolved into that kind of enthusiasm which by hacknied courtiers and their base-minded train is with a sneer insinuated to be the sure mark of a true visionary and an indubitable proof that nothing sound and practical can come from such a per­ son, I would here declare myself so thoroughly assured of the moral infallibility of the measures I have suggested for producing the effects proposed, that was I in rank or station so near the throne of the best of / princes as to be entitled to make him a personal offer of my council, I would stand forth alone if there were

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none to join me, to propose and recommend them in the most earnest manner; content, should they be found to fail or even to fall short of what I foretold, to be branded as a traitor, and to be publicly proscribed as a curse to my country with a price set upon my head, so that ‘every man’s hand should be against me.’

THE END.

EDITORIAL NOTES

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Present Disputes 1. QUID NOSTRAM CONCENTUM DIVIDAT, AUDI. Hor.: Horace, or Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65–8 bc), Roman poet, Epistles, I.14.31. 2. Lycurgus: Lycurgus (c. 800–c. 730 bc), real or mythical lawgiver who reformed Spartan society in accordance with the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi and with the Spartan virtues of equality (among citizens), military preparedness and austerity. 3. Pericles: Pericles (c. 495–429 bc), Athenian democratic politician, orator and soldier of the city’s Golden Age, who led Athens in c. 461–429 bc, transformed the Delian League into an Athenian empire, and headed it through the first two years of the Peloponnesian War. 4. In Molesworth’s history of Denmark: Robert Molesworth, first Viscount Molesworth of the Irish peerage (1656–1725), English diplomat and political scientist, An Account of Denmark, as it was in the Year 1692 (London, 1694).

[Langrishe], Considerations on the Dependencies of Great Britain 1.

The Present State of the Nation: William Knox (1732–1810), The Present State of the Nation: Particularly with Respect to its Trade, Finances, &c. &c. Addressed to the King and both Houses of Parliament (London, 1768). For more of Knox’s work, see The Claim of the Colonies to an Exemption from Internal Taxes Imposed by the Authority of Parliament, Examined and A Letter to a Member of Parliament, Wherein the Power of the British Leg­ islature, and the Case of the Colonists, are Briefly and Impartially Considered (both 1765), both reprinted in Volume 5, pp. 21–63. 2. Lady-day 1766: Lady Day was the Feast of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, 25 March. Until the 1752 transition from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar it was also New Year’s Day. In 1766 Lady Day was 6 April, to account for the 12 days ‘lost’ when the calendar changed, and it represented, and still represents, the beginning and end of financial years – hence Langrishe’s use of it here. 3. Mr. Postlethwayt: Malachy Postlethwayt (c. 1707–67), economist and author of pam­ phlets for the Royal African Company. He was author of The Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, which appeared in instalments between 1751 and 1755 and then in a two-volume edition in 1757, Britain’s Commercial Interests Explained and Improv’d (London, 1757) and Great Britain’s True System (London, 1757).

– 255 –

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Notes to pages 42–57

4. the author of the farmer’s letters: John Dickinson (1732–1808), Philadelphia lawyer, poli­ tician and pamphleteer, author of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, first published in instalments in 1767 and 1768. 5. when the Earl of Hertford was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland: Francis Seymour-Conway, first Marquess of Hertford (1718–94), was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from August 1765 until October 1766. 6. as Montesquieu calls it, ‘a manufacture … any other can’: Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755), French philosopher and author of De L’Esprit des Lois or The Spirit of the Laws (1748). This and many subsequent phrases that Langrishe puts in quotation marks seem to be either idiosyncratic translations or paraphrases, if not actual inventions, rather than quotes. 7. ‘You must apply yourselves … more regular and rational’: It is not clear who Langrishe is quoting, or more likely paraphrasing, here. It could be a continuation of the citation of Montesquieu but is more likely either Malachy Postlethwayt (see note 3 above) or possi­ bly William Molyneux (1656–98), The Case of Ireland being Bound by Acts of Parliament in England, Stated (London, 1698). 8. By the English statute of the 15th of Ch. II. … cloth directly to the plantations: 15 Car. II, c. 7, Encouragement of Trade Act, 1663; 3 & 4 Anne, c. 16, Perpetuation and Amendment of Acts, 1704. 9. By the 7 and 8th of King William, ‘no plantation goods … in England’: 7 & 8 Will. III, c. 22, Plantation Trade Act, 1795 (1796). 10. By the 10 and 11th of W. III. no manufactured wool … to England: 11 Will. III, c. 13, Exportation Act (Wool Act), 1698. 11. By the 7th of Geo. I. no commodity … from England: 7 Geo. I, c. 21, Trade to East Indies, etc. Act, 1720. 12. in the 4th of Geo. I. … to export ‘glass or silk,’ &c.: 4 Geo. I, c. 11, Piracy Act, 1717. 13. In Mr. Prior’s publication, about thirty years ago: Matthew Prior (1664–1721), English poet, diplomat and commissioner of trade. A History of his Own Time, purporting to be Prior’s papers, was published in 1740, although its provenance is now in doubt. 14. Mr. Postlethwayt: see note 3 above. 15. Sir John Davies observes … a million of money: Sir John Davies (1569–1626), English poet, lawyer and attorney general in Ireland, author of Discoverie of the True Causes why Ireland was Never Entirely Subdued and Brought under Obedience of the Crown of Eng­ land until the Beginning of His Majesty’s Happy Reign (London, 1612). Davies’s legal reports established some of the founding legal principles of English and British imperial­ ism. 16. Sir Francis Brewester … in any hands but her own: Sir Francis Brewster (d. 1704/5), Irish merchant, politician and writer of obscure origins, author of Essays in Trade and Navi­ gation, in Five Parts (London, 1695) and New Essays on Trade (London, 1702), which seems to be cited here. He is also the supposed author of the anonymous A Discourse Concerning Ireland and the Different Interests Thereof (London, 1698) about the wool­ lens issue. 17. Sir Matt. Dicker’s time: Sir Matthew Decker (1679–1749), English merchant, writer and proto-Smithian free-trade advocate, author of Serious Considerations on the Several High Duties which the Nation in General, as well as Trade in Particular, Labors under, with a Proposal for Preventing the Removal of Goods, Discharging the Trader from any Search, and Raising all the Publick Supplies by one Single Tax (London, 1743) and Essay on the

Notes to pages 57–93

18. 19.

20.

21.

22.

257

Causes of the Decline of the Foreign Trade, consequently of the Value of the Lands in Britain, and on the Means to Restore Both (London, 1744). Montesquieu: see note 6 above. ‘The Case of Great Britain and America’: Gervase Parker Bushe (c. 1744–93), The Case of Great-Britain and America: Addressed to the King, and both Houses of Parliament (Phila­ delphia and London, 1769, and subsequent editions). the County Palatine of Chester: The Chester and Cheshire (Constituencies) Act of 1542 gave Chester and Cheshire representatives in the Parliament of England, and replaced the county palatine of Chester, ruled by the earls of Chester and a local Parliament made up of barons, first established by William the Conqueror. Tiberius Graccus: Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (168/163–133 bc), Roman soldier and politician, became a tribune of the people and proposed a law, Lex Sempronia Agraria, to distribute public land among legionaries dispossessed during wartime. The controversy ended with his murder by senators. that great Sully: Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully (1560–1641), French Huguenot, soldier and minister for Henry IV, famous for his Mémoires or Économies royales (1638).

[Pownall], State of the Constitution of the Colonies 1. Commissions of Government, ‘have and enjoy … within the Realm’: In 1757 the Privy Council received a petition regarding lands from the East India Company. The Privy Council sought legal advice from Attorney General Charles Pratt (1714–94) and Solici­ tor General Charles Yorke (1722–70), later Lords Camden and Morden. Pownall is here quoting their opinion. Pratt went on to become Lord Chancellor. Yorke had previously been a counsel to the East India Company, and was supposed to succeed Camden as Lord Chancellor. He had previously sworn, as a Rockinghamite, never to take office under Lord Grafton. When the King threatened that this was his only opportunity to take this office, he accepted but subsequently committed suicide. 2. Laws to which the King hath given his Consent … the Exercise thereof: An Act declaring the sole Right of the Militia to be in King and for the present ordering & disposing the same, 1661, was actually 13 Car. II, c. 6. 3. Locum Tenens: ‘place holder’ (Latin). 4. 16th Car. I.c.10: Habeas Corpus Act, 1640. 5. 13th and 14th Car. II. c.2: see note 2 above.

Observations on Several Acts of Parliament 1. Several Acts of Parliament … His Present Majesty’s Reign: The Sugar Act of 1764 is 4 Geo. III, c. 15; The Stamp Act of 1765 or Duties in American Colonies Act 1765 was actually in the fifth year of George III: 5 Geo. III, c. 12, which was repealed in 1766 under the Duties in American Colonies Act, or Repeal Act, 6 Geo. III, c. 11, on the same day, 15 March, as the American Colonies Act 1766, or Declaratory Act, 6 Geo. III, c. 12, which declared the colonies subordinate to Parliament ‘in all cases whatsoever’; Duties on Tea, etc. (American Plantations) Act 1766, or the Townshend Acts, 7 Geo. III, c. 46. 2. an act made in the 12th year of the reign of Charles the Second … Isle of Man: Navigation Act, 1660, 12 Car. II, c. 18. 3. tierces: A tierce was a third of a pipe, or 42 gallons.

258

Notes to pages 97–124

4. the act of the 6th of George the Second, commonly call’d the sugar-act: Trade of Sugar Colonies Act, 1732, better known today as the Molasses Act of 1733 (in the Gregorian calendar), 6 Geo II, c. 13. 5. the importation of wines … act of the 15th of Charles the Second: Encouragement of Trade Act 1663, 15 Car. II, c. 7. 6. act of the 12th of Charles the Second … said act enumerated: see note 2 above. 7. the act of the 15th of the same reign … all such goods, &c.: see note 5 above. 8. the act of the 25th of the same reign … inspection of the trade: Trade Act, 1672, 25 Car. II, c. 7.

Lathrop, Innocent Blood Crying to God 1.

D octors Increase and Cotton Mather: Increase Mather (1639–1723) and his son Cot­ ton Mather (1663–1728) were Massachusetts Puritan ministers and prolific authors of numerous sermons and theological tracts. 2. The barbarous murder of young Snider on the 22d of last Month: Christopher Snider was shot and killed by Loyalist Ebenezer Richardson. He was buried in the same grave as the victims of the Boston Massacre. His tribute on the tombstone in the Old Granary Burial Ground by the Park Street Church, Boston, reads: ‘Here also lies buried the body of Christopher Snider Aged 12 years, Killed February 22nd, 1770. The innocent, first victim of the struggles between the Colonists and the Crown, which resulted in INDE­ PENDENCE’. 3. sons of Belial: Belial is a demon and one of the four crowned princes of Hell according to Judaeo-Christian belief. In the Book of Jubilees or Lesser Genesis and Leptogenesis, a second-century exegesis of Genesis and Exodus, the ‘sons of Belial’ are uncircumcised heathens.

[Allen], An Oration on the Beauties of Liberty 1. Right Honorable the Earl of Dartmouth: William Legge, second Earl of Dartmouth (1731–1801), was Secretary of State for the Colonies from 27 August 1772 to 10 November 1775. 2. Charter confirmed, sealed, and ratified … an hundred years: Rhode Island’s charter dated from 1663 and along with Connecticut (chartered in 1662) it was one of two private charter colonies and thus not directly under royal rule. There were also two private proprietary colonies that survived until American independence: Maryland and Penn­ sylvania. 3. the Governor of Rhode-Island: the Governor from 1769 to 1775 was Joseph Wanton (1705–80), a Newport merchant and loyalist. 4. are not the Rhode-Islanders subjects to the King of Great-Britain?: see headnote above, pp. 115–17. 5. Nero-Tyrant: Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (ad 37–68), Roman Emperor from 54 to 68. 6. G— F—g: Edmund Fanning (1739–1818) held several posts as protégé to William Tryon (see note 7 below) both in North Carolina and in New York, though only later did he serve as Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia and Governor of St John’s (King Edward) Island from 1786 to 1805. 7. G—r T—n: William Tryon (1729–88) was Governor of North Carolina from 1765 to 1771 and of New York from 1771 to 1780.

Notes to pages 125–32

259

8. says Christ to Peter … the children are free: Matthew 17:24–7. 9. General Gage: Thomas Gage (1719/20–87) was Commander-in-Chief of British forces in North America from the end of the Seven Years War in 1763 until shortly after the outbreak of the War of Independence in 1775. 10. bloody Bonner’s: Edmund Bonner (c. 1500–69) was a Henrician reformer and Bishop of London from 1539 to 1549, when he became disillusioned by the Earl of Somerset’s ardent Protestantism and returned to the Catholic Church. He was Bishop of London for a second time (1553–59) under Mary I, and earned the nickname ‘Bloody Bonner’ for his role in the persecution of Protestants during her reign. 11. Scotch barbarian troops … in St. George’s fields: The radical John Wilkes was jailed in King’s Bench Prison, London, for an attack on George III in the North Briton, but when he was elected MP for Middlesex in March 1768 his supporters hoped he would be freed to take up his seat when Parliament opened on 10 May. A large crowd, some said as many as 15,000 people, gathered in St George’s Fields, outside the prison. Fearing the crowd would attempt to free Wilkes, troops killed a disputed number of people (his­ torians say anything between five and eleven) in what became known as the Massacre of St George’s Fields. One of the victims, William Allen, became a particular martyr because he was said to be innocent and was chased and then shot in the yard of the Horse Shoe Inn, Stones End. The following February Wilkes was found guilty of sedi­ tious libel for criticism of the government over the ‘massacre’ and was excluded from the House of Commons, leading to the formation of the ‘Supporters of the Bill of Rights’, which campaigned for Wilkes and for parliamentary reform. ‘Lord B—n’ is William Wildman Shute Barrington, second Viscount Barrington (1717–93), Secretary of War from November 1755 to March 1761 and July 1765 to December 1778, who notori­ ously thanked troops for suppressing the disorder. ‘Lord W—h’ is Thomas Thynne, third Viscount Weymouth (1734–96), created Marquess of Bath in 1789, Secretary of State for the Northern Department from January to October 1768 and for the Southern Department from October 1768 to December 1770, who wrote a letter to the Surrey magistrates urging use of troops to suppress disorder. 12. Stand fast in the … wings of the morning: Psalm 139:9–10: ‘If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me’. 13. Homer’s thoughts, and Virgil’s ideas: Homer was an ancient Greek epic poet, author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, among other works, thought to have lived in the eighth or ninth centuries bc. Publius Virgil Maro (70–19 bc), also known as Virgil or Vergil, Roman poet. 14. let the voice of the blood of your brethren in King-street speak: The Boston Massacre of 5 March 1770 took place outside the Customs House on King Street, today’s State Street. 15. Alexander: Alexander III of Macedon (356–323 bc), also known as Alexander the Great. 16. Cæsar: Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (63 bc–ad 14), first Roman Emperor from 27 bc to 14 ad. 17. Bishop Burnet: Gilbert Burnet (1643–1715), Scottish theologian, historian, linguist and Bishop of Salisbury. A Whig, he was chaplain to William of Orange and preached the Coronation sermon for him as William III on 11 April 1689. He was author of The History of the Reformation of the Church of England, 3 vols (London, 1679–1714) and History of My Own Time, which he began writing in 1683 and was published posthu­ mously in two volumes in 1724 and 1734.

260

Notes to pages 135–45

18. Lord B—e: John Stuart, third Earl of Bute (1713–92), Prime Minster from 26 May 1762 to 8 April 1763. 19. the Duke of G—n: Augustus Henry FitzRoy, third Duke of Grafton (1735–1811), Sec­ retary of State for the Northern Department from 12 July 1765 to 23 May 1766, Prime Minister from 14 October 1768 to 28 January 1770 and Lord Privy Seal from 12 June 1771 to 10 November 1775. 20. Lord H—h: Wills Hill, Earl of Hillsborough (1718–93), also Lord Harwich of the Irish peerage, and Marquess of Downshire from 1789, President of the Board of Trade from 9 September 1763 to 20 July 1765, 16 August to 17 December 1766 and 20 January 1768 to 31 August 1772. He was also Secretary of State for the Colonies from 27 February 1768 to 27 August 1772, and later Secretary of State for the Southern Department. 21. Lord N—h: Frederick, Lord North, second Earl of Guilford (1732–92), Chancellor of the Exchequer from 6 October 1768 and Prime Minister from 28 January 1770 to 22 March 1782. 22. lately the case in Sweeden … tyranny of death: On 20 August 1772 King Gustav III forced the Swedish Riksdag of the Estates at bayonet point to accept a new Constitution signifi­ cantly centralizing the state and enhancing the power of the monarchy. 23. the people sending home their Governour … deemed rebellion: A reference to the overthrow of in 1689, in the wake of the Glorious Revolution in England, of Edmund Andros, Governor of the Dominion of New England, a near-vice-regency of the New England Colonies of New Jersey and New York established by James II and ruled without legisla­ tive assemblies. 24. Phillis … Dr. Cooper’s Church: Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753–84) was born in West Africa and was brought to America aboard the slave ship The Phillis, arriving in Boston in July 1761. She was purchased by John and Susannah Wheatley who provided that their eighteen-year-old daughter Mary educate the young slave. Wheatley converted to Christianity and became a poet. Her first poem, ‘On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin’, was published in the Newport Mercury in December 1767, but she found fame with ‘An Ele­ giac Poem on the Death of that Celebrated Divine, and Eminent Servant of Jesus Christ, the Reverend and Learned Mr. George Whitefield’ (the most famous evangelist of the Great Awakening), a funeral elegy of 1770 published in Boston and London in 1771. In 1773, when An Oration, upon the Beauties of Liberty appeared, Wheatley published her major collection, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, in London, where she was promoting her work. She wrote a poem ‘To his Excellency General Washington’ and sent it to its subject in 1775, meeting him by invitation the following year. Her final work was ‘Liberty and Peace, A Poem’, published just after the end of the War of Independence in 1784. She was freed in John Wheatley’s will in 1778. Samuel Cooper (1725–83) was minister of Congregational Battle Street Church in Boston from 1747 until his death and he and Wheatley knew each other well. 25. Gath: biblical city and home of Goliath. 26. Mr. Swan’s Piece … from the Slave-Trade: James Swan (c. 1754–1830) was born in Fifeshire and moved to Boston in 1765 where he became a merchant and financier, a patriot, member of the Sons of Liberty, participant in the Boston Tea Party in 1773, and fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775. An antislavery campaigner, he precociously authored A Dissuasion to Great-Britain and the Colonies, from the Slave-Trade to Africa (Boston, 1772). He got into debt, however, and moved to France in 1787, returning to the United States in 1794–8, but in 1808 he went to debtors’ prison where he remained until shortly before his death.

Notes to pages 151–4

261

[Bollan], The Rights of the English Colonies Established in America Stated and Defended 1. Lord Clarendons Survey of the Leviathan: Sir Edward Hyde, first Earl of Claren­ don (1609–74), who joined the future Charles II in exile in 1651, became his Lord Chancellor in 1658 and was instrumental in the Restoration of 1660, after which he was ennobled. Clarendon was also one of the eight Lords Proprietors of the Carolinas from 1663, but fell out of favour and went into exile after the outbreak of the second Anglo-Dutch War. His daughter, Anne (1637–71), married James, Duke of York, and mothered queens Mary II and Anne. Clarendon was actually an Anglican and defender of the Church of England, not a Catholic. A Brief View and Survey of the Dangerous and Pernicious Errors to Church and State, in Mr. Hobbes’s Book, entitled Leviathan was published in Oxford in 1676. Much of Clarendon’s major work was published post­ humously, including The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England: Begun in 1641 (Oxford, 1702–4), The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in Ireland (London, 1720), A Collection of several Tracts of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, (London, 1727) and Religion and Policy, and the Countenance and Assistance Each should Give to the Other, with a Survey of the Power and Jurisdiction of the Pope in the Dominion of other Princes (Oxford, 1811). The work refers, of course, to Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), English philosopher, author of Leviathan (London, 1651). 2. peragit tranquilla potestas … Claud: The original quote is ‘Peragit tranquilla potestas, quod violenta nequit; mandataque fortius urget imperiosa quies’ (rather than ‘amor’; love): ‘Quiet authority accomplishes what violence cannot, and that mandate compels more which comes from a commanding calm’. Claudian, or Claudius Claudianus (ad c. 370–404), Panegyricus dictus Manlio Theodoro consuli or Panegyric on the Consulship of Flavius Manlius Theodorus, ll. 239–41. 3. Liberty should reach … Spectator: This appeared in Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s daily, the Spectator, on Tuesday, 29 January 1712 (new calendar). 4. quæ in sui dispositione non fallitur: derived from the eighth of the Collects in the Book of Common Prayer for the first Sunday after the Trinity: ‘Deus, cujus providentia in sui dispositione non fallitur, te supplices exoramus, ut noxia cuncta submoveas, et omnia nobis profutura concedas’: ‘God, Whose never-failing Providence ordereth all things both in heaven and earth, we humbly beseech thee to put away from us all hurtful things, and to give us those things which be profitable for us’. 5. P olybius, that ‘it is a true … abandon each other’: from Book 2, ch. 1, ‘The Beginning of the Wars between the Duke of Burgundy and the Men of Liège’ from the Mémoires (Paris, 1524) of Philippe de Commines or de Commynes (1447–c. 1511), Burgundian and French diplomat, regarded as the first of the Renaissance historians and writers, hence the comparison to Polybius (c. 203–120 bc), Greek historian of Hellenistic period, author of The Histories. 6. Dies, hora, momentum … Casaubon: ‘A day, an hour, a moment, is enough to overturn the things, that seemed to have been founded and rooted in adamant’, Isaac Casau­ bon (1559–1614), Geneva-born classical scholar, quoted in the preface of Sir Walter Raleigh’s The History of the World (London, 1614). See also note 8 below. 7. Omnia sunt hominum … qua valuere runt: ‘All human things hang on a slender thread, the strongest fall with a sudden crash’, Ovid Publius Ovidius Naso (43 bc–ad 17/18), Roman poet, Epistoloe Ex Ponto or Letters from the Black Sea, IV.3.35, written in exile.

262

Notes to pages 154–67

8. Sir Walter Raleigh, in his arts of empire: Walter Raleigh (c. 1552–1618), English aris­ tocrat, courtier and New World explorer. His The Arts of Empire and Mysteries of State Discabineted: In Political and Polemical Aphorisms, Grounded on Authority and Expe­ rience, and Illustrated with the Choicest Examples and Historical Observations by the Ever-Renowned Knight, Sir Walter Raleigh was published by John Milton in 1658. 9. The author of the Royal Politician: The Royal Politician represented in One Hundred Emblems; Written in Spanish by Don Diego Saavedra Faxardo … With a large Preface, containing an Account of the Author, his Works, and the Usefulness thereof. Done into Eng­ lish from the Original. By Sir Ja. Astry (London, 1700). 10. Galgacus: Galgacus or Calgacos was a chieftain of the Caledonian Confederacy who fought the Roman army of Gnaeus Julius Agricola at the Battle of Mons Graupius in northern Scotland in ad 83 or 84. 11. Polybius … et domi concordia: The quote from Greek historian Polybius (c. 205–c. 123 bc) appears to be a paraphrase, if not an invention. 12. Dyonisius of Halicarnassus: Dionysius of Halicarnassus (c. 60–after 7 bc), Greek histo­ rian and teacher of rhetoric, author of Roman Antiquities, a history of Rome from the mythical period to the First Punic War (264–241 bc). 13. Fabricius: Georg Fabricius (1516–71), born Georg Goldschmidt, German poet, archae­ ologist and historian whose Roma was published in 1550. 14. J. H. Bœccler: Johann Heinrich Boecler (1611–72), classical scholar and author of Institutiones Politicae Dissertationes Academicae (1658), Disputatio Histrorico-Politica de causis factionum in republica Romana (1648) and many other works on ancient Rome. 15. poem of Rutilius … prius orbis erat: Rutilius Claudius Namatianus, Roman poet of the fifth century ad. ‘For nations far apart thou hast made a single fatherland; under thy dominion captivity hath meant profit even for those who knew not justice: and by offer­ ing to the vanquished a share in thine own justice, thou hast made a city of what was erstwhile a world.’ De Reditu Suo, Liber Primo or A Voyage Home to Gaul, Book I, ll. 63–6. See also [William Bollan], A Succinct View of the Origin of our Colonies (1766) in Volume 5 of this edition, pp. 65–88. 16. letter of Pliny to Trajan: Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (ad 61–c. 113), also known as Pliny the Younger, magistrate and author famous for letters, including to Roman emper­ ors, such as this one to Trajan when Pliny was Governor of Pontus/Bithynia from 111 to 113. 17. Gothofred: Dionysius Gothofredus, or Denis Godefroy (1549–1622), jurist, author of Corpus Juris Civilis (Geneva, 1583) among other works. 18. Herodian: Herodian or Herodianus of Syria (ad c. 170–240), author in Greek of the eight-volume History of the Empire from the Death of Marcus, on the years 180 to 238. 19. festival of Janus: The Festival of Janus celebrated the two-faced god of new beginnings on 1 January. 20. Imperial Constitutions of the Germanic-Roman Empire, Tom. I. P. 4: not identified. 21. Procopius, in his third book of the Gothic wars, saith 7000: Procopius of Caesarea (ad c. 500–c. 565), Byzantine scholar, author of The Wars of Justinian, of which volumes on the Gothic wars were part. His works concerned the Roman (Byzantine) Emperor Justinian I, the Great (ad 483–565), Emperor 527 to 565. 22. Cardinal Bentivoglio, in his history of the wars of Flanders: Guido Bentivoglio d’Aragona (1579–1644), Italian statesman, Papal nuncio in Flanders, Cardinal, historian and author of Della Guerra di Fiandria, published in English as The Complete History of the

Notes to pages 167–92

263

Warrs of Flanders, Bound with the Author’s Historicall Relations of the United Provinces of Flanders (London, 1654). 23. Sir William Temple: Sir William Temple (1628–99), English diplomat and historical and political writer who negotiated the fateful marriage of Prince William of Orange and Mary Stuart and the Triple Alliance of 1668. He was author of many essays, col­ lected in several volumes and several editions of Miscellanea, first published in 1680, as well as Essay upon on the Original and Nature of Government (London, 1672) and Observations upon the United Provinces (London, 1673). See also The Late Occurrences in North America, and Policy of Great Britain Considered (1766), Volume 5, pp. 89–110. 24. Grotius, in his annals and history of Belgic affairs: Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), Dutch jurist most famous as author of De Jure Belli ac Pacis (On the Law of War and Peace) (Paris, 1625) and Mare Liberum (The Free Sea) (n.p., 1609), and of Annales et Historiae de Rebus Belgicis (Annals and Histories of the Revolts of the Low Countries), published posthumously in Amsterdam in 1657. 25. Sir Walter Ralegh, in the preface to his history of the world: see notes 6 and 8 above. 26. Don Ferdinand Vasquez: Ferdinand Manchaea Vasquez (1509–1566), Spanish jurist, Controversiac Illustres, much cited in Grotius, Mare Liberum. 27. Mr. Cotton Mather, in his New-English history … year 1702: Cotton Mather (1663– 1728), New England Puritan minister and prolific author, Magnalia Christi Americana (London, 1702). 28. Florus: Florus, second-century Roman historian, author of Epitome de T. Livio Bellorum omnium annorum DCC Libri duo, a history of Rome from the foundation of the city to the time of Augustus (25 bc), derived from Livy, Titus Livius (59 bc–ad 17), Roman historian, author of Ab Urbe Condita Libri (History of Rome). 29. Trifles light as air … of holy writ: Iago in William Shakespeare’s Othello (III.iii.322–4). 30. Concordiâ res parva … maxuma dilabuntur: ‘Concord accomplishes more, discord maxi­ mizes loss’. Sallust, or Gaius Sallustius Crispus (86–34 bc), Roman historian, Jugurthine War, 10, about the war in Numidia c. 112 bc. 31. Gozliski: Wawrzyniec Grzymala Goslicki (1530–1607), senator of the First Polish Republic, author of The Accomplished Senator: In Two Books. Written Originally in Latin, by Laurence Grimald Gozliski … Done into English, from the edition printed at Venice, in the year 1568. By Mr. Oldisworth (London, 1733). 32. Humanum est errare: ‘to err is human’ (Latin). 33. Comines: see note 5 above. 34. ‘Remarks on the advantages … to commerce’: Remarques sur les avantages et les desavantages de la France et de la Gr. Bretagne: par rapport au commerce & aux autres sources de la puissance des etats traduction de l’anglois, du chevalier John Nickolls (Leyden, 1754), trans­ lated as Remarks on the Advantages and Disadvantages of France and Great-Britain: With Respect to Commerce, and to other Means on Encreasing the Wealth and Power of a State being a (pretended) Translation from the English, written by Sir John Nickolls (London, 1754). John Nickolls was a pseudonym for Louis-Joseph Plumard de Danguel (1722– 77), French political economist. 35. Mons. Colbert: Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619–83), Minister of Finance for Louis XIV from 1665 to his death, author of The Political Testament of M. Jean Baptist Colbert, Minister and Secretary of State: Wherein is Contain’d all that hath Pass’d under the Reign of Lewis the XIV unto the Year 1684: With Remarks upon the Government of the King­ dom of France Translated out of French (London, 1695), translated by Gatien Courtilz de Sandras.

264

Notes to pages 193–208

36. Euclid: Euclid (second or third centuries bc), Greek mathematician, author of The Ele­ ments (13 vols) of c. 300 bc. 37. de statu hominum: ‘the state of men’ (Latin) 38. et non regredi est progredi: ‘not to go forward is to go backward’ (Latin).

[Cartwright], A Letter to Edmund Burke, Esq 1. Telemachus to learn from the lips of his Mentor: Telemachus is a Greek mythological fig­ ure, the son of Odysseus and Penelope, featured in Homer’s eighth-century epic poem, the Odyssey. The first four books, the Telemarchy, focus on Telemachus’s search for news of his father. 2. Locke: John Locke (1632–1704), English physician and philosopher, author of Two Treatises on Civil Government: In the Former, the False Principles of Sir Robert Filmer, and his Followers, are Detected and Overthrown. The Latter is an Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil-Government (London, 1690) implicitly referred to here. 3. the fundamental act of navigation until 1764: The first Navigation Act was an Ordinance of the Long Parliament of 9 October 1651: Act for Increase of Shipping and Encour­ agement of the Navigation of this Nation, 12 Car. II, c. 18. It was revived with the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, subsequently elaborated on in further Acts and codi­ fied and clarified in 1696. 4. the law of England … brought into this free country: The Somersett Case, R v Knowles, ex parte Somersett, of 1772 concerned James Somersett, slave of Charles Steuart, a Boston customs officer who brought Somersett to England in 1769. Somersett escaped but was recaptured and put aboard the Ann and Mary bound for Jamaica under Captain John Knowles. Claiming to be Somersett’s godparents, John Marlow, Thomas Walkin and Elizabeth Cade applied to the Court of King’s Bench for a writ of Habeas Corpus on Somersett’s behalf. Lord Chief Justice Mansfield ruled that Somersett’s imprisonment was illegal as no one could be removed from the kingdom against their will, and Som­ ersett was freed. Abolitionists claimed that this effectively outlawed enslavement in the British Isles, although Mansfield denied that construction of his ruling. 5. ‘to bind the people … all cases whatsoever’: The Declaratory Act or American Colonies Act, 1766, 6 Geo. III, c. 12. 6. Lord Rockingham: Charles Watson-Wentworth, second Marquess of Rockingham (1730–82), was Prime Minister from 13 July 1765 to 30 July 1766. 7. Judge Hale: Sir Mathew Hale (1609–76), Lord Chief Justice of England and author of The History and Analysis of the Common Law of England (London: J. Walthoe, 1713). 8. learned brother Blackstone: Sir William Blackstone (1723–80), jurist and judge, and author of Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1765–9). 9. Milton: John Milton (1608–74), English poet, polemicist and civil servant, vehemently attacked the prospect of a restored monarchy in The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, published in London in February 1660 with a second and even more heated edition the next month. 10. Locke: see note 2 above. 11. Sydney: Algernon Sidney (1623–83), republican writer, politician and civil war parliamen­ tarian colonel, executed for involvement in the Rye House Plot against Charles II, author of Discourses Concerning Government, published posthumously in London in 1698.

Notes to pages 208–40

265

12. Filmer: Sir Robert Filmer (1588–1653), English political philosopher and most famously the author of Patriarcha, or the Natural Power of Kings, written in the 1630s and 1640s and published in London in 1680. 13. Shipley: Jonathan Shipley (1714–88), Bishop of Llandaff and of St Asaph who was denied the chance to speak against the Coercive Acts in the House of Lords in 1774 and so published The Whole of the Celebrated Speech of the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Shipley, Lord Bishop of St. Asaph; Intended to have been Spoken on the Bill for Altering the Charter of the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay; but Want of Time, or some other Circumstance, Pre­ vented his Delivering it in the House of Lords; for which Reason it was Printed in a Large Pamphlet, and Sold at one shilling, Sterling; and is Allowed to be one of the Best Pieces Ever Wrote on the Present Disputes between North-America and Great-Britain (Newport, RI, 1774). The previous year Shipley published A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, on Friday February 19, 1773 (Boston, MA, and London, 1773), which had updated editions published in 1774, 1777 and 1792 (in a collection of his works). 14. Dickensons: see note 4 to [Langrishe], Considerations on the Dependencies of Great Brit­ ain, above, p. 256. 15. Mr. Grenville: George Grenville (1712–70), Chancellor and First Lord of the Treasury and therefore Prime Minister from 16 April 1763 to 16 July 1765, principally responsi­ ble for the Sugar and Stamp Acts. 16. the Sydney of the last century: Thomas Townshend, first Viscount Sydney (1733–1800), Whig politician who held various positions in the first and second Rockingham minis­ tries but was a vocal opponent of Lord North and of the war in America. 17. Mr. Bull: Frederick Bull (c. 1714–84) was a tea merchant and radical Wilkesite, sometime Treasurer of the Society of Supporters of the Bill of Rights who, as an MP after winning a London by-election in 1773, went on to be a Parliamentary reformer. He made his speech against the Restraining Act on 5 April 1775. The New England Restraining Act New England Trade and Fisheries Act, 15 Geo. III, c. 31, of March 1775, which forbade trade with foreign nations and colonies in response to the colonial boycott of British goods with the Continental Association, was extended to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Vir­ ginia, Maryland and South Carolina in April 1775. 18. Considerations on the measures … North America, p. 22–27: Matthew Robinson-Mor­ ris, second Baron Rokeby (1712–1800), eccentric loner noted for support of spas and swimming pools, was the initially anonymous author of Considerations on the Measures carrying on with Respect to the British Colonies in North America (London, 1774). 19. Lord Chatham: William Pitt, first Earl of Chatham (1708–78), Prime Minister from 30 July 1766 to 14 October 1768. The House of Lords rejected his Conciliatory Bill which would have recognized colonial self-government in January 1775 and a more moderate compromise measure was defeated in February. 20. Taxation no Tyranny … Dr. Johnson: Samuel Johnson (1709–84), Taxation No Tyranny (London, 1775).

THE AMERICAN COLONIES AND

THE BRITISH EMPIRE, 1607–1783

Contents of the Edition

PART I

volume 1

General Introduction

Introduction, 1607–1763

1607–75

volume 2

1676–1714

volume 3

1715–52

volume 4

1753–63

PART II

volume 5

Introduction, 1764–83

1764–8

volume 6

1769–75

volume 7

1775–7

volume 8

1777–83

Index

THE AMERICAN COLONIES AND

THE BRITISH EMPIRE, 1607–1783

Editor

Steven Sarson

Consulting Editor

Jack P. Greene

Volume 7

1775–7

First published 2011 by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited

Published 2016 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Taylor & Francis 2011

Copyright © Editorial material Steven Sarson 2011

All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages.

No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form

or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter

invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information

storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and

are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

british library cataloguing in publication data

The American colonies and the British Empire, 1607–1783. Part 2, Volumes 5–8. 1. United States – History – Colonial period, ca. 1600–1775. 2. Great Britain – Colonies – America. I. Sarson, Steven. II. Greene, Jack P. 973.2-dc22 ISBN-13: 978-1-85196-949-4 (set) Typeset by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited

CONTENTS

A Full and Circumstantial Account of the Disputes between Great Britain

and America (1775) 1

A Proposition for the Present Peace and Future Government of the British

Colonies in North America (1775) 13

[ John Cartwright?], Taxation, Tyranny. Addressed to Samuel Johnson (1775) 39

[Hugh Baillie], ‘A Letter to the Author of a Pamphlet, called Taxation no

Tyranny’ (1775) 69

Cradock Glascott, The Best Method of Putting an End to the American

War (1776) 89

John Roebuck, An Enquiry, whether the Guilt of the Present Civil War in

America, ought to be Imputed to Great Britain or America (1776) 105

[George Chalmers], An Answer from the Electors of Bristol, to the Letter of

Edmund Burke, Esq. on the Affairs of America (1777) 139

Editorial Notes

185

A FULL AND CIRCUMSTANTIAL ACCOUNT

A Full and Circumstantial Account of the Disputes between Great Britain and America. Containing, I. A View of the several Acts of Parliament which the Americans Object to. II. The Lengths they have gone in Rebellion, in Attacking his Majesty’s Forces, Forts and Magazines. III. The Lenity of Government, in not Punishing the Americans with Rig­ our. IV. Shewing how Easy it would be for Britain to Ruin their Trade, and Destroy their Principal Towns, Estates and Property, if they were not Inclined to Save the Colonies from Misery (Glasgow: William Smith, and Walter McLachlan, 1775).

By spring 1775, colonial resistance had turned into armed rebellion that later became a war for independence. In 1774, Parliament responded to the Boston Tea Party with the Coercive Acts: the Impartial Administration of Justice Act provided for juryless trials of rebels in England; the Boston Port Act closed the harbour in lieu of compensation; the Quartering Act billeted troops on unoc­ cupied dwellings in Boston; and the Massachusetts Government Act imposed virtual martial law. Colonists named these and the Quebec Act, which insti­ tuted Crown control of legislation, French civil law and Catholic toleration, the Intolerable Acts. The Massachusetts General Court carried on meeting and in October declared itself a Provincial Congress deriving its authority from the towns not the Crown, effectively a revolutionary government. A Continental Congress established itself and began acting as a government-in-lieu, adopt­ ing the ‘Declaration and Resolves’ pronouncing American rights, supporting a boycott of British goods enforced by local Committees of Inspection (another extra-legal form of authority constituted in defiance of Britain), promising Massachusetts aid if attacked, and warning colonists to arm for their defence. Despite calls for compromise, Colonial Secretary Lord Dartmouth ordered General Thomas Gage to take action and on the night of 18 April Gage sent 700 men from Boston to Concord to capture an illegal arms cache and arrest radi­ cals Samuel Adams and John Hancock. The first shots were fired by the British the next morning when met by militiamen at Lexington Green, which was fol­ lowed by bloodshed on both sides at Concord and on the march back to Boston, which colonists then besieged. In August, as fighting spread north and south, the King proclaimed the colonies to be ‘in open and avowed rebellion’. Its Olive –1–

2

The American Colonies and the British Empire, Volume 7

Branch Petition rejected, the second Continental Congress appointed an army with George Washington as Commander-in-Chief and printed money to pay for war. In July the next year it would formally declare independence. It was in this context that the anonymous author of A Full and Circumstan­ tial Account of the Disputes between Great Britain and America observed that Americans entertain a notion that they are invincible, and consequently have used every art to provoke the commander in chief to draw the sword in a civil war, and upon the 19th April, in a most cowardly manner, attacked his Majesty’s troops on their return to Boston, from hedges, walls, &c and murdered a number of them. (below, p. 11)

The author’s aim, however, was to be much more reassuring to Britons about the rightness of Parliament’s cause and the prospects of victory. While adopting a Burkean opening line that the ‘constitution of most of the Colonies was formed by accident, and not by forethought’, he nevertheless notes that it ‘hardly could enter into the breasts of the legislature, when they granted [colonies] charters for their security and protection in trade, that these colonies, entirely dependent on them, should, in a future period, aim at independency’ (below, p. 5). Assuming it was Parliament that granted colonies their charters was a logi­ cally if not factually sound grounding on which to proceed with a recounting of events that justified British policy from the Sugar Act to Lord Dunmore’s proc­ lamation offering freedom to slaves who fought against patriot masters. But the most novel and perhaps most significant section of the pamphlet is the account given of Britain’s military advantages. The colonists ‘have not a single fortified town’, he writes, and ‘no standing army … no navy … nor any fund upon which monied men would lend them a month’s expence of an armament’. Britain, however, ‘is possessed of a veteran army… and a veteran navy’. Also, the ‘trifling revenue of America, only 75,000l. a year, can have but little weight against that of a nation which has a sinking fund of between two and three millions a year’ (below, p. 11). In addition, Their towns are built all to the edge of deep water, so as to be within the reach not only of cannon shot, but even of pistol-shot. Their country houses and estates lie gen­ erally on the banks of deep rivers – Their slaves ready to rebel or run away from their masters on the appearance of an enemy (below, p. 11)

His confidence, of course, would prove to be misplaced.

A

Full and Circumstantial

ACCOUNT Of the Disputes between GREAT

BRITAIN and AMERICA.

CONTAINING,

I. A View of the several Acts of Parliament which the Americans

object to.

II. The lengths they have gone in Rebellion, in attacking his Majesty’s

Forces, Forts and Magazines.

III. The lenity of Government, in not punishing the Americans with

rigour.

IV. Shewing how easy it would be for Britain to ruin their Trade, and

destroy their principal Towns, Estates and Property, if they were not

inclined to save the Colonies from Misery.

Glasgow: Printed for William Smith,

and Walter McLachlan.

M, Dcc, lxxv. /

A Full and Circumstantial Account, &c. The constitution of most of the Colonies was formed by accident, and not by forethought. It hardly could enter into the breasts of the legislature, when they granted them charters for their security and protection in trade, that these colonies, entirely dependent on them, should, in a future period, aim at inde­ pendency, and endeavour to form an internal government among themselves, to the prejudice of the state to whom they owed their very being. The most of their charters were granted in an infant state, and are calculated to encourage and protect them in a way most advantageous to themselves and to the mother country; but, on account of their peculiar situation, the internal government among them was not regulated in such a manner as to extend to a numerous people. Their modes of law were regulated by the English constitution. In most of them, the Justices of Peace and the Governor and Council are the only judges. The justices sit once a month, and from them an appeal may be made to the Governor and Council, who sit twice a year and only twenty days at each time. Hence it is impossible for them to discuss all the public business that comes before them, so that in Virginia alone appeals are before their courts more than six years back. This mode of justice did well enough in the infant state of the society; but by an increase of population, the disputes about matters of right are become so numerous, that the legislature being so weak as it is, cannot overtake or redress them. This impotent state of law has given room for the present dis­ orders: for the Justices dare not officiate though they were willing, and the mob are turned the governors instead of the governed. Thus their judges being set up by themselves are the slaves of those who appoint them or of the mob, instead of being their masters. These are the very rocks on which the Grecian republics were shipwrecked, for the spirits of free men are high, and therefore mutinous, and can be kept from / disorder only by the laws. Where the law or a regular form of government does not take place there can be no security for the prop­ erty, person or honour of any one; and every sensible person must be convinced that the factious among the Americans, by taking the law into their own hands, have thrown every thing into confusion; and a person who would presume to be an advocate for justice, or a regular form of government among them, would run the risque of their law, that is to be stript naked and rolled into a tar barrel, and after his body was all besmeared, to be in like manner rolled in a parcel of feath­ ers, which sticking to the tarry ointment, would make him all over like some monstrous exotic bird. –5–

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The American Colonies and the British Empire, Volume 7

One of their great quarrels with the Parliament of Great Britain, is the power of the Crown to appoint their judges with a fixed salary, which would render, the course of justice more equal, give the law a proper force, and prevent these licentious disorders. Yet their popular leaders would persuade them, that the parent state which first gave them charters, and expended a great deal of money to maintain them in these charters, are tyrannical in amending what they find deficient for regulating their government; because forsooth they are now grown to maturity, and will no longer be directed by their indulgent parent, but act according to their own inclinations, though they should thereby ruin themselves and the parent state. The next great objection is to the power of the Parliament of Great Britain in laying restraints upon their trade. This right they cannot refuse to Parliament, because it is reserved to them in the very bosom of every American charter, and yet these restraints more nearly affect Great Britain herself than they do the Americans. The landed man is prohibited from raising tobacco at home, and the merchant disabled from importing it from abroad, in order to give the Americans a monoply, tho’ both the landsman and merchant could have it at an easier price than from them. We give vast bounties on the importation of American flax, hemp, timber and naval stores; but give none to those who raise them at home / excepting some small bounties on flax. We are restrained by pro­ hibitions, or duties equivalent to prohibitions from importing rice, indigo, and many other articles of American produce, in order to give them a monopoly; and upon their indigo we continue the bounty for exportation, which enables them, by the advantage of a double market, to raise the price upon us. – Our West India islands are restrained from taking provisions or timber from other countries, and yet never complained of restraints which they shared with the mother country. Our merchants are subject to duties on the importation of foreign commodities; but they draw them back, so that we pay a tax and the Americans receive the pre­ mium. In some instances we hurt both our revenues and trade to serve America. In the present reign the duties were taken off American whale-fins, by which those duties were lost to government, and the interest of the British whale-fish­ ing sacrificed to that of America.1 It was even proposed to take the bounties off the British whale fishing, which produces 300,000l. a year and maintains 3000 seamen in order to secure the superiority of the whale fishing to America. The only thing that stopped the project was the disorders which arose in America: for these led men naturally to reflect how imprudent it would be to confer favours which were repaid with ingratitude. These monopolies, restraints, taxes and preferences have been yielded to by Great Britain as necessary to fasten the vast chains of commerce, which is thrown across the Atlantic between America and England. In some of these, mistakes may be, but Parliament has ever been ready to remedy them as soon as pointed out in a legal manner.

A Full and Circumstantial Account

7

The only other difference is that of the power of the Crown to send troops among them without consent of their assemblies. Certainly the Americans have as much interest to be defended as Britain has to defend them; and if they are willing to own the authority of the mother country, the number of troops may be restricted in such a manner as not to be burdensome to the colonies, except in time of war or actual rebellion. The Americans complain that Parliament by an act / declaratory affected ‘a right’ to bind them by its regulations ‘in all cases whatever.’2 Britain, on the other hand, complains that the Americans assert that the British Parliament has no right to bind them ‘in any case whatever.’ Under the objection to the supremacy of Great Britain, they deny the King the executive part of the constitution, the power of appointing the officers of revenue, law and government, whom he has always been accustomed to appoint: as also they refuse him the power of put­ ting a negative upon the bills of their assembles, and of sending forces for the protection of his subject, with the usual powers of the Crown. The right of a supreme court of judicature in England to receive appeals from the other courts of justice as well in America as in Scotland, Ireland and the other parts of the British empire; and the legislative authority of the Parliament to regulate com­ merce for the mutual benefit of his Majesty’s subjects in the British dominions, was never before questioned by the colonies, though several acts of Parliament actually subsist which expresly lay on taxes on the British colonies in America, particularly 25 Charles II. cap. 7. 7 and 8 William and Mary cap. 22. 9 Anne cap. 10. 1 George 1 cap. 12. 6 George 11. cap. 13.3 The Americans indeed clamoured against these taxes, but till this period they never dreamt of denying the right of Parliament to lay them on. No province excepting one (that of )4 can pretend to a right by charter to tax themselves, and the nation that they cannot be taxed be cause not represented, is disproved from obvious fact by the instances of many men who are taxed in this kingdom, and yet not represented. Every state extends as revenues as they extend their dominions, and every subject is bound to support the state which protects him. The small taxes imposed on America were to be applied within their own provinces, and their abilities to pay heavier taxes is unquestionable, seeing eight millions of British subjects pay ten millions of taxes, 2 s. a head, and three millions of Americans, where a labour­ ing man has three times the wage that one does in Britain, pay only 75,000l. or sixpence on each person. / The last war was begun for the sake of America, and Britain loaded with an immense public debt for its support. Had the ministry then proposed to make the Americans liable for the debt contracted in defending them, it might have prevented their arriving at such opulence, but at that time no American would have questioned the justice of it. In the fourth year of his present Majesty, Parlia­ ment laid a tax on foreign commodities imported into America, under the name

8

The American Colonies and the British Empire, Volume 7

of Port-Duties.5 No American did then complain of this as an imposition of slavery, but paid the tax as their ancestors had done other necessary ones. Next year, the stamp act was passed from a view of establishing a revenue in America, and giving security to commerce. The lawyers in America, whom this act chiefly affected, artfully raised clamours against it, and Parliament in the succeeding administration repealed: but no American at even this period of opposition refused the power of Parliament to lay on that tax. The easy man­ ner in which Britain passed from the stamp act, gave rise to all the clamours that have arisen in America since. And their lawyers (gentlemen who love to fish in drumbly6 water) have instilled a notion into their minds that Britain has no power to impose external taxes upon them. As America had not hitherto refused the authority of Britain to lay taxes on them, in the seventh year of his present Majesty an act was passed laying Port-duties on some other objects of commerce.7 Then America clamoured and objected to the power of Parliament to tax them. Then she found out new pretensions, that America was not bound by the navigation laws, and that she was even independent of Parliament alto­ gether. That act offended British manufacturers which had already paid taxes. Parliament again repealed part of it and the colonies imagined they had now gained their much loved independence and triumphed over the authority of the British Parliament, exultantly manifested the tendency of their designs. The assembly of New York refused obedience to the statute made for the quartering and provisions of the / King’s soldiers in America,8 and if they could thus repeal one act of Parliament, why not all the others affecting America? Gov­ ernment found it necessary to suspend that assembly. The effect answered the design. The assembly recovered the just sense of their duty, and were restored to their authority. America had long complained of the distance of the London custom house. Smuggling had gone beyond all bounds from the want of a board of customs. That establishment being settled by Parliament, the fair trader rejoiced at it, but the smuggler took occasion to represent it as a grievance. As long as it was not established, Britain was blamed for neglecting her colonies, and when it took place, by the artifice of interested smugglers it was noted as a badge of slavery. The congress complains of the statutes regulating the admiralty courts, as extending the jurisdiction of these courts beyond their ancient limits, in depriv­ ing them of a trial by jury. If this be a hardship, Britain and Ireland labour under it without complaining, as revenue questions are tried by summary excise laws; and the ancestors of the present Americans found it scarcely practicable to bring a fair trial upon a smuggling cargo before a jury of smugglers. So long as custom house causes were tried by juries, the illicit trader was continually acquitted, to the ruin of the fair one. They next complain that there is a violent stretch of authority in the revival of the old law of Henry VIII, declaring that treasons and

A Full and Circumstantial Account

9

misprisions of treason committed in America may be tried in England. There is no novelty in this. The Scots rebels were tried not in the kingdom in which their crime was committed, and many of them had not gone such daring lengths as the Boston rebels. The murderers of Mr Park, governor of the Leeward Islands,9 were tried not in the West Indies, but in London; and that on the very act which the congress would make their countrymen believe is newly framed to enslave them. It is founded in justice and has been the universal practice of all nations ancient and modern and it is necessary, that in crimes which affect its existence, the arm of the state / should be felt to the very extremity of her dominions. The rule of law is universal through every other part of the British dominions in Europe, Asia and Africa. Where is the statue, the charter, the act of assembly, or the prac­ tice which exempts America from it? In order to relieve the East India Company, parliament passed an act to give a drawback on the British duties upon teas imported to America.10 By this step, the fair trader of America had it in his power to beat the French, the Dutch and Danish smuggler out of the field; and the inhabitant of America was furnished with teas from Britain at a cheaper rate than we: because we paid a tax, and he drew it back. But the new doctrine of independence to the British senate had now taken place and the inhabitants of Boston in a riotous and unprecedented manner destroyed the East India Company’s property in open day. There was no obligation upon them to purchase it. Holland and Switzerland, as well as France and Spain, would have called this rebellion: Britain only called it insurrection. Other nations would have made this a pretence for stripping their subjects: We only required the Bostonians to do justice, and extended the punishment no longer than they should do their duty in repaying the damage. The trade of Bos­ ton was suspended, and the custom house removed from a place where it could be no longer safe where the commissioners had been obliged to take shelter in the king’s ships: yet Britain left an open door for reconciliation; if the Bostoni­ ans would not enter who has been to blame? ’Tis true, government had an act passed for the suppression of tumults in Massachussets Bay, whereby any of their servants could claim a trial in England if they were questioned for doing their duty. This was a law absolutely necessary. Was it just to expose the lives and hon­ ours of men to the mercy of juries, who declared that they looked upon them as enemies? Yet this law will die of itself if only America will only adopt a regular arrangement of law, police and government, by which British subjects may be secured from the insolence of the gentlemen of the tar and feather order. The alteration of the charter of Massachussets Bay, / giving the nomination of the council to the king instead of leaving it with the house of representatives, is another subject of complaint. King William, without act of parliament, and even without legal process, resumed the government of Pennsylvania and Maryland into his own hands, because those who possessed them had broke the condi­

10

The American Colonies and the British Empire, Volume 7

tions on which they were granted, by violating the law; though not in so great a degree as the people of Massachussets Bay. George I did the same with regard to the government of S. Carolina. Q. Anne took the command of the Connecticut and Rhode Island militias from the governors of those provinces, and gave the command of the one to the governor of N. York, and the other to the governor of Massachussets Bay; because it was thought dangerous to commit the power of the sword to the same hand which held that of government. The ancestors of the Americans never questioned the power of parliament to regulate their charters, though these arbitrary steps by one branch of the legislature gave them room to complain. The provisionary law for quartering of the troops in America, without which our soldiers in times of disorder and danger, would be no better than statues is another object of American grievance. This law cannot affect the provinces when order is re-established among them. It is but a few years since a few regiments of regulars from France along with the militia of Canada made all America tremble. There was then no complaint of the hardships of quartering British troops; but now that America is encreased in number and wealth, these forces which saved them from ruin, are become a grievous burden. The statute adjusting the limits of the province of Quebec is another com­ plaint. It does not affect the boundary of any other colony; but only gives the enjoyment of French laws to French men who declared that they could not live without them. Those men who find an interest or perhaps a diabolical pleasure in sowing sedition convert every thing into a grievance. The act passed for the security of his Majesty’s / ships and dock yards after the dreadful fire at Portsmouth; because it made the crime punishable in Britain, has been construed by the fac­ tion in America as a contrivance formed on purpose to oppress them. The House of Commons have adopted a resolution to levy no past and impose no future duties, providing the Americans will themselves contribute to the expence incurred for their own public service. This resolution entirely removes the danger of taxes in America, being converted into a revenue for Britain. It indeed reserves a power in parliament of imposing duties for the regu­ lation of trade, which is absolutely necessary for the interest of trade; but, to prevent the abuse of this power, the produce of these duties is to go, not to the account of Britain, but to the exoneration of the provision made by the colony for its own service. Our Patriots at home have encouraged America in her opposition, and pre­ vented as much as they could any rational measures for closing the breach. The lawyers in America who have long kept the southern provinces in a state of slav­ ery to themselves, and by their oppressions and extortion, make their gain from uncertainty and disorder, violently oppose every attempt to a regular admin­

A Full and Circumstantial Account

11

istration of law, police and government, because it would diminish their own importance. These with the clamours of the Boston smugglers, keep the minds of the people in a continual ferment, and hinder them from listening to salutary terms of accommodation. They now entertain a notion that they are invinci­ ble, and consequently have used every art to provoke the commander in chief to draw the sword in a civil war, and upon the 19th April, in a most cowardly man­ ner, attacked his Majesty’s troops on their return to Boston, from hedges, walls, &c and murdered a number of them. They have also in a riotous manner seized the King’s stores in different places of the Colonies, and engaged themselves in open rebellion. On the other hand, government has shewn them every mark of lenity and tenderness; they have deferred chastising the guilty whom they had in their power; they / did not punish the town of Boston in the manner they might easily have done, but gave them time and opportunity to return to their duty – they have indeed suspended their trade; but then it is only till they repay the damages they so wantonly brought upon the East India Company, and pay a due submission to the authority of the parliament, which their forefathers never once questioned. It may be said, these are the effects of our dread of the Americans: but not­ withstanding of all their boasted numbers and disciplined provincials, they are but in a poor situation to engage in a war with us. They have not a single forti­ fied town to secure the persons of their people, nor intercept the advances of their enemies. – They have no standing army to defend their land – no navy to protect their coasts, nor any fund upon which monied men would lend them a month’s expence of an armament. Britain on the other hand is possessed of a vet­ eran army, lately come from carrying conquests wherever it carried colours, and a veteran navy, lately come from sweeping the seas of all enemies, in all quarters of the globe; the trifling revenue of America, only 75,000l. a year, can have but little weight against that of a nation which has a sinking fund of between two and three millions a year, and which in the last war, was able to expend seventeen millions in one year. Their towns are built all to the edge of deep water, so as to be within the reach not only of cannon shot, but even of pistol-shot. Their country houses and estates lie generally on the banks of deep rivers – Their slaves ready to rebel or run away from their masters on the appearance of an enemy: (Witness the numbers, who on a late occasion offered their service to Lord Dunmore, governor of Virginia, to cut the throats of their masters) Their coasts, by the large inlets of bays and rivers, are easily commanded; two twenty gun ships stationed at the Capes of Virginia, where the sea is not more than three leagues over, and another in Albemarle Sound, with two or three armed ships to attend them, could lock up altogether the very hot part of North Carolina, and the whole of Virginia and / Maryland, that is a coast of 600 miles. A war with Brit­

12

The American Colonies and the British Empire, Volume 7

ain would expose them to the most shocking miseries ever exhibited. For in a few months, every town in that beautiful country above 2000 miles in extent, might be reduced to ashes by our ships of war, and the country houses and estates rav­ aged by the rapid progress of the ships barges; the slaves turned masters or joined the enemy; their trade destroyed, their vessels and seamen prisoners in the ports of that enemy whose rage they had provoked. Suppose they should procure for­ eign aid, will France or Spain make a Protestant cause independent, or establish an empire of liberty equal to the glorious and envied liberty of Great Britain and her dominions? As to their commercial scheme of opposition, it is still more foolish: for if Great Britain should make an act prohibiting the importation of Osnaburghs, salt and molasses into America, it would effectually lay their prov­ inces desolate, without the aid of armies or navies. Whereas, whilst mankind have wants to supply, Great Britain will not want trade. The channels of trade may indeed be changed, but they will not be dried up. It were then an easy matter for Britain to ruin her Colonies; but the horrors of a civil war naturally makes a generous-hearted Briton shrink at the thought, and disdain to make use of that conscious superiority over his friends and fellow-subjects which his situa­ tion may give. All good men and true lovers of their country, on either side the Atlantic will be led to wish for the interest of humanity, that these unhappy differences were reconciled, by a lasting peace and harmony between the two Countries; that as we are professors of the same holy faith, natural subjects of the same King, united by the ties of religion, laws and friendship, that the voice of faction and discord should no more be heard among us; but that each country should con­ tribute its part to form one great, happy and lasting empire, having true liberty, under the regular administration of law and justice, for his basis.

FINIS.

A PROPOSITION FOR THE PRESENT PEACE

A Proposition for the Present Peace and Future Government of the British Colonies in North America (London: W. Davis, J. Fox and T. Evans, 1775).

The anonymous author A Full and Circumstantial Account of the Disputes between Great Britain and America ended his pamphlet on a conciliatory note, hoping for ‘lasting peace and harmony between the two Countries’ (above, p. 12), although the general tone was decidedly belligerent. The also anonymous author of A Proposition for the Present Peace and Future Government of the British Colonies in North America was much more consistently conciliatory, aiming to persuade Parliament ‘to promote the restoration of harmony, peace and union, between the descendants of the same fathers, the subjects of the same Sovereign, and of the same laws’ (below, p. 17). This tone is partly explained by pessimism over the prospect of victory. Adopting a contrapuntal discursive style, the author responds to the argument that ‘if we increase our naval strength and augment our land forces in America, the sudden exertion of both, may break the com­ bination of the rebellious provinces, and put an end to the war’ (below, p. 20) by noting that Britain would then be attacked by enemies in the east. In any case, ‘When the people of a country shew, they will rather die than give up what they conceive to be their rights, whether their persuasion proceeds from a just or mistaken idea, the consequences of their resistance must be the same’, lead­ ing to the ‘melancholy reflexion’ that the issues at stake ‘will remain a subject of dispute for years to come, and to be decided by future wars’ (below, p. 19). The consequences of continued war would be that the lives of our bravest officers and soldiers must be laid down to purchase the name of a right, for the short season the colonies may require to enable them to renew the dis­ pute. And if victory ends on their side, it is most likely to put down the best form of government under which any subjects ever lived, and erect in its place a combination of petty tyrants (below, p. 23)

The author ultimately argues for the colonists. He undercuts the idea that colo­ nists should have paid more towards the Seven Years War by noting ‘a message – 13 –

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from the late king to the house of commons, repeated for four sessions together, and entered in the journals the 26th April, 1759’ indicating ‘that the Colo­ nies not only contributed their proportion, but more than was reasonable for them to bear, and the house of commons made them compensation’ (below, p. 23). He also compares colonists’ actions against taxes to ‘the forefathers of the Americans and ourselves’ who ‘objected in the last century to pay the duty of ship-money’ (below, p. 24). The author promises his readers that reconciliation can be achieved ‘not by any alteration in the rules of the English constitution, but by a wise and just application of them’ (below, p. 17). However, his ‘Proposi­ tions for the present Peace and future Government of the Colonies’ would end any semblance of Parliamentary sovereignty in America. In its place would be an assembly of deputies of ‘(suppose) four members of the council, and twelve of the representatives of each province’ chosen by each colonial legislature (below, p. 27). If the ‘deputies shall request his Majesty to appoint a lord lieutenant for America’ this officer would ‘concur with the deputies of his provinces in such wise, just and salutary measures, as may be thought most expedient for settling the present peace of America, and for establishing its future tranquility and alle­ giance upon the most lasting foundation’ (below, pp. 27–8). All hostilities would then cease, obnoxious laws would be repealed and a ‘general pardon’ would be granted for inhabitants of each colony agreeing to these procedures (below, p. 28). After that, similar annual assemblies would vote on ‘the several sums they shall raise for the support of government’ while in ‘all other respects each prov­ ince to retain that form of government to which it has been accustomed’ (below, p. 28). These taxes would be binding on all colonies, the lord lieutenant would be military commander-in-chief in America and ‘acts of the lord lieutenant, and deputies, contrary to the common law of England, and the acts and authority of the British parliament, [would be] void’ (below, p. 29). However, the thrust of the proposals would concede all taxation powers to the colonies. For those the author thought would reject his proposals, he concludes with cautionary tales of other empires, from the Persian, which ‘seems to have fallen by exhausting its strength in the reduction of its provinces’ (below, p. 33), to the ‘disunion of Por­ tugal from Spain, and the signal rise about the same time of the united provinces’ (below, p. 34).

A PROPOSITION

FOR THE

PRESENT PEACE

AND

FUTURE GOVERNMENT

OF THE

BRITISH COLONIES

IN

NORTH AMERICA.

LONDON:

Printed and Sold for the Author by

W. Davis, the Corner of Sackville-Street, Piccadilly; J. Fox, in WestminsterHall; T. Evans, No. 54, Paternoster-Row; and F. Blyth, No. 87, Cornhill. /

PREFACE.

The subject of this Proposition being of great and universal concern, will, it is hoped, atone for the impropriety of its coming through the hands of the pub­ lic, to the Members of that august body, who are alone invested with the power of adopting it. If it be too weak to be of use to the state, it will be thrown out, like the Spartan infant, to perish by neglect. But if it be favourably received by the public, then it will be better recommended to the guardians of the public welfare, than if it had been offered through the conveyance of any particular Member. By this means, it hopes to escape the opposite dangers of prejudice / or influence; and to be heard, when reason sits undisturbed by the warmth of debate. It is a child of the public, and honestly designed for their service; and springs from a wish to promote the restoration of harmony, peace and union, between the descendants of the same fathers, the subjects of the same Sovereign, and of the same laws. And it proceeds upon the principle of applying the rules of the constitution to the future government of the Colonies, in a way that their growth and extent has perhaps made necessary for preserving the peace of the empire within itself, and for securing the King and his family, and the civil and religious liberties of his subjects, against those powers, that have so often shewn themselves the enemies of both. The authority of the parent state may not be impaired by declaring new terms of reconciliation, and the motives to embrace them are the / greatest on their side. We are suffering the interruption of a great part of our commerce, but they of all. The public expence must make every man in Britain a loser in proportion to his property, but the lives of our fellow-subjects in America are pledged on the continuance of the war. With these inducements on both sides, it would be an indignity to the good sense of all, to suppose any thing more was wanted, than to have the public mind informed, that it might meet on the terms of protection on one side, and obedience on the other; not by any alteration in the rules of the English constitution, but by a wise and just application of them, to the support of the executive power, and the security of the subjects. And as an institution may be found, growing out of the wisdom of our ancient laws, that have made equal provision for every branch of the state, it might be of the / highest use, to call upon the Judges of those laws, for their

– 17 –

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solemn opinion of such a legal establishment, as may be equally honourable to Great-Britain, and acceptable to the Colonies. And if this Proposition has the smallest tendency to promote a matter of so much importance to the happiness of his Majesty’s reign, and to the present and future welfare of his subjects, the author of it will rejoice in having been used as an instrument for this purpose, in the hand of that gracious Being, whose word and works are ever proclaiming peace upon earth, and good-will towards men. London, 17th Nov. 1775. /

A PROPOSITION

FOR THE

PRESENT PEACE

AND FUTURE

GOVERNMENT of the COLONIES. To spend a moment on the question of right that has produced the present con­ flict in America, is now as unnecessary as in me it would be presumptious. The first members of both houses of parliament and the ablest judges of our laws have delivered opposite opinions, both as to the right and expediency of taxing the Colonies in England. But the majority of the legislative body have thought it consistent with their own constitution to do it. And the execution of these laws has unhappily been attended with the concurrence of such / unfortunate circumstances, as to engage the crown in a civil war with its subjects in the Colo­ nies. And it is to be feared if the great authorities that have been so divided in their opinions of the rights of the subjects in America, were now to unite in shewing the necessity of their obedience it would be ineffectual. When subjects at the risque of their lives, assemble together in open violation of the laws of the government under which they live, and appear with arms in their hands to face the forces of their Sovereign in the field, reason and argument come too late to be heard. When the people of a country shew, they will rather die than give up what they conceive to be their rights, whether their persua­ sion proceeds from a just or mistaken idea, the consequences of their resistance must be the same. Upon which every one must make this melancholy reflexion, that after the controversy has cost ten thousand lives, the question from which it arose, will remain a subject of dispute for years to come, and to be decided by future wars – wars that ever have been the most fatal / both to the government and people of every country that have engaged in them. Intestine divisions are frequently the most irreconciliable, and what was said of a desperate struggle between two individuals* may with too much probability * 

Sackville and Bruce.1 – 19 –

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be applied to Great-Britain and America – ‘When amity is dead, confidence cannot live, and who shall yield first is the question.’ Which ever side prevails it may be equally fatal to both. Had it only been a county, a small island, or a single province that appeared in opposition to government, then might every private subject have stood unconcerned. But so unanimous do the people of America appear to be in their resistance, that in all the extent of its sea coast, there is not a single port found to supply our troops with provisions, though they have men of war to fetch them. But from the ability of our generals and the bravery of the soldiers, humanly speaking, they / will destroy many thousands of the Provincials, if this unhappy conflict is continued. Yet on the other hand we must consider, that the men with whom we are fighting, are the sons of the same fore-father with ourselves. And the bravest Roman legions have told us, the difficulty of beating Britons upon their own ground. And men in rebellion are inspired with double motives to those that engage in common wars. Whoever has examined the evidence of the present state of the Colonies, their number – their union, and how much their professions as farmers and sea men, tend to make them an hardy and active race of men, would be much con­ cerned to see his country engaged in a war with such a people, were they not his brothers, his countrymen, and his friends. With these manifest advantages in their favour, that they are placed in a country, which over and above the support of its own inhabitants, has afforded provisions for many of the European mar­ kets, and most of the West-India islands for years past. But our troops and their supplies must / pass over an ocean of a thousand leagues before they arrive at the country that is the seat of this unfortunate war. The lowest estimate of their inhabitants, must afford a greater number of men to bear arms, than Britain and Ireland has of soldiers to send against them. And was a difference to be supposed between the personal courage of the descend­ ents of the same family, yet their being at home, fed with their usual provisions, inured to the climate, and acquainted with the country; must, man for man, give them an equality to any troops that can be sent against them. But in producing submission to the laws they resist, much may be reckoned on the division of strength that may be made in America. Were any of the Colo­ nies certain, that they must have us or the rest of America in arms against them, there might be some difficulty at present in their choice. But no colony can fear our resentment, for its keeping a peaceable neutrality, and it must see its danger / in engaging in a war with its neighbours. The policy of an Indian nation could therefore hardly lead it, to take an active part in our favour from such motives. But if we increase our naval strength and augment our land forces in Amer­ ica, the sudden exertion of both, may break the combination of the rebellious provinces, and put an end to the war.

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While such a part of our national defence is thus employed on the other side of the western ocean, let us turn our attention to the East, from whence the enemies of the civil and religious liberties of the people of this country have ever come. The combined interest of the Romish powers have every motive they ever had, for working the ruin of the object of their hatred – the Protestant establish­ ment. And our civil liberties and the commerce and independence that are the consequence of them, are equally offensive to the great monarchies with whom we are surrounded. But our danger and the motives of our enemies to destroy us, / are encreased beyond that of any other period of our history; by the treasures the Indies have been made to empty into our island. And may there not be courts in Europe, too strong to be restrained by the laws of nations, from uniting their policy and their arms against a country divided in itself, and claiming a part of its gold, by the same title by which some of our own subjects have obtained it? And unless we forget our own experience, of the prevailing maxims of government amongst some of the neighbouring states, we must expect to receive the strong­ est assurances of peace and amity, at the very moment they are preparing to make war for our destruction. But while we are cutting down the tree, they would be guilty of a childish precipitation to climb for the fruit. – While Great-Britain is employed with her own hands, in levelling her walls of defence; they are not so unwise as to enter a new made breach, that perhaps is not yet so wide, but it might still close and overwhelm them. And while Englishmen are fighting with Englishmen, their common destruction will be advanced with greater rapidity, than by the united / efforts of all their enemies. These are not yet the days for weapons of violence; but for those arts of intreague, that can whisper courage in the camps of America, and the same hour promise support in the cabinet of England. They know the same intestine divisions that levelled with the ground the masters of the world, will sink the Empress of the seas. And surely we ought to remember, that the same causes that have ruined a Roman empire can only be prevented from destroying that of Britain, by maintaining in a state of union and mutual support, those great branches of the dominions on which the strength of the whole is dependant. But is it not necessary for the good of all the subjects, that obedience to the laws be inforced in every part of the dominions? The supreme legislature of Great-Britain has declared, *its right to make laws to bind the kingdom and people of Ireland. In which general declaration is said to be included, the right of disposing / of their property by taxation. But what would be the consequence of enforcing obedience to such an act. Again, one of the greatest writers on the laws and constitution of England in the present age affirms, that the British par­ liament might consistent with its powers, enact a law for altering the established religion of England or Scotland, notwithstanding the article to the contrary in *

Geo. 1. c. 5. And Commentaries, v. 1. p. 101.2

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the act of union.* But let the people of Great-Britain answer for themselves, if the execution of such acts, would not be resisted in every parish in the kingdom, and with as little fear of the greatness of the power they opposed, as the people of America now discover, in defence of what they think themselves equally intitled to possess. And could men be beat out of that to which they annex the idea of their liberty, or their right, they would be prepared for subjection to one govern­ ment as soon as another, / and become of little value to a state like ours, whose numbers are comparatively small, to those nations who are our enemies, by all the motives of envy and hatred to the religious and civil liberties from which we derive the strength that binds them. But interrupt our commerce and divide our strength, and the power of Great-Britain will neither be allowed in negotiation, nor feared in war. There may therefore be extremes of obedience in which those who think highest of the right, might wish to be very cautious of the exercise. Of which the learned author already quoted seems in the case of Scotland to be sensible. And whether the case of Scotland, which made an express compact, or that of America thinking they have an implied one equally strong, be the better, though on these principles the best is no security. Yet probably the resistance against the supreme authority would be alike in either, in proportion to their strength it would be the resistance of their feelings, and those the strongest that hope or despair could furnish. For ever therefore may all those questions of right, be buried in oblivion, that would place the British forces in a state of hostility with the inhabitants of England, Scotland, Ireland or America. For while the bravest subjects are in arms against each other, the numbers engaged on both sides, become as nothing in their common cause. Whenever this is their situation, then is the time of their danger. For how many ages together, were the divisions between the people in the north and south parts of this island, made the season of war by the enemies of both. And the present civil war in America, is probably not the less favorable to our enemies, by the distance to which it removes our arms of defense from the seat of government. And a short continuance of the unfortunate concurrence of events, that has produced such preparations to inforce obedience on one hand, and an universal spirit of resistance on the other, may soon put the fate of both, more in the power of our enemies, than our present animosities will allow us to believe. For nothing is more obvious in the downfall of states by intestine divi­ sions, / than that they did not see their common danger, till their strength was too much engaged or broken to resist it. To enquire whence these evils spring, how they have been increased, or whose fault it is that they subsist in their present dangerous extent, ought utterly to be thrown aside. Our neighbours, our brother’s house is on fire; the conflagra­ *

‘An act of parliament to repeal or alter the act of uniformity in England, or to establish episcopacy in Scotland, would doubtless, in point of authority, be sufficiently valid and binding.’ Commentaries, v. 1. p. 98. (7th octavo edition.)

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tion is spreading, and threatens to be universal. If each side tosses brands of fire upon the other, there will nothing remain in the event, but to determine which shall enter into possession of the ruins. Or whether some third, an enemy to both, shall not carry off the plunder, or build upon the indiscriminate mass of mutual destruction. To proceed in the present measures, and determine the question by force of arms, the best to be hoped is, that neither side should be utterly ruined, and after great mutual damage we should sit down and wonder, at the labour it had cost us to inflame our animosities, increase our difficulties and dangers, and perpetuate the seeds of trouble to posterity; to obtain / an acknowledgment, that our contest was to no profit, and ought to have had no beginning; and had weakened and dishonoured both sides by its continuance; – and that the worst side had fewer faults, and the best, which ever it be, more misapprehensions, than our present warmth and agitation will permit us to see. And lament that we had brought more and greater mischiefs than either expected or intended to the other, or than any acts of either could possibly deserve. But by continuing the conflict, one side or other, sooner or later must pre­ vail; and whenever that is decided, the consequence of victory may be as fatal to either, as the means of obtaining it is likely to be to both. The lives of our bravest officers and soldiers must be laid down to purchase the name of a right, for the short season the colonies may require to enable them to renew the dispute. And if victory ends on their side, it is most likely to put down the best form of govern­ ment under which any subjects ever lived, and erect in its place a combination of petty tyrants, and keep / the provinces of America in Venetian slavery for ages to come. And must those fatal events be hazarded, for a mere question of doubtful disputation? And that it is only the name and not the substance for which we contend, is plain from the best evidence the nature of the case will admit. By a message from the late king to the house of commons, repeated for four sessions together, and entered in the journals the 26th April, 1759, it appears that the Colonies not only contributed their proportion, but more than was rea­ sonable for them to bear, and the house of commons made them compensation agreeable to his majesty’s message, which is this: ‘His majesty being sensible of the active zeal and vigour with which his faithful subjects of North America have exerted themselves, in defence of his Majesty’s just right and possessions, recommends it to this house to take the same into consideration, and to enable his Majesty to give them a proper compensation for the expences incurred by the respective provinces, / in the levying, cloathing and pay of the troops raised by the same, according as the active vigour and strenuous efforts of the respective provinces shall justly appear to merit.’

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But it is said they were then only defending themselves in their own country, and it is therefore no proof of their readiness to support Great-Britain? It is plain neither the king nor house of commons saw their conduct in that light, and the conquered islands will tell that their troops were united with ours in making conquests for Great-Britain as well as in the defence of America. And it seems not an obvious distinction in the case of the body and the members between the defending that and defending themselves. But it is said again the war is a proof they are not now willing to contribute to the support of government? Many of the forefathers of the Americans and ourselves, objected in the last century to pay the duty of ship-money,3 legally imposed in the opinion of a majority of the judges. That refusal was as good a proof / that the people of England would not contribute any thing to the sup­ port of government, as it is that the Americans refuse to do it at this day. The question was then as it is now – the mode of laying the duties, not the reasona­ bleness of granting them. But they want to be independent, and that is the true cause of the war. They want then to be independent of the best form of government in the world – Of a people with whom they hold the most beneficial intercourse, and to whom they would certainly sooner wish to be related as fellow subjects, than to those of any other government upon earth, were they to be allowed the liberty of their choice. But what proofs are there of this preference and attachment of the Colo­ nies to their mother country? The plainest and strongest that the kindest parent could desire, or the most affectionate child can shew. Men bred in America, speak of England as their home, in the same manner as a son does of the house of his father. / From all the circumstances of this unfortunate civil war, it cannot be believed that it was begun with any view to its continuance on either side. Much less can it be imagined, that the Colonies, unprepared as they were for war with such a power, began it with any view to independence. True it is that the Americans desire independence; but it is that of being able to retire with the fruits of their industry, to a country they revere as their own. Is there then no means of obtaining a return of confidence and protection, so necessary to the happiness of both? Is there no medium between inforcing their obedience by a desperate war, and an unbecoming revocation of our just rights of superiority? If there is not, unfortunate are both indeed! For the concessions of one side might have as many inconveniences, as the compelled submission of the other. Our situation as an European state, exposes us to an unusual degree of danger during the continuance of the conflict, and the life of every subject that is lost in it, is an irreparable injury to his country and his friends. And / the

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diminution of trade, and the increase of the public expence, unavoidable on the continuance of the war, are the misfortunes of that kind, most to be lamented. These are a part of the certain evils and probable dangers that must now attend the exercise of our right of taxing America. As to the tax itself, there appears to be no evidence to believe, that they are not willing to grant their just proportion of the national expence. And this lays out of the question the necessity of the war to inforce the payment of that proportion, till they are so unreasonable as to refuse it. On the other hand our acts of parliament, and the opinions of the judges of our laws, declare the possession of rights in the legislature of Great-Britain, that to inforce the execution of in England, Scotland, or Ireland, might produce, and humanly speaking would produce the same resistance as now appears in Amer­ ica. If therefore the dignity of legislature depends upon actual submission to the / rights it possesses, then it becomes as necessary to inforce that submission in one part of the dominions as another. Legislature may alter the established reli­ gion of England, may establish episcopacy in Scotland, may tax the people in Ireland and America; and surely the dignity of government is no more impaired by allowing its right to remain uninforced in one of these instances, than in the other three. It is sufficient that legislature has that right in itself to make use of, with all the force the executive power can give it, whenever America shall refuse to contribute her just proportion of expence in the government of the empire, of which it is now become so considerable a part. But if all the wise and good purposes of government can be answered, by the ordinary administration of the civil powers, then the warmest advocates for the supremacy of legislature will admit, that it is more for the happiness of all his Majesty’s dominions, that every part of them should remain in the quiet possession of those principles of civil and religious liberty, that their several institutions has permitted them to enjoy from father to son / for many generations.* And those that are no less jealous for the honour of the British arms, than the dignity of legislature, must grant that the bravery of our sea and land forces has been two well proclaimed by their victories, to depend at this day on compelling a part of our own subjects to relin­ quish a right, in the possession of which it is their greatest boast that they were born and educated. The people in America are too sensible of the advantage of being subjects of the English constitution, for them to refuse their part in the support of its gov­ ernment. Whenever it has been required of them, they have done it in times past with great readiness and zeal, the king and parliament being the judges. They say they will do it for the time to come, and we can have no proof to the contrary but *

Mr. Hutchinson in his history of the Colony of Massachusets Bay,4 has preserved a state of the taxes in the manner that Colony has been accustomed to pay them so far back as 1642.

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in our prejudices against them – prejudices that / may naturally have found their way into minds of great candour, from the influence of those characters amongst us who have taken an active part against America. But in justice to our distant fellow subjects in America, the proofs ought to be called for from the merchants trading to the Colonies, of the regard they have paid to integrity, even since their country has been in a state of hostility with our own. And on this evidence alone the injustice would appear, in condemning the people of America as united in arms to resist the claim of Great-Britain to their contributions to the support of her government. A claim as old as reason and the nature of things, – that the power that protects shall be maintained by all that are protected. A claim upon all the members of society, as little equivocal as the plainest rules of private justice amongst individuals. And to suspect the Americans as opposing the just demands of government to their equitable part of the general aid, is as reasonable as to accuse them of taking up arms to violate the established order of justice in any other instance. And to suppose the Colonies / to think they have no longer occasion for the protection of Great-Britain, and therefore will not contribute to her support since she has delivered them from the fear of their enemies on the continent of America, is to suppose them entirely unacquainted with the present state of Europe. Certainly the Americans know as well as ourselves, that there are those insatiable monarchs, whose armies are ready to be led wherever they can gain new dominions for their masters. And if some of those powers scrupled not to hazard a war with Great-Britain, with an hope of erecting their standards over more American ground; certain it is our fellow subjects in America would have to defend themselves against an host of absolute sovereigns, if ever GreatBritain became unable or unwilling to protect them. Under divine providence the security of the Colonies must depend on the power of Great-Britain. And that power on the union of all its dominions, in which the Colonies of America are now become a very considerable part. But as this has been briefly stated in the protest signed by many names of / the first rank in the kingdom, it would be disrespectful to conclude this article in any other words. And from the dig­ nity of the witnesses, the testimony must have weight with all – the end being peace. For say their Lordships, ‘Great-Britain can never preserve by mere force, that vast continent and that growing multitude of resolute freemen that inhabit it; even if that or any other country was worth governing, against the inclina­ tions of all its inhabitants.’ And as to the importance of the Colonies to the mother-country it is said, ‘The commerce of Great-Britain with America was great and increasing, the profits immense, the advantages as a nursery of seamen, and an inexhaustible magazine of naval stores, infinite; and the continuance of that commerce, particularly in times of war, when we most want support to our fleets and revenues, not precarious, as all foreign trade must be, but depend­ ing solely on ourselves. These valuable resources, which enabled us to face the

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united efforts of the House of Bourbon, are actually lost to Great-Britain, and irretrieveably lost, unless redeemed by immediate / and effectual pacification.’ As this passage at once shews the importance of the Colonies and the danger of the war, it may be proper to add from the same authority what is said of the disposition to peace in our fellow subjects in America. ‘We have beheld,’ say their lordships, ‘this part of his Majesty’s subjects still making professions (in which we think it neither wise nor decent to affect a disbelief ) of the utmost loyalty to his Majesty; and unwearied with continued repulses, repeatedly petitioning for conciliation upon such terms only, as shall be consistent with the dignity and welfare of their mother-country.’5 And these are the terms on which the last declaration from the throne seems to extend the hand of the sovereign, as ready to lay the first stone of an altar to peace. With these evidences of the disposition on all sides, the only difference can be about the means. First, Of preserving the dignity of Great-Britain. Secondly, The privileges of America upon their ancient footing. Thirdly, Without prej­ udice to the question of right, / but to allow it to remain as it does with the other constitutional superiorities of the legislature over the rest of the subjects in England, Scotland, and Ireland. Fourthly, To enable the Colonies to give the same expressions of loyalty to his Majesty, as the subjects of any other part of the dominions, by granting their part of the supplies as a voluntary aid to govern­ ment. And fifthly, To give the crown the same general means of controul over all its subjects in America as it has over the Commons of Great-Britain or Ireland, were they to refuse to grant the necessary supplies. To promote those ends so ardently to be desired, is, submitted with great humility, the following.

Propositions for the present Peace and future Government of the Colonies. I. That during the seasonable interruption the winter months will give to hostilities in America, the governors of the Colonies be / directed to call the assemblies of each province together, and to acquaint them with his Majesty’s gracious intentions of affording them a legal opportunity, of manifesting the sin­ cerity of their desires of a speedy reconciliation with Great-Britain, – by each assembly choosing a certain number of deputies (suppose) four members of the council, and twelve of the representatives of each province to meet at New-York or Philadelphia, and form an assembly of deputies. II. And if the majority of the said deputies shall request his Majesty to appoint a lord lieutenant for America, that his Majesty will make such appointment, to take place with all convenient speed after their petition shall be presented, impowering the said lord lieutenant to concur with the deputies of his provinces

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in such wise, just and salutary measures, as may be thought most expedient for settling the present peace of America, and for establishing its future tranquility and allegiance upon the most lasting foundation. / III. That when the assembly of each province shall have met and made choice of their deputies agreeable to the foregoing design, all hostilities with respect to such province shall cease. And upon the publication of the resolutions of each province, for opening their ports to the usual intercourse with Great-Britain, all acts of parliament relative to the Colonies since the act for securing the dependency of his Majesty’s dominions in America shall be suspended, during the pleasure of the legislature, with regard to such province, and all the proceed­ ings of civil justice be revived, and the internal government restored to its usual course. IV. That immediately upon the performance of these conditions on the part of each province, a general pardon and indemnity shall take place in favour of all in the said province. V. The council and representatives of each province to choose from amongst themselves / the same number of deputies within one month after their first meeting each year. And the said deputies to assemble at such time and place as shall be appointed by his Majesty’s governor lord lieutenant, over whom he shall preside in the same manner as his Majesty’s governor doth over the assem­ bly of each province. And the vote of the majority of the deputies shall bind all the provinces as to the several sums they shall raise for the support of govern­ ment, that their settled tranquility may not be interrupted by any one or more of them refusing to contribute such proportion as the majority of their deputies may have imposed. That all bills shall pass through the house of deputies, in the same manner as they now do through the house of representatives and council of each province, and shall receive the lord lieutenant’s assent before they pass over for the sanction of Great-Britain, in the same manner as acts of assembly in the provinces are now passed by their several governors. And the acts of the lord lieutenant, council, and deputies thus passed in their general assembly, when / they have received the royal assent, to be in force over all British America, as to all purposes of taxation, and apportioning the militia that shall be raised either in peace or war. In all other respects each province to retain that form of govern­ ment to which it has been accustomed. VI. The lord lieutenant to be commander in chief in America both of his Majesty’s forces and of the militia of the provinces, and be vested with such super-intending powers for all purposes of civil government as may give the effect of the English constitution in America. VII. The receivers of taxes in the several provinces to take their authority from the act of the lord lieutenant, council, and assembly of deputies, to levy and

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transmit the supplies to their treasurer, to be by him sent to England, or retained for the other uses for which they shall be levied. / VIII. In case any province shall delay to raise its proportion of the supplies under the act of its own government within the time limited, then the act of the lord lieutenant and deputies to have the same effect. And if the governor and assembly of any province shall not meet for one or more years, then the deputies last appointed from such province to remain members of the general assembly; but otherwise to be chosen within one month after the election of the represent­ atives of the province, and to be under such limitations as to holding any place or appointment as the members of the assembly are to which they belong. And upon the decease of any deputy during the recess of the council or assembly of which he is a member, then the senior member in the assembly of that province shall succeed him. IX. All the acts of the lord lieutenant, and deputies, contrary to the common law of England, and the acts and authority of the British parliament, are void. / By this establishment the crown will maintain its constitutional weight. And what the public service requires to be communicated to the provinces, will be done to them all at once; by which means the executive power of the crown will acquire strength and dispatch. And the deputies sent from the representa­ tives and council of each province, will bring the knowledge of the true state of all the Colonies together, and prevent any of them being injured by mistake, or favoured by partiality. The people will retain their constitutional security by the deputies who tax them returning amongst their constituents, to partake of the burthens they have laid upon them. This being the singular happiness of the subjects of the constitution of England, that they never can be oppressed but by themselves. And the whole number of deputies not being more than 144, their frequent election will be the more necessary; and the body that appoints them having to assemble yearly to attend the public business of their several provinces, those frequent elections will be more / practicable than in other circumstances perhaps they might be. And the 48 deputies from the councils will be an equal security to the prerogative of the crown and the privileges of the people. This subordinate legislative body will answer as to all America, what seems to have been intended as to the province of Massachusets-Bay, by the charter granted by King William, that it should have constitution as nearly resembling that of England as could be. The king appearing by the governor, the people by their representatives, and the council to answer in some degree that of the house of peers; the whole resembling subordinately the British parliament. And this assembly of deputies from all the provinces under his Majesty’s lord lieutenant, will only be the application of the same powers, in a way perhaps that time and the growth of the Colonies have made necessary, had not the present interrup­

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tion of our harmony required such an establishment as a / means of peace. For had it been agreed on all sides, that the aid of the Colonies to their mothercountry, should be adjusted between government and each province seperately, it certainly would have been a matter of great difficulty in practice to have done it. One province would have thought their neighbours paid too little, while they paid too much. The American department would have had no time left to attend to their common prosperity, from adjusting representations of one anothers con­ dition. And their distance, and the fluctuation of circumstances, on which their comparative ability depended, would have made it impossible to have settled the proportion of each with any tolerable degree of justice. A good or bad fishery, a scarce or plentiful crop of rice, grain, or tobacco, would have made the best rule for this year an unfair one in the next; and redress to one province would have laid the foundation of complaints from the rest. And if government had exacted what any of them thought hard conditions, the case of one might be the case of all, severity would have / produced union, force, resistance, and the peace of the empire would have been continually interrupted. But when the wants of government can be communicated at once to deputies from all the provinces, it will be immediately known what their people can raise, and also when and in what manner they can do it most effectually for the ser­ vice of government, and least burthensome to themselves. And was it true that they have not the inclination to grant any thing, the crown in that case has the same compulsory force over the people in America, that it has over the people of Great-Britain or Ireland, were their representatives to refuse the supplies. The laws that the subjects wanted, the crown may not assent to, till the subjects grant the supplies to the crown. The people, as their property increase, are continually wanting additions or alterations in their legal security, against those members of society who are no law to themselves; the people must therefore pay the expence of civil government, which the richest and best part of any community / stand most in need of as having most to lose, and being most disturbed by any act of violence. And it will be allowed that America as much requires this kind of secu­ rity as any other part of his Majesty’s dominions. Subjects also want the protection of their government against foreign ene­ mies, and whenever those of Great-Britain think it the season for attacking her dominions, the part that is most likely to be the object of assault, will certainly be that where our navy is least likely to be found; and as this is not the case with America in ordinary times, they therefore stand, as much in need, as we do, of this kind of service from government, and the constitution has allowed the crown to determine which of its dependencies are the first objects of protection. And it would be an unreasonable expectation in America to look for our fleets to guard their coasts, when they would neither contribute to build, victual, or man a single ship. These, and many other powers of controul the crown possesses over

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the subjects, to oblige them to grant supplies / to the support of government. And every one of these powers being applicable to the people of the Colonies, there is as little reason for supposing any other force necessary to oblige them to raise their just proportion of the supplies, as any other of his Majesty’s subjects. If any practicable means of blessing the Colonies with the privileges of the English constitution be adopted, it would be as great an imputation on their policy, as their loyalty to the king, and justice to their fellow subjects, to suppose they would not discharge their duty to the crown, with as great readiness and zeal as any other part of the dominions. If the peace gives them the possession of the privileges of English subjects, it is their interest to keep that peace, and sup­ port that government. And the means here proposed seem equally free from the objections of being inconsistent with the supremacy of Great-Britain to grant, or insecure for the Colonies to embrace. The crown trusts its dignity to an officer of its own appointment, – the people their property to deputies of their own choosing – men that know the state of / every part of America, and embarked in the common welfare of its inhabitants. And the application of all sides of the sys­ tem is neither unusual nor dangerous. Every part of the dominions has the most intimate experience of all the rules that are required to be exercised. It is only including all America in the same resemblance, that the learned New-England historian says, the different provinces already bears. ‘The government of every colony, like that of the Colonies of old Rome, may be considered as the effigies parva of the mother state.’* The government established in each province, would remain without alteration, or interruption to their accustomed administration within themselves. Their appointing their deputies to meet the lord lieutenant of the crown, would not in practice be a matter of great trouble or expence to the people, who would be amply reimbursed for the charge of such a superintending governor, who was not of this or the other province, but equally engaged by his dignity / and the honour of his office to promote the common good of them all. The presence in America of any of those great characters in whom the king reposed intire confidence, would soon dispel those unhappy impressions that have taken place in the minds of our fellow subjects in the Colonies. When they saw such an officer among them only employed in rendering the intercourse and commerce between all America and Great-Britain more universal and beneficial, they would become more attached to their sovereign and his government; and when no man thought himself less free or less happy in one part of the same dominions than another, all distinctions would be lost; every subject would feel himself, like the mariner, embarked in the common good; and the security, the honour and the success of all, would become the objects of his private interest. And there is no danger that a lord lieutenant of America, should ever erect him *

Mr. Hutchinson’s History, v. i. p. 37.

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self into an independence of the sovereign and legislature that intrusted him with the powers of his office; those powers would only be delegated during pleasure, and / the people over whom they were exercised, would be as much concerned to prevent that as Great-Britain. For the same person that had force enough to venture upon such a usurpation against his sovereign, must first make slaves of his subjects; and the Colonies are little to be suspected at present of turning the security given for their liberties, into an instrument of destroying them, in that way at least. Neither is there any danger on the other hand, that any province would separate itself from the rest, and withdraw its allegiance and dependence on the mother country, And when they all had the opportunity, under the rep­ resentative of their sovereign, of exercising collectively those subordinate powers for which they contend, it cannot be supposed any of them should be so impol­ itic as to refuse to assemble with their sister Colonies upon the terms of the English constitution, or ever be so far deluded as to dream of living under any other government. As it must soon follow that the inhabitants of that province would forfeit the protection of its neighbours, and stand alone unsupported, if not opposed, by / all the rest of America, and the forces of Great-Britain. Men in every country readily enlist under the banners of reason and justice, when self-preservation and interest are on their side; and the Duke de Sully6 says, the people never rise in any country in opposition to their government from a desire of contending, but from an impatience of suffering injuries. – And probably it is most for the dignity, as well as the interest of Great-Britain, that the conditions on which her subjects in America may return to their obedience, should at once be publickly declared to all the representatives of the people called together by proclamation for that very purpose; that every man and every province that has taken up arms against their mother-country, whether from a real or mistaken idea of her oppression, may lay them down with a thorough persuasion of her justice, that whenever occasion may require them to take them up again, it may be in support of that government they cannot but approve. But if unhappily the war should be continued, and in the issue of it the Colo­ nies are / forced to submit the taxes they are to pay to be laid upon them in England, and not by those whom they wish to entrust with that power; in that case, whatever the language of a vanquished people may be, their future conduct may be expected to say with the deputy of Privernum to the Roman senate, – ‘We will submit while we are obliged, and then keep the peace no longer than we can break it with the hopes of better terms.’ For what parent ever retained the duty and affection of his children by severity alone? On what foundation does the peace of that family stand, that is not built upon the union and mutual good­ will of its different branches? A nation is but a family of greater size, divided in itself, it cannot stand: And were the Colonies to practice the policy of refined nations, and suppress the declaration of their designs, it would only be to execute

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them more effectually. For when people are driven into a submission of which they are ashamed and sorry, and obliged to relinquish what they prized so highly, as to hazard their lives / to retain; the tenure of peace with such a people must be, that which binds slaves and cowards, the timid and the abject; and such subjects are a burthen and disgrace to any government, and when they should be strong enough to be useful, they would be resolute enough to be free. And if one of the most martial and most absolute sovereigns the world ever saw, could not force his subjects to change the cut of their beards, little lasting good may be expected, by forcing men to a submission, against principles they will always retain, while they remember themselves as the descendants of Englishmen – principles in which they think resides the essence of their freedom, and in that their all. And every age and country bear witness to the effects of governing, or attempting to govern, a people, in any manner diametrically opposite to their settled persua­ sion. And the history of mankind is only one chain of these instances. The Persian empire seems to have fallen by exhausting its strength in the reduction of / its provinces, which were governed with great severity; till at length, they preferred the despotism of a conqueror to that of their arbitrary governors; and Alexander ascended the throne of Darius, with the same or greater facility, than his paternal throne in Macedonia. The Carthaginian empire was broken in Spain, Sicily, and Sardinia, by the comparison between the Roman government, which was then mild and moder­ ate, and the Carthaginian rigour and excessive imposts. The Grecian empire fell by the disunion of its parts, and their jealousies of each other, the stronger tyrannizing over the weaker; and the weaker call­ ing in sometimes the Persian king, their natural enemy; sometimes Macedonia, and afterwards the Romans, and these successitively freed them from domestic oppression, to subject them to foreign tyranny. The mighty and populous states of Gaul fell by the art of Cæsar, in breaking them / one against another; as he had used the civil wars of Egypt, to obtain that kingdom, and the civil wars of Rome, to swallow up the liberty of his country, and make Rome bow to slavery. Agesilaus,7 who shook the Asiatic world to its centre, and obliged even Epaminondas, the first name of immortal Greece, to retreat from the walls of Sparta, though ready to be betrayed by her own citizens; when he was compli­ mented on the victory of Coronea over the Corinthians, and saw ten thousand Greeks lying on the field, wept as on the defeat of his country, and said some­ thing to this effect: Unhappy Greece, in destroying thyself so many brave men, who were sufficient to have chastised the insolence, and punished the injuries of Persia! There perhaps never was a senate which made so great concessions as the Roman, nor yet any whose dignity stands higher in the esteem of mankind. /

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When the famine pressed the republic, and a war with the Volscians was on foot, the Romans would not serve. The senate, fierce as they were, and tenacious with great reason of military discipline, sent Menenius Agrippa, the most popu­ lar of their body, by origin a Plebeian, to appease the sedition. He gently won them over; the senate condescended to grant them terms, and to give them the Tribunitian college, who were to be of the people only, to whom there was an appeal from the consuls, and their persons were inviolable. And the senate, not merely waived a speculative proposition of right, but really receded from a great part of their executive and legislative authority. When the tyranny of the decemvirs had oppressed them, the people made a secession as they had done before to the Aventine Mount, – deputies were sent from the senate to recal them on terms: – the deputies, on the part of the people, rested upon such terms, as says / Livy,8 made it evident that they sought more from equity than from arms – the restoration of the Tribunitian power, – the want of which had caused the division, and indemnity to all who might be called in question for raising the people to arms. The only harsh proposition, he says, was that the decemviri might be given up, and they threatened to burn them. The reply by the deputies of the senate was, ‘What has proceeded from delib­ eration in the requisition made by you, is so just and equitable that it ought to have been offered you unasked; for ye have asked security for your own liberty, not licence for assaulting that of others. But what ye have sought from resentment, is rather to be forgiven than indulged. – He is free and happy who lives in a state, neither suffering an injury nor inflicting one; to have your liberty restored and secured to you is enough for you to ask.’ The people were unanimously content. / The Italian states by destroying each other, had made way for the Roman empire, and after the fall of that empire the same spirit again exerted itself with the same fatal effects, to which the servitude and weakness of those states may still be ascribed. The civil wars in France had nigh ruined that kingdom, when our Henry Vth interposed – the sense of the common enemy united them at that time, and Agincourt, as it has justly been observed, was much less fatal than France against itself would have been soon. The German principalities, by their continual discords amongst themselves, have been generally entangled in the quarrels, or a prey to the ambition of their neighbours. The disunion of Portugal from Spain, and the signal rise about the same time of the united provinces, and the causes and effects of these several evils, are too recent to need explanation or enlargement. And we stand too near to / the date of the treaty of partition, to make it necessary to say any thing of those domestic divisions that produced the dismemberment of the kingdom of Poland.

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Happy will it be for the subjects of Great-Britain, if their liberties, and the power of the state to defend itself, shall remain unimpaired by the same causes that have been so fatal to the government and people of so many countries. But it may be said that none of those instances bear an exact similitude to Great-Britain and America. And the circumstances being different, it cannot follow that there should be an agreement in the consequences. In cases so complicated as the situation of nations, it is certainly impossible to find two that are exactly parallel, and yet it would be against the evidence of all history to say, that the causes of the downfal of the most powerful states did not bear the greatest similitude, in such a variety of instances, as ought to carry conviction to the greatest infidel in politicks – that a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. A divine position demonstrated, like / every other sacred truth, by the nature of things, and in this case of the fall of empires, established by the concurring testimony of all ages and nations; every instance serving to prove, that unity is strength, and discord destruction – that mildness preserves friends, and violence multiplies enemies. – That in forgiveness there is glory – in revenge shame. And that no government has ever been a gainer by inforcing obedience against the general sense of its subjects in any country. And in the case of the Spanish provinces in Holland, when they thought they could not prevail against their government, their whole council made an earnest and solemn offer of the dominion of these provinces both to England and France; but being refused by both crowns, their hatred of Spain grew to that height, that they were not only willing to submit to any new dominion rather than return to the old, but were even upon the counsel of burning their great towns, wasting and drowning what they could of their own country, and going to seek some new seats in the Indies.’* So that / had the government of Spain been successful, it would have had small cause for rejoicing at a victory over its own subjects. And Sir William Temple9 concludes the catalogue of the causes of this desperation in the provinces, with ‘the execu­ tion of Count Egmont,10 the patriot of Holland, by the Spanish governor, and the imposition of taxes against the customary forms of government, in a country where a long derived succession had made the people fond and tenacious of their ancient customs and laws.’ And to shew how differently the events of such conflicts may prove to the conjectures of the wisest men, we need only recollect that it was said very early in the design of inforcing obedience in America, that if government could not prevail, we should only be where we were. But the irreparable losses that have already taken place, will probably make it safer for us to form our expecta­ tions of the events to come, on the evidence of past ages and our own experience, than upon any conjectures. The highest human wisdom is not always proof against the fallacy of those inclinations, that prompt the ablest men to pursue measures *

Sir William Temple’s Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands, v. 1. p. 33.

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that are neither / warranted by reason nor justified by necessity. And this was so remarkably the case when the crown of Spain lost the kingdom of Portugal, that the very measures the minister of Philip adopted for securing the dominion of their master, was the means that united the minds of the Portuguese in the choice of the Duke of Braganza, and enabled him to drive the forces of Spain out of Por­ tugal. But the people of that country have small cause for rejoicing at the victories of their forefathers – they only changed one absolute master for another. And for us to be in any degree in the situation in which we were, before our difference with America began, will require the best prudence and temper on both sides. As con­ querors we must be in a worse situation, we shall have changed love and permanent dominion, for fear instability and servile obedience. As defeated what shall we say or think. Peace and a speedy reconciliation can alone bring back the current to its former channel, from whence our mutual happiness flowed, before it be dried up or forced into another course, to the mutual and perhaps irretrievable loss of both England and America. The motives that have induced the people in the Colonies to hazard their lives, are the same that arose in the minds of men a thousand years ago, and the consequences of the contest ought to be estimated from the agreement of the motives and the powers they have to exert, and not the similitude of the weapon they use or the ground they stand upon. And if the conduct of Great-Britain to America is to be determined by the evidence of history, there are no inducements for prosecuting the present war, from the most successful use of arms by any government against its own subjects. Neither have subjects had more reason to boast of success against their governors; they have in general paid down the lives of their bravest citizens to purchase subjection to a worse form of government; better than that of England the Colonies cannot have. The reasons therefore on both sides call aloud for peace; and were the people of America to discover more bravery than ever men did before, and those that prosecute the war against them to shew more fortitude in their measures than has ever yet appeared in the world, neither that courage nor that fortitude / can write the names of either party upon any monument like that of peace – peace to secure the greatest mutual good of Great-Britain and the Colonies, and avoid the highest probable danger to them both. And if the British with the Roman senate listen to the requests of the people, ages to come will equally admire their moderation, their wisdom, and their dignity. The first citizens of America will prove themselves the best friends of their country, by securing to it the lasting protection of Great-Britain. The best blessings of both must be found in peace and union, and these ends can only be advanced on both sides by moderation, a prudent and generous forbear­ ance, and a benevolent interpretation of mens thoughts and conduct. And if any side can be backward in embracing any terms of effectual accommodation, the consequences are not new or of little weight, and the guilt would not be less than

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the misery that is likely to ensue. The peace of the world, and certainly that part of it in which Britons are most concerned, and the civil and religious liberties of them and their posterity, must stand exposed to a very unusual degree of danger, during / every days continuance of a civil war with so great a part of the empire, as our American Colonies now make. May therefore the Author of peace, in whose hands all things are flexable, increase every tendency to peace! May He who is wisdom, power, and goodness, give accomplishment to this or any other measure that may be proposed for the return of confidence between Great-Brit­ ain and her children, and for establishing their mutual amity and goodwill upon the best and most lasting foundation!

THE END.

[CARTWRIGHT?], TAXATION, TYRANNY

[ John Cartwright?], Taxation, Tyranny. Addressed to Samuel Johnson (London: J. Bew, 1775).

Samuel Johnson’s Taxation No Tyranny: An Answer to the Resolutions of the American Congress (London: T. Cadell, 1775) provoked considerable con­ troversy.1 In A Letter to Edmund Burke, Esq. Controverting the Principles of American Government (1775), for example, John Cartwright called the pam­ phlet ‘such an indecent scrap of trash’ that it may not have come from ‘a pen that hath formerly done so much honour to literature, and so much service to the cause of morality as that of Dr. Johnson!’, adding that ‘the real writer of this wretched piece cannot possibly rank any higher in the literary, political, or moral world, than some unprincipled parish pedagogue’.2 Given the above, the similarities in evidence and argument in that pamphlet and the present one, and the fact that both are addressed to others, the anony­ mous author of Taxation Tyranny may also have been Cartwright.3 Cartwright, furthermore, theorized in the Burke letter that an ‘imitation of the capital defects observable in the Doctor’s stile, like the mimickry of an aukward attitude or ridic­ ulous gesture, could at first sight strike the reader with a resemblance’ to Johnson’s writing.4 It is interesting, then, that Cartwright’s literary style in A Letter to Edmund Burke and that of the author of Taxation Tyranny is ornate, sometimes baroque, perhaps in ‘mimickry of an aukward attitude or ridiculous gesture’. The author of Taxation Tyranny admired Johnson’s other work and regretted that things had changed, as Cartwright confessed he did in A Letter to Edmund Burke. The pamphlet’s main point, though, is that Parliament had no right to tax the colonies. ‘By Magna Charta’, it notes, by other Statutes of England, and by the Bill of Rights, it was granted and confirmed, that no subject should be compelled to contribute to any tax, tallage, aid, or other like charge, not set by common consent of Parliament. Our colonists are subjects of the British dominions. In the parliament of Great Britain, which is only a part of those dominions, they are not represented. (below, p. 51) – 39 –

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Noting the argument that colonists ‘voluntarily resigned the power of voting, to live in distant, and separate governments’, the author answers ‘that when they emigrated to a remote country, they could not so strictly be said to have relin­ quished all privilege of voting, as under the sanction of a Charter, to have taken a similar privilege along with them’ (below, p. 60). Thus, ‘The Representation of an American is … confined to his own Assembly’ (below, p. 53). The author discusses in detail the charters of several colonies and the various constitutions of Ireland, Wales, English palatinates and boroughs, and Calais, all to the effect that taxation without representation is illegal. Thus, ‘the only justifiable mean, by which Great Britain should obtain [revenue] from America, is Requisition: and the only legal manner in which it can be bestowed is a resolution … passed in an assembly of Representatives’ (below, p. 46). Taxation without representation was not only against constitutional and stat­ ute laws but also ‘certain original rights are inherent to the People, of which the Parliament never can deprive them’ (below, p. 51). This claim leads the author to a Lockean justification of resistance. ‘The necessity of a subjection either from an Englishman, or from a Colonist, to an higher authority’, he asserts, ‘ceases in the moment when that authority extends itself beyond the bounds of Constitutional Law, and Equity’ (below, p. 48) and at that juncture ‘resistance is a legal measure’ (below, p. 47). Indeed, ‘opposition, by force of arms, to the supreme power, when engaged in the maintenance and execution of an act, in all respects illegal and injustifiable, is not Rebellion’ (below, p. 47). The author also notes that ‘by their Charters’ colonists have a right to be ‘tried by the peers of the vicinage’ and thus the Administration of Justice Act ‘is not constitutionally valid, and militates against the Common Law which the three Legislative Bodies are solemnly bound to maintain inviolable’ (below, p. 64). Similarly, ‘Courts of Admiralty’ are ‘repugnant to the Great Charter, and the incontrovertible Right of Trials by Juries’ (below, p. 65).

Notes: 1. An account of Taxation No Tyranny and its critics can be found in J. C. D. Clark, Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion, and Cultural Politics from the Restoration to Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 225–33. 2. Reprinted in Volume 6 of this edition, pp. 195–254, quote on p. 240. 3. Cartwright also authored A Letter to the Earl of Abingdon: Discussing a Position relative to a Fundamental Right of the Constitution: Contained in His Lordship’s Thoughts on the Letter of Edmund Burke, Esq. to the Sheriffs of Bristol (London, 1778). 4. Volume 6 of this edition, p. 240.

TAXATION, TYRANNY.

ADDRESSED TO

SAMUEL JOHNSON, L.L.D.

Quæ Alii scelera, Hic remedia vocat. Tacit.1

LONDON: Printed for J. Bew, No. 28, Pater noster Row.

M.DCC.LXXV. /

TAXATION, TYRANNY;

SIR, I Recollect the time when entertainment and instruction were inseparably connected with every sentence which you wrote. Amidst the splendor of your language, we traced the close solidity of argument. To what cause, whilst you remain fantastically nice in the attirements of the former, must we attribute your contemptuous desertion of the latter? The / sounds of reason are no more; the harmony of the periods still ravishes the ear, and reminds us of the music of an opera, accompanying words the meaning of which is neither recommended by its novelty, nor distinguished by its importance. From a philosophical exordium, you proceed to the position that the supreme power of every community hath the right of requiring from all its subjects such con­ tributions as are necessary to the public safety, or public prosperity. If I dissent from you, I must be branded with the appellation of a zealot of anarchy denying to the parliament of Great Britain the right of taxing the American Colonies. I do not mean to murmur at the severity of the charge, yet, whilst I kiss the rod, must take the liberty to observe that the expression, supreme power, is, in the present case, not only too indefinite, but too arbitrary in its sound for any Englishman the least conversant in the nature of the Constitution. The absolute right of / taxing the Americans is not vested either separately, or collectively, in the three legisla­ tive bodies of Great Britain; and, if it were, should have been waved, upon a late occasion, as unnecessary and detrimental to the public welfare. The tendency of this doctrine is not to lessen English honor, or English power. English honor will blaze the brighter through an aversion from injustice. English power will stand upon the firmest ground, when it is least abused by tyranny. Your countrymen have not listened to this opinion with a wish to find it true, but with a conscious­ ness that it was not erroneous. That passion hath in its first violence controlled interest, is as little applicable to them as it can possibly be to you; and there are many who do you the justice to suppose that, howsoever exasperated you appear to be against the Colonists, you have not, in your anger, been forgetful of your interest.

– 43 –

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Two of your next paragraphs are equally liberal and just. The love of / our country is, indeed, a virtue, even when the preference is blindly made with­ out a comparison; but amongst those Englishmen who to their natural reason have joined experience, this love, although it may, originally, have been grafted upon prejudice, is strengthened and augmented by a cool comparison between the state of Britain, and the state of every other nation. May no events arise to weaken and diminish this attachment! the difficulty of producing them is a ref­ uge from our fears; and whatsoever might be the future inclinations of princes, and superiors less gracious than the present, the powers that should aim at lower­ ing the Constitution beneath the envy and admiration of every kingdom which surrounds us, would sink amidst their own fatality. Some blows may probably be stricken with impunity: yet the violence of invasion perceives a limit which it cannot pass, without destruction. / If it hath not been your fortune to find either in ancient, or modern writ­ ers, any honorable mention of those, who have with equal blindness hated their country, I can only impute it to the loss of the ministerial abortions which screamed and perished without engaging your attention. Who these antipatri­ otic individuals are, is a question to which, I am positive, we should return a different answer. In your political creed, they are the advocates of America. In mine, they are her enemies. For the honorable mention which you despaired of seeing, will you permit me to refer you to a writer of the first eminence amongst the moderns; the political, the liberal, and disinterested author of Taxation no Tyranny? That a gentleman of your courtly disposition should close six valuable pages, without the slightest raillery on the Whigs, is an indulgence which that body, whom it is so fashionable to insult, could scarcely have expected. Yet not / for such miscreants is there a possibility of escaping. Howsoever slow, your justice will be sure. Expert at varying the torture, you either punish them by an indig­ nant silence, or by a stroke, a coup de grace in your expressions which dispatches them, at once. Of the last severity we find a terrible example in the beginning of your pamphlet. At the seventh page, you speak ‘not of men merely, but of Whigs, of Whigs fierce for liberty, and disdainful of dominion.’ Your inference is contemptible: they neither wrangle for licentiousness, nor wish to be exempted from an equitable subjection. The liberty for which they plead is constitutional, and the dominion which they disdain, is arbitrary. Of the former severity, the reader who hath perused a Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland, may call to mind as singular an instance. May I presume to ask you, Sir, whether, if victory had declared against the Whigs, you would so cautiously have concealed from us that the field of Culloden / was lately honored with your presence? We have been taught to hope from the mild, but general assurances of the Secretary at War,2 that only ten thousand soldiers should be employed against

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the Colonists. Yet were the hint, which is an equal credit to your understand­ ing, and to your feelings, adopted by the Ministry, the present military force of England would scarcely be sufficient to accomplish it. I should imagine, Sir, that the work would be more than they could easily go through. Resistance, I put out of the question. Your allusion to an imitation of the destruction of the Hydra is beautifully poetical, and, when reduced to plain prose, means nothing worse than cutting off the heads of our fellow-subjects in America. You are a subject of one of the first commercial countries in the world; and it is, therefore, wonderful that your observations concerning the feelings, the views, and the abilities of our merchants / should be so groundless that they confute themselves. If I did not discern that they were tainted by an obedient illiberality, which, as you knew that a petition was to be presented to the throne, hath placed you in the light of one who prepossesses the minds of juries before the trials, I should suppose that you only wrote them to discover whether you could be more fallible in your judgment, than a right honorable apostate, who believes that of all the evils which the American merchants, now, suffer, suspense is the greatest. From this censure, general as you have made it, your pleasure is that a rem­ nant shall be saved. The traders of the town of Birmingham, and, let me add, the clothiers, and the inhabitants of Trowbridge, and the counter-petitioners of Nottingham are equally intitled to your protection. A writer, whose veracity as a politician might not rest upon so solid a foundation as your own, would have esteemed it necessary to satisfy the public / concerning the manner in which this Birmingham petition was procured, and signed. The parliament and You with­ hold the information; and the utmost that the advocates of the petition could contend for was, that the individuals who signed it, were, if not traders, inhab­ itants of the town and neighbourhood. Were you ignorant that fifteen of the most opulent and respectable merchants of Birmingham had justly stigmatized, in their letter to Mr. Burke, the conduct of these inhabitants whom you bedizen with such tawdry praise? It would be difficult to read the panegyric, or the mani­ festo which occasioned it, without a smile, if the memory did not too naturally revert from the welcome reception of the language of folly and corruption, to the contempt which, once, was thrown upon the necessary remonstrances of almost half the leading bodies in the nation. Whether the Americans, if driven from their towns, their ports, and their commerce, will reap from an attention / to the various arts of husbandry and till­ age, a full sufficiency for all their home consumption, is yet a point too difficult to be resolved. The devastations of a civil war may prove the grave of agriculture; and should we realize the fiction of the Hydra, ‘good houses will, indeed, be left to wiser men.’ That the Bostonian should starve upon his native soil, is an event

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which might not seem improbable, should the violence of the English, and the resistance of the Americans be alike inflexible. You, now, appear to quit the flowery paths of declamation, and move, but with a wandering step, along the plainer fields of argument. The great question concerning the right of taxation is brought before you; and you profess to exam­ ine it with caution proportioned to the event of the decision, which must convict one part of robbery, or the other of rebellion. Forgive me, Sir, if I affirm that your first position is stated falsely. You observe, / that a tax is a payment exacted by authority from part of the community for the benefit of the whole. I answer, that we acknowledge no authority which can exact a tax from any part whatsoever of the community without the free consent of that part. Such a procedure is a flagrant violation of the law of England. It is a power to which no authority whatsoever vested in the king, the lords, and the commons, can lay the smallest claim. Great Britain, like America, is but a portion of our empire; and, therefore, every attempt which she makes to tax a separate, although a sister state, without the full permission of the freemen of that state, is not merely absurd, but positively illegal. In your next paragraph, you propose what seems to be a case in equity, and have mistaken it for law. I grant that when all subordinate communities of an empire share the benefits of government, they ought all to furnish their propor­ tion of expence. Yet the only justifiable / mean, by which Great Britain should obtain this proportion from America, is Requisition: and the only legal manner in which it can be bestowed is a resolution to that effect, passed in an assembly of Representatives. Howsoever particularly you express yourself, I would not suppose that, by the term supreme power, you mean any thing more than the three united bodies of the British legislature. To this power we find that the Americans (if their own words may be weighed in the balance against your insinuations) allow as much as it can honestly expect. They do not wish to weaken, or diminish the prerogative; new rights are not sollicited, and they aver, that they will support and maintain the royal authority over them, and their connection with Great Britain. It ought to satisfy you, were it confessed, that the colonists stand in the same degree of subserviency to this kingdom, with the parliament to the sovereign. Do not the Commons restrain the Crown / within the mere notification of its demands, or its necessities? Do they not claim a right of debating concerning the propriety of fixing the influence, and of limiting the grant of these demands? or, will they co-operate by means which they dislike, and at a greater charge than they are willing to support? If you imagine that such a claim is wild, when asserted by the colonists, you scarcely can suppose it to be more reasonable, when asserted by the English. Were it even possible that it could imply dominion without authority, and sub­

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jects without subordination, it must only lead us to an incontrovertible paradox that those systems are the wisest, and the happiest, where kings can never govern, and where the people always disobey. Your account of the two modes of migration is entertaining, and instructive; but its importance to your political designs is so far from being obvious to my humble comprehensions, that I beg leave to follow you to another ground. / If, on the way, I might assume that liberty, I would observe that, even in this agreeable digression, you have advanced a position which, in the first part, is not always to be depended on. To the remark, that in a properly formed, and consolidated state, every man is taught to consider his own happiness, as com­ bined with the public prosperity, you add, that he is also taught to think himself great, and powerful, in proportion to the greatness and power of his governors. But greatness and power may exist under a wicked government; and, in these circumstances, few subjects will deem themselves participators either of the one, or of the other. Your assertion, that there can be no limited government, howsoever plau­ sibly supported, is false in fact. When the supreme authority (and I adopt the phrase with an extensive meaning) proceeds to lengths where justice utterly for­ sakes it, resistance is a legal measure. The frequency of its success appears, in / spite of metaphysical distinctions, to prove that all governments are limited. Is it possible, Sir, more warmly to inculcate the doctrine of passive obedience, than by observing, that the supreme power, although it do wrong, can be resisted only by rebellion? Doth this (to use your own expression) appear like taking away the weapon which is injuriously employed? An act of our fellow-subjects, in the last reign, made it questionable what should be thence-forward the supreme power. To this, you gave a kinder epithet. And must America be judged so harshly? yet, how shall we prevent it? The tender phrases, ‘revolution,’ ‘insurrection,’ and ‘final conquest,’ were all expended in your description of the Highlands, and nothing now remains but absolute rebellion. Where your decisions fall, they make a deep impression. And yet we seem to want a clearer evidence that may involve the colonists within the cases of constructive treason. The subtleties which mix with / these distinctions are too profound for common intellects to fathom. I rest contented with a plain solu­ tion. An opposition, by force of arms, to the supreme power, when engaged in the maintenance and execution of an act in all respects lawful and justifiable, is Rebellion. An opposition, by force of arms, to the supreme power, when engaged in the maintenance and execution of an act, in all respects illegal and injustifia­ ble, is not Rebellion. The tender mercies of the present ministry are of themselves sufficient to save me from the imputation of alluding to any circumstance within our own remembrance. Civil wars may arise without rebellion. The example is at no greater distance than the reign of Charles the First. With you, the sentiments

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which Livy3 hath ascribed to Pontius, may be of little weight. On me, they have a different effect, and I, perhaps, may quote what you despise. . . . . . ‘Justum est bel­ lum / quibus necessarium, et pia arma quibus nulla nisi in armis relinquitur spes.’4 In all the Charters, granted to the Americans, the administration of forms is prescribed, under due allowances for local variations, with an exact similitude to the powers enjoyed by the inhabitants of Great Britain. The necessity of a sub­ jection either from an Englishman, or from a Colonist, to an higher authority, ceases in the moment when that authority extends itself beyond the bounds of Constitutional Law, and Equity. If the discretionary powers, entrusted to men placed at a greater distance from the Supreme Council of the kingdom, be suffered to wander to any con­ siderable absence from the line of law, they will frequently strike out into an act of tyranny. I much question whether the wisdom of the Colony-governors hath been so conspicuous as to justify the permission that they should regulate their conduct by it, with even as ample a liberty as they have hitherto enjoyed. / Your information that to their Charters the Colonies owe, like other Corpo­ rations, their political existence, may pass unnoticed; but, when you add that the solemnities of legislation, the administration of justice, and security of property, are all bestowed upon them by the royal grant, we feel a melancholy inclination to assert (not by advancing proofs, for you despise them, and they, besides, come forward of their own accord) that these solemnities have been made ridiculous, that this administration hath broken out into the violence of oppression, and that this security of property is not only most imprudently enfeebled, but on the brink of its destruction. I do not pretend to deny that a Charter is a grant of certain powers, or privi­ leges, given to a part of the community for the advantage of the whole, and is therefore liable in its nature to change, or to revocation: but, surely, to point out with caution, and precision, the circumstances which can justify a change, / or revocation, is a task which only the closest association of exalted talents, impar­ tial firmness, and those humane designs which brighten every act of justice with a ray of mercy, must hope to execute. The observation that every act of government aims at public good, is a pan­ egyric on the Powerful, for which they, probably, are not indebted to you: But, how sweetly soever the voice of a ministerial Charmer may sound within an arbi­ trary ear, the multitude discern the falsity that taints the sentence which it utters. Were it indubitably clear that the nation felt a detriment from the existence of a Charter, and that the total abolition of it would not produce evils of a more alarming magnitude, it would be highly criminal to oppose, or even not to aid in the accomplishment of its repeal. And yet, with deference to ‘a head so fully impregnated with politics’ as your own, it might be proper, previous to the execu­ tion / of a design so critical as the annihilation of a Charter, to enquire how far

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it became hurtful to the Community, and what consequences would follow its removal. As to the first case, the proof how far a Charter is become hurtful to the Community, that must rest with you, who having only vouchsafed to bestow upon us ‘a most plentiful lack’ of real instances, leave nothing for us to make, except a positive assertion that you neither have established, nor can estab­ lish, as indisputable, the position that any one clause of an American Charter is detrimental to the true prosperity of the Nation. As to the second case, you have already supposed (a) that the Charters of the Americans are, now, legally forfeited; and, certainly, it is no uncharitable construction of your sentiments which insinuates that you would advise the Ministry to enforce the forfeiture. Of the consequences of this measure, we have a very pleasing / picture of your own painting. From every soft, but striking touch of your immortal pencil, in what enchanting points of view do the Americans arise to fill the valuable canvas! Upon the draperies in which your liberal hand adorns them, the eye of Humanity can scarcely ever cease to gaze with transport. How charming is the prospect of millions of our fellow-creatures, amongst whom there is no power, by which any law can be made, any duty enjoined, any debt recovered, or any criminal punished! whilst, to complete the glorious scene, the whole fabric of subordination is destroyed, the Constitution is sunk at once into a chaos; the society is dissolved into a tumult of individuals, without authority to command, or obligation to obey; without any punishment of wrongs, but by personal resentment, or any protection of right, but by the hand of the possessor! Where is the singular American who could shudder at the appearance of so fine a piece? but let not horror be succeeded / by despair. His charter is, indeed, forfeited to the law: yet, the advocate of a wise and gracious ministry hath encouraged him to expect that this charter ‘may be modelled as shall appear most commodious to the Mother-country;’ that ‘thus the privileges, which are found by experience liable to misuse, will be taken away, and those who now bellow as patriots, bluster as soldiers, and domineer as legislators, will sink into sober merchants, and silent planters, peaceably diligent, and securely rich.’ And do you really think that the affection which these unhappy Children still desire to retain for an unnatural Parent, will feed, and thrive upon severity? should she consult what she may blindly deem her own advantage, will no Amer­ ican be heared to murmur at dependence? will none conspire to break the bonds of peace asunder? will jealousy, will discontent subside? will laws, which strike their roots within an arbitrary / ground, secure from all evasion, find a tame obe­ dience? is it improbable that, to avoid the tyranny of one power, an oppressed people may cast themselves upon the mercy of another power? we seem inclined, (a)  See Taxation no Tyranny, p. 88.

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(and from the manly notion that the colonists are all bellowers, and blusterers) to hazard the experiment; or rather, we have reached the point at which, in spite of boasted resolution, we know not whether we should stop, recede, or venture on. You allow, in express terms, that the inhabitants of the colonies, incorpo­ rated by English charters, are intitled to all the Rights of Englishmen. No subject of Great Britain can be deprived of his property, without his free consent, given either by himself, or by his representative in parliament. This is one of the rights to which he is intitled: a colonist is intitled to the same right: he is not repre­ sented by any part of the parliament of Great Britain; it, therefore, follows, that by this parliament he cannot be taxed. / Perhaps, the profound arguments which occur between the twenty-eighth, and the thirty-fifth pages of your Pamphlet, may be deemed irresistible by the advocates of a right in the Parliament of Great Britain, to bind the Colonists in all cases whatsoever. Could I imagine that a few declamatory lines, where a right reasoning is seldom known to occur, until it hath been first founded upon a false fact, were capable of giving weight to an hypothesis, intended to destroy the supposition that the commons of this kingdom have no legal pretence whatso­ ever to exercise the power of taxation over the colonists, because these last send no representatives to their house, I should attempt, though probably in vain, to cast new light upon the subject. Some who have already investigated it, are (as you, with all the parsimony of praise, express yourself ) ‘not contemptible for knowledge.’ The fruits of their researches have been delivered to the public, not squeezed within the scanty compass of a / score of pompous lines, but placed upon an ample scale, where all the solidity of principles, and all the self-evidence of deductions, both flowing from a long, laborious study of the Constitution, have formed an exposition fit for readers, whose wish it was to find a solemn case indubitably settled. The rapidity with which you have chosen to run over this wide political domain, where every spot should have been truly marked, will scarcely justify the sentence which you pass on those who will not bend to your opinion. The idea of comprizing within a nutshell, every beauty of the Iliad, is scarcely more ridiculous than the attempt to cram between some little sheets of modern printing, one portion of the great Business of your life; The Emanation of your legislative knowledge of the subject of taxation, as connected with representa­ tion. I scorn a mean endeavour to remove your arguments from the fairest ground / on which they possibly can stand, and, therefore, grant that the colonists have not yet denied the English parliament the right of making laws civil, or criminal; and that they have admitted statutes for the punishment of offences, and for the redress, or prevention, of inconveniences. The propriety of their conduct, in this particular, is not, now, an object of discussion. All which I contend against is,

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your assertion that, the reception of any law draws after it, by a chain which cannot be broken, the unwelcome necessity of submitting to taxation. By Magna Charta, by other Statutes of England, and by the Bill of Rights, it was granted and confirmed, that no subject should be compelled to contribute to any tax, tallage, aid, or other like charge, not set by common consent of Parlia­ ment. Our colonists are subjects of the British dominions. In the parliament of Great Britain, which is only a part of those dominions, they are not represented. The imposition, therefore, / of any tax, by that Parliament, must be without the consent of the colonists; and it follows that they are absolutely exempted from the necessity of submitting to it. It is a manifest absurdity to suppose that their reception, at any point of time whatsoever, of a law different in its nature, can have reduced them to the necessity of submitting to taxation. The Great Charter is still the impregnable fortress of our privileges. Its per­ spicuity is so evident to the humblest reader, that all endeavours to ‘explain a country’s dear-bought rights away,’ (b)

will move his scorn, but cannot excite his fears. When we observe the recommen­ dation of statutes, which are hostile to its liberties, the mildness of christianity is on the point of quitting us, and we are almost led to wish, that the sentence of excommunication, denounced in / the presence of an English Monarch, against every violator of Magna Charta, might be again as solemnly repeated. The general Assemblies of the American Provinces are, by Charters, invested with the power of enacting laws for their internal government, and taxation. Until these Charters shall have been forfeited, this power must continue in its full effect. The laws which the Parliament of Great Britain have a right to make, are fixed within the boundaries of their peculiar constitution. Every claim which they extend beyond this point, falls by its own absurdity, because certain origi­ nal rights are inherent to the People, of which the Parliament never can deprive them, without a manifest violation of their own Constitution. The right of representation in the same body which exercises the power of taxation is incon­ trovertible. In this right, the Americans are illegally, and injuriously plundered of their necessary portion, whensoever they are debarred from the exercise / of it, within themselves; and it follows that this exercise must be enjoyed by them, exclusively, because they are not represented in the Parliament of Great Britain. A delegate, or member of the Commons, although entrusted with discre­ tionary powers of speaking, and acting, according to the various circumstances which may arise in the course of parliamentary business, is to consult the interest of all, and, as precisely as possible, to express the sense of his Constituents. In (b)   See a Spirited Poem, intitled LONDON, and written in the reign of George the Second, by Doctor Samuel Johnson.

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order to effect these points, the Law, amongst other salutary declarations, enacts that He shall be a proprietary resident in that Kingdom, of a part of which, he is chosen the deputy. Under these predicaments, the Elected, by the National con­ sent, assume, and exercise the right of taxing the Electors. Here, all is reasonable; but inextricable absurdities are blended with the supposition that an English­ man, on this side of the Atlantic, should tax an / American on the other side, not only against his consent, not only under the most confined knowledge of his interests, and of his opinions, but without having either visited, or possessed a single spot in any of the colonies, from the opening of the first sessions, to the conclusion of the last. You observe that where the numbers of Electors approach to equality, almost half must be governed not only without, but against their choice. You have, here, ventured upon a misapplication of words, in order to perplex us. It is intended that at an election, whether general, or particular, the sense of the people at large should be taken with all the accuracy which the variety of intervening circum­ stances will admit of. To expect an unanimity of voices were ridiculous, and, therefore, the decision is to proceed from the majority, in consequence of which, the Law, not weighing the dissent of a smaller part of the People, supposes the greater part to have virtually chosen for the whole. / To a writer of your gay, and lively turn, it is not wonderful that the resolu­ tions of the Congress should prove the storehouse of materials for a merry jest. And who shall call in question your fortunate ability to determine that the Colo­ nists are free from singularity of opinion, and that their wit hath not yet betrayed them to heresy, whilst you favour us with such instances of penetration, as the assurances that all generally received axioms are little doubted, and that he who will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade. (c) The Americans observe that they are intitled to Life, Liberty, and Property, and that they have never ceded to any sovereign power whatever, a right to dispose of either, without their consent. All this you grant to them, whilst they speak as the naked sons of Nature. They, next, add that their Ancestors, who first settled the Colonies, were, at the time of their emigration from the Mother-Country, intitled / to all the rights, liberties, and immunities of free, and natural born subjects, within the realm of England. To this truth, you also assent; but having allowed this, you remark that their boast of original rights is at an end; and that they are no longer in a state of nature. I do not think it necessary to follow you through the remainder of your diverting paragraph concerning the kings of Me, and the demi-gods of independence. That the Americans are no longer in a state of nature, is not be disputed; but I presume that their boast of original rights is far from being at

(c)  See Taxation no Tyranny, pages 1, and 38.

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end. If it can be proved that Englishmen enjoy these rights, it must follow, on your own principles, that the Colonists enjoy them, also. The English have not ceded to the King, and Parliament, either the right or the power of disposing, without their consent, of their Lives, Liberties and Properties. Is it not a fact, that no law whatsoever, relative to Life, Liberty and Property, shall be valid in Great Britain, / until it hath received the Constitu­ tional consent of the People, by their Representatives, in Parliament assembled? Surely, it cannot be absurd to advance that when the Felon is executed, he dies by a law, to which either he, or his ancestors consented, either in person, or by a delegate. Doth not the Debtor who is led to prison, lose his liberty by virtue of an act, to which either he or his predecessors, themselves, or their representatives attending, consented? Doth not the Offender who pays a fine, judicially imposed upon him, submit to this penalty, because that either he, or his forefathers had, either personally, or by their delegates, consented to the propriety of exacting such a fine, in particular criminal cases? This certainly, may be deemed consent. Had the Americans used the word inclination, your witticisms would have been as just, as they are entertaining. I am sure you need not be told that howsoever merited the punishment / inflicted on an abandoned man may be, it will go hard against his inclination. With submission to the superiority of your judgement, I think that the acute reasoning with which you have enriched the thirty-eighth page of your elaborate composition, was not absolutely necessary. The Colonists seem to imply that their local, and other circumstances might preclude them from the exercise, and enjoyment of some of their rights. With a kindness not natural to you, because it is extended to the Americans, you proceed to the support of this implication. Yet, even this you have concluded with an error. They are not represented in a general Representation. In Great Britain, which is only a part of the whole dominion, a general Representation cannot exist. Representation must be local. The Representation of an American is as much confined to his own Assembly, as the Representation of an Englishman is confined to the Parliament of Great Britain. / Can you suppose, Sir, that the witty paragraph which concludes with an excellent hint to the Colonists to encircle, by their suffrages, with a diadem, the brows of Mr. Cushing, deserves an answer?5 and yet, it may intitle you to a ques­ tion. Is it from your heart, that heart which overflows perpetually with the milk of human-kindness, that you have discovered that a violent contention between the Mother-Country, and her Children, is not sufficiently alarming to secure it from a miserable jest? If it were possible to mortify you, I could assure you that your raillery is misplaced: It is not from this instance alone that we discover your ignorance of the Americans. One of their least defensible errors is, that they are not extravagantly attached to Kings of any sort.

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To leave unnoticed a series of arguments so evidently futile, I pass forward to your next censure on a declaration made by the Congress of Philadelphia. You are, probably, much better acquainted / than I can pretend to be with the meaning and force of Provincial laws; and therefore have dissected them in a curious investiga­ tion. But, the construction which a writer of my limited comprehensions is apt to put on that expression of the colonists asserting their claim to immunities secured to them by their several codes of Provincial laws, amounts only to this: that all acts of government whatsoever, passed by a general Assembly of the Province, or (in other words) all Provincial laws, which have been ratified by the assent of a Gover­ nor, transmitted under the public seal to England, for the royal approbation, and not afterwards disallowed within the space of three years, shall continue in full force and effect, until the expiration thereof, or that the same shall be repealed by the general Assembly of the Province. If this be the meaning of the Colonists, the subtleties of your arguments may amaze, and even entertain your readers, but it is scarcely possible that they can ever be convinced. / When you observe that the Legislature of a Colony is only the vestry of a larger parish, you do not reason like the traveller, ‘Qui mores hominum multorum vidit,’6

and if your expeditions were not on record, we might imagine that they began, continued, and ended within the boundaries of your own parish. Between a par­ ish in Great Britain and a parish in America, the resemblance is much the same; and, as nearly in similitude, doth the Legislature of the Colonies approach to the Legislature of the Mother-Country. The privileges of vestries are confined within a narrow compass. The imposition of a cess on the inhabitants, the collection of the payments, the application of the monies, and other agencies, warranted by general laws, are the sum total of their powers. To answer for the mal-adminis­ tration of these powers, their official members, and, frequently, the whole body are amenable not only to / the highest, but to the lowest courts of justice. The Legislature of the Colonies, like the Legislature of Great Britain, extends itself over important national objects, in the settlement of which no merely-parochial Community hath the least concern. Appeals against the last are made at various tribunals. Against the legislative acts of Governors, Councils, and Assemblies, there is no appeal, (if we except a negative vested in the King, but even this hath been confined by Charter, to a certain period) and such relate to the concerns of the Navy, and of the Army, the management of the Public Works, and the disposal of the Civil List. I take the liberty to vary from your opinion, and to assert, that something more than a general light may be extracted from the Charters, given to different Provinces. In the great points which imply an exemption from Taxation, where there is no Representation, they are not so dissimilar as you imagine. / I allow

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that the Charter of Pensylvania contains a clause admitting, in express terms, Taxation by the Parliament. It is, however, the only Charter where so arbitrary a clause occurs. Without enquiring into the motives by which Charles the Second was actuated, or whether so indolent a creature was actuated by any motives at all, it is sufficient to remark, that the insertion of the clause was a direct viola­ tion of a Constitutional law, and that no equitable reason can be given why the Pensylvanians, as yet unrepresented in the Parliament of Great Britain, should hold themselves bound by the declaration of a claim which is at once tyranni­ cal, and absurd. I will go farther, and observe that, with respect to the forms of the Constitution, it was equally criminal to advance the claim, and to submit to it. The same Charter enacts, that if any doubt, or question should arise concern­ ing the true sense and meaning of any word, clause, or sentence, contained within it, such interpretation shall be made thereof, / and allowed, as shall be adjudged most advantageous and favourable. Let us suppose that the Pensylvanians were to contend against the legality of the Clause, and that the point were referred to the decision of the twelve judges. Is it possible that the most unpractised student of the law could entertain a doubt of the success of this appeal, if integrity and ability were not to rise in contradiction to each other? You imagine that if a Clause, admitting taxation by the Parliament of Great Britain, be not advanced in the other Charters, the omission was occasioned by a conviction that it was unnecessary. Forgive my freedom, Sir; you reason from a total ignorance of our constitution. The right of the Colonists, unrepresented in the Parliament of Great Britain, to an exemption from taxation by it, is verbally omitted, as not necessary to be inserted. The Constitutional Law declares, that this particular claim of taxation cannot exist. The Supreme Power hath no right / to advance it. The Americans are legally warranted in their refusal to submit to it. The position that it is implied in the nature of subordinate government is, in all respects, wild and inconclusive; neither can it follow, in the present case, that they who are subject to laws, are, therefore, liable to taxes. I speak (as I sup­ pose you do) of internal taxes laid on by an external power. The Parliament of Great Britain are constitutionally restrained from the power of taxing any part of the whole Dominion which they do not represent. The subordination of the American part is nothing to the point. It is not represented in the Parliament of Great Britain; and, therefore, in that Parliament, it cannot be taxed. I reject, as unworthy of the least attention, a mere ipse dixit,7 that if any such immunity had been granted, it is still revocable by the Legislature, and ought to be revoked as contrary to the public good. A law to violate which is an act of treason against the Constitution, expressly turns upon you. / The immunity is not revocable by the Legislature; neither have you proved that it is contrary to the public good. I am aware that my endeavours to establish a position, which militates against your own, upon the firmest ground, may make me tiresome to the reader,

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by frequent repetitions of the same assertion. But, whilst, at one moment, you quit, and, at another moment, you return to the argument of Taxation, ‘in such a questionable shape,’ it is necessary to oppose you with legal points, which no sophistry can demolish. The varieties of your production must always please; and, as an elegant declaimer, it is your interest to shift your station. Upon the spot which I have chosen, are law, and fact. From these it were impolitic to move. The desertion which supports you in the contest, would disarm me. Although the right of the Colonists unrepresented in the Parliament of the Mother-Country, to an exemption from taxation by it, may not be verbally expressed, / pressed, it is virtually implied. In each of the three Charters, granted to Virginia, it is declared, that all and every the persons, being subjects, which shall go and inhabit within the said Colony, and Plantation, and every of their chil­ dren and posterity, which shall happen to be born within any the limits thereof, shall have, and enjoy all liberties, franchises, and immunities of free denizens, and natural subjects, within any of the other dominions, to all intents and purposes, as if they had been abiding, and born within the realm of England, or in any other of its dominions. Every one the least acquainted with the British Constitution, perceives that this Stipulation is a positive assent to the doctrine that no Colo­ nist, considered in the light of a fellow-subject of the People of England, can be deprived of his property, without his free consent, expressed either by himself, or by his delegate, in the Parliament assembled. The excellent political writings of the Dean of Gloucester8 are not before me; / but, when you venture to assert that he hath shewn that the Maryland Charter promises no exemption from Parliamentary Taxes, I take the liberty to answer, that you, at least, are under a mistake. To prove the exemption, it might be sufficient to quote a Stipulation, conceived in similar terms to those which occur in the three Charters of Virginia. Yet, as a Clause in the Maryland Charter conveys to the poorest understanding so palpable a meaning, I shall copy it, verbatim, and leave the reader to his own conclusions. And further Our pleasure is, and by these presents, for Us, Our Heirs, and Successors, We do covenant, and grant to, and with the said now Lord Baltimore, and his heirs and assigns, that We, Our Heirs, and Successors, shall at no time hereafter, set, or make, or cause to set any imposition, custom, or other taxation, rate, or contribution whatsoever, in, and upon the dwellers and inhabitants of the aforesaid Province, for their lands, tenements, goods, or chattels, within the said Province, / or in, or upon any goods, or merchandize, within the said Province, or to be laden, or unladen within the ports, or harbours of the said Province. And Our pleasure is, and for Us, our Heirs, and Successors, We charge, and command, that this Our Declaration shall be henceforward, from time, to time, received, and allowed in all our Courts, and before all the Judges of Us, Our Heirs, and Succes­ sors, for a sufficient and lawful discharge, payment, and acquittance; commanding

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all, and singular Our officers, and ministers of Us, our Heirs, and Successors, and enjoining them, upon pain of Our high displeasure, that they do not presume, at any time, to attempt any thing to the contrary of the premises, or that they do, in any sort, withstand the same; but that they be at all times aiding, and assisting, as fit­ ting, unto the said now Lord Baltimore, and his heirs, and to the inhabitants, and merchants of Maryland aforesaid, their servants, ministers, factors, and assigns, in the full use, and fruition of the benefit of this Our Charter. / The exemptions from taxes not issuing from the Representatives of the sev­ eral Plantations, are declared, (according to a form of words already specified) in the Connecticut, the Rhode-Island, and the Massachuset’s Bay Charters. Of your apparent inclination to take no notice of the last Charter, you have already been reminded. But, necessary detection, just censure, and good advice may be produced, a second time. Have I your leave to fill a Note with a letter copied from the Public Advertiser? (d) / (d)   To SAMUEL JOHNSON, L.L.D. SIR, From amongst a multitude who, when they oppose, may hope to foil you in political engagements, some champions will certainly arise, whose entrance within the lists will be succeeded by your defeat. To the mercy which ought to follow victory, it is not posi­ tive that you are intitled, yet may you find it amidst the warmth which is so inseperably united with a detestation of the man, who having once appeared with public virtue at his side, is now rejoiced to wield a feeble weapon in the cause of public vice! It is presumed that the moment of your disgrace is near at hand; till then, if the gen­ erality of your countrymen can receive from you so poorly-defended an opinion, let it be thought that the Taxation to which you allude is no Tyranny. All at present necessary is, not to enquire whether you have in one particular chosen to be misled, but to prevent you from misleading others. / Having in the 59th page of your last ministerial pamphlet, referred us to the royal promises of James and Charles the first, relatively to a restricted exemption from Taxes granted to the settlers in Massachuset’s Bay, you sink, with your usual veneration for the memory of William, into a sullen silence concerning the charter passed in the third year of the reign of that prince and of queen Mary: and you either do not know, or would not have your readers know, that the first charter was cancelled, vacated and annihilated by a judgment in chancery, in the 36th year of the reign of Charles the second. From this charter of William and Mary, which (if you will allow me the expression) you perhaps remembered to forget, I beg leave to transcribe a passage* which, granting * 

‘Our will and pleasure is, and we do hereby for us, our heirs and successors, grant, establish, and ordain, that all and every of the subjects of us, our heirs and successors, which shall go to or inhabit within our said province or territory, and every of their children which shall happen to be born there, or on the seas in going there, or returning from thence, shall have and enjoy all liberties and immunities of free and natural subjects, within any of the dominions of us, our heirs and successors, to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever, as if they and every of them were born within this our realm of England.’

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The Charter of Georgia was passed in the fifth year of the reign of our late Sov­ ereign, and grants, in the most express terms, to the inhabitants of that Colony, and to their posterity, all the liberties, franchises, and immunities whatsoever / claimed by free denizens, and natural-born subjects, within any of the Domin­ ions of Great-Britain. An attempt, howsoever successful, to prove that even one of the American Provinces / may plead an exemption from Parliamentary Taxation, is not to weigh a feather with a Politician of your superior cast. As if you were aware that such a tenet might still maintain its ground, you make an honorable retreat with all your troops of argument, and instructed by your alliance with the Powers, to whom the feeble force of reason is an easy conquest, you arbitrarily pronounce that, supposing it to be true, that these exemptions are contained in Charters, yet, they must be considered as one of the grants in which the King hath been deceived; they must be annulled as mischievous to the Public, by sacrificing to one little settle­ ment the general interest of the Empire; as infringing the system of Dominion, and violating the compact of Government.

that the inhabitants of Great Britain must be represented previous to their Taxation, indicates that the Americans are under a similar (and not a septennial) predicament, with such strength of language, that I much doubt whether the utmost violence of your / arguments can wrench it from the ground it stands on. All the additional force of reason­ ing which may probably burst out upon us in some future edition of your pamphlet, will serve in this particular to astonish, but not to convince our understandings. It is deemed extraordinary, even by the mercenary troops who fight with you under the same banner, that you should rush so madly into battles, where the power of con­ quest is perpetually denied to you. The early campaigns of your literary service were crowned with triumphs, the brilliancy of which was equalled only by the conduct which preceded it. The warfare of ‘The Rambler’ was waged in the defence of all which stamps a value on humanity, and to exterminate the passions which disgrace it. If you were not victorious, it was more owing to the infirmity of our nature than to the weakness of your attack. On such a ground as this be still a Veteran; here brandish all your arms; but flee, (for even now your laurels are becoming blasted) with precipitation flee from the field of politics. Here, and perhaps here only, like an Achilles who shews nothing but his heel, you must be vulnerable. A fellow native of those individuals whom you have so liberally laden with the turgid virulence of invective, would not be totally inexcusable were he to grow saucy in his turn: but to the writer with whom good-breeding is of any weight, it must be afflicting that you should equal him in politeness; I therefore shall steer my course to a considerable distance from scurrility, a rock on which, in all political voyages whatsoever, you seem unfortunately destined to be cast away. I am, SIR, Your much obliged Friend, A BOSTONIAN.

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If, in defending the claims of England, you really think, like Davenant, who so vigorously opposed the Champion of the Irish, that it is not necessary to prove any thing more than that the present Americans / may be deemed a Colony, it were a needless cruelty to strive to dispossess you of an idea which never can attract envy, because few writers would be willing to embrace it. Whatsoever description you chuse to lay before us of the salutary effects of the mode of representation in Great Britain, we are not to be told, that, in a later reign, there was a time when you imagined that ‘the interest or corruption of particular men did often operate with much injury to the public.’ From you, at least, this iron age is passed; it is the present golden age, to which you bid us look, with all the mingled extasies of hope, and confidence, and joy. It is no more of any weight what serpents lurk beneath the tempting flowers of your stile. A lenient hand presents the antidote which must expel the venom. And, can it possibly be yours? It is; and we must thank you for the quick dispersion of some stubborn doubts, and for the kind assurance that we are as secure against inten­ tional / depravations of government, as human wisdom can make us, and that upon this security the Americans may venture to repose. To the objections urged by the Old Member, who wrote an Appeal against the tax, you seem to give your assent: but, here, as usual, like a penurious trader, you will not come to an agreement, without a drawback. This gentleman, according to your opinion, may be ignorant that, if his brethren of the Legislature see as far as himself, the Americans are in no danger of oppression, since by men com­ monly provident, they must be so taxed, as that we may not lose one way, what we gain another. The qualifying word if implies such a wish to affirm, that it were ill-natured to give it a flat contradiction. A question is as much as it can bear. Do you really think that the majority of his brethren are as intelligent as the old member? and, allowing that they are, can you deny that some of the ablest have professed opinions either / grafted upon prejudice, or upon a careful respect for the minister, with whom they vote, incessantly? From your moral writings, we learn that fallibility is the common lot of human nature. In your political writ­ ings, we have the pleasure to perceive that the government but seldom errs. The same conviction flashes upon us from the conduct of the House of Commons. In whatsoever shape, a proposition of administration is brought forward, their voices, and your pen unite in its defence. Is there between you the variation of a tittle, in all the great constitutional points that have been lately agitated? Amidst the prodigality with which you bestow injuries, be sparing of your insults; and recall, in the fourth edition of your pamphlet, the insinuation that taxes are so providently thrown upon America, that we cannot lose one way, what we gain another. Ireland (say the judges) hath a Parliament of its own. Therefore, you infer that the cases of Ireland, and America / are different. I venture to affect that the

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governor, council, and assemblies of the colonies are, in their nature, and in their powers, equal to the three Legislative Bodies of Great Britain, in all respects, except a trivial variation. In Great Britain, a negative against an act can proceed from the King, when that act hath passed the two houses. In America, a gover­ nor, although he be the Royal Representative, may have given his assent contrary to the intention of the Sovereign, and, therefore, the Last hath the privilege of transmitting, within a limited time, his negative against an act which had passed the three Legislative Bodies existing by virtue of a Charter. The propriety of a British act of parliament binding Ireland is nothing to the present purpose; and, if it were, requires a larger field for its discussion, than could be opened, here. In one part of your otherwise inimitable production, you condescend to walk within a beaten track, and refer us to the Palatinates of Chester, and of Durham, / and to the Principality of Wales. I am afraid that in the course of your reading, you do not often meet either with Acts of Parliament, or Charters. Let me rec­ ommend to your perusal a Bill for the admission of members from the Palatinate of Chester. You will find in it the most positive assertions that Taxation and other proceedings of Parliament, extending over unrepresented inhabitants, are tyrannical, and illegal. You are not insensible that when the Palatinates, and the Principality were alluded to in the House of Commons, our Chief Magistrate produced a case, the strength of which alone decides the question relative to the subject of Taxation. It is a case which stands recorded to this hour. Concerning this matter, you are entirely silent. To have acknowledged that the town of Calais never was taxed, until two of its Burgesses sat, and voted in the Parliament of Great Britain, must have resembled the stupidity of a boxer, who, in order to / get the better of his antagonist, esteemed it necessary to beat himself. In the same paragraph, you add that the Americans have voluntarily resigned the power of voting, to live in distant, and separate governments; and that what they have voluntarily quitted, they have no right to claim. I answer, that when they emigrated to a remote country, they could not so strictly be said to have relinquished all privilege of voting, as under the sanction of a Charter, to have taken a similar privilege along with them. The government to which they were rendered subservient was formed as consonant as possible to the government of Great Britain, and, under it, they enjoy an equal right of voting; an equal right of claiming an exemption from internal Taxation against their own consent. You wish to have it always remembered that they are represented by the same virtual representation, as the greater part of Englishmen. If I collect your mean­ ing, it is, that the Americans are as / virtually represented in the Parliament of Great Britain, as those Englishmen who do not give their vote at the election of Members. I humbly apprehend that too much constitutional learning hath led you into an error. In Great Britain, all the natives are represented in their Parlia­ ment. If so large a multitude could have been conveniently collected together,

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and could have coolly and regularly discussed, and determined the various points relating to the public business, no delegates would ever have been cho­ sen. Again, if insuperable difficulties had not arisen to obstruct the formal, and public collection of votes from every individual, all would have acted as electors. It, therefore, was agreed, that a part (and, out of that part, the Majority,) should choose for the rest, who rather appear to have intrusted their right, than to have resigned it, to a select number. The observation that the Colonists have now their choice of a vote at home, or riches at a distance, is not so extremely to the / pur­ pose as the offspring of your conceptions hath generally proved. The position that these Colonists are not represented in the Parliament of Great Britain, and, therefore, should not be taxed by it, still keeps its ground. You observe, that if the Americans are at liberty to grant, or to deny the sum prescribed, they are no longer subjects. We, as represented in our House of Com­ mons, enjoy this liberty. Pray, Sir, are we no longer subjects? You ask us, with an air of triumph, what is the difference between him that is taxed by compulsion, without representation, and him that is represented by compulsion, in order to be taxed? In my poor idea, the answer is obvious. He who is taxed by compulsion, without representation, suffers under a law which militates against justice, against equity, and against his natural rights; because he cannot be bound by this law, but with his own consent, signified either by him­ self, or by his delegate. He who is represented, / in order to be taxed, doth not stand in the predicament of a compelled individual. Taxation is a law to which, being represented, he consents, either by the voice of his delegate, or because the Majority of the delegates of his fellow-subjects think proper to enforce it. When you mention the fluctuating state to which the House of Commons was exposed, during the course of many reigns, we are inclined to wish, that as no page of history, or politics, can have escaped your search, or warped your penetration, you had enriched a longer paragraph with just remarks concern­ ing an acknowledged truth. Yours is no partial pen, and must undoubtedly have corroborated the idea that this fluctuation receded, at one period, from the too powerful attacks of tyranny, and, at another period, advanced beneath the auspices of Patriots, who had recourse to prosperous arms, for its defence. The majority of the subjects of Henry the Eighth may be divided into devoted victims, / and abandoned slaves. From this despotic Executioner, the former ventured to dissent, and perished. The latter trembled, and obeyed. The turpi­ tude, and the distress of Parliaments, at such a juncture, is easier to be imagined, than described. Their fluctuation was the signal of a long, and baneful inactiv­ ity, through which their claims to formerly-acquired rights were scarcely ever urged, and often sunk into disgraceful silence. The Barons, at an æra more remote, obtained, by force of arms, from John, in power a feebler Prince than Henry, but in his will, as keen a Despot, the confirmation of the rights of Eng­

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lishmen. They have been violated too frequently by the invasions of succeeding Sovereigns. Elizabeth hath aimed some furious blows at the immunities of the Commons, whilst the nation, seduced by an attention to a recorded chain of glorious circumstances, were either blind to tyranny, or thought it fell too lightly to be noticed. / James (e) and Charles the First have trodden, with a wanton foot, along this beaten path; and as the last hath justly paid the forfeit with his life, it were a cruelty to load his memory with detestation, if, whilst we speak with horror of the Plunderer of human rights, we did not wish to shew him as a Bea­ con to the different Kings who guide the helms of Government. In Charles, and James the Second, we trace again the overbearing spirit of the Stuart line. From these arose another fluctuation in the House of Commons; nor can it properly be said to have acquired any capital degree of / permanency, until the Revolution of 1688, Whatsoever may be my own feelings, I scorn to hurt the delicacy of yours; and, therefore, not to drop one little grain of praise for William, proceed to observe that the firm basis of the Parliament seems rivetted by the settlement of the Crown upon the gentle House of Hanover. It scarcely appears possible that the success with which your political inves­ tigations are always crowned, should not direct you to a discovery of the reason why new Burgesses have been added to the House of Commons, from time to time. Not to mention that this increase hath been effected, at one period, to support the purposes of the Crown, and at another period, for the national advantage, there are motives which scarcely can elude your search, if you had patience to pursue it. Whether the King hath a power of increasing the number of Burgesses, is a question which, I would flatter myself, cannot be resolved affirmatively, / even by you, without an host of difficulties to impede your progress. I trust that our gracious Sovereign beholds with too favourable an eye the conduct of the major­ ity of his Parliament, to think it necessary to assist them with a fresh recruit. The multitude of those who want to have the Constitution new-modelled in favor of the planters, is far from being so large, perhaps, as you imagine; and I can venture (e)   James was far from being convinced that he had no right to force money from his People, without their consent. In a conversation with two Prelates, Montagu, and Neale, the last as courtly a creature as ever sat upon the sacred bench, the king enquired whether he might not ease his subjects of some part of their cash, without an application to Parlia­ ment. ‘Undoubtedly, Sire,’ (replied Neale) ‘You are the breath of our mouths.’ When the question was repeated to Montagu, he observed that, although he could not pretend to determine so nice a point, yet he must beg leave to affirm that his Majesty would be to blame, if he did not take his brother Neale’s money, because his lordship had offered it. One is almost tempted to wish, that the Author of Taxation no Tyranny had been an American, that, upon his own principles, the wholesome doctrine of bishop Montagu might have been enforced against him.

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to assure you, that they are not even as one to the hundred of those who wish that the Constitution may be secure from flagrant violations, during the execu­ tion of what is called justice upon the Americans. Your observation that, as the planters grow rich, they may buy estates in Eng­ land, and without any innovation effectually represent their native Colonies, is puerile; One of the present Members for Bristol was born in America. By what sophistry do you prove an assertion with a legal import? Will you never indulge us with a better argument to convince / us that he is absolutely a Representative of the Colonists? It is a pity that the zeal which hurries you into an attempt to prove that every public measure is defensible, could not restrain you even from the bare mention of Quebec. Did you imagine that another instance was wanting to ascertain the justice of the old remark, a weak advocate is the worst enemy? The late transac­ tions in Canada might administer to a bitter Pamphleteer perpetual food for scandal. To you, and to your friends, I leave the painful task of heaping more contempt upon the Royal Proclamation. If either you, or Mr. Mauduit,9 infer, that because King James, and King Charles the First promised the settlers in Massachuset’s Bay, exemption from taxes for seven years, they were, after the expiration of the stipulated term, liable to taxation by the Parliament of Great Britain, I presume that you are both mis­ taken. Not to reason with you concerning a clause in a cancelled Charter, let / us attend to the meaning of the Virginian Charters, which are still in force. These temporary exemptions from taxes were not introduced so much with a retrospect to Constitutional Powers, and Prohibitions, as in order to encourage the political, and commercial struggles of an infant Colony, and to protect it from that early imposition of duties, whether external, or internal, which, pre­ ceding its arrival at maturity, might so weaken it as to hazard its recovery. Thus, the fourteenth Clause in the first Virginian Charter (granted in April 1606) enacts that during the term of seven years, for the better relief of the Plantation, all goods, chattels, armour, munition, and furniture, shall not be liable to custom, or subsidy. All this cannot, by any sophistry whatsoever, be construed as declara­ tory of a right to tax the Virginians, at the expiration of a stipulated time, in a Parliament, where they are not represented. The very next, the fifteenth Clause, investing them with all the immunities / claimed by individuals abiding and born within the Realm of England, directly contradicts so groundless a position. In the nineteenth Clause of the second Charter, passed in March, 1609, and still before the Virginians began to feel increase of strength, the exemption from subsidies, and customs, within their own Colony, was lengthened by the space of one, and twenty years; and they were also freed, in the same Clause, from all taxes, and impositions, for ever, upon any goods, or merchandizes, at any time thereafter, either upon importation thither, or exportation from thence, into the

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Realm of England, or into any Dominion belonging to England, except only the five pounds per cent. due for custom upon all goods brought into the Brit­ ish Dominions, according to the antient trade of Merchants. The twenty-second Clause of this Charter again invests the Virginians with every immunity of Eng­ lishmen. All these privileges are ratified in the last Virginian Charter granted in 1611–12. / In your legislatorial capacity, you scarcely deserve an answer; yet, as your dictates, so extravagantly, and, I must add, so horribly removed from every principle of justice, and humanity, receive too powerful a sanction, contempt is not sufficient. A word is due to indignation. The Americans are, by their Char­ ters, invested with the immunities of Englishmen. To be tried by the peers of the vicinage, is one of these immunities. Therefore, an act which declares, that an American, accused of a crime committed within the precincts of his Colony, shall be brought over to Great Britain, in order to take his trial, is not constitu­ tionally valid, and militates against the Common Law which the three Legislative Bodies are solemnly bound to maintain inviolable. Were a Statute replete with equal tyranny to be in force against you, in conjunction with other Englishmen, from the perpetration of a particular offence, with what temper, after having applied for mercy, could you / support this insolent return? Expect no pity; Pre­ sume not to offend, for, only whilst you continue innocent, shall you be safe. It doth not follow that because frauds in the imposts are tried, amongst us, by commission, without a jury, the Bostonians should submit to the same mode. The Excise laws, howsoever arbitrary they may appear, have not hitherto been effectually opposed in England, and they, perhaps, result from political necessity. A discussion of their propriety is foreign to the present purpose. It will be suffi­ cient to remark that they neither do exist, nor could have existed in this Country, without the consent of the Majority of the Representatives of the People; and that they cannot legally exist in the American Colonies, the inhabitants of which are invested with all the immunities of Englishmen, until they shall have passed through the particular Assemblies, from which, alone, they are to issue. / It is pleasant to observe, that two distinguished props of your political inves­ tigations are Fontenelle, and an Italian Philosopher.10 As the latter hath remarked, that ‘no man desires to hear what he hath already seen,’ you infer, in answer to the complaint which the Americans make of being condemned unheared, that all trials are enquiries concerning a doubtful point, and that they are needless, when the crime is manifest, and notorious. Sancho Pancha, or Trappolin, would have passed a wiser sentence. According to this rule, it could not be absurd, were one of the twelve judges to order an Highwayman, committing a robbery in his sight, to be seized, and led, immediately, without a trial, to execution. This ignorance of the inevitable Law of England, whether it be real, or affected, is not worthy of a serious answer.

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It is not sufficient, if after slightly lamenting that the same vengeance involves the innocent, and guilty, you only add that human caution cannot prevent it, / nor human power always redress it. From so amiable a writer, one might have expected an endeavour to alleviate the grievance. Even a Sollicitor-general wishes for a test to discriminate the innocent from the guilty. To your arguments in defence of the authority vested in the Courts of Admi­ ralty, it is sufficient to answer that it may be disputed, because it is manifestly repugnant to the Great Charter, and the incontrovertible Right of Trials by Juries. To enquire whether the Americans should resist the demands of Parliament, as well for our sakes as for their own, is an invidious task; I willingly decline it; and although much might be said to prove that the introduction of taxation, without representation, in any part of the British Dominions, is a precedent which might hereafter become fatal to the whole, I shall leave the reader to his own conclusions. Should I assume the liberty of stiling you an impudent, (and what may naturally / follow) an empty, and conceited writer, a multitude to whom the whistling of a name is like a sacred sound which bids us bow before some literary god, would consider me as an heretic, whose sins were never to be purged away. To their fulminating sentence, I can attend with all the colonies of disdain; and, (if the feelings of my heart have not misled me,) there is an obstinacy connected with my errors, which makes me wish for a perpetual excommunication from the pale of such politics as your own. The patriotic flame which burns within your virtuous bosom, emits no genial heat to mine, nor shall I follow you to that com­ munion, where the purity of the service can only be exceeded by the value of the offerings. May I presume to ask if, when the Minister divided these, your pious zeal was not rewarded? Yet the question is unnecessary; He saw that you were a melancholy object of his charity, and flew to your relief. / But, permit me to come nearer to the point: The epithets impudent and arro­ gant are violences of language, in the use of which, he only should be justified, he only should be secure from personal corrections, who can support his allegations. May I flatter myself that it is not criminal to mark the amiable extremes of your modesty, and humility, when you are pleased to stigmatize a Congress (who have found advocates amongst no inconsiderable number of the most upright, and dis­ cerning Politicians of this Kingdom,) as acting with unpardonable effrontery? Is a meeting, at which the sentiments of the Americans were collected with all the regularity, equity, and precision, which a variety of melancholy circum­ stances could possibly admit of, a proper object for illiberal abuse? Even now, amidst the violence of contention, they wish for peace. But you resign them to disdain, and vengeance. /

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Were I a Cornish Tin-man, it is probable that, retaining a grateful sense of the creditable specimen which you have given of my understanding, I might wish to hug you in my arms. Athletic as his Benefactor, how suitably might such a Son of liberty return the favor which you granted! In whatsoever light, the individu­ als, for whose service you have composed this spirited memorial, may view your conduct, I heartily subscribe to part of the opinion which you give concerning it; and although too stupid to enjoy the Attic seasoning of the jest, agree that ‘it was written by a madman.’ When you contend for arrogance, you may with ease monopolize the palm of victory. It cannot be denied to him who, sounding his own trumpet, informs us that he knows not whether the warmest admirers of Pennsylvanian eloquence can find any argument in the addresses of the Congress, that is not with greater strength urged by him in the character of the Cornishman, Had you, in all the merciless / course of your Pamphlet, advanced a single argu­ ment, supportable by the Law of the Constitution, to prove that Taxation could exist without Representation, your Memorial would not only have been admissi­ ble, but as just, as it is laughable. One of the most distinguished sentences in it is, ‘We do not like taxes; We will not therefore be taxed.’ It is something similar to the ground, on which a late Majority have proceeded; They like to tax the Americans without their consent, and, therefore, the Americans shall be taxed. You observe that all which the Colonists can boast is, that they did something for themselves, and did not wholly stand inactive, while the sons of Britain were fighting in their cause. I leave the Journals of the House of Commons, signifying their thanks, and ordering the repayment of large sums expended by the Ameri­ cans in support of the last war, to contradict you. On the Fishery Bill, it is needless to expatiate. I will venture to assert, that / it is not the sanction of the Legislature which will prevent the Multitude from reading it with horror. You are severe on their associations of fraud to rob their Creditors. In this, you remind us of a practice much too prevalent in England; Executions are carried into the house of an unfortunate tradesman; his person is arrested; and whilst the only difference between him, and his family is, that the one starves within a Goal, and that the others starve out of it; the barbarian at whose suit they suffer this distress, exclaims that they have no principle, and never can be prevailed upon to pay their debts. You wish that these Rebels may be subdued by terror rather than by violence. Is that, now, possible? Hath no violence been tried? Or, doth it exist only in the force of arms? Unless that we can so totally insult the understanding, and depreciate the resolution of the Americans, as to suppose them to be languish­ ing under such ignominious feelings, as are inconsistent / with every degree of cowardice, except the last, we cannot hope that, in the alarm of fear, they should surrender, before they are attacked: we have already found a reason to expect the contrary.

[Cartwright?], Taxation, Tyranny

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When you mention the agitation of different opinions, I look back with rev­ erence on one opinion, which underwent a fate in all respects ill-suited to the exalted talents, and to the liberal intentions of the man who gave it. A noble Lord, or, (to borrow your expression, whilst I reject your meaning,) the great Actor of Patriotism, whose political offences, howsoever violently they may be exaggerated, are all too trivial to impair the chain of public gratitude which still connects him with his fellow-subjects, hath drawn a Bill of Accommoda­ tion between the Mother-Country, and the Colonists, to which the principal objection is, that its success must tend to the destruction of twelve Acts of Parlia­ ment. The faithless Peer, who once was honored / with the tutelage of the Earl of Chatham, must certainly have forgotten that it is more disgraceful to startle at the repeal of an injurious edict, than to promote an wholesome ordinance. This conciliatory Plan speaks for itself. It is the Corner Stone of the Temple of Peace; and were it once placed, the Building would arise in all its beautiful proportions, and last for Ages. The tranquility with which you mention the necessity of subduing the Americans, and with the least injury possible to their persons, and their possessions, is natural to the Politician of the closet, who, by the magic of his pen, can guide the course of war, or fix the proclamation of a peace. Were it possible that you could be convinced of any fallacy in your reasoning, one might be apt to wish that you would fight your battles, at a less considerable distance from the enemy, and that you would bravely venture, in your next expedition, to pass over the Atlantic. If you can trust the representations / to which the Ministry appear to listen with an easy faith, you may indulge the pleasing hope that all your laurels will be reaped without a drop of blood to stain their honorable verdure. Yet, were the Rebels to oppose you, still Victory must be yours; And, let us hope, (to borrow the expression, in which you lately paid a tribute to the memory of the Uncle of our Sovereign,) that these Americans may not be ‘crushed by the heavy hand of a vindictive conqueror.’ It is the mode amongst the military Gentlemen, (and one Officer, with whose opinion a virtuous Lord concurs, hath assumed it within the House of Commons;) to affect a deep acquaintance with the nature of the Colonists, to paint them as a set of Bobadils, who bluster till their foes approach, and then are planet-stricken, to enlarge upon the meanness, and corruption of their man­ ners, to enumerate their sordid ways of living, and to expose with ridicule their enthusiasm in religion. To such as these, / it never can be imagined that our warlike Court would chuse to set the first example of disarming ( f ) And yet, if we must take the field against them, it would be politic to wait the issue of a battle, before we undervalued them. It was acknowledged by some impartial ( f ) See the Memorial of the Count de Guines.11

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Generals that a disturbance in the North, (of which you, probably, have heared) might more easily have been quelled, if such a multitude of their fellow-soldiers had not reported that the insurgents were at once timid, and undisciplined. Is it from similar formations that our Ministers think fit to threaten? And would they eagerly proclaim these . . . . . ‘bella execrata Colonis,’12

because the natives of America are ‘tremblingly alive’ to every sense of fear, and imbecillity? Such is the character for which Millions are indebted to the liberality of the English. It would have been drawn with more consistency, if no mention had been / made of their enthusiasm in religion. With this predominant spirit, the civil wars in the last century were waged amidst a series of successes, which ter­ minated in the destruction of a Tyrant. A Reverend Writer hath with propriety observed, that a Poet is an Enthusiast in jest; but that a man who thinks himself a Divine is an Enthusiast in good earnest. The allusion in the sentence, If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty, among the drivers of negroes? is best known to yourself. I would not wish to wrong you by an interpretation of it. If it be liberal, you are guiltless, and the audacity of insolence alone could venture to attack you. If it be illiberal, I must be silent, from that excess of disdain, which frequently deprives us of the power of language. Your ‘keenness of perspicacity’ may have discerned the future æra at which we are to be defeated by the Colonists. It is probable that You, and I (forgive the arrogance which joins such different beings, / in the same sentence,) may be devoured at a banquet for the worms, before America reduces England. Even the splendid Monument of Politics that must consign to after-ages the credible tradition that no Taxation can be Tyranny, may be dissolved ere this reproachful period shall arrive. Should you survive it, to whatsoever fate, your vanquished Countrymen may be reduced, it is my anxious wish not that they may be permit­ ted to import into the confederated Cantons such products as they do not raise; not that if an English Ship salutes a fort with four guns, it shall be answered at least with two; but that if You be inclined to hold a plantation, You shall only take an Oath of Allegiance to the reigning powers, and be suffered, while you live as inof­ fensively, as you certainly do at present, to retain your own opinion of English rights, unmolested in your conscience by an Oath of Abjuration, the which, (unless my memory hath failed me,) you gratefully refused to take, in the moment when you did his present Majesty the honor to accept of an inconsiderable pension.

THE END.

[BAILLIE], ‘A LETTER TO THE AUTHOR OF A

PAMPHLET’

[Hugh Baillie], ‘A Letter to the Author of a Pamphlet, called Taxation no Tyranny’, in An Appendix to a Letter to Dr. Shebbeare. To which are added, Some Observations on a Pamphlet, Entitled, Taxation No Tyranny: In which the Sophistry of that Author’s Reasoning is Detected. By a Doctor of Laws (London: J. Donaldson, 1775), pp. 33–84.

In response to pamphlets attacking his Taxation No Tyranny, Samuel Johnson wrote that ‘The patriots pelt me with answers’.1 One of the pelters was probably John Cartwright,2 and another was ‘A Doctor of Letters’, Hugh Baillie, of whom little is now known. In fact, Baillie decided to hit two controversial birds with one stone, combining an attack on Johnson with one on John Shebbeare. Whig attacks on the two together were common, and when both were pensioned by the Crown they became amusingly associated as a He-Bear and a She-Bear. Shebbeare also knew all about being pelted. Always a controversialist, his first novel, The Marriage Act (London: J. Hodges, 1754), saw him arrested for attacking Parliament and the Earl of Hardwick, author of the Marriage Act. He moved closer to direct political engagement with the epistolary fiction of Letters on the English Nation (London, 1755) by an imagined Italian Jesuit, encourag­ ing suspicions of his Jacobitism, and engaged directly with his own Letters to the People of England attacking successive administrations during the French and Indian and Seven Years Wars.3 In 1758, Shebbeare was convicted of seditious libel for his Sixth Letter (London, 1757), and a seventh one was suppressed. He was fined £5, sentenced to prison for three years, and sent to the Charing Cross pillory on 5 December 1758, although he was allowed to rest his hands on the post and was protected by an umbrella. The crowd cheered his act of political theatre, although he was caricatured for it by William Hogarth in The Polling. His receipt of a £200 pension from 1764 was followed by numerous defences of Britain’s colonial policies against attacks by the likes of Edmund Burke and Richard Price. Johnson, as well as supporting the administration’s American policies, had similarly launched more general attacks on William III, Algernon Sidney and other Whigs, which elicited Baillie’s more wide-ranging Letter to Dr. – 69 –

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Johnson occasioned his late Political Publications, by a ‘Doctor of Laws’ (London: J. Towers, 1775). As J. C. D. Clark has said, many of Johnson’s detractors were religious dissent­ ers, and Shebbeare attracted attacks from the same quarters, including Baillie.4 Baillie opens his letter to Shebbeare with an examination of whether the first four Stuarts’ conduct ‘to the Presbyterians and Protestant Dissenters’ justified revolution, simultaneously goading the Tory, citing John Locke and Algernon Sidney, that his support for the Glorious Revolution meant that ‘You agree with me … that all government arises from the people, and that they have a right, in the last resort, to rectify abuses in government’.5 He then contrasts the persecu­ tions of dissenters by those kings with their acts of loyalty, including their role in the Restoration of Charles II. He also makes a direct comparison with American policy, noting that ‘The people in America are mostly Presbyterians, and Protes­ tant Dissenters’ and, though loyal, were now suffering wholesale persecution on the pretext that ‘a mob of 40 or 50 Banditti destroyed some Tea belonging to the East-India-Company’.6 The appended observations on Johnson, however, were more consistently topical. Whereas John Cartwright attacked Johnson with a broad brush, making sweeping statements about sovereignty, Baillie used a fine-tooth comb, picking apart Johnson’s arguments one by one, paragraph by paragraph, each one num­ bered. There is therefore a lot of valuable detail, though considerable repetition is required by Baillie’s applying these details to the fundamental principles, as he sees them, of colonies’ customary, constitutional and natural rights to self-gov­ ernment, especially over taxation, and rights to defend their civil liberties. His conclusion includes a reiteration that ‘my principles with regard to government, are much the same with those of Mr. Locke’, an admission that ‘I think from your Pamphlet, your principles are different from mine’, a warning that war in America ‘must ruin the prospect we had of being the greatest nation in Europe, and can serve no interest but that of France, our natural enemy’ (below, p. 85), and a brief history of the fall of other empires. Notes: 1. Quoted in J. Cannon, Samuel Johnson and the Politics of Hanoverian England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 96. 2. See above, pp. 39–68. 3. See Volume 4 of this edition, pp. 53–122, for Three Letters to the People of England (1756). 4. J. C. D. Clark, Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion, and Cultural Politics from the Resto­ ration to Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 225–33. 5. [Baillie], An Appendix to a Letter to Dr. Shebbeare, pp. 1–2; not reproduced here. 6. Ibid., p. 9; not reproduced here.

A LETTER TO THE AUTHOR of a PAMPHLET, CALLED Taxation no Tyranny. SIR, I Have read your ingenious pamphlet, by which you make as much of the subject you write on as it is capable of: but I submit a few observations on the subject of it to your consideration. 1. You say, that it is the right of the supreme power, in every community, to demand the necessary contributions from those who are subject / to it, and that this was never denied till lately, by the lovers of anarchy in America. I never heard that the Americans denied this position; but they affirmed another position, That that supreme power may give to settlers in any new Col­ ony what privileges they think proper. All lands are derived to the subject from the sovereign; and the moment they are in the crown, they can be given by it to the subject, on what condition it pleases. This is the rule with regard to charters granted by the crown, even here in Britain; and when these charters are granted, they cannot be violated by the crown, nay nor by the parliament, justly; for the nature of a free government is such, that all property is inviolable, except the pos­ sessor of it do something which forfeits the right he has to the protection of his property, by the laws of his country. There are instances, to be sure, where, for the publick good, private property may be exchanged for its value with the propie­ tor: but these things are never to be done, except in cases of necessity. The case of the Americans is still more favourable: their predecessors, at the risk of their lives and fortunes, enlarged / the British dominions, and had charters granted them by the crown for their encouragement; and, amongst other privileges, they had – 71 –

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a power given them of taxing themselves, which they have possessed for about 200 years. And would it be right for either king or parliament to take of these subjects in America their money, in any other way than what is approved of by their charters? If it be said, that this privilege of taxing themselves is not exclu­ sive of any taxation by parliament; the answer is evident, That in that case their privileges, by their charter, of taxing themselves are nothing, because a parlia­ ment may tax them to the utmost they can bear, and then tell them, they may tax themselves when they please, when they can bear no more. This new scheme of ministers breaking in upon charters in America, and their constant custom for about 200 years, has always appeared to me below the dignity of the crown and parliament, who have both of them often homologated these privileges, by the continuation of which, we should in a few years be the greatest nation in Europe, and by oppressing America we shall lose our trade with them, ruin our manufac­ turers, lessen the number of our sailors, and consequently / lessen our security against our natural enemy the French. 2. You say, it would be a reflection upon English power and English honour not to tax America. In my opinion, instead of being a reflection upon English power and English honour not to exert its power of taxation, which you seem to think, it would be to the honour and glory of England not to break through what they themselves have established, and to keep their faith religiously with their brethren in America. And although they had no charter nor privileges, I think it would be our interest to grant them the privileges they desire; for by that alone they are become a great people, and able to assist their mother country, and by that they will be every year the more able to assist it. And that opinion propagated with so much industry by pensioners and placement, of their becom­ ing independent of their mother country, is a mere chimera; they neither wish it, nor can it ever be in their power, the navigation act being a bar to it, as by that we command their trade. / 3. You observe, that the advocates for America here are enemies to their native country. It seems as clear to me as any proposition in Euclid, that nothing can preserve this country but a good correspondence with America, and that the late acts of parliament in the last sessions, must ruin that good correspond­ ence, if put in execution. Is it possible, that you can think that the Americans can see themselves surrounded by French Papists in Canada with indifferency; and can any good Protestant in Britain see Popery made the established religion in Canada, and the extent of that province enlarged to double of what it was, and to see slavery established there by law, and to see the trade of this country with America ruined, by which our nursery of sailors is greatly diminished, and our manufacturers undone? Can any man in Britain see with indifference, that instead of being furnished with naval stores from the northern powers of Europe, at the expence of near two millions a year, and that we were now sure of being

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furnished with these things from America, in exchange for our manufactures, and that now by these acts of parliament we are in danger of losing all these advantages, and the prospect of / many more, by being furnished with other things from thence, such as, Raw Silk, Fruits, Wines, &c. It is true, Sir, we ought to regard the Americans as our brethren, and so not to encroach upon their privi­ leges. But there is another consideration still more powerful, that every step taken against the Americans hurries us on to our own destruction. Our predecessors, for these 200 years, have thought it right to encourage the Americans, as the best way to aggrandize Great Britain. But our present ministry seem to think otherwise; for what reason, I know not. Is it not evident, that France, our natu­ ral enemy, is more powerful now than in Lewis XIV.’s time, by the addition of Lorrain to its territories, by which they can maintain 30,000 troops more then before? their riches from America are three times greater than they were in Lewis XIV.’s time; and yet we seem to have forgot, that, in his time, France alone was a match for Great Britain, the Emperor, the Empire, Spain, Holland, and the Duke of Savoy. Do we imagine, that that ambitious nation is now asleep, or have dropt all ambitious views? No, they are acting now the / wisest part they ever did, to accomplish their ambitious views against us; they are preparing for war by paying off their debts, while we don’t seem to think of paying off ours, by our encroaching on the sinking fund every year, and now we are contracting more debts, by sending a great fleet and a numerous army to destroy our own colonies, and the principal branch of our trade, and the support of our manufacturers, whilst we neglect to support and vindicate the honour and interest of the nation, by allowing our trade with foreign nations to be ruined contrary to the most solemn treaties, which we have been in possession of for about 100 years; witness our trade with Portugal, which, before they broke through their treaties with us, yielded us about a million of balance yearly, and does not now yield above one tenth of that sum; and can any honest British subject not wish that our fleet and forces had been employed rather in supporting our trade with foreign nations, than in endeavouring to ruin our own plantations and the principal branch of our trade. France has the satisfaction to see us follow the very measures they would have dictated for our destruction, by ruining our correspondence with America; by a / good correspondence with which, they easily saw, we must, in less than an age, become the greatest nation in Europe. You speak in one part of your Pamphlet of the great increase of inhabitants in America, in a way that is unworthy of the pen of so sensible an author. You say, they multiply like their rattle-snakes. If you was among them, perhaps instead of tar and feathers, some giddy-headed mob might condemn you to keep company with those very ani­ mals you compare them to.

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4. You say in defence of these acts of parliament against America, that it is time to curb them before they turn too powerful. I am clearly of opinion with Sir Robert Walpole,1 that the more numerous, rich, and powerful they are, the better for their mother country, because their riches centre here; and the more numer­ ous they are, the more occasion they have for our manufactures: and that sensible minister, as I am well informed, when pressed to tax America, always said, that the only right way to tax them was to encourage their trade with us, and their demand for our manufactures, which must increase as the number of inhabitants in America / increased; for, said he, the last buyer of goods always pays the taxes raised by these goods. This tax they don’t grudge to pay, but would grudge to pay taxes directly laid upon them by any body but their own assemblies. The politicks of our ministers now seems to be quite different from that of their predecessors for near these 200 years past: and the opinion of most people I converse with, instead of thinking it our interest, by encouraging the people of America by supporting their privileges, they seem to follow the politicks of King Philip II. of Spain, who employed his armies and fleets in endeavouring to ruin the privileges of Holland and Flanders. In doing of which he spent about a hundred and fifty millions sterling. When told by some honest man about him, that it was against his interest to ruin so valuable a part of his dominions, he said, that he would rather be king of a wilderness where his will was absolute, than of the richest provinces of the world where his subjects durst contradict it. We are in no danger from the increase of power in America. No people ever shewed a more sincere love to their / mother country than they have done, and by the navigation act we command their trade. By the present scheme of our ministers, they seem to want to provoke the Americans to lose their natural affection for their mother country, and to force them into rebellion, by leaving them no choice, either to be slaves or to resist government. This case is just the same with what happened in Scotland in the reign of Charles II. The country was quite peaceable, but by the contrivances of Archbishop Sharp,2 the Duke of Lauderdale,3 and Sir George Mackenzie4 his majesty’s advocate, they were persecuted with fines, tortures, and death, for worshiping God in their own way: which obliged them, when they heard their ministers preach in the fields, to carry weapons of defence with them in case of their being attacked by the kings forces, who hunted them every where to destroy them – and this was called rebellion. Is not the case of the Americans something like this? they are deprived of their privileges by charter and 200 years possession; they are surrounded by French papists in Canada, which / province is enlarged double to what it was; and arbitrary power established there, and Popery declared to be the established religion, contrary to the act of settlement in the royal family; and lately, by a new act of parliament they are deprived of that subsistance, by fishing, which their

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situation gave them, by which their ships must rot, and they themselves must starve: and because they seem to be sensible of these pieces of oppression, they are called rebels to their mother country by the ministry, and by you, Sir, lovers of anarchy and bad subjects, though they have always shewn themselves ready to sacrifice their lives and fortunes in the service of their mother country: but it seems nothing else will do, but an absolute submission to arbitrary power, and giving up their privileges, in your opinion. 5. You say, our shewing our superiority is the only way to make our trade profitable with America. Hitherto the sensible part of mankind have thought that trade was to flourish only by indulgencies, and not by force; you think quite otherways: and I shall use no other argument to convince you of your mistake, than to refer you to the applications to parliament from most of / the trading towns in England, and amongst others from London, shewing the destructive consequences to trade by the measures now followed by the ministry. 6. This author seems to laugh at the patriots of America leaving their mari­ time towns, and retiring into the country, as a chimera: but if he will look back into the practice of the Dutch in 1672, when threatened with slavery by Lewis XIV. he will see that real patriots, who put a just value on liberty, are capable of doing much more than that which he calls a chimera. They were obliged by force to abandon the most considerable parts of the Seven Provinces, and retired where they had no other defence but to overflow their country by the sea. When Lewis XIV. sent the message to the prince of Orange, afterwards king William, representing to him the impossibility there was of defending his country longer; he answered, He should have the pleasure at least of dying in the last ditch. If you will look into the history of Rome, you will see, by the resistance made by that little republick of Numantra in Spain to the whole power of Rome, what a value brave men put upon liberty. / They never exceeded 4 or 5000 men, and yet beat a Roman army of three times their number, and obliged them to go under the yoke: and when at length they were surrounded by a very great Roman army, the Romans chose to starve them, by surrounding their town by deep trenches, rather than come to blows with such determined men, who were resolved to die rather than become slaves. You will see the same happened in Sweden in Gus­ tavus Erickson’s time, when the inhabitants of the province of Dalecarlia, not accustomed to arms, beat 20,000 Danish regular troops, and drove them out of Sweden. 7. You say, that all governments are ultimately and essentially absolute, but different depending societies may have different emoluments and privileges from the supreme power. – The last part of what you advance is all the Americans desire; that is, the privileges the supreme power in Britain has granted them, and what they have been in possession of for these 200 years, by the consent of both king and parliament. – As you observe every supreme power must be absolute in

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the management of publick affairs, but if that power which is from the people, (from / whom it must always originate) should declare itself an enemy to the people and their privileges, (from whom they derive their power) nobody who understand the principles of government properly, will deny, that these people have a right to call that supreme power, appointed by themselves, to an account for betraying their trust. As for example, if the parliament of Britain should betray the trust put in them by their constituents, and declare the crown abso­ lute, the people who chose them would have an undoubted right to punish them for breach of trust; and the power would revert back to the people. This was the case with Sweden, who about 200 years ago were betrayed by the senate, who made the king absolute, by the crown having procured a majority in the senate composed of officers of the army, pensioners, and placemen. 8. You say, that every Englishman, and every colony, may be deprived of his or their privileges by the supreme authority, without that supreme authority giv­ ing any reasons for their actions. / This is a position directly contrary to all true principles of free government. There is indeed a thing practised in Britain by bills of attainder, in cases where proof against criminals are not so clear as the common law requires, but yet are such as to convince the supreme power, who passed these bills, of the guilt of the person. Such was the case of the bishop of Rochester.5 But I believe it never came into any body’s head, who understood the principles of a free government, to maintain that the supreme power was not obliged to give a reason for their proceeding. In that case of the bishop of Rochester, and in every other bill of attainder, as far as I know, the supreme power always gave reasons for their pro­ ceedings. In all free governments, every subject enjoys his property under an absolute security, that no power whatever can take it from him, as long as he does not forfeit the protection of the laws of his country. Indeed it is true, that if the king and parliament should deprive any subject of what they have a right to, by charter or other privilege, that private person must submit, because he has not power to do otherways: but that action of that power / would be against the axiom of the law of nature, of the law of nations, and the civil law, that no power can do what they cannot do justly: and if the king and parliament should declare the rights of any county in England forfeited, without any just cause, or giving any reason for it, as you say they may do, I believe all the rest of the counties of England would join in protecting that county. The just privileges and rights of our brethren in America are upon the same footing with our own. And I hope in God, it never will enter into the head of any prince of the present royal family, who are established on the throne to support the religion and liberties of this country, to maintain this position of yours as just. I am very sure his present Majesty will never do any thing against the liberties of his subjects any where

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willingly – but the best of princes may be imposed upon by bad counsellors, under false pretences. There was an instance in Scotland, in the reign of king Robert Bruce, which shews the danger that the greatest princes may be in, by attempting to encroach on what his subjects think they / have a right to possess. He called a parliament, and insisted on every body shewing their charters and rights to the lands they were in possession of. At that time few people had regular charters for their lands, and long possession was their principal right. Upon this proposal from the king, tho’ he was the greatest prince that ever was in the nation, and the most beloved, they unanimously drew their swords, and said, they would defend by these, the possessions derived to them from their ancestors. The king was too wise a man to insist on this proposal, which had been suggested to him by some greedy courtiers, who wanted to profit by it. 9. Next you maintain, there can be no limited government. – I did not imag­ ine, that any body of knowledge in these matters could have maintained such a position in this country, where government is universally understood to be lim­ ited; that is, in other words, that it is derived from the people, and consequently accountable to the people, when it acts contrary to the ends of its institution. This position of yours might have had some chance to have met with some sup­ porters in the days of that pedantical / king, James I. of England, who dreamed that he had his commission only from God, and was not accountable to his peo­ ple for any of his actions. He said, he would not turn away the least cook in his kitchen at the desire of his parliament; and that they had no rights but what they derived from the indulgence of his predecessors. The principles of government are now so well understood, that such idle conceits would be looked upon as the reveries of a distempered brain, by the sensible part of mankind. 10. You say, He that denies the English parliament the power of taxing Amer­ ica, denies them the power of making any other laws to regulate the Americans. – There is no consequence can be drawn from denying the power of taxation, to denying the power of making laws. The power of taxation being fixed in the Assemblies in America by charters and long possession, often homologated by king and parliament; whereas the laws of Britain have been adopted in America; and the navigation act, by which we are impowered to regulate their trade, has never been denied by the Americans as binding them. / 11. You say it is a false position to say, that every man in England is taxed by his own consent, for most of the inhabitants have no such privilege, either by himself or his choice of delegates. By all the laws I know, consent may be either express or tacit; and a tacit consent is often as binding as an express consent in the disposal of property. For example; If I allow a man to take possession of a part of my property, to which I have a right by charter, that man, or his heirs, may acquire a right to that part

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of my property by prescription, established by long possession; and the law will presume that I consented to it, altho’ he can’t produce any positive proof of that consent. By the same rule, every man in England is presumed to have given his consent to our present constitution, as it has existed for many years beyond the longest prescription, without being complained of by any of those people who have no right to chuse their representatives in parliaments. 12. You say the Americans have the same power of making a king as they have of making a parliament to tax themselves. / Surely, Sir, you can’t be in earnest in advancing so strange a position. Let us put your argument in the shape of a sylogism, and it will run thus: The Ameri­ cans have a power granted them by king and parliament to tax themselves, ergo, they have a power of making a king and parliament. Don’t you think that a man might very justly deny the consequence. The historians tell you, that it was a practice with Socrates, to save himself long reasoning, to make his adversary’s opinion appear ridiculous to the man himself, by putting his answer in a short syllogism like this. 13. You say the Americans are in the same situation as towns in England who have no representatives in parliament. This position of yours is just as extraordinary as the last. At first when the constitution of England was formed, towns were allowed votes in parliament, according as they were thought considerable enough in the state as to deserve it. And these towns not considerable enough as to deserve to be represented in parliament, had no such privilege. And these last mentioned towns / having tacitly consented to that constitution then established, cannot complain of that establishment. Tho’ at the same time I think when a town turns considerable, which was not so at the beginning of the constitution, it has a right to petition king and parliament to be represented. This reasoning of yours, with regard to towns, is the very same with what it was in regard to some individuals not having a right to be represented. Here I shall submit another sylogism to your consideration. – A porter and a cobler having no property in Britain, have no right to complain they have no repre­ sentative in parliament; and therefore all the people of America, where there are some millions possessed of great property, have no reason to complain they are taxed without being represented, and without their consent. 14. You say the case of Ireland is different from America, because it has a parliament of its own. Put the case that the parliament of Ireland was called the assembly of Ire­ land, and the case / would be the same; only with this difference, that the case of America is much stronger. The parliament of Ireland had their rights and privileges granted them by the king and parliament of England, after they were conquered by them, and so by the right of conquest might prescribe what rules

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they thought proper. The case is otherways with regard to America, most of these lands were conquered by private people, emigrants from Britain, at the danger of their lives and fortunes; to which lands Great Britain had no pretence of any right. I submit it to you whether they had not a better right to expect indulgen­ cies from Great Britain, then a country conquered at the expence of so much blood and treasure. At the same time, I think the parliament of Ireland have as good a title to tax Ireland, as the parliament of Britain to tax us; although by your way of reasoning you seem to think that our parliament is so almighty, that they may dispose of charters, privileges and rights of all sorts, as they think proper, without being obliged to give any reason for what they do: but I imagine, Sir, if they were to make a practice of such proceedings, general or frequent, the people of Britain might be apt to tell / them, they acted beyond the power they intended to give them, and shew them they were still their superiors, and they only their servants, acting under their authority. 15. You say the Americans are left in the possession of all their privileges, except those their sedition have deprived them of. Surely, Sir, you must know things better, than to be in earnest in what you say. The sedition complained of in parliament, and which have occasioned these acts of parliament against Boston, was the sinking of some tea there. Now, Sir, before that, there was several encroachments upon their charter and privileges, which they had been always in possession of; such as the enlarging the power of the courts of Admiralty, by which they were denied the trial of their property by jury; and several taxes imposed upon them without their consent. And to this day there never has been any proof that the people of Boston sunk that tea; and though they applied to parliament to be heard by their council, to shew that the tea was not sunk by them, yet they were refused to be heard. Now, Sir, I / have always thought it a just maxim, that every man is to be supposed innocent ’till he is found guilty, upon a fair trial, where he has access to defend himself. I desire any man would shew me the difference between what happened at Boston by a mob, with regard to the tea, and what has often happened at London, where mobs have broke glass windows, and done other hurts to property – and would you think it just, upon account of such a mob, to deprive the people of London of trade, block up their port, and deprive them even of the common necessaries of life? But pray, Sir, what sedition has the people of Canada been guilty of, to provoke the ministry to deprive them of what they were entitled to by their capitulation, and afterwards by the king’s proclamation, to have the benefit of the laws of England? And yet by the late act of parliament, they are reduced to the state of abject slavery, denied the privilege of English subjects, and their whole property put into the hands of men named by the ministry, and turned out by them at pleasure. When we see the ministry treat that favourite prov­

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ince so, possessed by / French Papists, and enlarged on purpose to be a power to scourge the rest of America, surely we cannot expect that they have not the same intentions to overturn the liberties of all the rest of America. 16. You say the Americans, by leaving Britain, have quitted the right of vot­ ing; and what they have voluntarily quitted they have no right to claim. I never heard that any American claimed the right of voting in any election in England, by virtue of any possessions they have in America; all they claim is the privileges in their own country, granted them by their charters, and homologated by par­ liaments, and which they have been in possession of for 200 years. 17. You say there was no occasion to hear the Bostonians in their justification, as the fact was notorious, and known to those who were the judges. This is the first time I ever heard it advanced, that either an individual, or a town, could be condemned in any free country without being heard. Under an arbitrary government this may / be the case, because there the will of the sovereign power is the rule, whether a person is innocent or guilty. As to the peo­ ple of Boston being guilty to the knowledge of their judges, that does not alter the case; for if you look into any of the law books of any civilized nation, you’ll find, although a judge saw a person commit a crime, he could not condemn him without a proof. In this case, the knowledge of the judges was founded on let­ ters from two governors, which has since appeared. By the discovery made from their letters these governors were a disgrace to their employments; for instead of acting the part of friends to the people intrusted to their care, they made it their business to make the ministry their enemies, frequently by advancing falsehoods. 18. You say the power granted to the courts of Admiralty, if a grievance, is no new grievance – it has subsisted for some years. It is true, that this grievance, as well as other grievances and encroachments on the charters of America, have subsisted for several years, but not under differ­ ent ministers; for if the common / opinion of mankind be true, we have had only one minister since his majesty came to the throne, though he has employed dif­ ferent people under him. And if the people in America have bore encroachments on their privileges for some years past, that can be no reason for continuing and encreasing these encroachments; especially when these encroachments have struck at the very vitals of the constitution, by denying them the use of juries, by which their properties were at the absolute disposal of a judge named by the minister, and who he could turn out at pleasure. 19. You say, how slavery can be brought from America here, none but the Americans can see. Here you pretend blindness to a thing obvious to every body; for if America is reduced to slavery, it must be done by a very powerful army; for 6 or 700,000 men who have arms, and know the use of them, won’t tamely submit to slav­ ery: and if that army should succeed, the same ships that transported them to

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America may as easily bring them back when their business is done, in order to compleat the scheme for arbitrary power through all his majesty’s dominions: for the / enemies to the present ministry believe, that the chief view of the pre­ sent measures against America, is to have a pretence to encrease the army very considerably, which is necessary to compleat the scheme for arbitrary power in Britain and Ireland. At present the army amounts to upwards of 30,000 men, which is more then King James had before the Revolution, by which probably he had established papery and slavery, had not King William come to our relief. If we had as many more regular forces as are necessary to execute our present schemes in America, do you think our present happy constitution is safe; besides the danger we run by the encrease of the standing army? Should the ministry succeed in imposing taxes on America at pleasure, the fund of corruption must be so much encreased, that there should be little hopes left for preserving our present happy constitution. 20. You say, that when the legislative power is attacked, there nothing remains but either to crush the spirit of rebellion, or to give up that power. / I answer this by another position, that if the legislative power, appointed by a free people, should at any time encroach upon the privileges and liberties of that people, they have no other remedy, but to take care of their privileges and liberties themselves, when those they have appointed to take care of them act contrary to their duties. And as to our present situation with America, if the leg­ islative power shall (and which I hope may be the case some time or other) find that the ministry have followed wrong measures, they will correct these meas­ ures, and change these ministers, rather than force a free people to defend their liberties by force. 21. Next you say, there are people here who justify measures taken by the Americans against the trade of their mother country, which is unknown in his­ tory. There are hundreds of examples in history where a free people have been forced to shew a seeming disregard to their mother country, by the oppression of those in the legislative power. One example of it you have in the people of Rome when free and oppressed by the senate, / they frequently made a Secessio to Mount Saver, and refused to enlist themselves against the enemies of Rome, ’till their grievances were redressed. What the Americans have done in the general congress, seems what they were forced to by necessity: they found the minis­ try had no regard to their charters and privileges, they therefore shewed, by the resolutions of that congress, that by oppressing America they must ruin the trade of England, beggar its manufactures, and by lessening the number of their sailors, expose themselves to destruction from France, the unalterable and only dangerous enemy to Great Britain. What they foresaw is come to pass; for by the addresses from almost all the trading places in England, the truth of this appears:

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and if the ministry are so keen for ruining the liberties of America, as to chuse, rather than not do it, to risk the ruin of Great Britain, whether are they or the Americans to blame? 22. You say, the people of Cornwal have the same right to talk the language that the Congress at Philadelphia do, as being the first possessors of land in Eng­ land. / This argument of yours is not an argument in favour of what you intend, it is only in favour of the Indians in America, who were the first possessors of the lands there: but if the people of Cornwal could justly say, that the rest of England broke through the original compact with them, by which they had agreed to be part of the kingdom of England, no doubt they had a right to declare themselves free of that agreement, by which they consented to be part of England. But I submit it to your cool judgment, whether the people of Cornwal have ever com­ plaind, that the rest of England have taken any privilege from them, which they had given them, and which they were in possession of for 200 years past, and which had been confirmed to them several times during that time: this ought to be your argument if you intended to make that supposed case of Cornwal the same with that of America. 23. You say the friends of the Americans threaten us to be attacked by the Americans in our turn; therefore, says the author, we must double our troops and militia. / I never heard any friend of America mention what you say as possible; nor need they take any other method to ruin us but to deprive us of their trade and assistance. We have lost the advantages we had by the trade of Portugal; by which we had a balance in our favour of a million yearly. Our trade to Turky is dwindled to a tenth of what it was: and if we lose the trade of America, our West India trade must dwindle of course, as the West Indies are supplied with necessaries from North America. So that if these American schemes should go forward, I should not be surprised, old as I am, to see Great Britain a province to France. In this place you seem to hint at what many sensible people here imagine to be the real intention of the ministry, to double our military force, under pretence of send­ ing an army to America; and it’s easy to bring them back to extinguish liberty here, after they have done it in America. If this is the case, you have published the secret intentions of your employers too soon. 24. You say the friends here of America, not only refuse our parliament the power to tax them, but tell us, that none of our laws can bind them. / You repeat here what you have said before, and I refer you to my answer to it, which in substance was, that no friend here of America, as far as I know, ever maintained that they were not subject to any of our laws; and their practice shews they willingly submit to us the regulation of their commerce by the act of navigation.

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25. You say the last war was begun by the American outcries, and carried on for their defence, and none but themselves were gainers by it. Of all your extraordinary positions, this is the most extraordinary. All the ministers, till those of the present reign, easily foresaw, that by America being properly supported against the encroachments of France, we must become the greatest nation in Europe; as by that we must be supplied with all naval stores from thence, and many other things, which cost this nation some millions yearly to foreign nations; and that their demand for our manufactures must increase every year, as it is computed their numbers double every twenty years; so that, in about / eighty years, there will be more people in British North America, than there is in France, Germany, and Britain, which must increase the number of our manufacturers at home, and our riches, and the number of our sailors. Whereas had we allowed France to build forts on the Ohio and the lakes on the back of our settlements, the French would then have been able to reap all the advantages we now may enjoy from America, and consequently be enabled to prescribe laws to Great Britain. But so blind many now in power are, to the glory and inter­ est of Britain, that I have heard some of them say, it had been better to have indulged France in building these forts on the back of our plantations, rather than to allow our brethren in America to enjoy their privileges, by which alone they can be a great people, or enable us to be great. – As to your observation, that we were no profiters by the war – pray were the Americans to blame for that, that after they had assisted us to destroy the power of France there, and to put us in possession of all their sugar islands, by which, with the sole possession of the fishery of Newfoundland, and of the Havannah, we commanded the trade of France and Spain, and increased / the profits by trade to the extent of four or five millions a year, and increased the number of our sailors, by adding at least 20,000 to their number? I say, was that the fault of the Americans, that we gave up all these advantages, by a shameful peace after that successful war, which cost this nation upwards of eighty millions of money, and the lives of more than 200,000 of our bravest men? By which peace, we received no other advantages but being freed of a German war for the defence of Hanover, in which we had no concern, and which cost us upwards of thirty millions sterling. By this peace France and Spain have recovered their former strength at sea, after we had entirely ruined their naval power, beyond a possibility of their ever recovering it, as we were in possession of their trade which supported it. And our American subjects sup­ ported us in that war beyond their abilities, and shewed an unheard of zeal for their mother country. 26. You say we are complained of for stopping up their ports, destroying their trade, fisheries, &c. whereas they are ruining our trade, and making bankrupts of our merchants. /

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This is a very merry observation of yours: we first block up their ports, ruin their trade, and then endeavour to starve them, by denying them the privilege of supplying themselves with fish, the great support of the inhabitants there: and because they resent this unnatural usage, and shew us that our trade must suffer by our endeavouring to ruin them, therefore we complain against them. This puts me in mind of a man, who, after breaking his neighbour’s head, and wounding him in several parts of his body, in the severest manner, pursued him for striking his hand which held the stick that thus wounded him. 27. You say, that by thus restoring to France what we conquered from them, might bring them to the sense of what they owe us. This proposal of yours is no more than what I have heard mentioned by several of the sycophants of the ministry. And I have no doubt, that had the proposal come before the last house of commons, from the Treasury, it would have succeeded, even after the bounds of Canada had been enlarged: but I hope the present house of commons would abhor such a proposal. It is all / we got by the last successful war, having given up to our enemies all the rest of our valuable conquests. To propose to any British subject to surround our Protestant brethren by French Papists, and by a French government, must be abhorred by every Brit­ ish minister, who does not renounce all feelings for his mother country. I have seen so many things of late supported by a British ministry, which I should have thought took its rise from the court of France, that if the French should threaten to invade Hanover, except we agree to such a proposal, I should not be surprised if a minister was found wicked enough to go into it. 28. You say the people here, who encouraged the Americans by rescinding the stamp act, are only to blame for all bad consequences that may happen; for the Americans would not have opposed it in the way they do now. It must be for ever to the honour of the Marquis of Rockingham6 the rescind­ ing of the stamp act, which at once removed all jealousies from the minds of the Americans, of there being any more encroachments intended against them, for / there were several more encroachments before, And altho’ the Americans might not complain so loudly as they do now when their whole privileges are attacked, yet that is no argument in favour of that tax: for tho’ I should not complain so loudly of a man who deprived me of a guinea, as I would of a man who deprived me of my whole substance, yet you must not infer from that, that I should be insensible of being deprived unjustly of that guinea. And here I must observe something remarkable on this occasion: When the stamp act past in the house of commons, Mr. Grenville7 was at the head of the treasury, and there were only thirty-five members, I think, against it – the very next year, the Marquis of Rock­ ingham was at the head of the treasury, and it was repealed by a great majority, by the very same house of commons.

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29. You say their charters, being forfeited, may now be modelled at our pleas­ ure. This is a new doctrine, unknown in our law books, that a person attempting to defend his charter forfeits it. Such a doctrine would make / charters nuga­ tory, and reflect dishonour on the granters of them, for revoking their own deed without any just provocation. 30. You seem to laugh at supposing it in the power of the Americans to defend themselves against the power sent against them by Great Britain. Suppose another man should laugh at you for laughing at what you laugh at. Which of the two laughs do you think a reasonable man would think best founded? It is true, our fleets may ruin their maritime ports, and hurt their trade; but it is not easy to conquer 6 or 700,000 men, with arms in their hands, and who know the use of them, when they believe they are fighting for every thing that is dear to them. By hurting them to the value of a shilling, I am afraid we shall hurt ourselves in a crown, when we consider all the advantages we have reason to expect will arise from a good correspondence with our American set­ tlements. I have made the foregoing observations on the chief arguments contained in your pamphlet. I / can easily have charity for most people who differ from me in opinion, because different opinions mostly arise from different educations; and we are frequently under biases without being sensible of it. My own educa­ tion has been under the care of my predecessors, who were lovers of liberty, and opposed the encroachments on it in the four last reigns of the Stewart family, and were zealous friends to the Revolution, and the settlement on the present royal family; and I have ventured my life and fortune in its defence. And my principles with regard to government, are much the same with those of Mr. Locke in his treatise on that subject.8 I think from your Pamphlet, your principles are different from mine – this does not surprize me – but I own I am surprized to find any man, who is not dependent on the ministry, declare it to be our interest to go to war with North America, which must ruin the prospect we had of being the greatest nation in Europe, and can serve no interest but that of France, our natural enemy; for had they the direction of our measures, they could not have dictated any more effectual than those now putting in practice, which must end, in my opinion, in the destruction of the trade, manufactures, riches, and power of / Great Britain, and by destroying our trade, lessen the number of our sailors, and so leave us a prey to France. In the time when virtue most flourished at Athens, both virtue and vice were brought on the stage, to recommend the one and expose the other; introducing people who practised either the one or the other. And if Sophocles and Aris­ tophanes9 were alive, they would probably introduce on the stage, those people in power who have pushed on these measures against America.

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At that time nobody was afraid of this freedom of the stage, but bad men; for if people are sensible they intend what is for the publick good, they need not fear calumny, which can never hurt any body long if not well founded. Afterwards when vice crept in, in the days of Menander,10 who Julius Cæsar says was the best writer for the stage, he altered this custom, because there were many who forgot their duty to their country, and could not bear to be exposed on the stage, as their actions could not be justified. / What happened in Greece much about this time, is something like our pre­ sent situation. When virtue flourished, they joined all in opposing the power of Persia, as their mortal enemy, and supported their colonies in Asia Minor; but when the difference arose between Sparta and Athens, they forgot their common concerns for their country, and by courting the friendship of the Persian king, to support their different pretensions to command Greece, they abandoned their colonies to the will of their mortal enemy the king of Persia. Tho’ we have not yet abandoned our colonies to France, yet we are endeavouring to destroy their liber­ ties, and make them useless to themselves or us, by which we weaken ourselves as much as the Greeks did by abandoning and giving up their colonies in Asia. I hope the present parliament will see reason to alter what was done by the last; and it never can be a reflection upon any man or minister to alter his meas­ ures, if he thinks them destructive to his country; for it is no more than saying, he is wiser to-day than he was yesterday. And I own I tremble at the thoughts of what we are exposed to, by the danger we run into from France, by / exporting to America our force both by sea and land, which alone can secure us against the ambitious views of that nation. To conclude: our present situation with regard to our brethren in America, must give the most dismal apprehensions to every body who really has the public interest at heart – to see the nation throw out about 90 millions of money, and the lives of some hundred thousands of their best subjects, in order to secure our valuable dominions in America, against the encroachments of France, by driving the French out of North America; without which our settlements there could not be secure: and after we had thus secured ourselves in the possession of all that large continent, to see us wantonly throwing away all the advantages arising to our country, by the possession of one of the greatest empires in the world; by means of which we would be able to furnish ourselves with naval stores, and other necessaries, in exchange for our manufactures, which cost us some millions a year to foreign nations: I say, to see us wantonly throw away these advantages, by which our trade, our fleet, and manufacturers are supported, and endeav­ ouring to destroy our brethren upon that / continent, because they don’t chuse to part with their liberties and privileges, and be slaves to our ministry here, is something that appears so ridiculous in the opinion of most sensible men I converse with, except pensioners and placemen, and their connections, that one

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could not believe it to have happened, except we had seen it; as by what we have done with regard to America, we have done the very thing France wishes us to do; and which, if persisted in, must end in our ruin, and probably in our being a province to France. Our situation with regard to France is very like that of the free states of Greece, and particularly of Athens, with regard to Philip King of Macedon. When he schemed the conquest of Greece, he pretended to be their best friend, and by bribery got himself elected a member of the Amphictyons, the court which had the care of the affairs of Greece: and when the people of Phocis were guilty of what they called sacrilege against the groves belonging to the oracle at Delphos, he offered his service against those people. At the same time he attacked the principal frontier of Athens, on the borders of Greece: / and when these Allies complained to Athens, their orators, who were all bribed by him, except Demos­ thenes,11 threw delays in the way to prevent the Athenians from succouring their allies, till it was too late. The town of their Allies was taken, and the inhabitants sold for slaves. On pretence of punishing the people of Phocis for their sacri­ lege, he took possession of the pass of Thermopylæ, and so enter’d Greece with his whole army; and, by the battle of Chæronea, enslaved that people, the bravest that ever appeared on earth. Before he discovered his real intentions, he took every method to promote luxury and dissipation amongst the youth of Greece – particularly at Athens there was a club of 60 or 70 of the first families there, who gave themselves entirely up to pleasure, and neglect of the affairs of the publick. To these he applied himself in a particular manner; commending them for their fine taste of life, he desired to be a member of their club, and sent them very rich presents. By such methods, and many fair professions of friendship to the state of Athens, he cajoled them into slavery. Is not our case with France, much the same with that of the free states of Greece, with regard / to the King of Macedon? and does any man of sense, who is not bribed to think otherwise, believe that the intentions of France can ever be to serve the interest of Great Britain? They are our natural enemies, and they never will forgive us for being the only power in Europe which put a stop to their project of universal monarchy. Our saving them from ruin by the last ignomini­ ous peace, will have no other effect but to encourage them to compleat our ruin whenever they can; and surely they never can have a better opportunity, than when our fleet and army is employed to ruin our settlements in America, when our trade and manufactures are ruined, and we want sailors to man our fleet; and when there is universal discontent, not only in America, but in Great Britain and Ireland, by the destruction of trade and manufactures. There is a report prevails, as if France insisted to have back Canada, with all the additions made to it by our ministry: by which they would have the pleasure to encompass the settlements of our Protestant brethren, and so destroy them

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whenever they have an opportunity. It is scarce possible, that even the French could have / the assurance to make this proposal, as this is all we got by the last successful war, and for restoring France and Spain to what we had taken from them, by which we may be said to have been in possession of the trade of America. But after what I have seen, particularly the attempt at once to ruin the liberties of Britain, by making general warrants legal; by the house of Commons imprisoning my Lord Mayor for maintaining the liberties of the city, established by act of parliament; after seeing Popery and slavery established in Canada, and Popish counsellors, judges, and justices of peace, established in the Grenades, contrary to the intention of the act of settlement in the crown by King Wil­ liam – nothing can surprise me. And if we should give back Canada to France, perhaps Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Wight, might follow, if France threaten to invade Hanover, if we refuse them that compliment. But to free ourselves for ever from any dependence on France, we have only two things to do: First, to renew our alliance with the emperor. Secondly, if his Majesty can be persuaded to give Hanover to one of the branches of his family, not possessed of the crown of Britain. This would not only free us from all / dependence on France, but likewise make his Majesty adored by his British subjects, and free Hanover from invasions from France. And as the feudal law, and the law of nations, have been my study, I shall be able to shew that this may be done agreeable to these laws and the practice of the Empire. This will secure us against the only enemy abroad we have to fear. But our danger from ourselves is the greatest of all dangers; for if we don’t get the better of our luxury, venality, dissipation, and want of publick spirit, we must be ruined in the same way that all the free states which have existed before us have been. I have been acquainted with all ranks of men for more than sixty years, and have always found two positions approved of universally. 1. That it would be for the interest of Britain and Hanover, to have different sovereigns. 2. That, by encouraging America, we must be a great nation. But I find now that our ministers maintain a quite different system; but are supported in it by no body but pensioners and placemen, except those who don’t understand the interest of Great Britain. I am, &c.

GLASCOTT, THE BEST METHOD OF PUTTING

AN END TO THE AMERICAN WAR

Cradock Glascott, The Best Method of Putting an End to the American War. Being the Substance of a Sermon Preached on the 13th of December, 1776; The Day of the General Fast, at Tottenham-Court Chapel, (Erected by the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield.) By the Rev. Cradock Glascott, A.M. Chaplain to the Earl of Buchan, and one of the Preachers in the Chapels of the Countess of Huntingdon. With an Address from Henry Peckwell, A.M. and Chaplain to the Marchioness Dowager of Lothian, to his Fellow Subjects on that Solemn Occasion (London: J. W. Pasham, 1776).

While dissenters like Hugh Baillie saw the American controversy in political terms, some evangelicals interpreted it as a religious crisis, a punishment from God, and Cradock Glascott was among them. Born in 1743 in Cardiff, he was the son of

Thomas Glascott, who was known to leading dissenters, including George Whitefield, Charles Wesley and possibly John Wesley. In 1765, Cradock Glas­ cott graduated from Jesus College, Oxford, and was ordained at Christ Church, Oxford. He was later curate at Cleverly, Berkshire, a position he lost due to increasingly intense Calvinist convictions. In 1767, he began an association with Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, and her network of evangelical chapels, later organized as the Huntingdon Connexion. He was also chaplain to David Stewart Erskine, eleventh Earl of Buchan. In 1781, however, he broke these con­ nections and was appointed vicar of Hatherleigh, Devon, where he remained until he died on 11 August 1831. Glascott’s The Best Method of Putting an End to the American War was preached and published in his evangelical era. It begins with a brief address by like-minded Methodist Henry Peckwell (c. 1746–87), which starts characteristi­ cally with ‘My dear Fellow Sinners and Fellow Subjects’ (below, p. 93). Peckwell claims that Glascott has hit upon the only means of putting an end to the American war. Judgments for sin have never been averted but by turning unto the Lord. The deepest councils, the best disciplined armies, the most formidable fleet, and every change of men and measures, – 89 –

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Like Glascott, Peckwell was unapologetic in eschewing political answers to American questions. Controversies can only be solved, he believed, ‘If every man, instead of turning politician, would “turn unto the Lord”’ (below, p. 93). He even blamed politicians for evoking God’s wrath by causing controversy, rhetorically asking, ‘when professing Christians become fierce politicians, either bigotted statesmen, or fiery patriots; when they neglect to be thankful for their own privileges, and forget to pray for their brethren; can any judgments be won­ dered at?’ (below, p. 93). Glascott’s Jeremiad begins with the assertion that the ‘parent of all our mis­ ery, and the source of every evil is sin’ (below, p. 96), and the author is rarely more specific about anything than that throughout the rest of his tirade. He offers that ‘History furnishes us with awful and dire instances of cities which have been destroyed, of countries depopulated, of nations rooted out, of families reduced, and of individuals distressed in body and soul’ (below, p. 96), though he offers no specific examples. Indeed, like Peckwell, he studiously avoids historical and political specificity, explicitly so when stating that ‘Without entering into the political disputes which attend the American war, I may safely affirm that rebel­ lion against God, and the dreadful profaneness of the age are the unhappy causes of it’ (below, p. 96). The solutions Glascott offers to the American crisis are simi­ larly other-worldly. The ‘only way to deprecate God’s anger’, he writes, is for all to follow his advice on ‘what must be rent from the heart’, ‘By what means the heart is inclined to part with it’, and ‘What encouragement we have to turn unto the Lord’ (below, p. 96). First, the heart must be rent from ‘sin’, ‘self-righteous-ness’, and ‘idols’ (worldly as well as religious) (below, pp. 96–8). The means of rending the heart of the above were the ‘word of God … by the sovereign attending power of the holy Ghost’, ‘Affliction’ such as the ‘Public calamities and national evils’ visiting Britain at the time of writing (below, p. 99), and ‘As the hammer of the word is often ineffectual, so the thorns of affliction sometimes rend the flesh but not the heart; in such case, the revelation of the gospel breaks it down’ (below, p. 100). The ‘encouragements we have to turn unto the Lord our God’ are ‘The manifestation of God’s love, the calls of his ministers, and the invitations in his word’ (below, p. 101), as well as God’s ‘gracious name’, ‘faithful promises’, and the ‘examples of his saints’ (below, pp. 101–2). If Peckwell and Glascott offer little in terms of practical political policies, they nevertheless tell us much about the anxieties the American crisis inspired among some of the most pious.

The best Method of putting an End to the American War. BEING THE SUBSTANCE OF A SERMON Preached on the 13th of December, 1776;

The Day of the General Fast, at Tottenham-Court Chapel,

(Erected by the Rev. Mr. GEORGE WHITEFIELD.)

By the Rev. CRADOCK GLASCOTT, A.M. Chaplain to the Earl of Buchan, and one of the Preachers in the Chapels of the Countess of Huntingdon.

WITH AN ADDRESS FROM HENRY PECKWELL, A.M. And Chaplain to the Marchioness Dowager of Lothian, to his Fellow Sub­ jects on that solemn Occasion.

LONDON: Printed by J.W. PASHAM, in Black-Friars;

And sold at Tottenham-Court Chapel; the Tabernacle in Moorfields; the

Countess of Huntingdon’s Chapel, Westminster; the Mulberry-Gardens,

Wapping; Ram’s Chapel, Hackney; at the other Chapels in the same Connec­ tion, both in Town and Country; and at J. Mathew’s, Bookseller, in the Strand,

1776. /

My dear Fellow Sinners and Fellow Subjects. A Day has been long expected, on which we should be called upon unitedly to beseech a throne of grace, to heal the unhappy divisions which have subsisted between the Mother Country and her Colonies – to deprecate God’s anger – to implore his mercy – and to beg his blessing upon a nation whose infidelity and profaneness deserve destruction. In private I have wept for these public calami­ ties, and oftentimes, in my own family, during my long illness, repeated those prayers, which many of you have heard from the / pulpits;* ‘that long life may attend, and that every grace may reign in the royal heart of our beloved sovereign King George – that every branch of his illustrious family may enjoy the conso­ lations of Israel – that infinite wisdom may preside, and infinite power rule over his councils and counsellors; so that peace and plenteousness may abound in his wide extended empire.’ Notwithstanding I have not yet resumed my public ministry, it was with a sensible pleasure I mixed with the thousands, who attended my dear brother and fellow labourer this morning at Tottenham-Court Chapel. His sermon appeared to me so proper, and so judicious, that on my return, finding it made a great impression upon me, I determined to write the substance of it memoriter, and with his permission to lay it before you. May the seasonable, / saving truths it contains deeply affect your hearts, and constrain you to wrestle with the Lord in humble prayer, for the King, the State, the Parent, and the Colonies. If every man, instead of turning politician, would ‘turn unto the Lord:’1 – instead of rending the characters of others, would ‘rend his own heart’2 – in short, instead of deciding, what they are not called to determine, would pray for grace and wisdom on them, who are; the voice of praise would soon be heard, and our public thanksgivings resound from coast to coast. But when professing Christians become fierce politicians, either bigotted statesmen, or fiery patriots; when they neglect to be thankful for their own privi­ leges, and forget to pray for their brethren; can any judgments be wondered at? or any one suppose that an unbelieving and ungrateful people will escape correc­ tion or destruction from the Almighty? Some mistaken men / cry, ‘To your tents O Israel;’3 some incendiaries to arms to arms; but let it be the cry of every gospel minister and gospel follower, ‘To your knees, to your knees, O ye inhabit­ *

Of Tottenham Court Chapel, and the Tabernacle in Moorfields, which belonged to the late rev. George White field; and of the Countess of Huntingdon’s Chapel, in the New Way, Westminster. – 93 –

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ants of Great Britain; mourn and weep for your iniquities:’ turn ye, turn ye ‘to the Lord;’ plead with him, that the ‘devouring sword’ may return to its scab­ bard, and the wounds of our countrymen be bound up. The preacher has hit upon the only means of putting an end to the American war. Judgments for sin have never been averted but by turning unto the Lord. The deepest councils, the best disciplined armies, the most formidable fleet, and every change of men and measures, will prove ineffectual, unless war be declared against our sins, and a thorough change of heart and conduct take place. What brought the deluge? The sins of mankind. The ‘Cities of the plain’ felt the just ire of God, ‘because their sins were very grievous.’4 The learned polite Egyptians and / ‘populous No’5 were ruined by their iniquities. The inhabitants of Canaan could subsist no longer, than till the ‘measure of their iniquity was full.’6 ‘The daughter of Sidon,’7 that ‘Queen of cities,’ was utterly destroyed by impiety against God, barbarity and cruelty against his people. She was proud of her fleets, boasted in her wisdom, and esteemed herself impregnable; but the Lord ‘stained her pride, and brought her honour to contempt.’ Neither the thickness, or the height of the walls of Babylon, her much admired river, or hundred ‘gates of brass,’ could turn aside the ‘besom of destruction,’ which her pride, drunkenness, and sorceries had put into the hands of Jehovah’s servants.8 But ‘the time would fail me to tell’ of Ninevah, of Carthage, of Athens, of Corinth, of Rome, which through infidelity subdued conscience, wrought unrighteousness, and obtained destruction.9 Such awful instances of God’s displeasure, and vindictive power, should stir up / all the lovers of Great Britain, and her American children, to say, ‘Take away from us, O Lord, all hardness of heart, all neglect of thine ordinances, and con­ tempt of thy word; and endue us with a spirit of piety and devotion, a spirit of justice and temperance, of humility and charity, and of all other graces which adorn the Christian profession; that so thy dreadful displeasure and judgments may be ever averted from us, and iniquity not become our ruin.’*. So prays, Your’s sincerely, HENRY PECKWELL, Charlotte-Street, Dec. 13, 1776. /

*

Form of Prayer appointed for the Fast.

Glascott, The Best Method of Putting an End to the American War

The Hymn sung before the Sermon.

For a Public Fast. Lord, look on all assembled here; Who in thy Presence stand, To offer up united Pray’r For this our sinful Land. Oft have we, each in private, pray’d Our Country might find Grace. Now hear the same Petitions made In this appointed Place. Or, if amongst us some be met, So careless of their Sin, They have not cry’d for Mercy yet; Lord, let them now begin. Thou, by whose Death poor Sinners live, By whom their Pray’rs succeed, Thy Spirit of Supplication give, And we shall pray indeed. We will not slack; nor give thee rest; But importune thee so, That, till we shall be by thee blest, We will not let thee go. / Great God of Hosts, Deliv’rance bring, Guide those that hold the Helm; Support the State; preserve the King; And spare the guilty Realm. Or should the dread Decree be past, And we must feel thy Rod; May Faith and Patience hold us fast To our correcting God. Whatever be our destin’d Case, Accept us in thy Son; Give us his Gospel, and his Grace; And then thy Will be done.* /

*

Whitefield’s Hymns, page 225.10

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JOEL ii. 13.

Rend your Heart, and not your Garment, and turn unto the Lord your God. THE parent of all our misery, and the source of every evil is sin. All calamities, public as well as private, flow from it; for our iniquities lay the foundation of our sufferings. History furnishes us with awful and dire instances of cities which have been destroyed, of countries depopulated, of nations rooted out, of families reduced, and of individuals distressed in body and soul: but, whence come these judgements upon a guilty land? from sin. Whence arise destruction to nations, misery to families, pain and anguish to particular persons? from sin. The devour­ ing sword; the raging pestilence, and the murdering famine follow sin. Had not sin entered into the world, there had been neither wars, or rumours of wars – there had been no sickness, no pain, no death, no hell. / Without entering into the political disputes which attend the American war, I may safely affirm that rebellion against God, and the dreadful profaneness of the age are the unhappy causes of it. Sin lays at the root; the Lord help us to lay the ax to it this morning. The Lord incline the hearts of the people, both on this and on the other side of the mighty ocean unto peace. May our ‘Spears be beaten into ‘plough shares, and our swords into pruning hooks.’11 May the olive branch abound in our land, and every happy effect of a joyful and lasting peace be felt among us. After wrestling with God this morning in prayer, I could find no subject more suitable for this solemn occasion, than repentance. Repent was the first word of our blessed Saviour’s public ministry. Repent, repent, was the theme which constantly employed the tongues of his Apostles: and I remember to have read a striking prayer of an eminent preacher in the last century: ‘Lord, if I die in the ‘pulpit, may it be preaching repentance; if I die out of the pulpit, Lord, grant it may be in practising it.’12 / Convinced that the only way to deprecate God’s anger, and to escape his judgements, either as a nation, or an individual, is to be found deeply humbled at his feet, ‘rending not our garments, but our hearts, and turning to the Lord our God.’13 I shall First of all, shew what must be rent from the heart:– Secondly, By what means the heart is inclined to part with, what was once dear as itself: and Lastly, What encouragement we have to turn unto the Lord our God. First then, The heart must be rent from sin. True repentance is always attended with a real conviction of the evil of sin. Natural conscience, when alarmed, will make a man tremble at approaching death: – Reason will shew the absurdity of transgressing his commands, who can destroy with the breath of his mouth; but the Spirit of the Lord alone, whose gift repentance is, can, and will shew the

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abhorrent nature and evil of sin. Too many are partial in their repentance. Herod heard gladly, and forsook many things; but Herod as was too near and too dear to be rent from his heart; so Herod perished. Some truths will rend a tear from the eye; / some a groan from the breast, but all is of little or no avail unless you ‘rend your hearts, and not your garments.’ 2dly, As from sin, so from self-righteous-ness, must the heart be rent. A true penitent as really denies his own righteousness, as a ground of dependence, as he does his iniquities as a source of pleasure. The great evangelic Gentile preacher after enumerating all his privileges, and shewing that if any had a right to boast, except in Christ, it was himself, adds ‘what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ, yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suf­ fered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God.’* So the Father of the faithful had a righteousnesss put to his account, while he was yet in uncircumcision:† and the King of Israel describes ‘the bless­ edness of a man unto whom God imputeth / righteousness without works’,‡ i.e. in which his own works had no share. So close does self-dependence, or a reliance upon self-righteousness stick to the soul, that it requires a very feeling sense of the necessity of parting with it, to prevail upon a person to believe it must be rent from the heart. One of the Erskines (preachers in Scotland a few years ago) illustrated this subject in a sensible manner: ‘A merchant,’ says he, ‘commanding his own vessel, with a very valuable cargo, will endeavour to ride out many a sea, and weather as many storms as he can, before he will part with any of it? but when the ship, the crew, his own life is in danger, he will cast the whole overboard. So a sinner will never deny his own righteousness, till he feels his soul in danger, and till he knows that unless he be found in the Saviour’s, he must perish.’ An old divine, who had spent many laborious years in his Master’s vineyard, when laying on his death bed, said to those around him, ‘I do not feel that I have so lived as not to be afraid to die,’ but I have so learned Christ, as not to fear / an entrance into the joy of my Lord.’ O my dear hearers, it is not for what you have done, but what Christ has done, that your souls are saved. The fair moralist, the proud pharisee, the pious, the just, and the benevolent, in point of acceptance with God, stand with the profane, the drunkard, the whoremonger, and the unjust; for whosoever is saved, finds acceptance through rich grace, the blood of the Lamb, and the righteousness of our incarnate God.14 * † ‡

Phil. ii. 9. Rom. iv. 13. Rom. x. 6.

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3dly, Rend your hearts from your idols. We need not visit either Pagan or Papistical Rome for images. Idolatry does not consist in worshipping stocks or stones, but giving that heart, or that divine worship unto another, which ought to be given unto God alone.* Hence, the worldly / man, whose mind is alto­ gether fixed on gain, who labours night and day to amass his wealth, makes an idol of his business. – The epicure, who chooses a sumptuous dinner, in prefer­ ence to a good gospel-sermon, who prefers ‘the meat which perisheth, to that which endureth to everlasting life,’ makes his ‘belly his God.’16 – The gay and dressy, who spend so many hours in decorating a poor vile lump of clay, which being dust, must soon return to the dust, from whence it came, makes an idol of the body, and is in an awful situation, near unto death. A godly minister of the gospel, occasionally visiting a person of this unhappy stamp, was introduced to a room near to that wherein she dressed. After waiting some hours, the lady came in and found him in tears: she enquired after the reason of his weeping. He replied, ‘Madam, I weep on reflecting that you can spend so many hours before your glass, and in adorning your person; while I spend so few before my God, and in adorning my soul.’ The rebuke / struck her conscience. She lived and died a monument of grace, and after death, was most assuredly raised a monument of glory. A friend, a relation, a child may so steal away the affections, as to become an idol in the heart; hence some are called by that God, who is graciously severe, to bury their beloved Sarahs, to part with their Isaacs, and to mourn for the Jonathans whom they have lost. Learning, natural, and acquired accomplish­ ments, houses, horses, dogs, may possess the greatest share of the human mind, and therefore be esteemed idols. – ‘Rend your hearts,’ O ye idolators, and ‘turn unto the Lord your God.’17 The second thing which I undertook to explain was ‘By what means the heart was inclined to part with, what was formerly dear as itself.’ The psalmist, deep in reflection on the wonders which God ‘when wrought, Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language,’ cries out, ‘What ailed thee, thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou *

Mistaking the real nature of idolatry has led some very well meaning men, into a bad indefensible argument, in favour of those, who, (as Pliny describes the primitive Chris­ tians, in his letter to the emperor Trajan)15 worship Christ as God. It has been said, ‘That supposing the Lord Jesus Christ be not essentially Jehovah, there can be no iniq­ uity, neither will he, who shall judge both quick and dead, be offended by our expressing too much love, in such an undue exultation; nay! it has been hinted, that he would be pleased with it.’ Scripture and reason seem to be of their opinion, who affirm ‘that he cannot be esteemed a good man, if he be not the essential God.’ That on such a supposi­ tion, in accepting divine honours, he became accessary to the grossest sacrilege:– that he himself must be inferior to Mahommed, his religion a body of deceit, and his worship­ pers abominable idolaters.

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wast driven back?’ wonders not less astonishing attend the conversion of a sin­ ner; and no other, no / adequate reason can be given for so great a change upon his heart, but ‘the presence of the God of Jacob.’* Ist. The word of God is a means of rending the heart, not by any intrinsic power it possesses, (for, were that the case, it would always have this happy effect) but by the sovereign attending power of the holy Ghost. Hence the Lord says, ‘My word is a hammer,’ to break the rocky heart in pieces; so that as a hammer may lay upon a rock, time immemorial, without breaking it, unless it be enforced by a powerful arm; so may sinners attend to hear the word of condemnation, months and years, without feeling its effects, unless the all-powerful Spirit of God take it into his able hand.18 – Again, the word is spoken of as being ‘sharper than a two edged sword, ‘piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow;’† by which we also learn the necessity of a hand to grasp it, and power to strike with it, – thus were the hearts of the three thousand rent – thus the soul of the jailor at Philippi – and thus have many sinners been torn from beloved lusts, and obliged / to cast away their idols, even in our own age. 2dly. Affliction is another way which the Lord often takes to wean his people from their sins, and rend their hearts. Public calamities and national evils call aloud, on those among whom they are permitted, to ‘rend their hearts and not their garments, and to turn unto the Lord their God.’ To quarrel with men and measures, to reflect only upon second causes, is, in this case, falling very sinfully short of what the text exhorts to. There is no evil of correction or punishment in a nation or city, but the Lord hath done (i.e. planned, and though by a variety of instruments, executed) it. When civil wars distract our empire, and the sword neglects to return to its scabbard, let ministers ‘weep between the porch and the altar, crying spare, spare thy people, O Lord.’ And may the Lord descend in mercy upon the thousands who surround me, and rend their hearts on account of their own iniquities, and the sins of the nation to which they belong. When the Lord is pleased to visit families, or to chastise individuals, he calls upon them to rend their hearts, to cast / away their sins, to relinquish self-depend­ ence, and to dethrone their idols. Now notwithstanding these warnings are often either misunderstood or neglected, they sometimes revive in an hour of death, and convince the soul of its former insensibility and ingratitude. I have found in the records of history an instance of this. A minister, (whose brother was an officer in the army, and like too many of that corps, in spite of all the admoni­ tions and prayers of the gospel preacher, addicted to very gross and abominable iniquities) addressed the sinful soldier thus: ‘Oh! my brother, you shut out my words, but the Lord, if he has gracious designs towards you, can find the way to * †

Psalm 114. Heb. iv. 12.

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your heart by a bullet or a sword.’ In a few years he received a wound, and upon his death bed, remembering the evangelical reproofs, committed his soul into the hands of a dear redeemer. As one says, ‘Men have brazen foreheads, adamantine necks, and ribs of mar­ ble around their hearts – they bleed not; they bend not; they blush not;’ but the Lord sends his afflictions to cover their faces with confusion, to break the iron sinew of their necks, and to rend the / rocky marble of their hearts. O that they may turn us unto the Lord our God. The leprosy drives Naaman, the Syrian, to seek relief in Israel. Manasseh lives in blood and sin, till a timely affliction awak­ ens his mind. We are told ‘the Lord spoke to him and he would not hearken;’* where-fore ‘he brought upon him the captains of the host of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh among the thorns, and bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon;’19 and when he was in affliction: what then? Did he harden his heart and stop his ears? No. The thorns had took effect, when the word had failed. ‘In his affliction he besought the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers.’ Blessed affliction! happy Manasseh! the Lord will have his own, ‘though he drag them through the thorns; and load their bodies with chains, in order, instrumentally, to knock the shackles from their souls. Affliction brought the prodigal to himself, and made him feel the want of a father’s heart, a father’s hand, and a father’s house.20 He returned, it is said, – but his father ran to meet him: so sinners return; / but mercy, mercy runs to meet them. O rend your hearts my brethren. Turn, turn ye at my reproof, that these thorns may not tear, nor these fetters of affliction gall your souls. Upon this solemn occasion, let each mourn, and weep and pray. Thirdly, As the hammer of the word is often ineffectual, so the thorns of afflic­ tion sometimes rend the flesh but not the heart; in such case, the revelation of the gospel breaks it down. Nothing weans our hearts and destroys our idols so effectually as the love of God shed abroad therein. Ephraim had been warned without effect: he bemoans himself over his unsanctified afflictions, ‘Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised like a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke;’† i.e. I kicked and flung against thy rod, and did not profit by thy correction; and yet, something took effect upon him; for we afterwards hear him say, ‘What have I to do any more with idols.’‡ Whence came this mighty change? God had said, ‘Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone.’§ Let him alone conscience. Let him alone ministers. Let him alone afflictions. O Ephraim, what will become of thee? Hark! my fellow sinners. / The gospel does, what neither the law, or afflictions * † ‡ §

2 Chron. xxxiii. 9 Jer. xxxi. 18. Hos. xiv. 8. Hos. iv. 17.

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can accomplish. ‘God could not give him up.’* His determination is, ‘I will surely have mercy upon him.’† The change is thus brought about. The Lord reveals his mercy, ‘I will heal their backslidings, I will love them freely.’‡ The Lords put a prayer into their mouths: ‘Say unto the Lord, take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously.’§ Then Ephraim breaks out, ‘What have I to do any more with idols?’ ¶ Divine love dethroned his idols. Mercy broke his heart. Free salvation and rich sovereign grace bound him to the very horns of the altar. O Lord display thy mercy; shower down thy love. Hear us, when we adopt Ephraim’s words, and cry, ‘Turn thou us, O good Lord, and so shall we be turned.’** I come now to the third and last thing I proposed, viz. to shew what encour­ agements we have to turn unto the Lord our God. The manifestation of God’s love, the calls of his ministers, and the invita­ tions in his word, are encouragements for us to / turn unto him. A number of objections may arise from the soul’s past transactions, and present feelings, but his infinite love looks over, and his revealed will removes them all. The gracious atonement of his Son has fully satisfied him, the debt is paid. ‘He has made an end of sin, and brought in everlasting righteousness.’†† Ho! every one that thirsts, turn unto the living waters, and drink. Ho! ye pharisees, formalists, and moral­ ists, turn ye, turn ye to the Lord your God; for ‘except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.’‡‡ Ho ye who cozen and defraud, ye who break the sabbath,§§ ye / drunkards and unclean, ‘ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the

* † ‡ § ¶ ** †† ‡‡ §§

Hos. xi. 18. Jer. iii. 20. Hos xiv. 4. Hos. xiv. 2. Hos. xiv. 8. Jer. xxxi. 11. Dan. ix. 24. Matt. vi. 20. ‘Breaking the sabbath’ is become so notorious, especially in country towns, that the shops of many are opened as on other days. This is a crying sin, and an horrible contempt of the dear redeemer, whose resurrection ought then to be commemorated. When the nobles of Judah permitted such a profanation of the sabbath. Neheniah addressed them thus: ‘What evil thing is this that YE do, and profane the sabbath day.’ By not preventing it, when in their power, they became accessory to it. See Neh. xiii. 15 – 21. Awake, O ye rulers, and stretch forth your hand, ye magistrates, to stem this torrent of iniquity; or, being sharers in perpetrating, you will share also in the punishment which will follow it. In order to put a stop to this destructive sin, a society has been lately formed ‘for prevent­ ing the profanation of the sabbath.’ May the Lord direct its directors, and crown their valuable purposes with success.

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friendship of the world is enmity with God.’* Turn ye, turn ye, and ‘he will blot out your transgressions for his own sake, and will not remember your sins.’† Other encouragements arise from his gracious name,‡ and from his faithful promises. His name, the latter part of the verse, from whence the text is taken, tells you is, ‘gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness.’§ Are you unworthy? He is gracious. Are you guilty? / He is merciful. Have you ‘provoked most justly his wrath and indignation against you?’¶ He is ‘slow to anger.’** For what reason are sinners spared who blaspheme his name, break his laws, and despise his gospel? O my friends! ‘His mercies and compassions fail not, there­ fore they are not consumed;’†† he is slow to anger,’ therefore ‘he hath not dealt with us after our sins: nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.’‡‡ Doubting, mourning souls, be not discouraged, but ‘turn unto the Lord your God.’ Your sins, though many, are finite; his mercies are infinite. Your sins, though of long date, began in time: ‘His mercy is from everlasting to everlasting.’ §§ Your ‘sins may have reached unto heaven,’ but ‘his mercy is above the heavens;’¶¶ O turn ye unto his merciful arms, and take refuge in his gracious name. – To which I add as A further encouragement, his faithful promises. Heaven and earth may pass away, but not a tittle of his word shall fail. That the coming sinner shall be received, the trembling soul be comforted, the soul which now lays at his feet, e’er long be / taken into his arms, are truths as certain as that the world was made * James iv. 4. † Isaiah xliii. 25. ‡ Exod. xxxiv. 6,7. In commenting upon this passage, the judicious Mr. Charnock says, ‘When mercy shews itself in state with all its train, it is but to usher in pardoning grace.’ Not a letter, not an attribute that makes up the composition of that name, but is a friend and votary of mercy. And that latter clause a learned man explains of God’s clemency, He will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers, &c. which he renders thus; ‘He will not utterly cut off or destroy, but when he doth visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, it shall be but to the third or fourth generation, not for ever.’ This name of God is urged by Moses, Numb. xiv. 17. Now, I beseech thee, let the power of my Lord be great; the Lord is long suffering and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and trans­ gression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity, &c. Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people, according to the greatness of the mercy. Where Moses repeats this clause more particularly than he doth the other parts of his name; which surely he would not have done, and pleaded it as a motive to God to pardon Israel, if he had not understood it of God’s clemency. § Joel ii. 13. ¶ Liturgy. ** Psalm ciii.8. †† Lam. iii. 22. ‡‡ Liturgy. §§ Psalm ciii. 17. ¶¶ Psalm cviii.4.

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by his word, and is upheld by his power. Did ever any ask and not receive; seek and not find? Did ever man trust in the Lord, and was confounded? No! no, my fellow sinners; for the proof of which, and in order to draw towards a conclu­ sion, I adduce The examples of his saints, as the last encouragement I shall mention ‘to turn unto the Lord your God.’ – Let unclean Mary and bloody Manasseh say; let per­ secuting Paul and the riotous prodigal declare the loving kindness of his heart, and the readiness with which he received their returning souls. Let rebellious Israel, and backsliding Ephraim be called to attest his willingness to ‘forgive iniquity, transgression, and sin.’* The Gentile apostle was set up as ‘a pattern to them who should hereafter believe,’† that none might despair of obtaining mercy. Would to God these encouragements may incline your hearts to him, and that with your fasting, weeping, and prayer, you may increase in the knowl­ edge and love of God; remembering that the fast which he has chosen is / to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burden, to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke, and to deal thy bread to the hungry;‡ – then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speed­ ily; thy righteousness shall go before thee; and the glory of the Lord shall be thy reward.’§

FINIS.

* † ‡

§

Exod. xxxiv. 7. Tim. i. 16. The profit arising from the sale of this Sermon, will be applied to the use of the New-Way Charity School, Westminster. And the Gospel-Society Charity School, in the City of Chichester. Isai. lviii. 6,7.

ROEBUCK, AN ENQUIRY

John Roebuck, An Enquiry, whether the Guilt of the Present Civil War in America, ought to be Imputed to Great Britain or America, new edn (London: John Donaldson, 1776).

John Roebuck was an innovative industrialist, primarily an ironmaster. Born in Sheffield but educated in Scotland, he had a wide range of interests. His concern in the American crisis no doubt arose from genuine political engagement, but it coincided with a broader interest in Britain’s economic welfare. He admitted as much when he noted in his American pamphlet that raising revenue in Amer­ ica would ‘enable Britain to revive some of its declining manufactures’ (below, p. 124). Roebuck’s wide-ranging Enquiry, whether the Guilt of the Present Civil War in America, ought to be Imputed to Great Britain or America imputes it to America. He starts by analysing colonial charters, using the examples of Virginia and Massachusetts, the two most truculent colonies, to show how their 21-year exemptions from British taxation were mere temporary expedients and ‘imply the right and propriety of their being taxed if found expedient at the expiration of that term’. ‘And the charter of Pensylvania declared’, he adds, ‘that the inhabitants of that colony should not be taxed, except by their own assemblies, or by act of parliament in England’ (below, p. 111). He also notes that, as colonists retained the rights, privileges, and freedom of Englishmen, and are protected by English arms, they are of course subject to the laws of the English parliament: For it is impossible to possess the rights of a citizen without being subject to the duties and allegiance of one (below, p. 111)

He then notes the Navigation Acts of 1651, 1660, 1673 and 1696, and other legislation from the Naval Stores Act (1705) to the Iron Act (1750) as proofs that parliaments ‘from the first granting of the charters to his present majesty’s reign, have uniformly exercised a supreme authority over all the colonies, and have raised taxes from them upwards of one hundred years’ (below, p. 114). Roebuck also takes on colonists’ arguments directly, first by denying a dis­ tinction between taxes for ‘raising a revenue’ and older ones ‘to regulate the – 105 –

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commerce’ (below, p. 114) of empire, noting that the latter were similarly ‘levied by his majesty’s officers of the customs, and the proceeds paid into the exchequer’ (below, p. 115). To the point that ‘the inhabitants of the colonies are Englishmen, and therefore according to the spirit and constitution of England, can only be taxed by their own representatives’, he notes that actual voters do ‘not amount to one sixth of the freemen of Britain, or one 20th of the whole inhabit­ ants’ (below, pp. 115–16). He answers claims that colonists could not afford taxes by citing Edmund Burke’s observation in his March 1775 speech to the House of Commons that colonists’ ‘exports have encreased from £. 569,000 to £. 6,024,000, from the year 1704, to 1774’ (below, p. 118). Ultimately, though, like other opponents of Burke, Roebuck seems to be arguing more against Brit­ ish supporters of the Americans than against Americans themselves. Making the point that much more is at stake than just the right to tax the colonies, he argues that If a parent state cannot justly tax its colonies, and exercise dominion over them, nei­ ther can it justly restrict their commerce. If the former are inconsistent with civil liberty and the natural rights of man, so is the latter. The Act of Navigation is as unjust as an imposition of three pence a pound duty on tea: the one therefore may be as rightfully resisted as the other; and all the arguments which have been alledged against taxing the colonies, apply with equal force against the Act of Navigation. (below, p. 128)

He also speaks to a home audience with his attempts to assuage fears that Ameri­ cans will win the war: Does the standing army of America amount to 15,000 men? Are not most of them enlisted for short periods, and are they not paid with paper currency instead of real cash? – Thus circumstanced, dare the officers exact strict obedience from the soldiers, or is it possible for such an army to be regularly and effectually disciplined? (below, p. 136)

He thus concludes that ‘A well appointed army of twenty thousand men will put to rout any number whatsoever of such disorderly ill-disciplin’d forces as the Americans can bring into the field’ (below, p. 136).1 Notes: 1. R. H. Campbell, ‘Roebuck, John (bap. 1718, d., 1794), ironmaster’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 47, pp. 518–20.

AN

ENQUIRY,

WHETHER

The GUILT of the Present CIVIL WAR in AMERICA,

Ought to be imputed to

GREAT BRITAIN or AMERICA.

By JOHN Roebuck, M.D.F.R.S.

A NEW EDITION.

LONDON:

Printed for JOHN DONALDSON, the Corner of

Arundel Street, No. 195, in the Strand,

MDCCLXXVI. /

ADVERTISEMENT. If any Facts are misrepresented in the following Pages, the Author will be much obliged to any Gentleman who will inform him (by a letter to be left with the Pub­ lisher) where Evidence may be obtained to correct them. /

An ENQUIRY, &c. Before the close of the last war, the inhabitants of the English colonies in America were considered as Englishmen, having a right to the same privileges with those who continued to reside in England, subjected to no separate laws, except such as the mutual advantages of commerce and situation rendered indis­ pensably requisite. In this capacity they were defended and protected by the arms of Great-Britain; and every Englishman, regardless of the treasure that was lavished in the cause of the colonies, considered every advantage gained as an extension of the laws, freedom, and power of this country. The open and unsus­ picious English, never apprehended that their distant fellow citizens would have the faintest wish to tear from the parent state members that she had guarded with so much affection, and nourished with so much of her blood. The French were of different sentiments, they declared publickly in the coffee-houses at Paris, that the conquest of Canada would be no injury to France, but would / ultimately break the forces of Britain, by opening a way to the separation of provinces which now made a part of her united strength. The intercepted let­ ters of Montcalm,1 the celebrated commander of the French forces in Canada, declared the same sentiments. Yet so little deference did Englishmen pay to their opinions, that a pamphlet, supposed to be wrote by the Earl of Bath,2 addressed to a noble Peer, and a great Commoner, which was published purposely to warn the nation of some errors they were likely to commit, in the intended treaty of peace, and which strongly recommended the retaining of the West India islands, preferably to the northern continent of America, never supported this opinion, by the smallest hint, that in order to secure more firmly the allegiance of the New-England provinces to Britain, it might be expedient to leave part of Can­ ada in possession of the French. The English conscious of their own intentions, and having not the least distrust of the mutual confidence and affection of their fellow citizens in that part of the empire, were anxious solely to secure their colo­ nies from foreign violence. Actuated by these principles, they retained Canada, / and relinquished the more profitable possessions of Martinico and Guadaloupe. Unhappily this belief of reciprocal affection is now found to be an illusion: A civil war is commenced between Great-Britain and her colonies of North America: A war that must somewhere imply the deepest guilt: But to which party the guilt is to be imputed is the subject of the following disquisition; and the cause of the injured part, the most interesting cause that has occurred since the Revolution, will dwell on every honest citizen’s mind, and prove a sufficient – 109 –

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apology for the attempt of a private person to perform a task for which others have superior advantages of information and ability, but none a more disinter­ ested desire to establish the truth. The thirteen provinces of America, which are at war with Britain, were estab­ lished in consequence of charters granted to them by the crown of England. They continued till very lately without exception to acknowledge the author­ ity of these charters: They have indeed boasted of them as their surest arms of defence. Habemus senatus consultum quasi gladium in vagina conditum, says the Farmer’s Letters.3 / The first charter was granted by James I. in the year 1606, to Sir Thomas Gates, and others of the city of London and elsewhere, giving them ‘licence to deduce colonies into any part of America, lying between four and thirty and five and forty degrees of northern latitude.’ Which tract of country includes the whole of the four colonies of New-England, except a very small part of the provinces of Main and New Hampshire, the whole of the colonies of New York, Jersey, Pensylvania, the counties of Newcastle, Kent, Sussex on Delawarre; the colonies of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and part of South Caro­ lina. This charter, conformably to the desire of the gentlemen to whom it was granted, appointed that two colonies or plantations should be established. One of them by certain knights and others of the city of London and elsewhere, at any place on the coast of America, between thirty four and forty one degrees of northern latitude, which should be called the first colony. And the other by certain knights and others of Plymouth and other places, between thirty eight and forty five degrees of northern latitude, which should be called the second, or Plymouth colony. And to prevent their / interfering with each other, the char­ ter provided, that as soon as any settlement was fixed, no subsequent plantation should be made within one hundred miles of that which had been just planted. The charter ordains, that each of these colonies shall have a council to regulate all causes which may arise within the colony; it further ordains, that one superior, or domestic council, shall be established, consisting of thirteen persons appointed by the king, which shall be called the council of Virginia, and have the superior management and direction only of all matters that concern the government of the several colonies within the above mentioned precincts. And to encourage the first settlers, they are allowed to impose a duty of two and a half per cent. on all merchandizes imported into the said colonies by persons not being of the colonies, but being of the realms and under the obedience of the king; and five per cent. on all merchandizes imported by other persons. These duties, during the space of twenty one years, are to be wholly applied to the benefit of the colo­ nies within which they are levied; and at the expiration of that term they are to be taken to the use of the king, and collected by such officers and ministers as the king / shall appoint. It further ordains, that the inhabitants of the colonies,

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and such children as shall be born within the precincts of them, are to enjoy ‘all the liberties, franchises, and immunities, within any of the king’s other domin­ ions, to all intents and purposes as if they had been abiding, and born within the realm of England, or any other of the said dominions.’ The proprietors of the first charter not meeting with the expected success, obtained from the crown an alteration of their charter; and the thirteen prov­ inces, now at war with Britain, have in consequence received distinct charters under successive reigns. To encourage the original settlers, the first charter of Massachuset’s Bay, granted to the people of New England an exemption from all taxes for the space of one and twenty years. And the charter of Pensylvania declared, that the inhabitants of that colony should not be taxed, except by their own assemblies, or by act of parliament in England. And in every charter it is declared, that not only all the English who settle in the colonies, shall retain the rights and privileges of Englishmen, but all who are born there, or in the pas­ sage to and from England to the several colonies, / shall be deemed natural born subjects of England.* Since therefore the inhabitants of the English colonies retain and possess the rights, privileges, and freedom of Englishmen, and are protected by English arms, they are of course subject to the laws of the English parliament: For it is impossible to possess the rights of a citizen without being subject to the duties and allegiance of one; and the very clauses in the charters, which judiciously and humanely exempt the colonies from taxation for a certain number of years, after their first settlement, virtually imply the right and propriety of their being taxed if found expedient at the expiration of that term. By the spirit of the charters, it is manifest that the several princes who granted them, and the planters or corporations to whom they were granted, considered the colonies as subject to the legislative authority of England. It is now proper / to enquire what has been the conduct of England towards them, from the grant­ ing of the charters to the origin of the present contest. Eight years after granting the first charter of Virginia, the house of commons having received petitions, and being about to pass a bill relating to that charter, it was moved, that a member of the house, being a patentee, or one of those to whom the charter of Virginia had been jointly granted, and as such inter­ ested in the petition then depending before the house, should withdraw during the debate; it was resolved by the house, that he should not withdraw; and this resolution was formed on the following parity of reason, ‘that if there was a bill depending concerning York, the member for York would not withdraw, for it *

See a history of the charters of Massachuset’s Bay, in a pamphlet, written by Israel Mau­ duit, Esq;4 and a minute detail of the several charters, in a book, entitled, Remarks on the principal Acts of the Thirteenth Parliament of Great Britain;5 and a collection of charters printed for Owen, Almon and Blythe, in 1766.6

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concerneth the common-wealth.’ A reason which implies, that the house consid­ ered Virginia as a part of the state no less than any borough in England.* During the civil wars, when the house of commons alone, or jointly with the lords, assumed the sovereignty of Britain, they assumed the same author­ ity over the colonies as over any county in England. They passed an ordinance / in the year 1642, ‘exempting them for a time from all taxations whatever; in the year 1646, they passed another ordinance, exempting them, during the space of three years, from all customs, subsidies, taxations, imposition, or other duty, EXCEPT THE EXCISE.’† In the year 1650, they declare in the preamble to an act, or ordinance, ‘That in Virginia, and divers other places in America, there are colonies and planta­ tions which were planted at the cost, settled by the people, and supported by the authority of this nation; which are and ought to be subordinate to, and depend­ ent upon England, and have ever since the planting thereof been and ought to be, subject to such laws, orders, and regulations as are, or shall be made by the parliament of England.’ In the year 1650 they passed that celebrated ordinance of Oliver St. John, which, though the offspring of the pride and revenge of an individual, has proved most honourable and beneficial to England. The ordinance restrained the commerce of every English colony to Britain.‡ These several ordinances, which so indisputably assert the supreme authority of England over all / its American colonies, were passed by a house of commons chosen by the people of England, at a time when their dread of slavery, had wound up the spirit of freedom to its highest pitch. If therefore these gentle­ men, confessedly zealous for liberty, asserted their authority over the colonies, restrained their commerce, and approved the taxing of them even with internal taxes, the taxes of excise, they certainly did not consider themselves as guilty of acts of oppression; they thought they were innocently discharging their duty, in supporting the glory and welfare of England. The candid and liberal will ascribe to others the same motives of action. After the Restoration, the king, lords, and commons, continued to assume the same supreme authority over the colonies, as had been exercised by the several sovereign powers, during the preceding twenty years. They granted to the crown a duty of tonnage and poundage, and declare the duties shall be payable upon commodities not only imported into the realm of England, but also into the dominions thereunto belonging. See 12 Charles II. They wisely and unanimously passed an act, called, the Act of Navigation, confirming the beforementioned / celebrated ordinance of St. John, which act * † ‡

Journals, vol. I. page 481 and 487. See Lords Journals, vol. 8. page 685. See Parl. Hist. vol. 19. page 314, 315.

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restrained the commerce of the colonies to their mother country. See 12 Car. II. c. 18. Three years after they passed another act to keep the colonies, as they express themselves, in a firmer dependence on England, to make this kingdom a staple not only of the commodities of the plantations, but also of the commodities of other countries for supplying them. See 15 Car. II. c. 7. In the year 1672, they passed an act imposing a duty on sugar, molasses, tobacco, &c. when transported from one colony to another; which duties or customs are ordered to be collected by officers appointed by the commissioners of the customs in England, and the penalty for nonpayment to be the same as for defrauding his majesty of his customs in England; these customs were appointed to be levied at the ports from which the commodities were exported. On the payment of these duties the colonies assumed the liberty of exporting these goods to foreign markets; but to prevent such a false interpretation of the act, in the year 1696 (7 and 8 William III. c. 22) another act was made, in which these several duties are ordered to be paid / on goods transported from one colony to another; and it is further provided, that notwithstanding the pay­ ment of such duties, security shall be given that the goods are to be exported to some part of his majesty’s dominions; and the officers appointed for collecting these his majesty’s revenue (as the act calls them) have the same power of visiting, searching, and entering wharfs, warehouses, &c. as the officers of the customs in England. In this revenue act of king William, there is this remarkable clause, very similar to the ordinance of 1650, before mentioned,* and also to the Declaratory Act passed in his present majesty’s reign, when lord Rockingham7 was first lord of the treasury, ‘That all laws, bye-laws, usages or customs, at this time, or which hereafter shall be in practice in any of the said plantations, which are in any wise repugnant to the beforementioned laws, or any of them, so far as they do relate to the said plantations, or any of them, or which are any wise repugnant to this present act, or to any other law hereafter to be made in this kingdom, so far as such laws shall relate to and mention the said plantations, / are illegal, null, and void to all intents and purposes whatsoever.’ The above act also regulates the internal policy of the colonies, by precluding the colonists from alienating their lands in favour of others than natural born subjects. In queen Anne’s reign several acts were passed, prohibiting the exportation of rice and molasses to foreign markets; prohibiting the cutting down of pine, pitch or tar trees, not inclosed and under a certain diameter; ascertaining the rates of foreign coins in America; establishing a general Post-Office, and appointing *

See page 9.

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post-masters, and fixing the rates of postage. These acts not only regulate the internal government of the several colonies, but the last of them actually raises an internal revenue. See 3 and 4 Anne, c. 5 and 10; 6 Anne, c. 30; 9th Anne, c. 10. In the reign of George I. an act was made, ordering the plantation duties, as they are in this act called, which were established by the 25th of Charles II. to be paid into the exchequer; and in the same reign, an act was made further restrain­ ing the cutting of pine trees, conformably to the act made in queen Anne’s reign; and in / two other acts during this reign, furs and copper ore are forbid to be exported to any place except Great Britain. In the reign of George II. it is enacted, that an affidavit, taken before the mayor, or other chief magistrate, of any town in England, should be received as legal evidence in all the courts of the plantations; and it was also enacted, that lands, houses, negroes, other hereditaments, and all real estates whatever, should be liable to, and chargeable with all debts due to the king or any of his subjects, see 5 George II. and in the same reign, cap. 7. the commons give and grant, certain duties on all foreign spirits, molasses, syrrups, sugar and panels, imported into the plantations; see 6 George II. c. 13. In the 14th of George II. an act passed, imposing a duty of sixpence a month on all the British American sailors, towards the support of Greenwich Hospital. In the same reign an act passed, restraining the governors and assemblies of the provinces, from making any act, order, resolution, or vote, whereby paper bills, or bills of credit, shall be created or issued, and also the acts prohibiting the expor­ tation of hats, from one plantation to another, or any other place / whatsoever, and for preventing the erection of any mill, or other engine for slitting or rolling iron, or plating forges, worked with a tilt hammer, or furnaces for making steel. These acts and ordinances, incontestibly prove, that the legislative power, during every king’s reign, and the Lords and Commons during the Interregnum, from the first granting of the charters to his present majesty’s reign, have uni­ formly exercised a supreme authority over all the colonies, and have raised taxes from them upwards of one hundred years. The reader will therefore naturally wonder, whence arose this present dispute, since it is not easy to discern, that a tax of threepence a pound on tea is more oppressive than five shillings on a hundred weight of sugar; and yet the exacting of this tax on tea, is held out by the Americans as the justifiable reason for the commencing the present civil war. Let us therefore calmly enquire whether there is any essential difference between this duty and those before imposed. It is alledged, that this tax was imposed with the express intention of raising a revenue from the colonies, whereas the former taxes had only been imposed with a view to regulate the commerce; but before we give our assent to such / allegations, it behoves one who wishes to know the real truth, to examine the acts of parliament, and compare them with each other. The duties or customs on

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sugars, &c. established by 25 Charles II. were ordered to be levied in the colony from whence the commodities were exported, and not in the colony into which they were imported. But notwithstanding the payment of this duty, security was to be given for the actual landing of the goods in the several colonies for which they were entered. The higher duties laid on sugar, molasses, &c. by 6 George II. encouraged indeed the commerce of the English colonies, as well as augmented the revenue. The allowing a drawback of one shilling in the pound on tea, on exportation to the colonies, and only imposing a duty of threepence on their importation, tends to prevent smuggling and encourage commerce; the imports on sugar, &c, as well as the imports upon tea, are levied by his majesty’s officers of the customs, and the proceeds paid into the exchequer. The one is as much an internal tax as the other, the one is no more necessary for the regulation of commerce than the other. The one as effectually raises a revenue as the other; / since therefore the imposing this tax on tea, is conformable to the original char­ ters, conformable to acts of parliament passed very early, and to the customs and practice of England for these hundred years, the debate would seem to be closed, and the offering any further argument in support of the measure, seems offering an insult to the reader. But as some gentlemen, of great eminence, and who at times highly possessed the popular favour, have declared themselves of contrary sentiments; and as their authority has given spirit to the colonies, and has induced many in this country to adopt the same opinion, it may be expedient to examine the specious argu­ ments which have been advanced. It is urged, that the inhabitants of the colonies are Englishmen, and therefore according to the spirit and constitution of England, can only be taxed by their own representatives; that as their distance renders it impossible for them to be represented in the British parliament, they can never be taxed except voluntarily, by their own assemblies; that if the parliament of England has a right to tax them a single farthing, / without their own consent, it has a right to tax them to the last farthing of their possessions. That the arguments which were urged in defence of Hampden, in the noted cause of ship-money, apply with equal propriety in favour of the Americans, whom it is as illegal and oppressive for the parliament of England to tax without the consent of their own assemblies, as it was for the king to levy ship-money solely by his own authority; that a parliament, or house of commons, exercis­ ing an authority over a people, who have no influence in the nomination of the representatives who compose that parliament, may be as tyrannical as a single person; that encreasing the number of tyrants, does not decrease the tyranny. Though it may be allowed, that in the speculative case of a government to be new modelled, every individual ought to be allowed an equal vote in the choice

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of the legislature, yet it may be justly doubted, whether England, either now or ever did approach nearly to this perfection. About a hundred years ago, the county and city of Durham did not send members to parliament, and yet for above fifty years preceding / that period they paid subsidies, as well as other cities and counties; and when they petitioned the house of commons, to allow them to send members to parliament, the house rejected the petition, on a division of 65 to 50. See the Journals, vol. 9, page 69, and the particulars in Grey’s Debates, page 120, vol. I. In a few years after, the house granted their reasonable request, and an act passed accordingly. The number of freeholders, citizens, burghers, who have the right of voting in the choice of members of parliament, does not amount to one sixth of the free­ men of Britain, or one 20th of the whole inhabitants; yet these people who have no vote, suffer no personal inconvenience, nor are the inhabitants of Birming­ ham, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, and other towns, which send no members to parliament, more enslaved than the voters of borough towns. – These facts are not recited to justify an unequal representation, but to show that a comfort­ able degree of freedom may be enjoyed in a state, that has not attained to the perfection of an equal representation; and that the gentlemen who have wan­ tonly asserted, that taxation and representation are / inseparable, have not paid a decent regard to truth. If this maxim be the spirit of the English constitution, the practice, custom, and law of the land, has not been always conformable to such a spirit. The inhab­ itants of the Isle of Man, have been lately subjected to pay customs and duties, though they send no member to parliament, and no murmur was raised on the occasion. The arguments therefore which prove, that the king could not justly of his sole authority, without the gift and grant of parliament, levy ship-money, or any other tax, loan or benevolence, do not at all avail against the parliament’s taxing Englishmen, or the Colonies, who have no vote in the choice of the mem­ bers who compose the parliament. When the king levied ship-money, without the gift and consent of parlia­ ment, he notoriously violated the law of the land; but the taxing of the colonies by parliament, is neither contrary to the law of the land, nor to their charters. The king by levying ship-money, &c. of his own authority, is in reality con­ stituting himself sole legislator: The parliament by taxing the / colonies acquires no new authority; she is already their supreme legislature, it is her duty to govern them with candour and equity, but not to withdraw from them her protection, nor to relinquish her sovereignty over them. Much has been said, to prove that the colonies under such subjection, are in a state of slavery. In the freest government, every man is a slave to the laws; and must either submit to such slavery, or forfeit the benefits of public order; – the

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truth of this alternative some societies have probably by this time too severely experienced. Every colony is subject to the authority or will of the original state; which subjection or slavery, if it must be so called, is inseparably attached to the condi­ tion of a colony; when a colony refuses to acknowledge this supremacy, it assumes the rights of an independent state: Yet, though the colonies be thus absolutely subject to the parliament of England, the individuals of which the colony consist, may enjoy security, and freedom; there is not a single inhabitant, of the thirteen colonies, now in arms, but who may be conscious of the truth of this assertion. The compliment which Montesquieu / pays to the legislature of England on the government of her colonies, is strictly true, that while she keeps the body politic in a state of dependence, she makes the individual compleatly free.8 How specious soever the argument may appear, that a body of people, sub­ ject to the will of a legislature, however numerous, which they do not appoint, are as much in a state of slavery as if they were subject to the will of a king or any single person; yet it is not just nor conformable to fact. The populous and wealthy city of Amsterdam is governed by forty burgomasters; and the large Canton of Berne by no more than two hundred and ninety nine citizens, even when the great council is compleat; a vacancy in each of these states is replaced by the surviving members; and the rest of the inhabitants who are not burgomas­ ters, or of the great council, have no voice at all in the choice; yet neither is the citizen of Amsterdam, or an inhabitant of Berne, accounted a slave, or liable to the same oppression as a citizen of a despotic prince. It may however be alledged, that there are peculiar circumstances which prevent the burgomasters / of Amsterdam, or the great council of Berne, from oppressing the people. There are also principles or motives of prudence which have hitherto so strongly operated in the British parliament, as to prevent it from offering the least oppression to her colonies; and will not the same motives or principles, continue to influence its conduct, and produce the same effect? – The late acts of parliament, which have been passed, since part of the colonies were in actual rebellion, are no exception. These acts were deemed necessary to maintain the supremacy of Britain; when the colonies return to their duty, the parliament will also resume its old good-humour and candour. A British colony cannot be oppressed except by an act of parliament, and it is scarcely possible that the three branches of the legislature should concur to pass an act of notorious oppression. The king has evidently no interest to urge one part of his subjects to tyrannize over another, or violently seize the property of one part of his subjects, solely to prevent the other from paying their just trib­ ute. The advantages which a member of either house would obtain, by laying an oppressive tax on a colony, in order / to alleviate the taxes of this nation, are too inconsiderable to influence even the most avaritious.

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The minister who should dare to propose such an act of injustice, would in this free country raise a clamour, which would incessantly pursue him, and which even all the charms of place would not be able to silence. But as those opinions are justly esteemed to be founded on the most solid basis which are founded on facts, we shall be best enabled to form a just opinion of what may hereafter happen, by taking a view of what has already past. Before the present contest, the total revenues of the whole continent of America, which were accounted for in the Exchequer, did not amount to above £. 75,000, which is but a small proportion of that sum which has been annually spent to support and protect them, and to give bounties on such of their products as it has been judged expedient to encourage. A gentleman, who surely must be acknowledged by themselves to intend them no ill, has declared, that their exports have encreased from £. 569,000 to £. 6,024,000, from the year 1704, to 1774. They are now also said to have obtained such wealth and power, that the whole / force of Britain is not able to command their obedience. If therefore in the space of seventy years, they have attained such amazing power and commerce, and the whole burdens laid upon them be so small, it is quite unnecessary to urge any further arguments to prove that they have not hitherto been oppressed. And now that it has lately been judged expe­ dient to oblige them to contribute a more equitable share to the support of the necessary demands of the state, they have found people in this country, who have zealously opposed this demand, not on the pretence, that the ratio demanded of them was greater, or even equal to the share which they ought to contribute. But upon this extraordinary plea, that the gentlemen dare not trust themselves; they are afraid, that after having experienced the advantages of a moderate tax, they shall be tempted to lay on an immoderate one. Since therefore there are so great a body of the people, who are afraid to do right, lest they should hereafter be enticed to do wrong, we may readily judge, what would be the general spirit of the nation, if a notorious act of violence was attempted. / They are no inconsiderable part of the nation, who at present favour the Americans, alledging, that favouring their cause, is favouring the cause of equity and freedom. Surely neither the Americans nor their abettors, will endeavour to invalidate this argument, by insinuating that these gentlemen may possibly oppose the measures of the administration from other views not quite so gener­ ous and disinterested. And no man can judge so harshly of his country, as to apprehend that virtue and the love of liberty is to die with the present patriots; since therefore they have so strongly expressed their dread of establishing cus­ toms which they themselves acknowledge have only the appearance of wrong, they may enjoy the comfortable hope that their posterity would at least as warmly detest what is really and notoriously wrong. If so, the rights and liberties

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of America are quite secure under the protection and sovereignty of a British parliament. But if the Americans thought otherwise, and suspected that their liberties, by paying obedience to such a power without being represented, were endangered, it was their duty to have petitioned the house for a representation as had / been formerly practiced.* And their withdrawing their allegiance without making such a requisition, while they were enjoying the privileges of Englishmen, was ungrateful and unjust, and every state in Europe will deem it rebellion. It is urged in favor of America, That whatever clauses there may be in the charters, or acts of parliament, respecting England’s right to tax the colonies, yet as in fact they have never been taxed to any considerable extent, the law or right is now become obsolete or tacitly renounced; and that the renunciation is even in some measure declared by permitting the assemblies of the several prov­ inces to raise money for the support of their own government; that it is absurd to suppose two separate powers to have the right of raising money in the same province; and that this absurdity has, in effect, been acknowledged by requisi­ tion of a secretary of state made to them to raise money during the war; and by the thanks and the reimbursement they received from a British parliament at the conclusion of it. The observation of Montesquieu is just, That England on the establish­ ment of the colonies has / rather had a view to the encrease of trade than the exaction of a revenue. At their first establishment she has even supported and cherished them at considerable expence. Parliamentary aids have been so lately and bountifully granted for the support of Georgia, Florida and Nova Scotia, that their impression cannot be yet effac’d from the memory of any in England. But though these aids have humanely and politically been granted to most of the colonies, to enable the first planters to surmount the obstacles which unavoid­ ably occur in the establishment of new settlements, yet as soon as they acquired strength, with equal propriety taxes have been imposed, though in so moderate a degree as rather to have the appearance of being laid on with a view to regulate the commerce and assert the right of taxation, than for the purpose of a revenue. In a country thinly peopled the expence of levying taxes is often equal, and some­ times exceeds, the amount of them; probably for this reason the excise laid on in 1646 as mentioned before, was not collected, nor the duties of tonnage and poundage in 1660. Besides, if the calculations which are so incessantly rung in our ears, of the rapid encrease of / the inhabitants in America, be just, that they double every twenty or twenty-five years, the number of inhabitants in the year 1716, con­ sidering the prodigious swarms of Germans and Britons which since annually *

See p. 18, 19.

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emigrated thither, could scarce exceed three hundred thousand; and conse­ quently the revenues which might have been raised from such a small number, scattered over a wide extensive country, would be too trifling for a national con­ sideration. The colonies have indeed, with the approbation of the crown, expressed by their governors, been permitted to levy some small revenue for regulating the internal policy of the country: corporations, counties, and parishes in England, are also permitted to a certain extent to raise money for the maintenance of the poor, reparation of churches, bridges, high-ways, &c. and though this power has been exercised with propriety to a greater extent in the provinces, yet the parlia­ ment of Britain has asserted its controuling power over them whenever it was judged to be exercised improperly or to the general detriment. The act of assembly of Virginia, which laid a duty on the importation of negroes, was annulled, / and an act passed in the 24th George II. restraining the governors and assemblies of the provinces from making any act, order, reso­ lution, or vote, whereby paper bills, or bills of credit shall be issued under any pretence whatever. And in the 14th of George II. an Act was passed restraining them from erecting Banks. But the Americans have exercised this power of taxa­ tion over themselves with so much moderation that the parliament has rarely had occasion to restrain it. They would not cess themselves and raise sufficient sums even to repel the invasion of the Indians in the year 1754. At the close of the last and the preceding war the money which the provinces of America had spent during the war, was restored to them by parliament; the provinces of Massachuset’s Bay and New Hampshire were the only provinces who raised any money the first war, and therefore there was some propriety in repaying them, especially as some few private people had, in expectation of being amply repaid, advanced money otherwise much beyond their abilities. And in the last war Mr. Pitt,9 then secretary of state, wrote circular letters to several of the provinces, requesting them to lend money to government / for the support of the war in America, and pledging his honour that he would use his utmost endeavours to see them repaid by parliament. – The money raised by these provinces in consequence of those letters, compared with the money raised in Britain, was but a drop in the bucket; yet this is the foundation from whence all our ills have flowed; the Americans then first began to conceive the opinion that the right of taxation was solely vested in their own assemblies. It will be some apology for the parliament’s complying with Mr. Pitt’s engage­ ments, if we consider, that as some of the provinces had exerted a spirit against the common enemy more than others, it was but just in the British parliament to restore them to an equality with those provinces which had shewn less zeal for the support of the empire. – It might perhaps have been wiser in the parliament to have acted like the Romans (Livy,10 b. 27. c. 29) and exacted a double ratio

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from the colonies who had not manifested a proper zeal, than to have restored to the others the small pittance which they had granted. Small it may surely be called, for in the sequel / of these pages it shall be proved to be so in comparison of what the people of Britain advanced. The fallibility of parliament is by certain people freely enough announced on some occasions, but in this, wherein the acts and resolutions of parliament coincide with their views, they speak of their sentiments having thereby acquired a sanction, as if the wisdom of parliament was infallible. But whatever may have been the motives for the conduct of parliament in the above instances, on all other occasions they have strenuously maintained their supremacy and right of taxation: and what particularly merits the reader’s attention, is that on former occasions, the whigs and republicans have been the foremost and most zealous in asserting those rights. Witness the Excise by the Republican party, and the duties of tonnage and poundage granted by the Convention Parliament 1660. – Witness the duties on sugar, and a variety of other articles laid on in 1672, by the parliament which proposed the Bill of Exclusion. – Witness the enforcing the last mentioned act in King William’s reign, 1696, by giving the same powers to the custom-house officers of entering wharfs, ware-houses, / houses, &c. as in England. – Witness the duties laid on foreign spirits, sugars, &c. in the reign of George II. and also the act prohibiting the erection of slitting mills and steel furnaces, passed in the 12th of the same reign. – Witness the three declaratory acts, as they may be called; the ordinance-of the lords and commons, 1650, (p. 10) The act of 7th and 8th of King William (p. 12) And the act of his present Majesty’s reign, when Lord Rockingham was first Lord of the Treasury, declar­ ing that the King and parliament of Great Britain have authority to make statues to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever. – Witness, lastly, the bill proposed by the whig ministry in Queen Anne’s reign, 1710, which was only prevented from being passed into a law by a change of administration, when the Torries succeeded to the management of public affairs: the title of the bill was, An act for granting a revenue to her Majesty, to arise within the province of New York in America, for the support of that government. In the preamble it is said, the Commons give and grant unto her Majesty, the rates, duties, excises, imposi­ tions, &c. therein after mentioned.* – Wherefore, when the / gentlemen of the opposition declare the present measures are founded on Tory and tyrannical principles, they rather give a testimony of their zeal than of their candour. The favourers of America farther alledge, that as England assumes an exclu­ sive right to their commerce, she in reality taxes them by this restraint; and by virtue of it receives all their wealth, and cannot in reality receive more, how high soever she may tax them. *

See Observations on the Thirteenth. Parl.11

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Great Britain certainly receives considerable advantages from her commerce with her colonies; and has undoubtedly enacted many laws with intention to secure and encrease these advantages; and some of these laws, by restraining the commerce of the colonies, may seem to be injurious to them; but if the whole of the laws be impartially viewed, and the commercial restraints, which Great Brit­ ain has also imposed on herself for the benefit of the colonies, and the bounties which she has given to encourage the cultivation of such articles of commerce as were most suitable to the respective colonies; it will be granted, that she could not have enacted wiser and more advantageous laws for the colonies, if their commerce had been the sole object / of her care. She has not so properly restrained the commerce, as compelled the people to direct their industry and skill to the culture of those articles which it was the interest of each colony to cultivate: she has not diverted this bountiful stream to an unnatural course; but has only restrained it to its proper channel, by which it has swelled to such amazing magnificence, that though in the year 1704, the total of the exports from America amounted only to 569,950£. yet in 1772, they amounted to no less than 6,024,171 £. (See Mr. Burke’s speech, March 22d 1775, p. 9, 10.) The laws therefore can never be oppressive under whose influence the commerce of America hath so rapidly increased. By these laws the following articles pay so much less duty when imported from the colonies than from other places, that the most considerable of them are solely imported from the plantations: Sugar, Tobacco, Rum, Molasses, Cocoa-nuts, Coffee, Ginger, / Whale-fin, Tar, pitch. The following articles are imported duty free from America, and pay duty from other places: Pig-iron, Wood, Rice, Pot and pearl ashes, Raw and undrest hides, Raw silk into the port of London, Bar-iron into the port of London,

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Cotton wool is free at present from all places, but till lately it was only free from the British plantations. Bounties are given on the following articles from America: Indigo, Hemp, Rough and undrest flax, Naval stores, viz. Masts, Yards, Bowsprits, Tar, Pitch, Turpentine, / Raw silk into the port of London, Deals, planks, boards, and timber. Coals, when exported to the plantations, pay less duty than when exported to other foreign parts. American vessels are deemed British, which encourages ship building in America. See Abstracts of the Acts of Parliament in Burrow and Saxby on each of the above articles. It is manifest from the above laws, that the advantages of commerce between England and its colonies, are mutual; for tho’ England has indeed much restricted the trade of its colonies to itself, yet it has in return, in reality restricted itself to purchase solely from its own colonies, such articles as they can most advantageously produce. Every merchant knows, that sugar, tobacco, rum, are solely imported from them. They who think lightly of this restriction must alter their opinion by reflect­ ing, that our favourable treaty of commerce with Portugal is on this express condition, that less duties shall be imposed on their wines than on those of France: where-fore, if the whole of the commercial colony laws be accurately and candidly examined, it must be acknowledged, that the colonists have no right / to plead exemption from taxation on their account. By virtue of these laws, the commerce of the colonies has become greater than the whole commerce of England in the reign of queen Anne: In 1704, the whole export trade of England, including that to the colonies, amounted only to 6,509,000 £. In the year 1772, the exports from Britain to its colonies alone, are said to have amounted to 6,024,000 £. (see the above speech, p. 10.) The colo­ nies therefore, to make a return for these goods, must export upwards of seven millions sterling; otherwise, considering the interest, freight, and insurance, the British merchant must be a loser. In the reign of queen Anne, England was accounted one of the first commer­ cial nations in Europe, and by virtue of it maintained a long and expensive war,

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and annually raised a revenue amounting to about 8 millions.* Surely therefore America, under the advantage of a greater commerce, might contribute some­ thing considerable toward the necessary support of the state, and the people there still continue happy and free, as they were in England in the days of queen Anne. / The inference, that we receive all their wealth because we confine all their commerce to ourselves, is fallacious; for notwithstanding this restriction of their trade, they daily increase in wealth; fresh lands are cultivated; new manufactures established; and were they to continue to improve in the same ratio for the next hundred years as the last, they would be the wealthiest and greatest commercial nation in the world. No wonder, since they are put in possession of fertile lands, for which they scarcely pay any rent, and have the advantage and protection of the best of governments almost without expence. If Britain was to transfer some part of this wealth to itself, by obliging America to contribute a moderate share towards the supplies of the empire, even though such contribution should check a little the rapid progress of America, and enable Britain to revive some of its declining manufactures, it is evident no injustice or violence would be committed; the overburthened English steed would indeed be a little eased, and the irregular paces of the American one gently checked. The large sums of money which the Americans owe to the English mer­ chants, induce some / people to think that they are poor, and incapable of paying taxes; whereas the continuance of this large debt solely arises from their applying the annual profits of their cultivated lands to the culture of fresh lands, instead of liquidating their debts; and while they have fresh lands to cultivate, and they continue this practice, they will continue apparently poor, tho’ they daily encrease in wealth. Some gentlemen have fantastically asserted, that the colonies pay taxes on every bit of cloth, or other manufacture which they purchase; for as the English manufacturer pays taxes, these taxes encrease the rate of his wages, and conse­ quently enhance the price of the goods; therefore they, the purchasers, ultimately pay the taxes. Without entering into a minute detail in answer to this argument, it may be sufficient to alledge – That on this principle every state in Europe pays taxes to Britain, and Britain to every state in Europe with which she has commerce. If this answer does not equally apply to the American colonies, and if the Eng­ lish merchant does not, on the same parity of reason, pay a tax on every leaf of tobacco which he purchases / from Virginia, it is because Virginia and the rest of the English colonies have hitherto been protected at England’s expence, and have in consequence been the only civilized societies of wealth, which ever *

See Postlethwayt’s history of the public revenue.12

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existed without paying taxes to any extent: which objection the English now wish to remove. Man is naturally the benefactor of man, and commerce the chain that in some degree unites societies of the most distant situations, even though their customs, manners, religion and civil policy be ever so different; commerce not only civilizes man, enlarges his science, distributes the peculiar products of dif­ ferent climates, and supplies their mutual wants, but diffuses arts, promotes industry, enriches the merchant, and consequently enables the state the more easily to raise its revenues; in this sense, but in no other, the American, and every merchant, pays to England a tribute on the goods they purchase. With as little propriety it has been alledged, that Virginia pays a large trib­ ute to Britain, because the customs which are levied on the importation of their tobacco amounts to a large revenue. – If this inference is just, Virginia pays three times as much tribute to France on this / article as to Britain. But this nonsense is too notorious to require farther animadversion. The laws seem harsh which impowered the magistrate to pluck up by the roots tobacco planted in England; and which prohibit a Virginian from erecting a slitting mill: yet England is not injured by the one, nor Virginia by the other; a planter in Virginia can earn two shillings a day, a nailer at Dudley or Hales Owen not above sixteen pence: in consequence of this different price of labour, the people of Virginia can import nails from England cheaper than they can manufacture them; and the law therefore which prohibits them from erecting slitting mills, only prevents from misapplying their skill and industry. Many gentlemen have adopted an opinion, which one of extensive knowl­ edge has warmly supported with all the splendor of eloquence, That the present wealth and power of Britain have principally arisen from the commerce of the Colonies; and that the benefits it receives from this commerce are an adequate recompence for the immense treasure that has been expended in settling, encour­ aging and protecting them; and therefore, in prudence and equity, Britain ought to be content with the profit of this commerce, / and not exact a single farthing from them by taxation; and that it was wrong to alienate their affections by mak­ ing an attempt which must tend to destroy our connexion with them. The wealth of a nation consists of the skill and industry of its inhabitants, which commerce sustains and promotes; and as the commerce of the colonies constitutes a great part of the commerce of Britain, and as the property of many merchants is employed in the factories and plantations of the colonies, this trade and commerce undoubtedly constitutes a great part of the wealth of Britain, and consequently the loss or stagnation must be a present injury. – A cessation of the commerce to Lisbon, Cadiz or Naples, in proportion to the extent of it, would be at least an equal injury. It is supposed that part of the returns for English merchandize exported to these cities are made in gold and silver; which

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returns are generally deemed the most advantageous. The colonies cannot make such returns, they have no mines at present which produce these metals, and most of the unwrought materials which are supposed the next beneficial return that are imported from the colonies, can be procured from other places; but / to encourage the commerce of the colonies, bounties have been given on the importation of many of these articles from the colonies, and a custom laid on them when imported from other places. But notwithstanding these encourage­ ments, the principal returns are made in articles of luxury, as sugar, tobacco, rum, &c. the imports of which articles amount annually, to three millions sterling and upwards. The commerce of the colonies is also accompanied with the incon­ venience of a slow return of the money employed in it, which does not arise so much from the distance as from the planters clearing their grounds and cultivat­ ing their plantations with capitals furnished to them by the English merchant. Notwithstanding therefore this extensive commerce of the colonies, which is said to be the strength of Britain, it may be much doubted whether its power would not have been greater, if instead of establishing colonies and spinning the web from its own bowels, it had availed itself of the wealth and ingenuity of other nations, and had cultivated a more general commerce. If restrictive com­ mercial companies had been abolished and national measures adopted for the protection of private traders in different parts of / the world, it is more than probable that an enlarged commerce, with upwards of two hundred millions of people in the different kingdoms of Asia, might have proved as advantageous as a monopoly of commerce with two millions only. The Spanish colonies in America bear at least as great a proportion to the wealth and power of Spain as the British colonies in America to the wealth of the British empire; yet it is generally thought that Spain has rather decreased than encreased her power by the establishment of her colonies; and if Britain has, on the contrary, increased in power, since the establishment of her colonies, this increase of power and wealth ought not to be ascribed to the establishment of the American Colonies, but rather to the wisdom of her laws, and the industry and ingenuity of her inhabitants. But quitting this region where Fancy may take her boldest flights, let us confine ourselves to facts. Ever since the reign of James I. commerce has been constantly the object of parliamentary attention, in that reign monopolies were demolished, and so early as the Commonwealth, the Lords and Commons passed an act, or ordinance for the improvement of commerce, which if the / curious reader will consult, he will find that the laws since enacted, which have most contributed to the improve­ ment of trade and commerce, are conformable to the principles and regulations contained in that ordinance. See Parl. hist. vol 19. p. 314, 315. But what has most of all contributed to the encouragement of commerce, has been the steady security of private property. During the last hundred years, every

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man has sat under his own vine and his own fig-tree, no one making him afraid: no foreign enemy has invaded the kingdom, and there has been no civil commo­ tion worth notice. During such a period therefore, the wealth of the nation must have immensely increased. From the building of the walls of Athens, by Themistocles,13 to the com­ mencement of the Peloponesian war, only twenty-eight years, Athens in that short period, by her naval skill and commerce, arrived to such power as to con­ tend for the sovereignty of Greece. From the end of the mercenary war, which so impoverished Carthage as to reduce her to the wretched necessity of submitting, without resistance, and almost without murmur, to be robbed by the Romans of 1200 / talents, and of the island of Sardinia, to the commencement of the second Punic war, was only twenty years, yet in this period she acquired such strength, principally by her commerce and maritime skill, as to contest with Rome for the sovereignty of the world: and the power of Carthage was so nearly equal to that of her rival, that victory long hovered o’er the Carthaginian camp, and would have fixed her seat there if the factious citizens had not with-held from their suc­ cessful General the necessary and opportune supplies. If these two states, by their naval power and commerce, arrived in so short a period to such vast wealth and power, why might it not be expected, that Brit­ ain, with as free a government, as intrepid and active mariners, and as great an attention to commerce, during a much longer period, should attain to extensive wealth and power, though the colonies of America had never existed: If so, it may be asked – Why this contest? The answer is obvious. Manufacturers cannot instantly turn their hands from one trade to another; neither can commerce be instantly transfer’d from one nation to another. The Thames might have run in a different channel, / and yet as noble a commercial city, and as substantial docks have been erected on its banks as the present: but was this river now to alter its course a few miles only, such an alteration would be an immense injury to Britain. Besides, as England has expended enormous sums in establishing and protecting the colonies, she has a right to demand peculiar returns from them. Tho’ England, like many other projectors, may have spent large sums, for which she may never obtain an adequate return, however beneficial her projects may prove to others. The money actually spent on the conduct of the late war amounted to, at least, ninety millions, which will be manifest to any who reflects on the seventy millions of additional debt that was incurred, and the sums which were actually raised over and above what would have been necessary in time of peace: how therefore can any gentleman say, that the extraordinary gains of their commerce is an equivalent for our expences, when the annual interest of those expences amounts to two thirds of the total returns of their trade. We all know that the last war was begun on account of our colonies in North America; and the Con­

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gress at Philadelphia, in their / petition to his Majesty, 8th July 1775, have in fact declared the same opinion: They say, ‘That the benefits arising from the union of the mother country and the colonies, excited the wonder and envy of other nations, while they beheld Great Britain rising to a power the most extraordi­ nary the world had ever known. Her rivals observing, that there was no probability of that happy connection being broken by civil dissentions; and apprehending its future effects, if left any longer undisturbed, resolved to prevent her receiving such continual and formi­ dable accessions of wealth and strength, by checking the growth of those settlements from which they were to be derived.’ See Journal of the Congress, 1775, p. 130. Acknowledging however the peculiar benefits of this commerce, it becomes more the interest of Britain to secure the allegiance of the colonies: from the moment they become independent states, they will trade where they can make most gain; for states, as much as private merchants, adopt the maxim, that trade knows no friendship but preference: one person may be preferred to another, where the gains are equal, but on no other terms. / If a parent state cannot justly tax its colonies, and exercise dominion over them, neither can it justly restrict their commerce. If the former are inconsistent with civil liberty and the natural rights of man, so is the latter. The Act of Navi­ gation is as unjust as an imposition of three pence a pound duty on tea: the one therefore may be as rightfully resisted as the other; and all the arguments which have been alledged against taxing the colonies, apply with equal force against the Act of Navigation. The Americans have declared, and the ablest writers in their favour, now acknowledge the same sentiments. Let us not therefore deceive ourselves, and imagine that the exaction of the tax on tea is the true and efficient cause of the present war; it is only a circumstance, an incident, which has sooner brought the combatants into the field. It was more popular to resist the exaction of the impost on tea, than the Act of Navigation. And if the Americans ‘acknowl­ edge it as a signal instance of divine favour, that his Providence would not permit them to be called into this severe controversy, until they were grown up to their present strength, had been previously exercised in warlike preparations, and pos­ sest of the means of / ‘defending themselves,’ (see ibid. p. 128.) England also may rejoice, that this unnatural war is commenced when she is in perfect peace, and every nation in Europe approves her cause; and when her great superiority will enable her to restore peace and order to her deluded citizens with less destruc­ tion than must unavoidably have happened if the contest had been deferred till the parties were more equal. And since the temper of the colonies make it mani­ fest, that this event must have taken place sooner or latter, it is the interest of the nation, however disagreeable it may be to the present administration, that it has commenced thus early.

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Every candid person must acknowledge, that the present revenues of Brit­ ain are inadequate to defray the necessary expence of the state and reduce the national debt with the speed that the welfare and safety of the nation require; from the year 1763 to 1775 the national debt has not been reduced more than eleven millions, which reduction does not amount fully to a million annually; during eight of the above years, the land tax was only three shillings in the pound, if it had been four, this additional shilling would in eight years have amounted to about 3,400,000 / pounds. But this deficiency has been fully compensated by the contribution of two millions in five years, by the India Company; by the sale of the French prizes which were taken before the war, and by the money paid by the French for maintaining their prisoners. If therefore during these eleven years, which immediately followed a success­ ful war, England has not been able to liquidate above a million a year of the debt, notwithstanding this mighty increase of the commerce of the colonies, and in consequence thereof an increase of trade to other places, what probability is there that a greater sum can hereafter be annually liquidated. The ignorant and factious will say this arises from an unfair account of the publick treasures; or from extravagant and injudicious disbursements of them. But the ingenuous enquirer will reflect, that during the above period Mr. Gren­ ville, the Marquis of Rockingham, the Duke of Grafton, and Lord North,14 have been severally, at the head of the treasury, and as neither they nor their friends and able coadjutors, when in or out of office, have been capable of jointing out a method of making any considerable savings and paying annually larger sums, the / fair inference that the subject is incapable of it. And since every real patriot must acknowledge, that a greater annual reduction is absolutely necessary to put the nation in a state of security, the legislature is reduced to the necessity of either imposing heavier taxes on the British subjects, or compelling every part of the empire to contribute its proper ratio of tribute. The gentlemen in opposition, will scarce approve of laying a tax of five shil­ lings in the pound on land; or of raising the excise on beer so as to make it a penny a pot dearer to the labourer. Britain is supposed to contain about eight millions of people, and the Congress estimate the inhabitants of North America, at about 2,500,000. All parties acknowledge that England raises a revenue of ten millions, over and above the expence of collection; and it cannot be provide that the whole of the North American colonies, raise above 100,000 pounds. These facts are so extraordinary, that notwithstanding their present notoriety, they will hereafter scarce be credited. If a revenue was raised on the colonies proportionable to their wealth and numbers of inhabitants, the national debt would / speedily decrease, and no part of the empire would be long oppressed with heavy taxes.

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But the impropriety of the Americans contributing so little to the support of the state, will be still more manifest by enquiring what the total of the taxes amount to which people of landed property pay in America, and by taking a comparative view of the price of labour, and provisions in England and America. A gentleman purchased an estate in the province of New-York, with about 2,400 £. sterling: He stocked this estate, and lived on its produce, and the total of the taxes which he annually paid to the poor, church, county rate, province or state, amounted to no more than £ 1 15 7d sterling. The country gentlemen in England, will make their own reflexions on this fact. – It would be foolish and ridiculous to attempt to add lustre to the Summer’s noon day Sun. A ship carpenter in the province of New-York can earn eleven shillings of their currency, or six shillings sterling, a day; a house carpenter, or bricklayer, eight shillings currency, which is four shillings and sixpence sterling; a common labourer three shillings and sixpence currency, or / two shillings sterling. It is well known that men employed, in similar branches of business, in England, can­ not earn above two thirds of the above sums; and yet the prices of beef, bread, rum, and most of the necessaries of life, are considerably lower in America than in England. On what principle therefore of policy, equity or humanity, ought the English artificers to be oppressed with taxes and the Americans exempt? Why should the ship builder or sailor of Boston or New-York be put in a better condition than the ship builder or sailor of Whitby, or Port Glasgow? – These in Britain are at least as useful members of the empire as those in America; and if the former are loaded with taxes, which the latter are exempt from, and cannot with equal skill and industry live as comfortably, and acquire as much wealth, the laws are some where defective. It is the duty of the legislature to remove this inequality. If it cannot be effected without some inconvenience, as there is no good without its alloy of ill, the real Patriot will not be at rest till he has formed a plan which seems attended with the least inconvenience. He will not supinely acquiesce in permitting his fellow citizens whose families, or friendly / connections, induce them to continue to reside at home, to suffer notorious injustice. It would be unnecessary to dwell longer on this subject, if some very worthy citizens were not almost rivetted in opinion, that the monopoly of commerce with the colonies is of itself a sufficient taxation; and if they are taxed it should only be with intention to regulate their commerce, or simply to assert the supremacy of Britain, without any intention of raising a revenue. If this restrictive commerce had enabled Britain to raise a revenue adequate to the demands of the state, it would have been unnecessary to call in the aid of the colonies; or if this restriction had prevented men of industry from acquiring wealth as easily in the colonies, as in Britain, it would have been cruel and unjust

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to have demanded it, whatever might have been the custom and law of the land, or even the necessities of the empire. In the preceding pages it has been proved, that a proper revenue cannot be raised without too much oppressing the people in England, and every Ameri­ can merchant knows that men of equal industry and capital, can much more / readily acquire wealth in America than in Britain. Indeed the rapid increase of the wealth and commerce of America, prove it to a demonstration; for if the community increase in wealth, the individuals of which it is composed must pro­ portionably grow richer. All the nations in Europe exercise supreme authority over their colonies and tax them. The Romans taxed their colonies, and sometimes exacted a tribute of one tenth of the corn, &c. which is equal to a land tax of real six shillings in the pound. The equity and necessity of obliging every part of the empire to contribute to its maintenance is so obvious, that the Americans would not have had the folly and insolence to have opposed the measure, if the declarations of some gentle­ men of distinguished character and station here, with respect to the repugnance of the mode in which this contribution was required to be made to the princi­ ples of the constitution and the rights conveyed to them by their charters, had not given them encouragement for such a conduct. – These declarations there­ fore, from whatever motives they were made, have in reality much conduced to involve this country in an expensive / war, brought the greatest present misery and ruin on some parts of the infatuated colonies, with impending danger of the same calamity to the rest, and cannot ultimately tend to increase their freedom. A writer, who has been considered as the champion of liberty, and whose sentiments many of the opposition have implicitly adopted on other occasions, has been very much overlooked on the present. Junius15 says:* ‘A series of inconsistent measures has alienated the colonies from their duty as subjects, and from their natural affection to their common country. When Mr. Grenville was placed at the head of the Treasury, he felt the impossibility of Britain supporting such an establishment as her former successes had made indis­ pensable, and at the same time of giving any sensible relief to foreign trade, and to the weight of the public debt. He thought it equitable that these parts of the empire which had benefited most by the expences of the war, should contribute something to the expences of the peace; and he had no doubt of the constitu­ tional right vested in parliament / to raise the contribution. But unfortunately for this country, Mr. Grenville was at any rate to be depressed, because he was minister; and Mr. Pitt and Lord Cambden16 were to be the patrons of America, because they were in opposition. Their declaration gave spirit and argument to *

See Junius, vol. 1. p. 8.

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the colonies; and while perhaps they meant no more than a ruin of a minister, they in effect divided one half of the empire from the other.’ At the words Mr. Pitt Junius puts a mark of reference to a marginal note, which is in these words: ‘Yet Junius has been called the partizan of Lord Chatham!’ Junius also says, in another letter,* ‘When Lord Chatham affirms, that the authority of the British legislature is not supreme over the colonies in the same sense in which it is supreme over Great Britain – I listen to him with diffidence and respect, but without the smallest degree of conviction or assent.’ Tho’ these are the sentiments of Junius, whose writings have been almost adored, as written by the God of Liberty, yet others, for having adopted the same sentiments, are treated as the / abettors of tyranny; and they who petitioned the House, and addressed the throne, to maintain this supremacy so necessary to the welfare of Britain, are said to present blood thirsty petitions, ‘and that a spirit of domination has led them with savage folly to address the throne for the slaughter of their brethren in America.’ (See Dr. Price on Civil Liberty, &c. p. 54.)17 The author, whose zeal is so well expressed in the last sentence, has declared sentiments which, as they coincide with those of many of the Ameri­ can assemblies, and of the Congress at Philadelphia, claim particular attention. The author declares, ‘That in every free state every man is his own legislature. That civil liberty, in the most perfect degree, can only be enjoyed in small states, where every member is capable of giving his suffrages in person: but that in large states such near approaches may be made to perfect liberty, as shall answer all the purposes of government, by the appointment of representatives or delegates. But if the laws are made by one man, or a junto of men, in a state, and not by common consent, a government by them does not differ from slavery. And if the representatives or delegates are chosen for long terms, by a part only / of the state, and subject to no controul from their constituents, the very idea of liberty will be lost.’ From these principles the author infers, ‘that no one community can have any power, or property, or legislation of another community that is not incorporated with it by a just and adequate representation. And that a country that is subject to the legislature of another country, in which it has no voice, is in a state of slavery.’ And consequently if Britain exercises a supreme authority over the colonies, as they have no representation in the British parliament, they are in a state of slavery. But as liberty is the unalienable right of man, which neither individuals nor communities can be deprived of by contract, compact, or favour, the colonies have a right to resist Great Britain when she endeavours to deprive them of it by taxation or legislation.’ (See Dr. Price, p. 19, &c.)

*

See Junius, vol. 2. p. 268, 269.

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If the above principles are just and true, it indisputably follows: first, That all the nations in the world, except a very few, the whole of whose inhabitants scarcely amount to one million, have a right to rise in rebellion to alter their present forms of government; since their laws are enacted either by one man, or a junto / of men, and not by the whole of the people collected in a legisla­ tive capacity, nor by a just and adequate representation of them. The states of Holland, the Canton of Berne, the Hanse towns, and even England itself, come under this predicament: which last the author undoubtedly did not intend, for certainly nothing is less his disposition than the wish to destroy the peace and good humour of England, and set in hostile array friend against friend, brother against brother, and the son against the father. Yet unhappily all this is implied in his pamphlet. For ‘since in Great Britain, consisting of near six millions of inhab­ itants, 5723 persons, most of them the lowest of the people, elect one half of the house of commons’ (see Dr. Price, p. 10.) the legislature of Britain cannot be said to be a just and adequate representation of the people, and therefore the people have as just a right to rise in rebellion to remedy this imperfection of representa­ tion, as the Americans have to rid themselves of the supremacy of Britain; for it has been demonstrated, so as not to leave a possibility of doubt in the minds of the most sanguine favourers of America, that they neither are not have been oppressed; and therefore the / present rebellion can be solely on the pretence of securing themselves from future oppression. 2dly, That all the colonies belonging to the different nations of Europe, have a right to revolt, and form themselves into independent states, for they are all subject to the supremacy of their parent states, and none of them are governed by laws of their own making. Spain will not be much indebted to this author for exciting her colonies to rebel: neither can the cause of the British colonies be much benefited by supporting their rebellion on such principles only as would justify the immediate rebellion of every colony in the world: neither can any colonies be hereafter established, ‘for as neither compact, protection, or favour, can confer an obligation on them to remain dependent on their parent state,’ they will trade wherever interest or fancy promps them: and consequently no nation can have any motives to form expensive establishments of colonies, and therefore this plentiful spring of commerce and population would soon dry up. The form of government which this author represents as the most perfect, in which every man is his own legislator, is so far from being entitled to that pre-eminence, that it ought rather / to be classed with the most imperfect ones: the other form which invests the legislative authority in delegates chosen by the whole inhabitants, is liable to fewer exceptions; altho’, if those delegates are only chosen for a short period, and their power limited by being obliged to consult their constituents, this form will partake much of the imperfections of the other.

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In a state where every man is a legislator, the citizens instead of employing themselves in the peaceful occupations of arts and commerce, will form them­ selves into factious political cabals: the assemblies of the state, if the state be of any magnitude, must consist of such multitudes as will unavoidably be tumultu­ ous and disorderly; the voice of the worthy and the modest will be seldom heard; the bold, the ambitious, the artful, will have most sway; an Alcibiades will rule, and a Socrates will be martyred; a Themistocles, a Zenophon and Aristides ban­ ished; the great Pericles fined, and his son with five other admirals put to death when they deserved laurels for the victory they had obtained; a vainglorious war, unjust as destructive, resolved against Syracuse, and the whole revolted city of Myteline ordered to be massacred. If any one / reflects on what was acted in the Campus Martius of Rome, from the murder of the Gracchi to the establish­ ment of the sovereignty in the person of Augustus Cæsar, it will diminish his attachment to that form of government where every man acts as legislator. But if any one wishes to see the glaring imperfections of this form of government, let him read in Polybius the revolt of the Carthagenian mercenaries, after the first Punic war, when every soldier became his own legislator, till they were at last reduced to seek relief by submitting themselves to the arbitrary command of such wretches as Spendius and Matho.18 The imperfections of this government are so numerous, that it has no where long subsisted, but has become the prey of some artful and ambitious dema­ gogue. If these forms are so very necessary to the welfare of mankind that it is even justifiable to commence a civil war to establish them, it is somewhat surpriz­ ing there never has been any considerable establishment of them. The pious will not adopt such an opinion, as it seems derogatory to the wisdom of Providence; the naturalist well observes, that all animals, and even inanimate machines, are / constructed of that form which best answers the purposes for which they seem intended. The knowledge of the optician and anatomist, scanty as it is, is yet sufficient to convince him that the eye is of that form which best answers the purposes of vision; he perceives in some degree the propriety and necessity of every muscle, coat, and humour which composes that delightful organ; he is convinced there is nothing defective, nothing redundant. The moralist who reflects on the mental world, makes the same observation on the instincts and passions of animals; he will not therefore readily acquiesce with Dr. Price, that man, the sovereign of the earth, is the only animal of imperfect construction, which he certainly is, if the form of government which the Doctor has given a sketch of be absolutely necessary to his welfare; since it neither now is, nor ever was, established to any extensive degree; and therefore this defect must arise from the natural imperfection of man. It falls not within the purpose of this disquisition to attempt to describe the most excellent forms of government; but on this occasion it may not be improper to declare that the principal purposes of government of every state

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are / the protection and security of the persons and property of its members, which are best obtained by a system of equitable laws, whose authority protect the weakest and controul the mightiest. In every nation, where such a system of laws are established and reverenced, the inhabitants will be happy, whatever may have been the original or present form of government. It is for these reasons that some of the ablest political writers have properly called government an empire of laws, and not of men. Let any one examine the government of England and its American colonies since the Revolution, and he must acknowledge that they have been blest with the government of laws; no king or governor has dared to substitute his will for law; no fortification has been erected, no military force established to over-awe the colonies; the inhabitants have been permitted to carry their own arms; and it has been already clearly proved that they have nei­ ther been loaded with taxes nor otherwise opprest, so as to prevent their living comfortably, and rapidly encreasing in wealth. Wherefore, their present revolt has arisen solely from speculative notions, the folly and wickedness of which must appear to every one who / considers, that though some of the ablest men in different ages and nations have proposed different forms of government, yet they widely differ from each other, and no one of them has met with univer­ sal approbation. – If America could detach herself from Great-Britain, without being guilty of ingratitude, and the most notorious injustice; without the ruin of her trade, the destruction of her fairest towns, the misery and slaughter of her inhabitants, yet the wisest may doubt whether it would be a desirable event; and whether they were not changing an excellent form of government for a bad one. If the different provinces of America were formed into separate independ­ ent states, and united in a general confederacy, what security is there that they would continue long in peace? Connecticut and Pensylvania are even now at variance about the limits of their provinces, notwithstanding their union against Great-Britain, and fourscore of one party were killed in the contest last year. Are the inhabitants of America more wise? more virtuous? or less avaricious than the ancient Grecians; who by their dissentions so weakened each other as to become an easy prey to their common enemy. / But there is no chance that the American provinces will this century have an opportunity of becoming independent states. If the Americans had been per­ secuted on account of their religious principles – If an armed force had filled their jails with men of the most distinguished worth and spirit – If the prop­ erties of private persons had been unjustly seized – an insurrection from such causes would be truly formidable. Two millions of people, who had been really oppressed, and who were well instructed in the principles, and actuated with the spirit of liberty, would be almost irresistible. Animated with one and the same sentiment, they would form armies of the strictest and severest discipline. – Their brigades would move like clock work. – Such men would be capable of taking a city that was as well garrison’d and fortified as Namur was when besieged

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by King William; and like that gallant deliverer, they would take the city even though a hostile army of one hundred thousand men should attempt to raise the siege. But what resemblance has this picture to America! – Fiction or truth may for a moment produce the same effects – but ultimately the effects which flow from them will be as different as / themselves. Accordingly, after a momentary boast of the rising glories of America, the indissoluble union of the congress, the just and equitable government which was to be established, and the immense well disciplin’d armies which were to take and keep the field – What is now the fact? Have not several of the delegates of the southern provinces withdrawn from the congress? Do not people who have little or no property in the south­ ern provinces command and tyrannize over those who have property? Instead of order and justice does not misrule and uproar bear sway? Can any man in that country call any thing freely his own? Does the standing army of America amount to 15,000 men? Are not most of them enlisted for short periods, and are they not paid with paper currency instead of real cash? – Thus circumstanced, dare the officers exact strict obedience from the soldiers, or is it possible for such an army to be regularly and effectually disciplined? The invasion of Canada, the one only spirited military operation of the provincials, proves their impotency. When they had determined to throw off the mask, and make themselves abso­ lute masters of North America, Why did they not send such a force as should command / success? Was not Canada as naked of armed regulars as they could wish? And the garrisons as incapable of defence? And did not the natives receive them more favourably than they had any pretence to expect? And yet has not an undisciplined band of men, though brave indeed, collected in haste through despair by General Carlton, checked this mighty invasion? A well appointed army of twenty thousand men will put to rout any number whatsoever of such disorderly ill-disciplin’d forces as the Americans can bring into the field. It is impossible for such disjointed, ill-formed bodies to resist the power of Great Britain. Let any one reflect on the power which Great Britain exerted the last war, and he will find, upon estimating the sailors according to their expence, that the number of well-disciplin’d forces, which were armed at Britain’s cost, amounted to between four and five hundred thousand men:* a number nearly equal to all the men in America capable of carrying arms. – But it is not neces­ sary for Britain to put forth all her strength – what she does exert, shall wither all the strength of America. / The moment Howe sails, the Americans become objects of compassion, and not of dread. The generous already cast an eye of pity towards ten thousand unhappy fami­ lies who must be expelled from their comfortable habitations. They have been deluded by artful men, who have given them false representations of the state of this country – That the legislature consisted of venal and corrupt slaves – That *

See the Journals of the House of Commons for the years 1761 and 1762.

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the people had in consequence lost all reverence for government – That manufac­ tures were decaying, and the manufacturers of populous towns rising in clamorous mobs – That a general bankruptcy was daily expected. – These unreal spectres have deceived the people in America, who are as ignorant of the motives and original springs which have put themselves in action, as they are now ignorant what will be the event of their insurrection. – It is happy for them that persecution and revenge have no seat in any one branch of the British legislature: and as Britain by her fostering kindness and equitable laws, has in a short period reared colo­ nies who had attained a strength and splendour far beyond what the world had ever known, so she will in this instance of their disobedience, give as unexampled / a proof of her wisdom, clemency and moderation. – The raising of an equitable tribute, and the establishment of a just government to prevent future misrule, will be the objects of her attention. But after all, the situation of many deluded worthy people in America, will be truly calamitous; and the reflection of it must prevent some gentlemen here, as well as in America, from resting easy on their pillows. ’Till the late disturbances the Americans lived in perfect ease and freedom, every man’s person and property was quite secure; he was only amenable to the laws, and those so mild that they restrained no man more from the exercise of his natural liberty, than a good man would wish to restrain himself if there was no municipal law at all. There was no armed force to oppress and overawe them. The press was open, conversation free, no persecution for religious principles, every man was at liberty to worship God after his own mode. The spirit of free­ dom flourished in every village. Their number and wealth increased so fast, that England would soon have as little power as she has hitherto had inclination to oppress and enslave them, which makes the folly of those in America who are the authors of this war, as notorious as their wickedness.

FINIS.

[CHALMERS], AN ANSWER FROM THE

ELECTORS OF BRISTOL

[George Chalmers], An Answer from the Electors of Bristol, to the Letter of Edmund Burke, Esq. on the Affairs of America (London: T. Cadell, 1777).

Edmund Burke’s March 1775 speech to Parliament was criticized by many, in these volumes by John Roebuck and, in a much more sustained way, by John Cartwright.1 Cartwright attacked Burke from an unusual angle, arguing that he was too strict with colonists for insisting on the principle of Parliamentary sover­ eignty even while advising against its usage. George Chalmers came at Burke from a more frequently travelled direction, arguing that he was too soft on colonists. Chalmers was born in Fochabers, Moray, in 1742, and studied at Aberdeen before studying law at the University of Edinburgh. He arrived in Maryland in 1763 to help an uncle with a lawsuit, and bought a substantial plantation there before selling it in 1768 to practise law in Baltimore. A known loyalist, he moved back to Britain in late 1775, as the imperial crisis deepened, later receiving parlia­ mentary compensation for confiscated property. Chalmers’s May 1777 pamphlet was his first intervention in imperial debates on the eastern side of the Atlantic. He addresses Burke’s Letter to John Farr and John Harris, Esqrs. Sheriffs of Bristol, on the Affairs of America of 3 April 1777, rather than, like Cartwright, his 19 April 1774 speech on taxes and his 22 March 1775 speech on conciliation. Chalmers’s respectful language to Burke often slips into condescension, beginning with his remark that Burke’s Letter is more a ‘vehicle of sentimental Declamation, than a formal, methodical Treatise on the present State of Public Affairs’ (below, p. 143). Chalmers defends the two pieces of recent legislation that Burke criticized in his Letter, the ‘Letters of Marque Bill’, part of the 1775 Prohibitory Act that withdrew British protection of American shipping and declared a naval blockade against colonial trade, and, most especially, the act ‘to empower his Majesty to secure and detain persons charged with, or suspected of trea­ sons committed in the Colonies, or on the seas, or of piracy’ (below, p. 145), arguing at some length that the Act was neither novel nor unconstitutional in its limited suspension of Habeas Corpus, and citing several precedents for it. But his main – 139 –

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aim is to critique a series of concessions by British governments that, in his view, only encouraged colonists to push for more. He took this point back to the near beginning of the revolutionary era, noting that as was foreseen and foretold by the very respectable list of Peers who protested against the repeal of the Stamp Act, every other Statute afterwards enacted by Parliament for the Colonies, was opposed by them with the same vehemence, the same outrage and force, which had proved so successful in procuring the repeal of the Stamp Act: and this conduct, and its success, as examples, were held up to them, and on every new occasion recommended to their practice. (below, pp. 143–4)

Chalmers defends the use of Hessian mercenaries in America and, like other concerned imperialists, offers an optimistic account of the war’s progress and prospects. He also displays a distinctly Tory notion of the obligations of subjects, especially as applied to Americans, noting that ‘Unconditional submission to the laws of the land, we think the duty of every subject; since, in proportion as their obedience is qualified, they cease to be subjects, and acquire a portion of independence’ (below, p. 161). Chalmers’s Answer to Burke was not his last word on American affairs. He also produced Political Annals of the Present United Colonies (London: for the author, 1780), reiterating his claim that the colonies had always sought inde­ pendence, Introduction to the History of the Revolt of the Colonies (London, 1782), detailing early imperial administration to elaborate his argument that British administrations had always been too lenient with the colonies, and Esti­ mate of the Comparative Strength of Great Britain during the Present and Four Preceding Reigns (London: C. Dilly & J. Bowen, 1782), an optimistic account of Britain’s economic prospects that went into seven editions and numerous translations over the succeeding quarter century. In 1786 he was rewarded with appointment as clerk to Charles Jenkinson,2 a post he held for life, and was also a long-time London agent for the Bahamas. He wrote on economics, politics and Ireland. He had a rich scholarly hinterland as well, elected to the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Society in 1791. He also published a sentimentally Jacobite Life of Mary, Queen of Scots (London: J. Murray, 1818) and in 1807 began producing an encyclopedic Scottish history, Caledonia, publishing three of a planned six volumes before he died in London on 31 May 1825.3 Notes: 1. See above, pp. 105–37; Volume 6 of this edition, pp. 195–254. 2. See Volume 5 of this edition, pp. 15–20. 3. A. Du Toit, ‘Chalmers, George (bap. 1742, d. 1825, antiquary and political writer’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 10, pp. 870–2.

AN

ANSWER

FROM THE

ELECTORS of BRISTOL,

TO THE

LETTER

OF

EDMUND BURKE, Esq.1

ON THE

AFFAIRS of AMERICA.

LONDON: Printed for T. Cadell, in the Strand.

MDCCLXXVII. /

AN ANSWER, &c. SIR, The Letter which you have done our Sheriffs the honour to write them, ‘on the affairs of America,’ they have obligingly communicated to us, conformable to your desire. Although we had already perused, with great attention, the two Acts of Parliament which you inclosed in them, and on which you have writ­ ten so elaborate and learned a commentary; yet your condescension ‘in having pleasure in accounting for your conduct to your Constituents,’ when it was matter of doubt ‘whether you was under any formal obligation to it*,’ hath given us a satisfac­ tion, which we cannot soon, or easily forget. On / our reputation, we assure you, that we never will requite the most obliging favours conferred, with a studied neglect; or your inclination to inform and instruct us, by giving ‘your opinion on the present state of public affairs,’ with a disrespectful silence. A moment therefore we could not delay, in writing you an answer, on this interesting subject. As ‘our talents are not of the great and ruling kind,’ as we are not writers by profession, we have some reason to hope, that if we sacrifice the flowers of language to perspicu­ ity, and a studied ambiguity of sentiment to plain and simple sense, we shall find pardon from your goodness. The graces of order, or the regularity of method, are hardly to be expected in an epistolary correspondence; and it shall be our endeavour to follow, with all possible attention, the several pages of your Letter; which, perhaps, we do wrong in considering rather as a vehicle of sentimental Declamation, than a formal, methodical Treatise on the present State of Public Affairs. We are happy in agreeing with you in opinion, ‘that these Acts are similar to all the rest on the same subject; that they operate by the same principle, and are derived from the very same policy†’ – a policy nevertheless dictated by necessity, which is governed by no / principle of jurisprudence. We wish not to incur the imputation of tediousness; and we shall not enter into a minute detail of Colo­ nial History, since the æra of the Peace of Paris, in 1762.2 But, as was foreseen * †

Page 65. Page 3.

– 143 –

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and foretold by the very respectable list of Peers who protested against the repeal of the Stamp Act, every other Statute afterwards enacted by Parliament for the Colonies, was opposed by them with the same vehemence, the same outrage and force, which had proved so successful in procuring the repeal of the Stamp Act: and this conduct, and its success, as examples, were held up to them, and on every new occasion recommended to their practice. Against the operation of the Stamp Act, the ablest advocates for the Colonies contended only for an exemp­ tion from internal taxation. The repealers of that law very effectually transferred to them that important right. Against the execution of Mr. Townsend’s indefen­ sible law for taxing tea, painters colours, &c. your worthy friend the Pennsylvania Farmer3 strenuously asserted the right of the Colonies to exemption from external taxation, or even any regulation of trade, where any incidental revenue might arise. To gratify the Colonies, and, if possible, to remove all cause of discontent, this Act was repealed, the trifling tea duty only excepted. Against the law for permit­ ting the East India Company to export their teas to / the Colonies, a Pupil* of the Farmer’s arose, and at once boldly cut the knot which he could not untie, and expressly contended, ‘that the Parliament had no right to legislate for the Colo­ nies in any case whatsoever.’4 The violences which ensued, the destruction of the tea at Boston, and the wound given to the security of the national commerce in the Colonies, are known to all. It became apparent to every one not linked with Party, or blinded by their ‘inveterate partialities†,’ that Colonial affairs had arrived at an important crisis at the end of the year 1773; and that this Country was reduced to the exquisite dilemma, of either relinquishing for ever the impor­ tant rights contained in your Declaratory Act, of making laws for the Colonies in all cases whatsoever; or of adopting the decisive resolution, of effectually support­ ing the national rights, the just authority of the laws, and the legal prerogative of the King. The great Council of the Nation chose the latter. The Boston Port Act, That for regulating the Massachusett’s jurisprudence, and others, was the result. And from this wise and spirited resolution, springs the policy of those laws, ‘which compleat the number of this sort of statutes to nine‡.’ As we see not the truth or the extent of your observation, ‘That our subjects diminish / as our laws encrease,’ you will not blame us, if we give you not a decisive answer. Inform us, we pray you, if it is your opinion, that because the Colonies, with a temerity peculiar to them, have declared the Colonies independent, they therefore are so; or if every County, Isle, or portion of the Empire, who, from motives of ambition, interest, or resentment, chuse to throw off their allegiance, cease to be the subjects of the Crown? If we have the misfortune to think differ­ ently with you on this important constitutional point, we have the satisfaction * † ‡

Mr. Wilson of Pennsylvania, who studied under Mr. Dickenson. Page 23. Page 3.

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to know, that our sentiments are perfectly coincident with the law of England, and Lord Coke*, whom you honour with your approbation, where he says, ‘Alle­ giance is a debt of gratitude, due by every subject, in return for the protection he receives from the moment of his birth, that can neither be forfeited, cancelled, or altered, by any change of time, place, or circumstance, or by any Act but that of the Legislature.’ It is matter of comfort to us, that against the Letter of Marque Bill ‘you have little to say†’ We freely confess our only objection is, that it was not enacted a twelve-month before. How long is it since our Factors were / obstructed, and driven out of the Colonies with every insult and injury; our property destroyed in their towns, and our ships burnt in their ports? To your candour and knowl­ edge we appeal, if, before this Act was thought of, several of the Colonies had not issued edicts to encourage ‘persons to make a naval war upon us,’ by privateers, which we have had too much reason to feel and to remember. How many of our defenceless ships, loaded with the rich produce of the West Indies, had they not carried into their ports, to the encrease of their fortunes, by the diminution of ours? How many of our sailors had they not carried into captivity, or compelled to fight against their Country, which they love? Yet those men you honour with your approbation, and all their actions defend or palliate with those great talents which Nature has blessed you with. What nation on earth, we beg leave to ask you, would have dared thus to insult and injure Old England with impunity, however fallen, as you think, from her ancient power or consequence? But the men whom you feel for so much, even in preference to us, have been taught to trample on the rights of this Country, to despise the authority of the Legislature of the Empire, and to insult our Sovereign. This is called a Contention for Lib­ erty, and as the end is glorious and good, the means of attaining it cannot be bad or wrong. The Act ‘to empower his Majesty to secure and detain persons charged with, or suspected of treasons committed in the Colonies, or on the seas, or of piracy,’ appears to you ‘of a much deeper malignity,’ and as ‘a masked proceeding, not very honour­ able to the justice of the Kingdom.’7 From an attentive perusal of this law, and it is from this only that a true judgment can be formed, we are constrained to differ in opinion with you; and in doing this, we always distrust our own. Nothing more can we find in this Statute, than that persons taken in the act of hightreason committed in the Colonies, or on the seas, or in the act of piracy, or who shall be charged with, or suspected of any of these crimes, and committed by a Magistrate having competent authority, may be detained without bail or mainprize, and without trial, till the 1st January 1778. Such is the language of * †

Coke’s 7th Report, p. 7, &c.5 Vid. Hale’s Hist. Pleas of the Crown, vol. i. p. 68, 96.6 Page 4.

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this law, which seems to us as clear, precise, and accurate, as it was possible for the soundest head to propose. To enquire what was the antecedent law, is a sound rule of construction. Persons accused, or suspected of the crimes of treason or piracy, might have been committed and detained without bail, until discharged by due course of law. But it is a singular excellence in the law of England, that the gaols are cleared, and all offenders tried, punished, or delivered, twice every year, London and Middlesex excepted, where the Courts of gaol-delivery being held / eight times a year, the offenders are so often punished or discharged. To have proceeded to the trial of person described by this Act, according to the usual course of law, might have been highly inconvenient. The Congress, with a spirit peculiar to them, had threatened to retaliate on the peaceful and loyal; several persons have been already executed for pretended crimes in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Carolina; and what waste of the human species might not have ensued, from the rashness of those men, it is very easy to imagine. To have suffered the offenders to have gone at large, might have been of most evil exam­ ple. Notwithstanding the provisions of this law, and the terrors of punishment, Cunnyngham8 and his associates, probably actuated by the example of the men ‘who make a naval war upon us,’ and even without any commission from Mr. Franklin,9 have taken the Harwich Packet, in which we were greatly interested. How much more noble is it to prevent than to punish crimes! In pity to man­ kind, what slaughter of our fellow-citizens does not the humanity of this law prevent, by ‘detaining the criminal for future trial,’ and, if guilty, ‘for ignominious punishment.’ To what passed ‘during its progress through the House of Commons,’ when ‘you declined your usual strict attendance,’ you recal our attention, We perfectly recol­ lect, that it was / insisted by those ‘Gentlemen, who were of opinion their exertions in this desperate case might be of some service,’ that this Bill totally suspended the Habeas Corpus Act, the great bulwark of England’s liberties; that though its lan­ guage extended only to treasons committed on the seas, or in the Colonies, its spirit might be so directed, as to imprison those who had remained peaceable in England; that none could say whether any Liberty existed in the nation, or if any man was free; and that now the liberties of Englishmen were held at the will of the Minister. But since this Bill became the law of the land, a very different language has been very solemnly held. The noted Mr. Platt10 has applied for his Habeas Corpus, and liberty, notwithstanding this Act; and it was most gravely insisted on his behalf, that the language of the law was so confused, inaccurate, and bungling, as to be perfectly unintelligible; that being unintelligible, it could receive no sensible construction, and must remain a dead letter; that even if it might possibly operate in some degree, yet the Habeas Corpus Act was not sus­ pended; and the power of the King’s Bench not being taken away, they may still set the party free, by admitting him to bail. And now you inform us, that ‘the

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main operative regulation of this Act is to suspend the common law, and the statute Habeas Corpus, with regard to all those who have been out of the realm, or on the high seas, / within a given time*;’ and that ‘the true danger is, when Liberty is nib­ bled away for expedients and by parts†.’ Such contradictions your great talents only can reconcile. We beg to recommend to your attention that just observation of our late worthy Recorder‡, where he says, ‘The leaders of party never blush, and the herd seldom think||.’ The ‘persons who make a naval war upon us,’ you think, ‘may be Rebels, but not Pirates;’ and to treat them as such, ‘is confounding not only the natural distinc­ tions of things, but the order of crimes.’ Whatever offence this has given you, it is the wisdom of the ‘old cool-headed law’ of England which has made the distinc­ tion; and this Act has introduced no other change, than providing that nothing shall be construed within its meaning, except acts of felony committed on the ships and goods of his Majesty’s subjects on the high seas.’ We consider it as a felicity, that we live under a code of criminal law, wherein crimes are more accurately defined, and more precisely ascertained, than in any other upon earth. Nothing is deemed Treason, but what is expressly declared to be such by positive Stat­ ute; and wherein consists the offence of Piracy, is known to every sailor. ‘If any of the King’s subjects hostilely invade any of the King’s ships, / which are so many royal castles, this,’ according to Lord Hale§, ‘is levying war against the King.’ But a depredation or robbery on the high seas is piracy; and therefore, says Lord Coke¶, ‘a Pirate is called a Robber, and a Robber upon the sea.’ But, says he, if one subject commit Piracy upon another, this is no Treason, though pirata est hostis humani generis.’12 The distinction is sensible and plain. To invade hostilely the ships of the King is Treason; to commit a robbery on the ship of a fellow-subject, is piracy; and to blend the one with the other, ‘is disordering the whole frame of Jurisprudence.’ You must recollect, that many of the inhabitants of Virginia, of Barbadoes, and Antigua, opposed the pretensions of the Long Parliament, after it had acquired by its policy or force, all power in England. With a vigour peculiar to them, they passed an Ordinance in 1650**, wherein they declared the People of Virginia, and others then in opposition to them, ‘notorious robbers and traitors;’ and we wish to know who will dispute the wisdom of an Assembly that has been celebrated ‘for having recalled the wisdom and glory of ancient times,’ by an Historian, whose writings you must have perused with satis­ * † ‡ || § ¶ **

Page 14. Page 16. Foster Vide his excellent Discourse in support of the Revolution.11 Hist. Pl. of the Crown, vol. i. p. 154. 3d Institute, 113. Scobell, 1650, ch. 28.13

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faction, with extacy. As you had so lately perused the writings of Lord Coke, we are astonished that you saw not the / clear distinction which the law of England has made betwixt Treason and Piracy. But the blindest of all are those who will not see. As the law had made this distinction in the nature and malignity of the crimes of Treason and Piracy, so has it made a very considerable difference in their punishment; though you tell us, ‘they are in effect punished with the same death, the same forfeiture, and the same corruption of blood.’ The Pirate is sim­ ply hanged by the neck till he is dead; but the punishment of the Traitor is aggravated with the circumstances of being drawn to the place of execution on a hurdle, of being cut down alive, and of having his body mangled. The Trai­ tor forfeits all his Goods and Lands; the Pirate forfeits only his Goods; a very material difference, where the criminal possesses little other property than lands. We agree perfectly with you, ‘that we never would take from any fellow-creature whatsoever, any advantage – when we cannot soften his punishment.’ But how the criminal is deprived of any benefit, or subjected to any inconvenience, by being deemed a Pirate rather than a Traitor, is what we cannot comprehend, and wish you to explain. In return for the passage you give us on this subject from Lord Coke, who retained through life a hard unpitying nature, we wish to recommend to your attention, a citation from that amiable oracle of the law, / Lord Hale, where he says*, ‘The Parliament is a Court of the greatest honour and justice, of which none ought to imagine any thing dishonourable.’ That those offences which may possibly arise from mistaken virtue, are not in the class of infamous actions†, is a sentiment which we cannot possibly approve. When Pierre and his honourable associates were plotting the destruction of the Venetian State, and had resolved ‘To sheathe the sword in every breast they meet;’

to spare ‘Neither sex, nor age,

Name, nor condition;’

these excellent patriots considered themselves as men of the purest virtue; and that by the destruction of their country, they would deservedly entail ‘eternal honour’ on themselves. The gallant Macheath and his friends were also men of honour; and when they levied contributions on the wealthy, thought they acted a virtuous and a meritorious part. And when John the Painter affixed the match to the national Arsenals, or carried the torch through our city, he thought these actions, so far from being infamous, were perfectly virtuous and praise-worthy. * †

Power of Parliaments, 49. Page 6.

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With great consistence, a Jesuit might inculcate such morality / on his disci­ ples; but, lest our ‘purity of manners’ are corrupted, we hope in God it will never become fashionable in Bristol, which you do us the favour to consider as ‘an honest, well-ordered, virtuous city*.’ We wish our motto always to be, what you inform us: ‘The honest juridical principles of England were invented for this one good purpose – That what was not just, should not be convenient†.’ The professed purpose of the Act, you tell us, is to detain in England for trial those who commit High-Treason in America; and you apprize us, that there is an Act made so long ago as the reign of Henry VIII. ‘for the trial in this kingdom, of treasons committed out of the realm.’ This subject we have fully considered, and we submit the result to your superior judgment. Under the ancient law, it was matter of doubt and uncertainty, how treasons committed out of the realm were to be tried. ‘It wanted trial at common law, according to Lord Coke‡; and therefore, to establish certainty therein, the Statute Henry VIII. was made|| which yet remains in force.’ It was enacted by this law, ‘That all treasons committed, or to be committed, out of the realm, shall be enquired of, and determined, either in the King’s-Bench, or by a / Commission in any County of England.’ But, every territory of the Crown, England only excepted, is without the realm, within the intention of this law; and ‘it was resolved by all the Judges of England,’ says Lord Coke§, that for a treason done in Ireland, the offender may be tried by the Statute Henry VIII. in England; because Ireland is out of the realm of England.’ How much the reign of Elizabeth was disturbed by rebellions in Ireland, you are perfectly informed. For the treasons then committed, many of the offend­ ers were tried in England, conformable to this resolution of all the Judges¶. A Peer of Ireland was tried by a Middlesex Jury, and convicted, in the beginning of the reign of Charles I. though he pleaded, that if he was tried in England, he would lose the benefit of his trial by his Peers**. The law, therefore, was clearly settled, and perfectly known, at the æra of American Colonization, in the reign of James I. It was established as a fundamental principle of the Virginia consti­ tution by the instructions of James, ‘that every offender against the duty of his allegiance, shall be sent to England, there to receive condign punishment††.’ Cul­ peper15 was sent to England, charged with raising a rebellion in Carolina, and in 1680, tried in the Court of King’s-Bench‡‡; and Sir Peyton / Ventris||||,17 who * † ‡ || § ¶ ** †† ‡‡ ||||

Page 66. Page 8. 3d Institute, p. 11. 113.

35 Henry, ch. 2.

Page 11.

Ibid.

State Trials, vol. i. p. 181.

Vid. Stith’s Hist. Virg.14 Mod. Univ. Hist. vol. xl. p. 424, 425.16 Reports, p. 349.

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reports his Case, remarks with approbation, that he was tried under the Statute 35 Henry VIII. At the Revolution, King William ordered the Ruling Powers at Boston, to send Sir Edmond Andros18 and others to England, ‘to answer before us what may be objected against them;’ and they were accordingly sent*. And the murderers of Governor Park of Antigua,20 were sent to England, and there tried and condemned, in the reign of Anne. But, according to the benign spirit of the law of England, the Statute of Henry VIII. seems to have been afterwards construed to extend to those offences only, which were treasons when it was enacted. And accordingly, the several Statutes† of William III. of Anne, and of George II. contain an express proviso, – ‘That where any of the offences by this Statute made High-Treason, shall be committed out of the realm, the same may be enquired of in any county in this kingdom, or by the Court of King’s-Bench.’ That the rebels who committed treasons in Scotland in 1715 and 1745, were tried in England, by virtue of Statutes for that purpose specially made, is known to all. And we now submit it to your judgment, though we are hopeless of making any great impression on ‘your inveterate partialities,’ if it does not clearly appear, that the Parliament, from the / æra of the Revolution, to the present reign, had not adopted it as a fixed principle of policy, ‘that all foreign treasons shall be enquired of within the realm of England.’ ‘In 1769,’ you inform us, ‘Parliament thought proper to acquaint the Crown with their construction of this Act in a formal address, wherein they instructed his Majesty, to cause persons charged with high-treasons in America to be brought into this kingdom for trial:’ A measure, however, which you consider ‘as a mischievous project, most unjust, and most unconstitutional;’ and ‘far from removing difficulties which would impede its execution, you would heap new difficulties upon it.’ But this resolution of Parliament introduced no new law, nor repealed the old. We have endeavoured to convince you, though without much hope of success, of what was the law, from the settlement of the Colonies to the present reign; and what­ soever it was, notwithstanding this resolution, it continued the same. The unjust violence, and innumerable treasons, committed in the Colonies, antecedent to this ‘formal address,’ and which gave rise to it, you do not mention, because it did not suit the argument. Why it is more unjust, or more unconstitutional, to try a Colonial traitor in England, than a Scotch or Irish rebel; or why you would impede the execution of the laws of the land, by heaping new difficulties upon it, as we / have seen no reason to convince our understanding, we cannot pos­ sibly comprehend. Confident assertion, indeed, we have remarked, without your usual energy of language, or any just attention to the ‘old, cool-headed, general law,’ the resolution of all the Judges, or the determination of Parliament; and * †

Neale’s New England.19 13 William, ch. 3. 2 & 3 Anne, ch. 20. 7 Anne, ch. 21. 17 Geo. II. ch. 39.

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nothing but a confidence which sometimes arises from the greatest knowledge, for you are not ‘ashamed to confess, that where you are ignorant, you are dissident*,’ could have produced a censure of this resolution of Parliament, as ‘a new and unconstitutional interpretation†.’ ‘We sympathize with you in a proper horror of all punishments, further than as it serves for an example‡.’ But, you ask us, To whom does this example of execution in England, for this American rebellion, apply?’ It might apply, we think, and some good purposes answered in England, by restraining the insolencies of the seditious, and the interested intrigues of the great. We however perfectly agree with you, that it is among such rebellious children that such examples should be made. Nor is there a more common case, than a trial in England, followed by punishment in America. Before the ports of the Colonies were shut against our commerce, by the men whom you admire and patronize, / how many convicts did not there annually sail from the Severn for America? What happened, we beseech you, in 1715 and 1745? Those who had committed treasons in the far­ thest Highlands of Scotland, were brought into England for trial; they were not ‘condemned unheard,’ they had the ‘beneficial trial by jury;’ and none has hitherto been bold enough to assert in the face of the nation and its laws, ‘that such persons were executed according to form, but could never be tried according to justice||.’§ And for punishment, many of them were transported to America; which, we suspect, has been attended with the usual effect, and utility of example. That it was pos­ sible to enquire of the crimes of a Colonist in England, and to send him for punishment to the place where the offence was done, according to a very com­ mon course of policy, seems not to have occurred to you; though you have told us, how he might be brought from America to England, with your usual energy of diction, and elegance of language, where you say, ‘a person is brought hither in the dungeon of a ship’s hold: thence, he is vomitted into a dungeon on land§.’¶ If policy shall think proper to transport the convict to the colony, for punishment, why he may not be vomited from the dungeon of a ship’s hold to the tree in the field, with the usual decorum, and / formality ‘of the triumphs at Tyburn,’ is what we wish you to tell. ‘That you could not vote,’ you honestly tell us, ‘for a Statute, which stigmatizes with the crime of piracy – an unhappy interdicted people¶;* because ‘they had been previously put out of the protection of the law. – The Legislature, for the mere new created offence of exercising trade, had ordered all their ships and goods to be divided as a spoil among the seamen of the navy; and to treat the necessary * † ‡ || § ¶

Page 46. Page 14. Page 10. Page 8. Ibid. Page 6.

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reprisal, of those men, as the crime of piracy, seemed harsh and incongruous.’ But these reasons, as they appear to our understandings dissatisfactory and incon­ clusive, we cannot possibly approve. The policy of this Country has been long governed by that of the Colonies. Some violent and precedent conduct of the Colonists, has directed every measure of the Legislature. They had resolved not to trade with Old England, and had carried this into execution, with a strain of the most insulting injustice; which gave rise to the law prohibiting their com­ merce with foreign countries. They had refused all obedience to the laws, and with arms in their hands prevented their execution; and they were reduced to that state, which you are pleased to call ‘putting them under the protection of the law. But, in truth, the outlaw and the traitor still possess certain legal privileges, / and are not without the protection of the law; because the former, even while he refuses to recognize the process of law, may apply for and obtain a reversal of his outlawry; and the latter, though he has thrown off his allegiance, still receives every benefit of legal trial. Obedience and protection are reciprocal duties. Let the Colonists return to their duty, and, as other subjects of the Crown, obey the laws of the land; they will no longer be considered as an interdicted people, and they will receive from that moment every protection which the laws can give. The duration and extent of their sufferings depend merely on themselves. We beg your attention to what you must already know. So early as the Res­ toration, the Acts of Trade and Navigation, which that illustrious Merchant Sir Josiah Child21 very properly calls the Charta Maritima of England, were enacted, the Colonial Commerce was regulated, and restrained to England; and every nation, and every alien; were totally excluded. In proportion as the policy of these laws has been universally approved, their spirit, during every reign, has been carefully cultivated and enforced. The offender, who exercised trade con­ trary to the provisions of those salutary laws, incurred the forfeiture of his ship and goods. Yet you consider this as ‘a mere new created offence,’ and the offender as neither deserving blame or punishment. Why / the forfeitures incurred by act­ ing contrary to the laws of trade, may not with as much propriety and justice be divided among the seamen of the navy, who enforce the observance and execu­ tion of the law, as distributed to the Governor of a Colony, and the Collector of the Customs; as it is not obvious to intuition, we wish you to explain. The remedy, however, is in the hands of the Colonists themselves; let them cease to endeavour to ruin the Commerce and Manufactures of this Country, and they will instantly be restored to their former important privileges. Necessary reprisal on what or whom? If this is a ‘dispute with the Ministry,’ and not ‘a quarrel with the nation*,’ we wish to know why reprisal is necessary; or if made at all, why on us your Constituents? If all reprisal presupposes some­ *

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thing already taken, or damage done; unless it can be shewn that we had taken their ships, or destroyed their property, the necessity, or even the propriety of this reprisal on us cannot easily be supported. But we are not conscious that we have ever injured this ‘unhappy People;’ unless to give them greater credit than they deserved, or to be their creditors to a greater extent than they seem willing to pay, be an injury, we know not that we have ever done them wrong, / What­ ever offence it may give you, that the necessary reprisal of those men is treated as the crime of Piracy; yet however incongruous you may think it, the wisdom of the law of England has deemed it such. Until they cease to be the subjects of the Crown, their depredations on their fellow-subjects upon the high sea will be adjudged Piracy, and punished as such. That our representatives had voted for them; that you had conferred honour on their cause, by patronizing it; and with those great talents which you possess, had palliated all their conduct which you could not defend; ought at least to have given us some merit with them. Perhaps we are at present too much actuated by what we have felt and suffered, not to consider their conduct towards us any otherwise than ‘a strain of the most unnatural cruelty and injustice*.’ A naval war is not only carried on against us by reprisal, but the war is at pre­ sent carried on in America; though we think not on the usual footing of other wars. Exchange of prisoners has been made, but with little fairness or equality. Those miserable men who have been taken in the act of high treason commit­ ted, by fighting against the King’s troops, or had been left to perish with hunger or disease in the woods, were sent from Canada / to their homes, without ran­ som or condition. Those who had been rescued by the good conduct of a British Officer from the Indians at the Cedars with great difficulty and danger, were discharged, on the express condition of returning as many of the King’s troops who had been taken at St. John’s. But the Congress, with a policy peculiar to them, afterwards refused to perform the capitulation; a conduct which would have greatly surprized us, if we had not been told, that among the other mis­ chiefs of civil wars, ‘they corrupt their morals, and prevent even the natural taste and relish for equity and justice†. Those who were taken prisoners at New York, the Congress, perfectly consistent with those principles, refused to subsist; and General Howe,22 with a humanity which embellishes the greatest talents, dis­ charged them without ransom or stipulation of return; and others were simply exchanged for those officers and men who had fallen into the hands of the insur­ gents, before the war could be said to have commenced. Whether you approve or condemn, praise or censure, this conduct of the King’s General, we are at a loss to discover. If Administration prepares to act against those who have been exchanged, and thereby ‘virtually pardoned, it will * †

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exhibit as indecent a peice of injustice,’ / you say, as ever civil fury had produced*;’ and yet you tell us, ‘that if our enemies are Rebels, the King’s Generals have no right to release them upon any condition whatsoever, and they are themselves as answer­ able to the law, and as much want pardon, as the Rebels whom they release†.’ If the prisoners exchanged are not thereby virtually pardoned, ‘the cartel,’ you inform us, ‘is a cruel fraud; for the life of a man is received, and you ought to return a life for it.’ You consider the soldier who is fighting for the national rights, and in support of the laws, in the same predicament with those who, by contending by force against all law, had incurred the crime of Treason. But here is no fairness or parity in the transaction; the former had not forfeited his life, and to take it away, would be a most indecent piece of injustice, the latter having forfeited his all to the laws, if he was virtually pardoned, he received a benefit, in return for which he had nothing to give. Whenever a rebellion really exists, Government, you say, has not entered into such military conventions, but has declined ‘all intermediate treaty.’ But what happened, we beseech you, in the numerous rebellions in Ireland, from the commencement of Elizabeth’s reign to the capitulation of Limerick? / How many Conventions did not her famous Generals enter into? How many inter­ mediate treaties did not the vigorous Administration of Elizabeth make with the Irish Rebels, the conditions of which they generally forfeited? The same policy was pursued in the reign of Charles I. and with a similar success. How many intermediate treaties did not William III. and his Generals enter into with the Irish, antecedent to the final settlement of their affairs by the capitulation of Limerick, which was dictated by a necessity, which in war, as in every thing else, is governed by no principle? But you ask us, ‘Who has ever heard of capitula­ tion, and exchange of prisoners, in the late rebellion of this kingdom?’ Preston in 1715, and Carlisle in 1745, were expressly surrendered upon capitulation. The benefits, however, which are acquired, are more or less, according to the terms of it. If they surrender at discretion, they acquire little more than their lives; and such were the capitulations of Preston and Carlisle. The prisoners were reserved for future legal enquiry into their conduct, and for pardon, or punishment, or acquittal, according to their demerits. To a circumstance which happened at the trials of these men, you seem not to have sufficiently attended. They insisted, that they had been virtually pardoned by the capitulation; and the Generals who had reduced them proved, that they had surrendered simply at discretion. The law, therefore, / plainly supposed, that the King’s Generals had a right to release them on conditions. Every war must be carried on according to circumstances; and every General must have powers in proportion to his situation. If a simple * †

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capitulation at discretion is no virtual pardon, as no promise is made, so neither is a simple discharge without condition. The Convulsions of a great Empire you could not consider ‘as fit matter of discussion under a commission of oyer and terminer*.’ The King’s Generals, you say, ‘had no right to release them upon any conditions whatsoever.’ If the life of a man is not granted by a virtual pardon for the one you receive, it is a cruel fraud, and there is no fairness or parity in the transaction. These strange incongruities must ever perplex those who, without paying a just regard to the old, cool-headed law of England, are altogether governed by their inveterate partialities. But these speculations are perfectly nugatory and vain, and tend only to perplex the igno­ rant, or confound the uninformed. General pardon has been offered to all; the validity of which there can be no reason to doubt; and those who continue in arms, well know how easy it is to make their peace and obtain forgiveness. ‘We have,’ it seems, ‘made war on the Colonies, not by arms only, but by laws:’ But / whether this policy is right or wrong, we borrowed it from themselves, and we have only followed precedents which they had established. When the Colo­ nies first considered themselves as aggrieved, ‘by an unlimited legislative power of Parliament over them, of which you found them in possession when you first came into public trust,’ how did they procure redress? They entered into associations, which had all the effect of laws, for a suspension of their commerce, which they had been taught to consider as essentially necessary for the very existence of this Country. A measure which you had done so much, by the repeal of the Stamp Act, to render so successful, was adopted, and pursued upon every new occasion, with almost a similar success. These associations ‘rooted in their jurisprudence, and we now taste the fruit of them.’ While they were successful, you deemed them wise, and honoured them with your approbation; but when a similar policy was adopted by the wisdom of the Nation, you then considered it as ‘trampling on some maxim of justice, or some capital principle of wise Government†.’ The Act on which you have said so much, you have gravely assured us, has suspended the Habeas Corpus with regard to all those who have been out of the realm within a / given time. But, if you had debated against this Bill in its progress, or if you had ever perused it with attention, you could have formed no such opinion of its contents. Every sound principle of jurisprudence concurs to prevent an extension of its ‘operative regulation,’ beyond the very letter of it, to other cases equally within its principle. We have already submitted the very accurate language of this law to your superior judgment. Yet you tell us, that all who have been out of the realm within a given time, are objects of the Act: but those only who having been guilty of crimes in the Colonies, or on the seas, and * †

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committed by a magistrate having competent jurisdiction, are within the let­ ter or meaning of it. Every inhabitant of the West Indies, or three unoffending Colonies, are objects of this law; but, if they have not committed crimes, they have nothing to apprehend. Every gentleman may travel for health, or education without intriguing with Mr. Franklin, or conveying intelligence of the strength or weakness of the nation. Every sailor who navigates the sea, may surely follow his usual occupation without committing piracy. And yet you inform us, that the gentleman for no other offence than travelling for health, and the sailor for navigating the seas, ‘are under a temporary proscription*.’ If we did not / perfectly know your integrity, we should suspect your candour; or if your great talents were not universally acknowledged, we might perhaps blame your understand­ ing. That liberty is the general right of all, we perfectly agree with you; and that ‘the mariner who lands on the quay, ought to rest on the same firm legal ground, as the merchant who sits in the counting-house:’ but that the sailor, who having committed a piracy, and merits a gaol, should stand on the same legal ground as the merchant who in innocence has pursued his respectable occupation, we cannot possibly admit. Having exploded this Act as putting every one under a temporary proscrip­ tion for no other offence than navigating the seas, you inform us†, that this is the first partial suspension of the Habeas Corpus that has been made‡; which is far worse than an universal suspension; and the limiting qualification, instead of taking out the sting, sharpens it to a greater degree. Notwithstanding the ingenu­ ity of your reasoning, we must remain of opinion, that some liberty is better than none; that in proportion as the natural rights of mankind are restrained, a greater or less degree of tyranny is introduced; and that the liberty of all is much less affected by a law which extends to criminals / only, than if the innocent, by being deprived of their Habeas Corpus, were subjected to unlimited confinement. We suspect, however, that the true objection is, that the suspension was not general. ‘The alarm of such a proceeding would then be universal. It would operate as a sort of call of the nation.’ An universal alarm, a call of the nation, are things which some men cannot possibly resist; and when the frightened retired into obscurity, the bolder would have risen up into power. But we think it a felicity, that notwithstanding Congressional resolves, and the intrigues of their patrons, an universal tranquillity, attended by an unusual prosperity, reigned in England. Prudence, therefore, adopted what necessity only required; and all that was nec­ essary, or that was carried into execution by this Act was, to detain criminals, particularly described, for a limited time. ‘The rest of the people are to continue as * † ‡

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they stood before.’ We are happily unconnected with ‘State factions,’ and as it is the ‘obnoxious’ only who are suspected, we have very little to apprehend. During the several plots and rebellions, which at various times have disturbed the tranquillity of this Country, from the Revolution to the present reign, laws were made ‘to empower his Majesty to secure and detain such persons as shall be suspected of conspiring against his person and government.’ Those were times / of great heat, and the violence of State factions agitated the whole. We feel a very sensible pleasure in comparing the happy tranquillity of our own times, with the condition of those of former days. If those laws really introduced an univer­ sal suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, let us regret the necessity which, for the preservation and safety of the whole, justified their principle. But if none could be deprived of their liberty but suspected persons, which are terms known in law, then the suspension of those laws were merely partial, since none were the objects of them but those who had given cause of suspicion. To pursue this enquiry further would lead us into a contention of more words, which we think the most contemptible of any. Whether the suspension was general or partial, those laws were of short duration; when the necessity disappeared, the former liberty returned, which we now happily enjoy. It is matter of great regret, that you have not debated against this Bill in its progress through the House. What might not have been the good effects of your powers of speech? The same ingenious reasonings which, out of the House, you have now employed against it, to prove, how far worse in its consequence, and bad in the principle, is a partial than an universal suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act*; how much better / a total ecli[p]se of liberty is, than a partial freedom†; and how much more dangerous it is, when liberty is nibbled away by parts, than a rational freedom, which must be limited to be possessed; must have had the most decisive consequences: And you would have probably had no rea­ son to complain, that all opposition to measures proposed by Ministers, where the name of America appears, is vain and frivolous‡. Although you seem to doubt, whether every thing proposed against America is of course in favour of Great Britain||; yet, when it is considered, that the con­ test is now no longer to be ended by writings or by words; that a ‘long array of hostile Acts of Parliament’ have proved unsuccessful; that with a levity character­ istic of them, they have themselves chosen to close the dispute by force, and have disdainfully rejected all treaty that did not admit their independence; you will pardon us, if we are of opinion, that the measure which militate against America are in favour of Great Britain. We however enjoy hope, notwithstanding ‘your * † ‡ ||

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prophecies,’ that the time is not far distant, when the delusion of the Colonists being dispelled, they will return to their duty and former connections; when their hopes of foreign aid, and of a successful issue to all / contention by force being destroyed, they will again be the peaceful fellow-subjects of the same crown, and governed by the same equal laws. The interests of the two Countries, properly understood, being then the same, we shall entirely agree in opinion with you, that every thing proposed against America is not in favour of Great Britain. But you lament, that in the late proceedings you see very few traces of that ‘generosity, humanity and dignity of mind, which formerly characterized this nation*.’ We shall not propose to your consideration the repeal of the Stamp Act, and of Mr. Townsend’s law, for which they were so remarkably grateful. But that you see no generosity in the resolution of Parliament of the 20th of Feb­ ruary 1775, who with a real dignity of mind, and with a view, if possible, to prevent a civil war, even after their authority had been denied, and their laws had been forcibly opposed, gave up the important right of taxation, which was the great original cause of all their complaints, that you see no humanity in the general unconditional pardon which has been offered to all who had forfeited every thing to the laws; we think astonishing: Nor can we account for it without considering, that Civil wars vitiate the politics, and corrupt the morals of / man­ kind†; and their natural relish for equity being perverted, they no longer view the proceedings of nations or of individuals with impartiality, or characterize them with any fairness or truth. As we think not the worse of you for declining to participate in this joy, on the present situation of the British affairs; yet, you have not told us the cause why you censure others, who have thought proper to consider them as objects of triumph to themselves, or congratulation to their Sovereign. If liberty is a gen­ eral right; you ought to allow to others, what you claim for yourself, the right of enjoying ‘your inveterate partialities.’ Thro’ the medium of those partialities, you see the conduct and affairs of this country, ‘as a sad spectacle exhibited to the scorn of Europe.’ Permit others to see them in a very different light. They behold it as a great, flourishing, and wealthy nation, which, under the conduct of prudence and wisdom, has made greater exertions in a contention of the greatest magni­ tude, than any other nation on earth could make; instead of being reduced to a servile dependence on her neighbours, with a magnanimity worthy of the first of nations, preparing her mighty natural strength to repel injury, and to command attention; complaining / of supposed hostilities, and procuring redress; regarded by her allies, and feared by her enemies; and at the same time that chastisement is prepared for the refractory and rebellious, those who shew any inclination to * †

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return to their duty, are treated with a generosity, and even humanity, beyond example. If the employing ‘the hireling sword of German boors,’ to support the liberal Government of this free nation, has given you offence, we beg you to inform us, if the same policy was not pursued in the most flourishing days of this kingdom? Who, we beseech you, fought the battles of William III. in support of the glori­ ous Revolution against the Irish? The Danes and Dutch, the Wurtemburgers and French refugees. The Dutch fought against the rebels in 1715, and the Hes­ sians fought against them in 1745. In other reigns ‘German boors’ were brought into the nation to prevent invasion; and in the last war, the most expensive and glorious of all, the swords of ‘German vassals’ fought the battles of this country; America was conquered in Germany. If the continuance of war was unavoid­ able, since the demands of the Colonists rose in proportion to concession; and treaty proposed, even with condescension, was rejected with disdain; we desire you to tell how an army was to be raised able to contend with ‘three millions of subjects seeking protection in the arms of France?’ If the projects of the Congress / and their abettors had proved successful, in destroying the trade, and ruin­ ing the manufactures of the nation, armies, though without discipline, indeed, might very easily have been raised. But, thank God, no loom has been stopped in its shed, or ship laid up in its dock; the mechanic still sings in his shop, and the ploughman whistles after his plough. The lazy and vicious, indeed, recruited the national troops; but, their numbers being few, they were insufficient to aug­ ment armies, or to supply regiments. Vigour, therefore, proposed what Wisdom instantly adopted, to take into the service and pay of the State foreign disciplined veterans; a policy which had been found convenient in the most flourishing days of the kingdom, and wiser far, in our judgments, than obstructing trade, or incommoding the manufacturer, by making new levies, which are always more expensive, and seldom so effectual. You could not easily adapt your mind to the victories communicated by the ‘Court Gazettes;’ and the ‘glory acquired at the White Plains by Colonel Raille has no charms for you.’ But if you found no charms in his glory, what delight must you not have felt in hearing of his unfortunate fate and unhappy end on the fields of Trentown!23 If you delight not ‘in finding Fort Kniphausen in the heart of the British dominions,’ with what extacy / you must have heard of the erection of Fort Lee and Washington, and above all of Fort Independence! And if the ‘bar­ barous appellations of strangers,’ which you ‘scarcely know how to pronounce,’ has given you offence, how charmed must you have been with reading the harmoni­ ous names of Washington and Putnam, Macdougal and Wooster!24 Notwithstanding those victories, ‘our affairs,’ it seems, ‘are in a bad condi­ tion; America is not conquered*.’ More, however, has been done than the most *

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intelligent expected. There were difficulties in the transporting so large an army, with its immense train of necessaries and attendants, across the ocean, which no nation but this could have surmounted. The wisest Generals were of opinion, that little more could be done, than collecting together an army in the Fall, to prepare for the campaign of 1777, in the spring. But the abilities of our Officers have successfully executed that which the wisdom of the Minister had planned. Canada has been reconquered; and by the destruction of the Congressional fleet on the Champlain, a way has been opened into New England. The Floridas have been secured; Nova Scotia has been freed and strengthened; Long Island and New York were conquered; the impregnable works / at Kingsbridge were forced without the loss of a man; and the Forts Lee, Washington, and Independence, submitted at discretion. The army penetrated to the Delaware without opposi­ tion; the Congress fled; and, if our private intelligence is true, nothing but the severity of winter could have prevented the final dissolution of their power. But on the most prosperous issue of our arms, you assure us, ‘we will not be where we stood when war was called in to supply the defect of political establish­ ment*. If, after having endured all the intermediate evils of war, we cannot stand on better ground, we shall have got a bad bargain indeed. If at the conclusion of war, our factors cannot without insult and obstruction carry on our affairs, and recover our debts; if our ships cannot trade with safety in their ports; if smug­ gling, the bane of fair trade, cannot be restrained; and if the Acts of Navigation, the great Palladium of national commerce, cannot be executed, enforced, and invigorated, we had better have independence at once. These are the important objects on which we have set our hearts; it is for these that we are at war. ‘A rev­ enue,’ you assure us, ‘we will never see from America.’ But, as we understand this great original cause of Colonial Grievance was expressly / given up to them by the resolution of Parliament of February 1775; if they would have condescended to have entered into communication or treaty as subjects with the national Com­ missioners, we have reason to think this important point, with others of less import, would have been settled to the mutual satisfaction of all. But if they, as subjects, continue to receive the protection of this Country, let them contribute by supplies to the support of its power; let them give something, but in their own way; they ought, however, to afford some assistance to Old England; and it is for this too we are at war. The way to final settlement, we think, with you, is still full of intricate, dark, and perplexed mazes: But as these principally consist in that dark delusion which has overspread the Colonies, and has hitherto prevented them from seeing their own good, or dispassionately pursuing it; and as we have the satisfaction to be told, that ‘you should be ashamed to make yourself one of a noisy multitude, to hal­ loo and hearten them into doubtful and dangerous courses†;’ we are not without * †

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hope, their delusions will soon be dispelled, they will in all soberness return to their duty, and as men of business, unconnected with Party, seriously concur with the national Commissioners in a final adjustment of their affairs. / Every thing that has been done there, we are told, has arisen from a total misconception of the object; and all means of reconciliation with it, even after victory, must depend on a total renunciation of that unconditional submis­ sion, which has taken such possession of the minds of violent men. All means, indeed, have hitherto proved unsuccessful; but whether there has been a total misconception of the object, we have some reason to doubt. During almost every Administration in the present reign, a different mode of policy has been pursued, and all equally unsuccessful. A law made during one Administration was repealed by the next, without acquiring their confidence; a new law, made under a third, upon principles which they had formerly admitted; but, grown confident from success, met with a similar opposition; and to remove discon­ tent, was repealed under a fourth Administration, but without attaining the end. Another law was enacted upon a still different principle; but the authority of Parliament to legislate for them in any case, was now expressly denied, and the law was opposed by them with greater outrage. Principles of Legislation had been surrendered to them; but they insisted for a greater concession. Laws had been repealed without receding from principle; but they rose in their demands. They were threatened and soothed; measures of vigour, and those of concession, were proposed, / and all proved equally unsuccessful. We will do you the justice to say, that nothing could have prevented the important crisis of affairs which had arisen in 1773, but a steady pursuit of your principles of Colonial Policy; to repeal without reserve every law of which they complained, and never again to legislate for them in any case whatsoever. But whether this would not have produced an independence of the worst kind, a nominal dependence, but real independence, we submit to your consideration. They would have then been the subjects of the State, without being bound by its laws; they would have received the advantages of subjects, and the protection of Government, without contrib­ uting any thing to its support; and they would have traded whither they pleased, without regard to the Acts of Navigation, which, as there would have remained no power to execute or enforce them, must necessarily have become a dead letter. There is a simplicity in this plan of policy which would have ensured its success; but we wish you to tell, where would have been the advantage of Old England? Unconditional submission to the laws of the land, we think the duty of every subject; since, in proportion as their obedience is qualified, they cease to be subjects, and acquire a portion of independence. This is the unconditional sub­ mission to which men of the greatest / wisdom and authority in the State have thought the Colonies ought to submit. If conditions are granted while arms are in their hands, the idea of their own power and consequence will remain; and

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what security would there be, that they will faithfully perform the conditions of peace any longer than they please, or than this Country is able to enforce; since the stability of all Government depends much upon opinion? If the mak­ ing of peace was confided to you, and every law was repealed of which they had ever complained, and every thing conceded which they had ever required, we beseech you to inform us, what guarantee you or they could give against those powerful motives of mankind, Ambition, Interest, or Resentment. If no rational security can be given, that they would at all times faithfully perform the articles of peace which you had made, the dilemma is plain; they must either be reduced to the unconditional submission which every subject, in every territory of the Crown, owes to the supreme Legislature, or be declared independent. Although nothing can place us in our former situation, yet ‘terms relative to the cause of the war,’ you say, ‘ought to be made by authority of Parliament*.’ This is a point of great consequence, and we beg a little of your / patient attention. Wise men have differed with regard to what is the real cause of the war. Some, indeed, have supposed, that Independence was the real cause from the beginning, and that exemption from parliamentary taxation was merely a pretence. But if the great original cause of Colonial Grievances, and real cause of the war, was taxa­ tion; yet till of late, they professed their readiness to grant money for the public exigencies, by their own Assemblies, in their own way. Upon the peace of 1762, which had secured the Colonies so many important advantages, and in truth had preserved them from the dominion of France, the nation was found immensely indebted, and no small part of it incurred on a Colonial account. These cir­ cumstances were communicated to the Colonies by the Minister, through their Agents; and they were informed, that it was not expected of them to pay any part of the interest of the national debt; but some part of the annual expence of the great encreased American Establishment they ought to pay, which they might raise by their own Assemblies, in the way most agreeable to them. However rea­ sonable the proposition, or however consistent with their former professions, it was scornfully rejected by some of them, and complied with by none. These facts, which prove beyond doubt that the Colonies were requested to tax them­ selves, before the passing the Stamp Act, and refused to comply, were carefully / concealed in America, and even almost unknown in England. Three persons† of integrity and understanding, who were ear and eye witnesses of the transaction, as well as the letters of Assemblies, and of Agents, concur in establishing this singular, and important point in Colonial History; and yet you have asserted, in the face of Parliament and the Nation, that ‘these facts happen to be neither true nor possible.’‡ * † ‡

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The various steps which were pursued by different Administrations, from this time to the beginning of 1775, to carry into execution the policy, of either inducing or obliging the Colonies to contribute something towards the support of their own establishments, have been already slightly touched, and need not be repeated. To conciliate the affections of the Colonies, and if possible to prevent a civil war, the House of Commons, on the 20th of February 1775, with a generos­ ity, and even condescension, which will always do them honour, passed several resolves, which may be reduced to this single, simple proposition – ‘That when the Colonial Assemblies shall contribute, according to their circumstances, to the common defence, Parliament will forbear to tax the Colonies. If this proposition did not / contain all that had ever been claimed; yet much more was conceded than their most sanguine Patrons had ever any reason to expect. Upon this sim­ ple proposition, wisdom and prudence might have erected a system of Colonial jurisprudence, which, if not absolutely perfect, might have given satisfaction to all. The authority and omnipotence of the House of Commons, principally arise from the important prerogative of granting money. Why the same or similar effects might not have been derived from this circumstance in the Colonies, we believe no mortal can tell. It was a singular excellence of this proposition, that the appropriation of the expected revenue was specified, which prevented all suspicion of its ‘increasing the means of corruption, without any ease to the public burthens;’ – it was ‘to be carried to the account of each Province respectively.’ Little evil could have ensued, and mighty good might have followed the adoption of this resolution by the Colonies; yet you opposed it in Parliament, for reasons which we recollect not, if you have ever explained. Both private intelligence and public information agree, that these Resolu­ tions had the good fortune, which few Parliamentary determinations have met with; it was published in the Colonies without a comment, and two weeks before any private letters, or public / speeches arrived. It seemed to give satisfaction to all, as containing every thing for which they had ever contended. But this satis­ faction was of short duration. The usual private letters, with the Parliamentary Speeches, having arrived, they were published with the Resolutions themselves in form; and it was now reprobated with a warmth in proportion to their former approbation. The Governors communicated these propositions of Parliament to the Assemblies, in the usual constitutional way; but, unhappily, they had now got their cue; they would hardly do them the honour to read them with attention, and they finally rejected them with disdain. The Congress too, has considered and rejected them; and it is very singular, that in their Declaration of disappro­ bation, they echoed back the very objections, in almost the same language which had been made to them in Parliament: circumstances which appeared to us, who are unconcerned in the intrigues of the Great, as very extraordinary.

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Notwithstanding this want of success, the Parliament, in the beginning of 1776, passed a law to empower Commissioners to grant pardon to the Colo­ nists, to restore them to peace, and to all the privileges of subjects. But, with a peculiar insolence, the Colonists have despised the proffered pardon; and though the Commissioners, with a condescension which / perhaps detracted from the national dignity, entreated them to confer on the means of restoring peace, and of redressing all their just grievances; yet, with unexampled temerity, they rejected all mode of treaty that did not presuppose them independent. Such are the terms relative to the cause of the war, which appear to us to have been offered by authority of Parliament, with a moderation which does credit to the Nation, and rejected with an insolence which ever accompanies a power newly acquired. But you ask us, Have the National Commissioners, whom you very mod­ estly denominate ‘the leaders of a faction,’ restored to the King’s peace, and to free trade, any men who have submitted? Yes; they have not only offered a general unconditional pardon to all, even to those, the inveteracy of whose crimes had rendered the most obnoxious; but have granted pardon, protection, and security, to those who have submitted, and have declared themselves willing to become the peaceful Subjects of the Crown. They are now at the King’s peace, possess their property in security, and enjoy all the privileges of other Subjects, with­ out diminution. But why are they not instantly restored to trade? They enjoy perfect freedom of internal commerce, and even foreign trade, to as great an extent as any subject of the Crown. We who preserved / our loyalty, are as much excluded from carrying on a foreign trade at New York, as those, who, by their insurrections, had forfeited every thing to the laws. Every part of the Empire feels the evils of war, in a greater or less degree; and we think it unjust to com­ plain of their suffering an inconvenience, when the most peaceful and loyal are in a similar situation. When the necessities of war shall permit, and just policy require, the trade of every port in the Colonies, will be once more laid open to all; they and we will enjoy the same privileges; and then there will be no longer any cause, even for misrepresentation, to assert, ‘That the American trade from being national, is turned into a personal monopoly, and dealt out in private graces to recompense the incendiaries of war.’ Never had we heard, ’till you gravely informed us, that there were in this Kingdom several Gentlemen, who, not satisfied with carrying fire and sword into America*, are nearly animated with the same rage against their neigh­ bours; and, not content with the toleration of their own passions, persecute the moderation of their fellow-citizens. We flatter ourselves we fall not under this censure; and we hope you will do us the justice to believe, / that not being of the number of those Gentlemen, we abominate every kind of persecution; but *

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especially for political opinions of any kind. That every man in this free Country may think as he pleases on politics, and write what he thinks, without dread of persecution, your Letter, which is now before us, seems to us the strongest of proofs. Some reason we have to believe, that it was owing to the lenity of Government, that ‘the intrigues of some men,’ which were perfectly known, had escaped punishment, or even reprehension. We exceedingly admire the ingenu­ ity of your reasonings in favour of toleration; and though they are not altogether applicable to the happy situation of this Country, we apprehend they might do ‘Knights service’ in the United States of America, where persecution for politi­ cal opinions reigns triumphant. Every man in those free States must think, speak, and write according to rule; none dare arraign the wisdom, or the virtue of the ruling powers. There is no opposition-party in that Country, with the invaluable prerogative of reviling, misrepresenting, and insulting those who have happily got into power. How many in that Country have suffered confiscation, imprisonment, and death, for their political opinions! How many do we daily see, who have been driven from their homes and friends into banishment, who, from being of some importance, / are now insignificant; and who from enjoying affluence, are now reduced to poverty, merely because they would not support measures which their consciences could not approve! If the Congress and Com­ mittees are not even more ungrateful than we have had reason to think them, they would certainly pay a just regard to your sentiments. As a friend to the gen­ eral rights of mankind, we beseech you, therefore, to write them on this subject. Let them know, in your forcible and elegant manner, that there is nothing more inconsistent with the natural rights of men, more unreasonable or unjust, more iniquitous, more impolitic, than persecution; and advise them, that tolerated in their own passions, they ought not to inflict what they are not willing to endure. As we see not its truth, we cannot possibly approve of your sentiment; That General Rebellions never were encouraged, but are always provoked*. From our intimate connection with America, we have learned something of its affairs. Antecedent to the Stamp Act, the Colonies or their politics had never been very great objects of public attention; nor had they ever been adopted into the political party-game of this Country: But the vigour and success with which they had / opposed that law; the decisive influence which their resolutions had on the great commercial and manufacturing interests of this Country; and the great influence which their vehement opposition had, or was supposed to have, in changing a Ministry, or repealing a law; gave them a weight in the political scale, which before they had not possessed; and they were regularly inlisted into the parties of this Country. From this time the Colonies became a scene of political intrigue and management, of great extent and importance. Certain *

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great men, who had observed the utility and effects of Colonial opposition, and that they were capable of direction and management, carefully cultivated a cor­ respondence with their leading men, who were forward enough on their part; and politicians of less pitch and moment, carried on similar intrigues with simi­ lar views: And mercantile letters, admired formerly for brevity and precision, were now stuffed with details of public affairs; nor could any merchant or man­ ufacturer hope for success with his correspondent, whose letter contained not a representation of politics, suitable to his passions or his views. Nor were the Colonists backward on their part: They carefully cultivated this correspondence. The thanks of Public Bodies were given to Parliamentary Speakers for their pro­ tection, their speeches, and defence; and their pictures were exhibited in their public places to do them / honour; and a regular Colonial party was formed in England, which you avow and defend*. The Society of the Bill of Rights became the ostensible Patrons of the Colo­ nies. They transmitted sums of money to enable them to carry on their intrigues and opposition; they were exhorted by them to persevere in their resistance of Acts of the Legislature, which they declared to be no Parliament. ‘Property,’ say they, in one of their circular letters, ‘is the natural right of mankind. The connection between taxation and representation, is its necessary consequence. The connection is now broken, and taxes are to be levied both in England and in America, by men who are not their respective representatives. Our cause is one. Our enemies are the same. We trust our constancy, and conduct will not differ. Demands which are made without authority, should be heard without obedience.’ Among the signers of this truly patriotic epistle, we find among others, the celebrated names of Glynn and Oliver, Trevannion and Townsend, Mawbey and Sawbridge†. These are some of your Political Company – with whom for eleven years you have constantly thought and acted‡.’ This very famous Society, not content with sending them money, and conveying advice to the Colonies, instructed the / national representatives in their behalf. ‘You shall endeavour,’ say they, ‘to restore to America the essential right of taxation by representatives of their own free elec­ tion; repealing the laws passed in violation of that right since the year 1763; and the universal excise, so notoriously incompatible with every principle of Brit­ ish liberty, which has been lately substituted in the Colonies, for the laws of custom||.’ The illustrious Junius25 condescended to write a Commentary on this sin­ gular instruction, which, in truth, wanted none. Instead of telling them what he must have known to be true, or his ignorance was extreme, that this was a mere * † ‡ ||

Page 37. Un. Reg. vol. xiii. p. 224 – 5. Page 67.

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political falshood, calculated to inflame discontent, he very gravely informed them*, ‘I am not sufficiently informed on the subject of that excise, – to deliver our opinion upon it;’ and he assures them, that ‘any other revenue laws, but those of excise, would be nugatory in such a country as America.’ Such were the arts used to promote disorder, and to excite disobedience. Thus encouraged to despise and to resist the authority of Parliament, none ought to be surprised that scholars so apt, were not backward to practise the excellent lessons which had been so carefully taught, and / so warmly inculcated on them. But it was not only public societies, private individuals enforced the same doctrines: ‘Go on, go on,’ say they, in Letters which filled all the public papers; ‘your friends are daily increasing in England; persevere, and your resistance will be crowned with success.’ When, in superaddition to those facts, are mentioned public speeches and inflammatory writings, can any mortal hesitate to concur in thinking with us, that the present war with the Colonies was rather encouraged, than provoked? But whether encouraged or provoked, the war, it seems, is now of full two years standing†; and the superiority of the former campaign rested wholly with the Colonies‡.’ That you may form a true judgment of affairs, we mean to trouble you with a brief state of things. There were not wanting many wise and well meaning men, who from the proceedings of the Congress, which met in September 1774, hoped for, and expected a peaceable and final end to Colonial disputes and dis­ turbances. But their wishes and hopes were altogether disappointed, when the Congress, in an evil hour, most thoroughly approved of the resolutions of the county of Suffolk, in Massachusetts, avowing their determination to oppose Acts of the Supreme Legislature by force. All their / subsequent proceedings were unhappily marked by the same spirit. All their grievances, as you inform us, have arisen from the principle of Acts of Parliament; but to the Legislature, who could only grant them relief, they applied not for redress; for this would have admitted jurisdiction, which they were not then of a temper to do. To the King, indeed, they petitioned, and complained of a very long list of grievances; but they knew the King could not grant them the redress which they prayed, and must have had therefore little hope of success. Their former commercial associa­ tions were now improved and enlarged; and with a view to alarm the merchants, and to raise insurrection among the manufacturers in this country, all trade with us was prohibited. The conclusion of their address to the people of America, desired them to prepare for the worst; words dark and ominous, which sufficiently evince, that even the Congress thought the measures they had pursued were such, that no reasonable hope could be entertained of their success. Without waiting for a * † ‡

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redress of their grievances, as they had prayed, or the result of their commercial regulations, almost all the Colonies, immediately after the rising of this Con­ gress, in October 1774, made vigorous preparations for war. In the provinces of the South, the militia was embodied and trained, money was raised, and arms and ammunition were / provided. As the measure of opposing Acts of the Leg­ islature by open and avowed force, originated in Massachusetts, it was now the most forward in preparations for war. The public treasury was seized, and the monies appropriated; magazines of war were provided, and arms and ammu­ nition were procured; and an army of minute men was raised and disciplined for immediate action. The Courts of Justice were shut up by force, with every circumstance of outrage and insult; and all who had shewn any inclination to execute the law, were obliged to seek for refuge with the army in Boston. The Parliament having in the beginning of 1775, maturely considered Colo­ nial affairs, the two Houses, ‘by a majority that will redeem all Acts ever done by majorities,’ resolved, that a part of the King’s subjects in the Massachusetts-Bay, have proceeded so far to resist the authority of the Supreme Legislature, that a rebellion actually exists within the Province. With a view to prevent the rebellion from spreading itself over the other Colonies, the House of Commons, though they had not been petitioned by the Congress, soon after, by their resolution of 20th February 1775, transferred to the Colonists the right of taxation, the origi­ nal and principal cause of all their grievances. The great plan of the campaign of 1775, if it deserves the name, was here plainly marked. To remove all pretence of insurrection, a great / important concession, relative to the cause of Colonial discontents, was made by authority of Parliament to all; and if this proved inef­ fectual, the rebellion then existing in the Massachusetts was to be suppressed by force. And if this plan of operations has not met with all the success which its wisdom and moderation merited, it is owing to intermediate change of circum­ stances in the Colonies, to accident and to intrigues, which could neither be foreseen or prevented. The temper with which this proposition of conciliation was received in the Colonies, and the disdain with which it was rejected by them, have been men­ tioned, and need not be repeated. A measure intended to prevent a civil war, was unfortunately the more immediate and accidental cause of its actual existence. Great military magazines having been prepared in Massachusetts in the winter, the General thought it prudent to endeavour to secure or destroy that, without which a war could neither be commenced or carried on; and the skirmish at Lexington was the result. Accident had now furnished the leaders of Insurrec­ tion with a pretext, for which they had long waited with anxiety; and the army which they had for some time embodied, and trained, was now brought forth into action. They seized on that which commanded Boston and its harbour, and prudence and self-defence required it should be / immediately regained; and the

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affair of Bunker’s Hill ensued. The army, designed to contend with the unpre­ pared strength of Massachusetts, was found little able to cope with the united and prepared forces of all the Colonies; and to strengthen the army, almost all the troops in America were ordered to Boston. Ticonderago and Crown-Point, guarded only by a few men for the police, before they had heard of a war, were surprized and conquered. Having secured the King’s Sloop on the Champlain, they opened a way into Canada. Having a General almost without an army to contend with, they over-ran nearly all that Province; but with a few sailors and recruits, he defended Quebec against their most strenuous efforts. There being only thirty-five men in garrison at Hallifax, they invaded part of Nova Scotia; and there being only a company of invalids at St. Augustine, they threatened East Florida. The whole prepared strength of the Colonies blockaded five thou­ sand men in Boston. There being no where any army to oppose them, they were universally successful: And thus ended the campaign, ‘the superiority of which,’ you tell us, ‘rested wholly with the Colonists*.’ The Colonies having rejected with scorn the terms of conciliation proposed to them by authority / of Parliament; and not satisfied to act on the defensive, having invaded the Provinces of the Empire; it became absolutely necessary to carry on the war with effect and earnestness. To conduct the operations of war, a new Secretary for the Colonies, of acknowledged military talents, was appointed in November 1775. An army, however, was not only to be collected, but transported to the scene of action three thousand miles. Vigour, directed by Prudence, will generally overcome every difficulty. A new corps was immediately raised in the North, whose utility experience has demonstrated; and a large army of foreign veterans were instantly taken into the pay of this Country. A larger fleet and army were sent early in the spring to America, than any nation before had ever transported so far; and far greater than any other State could have sent. A reinforcement was sent through the ice to Quebec; and the Canadian army had no sooner arrived, than its invaders immediately disappeared. During the winter, St. Augustine was not only put in a state of security, but Florida was enabled to invade those who had threatened her. Hallifax was garrisoned, and pefectly secured. When the main army gathered round General Howe at New York in August, what opposition, we pray you, was made to his power? The works on Long-Island, which had been constructed with so much labour, were no sooner attacked than / deserted; New York, fortified at so great an expence, was instantly surrendered; the works at King’s-Bridge, said to be impregnable, were evacuated; and whichsoever way he bent his course, the enemy, without a single effort, retired. We perfectly approve of your censure of those who have characterized the Colonies as cowards. Every national reflection is unworthy of the virtuous and wise. We approve not even of your speaking contemptuously of *

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‘German boors and vassals;’ but we may safely assert, that the Colonial Generals have not displayed the talents of Turenne or Saxe,26 nor their soldiers exhibited the never-failing spirit and vigour of British grenadiers. Unless all our information is wrong, we think nothing, but the appearance of winter to their aid, could have prevented a total overthrow of Congressional Power at the conclusion of the last campaign. We have reason to entertain the strongest hope, that the time is not now far distant, when the Congress will cease to exist; when the Colonists, freed from their delusion, will at last perceive, that the power of Old England, notwithstanding the misrepresentations of the designing, or the misconceptions of the ignorant, is still as able to chastise the refractory, as she has been always willing to grant every rational redress to the peaceful; and when, being convinced of this truth, they will in all soberness reas­ sume the / character of subjects under the mildest Government upon earth. It would give us the greatest satisfaction to see a free government, and to ‘any other,’ you assure us, ‘the people of America are wholly averse,’ established in that country. We were of opinion, that to be a subject of the British Crown, was to enjoy the most perfect freedom of which man in a state of Society is capable. You assure us, however, that a free government ‘is what the People think so*.’ But, alas! while the American party, which you avow and justify, continue to invent falsehoods, to mislead and inflame, and encourages resistance to the Acts of the Legislature, which they declare to be no Parliament, because ‘demands which are made without authority, ought to be heard without obedi­ ence;’ we almost despair of ever seeing such a free Government erected in the Colonies ‘as the People will think so.’ We are not, however, altogether without hope, that the eyes of the Colonists will at length be opened to their own true happiness and interest, and will no longer consider their cause as one, or their enemies the same, with interested Party; that they will see how much they have been abused by designing men; that they will be of opinion, that the Government / of this Country, which, before this Party existed, and Distrust was awakened, they thought the mildest and most free of any, never had any intention to oppress or aggrieve them; and that hereafter, if grievances arise from the operation of laws made by a Legislature not absolutely perfect, redress may be had without association or insurrection. Whether the whole Empire has reasons to remember, with eternal gratitude, the wisdom of that man who formed the plan of pacification of 1766, we think may be very well doubted. If the repeal of the Stamp Act is the genuine cause of the present unnatural contention, we think little gratitude is due to him, either from the Colonies or Britain. Men of sense and information, who had seen the subsequent discontents which almost immediately broke out after its repeal, and *

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the outrageous opposition which the Colonists have made to every other Act of Parliament respecting the Colonists since that æra, consider that important measure as the remote cause of the present unhappy contentions; and the public voice seems to confirm the truth and propriety of their opinions. At that time, there was no danger of ‘rushing headlong into all the calamities of civil war.’ How­ ever vehement their opposition, no man in the Colonies then thought or talked of resisting Acts of Parliament by open insurrection. There is a very / remark­ able difference in the publications and sentiments of those days, from these of late and present times. Colonial Printers were then as fearful in publishing doc­ trines which militated only against the right of internal taxation, as they have been forward of late to print declarations against the authority of Parliament, in every case whatsoever. The diffidence, timidity, and apprehension of punish­ ment of those times, form a perfect contrast to the forwardness, boldness, and contempt of pardon, which have marked their late proceedings. It was their successful opposition to former laws, without punishment or reprehension; the opinion of their own encrease of power and consequence, and the decrease of both in this Country, which were constantly inculcated on them; and the intrigues of designing men in both countries, who encouraged their resistance, with the hope of gaining from confusion, that ever induced even the most confi­ dent Colonist to think of commencing a war with this Country. Even when the present opposition commenced, their principal reliance for success, was on their commercial regulations, which they carried into execution with the greatest rig­ our, and by which they hoped to distress the trade, and ruin the manufactures of this Country, and thereby to procure a change of men, or a repeal of laws. The great body of the People would have been shocked beyond conception, if a war had been / even hinted to them; it was by imperceptible degrees, and a thousand arts, that they were at last brought to approve of that measure. The disturbances created by the Stamp Act, however violent, were nothing more than what this and every Country have experienced from similar causes, and might have been easily quieted before they attained to any dangerous height; and the Act, with a little perseverance and patience, would have executed itself. And if the repeal of the Stamp Act has contributed so much, as for these reasons we think it has, to produce the present war, we can hardly felicitate you on ‘your having the happi­ ness to give your first vote for that pacification*.’ We cannot possibly agree with you, when you say, ‘our unlimited declaration of Legislative authority produced not a single murmur†.’ The Colonial rejoicings, on account of the repeal, were merely temporary. As soon as they had time for recollection, they instantly began to view the expressions, but, above all, the principle of your Declaratory Act, with great jealousy. Far from being gratified * †

Page 62. Page 63.

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by your kindness, when accompanied with this unlimited Declaration of Leg­ islative authority, that it was with the greatest difficulty those who had suffered from the violence of Opposition, though recommended / by their favourite Ministry, the repealers of the obnoxious Act, could be listened to; and though some procured redress, yet others were totally neglected. The Massachusetts Assembly, notwithstanding the endeavours of the Governor, would pay no kind of regard to the measures recommended to them. And the Address*, which they presented on that occasion to the Governor, is remarkable for that moroseness and fullness characteristic of the People. This Declaratory Bill, we admit, as it took nothing from them, demanded no recognition of Parliamentary Power, and was nothing more than the mere inefficacious Declaration of a power which, you had so lately shewn you wanted the spirit to enforce, was not immediately opposed: But no sooner was an Act of Parliament passed conformable to its principle, than not only a single mur­ mur, but a thousand instantly broke forth. Your friend, the Pennsylvania Farmer, wrote against it; and endeavoured to shew, that it was worse in principle, and more dangerous in its effects, than even the Stamp Act. If the Congress really are what you have asserted them to be, the just and equal representative of the Thirteen Colonies, their Declaration must contain the united sentiments of the whole. The Declaration of the Congress, ‘setting forth the Causes / and necessity of their taking up arms, after stating their grievances at length, exclaims, – ‘But why should we enumerate our injuries in detail? By one Statute it is declared, that Par­ liament can of right make laws to bind us in all cases whatsoever. What is to defend us against so enormous, so unlimited a power†?’ And they go on to affirm, that the Declaratory Act contains ‘all the grievances of which they complain.’ With what propriety, therefore, it can be affirmed, that this law did not produce a single murmur in the Colonies, we cannot possibly comprehend. And it appears most plain to us, if we can believe the Congress themselves, that they are not actually fighting against your Declaratory Act. You assure us, however, that after the repeal of the Stamp Act, the Colonies ‘fell into their ancient State of unsuspecting confidence in the Mother Country‡.’ But all our information agrees, that from the hour of the repeal, the Colonies have not enjoyed one day of perfect quiet and peace; and a distrust went forth, which no sett of men have hitherto found talents to allay. Mr. Townsend’s Act; passed in the subsequent year, occasioned the same uneasiness, and was opposed in a similar manner. The Assembly of New York thought themselves aggrieved by the operation of an / Act passed the session of the repeal of the Stamp Act; and early in 1767, they presented a Petition to Parliament, in which, after acknowl­ * † ‡

Annual Register, vol. IX. p. 176–179. Vide their Declaration. Page 61.

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edging their gratitude for the tender regard shewn in the last Session for their happiness; yet ‘the commercial regulations then enacted, instead of remedying, had encreased the heavy burthens under which the Colony already laboured*.’ The com­ mercial regulations, of which they complained, were enacted during the Session in which you gave your first votes; and you must perceive how difficult it is to give satisfaction to a people, after distrust has gone forth among them. And that they had not fallen back into their ancient state of unsuspecting confidence, this proceeding of the New York Assembly seems to us the most unequivocal proof. We are happy to agree in opinion with you, that at the æra of the Stamp Act, when you first came into public trust†, the Parliament was found in possession of an unlimited legislative power over the Colonies. We ‘could not open the Stat­ ute-book without seeing the actual exercise of it more or less, in all cases whatsoever‡’ By the Statute of Anne, internal duties had been levied, for the postage of letters; which were expressly appropriated for the carrying on the war. By the several. / Statutes of Charles II. of William III. of George I. and George II. external duties, from their imports and exports, had been collected by the same Officers of the Customs, as in England; and appropriated, as other duties, for defraying the public expence. The Statute of William III. had expressly repealed their laws, bye-laws, usages and customs. The Statute George II. had abrogated so much of their common law, as required evidence of a particular kind in their Courts of Justice; and for the convenience of the merchants of England, had introduced a different rule. By the Statute George II. all the privileges of natural born subjects had been conferred on aliens, and on Jews, in the Colonies. The Act of William III. had prohibited Proprietors of Provinces from disposing of their rights to foreigners. An Act of Charles II. had declared who shall not act as factors, or merchants in the Colonies; and an Act of George II. had declared who shall not act as apprentices in them. By the Statute of George II. their Assembles had been restrained in an important right of a most delicate kind, that of raising money by issuing paper bills. The Colonists had been prohibited from trading with foreign nations; and aliens were prevented from trading with them, by the Acts of Navigation. Their internal commerce had been regulated by the Statutes of William III. and George II. which prohibited the carrying their manufactures from one / Colony to another by land. The Statute of George II. had regulated the manufactures of hats and iron; and the Statutes of George II. had authorized the transporting felons to the Colonies; and the rights of their purchasers were held and secured by these laws. Those several laws had been made; and by them the Colonies had been governed without opposition or complaint. Under them * † ‡

Com. Jour. vol. xxxi. p. 160. Page 46. Ibid.

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they were happy and free; and the authority of Parliament to make those had never been questioned or denied, antecedent to the present reign. This unlimited legislative power over the Colonies, was not only exercised by Parliament in all cases, and acquiesced in by the Colonies before the present reign, but the constitutional right to exercise this unlimited power, had been at various times declared by the Courts in Westminster-Hall, and asserted by lawyers the most celebrated for their legal knowledge, and for their attachment to the Constitution. Antecedent to the æra of the Restoration, the Colonies had hardly been objects of public attention, or of judicial discussion. But in the reign of Charles II. the Courts in Westminster-Hall began to take notice of them; they considered them as on a footing with the various other subordinate dependent territories of the Crown, and from time to time declared them, when for that purpose named, bound by Acts of Parliament, as the Supreme / Legislature of the Empire*. In the reigns of William III. and Anne, the same doctrines were delivered; and even that illustrious whig and Chief Justice Holt27 held the same language at, and after the Revolution†. And in the two subsequent reigns the same opinions prevailed‡. During the reign of Anne, those celebrated law­ yers Northey and Raymond28 approved of an Act of Parliament for the express purpose of levying taxes, internal and external, on the Province of New York. A copy of the Bill, with their names annexed, has been published||, and clearly shews the opinion of the greatest statesmen and lawyers of those times. In 1722, those great men, Sir Clement Wearg and Sir Philip York29 held the same lan­ guage, and indeed took it for granted as a thing indisputable, that the Colonists, as British subjects, might of right be taxed by Parliament. And last, though not least, the ‘people’s lawyer,’ Lord Camden,30 who was Attorney General in the late reign, has given his opinion against that exclusive power of taxing themselves, now claimed by the Colonies: He asserted that ‘the constitution of the British House of Commons and an American Assembly differ fundamentally in many respects; and that the latter never will be allowed to assume those privileges which the House of Commons / are justly entitled to here, upon principles that neither can nor must be applied to the Assemblies of the Colonies.’ The possession of this right had been long, uninterrupted, and continued, from the settlement of the Colonies to the present reign. Upon a similar prin­ ciple stands the legal prerogative of the Crown, the acknowledged privileges of both Houses of Parliament, and the most indubitable rights of the Legislature. Upon this, or a similar principle, have the glorious Revolution and the present establishment been defended and supported. This possession passed with you * † ‡ ||

Vaughan’s Rep. 278. – 9. Freeman’s Rep. 175. Mod. Rep. vol. iv. p. 225. Williams’s Rep. Vol. ii. p. 75. Review of American Controversy, 190.

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for a title. It does so, in all human affairs. But the title was disputed, the right was called in question: And how did the great man of mediatorial spirit and talents, who was intrusted with the care and management of this fair inheritance, act? He gave up the possession; he transferred the point in controversy; and then declared he still possessed the right. In the human affairs of common life, the man who being in possession of a parental estate, gave it up to a litigious claim­ ant under a protest, declaring, that tho’ he had surrendered the possession, he continued to claim the right, would justly be considered as an object for a com­ mission of lunacy. And yet a similar conduct has been celebrated as a necessary concession of Parliament, in which its authority has been preserved, and its honour respected. / In common life, to give up tamely one disputed right, is to provoke other claims. No sooner had Parliament surrendered one right, than new claims were made with still greater confidence, and prosecuted with more vehemence and vigour. And thus, by pursuing a similar conduct with that of the repeal of the Stamp Act, every right of the legislature and the nation may be given away with equal facility. Greater talents are required to defend successfully a right vigor­ ously attacked, than to surrender it with condescension, and without difficulty. We are very thankful for your opinion on the present state of public affairs; and altho’ it be lengthy and elaborate, we are not entirely certain, such is our want of comprehension, that we always understand the scope of your reason­ ings, or see the full extent of your opinions. We mean briefly to review some of them; and if we do you wrong from misconception, for it shall not be from the malignity of bad intention, we know your goodness will pardon us, or your great talents will be employed to set us right. That you think ‘our affairs are in a bad condition,’ is most apparent; but we rec­ ollect not, that you have any where precisely told us, how they are to be mended. That the way is dark and intricate, and full of treacherous / mazes, we are very explicitly informed; but you refer us for assistance to those who think they have the clue to lead us out of this labyrinth. And in this time of difficulty and danger, we are unhappy to hear, that you are unable to lend a helping-hand to those who direct the State. We ought not, however, to despair of the Commonwealth. If you had proposed some clear, and accurate, practical measure of relief, the present state of things considered, it would have given us the greatest satisfaction; how the present war might have been ended, with honour and advantage to Old Eng­ land, and security, peace, and freedom to the Colonies. On the subject of Colonial affairs, one opinion, we think, you decided in; That when you first came into public trust, the Parliament had a right to make laws for the Colonies in all cases whatsoever; you found them in possession of this right, which you considered as a title; you thought that a legislative author­ ity, not actually limited, could not be parcelled out, so as to enable us to affirm, that here they can, and there they cannot bind; and you could not see how

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one power could be given up, without giving up the rest. And the whole of this authority, as you found it perfect and entire, you wished to keep so. This title was questioned, this authority denied, and this right impugned. What / kind of conduct did you hold? You repealed the Stamp Act; and made the Declaratory Law. If the Colonies had objected against the obnoxious tax on principles of expediency, on grounds of mere commercial inconveniency, the law might have been amended; the grievous provisions of it, if there any were, might have been mollified; and even the law itself repealed, without dan­ ger. But the Colonies objected to the principle of the Bill, as unconstitutional; they denied the authority of Parliament to tax them. To repeal the law totally, unconditionally, and without recognition of any power of Parliament on their part, was therefore to transfer the right. But the Declaratory Law was passed. It declared indeed the legislative authority, and nothing more. No recognition of the powers declared, or indeed of any other, was required of any; no means of enforcing it was prescribed; nor were any rescission of the Colonial resolves, denying the right in the strongest terms, required of them. You relinquished the possession to the litigious claimant, and declared you had nevertheless the right; you surrendered the purse, and afterwards insisted, that you might claim it when you pleased. And it may safely be affirmed, for the reasons already submitted to your judgment, – that you gave up the thing, and preserved the name, and transferred the property in debate, while you retained the lawsuit. / Whether, since this famous æra, you have changed your opinions as to the Parliamentary Power or Right, we have not been able to discover. We incline to think you have some-how insensibly changed your opinion, though we have no observed the cause. For, without supposing this, you cannot easily support your objections to any of the laws which have been since enacted, and complained of as grievances. If the Parliament continued to have the right, the mere principle of those laws cannot be wrong; and from whence you could deduce a grievance, as you have not explained, we cannot possibly comprehend. For their mere opera­ tive regulation, abstracted from their principle, has never, that we have heard of, been complained of as excessive, or very inconvenient. A free Government, you have told us, ‘is that which the people think ‘so;’ it would seem to us, that accord­ ing to your declared principles, the grievances arising from those laws consist in this, that ‘the people think them so. Judging by this rule, it is most difficult to say, what would not be considered as grievances. But the question is not, why they think them grievances, for they deny the authority of Parliament; but why you deem them so, thinking as you do, of the omnipotence and indivisibility of Parliamentary Power, and admitting the validity of the principle; and yet you inform us, ‘That all the grievances of which they complain, originate / from Parlia­ ment.’ If indeed you are of opinion, which we think most probable, that the right

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declared by your law ought never to have been brought out into common use, then the point is explained. Habits of soreness, jealousy, and distrust, however, you assure us, have intro­ duced a different state of things, which require a different conduct; and now the entireness of the legislative power of Parliament is to be mutilated, and even the whole right of taxation is to be cut off. But how will this stand with your former principle, that ‘you cannot see how one power can be given up, without giving up all the rest?’ To every objection, however, one answer is ready; – ‘any thing rather than a fruitless, hopeless, unnatural civil war.’ That it is a most unnatural war on their side, we admit; for according to your own principles, properly understood, they have not been aggrieved, and they have rejected every mode of treaty and conciliation. That it is a hopeless war we deny; for the war would have ended last campaign, but for the interposition of winter’s severities; the King’s army is augmented in a greater proportion, than that of the Congress has diminished; and now, with every preparation, they have the whole Summer before them. That it will be a fruitless war, we cannot possibly conceive; unless we suppose an improbability that those in / power, with example and experience before them, will act a similar part with the repealers of the Stamp-Act; declare that the war is over, when it really exists, and give us the name, when the thing actually remains. The blessings of peace are the fruits of the calamities of war. What all the World, yourself only excepted, will call a free Government, we hope to see established in the Colonies, as one of the fruits of the war. – We wish for security to our commerce, an easy mode for the recovery of our debts, by the regulation of their courts of justice; and the great cause of the war settled upon a permanent foot­ ing, by giving the Colonists content on the article of taxation; which was left undone at the repeal of the Stamp-Act. ‘You prefer independency without a war, to independency with it.’ We freely confess, we prefer independency without a war, to the State of the Colonies sub­ sequent to the repeal of the Stamp-Act. For your principle is right – that more is to be expected from her in this State than a nominal dependence, accom­ panied with terror, disgust, and abhorrence. Bodies tied together by mutual hatred, are only connected to their ruin. – Principles most happily illustrated by the whole tenor of Colonial History, since the æra of your famous repeal. Whatever may become of the problem / respecting independency, whether it would, or not, be for the happiness and interest of both Countries; your mode of pacification, by mutilating the entireness of legislative power, and cutting off the whole right of taxation, would necessarily lead to that state of mutual hatred, which would only connect both to their ruin; a state of nominal dependence, but real inde­ pendence, will most abundantly produce mutual disgust and abhorrence, and all their attendant evils. If such would be the effects of your mode of pacification, it is little worth enquiry, whether it would produce peace if it was adopted? Judging

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from experience, we think no success would have attended it, when proposed; since nothing but independence, in the late state of delusion, would have given them satisfaction; and they have scornfully rejected every application for treaty or conciliation, that did not admit independence as its first principle. Not satisfied with your own mode of pacification, you would have parted with more, if more had been necessary. The principle of giving up, seems a very favour­ ite policy of yours: But small are the talents which are necessary to execute this plan of Government. Perhaps all our present contentions arise from it. When the Colonists are taught to believe, that Free Government consists in what the / people think so; when an American party, not very remarkable for scrupulosity, shall continue to invent falshoods, to promote distraction, and be ever ready, on every new occasion, to expose the black side of things; who can possibly tell, what will be the extent of the demands of the Colonists, or where the policy of giving up would end? How much more open, candid and honorable, would it be in the American party, instead of conciliatory motions, which for some years have only tended to inflame discontent, and promote distrust, at once to adopt the celebrated policy of a very respectable Dean, and boldly move for the independence of the Colonies. This would bring matters to that point directly, which your mode of pacification, by giving up, as demand is made, tends, though mediately, to reduce them to, after enduring all the intermediate evils. Thus, the knot, which no sett of men have hitherto been capable to untie, would at once be cut asunder, and the Colonies would instantly be put into that situation of independence as the Dutch, who, you gravely assure us, were once dependent on England. To support their own establishments in peace, and to contribute something to the general defence in war, was the only thing ever expected of the Colo­ nies by any rational man. This was proposed to them by Mr. / Grenville,31 and refused; the same thing, more accurately expressed, and more clearly defined, was offered to them by authority of Parliament, and rejected. We expected not to have our own burthens relieved by their subjections; and we consider not ‘this as the pretext of the war.’ If they had in all quietness allowed the Tea Act to operate, where would have been the great injury to them, or benefit to us? There wanted not precedents enow before; and the danger of evil precedent was therefore a mere groundless pretence, and our burthens would have been little lessened by the produce of its revenue. the Parliament would probably have repealed the law; but they were hampered with your principle, which of late seems, however, to have given you little disturbance; they could not see how any one power could be given up, without giving up the rest. The Colonists being encouraged to go on, persevered in their opposition. Their commercial regulations, when checked by the late Acts of Parliament, recoiled upon them­ selves, and were found utterly ineffectual; and they had recourse at length to

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INSURRECTION. To reduce them to the condition of free subjects; to restore a freedom of commerce; and to re-establish the just authority of government and law, circumstances / being entirely changed, are now the great pretexts of the war. Of the political company you blush not to have kept for eleven years, little more do we know, than what the news-papers have communicated to all; and the great principle upon which you have constantly thought and acted, during that period, was not altogether unknown to us. We had perused, with satisfaction, your ‘thoughts on the cause of the present discontents,’ in which the great political principles of action of ‘your company’ are explained at great length, with your wonted ability and address: and the substance of the whole being summed up, seems to us to amount to this simple proposition, that ‘the King of this Country ought to be a man of straw, a mere non-entity; and this free Country ruled by a Party. Without entering at large into the discussion of this doctrine, it is suffi­ cient for us to know, that this is no part of the law of England, and is not among the ‘principles of the Constitution.’ The Supreme executive power is invested by our laws in a single person, to whom is committed in subservience to the law of the land, the care and protection of the community. And the kingly office, being a great and important Trust for millions, cannot be discharged without efficacious authority, and substantial / power. It is the great happiness of English­ men, that every Subject, without any regard to family, name, or connection, has a right, if in other respects qualified, to fill the first offices in the State. The sons of every merchant and mechanic have the same equal right to trust and power, as the proudest name you mention to us. Without ‘accusing all mankind of corruption,’ we may be allowed to assert, that men in every age, and in every country, placed in similar situations, will ever act similar parts. As we are not permitted by our situation to associate with those ‘incomparable persons’ you mention, we have no opportunity ‘to scrutinize motives’ as a rule of Judgement. We can only have recourse to the faithful pages of history, written for the instruction of mankind, to find the real motives of action of the politician and the statesman. What bloodshed, we beseech you, what distractions, what tyranny was introduced into the nation in the last cen­ tury, by the pretences of a party to superior sanctity and patriotism! Your patriot heart must have bled over the perusal of the History of Charles II.’s reign. What unhappiness you must have felt at seeing the most virtuous popular characters intriguing with the natural enemies of Old England; and leaders of / parties, and the great Parliamentary Orators, receiving the wages of prostitution from France! And an attentive perusal of the history of the subsequent reigns, will discover similar intrigues, and similar prostitutions. The eyes of this nation are now opened to their own happiness. Protected in their privileges, and secured in their property, under a just administration of the laws, they view the conten­

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tions of the Great with tranquility, and find themselves little interested, whether Titius is IN, or Mævius is OUT. Perfectly aware that the age is not what we wish, we heartily concur with what is best in our time. With us, we assure you, liberty is in no danger of being unpopular. But it is the liberty of enjoying, in peace and security, those invalu­ able rights and privileges which were handed down to us under the laws and civil institutions of our fathers; it is the prerogative of being governed by the laws of the land, ‘the old, cool-headed law of England,’ and not by party, or by men; and it is not that which the weak may be taught by the designing, to think being free.’ This liberty we are determined to posses, and to defend. Out of these principles we are resolved to be neither persuaded, shamed, or frightened. And you may be assured, we shall not be amongst / the first to renounce the principles of our Fathers. We have the honour of being, with all possible consideration, SIR, Your most obliged May 20, 1777. humble Servants,

ELECTORS of BRISTOL. /

APPENDIX. To confirm the reasonings in the foregoing Answer, it hath been thought proper to publish the following American State-Paper, copied exactly from the Maryland Records: It is the genuine opinion of Lord Camden, when Attorney-General*, as well on the rights of a Colonial Assembly, as on the Supreme authority of the Parliament; and shews clearly the opinions of the greatest Statesmen and Lawyers, on the late disputed points, just before the commencement of the Pre­ sent Reign. As to the nomination of Officers by the Lower House:– In my opinion, the sole nomination of those Commissioners, who are new Officers appointed by this Bill, belongs neither to the Proprietary nor the Lower House, stricto jure; but, like all other regulations, must be assented to by both, but can be claimed by neither. The Proprietary’s charter intitles him to nominate all constitutional Officers, and all others, which by the laws are not otherwise provided for; but I do not conceive my Lord has any original right to nominate new Officers, appointed / for the execution of a new law, without the consent of the two Houses; nor, on the other hand, has the Lower House any such independent authority; and therefore, I think, the Upper House are right in withstanding this claim, in which they might be supported by the Proprietary; because it is unreasonable in one branch of the Legislature to assume a power of taxing the other by Officers of their single appointment. As to the insufficiency of the allowance of the Commissioners of the Loan Office:– My Lord should not meddle with this question, which is proper to be discussed, and settled by the two Houses, as it concerns the quantum of allow­ ance for the Officers, and does not encroach upon any of the Proprietary’s rights. As to the duties required from Lord Baltimore’s private Officers, his Agent and Receiver; – here my Lord ought to interpose; for it is a great indignity to compel his Lordship’s Agents into a public service, without making them a lib­ eral allowance and compensation for their trouble. As to that required from the Sheriffs:– This my Lord will leave to be debated by the two Houses. As to the power of the Upper House, to examine claims and accounts:– The Upper House / are right in making a stand to this clause in the Bill, and should *

He was so from 1759 to 1762.

– 181 –

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take care how they admit Encroachments of this kind, when they are sup­ ported by arguments drawn from the exercise of the like rights in the House of Commons here. The constitutions of the Two Assemblies differ fundamentally in many respects. Our House of Commons stands upon its own laws, the Lex Parliamentaria; whereas the Assemblies in the Colonies are regulated by their representative CHARTERS, usages, and the common laws of England, and will never be allowed to assume those privileges which the House of Commons are entitled to justly here, upon principles that neither can, nor must be applied to the Assemblies of the Colonies. As to the narrowness of the exemption of persons to be Assessors:– My Lord has nothing to do with this. As to the double tax on Nonjurors:– My Lord would do right to join with the Upper House in opposing this double tax; because it is a breach of public faith, and tends to subvert the very foundation of the Maryland Constitution; and can be excused by nothing, but a well-grounded jealousy of dangerous practices, and disaffection in the Papists. / As to the clause enabling debtors and tenants to retain:– This is very absurd; but my Lord need not meddle with it. As to the tax on Non-residents and Imports:– The Upper House are clearly right in that part of the objection which relates to British Merchandize imported; for I am well satisfied the Mother Country will never endure such an Impost upon their trade. The Province may, by the same rule, prohibit the importa­ tion, as well as they may tax the merchandize imported; and it seems to be a very unwarrantable attempt to make the English importer of goods car­ ried to Maryland, in the way of trade, pay a tax for the defence of that Province, for no other consideration but the liberty of trading there, to which they have an original right, which cannot be invaded, diminished, or even regulated, by any thing this Province ever can do. As to the tax on Tenants for Life:– My Lord will leave this to be settled by the two Houses. As to the tax on uncultivated lands:– This seems to be a very unreasonable tax, and ought to be resisted by the Proprietary; because it seems principally on his estate. As to the tax on plate and ready money:– My Lord has nothing to do with this. / As to the tax on the Governor:– This is rather and uncivil than unjust tax; and therefore the Upper House would do well to oppose it as far as they may in reason. Having given you my sense on each of the objections, so far as they have been taken up and maintained by the Upper House in the margin of that part

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of the Case, I shall only add here a general piece of advice to Lord Balti­ more; that in this disposition of the Lower House to assume to themselves any privilege which the English House of Commons enjoy here, his Lord­ ship should resist all attempts where they are unreasonable with firmness, and should never allow any encroachments to be established on the weight of that argument singly; for I am satisfied, neither the Crown nor the Parliament will ever suffer these Assemblies to erect themselves into the power and authority of the British House of Commons. (Signed) C. PRATT.

EDITORIAL NOTES

A Full and Circumstantial Account 1. interest of the British whale-fishing sacrificed to that of America: The Act for the Encour­ agement of the Ship Fishery, 1775, 15 Geo. III, c. 31, also known as Palliser’s Act, introduced by Admiral Sir Hugh Palliser (1723–96). 2. The Americans complain … ‘in any case whatever’: The Declaratory Act or American Col­ onies Act, 6 Geo. III, c. 12. 3. 25 Charles II. cap. 7. 7 and 8 William and Mary cap. 22. 9 Anne cap. 10. 1 George 1 cap. 12. 6 George 11. cap. 13: The Trade Act (1672), Plantation Trade Act (1695/6), Post Office Act (1710) (actually 9 Anne, c. 11), National Debt Act (1714), Trade of Sugar Colonies Act or Molasses Act (1732/3). 4. (that day of ): this is left blank in the original text. 5. a tax on foreign commodities … Port-Duties: The Sugar Act (1764), 4 Geo. III, c. 15. 6. drumbly: a Scots word meaning dark or troubled. 7. an act was passed laying Port-duties on some other objects of commerce: The Revenue Act, 1767, introduced as part of the Townshend Acts, 7 Geo. III, c. 46, imposed after the repeal of the Stamp Act 1766. 8. the statute made … the King’s soldiers in America: The Quartering Act, 1765, 5 Geo. III, c. 33. 9. The murderers of Mr Park, governor of the Leeward Islands: Daniel Parke (b. 1664/5) was Governor-General of the Leeward Islands from 1706 and was assassinated by a large crowd of islanders in his mansion in St John, Antigua, on 7 December 1710. 10. an act to give a drawback on the British duties upon teas imported to America: The Tea Act, 1773, 13 Geo. III, c. 44, which aimed to expand the British East India Company’s monopoly on the tea trade to all British colonies. It met with resistance from colonists, leading to the Boston Tea Party.

A Proposition for the Present Peace 1. Sackville and Bruce: Edward Sackville (1590–1652) killed Edward Bruce, second Lord of Kinloss (1594–1613), in a duel over a woman called Venetia Stanley in 1613. He was later pardoned, became fourth Earl of Dorset in 1624, remained loyal to the King in the civil war, and died in July 1652. 2. Geo. 1. c. 5. And Commentaries, v. 1. p. 101: Dependency of Ireland on Great Britain Act, or Declaratory Act, 1719/20. Sir William Blackstone (1723–80), English judge and jurist, authored Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1765–9). – 185 –

186

Notes to pages 24–53

3. ship-money: a tax that Charles I attempted to impose without the consent of Parliament. Traditionally a wartime tax opposed on coastal towns, its introduction during peacetime and inland in 1634 provoked resistance and was one of the causes of the English Civil War. 4. Mr. Hutchinson in his history of the Colony of Massachusets Bay: Thomas Hutchinson (1711–80) was the Boston-born royal governor of Massachusetts from 1771 until Gen­ eral Thomas Gage became military governor under the Massachusetts Government Act of 1774. He became a leading loyalist and exile from 1776, dying in London. He pub­ lished the first two volumes of his History of Massachusetts Bay in 1764 and 1767, with a third volume published posthumously in 1828. 5. For say their Lordships, ‘Great-Britain … welfare of their mother-country’: Lords Protest against the Address to the King, 26 October 1775. 6. Duke de Sully: Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully (1560–1641), French Huguenot soldier and minister for Henry IV, author of Mémoires, also known as the Économies royales (1638), famous for a model of a Christian confederation of Europe detailed as a ‘Grand Design’. 7. Agesilaus: Agesilaus II (c. 400–360 bc) was a King of Sparta who secured a victory at the battle of Coronea in 394 bc against a Greek force of Thebans and Argives. 8. Livy: Titus Livius, or Livy (59 bc–ad 17), Roman historian, author of Ab Urbe Condita Libri (History of Rome) covering the period from the legendary origins of the city before 753 bc to the reign of Augustus up to 9 bc. 9. Sir William Temple: Sir William Temple, first Baronet (1628–99), English statesman and writer, author of Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands (London, 1673). 10. the execution of Count Egmont: the execution of Flemish statesman Lamoral, Count of Egmont and Prince of Gavre (1522–68), was one of the events that set off the national uprising that led eventually to the independence of the Netherlands.

[Cartwright?], Taxation, Tyranny 1. Quæ Alii scelera, Hic remedia vocat. Tacit: ‘What others call crimes, he calls reforms’. Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus (c. ad 56–117), senator and historian of the Roman Empire, The Histories, Lib. I.37. The reference is to Galba, or Servius Sulpicius Galba (3 bc–ad 69), who declared himself Roman Emperor following Nero’s death in June 68 and marched on Rome, killing large numbers of soldiers as he entered the city. He embarked on unpopular financial reforms, including refusing to honour rewards to the Praetorians. His short and unpopular reign ended in rebellion and with his assassina­ tion by the Praetorians in collaboration with an alienated former ally, M. Salvius Otho. 2. Secretary at War: from 1765 to 1778, this position was held by William Barrington, second Viscount Barrington (1717–93). 3. Livy: see note 8 to A Proposition for the Present Peace, above. 4. ‘Justum est bellum … relinquitur spes’: ‘War is just to those for whom it is necessary, and to take up arms is a sacred duty with those who have no other hope left.’ Livy History of Rome, IX.1. 5. the witty paragraph … Mr. Cushing, deserves an answer: Johnson had written that the colonists’ aim was ‘to adorn the brows of Mr. Cushing with a Diadem’. Thomas Cushing (1725–88), a renowned Whig, was elected to the General Court in 1761, was Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1766 to 1774, when he became a member of the

Notes to pages 53–76

187

Provincial Congress. He was later Lieutenant Governor and at one stage Acting Gover­ nor of Massachusetts. 6. ‘Qui mores hominum multorum vidit’: ‘He who saw the customs of many men.’ From Quintus Horatius Flaccus, or Horace (65–8 bc), Roman poet, Ars Poetica (18 bc), I.141. 7. ipse dixit: a Latin phrase meaning ‘he himself said it’. 8. political writings of the Dean of Gloucester: Josiah Tucker (1713–99), Welsh economist, political writer and Dean of Gloucester from 1758, A Letter from a Merchant in London to his Nephew in North America, Relative to the Present Posture of Affairs in the Colo­ nies (1766), reproduced in Volume 5 of this edition, pp. 147–74. See also Dispassionate Thoughts on the American War: Addressed to the Moderates of all Parties (1780), repro­ duced in Volume 8 of this edition, pp. 101–14. 9. Mr. Mauduit: Israel Mauduit (1708–87), an Englishman of French Huguenot descent, was agent for Massachusetts. He was sympathetic to the colonists over the Sugar Act but became disenchanted with them after the Stamp Act controversy. He was the author of Some Thoughts on the Method of Improving the Advantage Accruing to Great Britain from the Northern Colonies (London: J. Wilkie, 1765), A Short View of the History of Massachusetts Bay (London: J. Wilkie, 1769), and A Short View of the History of the New England Colonies, with Respect to their Charters and Constitutions (London: J. Wilkie, 1769), among other works. 10. Fontenelle, and an Italian Philosopher: Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757), also known as Bernard le Bouyer de Fontenelle, was a prolific French polymath. The Ital­ ian philosopher was not identified by either Johnson or Cartwright. 11. Memorial of the Count de Guines: Adrien-Louis de Bonnières, comte then duc de Guînes (1735–1806), ambassador from 1770 to 1776, Memorial of the Count de Guines, the French Ambassador to the Court of London: Against Messieurs Tort and Roger, Formerly His Secretaries ([London], [1777]). 12. ‘bella execrata Colonis’: Edmund Spenser (c. 1552–99), English poet most famous for The Faerie Queene, used this phrase in A Vewe of the Present State of Ireland (written 1596), para. 184, attributing it to an unnamed poet.

[Baillie], ‘A Letter to the Author of a Pamphlet’ 1. Sir Robert Walpole: Robert Walpole (1676–1745) was a British statesman and the first Prime Minister of Great Britain (1721–42). 2. Archbishop Sharp: James Sharp (1613–79) was a Presbyterian minister and later Arch­ bishop of St Andrews (1661–79). Initially representing the Scottish Covenanters, he later embarked upon a severe policy of repression against them. 3. Duke of Lauderdale: Sir John Maitland, first Duke of Lauderdale (1616–82), was a Scottish politician and leader within the Cabal Ministry. Like Sharp, he was initially a supporter of the Presbyterian cause, but later took severe measures against the Covenant­ ers in order to further his own power and position of influence with the King. 4. Sir George Mackenzie: George Mackenzie (c. 1638–91) was a Scottish lawyer, legal writer and Lord Advocate. The relentlessness of his persecution of the Covenanters gained him the nickname ‘Bloody Mackenzie’. 5. bishop of Rochester: Saint John Fisher (1469–1535) was an English Roman Catholic Bishop executed by order of King Henry VIII during the English Reformation for refus­

188

Notes to pages 76–98

ing to accept him as Head of the Church of England, upholding instead the Catholic tradition of papal primacy. 6. Marquis of Rockingham: Charles Watson-Wentworth, second Marquess of Rockingham (1730–82), was Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1765–6, during which time the Stamp Act was repealed and the Declaratory Act was passed. 7. Mr. Grenville: George Grenville (1712–70) was Prime Minister of Great Britain and First Lord of the Treasury in 1763–5 and was responsible for the passage of the Stamp Act. 8. Mr. Locke in his treatise on that subject: John Locke (1632–1704), English physician and philosopher, author of Two Treatises on Civil Government: In the Former, The False Principles of Sir Robert Filmer, and his Followers, are Detected and Overthrown. The Latter is an Essay concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil-Government (London: Awnsham Churchill, 1690). The opening words of the first Treatise, which Baillie quotes in the first section of the Appendix (not reproduced here), are ‘Slavery is so vile and mis­ erable an Estate of Man, and so directly opposite to the generous Temper and Courage of our Nation; that ’tis hardly to be conceived, that an Englishman, much less a Gentleman, should plead for’t’. 9. S ophocles and Aristophanes: Sophocles (c. 497–c. 406 bc), ancient Greek tragic play­ wright. Aristophanes (c. 446–c.386 bc), ancient Greek poet and comic playwright. 10. Menander: Menander (c. 342–c. 291 bc), ancient Greek comic dramatist. 11. Demosthenes: Demosthenes (384–322 bc), a prominent Greek statesman and orator of ancient Athens.

Glascott, The Best Method of Putting an End to the American War 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11. 12.

13. 14. 15.

‘turn unto the Lord’: Deuteronomy 30:10. ‘rend his own heart’: Joel 2:13. ‘To your tents O Israel’: 1 Kings 12:16. ‘Cities of the plain’ … ‘because their sins were very grievous’: Genesis 19. ‘populous No’: Nahum 3:8. ‘measure of their iniquity was full’: Genesis 15:16. ‘The daughter of Sidon’: Isaiah 23. Neither the thickness … Jehovah’s servants: Isaiah 51; Isaiah 45:2; Isaiah 14:23. ‘the time would fail me to tell’ … obtained destruction: adapted from Hebrews 11:32: ‘And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and [of ] Barak, and [of ] Samson, and [of ] Jephthae; [of ] David also, and Samuel, and [of ] the prophets’. Whitefield’s Hymns, page 225: George Whitefield, A Collection of Hymns for Social Wor­ ship. More Particularly Designed for the use of the Tabernacle and Chapel Congregations (London: William Strahan, 1753), hymn 115. ‘Spears be beaten … into pruning hooks’: Isaiah 2:4; Mica 4:3, usually rendered in reverse: ‘swords into plowshares, and … spears into pruninghooks’. ‘Lord, if I die … in practising it’: This quote is sometimes attributed to nonconformist clergyman, scholar and diarist Philip Henry (1631–96), sometimes to a lesser known puritan named Reverend Dodd and also known as ‘Old Mr. Faith and Repentance’. ‘rending not our garments … Lord our God’: Joel 2:13. ‘A merchant’ … our incarnate God: I have not been able to confirm or attribute these quotations. Pliny describes the primitive … the emperor Trajan: Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (ad 61–c. 113), also known as Pliny the Younger, magistrate and author famous for letters,

Notes to pages 98–121

16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

189

including to Roman emperors, including to Trajan when Pliny was Governor of Pontus/ Bithynia from 111 to 113. Epistulae, X.96–7. ‘the meat which … his God’: John 6:27; Job 20:23. ‘Rend your hearts’ … ‘turn unto the Lord your ‘God’: Joel 2:13. ‘My word is a hammer’ … his able hand: Jeremiah 23:29. ‘he brought upon … him to Babylon’: 2 Chronicles 33:11. Affliction brought the prodigal … father’s house: Luke 15:20.

Roebuck, An Enquiry 1. Montcalm: Louis-Joseph de Montcalm-Gozon, Marquis de Saint-Veran (1712–59), French commander in during the French and Indian War. 2. a pamphlet, supposed to be wrote by the Earl of Bath: William Pulteney, first Earl of Bath, fourth creation (1684–1764), a Patriot Whig opposed to Walpole. He was created Earl of Bath in 1742 by George II, who also asked him to form a government after the fall of the Pelham ministry on 10 February 1746, but after two days of failure he gave up. A Letter Addressed to Two Great Men, on the Prospect of Peace; and on the Terms Necessary to be Insisted Upon in the Negotiation (London: A. Millar, 1760), probably dedicated to the Duke of Newcastle and to William Pitt, is thought to have been written by John Douglas in consultation with Bath. Douglas (1721–1807) was a family friend, chaplain and sometime secretary to Bath, as well as Bishop of Salisbury and a writer. 3. H abemus senatus … the Farmer’s Letters: John Dickinson (1732–1808), Philadelphia lawyer, politician and pamphleteer, author of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, first published in instalments in 1767 and 1768, Letter iv. The actual phrase used by Dickinson is ‘Habemus quidem senatus consultum, tanquam gladium in vagina repositum’, which he translates as ‘We have a statute, laid up for future use, like a sword in the scabbard’. 4. a pamphlet, written by Israel Mauduit, Esq: see note 9 to [Cartwright?], Taxation, Tyr­ anny, above, p. 187. 5. Remarks on the principal Acts of the Thirteenth Parliament of Great Britain: John Lind (1737–81), clergyman, tutor, barrister and pamphleteer. His Remarks on the Principal Acts of the Thirteenth Parliament of Great Britain. by the Author of Letters Concerning the Present State of Poland. Vol. I. Containing Remarks on the Acts relating to the Colonies (London: T. Payne, 1775) defended the Intolerable Acts. 6. a collection of charters printed … in 1766: The Charters of the following Provinces of North America; viz. Virginia, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pensylvania, Massachusett’s Bay, and Georgia. To which is prefixed, a Faithful Narrative of the Proceedings of the North American Colonies, in Consequence of the late Stamp-Act (London: W. Owen; J. Almon; and F. Blyth, 1766). 7. lord Rockingham: see note 6 to [Baillie], ‘A Letter to the Author of a Pamphlet’, above, p. 188. 8. compliment which Montesquieu … compleatly free: Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755), De L’Esprit des Lois (1748), or The Spirit of the Laws, especially Book XI, ‘Of the Laws Which Establish Political Liberty, with Regard to the Constitution’, ch. 6, ‘Of the Constitution of England’. 9. Mr. Pitt: William Pitt, first Earl of Chatham (1708–78), playing a leading role in the Seven Years War (1756–63). 10. Livy: see note 8 to A Proposition for the Present Peace, above, p. 186. 11. Observations on the Thirteenth. Parl.: see note 5 above.

190

Notes to pages 124–45

12. Postlethwayt’s history of the public revenue: James Postlethwayt (d. 1761), writer on economic and demography, possibly the brother of the more famous writer Malachy Postlethwayt (c. 1707–67), The History of the Public Revenue, from the Revolution in 1688, to Christmas 1753: With an Appendix completing the same to Christmas 1758: Con­ taining a Minute and Comprehensive View of all our Public Transactions relative to Money and Trade, within the said Period (London: for the author, 1759). 13. Themistocles: Themistocles (c. 524–429 bc) was an Athenian politician and general who helped lead a Greek victory in the battle of Salamis against the Persians in 479 bc and who was responsible for the Long Walls which joined Athens, the Piraeus and Phalerum in a single system of defences. 14. Mr. Grenville, the Marquis of Rockingham, the Duke of Grafton, and Lord North: For Gren­ ville and Rockingham, see notes 6 and 7 to [Baillie], ‘A Letter to the Author of a Pamphlet’, above, p. 188. Augustus Henry Fitzroy, third Duke of Grafton (1735–1811), was First Lord of the Treasury in 1766–70. Frederick North, second Earl of Guildford (1732–92), was First Lord of the Treasury and Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1770–82. 15. Junius: Junius was the pseudonymous writer of a series of letters on liberty that were pub­ lished by the Public Advertiser from 21 January 1769 to 21 January 1772 and published collectively Letters of Junius (London: Henry Sampson Woodfall, 1772). 16. Lord Cambden: Charles Pratt, first Earl Camden (1714–94), was an English lawyer, judge and Whig politician, Attorney General from 1756 and Lord Chancellor from 1766. He was a leading proponent of civil liberties, voting against the Declaratory Act (1766), and a strong supporter of Pitt. 17. Dr. Price on Civil Liberty, &c. p. 54: Richard Price (1723–91), Welsh-born dissenting preacher and moral and political writer, authored the pro-American Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America (London: T. Cadell, 1776). 18. Polybius … Spendius and Matho: Polybius (c. 203–120 bc), Greek historian of Hellen­ istic period. His The Histories cover the period 220–146 bc. Spendius and Mathos were two of the mercenary commanders fighting against Carthaginian control in the Merce­ nary War (c. 240 bc).

[Chalmers], An Answer from the Electors of Bristol 1. EDMUND BURKE, Esq.: Edmund Burke (1729–97), Anglo-Irish statesman and phi­ losopher, made his ‘Speech to the Electors of Bristol’ on 3 November 1774 and it was printed the following year. 2. Peace of Paris, in 1762: The Peace of Paris was in fact signed on 3 February 1763 by Great Britain, France and Spain, with Portugal in agreement, ending the French and Indian War and the Seven Years War. 3. the Pennsylvania Farmer: see note 3 to Roebuck, An Enquiry, above, p. 189. 4. a Pupil of the Farmer’s … any case whatsoever: James Wilson was born in Scotland and moved to America in 1766. He studied law under Dickinson and became a revolutionary leader, member of the Continental Congress, signer of the Declaration of Independ­ ence and one of the drafters of the United States Constitution in 1787. The quote, from Considerations on the Nature and the Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament (Philadelphia, PA, 1774), appears in fact to be a paraphrase. 5. Coke’s 7th Report, p. 7, &c.: Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634), jurist and MP, co-author of the 1628 ‘Petition of Right’, and author the four-volume Institutes of the Lawes of Eng­

Notes to pages 145–50

6.

7. 8.

9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

191

land (London: Societie of Stationers, 1628–44) and of thirteen volumes of Reports on the common law, eleven published between 1600 and 1615 and the others in 1658 and 1659. Hale’s Hist. Pleas of the Crown, vol. i. p. 68, 96: Sir Mathew Hale (1609–76), Lord Chief Justice of England, The History and Analysis of the Common Law of England (London: J. Walthoe, 1713), though it was widely known and circulated before that date. The Act ‘to empower … the Kingdom’: 17 Geo. III, c. 9, 1777. Cunnyngham: William Cunningham (1738–91) was a British military officer who held the position of provost marshal in New York. Often abusing this role he inflicted bru­ tal treatment on American prisoners who came under his authority, notably starving to death, along with his associates, thousands of American patriots imprisoned on board the British prison ship Jersey. He was hanged in England in 1791 for forgery. Mr. Franklin: Benjamin Franklin (1706–90), one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, and a leading author, politician, diplomat and scientist of his time. Mr Platt: Ebenezer Smith Platt was a young American colonist suffering under the sus­ pension of Habeas Corpus in London’s Newgate Prison. his excellent Discourse in support of the Revolution: Sir Michael Foster (1689–1763), a judge of the Court of King’s Bench from 1745 as well as Recorder of Bristol from 1735, most famous for A Report of some Proceedings on the Commission of Oyer and Terminer and Goal Delivery for the Trial of the Rebels in the Year 1746 in the County of Surry, and of other Crown Cases. To which are added Discourses upon a Few Branches of the Crown Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1762). A second edition was published in London in 1776. I have been unable to find the exact quote. pirata est hostis humani generis: ‘a pirate is the enemy of the human race’ (Latin). Scobell, 1650, ch. 28: Henry Scobell (1610–60), under-clerk of the House of Commons from 1743 and clerk from 1749. Author of Memorials of the Method and Manner of Proceedings of Parliament in Passing Bills (London: H. Hills & J. Field, 1656), Remem­ brances of some Methods, Orders and Proceedings of the House of Lords (London: H. Hills & J. Field, 1657), and possibly The Power of Lords and Commons in Parliament in Points of Judicature (London, 1680). Editor of A Collection of Several Acts of Parliament, 1648– 1651 (London: H. Hills & J. Field, 1651) and A Collection of Acts and Ordinances from 3 November 1640 to 17 September 1656, 2 parts (London: H. Hills & J. Field, 1657–8). Stith’s Hist. Virg.: William Stith (1707–55), The History of the First Discovery and Settle­ ment of Virginia: Being an Essay towards a General History of this Colony (Williamsburg, VA: W. Parks, 1747). Culpeper: John Culpeper (1644–93), surveyor general of the Carolinas, led ‘Culpeper’s Rebellion’ against the proprietors. He was acquitted of treason by the King’s Bench, in part because the proprietors wished to play down their problems of governance. Mod. Univ. Hist. vol. xl. p. 424, 425: Modern Part of a Universal History, 44 vols (Lon­ don: S. Richardson, 1759–66) was part of A Universal History, from the Earliest Account of Time. Compiled from Original Authors; and Illustrated with Maps, Cuts, Notes, &c. With a General Index to the whole, 65 vols (London: T. Osborne et al., 1747–68). Sir Peyton Ventris: Sir Peyton Ventris (1645–91), judge and politician, had two volumes of reports published posthumously in 1696: ‘Cases in the King’s Bench, 20–36 Car. II’ and ‘Cases in the Common Pleas, 21 Car. II–3 Will. and Mary’. In 1677–8. Sir Edmond Andros: Sir Edmund Andros (1637–1714) was Governor of New York and the Jerseys from 1674 until 1681 when he was charged with but acquitted of dishonesty and favouritism in the collection of the revenues. He was then appointed Governor of the Dominion of New England from 1686 (including New York and the Jerseys from

192

19.

20. 21.

22.

23.

24.

25. 26.

27.

28.

Notes to pages 150–74 1688) until overthrown in 1689 following the Glorious Revolution. He was charged but never tried for his actions as the Dominion’s governor, and was later appointed Governor of Virginia (1692–8), Maryland (1693–4) and Guernsey (1704–6). Neale’s New England: Daniel Neal (1678–1743), English historian, The History of New-England containing an Impartial Account of the Civil and Ecclesiastical Affairs of the Country to the Year of Our Lord, 1700. To which is added the Present State of NewEngland. With a New and Accurate Map of the Country and an Appendix containing their present Charter, their Ecclesiastical Discipline, and their Municipal Laws, 2 vols (London: J. Clark, R. Ford, & R. Cruttenden, 1720). Governor Park of Antigua: see note 9 to A Full and Circumstantial Account, above, p. 185. Sir Josiah Child: Sir Josiah Child (1630–99) was an English merchant, famous for his role as Governor of the East India Company, in which he advocated the Company’s claims to political power as well as its right to restricting competition to its trade. General Howe: William Howe, fifth Viscount Howe (1729–1814), was a British army officer who became commander-in-chief of British forces during the American War of Independence. Under him the British achieved victories in the Battle of Bunker Hill and the capture of New York City and Philadelphia. Trentown: The Battle of Trenton took place on 26 December 1776 after General George Washington crossed the Delaware River, north of Trenton, New Jersey. Washington led the Continental Army to a decisive victory against the Hessian soldiers garrisoned at Trenton under the leadership of Colonel Johann Gottlieb Rall (c. 1726–76). Putnam, Macdougal and Wooster: Israel Putnam (1718–90) was an American army gen­ eral during the American War of Independence who fought with distinction at the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775. Alexander McDougall (c. 1731–86) was a leader of the Sons of Liberty in New York, a political group of American patriots formed to protect the rights of the colonists, and later served as a major-general in the Continental Army during the American War of Independence. David Wooster (1711–77) was an American general who served during the French and Indian War (1754–63) and the American War of Independence, fatally wounded at the Battle of Ridgefield in 1777. Junius: see note 15 to Roebuck, An Enquiry, above, p. 190. Junius also published letters, as cited here, in the Political Register, published by John Almon. Turenne or Saxe: Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne (1611–75), was a French soldier who achieved fame for his military distinction, rising to the position of marshal general of France in 1660. Maurice de Saxe (1696–1750) was a German-born soldier serving in the French army, renowned for his military distinction on the battle­ field most prominently during the War of Austrian Succession (1740–8), rising to the position of marshal general of France in 1747. Chief Justice Holt: Sir John Holt (1642–1710), Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales from 17 April 1689, Report of Cases Adjudged in the Court of King’s Bench with some Special Cases in the Courts of Chancery, Common Pleas and Exchequer … From the First Year of King William and Queen Mary, to the Tenth Year of Queen Anne, by William Salkeld, Late Serjeant at Law. Northey and Raymond: Sir Edward Northey (1652–1723), Attorney General of Eng­ land and Wales from 1701 to 1708 and 1710 to 1718, and MP for Tiverton from 1710. Sir Robert Raymond (1673–1733), lawyer and statesman, Solicitor General from 1715, Attorney General from 1720, and Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench from 1725. He was also MP for Ludlow from 1719 and Helston from 1722.

Notes to pages 174–8

193

29. Sir Clement Wearg and Sir Philip York: Sir Clement Wearg (c. 1686–1726), lawyer and politician, Solicitor General and MP for Helston from 1724. Sir Philip Yorke, first Earl of Hardwicke (1690–1764), MP for Lewes and then Seaford from 1719, Attorney Gen­ eral from 1720, and Lord Chancellor from 1738. 30. Lord Camden: see note 16 to Roebuck, An Enquiry, above, p. 190. He made the Pratt– Yorke judgement (with Charles Yorke, son of Philip, Earl of Hardwick) of 24 December 1757 distinguishing between territories acquired by treaty, in which the Crown had sov­ ereignty, and territory acquired by conquest, which the Crown possessed as property as well as exerting sovereignty. The opinion related to the East India Company, but was held by some to apply throughout the British empire. 31. Mr. Grenville: see note 7 to [Baillie], ‘A Letter to the Author of a Pamphlet’, above, p. 188.

THE AMERICAN COLONIES AND

THE BRITISH EMPIRE, 1607–1783

Contents of the Edition

PART I

volume 1

General Introduction

Introduction, 1607–1763

1607–75

volume 2

1676–1714

volume 3

1715–52

volume 4

1753–63

PART II

volume 5

Introduction, 1764–83

1764–8

volume 6

1769–75

volume 7

1775–7

volume 8

1777–83

Index

THE AMERICAN COLONIES AND

THE BRITISH EMPIRE, 1607–1783

Editor

Steven Sarson

Consulting Editor

Jack P. Greene

Volume 8

1777–83

First published 2011 by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited

Published 2016 by Routledge

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are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

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The American colonies and the British Empire, 1607–1783. Part 2, Volumes 5–8. 1. United States – History – Colonial period, ca. 1600–1775. 2. Great Britain – Colonies – America. I. Sarson, Steven. II. Greene, Jack P. 973.2-dc22 ISBN-13: 978-1-85196-949-4 (set) Typeset by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited

CONTENTS

[Allan Ramsay], Letters on the Present Disturbances in Great Britain and her American Provinces (1777) Thomas Warwick, The Rights of Sovereignty Asserted. An Ode (1777) [ Joseph Galloway], Considerations upon the American Enquiry (1779) D. M. Knight, A Proposal for Peace between Great Britain and North-America; upon a New Plan. In a Letter to Lord North (1779) Beilby Porteus, A Sermon Preached before the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, in the Abbey-Church, Westminster (1779) James Cornwallis, A Sermon Preached in the Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of Christ, Canterbury, on Friday, February 4, 1780 (1780) [ Josiah Tucker], Dispassionate Thoughts on the American War: Addressed to the Moderate of all Parties (1780) [David Williams], A Plan of Association, on Constitutional Principles, for the Parishes, Tithings, Hundreds, and Counties of Great Britain (1780) [ John Almon], The Revolution in MDCCLXXXII Impartially Considered (1782) [Edward Stratford], An Essay on the True Interests and Resources of the Empire of the King of Great-Britain and Ireland (1783)

1 25 35 63 77

91 101

115 139 161

Editorial Notes

171

Index

177

[RAMSAY], LETTERS ON THE PRESENT

DISTURBANCES

[Allan Ramsay], Letters on the Present Disturbances in Great Britain and her Ameri­ can Provinces (London, 1777)

Allan Ramsay (1713–84) was and is best known as a portrait painter. The son of poet and bookseller Allan Ramsay, he grew up in Edinburgh before honing his artistic skills in Italy from 1736 to 1738. From 1738 to 1754 he made a reputa­ tion as an artist in London, portraying numerous eminencies, making many visits to Edinburgh, before spending another three years in Italy. Returning to London in 1757, Ramsay painted a famous full-length portrait of the Earl of Bute, then governor to Prince George. The prince was impressed enough to employ Ramsay for the coronation portraits of himself and Queen Charlotte. He became one of His Majesty’s Painters in Ordinary in December 1761 and Principal Painter in Ordinary to the King when John Shackleton died in March 1767. In these roles he produced at least 150 portraits of George III and Queen Charlotte as well as paintings of others, making a considerable fortune. Ramsay also had a distinguished career as an intellectual. Unsurprisingly, he developed an interest in antiquity, publishing descriptions of frescoes at Her­ culaneum in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1740 and producing A Dialogue on Taste in 1755, his most important commentary on art and architecture. But Ramsay’s interests also stretched beyond the artistic. On his first visit to Rome he met James Stuart and Charles Edward Stuart, and flirted with Jacobitism. In 1754, however, he co-founded, with David Hume (whom he later painted) and Adam Smith, an exclusive debating club called the Select Soci­ ety to discuss anything ‘except such as regard Revealed Religion, or which may give occasion to vent any Principles of Jacobitism’. He also advised Hume on his History of England, especially on Shakespeare. He later became associated with Horace Walpole, Johnson, Boswell, Gibbon, Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rous­ seau and Voltaire. In 1753 he produced On Ridicule and Concerning the Affair of Elizabeth Canning, tackling issues of truth, evidence and logic, the latter help­ ing to save a condemned woman named Mary Squires. In 1754 he published an –1–

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Essay on the Naturalization of Foreigners, points from which would appear in his Letters on the Present Disturbances. He produced his pro-Hanoverian An Essay on the Constitution of England (London: T. Becket & P.A. De Hondt, 1765), Thoughts on the Origin and Nature of Government (London: T. Becket & P.A. De Hondt, 1769, though written in 1766), expressing fears of colonial rebel­ liousness but supporting parliamentary taxation. He addressed these issues again pseudonymously in letters ‘To the Printer of the Public Advertiser’ on 18 April 1771, and 25 and 26 January 1775, reprinted as Letters on the Present Distur­ bances, while on a third visit to Rome after ‘Finding, by the conversation of my fellow-travellers here, that many of them were still unaquainted with the true nature of the dispute between England and America’ (below, p. 4). Though time had passed and events had moved on, Ramsay’s points were general enough to be relevant still. He only added in an introduction that recent American ‘Petitions and Remonstrances’ advised the King ‘to dissolve the Parlia­ ment, on account of some alledged misbehaviour of the House of Commons: a most preposterous attempt, and to which nothing similar is to be found in all the annals of England’ (below, p. 5). The first letter outlines the philosophical principle that the ‘safety of the community’ was ‘entitled to preference’ over individuals and their property (below, p. 8). The ‘civil dissention’ (below, p. 10) in America and its reverberations in Britain therefore required greater executive exercise of military power. The second letter expresses confidence in victory over the Amer­ icans, whom he defines as non-English as they live abroad and have different interests from British islanders: ‘where the treasure is, there will the heart be also’ (below, p. 15). The third essay continues with the theme of who is entitled to political enfranchisement, arguing that only the interests of the landed coincide fully with those of the country, as opposed to ‘the selfish spirit of merchandise’ (below, p. 22), especially British merchants trading with Americans. Ramsay produced other writings on empire, including An Enquiry into the Rights of the East India Company of Making War and Peace (London, 1772), A Plan of the Government of Bengal (London: J. Almon, 1772), A Succinct View of the Ameri­ can Contest (London, 1778), A Letter to Edmund Burke (London: J. Bew, 1780), Observations on the Riot Act by a Dilettante in Law and Politics (London: T. Cadell, 1781), advocating increased government powers after the 1780 Gordon riots, and an expansionist, imperialist Essay on the Right of Conquest (Florence, 1783). He wrote the latter on a health-restoring fourth sojourn in Italy, but he died at Dover on his way home.1 Notes: 1. J. Ingamells, ‘Ramsay, Allan, of Kinkell (1713–1784), portrait painter’, in Oxford Dic­ tionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 45, pp. 905–11.

LETTERS

ON THE

PRESENT DISTURBANCES

IN

GREAT BRITAIN

AND HER

AMERICAN PROVINCES – opes nimias mundo fortuna subacto Intulit, & rebus mores cessere secundis Lucan.1

LONDON

REPRINTED MDCCLXXVII. /

Finding, by the conversation of my fellow-travellers here, that many of them were still unaquainted with the true nature of the dispute between England and America, I have caused to be reprinted some copies of these letters, for their bet­ ter information. I flattered myself that they were sufficiently clear, two years ago; but if any passages in them appeared, at that time, obscure or Doubtfull, the late conduct of the Americans may be adduced as their best commentary. Rome, February 22

1777 /

ADVERTISEMENT. The two letters signed Britannicus, which form the main body of this litle collec­ tion, were first printed in the Public Advertisers of the 25 and 26 of January 1775, a few days after a petition from a set of Merchants of London had been presented to the House of Commons in favour of the Americans; and when Petitions of the same kind were foretold and expected, by the Leaders of Opposition, from all the other trading and manufactoring towns. From the Public Advertiser, these Letters were immediately reprinted in the London Chronicle, and by that channel conveyed to the most distant parts of the Kingdom. With what effect they were read it is dif­ ficult to say; but the crouds of Petitions, which had been so confidently announced, never made their appearance; while some others were presented of a quite contrary tendency. By way of Introduction to these, we have republished a letter signed Marcel­ lus, / first printed in the Public Advertiser of the 18. of April 1771, being the last of six which had appeared with the same signature. The other five had for their subject the Petitions and Remonstrances presented to the King, by certain knots of the people, advising him to dissolve the Parliament, on account of some alledged misbehaviour of the House of Commons: a most preposterous attempt, and to which nothing similar is to be found in all the annals of England. The memory of this whole transaction has been since obliterated by attempts of a much deeper dye: so that the revival of any reasonings upon it would be, at this time, very litle interesting to the Public: but we have reprinted the last of those six letters, as it endeavours to point out the cause of that disorder in the State, of which the London Remonstrance and the American rebellion are only different symptoms. /

LETTERS

ON THE

PRESENT DISTURBANCES

IN

GREAT BRITAIN THURSDAY April 18, 1771 To the Printer of the Public Advertiser. SIR. Whoever has made any observations on the manner in which political dis­ putes of the greatest importance to the safety of States have been carried on, cannot fail of observing, that the disputants, eager in their little daily attacks or defences, never look above an inch, either before or behind them, towards the ultimate consequence, or the original source of their dissention; but, like silly physicians, unmindful of the cause, are ever busily employed in curing every new symptom of the distemper, without being awakened from their short-sighted practice by seeing the patient hourly verging towards his grave. How came the Ministry, says one of these, to suffer George Onslow2 to med­ dle with the Printers? / To which trifling question is immediately returned as trifling an answer, and deeper they never get. But those who are able to extend their view to general facts, will easily find such as are more worthy their atten­ tion, and which might suggest more significant questions. They will find that there has been, for these eight or nine years, a studied train of insult pointed at all Persons in authority, for the obvious purpose of galling, intimidating, and rendering them odious or contemptible to the People: that all these insults, at the time of committing them, were judged, by the most cool and considerate, to be deserving of severe punishment. and yet, that all the attempts which have been made by those in administration to punish such offences, have been after­ wards almost as generally condemned, as illegal in their mode, and inconvenient in their consequences. They will find that these mismanagements have been con­ stantly imputed to the ignorance or folly of the Ministers who commenced, or who carried on the several prosecutions; and perhaps was one of the causes of the frequent changes which have been made of them: and yet that the change of men –7–

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never made any change, for the better, in the measures; the same illegal manage­ ment having been imputed to them all successively; with this single difference, that the last Minister was always found more unsuccessful than his predecessor. / It would be an irrational as well as a harsh supposition to suppose that all the experienced Statesmen of England, assisted by the advice of the most learned lawyers, had acted, for a course of years, like fools or cowards: nor, were I will­ ing to make such a supposition, would there be found any Party of men willing to subscribe to it; as the Leaders of each Party would be necessarily involved in the general condemnation. We are therefore constrained to believe that their miscarriages were not so much owing to their misconduct, as to the situation of things in which they were called to act. If this should happen to be the case, as I am persuaded it is, it will be in vain to hope for an end to these disturbances, from a change of men, or even from a change of conduct, without some change in our general situation. To bring about such changes, probably requires more than a mere speculative genius, and therefore not within my department: but, as people got into a laby­ rinth will find no better method of extricating themselves than by recollecting how they came in, I will endeavour to give a few hints with regard to the steps by which our affairs, have been brought into this situation; which, though confined to the narrow compass allowed by a news-paper, will be sufficient to serve as a clue to such of your readers as are willing to enter into a more compleat investiga­ tion of the subject. / There are two great maxims admitted in this Country of freedom: the one, that no man ought to be punished but by the known laws of the land: the other that the salus populi, the safety of the community, is the supreme law. Of these two maxims, one regarding the security of the individuals, the other the safety of the Whole, the last has ever been, with great justice, entitled to the preference; as Common-sense informs us, that where the Whole is in danger none of the Parts can be safe: and therefore, not only in our’s but in every government, free or arbitrary, the guardianship of this supreme law has been, in a peculiar manner, committed to the supreme executive power of the State; checked, however, more or less, in free countries, by laws wisely framed for the security of the individuals. From the beginning of the English Monarchy this executive power was entrusted with the King, both for the defence of the kingdom against invaders, and for preserving the internal quiet of it: he exercising this power, as occasion should require, by a Right known in our laws and Constitution by the name of Prerogative; a Right in the beginning very extensive, but which was first lim­ ited by the feudal Rights of the Barons, and in late times much more by the Commons assembled in Parliament. Nor, to a certain degree, were those late limitations improper or unnecessary; / as the Princes before the Revolution had often employed this Prerogative for foolish and oppressive purposes; particularly

[Ramsay], Letters on the Present Disturbances

9

that of obtruding their own religious opinions upon the People, contrary to the Rights of mankind, and the nature of things. But, on the other hand, it is no less true, that the Commons in Parliament, having a more anxious care for personal security than for public order, put no bounds to their restrictions of Prerogative; and at last reduced the only executive power of the State to a condition which was insignificant, as well as harmless. Thus matters stood at the Revolution, when the King was left with the com­ mand of a brave and loyal body of troops, without being aware that the laws were so contrived in favour of the seditious, under the notion of securing the Liberty of the Subject, that he could not employ any of this armed force to protect his Courts of justice, his two Houses of Parliament, or even the gate of his own pal­ ace, from popular insolence; without a breach of some law of the land. For about seventy years this evil was neither felt nor understood; and perhaps, to speak more properly, it was during that period no evil. An even balance of power, then existing between the Rulers and the rest of the Community, created that mutual awe in which consists the essence of order and liberty; and pre­ vented an enquiry into / the elementary principles and Rights of Government; which never become the objects of public enquiry till the political machine is fallen of itself into disorder. Upon sudden and accidental Rebellions, Parliament provided sufficiently for the safety of the Whole, by lending to the Crown that legal species of dictatorial power which is produced by a temporary suspension of the Habeas corpus Act: and upon smaller occasions, where the utility was manifest, the Crown exercised of itself some remains of its accustomed powers, such as the issuing General Warrants; without their illegality being considered either by King or People. The People entertained few jealousies of the Crown, which they knew was abundantly circumscribed; and none at all of the House of Commons, by which their liberty lived, moved, and had it’s being. The extent of it’s powers, by the name of Privilege, was held as a sacred mystery, which it was High Treason against the Majesty of the People to pry into: and Mr. Walpole was disqualified, and the Honourable Alexander Murray was lodged, during pleasure, in Newgate; without such exertions of power having been reckoned either illegal in themselves, or dangerous to the Commons, for whom, and by whom, they had been, in fact, exercised. Were it possible to make laws for a free people of such complaisant stuff that they might contract and dilate themselves, as the real affairs of that / people should be contracted or dilated, their political system being once happily con­ stituted, might be for ever preserved in the same happy state, without almost a possibility of political dissentions or civil wars. But unluckily it is the nature of things to move, while it is the nature of laws to stand still; and we ought no more to wonder at the troubles arising from their unfitness than that a grown man should find himself uneasy and ridiculous in a coat which had been made

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for him when a boy. The more prosperous any free country is, and the faster it grows, either by commerce or conquest, the more it is subject to these returns of civil dissention, which arise from a deficiency in the powers of Government, or, what is the same thing, to a disproportionate increase of wealth and power in the individuals. The present disturbances had their immediate rise from the successes of the last war, which, while it impoverished the State by an addition of sixty millions to it’s debt, and dispersed it’s small military force in guarding new acquisitions of territory, threw immense sums into the pockets of private persons. These men, after being satiated with every species of luxury which their money laid open to them, soon felt a new appetite arise for rank and dignity; but being mostly of the lowest class, with regard to education or connections, they found but / one way of gratifying this appetite, which was by purchasing seats in the House of Com­ mons. Many attempts of this sort were accordingly made at the General Election in 1761, and since that time, some of which succeeded, and others failed. But those which succeeded, and those which failed equally served to spread this newly acquired money to a larger circle, and in such a manner as to give those who received it, along with the money, a high idea of their own importance; so that they all began to think themselves entitled to a share in the honours and emoluments of Government, which in reality can only be the lot of a few. Hence arose a general hatred to the few in possession, the true source of which being ridiculous and shameful, could not be suffered to appear in it’s genuine shape, but was ready to vent itself in a full chorus of lamentations upon any mismanage­ ment of the public affairs, real or pretended. While a free State preserves it’s equilibrio, and every thing flows easily in it’s accustomed channels, the first posts in Government are always filled by persons whose hereditary honours and estates give them a sort of proscriptive right to them; and new men, of the greatest talents and accomplishments, are seldom promoted to any offices above those of the middling rank. But, when once confusion, and with it danger and difficulty, make their appearance, there is no height to which men of address and / boldness may not aspire; tho’ destitute of birth, fortune, and character. Some of those, taking their cue from the encreas­ ing tone of presumption and discontent, stood forth, as writers and orators, to revile their rulers, first with more, afterwards with less reserve; feeling, by little and little, that those Rulers were not so able to punish as the popular Party was to support and reward them. From the same motives several ambitious Lawyers, and even Judges, enlisted themselves under the popular banner, and pointed out to the common people many weak parts in the Laws for preventing or punish­ ing seditious practices, which, without their assistance, never would have been known.

[Ramsay], Letters on the Present Disturbances

11

Nor were the King’s Servants altogether wanting in their contributions to this mass of disorder; for actuated either by the fear of clamour and insult, or by the vain hope of popularity, they all in their turn sacrificed the Rights of Govern­ ment, and the interest of the Public, to the rabble of the City of London, whose nearness and noise made them be considered as representing the whole rabble of England. Want of strength was the real inspirer of those measures, and weakness was the result of them. But of all their palliatives, the most destructive was that of admitting the most violent and foul-mouthed of their Opposers into places of trust; by which they changed their quality of avowed enemies into the more mischievous one of timid or treacherous friends. / In the course of these preposterous transactions we have seen every thing relating to Public law or Government turned, as it were, upside down. The American disclaims the authority of the British Legislature, and insists upon the Right of taxing himself at his own pleasure. The Coal-heaver becomes his own employer, and insists upon the Right of regulating his own wages. The outlawed Culprit breaks into the Court of Justice, and, regardless of the tip-staves, arraigns his Judge; who, feeling his own helpless situation, is forced to plead before the Criminal, and to exert his eloquence in defence of his own conduct. The Livery of London, who by reason of their number, and of their being already repre­ sented in Parliament, are prohibited by Law and Common-sense from meeting in a Body to deliberate upon any proposition whatever, make their first essay in a Remonstrance to the King against both Houses of Parliament; and this absurd Remonstrance is not only received, but received upon the Throne, with the same respect as if it had come from the two Houses of Parliament themselves. The serving an Order of the House of Commons to bring a Printer before them, is deemed by the Printer an assault, and the Messenger is committed to prison for it by the Magistrates of London; while Mr. Sheriff Harley, the late Duke of Bedford, and the present Lord North, are wounded in open day-light in the exercise of their public duty; without such outrages being / deemed assaults, or at least such as could bring the offenders to punishment. Such are the symptoms of a more than ordinary disorder in our political system, and which can only be rectified by extraordinary means. These must be employed, either in reducing the situation of Things to a conformity with the present Laws; that is, by restoring to every order of the Commonwealth that natural poise which, without the help of force, may keep them all firm in their several places: or, if this is thought a task out of human reach, in bringing our Laws to a conformity with the real situation of Things; by contriving artificial equivalents to supply the deficiency of this natural poise; by placing a proper degree of Force in the hands of those who are already vested with Authority, or, in other words, by providing an executive power suitable to the present riches and extent of the British Empire.

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God forbid that quiet should be restored to us by tumultuous or arbitrary means; or that we should ever have occasion to say with Lucan, Cum Domino pax ista venit.3 I am, Sir, Your constant Reader, Pall-mall, April 13. MARCELLUS /

WEDNESDAY January 25, 1775.

To the Printer of the Public Advertiser.

SIR. After a great deal of unavailing argumentation, the dispute between the Amer­ icans and us seems now to be reduced to the single question, Whether we are able by force to reduce them to obedience or not? It is a mere question of fact, in which, as the Lawyers say, the parties join issue; and so is ready to be sent to trial, without any farther demurring: leaving the cause to be finally decided, as the weight of evidence, shall preponderate in favour of one side or the other. That the power which so lately carried on a successful war, against the united forces of France and Spain, should not be able to subdue a parcel of Planters and Merchants, who have no fleet, no army, no public treasury, no artillery or military stores; and who have no respectable Head of authority to produce uni­ formity of conduct, or to prevent mutiny and sedition in those who, from a spirit of sedition only, take upon them to be soldiers, is what no man will easily con­ ceive, who is in the least acquainted with the history of human dealings. / At the same time, in examining how the powers of Great Britain are to be brought to act hostilely against the Americans; I am sensible of some difficulty; the causes of which I shall here endeavour to investigate. The English Nation has hitherto divided the whole human race into two classes only, viz. Foreigners, who are always supposed to be, at bottom, enemies; and Englishmen, who are always supposed to be, at bottom, friends to England. In compliance with this distinction, not ill founded in the nature of things, two very different plans of conduct have been constantly followed by the people of England, whenever any insult has been offered by the one or by the other of those two classes to any branch of their government. Were, for instance, a Cap­ tain of a French or Spanish man of war to order the cockswain of an English long-boat to be tarred and feathered in the Bay of Campeachy, the news would put all England in an uproar: Fleets would be immediately fitted out, Officers put into commission, and men pressed at every port, to resent the affront put upon the British flag; and all this, without any cool or regular examination into the fact, or how far the cockswain might not have drawn this feathering upon himself by his own insolence. Should the Ministry shew any backwardness in seconding this ardour in the people, and treat this feathering as a teterrima belli causa; their eternal opposers would not fail to lay hold of / so favourable an occa­ – 13 –

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sion of representing them as traitors to their country, and of driving them out of their so much wished-for places. If, on the contrary, the Ministry should engage heartily in a war, the most hungry Orator amongst the Patriots would not dare to open his mouth against them. On the other hand, the grossest insults offered by an Englishman, not only to an inferior officer, but to the highest persons and departments in the Govern­ ment, and which manifestly lead to other practices totally subversive of the State, are treated with the utmost temper and moderation. If he is called to account for this offence, he becomes immediately the favourite of the populace, and zeal­ ously supported by the minority in both Houses of Parliament. Though the laws of England are of themselves sufficiently formed for the protection of the indi­ viduals, every quibbling interpretation of them, by every factious or mercenary Lawyer, is readily admitted in his defence; none against him. Every evidence against him is examined with the utmost scrupulousness, and every informal­ ity in the mode of trial is allowed to operate in his favour. And lastly, his Jury, who are much more nearly allied to him than to his accusers, are easily induced not only to let him come off unpunished, when every rational man esteems him punishable, but may possibly ordain heavy damages to be given to him by his prosecutors for / any irregularities they may inadvertently have fallen into in the course of their proceeding. When we look back for the cause of this extraordinary heat of the English, in resenting the affronts done to those who represent their State in one of those cases, and of their no less extraordinary coolness in the other, it plainly turns out to be this: That any contempt shewn by a foreign power to their rulers, is supposed to be levelled at the whole community, and at every individual of it; whereas the insults of an Englishman, who is himself a member of the commu­ nity of England, and interested in its welfare, cannot be supposed to mean any mischief to it, or to his fellow-citizens; and the spirit of liberty, which requires them to have always a jealous eye to the conduct of their rulers, naturally inclines them to take part with any one of their own body who complains of an undue exertion of power, and to overlook the demerits of the complainer. If the Government of England were to have no disputes to settle with any but meer foreign States, or meer Englishmen, the experience they have acquired in the conflicts of several centuries past, would be sufficient to guide them in any new emergencies of a like kind: but unfortunately, there has lately started up to view in America a new class of men, who will be found upon examination to belong to neither of those two classes; who for that reason, give great perplex­ ity both to the Government and / people of England, and must ever continue to perplex them till their true nature, and their true relation to Great Britain is accurately known, and a suitable mode of proceeding with regard to them adopted.

[Ramsay], Letters on the Present Disturbances

15

Being descended from an English stock; speaking the English language; holding amongst themselves laws, customs, and religion, somewhat similar to those of England; being in the practice of calling themselves Englishmen, and us brethren, they have artfully persuaded the people of England that they are their fellow-citizens, and Englishmen like themselves, to all intents and purposes. But this is altogether a fallacy. Similarity of language or descent do not confer upon a man the Rights of any community; nor does the want of them preclude him from those rights, if he happens to be furnished with the more essential requisites. A native of Languedoc or Dauphiny, who sells his lands, and, with his family and effects, comes over to settle in England, becomes upon his landing as good an Englishman, in every political sense of the word, as any man born in the Island; and if he is not completely so in the eye of the law, it is because our law is not able to distinguish, at first sight, the strangers who come into England with the fixed purpose of settling, from those who do not. In like manner a native Englishman, who leaves England to settle in Languedoc, and there purchases lands, or enters into partnership in trade or manufactures with Frenchmen, becomes himself / a Frenchman to all intents and purposes. He cannot owe allegiance to two differ­ ent Sovereigns at the same time, and therefore pays it to the King of France, from whom he receives protection; forfeiting all the rights of citizenship he held in his native country, to which he is thus become a commercial rival, and political enemy; for where the treasure is, there will the heart be also. An American Englishman, according to his own description of himself, seems to differ but in one circumstance from this Frenchified Englishman; and that is, in his not having come under the allegiance of any foreign Prince; by which it must he allowed that he is not completely a foreigner. But his allegiance to the King of England is of a very weak and ambiguous kind; little more than nomi­ nal: as he acknowledges him only in his feudal capacity, as Lord of the Manor of Greenwich, or of Windsor Castle; renouncing him in his more exalted character of Head of the British Empire, and third part of its legislative power. He allows that his own situation excludes him from having any share in the legislature of Great Britain; and affirms that it has no right to tax him, as it taxes Englishmen. These are some of the principal features by which an American is, by his own account, to be distinguished from an Englishman of this country; but they are likewise the features of an Alien, not of our fellow-citizen. Nor do the marks of an Alien / appear stronger in those political circumstances, than in his interests as a landholder, a merchant, and a manufacturer: For, so far from our having a common interest with the Americans, in which the great characteristic of citi­ zenship consists, the prosperity of their trade and manufactures would have long ago ruined England, had it not been for that tyrannical and unconstitutional power, as they call it, of the British Parliament, which has put a variety of fet­

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ters upon their trade, and made it subservient to ours; very little with their own consent, as appears by many passages in their late manifestos from Philadelphia. When a Bostonian tells us, he carried the free constitution of England with him to America, it is very difficult to say what he means. But if we may be allowed to explain his meaning by the help of the fact itself, he can only mean, that he left England to become a freeman of a corporation, settled in a far distant country, by a charter from the King of England: that the internal policy of this corpora­ tion was formed upon the model of that of England: that he had there his House of Commons in which he was represented, and which had the right of impos­ ing taxes upon him for the purposes of this corporation: that he had a Council which answered to our House of Peers; and that, to make this a complete Par­ liament like that of England, a Bailiff or Governor from the King of England was sent to preside in it. Supposing all this similitude to be just, as in fact it / is not; for an American Council is exceedingly unlike an hereditary House of Peers; yet when the whole, or any of the parts of an American Government, is put side by side with the whole, or any of the corresponding parts of the Govern­ ment of England, so different in its nature as well as magnitude, the comparison produces something completely ridiculous. Mr. Hancock may be a very good Englishman amongst Bostonians, and he has reason to thank God for the enjoy­ ment of so valuable a priviledge; but it is fit for him, at the same time, to know, that Bostonians, politically speaking, are no more Englishmen, or their Assem­ bly a Parliament, than their Governor, Gage, is a King. To hinder us from perceiving that they are not Englishmen or our Fellow Citizens, the Americans have availed themselves of every ambiguity in our lan­ guage. They have called, themselves our Fellow Subjects, knowing, all the while, that they acknowledge themselves to be such, only from a circumstance which belongs to them in common with the people of Hanover. They have talked con­ stantly of their Mother Country, and have founded their absurd pretensions on their British descent; when they know that there are thousands amongst them who join in those demands upon their Mother Country who were born in West­ phalia, and who owe their rights of American Englishmen merely to an Act of that Legislature, the authority of which they join in / disclaiming: and they have lately talked to us, in the tragic strain, about the horrors of a civil war, when they know, that, let the war in America be ever so horrible, there will no true English­ man fall in it, except he be from amongst those brave men who have lately sailed from England with red coats upon their backs, to vindicate the important rights of their countrymen. But all this juggling, of which the detail is infinite, must lose its effect upon Englishmen, whenever they come to be distinctly informed, that the Americans are not their fellow-citizens, but their subjects; and that it is to be independent of them, not of the Parliament, which separate from the

[Ramsay], Letters on the Present Disturbances

17

people of England has no meaning at all, that is the great object of the present American struggles. With this single light, the people of England will be able to see through all the sophistry of the American Pamphleteers; who, having no sense of their own, borrow some from Locke, and then turn it into nonsense by their misapplication of it. They will see, that all they have said about taxation going hand in hand with representation, and which Locke expressly confines to free men, members of a free state, was never meant to be applied to our Americans, who, though they are free men, as individuals, and as far as regards their own provincial Government, are not in a free and independent State with respect to England. They will see, that notwithstanding the deep and important maxim, / that every man’s property is his own; and that other no less wonderful discovery, that it is no better than rob­ bing a man to take his property from him without his own consent: yet that the Americans are still liable to be justly taxed by the English: inasmuch as no man who is indebted to other people has a right to call any thing he possesses his own, till all his debts are discharged: that, in the mean time he must acknowledge a right in his creditors of taking from him what belongs to them, whether he will or not; and that he must not think of excluding from the number of those credi­ tors the person to whom he owes much for support and protection, and without whose support and protection he would never have been possessed of any thing at all. The Americans are certainly not represented in the British Parliament, and from what I have already said of their situation and circumstances, it is impos­ sible they ever should: not from the impossibility of sending Members from a great distance, a circumstance in which the inhabitants of Rhode Island do not essentially differ from those of the Orkneys; but from the incompatibility of their partial interests with ours, in matters of trade and manufactures, which would make their admission into our Councils a mischievous absurdity. Ministers of State have seldom leisure, from official business and parliamen­ tary wrangling, to enter into speculative enquiries concerning the more abstract / relations of men and things; yet it appears by the late Acts of Parliament for curbing the Americans, that the true relation between them and us, as laid open in this paper, was not unknown to them. It is at least upon this ground that the propriety of those Acts can be best defended, and the absurdity of the com­ plaints against them most easily exposed. The Americans, for instance, complain that trials by Jury, the birthright of every Englishman,4 is taken from them. But this assertion, as far as regards them as Bostonian Englishmen, is not in the least true. They still are allowed Juries of their own vicinage for deciding every cause, civil or criminal, that can occur with regard to their own affairs within their own district, as fully as is enjoyed by any Englishman in England. But what the Bostonians most unfairly contend for, is to have disputes between them and the English nation settled by a Jury of Bostonians; that is, that they be allowed to

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become, at the same time, both Judge and Party-This our Parliament has wisely provided against, by ordering all causes respecting the public revenue to be tried by the Courts of Admirality; and all treasons and other crimes and misdemean­ ors against the state of Great Britain, to be tried in Great Britain, or in some other part of the British empire, where its supreme authority is fully acknowledged. In like manner their complaints against the plan of Government established in Canada, give the strongest presumption / of the wisdom and propriety of it; as those complaints manifestly arise from the various means provided in that plan to prevent the Canadians from entering into rebellious projects, such as the Bostonians have lately fallen into, and into which they have been at great pains to draw all their neighbours. The Canadians, upon large and truly Revolu­ tion principles, are allowed the free exercise of their religion,5 with full security for their property by forms of law to which they have been long accustomed, and which, while they are more convenient for them than the common law of England, are of perfect indifference to us. But their duty to the British state is marked out in that plan with much more precision than has been done in any of the former establishments in America; in which there has been more trusted to the gratitude, the justice, and common sense of the persons on whom they were bestowed, than the event has been able to justify. I have still more to say upon this subject (and indeed one of the chief obstructions to our acting hostilely against the Americans is still untouched) but finding I have already extended this letter to an unusual length, must reserve what remains for another. I am, SIR your most humble servant Pall-mall, Jan. 20. BRITANNICUS /

THURSDAY January 26, 1775.

To the Printer of the Public Advertiser.

LETTER II. SIR. Upon the great principle laid down in my Yesterday’s letter, ‘that is the having a common interest in the welfare of any community which entitles a man to be considered as a member of it, or to have any voice in the management of its concerns,’ I have hitherto considered every man resident in the island of Great Britain, and having no establishment any where else, as our fellow citizen. Nor is this, in its lowest degree, a slight privilege; or as such esteemed by the other nations on the continent of Europe: as appears by the numbers of those who daily come over to be enrolled, by residence, amongst us; while few or none of our people are found willing to return them the compliment. But although the inhabitants of Britain make, with regard to foreigners, but one class; yet, upon the great leading principle of citizenship, a very little reflec­ tion may point out, that there must be in that body a great many different classes, according to their different degrees of interest in the common-wealth; the inter­ est of one member being extensive / and fixed, while that of another may be small and removable. This is no new discovery of mine: Every well-constituted republic, every wise legislature has attended to it; and has accordingly divided its citizens into a variety of classes, allotting to each class a share in the management of the public concerns, in proportion to its share of interest in them; excluding altogether from the political functions of citizenship that most numerous class made up of those, who, having nothing at all of their own, have little or nothing to lose by any misfortune which might befall their country. As no form of republic has been, in the general opinion of mankind, more happily contrived than that of England; so there is none in which the attention to this great maxim has been more conspicuous. Our wise ancestors considered land as the only species of property that could be called fixed or local; the only kind that necessarily attached the owner to his native soil; and the only kind that could make him extend his care to its future, as well as to its present prosperity; and therefore they considered no man as a political member of the community of England, or as qualified to be consulted on the management of its public affairs, either in person or by a representative, unless he were a landholder. They consid­ – 19 –

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ered that, without his being either a merchant, manufacturer, or labourer, every scheme for the advancement of the trade or improvement of the / manufactures of England; every scheme that should be proposed for the ease and happiness of the labouring people; every scheme by which their numbers might be increased, and their emigration prevented: and, in short, that every proposal tending to promote the public happiness and safety, in which he and and his posterity had so permanent an interest, would be felt by him as his own private concern, and be treated with the same zeal and sincerity. On the contrary, they considered a man who had no estate but what arose from the labour of his hands, or from his skill and dexterity in some art, or from such property as might easily be crammed into a knapsack, as a slippery kind of fellow citizen; who, knowing how easily he might withdraw himself, and all that belonged to him, from his native country, might look with indifference upon its approaching ruin in which he was not to be involved, and from which he might possibly reap some advantage. Such was the wisdom of our ancestors: but the establishments of men, like their bodies, are but of limited growth and duration; having always some lurking disease, which, in the midst of their most blooming health, is gradually forward­ ing their dissolution. By a long train of causes, seemingly tending to the happiness and greatness of this country, the landed interest has gradually lost that weight which it originally had in the scale of Government; and has, upon many occa­ sions, been forced to give / way to the weight and influence of an interest arising from trade and manufactures, which is of a much more complex and fluctuating kind. A well-conducted Government, happily meeting with a prosperous trade will produce the highest degree of national happiness: but the alliance between those two powers is of a very extraordinary nature; for they will always be found to assist one another the most effectually the less they act in concert. When the powers of the state attempt to adjust, or superintend the affairs of commerce; when, not contented with holding out freedom to trade, and with protecting the fair trader from fraud or violence, they go farther, and attempt to assist him in promoting his traffic; they then undertake an office which they cannot be supposed to understand, and in which they can hardly fail of doing mischief. On the other hand, when merchants are suffered to give advice to Statesmen even in matters which appear of a commercial nature, they seldom fail of mixing a selfinterested dash with their counsels, and of rendering them unsalutary. The cause of all this will become very obvious when we compare the princi­ ples of Government with those of commerce, and find how opposite they are to one another. The principle of Government is, by union and unanimity, arising from supreme command and subordination, to provide, upon maxims general and extensive, for the order and safety of the whole; whereas the interest of com­ merce is best / promoted when each private merchant, without any extensive view of commerce in general, and without concerning himself about the inter­

[Ramsay], Letters on the Present Disturbances

21

est of his neighbour, or the interest of the State, quietly employs his industry in his own branch of business for his own private emolument. For while he is saying, ‘every man for himself,’ and suffers no idea more enlarged to enter his mind, he is in reality contributing his quota to the public good; as the wealth of the community, and the strength of the State, are the certain, though unin­ tended, consequences of the private gains of so many individuals. While riches continue thus to flow, without force or noise, through these imperceptible, but numerous channels, the interest of the merchant, and the interest of trade in gen­ eral, will be exactly the same; and the public safety will be established instead of being endangered by it. But whenever the merchant, with the rapacious view of extending his traffic beyond its natural bounds, pretends a zeal for the advance­ ment of the national commerce, enters into combinations with other merchants, and loudly calls upon the State to assist them with its force, then does merchan­ dise cease to be useful to the public, and instead of supporting the State, becomes a dead weight upon it. Of these general truths, the two last wars carried on by England against France and Spain, furnish a most melancholy illustration. To obtain the sole and exclusive commerce of the western world, in which / the French and Spaniards were their rivals, was the modest wish of our merchants, in conjunction with our Americans. The fair, and truly commercial, method of effecting this would have been by superior skill, industry and frugality, to have undersold their rivals at market: but that method appearing slow and troublesome to a luxurious people, whose extraordinary expences required extraordinary profits, a more expedi­ tious one was devised; which was that of driving their rivals entirely out of the seas, and preventing them from bringing their goods at all to market. For this purpose, not having any fleets or armies of their own, the powers of the State were found necessary, and they applied for them accordingly. But the reasons urged for engaging the nation in war not appearing of sufficient weight to the administrators of Government, other means were to be employed to force them into the project; such as irritating the ignorant and prejudiced rabble of the trad­ ing towns, by stories of Spanish depredations and French encroachments, many of them untrue, the rest partially told and exaggerated; till at last those artificial clamours, vigorously supported by the antiministerialists in parliament, pro­ duced the desired effect. I shall leave it to the historian to recount the numbers of Englishmen who were slain, the numbers who were drowned, and the much greater numbers who perished by pestilential climates and unwholesome diet; with all the rest of the pride, pomp and circumstance of those two glorious wars; / and shall content myself with mentioning in a few words, the final result and produce of them; which consisted of large sums of money for the pockets of merchants, owners of privateers, contractors and tallow chandlers: a great acces­ sion of men, riches, and independency to the American colonies: and to Old

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England an addition of eighty millions of public debt, to remain a perpetual mortgage upon her lands, after all her merchants, manufacturers and labourers, have quitted the silver Thames, and the sweet-winding Tay, for the pleasanter banks of the Ohio. Such are, and such ever will be, the consequences of a friendly alliance between the camp and the counting-house. But now a scene of a new and dif­ ferent nature opens itself upon us; or rather, a new theater, on which the selfish spirit of merchandise will exhibit itself in a new and different garb. Merchants are not by profession a bloody-minded set of men: their end is private gain, and if that can be attained, the mode of attaining it becomes to them a matter of indifference. To resent exceeding small national affronts, or to pocket exceed­ ing great ones; to trade during a destructive and dangerous war, or during an ignominious and unsafe peace; may be equally by turns profitable to them, and may be equally by them recommended to the State: but rotten is that State, and ripe for destruction is that nation, where such recommendations have any weight. / The present attempt of the merchants trading to America must raise astonishment in every one, who judges of the conduct of men in public affairs upon public principles; and who is not aware, that, as the interest of trade may be contrary to the interest of the nation, so the interest of the trader may be, upon some occasions, diametrically opposite to the interest of trade. For they are now endeavouring, by an accumulation of clamour, under the stale pretence of petitioning, to force Parliament, the guardian of our rights, to repeal all the Acts lately made for punishing the past, and preventing the future insolence and injustice of the Americans; and all this, forsooth, because our treating them with severity might occasion some interruption in their business, and some delay, and perhaps loss, in their payments: a stroke of selfishness beyond what was to be expected, even from merchants; and is like procuring for themselves a handful of fruit, by pulling up the tree by the roots. For can there be any one of those mer­ chants so ignorant of the nature of mankind as to believe that the Americans will lay aside all farther projects of independency, upon finding their first project has so easily succeeded; or that they will cease their hostilities against England, upon finding they have an invincible body of auxiliaries in the heart of it? Can there be any one of those merchants so dull of comprehension as not to perceive, that the Americans consider them as a body of English / seapoys, which they keep on foot in England to assist them in subduing their countrymen; and that they are kept on foot by the ridiculous means of withholding from them their pay, and constantly threatening to turn them out of their service? Can there be any one of them so stupid as not to find out, that the same fears for interruption of trade and delay of payments must still continue to make them the tools of the Ameri­ cans, till, link by link, the whole of that chain is dissolved which hath hitherto bound the trade of America, exclusively to England? And lastly, when, according to the scope of their present petition, they have destroyed the authority of the

[Ramsay], Letters on the Present Disturbances

23

British Government in America, and set up one entirely American in its stead; can there be any one of them so credulous as to believe that the property of Eng­ lishmen will be any longer safe in their hands? Let us not, Mr. Printer, be the dupes any longer of words and appearances; or attempt to hide from one another a Truth, which every American has long felt and understood: but the Truth is, that we have no commercial intercourse, properly speaking, with the Americans at all. Trade is of a free nature, carried on by voluntary contracts between one private man and another, for their mutual benefit; and in which no consideration is held, whether the contracting parties are fellow citizens or belonging to separate communities. A real merchant is a cit­ izen of the / world, and a most valuable one; who enriches himself by speeding a friendly intercourse from nation to nation, and as it were uniting all mankind in one society. Between men and societies altogether independent of one another, no trade can be carried on but what is of this free and genuine kind. The inde­ pendent merchant will always deal with those who supply him with goods upon the most advantageous terms; and any interposition of power to promote such a trade would be at least useless, if not destructive. But what free or genuine com­ merce do we carry on with the Americans? I will venture to repeat it, none at all; nor did we ever treat them as customers, but as subjects. The very Regulations, as we call them, imposed upon that trade is a sufficient proof of what I advance; for a regulated free trade is a contradiction in terms. Regulation can only be imposed by rulers upon subjects; they are almost always imposed for the purpose of raising a revenue; they are then but a mode of taxation; and the merchant who, under the authority of Government, becomes the instrument in carrying on such a forced trade, is no other than a tax-gatherer in disguise. Let the respect­ able merchants who assemble at the King’s Arms in Cornhill take care, let them take care how they countenance the Americans in resisting the authority of the British parliament; for that being withdrawn, they will soon learn to strip them of their thin mercantile disguise, and apply the tar and feathers / to them as they have done to other excisemen. When an American has once thoroughly persuaded himself with the help of misapplied passages from Locke, that the British legislature has no constitutional authority over him, and that all its acts are arbitrary and tyrannical, he must look upon the French and Dutch smug­ glers, who furnish him with goods at the easiest rate, as the only fair traders; and must be bound by his conscience, as well as his interest, to deal with them only. We must not fancy we can trifle with the understandings of those people, by tell­ ing them there is a difference between regulating trade, and imposing duties for the sake of raising revenue: for they know, and tell us, that all the goods we force upon them have first paid towards the revenues of Great Britain; and that they are forced to repay those duties to the people who call themselves merchants, in the purchase of the goods.

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Those who speak of returning things to the state they were in before the Stamp Act, try to amuse us with impossibilities; or probably indulge themselves in the use of words to which they have attached no ideas. It is, no doubt, very easy for our Parliament to repeal all their late Acts; but nothing less than that almighty Power which made the universe out of nothing, and with a like word is able to return it to its nothing again, would be able to repeal from the perverted minds of those Americans the impression / which such a conduct would leave behind it. Every Act which had been passed against them would be produced as so many proofs of our folly and injustice; every repeal of those Acts, as equal proofs of our weakness, disunion, and timidity; and the present difficulties, which have no other foundation than the bare suspicion of our weakness, would be multi­ plied upon us ten fold. Our rulers, it is to be hoped, will have wiser Counsellors. Whenever the Gentlemen of the King’s Arms tavern are able to produce from history a single example of subjects who, after having denied their Sovereign’s rights, and dared him to arms, were brought back to any degree of respect and obedience by the gentle means of treaty and accommodation, without any previ­ ous chastisement, we shall then, and not till then, think their Petition worthy of a serious hearing: but if they can produce no such example, then ought they to be ashamed of their presumption in departing from their own line, and taking upon them to instruct Statesmen in State affairs of the highest importance, with­ out being possessed of the smallest tincture of political knowledge. After all, I am, perhaps, doing injustice to those Gentlemen in imputing to their ignorance, or narrowness of mind, what may be only the consequence of an unavoidable peculiarity in their situation. They have been called upon by their American correspondents, with whom a part of their fortunes is disagreeably entangled, to assist them in their wild / projects, and, not being able to refuse, may have put their hands to Petitions which in their hearts they disapprove, trusting to the wisdom and firmness of his Majesty and Parliament that their Petitions will be rejected. It is, indeed, from that august quarter, and particularly from the Representatives of the landed gentry, whose all depends on the fate of this island, that the English nation is to hope for any safety. Union and firm­ ness being established in that quarter, very little more is wanted for restoring law, order, and decency, to America. Every common sailor is able to point out to Government how the vain and misled Americans may be reduced, in a few months to any degree of distress our humanity will permit; and be taught, by their dire experience, that the Power which is able to protect is likewise able to punish all those who, having received that protection, ungratefully refuse to make a suitable return for it. I am, Sir, your most humble servant Pall-mall, Jan. 21. BRITANNICUS

WARWICK, THE RIGHTS OF SOVEREIGNTY

ASSERTED

Thomas Warwick, The Rights of Sovereignty Asserted. An Ode (London: J. Dodsley, 1777).

Thomas Warwick was a Cornish-born student poet at University College, Oxford, when he penned The Rights of Sovereignty Asserted, his patriotic ode. He dedicated the poem to Hugh Percy, Duke of Northumberland (c. 1714– 86), who, originally named Smithson, took his wife’s family name. Percy was a vice-president of the Society for the Encouragement of Learning and a Privy Councillor from 1762. The poem was also dedicated to his son, also Hugh (1742–1817), then Earl Warkworth but who would be the second Duke of Northumberland. Warkworth was elected MP for Westminster in 1763, and he married Lady Anne Crichton-Stuart, daughter of Lord Bute, in 1764. In 1774, as brigadier general and colonel of the 5th Regiment of Foot, Warkworth went to Boston. Though initially sympathetic to the colonists, he was alienated by their behaviour. He narrowly escaped back to Boston after leading a relief column at the battles of Lexington and Concord, and the following year, as lieutenant-gen­ eral, he commanded a division at the Battle of Long Island and led the attack on Fort Washington. He resigned that year, however, after falling out with General William Howe over supplies and over the general conduct of the war. Warwick’s sympathies are easy enough to discern, opening with a charac­ terization of America as a ‘MONSTER!’ with an ‘unfilial hand’, a ‘rebel-blade’ and a ‘rash arm’ (below, p. 31). Despite using the medium of poetry, many of Warwick criticisms of colonists are similar to those of prose writers. He also por­ trays Americans as dishonest, with ‘well-feign’d Peity’, a ‘false appeal’, and ‘Guile’ (below, pp. 31–2). To the rebellion’s leaders he throws accusations of ‘Avarice’ and ‘Ambition’ (below, p. 32). He chides the colonists for ingratitude for turn­ ing against a mother country that had given them ‘equal rights’, ‘ample wealth, and ampler glory’, and which had defeated the ‘Bourbon’s fleets’ and ‘laid the Iberian low’ (below, p. 32). It was perhaps with some bitterness then that the poet declaimed ‘Go now – and crouch to vanquish’d Spain; / With servile knee – 25 –

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fatigue the Gallic throne’ (below, p. 33). He warns the colonists of ‘The burthen yet unfelt, and chains unknown’, but is soon clear that colonists, in allying with France, are playing with the fires of absolutism and Catholicism, or ‘martial laws, and Superstition’s sway’, as he expresses it (below, p. 33). It is impossible to tell if Warwick knew of the enmity between Percy and the Howe brothers, General William and Admiral Lord Richard, but he has kind words for all. He refers to General and Admiral Howe as ‘the illustrious brothers’ (below, p. 33), but is even warmer about Percy. The final stanza refers to ‘a Youth’ with an ‘eagle-eye’ and of ‘heroic line’ who ‘Darts martial lightnings on th’ astonish’d crew’ (below, p. 34). Warwick went on to author other poems, notably Abelard to Eloisa. An Epis­ tle (London: J. Bew, 1782; later revised and republished) and Edwy. A Dramatic Poem (London, 1784).

THE

RIGHTS

OF

SOVEREIGNTY

ASSERTED.

AN ODE.

By THOMAS WARWICK, Esq;

OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD.

LONDON:

Printed for J. DODSLEY in Pall-Mall; and sold by J. FLETCHER at Oxford.

M.DCC.LXXVII. /

TO

HIS GRACE THE DUKE

OF

NORTHUMBERLAND,

THIS PIECE,

BY HIS GRACE’S PERMISSION,

A SMALL PROOF OF RESPECT AND VENERATION

TO HIS GRACE’S MOST EXALTED CHARACTER,

AND THAT OF HIS NOBLE SON

EARL PERCY,

IS,

WITH DUE HUMILITY,

INSCRIBED,

BY HIS GRACE’S MUCH OBLIGED

AND MOST OBEDIENT SERVANT,

University College, Oxford.

May 15th 1777.

THO. WARWICK. /

– 29 –

The Author would think himself deficient in gratitude, should he suffer this little Coup d’Essai1 to see the light, without returning thanks to the Reverend Doctor Wheeler, Canon of Christ Church, and Professor of Poetry in this University, for his candid and friendly remarks on some exceptionable passages before its being submitted to public inspection. /

– 30 –

THE

RIGHTS OF

SOVEREIGNTY ASSERTED.

(I. 1.) ‘MONSTER! whose unfilial hand

‘Britannia’s wrath would madly dare,

‘At mine and Nature’s dread command,

‘Let fall the unhallow’d spear.’

Thus ’mid’ the deepest shades of night

From Montmorency’s craggy height2 /

Her heav’n-taught Genius – When thro’ fury blind, Ill-trusting to a rebel-blade, America’s rash arm display’d Her standard to the wind:

(I. 2.) Vainly warn’d – for lo! the Fiend

From Acheron3 hath wing’d her way,

Whose steps no common woes attend,

Who asks no common prey –

Belying now the sacred form

Of Freedom brews the civil storm;

Or lifts in well-feign’d Piety her eyes; Directs to Heaven the false appeal, And views with joy fanatic Zeal To impious Frenzy rise. /

– 31 –

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(I. 3.) Rous’d by the proffer’d lures of Guile The headlong Passions hurry to her aid; Here Avarice grasps a fancied spoil; For specious palms Ambition burns to wade In kindred gore – with sullen cry Dark Discontent proclaims, ‘Revenge is nigh!’ Here, while Distrust and mutual Fear

Grasp all-irresolute the guilty spear,

Starts hell-born Anarchy to giant size,

And rears the embattled front amid supernal skies.

(II. 1.) Fiends, avaunt! – for lo! profuse

Of pardon and parental care /

The traitor child Britannia sues

Her laws, her rights to share:

‘Yet to those arms return,’ she cries,

‘That bade in peace thy wealth arise,

‘That dash’d in war destruction on the foe – ‘When Bourbon’s fleets hung o’er thy coast, ‘Gave to the winds his scatter’d host, ‘And laid the Iberian low.

(II. 2.) ‘Hence in safety thro’ thy land ‘Their heads a hundred cities rear; ‘With treasures fraught on every strand ‘Thy banner’d oaks appear – ‘To thee my equal rights I gave, ‘With thee my empire o’er the wave, / ‘And ample wealth, and ampler glory shar’d – ‘O happy! hadst thou known to use ‘What She, who now a suppliant sues, ‘Had freely thine declar’d.

Warwick, The Rights of Sovreignty Asserted

(II. 3.) ‘Go now – and crouch to vanquish’d Spain; ‘With servile knee fatigue the Gallic throne; ‘Acquire new Lords, nor blush to feign ‘The burthen yet unfelt, and chains unknown. ‘O! well-deserving that this hand ‘Withdraw her shield from an ungrateful land, ‘Self-doom’d, of foreign arms a prey, ‘To martial laws, and Superstition’s sway – ‘Rent in ill-hour, and propless on the plain ‘The trampled Ivy seeks her late-priz’d Oak in vain. /

(III. 1.) ‘Breathes her voice a fruitless prayer,

‘Untaught but to command before?

‘Let then, who scorns my love, prepare

‘To feel my rightful power!

‘Is not this trident still my own?

‘Cease I to wear the coral crown?

‘Immortal pledge, for ages fresh and bright!’ –

She spoke – and with decided air,

Gave to the* illustrious Brothers’ care

Her sword of conscious right.

(III. 2.) Arbiters of peace and war! Twin-stars of glory! urge your way! / Soon may the Breasts you wish to spare Returning duty sway!

But ah! what horrors strike my sight?

The Rebel-band hath rush’d to fight –

The Vulture’s beak is dy’d in civil gore. Britannia, weeping, turns away; In pity feels her wrath decay, Yet Honour calls for more.

*

The Howes.

33

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(III. 3.) And lo! a Youth, whose eagle-eye Darts martial lightnings on th’ astonish’d crew, Intently from th’ unfolding sky In bright array what kindred spirits view! O! destin’d to again call forth In noble breasts the seeds of ancient worth, / Thee, Percy! thy heroic line Have mark’d with transport from their seats divine! Thither, O! late be thy great soul restor’d! A Father bids thee live, and Britain claims thy sword.

FINIS.

[GALLOWAY], CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE

AMERICAN ENQUIRY

[ Joseph Galloway], Considerations upon the American Enquiry (London: J. Wilkie, 1779).

Joseph Galloway (c. 1731–1803) was born into a wealthy Maryland planter family but moved to Philadelphia to practise law in 1747. He was elected to the Pennsylvania assembly in 1756, though he and Benjamin Franklin lost their seats in 1764 following an attempt to replace the Penn proprietorship with royal rule. He regained his seat the following September and became speaker of the assembly. He was also vice-president of the American Philosophical Society from 1769 until 1775. As the revolutionary crisis deepened, however, so did Gal­ loway’s troubles. Appointed to the first Continental Congress in 1774, he was disillusioned to have his plan for an inter-colonial assembly subordinate to Par­ liament rejected. He refused appointment to the second Continental Congress and worked instead on promoting his plan by publishing his loyalist A Candid Examination of the Mutual Claims of Great Britain and the Colonies (New York, 1775). Galloway resigned from the Pennsylvania assembly in May 1775 and later joined the British army. He was appointed superintendent-general for the main­ tenance of peace in Philadelphia during the city’s occupation in 1777–8, but in March 1778 was evacuated to New York and later to London with his fam­ ily where he became a leading loyalist spokesman, authoring his Considerations upon the American Enquiry shortly after his arrival. Little wonder, then, that Galloway’s Considerations opens by stating that ‘The present is an alarming moment’ (below, p. 39). Yet, asking ‘whether, under our present circumstances, we should still persist in our efforts against America’, he suggests ‘Let us look back to the measures we have already pursued; and from past errors endeavour to collect precepts for future wisdom’ (below, p. 40). While critical of colonists’ actions, he notes that ‘imprudent’ taxes and a ‘hostile system’ had brought things to the present pass (below, p. 41). Nonetheless, accepting American independence was, he believed, a ‘dastardly proposal’ (below, p. 42) supported only by the Duke of Richmond and a few weak allies. Galloway states – 35 –

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baldly that ‘Force only can bring them back to the subjection of this country; and we must trust to the vigour of our arms, for what every other method has been unsuccessfully exerted to obtain’ (below, p. 43). Addressing the pessimis­ tic, whose numbers had grown since the Saratoga defeat and subsequent French and Spanish involvement in the war, he asks ‘what have we to hope from these? Has not the glory of our arms been already sufficiently tarnished?’ (below, p. 43). The rest of the piece is devoted to diminishing such misgivings. He notes first that ‘not one fifth part of the people of America has, at any period, supported from choice the American rebellion’, noting low electoral turnouts in Pennsyl­ vania as evidence (below, p. 44). Also, though Congress in 1777 called for an army of ‘sixty-six thousand men, they could not bring into the field, at the utmost, sixteen thousand’ while ‘Seven thousand provincials are actually serving in our army’ (below, p. 45). Despite early setbacks in the war, Galloway defends General William Howe, whose conduct was subjected to parliamentary scrutiny, and his brother Admiral Lord Richard Howe, stating that the former ‘gallant officer had been so much exposed’ (below, p. 46). Galloway also undermines the testimonies of military officers, including Charles Cornwallis, and even launches a vicious attack on the ‘short and squalid … mean and disagreeable’ Charles James Fox, whose ‘countenance is strongly Judaic’ and who was reduced ‘From affluence … to a servile dependence upon usurious creditors’ due to his ‘invincible attachment to play’ (below, p. 49). Nonetheless, if lessons had been learned then ‘the contest is not in vain’ (below, p. 54). Support for independence was lower than ever as ‘Britain has made the most ample and liberal concessions’ while American leaders had made a ‘treaty with a despotic Monarch’ (below, p. 55). Congress had been able to get away with its actions by political oppression and dispossession of loyal­ ists, but persistent military endeavour would eventually make the majority force the minority to return to peace and prosperity within the empire. Galloway again defended Howe in Letters to a Nobleman on the Conduct of the War in the Middle Colonies (London: J. Wilkie, 1779) and again encour­ aged a redoubling of the war effort in Historical and Political Reflections on the Rise and Progress of the American Rebellion (London: G. Wilkie, 1780), which helped inspire John Wesley’s Reflections on the Rise and Progress of the American Rebellion (London: J. Paramore, 1780). Galloway went on to write about church history and biblical prophecy. He received compensation as a loyalist in 1790 in the form of a £500 annuity, though that never made up for the loss by confisca­ tion of a fortune of £40,000. He died and is buried in Watford.1 Notes: 1. J. Tate, rev. P. Carter, ‘Galloway, Joseph (c.1731–1803) colonial politician and author’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 21, pp. 328–9; F. Baker, ‘GALLOWAY, Joseph (c.1731–29 August 1803), in American National Biography, ed. J. A. Garraty and M. C. Carnes, 24 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), vol. 8, pp. 657–9.

CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE

AMERICAN ENQUIRY.

– Quid facitis? quæ vos dementia, dixi, Concitat, O socii, captam dimittere Trojam? Ovid.1

LONDON: Printed for J. Wilkie, No. 71, in St. Paul’s Church-yard.

M DCCLXXIX. /

CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE

AMERICAN ENQUIRY. The present is an alarming moment; nor are they to be despised who feel fears upon the occasion. Our situation would justify apprehension, if apprehension did not render our situation more desperate. With an expence of treasure new difficulties croud upon us; with a waste of blood, fresh enemies hourly present themselves. We have seen the force of this country unsuccessfully tried in Amer­ ica; and we are now called upon to exert it against America, France, and Spain. Our natural foes contemplate our enfeebled situation with rancorous delight, and are advancing to press us to the ground. The powerful nation, whose right hand, but yesterday, was to smite America, now / trembles for herself: from dreams of foreign conquest, she wakes to plans of domestic safety, and starts, affrighted with the din of arms, from her luxuriant couch. What has given rise to this revolution? How has this sudden change been effected? While Parliament was sitting, it would have been presumption in an individ­ ual to have endeavoured to call off the attention of the people from the collected wisdom of the nation. The deliberations of their representatives were the ora­ cles to which they would naturally resort, in all cases of doubt and difficulty; and in whose determinations all their confidence would be vested. But, whether fortunately or unfortunately for this country, time must decide, those difficul­ ties, which appeared to us alarming, have scarcely seemed worthy of notice to them. In the Lower House, the greatest part of the last Sessions has been con­ sumed in enquiries that could only derive their consequence from a total dearth of any more interesting subjects. For had there been a prospect of immediate danger to the kingdom, the safety of the nation could never have given way to Admiral Keppel’s vindication,2 or the establishment of Sir William Howe’s mili­ tary fame.3 In the proceedings of / the Upper House this truth becomes more striking. The dignity of Peerage condescended to examine into the breeches of decayed seamen; and the first assembly in the nation, with a more than Gallic regard for the rules of decorum, consumed a day to settle the etiquette of salute between the chaplain and the pensioners of Greenwich hospital.

– 39 –

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If we had therefore no other proof of existing danger but the proceedings of parliament, we should naturally conclude it ideal and imaginary. But when we look around, and behold in every part of the kingdom the most unusual prepa­ rations; the husbandman dragged from his peaceful occupation; the mariner torn from his wife and family; felons permitted to make their option between military service and infamous punishment; every purse open to the hand of Government; an intended invasion announced from the Throne; – we wake from the delusion, into which Parliament had plunged us, astonished at their inconsiderateness, and alarmed for our own situation. With regard to our natural enemies, one sentiment only can prevail. But it becomes a question, whether, under our present circumstances, / we should still persist in our efforts against America – Let us look back to the measures we have already pursued; and from past errors endeavour to collect precepts for future wisdom. The privilege of not being taxed without our own consent, has, since the earliest periods of our constitution, been deservedly dear to every Englishman. Perhaps there is not one of which the people are more jealous; or even their rep­ resentatives, in times of the greatest corruption, more watchful. Independently of the quiet enjoyment of ‘private property’ being one of the three component parts of liberty, it forms such a restraint upon the royal power, as to give to the people, could they remain uncorrupted, the controul over almost every action of the crown(a). I will not enter into the question, whether a distant colony, dependent upon a kingdom, has a right to share every privilege in common with that kingdom; or whether this country had any just claim of taxation over America unrep­ resented. It is sufficient for the present purpose to consider, that this country attempted to exercise / that right, and that America resisted. In opposition to an unpopular act, they made use of every popular art; and employed language very harmonious to the body of the people. With political sagacity, they represented themselves as contending for the common cause; and turning aside the dagger that was through their sides to stab the constitution of this country. They called upon every Englishman to join them in opposition to so odious a claim; and to feel for fellow-subjects who were labouring to resist an unconstitutional meas­ ure. They artfully affected to consider the act of parliament as distinct from the act of the people; while their friends in this country refined upon their cunning, and distinguished between the act of parliament and the act of the minister. The plain understanding of an Englishman was not proof against such address, and the nation was much divided upon the justice of their cause. The most violent justified their resistance, and considered them as champions in the cause of lib­ (a) In De Lolme on the Constitution,4 p. 86, this is placed in a very strong light.

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erty; while even the most moderate alleged, it was imprudent in this country to endeavour to enforce a claim, which, whether just or unjust, would certainly never be quietly submitted to. But the time was come when the contest was to assume another appearance, and the / question of strength to be tried. Parliament adopted a hostile system; armies were sent forth, and fleets equipped. A new scene was now exhibited, and the subjects of this country were permitted to array themselves in a hostile man­ ner, in the face of the British army. They were collecting ammunition, and had provided cannon; when the plains of Lexington were dyed with the first blood shed in the present civil war. The nation now paused for a moment. – Grief was seen upon some counte­ nances; deep reflexion was perceived upon all. From different emotions different counsels resulted. One party thought it time to drop every peaceful measure, and became clamorous for hostility and war. The other threatened Ministers with the consequences of their conduct, who had provoked a brave people to resistance by an invasion of their rights; and charged them with irritating the minds of freemen by pointing the bayonet at their breasts. Ministry seemed to feel the divided state of the nation, and their measures were indecisive and irresolute. They appear not to have thought seriously of any lasting resistance on the part of America; and to have imagined, / that the appearance of force would terrify them into submission. Indeed such was the language of the day. The Americans were represented as dastardly poltroons, incapable of any manly exertion; and the expression was employed, that though ‘dogs in forehead, in hearts they were deer(b).’5 Those who published these opin­ ions seemed to forget, that there is a certain value beneath which no human quality should be estimated; and that even the timid ‘deer,’ when it perceives no hope but in despair, will turn upon its pursuer, and exert those means of defence, with which nature has provided all her creatures. But whatever might be the opinion of different parties, with regard to the resistance which America made to the claim of taxation, the declaration of inde­ pendence staggered her most zealous friends. A declaration that was to throw off all the authority of this country over America; to expunge from our books every statute concerning her; to annihilate our commerce; to shut up our nurseries of seamen; – and taking from us these great resources, pour them into the lap of a powerful rival, and / inveterate enemy – such a declaration can hardly be sup­ posed to have been very favourably received. There were not, however, wanting men to vindicate this measure; while the majority of the American party only endeavoured to palliate it. They attributed it to that system of oppression, which Administration, they said, had uniformly pursued; to the contempt with which (b) Pope’s Homer.

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every petition had been received, and every remonstrance rejected; and looked forward to the time, when under the administration of men in whom they could confide, and upon the adoption of measures they might deem equitable, the Americans would revoke this declaration. In the mean time, every packet that arrived from America, brought fresh proofs of her fixed purpose to emancipate herself from the dominion of this country. The seeds of rebellion, scattered with a profuse hand, were spreading widely. The soil was friendly, and the climate genial. Posterity will hardly credit the tale, that at a time, when we were at peace with all the world, except America, there could be found a man, who, urging so disgraceful a motive as the defeat of our arms, could propose to the people of this country to acknowledge American independence. / The Duke of Richmond(c)6 was the man who came forward with this dastardly proposal; which was shortly followed by a notification from the Court of France, of their having concluded a treaty with America as an independent state. The Earl of Chatham still lived; or rather, under a complication of disorders, he protracted a wearisome existence. His understanding / preserved its vigour; but his corporal infirmities rendered him unfit for the labours of public life. His mind was the helpless tenant of a decayed castle, venerable in its ruins! He was the first who had started doubts in Parliament with regard to the right of this country to tax America, and had declared that ‘he rejoiced in her resistance.’ He had censured the conduct of Administration as founded in error and folly, and had made unsuccessful efforts to effect a reconciliation. But when he found that the aims of America were (c) It would be disrespectful to pass by this illustrious character, without rendering it due homage. His Grace plays a very conspicuous part in the tragedy of the times. He is no orator; but, like the prostitute in Scripture, ‘loud and noisy.’ His application is indefati­ gable; and it is not his fault if his judgment is not equal to it. By opposing Ministers he has acquired some degree of fame. There are men who, without possessing wisdom enough to discover what is right, have just sense enough to discover what is wrong. His Grace is certainly a powerful opponent; not from any final triumph which he obtains, but because he proves an obstacle in the mean time. He is, moreover, remarkably captious and turbulent; and calls to our recollection John Lilburn of notorious memory, of whom it was said, if there were no other man living but himself, Lilburn would quarrel with John. The following lines have unaccountably strayed into this note: Thersites only clamoured in the throng,

Loquacious, loud, and turbulent of tongue;

Aw’d by no shame, by no respect controul’d,

In scandal busy, in reproaches bold.

The Great to censure was his darling theme,

But Royal scandal* his delight supreme.7

*

What cared he for the King’s birth-day? – D. of R.

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no longer disguised, and that, renouncing an attachment to this country, she became an instrument to the ambition of France, he hurried down to Parlia­ ment anxious to deliver his opinions. He exclaimed against the perfidy of our enemies; he execrated their mad ambition, that was kindling throughout Europe the flames of war. He dwelt upon the resources of this country; he expatiated upon her spirit. He declared himself a friend to America till she had declared independence; but in the pursuit of this measure he ‘would contribute his shirt off his back to oppose her.’ It was a solemn sight, to behold the expiring efforts of this illustrious Statesman! All parties gazed upon him with reverence; and a mute awe pervaded the august Assembly. It seemed as if they had anticipated the event that was soon to take place; and, like children, were / crouding round the death-bed of their aged and venerable parent, to receive the last testimonies of his affection, and the dictates of his departing experience. – His words gave new vigour to firmness; fresh confidence to hope; and sentiments flowing from his enlightened understanding were received and treasured up, as the sacred pre­ cepts of political morality. The opinion of the nation became settled from this time. No man in a pub­ lic situation would avow an opinion in favour of American independence; and none but a few slaves to system, whose influence was as weak as their abilities were insignificant, were heard to mutter in support of it. Force had been exerted without success; and Parliament determined to try the effects of moderation. Commissioners went out, with a power to grant every privilege to America, short of independence. Unfortunately the intentions of this country could not be fully revealed to them; for expressions occurring in the Commissioners declaration injurious to ‘their great and generous ally the good King of France,’ reduced the Congress(d) to the necessity of putting an end to its further reading; and, after a series of fruitless efforts, the Commissioners returned to this country. / Such has been the progress of this unhappy contest; and at this day there can­ not remain a doubt with regard to the future conduct of the American Congress. They will never relinquish independence while they can possibly preserve it; and no entreaty, no concession, upon our part, will induce them to change their purpose. Force only can bring them back to the subjection of this country; and we must trust to the vigour of our arms, for what every other method has been unsuccessfully exerted to obtain. – But what have we to hope from these? Has not the glory of our arms been already sufficiently tarnished? To what purpose have we handled them, but to croud the prisons of America, and to call forth the armaments of France and Spain? Where are our successes to be found? Where are our triumphs recorded? Every victory we claim disputed by the enemy, and (d) Proceedings of Congress.

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nothing certain but our defeats. Of these we have unfortunately the most damn­ ing proofs: – arma,

Militibus sine cæde –

Direpta vidi; vidi ego civium

Retorta tergo brachia libero.

Hor.8

In return for the most ample supplies of money and men, we have no other satisfaction but to learn, that our failure has been owing to the / ignorance of Ministers, or the incapacity of Generals. But there are candid and disinterested men, who, neither blaming Ministers nor Commanders, impute our failure to the impracticability of our attempt. You have not, say they, made difficulties to yourselves; they have not grown out of your errors; they were inherent in your situation. You have attempted to disturb the necessary relations of things; you would combat the order of events. Desist from the vain endeavour; withdraw your troops from America; acknowledge her independence; and conclude a treaty with her as beneficial as you can render it to your interest. Your situation becomes every day more difficult. If, after a profound peace of several years, with the most lavish contribution of money and troops, you have not been able to conquer America, in the infancy of military discipline, unassisted by any foreign power; what probability is there of your success, after you have spilled your blood, and exhausted your treasure, against America trained to arms, hardened in war, and assisted by France and Spain? To those who are unaccustomed to reason, it is difficult to detect the fallacy of this argument. The positions are founded upon assumed facts / of popular existence; which, if they were true, must compel an inference in its favour. But it is not true that we have made war against America, but against a rebellion existing in America; and it is equally false that we have done all in our power to subdue that rebellion. It is confidently asserted by Gentlemen(e), whose long residence in America has afforded them every means of information, and whose veracity stands unim­ peached, that not one fifth part of the people of America has, at any period, supported from choice the American rebellion. This assertion is proved by a variety of facts. The reluctance which the people shewed to send Delegates to Congress was so great, that the last delegation from the province of Pennsylva­ nia was made by less than two hundred voters, although there are at least thirty thousand men entitled to vote by the laws of that province. In the Congress of 1774, one of the Delegates from the province of New York, representing a con­ siderable district in that province, was chosen by himself and his clerk only. At (e) General Robertson, and Joseph Galloway, Esq.

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the time that the British army was expected in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania militia could not be prevailed upon to turn out. In disobedience to repeated proclamations, the British army was supplied with great plenty of provisions. Though Congress / voted for the campaign 1777, sixty-six thousand men, they could not bring into the field, at the utmost, sixteen thousand. The Congress paid 56l. 5s. for every recruit, while we only paid 2l. 5s. Desertions were so frequent, that in a day fifty have been known to come in. Such was the aversion to serve, that 200 l. currency has been given for a substitute. Seven thousand provincials are actually serving in our army. In the back parts of Carolina one thousand six hundred took up arms in support of the King’s authority. It was thought neces­ sary to disarm all the people of Queen’s County; and when we consider the art and violence the Congress made use of; shutting up every source of information and complaint, by imprisoning printers, who dared to canvass their measures; appointing Committees to frustrate every plan of the friends of Government; holding forth to them the penalties of confiscation and high-treason; keeping spies to watch every motion; an armed force constantly before their eyes(f); – when we consider all these circumstances, it is impossible to refuse belief to the assertion of General Robertson and Mr. Galloway. But if the people in America are so friendly to our cause, how happens it that these favourable / dispositions have not been improved, and that the immense force we have sent into that country has not been able to bring her back to a constitutional dependence upon this? The question is important, and deserves some degree of consideration. Sir William Howe took the command in America, with every favourable expectation from his conduct. He had not signalized himself by any display of military knowledge; but had served in America under the late General Wolfe, and had given very honourable proofs of his bravery. This was sufficient to procure him the affection of the people, with whom courage effects more than charity. He embarked for America with the Generals Clinton and Burgoyne. The second was but little known out of the profession. The latter had, indeed, appeared in more characters than one to the public. His exploits at Preston were well known, and for some time remembered with resentment; but his zeal to do justice to an oppressed people, and to vindicate the character of the nation, had in some measure reinstated him in the opinion of his countrymen(g). Their departure was celebrated with all the pomp of poetry; and a tempest that appeared, about the time of / their sailing, upon the face of the sky, was prophetically interpreted to be the God of Battles arming them with his lightning. I pede fausto quo te rapit (f) Evidence of General Robertson and Mr. Galloway9 before the House of Commons, pas­ sim. (g) Enquiry into the state of the East India Company.

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Jupiter, was the farewel they received; and the nation was convinced that victory beckoned them across the Atlantic. But popularity is more easily acquired than preserved. The first news that arrived from America(h) brought us proofs of what was before very clearly ascer­ tained, the courage of Sir William Howe; but the nation had reason to lament that this gallant officer had been so much exposed. At the expence of the dear­ est blood in the nation, a victory it is true was purchased; but there were some, who, in the emotions of grief for their departed friends and kindred, were heard to exclaim, ‘It is one thing to gather laurels, it is another to scatter cypress(i)!’10 It was said, that the rashness of a soldier, not the prudence of a General, had conducted this enterprize; and that to ‘take the bull by the horns’ was not always the part of wisdom. Sir William Howe felt the reproof, and seems to have determined never again to incur a like censure. From this period the war was carried / on, if not with the delay, at least with all the caution of a Fabius;11 and Sir William Howe had been taught to respect the enemy too much, ever again to approach them without all the ceremonies of combat. It is not here a proper place to enumerate what these were. They are recorded at length in every Gazette; and may serve to undeceive those who have foolishly imagined, that any success is to be effected in war by dint of discipline and valour. The bulk of the people, who have no conception of armies being long opposed to each other without an engagement taking place, began to murmur at this inactivity of the Commander in Chief. Some doubted his capacity, others his zeal in the cause. The liberal told us, that the influence of women and wine was irresistible; the sordid whispered, that Sir William’s fortune had been ruined in this country; and insinuated that his appointments were immense. A foreign officer(k) was heard to declare, ‘If you had paid your Generals by the job, and not by the day, this business would have been settled long ago.’ The most insulting pasquinades were circulated through the town; a reward was offered to who­ ever should bring news of a strayed army; a most hackneyed allusion was worn thread-bare; and Antony and / Cleopatra led the van of political paragraphs. Those who attacked his measures with serious argument, pretended that they discovered unpardonable errors in every part of his conduct. With powers for negociating peace, he never exerted them but upon some great advantage gained by the rebels; and offered them terms of pardon, when they were flushed with success, and most confident in their cause. They alleged that he had lost several glaring opportunities of putting an end to the rebellion; and that in five several complete defeats, at Long Island, the White Plains, Quibble Town, Brandy­ (h) Engagement at Bunker’s hill. (i) Sterne. (k) General De H—.

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Wine, and German Town, there was no pursuit made after victory. He permitted the rebels to escape, and returned to the dice and his mistress. He indulged in the luxuries of Capua, when he should have marched to the gates of Rome. Lord Howe, who had been appointed to the command of the fleet, shared in some degree these reflexions with his brother. At the head of an immense naval power, he suffered the Americans to fit out ships of force; and what had never been foreseen, to become formidable by sea. Our trade suffered severely; the packets of Government were intercepted; and / even upon the coast of America a King’s ship(l) was obliged to strike her colours to the American flag. It is said that some Gentlemen, who had lost all their property in this contest, applied to his Lordship for leave to fit out letters of marque to cruize against the enemy; and that he sternly replied, ‘Will you never have done with distressing these poor people? Will you never give them an opportunity of seeing their error?’ The complaints of the nation, and the general dissatisfaction that prevailed, were become too serious to be disregarded; and it having been signified to the Brothers, that his Majesty consented to their return, Sir William, and shortly after, Lord Howe arrived in this country. In their turns they became clamorous for redress, and talked much of their insulted honour, and much of their injured fame. Parliament after some difficulty met their complaints, and an enquiry was instituted into their conduct. We have seen that enquiry proceeded upon; and there are three things nec­ essary to be considered; the nature of the tribunal, the evidence given, and the result of the enquiry. / It may, perhaps, hereafter be a matter of surprize, that no Court could be found in this kingdom to sit in judgment upon military operations, but the House of Commons; and that no better time could be appointed but at the close of a laborious Sessions, and at a time of great national difficulty and dan­ ger. It is not easy to conceive, how men not bred to the profession, and only accustomed fictis contendere verbis,12 could be able to form proper opinions upon the complicated list of military manœuvres that have so peculiarly distin­ guished the present war. The honourable Mr. C. Fox has a quick understanding, and Mr. Edmund Burke(m) most surprising volubility; but we are yet to learn (l) Fox, Captain Fotheringham. (m) When I mention the names of these two Gentlemen, I do not mean to represent them as ignorant beyond the rest; but only as having been most active in this enquiry. I respect their abilities; and have, perhaps, a better opinion of their patriotism than the public. Whatever is suggested by them should be heard with attention. Their efforts can only proceed from a pure affection to their country; for if our enemies were to become pos­ sessed of every acre of land in the kingdom, they cannot be losers by the event: and their opinion ought to be attended to; for they are certainly best judges in a cause who are not parties interested.

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that they have military judgment, and experience in the art of war. Were they witnesses of the condition of the rebel army, of their numbers, of their want of discipline? Are they acquainted with the face of the country? or / can they, from a description of it, form any comparative opinion upon the strength of particu­ lar situations, from similar situations that come within their own experience? When and where was this experience acquired? During their service last war in Germany? The idea is too absurd for serious refutation! It is true, the conduct of the Howes was of great national consequence, and merited the consideration of the representatives of the people. But this consideration should not have been confined to the House of Commons. The reports of men, enabled from profes­ sional knowledge and faithful services to decide, might have merited their most serious attention. In effect, we should be at a loss to say, how it was possible that this enquiry found its way into the House of Commons, if we did not know that Opposition* had taken it by the hand. The noble Lord and his Brother / relying upon such powerful assistance, looked forward, not only to an honour­ able acquittal, / but to a vote of thanks: and it was the interest of Opposition to promote the enquiry, whatever / might be the event to the noble Admiral and the honourable Commander, because it would take up the time and harass the attention of Government, at a juncture when time was most wanting, and atten­ tion should be least embarrassed. Such was the tribunal, before which they appeared. Ministry had declared they should confine themselves to their own exculpation; Opposition favoured *

The following sketches are hazarded with diffidence: Mr. Edmund Burke is attached from friendship and interest to Lord Rockingham, and shared in his short Administration. As its character was ‘debility,’ so is that of Mr. Burke. He possesses genius, but he wants judgment; and is better calculated for the closet than for a public assembly. Intent upon the display of his own abilities, he cannot watch the passions, or accommodate himself to the temper of his audience. In his reasoning he is too subtile and abstruse. He never strikes boldly at his adversary, but by endeavouring to circumvent, suffers him to escape. He renders politics a / system of metaphysics. We admire, but we are not convinced. Trifling, diffusive, and puerile, he seems to have cho­ sen the ludit amabiliter for his motto; and when we expect him, in all his dignity, upon the front of the theatre, we find him at play behind the scenes. – Yet he has his excellen­ cies. His imagination is warm and fruitful. He plays with the most difficult subject; he leads it through the winding mazes of his fancy; he places it in a thousand lights; he gives it an infinity of colours. We admire for a while the splendour of the dress; but the eye becomes tired with the gaudy glare of the glittering tinsel, and wishes for the beautiful simplicity of nature. Instead of bringing forward the bold outlines and prominent fea­ tures of his figure, he bestows his labour upon the drapery. And even in this he is faulty. His purple robes resemble a patched garment. He often debases the sublimest thought by the coarsest allusion; and mingles the vulgarity of idiom with the most delicate graces of expression. – Mr. Burke has a certain currency with all parties. He can never rise into Sterling value with any.

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their cause, so that they had little to dread from the rigour of their judges. The evidence is equally strange. Lord Cornwallis was the first examined; and truly his Lordship’s testimony is of a very curious nature. Before he answers any question, he takes an oppor­ tunity to assure the House of his great veneration and regard for the character of Sir William Howe; and that he thinks he has served his country with fidel­ ity, assiduity, and great ability. After having borne this public testimony to the General’s conduct, he begs the House to understand, that he shall not answer questions of opinion, but merely questions of matter of fact. The policy of this conduct is obvious. Lord Cornwallis will not subject himself to the dilemma of giving his opinion upon particular operations, because if he gave it in favour of the General, he might be at a loss / to justify it; and if upon questions being proposed, the answers should turn out unfavourable to the General, he would leave the House at a loss to understand, how he came to form such an opinion Mr. Fox wants every requisite to form the exterior of an orator. His person is short and squalid; his appearance mean and disagreeable. His voice, naturally inharmonious, is rendered more so by his unskilful management of it. His countenance is strongly Judaic. At his Jerusalem levee, if a stranger were to be asked, which of the chosen race present had most of the blood of Jacob in his veins, Mr. Fox would be pointed out as the man. He possesses strong ingredients to form a political character. He has early been accus­ tomed to the vicissitudes of fortune, and been marked out by the storms / of fate. He is a stranger to those indulgences of youth, which unnerve the intellectual system: the list­ less languor that succeeds the excessive hilarity of social pleasures; the abuse of wine; or the immoderate enjoyment of women. Play has filled up the measure of his time; and he has experienced all its distraction. From affluence and prosperity, he has been reduced to beggary and want; from a command of fortune and friends, to a servile dependence upon usurious creditors. This has fitted him for the great business of a kingdom, and taught him to look for revolutions. In the House of Commons he leads Opposition. He is not sup­ posed to possess a great fund of information, but his mind supplies this deficiency from her own inexhaustible treasure. His understanding is strong and masculine; his expres­ sion full and copious. In proportion to the quickness of his conception, his delivery is rapid. The torrent of argument comes rolling from him with irresistible force. He does not leave his hearers to follow; he drives them before him. He is a perfect master of the art of debate; and disguises the sentiments of his opponents with so much dexterity, that it is some time before we perceive the distortion. The strongest sense is not proof against his power. He fits truth to the rack of ingenuity, and tortures the unhappy sufferer. His eloquence never fails to produce its effect. It strikes the whole assembly; every man com­ municates the shock to his neighbour. – With these qualifications he would rise to the highest offices in the state, if the same striking disadvantages did not fetter his flight. He is supposed to want firmness. He is said to be destitute of principle. As his character is so bare to public view, his efforts are not imputed to honourable motives. His invincible attachment to play makes it impossible for him to possess the confidence of his country; and though his abilities are admired by all men, no man wishes him to be employed.

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of Sir William Howe’s great ability. The resource was certainly happy, and does honour to his Lordship’s ingenuity. I shall not enter into the particulars of his Lordship’s evidence; because, upon the face of it, it is inadmissible evidence. He appears to have been so much a party concerned, that the vindication of his military reputation is necessarily connected with that of Sir William Howe. Like Pylades and Orestes, they will go down hand in hand to posterity. It is universally admitted, that the defeat at Trenton* gave a most unfortunate turn to the war; perhaps the most so of any defeat we have suffered. It is as undeniably / true, that that defeat was owing to the too great extension of our cantonments. I was the person, says Lord Cornwal­ lis, who suggested to Sir William Howe the idea of extending his cantonments, and I think myself bound in honour to answer for it(n). Upon another occasion, the action of Brandywine, he assures the House, he did not concur in that meas­ ure; that he has no right to take any merit from it(o); from this negative pregnant we are left to conclude he did concur in most other measures; and in answer to several questions, he makes a distinction between public consultations, and pri­ vate conferences(p); from all which it evidently appears, that Sir William Howe, upon almost all occasions, consulted with Lord Cornwallis. His Lordship is indeed cautious how he gives any direct proof of this. When a question is put to him, the answer to which might make any measure his own, his Lordship objects to it; and his objection cannot certainly be over-ruled. It would be admitted at the bar of any court of justice in the kingdom, I will not answer your question; it tends to criminate myself. / General Grey, who comes next, is certainly a competent, though not a very credible witness(q). He speaks with too much confidence, and with too little consideration to make much impression upon the minds of sensible men. He *

(n) (o) (p) (q)

The success of the Rebels at Trenton had a very mischievous effect on the British service. It removed that panic with which the New States of the Middle Colonies were stricken. It enabled the Congress and the Members of the New State of Pennsylvania, to return to Philadelphia, the most advantageous post for their residence in all America. It revived their spirits, and the spirits of the disaffected. – It induced a number of the militia to turn out, who otherwise would not have done it; and contributed in a great measure to the raising of the army which Washington commanded the next campaign. – Evidence of J. Galloway, Esq. Examination of Lord Cornwallis before the House of Commons. I bid. Ibid. This expression is not to be understood in an odious sense. It is merely used as a legal phrase. An evidence is competent, unless under particular disqualifications; but if his tes­ timony be contradicted, we are to judge of his credibility. General Grey speaks to matters of opinion, and, I verily believe, speaks from his conscience; but if he be mistaken, it is no reason, because he has been too positive, that we should be too credulous.

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speaks to the character of Sir William Howe, in terms of the highest panegyric, and enters into a justification of many particular transactions. He considered the force, under Sir William Howe, as very incompetent to the purpose he was entrusted with it to accomplish; and does not think that any force this country can spare from her home defence and that of her distant possessions, can effect the reduction of America(r). His evidence may be reduced to this; matter of opinion upon American measures, and a great character of Sir William Howe. As to the first, his experience does not entitle him to speak with any precision; and accordingly we find that he is contradicted in every opinion he has formed; and, with regard to the latter, character / can only avail in doubtful circum­ stances, and is never suffered to be placed in opposition to facts. It is unnecessary to dwell long upon the testimonies of the Captains Montre­ sor and Mackenzie, or Sir George Osborne. Captain Montresor speaks to the strength of the Rebel lines at Long Island, and the position above Quibble-Town, and he thinks in both instances the General acted properly in not attempting to force them(s). Captain Mackenzie is examined, and informs the Commit­ tee, that General Howe gave leave to Sir Henry Clinton to make a diversion in the Highlands to favour the operations of General Burgoyne(t); and Sir George Osborne(u) proves that the General had notice of the attack at Trenton, and that our defeat there was owing to Colonel Rhall’s intoxication, and disobedience of orders. He speaks highly in favour of Sir William Howe, and considers him as a great, able, and judicious Commander(w). / Such is the evidence produced by Sir William Howe; and without consider­ ing the testimony on the other side, but admitting this to stand uncontradicted, would it be considered by the nation as an exculpation from the very heavy charges, under which he has so long and so generally laboured? Can it be sup­ posed that the sense of the army had been fairly collected from the opinions of two or three Officers attendant upon his person; obliged to him for preferment; attached to him from friendship; who seem to have shared his councils, and to have had an influence over his measures? And after all, what does it amount to? That the rebels were in possession of a strong country, and that they understood the art of entrenching themselves to advantage. Good God! – but I would wish to keep my temper. – Was Sir William Howe entrusted with forty thousand men to encounter no difficulties? Was he to prepare for no labours? Did he imag­ ine that his troops were to walk over the smooth surface of a lawn, and never to attempt a victory but where there was an impossibility of a defeat? In an (r) (s) (t) (u) (w)

General Grey’s evidence before the House of Commons. Captain Montresor’s evidence, before the House of Commons. Captain Mackenzie’s evidence, before the House of Commons. Sir George Osborne’s evidence, before the House of Commons. Captain Money’s evidence before the House of Commons, upon the Canada enquiry.

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enemy’s country, was not delay destruction? And should not a blow have been stricken that might have spread an universal panic, even though at a considerable expence? If the rebels were found to fortify themselves so strongly, when they were dislodged from one post, why were they suffered / to strengthen themselves in another? Was nothing to be hazarded at the head of a valiant and disciplined army against feeble and raw recruits? Was nothing to be trusted to the ardour of troops flushed with victory, and in the full career of pursuit after a flying and defeated enemy? – When I hear Officers high in rank holding such language at the bar of a British House of Commons, – I grow ashamed for my country; every manly feeling takes the alarm within me, and my blood runs cold with indignation. If we look back to the time of our gallant ancestors, we shall have reason to wonder at their successes. The system of war admitted not then of such math­ ematical precision; nor did they consume weeks in the field to calculate the exact force of a ball, or the resistance of an entrenchment, behind which an enemy was lodged. The event of an engagement was not reduced to a certainty; no intricate estimation of difficulties determined every enterprize. All was darkness, uncer­ tainty and ignorance! They vainly confided in their valour, and trusted to the reputation of their arms. They never counted the numbers of the enemy, but rated the energy of their own troops. And yet this imperfect system has led to victory and renown, / and rendered the name of Briton respectable in every part of the world. If engagements had never taken place but between armies of equal strength, the history of human combats would be comprized within a narrow compass; and if this system were to prevail, mankind would have little to fear from the future ravages of war. But those troops which we did not dare to attack within their entrenchments, those very troops thought it their duty to attack us within ours. ‘On the morning of the 7th of October, General Arnold marched out to attack us within our entrenchments: he advanced under the heaviest cannonade of artillery, grape shot, and rifle fire, I ever beheld, and never gave way till they, met the British grenadiers(x).’ – I will / only observe, for the regulation of our future conduct, ‘Fas est et ab hoste doceri.’13 (x) Captain Money’s evidence before the House of Commons, upon the Canada enquiry. It is unnecessary to dwell upon the particulars of General Robertson’s and Mr. Gallo­ way’s evidence, of which advantage has been already taken, further than to state briefly, that the latter Gentleman is of opinion that the powers for negociating peace, with which Lord and Sir William Howe, as Commissioners were invested, have been injudiciously exerted; and instead of promoting the purpose for which they were delegated, from the manner in which they were employed, have protracted the war, and materially injured our cause. General Robertson does not think the country remarkably strong, and is of opinion we ought to have attacked the Rebel posts. We wave other particulars. The /

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Thus would the matter stand, if no evidence had been produced to contro­ vert that in favour of Sir William Howe. But the evidence of Mr. Galloway and General Robertson contradicts directly that of General Grey; and when we con­ sider that General Robertson has been twenty-four years in America, and Mr. Galloway forty-eight; and that General Grey has only passed eighteen months in that country; their characters in every respect standing upon the same footing, we cannot hesitate one moment in our determination(y). But no proof can be so strong of the guilt of Sir William Howe, as the man­ ner in which this enquiry terminated. The evidence upon the part of Sir William had been gone through; Ministry were upon the examination of theirs; when Sir William Howe, who had entreated, who had provoked, who had insisted upon this enquiry, neglects to attend at the usual hour; no Member in his absence chuses to move for the further sitting of the Committee, and it becomes dis­ solved of course. The Committee makes no report; the House comes to no resolution. – It is sufficient to state the fact. It is impossible to err in the com­ mentary. These observations are founded in stubborn fact, and they will not easily be refuted. They are made with the freedom of truth, and the confidence of convic­ tion. They do not proceed from enmity to Sir William Howe, but from zeal for the public service. May he long continue undisturbed in the peaceable possession of his enjoyments! Let him throw the dice. Let him lie with his mistress. Play is a venial error, unless carried to a criminal excess; and the immoderate love of women is a generous failing. We freely forgive the errors that it occasions, and impute them to an amiable weakness. Sir William may be the man of gallantry, the agreeable companion, the generous / friend; but it was necessary the Public should know, that he is not the great Commander*. But whatever may be the opinion respecting him, we have certainly derived lights from this enquiry to guide us in our future attempts. If the system of war retreat from Boston; the expedition to Philadelphia; or the business of the Jerseys. The having neglected to make a proper use of the powers for negotiating peace; the permit­ ting the rebels to throw up entrenchments, and not attacking them; making no pursuit after victory; are the great facts upon which we rest. We do not institute a rigid scrutiny into the conduct of Sir William Howe to bring to light any latent error, but to discover whether there is any part of his conduct that is free from error. It is not the trial of virtue; it is the condemnation of vice. (y) It appears from General Robertson’s evidence, that if the grenadiers had not been called off by the General they would have stormed the lines at Brooklyn; and if the attack had been made, they must have forced them, as Putnam could not collect three hundred out of all the troops to stand to their arms. * Perhaps his character may be summed up in a few words, by applying to him what Mon­ tesquieu says of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, Sir William Howe is not an Alexander the Great; but he would have made a good soldier under Alexander.14

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which he pursued be justified as a general system; still it will be admitted that the opposite one would have proved more successful in our particular instance; and of course we may expect to see it adopted in future. It has convinced us, that the contest is not vain, nor the pursuit impracticable; and if favourable circum­ stances have not been improved; if war has been unskilfully carried on; if peace has been injudiciously negotiated, we have suffered through our ‘folly, not our fate,’ and we may hope that the errors of our conduct are not irreparable. With regard to general Burgoyne, it is not yet time to enquire into his conduct. The day must come when that will be discussed in a proper place. If every Commander, who, in any manner whatsoever, loses a King’s ship, must be brought to a court-martial; is it not fit that he / also should face one, who has lost an army? One fact, however, is very glaring upon the face of the Canada evidence. – Great stress is laid throughout upon the opinion of the late General Frazer. His memory is deservedly esteemed. His death happened unfortunately for us; it happened fortunately for him. He was not a witness to the unhappy condition of his fellow-soldiers. He died in the bed of honour; and the tears of his country streamed over his grave. – It is painful to me to quit the language of panegyric for that of reproach. ‘General Frazer (says Colonel Kingston)(z) found fault with no operation of the campaign, but that of employing Germans, instead of British, upon the expedition to Bennington.’ – Is there a man who will take upon him to assert, that the Bennington expedition was not the loss of the Northern Army*? / It is already very clearly proved, that the Americans in general have been favourable to our cause. Events remain to be mentioned that will place this truth in the strongest light. No two measures could be more odious to the people of America than the Declaration of Independence, and the Treaty with France. At the beginning of this contest, the people in general, were very far from hav­ ing independence in view. There were, however, a particular set of men who indulged this hope; and by every art, that the designing could practise over the weak, laboured to bring about their purpose. But so sensible were the Congress of the general aversion that prevailed from a separation with this country, that even at the time that they declared independence, they asserted, that it was not with a view to a total separation of the two countries, but from necessity; because, unless they declared independence, the Powers of Europe would not trade (z) Colonel Kingston’s examination before the House of Commons upon the Canada enquiry. * The evidence concerning Lord Howe will not be taken any notice of. In his character of Commissioner he is equally culpable with the General; and the evidence that affects the one applies to the other. As an Admiral, commanding a numerous and powerful fleet, he has also been censured. He certainly suffered our commerce to be very shamefully annoyed. But as the public opinion does not seem to be with those who have attacked his conduct, we would rather ‘praise where we can, than censure where we may.’

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with them, and they were in great distress for want of many foreign necessaries. To carry the Declaration was found a most arduous task. Their debates lasted near a fortnight; and, when the question was put, six Colonies divided against six; the Delegates for Pennsylvania being also divided, the question remained undecided. One of the Members of that Colony, however, changed his opinion; and upon the question, the next day, it was / carried in the affirmative, by a single vote only(a). It is, therefore, fair, from the face of the proceedings of Congress, to con­ clude that America was divided upon the question of Independence. But, when we consider that Congress was by no means a fair representation of the people; that the friends of Government would not vote for a Deputation to an Assembly, whose proceedings they considered as violent and unlawful; that some counties sent no Delegates; that in no county where these Delegates were not appointed by the Assemblies (which were in four only) were they chosen by one-twentieth part of the people(b); – when we consider all these circumstances, we may safely affirm, that a very small part of America favoured this measure. And if such was the case at that time, have any circumstances since occured to reconcile them to it? This country had then treated them with too much pride; and by returning no answer to their petition, as if unworthy of any answer, had aggravated a fancied injury by a real insult. The most vigorous preparations / were making to subdue them; the measure of employing foreign troops was then known; unconditional submission was sounded loudly; in short, it was the time, at which there appeared to be the greatest degree of irascibility in the proceed­ ings of this country – and yet America wished not for Independence! What then must be their feelings at this time, when Great Britain has made the most ample and liberal concessions; when she has offered to wave the claim that gave rise to the dispute; and to establish the connection, between the two countries, upon the broad and liberal principles of mutual commerce, and reciprocal freedom? The Congress assured them, they declared Independence, that they might trade with foreign powers; they have since made them parties to a treaty offensive and defensive with that power, whom America has ever been taught to consider with an eye of detestation. A treaty with a despotic Monarch, who affects to feel for their violated rights, and their invaded freedom; against a nation, from whom their ancestors descended; with whom they have long maintained the nearest and dearest connections; whose constitution is known to be the purest produc­ tion of liberty; whose manners, customs, and dispositions are so similar; and with whom they have so often fought, bled, and conquered! / But it will naturally be asked, If such are the sentiments of the people of America, and if this aversion from Independence is so universal, why do they (a) Evidence of J. Galloway, Esq. (b) Ibid.

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not rise in opposition to Congress? The question is not of difficult solution. It may be answered by another. Every tyrant is odious to his people; for the mind of man cannot brook oppression; how happens it then, that so many tyrants have been suffered to exist? The truth is, it is difficult for a body of people to act in concert. Their feelings are too strong, and their proceedings too disorderly, to cope with command of temper, regularity, and method. It is not often that men are found who chuse to lead so fickle and tumultuous a body. For if the popular attack should fall short of its purpose, it would be impossible to punish the body of the people, and the Chiefs alone would remain exposed to the vengeance of power. It is to the creation of tribunes that Cicero attributes the equilibrium of the Roman constitution having been so long preserved.15 They acted betwixt the senate and the people. They knew the fickle temper of the latter, who had for­ saken so many of their friends, and permitted so many of their favourites to be sacrificed; and a regard to their own safety induced them to controul the fury of the populace, for whose measures they must ultimately be responsible; and who to-day might storm the / Senate-house, and to-morrow pull down the Tribunal. Hence they encouraged them in a constant opposition to the measures of the Senate; their harangues were vehement and seditious; but they faultered when it became necessary to act(c). Though the inhabitants of America may, in general, be hostile to the Congress, no one chuses to be the first in resisting them. It is difficult to destroy a form of Government; and of the only form that at present prevails in America, the Congress are in possession. Perhaps we may in a great measure owe our success to accident. From the earliest times, the subversion of tyrannical Governments has not been owing to any preconcerted scheme, or combination of plans, on the part of those who have suffered under them; but to events, which, operating strongly upon the most violent passions of the human mind, have suddenly driven the people to measures of distraction and fury, and roused all the powers of despair. At Rome, the tyranny of the Tarquins was not likely to / be abolished, when the dead body of Lucretia produced the expulsion of the tyrants; the people, groaning under usury and extortion, would never have seceded, had not the Debtor appeared in the Forum, covered with stripes; and the bloody knife of Virginius16 effected the ruin of, the Decemvirs(d). In like manner, at Athens, a domestic injury placed Harmodius and Aristogiton at the head of the people; and put an end to the usurpation of Hippias. (c) The American dispute presents us at once with the proof and the exception to this rule. The conduct of the Congress is certainly an exception to it, for they have placed them­ selves in a responsible situation. The first proclamation issued proves it; a pardon was offered to all those who should return to their allegiance, except Hancock and Adams. (d) Esprit des Loix.17

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The Congress of America, sensible that the same causes must ever produce the same effects, have endeavoured, by force and fraud, to strengthen and to disguise their proceedings. Those, who absolutely refused to come into their measures, have been subjected to all the penalties of confiscation, and finally to the punishment of high-treason. To prevent resistance, a whole province has been disarmed. The members, who dissented from the measures of Congress, have not been permitted to enter their protests. While their resolutions were published to the people, such, as bespoke the violence and distraction of their proceedings, had been expunged from their journals; and their measures falsely appeared to be the result of undisturbed unanimity. But America begins to / murmur at their conduct. She perceives that her happiness is not their aim, but that they are actuated by a mad ambition. It is not to be expected that they will cheerfully enter into any negotiation with this country, that might put an end to the contest. War drew them from insignificance: peace must give them back to obscurity. But with dispositions in our favour, upon the part of the people, we have little to apprehend from them. Their situation is our best security. When America is ripe for a change, it will become unsafe for them to continue in it; and their measures must necessarily accelerate that moment. They will early affect to swim with the stream. They may in secret strive to counteract, but it is impossible that they should openly endeavour to check the general spirit. Should they be mad enough to attempt it, our force would co-operate with the people, and leave them no alternative but submission. If there are any who affect to disbelieve the testimony of Mr. Galloway(e), and to suppose it founded in interest, error, or partiality; to / such let the inter­ nal evidence of the contest at this period afford demonstration. The Americans, before the fatal rupture with this country, enjoyed the pro­ duce of a most luxuriant climate, and all the advantages of a lucrative commerce. (e) When Mr. Galloway appeared before the House of Commons, an attempt was made to invalidate his testimony, by representing him as an interested witness. He had quitted his family; he had fled his country; he had incurred the / guilt of high-treason against the States of America; he had given up 40,000l. for a scanty pittance barely equal to the wants of the day, – and yet he was an interested man! one whom mercenary motives, it was to be presumed, would warp from truth, or influence to falsehood! If such insinua­ tions are practised with any success, what man will in future make a like sacrifice for so ungrateful a nation? What American in his senses will espouse our cause, if after having experienced every species of persecution, he is to meet with such a reception from those for whom he has willingly incurred it? I hope, however, that the national character is too well established to suffer from the behaviour of a particular description of men. Mr. Gal­ loway has endeared himself to the inhabitants of this country. The house of every loyal Englishman is open to him; the hand of every loyal Englishman is warm to him; the heart of every loyal Englishman beats in his favour! Mr. T—d, Mr. F—x, and Mr. B—ke may asperse his character; but every man of honour, justice, and humanity, will defend it.

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But cultivation has necessarily ceased, and commerce has been interrupted. The husbandman loiters over the land, when he considers that he is not industrious for himself; that some hostile excursion may soon render his fertile dwelling a desolated waste, and snatch from his helpless family their only miserable / sup­ port. The parent no longer sends his offspring to the field, animated by the tale of liberty, and glad in his country’s cause. He tells him the forebodings of his anx­ ious mind; he imparts to him the suspicions he entertains; and communicates the doubts which distract his aged experience. He turns to the page of history. There they find that most tyrannic governments have owed their origin to popu­ lar delusion, and to the arts of men who have appeared to be the warmest friends of liberty, at the moment that they were meditating the most absolute measures of despotism. They read of Pisistratus at Athens; of the Decemvirs at Rome; of the Medici at Florence; and, in the history of their own ancestors, of the Long Parliament in this country. ‘My son (exclaims he), what are we contending for? We are relinquishing the best form of Government which human wisdom ever devised, in quest of uncertain and ideal advantages. We are renouncing an alli­ ance with a free country for one with an absolute Monarch, who professes a regard for the freedom of America, and an attachment to the natural rights of mankind. What reason have we to suppose him sincere? Will the nation who sought to enslave the United States of Holland, and to deprive them of freedom and independence, become a friend to the United States of / America, who have no other claim to her friendship, but that they are struggling to gain these privi­ leges? We took up arms to obtain redress of a grievance; that purpose is effected, and it is time that peace should be restored.’ – The trembling parent thus dis­ closes his mind; and the young man sorrowful, departs to return no more. The Congress have contracted an immense debt, which must ultimately fall upon the people. The latter are tired of military service, and pant for the return of peace and domestic enjoyment. They compare their former situation with the present; and are melancholy at the change. One hundred thousand men have already perished, the fifth part of the white people in America capable of bearing arms(f). Under these circumstances, Congress must have recourse to compul­ sive methods to raise supplies, and send troops into the field; and with these dispositions upon the part of the people, they will not be very patiently sub­ mitted to. – The man of sense and reflection, who draws information from his own mind, and reasons upon the probable consequences of every measure, not madly concurring in it as his passions urge, or servilely acquiescing as authority requires, perceives in a very striking / point of view, the different situations of the two countries. He knows, that if the contest were to cease at this moment, it must terminate prosperously for America; much to the glory of her arms, to (f) Mr. Galloway’s evidence.

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the honour of her councils, and to the advantage of her people. She will have obtained the first object of contention, and have acquired the most invalu­ able privileges. He considers that Great Britain cannot put an end to the war by treaty, without acknowledging American independence. If he consider inde­ pendence as a desirable object for America to obtain, he also considers, that it will be disadvantageous for Great Britain to lose it; and that if it will be glorious for America to succeed, it will be disgraceful for Great Britain to be defeated. If it should take off a few restraints from their commerce, it will not only ruin our trade, but may terminate in the loss of all our distant possessions, of our name among nations, perhaps of our existence as a state. He sees nothing but certain disgrace and infamy, and probable ruin for Great Britain, if she were to acknowledge the independence of America. Her nice sense of honour; her pride as a great nation; her spirit, and her invincible perseverance; her former conduct, and even her present reputation, afford him no reason to conclude, that she will easily become reconciled to infamy, and resigned to disgrace; or that she will / give herself up to ruin without a struggle, and expire without a groan. He places himself in her situation. He feels what powerful motives urge her to carry on the war, and he foresees from its continuance an innumerable train of ills. He reflects, that though America is at this moment successful, her arms may yet be defeated; and, from every possible consideration, he concludes, that it is not for her interest to persist obstinately in the struggle. – The daily labourer enters not into nice disquisition, but reasons from his immediate feelings. The advantages which he is told to look for, are distant and uncertain; instant calamities press upon him. His person is subjected to the hardships of military service; his prop­ erty is not secure from hostile attempts; he is oppressed by his own friends, and plundered by his enemies. He cannot enter into the views of the former, and of course he repines at the hardness of his lot; and when he looks around, he beholds no possessions of the latter, upon which he may satisfy his resentment by committing depredations, or reimburse himself, by making reprisals. Thus persecuted and distressed, it is but natural that he should wish for an end to the war, because it would prove an end to his calamities. – On the other hand, if the people of America look up to their friends, they are possessed of too much sense to suppose, that the motives proclaimed / by the Court of France are those which really influenced her to afford them assistance. They know that her his­ tory is a continued series of endeavours to subdue the liberties of mankind, and to reduce the government of every nation to her own despotic standard. Interest and ambition armed this aspiring power. She diverts the streams of American commerce from their accustomed channel, that they may flow in upon her own soil, and render it rich and fertile. She assists America to shake off the depend­ ence upon this country, that America may become dependent upon her. These truths are too striking to be disguised; and the Americans are already alarmed

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for the consequences. They foresee that it is impossible the two powers can long maintain an intercourse founded upon the principles of mutual advantage; that the dissonance of their manners, government, and religion, can never act in con­ cert so as to produce harmony. How will a people, the forms of whose religion are so simplified that they will not even suffer a Bishop to reside among them, be reconciled to the pomp of high mass, and the idolatrous worship of the Roman Catholic church? If they will not tolerate these, is it not likely that France would feel for her insulted faith, and insist upon a due observance of her ceremonies? Is a spirit of meekness and submission, of patience under controul, the distinguish­ ing characteristic / of this sect? In short, the union is unnatural, and it cannot possibly continue. It is true, our situation is in some respects more arduous than it was. France and Spain have armed against us, and it does not appear that we have any for­ eign allies. We must not, however, despair. The national jealousy, which subsists between these powers will, in all probability, prove favourable to us. Instead of strengthening, they may weaken each others efforts. If we should not prove suc­ cessful, our situation must make us friends; for it is not the interest of Europe to permit us to be sacrificed. Holland will afford us assistance in time, though she seems unwilling to give it at present. She is a trading power, and will endeavour to make the best bargain. The market is certainly favourable to her; but when we shew less anxiety to purchase, she will become more willing to treat. But even should we remain totally deserted, and continue without assistance, the situa­ tion is not unparalleled in our history. ‘When poor old England stood alone, and had not the access of another kingdom, and yet had more, and as potent enemies as it now hath, yet the King of England prevailed(g).’ I do not, however, mean to represent our situation as that of perfect ease. It has great / and numerous difficulties. If we should be under the necessity of recalling our troops from America, the probability of recovering her will be dis­ tant indeed. We can only preserve our friends by affording them protection; or induce others to become so, by having a force at hand to assist them. We have in this part of the world a fleet that can face that of France and Spain; in the West Indies we are equal, and in the East Indies greatly superior to them. They cannot transport any body of troops to attack our distant possessions, while we preserve the sovereignty of the sea; and at home we have a defence that leaves us little to apprehend. To our navy every effort ought to be directed; and while this contin­ ues upon a superior footing, our army in America may be left to act. At any rate, we should suffer many of our possessions to be sacrificed before we consent to relinquish America. In the shipwreck of the state, every thing valuable cannot be preserved; but this is the plank to which we should cling, and the last property from which we should part. (g) Sir Edward Coke,18 Parliamentary History, Vol. vii. p. 400.

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It is often said, How did this country subsist before America was discovered? The answer is plain: America unknown to us was unknown to every other power. But now that she has received from this country the principles of freedom, and the elements of commerce; that her / inhabitants have been employed in our manufactures; that her shipwrights have built, and her sailors navigated our ships; that her soldiers have been trained to our discipline, and fought under our banners; shall we permit them to turn these advantages against the nation from which she derived them? It is not only a weight taken out of our scale, but it is also thrown into the opposite one. If America were to become a great and inde­ pendent power in a durable alliance with France, what a powerful addition of strength would this country have to combat in every future war with her natural enemies! But if France were not to succeed in her views upon America, and the latter were to become a great nation unconnected with her, it is at least certain, that if America and this country were to make war against each other, France would always join America. Lord Shelburne truly said, When the independence of America shall be acknowledged, the sun of this country will be set for ever in the West. – The power, the commerce, the constitution of this country, can exist no longer than America is dependent upon her. If we are not convinced of this truth, every blow that we strike is an out­ rage done to humanity. Every drop of blood that we spill becomes an indelible stain upon the national character. We do not wage honourable war. We commit barbarous murder. – If, on the / contrary, we feel its force, the object is worth contending for. Every man will be convinced that the safety and existence of his country are at stake; that he is not struggling for dominion and empire, but that he is fighting pro aris et focis.19 He must not listen to the idle discourses of extravagant theorists, who talk of ‘the friendship of America being an infi­ nite recompence in exchange of an irksome dominion, onerous to them, and barren to us(h).’ Treaties are dictated by convenience, and violated as interest requires. Friendship among nations is a solecism in politics. We must have some better security for the friendship of America, than an unhallowed form of words. That security must be a dependence upon this country; and in the pursuit of this object, disadvantages must not dishearten us. Let difficulties multiply, and one defeat succeed to another, still we must continue firm and constant to our purpose, and not waver, as fortune proves fickle. We will strive to emulate the conduct of that illustrious people, among whose conquests that of our ancestors was not reckoned the least difficult. They seemed to acquire additional activity from every defeat, and to gain, like Antæus,21 fresh force from every fall. They were not dejected with every reverse of fortune; / but preserved a greatness of soul in the most desperate situations. When Pyrrhus, after having obtained many (h) Mr. David Hartley’s Letters, p. 41.20

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successes over the Romans, offered to treat with them upon advantageous terms; they replied, in the true spirit of magnanimity, Let Pyrrhus depart from Italy. When Hannibal was laying waste the Roman territory, they sent Scipio to beat down the gates of Carthage. – We must be prepared for the most calamitous events. We must look forward to what may happen, and put the question to ourselves, Have we fortitude to encounter it? If the answer should prove in the affirmative, let us not only act, but reason like men. To-day we may reduce a fort in America; tomorrow we may be defeated before one; but these are casualties that must not be suffered to interfere with our great purpose and design. But it is time to put an end to these Observations. It has been said, It is impos­ sible to subdue the rebellion in America; – they are offered to the public, with a view to prove the falsehood of that assertion. They submit to the candour of the nation, whether it has not been established by incontrovertible evidence, that our failure hitherto has been owing to very gross mismanagement; and that though from their public and formal acts it may appear otherwise, yet the people of America are favourable and / friendly to our cause; and there is every reason to hope for future success from wise and vigorous measures. If the attempt is admitted to be practicable, the merits of this imperfect performance-will then be compressed within a narrow compass. To those who are of opinion, that the essential welfare of this country depends upon reducing the Americans to their former dependence, little argument will be necessary to prove, that we should shed our last drop of blood in the attempt; and it is hoped, that these remarks upon it may contribute to inspire them with proper confidence, and manly hope. But to those, who think differently; who assert, that ‘the friendship of America will be an infinite recompence in exchange of an irksome dominion, onerous to them and barren to us,’ all argument must be vainly employed! For it would be madness to justify a war that may terminate in our ruin, and cannot possibly contribute to our advantage.

FINIS.

KNIGHT, A PROPOSAL FOR PEACE

D. M. Knight, A Proposal for Peace between Great Britain and North-America; upon a New Plan. In a Letter to Lord North (Birmingham: for the author, 1779).

While some were disheartened by the American alliance with France and apparent determination therefore to see the War for Independence through to its ultimate aim, D. M. Knight was not. First, Knight was confident that ‘the Americans will readily’ agree to his proposal, which was, he believed, ‘so much to their honour and advantage’. Should ‘they prove obstinate’, however, ‘I am then, at all events, for prosecuting the war with vigour against, not only America, but every nation that has or shall espouse their cause’ (below, p. 67). This rather contradicts a later statement that ‘the Americans have established their Liberty and Independence upon this country for ever, by the sword’ (below, p. 70). Even later, Knight notes that ‘The Americans are now fully sensible of their internal strength; and their alliance with France has secured them from the danger of conquest by Great Britain’ (below, p. 74). Whatever he believed about military possibilities, Knight certainly believed that politically America should be inde­ pendent from but allied to Great Britain. Knight shows some sympathy towards the colonists’ cause, at least before 1775. He mentions early on the poor ‘reception those apparently loyal and duti­ ful addresses met with from administration’, in which ‘Nothing but an entire submission to every act of the British government was the conditions America had to expect’, and even acknowledges that ‘The arguments of the Americans, against every measure of this kind, were strong and conclusive’ (below, p. 68). He certainly believed in mutual interests across the Atlantic, noting that Many subjects in Great Britain had considerable property in America, and many subjects in America had likewise considerable property in Great Britain. The mer­ chant and the planter were become equally necessary to each other, and both united together for the support of the British manufacturer, on whose prosperity the exist­ ence of the British Empire, in a great measure, depends. (below, p. 68)

– 63 –

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Indeed, his proposal is based on what he believed remained British and Ameri­ can mutual interests. ‘Let therefore Britains and Americans unite’ he declaims, to secure themselves against so false and dangerous a people, as the French are, and always have been. Is it from the avowed enemies of our religion, liberty, and laws, that the sons of Britain can ever expect to find protection? America will at last discover (when perhaps it is too late) that she has been deceived, and that that liberty, which is now the sole object of her wishes, will be for ever lost in one fatal hour, sooner or later; and by those very people they now court as the great supporters thereof. Are not the French the very reverse of the Americans? (below, p. 71)

In practical terms, the first part of Knight’s plan is that ‘the Americans be acknowl­ edged by Great Britain, a free, and independent people; and that the whole be united into one body, and a great council or parliament be established in America, like that of Great Britain’ (below, p. 72). A sort of union with Britain would be maintained as the ‘united colonies in America shall acknowledge George, Prince of Wales, for the Sovereign of their Empire, with all the powers and privileges enjoyed by the kings of Great Britain, and under the same regulations as the king­ dom of Great Britain’ (below, p. 72). The rest of the twelve specific proposals list equal legal and trading rights, and promise mutual assistance in war and rules for common diplomatic policies with other nations. He concludes with one observation; that a treaty of peace upon the plan here proposed, will, in all probability be the most durable, as neither party having a claim superior to the other: Justice must be equally the same to both; and the law equally free to every one, whether in Britain or America. (below, p. 75)

A

PROPOSAL for PEACE

BETWEEN

GREAT BRITAIN

AND

NORTH-AMERICA;

UPON A NEW PLAN.

In a LETTER to LORD NORTH.1

By D. M. KNIGHT.

BIRMINGHAM: PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR,

AND SOLD BY

Messrs. Pearson and Rollason; and R. Baldwin, No. 47, Pater-noster-

Row, London.

And may be had of all the Booksellers in Town and Country.

MDCC LXXIX. [PRICE SIX-PENCE.] /

A PROPOSAL for PEACE

BETWEEN

GREAT BRITAIN and AMERICA. My Lord, THE success depending on the Commission sent to America, for restoring Peace and quieting the present unhappy Troubles in that Country, made me lay aside the thoughts of giving my private opinion to the public, which I was about to do, when the Commissioners were sent out: But the hopes of a speedy and happy conclusion being put to the war, was to me (in appearance) almost certain, altho’ the end proved contrary. The alliance formed between France and the Colonies, has, undoubtedly, been the principal cause of the Americans refusing to treat, upon any terms, with Great Britain, untill their Independence is fully acknowledged, and the fleets and armies of Great Britain recalled from their country, which will be effectually done, should both parties comply with the following proposal, which I am led to believe the Americans will readily do. But should they prove obstinate, and reject a proposal so much to their honour and advantage, I am then, at all events, / for prosecuting the war with vigour against, not only America, but every nation that has or shall espouse their cause. I know there are many reasons which should make this kingdom wish for peace; but if peace must be purchased, at the expence of the nation’s honour, trade and commerce, with almost every other privilege that is the glory of these kingdoms, I think war upon any footing pref­ erable to such humiliating terms of reconciliation, and from a people too, who are indebted to Britain for their very existence. But I shall not enter upon that subject, nor much upon the past part of your Lordship’s Administration, since you now seem to acknowledge your own weakness, or rather the weakness of this kingdom, to reduce and bring again, under our subjection, the United Colonies in America. It is now generally admitted that the Americans have established that liberty by the sword, which was refused, in a much more contracted circle, to their humble petitions, and addresses; which at first breathed nothing but love to their Sovereign, and affection to their Mother Country. – 67 –

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It would be only a repetition of transactions recent in every one’s memory, to mention the reception those apparently loyal and dutiful addresses met with from administration. Nothing but an entire submission to every act of the Brit­ ish government was the conditions America had to expect: Ancient charters granted by former kings, were to undergo every change, which ambition or inter­ est might, from time to time, present to a British Legislature. The arguments of the Americans, against every measure of this kind, were strong and conclusive; they acknowledged the superior power of Great Brit­ ain, and the many obligations they lay under to their Mother Country, for the protection and assistance they had so liberally received from her; and that they were united to her by the ties of consanguinity, religion, laws, trade and com­ merce: Many subjects in Great Britain had considerable / property in America, and many subjects in America had likewise considerable property in Great Brit­ ain. The merchant and the planter were become equally necessary to each other, and both united together for the support of the British manufacturer, on whose prosperity the existence of the British Empire, in a great measure, depends. The British Empire on both sides of the Atlantic ocean was become of the utmost utility to each other; and a communication was formed between every part thereof, that was not to be broken, but upon the most urgent occasion. A mutual confidence subsisted between the traders of Great Britain, America, and the West-India islands; and the riches they acquired by their commerce great, nor was the revenue arising therefrom, to government small. The Americans were fully sensible of every advantage that Great Britain enjoyed, from the balance of trade so much in her favour. Almost every shilling that they could draw from their West-India trade found its way to Great Britain, for the purchase of her manufactories, and as they had no mines of the precious metals, in any part of the colonies, every inhabitant was therefore obliged to pro­ cure the necessaries or superfluities of life, which his own land did not produce, with the overplus of what it did; and their annual exports were abundantly suf­ ficient for the purpose, of supporting themselves and their families. The situation of their brethren in England was not quite so happy, particu­ larly the mechanic and labourer: Every article of provisions had risen to twice its original value, without any or very little advance in the price of their labour; and in many mechanical branches, the prices were so much reduced, that one half, and in others one third, was all that the most ingenious artist could earn of his former gettings: Nevertheless, additional / taxes, rates, and other contingences were continually increasing upon them. The national debt had risen to a most enormous sum;2 and the taxes for the payment of the interest due thereon, heavy and burthensome upon the nation in general, and the tradesman and manufacturer in particular. That some part of the national debt was contracted, in the defence and support of the colonies

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in America, is a fact well known to both Britains and Americans; nor has it ever been denied by the latter: But, nevertheless, all America agree, that Great Britain should have been content with the balance of trade so much in her favour, and not to have imposed any new tax upon them by the British Parliament, where they were not represented, and where their constitution was not fully under­ stood; but that the colonies should grant by their assemblies such sums, from time to time, as the British Government might think necessary for the support of the Empire, and the emergency of the time. This the Americans freely offered; but absolutely refused submitting to a general taxation, by the British Parlia­ ment. The British navy might (they said) destroy every sea-port town in America, without effecting the total subjection of the country: America was of a large extent, and in many parts cultivated so far in land, as left them no doubt of subsisting beyond the reach of a British fleet, with whose force they would not pretend to combat; but nevertheless they were fully determined to undergo every hardship that a war with the Mother Country could produce, rather than give up the rights they enjoyed by the laws first established under charters granted by former kings of Great Britain, or England, and by them held sacred. On the other hand, Great Britain claimed a power, by her King and Parlia­ ment, to change or alter the laws in / any of her colonies abroad; lay taxes upon the inhabitants, their trade, lands, goods and chattels, throughout the whole Empire, as well on the colonies in America, as on the subjects of Great Britain: And this power was not only insisted upon, but put in force by several acts, very disagreeable in their nature to the Americans; and altho’ they perhaps might have submitted to the acts that were passed, rather than come to an open rupture with their Mother Country, had they not plainly seen that Great Britain intended to raise a revenue in America, and that, in the end, they should not only be taxed equal to the Mother Country, but perhaps more. How far they were right in this conjecture, I shall not pretend to determine; But this much is certain, that the dread of a general taxation throughout America roused them to arms. It is to be doubted whether Independence upon the Mother Country was their first design, or only to redress grievances, which their petitions had failed in obtaining; be that as it will, the Americans flocked to the standard of (what they called) Liberty, with arms in their hands, from every quarter. Whether it was the surprize of so general a revolt, in America, that affected the British ministry, or a natural supineness to action, I will not pretend to say; yet certain it is that, the Colonies were united, their forces collected and embod­ ied, before any preparations of consequence were made to oppose them. In many places they secured the arms and ammunition belonging to government. This was not done in one place only but almost in every colony on the continent.

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How far, my Lord, you and your colleagues are answerable to the nation for these fatal neglects, I will not pretend to determine; but this I will advance as a truth, which you are now too fully convinced of, that only two things were to be done, at the beginning of / this rebellion, in order to bring it to a speedy and happy conclusion. In the first place, had the acts been repealed, the cause, for which the Americans had taken up arms, had been at an end, and consequently peace restored. In the second place, had the troops in America been sufficient in number to have given a check to the first insurgents, it might likewise have deter­ mined the point in favour of government; as the fate of a few would have struck terror in the whole, and supported the people, that were true to their king, in some degree of power, to have repelled the insults of their rebellious neighbours. For it is a certain fact, that many of the Americans, now in arms against this coun­ try, were at first loyal, and true to their king; and have only joined the American armies from the successes they have met with, and the lost hope of being pro­ tected by their Mother Country, in opposition to North America. And now the whole are fully united against us, those few only excepted, who are immediately under the power of our guns at New York and Halifax; the only places we now possess upon the vast continent of America, Canada excepted. Little success is now to be expected from our armies in America, coped up as they are; our fleets may indeed distress the Americans, and protect the remains of our shattered forces, and the public be amused with some acts of bravery; but I look upon it, that the Americans have established their Liberty and Independ­ ence upon this country for ever, by the sword. If any union can ever again subsist, between the two countries, it must be by treaty, and not by arms, that it will be brought about. But, my Lord, although I make no doubt of your skill in politics, as your qualifications have often shone conspicuous upon every branch thereof; yet there are certain errors sometimes committed by governments, that will admit of no excuse, because they are against the / most found precepts that have ever been advanced upon the subject. If you ever read that old-fashioned book called The New Testament, you will find it there from good authority, that a house divided against itself cannot stand:3 And history of much later date informs us, that oppression made the Swiss, Hollanders, and Portuguese, take up arms in their defence, by which they are at this day, all of them, a great and free people. I might give many more instances from history, of noble and glorious actions, in defence of Liberty; and none can equal those of our own country. But I shall proceed to the main object I have in view; nor shall I detain your Lordship long upon the subject; to point out the practability of my plan is all I intend, and if the grand object I have in view succeeds, and peace is again restored to this empire, I mean that internal peace upon which the security of our Religion and Liberty so much depends I shall rest satisfied.

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As our enemies are at all times numerous and powerful, ready to seize every opportunity to distress this kingdom, no treaties are by them longer kept, than an opportunity offers of again attacking this country with the smallest view of success. One would be almost led to think, that Great Britain was grown old and infirm, quietly to suffer so many affronts; first from Spain, and now from France. If any thing can rouse a country to revenge, or awaken a sleepy ministry, surely this is the time. What would a Chatham at the helm of affairs have done, for the honour of his country? I make no doubt but the perfidious French had found sufficient employment to guard their own coasts from invasion, and the many thousands they threaten to pour into these kingdoms, had been better employed at home, raising mud walls to defend themselves. But the principal object of this letter for finally terminating the war in America, and in some measure preserving / serving the Empire from being totally dismembered; and if any objections shall arise to the plan here offered, that does not now appear to me, I shall rescind any part, or the whole of this scheme, upon a more eligible one’s being proposed, and one that will be accepted of by the Americans; as I am informed the following would be by them not only approved, but extremely agreeable; as it will at once secure their Independence; and at the same time commence an indissolvable union between the Colonies and the Mother Country. The happiness and security of both depend upon such a connection, as may for ever render the contracting parties of mutual benefit to each other; and establish peace upon that foundation which should render the whole firm and durable to the latest ages; which I one day hope to see established, to the satisfaction of Great Britain and America, and the disappointment of our natural enemy, France; whose ambition has no bounds, and whose faith is not to be trusted. Let therefore Britains and Americans unite, to secure themselves against so false and dangerous a people, as the French are, and always have been. Is it from the avowed enemies of our religion, liberty, and laws, that the sons of Britain can ever expect to find protection? America will at last discover (when perhaps it is too late) that she has been deceived, and that that liberty, which is now the sole object of her wishes, will be for ever lost in one fatal hour, sooner or later; and by those very people they now court as the great supporters thereof. Are not the French the very reverse of the Americans? Have they not already, more than once, attempted to enslave them, when in a more juvenile state? Did they not first invent that diabolical practice, of giving the Indians a price for their scalps? Are these things forgotten by the very people who have suffered more than once, from such deceitful friends, and barbarous enemies? I can hardly believe that any sensible man in North-America / will ever be led to pre­ fer the friendship and alliance of France, to that of Great Britain: And when the advantages arising from the latter, come to be considered, America will find from which of the two, her greatest benefit is most likely to arise; when peace shall be

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again restored to these kingdoms, and trade and commerce flow, in every part of the Empire with redoubled force; and like waters that have been long stopped, gather strength from the very cause of their stagnation. That a happy period should be put to the present contest, I believe to be the sincere desire of every person who wishes well to either Britain or America; and I doubt not but peace may again be fully restored, and every ground of dispute totally obliterated. For the completion of which, I would propose, that the Americans be acknowledged by Great Britain, a free, and independent people; and that the whole be united into one body, and a great council or parliament be established in America, like that of Great Britain: And that an army and navy should be kept by them for their protection: And that no article should be demanded by Great Britain from America, but what should be reciprocally granted by Great Britain to America: By which each party ought to be equally bound to support and assist the other, when attacked by any enemy whatever. The trade and commerce of both countries are now so well understood by each of them, and their mutual interests stand so clear from practice, that nothing can more easily be adjusted. I cannot see any reasonable objection either party can have to such an estab­ lishment, where the advantages given are equal to those received. – And farther, to secure peace, and remove any future grounds of contention between the peo­ ple of Great Britain and those of America; and to establish and secure the laws, religion, and liberty of the united colonies in America, upon that / basis which may for ever be the glory of Great Britain to grant, and America to receive; and that they may for the future look upon one another as brethren, whose interests are the same, and whose commerce must languish without the assistance of each other. Every article, the produce of America, will readily find its way to Britain; and every article of the manufactories of Great Britain will find a ready market in return. The merchants, on this and the other side of the Atlantic ocean, are equally well known to each other; and there is hardly a doubt to be entertained, but the Empire may again flourish with greater lustre than ever; nor need the time be prolonged in compleating it, as the proposals which I shall here make, are such as America only ask; viz. That the power of their laws should rest in themselves, independent of any other state or kingdom whatever. This granted, the whole dispute is at an end; – and the following proposals should finally determine every thing relative thereto. 1st. The united colonies in America shall acknowledge George, Prince of Wales, for the Sovereign of their Empire, with all the powers and privileges enjoyed by the kings of Great Britain, and under the same regulations as the kingdom of Great Britain. The government of the Mother-Country should serve as a model for that to be erected in America. 2nd. That all offices, places of power and trust, should centre in the Sov­ ereign’s appointment, under certain laws and regulations, made and provided

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for the several departments of Government. And that all such appointments, whether ecclesiastical, civil, or military, should be settled and regulated accord­ ing to the most approved laws, for securing the liberty of the subject, and supporting the dignity of the sovereign. / 3rd. That upon the accession of the sovereign of America, to the crown of Great Britain, the next heir apparent to the crown of Great Britain, should immediately succeed to the sovereignty of North America. 4th. That any subject of Great Britain committing a crime in America, shall be tried there for the same; and the judgment be final, and without the power of making an appeal to his own country. 5th. That any native or subject of America, committing a crime in Great Brit­ ain, shall be tried in like manner, by the laws of Great Britain; and the judgment be final in like manner. 6th. That all persons contracting debts in one country, and flying to the other, shall be equally liable, and under the same power of being sued, or arrested for the same, as if they had remained in their own country. 7th. That all vessels trading between the two States, should pay no more for entering, loading, or clearing out for their voyage, than vessels of the same burthen belonging to the same kingdom usually pay: In every thing else they should submit to the laws of the state. 8th. That in case of war, and the assistance of one country being wanted by the other, the whole expenses should be paid by that country to whose assistance, either fleets or armies are sent. 9th. No treaty of trade, commerce, &c. should be entered into with any other nation, either by Great Britain or America, without first acquainting the ambas­ sador at that court, with the whole, and every article of such treaty. / 10th. No treaty, or other contract should be entered into or executed, with­ out the knowledge and approbation of both Empires. 11th. That all disputes relating to trade and commerce shall be settled by a board of trade established in each Empire; and their decision shall be final. 12th. That whenever ships of war meet at sea, or enter the harbours of either state, the American flag shall always be struck to the British; but every other mark of respect to a king’s ship shall be the same in both states. Many other articles might be added; but it is not my intent to proceed farther than only to point out a plan of agreement between Great Britain and America, as every method of accommodation hitherto proposed has failed. The fate of my humble scheme, presented with submission, to both Britain and Americans, can only share the fate of all the former consiliatory plans. It is agreed by both Great Britain and America, that the restoration of peace would be highly acceptable to them; but the method of bringing matters to a

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happy conclusion, have not yet been found; and every hour seems to place it at a greater distance. The Americans are now fully sensible of their internal strength; and their alliance with France has secured them from the danger of conquest by Great Britain; the manœuvers of whose fleets and armies have, hitherto, been insuf­ ficient for the purpose. Future ages will see with surprize, the fall of a Great Empire, arise from so trifling an object as a duty of Three-pence upon a pound of Tea, whilst every sub­ ject in Britain / is obliged to pay twice that sum, upon a plant of much less value. I might now proceed to examine many articles of great importance to this kingdom, relative to America; but I shall content myself with making a few observations upon the plan I have already offered; and these shall be only on the subject of objections – 1st. Great Britain will object to an heir apparent to the Empire being pos­ sessed of so great power, when at the same time he is a subject of Great Britain: This is an object of very little weight with me, because he is so still while in Britain; and only a sovereign Prince in America, or other foreign territories not subject to the crown of Great Britain. 2nd. That we shall lose much of our trade with America; the French will under-sell us, and consequently draw the trade of America principally into the ports of France, or other foreign powers, greatly to the disadvantage of our own manufactories. This will be in some measure true; but still the superior quality of those goods manufactured in Great Britain, to those manufactured in any other country, will, at all times, secure the market in America; and of course, the trade of America chiefly to Great Britain, who will at all times be able to pay the Americans a greater price for the commodities brought by them to Britain, than any other nation of Europeans whatever will give for the same; by which the Americans will be enabled to purchase the manufactories of Great Britain as cheap as those of any other country: And as the course of exchange will not only be more easy, but less expensive, and more secure in Britain than in any other kingdom; Great Britain would therefore still enjoy the trade of America in as great a degree, as / it did before the separation of the Empire. And as Canada and Lousianna may still remain to Great Britain, with the whole of the West-India islands, now in her possession. From this circumstance America will, in a great measure, still depend on England for the support of her commerce; and the balance must be for ever in favour of the latter. It will be objected that the Americans will chiefly manufacture their own goods, and draw cash from Great Britain, for what they export of the produce of their own country. Every person acquainted with the trade of America, will at once see that there is no reason, ever to expect, that a people who can employ their time in a

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much more advantageous manner, by cultivating the land, should ever undertake manufactories of any consequence; when the goods so manufactured would be worse in quality, and more expensive than those purchased from Great Britain, where the price of labour is still much cheaper than in America. It would be therefore absurd to think of America’s ever becomming the rival of Great Britain in her manufactories; nor would it ever be attempted by them. They know the impossibility of executing, with success, any thing of that kind, (ship-building excepted) the price of timber, iron, and hemp, in America, render this article much cheaper than in England; where the price of timber, proper for ship-build­ ing, is more than ten times the value of what it is in America. I shall now conclude the whole with one observation; that a treaty of peace upon the plan here proposed, will, in all probability be the most durable, as nei­ ther party having a claim superior to the other: Justice must be equally the same to both; and the law equally free to every one, whether in Britain or America. And as it will give our young princes an opportunity of putting in practice, what they could only know by / theory, before they came to the crown of Great Britain: So it will, in a great measure, fit them for the government of their peo­ ple, with greater ease and security to the nation in general. It is at the same time to be expected that our kings in England, will have a strong affection for their former subjects in America; and the Americans will of course have the same natural love towards the kings of Great Britain. The happy consequences which may, in time, arise from this almost unavoidable circumstance, will be the great­ est blessing these kingdoms ever could enjoy, which is the sincere wish of, Your Lordship’s Most Obedient, Humble Servant, D.M.K. /

POSTSCRIPT. AS the many and great qualifications of the Young Prince here proposed, to be the first Sovereign in America, and the restorer of peace to this Empire, are uni­ versally known and acknowledged, I shall not therefore enter upon that subject. But when I consider the probability, although not founded upon histori­ cal facts, yet from circumstances some credit must be due to the historian who related it, as he died before Columbus began his first voyage. This historian (from what information is not known) relates that prince Murdoc, son of Owen Guinneth, was cast upon the coast of North America, many years before the discovery of that quarter of the globe, by Columbus.4

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From this circumstance, historians have endeavoured to account for the inhabitants of Labradore, differing from all the other tribes of Indians in Amer­ ica. But I shall not pretend to fix any hereditary right to the Sovereignty of North America, in George, Prince of Wales, from that circumstance, were it supported from undeniable truths. Davis tells us, that he met with a whole nation, who spoke the Welch language, in its greatest purity. Some degree of credit is due to this navigator, who has had the honour of giving his name to one of the greatest straits in the world. The many advantages that must arise from the execution of the plan here offered, will be obvious to / every person in Great Britain and America; and the consequences that will arise from it, in the political system of Europe, will, undoubtedly, be greatly in favour of both Britains and Americans. Spain, who ought at all times to be the firm ally of Great Britain, will then be obliged to be so; if not from choice, from necessity; as the security of her ter­ ritories, in South America, will depend upon the alliance of Great Britain and America; in whose power it will always be (whenever a war happens) to attack the territories of Spain, in America, with success.

FINIS.

PORTEUS, A SERMON PREACHED BEFORE THE

LORDS

Beilby Porteus, A Sermon Preached before the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, in the Abbey-Church, Westminster; on February 10, 1779: Being the Day Appointed by His Majesty’s Proclamation for a General Fast (London: T. Payne & Son, 1779).

While most commentators on the American rebellions and revolution argued about taxation and sovereignty, some took more wide-ranging views of the issues. One such person was Beilby Porteus. Beilby was the son of Robert Por­ teus, a Virginia planter, and Sarah Jennings, daughter of Colonel Jennings, superintendent of Indian affairs in the colony, who was thought to be related to the Marlboroughs. For health reasons and the desire to see their children better educated, the family moved to England in 1720, settling in York, where Beilby was born on 8 May 1731. He graduated BA from Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1752, entered the clergy in 1757, and later obtaining a doctorate. He found fame with a 1761 sermon on the character of King David, taking what would become a regular anti-deistical theme in answer to Peter Annet’s The History of the Man after God’s Own Heart. He was appointed chaplain to Thomas Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1762, prebend of Peterborough in 1764, rector of Lambeth in 1767, chaplain to George III in 1769, master of St Cross Hospital, Winchester, in 1773, bishop of Chester in 1776 and bishop of London in 1787. Horace Walpole would complain that ‘The Fast Sermon of Dr Porteus let loose all the zeal of the clergy and contributed to raise the infatuation of England against America’. In fact, however, the sermon says very little of any substance about America, focusing instead on the sins of British people that had, in Porteus’s view, brought the country’s misfortunes about. He begins by not­ ing that ‘a most awful and alarming change has taken place in the situation of our affairs’ and that ‘Every effort, whether of lenity or of force, to bring back the deluded Colonies to a sense of their true interest, has proved ineffectual’ (below, p. 83). Observing, post-Saratoga, that colonists rejected the British offer of terms the colonists themselves had set, and that colonists had instead allied with the French, he states that ‘the prospect before us is, upon the whole, – 77 –

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sufficiently dark and uncomfortable’ (below, p. 83). The rest of the sermon elab­ orates on the implications of the words of Jeremiah with which Porteus began: ‘THUS SAITH THE LORD: BEHOLD, I FRAME EVIL AGAINST YOU. – Return ye now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good’ (below, p. 83). Porteus’s list of evil ways is long. ‘Has one single article of luxury been retrenched …’ he asks, one favourite vice renounced, one place of amusement, one school of debauchery or of gaming shut up? Do we keep a stricter guard upon all our irregular appetites and desires …? Are the obligations of the nuptial vow more faithfully observed …? Is there a more plain and marked difference in our behaviour towards the virtuous and the profligate; and have we set ourselves with greater earnestness to repress the bold effrontery of vice …? Are we become in any degree more religious …? (below, p. 84)

Porteus does attribute some of this misbehaviour to empire, noting that The successes of the last war were too great for our feeble virtue to bear. The immense wealth that they poured in upon us, from every quarter of the globe, bore down before it every barrier of morality and religion, and produced a scene of wanton extravagance and wild excess (below, p. 85)

His answer is straightforward, this time quoting Peter: ‘Listen then, I beseech you, to this most salutary advice, and “humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time”’ (below, p. 86). Porteus returned to these themes in his Letter to the Inhabitants of Manches­ ter, Macclesfield and the Adjacent Places on the Occasion of the late Earthquake in those places (Chester: J. Poole, 1777), Letter to the Clergy of London on the Profa­ nation of the Lord’s Day (London, 1787), and in his activities with the Society for Enforcing the King’s Proclamation against Immorality and Idleness, which in 1795 prosecuted Thomas Williams for printing Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason. It was clear, then, which side Porteus took in the eighteenth century’s culture wars. He refers in his fast-day sermon to ‘modern novels, modern histories, and modern philosophy’ as ‘grand corrupters of [children’s] unguarded innocence and simplicity’ (below, p. 87). He also campaigned against the slave trade from as early as 1784 and voted in the House of Lords for its abolition. He opposed the campaign against slavery itself, however. He died at Fulham Palace on 14 May 1809.1 Notes: 1. A. Robinson, ‘Porteus, Beilby (1731–1809), bishop of London’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 44, pp. 977–9.

THE

BISHOP OF CHESTER’s

SERMON

ON THE

GENERAL FAST,

FEBRUARY 10, 1779. /

Die Veneris,1 12* Februarij, 1779. ORDERED by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, That the Thanks of this House be, and are hereby given, to the Lord Bishop of Chester, for the Sermon by him preached before this House on Wednesday last, in the Abbey-Church, Westminster: and he is hereby desired to cause the same to be forthwith printed and published. ASHLEY COWPER, Cler. Parliamentor. /

A

SERMON

PREACHED BEFORE THE

LORDS SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL,

IN

THE ABBEY-CHURCH, WESTMINSTER;

ON

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1779:

Being the Day appointed, by His Majesty’s Proclamation,

FOR A

GENERAL FAST.

BY BEILBY LORD BISHOP OF CHESTER.

LONDON: Printed for T. Payne and Son, at the Mews-Gate. Sold also by J. F. and C. Rivington, in St. Paul’s Church-yard: J. Dodsley, in Pall-Mall; B. White, in Fleet-street; T. Cadell, in the Strand; and J. Robson, New Bond-street. M.DCC.LXXIX. /

JEREMIAH xviii. Part of 11th Verse. THUS SAITH THE LORD: BEHOLD, I FRAME EVIL AGAINST YOU. – Return ye now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good.

WE are now once more assembled together, to humble ourselves before Almighty God: and since we first met here for that purpose, a most awful and alarming change has taken place in the situation of our affairs. A few successes in the beginning have been followed by a series of misfortunes. Every effort, whether of lenity or of force, to bring back the deluded Colonies to a sense of their true interest, has proved ineffectual. The fairest and most liberal / terms of reconciliation, such as would have compleatly removed every grievance of which they complained, and secured, on the firmest ground, every right for which they contended, have been rejected. They, who were once our fellow subjects, are now the allies of a foreign Power; and that Power, with a perfidy almost unparalleled, even in its own annals, has, in the midst of the strongest professions of peace and friendship, without the smallest provocation, without even the pretence of complaint, commenced hostilities against us, and wrested from us a part of our foreign dominions. Our attempts to chastise this treachery, have not hitherto been attended with the desired success; and the prospect before us is, upon the whole, sufficiently dark and uncomfortable. Let us turn our eyes from it to another object; to ourselves I mean, to our own conduct. Will that afford us any consolation? ‘When the judgments of the Lord are in the earth,’ we are told that ‘the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.*’2 / Have those judgments which now press so heavy upon us, taught us this most useful lesson? In proportion as our dangers and our dis­ tresses have multiplied, has the warmth of our piety encreased, and our sins and our follies melted away before it? Twice already have we, in this place, and on this very occasion, addressed ourselves to the Throne of Grace; have, with every appearance of sorrow and contrition, confessed our sins, and acknowledged that they have most deservedly brought down upon us the heaviest marks of God’s displeasure. We have entreated pardon, we have besought compassion, we have implored assistance and protection; and in return have, in the most solemn manner, vowed repentance and reformation. Has that repentance and reforma­ *

Isaiah xxvi.9 – 83 –

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tion followed? Has one single article of luxury been retrenched, (retrenched, I mean, from principle) one favourite vice renounced, one place of amusement, one school of debauchery or of gaming shut up? Do we keep a stricter guard upon all our irregular appetites and desires, and restrain them within the bounds of temperance, decency, and duty? Are the obligations of the nuptial vow more faithfully observed, and fewer applications made to the legislature for the dis­ solution of that sacred / bond? Is there a more plain and marked difference in our behaviour towards the virtuous and the profligate; and have we set ourselves with greater earnestness to repress the bold effrontery of vice, by treating it, wherever it is found, with the indignation and contempt which it deserves? Are we become in any degree more religious, more devout, more disengaged from this world, more intent upon the next? Are our hearts touched with a livelier apprehension of heavenly things, with warmer sentiments of love and reverence for our Maker; and do we demonstrate the sincerity of that love, by a more exact obedience to his commands, and a more serious regard to that sacred day, which is peculiarly dedicated to his service? Happy would it be for every one of us, could these questions be answered truly in the affirmative. But if they cannot, for what purpose have we again resorted to this solemnity? Do we think that the abstinence, the sorrow, or the supplications of a day, will avail us? In a country so enlightened as this is, it is impossible that any one can deceive himself with such imaginations as these. If we come here to say a form of prayer for mere form’s sake; if our devotion is put on for the occasion, / and put off the moment we leave this place; if we are serious for a few hours once in a year, and as dissi­ pated as ever all the rest of our lives; such annual shows of piety, such periodical fits of devotion, instead of being a humiliation before God, are a mockery and insult upon him; and our very prayers will be amongst the sins for which we ought to beg forgiveness. The prayers to which He listens, are those only that spring from a broken and a contrite heart: the sorrow that He accepts, is that only which worketh repentance: the abstinence which He requires, is abstinence from sin. Unless we renounce each of us our own peculiar wickedness, our pro­ fessions here do nothing: they do worse than nothing; they add hypocrisy to all our other sins. ‘This people,’ says God, on a similar occasion, ‘draw near to me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me: and their fear towards me is taught by the precept of men. Their goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away. When they fast, I will not hear their cry, and when they offer an oblation, I will not accept them*. Because I have called, and ye refused, I / have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought my counsel, and would none of my reproof; I also will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear *

Isaiah xxix. 13. Hosea vi. 41. Jer. xiv. 12.

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cometh. When your fear cometh as a desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind, when distress and anguish cometh upon you; then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer, they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me; for that they hated knowledge, and did not chuse the fear of the Lord*.’ All this, I am aware, when applied to ourselves, will be considered by many as nothing more than the usual language of the pulpit; as a little pious declamation necessary to be used on such occasions as this, but meaning nothing, and cal­ culated only to strike superstitious minds, which see divine judgments in every common occurrence of life. This is neither the time nor the place for entering into any controversy on such subjects. We are come here, I apprehend, not to dispute God’s moral gov­ ernment of the world, but to acknowledge it. They who do / not acknowledge it, have no concern here. Yet even these, when they happen to reflect a little seri­ ously on what we were a very few years ago, and what we now are; when they consider the means by which this sudden and surprising revolution has been brought about; when they look back to the origin, and trace the whole progress, of that unhappy contest in which we have been so long engaged, find themselves obliged to own, that there is something very extraordinary in it; that it has in many instances gone far out of the usual track of human affairs; that the causes generally assigned, are totally inadequate to the effects produced; and that it is altogether one of the most amazing scenes that was ever presented to the obser­ vation of mankind. They allow it is impossible to account, in any common way, for every thing that has happened in the various stages of it; and talk much of accident, ill fortune, and a certain strange fatality (as they call it) which seems to attend even our best concerted measures. Let those who can, digest such reason­ ing as this, and disguise their ignorance of the truth, or their unwillingness to own it, under the shelter of unmeaning names, and imaginary / beings of their own creation. But let us, who are, I trust, a little better informed, confess, what it is in vain to deny, that the hand of God is upon us; that we wanted humbling, and have been most severely humbled. The successes of the last war were too great for our feeble virtue to bear. The immense wealth that they poured in upon us, from every quarter of the globe, bore down before it every barrier of moral­ ity and religion, and produced a scene of wanton extravagance and wild excess, which called loudly for some signal check; and that check it has now received. It would be the extremity of blindness not to see in those calamities that have befallen us, the workings of that over-ruling power which ‘destroys the wisdom of the wise, and brings to nought the understanding of the prudent; which chuses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty, that no flesh should glory *

Prov. i, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29.

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in his presence*.’ It is plainly the voice of God that speaks to us in the sublime and tremendous language of scripture; ‘Hear this, thou / that art full of stirs, a tumultuous city, a joyous city; Thou that art given to pleasures, that dwellest carelessly, and sayest in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me; though thou exalt thyself as the Eagle, and though thou set thy nest amongst the stars, thence will I bring thee down, faith the Lord. Can thy heart endure, or can thy hands be strong, in the days that I shall deal with thee? I the Lord have spoken it, and will do it. I will mingle a perverse spirit in the midst of thee, I will cause thee to err in every work†.’ Whether we have not thus erred, I leave you to judge; and if our errors are here referred to their right source, we know the remedy. It is, God be thanked, in our own hands: it is what this day’s solemnity was meant to remind us of; it is what the text itself very distinctly points out to us. ‘Return ye now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good.’ Listen then, I beseech you, / to this most salutary advice, and ‘humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time‡.’ But is any one then (we shall be asked) so weak as to imagine, that immediate reformation will be followed by an immediate declaration of Heaven in our favour, and that the moment we become religious and virtuous, we shall be secured from danger, and rewarded with success? The best, indeed the only proper, answer to such a question as this, is – Make the trial. It may be made without either expence or hazard; and surely, in our present situation, every thing that affords the least shadow of relief, deserves our notice. Expedient after expedient has been tried, and failed. Above all things, we have tried what Irreligion will do for us; and we have no reason, I think, to be proud of the experiment. It is then high time, surely, to discard a physician that has done us so little good, to make a change in our medicines, and to put ourselves under a different regimen. And what other regimen can we adopt, but that which is / recommended to us by the great physician of our souls? It is Religion, ‘pure, undefiled Religion,’3 that will strike at the root of our disorder, and nothing else can. To see its influence suddenly and universally restored, is more, perhaps, than we can expect. As the depravation of our manners, and the decay of vital piety amongst us has been a gradual work, the recovery of them must be so too. But let every one begin to do something towards it; let all parties and denominations of men, instead of inveighing against each other, without mercy and without end, reform them­ selves; and the restitution of religious sentiments, and virtuous practice, will not be so difficult an achievement as is imagined. It behoves us, in the first place, the ministers of the Gospel, from the highest to the lowest, to redouble our attention * † ‡

1 Cor. i. 27, 29. Isaiah xxii. 2. Isaiah xlvii. 8. Obad. 4. Ezek. xxii. 14. Isaiah xix. 14. I Pet. v. 6.

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to every branch of our sacred functions, and to take the lead, as we are bound to do, in the great work of Reformation. As an indispensable requisite towards it, let us be careful to impress deeply both upon our own minds, and those of our hearers, the absolute necessity of faith in Christ, of fervent love towards God, of internal sanctification by his Spirit; and on this foundation, the only solid and substantial one that can be laid, let us erect the superstructure of a holy, religious, Christian / life. Let those who direct our public measures remember, that their success must, in a great degree, depend on the purity and integrity, not only of their political, but of their moral and religious conduct; and that ‘except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain*.’ If therefore they leave the Supreme Governor of the world out of their counsels, and form plans independ­ ent of him and his Providence, there is but too much reason to fear, that all the efforts of human wisdom and power, the most vigorous exertions of national strength, the best appointed fleets and armies, will avail them nothing; for ‘the battle is not theirs, but God’s†.’ Let their opponents, on the other hand, be no less attentive to the regulation of their own hearts, than to the management of the State; and contend with them chiefly for that noblest object of human ambition, Preeminence in Virtue. To all this, let those who are distinguished by their birth and fortune, add the weight, the almost irresistible weight, of their example; and manifest their public spirit in the most useful way they can, by letting the light of their truly illustrious conduct ‘shine before men,’4 and instead of leading the multitude to do evil, making the multitude follow / them to do good. Let all par­ ents, in fine, whilst they are so anxious to embellish the manners, and improve the understandings of their children, pay a little more attention than they have hitherto done, to the cultivation of their hearts. From their infancy to their man­ hood, let them be brought up ‘in the nurture and admonition of the Lord‡.’ Let those grand corrupters of their unguarded innocence and simplicity, modern novels, modern histories, and modern philosophy, which (not to mention those of our own growth) have constituted a large and most pernicious branch of our commerce with France, and thereby rendered the friendship of that kingdom more fatal to us than I trust her enmity will ever prove; let these, I say, be for ever banished from the hands of our youth, and in their room, let that long neglected, and almost forgotten thing, Revealed Religion, make an essential and fundamental part of their education. Let them not be left (as is too much, God knows, the case) to pick it up themselves, as well as they can, from casual information, or a few superficial unconnected instructions; but let it be taught them systematically and methodically; let the first rudiments of it be instilled as early / and as carefully into their minds, as those of every other * † ‡

Psalm cxxvii. 1. 2 Chron. xx. 15. Ephes. vi. 4.

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science; let its evidences and its doctrines be gradually explained to them, in the several seminaries of learning through which they successively pass, in propor­ tion as their judgments ripen, and their understandings unfold themselves. Let them, in short, be made not only great scholars, and accomplished gentlemen, but what is of infinitely more importance, both to themselves and to the public, honest Men, and sincere Christians. By means such as these, together with our most earnest prayers for the assis­ tance of Divine Grace to co-operate with our own endeavours, there is little doubt but a great and a blessed change may in time be brought about, in the manners even of the present generation, and still more of the rising one. And when once the sense of Religion is effectually awakened in our souls, we have every reason in the world to expect the happiest consequences from it. The declarations of scripture on this head are peremptory and decisive. ‘At what instant’ (says God) ‘I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up and to pull down, and to / destroy it, if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil which I thought to do unto them*.’ But besides the reviving hopes which these promises may well inspire, there are other very important advantages which will naturally and spontaneously flow from a sincere belief in the doctrines, and a general obe­ dience to the laws of the Gospel. I. In the first place, true Christianity will produce true Patriotism and Public Spirit. By its commanding influence over the soul, ‘it will keep under, and bring into subjection†,’ all those irregular passions which render men rapacious, sor­ did, selfish, and corrupt, indifferent and inattentive to the public, devoted solely to the pursuit of some favourite object, or the gratification of some implacable resentment, to which they are at any time ready to prostitute their consciences, and sacrifice the true interest of their country. From all these vile impediments to the discharge of our duty Christianity sets us free, and substitutes in their room, the noblest and most generous sentiments. It gives that dignity and eleva­ tion of soul, which is superior to every / undue influence, either of popularity or of power. It lays down, as the foundation of all disinterested conduct, that great evangelical virtue, Self-Denial: it teaches us to deny, to renounce ourselves; to throw entirely out of our thoughts, our own prejudices, interests, and pas­ sions; and in every public question, to see nothing, to regard nothing, but the real welfare of our Country, and that plain line of duty, which no honest man can mistake. To this it adds unbounded love for all, but especially ‘the brother­ hood‡;’ that is, the community of which we are members. It extends our prospect beyond the present scene of things, and sets before us the recompences of a * † ‡

Jer. xviii. 7, 8. 1 Cor. ix. 27. 1 Pet. ii. 17.

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future life; which, as they make us richer, enable us to be more generous, than other men. They whose views are wholly centered in this world, will too often prefer the emoluments of it to every other consideration: but they who look towards an inheritance in another state of existence, can afford to give up to the general welfare, a few advantages in this. II. When once we have thoroughly imbibed the true spirit and temper of the Gospel, it will soon compose all those unhappy dissensions which have so long torn / the State in pieces; which have been one principal cause of our present evils; and if not timely extinguished, or at least greatly mitigated, will probably lead (as in all great empires they have universally led) to final ruin. Now the source of this dreadful mischief lies where few seem to suspect, in the want of Religious Principle. Had not all sides departed, in a greater or less degree, from those heavenly precepts of gentleness, humility, meekness, placabil­ ity, brotherly kindness, moderation, equity, and forbearance, which the Gospel prescribes, it is utterly impossible that our divisions could have arisen to their present alarming height. But the misfortune is, we are apt to think ourselves dispensed with in matters of state, from all those rules of morality which, in every other case, we deem it our duty to observe: and, what is quite astonishing and unaccountable, the very same persons, who in private life are considerate, reasonable, impartial, good-natured, and humane, will, in public affairs, be impetuous, vehement, acrimonious, ungenerous, and unjust. On what grounds they establish this strange distinction, and why they conceive all the obligations of Religion to hold good in the one case, and entirely to vanish in the other, is to me, I own, utterly incomprehensible. The Gospel, I am sure, knows nothing / of any such exceptions as these. It lays down the same rules of behaviour for all men, in all relations and circumstances of life; and grants no dispensation in any one supposable instance, from the eternal and invariable laws of evangelical rec­ titude. It is Charity, in short, true Christian Charity, diffusing itself through our whole conduct, public as well as private, that can alone restore harmony and union to this distracted kingdom. Let her mild conciliating voice be once heard and attended to by all ranks of men, and she will say to their ruffled passions, as our Saviour did to the troubled waves, ‘Peace, be still:’ and the consequence will be the same: ‘there will be a great calm*.’ Lastly. A consciousness of having discharged our duty, of being at peace with God, and of living under his gracious superintendence, will give us a spirit, a firmness, and intrepidity of soul, which nothing else can inspire. Valour indeed, it has been often said, is no Christian virtue; and it is very true; for, considered simply in itself it is no virtue at all. It is a mere personal quality, / depending principally on constitution and natural temperament, but *

Mark iv. 39.

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improved by education, discipline, and habit; and can be no otherwise moral or immoral, than as it is well or ill directed. But supposing all other circumstances equal, the sincere Christian will have many incitements to face danger with a steady countenance, which the irreligious cannot have. Under the defence of the Most High, he has less cause to fear the worst, and more reason to hope the best, than those that live without God in the world. ‘The wicked therefore flee when no man pursueth, but the righteous are bold as a lion*’ Even Death itself has, to the real Christian, no terrors: the only sting it has, is sin, and of that sting he has disarmed it. Instead of being to him, as it is to the worldly man, the extinction of his hopes, it is the consummation of them, and puts him in possession of those heavenly treasures on which his heart is fixed. He therefore goes on with cool undaunted composure to the discharge of his duty, whatever difficulties, what­ ever dangers may stand in his way; conscious that he is acting under the eye of an Almighty Being, who can both protect and reward him; who has commanded him, if it be necessary, ‘to lay down his / life for his brethren†;’ and who will never suffer him to be a loser in the end, even by that last and greatest sacrifice to the public good. Such are the effects, the genuine and natural effects, of Religious Prin­ ciple on the human mind. It will give us, as we have seen, every thing which our present situation seems more peculiarly to require; public spirit, una­ nimity, and unshaken fortitude. Embrace then, with thankfulness, the support which Christianity offers you, and which you have hitherto sought else­ where in vain. Amidst so many enemies, take care to secure, at least, one friend. By obedience to the Divine Laws, entitle yourselves to the Divine Protection; and then remember those most comfortable expressions of the Almighty to another people: ‘How can I give thee up, Ephraim? my soul is turned within me. I will not execute the fierceness of my anger; for I am God and not man‡.’ ‘In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment, but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee§.’

FINIS.

* † ‡ §

Prov. xxviii. 1. 1 John. iii. 16. Hos. xi. 8, 9. Is, liv. 8.

CORNWALLIS, A SERMON PREACHED IN

THE CATHEDRAL AND METROPOLITICAL

CHURCH OF CHRIST

James Cornwallis, A Sermon Preached in the Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of Christ, Canterbury, on Friday, February 4, 1780. Being the Day Appointed to be Observed as a Day of General Fasting and Humiliation (Canterbury: Simmons & Kirkby, 1780).

Like Beilby Porteus, James Cornwallis believed in ‘a super-intending providence’ (below, p. 95) over earthly affairs. Rather than adopting Porteus’s anti-modern­ ist rhetoric, though, Cornwallis uses a more up-to-date discourse. ‘It must be agreeable’, he writes, ‘to the dictates of Reason, that there should be a divine interference in human affairs’. And ‘we can scarcely be led to think, that our creator would not retain a superintendency during the execution of a plan, so evidently important in itself, and agreeable to its Author’ (below, p. 95). Corn­ wallis thus begins his own fast-day sermon in similar fashion to Porteus, quoting Job: ‘HE INCREASETH THE NATIONS, AND DESTROYETH THEM; HE ENLARGETH THE NATIONS, AND STRAITENETH THEM AGAIN’ (below, p. 95). James Cornwallis, born 25 February 1743, was the son of Charles Cornwal­ lis and Elizabeth Townshend, daughter of Charles Townshend, and was younger brother of Lord Charles Cornwallis, the British general forced to surrender at Yorktown in October 1781. James graduated BA from Christ Church, Oxford, in 1763 and MA from Merton in 1766, and afterwards gained a clerical living in Kent from the Archbishop of Canterbury, his uncle Frederick Cornwallis. He was also chaplain to his cousin, Lord Townshend, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, made prebend of Westminster in 1770, dean of Canterbury in 1775, bishop of Lichfield and Coventry in 1781, dean of Windsor in 1791 and dean of Durham in 1794. In August 1823 he became the fourth Earl Cornwallis, but died the fol­ lowing 20 January and was buried in Lichfield Cathedral. – 91 –

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As well as ‘the dictates of Reason’, Cornwallis argues that ‘This great truth, the existence of a national providence, is farther confirmed by the general con­ duct of mankind, recorded in Profane History’. ‘We there find’, he continues, that the Gentile, as well as the Jew, the Heathen as well as the Christian, ever had recourse to propitiatory rites and prayers in times of public danger. But whence these propitiatory rites; whence these prayers; if there did not always exist an inward con­ sciousness of a Deity, to whom it appertained ‘to increase and enlarge,’ or to ‘straiten and destroy?’ (below, p. 96)

Finally, With respect to Revelation, the jewish History is a detail of the constant interposi­ tions of God, in order to impress upon the minds of his chosen people a due sense of obedience to his commands … The publication of the christian system afforded like­ wise a most striking instance of divine interference in human affairs; and our blessed Saviour, although rewards and punishments in a future state were the great sanctions of his religion, evinced, in the strongest manner, the certainty of temporal and national visitations, by his remarkable prediction concerning Jerusalem. (below, p. 97)

Cornwallis seems more concerned with proving the truth of his providentialist doctrine than with ‘the particular application of this doctrine, which our present humiliation requires’ (below, p. 97). Indeed, Cornwallis has surprisingly little to say, certainly a lot less than Porteus, about precisely why God would have imposed ‘reverses of situation’ (below, p. 95) on the British empire. The closest he comes to detailed analysis thereof is to suggest that ‘An evident neglect in our public devotions … seems to have called down the divine displeasure upon us; and to have produced that diminution of social and political blessings, which we feel so sensibly at present’ (below, p. 98). A little later he points to the ‘peculiar blessings’ of Britain, but asks, what have been the fruits of all these distinctions? We have condescended to learn vice and infidelity from that enemy, whose civil dominion we had so nobly with­ stood. Political affairs have exhibited a constant scene of dissension; and the extent of our eastern commerce hath furnished instances of the most cruel plunder and rapine abroad; of unexampled luxury and dissipation at home. (below, p. 99)1

Notes: 1.

A. Vian, rev. P. Bancroft, ‘Cornwallis, James, fourth Earl Cornwallis (1743–1824), bishop of Lichfield and Coventry’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 13, pp. 484–5.

A

SERMON

PREACHED IN THE

Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of Christ,

CANTERBURY, On FRIDAY, February 4, 1780.

BEING

The Day appointed to be observed

as a day of

GENERAL FASTING and HUMILIATION.

By the Honourable and Reverend

JAMES CORNWALLIS, LL. D.

Dean of Canterbury.

CANTERBURY: PRINTED BY SIMMONS AND KIRKBY,

And sold by J. Robson, in, New Bond-street, London.

[Price Sixpence.] /

JOB XII. 23. HE INCREASETH THE NATIONS, AND DESTROYETH THEM; HE ENLARGETH THE NATIONS, AND STRAITENETH THEM AGAIN.

That empires are subject to great changes, and to reverses of situation, is unde­ niable; but much controversy hath arisen in examining the causes, to which these revolutions are to be attributed; whether solely to the natural course and order of things, or to a super-intending providence. The former supposition is neither agreeable to the dictates of Reason, nor to the general conduct of / mankind recorded in Profane History, nor to Revelation; whilst the latter receives strength and support from a reference to these several standards. It must be agreeable to the dictates of Reason, that there should be a divine interference in human affairs. We must suppose, that he, who formed us after so exquisite, so wonderful a manner, formed us for some very wise and excellent purpose: that this purpose could not be a subserviency to the will of any created beings in this world, as man is evidently placed in the most exalted station in it; but was such as required the agency of man toward its completion. Now, if this be granted, we can scarcely be led to think, that our creator would not retain a superintendency during the execution of a plan, so evidently important in itself, and agreeable to its Author. And this superintendency must be active: otherwise it would / be useless, were it confined solely to observation; without producing any effects, adapted to remove the obstacles, and to apply the salutary helps to the grand design. Indeed, to suppose him without this active providence, would be to derogate from his wisdom, as it would be to suppose him not taking the only effectual means to produce the success of his views; and from his goodness, as the happiness of his creatures depends upon it. It requires then surely no great exertion of our reason to discover, that the Author of our being not only is thoroughly acquainted with human affairs, but that he effectually interposes in the administration of them; since his existence necessarily implies his governing providence. It is not, however, always so easy to comprehend the workings of this great principle. In some instances, they are not apparent / to us; we only see the effect without tracing the operation of second causes; in others, they are discernible only to the attentive observer, who makes a proper use of his reasoning faculties; whilst in others, they are open and notori­

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ous, so that all are enabled to say, ‘this hath God done, and to know his work.’1 – But he surely is justified in all his ways. These conclusions appear with additional weight, in considering states and empires. Did God not ‘increase the nations, and destroy them,’ did he not ‘enlarge the nations, and straiten them again;’ there would be no encouragement to such as fulfil the divine intentions, or discouragement to those that oppose them. The reward or punishment of a nation can only be in its present state, that of individuals may and must be likewise in a future one. But it will perhaps be urged, that the individuals, of whom a / nation is composed, may be rewarded or punished hereafter for their actions, as political, as well as moral agents. A little reflection, however, suggests to us, that this mode of reward and punishment cannot be relied upon. It is not adequate to the magnitude of the evil intended to be restrained, nor can it be so conducive to general reformation, as immedi­ ate exertion. And although it must be owned, that the blessings bestowed on communities are too often disregarded by them, yet it is certain, that national calamities have always a great and extensive effect. They awaken the attention of millions, and have a natural tendency to produce a serious disposition of mind, the only vehicle, in which a successful remedy for vicious inclinations can be applied. This great truth, the existence of a national providence, is farther confirmed by the general conduct / of mankind, recorded in Profane History. We there find, that the Gentile, as well as the Jew, the Heathen as well as the Christian, ever had recourse to propitiatory rites and prayers in times of public danger. But whence these propitiatory rites; whence these prayers; if there did not always exist an inward consciousness of a Deity, to whom it appertained ‘to increase and enlarge,’ or to ‘straiten and destroy?’ And as this has been the conduct, not of any particular state or nation, but of all; not of any particular age, but of every one; it cannot be ascribed to the accidental warmth of enthusiastic zeal: the operations of enthusiasm are irregular and uncertain, those of natural reason, more espe­ cially when applied to the successive actions of communities, regular and equal. Besides, the ablest philosophers discovered the same sensations. When the great Roman orator endeavoured to animate the people to oppose the machinations / of Catiline,2 he arranged every virtue on the side of the commonwealth, and every vice on that of the conspirators; and then added, ‘In a contention of this kind, should we not be sufficient of ourselves; should human exertions be found inadequate; will not the immortal Gods compel so many and such enormous vices to yield to such admirable and excellent virtues?’ Can there be a stronger declaration in favour of a providence, of an active providence, protecting virtue and discouraging vice? And we may surely discover in it the real sentiments of this great philosopher; since we here find a doctrine, which he hath often main­ tained in his other writings, expressed with uncommon beauty and energy. The

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situation of Rome too was at that period critical: It was not a time for uncertain arguments; or inconclusive rhetoric: It was not his business, as the patron of so just and important a cause, to suggest problematical questions to his audience, but to meet and heighten every legitimate idea, as it was rising in their breasts. / We may therefore conclude it to have been his opinion, that there is an active superintending deity (for the use of the word Gods in the plural number was only in conformity to local language and custom, and does not at all affect the argument) we may conclude it, I say, to have been his opinion, that there is an active superintending deity, and possessed also of moral attributes; that virtue is the foundation of public happiness; and that the practice of moral goodness gives stability to the freedom and civil privileges of a country. It may naturally be asked then, why our modern reasoners, who controvert this point without the abilities of a Cicero, pride themselves in supporting ten­ ets, so opposite to the avowed sentiments of this great philosopher? The only superior advantages, which they can have a right to claim, are such, as are derived from the clear and instructive precepts of Revelation. But do these weaken our trust in God? Do these teach us to deny the existence of a national providence? / With respect to Revelation, the jewish History is a detail of the constant interpositions of God, in order to impress upon the minds of his chosen people a due sense of obedience to his commands; and lest it should be thought, that these interpositions extended no farther than that nation, we find the fate of several other kingdoms sometimes foretold, and the prophecies fulfilled, when they were not immediately connected with the Jews: so that, while the jewish prophets were the means of declaring their own people to be under the particu­ lar direction of God, they proved, that his providence had also a more extensive operation. The publication of the christian system afforded likewise a most strik­ ing instance of divine interference in human affairs; and our blessed Saviour, although rewards and punishments in a future state were the great sanctions of his religion, evinced, in the / strongest manner, the certainty of temporal and national visitations, by his remarkable prediction concerning Jerusalem. These several testimonies, relative to the overruling providence of God, appear to be incontestable; and they are greatly illustrated by various events in our own, as well as other histories. But the investigation of these events would detain us too long from the particular application of this doctrine, which our present humiliation requires. Every individual under the pressure of adversity, who hath not lost the true sense of his situation in this world, is naturally induced to enquire, whether he is duly thankful for the blessings conferred upon him, and employs the talents, committed to his trust by a beneficent father, to the ends, for which they / were designed. If the evil be of more general import, and the welfare of the commu­

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nity be involved in it, will not an enquiry of the same tendency, tho’ of greater extent, suggest itself ? And hence are derived those reflections, which teach us, that it must be highly agreeable to the Creator, as well as Judge, of all men, to receive the united acknowledgments of his creatures; and to see all inferior and worldly considerations giving place to a diligent and conscientious attendance in those houses, ‘where his honour more immediately dwelleth.’ This is the surest proof, that religion flourishes among us; that virtue is encouraged and practised; and consequently, that we are employing the talents, committed to our trust, to the ends for which they were designed. It is, indeed, the only public testimony that we can give in favour of religion; and when a public testimony is omitted, there is not much room to think, that a private one will ever take / place; and if it did, it could not, for many reasons, be attended with the same beneficial consequences. Now, when we perceive the justness of this reflection, can we avoid bringing it home to our own bosoms, and discovering, how little influence it hath upon our conduct? An evident neglect in our public devotions, which our many vices and transgressions, which are, perhaps, principally to be ascribed to it, seems to have called down the divine displeasure upon us; and to have produced that diminution of social and political blessings, which we feel so sensibly at present. For, beside the civil commotions, which have so long disturbed our peace, we are now engaged in hostilities with most bitter and implacable foreign enemies. / And although it may be thought, that the imputation of perfidy hath been by nations in general too freely fixed upon their formidable antagonists in war, yet surely the conduct of those, with whom we are contending, must ever receive this sentence from the impartial judgment of future ages. After having, twice within the present century, fomented and encouraged a rebellion in our island, in favour of a family most justly as well as legally excluded from the throne of these realms, and having supported and deserted that family, as it suited their own purposes; they have again, under the influence of the same detestable pol­ icy, directed their keenest arrows against the internal peace and prosperity of this empire; at a time, too, when they boast of most enlightened minds, and the utmost refinement of polished manners. / It should be remembered, however, that these accomplishments derived their merit, and were at first approved and admired, because they were supposed to represent a benevolent, friendly, and sympathizing heart. Better, surely, would it be, that the specious garb were wholly removed, than that it should be suffered to conceal so bright and amiable a principle; which is necessary to the produc­ tion of what humanity, philosophy, and religion ever dictated; an intercourse of kind, not malevolent offices; of real, not pretended affection, subsisting between the different nations of the earth.

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It is impossible not to lament, that there are so many obstacles to the effectual prevalence of this pacific sentiment, and not to be desirous of exerting ourselves to the utmost, in order to remove them. To this end, therefore, since we find that this state of / general peace (which all civilized countries respect in theory,) is often interrupted by God, as a means of punishment for general transgression, great endeavours toward reformation seem necessary from us, as well as from the neighbouring kingdom, tho’ not, perhaps, entirely of a similar kind. Amidst the universal censures upon our enemies, we are not to forget our own situation, or to be blind to our own failings; and neither the flagrancy of their public offences, nor the striking licentiousness of their manners, ought, in the smallest degree, to shake our belief in the supreme Governor of the world. These their iniquities do not at all lessen the probability of their being employed as instruments to hum­ ble us. The Babylonians, at the era of the jewish captivity, were inferior to the Jews in morality, and the most horrid and unparalleled crimes stain the roman annals, about the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. But as these events had been fore-told, / there can be no room for thinking, that they were not directed by the immediate hand of God. They evidently were so: to the Jews much had been given, and of them therefore the more was required. We too have had our peculiar blessings: an establishment in religion, most conformable to the true spirit of christianity; a constitution of government, the envy and admiration of the world; and, at the close of the last war, political and commercial advantages, superior, perhaps, to what any country ever enjoyed. But what have been the fruits of all these distinctions? We have condescended to learn vice and infidelity from that enemy, whose civil dominion we had so nobly withstood. Political affairs have exhibited a constant scene of dissension; and the extent of our eastern commerce hath furnished instances of the most cruel plunder and rapine abroad; of unexampled luxury and dissipation at home. / Is it, then, an argument of weakness or timidity to suppose, that our heav­ enly Father should visit us for the many perversions of his blessings; or a want of candour to impute the ‘evil that hath come upon us,’3 to the most flagrant abuses of our christian liberty? What he delights in, must be virtue, must be in some measure adapted to the purity and goodness of his nature. If our lives, then, are spent in such idle and unprofitable pursuits, as in no degree contribute to the furtherance of the objects, which he must ever have in view, can he approve our vanity? If our actions seem in many respects to militate against his heavenly purposes, and those powers of reasoning, which ought to be employed in pro­ moting his glory, are perverted to vilify and debase it, must he not condemn our presumption? And can we, under these circumstances, urge any well grounded pretensions to his favour; to the favour of that providence which is ‘our shield and / buckler,’ and ‘teacheth us to live in peace,’ of that providence, which is

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alone able, upon just and necessary occasions, to lead us forth with success to battle; which ‘maketh our hands to war, and our fingers to fight?’4 Let us, then, consider these things with that seriousness which their impor­ tance demands. The formidable confederacy now armed against us, seems to have made a deep impression upon our minds: God grant that the soil, thus far prepared for cultivation, may receive the good and true seed, and bring forth an increase worthy of it! And if any events, favourable to our cause, should give us confidence, in opposing our temporal enemies; may they operate also upon us with the same tendency, in resisting the powerful influence of vice! So that we may ever manifest the good effects of this awful admonition, by being grateful / to our God, just to our neighbour, and faithful to our country. Neither our duty to our country, nor to our neighbour, can ever be truly discharged, unless built upon a due sense of our duty to God. Private friendship, or the love of individuals, it is said by writers upon that subject, can only be genuine, when founded on virtue, and regarding virtue as its object: public friendship too, or the love of the community, can only be truly displayed upon the same principles. It is, therefore, a most fatal error to allow ourselves to be actuated by motives in our public, which we should reject with disdain in our private conduct. ‘Can the Ethiopian change his skin?’ Can vice cease to be vice? Can corrupt and self-interrested motives of action ever properly assume the merit due to honest intentions? / In whatever sphere of life we act, if we lose that awful sense of God and of our dependence upon him, in which the essence of the religious character con­ sists, we shall soon find a want of support. We shall ‘reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man;’5 whilst ‘they, that trust in the Lord, shall be as Mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever.’6 Whether, therefore, we regard our public or private conduct, our political or personal safety, the advice of Solo­ mon always presents itself to us, pertinent and adapted: ‘Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not to thine own under­ standing. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.’7

FINIS.

[TUCKER], DISPASSIONATE THOUGHTS ON

THE AMERICAN WAR

[ Josiah Tucker], Dispassionate Thoughts on the American War: Addressed to the Mod­ erate of all Parties (London: J. Wilkie, 1780).

Josiah Tucker was born in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, in December 1713 and educated at St John’s College, Oxford, BA (1736), MA (1739) and DD (1755). He moved to Bristol where, a protégé of Bishop Joseph Butler, he became curate of St Stephen’s in 1737 and vicar in 1750, a canon of Bristol Cathedral in 1742, and dean of Gloucester Cathedral in 1758, under which title he published his Dispassionate Thoughts on the American War. Tucker first wrote about the Amer­ ican colonies in the third edition (1753) of his economic treatise, A Brief Essay on the Advantages and Disadvantages, which respectively Attend France and Great Britain (London, 1749), recommending bounties on production of various raw materials and lower customs duties to discourage smuggling. He had opposed the French and Indian War and British-American territorial expansion as costly ways of encouraging colonial economic and political autonomy in letters to newspapers (as ‘Cassandra’) and friends, though he only published these views with The Case of Going to War for the Sake of Procuring, Enlarging or Securing of Trade, Considered in a New Light (London: R. & J. Dodsley, 1763). In A Letter from a Merchant in London to his Nephew in North America (1766),1 Tucker pos­ ited three possible futures for Britain and the colonies: British enforcement of its authority; procrastination; or American independence. He argued that the first was impracticable, the second would only postpone inevitable independence, and he appeared therefore to advocate the third. Yet he revealed ambiguous feel­ ings by listing predicted catastrophic consequences for independent American states. He moved more decisively in favour of separation in Four Tracts with Two Sermons (London: J. Rivington, 1774), The Respective Pleas and Arguments of the Mother Country and her Colonies (London: T. Cadell, 1775), A Letter to Edmund Burke (London: T. Cadell, 1775) and A Series of Answers to Certain Popular Objections Against Separating from the Rebellious Colonies (London: – 101 –

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T. Cadell, 1776), and summarized his arguments in the midst of war, and after Saratoga, in his Dispassionate Thoughts on the American War. As Tucker began, after Saratoga and with France and Spain joining the Amer­ ican War for Independence, it ‘seems to be allowed on all Hands, that the present Crisis of public Affairs, is most dangerous and alarming’ (below, p. 105). Calling for a reasoned debate, in contrast to his own tone in A Letter from a Merchant in London, and for no apportionment of blame to ministers for the state of affairs, he nevertheless takes a radical stance. His point is pretty simple: ‘Great as have been our Efforts, they have been all exerted, with respect to America, without Effect’ and there was no prospect of ‘better Success, against the united Forces of France, Spain, and America, than we have hitherto obtained, when contending with America alone’ (below, p. 106). He therefore asks, does not the Expedience of some Change in our Scheme of conducting the War, natu­ rally occur to every dispassionate Man…? And what Change so easy and practicable, and at the same Time so likely to produce favourable Effects, as an immediate and total Desertion of the American Contest? (below, pp. 106–7)

He then argues for the futility, if not impossibility, of subjugating America by force, before listing the advantages of abandoning the effort. First would be the defeat of the Bourbon powers, then Britain could exert ‘Superiority at Sea; recover our West India Islands; relieve Gibraltar; carry our Arms into the Dominions of our Enemies; and refund ourselves’ for the efforts (below, p. 109). Then there would be ‘advantageous Treaties of Amity and Commerce, with the American States’ and ‘without the Trouble and Expence of interfering in the Government of such heterogeneous Bodies, such various and jarring Interests, at the Distance of so many Thousand Miles’ (below, p. 109). Many more would accept Tucker’s realism the following year, after the Yorktown surrender. Tucker expanded on some of these themes in Cui bono? (London: T. Cadell, 1781), predicting a Franco-American victory in the War of Independence, fol­ lowed by a break-up of their alliance, huge trade benefits for Britain and the destruction of France. Some of his later works were more philosophical, includ­ ing The Notions of Mr. Locke and his Followers (n.p., 1778) and A Treatise Concerning Civil Government (London: T. Cadell 1781), which attacked natu­ ral rights theory, argued for the divine origins of civil society and government, and alleged a republican plot to revolutionize British politics with catastrophic consequences. Ageing and increasingly frail, his productivity declined notably in his later years, though he still volubly supported Anglo-Irish union. Tucker died on 4 November 1799 and was interred in Gloucester Cathedral, which he had done much to restore.2 Notes: 1. Reproduced in Volume 5 of this edition, pp. 147–74. 2. R. T. Cornish, ‘Tucker, Josiah (1713–1799) economist and political writer’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 55, pp. 497–500.

Dispassionate Thoughts ON THE

AMERICAN WAR: ADDRESSED TO THE

MODERATE of ALL PARTIES.

In the Multitude of Counsellors there is Safety. Solomon.1

LONDON. Printed for J. Wilkie, No. 71, St. Paul’s

Church-Yard.

MDCCLXXX. /

Dispassionate Thoughts

ON THE

AMERICAN WAR. It seems to be allowed on all Hands, that the present Crisis of public Affairs, is most dangerous and alarming. It must therefore be highly important, to con­ sider the Nature and Propriety of the Measures of Administration; to weigh the Fitness and Expedience of such Plans as have been already pursued; in order to determine, whether it be right to persist in the Prosecution of them, or to adopt others. Under such Circumstances it cannot be / culpable in any Individual, to throw out his Sentiments on Subjects in which all are interested. The general Welfare should be dear to every good Citizen; nor does he deserve that Charac­ ter, who on any Occasion withholds from his Country, such Assistance as it may be in his Power to afford. It cannot indeed become any one Man, however emi­ nent his Station, insolently to dictate to his Governors, on the Articles of their Conduct; but with Temper, Decency, and Decorum, to offer them Hints, and to submit Opinions to their View and Discussion, can never be improper; and, in Times like the present, must be a Duty highly incumbent and commendable. The Writer of the following Pages, professes himself of no Party; he disdains the Idea of Bigotry, in Behalf of any Set of Men whatever; he owes no particular Service, either to those in Power, or those in / Opposition; he aspires to the Character of an independent Man, a Friend to his Country, warmly attached to it’s Interests, and devoted to the Constitution, as fixed at the Revolution; on the full Conviction of his Reason and Conscience, that (notwithstanding all it’s Imperfections, both in System and Execution) there is no better at present sub­ sisting: And that to be a Subject of Great Britain, with all it’s Consequences, (notwithstanding our Complaints) is to be the freest Subject of any civil Com­ munity, any where to be found on Earth. Having premised the above, and given the Reader all the Information respecting the Writer, which it is necessary for him to receive, he advances, with becoming Deference to the Judgment of others, to offer his Opinions on some Articles of national Concern and Importance: He wishes to submit his Sentiments to all, without giving Offence to any; and would be understood, / to revere the personal Characters and private Merits of many, whose political Maxims and Conduct he cannot, at the same Time, but disclaim and reprobate. – 105 –

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The original Cause of the War in which we are engaged with the House of Bourbon, was our Squabble with the American Colonies; had we continued on Terms with them, it is probable, no Contention would at this Time have prevailed, between ourselves and the Courts of France and Spain. Those who judge only from Events, or view them through the fallacious Medium of Party, unanimously condemn the Minister for the American War, and the various Evils which have ensued; and it is curious to observe the very Men, who acquiesced at first in framing the Stamp Act, and afterwards in repealing it, vehement by Turns in their Censure on both Measures. In the Opinion of some, / the former was the Source of all our Misfortunes; while others affirm as confidently, that they origi­ nate in the latter. I mean not to go so deep into the Argument, as to consider the Equity or Expedience of either Step; but I cannot help hinting it, as my Idea on this Matter, that could Administration have carried the Point proposed, a very great Majority of those, who now reproach them, would have applauded their Conduct; and could a Revenue have been obtained from the Colonies, of such an Amount, as to have eased the Inhabitants of this Country, but few would have appeared among them unsatisfied or discontented; and we should have heard but little of Tyranny, Injustice, and Oppression. – But the Event has proved unfor­ tunate; Ministers have been unsuccessful; and we have not only failed in that Article, on Account of which we at first armed; but after an amazing Expence of Blood and Treasure, we find ourselves involved in / more dangerous Circum­ stances, than when Hostilities commenced. Great as have been our Efforts, they have been all exerted, with respect to America, without Effect; and though it be confessed, our Resources are still considerable, it yet seems difficult to recon­ cile, to any Principle of Reason, Policy, or Experience on similar Occasions, any Expectation of better Success, against the united Forces of France, Spain, and America, than we have hitherto obtained, when contending with America alone. – And though it must indeed be granted, that our revolted Colonies derived, from the very first of their Opposition, much Assistance from France, yet surely it cannot be supposed, that those secret, partial, and imperfect Succours, were equivalent to the full, open, and public Support, which that Power will now render them: to say nothing of the Aids they may likewise receive from Spain; who, besides favouring them under other Modes, / is, we are told, just opening her Coffers for their Relief. That our Situation is, upon the Whole, as above represented, there can be no Doubt. We are assured, by the most indisputable Authority, that a very formidable Confederacy is united against us; and it is acknowledged moreover by those who cannot but know, that we are at present without an Ally. – Now Things being thus, does not the Expedience of some Change in our Scheme of conducting the War, naturally occur to every dispassionate Man, who seriously adverts to the Subject? And what Change so easy and practicable, and at the

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same Time so likely to produce favourable Effects, as an immediate and total Desertion of the American Contest? The Pride of Man, I am aware, is not easily prevailed on, to renounce Sys­ tems, which have been long cherished, avowed, / and defended; and the sordid Attachments of private Interest may influence some, to reject a Proposal, which may clash with their Views of Gain, and put an End to their Prospects of Emolu­ ment. But though such Principles really exist in human Nature, I will not for a Moment imagine, that they operate more forcibly on one Set of Men than on another; and being of no Party myself, I will not join in Invectives against any. I will suppose Ministers honest and upright, that they really mean the Good of their Country, independent of all sinister Considerations; have the Interests both of Prince and People equally at Heart; and are disposed to adopt and pur­ sue, upon every Occasion, such Measures as may bid fairest, and promise best, to subserve these great and valuable Purposes. But, for the Sake of Argument, let it be granted, that we should be able, by the Efforts of another Campaign, the Expenditure / of more Millions of Money, and the Sacrifice of more Thousands of Men, to secure our Object, and succeed in our American Dispute: In short, that we should be able entirely to subjugate the Colonies; and oblige them to acknowledge, in all Cases, the Supremacy of the British Legislature. – Admitting all this, what shall we gain by our Success? And what will be the real Value and Amount of our Victory? – It would be well indeed, if we could answer this Inquiry, by saying, Nothing. – But the true Reply is, less and worse than Nothing; for we shall have conquered only a ruined People, an exhausted Country. – What Shadow of Benefit can accrue, from establishing a Right of Taxation over Bankrupts and Beggars? And how many Years must elapse, in the ordinary Course of Events, before these insolvent Colo­ nists would have it in their Power, to contribute towards any public Revenue? / Let it be observed again, that though we should at last, by Force of Arms, extort even unconditional Obedience from these ruined People, of whom we are treating, yet what unwilling Subjects would they in future prove; how untrac­ table in their Submission; how averse to every Instance of Subordination. And irritated by those Measures of Severity, which have occasionally been exercised among them, during the Progress of Hostilities; and that general Devastation, which must unavoidably and universally prevail in a Country which has been, for several Years, the Seat of War; is it not probable, nay is it not certain, that Discontents and Heart-burnings would long remain concealed in their Minds; be propagated from Father to Son, and frequently burst out in Tumults and Dis­ orders? And in consequence, would not a very formidable military and naval Force be absolutely requisite to secure that Obedience, the Acknowledgement / of which had been obtained by no other Means?

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Nor would the Expence attending the Support of our Government in America, be the only pecuniary Burden we should incur by this decisive Victory, which we are figuring to our Imaginations. The public Debts contracted by the different States, during their Opposition to us, must be discharged. Individu­ als, in one Way or other, must be indemnified for their Losses. The Towns and Villages must be rebuilt; and the Means of returning into the old Tract of Agri­ culture, Navigation, and Commerce, be provided to them. – And are we able to take a Load of this immense Weight on ourselves? The most accomplished Financier we can boast, might find it difficult, if not impossible, to furnish such Supplies, in Addition to all our other indispensable Demands. / However, allowing Expedients could be found, for raising all the Millions such Services would require, must not every Advantage, which our most san­ guine Expectations could promise us from the Americans, must they not be ever precarious, and at longest, but of short Duration? For, as the Scripture (the best Mirror of Men and Manners extant) admirably remarks, Offences will come. Matters of Disgust will arise, and on every Occasion of Dissatisfaction and Jeal­ ousy, the French (the general Incendiaries of the World) will be always ready to blow the Coals of Sedition, to widen the Breach, to encourage and assist the Malecontents; and, in a Word, to act over again the base and perfidious Part they have lately played. But though no such restless ambitious Power, as that of France existed, in Half a Century probably, the Colonies might be able to rise again to Inde­ pendence, by the / Force of their own natural Resources, without any foreign Assistance, in Spite of all our utmost Endeavours to the contrary: For, agreeable to the general Revolution of human Occurrences, Independent they one Day unquestionably will be: And though our Opposition to their present Claims, must indeed very considerably have retarded their Career, in the Attainment of that Figure and Importance, among the Nations of the World which they wish to establish; yet we have only retarded it. – Happy will it be, if we have not, in the same Proportion, accelerated our own Distress and Degradation. Having thus in vain, sought for Advantages, as the Reward and Recompense of our supposed Conquest over America, let us now contrast the Representa­ tion; and image to ourselves the Effects which, in all Probability, would directly succeed our abandoning this ill-fated Contention. / By leaving the Colonies to themselves, and renouncing all Connection with them as Subjects, we should save, not only every Expence which arises from the Prosecution of the War with them, but we shall be delivered likewise from every Charge which may accrue, by maintaining a Government among them, civil, military, and religious; supposing we should prove in the End victorious: and may devote the Sums demanded for such Purposes, to other Services far more valuable and beneficial. – We shall besides, immediately have the Assistance of

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our Forces, both Land and Sea, in carrying on the Contest with the French and Spaniards; and such very considerable Energy and Spirit, would this Addition of military and naval Strength afford to our national Exertions, that we should be enabled in the ensuing Spring, to change the whole Conduct of the War, which has hitherto been only defensive, into a vigorous and offensive Opposition; might again acquire / and retain a Superiority at Sea; recover our West India Islands; relieve Gibraltar; carry our Arms into the Dominions of our Enemies; and refund ourselves, a Part at least, of that Treasure, which their Baseness and Perfidy have obliged us to expend. Nor is there any Thing visionary or romantic in these Ideas. The most brilliant Successes may be expected, from the Zeal and Courage of our Country­ men, when united in their Endeavours against a common Enemy. And though we allow there are many Circumstances to alarm our Apprehensions, and urge us to Dispatch and Vigour in our Exertions, yet we deny that there are any which should induce us to despair. The French and Spaniards are the antient Disturbers of our Peace; we have often chastised their Insolence; and if our whole Strength is directed against them, we are still able to vindicate our Rights; / and do ourselves Justice on those malignant Powers, whose restless Ambition and encroaching Spirit, have encouraged them again, without Provocation, to insult and injure us. Nor can it in the least be doubted, but that in a certain Space of Time, Opportunities would offer, for forming advantageous Treaties of Amity and Commerce, with the American States. A short Experience of the Tyranny and Treachery of their new Allies, will convince them of their Mistake, in throw­ ing off our Yoke; and as their present Demagogues proceed in developing their long concerted Plans of private Ambition and family Aggrandizement, the Eyes of the People will be gradually opened, to a full View of their Duty and their Interest; and they will see how truly they may consult both, by cultivating a last­ ing and solid Friendship with Great Britain. Prejudices, though now violent, / may by Degrees wear out. The Endearments of original Ancestry, and still later Connections; the Arguments of Language, Religion, and similar Manners, will all operate in our Favour; and provided they can be furnished with the Manufac­ tures they may want, on the same Terms by us, as they can be supplied by other Countries, they will naturally give us the Preference. Trade, in some Sort, will return into it’s accustomed Channel again; and if we are not more than ordinar­ ily deficient in conducting ourselves towards them, according to the established Maxims of good Faith and found Policy, we shall be almost sure to reap every substantial Benefit, which their Friendship and Alliance are capable of yielding; without the Trouble and Expence of interfering in the Government of such het­ erogeneous Bodies, such various and jarring Interests, at the Distance of so many Thousand Miles. /

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But, says the zealous Advocate for the civil War, give up America, and you lose the West Indies. I cannot allow any such Consequence from such Premises. Our Possessions in the West Indies depend on the Strength of our Navy alone. Whenever our Enemies can maintain a decided Superiority over us at Sea, our Struggles elsewhere are all in vain; our Empire, in every Quarter of the Globe, will be totally dismembered; and at last, the Independence of this Island itself will be lost. It is argued besides, and with rather more Appearance of Truth, that the American Fisheries have proved a Nursery for Seamen, and that without their Assistance, we shall be incapable of furnishing our Fleets with hardy and expe­ rienced Sailors. But the Evil here stated is not, in Fact, of such Magnitude as is represented. By adequate Bounties, humane Treatment on Shipboard, a more equitable Division of / Prize-Money, a vigorous Impress of all those, without Exception, who have really no honest Means of Subsistence, and such other Expedients as the Wisdom of Government, on particular Emergencies, may sug­ gest, a sufficient Proportion of able Seamen may at all Times be obtained and secured: And if the greater Part of those numerous Land Forces, which have been in Arms in this Island for the last Twelve Months, had been destined for the Sea Service, instead of internal Defence, they would have afforded ample Supplies for our Navy; immense Sums would have been saved, both to the Public and Individuals; and the most important national Advantages might have been effected by them. But to answer at once, in a few plain Words, every Objection which can be urged against our abandoning the American War. – Is it possible to carry it on? Have we not already tried every Method in our / Power, and exerted every Nerve of national Strength, in order to succeed? And what has been the Event? Misfor­ tune, Defeat, and Disgrace. The Truth is, Impossibilities cannot be performed. Humiliating as is the Fact, it cannot be controverted; circumstanced as we now are, we are unequal to the Reduction of the Colonies. We must submit therefore to the Necessity of Things; and give up a Contest in which we have already been too long engaged, and which we are altogether incapable of supporting; which affords no Ray of Hope to cheer our Progress, or encourage our Perseverance; and which, if persisted in, must produce still farther Distresses, and terminate at last in Ruin. But unfortunate as is our present Situation, with respect to the American Colonies, there is yet, however, nothing to amaze the Philosopher or Politician. Where is the Wonder that the Americans should / forget their Obligations to the Mother Country, and revolt against her Authority, when they need no farther Protection? Or that we should be too weak to bring them back to Sub­ mission and Dependence?

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If a Spirit of national Pride and Vanity, would permit us to reason calmly on these Subjects; if it would suffer us farther, dispassionately to turn over a few Pages of authentic History, either antient or modern, we should see, that Colo­ nies while in their infant State, are always humble and modest; and while their very Existence results from, and every Hope is cherished by, the fostering Care of the Mother Country, make suitable Returns of Gratitude, Duty, and Affec­ tion. But as they rise in Strength, and approach Maturity, they become proud and insolent; impatient even of the most equitable Restraints, and incessantly aiming at Emancipation. – And this is but a Picture of what every Day passes in natural Life, / where the Connection is much stronger and more endearing. The Child, advanced to Man’s Estate, and in Possession of the Means of Sub­ sistence, withdraws from the Authority of his Parent; and though he may not formally renounce his Obedience, yet virtually and in fact, disclaims it; and too often refuses, to the Author of his Being, and the Guardian of his Minority, that Attention and Regard, which every Principle of Justice and Affection exacts in return. – The Stamp-Act, therefore, only hastened that Struggle which might otherwise have been deferred a short Time longer; but must assuredly have taken Place before the Expiration of many Years. Nor is it in the least surprising, that a Country circumstanced like Amer­ ica, should so soon have acquired so formidable a Share of Power. It’s natural Advantages of Climate, Soil, Extent of Territory, both of Land and Water, are all favourable to / Agriculture, Trade, and Population; and a Spirit of Industry, a Thirst of Gain, and an ardent Desire of that very Independence which has at length been set up, have led the Colonists to improve, with unremitting Applica­ tion, all those Means, which Nature has thrown into their Hands. And thus the wise Oeconomy of Providence diffuses Blessings, in Succes­ sion, to all the different Quarters of the Creation. – Learning, Arts and Sciences, Religion, Government, Riches, and Power, have all been progressive since the Appearance of the present System; and there is nothing chimerical in the Hypothesis to suppose, that in a certain Period, the American Continent will be the principal Seat of all these valuable Possessions; and make a most distin­ guished Figure among the Nations of the Earth, and in the History of the World; while the European States are sinking into Weakness, Poverty, and Contempt. / Let us then, no longer resist what appears the established Order of Provi­ dence, in the Distribution of Empire among Mankind. We have made our utmost Exertions, to recover and secure our lost Dominions, and they have all proved ineffectual. The most prejudiced therefore, must surely be convinced of the Expedience, nay of the Necessity, of renouncing the Contest. The wisest and the best Men may occasionally be mistaken, nor is the smallest Share of Guilt absolutely included, in the Idea of Disappointment and Miscarriage. But they will scarce be able to maintain their Pretensions, either to Wisdom or Virtue,

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who obstinately persist in Error, and persevere in a Tract, which leads not only to Distress, but Destruction. Withdraw then from America, without Delay, every Ship and every Man employed in our Service there; and leave the ungrateful Inhabitants to all the Consequences / of their Defection from us:– in full Reliance, as we have proved before, that, every Thing considered, we shall one Day reap more solid Advan­ tages from their present State of Independence of us, than we can now possibly acquire, should they return to Duty and Submission. And we shall find it sufficient Employment for us, (weakened as we are by past Efforts, and surrounded as we are by increasing Difficulties) to contend with the whole Strength and Vigour of the House of Bourbon; and it will be Honour sufficient for us, to prove ourselves superior to their Arms. An Event which can­ not fail taking Place, when we have only these Enemies to combat. The War once narrowed to this single Point, Unanimity at home must succeed. Opposition, both within Doors and without, must cease. Every real Patriot would zealously contribute his best Support to Government; and none but the / factious and seditious, Traitors to their Country, and Enemies to the Interests of Society, would oppose an Administration, whose grand Aim and Study was humbling our natural Enemies, in order to procure a lasting and honourable Peace. Let all Descriptions of Men among us be persuaded then, to forbear those ill-tempered Contentions, and illiberal Invectives against each other, in which they have so particularly and unjustifiably indulged themselves, since the Com­ mencement of the present War. Men may surely differ in Sentiment without a Quarrel; and contrary Ideas may be entertained and defended, without violat­ ing every Principle of Decency and Decorum. Ministers may be unfortunate, and not be criminal; and it is much easier to point out and aggravate Mistakes, than either to prevent or redress them. The most correct Oeconomist among our Murmurers, if he looks steadily into himself, / and his own Conduct, may find some Irregularities, even in his private Arrangements; in the Management of himself, his Family, his Dependents; and from that Consideration should learn to make Allowances for Errors or Omissions in those, whose Engagements are so much more various, extensive, and complicated; who must often act upon the Information of others; and resolve, in many Cases, without that full Evidence, which they would wish to acquire, but find it impossible to obtain. It should be remembered again, that the best concerted Schemes may miscarry, in conse­ quence of Accidents which could not be guarded against; that no human Being can be answerable for Events, since they ultimately depend on a superior Power. Those besides, who have heretofore held Offices in the highest Departments of the State, are particularly bound to recollect the Difficulties which attend the proper Discharge of them; and the Candour and Forbearance / which they thought their own Due, while they possessed them: They know too from Expe­

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rience, how impossible it is to give universal Satisfaction, upon all Occasions, to every Individual, in a Community where, as every Man is interested, so he claims a Right to censure and condemn; whether in Possession or not of that neces­ sary previous Knowledge of Circumstances, Motives, and Principles, on which alone a just Determination can be founded. And it is evident to all, how injuri­ ous it must be to the public Business, to have Ministers perpetually called off from the important Duties of their Stations, to mere Self-Defence; to vindicate themselves from Accusations which, perhaps, have no Shadow of Support; and to answer to Charges, originating possibly only in Suspicion, Pique, and Malevo­ lence. Ministers, on the other Hand, would do better, if they did not so indis­ criminately include, in one general Sentence of Disaffection / towards the King and his Family, every Man who happens to disapprove their Conduct. Those who are at all conversant in the History of parliamentary Proceedings, cannot but recollect the Names of almost all our present Governors, in one Period or other, in opposition to Court Measures; and it is much to their Honour, that they voted against Schemes which they thought exceptionable: But they would certainly feel very sensibly the Injustice of being charged in those Instances, with Disloyalty to the Prince then on the Throne, or the Succession in his House. In short, Facts and Experience every Day teach us, that we cannot see Things as we would. Our Minds are differently constructed, nor all of equal Dimensions. Nor is Merit of any Kind confined to a single Party; since as there are, no ques­ tion, faithful Servants of the Public among the Members of Administration; so it is as certain, there are disinterested Patriots in the Minority. And as / it is weak and unjust, to suspect the Servants of the Crown, of any fixed Purpose or concerted Plan, to violate our essential Rights, or destroy a Constitution, in the Fate and Fortune of which all their own most valuable Interests are involved; so it is equally ill founded and ungenerous, to imagine the Leaders of Opposi­ tion confederate in any such Design. And it is but a just Tribute to Truth and Impartiality to allow, that there are among those, who disapprove some certain ministerial Measures, (and particularly those relating to the American War) as respectable Characters as this Country can produce; as considerable in point of Abilities, as independent in Principle; as opulent with regard to Fortune, as any among the Court Favourites: Nor have any stood forth on public Emergencies, in Behalf of the reigning Family, and the Liberties of the People, with more Zeal and Intrepidity, than have some of them, and their Ancestors before them. / Since then it cannot be questioned, but that both Ministry and Opposi­ tion mean equally well to their Country, and are alike interested in it’s Welfare, be prevailed on, my Lords and Gentlemen, in both Houses, to concur in pur­ suing the only Means, which in the present truly alarming Conjuncture, seem adequate to the Salvation of it, the Renunciation of the American War, and a

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vigorous Prosecution of our Arms, by naval Exertions, against France and Spain. Dispassionately advert to the fatal Effects which must necessarily follow, from Party Divisions and political Animosities; and be induced from thence, to ban­ ish from among you, every Suggestion of Discord and Dissension; and, animated by the noblest Principles of genuine Patriotism, sacrifice every private Resent­ ment and sinister Consideration, to the public Good, and the Chastizement of the common Enemy. Let the Dangers with which we are threatened, influence you to Unanimity and Concord: / Let there be no Contention henceforward among you, but who shall be most eminently useful; most strenuously support the Honour of the Crown, and the Rights of the Subject; and most successfully defeat and counteract the mischievous Designs of the House of Bourbon.

FINIS.

[WILLIAMS], A PLAN OF ASSOCIATION

[David Williams], A Plan of Association, on Constitutional Principles, for the Par­ ishes, Tithings, Hundreds, and Counties of Great Britain; By which the Outrages of Mobs, and the Necessity of a Military Government will be Prevented, and the English Constitution in a Great Measure Restored. In Three Letters to a Member of Parliament (London: G. Kearsly, 1780).

David Williams, unlike Beilby Porteus and James Cornwallis, believed Brit­ ain’s problems were entirely man-made. Williams was baptized on 9 December 1738 at Waunwaelod, Glamorgan. He promised his dying father in 1752 that he would attend the dissenting Carmarthen Academy, from which he graduated in 1758, and became Presbyterian minister at Frome, Somerset and then Exeter, where he adopted the non-sectarian liturgy of the Octagon Chapel of Liverpool. After some scandalous womanizing, in 1769 he became a tutor and minister in Highgate, London, but left the clergy in 1773, unable any longer to countenance organized religion. He published The Philosopher in 1771, advocating freedom of conscience and deism in dialogues between a philosopher (himself ), a cour­ tier, a Whig, a Presbyterian and an Anglican. He further advanced these causes in Essays on Public Worship (London: T. Payne; E. & C. Dilly; G. Kearsly; & P. Elmsley, 1773), Sermons, Chiefly upon Religious Hypocrisy (London: T. Payne; E. & C. Dilly; G. Kearsly; & P. Elmsley, 1774), Liturgy on the Universal Principles of Religion and Morality (London: for the author, 1776) and other publications. With Benjamin Franklin and others he formed the deist Club of Thirteen or Wednesdays Club. He also published radical educational writings. His more political writings included Unanimity in All Parts of the British Commonwealth (London: Davis, Elmsley, Kearsley, & Dilly, 1778), attacking French involve­ ment in the War of Independence. A Plan of Association was largely a response to the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780, but reflected as well a more general state of anxiety arising out of the American conflict. The first of the three letters comprising A Plan of Association describes ‘The general Causes of the late Outrages, by the Protestant Association’ (below, p. 117). It praises the motivations behind the 1778 Papists Act, that lifted some legal dis­ abilities against Catholics who swore loyalty to George III and abjured Stuart and – 115 –

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Papal claims to temporal authority in Britain, as an ‘honour to humanity’ (below, p. 120). It also attacks the Protestant Association and Gordon rioters as a violent mob assembled ‘with a tumultuous impetuosity’ (below, p. 121). Williams also places the Gordon riots in a more general context, stating early on that we had no sooner formed an enormous empire, than it fell to pieces by the weight of its discordant parts. Our utmost efforts have been exerted to re-unite those parts; and the whole attention of the nation has been fixed on this single, and in all probability, unattainable object. (below, pp. 117–20)

He also notes that ‘There are reasons to think, that these circumstances had suggested to the French and Americans a plan of destroying London … when the fleets and, perhaps, armies of the house of Bourbon appeared on our coasts’, although ‘This is not the only instance in which the Americans have found their allies tardy; and we perhaps may owe the disappointment of their views, to the villainy of the Protestant Association’ (below, p. 125). Williams was concerned above all that ‘a succession of events’ showed that the provisions of civil government, for internal security and happiness, should have been disused and neglected; and that a people who abhor a standing army, and to whose Constitution of Government it is unnecessary, injurious, and even fatal, should owe their preservation and safety to that army. (below, p. 120)

The second letter thus outlines the plan of association comprising civil militia in every tithing, hundred and county of Britain to obviate the need for a standing army as a domestic police force. The final letter answers objections, stating that such a civil militia would be easy to create and that regular soldiers necessarily became ‘slaves’ with no role or rights as citizens. Williams’s famous Letters on Political Liberty (London: T. Evans, 1782) defended the Americans and called for various political reforms, including fran­ chise extension and redefining MPs as delegates rather than representatives of the people. From 1783 he published a reformist occasional paper, Friend of the People, and other political as well as religious tracts. However, an early and active supporter of the French Revolution, he eventually became disillusioned by its violence and his radicalism thereafter was somewhat tempered. He later wrote Regulations of Parochial Police (London, 1797), advising how citizens could counter an expected French invasion and uprisings at home. His final publica­ tion was Preparatory Studies for Political Reformers (London: C. & R. Baldwin, 1810), which warned against rapid change. He died in London on 29 June 1816. He is also remembered for co-founding in 1788 the (now Royal) Literary Fund which still supports impoverished writers today.1 Notes: 1

D. W. Davies, ‘Williams, David (1738–1816), political and religious theorist and founder of the Literary Fund’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 59, pp. 154–9.

A

PLAN

OF

ASSOCIATION,

ON

CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES, FOR THE PARISHES, TITHINGS, HUNDREDS, AND COUNTIES

OF

GREAT BRITAIN;

BY WHICH THE OUTRAGES OF MOBS, AND THE NECESSITY OF A

MILITARY GOVERNMENT

WILL BE PREVENTED, AND THE

ENGLISH CONSTITUTION IN A GREAT MEASURE RESTORED.

IN

THREE LETTERS

TO A

MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT. The First containing – The general Causes of the late Outrages, by the Protestant Association;1 and Remarks on the Discoveries supposed to have been made by them. The Second – The Plan of Association. The Third – Objections to the Plan – The necessity of adopting it; or some Plan of a similar nature. INTER SE CONGRUUNT, PRÆCEPTA & EXPERIMENTA.

Quint.2

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR G. KEARSLY, No. 46, FLEET-STREET,

MDCCLXXX /

A

PLAN

OF

ASSOCIATION, &c. LETTER I. Vagus primum & incertus Rumor, mox, at in magnis mendaciis, interfuisse se quidam & vidisse affirmabant. Tac.3

SIR, You have assigned me a very difficult task, that of explaining the causes of the late Tumults and Outrages, and giving you a concise and clear account of them. If I were to assign a general cause, it would be the following – That the Administration of Government in England, / for many years, has been misem­ ployed, and its attention directed to distant and unimportant objects; while those provisions, customs, institutions, and laws, which our ancestors had left for our security, and which are sometimes called our Constitution, have been suffered to languish and die. The convulsions which brought on the Revolution, and introduced the Han­ over family, did not subside into unanimity, but created a necessity of adopting a partial and contracted mode of Administration, whose object was the security of Government, rather than the happiness of the people. The mild hand with which measures were pursued, rendered their inconveniences almost imperceptible; and a concurrence of fortunate circumstances in commerce, having enriched us, the provisions which had been made for particular purposes, were directed / to those of ambition and conquest; and for a few years we had the vain and useless glory of giving law to Europe. But these things, being bestowed by fortune, who generally omits to put up the most important blessing among her gifts, wisdom to preserve, or talents to make use of them; – we had no sooner formed an enormous empire, than it fell to pieces by the weight of its discordant parts. Our utmost efforts have been

– 119 –

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exerted to re-unite those parts; and the whole attention of the nation has been fixed on this single, and in all probability, unattainable object. In a succession of events, so important, so interesting, and so rapid, it will not seem wonderful, that the provisions of civil government, for internal secu­ rity and happiness, should have been disused / and neglected; and that a people who abhor a standing army, and to whose Constitution of Government it is unnecessary, injurious, and even fatal, should owe their preservation and safety to that army. This, Sir, is the general cause. How far its effects may have been acceler­ ated by the views and measures of parties, or of individuals, is an inquiry of little importance; and which, perhaps, no man can make without sacrificing truth to his partialities and passions. Though invidious comparisons have been made between this period, and that which preceded the Civil War, and the death of Charles the First; though a faint and distant similitude of effects have been attributed to causes exactly simi­ lar – I am inclined to believe, that Administration was actuated by views above / those of party, in their perfect acquiescence and consent to the lenient measures taken in regard to the Roman Catholics. Though calumny has ranged through the utmost extent of our language, to obtain epithets of reproach and infamy to be applied to Gentlemen in Opposi­ tion, I am convinced, that in obtaining the act of the 18th Geo. III. chap. 60,4 their motives do honour to humanity. And that the measure had no ingredient of party spirit in it, is clearly evident from an omission, in all cases impolitic, and which they had never been guilty of where Administration was concerned – I mean that of attempting to render their Constituents parties, and explaining the motives on which they proceeded. That it is the part of truth and wisdom / to tolerate error and folly, in order to ascertain their nature, and remedy them, is a proposition as clearly demon­ strable, as any in nature. The imaginary dangers to the former from the latter, are the suggestions of folly or of Atheism. That an unlimited toleration of opinions may be perilous to some institutions, may be true; for in that case reason would be tolerated, from whom the most alarming dangers are really to be apprehended; but error of every kind, in opinions, and the avowal of opinions, is strengthened and established by severity and persecution. Those Protestants who were not capable of reasoning in this manner, were gradually acquiescing in the truth under the evidence of facts; and a little trou­ ble taken to inform them by the friends of the Bill, much less than has been taken to pervert and inflame / them, would have quieted their minds. They saw, that notwithstanding the officious imprudence of a few bigotted and visionary priests, the great body of Roman Catholics were assimilating with the rest of his Majesty’s subjects, and gradually losing their religious prejudices, in habits of

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attachment to a mild and happy Government. The doctrine of visiting the sins of remote ancestors on all their posterity, would depopulate the earth; for there cannot be a human being whose life is not forfeited on that principle. The Bill was therefore obtained without sufficient precautions in regard to the people; and the outrages* occasioned in Scotland, by apprehensions / that the effects of it would be extended to that country, were treated with too much indifference and contempt. Indeed, the affectation of disregard to all religious opinions, and the artifice of paying occasional attention to the interests and passions created by them, are circumstances which do not add so much to the dignity and importance of our senators as they imagine. A profligate and unprincipled hypocrisy excites hatred and horror in the very persons on whom it is intended to impose; whereas a plain avowal of any opinions, and a conduct uniformly consistent with them, would always be excused, and generally be respected. You know I have in my eye, some of those wits, who expressed themselves so unguardedly, so foolishly, to the Committees of the established and / dissenting Clergy, who have so often of late had intercourses with them: almost every man in the kingdom was instantly made acquainted with their real characters and opinions, and the artifices they occasionally used, to cover and conceal them. This may be deemed very artful; but it is wretched policy: it is the reason, that every thing from Parliament respecting religion, is regarded by the People with suspicion and disrespect. Lord George Gordon, a young nobleman of good family, but of very small fortune; of an impetuous temper, and strong passions, with an under­ standing rather wild and uncultivated than weak; having received a tincture of religious enthusiasm at the breasts of a presbyterian nurse – saw, or imagined he saw, his road to glory in the proper management / of these circumstances. He had been a witness to what passed in Scotland; he believed that the experiment on Toleration would be as fatal to Government, as the attempt to introduce the Liturgy had been to Charles the First; that all Scotland would unite against the abettors of Popery; and that he, possibly, might be their leader. His disposition, his views, and his connections in Scotland, led him imme­ diately to those Scotch Presbyterians, and those Methodists in England, who are of the same intolerant complexion. These persons, assembled with a tumultuous impetuosity, chose him their President; and resolved on a Petition to Parliament, which they determined should be a law. In all these proceedings, both in England and Scotland, the people had felt / themselves free from any civil restraint or regulation, but in the commission of *

In February 1779, the Mob at Edinburgh committed violent outrages on the chapels and houses of the Roman Catholics.

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actual outrages; and they could not be expected to have any awe or apprehension of a Government, the powers of which were sunk into disuse. Lord George stated his measures, and avowed his intentions in Parlia­ ment. The apparent extravagance of his declarations, made in the abrupt and uncouth manner of a school-boy, generally produced a laugh, and was always treated with contempt. This, in all probability, irritated his passions into vindictiveness; and knowing he could put himself at the head of a multitude, he determined to awe and intimi­ date Parliament into a repeal of the Act in favour of the Roman Catholics. / This is the most favourable interpretation of his advertisements and con­ duct, previous to Friday the second of June, when twenty or thirty thousand men were assembled by him in St. George’s-Fields; arranged in four divisions; sent through different parts of the City to increase their numbers; and re-assem­ bled at the doors of the Senate. The general position was, That they had a right to what they asked. They therefore used violence on every member who would not engage to obey their commands. That such measures had been agreed upon, is very probable, from the instructions of Lord George, That the Mob should wait for information from him, and from the manner in which he frequently gave that information; and it cannot well be doubted, that there was an intention the people should / break into the Houses of Parliament, and either compel them into some humiliating and ridiculous action, or drive the members out. All his harangues were of an inflammatory nature; and his followers were on the point of breaking in, when Col. —* told him, that on the first appearance of one of the Rioters, he would plunge his sword into the bosom, not of the Rioter, but of Lord George. Not possessing the genuine spirit of martyrdom, he thought it prudent to advise the people to depart; testifying his reluctance, however, in granting Parliament the liberty of adjourning the business to Tuesday, and declaring it very possible, the house might be blown up by the time. After committing outrages on the Legislature, which would have dishon­ oured / a tribe of savages – the Associated Mob proceeded in character, and in defiance of laws held sacred throughout the world, destroyed the private chap­ els of the foreign embassadors, in Golden-Square and Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, and were prevented by the soldiers only from entering their houses. They employed themselves the two following days, with cool and rancorous deliberation, in the destruction of the Catholic chapel and houses in Moorfields, and the house of Sir George Savile. *

This fact is given merely on the authority of the newspapers. The Author was a witness to the general transactions of the Protestant Association, but was prevented by the crowd from getting into the gallery of the House of Commons.

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On Tuesday the sixth, they assembled near the Houses of Parliament, with less order than on the preceding Friday; and would, probably, have put many of the members to death, if the soldiers had not attended and rescued them. Being offended by one of the Magistrates, they sent a detachment to destroy his house, and burn his furniture. / And when Parliament broke up, and Lord George informed them, That the consideration of their Petition was put off, until the tumults subsided, a party of them took out his horses, and drew him in triumph through the City: some of the most decent and prudent, it is to be sup­ posed, betook themselves home; but the greater number sallied out in different directions for the purposes of mischief, and depredation. Several houses were in flames on that day, and in the evening Newgate was on fire. They received so little molestation in their measures, that they professed a design of reforming the State, and turned their views to the Ministers. They sent a deputation to the Prisons of the Fleet and King’s Bench, desired the prisoners might be discharged, for they had determined there should be no place of confinement in England; appointed the hour / on which they were to be consumed, and were punctual to their appointment. It was not perceived they had blended politics with their principles of reli­ gious cruelty and depredation, until they destroyed Lord Mansfield’s house; and declared in the public streets, their intention of paying off the National Debt, and being revenged on the Dutch by totally destroying the Bank of England. Then the military operations against them commenced: but with so much reluc­ tance and caution, that on Wednesday evening, all London appeared to be on fire; and a total dissolution of every thing like order and government seemed to be taking place. The whole town was illuminated by the command, probably, of chandlers / and glaziers boys; but every command from the streets was instantly obeyed. The flames rose in enormous columns from the King’s-Bench, Fleet-Prison, the large Warehouses of Mr. Langdale the distiller, the Toll-houses on Black-friars Bridge, and a great number of private houses. The Rioters patrolled the streets in parties, and laid every house, and almost every passenger under contribution. People were seen in all directions; some car­ rying off their own goods with a view of saving them, others with goods they had stolen: men and women lay in heaps, from a degree of intoxication which was mortal; the reports of fire arms from the soldiers, and the sight of desperadoes dropping down and dying with mingled rage and pain – all formed a scene of horror, / which it is to be hoped will not soon be forgotten. The exertions of Government by the military power, particularly at the Bank, and the sacrifice made of many of the Rioters, checked their fury, and dispersed them.

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When the terrors of men were removed, their eyes were opened on the nature of their situation: every man saw, in a country which boasts of its Civil Constitution; where personal security and liberty are said to be provided for in a better manner than in any other part of the world, that the first links and ties of that Constitution were broken; that every family was almost detached and unsupported; and that the slightest combination of villainy, might lay waste a neighbourhood, a town, or a district; or might overthrow / throw the state, unless prevented by a power, whose protection must be purchased at a price to which nothing on earth is an equivalent. It is on all sides confessed, that the administration of our civil government has fallen into disuse, and that the very nature of it is nearly forgotten. Timid wretches, called Englishmen, tremble at the rustling of the winds; and they bless providence for the quiet and safety they experience under military regulations, as sheep bleat their satisfaction in the inclosures of butchers, where they may escape the depredation of wolves. These are the discoveries which I hinted at, as having been made by the late outrages: and they are as important to this country as can well be imagined. They form an era in the history of / our Constitution, and the measures taken at this time, will determine our disputes on Liberty and Slavery. For if civil regulations are revived, and the Magistrates are rendered competent to provide for our secu­ rity, our Constitution will be restored. But if a dastardly terror, an effeminate indolence, induce us to commit the care of ourselves and families to an Army, under any appellation, or in any method of introducing it, whose assistance we have experienced in difficulties and dangers, at the remembrance of which we ought ever to blush – we then sink into the condition of our neighbours, with this only difference, that we shall be more effectually enslaved from the very nature* of our situation, and taste our misery in multiplied bitterness, while we have any recollection of our former situation. / When I mentioned discoveries, you probably expected I should point out to you the French or American agents, who have been supposed to have occasioned this tumult. I have shewn its general causes; I will just touch on these opinions. No stranger can be long in this country, without perceiving its total want of police; that persons of all descriptions and characters, crowd into any corner as they think proper; that the first Magistrate of the best civil Constitution in the world, sleeps under the protection of a soldier; a being degraded from the rank of citizen, and not even known or acknowledged in that Constitution; that youth and health commit themselves to rest under the care of age and infirmity; that villainy may assemble desperadoes in any numbers, without question or molestation; / and that the blackest crimes may be committed, and the most *

All Government perfectly despotic are bounded by deserts or by seas.

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mischievous devastations be widely spread, before a remedy (almost as hateful as the evil) can possibly be applied. There are reasons to think, that these circumstances had suggested to the French and Americans a plan of destroying London. But from the imper­ fect hints and circumstances I could collect, I should imagine the plan was to have taken effect, when the fleets and, perhaps, armies of the house of Bourbon appeared on our coasts. This is not the only instance in which the Americans have found their allies tardy; and we perhaps may owe the disappointment of their views, to the villainy of the Protestant Association. For there does not appear the slightest ground of suspicion, that there was any / connection between those who were to execute such a plan and the Protestant Association. Nay, we must have so much candor to the Association itself, and pay so much regard to the declarations of their Secretary, after the mischiefs have been com­ mitted, as to suppose it was not their intention to do all that has been done; that they meant merely to intimidate the Legislature, and to wreak their religious rancour on the Roman Catholics. When they had thrown open the prisons, their accession of force enlarged the views of the most active among them, and the saints were to inherit the earth.5 If any friends to France and America mingled with them, as there are reasons to suspect, it was done too late to have any great effect on their views or actions. / They were probably disappointed in having a project taken out of their hands, which at a more convenient season, might have been executed in an effectual manner. I have the honour to be, SIR, Your most obedient June 16, 1780 humble Servant. /

LETTER II. What is settled by custom, though it be not good, yet at least is fit; and those things which have long gone together, are as it were confederate within themselves, whereas new things piece not so well; but though they help by their utility, yet they trouble by their inconform­ ity. They are like strangers, more admired and less favoured. Bacon.6

SIR, The question you have proposed is a most important one – What can be done to restore our Constitution to its ancient vigor? But in order to confine my own as well as your attention to those particular objects which now interest the Public, I would state your meaning in the following words. – What are the provisions of the English Constitution / for personal and domestic security, and the preserva­ tion of order and peace? It is a maxim of established authority, that governments, to be perpetu­ ated, should be frequently brought back to their first principles. They are not to be reformed and changed on speculative plans, for the people are governed more by the authority of ancient customs, than by argument or reason. My busi­ ness therefore shall be, to examine a venerable building, whose principal pillars remain, though perhaps concealed by ivy, or mouldered by time; and whose minuter parts can be delineated only by a reference to those which form and support the whole. Indeed the structure itself was never perfectly completed. A rude plan was given by the Saxons, which the Danes nearly erased. The fine genius of Alfred / reared afterwards the general and essential parts of a structure, the idea of which has been impressed on the imagination and heart of every Englishman; and, it is to be hoped, will never be obliterated. To some persons it appears to be a vague idea, because the magnitude of an object, whose parts are so distant, broken, and deformed, make it difficult for them to comprehend its general symmetry and beauty. I ascribe the complete formation of those general outlines, by which we have ever defined the English Constitution to Alfred, on the authority of historians, who specify the particular regulations which rendered his government so happy as well as glorious; which have been in some degree preserved amidst violent and numerous revolutions; / to which every Englishman has an unconquerable par­ tiality; and the restoration of which secure our persons vigor and effect, would

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secure our persons and property, and preserve that peace and order which are so essential to the happiness of the community. Keeping in view those general, those beautiful outlines which were formed by the institutions of our early ancestors; over which the people sighed when broken and deformed by the Norman conquest, by the bloody contests of the Houses of Lancaster and York, by the tyranny of the house of Tudor, and the folly of that of Stuart; and an attention to which alone, rendered the revolution a blessing:– we must define an English citizen to be a free-man; who is to owe his protection, and the security of his family and property, to a civil government, / of which he is an essential member. You will observe, Sir, that I confine myself to one object, or one part of our Constitution, which provided for the safety of individuals, and the preserva­ tion of order by the following regulations, still existing in names and forms; the revival of which would be the most beneficial and popular act of Government which can well be imagined. The whole kingdom was, as it is now, divided into counties, hundreds, and tithings. Ten families were associated, their names entered, their occupations defined: the males in them from eighteen to fifty, or sixty years of age, pledged themselves for the security of the tithing; and to obey the summons / of the decennary or tithingman, on the least apprehension of danger. They were fur­ nished with such arms as the times afforded. The perfect knowledge which every neighbourhood had of its inhabitants; the concern which every man had in the security of every man; and the obliga­ tion which every decennary was under to be answerable for his tithing, either prevented all violations of peace and order, or corrected them at their first origin. All the decennaries or tithingmen were chosen by the people once a-year, and this is an essential circumstance in the institution. The ten tithingmen of every district called a hundred, because it contained / a hundred families, chose a person to preside over the hundred, to whom they made their appeals, and who had a power of calling them out – All these were amenable to the Earl or Count who governed the county; and he was amenable to the King, who either by the Earl or by the Sheriff, both of which were of his own appointment, could call out the whole force of a county, or of any number of counties, as the public exigencies required; while the internal peace and order of each district was provided for without his interference, and, in a manner, per­ fectly consistent with his general authority and influence. Nothing has ever been imagined more simple in its construction, or more effectual in the execution, than this part of the English Constitution. The / sev­ eral powers of it, which in most cases are in eternal discord, are here so happily blended, that the people are secure and free; the King’s power extends to every

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thing but mischief, and is in reality greater than can be obtained on any other plan. These regulations might be easily restored and rendered as effectual as ever. The prepossessions of the people are strongly in their favour; and, perhaps, no others can be contrived which will not set the body of the people at enmity with Government; which will perfectly allay their apprehensions and jealousies; will make them the ministers of their own security, while the power of the King reaches every individual of them, by a chain, every link of which is effectual, and will not interfere with the prerogative of the King in other departments / of the state, however the business of them may be administered. This is the moment of time in which these institutions may be restored. The people, sensible of their danger, and apprehensive of the consequences of employing troops to protect them, are associating in several parts of the metrop­ olis: but they seem totally at a loss how to construct those Associations. They are embarrassed with the shoals and quick-sands of laws. Every thing is so quiet, so regular, so void of trouble under the present regulations of military law; and their own attempts are so inconvenient and troublesome, that they will probably give up the care of themselves, consent to a military police, or something similar to it, and consign their security and liberty to a power, which is always benignant in its first approaches, and seldom / shews its fangs until it be too late to escape them. I have the honour to be, SIR, Your much obliged, and June 20, 1780. most humble Servant. /

LETTER III. Consultatum inde, pro rostris, an in Senatu, an in castris adopti nuncuparetur: Iri in castra placuit. Tac.7

SIR, I Will answer your objections in the order you have stated them – 1. That the plan I have given, is not at this time practicable; and that all armed Associations, are offences against particular acts of parliament. 2. That the late outrages proved the / inefficacy of the civil power without the aid of the army; that the army is a necessary part of our Civil Constitution; and that the use made of it in suppressing those outrages, was not only expedi­ ent, but legal and constitutional. If you suppose the plan impracticable, because the influence of the Crown and the measures of Administration are directed to the establishment of an unmixed Monarchy; in which all the people will be protected by the army, part of which may have the appellation of militia, and in which such institutions as were formed for civil liberty would be inconvenient:– My answer is, That though I have ever regretted many of those measures which have lately alarmed the friends of our ancient Constitution – I do not attribute them to any particular Prince, or particular / Administration. The evils we complain of are owing to a general cause; the first operations of which, perhaps, no wisdom could easily have pre­ vented. At the Revolution and the Accession of the Hanover Family, the existence of the Constitution was said to depend on having a certain majority in Parliament in favour of the reigning Prince. This position, though not a fact, and though a wretched artifice in policy, was admitted without controversy; it saved the first friends of the Revolution and Hanover succession a few additional struggles; it smoothed the way of the first Whig Administrations; and involved their succes­ sors in the hateful necessity of perpetually extending an evil, which by rendering Parliament contemptible, and throwing an odium on Administration, and the K—g, will in / some future time make the whole nation acquiesce in the demoli­ tion of Government, and bring things to a state of anarchy or of despotism. I process to keep clear of this vortex of corruption. I am convinced that the present Cabinet and Administration have no system, but what arises from the necessities of their situation; and that they can have no objection, because they – 129 –

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will feel no inconvenience from the revival of constitutional institutions, which have not the most distant reference to their forms of legislation by the manage­ ment of Parliament. If you mean that is impracticable, because the inhabitants of this country are too far advanced in luxury, too indolent, too effeminate to enter on any plan of security, which will require the least trouble, or put them to the least / inconven­ ience; and if you can ascertain this fact, I have no answer to make. But the trouble and inconvenience are such as would not be complained of by women. What is it but an amusement to learn the common use of arms? What inconvenience to submit to such regulations as may bring together a neighbourhood, a parish, the ward of a city, a town, a district, &c. to clear them of vagabonds, occasionally to assist the civil Magistrate, and to lay the basis of a general security, confidence, and strength, where it ought to be laid, in the whole body of the people? I will venture to affirm, that there is no other method by which disturbances, riots, and insurrections can be prevented (without debasing the people into the condition of brutes): and there is no other method by which a king may / hold every man in the nation in his hands; while every man in the nation would feel and know himself to be as free as it is possible he should be in society. Hints have been thrown out, of acts of Parliament which render such Asso­ ciations as I recommend illegal; but the acts are not specified. I know there are laws forbidding a man’s going armed, in a time of tranquillity and peace, without leave from a Magistrate, and specifying such assemblies of people as are danger­ ous and seditious; but without the most distant reference to the right which every man has from nature, from the connivance of the most despotic govern­ ments, and from the express provisions of the English Constitution – to provide for his own defence and that of his family; and to unite with his neighbourhood, under / the eye and direction of the supreme Magistrate, for the general peace and order of the community. If there were such laws as you mention, they could not possibly have effect, against not only a necessary right of nature, but an essential principle of the Eng­ lish Constitution. If a law were made, that because it is possible an English elector may become venal, therefore all electors must relinquish the right of voting – Would this constitute an obligation? Will any man say, that the Legislature is competent to the making of such a law? – how much less to annihilate the first and most important principles of human society, by awarding, that as it is pos­ sible men may make an improper use of their limbs, or their arms, which may be as necessary as their limbs, they must therefore suffer them to be taken off. / The power of the Legislature, like every power in human society, is lim­ ited by certain and accurate bounds; it may exceed these bounds, and commit absurdities, and even offences. The English Legislature is just as competent to make a law, by which every Englishman may be banished to the Orkneys, or

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put to death, as it is to enjoin the people to give up the right of self-defence and preservation, by the use of their limbs, or by the use of arms. The apprehension that Associations will produce commotions and riots, instead of preventing them, must be pretended only. And all the arguments for depriving the people of the right of associating, because they have often assem­ bled for mischievous purposes, are delusive. Cardinal de Retz says, That all numerous assemblies are Mobs; and I will add, that all Mobs are mischievous.8 / Let the people who might form such assemblies be divided into small bodies; and though the individuals be not improved, they will act reasonably and well. The design of Associations, is to prevent large and tumultuous assemblies; to arrange the people under the eye of Government, as accurately as an army, with­ out diminishing their constitutional independance and liberty; to increase the difficulty of misleading them, and to destroy all ideas of appeals to them. Here I beg to be understood, not as aiming at any of the rights of the peo­ ple: but the idea of an appeal to them has been borrowed from the government of Rome; in England it is, like the introduction of military force, a thing that negli­ gence or mismanagement may render necessary; but the Constitution is perfect without it; no supposition is / made of the possibility of having any occasion to make it; and whenever it is made, the remedy may be as hazardous as any evil it can be designed to remove. A whole nation, like the human body, in order to act with harmony and pleasure, must be divided into small parts, each having its local power, subject to the direction and controul of the general will. The people of England have a right to petition, either as individuals or as bodies; but they cannot assemble, unless it be on specified occasions; or by the requisition of those Magistrates which I have described in the plan, and who are amenable to the King, as the first Magistrate of the kingdom. The tumultuous assembly, called the Protestant Association, was an uncon­ stitutional one; it could not have been brought together, if the institutions I / wish to revive, had not been long dis-used; or if it had been brought together, the civil power would have fully guarded us from its outrages. This leads me to your second objection. That the late outrages proved the inefficacy of the civil power, without the aid of the army. – This is undoubtedly a fact; but it proves nothing more, than that a rusty firelock may be of no use. Will you, Sir, or any man affirm, if every Citizen of London had been, what the Constitution of England, not only allows, but requires every man to be, in a condition to defend himself and his family; to elect a Magistrate who might not only make orations for him in the Common Council, and eat / good dinners at the Common Hall, but call the Ward out for its general defence; take the orders of a superior Magistrate, join the other Wards, and defend the City:– will it be imagined, that any of the mischiefs which followed the Protestant Association

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would have taken place? – The civil power was dead! and the Magistrates were only nominal. In the case alluded to, the City of London was in the condition of a man, who, having lost the use of his limbs, is glad to be indebted to any one for protection from an enemy who would destroy him. It does not follow, that when he recovers the use of his limbs, he is to continue under the protection and in the power of his deliverer. But you mean to try my temper, I suppose, when you say, – The army is a necessary part of our Civil Constitution; / and that the use made of it, in supressing the outrages of the Protestant Association, was not only expedient, but legal and constitutional. I will state your meaning at large, in the words of Lord Mansfield; and answer you from a speech which he made, when his faculties were in greater vigour, and his views of the English Constitution less influenced and partial, than they can be supposed to be at present. In his speech on the address, Monday, June the 19th, he said, ‘All men, of all ranks, descriptions, and denominations, are bound by their oath of allegiance to interpose for the prevention of acts of high treason or felony, wherever any attempts to perpetrate such crimes are made in their presence; and are crimi­ nal if they do / not do it; supposing, as must be understood, that the ability of prevention is within their power or capacity. – This is a general duty; an uni­ versal obligation that extends to all the members of the community. – If a man perceives another in the act of pulling down a chapel, or place of worship, or setting fire to a house, he not only has a right, but is under a duty to endeavour to prevent him; if the perpetrator resists, so as to make violence necessary in the prevention; the circumstances are a sufficient sanction and exculpation for the consequences of such a violation, to whatever degree it may extend. How then is it, that this peculiar kind of thing, called military law, is to be considered as being established from the late interposition of the soldiery? – What did they do, that any man was not bound to do, if he had possessed the power? / nothing. They were sent for to the metropolis; – that order the King has an undoubted right to give, as the head of his armies. When they came, they were ordered to patrole the streets. In the execution of that duty, they found certain men in the actual commission of felony, and therefore were bound, in common with all civil men who had the power, and no otherwise, to prevent it. If they had exercised that power in an improper manner, they would have been amenable to the civil law, and not the military; and if any individual of them had killed a man, without being justified by the offender’s perseverance in the act of felony, he would have been liable to be tried for murder, and to have suffered the laws. In the whole of these proceedings, therefore, the military have not acted in their technical capac­ ity as military, / but have merely exercised their duty as civil men, which they, in common with other civil men, have both a right and an obligation to exercise.

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When a body of men are convened, without proceeding to the actual perpetra­ tion of treasonable or felonious acts, then, by a clause in the riot act, the presence of a civil Magistrate is necessary, before the military can interpose at all; and for this reason, that as no acts of felony were committed, they could have no plea in their civil character for meddling at all; but by the statute-law of the country, it becomes felonious in any combination of men to persevere in that combination after the riot act has been read by a Justice of the peace; and this being done, then, and not till then, they have a constitutional reason for their interposition; namely, the privilege and duty of hindering the commission / of felony whenever they have it in their power. This being therefore the plain voice of the law, I do not see how any prerogative of the King has been exercised, nor how military law has been established. Nothing has been done out of the regular course of the law, and no power has been assumed by the soldiery, which they do not possess as civil individuals, and not in their technical capacity, as members of the military. In the following passage, Lord Mansfield has answered himself. – *’It will be said, I suppose, that the civil Magistrate is not strong enough; shall he not then call in the assistance of the troops? – I beg leave to say, that / the law of England, will not suffer a supposition of that sort to be made: for if a Sheriff who is armed, (I am aware of the objection) I say, if a Sheriff who is armed with the civil power of his country, or if a Bailiff who is armed by the law, if he should give an answer, for not returning the King’s writ, that he was resisted; though the fact be true, the law considers it as a fact not to be supposed, and an action lies against him at the suit of the party – and why? – because it is a libel on the Government, to sup­ pose the civil Magistrate not strong enough. – The troops are kept up by annual bills, not for the assistance of the civil Magistrate, that would be for a reason that lasts for ever. – Can any civil Magistrate send a warrant to the Guards? – Is there such a warrant known to the law? – No man, Sir, would wish to live to see that day, / when the Civil Government of this Country cannot support itself without the assistance of the military. I will be bold to say, when it is not, that Civil Gov­ ernment is undone; for it is then not the law, but the military that governs; and I hope in this country, the bare word of a tipstaff, will go as far as the commands of a lieutenant general, – Suppose, Mr. Speaker, a case of the most extraordinary necessity, when the civil Magistrate is really over-powered; and there is fire set to the town; shall not the troops then be called in to his assistance? – I think I put the objections as strong as I can. – That fatal argument of contending for an exception to constitutional principles; that fatal argument has brought us many times to the brink of destruction.’ Though I consider this answer of / Lord Mansfield to himself as a sufficient one, to those who understand the nature of the English Constitution, I cannot *

Mr. Murray’s9 speech on the Westminster election in 1741.

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avoid making some observations on a speech which is fraught with more perni­ cious sophisms than any which I ever read. I suppose Lord Mansfield’s talents in this species of eloquence never to have been exceeded: parvus callidus, bonos & modestos anteibat.10 – He began with prepossessing his hearers in his favour by the most candid and liberal sentiments on Toleration. He then impressed on their minds the strongest detestation of the late outrages, by a banditti calling itself a Protestant Association: having been a sufferer himself, from an apparent wantonness in their cruelty; and speaking in a resigned tone, every word sunk deeply, and gave him full possession of the hearts of his hearers. He took his usual advantage of the acquisition: he dwelt / on all the possible perils of our situation, except those which were obvious and impending; and men being more governed by imagination than reason, he artfully supposed they might be made to distrust the ground they walked upon from imaginary dangers, sooner than suspect those measures which they might see gradually encircling and annihilating their enjoyments. In this shadowy region of multiplied doubts, apprehensions and mischiefs, he introduced the military power in the garb of a beneficent and necessary divinity: for by a legerdemain, of which his Lordship has been long a master, a military man is convertible into a soldier or a citizen, as royalty may move its scepter; so that by this art of transmutation, the army, having received the royal touch, and thereby endowed with civil qualities, may be received into the very bosom of / the Constitution, with the utmost security and benefit: and may occasionally be taken out, endowed with military proper­ ties, and be most formidable to our enemies. – This is the sophistry of modern eloquence! – these are the arts of modern policy! – And is the sterling manly sense of the English nation so adulterated, so debased as to be imposed upon by such tinsel and such tricks! The Constitution of England knows no such character as a mercenary soldier, at the sole will of the executive power. No soldier, as such, can be employed in the service of that Constitution, without a particular act of Parliament in his favour. When he is enlisted and, employed, he is absolutely a slave. He is bought at a cer­ tain price; or he sells his liberty to preserve a forfeited-life; and / he is held to his duty by laws which affect no other part of the community. I conceive therefore, that no act of Parliament, consistent with the spirit of the Constitution, can constitute a soldier, while he continues a soldier, a Citizen of England. The army was first introduced in a case of pretended necessity. Mercenary armies were understood to consist of men who had either detached themselves, or been forced from civil societies. Laws were made on those suppositions, regard­ ing their liberties and lives, such as no members of civil society could submit to. The very idea of blending them with the common subjects of the state, and giving persons of their description a right of judging on its most important occur­ rences, would have filled our ancestors with horror, and not a soldier would /

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have been suffered in the land. They have been tolerated only by annual bills, and under repeated pretences. Why these pretences? or why these annual bills? if a military power be a necessary part of the Constitution? if soldiers be not only our fellow subjects, but from their privilege of going always armed, and their superior skill in the use of arms, they are constituted the arbiters of our lives on the slightest and most frivolous contentions? I hope the good sense of the nation will revolt at this legerdemain; which is to transform a soldier into a civil man or into a military man, as Government may chuse to employ him; and which will render our condition worse than that of those who are clearly and wholly subjected to martial law. For if this being called a soldier, bought from the refuse of our / gaols, unprincipled, ignorant, and sav­ age; impelled to any thing by the command of his leader; and subject to death on disobeying it, whatever it be – if this being is to be held before us as possess­ ing a double capacity, when he dare not in any case have a will of his own; if he is to blend in our affairs, and by a hint (a permission) from his officer, to judge of and determine them – we are tantalized with the faint shadows of ancient rights, while we are actually enslaved. For being told these are civil men who exercise their judgments in so decisive a manner on our contentions and lives, and in the execution of their determinations sacrifice the unoffending with the offenders, we may be tempted to seek a remedy, which Lord Mansfield says we may have against them in a court of law; and thereby add to those offences on which they may have permission from their commanders to judge / and decide; or we may find them transmuted into military men. Let us, in his Lordship’s own manner, suppose a case; and it may be a possible one; – that the King should order his troops, a power he undoubtedly has as the head of his armies, to all the towns where Members of Parliament are to be cho­ sen at the General Election, to controul, and determine matters at his pleasure. – It will be said, there is an Act of Parliament forbidding their approaching such places. True; – but it relates only to their military capacity. They attend only in a civil one; though commanded by an authority which it is death to disobey: and finding an occasion to disperse assemblies, and to produce order and quiet, they take the hint of freedom from their commander, and kill the citizens who resist or disobey them. We are told, if they have done any thing / unlawful we must have recourse to the laws; but their term of civil freedom instantly expires with the occasion for taking permission from their commander; and when called upon to answer for obeying the commands of their officers, they start up soldiers, and shelter themselves under military law. Let the King send ten thousand men to disperse those peaceable, regular assemblies, who are petitioning Parliament from several counties for a redress of the most oppressive grievances; though this be done by troops in martial array, and by a command (Lord Mansfield calls it permission) from an officer, to be

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obeyed on pain of death, they may said, according to the sophistry by which it is attempted to impose on us, to act in a civil capacity; in which capacity they may massacre all who create the least tumult / in endeavouring to arrest and render them amenable to law. I therefore repeat what I have said – the Constitution of England knows no such being as a mercenary soldier; that in becoming such, a soldier gives up almost all his civil rights, and is a slave, though of a particular description; that the laws tolerate an army for certain periods, and under certain restrictions; but there is no law which admits the interference of the military in any of the opera­ tions of civil Government. The interposition of the army in the late outrages, was an act of prerogative, unconstitutional and illegal, though perfectly seasonable and beneficial. The public safety and benefit may sometimes excuse exertions of power, which would be injurious and tyrannical on ordinary occasions. / If therefore, instead of having our civil Constitution restored, we are to be governed by the manæuvres and magic contrivances hinted at by Lord Mansfield, the people will either be so exasperated that we shall have one Association of the whole kingdom, to crush our dissembling oppressors; or they will emigrate into the milder domains of arbitrary power, where the convulsions attending its establishment are passed, and the national character and manners of its inhabit­ ants correct and meliorate its hardships. But if it were possible that the army could be legally incorporated with the other parts of our civil Constitution; if such a supposition were not the severest libel on it, its numbers must be prodigiously increased to form a police for the nation; and when that police were formed, it would not procure that / security which might be had by Associations: while the necessary oppressions, conse­ quent on military and despotic power, would multiply wretches and villains, whom no severity could effectually suppress. The plan of Associations would prevent the evils which a military power could only punish. They would clear all neighbourhoods of disorderly and suspicious persons; and every man would be happy in his situation, secured by himself from the attempts of villainy, without giving up his liberty as the price of that security. We are at this time, Sir, brought into an alarming situation; and are hover­ ing between Scylla and Charybdis. On the one hand, the general decay of civil Government, owing to the various engagements of all Administrations since the Revolution; and on the other, a / spirit of conquest and enterprize by military force – hold before us this horrible alternative, to sink into anarchy, or submit to arbitrary power, by accepting the kind offers now made us, of being made fellow-citizens with mercenary soldiers, and being protected by their judgment and virtue from the effects of our own irregularities. Ignorance only in the navigation of antiquity, made Scylla and Charyb­ dis formidable. Knowledge has since steered between them without danger or

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apprehension. Prosperity has lulled the people of this kingdom into an indo­ lence, which admits of any gradual encroachments on their rights. But the blow, aimed by a desperate and enthusiastic banditti* at all of them, has rouzed the / nation into attention, an awful kind of attention – non tumultus, non quies, quale magni metus & magnæ iræ silentium est:11 and this point of time is to be improved by us, as that on which every circumstance depends, which has given us a distinguished rank in the world. In a state of anarchy, confusion, and distress, we have been saved by the inter­ position of a military power, exerted by the prerogative of the King:– that power is now thought necessary to the execution of the laws; but let it be withdrawn, as it must be on the appearance or apprehension of an enemy, and our anarchy and misery must return: let it be continued; and though it be not competent to secure peace and order, it will necessarily render us slaves. We / are therefore under a necessity of resuming the parts of men and citizens; of associating for reciprocal defence; and reviving those wise institutions of our ancestors, to a very imperfect and partial use of which we have been indebted for all our glory and happiness. Sicut a majoribus accepimus, sic posteris tradamus.12

I have the honour to be, SIR, Your most obedient humble Servant.

THE END.

*

The Author involves the Protestant Association in the guilt of the late outrages, because nothing but bigotted cruelty could have committed them. Robbers are satisfied with booty; bigots are to be gratified with misery and blood.

[ALMON], THE REVOLUTION IN MDCCLXXXII

[ John Almon], The Revolution in MDCCLXXXII Impartially Considered, 2nd edn (London: J. Debrett, 1782).

John Almon was born in Liverpool on 17 December 1737. From 1759, after a period at sea, he was a printer and writer in London. His earliest writings in the Gazetteer supported Newcastle and Pitt, and he authored the anti-Bute A Review of Mr Pitt’s Administration (London: G. Kearsly, 1762), dedicated to Richard Grenville-Temple, Earl Temple (1711–79), Pitt’s brother-in-law. With Temple’s support, in 1763, Almon set up his own printing shop at 178 Piccadilly. Almon was also a supporter of John Wilkes and in 1764 produced his Wilkesite A Letter on Libels, Warrants, Seizure of Papers, etc. (London: J. Almon, 1764), which saw him before Lord Chief Justice Mansfield accused of contempt of court, though the case was dismissed. From 1771 he was involved with Wilkes in establishing press reporting of Parliament. He authored An History of the Parliament of Great Britain from the Death of Queen Anne to the Death of King George (London: G. Kearsly, 1764), and published The Debates and Proceedings of the British House of Commons from 1766 to 1780 and the Parliamentary Register, including debates of the House of Lords, from 1774 to 1780. Parliamentary friends sent him speeches that he collated in Commons Journals. He earned another appearance before Lord Mansfield in 1770 for publishing Junius’s seditious Letter to the King and, though fined and bound over for £500 for two years’ good behaviour, he produced The Trial of John Almon, which included the court’s copy of Junius’s Letter. Almon also published the Remembrancer, or, Impartial Repository of Public Events in America from 1775 to 1784. His interest in America is reflected in the fact that his press published many pamphlets on the subject from various per­ spectives, notwithstanding Almon’s own passionate partisanship. Thomas Paine recommended to Benjamin Franklin that The American Crisis (1777) be sent to Almon because others would censor its republican sympathies. His own The Revolution in MDCCLXXXII Impartially Considered, published by his succes­ sor, John Debrett (1753–1822), originator of Debrett’s Peerage, also arose out of the culmination of the American War of Independence. The Yorktown sur­ – 139 –

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render of October 1781 led to the resignation of Lord North as Prime Minister on 20 March following. The anything but impartial ‘Independent Whig’ consid­ ered this a ‘Revolution’: There is no other word in our language which so fully and properly expresses the force, and extent of the late total defeat of Corruption and Usurpation. It is not less a Revolution of system and government, than that of 1688. (below, p. 143)

He tries to rationalize this extraordinary claim by stating that The measures of the Cabal in the last century, and of the Interior cabinet in the present, originated in the same spirit, and were guided by the same principle. The policy of the Court in both periods was the same. The measures of government being hostile to the Constitution, and threatening the annihilation of the State, produced the necessity of both Revolutions. Accomplished as they were by the Whigs, the judicious and sensible part of the Tories, gave their assistance at both periods. (below, p. 144)

Much of the rest of the pamphlet comprises a before-and-after summary of the North administration, with everything decidedly better before, when, he says ‘we were in perfect peace with all the world’. The earlier disputes with Amer­ ica ‘were happily adjusted by the wise and critical repeal of the stamp act’ and ‘Our commerce was in the most flourishing state, in every quarter of the globe’ (below, p. 146). North, however, ‘left the nation engaged, without an Ally, in a quadruple war, of his own making, or approving, with America, France, Spain, and Holland’ (below, p. 147), and Almon lists in detail the costs of the war in terms of money spent, men and colonies lost, taxes raised and troubles elsewhere in the empire and at home. Almon concludes with a tribute to new premier Rockingham and his cabinet. In 1786 Almon was once again prosecuted for libel and this time fled to France, where he wrote Memoirs of a Late Eminent Bookseller (London, 1790) and finished preparing The Anecdotes of the Life of the Right Hon. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (London: J. S. Jordan, 1792). After returning in 1792 he became a cause célèbre for spending a year in King’s Bench prison. He thereafter went into semi-retirement, but still produced The Causes of the Present Com­ plaints (London: J. Sewell, 1793), Biographical, Literary and Political Anecdotes (London: T. N. Longman, & L. B. Seeley, 1797), Correspondence of the Late John Wilkes (London: R. Phillips, 1805), and Letters of Junius (London: R. Phillips, 1806). Almon died on 12 December 1805.1 Notes: 1. L. L. Leitner, ‘Almon, John (1737–1805), bookseller and political journalist’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 1, pp. 885–6.

THE

REVOLUTION

In MDCCLXXXII

IMPARTIALLY CONSIDERED.

The SECOND EDITION.

LONDON.

Printed for J. Debrett, (Successor to Mr. Almon) opposite Burlington-

House, in Piccadilly.

MDCCLXXXII. /

THE REVOLUTION. The Revolution in the Government of Great Britain, or, as it is commonly called, the change of the British Ministers in the month of March 1782,1 is one of the most splendid epochs in the history of these islands. The victories of former days, in the reigns of Edward and Henry, of Anne and George the Second, will not be found, upon examination, to merit a greater applause from the Nation, than the wisdom and courage of those virtuous men, who routed an army of insatia­ ble mercenaries, entrenched behind that prerogative which they had seized and abused, and in the moment of extremest peril, undertook the emancipation of their Country, when reduced to the lowest abyss of wretchedness and despair. This important and critical change of Ministers, may, with great propriety, be called a Revolution. There is no other word in our language which so fully and properly expresses the force, and extent of the late total defeat of Corruption and Usurpation. / It is not less a Revolution of system and government, than that of 1688. It is true, the person of the King is not changed; but the measures which have dishonoured his name are done away, and it is hoped will never be repeated. Nor is it less a Revolution for the timely and happy preservation of the Sovereign. By our Constitution, a King of England never dies. The situation to which the late Ministers had reduced the Country, left no alternative to King and People. To persevere was Ruin – to save must be Revolution. A majority of the House of Commons at length saw this situation; they saw, that notwithstanding the unlimited support which they had given to the King’s servants; had granted every request as well for men as money, which those serv­ ants had made; had with astonishing patience, which seemed to border upon treachery to their Country, year after year, heard those servants break every promise they had pledged themselves to fulfill: instead of success in any quar­ ter, there was nothing but defeat in every quarter; instead of a navy adequate to face the House of Bourbon, which Lord Sandwich in the hour of his insolence, said, the Minister who had not always ready, would deserve to lose his head; – there was nothing but a shattered flota of jails and hospitals. They promised a revenue from America, and had lost the country; they promised an increase of – 143 –

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trade, and had almost annihilated it; they promised to observe œconomy, and had practised the most unbounded extravagance. After such repeated and fatal experience of the King’s servants, / there could be only two opinions formed of them; – either that they were in the interest of the enemy; or that they were of such superlative incapacity, it was hazarding the existence of the Country to trust them a day longer. They had abused an unexampled persevering confidence: to an unpardonable ignorance, they had added a criminal negligence in the dis­ charge of their official duties. They treated Parliament in general with hauteur; and the humble solicitations of the People with insolent contempt. And looking upon their offices, as tenures for life, were as indifferent to the consequences of their measures, as to the motives which gave birth to them. All these circumstances were become so manifest, a majority of the House of Commons felt the indignity of their own situation; they saw, that instead of being the Guardians of their Constituents, they were made the protectors of their most inveterate enemies; they saw with shame their own misconduct; they felt with sorrow the humbled and debilitated state of the Country. They resolved to emancipate the People, and rescue the Nation. They gave their assistance to the Whigs. – Amongst them there were several very respectable Country Gen­ tlemen, who have been usually denominated Tories, who seeing the wreck of their Country, they with a laudable spirit that reflects the highest honour on then [sic] Independence of their situations, holding like Umpires the balance in their hands, gave the decision to the Whigs; to the old tried friends of the Con­ stitution and their Country; who had, in every instance of their condemnation of the late measures, produced such marks of political wisdom, and of thorough knowledge of the interests and strength of the empire, as time had ripened every year into so many strong and / indisputable proofs of sound judgment. These were the men most worthy of the confidence of Parliament. To great personal weight of character and fortune, was added the hereditary purity of those princi­ ples and virtues, which saved the country in 1688. The measures of the Cabal in the last century, and of the Interior cabinet in the present, originated in the same spirit, and were guided by the same principle. The policy of the Court in both periods was the same. The measures of government being hostile to the Consti­ tution, and threatening the annihilation of the State, produced the necessity of both Revolutions. Accomplished as they were by the Whigs, the judicious and sensible part of the Tories, gave their assistance at both periods. In the former it is known, and in the last it is more than presumption, the Tories prevented an accumulation of misery to the empire, by their virtuous, though late, support of the Whigs. I would here have made an apostrophe to the Tories, but that I recollect one suitable to the occasion, in a very excellent but now scarce pamphlet, called, ‘A Letter from Albemarle-street to the Cocoa Tree,’ which was written under the

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eye of a nobleman (I speak from personal knowledge) of great abilities, ami­ able manners, and unblemished integrity, (the late Earl Temple)* and which was published at the time that several Independent Country Gentlemen gave their assistance to the Whigs, upon the great question respecting General Warrants. / ‘You, the worthy Gentlemen of the Cocoa-Tree, have honourably distin­ guished yourselves among the friends of liberty. Your country with gratitude proclaims your merit; and the voice of liberty will loudly sound your praise. Welcome into the bosom of a free people, and to be numbered amongst the best citizens. You have followed the example of the venerable heroes in the cause of liberty, to whose cause, courage in the senate, and the field, we owe the preser­ vation of our constitution, the maintenance of our freedom. You have but to persevere in the same glorious path, and your fame will be recorded with their immortal renown. ‘Could you desire a nobler testimony to your services, than one you have? You share the large applauses of so many brave patriots, who on the same try­ ing occasion, with undaunted boldness, contended for the just rights of their Country. Amongst the foremost stands a gallant General, pointed out for supreme command, by the unanimous voice of his grateful country; in whose manly spirit a well-tempered mixture of / generosity and frugality, secures the foundation of true dignity: renowned for his prowess, more distinguished yet by his patri­ otism; who truly possesses that animus in consulendo liber, neque delicto, neque libidini obnoxius:6 a brave son of Mars, who follows not alone, but accompanied by many, his spirited companions of the war, wherever liberty leads; who pleads her cause at home, with the same ardour that he fought her battles abroad; wreathing the laurels of the camp with the garlands of the senate: who thinks, and shews, that honour is not confined to military service, but is equally sacred in all situations, and in all capacities. There is fortitude which despises danger, and defies dismission; the independent spirit which makes the man; the mag­ *

Upon this occasion I cannot help wishing to undeceive the public respecting an asser­ tion in Lord Chesterfield’s letters.2 In the letter numbered 366, dated August 14, 1766, his Lordship speaking of a certain pamphlet says, ‘It was published / by Lord Temple.’3 It is a mistake. Lord Temple so far from having any concern in writing or publishing the pamphlet alluded to, had not the smallest knowledge of it, until after it was printed, and sent to him at Stowe. It was written by Mr. Humphrey Cotes.4 Nothing but his Lord­ ship’s affection for his friends, prevented him contradicting the report which prevailed at the time, as well as several passages in the pamphlet, which were not true. Upon the publication of Lord Chesterfield’s letters, his Lordship sent for Mr. Dodsley, the pub­ lisher, upon the subject; but took no steps to vindicate his character from the infinite number of illiberal aspersions, which had been, for several years, circulated by the mali­ cious, and unceasing industry of the Court faction. Speaking upon this subject, with a person whom he honoured with his confidence, his Lordship said, ‘Guard me from my friends; – I will guard myself from my enemies.’5

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nanimity which crowns the hero; the bold soldier, the intrepid senator, the fine gentleman, the warlike advocate for liberty. England has a Conway,7 the powers of whose eloquence, inspired by his zeal for the object, animated with the fire of true genius, and furnished with a found knowledge of the constitution, at once entertain, ravish, convince, conquer.’ Pages 21 and 22, printed in 1764, for J. Almon. It was an admirable custom of the antient Egyptians, immediately upon the death of their King, to appoint a trial of his conduct and character. This institu­ tion, so wisely imagined for the instruction and restraint of succeeding Kings, might with double propriety be adopted by the people of England, upon every change of ministers; for as by law, our Kings can do no wrong, the Minister being responsible for every act of the Sovereign, he therefore, upon his removal, may be considered as the dead King. It is not until after death that the true characters of men come to light, and their survivors receive benefit from the / discovery. With a view of this sort, until a day of trial is appointed, let us take a short retro­ spect of the Conduct and Character of the last Minister; neither ‘extenuating his faults, nor setting down ought in malice.’ When Lord North came to the head of the Treasury, we were in perfect peace with all the world. The disputes with America, which a few years before, had threatened such violence to the Mother Country, were happily adjusted by the wise and critical repeal of the stamp act. Our commerce was in the most flourishing state, in every quarter of the globe. New veins of trade were daily opening. The revenue was daily encreasing; insomuch, that the Minister find­ ing such a surplus of money in his hands, even after all the various sums were impressed to every individual, and to every item, that could be enumerated, he voluntarily declared in Parliament, in 1770, he should pay off seventeen millions of the national debt, in a few years. The orders for our goods were larger than our merchants could execute. Like the king’s shipwrights, upon extraordinary occasions, our manufacturers were, in many places, obliged to work double tides. All sorts of people were fully employed, from the husband man to the artist. The value of land was at one and two and thirty years purchase, and increasing.* The *

In answer to this, I shall be told, that rents had risen, and were rising. I admit the fact. But the landlord’s property encreasing in proportion with the trader’s, was no grievance; it was justice. I remember Sir Cecil Wray stating and explaining this point so clearly, in the House of Commons, about the latter end of March 1775, that I will beg leave to quote his words, as I find them very accurately printed in the Parliamentary Register of that interesting time. ‘That if Parliament had the right to tax America, he should be against using that power; as in that case justice would demand, that we should give to America / an equal power of paying taxes; that that could only be done by opening the trade of the whole world to America, in common with Britain; a measure which no one could wish to see adopted, as it would then be at the expence of the latter, and a very considerable defalcation ensue

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poor’s rate, which is the / barometer of employment, was in general every where low. The Stocks, which are the barometer of the state, were every day rising. The three per cents were at ninety and ninety-one. On the 30th of November 1774, (which was only the year before the American war commenced) the three per cents consol. was at 90 ⅝. On the 3d of December 1774, the same stock was at 91 ¼. Lord Hawke, who went out in the same year that Lord North came in, left a fleet of ninety ships of the line, besides frigates, all fit for service, except five or six, which only wanted small repair. The yards were stocked with timber and naval stores. The Baltic, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, &c. were covered with our shipping. Our fleets went out freighted with the manufactures of this coun­ try, and returned laden with riches of Europe, Africa, Asia, and America. These immense, and infinite mines of commercial wealth, gave Great Britain such a splendid possession of power and authority, that her name was respected, and her friendship courted, by every nation in the known world. Such was our situation, when Lord North was appointed Minister of this country. / When his Lordship was removed from his post of Minister, he left the nation engaged, without an Ally, in a quadruple war, of his own making, or approving, with America, France, Spain, and Holland. One of the first acts of his Lordship’s administration, was to revive the dis­ pute with America; about a tax, which was so small, that the point of advantage to the revenue, is not even pretended to have been the object of it. The affair of Falkland’s Island8 was concealed, extinguished, and forgiven, that the Minister might have no embarrassment in executing the project of the Court against America. The value of the island was not considerable; but the hostility being committed in time of profound peace, and accompanied with every circumstance of extravagant and aggravated insult, it was unpardonable in the Minister, not vindicating, with spirit, the national character, which all Europe saw was deeply wounded by that violent and flagrant outrage. Shakespear says, – ’Tis not to be great,

Never to stir without great argument;

But greatly to find quarrel in a straw

When Honour’s at the stake.9

in its power of then paying the taxes it now does. That the quantum of taxes are not to be estimated by the sum of money raised, but by the proportion such sum bears to the ability of the persons taxed: For instance, if a farmer who, at the last mentioned æra, paid 100l. a year rent, and is now enabled to raise 300l. more than the sum he could then, by the encreased price of his goods, he cannot be said to have his rent raised, but rather lowered, if his landlord makes him pay 200l. rent instead of one.’ Volume the first, page 391.

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The French were suffered to keep quiet possession of Corsica, notwithstanding the King of Sardinia (once our ally) remonstrated against it, and the conquest was a breach of treaty; probably for the same reason that the Spanish insult was not chastised. / The friendship of Russia was lost, by refusing to accept the honourable and advantageous office of Mediator, between the Empress and the Porte, which was first offered to our Ministers, and upon their refusal to the French, who accepted it; and have thereby acquired an interest at the Court of Petersburg. The friendship of Denmark lost. The friendship of Sweden, lost; the ancient constitution of that kingdom being changed and made wholly French, which we might have prevented, and in which we had an interest. But these pursuits might have occupied a part of the attention of the Min­ ister, which was destined to be directed solely to the American war. To the American war all points of honour, all cement of national friendship, all pros­ pects of national advantage, have been surrendered and sacrificed. During Lord North’s administration, the royal marriage bill was passed. The constitution of the East India Company was altered; by which twelve hundred and forty-six proprietors were disfranchised, without a charge or pre­ tence of delinquency. The French laws, and the Roman Catholic Religion, were established by act of parliament, in the extended province of Canada. The particular acts of provocation passed against the protestant colonies in America, I shall forbear to mention distinctly, because / the word War, which was the ultimatum, includes them all. Repeated attempts towards conciliation with the Colonies, as well before the war commenced, as afterwards, were made by the best, the greatest, and most amiable characters in the nation;* but / they were all rejected by the Min­ *

To enumerate all these would be almost impossible; but I will attempt to give a re­ capitulation of some of the principle ones. 1773. June 23. Petition for the removal of Governor Hutchinson, and Lieutenant Governor Oliver, of Massachusett’s Bay, for betraying their trusts, and the people they governed, and for giving false information. 1774. Oct. 26. First petition from the Congress at Philadelphia. 1775. July 8. Second petition from the Congress at Philadelphia, brought by Mr. Penn. 1775. Jan. 20. Lord Chatham’s motion to withdraw the troops from Boston. Feb. 1. Lord Chatham’s bill for settling the troubles in America. Mar. 22. Mr. Burke’s conciliatory propositions. Mar. 27. Mr. Hartley’s conciliatory propositions. Nov. 16. Mr. Burke’s bill for composing the troubles in America. Dec. 7. Mr. Hartley’s second propositions. 1776. Mar. 5. Duke of Richmond’s motion for a suspension of hostilities in America.

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ister, spurred at and indignantly treated; yet he himself, in a sort of passion of despair, when the thing was too late, when his power was defeated, and his policy despised, prevailed upon Parliament to send three Commissioners to the Con­ gress, to lay at the feet of that assembly, all those claims of Supremacy, which he had year after year, for several years, repeatedly and solemnly assured Parliament, he would establish over all the British Colonies in America. During his administration a war was commenced, or, rather created, with America, in which we have lost the Provinces of New Hampshire, Massachusett’s Bay, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware Counties, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. The money expended upon this criminal war, conducted upon a system of expence never known before, by contractors at New York, and contractors at home; by such a scheme of double contract as was sufficient to exhaust the mines of Mexico and / Peru, has exceeded One Hundred and Twenty Millions! The loss of men in the same criminal war, by the capture of two fine armies, the number of lesser defeats, in fruitless victories, in marauding detachments, and disgraceful expeditions, by the climate, and by captures at sea, upon a very

Mar. 14. Duke of Grafton’s motion for the same, &c. May 10. Mr. Sawbridge’s motion for putting America on the same footing as Ireland. Nov. 6. Lord John Cavendish’s motion for a revision of the laws by which the Americans were aggrieved. 1777. Dec. 2. Governor Pownall’s plan for a revision of all the laws relative to, and the trade of America. 1778. Feb. 6. Governor Pownall’s offer to go to Congress, as a private gentleman, to treat of peace. 1780. May 5. General Conway’s bill for quieting the troubles in America. May 24. Governor Pownall’s bill for making peace, truce, or convention, with America. The debates, at length, upon all these interesting subjects, the reader will find in the Parliamentary Register; from whence the above heads are extracted.

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moderate calculation, is upwards of one hundred and twenty thousand. Besides arms, cannon, camp equipage, cloathing, money, &c. &c. The American war gave birth to the war with France, in which we have lost the islands of Grenada, St. Vincent, Dominica, Tobago, Nevis, St. Christophers, The River Senegal, &c. The war with France gave birth to a war with Spain, in which we have lost Florida, and Minorca; which last gives to the House of Bourbon the entire dominion of the Mediterranean. The American war gave birth also to the war with Holland; and eventually, to the armed confederacy of the Northern Powers, / by which our enemies are supplied with naval stores, and our ships are prevented cruizing in the Baltic.* These losses, and diminution of empire, comprise not the whole of our mis­ fortunes, under the late administration. Our domestic distresses have encreased, in pari passu, with the accumulation of our enemies. The late noble Chancel­ lor of the Exchequer instead of obtaining a revenue from America, which he pretended was the object of the war with that country, though the paltry sum intended to have been raised by the tax upon tea, gave the flattest contradiction to his assertion; he laid the following taxes upon Great Britain, after the com­ mencement of the war with America; besides the annual taxes of land, (at four shillings) malt, and lottery.

*

I have not said any thing of the captures at sea, because the value of them is not easily ascertained; but taking the whole into the consideration; that is, king’s ships, armed ves­ sels, merchantmen, traders, &c. the balance will be found to be greatly against us.

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1776.

1777.

1778. 1779. 1780.

1781.

1782. Moved in the Committee by Lord North on the 11th of March, 1782.

Duty on carriages Stamps on newspapers –------------ cards –------------ deeds Male servants Auctions Additional stamp duties Carried over Brought over Additional duties on glass, House tax Additional duties on wines Five per cent. on excise and customs Post-horses Foreign wines British wines Additional duty on spirits –----------------------- rum –----------------------- brandy –----------------------- malt –----------------------- coals Five per cent. on the preceding seven articles Licences (for tea dealers, &c.) Stamps on legacies Additional duty on advertisements –----------------------- salt Five per cent. on excise Discounts of customs Regulations on paper Sugar Tobacco Small beer Tea licences Soap Tobacco Carried over Brought over Brandy Salt Medicinal salt Insurances Stamp on inland bills of exchange Playhouses, &c. Land and water carriage Total per annum

151

£ 19,000 18,000 6,000 30,000 100,000 37,500 55,000 £.265,500 / 265,500 laid at per annum 45,000 264,000 72,558 318,000 164,250 72,000 20,617 34,557 70,958 35,310 310,000 12,899 46,193 9,000 12,000 9,000 69,000 150,000 167,000 100,060 326,000 61,000 42,000 48,750 104,500 141,333 £.2,971,485 / 2,971,485 laid at per annum. 5,000 60,000 5,000 100,000 50,000 30,000 210,000 3,431,485

laid at per annnm

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Besides these burdens upon the people, exclusive of the sums raised by the land, malt, and lottery every year, and all the old taxes continued, there is a large unfunded debt, which the last Minister has left as a legacy to his successor.* And there is to be taken into the account, some kind of estimate of the late annual advantage, or benefit to this country, arising from the possession, encreased and encreasing trade of the Colonies, which are lost. The subject does not admit of a precise estimate; and some capital articles will admit of no estimate at all, as the great nursery for seamen, ship-building, infinity of ordinary labour, &c. yet laying these out of the consideration, and taking only those points into the calcu­ lation, which have been known, tangible, clear advantages; / the estimate, upon the most moderate computation, in the judgment of men of acknowledged great ability and eminent skill in mercantile affairs, is stated at upwards of Five Mil­ lions, annually. To this immense loss is to be added, the great diminution of the African trade, of several of the West India islands. The entire loss of the Mediterranean. Together with all the attendant branches of trade and commerce, which are too numerous to be recapitulated. The stocks (which, as hath before been observed, are the barometer of the state) have been diminished considerably more than one third. Lord North’s last value of them when he made his bargain for 1782, with the subscribers, was the three per cents, at fifty-four. The value of land upon an average, it is now about one and two and twenty years purchase. And the poor’s rates, owing to the want of employment by the loss of trade, have encreased every year with the diminu­ tion; thereby laying a very heavy additional weight on the landed property. As to the fleet which Lord Sandwich has left, it is not proper to be called a fleet, there being very few ships fit for service; and it is more than probable, that if his Lordship’s dismission had been delayed a few weeks longer, the Channel would have been as completely abandoned to the enemy, as the Mediterranean hath been. But in the true spirit of delusion, which hath distinguished his admin­ istration throughout, when he found he could no longer insult the distresses of his country with a meretricious laugh, distresses of which he had been a principal author, he put every ship and / vessel in commission, unfit and unfinished, too rotten for the sea, and too soon to be launched, ships that could not swim, and ships that had not their ribs in. It was all the same. All helps to swell the list upon paper. His lists to the last moment of his power, have been uniform. They have been like Romeo’s apothecaries shop, a beggarly account of empty boxes.10 *

Navy debt, eleven millions Exchequer bills, almost three millions and a half Debt to the Bank, two millions There will be the winding up of the war whenever peace is made, the payment for the German troops sent to America, &c.

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By the late Administration, the national character was degraded and debased in every instance of their conduct; whether of war or negotiation. In war, they were cruel and cowardly. In negotiation, they were ignorant, indeterminate, and evasive. During the late administration, the affairs of Ireland were totally neglected. The war with America involving every part of the empire in difficulties and dis­ tresses, Ireland being one of the weakest, became the first affected. But such was the imbecility of Ministers, they were unequal even to the management of the affairs of Ireland. They did not understand them. They affected, for a consider­ able time, a total indifference to the representations they received, the better to conceal their superlative incapacity.* / *

This Lord North knows full well; he who knows little more than the price of each man’s conscience in the Cock-pit; whose genius never rose higher than some temporary expedi­ ent to patch up the business of a session; who feeling himself unequal to the management of a great empire, has pared it down to the measure of his own abilities; and who vainly supposes that if he be found in a majority, he has gained a complete victory; even he found that the poverty of Ireland was a bar to the exercise of his financiering talents, and therefore wished to loose some of her shackles in 1778. ‘But the weavers of England, and the pedlars of Scotland, clamoured. That was enough to daunt his mighty spirit. And therefore to gratify Manchester and Glasgow, he became an enemy to Ireland in 1779.’ See first Lines of Ireland’s true / Interest, page 36. Writen by the Rev. Dr. Campbell. Dublin printed by R. March-bank, Castle Street.11 ‘The hackneyed topic of Ireland’s Independence, I shall not dwell upon. For, though a question of right, it is one so singular, that it cannot be decisively discussed upon paper. The casuists indeed of the British Parliament have declared, ‘that the King’s Majesty, by and with the consent of the Lords &c. &c. hath power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the kingdom and people of Ireland.†’ Mr.

†

This law took its rise from an appeal to the House of Peers in England, by Maurice Annesley, against a decree of the House of Peers in Ireland, which the British House of Peers reversed, and ordered the Barons of the Exchequer in Ireland to cause Mr. Annesley, to be forthwith put in possession of certain lands in the county of Kildare, of which he had been dispossessed by virtue of a decree of the House of Peers of Ireland. Pursuant to this order, the Barons of the Exchequer in that kingdom, issued out an injunction to Alexander Burrows, Sheriff of the County of Kildare, and set several fines upon him for refusing to put it in execution, which the House of Peers in Ireland discharged, and voted that Jeffery Gilbert, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, John Pocklington, and Sir John St. Leger, the other Barons of the Exchequer in Ireland, had acted in manifest derogation to the King’s prerogative, in his High Court of Parliament in Ireland, as also of the rights and privileges of this kingdom, and of the Parliament thereof. These Barons were also ordered to be taken into custody of the Usher of the Black Rod. But the House of Lords in England resolved, that the Barons had acted with courage according to law, in support of his Majesty’s prerogative, and with fidelity to the Crown of Great Britain. In this heat, the English Judges were ordered to bring in a bill for the better securing the Dependence of Ireland. The bill is said to have been drawn by Mr. Philip Yorke, afterwards Lord Hardwicke, and Lord Chancellor. It passed into a law, and the following is a copy of it. ‘Whereas attempts have been lately made to shake off the subjection of Ireland unto, and dependence upon, the Imperial Crown of this realm, which will be of dangerous consequence to Great Britain and Ireland. And whereas the House of Lords in Ireland, in order thereto, have of late, against law, assumed to themselves a power and jurisdiction to examine, correct, and amend the judgments and decrees of the courts of justice in the kingdom of Ireland: Therefore, for the better securing the dependency of Ireland upon the Crown of

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Thus the affairs of Ireland have grown to a most alarming magnitude. The friends of Ireland, resident in that kingdom, viewing / with horror, the principles and conduct of the Ministers, in the creation and prosecution of the Ameri­ can war, have taken the / alarm respecting their own privileges and liberties; and have demanded a specific renunciation of certain claims, which had lain / dormant during the Whig administrations of George the First; and George the Second; and would not have disturbed the happiness of George the Third, if his Mollyneux12 has nevertheless made / it more clear than the fire which burned his book, that the Parliament of Ireland has just as good a right to make laws to bind the kingdom and people of England.’ Ibid, page 50. ‘Had this sovereign legislature stopped at declaratory acts, England would not have so soon lost so much ground in North America.’ Ibid, page 51. ‘But may the question of Ireland’s subordination to any legislature but her own, con­ tinue for ever a point of mere speculation, rather than that it should, at any time, be decided by the logick of Kings.’ Ibid, page 52. ‘The mercantile empire, which begins by taking from the connected country her trade, will soon proceed to make very bold attempts upon her liberty. Under pretence of main­ taining trade-laws, she will assert in all cases, and exercise in some, the power of binding internally; and next assume the right of taxing; one infringement will lead to another. Such was the power exercised against America, and denounced against Ireland.’ See a Letter to the People of Ireland. By Henry Gratton, Esq. Member of Parliament in Ireland. Page 7 and 8. Dublin Printed for Isaac Coles, in Caple Street.13 ‘Manchester does not care how œconomic our government shall be, provided our country does not acquire a trade; the Minister is not anxious about what you may get in trade, provided you support his system of prodigality; and thus does Ireland continue disabled and overburdened, between manufacturing towns maintaining their monopoly, and the Minister vindicating his plunder. ‘An opinion attributes our misery to the high letting of land. If this is an evil in Ire­ land, it is a very deplorable one, beyond the power of human statute to remedy. If the tenantry of Ireland will be satisfied to live upon less than the necessaries of life, while in England they insist upon more, we cannot restrain the humility of our people by act of parliament. But if the supposed high letting of / land were the cause of our distress, then it had not been the manufacturers, but the tenantry, who would have been the first and principal sufferers. Great Britain, may it please your Majesty, that it may be enacted; and it is hereby declared and enacted, by the King’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lord’s Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons in this Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, that the said kingdom of Ireland hath been, is, and of right, ought to be, subordinate unto, and dependent upon, the Imperial Crown of Great Britain, as being inseparably united and annexed thereunto; and that the King’s Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lord’s Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons / of the Great Britain in Parliament assembled, had, hath, and, of right, ought to have, full power and authority to make laws, and statutes of sufficient force and validity, to bind the people and the kingdom of Ireland. And be it farther enacted and declared by the authority aforesaid, that the House of Lords of Ireland, have not, nor of right, ought to have, any jurisdiction to judge of, affirm, or reverse any judgment, sentence, or decree, given or made in any court within the said kingdom; and that all proceedings before the said House of Lords, upon any such judgment, sentence, or decree, are, and are hereby declared to be, utterly null and void, to all intents and purposes what­ soever.’

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Tory Ministers had not sown the seeds of war and jealousy throughout all his dominions. The affairs of Asia have been trifled with in a manner not less criminal, than those of Ireland. The attention and views of the Ministers never went beyond Leadenhall-street. The number of votes at the India House, like the number of votes in the House of Commons, comprised all their knowledge, all their plans, and all their purposes. This ignorance and inattention, gave scope and opportu­ nity for transacting all kinds of jobs; gave rise to an impolitic and unnecessary war with the Marrattas, which laid the foundation of a confederacy of the Coun­ try Powers against us; in a word, for plundering the Provinces in India, and ruining the Company at home. Let us now reverse the Picture, and see what the other side produces; which will take but a few moments to examine. St. Lucia taken – and it has been the grave of our army in the West Indies. St. Eustatius taken – and retaken. Demarare and Issaquibo taken – and retaken. ‘Tis true the tenantry did feel and will feel, I fear long, the wretchedness of the last years; not from the exaction of the landlord, but the ruinous contract of the Minister. The embargo, which lay upon this country for three years like a curse, and is now felt in its effects like a plague! which prevented the tenantry from making any use of their land, and would have rendered any rent an exorbitant one.’ Ibid, page 10 and 11. ‘When we speak of the spirit of the people as a thing to be dreaded, we ought not to overlook one very important truth. – The constitution is now reduced to a state in which no public benefit can be obtained, but by the collective body of the people. If we wish to defend our land against a tax, our chance consists in this only, that the influence of the crown shall stand in awe of the clamours of the people. When the majority of those who compose the Legislature, have gotten a complete victory over remorse about conduct and character, there is no restraint but fear; no security, but the interposition of the peo­ ple.’ Ibid, page 48. ‘The association is a measure wonderfully calculated to unite all descriptions of men, and to inspire union.’ Ibid, page 53. ‘In opposition to this association, I have heard of but one objection, the danger of pro­ voking England. To know whether this fear is founded, let us consider what we have lost by it. Under this fear we have suffered Magna Charta, and whole volumes of privileges to be infringed. During this fear, his Majesty’s Minister in his speech from the throne, on a question whether England was to enforce a power to tax America, declared that he would mention such a power, not only over America, but every part of his dominions; and during this fear an application was made to Ireland to exhort her approbation of such a principle, and another application to spare her troops, to enforce that principle by arms.’ Ibid, page 56. ‘That we shall be united against the common enemy will be due to the virtue of Ireland; if we are less active against them it will be due to the conduct of the British Minister and his majority in Parliament; who have left us so little to fight for, so little to expect from their sincerity, and so much to apprehend from their power.’ Ibid, page 73.

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(As to Pondicherry, it was taken by the orders of the East India Company, without the knowledge of the Ministers.) / Such was the state of the Country when the late Ministers were dismissed from their offices. Such was the contrast between what they found, and what they left. So far from heightening the picture in any part, it is in every part much within the truth. It is but a sketch of some of the principal measures taken or adopted by the late Ministers; and a brief mention of one or two capital neglects. Were every particular to be set down, the Catalogue of blunders and expenses, losses and defeats, would fill a volume. It was time for Parliament, whose confidence the late Ministers had abused, to take the alarm. The country was hastening to destruction. Every man saw it. And though addresses did not come from every part of the kingdom, as they had done in the late reign upon the loss of Minorca, it was not because the people, both within and without the capital, were not convinced of the incapacity and wickedness of the late Ministers; but because the corrupt arts of those Ministers, and the misrepresentations they made of the state of the Country, in the Closet as well as in Parliament, had rendered all addresses and petitions, ineffectual. The People were reduced to this alternative; – to assume the power of action, in order to save, if salvation was within human reach; or to sit still, in silent patience, till the storm of ruin should burst. The time was awful. Parliament saw the gloom – and critically interposed. Parliament saw the Ministers were inca­ pable; were inadequate to the duties of their offices – they were undeserving of future trust and confidence: they had failed in the performance of every promise they had made; they had broken every engagement; their whole conduct, which had been a series of duplicity, / was become too palpable to be countenanced, too criminal to be permitted. With indignation, a majority of the House of Com­ mons, including a very large majority of the independent members, refused to give the Ministers any further support. These Gentlemen acted up to their con­ stitutional character, of Guardians and Trustees of the Nation. The greater part of the Ministers had nothing to lose but their salaries; and the greater part of their dependents nothing but their sinecures, douceurs, jobs, and contracts. The gains of all these people encreased with the distresses of the country. Parliament saw that the patrimony of the nation, which seemed to be the only permanent fund now left, was put in competition with the tenure and patronage of office. It was become a struggle between Property and Corruption; aided on one side by consummate ability and wisdom, and on the other by sordid avarice and low cunning. The wonderful talents, and oratory of Mr. Fox, poured conviction on the Skeptic, understanding on the Ignorant, gave ardour to the Indifferent, and decision to the Doubtful. The Treasury trembled at his name through all her classes of venality. His spirit and perseverance rouzed Parliament from its leth­ argy; and while he smote Corruption with one hand, he wielded the Democracy

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of England with the other. The Ministers were compelled to yield. They were obliged to go and acquaint the King they had lost the confidence of Parliament – that Parliament would no longer support them. On the 20th of March, Lord North came to the House of Commons to make a declaration, that he and his colleagues were no longer Ministers. But no sooner was one difficulty removed, than another presented itself; this was – Who had courage to succeed them? / There is no doubt but that the Court might, without much difficulty, have formed an administration of second and third rate men, like the last, who would have taken the responsible offices, and permitted the Interior Cabinet, consist­ ing of Mr. Jenkinson, and his coadjutors, to continue as before. Neither is there a doubt, that such a change would have been most agreeable. A Double Cabinet had been the favourite System of the Court for several years. It is the nature of man, when arrived at a certain age, to leave his habits with reluctance; and of all habits that of power, or the fancy of having power, is left with the great­ est. To form a Ministry, and preserve the favourite habit of the Court, was not impracticable, but to gain the Confidence of the House of Commons by such a Ministry, was totally impossible! The System had been exploded. It was uni­ versally known and reprobated. It was unconstitutional. The Cabal of Charles the Second laid the foundation of the expulsion of James the Second, and the consequent introduction of the House of Brunswick. Necessity, dire necessity, obliged the Court to resort to the Whigs. I will not be particular, because the subject is delicate. But there can be no impro­ priety in saying, and truth requires it, That the Answer of the Whigs was made with that decency and demeanour, which have ever marked their character. The warmest friend of Hierarchy must admire the respect shewn in it, and the most extravagant Independent must honour their firm adherence to the spirit of the constitution. The Court took courage; that bug-bear of nonsense, with which they had been threatened, they now found had no existence; it was a cheat invented by the last Ministers. It was now apparent, that the object of the Whigs was the Public Welfare; not the Captivity of the Crown. / There was a noble generosity, an exalted spirit of Patriotism, which a grateful posterity will be in love with praising, in the Whigs accepting the government of the Country, at a time, when by the mismanagements of the late Ministry, it was reduced to the most abject and humiliated condition. – After the losses of whole Provinces, and islands; all the defeats, and captures, which are deeply imprinted upon every man’s memory; an impoverished exchequer, a ruined marine, a peo­ ple unnerved by misfortune, and oppressed by taxation. Such a situation was enough to make the stoutest man tremble. And that such was the situation in which the late Ministry left us, notwithstanding they found us, when they were

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appointed Ministers, the most happy and flourishing people upon earth, is noto­ rious, not only to all ourselves, but to the whole world. There is a virtue, or a wickedness, in accepting the government of a Country in such a situation, as the history of the world cannot parallel. The act admits of no medium in principle. It must be superlatively good, or superlatively bad. If it is bad, there must be a temptation; a prospect, at least, of reward. No man, or set of men, will undertake a bad thing, in which there can be no honour, without the expectation of reward. What reward can be obtained from defeat of armies, diminution of empire, and decrease of wealth? But fortunately for the Whigs, notwithstanding every engine had been used for a series of years, in circulat­ ing the most villainous calumnies on their characters, and now stood ready to continue the infernal work; there was at this time, a criterion to judge of the prin­ ciple, without listening to the assertions, or declarations of either themselves, or their enemies. If reward had been their object in their acceptance of office, at this most hazardous / and perilous moment, we should not have seen Mr. Jen­ kinson and Lord Stormont dismissed as preliminaries, nor Lord Rockingham and Lord Shelburne negotiated with as principals. These facts are such public banners of an Independent Administration, that no suspicion of interest, nor slander of their enemies, can fasten upon them, with the least colour or pretence, the charge of any dishonourable motive or design. The virtuous men of Greece and Rome furnish figures, which fill up but the back ground of the canvas: a mighty empire torn to pieces, surrounded by powerful enemies, rescued from destruction, just as the Leviathan, Corruption, was ready to devour her, will to all ages occupy and fill the first. The virtue of their private characters, their acknowledged abilities, and the indisputable purity of their conduct when last in office, all warrant a favourable construction, in the first instance. But when the inflexible perseverance they have shewn against the ruinous measures of the late administration; their steady adherence to certain great constitutional points, notwithstanding repeated attempts, almost numberless, which have been made to divide them, are rec­ ollected; and that at last they made those points their conditions; it must be obvious and convincing to every man, that it was the Nation, the Public, and not themselves, which were the objects of their attention: that they have accepted of ardour, anxiety, difficulty, exertion, and responsibility, with the same view, and in the same manner, except that one is in some degree compulsory, and the other wholly voluntary, that the gallant soldier forsakes his ease, when the necessity of his country calls, and risks not only his life, but his reputation, which is dearer to him than life, in defence of her cause, her honour, and her existence. / They accommodated their own arrangements with a mutual and overbearing friendship, at a time when the public distresses had been augmented, had been

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encreased to such a wanton and unnecessary extent, as no indolence, no negli­ gence, no ignorance, can justify. The dawnings of their penetration are seen before they are warm in their seats. The Public take confidence in the rectitude of their measures, in their vigi­ lance, and in their wisdom. Ireland will treat with the present Ministers. The amiable manners, Whig principles, and hereditary purity of the Duke of Portland, seem like the former William, of the House of Orange, to be destined to restore the happiness, and lustre of Ireland. To his virtue and good sense, supported by the wisdom and energy of the Ministers at home, we may hope for the recovery and deliverance of our Sister Kingdom; who though in the regal titles is last named, is not least in love. Russia and Holland will likewise treat with the present Ministers. But nobody would treat with the last. All Europe saw they had no power; that they were only the ostensible puppets of an unresponsible Cabal. Our happiness at this moment is, that not only our own countrymen see, but that foreigners are also convinced, that the present Ministers are under no Secret Controul. They are superior to it. – The odious, unconstitutional and criminal system of a Double Cabinet, is broken up, and done away. That dark tempo­ rizing Cabinet of power, which was always equivocal, irresolute, and evasive, / and which rendered our Court despicable in the judgment of other nations, and detestable in our own, is exploded and banished, it is hoped for ever. The present Ministers of Great Britain are constitutional; they are the Authors and Advisers of their own measures. The omen of foreign communication is favourable, it is auspicious, and whether a peace with Holland succeeds or not, the change of system already shews, that the respectable names alone of the new Ministers, have recovered our rank among the nations; which by the late Ministers had been debased, abandoned, obscured and obliterated. This is an advantage, and an honour, which are not to be ascribed to any act in office, for they have not been long enough in office to see the effect of any; but solely to the high estima­ tion in which their characters stand abroad. It is an estimation founded upon experienced merit and excellence. When foreigners acknowledge such ability, who are in general not partial to us, the example must give weight and confir­ mation to our own judgments; and raise, in our minds, the estimation of those merits, because we are the people who are to profit by them. In our service we see engaged, The inflexible purity and virtue of the Marquis of Rockingham. The great political knowledge and sound judgment of the Earl of Shelburne. The spontaneous and perfect sagacity of Mr. Fox. The patriot spirit, and ardour of the Duke of Richmond. The constitutional learning and integrity of Lord Camden.

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His lordship’s approved, improving, and ennobled disciple, Lord Ashburton. The scientific and professional skill of Lord Keppel. The brilliant talents and amiable urbanity of Mr. Burke. The signal union of the whole House of Cavendish. With a long train of Peers and Commoners, Generals, and Admirals, return­ ing with zeal to the Public Standard, because they are confident of meeting with the support and the fidelity of office. If human wisdom, if acknowledged ability, if unimpeached virtue, and almost unexampled patriotism and heroism, ever deserved the confidence of a Nation, this combination, this assemblage of the brightest and purest gems in the British diadem, merit all the protection that a generous public can grant, and all the support that a people, snatched from ruin, can give. An INDEPENDENT WHIG. April 15, 1782. / Late Ministers.

Present Ministers. Appointed in April, 1782. Lord North appointed. January, 1770. Marquis of Rockingham. Lord John Cavendish. Lord Hillsborough. November, 1779. Mr. Fox. Lord Stormont . October, 1779. Lord Shelburne. Mr. Eilis.. February, 1782. Lord Bathurst. November, 1779. Lord Camden. Lord Dartmouth, . November, 1775. Duke of Grafton. Lord Hertford. December, 1776. Duke of Manchester. Lord Sandwich, December, 1770. Lord Keppel Lord Carlisle. October, 1780. Duke of Portland. Lord Amherst. June, 1779. General Conway. Lord Townshend. October, 1772. Duke of Richmond. Lord Clarendon. June, 1771. Lord Ashburton Mr. Rigby. June, 1768. Mr. Burke. Mr. Jenkinson. June, 1778. Mr. T. Townshend. Extravagance and Corruption. OEconomy and Reformation. INTERIOR CABINET ABOLISHED.

FINIS.

[STRATFORD], AN ESSAY ON THE TRUE

INTERESTS

[Edward Stratford], An Essay on the True Interests and Resources of the Empire of the King of Great-Britain and Ireland &c. &c. &c. (London: J. Stockdale, 1783).

Edward Stratford was the great-grandson of Robert Stratford, a Warwickshire Cromwellian emigrant to Ireland. His father, John, was made Baron Baltinglass in 1763, Viscount Aldborough in 1776, Earl Aldborough and Viscount Amiens in February 1777. Edward inherited these titles when his father died on 29 June 1777. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and followed his father as MP for Baltinglass in the Irish House of Commons from 1759 until his move to England in 1768. He was elected Whig MP for Taunton in 1774 but lost the seat the next year later due to corruption charges. He then retook his Irish seat, which he held until ennobled at his father’s death. Eccentric and quarrelsome, he argued with his brothers over governorship of County Wicklow, and conducted a vendetta against Lord Chancellor Fitzgibbon that saw him sued and briefly jailed for libel in 1798. He died without issue on 2 January 1801, and his titles and estates went to his brother, John. Stratford brought an Anglo-Irish and ultimately optimistic perspective to the loss of the thirteen American colonies in An Essay on the True Interests and Resources of the Empire. He begins by admitting the validity of pessimism fol­ lowing the 1783 Treaty of Paris. The ‘total dismemberment of thirteen of the most fertile and powerful provinces of America from the British Empire and the emancipation of Ireland from the subjugation of the Legislature of her sister state’, he notes, ‘naturally induce men of consideration, who are lovers of their King and country, to turn in their thoughts the effects these changes and revolu­ tions may produce’ (below, p. 165). Stratford aims to show that, instead of impoverishing, it will enrich these kingdoms, and turn out the surest and only means of reducing, and finally liquidating their national debts, and rendering what remains (by recurring to first principles of virtuous purity and œconomy, by the compactness of the empire, and governing it by honest, not factious, corrupt, and foolish councils, a trusty Administration under a virtuous and prudent Monarch) of – 161 –

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Stratford suggests that the extended empire made the ‘Parent State’ ‘dropsical’, with ‘the body and members infinitely too large for its head’ (below, p. 165) and thus ‘we never could manage so distant and large an empire, but at a great annual and increasing expence’ (below, p. 167). Stratford absolves the King of all blame for the American losses, accusing ‘evil and corrupt ministers’ (below, p. 167) instead. It is, he says, ‘a melancholy but true picture of most of the late Admin­ istrations, during his Majesty’s reign, who, faultless himself, has had the blame and odium of absurd, violent, and pernicious councils and ruinous measures, attempted to be laid at his door’, while the colonies had in fact been alienated by ‘men of notorious profligacy of manners, dissipation and poverty, of desperate and ruined fortunes, mere Catalines’ (below, pp. 165–6). By contrast, ‘Integrity, and independence are the ground-work, the foundation of each, and requires but a moderate share of abilities to conduct, the assistance, good will, and con­ fidence of the people, which must ever follow’ (below, p. 166). As others had said before the war, Americans were ‘allied in blood, religion, and constitution to us, the treasures spent there will quickly flow in again, and Britain and Ireland once more enjoy all the pristine benefits of America, without the expence of keeping it’ (below, p. 168). Similarly, ‘Ireland will prove, as an ally instead of a slave, of more solid advantage, comfort, and support to Great-Britain, and more to be relied on in time of necessity, than when the parliament of Great-Britain usurped an authority over it’ (below, p. 168). His anti-imperialism seems con­ firmed by the principled statement that ‘these then are the benefits which flow from freedom and independence, a free will offering far more desirable and of more avail than the forced and unwilling services of slaves’ (below, p. 169). In 1800, however, Stratford voted for the abolition of the Irish Parliament and full incorporation of Ireland into the British state.1 Notes: 1. E. I. Carlisle, rev. E. M. Johnson-Liik, ‘Stratford, Edward Augustus, second earl of Ald­ borough (1733/4–1801), politician’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 53, pp. 23–4.

AN

ESSAY

ON THE

TRUE INTERESTS and RESOURCES

OF THE

EMPIRE

OF THE

KING of GREAT-BRITAIN and IRELAND

&c. &c. &c.

BY THE EARL OF A—H.

DUBLIN, Printed:

LONDON: Reprinted for J. STOCKDALE, in Piccadilly.

MDCCLXXXIII.

[PRICE SIXPENCE.] /

TO

THE KING. Sire, The following Essay was at first intended to be dedicated to the Public, but as your Majesty is the Head of that Public, and your honour and welfare equally concerned in what it treats of, I / humbly beg leave to submit it to your royal consideration, and am, with real sincerity, affection, and respect, Your Majesty’s Dutiful, loyal, And faithful Subject, THE AUTHOR. /

AN ESSAY, &c. The period we are now at, the eventful changes occasioned by the late war, in the total dismemberment of thirteen of the most fertile and powerful provinces of America from the British Empire, and the emancipation of Ireland from the subjugation of the Legislature of her sister state, naturally induce men of consid­ eration, who are lovers of their King and country, to turn in their thoughts the effects these changes and revolutions may produce; and whether they will not ultimately tend to the advantage instead of detriment of both. / The idea of such a loss is, I confess, gloomy, and appears great indeed; but I hope briefly to shew, that instead of impoverishing, it will enrich these kingdoms, and turn out the surest and only means of reducing, and finally liquidating their national debts, and rendering what remains (by recurring to first principles of virtuous purity and œconomy, by the compactness of the empire, and governing it by honest, not factious, corrupt, and foolish councils, a trusty Administra­ tion under a virtuous and prudent Monarch) of more strength to defend, more power and force to attack, and easier to manage and conduct, than when clogged with the unwieldy burden of too large and distant a portion of continent; which made the Parent State, if I may be allowed the expression, dropsical, the body and members infinitely too large for its head, not but that it might still have remained annexed to the crown of these realms, at least for many years to come, under any just and / wise Administration, who (in their adult age) had treated them as friends and allies, not as children and slaves; under factions whose cor­ rupt views were sordid and selfish, whose love of peculation, weak minds, and baser dispositions, would immolate their King and Country, at the shrine of ambition, power, and avarice, and this is a melancholy but true picture of most of the late Administrations, during his Majesty’s reign, who, faultless himself, has had the blame and odium of absurd, violent, and pernicious councils and ruinous measures, attempted to be laid at his door; who hath lately had the gov­ ernment of his kingdom, nay, the power of appointing his own servants, and the regulation of his own family concerns, the establishment of his son’s houshold, interfered in, and wrested out of his hands, by a junto and coalition of interests, till then inimical and of different principles, and whose inconsistency hath ren­ dered it obnoxious, and suspicious to both realms, as well as to the Sovereign, / – 165 –

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whose only stay is the character of one man, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the rest being mostly men of notorious profligacy of manners, dissipation and poverty, of desperate and ruined fortunes, mere Catalines, alieni appetentes sui profusi,1 ingredients which ill fit them for Statesmen; which, surely, compose no part of a confidential Ministry, for without integrity and property, a strict adhesion to truth, justice, and their word, what Monarch, what people can trust them? What dependence can be had on men, whose words and actions, in and out of office, differ; whose private and public characters have not squared; whose lives have been a continued system of deceit, treachery, and inconsistency; a direct contradiction to every principle of honour or honesty, yet of such a miser­ able and wretched farrago is the present, and most of the latter Administrations made up; need we then look further at the losses the empire has sustained, the causes of inadequate treaties of peace, as well as unsuccessful wars; / and the late revolutions which have taken place, do not they prove their incapacity to man­ age, and that oratorical abilities unbacked by the confidence of the King and people, (for as their interests are the same, I shall never separate them, as wicked ministers and factions have attempted) though they may be false colouring for a time delude, can never long impose upon a discerning people, but must shortly sink into merited contempt. To such men and their principles we owe the distresses these kingdoms labour under; the debts which affect the subjects, to their insatiable lust for emoluments, the numberless sinecure and useless places, the disgraceful pen­ sions, and exceedings of the civil and military lists, the secret service money, and extraordinaries, and jobbing contracts, which afflict these kingdoms. / While such men, and such principles are suffered to bear sway, ’tis in vain to look either for reform or retrenchment. The good Government of an empire, depends not on venal or prostitute par­ liamentary majorities, they never speak the sense of the people, witness the late Parliament of Ireland, which through one session resisted every endeavour for the national welfare, and the next unsaid, and undid, what they had before said, and done; witness the change of administration, the speeches from the throne, and subsequent acts of parliament in both kingdoms. There is not that mystery, or difficulty in the management of public affairs, in being a good statesman, as crafty men paint. Integrity, and independence are the ground-work, the foundation of each, and requires but a moderate share of abilities to / conduct, the assistance, good will, and confidence of the people, which must ever follow; integrity and inde­ pendence, will amply supply all other wants. The good qualities of the heart will make amends for the deficiencies of the head; but this is begging the question, for I trust we have men both of abilities and integrity, who have independence to back them, and therefore want not to

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prey on the vitals of their country; the happy temperment of our laws and consti­ tution, the system of our education, and above all, the blessed effects of a pure (if well attended to) religion, without which, no man can be depended on; present opportunities for such worthies as scarce any other country can afford, and hath consequently produced more men of genius; greater in war, science, and the sen­ ate, than all the countries of Europe put together. / Such are now to be had, (under the auspices of a Sovereign, the protector and encourager of the liberal arts, of truth, and of merit) capable and willing to perform the functions of place without its emoluments, whose disinterestedness and integrity, would by a judicious curtailment of every unnecessary expence and office, without infringing on the Royal Houshold or State, for I am not one of those who want to lessen the dignity, or power of the Crown, but only that of evil and corrupt Ministers, and by an honest application of the public revenues, and œconomy in collecting them, and the wise management of the sinking fund, soon lessen and pay off the debts of each country. This, and this only, should be the criterion to judge of Ministers, if they did not settle their accounts annually, and thereby convince the people that con­ siderable deductions have been made in the space of time, both in their debts, / taxes, and expences: such a Ministry should by universal consent be dismissed, and a more proper one put in its place; integrity and œconomy would then take place of fraud and extravagant profusion, they would become national objects, and restore us to the first principles of virtuous Government. These then are the true interests of these sister kingdoms, interests they ought never to loose sight of, which when attainted, will amply compensate for their losses in America, if (except the blood and treasure spent there) it can be called so: I maintain the reverse, we never could manage so distant and large an empire, but at a great annual and increasing expence. A little reflection will shew, that a great part of the debts of these nations, the increase of taxes, places, contracts, and what is still worse venality, corruption, intrigue, profusion, and faction, evils enough to sap the foundations of the greatest empire, have had their / source from thence: a Stamp Act was the only internal tax likely to have operated there, from its nature of legalizing the transfer of property not valid without it. When that unjustifiable engine of power (unless to raise a subsidy for fla­ gitious ministers to extend their depredations on the public) and lawless sway could not go down, how weak and ruinous were the trifling expedients of the Declaratory and Tea Acts; but those topics have been so often and abler han­ dled, and now grown stale and foreign to my purpose, that I shall add no more on that subject, but to remark, that to the conduct of ministers in those futile and absurd attempts, and the dissoluteness and remissness of commanders sent to enforce them, who preferred making their own fortunes, to the honour and welfare of the King and Country, and have yet been suffered to enjoy the fruits of

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their villainy, do we owe / the disunion of those provinces from the parent state, separation I should not say, for unless by folly we continue to alienate their affec­ tion, and natural channel of their trade. Natural as being allied in blood, religion, and constitution to us, the treasures spent there will quickly flow in again, and Britain and Ireland once more enjoy all the pristine benefits of America, without the expence of keeping it; thus far I trust I have proved my assertion, that the dismemberment of America is rather a gain than a loss to us, and that if we main­ tain a superior navy to the rest of Europe and America, for on our wooden walls depend our trade, and existence as an empire, and a marine instead of a much more expensive and less useful land force, if we encourage Ireland to improve her ports and erect a navy, to add to and strengthen, but which can never vie with, or act inimical to Britain, whatever the groundless jealousy of weak or factious men have suggested, or may pretend (and / this is one of the principal amongst the true interests of the empire) we may bid defiance to the combined world, either to annoy our countries, or injure our commerce, and this the situation of these kingdoms, their maritime ports, particularly the capacious ones of Ireland, open to all the world, freed from impediments of shoals, or ice, or being wind-bound, or to the delays of slow navigation in working up channels, are most admirably adapted for, and would of necessity make us the carriers of Europe, the monopo­ lists of trade of the Western or oriental hemispheres, circumstances attending no other state in Europe, and in which Ireland hath evidently the advantage over Britain. In these considerations are comprehended the political, and some of the natural resources of that empire, in what is called its curtailed state; but if we further consider how infinitely superior its exports are to its imports, how few / its wants; how many its supplies; its internal resources may be truly said to be inexhaustible; as long as our navy can maintain us in the possession and use of them. I have hitherto, and ever shall, consider the islands of Great-Britain and Ireland to have the same common interests, as well as the same King, religion, and laws, and do contend, that in its present emancipated state, from its late absurd thraldom, that solecism in politics of an imperium in imperio, Ireland will prove, as an ally instead of a slave, of more solid advantage, comfort, and support to Great-Britain, and more to be relied on in time of necessity, than when the parliament of Great-Britain usurped an authority over it; this hath been long since maintained in theory by abler men than I pretend to be, it hath now been experimentally proved in practice, by lending its forces to Great-Britain for / her own defence, and repelling the threatened invasion of the united fleets of France and Spain, when hovering on its coasts and menacing a descent; this inglorious parade of the houses of Bourbon was frustrated by the Volunteers of Ire­ land – patriotic heroes, whose fame can never die, whose legal, temperate, wise,

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and determined actions, would have dignified the Roman, as much as they hon­ our, and immortalize the historic page of these times. This frustrated attempt employed their flotas, their supposed invincible Armada, and wasted one campaign, as Gibraltar did another, which else had possibly been exerted with effect elsewhere: these then are the benefits which flow from freedom and independence, a free will offering far more desirable and of more avail than the forced and unwilling services of slaves: my long residence and property in both kingdoms; my education and / connexions entitle me to judge; and to be an impartial spectator of these matters, as well as my situation in life, which sets me above adulation or delusion; my conduct in both parlia­ ments hath been, and ever shall be, for the mutual welfare of each state; and the ministers or persons who presume to create jealousies or mistrusts between the sister kingdoms (whose general interest and equality of trade and constitu­ tion every good, man and subject should strive to promote) I shall not hesitate to pronounce, are enemies to their country, and such I look upon to be those, who, out of place, propose plans of reform and œconomy, but never practise them when in; who employ the same prostituted hacks of every bad, as well as every good administration in the subordinate offices and management of the state; who recommend new and useless corps or regiments, by whatever name, or under whatever pretence, at the eve of a peace, an unnecessary burden to / the people, whose services (even in time of war) were not wanted; and in opposition to the sense of the nation, in detriment to the old established regulars, by put­ ting men who never saw service, over the heads of veteran officers; such I shall consider those who impede the progress, extension, and exports of the manu­ factures of Ireland; there is neither claim or pretence to restrain them from any European or American port not subject to Great-Britain, and to exclude them from Dominica while they open it to all the world besides, is both impolitic, unkind, and unjust, and tends to sever, instead of uniting the sister countries: a mutual courtesy in matters of privilege as well as in commerce, is also necessary and prudent to adopt, proving the two states as near in union as their respective situations admit of; and ’till these things take place, there will be no end of com­ plaints, grievances, distrusts, and jealousies. / I avoid at present touching on the conduct or character of particular persons, though I have much to object to several. I trust these general hints will suffice, they are at least well intended, their utility I think must be obvious to all; in hopes of their answering the salutary purposes intended, I have hitherto sup­ pressed a history of the administration alluded to, though possessed of letters, facts, and documents, to authenticate the charges therein brought against them, and which if the evils here only slightly glanced at are not remedied, no consid­ eration of connexion or family shall prevent me publishing; it wants but little alteration or emendation, which other avocations have prevented my attending

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to. I had however rather it should never be produced, at least during my life, as the malevolent in that case could not say, what they perhaps might now, that I was actuated by pique, or soured by disappointments, and that my strictures were dictated by / revenge (qualities foreign from my disposition) and of no avail in works of such a nature, wherein facts and not prejudices, are the basis. One word e’er I close. – I used the expression of England in its curtailed state; I meant only as to America, not as to its relative strength and consequence among the European nations. If England when disunited with Scotland, nay often at war with her, and at variance with the principality of Wales; and when Ireland had no connexion with her, and no resources therefore drawn from thence, could nevertheless penetrate to the gates of Paris, take captive its Kings, and repulse the united efforts of France and Spain; what can she not effect now? When backed by the two former, and aided by the latter with the East and WestIndia trade in her hands, with a virtuous and consistent ministry in both realms, under the good and gracious monarch who happily / governs both: I will take upon me to affirm we are, and shall continue, the greatest empire, as to riches, commerce, and manufactures, in Europe, mistress of its seas, and the ballance of its power.

FINIS.

EDITORIAL NOTES

[Ramsay], Letters on the Present Disturbances 1. opes nimias mundo … Lucan: ‘[When] Rome had conquered the world and fortune showered excess of wealth upon her, virtue was dethroned by prosperity.’ From Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, or Lucan (ad 39–65), De Bello Civili Sive Pharsalia, or Civil War [between Julius Caesar and Pompey], I.160–1. 2. George Onslow: George Onslow (1731–1814), Lord Onslow from 1776 and first Earl of Onslow from 1801, was initially a supporter but later an opponent of the colonists’ cause. The reference here is to the ‘Printer’s Case’ when, in early 1771, in order to control newspapers, Onslow notoriously had several printers brought before the House of Com­ mons for allegedly misrepresenting Parliamentary debates. 3. Cum Domino pax ista venit: ‘When peace comes, a tyrant will come with it.’ Lucan, De Bello Civili Sive Pharsalia, I.670. 4. trials by Jury, the birthright of every Englishman: As enshrined in the Magna Carta, clause 39: ‘No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land’. 5. The Canadians … are allowed the free exercise of their religion: The Quebec Act of 1774 guaranteed religious freedom for Catholic public officers who could now be sworn into office without renouncing Catholicism in favour of Protestantism.

Warwick, The Rights of Sovereignty Asserted 1. Coup d’Essai: ‘experiment’, ‘trial’ (French). 2. From Montmorency’s craggy height: a reference to Montmorency Falls at the mouth of the Montmorency River, near Quebec, where General James Wolfe (1727–59) built a fort in 1759 shortly before the Battle of Quebec, a decisive engagement in the French and Indian War. As the poem alludes, Wolfe was famously killed during this battle. 3. Acheron: In Greek mythology, the Acheron River, or river of pain, was associated with hell, and was considered one of the five rivers of the underworld.

[Galloway], Considerations upon the American Enquiry 1. Quid facitis? … Ovid: ‘What are you doing? What madness made you, O my friends, quit captured Troy?’ Ovid, also known as Publius Ovidius Naso (43 bc–ad 17/18), Roman poet, Metamorphoses, XIII.2, ‘The debate over arms: Ulysses speaks’, 225–6. – 171 –

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Notes to pages 39–56

2. Admiral Keppel’s vindication: Augustus Keppel, first Viscount Keppel (1725–86), who was acquitted at a court martial in 1779 after his failures at the First Battle of Ushant. 3. Sir William Howe’s military fame: William Howe (1729–1814) was held responsible for failing to break up the rebellion which would then become the American Revolutionary War. 4. In De Lolme on the Constitution: Jean-Louis de Lolme (1741–1804), Geneva-born political theorist who moved to England in adulthood and became a British subject. His Constitution de l’Angleterre, ou, État du gouvernement anglais comparé avec la forme républicaine et avec les autres monarchies de l’Europe (1771) first appeared in English as The Constitution of England, or, An Account of the English Government in 1775. 5. ‘dogs in forehead, in hearts they were deer’: Alexander Pope (1688–1744), English poet, satirist and translator of Homer. The quote, from the Iliad (1715–20), I.298, reads ‘Thou Dog in Forehead, but in Heart a Deer!’ 6. The Duke of Richmond: Charles Lennox, third Duke of Richmond and Lennox, (1735– 1806), soldier and politician, Secretary of State for the Southern Department from 23 May to 29 July 1766. In the parliamentary debates following Saratoga in 1778 Rich­ mond called for withdrawal of British troops. 7. Thersites only clamoured … delight supreme: From Pope’s translation of Homer’s Iliad, II.86 (‘Jupiter Sending the Evil Dream to Agamemnon’), ll. 11–14, 26. The words ‘The Great to censure was his darling theme’ do not appear in Pope’s Iliad, but seem to replace l. 18: ‘To lash the great, and monarchs to revile’. 8. arma, Militibus … Hor: Quintus Horatius Flaccus, or Horace (65–8 bc), Roman poet, Odes, III.5 (‘No surrender’), ll. 18–24. The full phrase reads ‘captius pubes: Signa ego Puni­ cis, adfixa delubris et arma, militibus sine cæde dixit, derepta vidi; vidi ego civium, retorta tergo bracchia libero, portasque non clausas et arua, Marte coli populata nostro’, or ‘I have seen standards and weapons, he said, taken bloodlessly from our soldiers, hung there in the Carthaginian shrines, I’ve seen the arms of our freemen twisted, behind their backs, enemy gates wide open, and the fields that our warfare ravaged, being freely cultivated again’. 9. General Robertson and Mr. Galloway: Loyalists James Robertson (bap. 1717–88) and Joseph Galloway (c. 1731–1803) spoke out against the methods of the British govern­ ment in dealing with the rebellions and called for them to be reconciled with the Crown by carrot rather than stick. 10. ‘It is one thing to gather … scatter cypress’: Laurence Sterne (1713–68), Irish-born novelist, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, ch. XXXII, originally published in 9 volumes between 1759 and 1769. 11. with all the caution of a Fabius: Fabius Maximus (c. 280–203 bc) employed strategic principles such as war of attrition against the Carthaginians in 217 bc. 12. fictis contendere verbis: ‘To battle using lying words.’ Ovid, Metamorphoses, XIII.9. 13. ‘Fas est et ab haste doceri’: ‘It is proper to learn, even from an enemy’, Ovid, Metamor­ phoses, IV.428. 14. Montesquieu says … under Alexander: Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755), French philosopher, De L’Esprit des Lois (1748), or The Spirit of the Laws, Book X, ‘Of Laws in the Relation they Bear to Offensive Force’, 13, Charles XII. 15. Cicero attributes … so long preserved: From Marcus Tullius Cicero, also known as Tully or Cicero (106–43 bc), Roman philosopher, lawyer and statesman renowned for oratory, De Legibus, or On the Laws, and De Re Publica, or On the Republic. 16. the bloody knife of Virginius: Lucius Appius Claudius was the leader of the Decemviri whose tyrannical rule (451–499 bc) was ended by the people who rose up against him

Notes to pages 59–96

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when they saw the knife that Virginius had used to kill his daughter to spare her from slavery to Appius. 17. Esprit des Loix: Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Book XI, ‘Of the Laws Which Establish Political Liberty, with Regard to the Constitution’, 15, ‘In what Manner Rome, in the flourishing State of that Republic, suddenly lost its Liberty’. 18. Sir Edward Coke: Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634), jurist and MP, opponent of Charles I, co-author of the 1628 ‘Petition of Right’, and author of thirteen volumes of Reports on the common law and the four-volume Institutes of the Lawes of England (London: Societie of Stationers, 1628–44). 19. pro aris et focis: a Latin phrase literally meaning ‘for our altars and our hearths’ but nor­ mally translated as ‘for god and country’. 20. Mr. David Hartley’s Letters, p. 41: David Hartley, the younger (1732–1813), statesman and scientist (and son of philosopher David Hartley), was MP for Kingston upon Hull, appointed His Britannic Majesty’s Minister Plenipotentiary to treat with the United States. He was eventually a signatory to the Treaty of Paris that ended the War of Inde­ pendence. His Letters on the American War. Addressed to the Right Worshipful the Mayor and Corporation, of the Trinity-House, and to the Worthy Burgesses of the Town of Kingston upon Hull was first published in 1778 and 1779. 21. Antæus: In Greek mythology the giant Antaeus has superhuman strength as long as he is in contact with the ground.

Knight, A Proposal for Peace 1. LORD NORTH: Frederick North, second Earl of Guilford (1732–92), widely known as Lord North, was Prime Minister from 28 January 1770 to 22 March 1782. 2. The national debt had risen to a most enormous sum: British national debt in 1764 was approximately £125m and would rise to £850m over the next fifty years. 3. a house divided against itself cannot stand: Mark 3:25; Matthew 12:25. 4. The historian … by Columbus: This reference is probably to Richard Hakluyt, who claimed that Prince Madoc made a voyage to America in 1170, 322 years before Columbus, in the eighteenth section of his Discourse of Western Planting (1584), entitled ‘That the Queen of England’s claim to all the West Indies or at least to as much as is from Florida to the Arctic Circle is more lawful and right than the Spaniards’ or any other Christian Princes’.

Porteus, A Sermon Preached before the Lords 1. 2. 3. 4.

Die Veneris: ‘Friday’ (Latin). ‘When the judgments of the … learn righteousness’: Isaiah 26:9. ‘pure, undefiled Religion’: James 1:27. ‘shine before men’: Matthew 5:16.

Cornwallis, A Sermon Preached in the Cathedral and Metropolitical

Church of Christ

1. ‘this hath God done, and to know his work’: This appears to be a paraphrase of Job 37:7. 2. the great Roman orator … machinations of Catiline: Marcus Tullius Cicero (see note 15 to [Galloway], Considerations upon the American Enquiry, above, p. 172). The Catiline or

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3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Notes to pages 96–129 Catilinarian Orations, paraphrased here, were speeches give by Cicero as Roman consul in 63 bc revealing to the Senate Lucius Sergius Catilina’s conspiracy to overthrow the Roman government. ‘evil that hath come upon us’: 2 Chronicles 20:9. ‘maketh our hands to war, and our fingers to fight’: Psalm 44:1. ‘reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man’: Psalm 107:27; Isaiah 24:20. ‘they, that trust in the Lord … abideth for ever’: Psalms 125:1. ‘Trust in the Lord … direct thy paths’: Proverbs 3:5, 3:6.

[Tucker], Dispassionate Thoughts on the American War 1. In the Multitude of Counsellors … Solomon: Proverbs 11:14, 24:6.

[Williams], A Plan of Association 1. the late Outrages, by the Protestant Association: The anti-Catholic Gordon Riots (1780) against the Papists Act (1778) which allowed Catholic soldiers to be sworn into the Brit­ ish Armed Forces without using the Protestant oath. The riots were named after Lord George Gordon (1751–93), who in 1779 became President of the Protestant Associa­ tion. See also note 4 below. 2. INTER SE CONGRUUNT … Quint: The last sentence of XII.6. 7 of Institutio Oratoria (ad c. 95) by Quintilian, or Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (ad c. 35–c. 100), Roman rheto­ rician from Hispania. The full sentence reads ‘Tum dignum operae pretium venit, cum inter se congruunt praecepta et experimenta’, meaning ‘It is only when theory and prac­ tice are brought into a perfect harmony that the orator reaps the reward of all his study’. 3. Vagus primum … affirmabant. Tac: Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus (ad c. 56–117), senator and historian of the Roman empire, The Histories, I.34. The full sentence reads ‘Vixdum egresso Pisone occisum in castris Othonem vagus primum et incertus rumor: mox, ut in magnis mendaciis, interfuisse se quidam et vidisse adfirmabant, credula fama inter gaudentis et incuriosos’, or ‘Piso had hardly gone forth when there came a rumour, at first vague and wanting confirmation, that Otho had been slain in the camp; soon, as happens with these great fictions, men asserted that they had been present, and had seen the deed; and, between the delight of some and the indifference of others, the report was easily believed’. 4. 18th Geo. III chap. 60: The Papist Act (1778), and the first Catholic Relief Act that freed Catholics from some of the provisions of the 1698 Popery Act. In particular, it gave protection to Catholics’ property rights provided they took an oath promising loyalty to the Crown, abjuring Jacobitism and denying papal temporal jurisdiction in Britain. Resentment against this Act was manifested in the Gordon Riots of 1780. 5. saints were to inherit the earth: Matthew 5:5. 6. What is settled by custom … Bacon: Francis Bacon, first Viscount Saint Alban (1561– 1626), English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist and writer, ‘Of Innovations’, ll. 10–15. This short essay first appeared in Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall in 1625, which was a third and enlarged edition of the Essayes: Religious Meditations. Places of Perswasion and Disswasion. Seene and Allowed, which first appeared in 1597. 7. Consultatum inde … Tac: Tacitus, The Histories, I.17, ‘Consultatum inde, pro rostris, an in Senatu, an in castris adopti nuncuparetur: Iri in castra placuit’, meaning ‘It was next

Notes to pages 129–45

175

discussed whether the adoption should be publicly pronounced in front of the Rostra, in the Senate, or in the camp. It was thought best to go to the camp.’ 8. Cardinal de Retz … all Mobs are mischievous: Jean-François Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz (1613–79), religious and political activist and writer, most famous for his Mem­ oires, written in the last decade of his life and going up to 1665. They were published in 1717, with an English translation first appearing in 1723. He famously wrote that ‘Every numerous assembly is a mob; everything there depends on instantaneous turns’. 9. Mr. Murray’s: William Murray, first Earl of Mansfield (1705–93), politician and judge, was MP for Boroughbride, but became famous as a reforming Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench from 1756 to 1788. 10. parvus callidus, bonos & modestos anteibat: ‘And thus the unscrupulous and the cun­ ning were preferred to the modest and the good.’ Tacitus, The Histories, I.87. 11. non tumultus, non quies, quale magni metus & magnæ iræ silentium est: ‘It was a scene neither of agitation nor of repose, but there reigned the silence of profound alarm and profound indignation.’ Tacitus, The Histories, I.40. 12. Sicut a majoribus accepimus, sic posteris tradamus: Tacitus, The Histories, I.40. The full sentence reads ‘hunc auspicato a parente et conditore urbis nostrae institutum et a regibus usque ad principes continuum et immortalem, sicut a maioribus accepimus, sic posteris tradamus; nam ut ex vobis senatores, ita ex senatoribus principes nascuntur’, meaning ‘This order which was instituted under due auspices by the Father and Founder of the city, and which has lasted without interruption and without decay from the Kings down to the Emperors, we will bequeath to our descendants, as we have inherited it from our ancestors. For you give the state its Senators, and the Senate gives it its Princes.’

[Almon], The Revolution in MDCCLXXXII 1. The Revolution in the Government … March 1872: Frederick North (see note 1 to Knight, A Proposal for Peace, above, p. 173) resigned as Prime Minister after losing the vote of confidence on 20 March. He was succeeded by Charles Watson-Wentworth, sec­ ond Marquess of Rockingham (1730–82), Prime Minister from March to July 1782. 2. Lord Chesterfield’s letters: Philip Dormer Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield (1694– 1773), politician and diplomat, most famous for Letters written by the late Right Honourable Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, to his Son, Philip Stanhope, Esq; late Envoy Extraordinary at the Court of Dresden: Together with several other pieces on various subjects (London: James Dodsley, 1774). 3. ‘It was published by Lord Temple’: Richard Grenville-Temple, second Earl Temple (1711–79) was brother of George Grenville and brother-in-law and political ally of Wil­ liam Pitt. The text is A Letter from Albemarle Street to the Cocoa-Tree (London: J. Almon, 1764). The Cocoa Tree Club was a chocolate house on St James’s Street, London. 4. It was written by Mr. Humphrey Cotes: Humphrey Cotes, a radical and associate of John Wilkes, was also author of An Enquiry into the Conduct of a late Right Honourable Com­ moner printed by Almon in 1766. 5. ‘Guard me from … from my enemies’: attributed to the French adventurer Jean Herauld Gourville (1625–1703). 6. animus in consulendo … libidini obnoxius: ‘They had industry at home, a just rule abroad, in counsel an independent spirit subject neither to passion nor to crime.’ Gaius Sallustius Crispus, or Sallust, (86–34 bc), Roman historian, Jugurthine War, LII, on the war in Numidia, North Africa, c. 112 bc, where Sallust was once governor.

176

Notes to pages 146–66

7. Conway: Henry Seymour Conway (1721–95), distinguished soldier and Whig politi­ cian, cousin of Horace Walpole. 8. affair of the Falkland’s Island: Spanish forces expelled the British from Port Egmont in the Falkland Islands in 1770. 9. ’Tis not to be great … Honour’s at the stake: Hamlet, IV.iv.58–61. 10. a beggarly account of empty boxes: Romeo and Juliet, V.i.45. 11. Ireland’s true Interest … Castle Street: This may refer to Thomas Campbell (1733–95), Irish Protestant clergyman and writer, A Letter to His Grace the Duke of Portland, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, touching Internal Regulation: With particular strictures upon the Linen Board, Excise Laws, &c. &c. To which is added, a Series of Aphorisms, Tracing, the Progress of Society, through Every Stage, from its most Rude to its most Refined State; and Connecting, In one demonstrative chain, the Elementary Principles of Political Oeconomy, which was printed and sold by R. Marchbank, Cole-Alley, Castle-Street, Dublin, in 1782, although the quotations are untraceable. 12. Mr. Mollyneux: The reference here is to William Molyneux (1656–98), Irish philosopher and author of The Case of Ireland’s being Bound by Acts of Parliament in England, Stated (Dublin: J. Ray, 1698). 13. Letter to the People of Ireland … Caple Street: Henry Grattan (1746–1820), member of the Irish House of Commons and campaigner for Irish legislative freedom. His Observa­ tions on the Mutiny Bill; with some Strictures on Lord Buckinghamshire’s Administration in Ireland (Dublin: W. Wilson, 1781) was also entitled A Letter, Addressed to the People of Ireland.

[Stratford], An Essay on the True Interests 1. alieni appetentes sui profuse: Latin: ‘foreigners eager to enrich themselves’.

INDEX

Abbott, George, Bishop of London, 1.1

Abraham, 4.156

absolute power, 2.195, 4.82–4, 101, 106,

5.206, 6.159, 163, 7.75–6, 8.58 Academy of Philadelphia, 4.149, 169–88 Act for the More Easy Recovery of Debts (1731), 5.22, 35–6, 41–2, 209n

Act of Settlement (1701), 4.111, 112

Act of Union (1707), 1.xxiv

Acts of Parliament, 3.140–1, 143–4,

167–71, 194, 206, 5.30–1, 53, 56, 58, 59,

61, 6.188, 257n, 7.48, 60, 67, 72, 157,

167, 174, 178, 8.17, 22, 40, 130, 135

Observations on Several Acts of Parlia­ ment, 6.83–99

relating to Ireland, 6.48–9, 56

see also names of individual Acts Adams, John, 5.xvi, 6.102

Adams, Samuel, 5.xii, xiii, xiv, 6.1, 115

Addison, Joseph, 6.261n

Aemelianus, Julius, 1.247n

Agesilaus, 7.33, 186n

Agincourt, Battle of (1415), 7.34

agriculture, 2.122–3, 258, 271, 5.116,

6.44–5, 8.111 see also plantations

Agrippa, Marcus Vipsanius, 6.155–7

Agrippa, Menenius, 7.34

Akeldama, 3.86, 226n

Alatamaha River, 3.104

Albany, 2.17, 85, 89, 3.221

Albany Congress and Plan of Union (1754),

3.193, 4.24, 6.73, 74, 189

Albemarle, George, Duke of, 2.117–18,

3.102

Alcibiades Cleiniou Scambonides, 4.235n, 7.134 Alderney, island of, 3.159 Alexander, Sir William, 6.175 Alexander the Great, 4.60, 6.132, 259n, 7.33, 8.53 Alexander VI, Pope, 3.100 Alfred the Great, 8.126 Allen, Ethan, 5.xv Allen, Rev. John, An Oration on the Beauties of Liberty, 6.115–45 Allen, William, 6.127, 259n Almon, John, The Revolution in 1782 Impar­ tially Considered, 8.139–60

Alphonsus V, King of Portugal, 2.27, 279n

Alva, Duke of, 5.102, 103, 6.169, 171

Amadas, Philip, 2.68

Amazon River, 2.61

ambassadors, 6.247, 8.73

American independence, 5.195, 6.74,

195–254, 196, 7.24, 8.42, 111

see also Declaration of Independence American Magazine, 4.149 American Philosophical Society, 4.149 American Revolutionary War (1775–83), 1.x, 4.190, 5.xiv–xvii, 16, 46, 148,

7.159–60, 8.9, 70

British victories, 8.46–7

destruction and debt as a result of, 8.108,

149–50 invasion of Canada, 7.169 Lord North and, 8.149 not unanimous support for, 8.44–5 Parliamentary inquiry into, 8.46–54 propositions for peace, 7.27–37

– 177 –

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start of, 7.11–12, 168–71 The Best Method of Putting an End to the American War (Glascott), 7.89–103 Considerations upon the American Enquiry, 8.35–62 Dispassionate Thoughts on the American War (Tucker), 8.101–14 An Enquiry (Roebuck), 7.105–37 A Proposal for Peace between Great Britain and North America (Knight),

8.63–76

The Public Advertiser letters, 8.5–12

Amherst, Sir Jeffery, 4.189, 195, 197, 198,

210, 239n

Amsterdam, 7.117

see also United Provinces

Andrews, John, 2.227, 228, 229

Andromache (wife of Hector), 1.7, 245n

Andros, Sir Edmund, 2.17, 171, 176, 180,

183, 184, 213–14, 222, 224–5, 229–56,

277n, 7.150, 191n

Anglicanism see Church of England

Anguilla, 2.135–7

Annapolis Royal (Port Royal), 6.185

Anne, Queen, 3.140, 143, 7.10, 113, 123,

150

Annesley, Maurice, 8.153

Anstey, Roger, 1.viii

anti-slavery tracts, 2.214, 5.148

anti-smuggling measures, 5.147

see also smuggling Antigua (Antego), 2.150–2, 3.42, 7.147 Antoninus Pius, Emperor, 4.61, 233n, 5.88, 213n, 6.160, 162

Anville, Duke d’, 6.186

Appleton, John, 2.226, 227, 228, 229

Appleton, Samuel, 2.229

Aquila, Gasper, 1.29

Aquitaine, 1.162, 165

Archons, 4.101, 235n

Argall, Samuel, 1.81–2, 2.85

Arianism, 1.24, 30, 31, 246n

Aristides, 6.134

aristocracy, 4.54, 103, 5.45, 198

Aristophanes, 7.85

Aristotle, 1.245n

Armitage, David, 1.viii, ix, 3.95, 110

Arnold, Benedict, 5.xv, xviii, 8.52 Ashburton, Lord, 8.160 Ashley, Anthony, Lord, 3.102 Ashley, John The British Empire in America,

Consider’d, 3.29–54

Memoirs and Considerations, 3.109–92

Ashley-River, 2.118, 119, 121

assemblies, 5.19, 39, 41, 53, 135–6, 139–42,

159, 161, 6.11–12, 16, 19, 7.74, 77

compared with House of Commons,

7.174, 181–3 contribution to common defence, 7.163 declaring themselves provincial con­ gresses, 5.xv–xvi laws, 7.54 Massachusetts-Bay, 4.48, 189–226, 6.190, 7.172

New York, 7.8, 172, 173

propositions for peace, 7.27–37

reform of, 3.203, 205–22

taxation, 5.8, 22, 28

Union Plan, 6.190

Assiento contract (1713), 3.95, 118, 227n Astyanax, 1.7, 245n Atabaliba, 2.36–40 Athanasius of Alexandria, 1.24, 246n atheism, 8.120 Athenaeus, 1.250n Athens/Athenians, 3.209, 4.59, 64, 101–2, 105, 107, 235n, 6.9, 7.85, 86, 87, 127,

8.56, 58

Attucks, Crispus, 5.xiii, 6.102

Auchmuty, Robert, 5.1

Augustine of Hippo, 1.246n, 2.284n

Augustus, Emperor, 1.150, 6.148, 155, 157,

159, 160, 7.134

Aurelius Antoninus, 6.162

Austria, 1.xxvii, 166, 168, 5.102, 103

Ayscue, Sir George, 3.51

Aztec empire, 2.29–35

Bacon, Sir Francis, 5.74, 210n, 6.177, 8.126, 174n Bacon, Nathaniel, 2.1, 2, 6, 3.201 Bahamas, 2.128 Baillie, Hugh, To the Author of a Pamphlet called Taxation No Tyranny, 7.71–90

Index Bailyn, Bernard, 1.ix, x Balantine, Rev. Mr, 4.18 Baldus de Ubaldis, 1.173, 249n Baltem, Governor, 2.5, 6 Baltimore, Benedict Leonard Calvert, fourth Baron, 1.xxvi, 2.3 Baltimore, Cecilius Calvert, second Baron, 1.xxiii, 2.1, 2, 5–18, 5.29, 156, 205n, 7.56, 57, 181 Baltimore, Charles Calvert, third Baron, 2.8, 12, 277n Baltimore, Charles Calvert, fifth Baron, 3.1 Baltimore, George Calvert, first Baron, 2.67, 110 Bank of England, 8.123 banking, 4.140–2, 7.120 Baptiste, Comte Jean, 5.xviii Barbados, 1.xxv, 2.7, 161–4, 165, 3.215, 216, 227n, 7.147 administration of, 2.265–9 agriculture, 2.271 duty paid, 3.147–9 hurricanes, 3.39 justice system, 2.270, 3.67 militia, 2.269–70, 3.48 money regulation, 3.141, 142 A Pattern for Governours, 3.55–77 petition to the king, 3.36–54, 109, 115–19 sugar plantations, 2.271, 272–4, 3.29–54 trade, 2.258, 271–3 Barbados Gazette (1735), 3.55–77 Barbuda, 2.131–4 Barclay, Rev. Mr, 4.16 Barclay, Sir John, 2.60, 92 Barclay, William, 2.284n Barlow, Arthur, 2.68 Barnarde, Governor, 5.140 Baron, Captain, 2.144 Barré, Isaac, 6.1–2 Barrington, William Wildman Shute Bar­ rington, second Viscount, 6.127, 259n Barrowe, Henry, 1.26–7, 28, 246n bartering, 1.127, 240–1 Baskerville, Sir Thomas, 2.55 Bath, William Pulteney, first Earl of, 7.109, 189n Bathurst, Lord, 8.160

179

Battle of Bunker Hill (1775), 5.xv Battle of the Boyne (1690), 4.162, 237n Battle of the Severn (1655), 2.2 Bedford, Duke of, 1.xxvii, 3.193, 8.11 beer, 5.122 Belial, 6.112, 258n Benson, George, A Sermon Preached at Paules Cross (1609), 1.1–72 Bentivoglio, Cardinal, 6.170, 262n Berkeley, Sir William, 1.xxiv, 2.1, 5, 16, 117, 3.102 Berkeley University, 4.42 Berkely, John, Lord, 2.117, 3.102 Bermuda, 1.xxv, 73, 109, 2.127–30, 3.142 Bermundaz, John, 2.127, 128 Bernard, Francis, 4.189, 190, 195–226, 239n, 5.x, xii, 6.1, 147 Berne, 7.117, 133 Berry, Sir John, 3.201 Beverley, Lenox, 2.237 Beverley, Robert, 3.228n Beza, Theodore, 1.29, 247n Bill of Rights, 4.112, 5.xii, 17, 22, 207n, 6.74, 79, 7.51 Bill of Rights Society, 7.166 bills of attainder, 7.76 bills of credit, 4.139, 146, 6.114, 191, 7.120 Bilney, Thomas, 1.19, 245n Birmingham, 7.45, 116 Blackstone, Sir William, 5.94, 213n, 6.207, 264n Blake, Admiral Robert, 1.154, 248 Blank Patents, 2.188 Board of Trade, 1.xxvi, xxvii, 2.257, 258, 3.29, 80, 193, 4.123, 144, 227, 5.vii, viii, 135, 6.73, 8.73 Bochart, Samuel, 1.250n Bodin, Jean, 1.173, 249n Boecler, Johann Heinrich, 6.148, 157, 262n Bolingbroke, Henry St John, Viscount, Idea of a Patriot King, 3.96 Bollan, William, 5.x, 46 The Free Britons Memorial to all the Freeholders, Citizen and Burgesses, 6.147–8 The Free Britons Supplemental Memorial, 6.148

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The American Colonies and the British Empire, Volume 8

The Mutual Interest of Great Britain and the American Colonies, 5.1–13

The Petitions of Mr Bollan, 6.148

The Rights of the English Colonies,

6.147–93 A Succinct View of the Origin of Our Colonies, 5.65–88

bonds, 6.91–2

Bonner, Edmund, 6.127, 259n

Borgia, Cesar, 1.63

Boroughs, Sir John, 1.168, 249n

Boscawen, Admiral Edward, 4.65–9, 234n

Boston, 2.17, 171, 177, 6.232, 7.45–6, 80,

8.16, 17

American Revolutionary campaign in,

7.11, 168–9, 8.53

‘Declaration of Grievances’ pamphlet

war, 2.171–256

Liberty Riot (1768), 5.xii, 6.1, 84, 101

Massacre (1770), 5.xiii, 6.101–13

Stamp Act riots, 5.x–xi

Tea Party (1773), 4.228, 5.xiii, 6.220, 7.9,

79, 144

troops in, 5.xiii, 6.74, 101

Boston Port Act (1774), 5.xiii, 6.74, 7.144

see also Intolerable Acts

Boswell, Sir William, 1.243

Bourbons, 7.27, 8.106, 112, 114, 143, 150,

168

see also France

Bowdoin, James, 4.199, 200

Boyle, Robert, 3.201, 228n

Braddick, Michael J., 1.viii, 5.viii–ix

Braddock, General Edward, 1.xxvii, 4.70, 75,

164, 234n

Bradford, William, 2.20

Bradstreet, Captain, 2.247

Braganza, Duke of, 7.36

Brandenburgh, 5.162

Brandenburgh, Elector of, 4.113

brandy, 1.189, 2.78, 79, 86, 5.123

Brandywine, Battle of (1777), 8.47, 50

Brattle, General William, 4.199, 200

Brazil, 2.42, 56, 85, 144

Brewster, Sir Francis, 6.53, 256n

Briareus, 4.86

bribery, 1.13–14, 4.63, 76, 84

Bristol, 6.177, 7.63

British Constitution see Constitution British empire, 1.vii–x, 2.20, 3.30, 5.76,

77–9, 90, 105, 147, 173, 6.8, 12, 15, 37,

175–80, 206, 212, 224, 237, 7.7, 46, 126,

8.11, 15, 18, 68, 74, 161–70, 165

British Post Office Act (1710), 5.207n Brittany, 1.166, 167, 219

Brooklyn, 8.53 Brown, Christopher, 1.viii Brown, John, 6.115 Browne, Robert, 1.26–7, 28, 246n Browne, Thomas, 2.241–2 Bruce, Edward, second Lord of Kinloss, 7.19, 185n Brunswick, House of, 8.157 Bucklin, Joseph, 6.115 Bull, Frederick, 6.220, 265n Bull, William, 5.xii bullion, 6.246 Bullivant, Dr, 2.224 Bunker Hill, Battle of (1775), 7.169 Burgoyne, General John, 5.xiv, xvii, 8.45,

51, 54

Burgundy, 1.166, 167, 168, 227, 238

Burke, Edmund, 1.xxvi, 3.193, 5.viii–ix, xiv,

46, 6.195, 231, 7.45, 190n, 8.47, 160

character sketch, 8.48

letter to sheriffs of Bristol, 7.139–83

Burnet, Bishop Gilbert, 6.132, 259n Burril, John, 2.234 Burrough, Stephen, 2.47–8 Burton, Robert, 2.19 Bushrod, Richard, 1.89 Bute, John Stuart, third Earl of, 4.124, 233n, 5.15, 6.135, 260n Butler, Bishop Joseph, 5.147 Butler, Captain, 2.128 Butts, Sir William, 2.64 bye-laws, 4.137, 229, 5.56, 57, 7.113 Cabot, John, 1.xxi, 196, 222, 228, 3.99, 100

Cabot, Sebastian, 1.222, 2.42, 64, 68, 111,

3.96, 99, 100, 101, 199

cacao, 5.116, 125

Cadiz, 7.125 Calais, 7.60 California, 2.58 Caluin, M., 1.29

Index Calvert, Philip, 2.8, 12, 277n

Calvert, William, 2.8, 277n

Calvin, John, 1.97, 3.20, 224n

Calvinism, 4.1

Cambrai, League of, 1.142

Cambrai, Peace of (1529), 5.98, 103

Cambridge University, 2.94

Camden, Charles Pratt, first Earl, 7.131,

174, 181, 190n, 8.159, 160

Camden, William, 1.160, 168, 237, 248n

Campeachy (Campeche) Bay, 5.173, 8.13

Canada, 2.2, 17, 143, 191, 3.221, 4.7, 8–9,

145, 197, 5.xv, 12, 96, 6.182, 185, 186,

7.72, 74, 79–80, 84, 87, 109, 136, 153,

160, 8.54, 70, 74, 148

American Revolutionary campaign in,

7.169 exploration of, 2.42–51 government of, 8.18 siege of Fort Duquesne (Lequesne), 4.70–5, 164

Canary Island, 5.119

Canceau (Canso), Nova Scotia, 6.185

Cannadine, David, 1.viii

cannibalism, 2.31, 80, 131, 141, 142, 143,

147, 149

Canning, George, A Letter to the Right Honourable Wills Earl of Hillsborough, 5.189–203 Canning, Stafford, 5.189 Canon Law, 2.16, 6.78 Canterbury, Archbishop of, 5.80 Canterbury Cathedral, sermon preached by Dean (1780), 8.91–100

Capadocians, 3.21

Cape Ann, 1.128, 129, 131

Cape Breton, 1.xxviii, 4.146, 227, 5.12,

6.187, 188

Cape Cod, 2.50, 70

Cape of Good Hope, 2.58

Care, Henry, 3.224n

Caribbean, 2.131–69

Carleton, Sir Dudley, 1.239

Carlisle, Lord, 8.160

Carlton, General, 7.136

Carlton, Lord, 1.174

Carmel and Sharon, 4.21, 39

181

Carolina, 1.xxv, 2.117–26, 171, 3.144, 4.145, 7.146 agriculture, 2.122–3 land grants, 2.121–2 Letters Patent, 3.102–3 Native Indians, 2.123–6 natural resources, 2.122 paper money, 3.141 rice exports, 3.122–3, 153 support for British in ‘back parts of ’, 8.45 see also North Carolina; South Carolina Caroon, Sir Noel, 1.242

Carr, Sir Robert, 2.85

Carteret, Sir George, 2.92, 117, 3.102, 226n

Carthage, 3.209, 7.33, 127, 134, 8.62

Cartwright, John

draft for an Emancipating Act, 6.241–54 A Letter to Edmund Burke, 6.195–218 Postscript, 6.219–40 Taxation, Tyranny. Addressed to Samuel Johnson, 7.39–68

Casaubon, Isaac, 6.166

Casimere, John, 1.47

cask-making, 5.119

Cassiodore, 2.207, 285n

Cassius, Dion, 2.199, 284n

Casson, George, 2.112, 113

Castile, 2.27, 3.100

see also Ferdinand and Isabella

Castroit, George, 1.45, 247n

Catholicism, 1.xxiii, 15, 2.1, 5, 10, 11,

16–17, 171, 190, 192, 221, 4.106, 107–8,

150, 5.101, 7.72, 74, 80, 84, 88, 98, 182,

8.60, 120, 148

conversion of Incas, 2.37–8

missionaries, 4.17–18, 43

Catiline, 4.120, 236n, 8.96

cattle, 1.131

Cavendish, Lord John, 8.149

Cavendish, Sir Thomas, 1.222, 2.55–8, 61

Cecil, Sir William, 4.136

Celsus of Verona, 1.40, 247n

Chalmers, George, An Answer from the

Electors of Bristol to the Letter of Edmund Burke, 7.139–83 Cham of Tartary, 5.195, 215n Chaplain, Samuel, 2.65, 280n Chappaquessot, 2.240

182

The American Colonies and the British Empire, Volume 8

Charles, Duke of Burgundy, 1.167 Charles I, King of England, 1.xxiv, 90, 160,

172, 230, 240, 242, 3.102, 4.23, 82, 86,

5.156, 6.123, 178, 7.47, 57, 62, 63, 149,

8.120, 121

Charles II, King of England, 1.xxiv, xxv, 138,

178, 195, 196, 2.1, 18, 85, 96–7, 117,

178, 3.102, 103, 4.229, 5.18, 109, 7.55,

74, 114

Charles II, King of Spain, 3.106 Charles V, King of France, 1.208, 5.100, 6.167, 169

Charles VIII, King of France, 1.63

Charles XII, King of Sweden, 8.53

Charleston, South Carolina, 5.xv

Charlestown, Massachusetts Bay, 2.118, 235

Charnock, Stephen, 7.102

Chaeronea, Battle of, 7.87

charters see Crown charters

Chemosh and Moloch, 2.17, 278n

Cherbury, Edward Herbert, first Baron,

1.251n

Cherokee Indians, 4.143, 145, 5.36

Chesapeake Bay, 1.80, 2.108, 115

Chester, 5.95, 6.65, 257n, 7.60

Chester, Bishop of, Sermon on the General

Fast (1779), 8.77–90 Chesterfield, Lord, 8.145 Chiegnecto massacre (1750), 4.46 Child, Sir Josiah, 7.152, 192n Chile, 3.105 China, 1.221, 5.116 Christian Soldier’s Duty (Smith), 4.156–61 Christianity, 4.33, 172, 5.90, 6.235, 7.51 breaking the Sabbath, 7.101 conversion of Native Indians to, 2.84, 4.2, 15–20, 43

conversion of Incas to, 2.37–8

imperial expansion and, 4.150, 172–3

missionaries, 4.2, 16, 20, 23, 43

St Vincent, 2.146–7

science and, 4.176–80

sermons, 1.1–72, 7.89–103, 8.77–90,

91–100

Chrysostome, 2.197, 207, 284n

Church of England, 2.190, 192, 4.24, 205

and Barbados, 2.263–5

Thirty-Nine Articles, 2.220

Churchill, Harriet, 6.73

Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 1.24, 246n, 2.196,

283n, 4.240n, 6.159, 8.56, 97, 172n

Cinque Ports, 1.236

civil law, 5.93–4, 106

civil liberty, 2.234, 5.85, 108, 6.78, 193,

7.21, 22, 25, 52–3, 56, 76, 118–19, 128,

132, 146, 156, 8.71, 113, 124, 145

see also Habeas Corpus

civil power, 4.23, 29–30, 158

Clarendon, Edward, Earl of, 2.117, 3.102,

6.151, 261n, 8.160

Cleland, William, The Present State of the

Sugar Plantations, 2.257–75

Clemens, Captain, 2.235

Clemens, Pope, 2.200, 284n

Clifford, Sir Nicholas, 2.59

climate, 8.42, 57, 111

Carolina, 2.118, 119

Maryland, 2.108

New England, 1.109–10, 2.84

Pennsylvania, 2.97–8

Virginia, 2.115

Clinton, General Sir Henry, 5.xiv, xvii, 8.45, 51

Clodoveus, King (Clovis), 1.43, 247n

Cluentius, 2.200

coal, 7.123

cochineal, 5.116

Cocks, James, 2.250

cocoa-nuts, 7.122

Codrington, Christopher, 2.264, 286n

Coddrington family, 3.61

Coercive Acts (1774), 5.xiii, xvii

coffee, 3.119, 5.116, 118, 7.122

Coke, Sir Edward, 1.163, 2.182, 283n, 3.11,

194, 206, 223n, 5.75, 211n, 7.145, 148,

149, 8.60, 173n

Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, 2.275, 286n,

6.192–3, 263n

Colden, Cadwallader, 3.221, 228n

Coleman, William, 2.247

Colleton, Sir John, 2.117, 3.102

Colley, Linda, 1.viii

colonial assemblies see assemblies

colonization, 5.90, 93

Columbus, Bartholomew, 2.27

Index Columbus, Christopher, 1.xxi, 221–2, 2.25, 26–9, 157, 169, 3.199–200

Comensis, Cardinal, 1.15

Commission of Trade and Plantations, 5.141

see also plantations; trade

Commodus, 6.148, 163–5

common good, 4.198, 6.22, 111, 187, 7.31

common law, 2.185, 187, 268, 3.7, 8, 9, 14,

15, 16, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 194,

5.22, 27–8, 30, 55, 94, 6.74, 77, 7.64,

76, 149

Company of Merchant Adventurers, 1.129, 130, 3.101, 4.137, 5.37, 6.177

Company of Stationers, 1.73

Conant, Joshua, 2.249–50

Conant, Richard, 1.89

Conciliatory Bill, 6.200, 236, 265n

Concord, Battle of (1775), 7.11

Connecticut, 2.253, 4.137, 6.241, 242,

7.135, 146

Albany Congress, 6.189

militia, 7.10

private charter, 5.viii, 29, 208n, 7.57

taxation, 5.18

conquest of lands, 3.99, 105

Constantine, Emperor, 1.17, 6.166

Constitution, 3.205–6, 4.189, 205, 5.29, 40,

52, 53–5, 56, 60, 66, 74, 95, 154–7, 197,

202, 6.6, 13, 67, 209, 211, 215, 7.49, 55,

8.40, 105, 120, 124

British, 4.82, 83, 84, 86, 105, 107, 112,

124, 190, 6.195, 202–5, 7.5, 21, 31,

32, 56, 116, 179, 8.16, 126–7, 130

colonial, 4.229–30, 5.142, 6.73–81, 7.5

law, 7.48, 55, 66

model for colonies, 5.xv

Plan of Association, 8.115–37

reform, 5.174, 6.195–254

Roman, 8.56

Constitutional Society, 8.23, 24

Continental Congresses (1774 and 1775),

5.xiv, xv, 7.54, 82, 128, 132, 146, 153,

159, 165, 167, 172, 8.43–4, 44–5, 54–6,

148

see also Declaration of Independence;

Philadelphia

contraband, 1.160, 3.44, 5.10, 120, 126

see also smuggling

183

contract theory, 2.2

contracts, 4.139, 140, 141, 6.79

Convention of Pardo (1739), 3.95

Convention Parliament (1660), 7.121

Conway, General Henry Seymour, 5.142,

144, 214n, 8.146, 149, 160, 176n Conway, Stephen, 1.viii Coode, John, 2.2, 171, 3.2 Cooke, Elisha, 2.256 Cooke, Captain Miles, 2.16 Cooper, Thomas, 2.90 Cope, Sir John, 6.177 copper, 5.116 copper ore, 7.114 Coram, Thomas, 3.95 Corinthians, 7.33 corn, 3.125, 5.119, 126–7, 6.40, 41, 43–9 Corner, Captain, 6.94 Cornwall, 7.82 Cornwallis, Lord Charles, 5.xviii, 8.49, 50 Cornwallis, Rev. James, Dean of Canterbury, 8.91–100 corruption, 2.247, 4.53–4, 61–3, 76, 84,

102, 6.123, 209, 233, 7.45, 59, 67, 163,

179, 8.129, 156, 158, 160, 167

Corsica, 8.148

Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, Hérnan,

2.29–35, 278n

Costello, Mary Ann, 5.189

Cotes, Humphrey, 8.145, 175n

cotton, 2.122, 5.116, 117, 125

cotton wool, 7.123

Court Party, 3.193–4

Courts of Admiralty, 8.18

see also Vice-Admiralty Courts

Cowes, Isle of Wight, 3.157–8

Cox, Sir Richard, 5.21

Crakanthorpe, Richard, 1.1

Cranfield, Henry, 2.84, 281n

Craven, William, Earl of, 2.117, 3.102

credit, 3.141, 145–6, 5.22

Creek Indians, 4.135, 143, 145

criminal liability, 8.73

Critical Review, 4.54

Cromwell, Oliver, 1.138, 2.1, 165, 5.109

Crouch, Nathaniel, 2.278n

The English Empire in America, 2.19–169

184

The American Colonies and the British Empire, Volume 8

Crown charters, 1.xxii–xxiii, xxiv, xxv–xxvi,

5.viii, 2, 7, 17, 22, 28, 29–30, 56, 66, 74,

89, 93, 155–7, 6.5, 6, 148, 7.5, 9–10, 48,

51, 54–7, 60, 71–2, 85, 110–11

Georgia, 7.58

Massachusetts Bay, 2.171, 4.41, 212, 220,

5.29, 7.29, 57, 63

New England, 2.178–83, 187

Pennsylvania, 2.96–7, 5.29, 208n

Virginia, 1.74n, 3.226n, 7.56, 63–4

Crown revenues, 1.233, 2.15, 258, 3.36,

111, 115, 125, 4.87, 92, 98, 123–4, 134,

7.6–8, 11, 113–15, 118–20, 118–21,

124–5, 129–31, 160, 163, 167, 178,

8.69, 106, 144, 146, 150

see also taxation

Crusades, 1.227

Cuba, 2.28, 29, 41, 166, 3.100, 105

Cudworth, Dr Ralph, 5.75, 79, 211n

Culloden, Battle of (1746), 4.75, 234n, 7.44

Culpeper, John, 7.149, 191n

Culpepper, Thomas, 7.149

Cumberland, George Clifford, Earl of,

2.59–60 Cumberland, Richard, 5.75, 211n Cumberland, William, Duke of, 4.75 Cummings, Archibald, 4.24 The Character of a Righteous Ruler, 3.56, 79–93 Cunningham, William, 7.146, 191n currency, 3.139–46, 4.124, 138–9, 141–3, 146, 6.246 Currency Act (1764), 3.109, 4.124, 5.x see also paper money Curteens, William, 2.161 Curtis, Joseph, 2.243 Curtius, 2.207, 285n Cushing, Thomas, 7.53, 186n customs duty see excise duty Dagobert, 6.165

Dalecalians, 4.88, 235n

Daniels, Christine, 1.viii

Dantforth, Thomas, 2.243

Darien, straight of, 2.52, 60

Darius I, King of Persia, 7.33

Darius III, King of Persia, 4.60, 233n

Dartmouth, William Legge, second Earl of, 4.228, 5.xiv, 6.115, 116, 121–46, 258n, 8.160

Davenant, Charles, 7.59

Davies, Sir John, 6.53, 256n

Davis, Captain James, 2.111, 235

Davis, John, 1.xxii, 222, 229, 2.45–6

Davis, William, 2.1, 13

De La Ware (De La Warr), Thomas West,

third Baron, 1.73, 86, 88, 120, 2.128

Decker, Sir Matthew, 6.57, 256n

Declaration of Grievances (1689)

John Palmer’s attack on, 2.171–212 Edward Rawson and Samuel Sewall’s rebuttal, 2.213–56 Declaration of Independence (1776), 5.xv– xvii, 6.116, 8.54–62, 67

Declaration of Rights, 5.xi

Declaratory Act (1766), 5.xi–xii, xvii, 6.1,

195, 206–8, 212–14, 242, 248, 7.7, 113,

144, 171–2, 176, 8.154, 167

decus & tutamen, 5.71, 210n

Dee, John, 1.137

Delaware, 2.17, 5.175, 6.241, 242, 7.110

Delaware, River, 2.93, 94, 106, 5.xvii

Delphic oracle, 7.87

Demarare, 8.155

democracy, 4.54, 103, 6.11, 156

Demosthenes, 4.53, 59, 64, 233n, 7.87, 188n

Denmark, 1.137, 160, 168, 169, 205, 219,

220, 243, 2.182, 4.113, 5.162, 7.159,

8.148

Dennis, James and Mary, 2.247

Devonshire, Duke of, 4.233n

Dickinson, H. T., 1.viii

Dickinson (Dickenson), John, 6.74, 196,

211, 256n, 7.144, 172, 189n Diggs, Sir Dudley, 2.51 Dinwiddie, Robert, 1.xxvii, 4.1, 234n Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 1.250n, 6.148, 155, 262n

Dissenters, 4.205, 8.121

Dobbs, Arthur, 4.123

Dodderidge, Sir John, 5.80, 211n, 6.177

Dodsley, James, 8.27, 81, 145

domestic servants, 1.123, 2.162

Dominica, island of, 2.141–4, 4.227, 8.150,

169

Index Dominion, 1.146–76, 3.95–107, 194, 201,

5.107–8, 186, 6.153, 182–3, 188, 211,

243–6

Don Frederick de Toledo, 2.158–9 Dongan, Thomas, 2.171 Dorchester Company, 1.89 Dorrington, Captain, 6.96 Douglass, William, 5.176, 188, 215n Doyly, Colonel Edward, 2.166, 282n Drake, Sir Francis, 1.xxii, 195, 222–3, 228–9, 2.51–5, 60, 61, 68, 82, 111, 3.104

drunkenness, 1.12, 24, 36, 37–8, 58, 60, 65,

124, 4.160–1

among Native Indians, 2.83, 102, 105,

129, 237–8, 4.10–11, 13, 18

Dryden, John, 2.278n

Dudingston, Lieutenant William, 6.115

Dudley, Joseph, 2.222, 227, 228, 232

Dulany, Daniel, The Right of the Inhabitants

of Maryland, 3.1–27

Dungan (Dongan), Thomas, 2.245, 253,

254, 285n

Dunmore, John Murray, fourth Earl of, 5.xv,

7.11 Durham, Bishop of, 4.94 Durham City, 7.116 Dutch Republic see United Provinces Dutton, Sir Richard, 2.164 Duvivier, François Dupont, 6.185 East Florida, 4.227, 6.242, 7.169 East India Company, 1.195, 4.117, 119,

5.xiii, 159, 6.74, 220, 257n, 7.9, 11, 129,

144, 8.148, 155, 170

East Indies, 1.100, 118, 230, 3.159

East Jersey, 2.90, 281n

see also New Jersey

Ecclesiastical law, 6.78

Edgar, King, 1.226, 233, 235, 242

education, 4.149, 150, 172–3

see also universities

Edward I, King, 1.163, 4.93, 94, 5.80, 81

Edward II, King, 1.234, 236

Edward III, King, 1.227, 233, 234, 236,

4.94, 6.53 Edward IV, King, 1.166 Edward VI, King, 2.42, 5.82 Edwards, Esther, 4.1

185

Edwards, Rev. Jonathan, 4.1, 2, 18, 19, 231n

Effingham, Lord Howard of, 2.116

Egmont, John Percival, Earl of, 3.95

Egmont, Lamoral, Count of, 5.101, 102,

7.35, 186n Egremont, Charles Wyndham, second Earl of, 4.197, 239n

Egypt, ancient, 8.146

Eleanor of Aquitaine, 1.162

elections, 3.208, 224n, 4.63, 84, 107, 5.37,

157–8, 158, 201, 6.65, 196, 240, 7.29,

60, 80, 166, 8.10, 135

Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 1.15,

159–60, 168, 196, 219, 228, 230, 234,

237, 239, 2.43, 55, 101, 3.104, 200, 5.77,

6.53, 173, 175, 176, 7.62, 149, 154

Elliott, Sir John, 1.viii, ix

Emanuel, King of Portugal, 2.35

emigration, 6.248, 7.119–20, 8.15, 22

Endicott, John, 1.131–2, 3.201–2, 228n

English Civil War, 1.xxiv, 90, 7.47, 114,

8.120 equality, 3.13, 5.195 Erle, Sir William, 1.89 Erving, John, 4.199, 200 Estrepment, writ of, 3.23, 225n Ethiopians, 1.221 Euclid, 4.92, 235n, 7.72 Euripides, 2.195, 283n Eusebius of Caesarea, 1.17, 32, 245n, 247n evangelism, 4.163 Evelyn, John, Navigation and Commerce, 1.195–244 excise duty, 1.xxv, 2.225, 271, 3.30, 38–9,

41, 49–50, 119, 147–9, 5.109, 118–31,

159, 6.43, 97, 7.64, 112, 121, 173, 8.151

cider, 5.7, 31, 32, 209n

liquor, 2.258

molasses, 3.131–4, 5.9–10, 6.84, 89, 93,

96–7, 7.113, 115

rum, 3.109, 136–7, 173–5

slaves, 7.120

sugar, 3.110, 117, 118, 173–5, 5.9, 7.113,

114–15

tea, 7.114–15, 128

textiles, 5.10

tobacco, 4.34, 5.116, 127, 6.46, 7.113,

124–5

186

The American Colonies and the British Empire, Volume 8

excise men, 2.247, 6.84, 92–6, 98, 7.121, 173, 8.23 Exclusion Crisis (1678–81), 2.2, 7.121 executive power, 4.38, 81, 203–4, 210–11,

220, 221, 223–4, 6.74, 79, 205, 7.7, 179,

8.8

see also monarchy; Parliament

exploration, 1.xxi–xxii, 196, 221–3, 229,

2.20, 25, 3.96, 99–104, 199–200

Christopher Columbus, 1.xxi, 221–2,

2.25, 26–9

conquistadors, 2.29–39

English, 2.42–63, 6.175–9

North-West Passage, 2.42–51

Eynde, Joseph, 2.231

France, 6.182

Grand Banks, 6.83, 87, 244

imports, 5.124

legislation, 7.66

mackerel, 6.83, 87–8

Montserrat, 2.138–40

New England, 2.225, 5.9, 122

New Jersey, 2.90–1, 92, 94

Newfoundland, 2.64, 65, 67, 5.9, 122,

123, 173, 6.244, 245, 7.83

Nova Scotia, 6.185

Royal Prerogative and, 1.153

rum and beer for fishermen, 5.9, 122–3

sovereignty of the seas and, 1.166–76

training ground for Royal Navy sailors,

7.26, 8.110

Fabian, Robert, 2.64 United Provinces, 1.75–6, 154, 173

Fabius, 8.46 whale, 2.48–9, 7.6

Fabricius, Georg, 6.148, 156–7, 262n Fiske, Samuel, The Character of the Candi­ Falklands Crisis (1770), 8.147 dates for Civil Government, 3.79

famine, 7.34, 96

Fitton, Sir Edward, 1.168

Fanning, Edmund, 6.124, 258n Fitton, Sir Henry, 1.168

Farewell, George, 2.222, 227, 233

Fitzmaurice, Andrew, 1.ix, 2

Faxardo, Don Diego Saavedra, Royal Politi­ Flanders, 1.163–4, 165, 166, 170, 188, 224,

cian, 6.154, 262n 236, 238, 3.159, 5.99, 100, 116, 6.167,

Fendall, Josias, ‘Complaint from Heven with 168, 170, 7.74

a Huy and Crye’, 2.1–18 Flanders, Robert, Earl of, 1.234

Fenner, Arthur, 2.240 Flavell, Julie, 1.viii

Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile, 1.221,

flax, 5.112, 116, 117, 131–3, 7.6, 123

2.27, 29

Fleet Prison, 8.123

Ferdinand of Brunswick, Prince, 4.197, 239n Fleetwood, William, 5.85, 212n

Ferguson, Niall, 1.viii Flood, Henry, 6.33

Feria, Duke of, 5.102, 103, 6.169 flora and fauna, 2.43, 47–8, 50, 58, 60, 62

feudalism, 2.9, 10

Antego, 2.150–2

Filmer, Sir Robert, 4.190, 204, 239n, 5.190, Melvis, 2.153–6

200, 6.208, 209, 265n New Jersey, 2.91, 94

Finland, 2.104 New York, 2.86

First Anglo-Dutch War (1652–4), 1.154–5 Newfoundland, 2.64

Fischer, David Hackett, 1.ix Pennsylvania, 2.99

Fisher, Saint John, Bishop of Rochester, St Christopher Island, 2.159–60

7.76, 187n Virginia, 2.112

fishery protection, 4.198–200, 210, 213–14, Florida, 2.42, 110, 117, 3.95, 96, 99, 100,

219

103, 106, 7.119, 8.150

fishing, 1.107, 108, 127–30, 138, 148–9,

Florus, Publius Annias, 1.250n, 6.180, 263n

187, 192, 231, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, Fones, John, 2.240

3.43, 45, 5.116, 6.89, 95, 188, 7.74, 84

Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de, 7.64, 187n

Antego, 2.150

Forbes, Brigadier-General John, 4.164, 237n

Ford, Letitia, 5.46

exports, 3.123

Index Fort Duquesne (Lequesne), 4.70–5, 164

Fort Loudon, 5.36, 209n

fortifications, 4.13, 73, 135, 5.34, 181, 182,

6.247, 7.83, 159

Fotheringham, Captain, 8.47

Fox, Charles James, 5.16, 8.47, 49, 156, 159

Foxcrost, Francis, 2.224

France, 1.162, 163, 184, 219, 220, 230, 231,

238, 241, 2.64, 191, 3.219, 4.121, 5.12,

96, 98, 105, 116, 148, 167, 173, 181, 185,

6.8, 12, 13, 23, 28, 96, 167, 7.12, 27, 72,

73, 81, 82, 84, 87–8, 109, 125, 159, 162,

8.13, 60, 61, 170

accused of being behind Gordon Riots,

8.124–5

administration of, 4.131–4, 136

Board of Commerce, 4.131–3

Bourbon dynasty, 7.27, 8.106, 112, 114,

143, 150, 168

and Canada, 2.2, 77, 4.8, 11, 12, 7.109

civil wars, 7.34

colonial wars, 1.xxvii–xxviii

colonization, 4.43–6, 5.121, 123, 125,

166, 168, 6.183

and Corsica, 8.148

and the Dutch, 6.27

and Hanover, 7.83, 84, 88

invasion of Newfoundland, 4.196, 198

King George’s War (1744–8), 5.1, 6.181,

185–7

Louisiana and, 5.206–7n

military incursions by, 7.83, 86, 88

monarchy, 4.131–2

and Native Indians, 2.17, 77–9, 248,

4.8–9, 11–12, 43–4, 133, 134, 145,

5.181, 6.183, 185

navy, 4.64–70, 89, 6.183

Nova Scotia, 6.181–5

prisoners of war, 7.129

regular troops in colonies, 4.145–6

revenue collection, 4.215

St Christopher Island, 2.157–8, 159

shipbuilding, 3.122–3

siege of Fort Duquesne (Lequesne),

4.70–5

sovereignty of the seas, 1.157–8, 159

sugar trade, 3.29–54, 117, 128–9, 152,

153–4, 157, 184–5, 5.122, 123, 125

187

support for American independence,

5.xvii, xviii, 8.42–3, 44, 54, 67, 71,

106, 108–9, 114

taxation, 6.42

trade in general, 6.192, 8.21, 74

wines, 7.123

woollen trade, 6.47, 56–7, 60, 62

see also French and Indian War; Seven

Years War Francis, Duke of Brittany, 1.166 Franks, 6.165 Franklin, Benjamin, 2.19, 3.193, 4.149, 5.vii–viii, xv, xvi, 6.73, 189, 7.146, 156,

191n

Frazer, General, 8.54

Frederick II, King of Prussia, 4.61, 233n

free trade, 1.160, 2.11, 3.51, 109, 118, 119,

121–9, 152, 154–8, 5.142, 6.190, 7.122, 8.23 see also Stamp Act; trade

free will, 4.23

freedom of the press, 5.71

freedom to bear arms, 4.54

Freeman’s Journal, 6.33

French, Thomas, 2.227, 228, 229

French and Indian War (1754–60), 1.xxvii,

4.1, 53, 64–70, 70–5, 77, 227, 5.vii, 2, 65,

90, 147, 166, 6.73, 148

see also Peace of Paris; Seven Years War

Frobisher, Sir Martin, 1.xxii, 222, 2.42–5 fruit imports, 6.97 Full and Circumstantial Account of the Dis­ putes between Great Britain and America, A, 7.1–12 fur trade, 1.127, 5.116, 7.114, 122

Gage, General Thomas, 4.228, 5.xii, xiv,

214n, 6.126, 147, 259n, 8.16 Galgacus, 6.154, 262n Galloway, James, 8.57, 172n Galloway, Joseph, Considerations upon the American Enquiry, 8.35–62 Game Acts, 6.78 Garth, Sir Samuel, 3.225n Gaspée incident (1772), 4.228, 5.xiii, 6.115–16, 124–6 Gaspesie, province of, 4.146, 237n, 6.252 Gates, General Horatio, 5.xvii

188

The American Colonies and the British Empire, Volume 8

Gates, Sir Thomas, 1.1, 73, 83, 2.127, 6.176,

7.110 Gay, Ebenezer, The Character and Work of Good Rulers, 3.79 Gay, John, The Beggar’s Opera, 7.148 Gee, Joshua, 3.43, 225n, 5.175, 180

Gellius, Aulus, 1.49, 247n Gentillet, Innocent, 1.13, 245n George, Prince of Wales (later George IV),

8.72, 75–6

George I, King of England, 3.104, 7.10, 114,

8.154

George II, King of England, 1.xxvii, 5.20,

7.114, 120, 150, 8.154

George III, King of England, 4.54, 168, 204,

5.xv, xvi, 7.23–4, 88, 93, 8.154

Georgia, 1.xxvi, 3.95–107, 96, 104, 4.145,

229, 240n, 5.116, 176, 6.242, 7.58, 119

German immigrants, 7.119 German Town, 8.47 Germanicus, 4.164 Germany, 5.105, 116, 170, 6.12, 7.83

linen, 5.118

mercenaries from, 7.159, 170

principalities, 7.34

sugar exports to, 3.159

trade with, 5.10

Gibraltar, 4.117, 8.169 Gibson, John, 2.244 Gifford, George, 1.27, 246n Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 1.xxii, xxiii, 2.65, 70,

3.96, 101, 5.77, 211n, 6.148, 175

ginger, 7.122 Glascott, Rev. Cradock, The Best Method of Putting an End to the American War, 7.89–103 Glorious Revolution (1688–9), 1.xxvi, xxix,

138, 2.3, 171, 223, 3.1, 4.108–10, 113,

118, 213, 221, 5.vii, ix, 46, 7.62, 81, 159,

174, 8.129

Glyn, John, 7.166 gold, 7.125

bullion, 6.246

Conquistadors’ search for, 2.29–40

mines, 1.241

ore mistakenly identified as, 2.43

Peruvian, 2.61

Spanish, 2.51–3, 57

Goodenow, John, 2.241–3 Goodhue, William, 2.227, 228, 229, 247

Gordon, Lord George, 8.121–2, 174n Gordon, Patrick, 3.80–93 Gordon Riots (1780), 8.121–5 Goree, Africa, 4.227 Gorges, Fernando, 1.xxiv Gosnold, Captain, 2.112 Gothofrey, Denis, 6.162, 262n Goths, 6.165–6 government, 4.24, 30–4, 143–4, 229–30,

5.73, 74, 6.229, 7.85, 135, 8.20, 166

see also assemblies; Parliament

governance, good, 3.55–77, 79–93, 203–4,

4.24, 34, 40, 49–50, 70, 82, 83, 86, 91,

103, 107, 203–4

Gozliski, Wawrzyniec Grzymala, 6.191, 263n Grafton, Augustus Henry FitzRoy, third Duke of, 6.135, 260n, 7.129, 190n, 8.149 Graham, James, 2.222, 230, 232, 236, 245–6

grain, 6.40–1, 44–5 Grand Banks, 2.65, 67, 6.83, 87, 244

Grand British League and Confederacy, 6.248, 252–3 Granvelle, Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de,

5.100, 102, 6.167–8, 171

Granville, Sir Bevil, 2.286n Grasse, Admiral François Joseph Paul de, 5.xviii

Grattan, Henry, 6.33

Graves, Joseph, 2.240, 243

Gray, Lewis, 6.96

Gray, Robert, 1.2

Gray, Samuel, 5.xiii, 6.101, 102

Great Awakening, 4.1

Greece, 6.8, 11

Greece, ancient, 3.20–1, 4.59–60, 6.165,

7.33, 85–6, 87, 127, 136

see also Athens/Athenians

Green Spring faction, 2.1 see also Virginia

Greenblatt, Stephen, 1.ix

Greene, Jack P., 1.viii, ix, x, xxvi, xxix, 3.193

Greene, Nathanael, 5.xviii

Greenland, 1.242, 2.44, 46, 47, 48, 50

Greenwich Hospital, 7.114, 8.39

Greenwich Hospital Act (1728), 5.207n

Index Gregory of Nazianzus, 1.31, 40, 247n, 2.202, 284

Grenada, 4.227, 8.150

Grenville, George, Earl of, 4.63, 124, 234n,

5.vii, ix, x, 15, 209n, 6.212, 265n, 7.84,

129, 131, 132, 178, 188n

Grenville, Sir Richard, 1.xxii, 229, 2.68

Grey, Anchitell, 7.116

Grey, General, 8.50, 53

Griffiths, Ralph, 4.54

Grimbald, Reyner, 1.163–6, 234

Groom, Samuel, 2.90

Grotius, Hugo, 1.137, 208, 228, 250n,

2.193, 283n, 3.2, 11, 100, 4.69, 234n,

6.170, 263n Growt, John, 2.242 Guadaloupe, 7.109 Guernsey, 3.159, 5.94, 7.88 Guiana (Guyana), 2.51, 61, 62–3 Guînes, Adrien-Louis de Bonnières, comte de, 7.67, 187n Gustav III, King of Sweden, 6.260n Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, 1.220, 4.88, 235n Gustavus Vasa, King of Sweden, 5.174, 214n, 7.75 Guy, John, 2.65 Gyles, Daniel, 2.249

189

Hancock, Thomas, 4.200 Hanham, Thomas, 3.200 Hannah (packet boat), 6.115 Hannibal, 8.62 Hanover, Duke of, 4.113 Hanover/Hanoverians, 4.54, 113–22, 6.53–4, 7.62, 83, 84, 88, 8.16, 119, 129

Hans Towns, 1.160, 7.133

Harley, Mr Sheriff, 8.11

Harrington, James, 4.34, 232n

Harriot, Thomas, 2.108, 281n

Hart, Thomas, 2.90

Harthorn, Hugh, 2.90

Hartley, David, 8.61, 173n

Harvard University, 4.42

Hat Act (1732), 1.xxvi

Hathorne, John, 2.231

Havana, 2.158, 4.197, 198

Hawke, Edward, first Baron, 4.234n, 8.147

Hawkins, Sir John, 1.xxii, 222, 2.51, 55

Hawkins, William, 1.xxi

hearth money, 6.43, 46

Heath, Sir Robert, 3.102, 6.177

Hebrew Law, 2.195

hemp, 5.112, 116, 131–3, 162, 7.6, 123, 8.75

Henry II, King of France, 1.158, 162

Henry III, King of France, 1.158, 4.94

Henry IV, King of England, 1.159, 219, 234,

4.94

Habeas Corpus, 2.176, 186, 226, 227, 258, Henry IV, King of France, 6.166

3.17, 18, 6.74, 79, 80, 7.146–7, 155,

Henry V, King of England, 1.234, 4.94, 7.34

156–7, 8.9

Henry VI, King of England, 1.162, 6.52

Hadrian, Emperor (Publius Aelius Adra­ Henry VII, King of England, 1.xxi, 166, 169,

nius), 1.41, 247n

222, 228, 2.27, 42, 3.96, 99, 100, 102,

Hains, General, 2.166

104, 199

Haiti, 2.28

Henry VIII, King of England, 1.167, 228,

Hakluyt, Richard, 1.1, 74, 90

3.101, 5.82, 7.61, 149

Hale, Sir Matthew, 3.26, 206, 5.80, 212n,

Herbert, George, 2.94

6.207, 7.147, 148

heresy, 1.30

Halifax, George Montagu-Dunk, second

Herod, 7.97

Earl of, 1.xxvii, 3.193, 4.227, 236n, 5.viii, Herodian of Syria, 6.162, 262n

135, 147

Herodotus of Halicarnassus, 1.38, 211, 247n

Halifax, Nova Scotia, 5.xv, 6.95, 7.169, 8.70 Hertford, Francis Seymour-Conway, first

Hall, Captain James, 2.46

Marquess of, 6.44, 256n Hamlet (Shakespeare), 4.119, 236n, 238n

Hesse Cassel, Landgrave of, 4.113 Hampden, John, 5.29, 209n, 7.115

Heydon, Sir Henry, 2.129, 282n Heylin, Peter, 3.100 Hancock, John, 5.xii, xiv, 6.1, 73, 84, 96,

Heyre, Lord, 2.11 101, 8.16

190

The American Colonies and the British Empire, Volume 8

Heywood, John, 2.90 Higginson, Rev. John, 2.229–31 Hill, Thomas, 4.227 Hilliard, Phillip, 2.250 Hillsborough, Wills Hill, Earl of, 4.227, 5.xii, 6.1, 135, 260n, 8.160

Hinckley, Thomas, 2.246, 285

Hispaniola, 2.28, 55, 165, 3.37, 105

Hobbes, Thomas, 1.177, 181, 249n

Hogarth, William, 4.54

Holbourne, Admiral Sir Francis, 4.65–7,

234n Holdernesse, Lord, 5.15 Holland see United Provinces Hollis, Rev., 4.15 Hollis University, 4.42 Holstein, Duke of, 4.113 Holt, Sir John, 3.223n, 224n, 7.174, 192n Homer, 1.59, 2.207 Honduras, 5.173 Hooker, Rev. Thomas, 2.214 Hopkins, Samuel, 4.53 Address to the People of New England, 4.1–21

Hopkinson, Francis, 4.149

Horace, 5.113, 213n

Hore, Richard, 1.xxi

Horn, Philip Montmorency, Earl of, 6.171

horse trade, 3.38, 40, 41, 44, 46–7, 5.119,

6.84, 88

Hottoman (Hotman), François, 1.63, 248n

House of Commons, 3.10, 215, 4.82, 83,

84, 85, 86, 106, 208, 223, 5.16, 21, 38,

39, 42, 46, 76, 88, 140, 160, 208n, 6.64,

239–40, 243, 7.10, 23–4, 51, 59, 60, 62,

66, 84, 88, 111, 112, 114, 133, 146, 174,

8.5, 8–9, 11, 16, 39

American Restraining Bill, 6.220

assemblies and, 7.174, 181–3

Carolina and, 3.103, 107

John Cartwright’s speech in, 6.199–219

duties on sugars, rum and molasses, 3.133

inquiry into the American War of Inde­ pendence, 8.46–54 ‘vote of no confidence’ in Lord North, 8.143, 157–60 see also Acts of Parliament; Parliament; Stamp Act

House of Lords, 5.88, 6.236, 243, 7.114, 8.16, 39

Hovey, John, 2.247

Howe, Captain Edward, 4.46

Howe, Maria Sophia Charlotte, Viscountess,

3.55, 60, 69, 76

Howe, Richard, 3.55

Howe, General Sir William, 3.55, 5.xiv–xv,

xvii, 7.136, 153, 169, 192n, 8.39, 45,

46–54, 172n

Howell, Captain, 2.7

Hubbard, Thomas, 4.199, 200

Hudson, Captain Henry, 1.222, 2.20,

49–51, 85, 280n

Hudson River, 2.89, 90

Hudson’s Bay Company, 6.244

Humphreys, Major, 2.234

Hunt, Rev. Robert, 1.1

Hunter, Robert, 3.193

Huske, John, 4.73, 234n

Hutchinson, Thomas, 4.199, 5.xi, 1, 6.147,

189, 7.25, 186n, 8.148 Hyde, Sir Edward, first Earl of Clarendon, 2.16, 277n Iceland, 1.168, 2.50 impressment, 4.201, 7.145 see also Royal Navy

Inca empire, 2.36–9

incorporation, 2.188, 4.137, 5.55, 176, 8.16

India, 4.227, 8.155, 156

indigo, 5.116, 118, 125, 126, 162, 7.6, 123

Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Present Disputes, An, 6.1–31

Intercursus Magnus (1495), 1.166

interest rates, 3.145–6, 4.115–16, 118

international law, 1.137–76, 5.54

Interregnum, 7.114

Intolerable Acts (1774), 5.xiii–xiv, 46, 6.74,

148

Ireland, 1.109, 160, 169, 2.20, 26, 181–2,

3.29, 30, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 44, 49, 116,

117, 118, 119, 132, 4.89, 5.52, 121, 147,

6.19, 21, 30, 33, 34, 53, 88, 91, 7.22, 25,

27, 8.159, 165, 166, 168, 169

capitulation of Limerick, 7.154

diet of poor people in, 6.41–2

linen manufacture in, 6.47–8, 58, 60, 63

Index Lord Lieutenants of, 6.52–3 Montserrat and, 2.138 under North administration, 8.153–4 Parliament and, 7.59–60, 78–9 rebellion in, 7.149 and relationship with England, 6.54–5 representation in Parliament, 5.208n rum consumption in, 3.135–7 sugar exports to, 3.159 taxation, 6.33–71 trade, 6.41–52, 56–63 woollen trade, 6.47, 56–63 iron production, 5.116, 6.91, 7.114, 8.75

Isle of Man, 3.20, 6.91, 7.116

Isle of Wight, 3.157–8, 7.88

Israel, 4.31

Issaquibo, 8.155

Italy, 5.100, 116, 6.165, 168, 169

191

Jenyns, Soame, The Objections to the Taxation of Our American Colonies, 5.xi, 1–2, 7

Jersey, island of, 3.159, 5.94, 7.88

Jerseys, East and West (1674–1702), 1.xxv,

xxvi, 3.142, 218, 5.115 see also New Jersey

Jesuits, 7.149

John, King of England, 1.155–6, 226, 4.94

John, King of Portugal, 1.222

John II, King of Denmark, 1.169

Johnson, Sir Nathaniel, 2.171, 3.104

Johnson, Rev., 3.61

Johnson, Robert, 1.1

Johnson, Samuel, 2.19, 6.195, 240

A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland,

7.44, 47

replies to Taxation No Tyranny, 7.39–68,

69–88

Johnson, William, 3.193, 6.73

Johnston, William, 4.123

Jackman, Mr, 2.47–8

Jacobite rebellions (1715 and 1745), 4.234n, Jones, John Paul, 5.xvii

Jones, Sir William, 2.252

5.176, 212n, 7.150, 154

judiciary, 1.163, 238, 242, 2.171, 187, 214,

Jacobitism, 1.xxvi, 4.81, 205

227–8, 230, 232, 242, 246, 265, 268,

Jamaica, 1.xxv, 2.29, 165–9, 172, 3.42, 106,

3.218, 4.137, 142, 5.8, 100, 155, 206n,

142, 4.105, 229, 5.41

6.74, 122, 130, 131, 133–5, 137, 139,

James, Thomas, 2.67, 280n

141, 7.5–6, 11, 80, 149, 173, 174, 8.9,

James I, King of England, 1.137, 138, 171,

73, 153

172, 174, 230, 237, 239, 243, 2.70,

see also law; magistrates

3.101, 4.61, 6.176–7, 7.77, 110

Julius Caesar, 1.233, 251n, 2.201, 3.21, James II, King of England, 1.xxvi, xxix, 2.3,

224n, 4.120, 6.138, 155, 159, 259n, 7.86

171, 179, 221, 4.95, 105, 106, 107–8,

Junius (pseudonym), 7.132, 166–7, 190n

111, 116, 7.62, 63

juryless trials, 5.xiii

Jamestown, Virginia, 1.xxiii, 1

see also Vice-Admiralty Courts Nathaniel Bacon’s sacking of, 2.1

jus genium, 2.96 buildings, 2.115–16

Justinian, Emperor, 6.161–2 deaths during winter ‘starving time’, 1.73

founding of, 1.80–1, 2.112

Keith, Sir William, 3.80, 5.175–6, 180

A True and Sincere Declaration, 1.73–88 Kennedy, Archibald, An Essay on the Gov­ see also Virginia Company of London/

ernment of the Colonies, 3.193–222 Virginia

Kennedy, Michael V., 1.viii Janizaries, 4.110, 236n

Keppel, Admiral Augustus, first Viscount, Java, 2.58

8.39, 160, 172n Jefferson, Thomas, 5.xvi, xviii

Keppel, Willem Anne van, 4.70, 234n Summary View of the Rights of British Kerley, Henry, 2.244 America, 6.116 Kilroy, Private Matthew, 5.xiii, 6.102 Jenkins, Lionel, 2.178 King George’s War (1744–8), 5.1, 6.181, 185–7 Jenkins, Robert, 1.xxvii, 3.95

192

The American Colonies and the British Empire, Volume 8

King’s Arms Tavern, Cornhill, 8.23, 24

King’s Bench Prison, 8.123

Kingston, Colonel, 8.54

Kinnoule, Lord, 2.265

Kinsman, Robert, 2.227, 228, 229

Knight, D. A., A Proposal for Peace between

Great Britain and North America, 8.63–76 Knights, Sir John Constable, 6.177 Knowles, Richard, 1.59, 248n Knox, William, 5.vii, 6.33–4 The Claim of the Colonies, 5.21–43 A Letter to a Member of Parliament, 5.45–63

lawyers, 5.79–80, 155, 7.8, 10, 174, 181,

8.14

Le Blanc, Vincent, 2.137, 282n

League of Friendship, 2.89, 281n

Lector, Theodore, 1.247n

Leda, Marquess of, 2.165

Lee, Charles Henry, 5.xvii

Lee, Richard Henry, 5.xvi

Leeds, 7.116

Leeward Islands, 1.xxv, 3.110, 119, 141, 142,

147, 149, 190, 218

Anguilla, 2.135–7

Antigua, 3.42, 7.147

Barbuda, 2.131–4

Montserrat, 2.138–40, 3.42

labour costs, 7.125, 130, 8.68

Puerto Rico, 2.55, 59, 131

Labrador, 3.100, 5.173

St Christopher Island, 2.157–60, 171,

Lacedaemonians, 4.102

3.42, 225n Lactantius, 1.23, 246n, 2.208, 285n

legislation, 5.75–6, 6.6, 9, 14–15, 18, 22, 28,

Lafayette, Marie Joseph, Marquis de, 5.xviii

7.161, 8.130

Lake Ontario, 4.74

see also Acts of Parliament

lakes, 6.244, 247, 250

legislative authority, 4.35, 41, 81, 84, 137,

land grants, 3.220

190, 203, 221, 224, 228, 229, 5.ix,

Carolina, 2.121–2

29–30, 74, 139, 140, 143–4, 193, 201,

Maryland, 3.26–7

6.18, 74, 79, 145, 214, 238, 241, 242,

New Jersey, 2.93

7.7, 21, 25, 27, 28, 29, 32, 34, 43, 46, 54,

North Carolina, 4.123

59–60, 64, 81, 111, 114, 116–17, 129,

land prices, 7.130

132–4, 137, 145, 151–2, 155, 166–77,

land-tax, 5.31, 51, 156, 209n, 6.43–4

8.11, 15, 23, 68, 84, 107, 122, 125,

land title, 2.230–2, 8.19–20

130–1, 154, 165

Lane, Ralph, 2.68

see also Parliament

Langdale’s Distillery, London, 8.123

Leisler, Jacob, 2.171 Langford, John, 2.249

Lennox, Duke of, 1.242, 6.177 Langrishe, Sir Hercules, Considerations

Letter from Albemarle-Street to the Cocoa

on the Dependencies of Great Britain, Tree, A, 8.145

6.33–71 Letters Patent, 2.187, 3.96, 99, 100, 101–3,

Late Occurrences in North America, The, 200, 205, 6.175, 176, 177, 178–9

5.89–110 Levingsworth, John, 2.244

Lathrop, Rev. John, Innocent Blood Crying to Lexington and Concord, Battle of (1775),

God from the Streets of Boston, 6.101–13 5.xiv, 7.11, 168, 8.41

Laud, Archbishop William, 1.90 Liberty (sloop), 6.1, 84

Lauderdale, Sir John Maitland, first Duke of, Liberty Riot (1768), 5.xii, 6.1, 84, 101

7.74, 187n see also Boston

law, 3.1–27, 2, 4.85–6, 228–30, 5.74, 85–8, Lidget, Charles, 2.188, 224, 232, 235

90, 6.11, 7.21, 54, 76, 77, 8.8, 10, 11, 14 Lilburn, John, 8.42

see also bye-laws; common law; inter­ Lincoln, Benjamin, 5.xvii

Lindsey, Earl of, 1.243

national law; judiciary; martial law; linen manufacture, 5.118, 6.47–8, 58, 60, 63

Rhodian Sea Law; statute law

Index Lipsius, Justus, 5.86, 212n Lisbon, 4.119, 236n Littleton, Edward, 2.257 Liverpool, Charles Jenkinson, first Earl of,

4.228, 5.45, 8.157, 158, 160

‘Notes on the Right to Tax the Colonies’,

5.15–20, 135

Liverpool, Robert Banks Jenkinson, second

Earl of, 5.16 livestock, 1.132, 5.116 Livingstone, Robert R., 5.xvi Livy, 1.250n, 7.34, 48, 186n Lloyd, Humfrey, 2.26 Locke, John, 3.2, 13, 223n, 4.144, 190, 203,

204, 205, 237n, 5.7, 8, 17, 75, 80, 190,

200, 6.208, 209, 211, 8.17

Two Treatises on Government, 6.196, 7.85

Logan, James, 3.80 Lolme, Jean-Louis de, 8.40, 172n London Chronicle, 8.5 London Company see Virginia Company of London London Gazette, 4.115 Long Island, 2.86, 235, 7.169, 8.46, 51

Long Parliament (1640), 7.147, 8.58 Longinus, 4.176, 238n Lords of Trade (formerly Council of Foreign Plantations), 1.xxv Loudon, John Campbell, fourth Earl of, 1.xxvii, 4.157, 234n, 237n, 6.73 Louis XIII, King of France, 1.219 Louis XIV, King of France, 1.158, 4.110,

131, 6.181, 213, 7.73, 75

Louisbourg, 6.95 Louisiana, 1.xxviii, 5.12, 206–7n, 8.74 Low Countries, 5.98–103, 6.167–73, 168

see also United Provinces

Lowther, James, 5.15 Lowther, Robert, 3.207, 228n Lucretia, 8.56 Lumbard (Lombard), Peter, 1.47, 247n lumber, 3.48, 5.116, 119, 123, 125, 173,

6.41, 49, 84, 88, 89, 90, 6.91, 94, 7.6,

113, 122, 123, 8.75

Luther, Martin, 1.29 luxury goods, 5.164, 6.34, 39, 40, 70, 7.73,

126

Lycurgus, 1.250n, 6.8, 9, 255n

193

Lynch, Sir Thomas, 2.169, 283n Lynde, Joseph, 2.231–3, 4.199 McCulloh, Henry, Proposals for United the English Colonies, 4.123–47

McCulloh, Henry Eustace, 4.123

McDougall, General Alexander, 7.159, 192n

Macedonia, 4.102, 7.87

Maecenas, 6.157–9, 160

Machault d’Arnouville, Jean Baptiste, 4.77,

234n

Machiavelli, Niccolò, 4.235n

Mackenzie, Captain, 8.51

Mackenzie, Sir George, 7.74, 187n

mackerel fishing, 6.83, 87–8

Madeira, 6.48, 88, 96, 97

Madras, India, 6.188

Madrid Treaty of Peace and Commerce

(1630), 1.160, 161, 249n

Magellan, Ferdinand, 2.53

magistrates, 4.32, 33, 38, 142, 6.11, 80–1,

102, 108, 109, 112, 113, 127, 155, 7.60,

114, 125, 156, 8.123, 129, 130, 131–2,

133

Magna Carta, 2.176, 177, 183, 185, 189,

228, 3.16, 24, 4.103, 112, 5.22, 46, 57,

154, 7.51, 65

Maine, 2.243, 245, 7.110 Malcom, Daniel, 6.96 Manchester, 7.116 Manchester, Duke of, 8.160 Mandeville, Bernard, 4.207–8, 239n Mandeville, Lord, 1.xxiii Manhattan Island, 2.86 Mansfield, William Murray, first Earl of, 8.123, 132, 134, 135, 175n

manufacturing, 5.10, 11, 12, 16, 19, 30, 37,

78, 83–4, 106, 111, 112, 117, 129–30,

162, 168, 173, 183, 6.47–8, 83, 87, 96,

7.72, 73, 81, 83, 127, 8.74–5, 146

Marblehead, Massachusetts, 4.198, 199, 210,

220

Marcus Aurelius, 6.148

mare clausum (closed seas), 1.137, 141,

177–8, 186–7, 188

mare liberum (free seas), 1.137, 138

Margaret of Austria, 6.171

Margery, Benjamin, 2.249

194

The American Colonies and the British Empire, Volume 8

marine jurisdiction, 1.161–6

Mark, Patrick, 2.235

Marlborough, Duke of, 4.60, 99, 112, 236n

marriage, 1.98

Marseilles, sugar prices, 3.185

Marshall, P. J., 1.viii

Martha’s Vineyard, 2.240

martial law, 6.74, 81, 8.128, 132–7

Martinique, 3.37, 47, 6.186, 7.109

Mary, Queen, 2.220

Maryland, 1.xxvi, 2.67, 5.8, 32, 115, 116,

126, 129, 131, 132, 6.241, 242, 7.110

administration of, 2.110

Albany Congress, 6.189

American Revolutionary War, 7.11

anti-proprietary rebellion in, 2.1–18

climate, 2.108

Crown Charter, 1.xxiii, 5.29, 205n, 7.9,

56

first settlers in, 3.10–11, 24

money regulation, 3.142

Native Indians, 2.108–10

Protestant Associators, 2.171

records, 7.181–3

The Right of the Inhabitants of Maryland (Dulany), 3.1–27 Massachusetts Bay Company/Massachusetts

(from 1691), 1.xxiii, xxiv, xxvi, 89, 108,

128, 2.70, 172, 187, 226, 253, 3.215, 4.2,

6.73, 185–6, 187, 241, 242, 7.10, 144

Albany Congress, 6.189

Assembly, 4.48, 189–226, 6.190, 7.172

colonial agent, 6.147

contingency funds, 4.213

county of Suffolk in, 7.167

Crown Charter, 2.171, 4.41, 212, 5.29,

7.29, 57, 63, 111

election sermon by Jonathan Mayhew,

4.23–52 founding, 6.178 garrisoning troops, 4.195 governorship of, 4.41, 48, 191–226 House of Representatives, 4.49–52, 189–226

Intolerable Acts (1774), 5.46, 6.74

introduction of foreign Protestants, 4.42

levied troops for British, 4.197, 198, 218

and Native Indians, 2.222

preparation for war, 7.168 rejection of the Union Plan, 6.190 revenue for wars, 5.120 slave petition (1773), 6.116 Massachusetts Government Act (1774), 5.xiii–xiv, 7.9 Massachusetts Provincial Congress, 5.xv massacre(s), 1.xxiii, 2.11 Boston in 1770, 6.101–13

by Native Indians loyal to the French,

4.46, 145, 147

by New England Indians, 2.71, 190, 244,

248, 4.13

at St George’s Fields, 6.127, 259n

see also Native Indians

Matchet, Captain John, 6.96 Mather, Cotton, 6.105, 178, 258n, 263n Mather, Increase, 2.177, 189, 283n, 6.105, 258n

Mauduit, Israel, 7.63, 111, 187n

Mayhew, Jonathan, 4.23–52, 53

Mazarin, Cardinal Jules, 4.215, 240n

Meadows, Philip, ‘Observations concerning

the Dominion and Sovereignty of the Seas’, 1.137–76, 177

Medicis, 1.208, 8.58

Meinig, D. W., 1.ix

Members of Parliament, 4.107, 7.51–2, 63,

116, 8.135

see also elections; Parliament

men of war, 1.154, 155, 159–61, 194, 210,

213, 215, 227, 228, 244, 3.126, 201,

4.65–70, 6.51, 185, 8.13, 147

customs officers onboard, 6.94–6

English, 4.89

French, 2.248–9, 4.64–70, 89

provinces outfitting, 4.213

Spanish, 3.95

special licence for sailing English seas,

1.159–61 see also Royal Navy

Menander, 7.86, 188n

mercenaries, 4.87–100, 106, 114, 7.127,

134, 159, 170, 8.134, 136

merchants, 3.194, 5.9, 22, 83, 143, 6.190,

7.6, 26, 64, 173, 8.21–3, 146

Birmingham, 7.45

Index A Letter from a Merchant in London (Tucker), 5.147–74 London, 5.109, 147–74, 6.176 money owed by Americans to, 7.124 Observations on Several Acts of Parlia­ ment, 6.83–99

petition to the king, 5.41–2

The True Interest of Great Britain,

5.111–33 Metacom’s War (1675–6), 2.71, 280n, 4.1 metaphysics, 4.175 Methodism, 5.147 Methodists, 8.121 Meursius, 6.166 Mevis, island of, 2.153–6 Mew, Richard, 2.90 Mexico, 2.26, 31–4, 3.105 Micah VII, 6.116, 129–3 Midian, 4.31 Mildmay, Sir William, 4.236n military law see martial law militia, 3.210, 4.142, 145–7, 225, 5.vii, 31,

73, 170, 182, 6.127–8, 218, 7.10

William Bollan on, 5.12–13

Christian soldier’s duty, 4.156–61

desertions, 8.45

discipline, 5.36

William Knox on, 5.21

Pennsylvania, 8.45

preparation for war, 7.168

millennialism, 1.2 Milton, Giles, 1.viii Milton, John, 1.137, 5.85, 212n, 6.208, 209,

211

Ministers of State, 6.141, 188, 190, 226, 229,

238, 7.64, 81, 8.7–8, 17, 44, 106, 112,

113, 128, 143, 146–8, 152–60, 165–7,

169

Minorca, 8.150 missionaries, 4.2, 16, 20, 23, 43

Mississippi, River, 4.73, 6.187, 245, 249, 251

Mohawk Indians, 2.83–4, 4.16, 18, 19

see also Native Indians

molasses, 3.29, 30, 36–44, 41–2, 49, 50, 53,

117, 118, 131–4, 5.x, 118, 119, 122–3,

124, 6.56–7, 93, 7.12, 114–15, 122

Molasses Act (1733), 1.xxvi, 3.109, 5.207n, 7.113

195

Molesworth, Robert, first Viscount, An Account of Denmark, 6.25, 255n

Moloch, 2.17, 278n, 4.114

Molyneux, William, 5.20, 208n, 8.154, 176n

monarchy, 4.81–5, 103–4, 5.198, 6.51, 53,

155, 156, 159, 213, 248, 260n, 7.179,

8.8–9, 15

absolute, 8.58

allegiance to the Crown, 5.74, 78

authority, 5.74, 155–6, 8.127–8

Civil List, 7.54

and colonies, 8.72–3

corrupt, 4.107–8

divine right of, 4.23–4, 30

French, 4.131–2, 6.192–3, 7.27, 8.106,

112, 114, 143, 150, 168

French and British comparison, 4.205,

206

Jonathan Mayhew’s advice to, 4.24, 34–8

reciprocal tie with subjects, 3.11–12

right to rule America, 6.126

Spanish, 6.167, 174

see also Royal Prerogative

Money, Captain, 8.51, 52

Monson, John, Lord, 1.xxvi, 3.193

Montagu, Bishop, 7.62

Montcalm, Joseph-Louis, marquis de, 7.109,

189n Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat,

baron de, 3.227n, 4.54, 103, 236n, 6.45,

63, 68, 256n, 7.117, 119, 189n, 8.53,

172n

Montezuma, Emperor, 2.26, 30, 31–5 Montgomery, Private Hugh, 5.xiii, 6.101, 102

Monthly Review, 4.54

Montresor, Captain, 8.51

Montserrat, 2.138–40, 3.42

Moore, Jacob, 2.241, 243

Moore, William, 4.149

Moore’s Creek, Battle of (1776), 5.xv

moral philosophy, 4.175–6

More, Richard, 2.128

More, Sir Thomas, 4.38, 232n

Morton, Thomas, Dean of Gloucester, 1.2

mosquitoes, 1.109–10

‘mother country’ paradigm, 6.196, 215–18,

8.16, 67–72, 110–11, 146

196

The American Colonies and the British Empire, Volume 8

mourning cloth, 5.11 mulberry trees, 5.162 Munster, Bishop of, 4.113 Murray, Alexander, 8.9 mutinies, 1.112, 2.50–1, 5.31 Myteline, city of, 7.134 mythology, 2.26, 4.234n, 235n Nahum Keike see Salem

Namur, 7.135–6

Nantucket, 2.240

Naples, 7.125

Naraganset Indians, 2.71

national debt, 1.xxviii, 4.110, 112, 117, 119,

5.2, 11, 18, 30, 61, 159, 165, 169, 171,

6.37–8, 239, 7.7–8, 127, 129, 131, 8.22,

68, 123, 146

Act for the More Easy Recovery of Debts

(1732), 5.22, 35–6, 41–3 Native Indians, 1.xi, xxii, xxvii, 2.43, 44–51,

5.36, 65, 118, 141, 167, 182, 6.124, 7.82,

120

Aztec, 2.29–35

Canadian, 4.9

captivity narrative, 2.72–9

Carolina, 2.121, 123–6

character of, 2.80–4

chiefs, 2.71, 88, 103–4, 112, 248, 3.104

children, 2.100

and Christopher Columbus, 2.28, 29

criticism of treatment of, 5.148, 153

Nathaniel Crouch on, 2.20

disease, 2.29

drunkenness, 2.83, 102, 105, 129, 237–8,

4.10–11, 13, 18

Five Nations of, 4.135, 143, 231n,

6.182–3, 184, 186, 187

foundation myths, 2.26

French and, 2.77–9, 248, 4.8–9, 11–12,

43–4, 133, 134, 145, 5.181, 6.183,

185

Inca, 2.36–9

justice system, 2.104, 112

Archibald Kennedy and, 3.193

land rights, 2.20, 230–1, 3.96

lost tribe of Israel theory, 2.104

Maryland, 2.1, 2, 5–18, 15, 108–10, 3.19

media reports of killings by, 5.12

mutual interest to be at peace with,

4.7–21, 5.12, 21

New England, 1.107, 108–9, 2.68–70,

71–2, 80

New Jersey, 2.92

New York, 2.86–9

Newfoundland, 2.65–6

Pennsylvania, 2.99–104

regulation of, 4.143

religious beliefs and practices of, 2.45, 47,

66, 68, 69, 82, 87–8, 102, 108–10,

111, 113, 123–4

snake-bites, 2.125–6

South American, 2.62–3

testimony against Edmund Andros by,

2.237–44

torturing prisoners, 2.75, 76, 113–14,

148–9

trade with, 1.221, 3.221, 4.2, 7, 10,

11–13, 124

Union Plan for, 6.189

Virginia, 2.111–15, 123, 6.176

see also individual tribes natural law, 3.2, 8, 5.75–6, 93, 199, 6.108–9,

139, 156, 217, 235, 237, 238

natural philosophy, 4.175

natural resources, 1.80, 85, 107, 108, 128,

5.116, 162

Anguilla, 2.135–6

Antego, 2.150

Barbados, 2.161, 162

Barbuda, 2.133–4

Bermuda, 2.129

Carolina, 2.119–20, 122, 124

Jamaica, 2.168

New England, 2.84

New Jersey, 2.91, 94

Pennsylvania, 2.98–9, 106

St Christopher Island, 2.157

Virginia, 2.111, 115, 116

natural rights, 1.x, xxix, 3.204, 4.189, 190,

203–4, 5.148, 6.116, 148, 195–6, 202–5,

7.61

naturalization of foreigners, 4.225–6

Naval Office, 6.97–8

naval power, 7.83, 127

see also Royal Navy

Index naval stores, 1.xxv, 160, 3.110, 125, 5.111,

116, 6.88, 7.123, 8.147, 150

Navigation Acts (1651–63), 1.xxiv–xxv, xxv,

xxviii, 2.257, 3.30, 51, 5.viii, 90, 109,

142, 207n, 6.83, 84, 98, 196, 264n, 7.82,

112, 128, 152, 160, 161, 173

Navy Debt, 4.96

Neale, Bishop, 7.62

Nero, Emperor, 1.59

Netherlands see United Provinces

Nevis, Island of, 3.42, 8.150

New Albion, 2.54

New Brunswick, 5.46

New England, 1.xxiii, xxiv, xxvi, 2.17, 20,

3.144, 215, 5.viii, 95, 6.29, 84, 177, 237,

7.109, 110, 160

Address to the People of New England (Hopkins), 4.1–21 being on good terms with Native Indians, 4.7–21 climate, 1.109–10, 2.84 common law, 2.187 Crown Charter, 2.178–83, 187, 7.111 debate on governor’s salary, 3.218 ‘Declaration of Grievances’ pamphlet war, 2.171–256 discovery and first settlement of, 2.68–9, 70

fish exports, 3.123

French men of war off coast of, 2.249–50

government and organization of, 2.84

governor’s letter of thanks to Boyle,

3.201–2 militia, 4.145 money regulation, 3.141–2 John Palmer on, 2.171–212 for the propagation of religion, 1.106–11 The Revolution in New England Justified (Rawson and Sewall), 2.213–56

sugar trade, 1.xxvi, 3.30, 42–3, 52, 110,

6.89–91 writs of intrusion, 2.187–8 see also Connecticut; Maine; Massachu­ setts; New Hampshire; Rhode Island New France, 2.68 New Hampshire, 1.xxv, 4.2, 5.xv, 29, 6.189, 241, 242, 7.110, 120

197

New Jersey, 2.17, 90–5, 171, 3.217, 4.218, 5.xvii, 18, 176, 6.189, 241, 242, 7.110

New Plymouth see Plymouth Colony

New Testament, 8.70

New York, 1.xxvi, 2.9, 17, 85–9, 86, 171,

176, 184, 190, 192, 225, 246, 3.193–4,

217, 4.2, 141, 146, 6.73, 241, 242, 7.10,

110, 121, 130, 153, 164, 8.70

Albany Congress, 6.189

American Revolution, 5.xvii, 7.169

assembly, 7.8, 172, 173

captured from the Dutch, 1.xxv

Congress delegates, 8.44

control of alcohol given to Native Indi­ ans, 4.14 militia, 4.145 money regulation, 3.142 taxation, 7.174 troops billeted in, 5.xii, 6.74, 101, 7.8 New York Restraining Act (1767), 5.xii Newcastle, Thomas Pelham-Hollis, Duke of, 1.xxvi, 3.95–6, 193, 4.53, 54, 63–79, 233n, 5.135, 6.147 Newfoundland, 1.xxi, xxii, 107, 129, 2.50,

250, 3.99, 100, 4.146, 5.173, 6.175, 177,

244

discovery and first settlement of, 2.64–7

fishing, 2.64, 65, 67, 3.123, 5.122, 123,

173, 6.244, 245, 7.83 French and English fleets off coast of, 4.66–8 French invasion of, 4.196, 198

Newport, Captain Christopher, 1.73, 80, 83

Newton, Sir Isaac, 4.177

Niagara River, 4.73, 74, 75, 6.184

Nicholls, Richard, 2.85, 89, 281

Nicholson, Francis, 2.171, 244

‘no taxation without representation’, 4.139,

205, 209, 5.xi, 2, 8, 17, 5.32, 5.46, 57–60,

76, 79–82, 152, 157–62, 197, 200–1,

6.2, 12–13, 16, 18, 20, 31, 34, 64–5, 74,

79, 138, 214, 223, 240, 243, 7.7, 50–1,

53–61, 63–7, 78, 115–16, 119, 132–3,

166, 172, 8.40

Norborough, Sir John, 1.229

Norman Conquest (1066), 1.233, 8.127

Normandy, 1.162, 165, 219

198

The American Colonies and the British Empire, Volume 8

North, Lord Frederick, 5.xiv, 16, 6.135, 260n, 7.129, 190n, 8.11, 65, 173n Falklands Crisis (1770), 8.147 letter from D. A. Knight on peace pro­ posals, 8.63–76 vote of no confidence in, 8.143, 147–60 North Carolina, 3.103, 107, 5.36, 115, 116,

131, 6.124, 241, 242, 7.110

Albany Congress, 6.189

American Revolutionary campaign in,

5.xvii–xviii, 7.11

land grants, 4.123

vote for independence, 5.xvi

see also Carolina; South Carolina

North-West Passage exploration, 2.42–51

Northampton, Henry, Earl of, 6.177

Northey, Sir Edward, 7.174, 192n

Northumberland, Duke of, 1.169, 8.29

Norway, 1.146, 155, 156, 168, 169, 170,

178, 185, 186, 188, 189, 205, 244, 2.25,

279n, 6.49

Nottingham, 7.45

Nova Scotia, 1.xxvii, 3.106, 193, 4.121, 146,

198, 229, 240n, 6.95, 175, 242, 7.119

fish exports, 3.123

King George’s War, 6.181–7

Nye, Philip, 2.220, 285n

Osborne, Sir George, 8.51 Osgood, John and Christopher, 2.247 Osnaburghs, 7.12 Otis, James, 5.1 Otis Jr, James, A Vindication of the Con­ duct of the House of Representatives, 4.189–226 Ottoman Empire, 1.145 Oxenham, Captain John, 1.229, 2.60–1 Oxford, Earl of, 6.182 Oxford University, 8.30

packet-boat system, 3.193, 7.146, 8.47

Pagden, Anthony, 1.ix

Paine, Thomas, 5.xvi, 148

Palmer, John, 2.213, 3.194

The Present State of New-England,

2.171–212

Rawson and Sewell’s rebuttal of,

2.213–56

Panama, 2.36, 52, 56, 60, 169

Panton, Lieutenant, 6.94

paper money, 3.80, 109, 139–43, 4.124, 138,

139, 5.xv, 11, 112, 131, 157, 187, 7.114,

120, 173

Parke, Daniel, 7.9, 150, 185n

Parliament, 2.6, 10, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18, 183,

4.205, 213, 215–16, 5.27, 88, 6.12–21,

23, 28, 38–9, 48, 64–5, 67, 68, 69, 74,

Oakes, Thomas, 2.256

79, 137–9, 192, 195–6, 204, 205, 207,

Oath of Abjuration, 7.68

Oath of Allegiance, 2.2, 9, 11, 12, 18, 171,

209, 212, 223, 231–4, 236–43, 248, 252,

4.225, 6.184–5, 7.68, 149, 8.15, 132

7.21–2, 55–6, 144, 148, 150–1, 155,

Observations on Several Acts of Parliament,

161–4, 8.8–9, 11, 14–18, 21–4, 39–43,

6.83–99

47, 58, 69, 113, 144, 146, 149, 153–7,

occupations, 1.88, 112

166, 168

officials, 3.194, 218–19

Edmund Burke on, 6.195

Oglethorpe, General James, 1.xxvi, 3.95, 102

in the case of a breach of trust, 7.76

O’Gorman, Edmundo, 1.ix

conciliatory attempts to prevent war,

Ohio, 3.221, 6.251

7.158, 160, 163–4, 168–9, 175

Ohio River, 4.70, 73, 5.xiv, 6.181, 7.83, 8.22

Convention (1660), 7.121

Oleron, laws of, 1.162, 236, 249n

infallibility of, 7.121

oligarchy, 4.54, 102, 103, 228, 229

and Ireland, 8.153

Oliver, Andrew, 4.200, 5.x–xi

jurisdiction, 5.75

Oliver, Thomas, 8.148

legislature, 6.12–13, 231

olives, 5.116

letters from David Williams to, 8.119–37

Onslow, George, 8.7, 171n

Long (1640), 7.147, 8.58

Orinoco River, 2.61, 62

petitions to, 3.36–54, 109, 115–19, 121,

7.172–3, 8.5, 24, 148

Osborne, Sir Danvers, 6.73

Index Protestant Association’s march on, 8.122–3

reform of, 6.196

regulation of charters, 7.9–10

and three estates, 5.45, 52–3, 55

see also Acts of Parliament; House of

Commons; legislative authority; ‘no taxation without representation’; taxation; virtual representation parliamentary sovereignty, 5.vii, ix–xii, 22,

33–40, 45–6, 52–3, 54, 56–7, 59, 66,

74, 89–90, 93, 109, 135, 143, 155–6,

6.147–8, 148, 169, 236–7, 7.6, 50–1,

112, 116

Parma, Margaret, Duchess of, 5.100, 101,

103, 6.167–9

Parmiter, John, 2.241, 242, 243

Parrey, Francis, 2.63

Parry, Dr William, 1.15

Passaconaway, Chief, 2.72

Pate, John, 2.1, 13

patriarchy, 5.40

patriotism, 4.165, 6.128, 192, 7.67, 179,

8.47, 112, 114, 160, 168

Peace of Paris (1763), 4.227, 5.123, 135,

213n, 7.143, 162

Peckwell, Henry, 7.93–4

Pelham, Henry, 4.234n

Peloponesian war, 7.127

Pembroke, Earl of, 1.73

Penn, Thomas, 3.80, 4.54, 70, 149, 234n

Penn, Admiral William (father), 2.165

Penn, William, 1.xxv–xxvi, 2.90, 96, 5.28

Pennington, Sir John, 1.161, 249n

Pennsylvania, 1.xxv–xxvi, xxvi, 2.96–108,

4.71, 141, 146, 5.32, 115, 127, 175,

6.189, 241, 242, 7.135, 146

administration of, 2.105–6

Albany Congress, 6.189

American Revolutionary campaign in,

5.xvii, 8.47, 50

climate, 2.97–8

Crown Charter, 2.96–7, 5.29, 208n, 7.9,

55, 111

Dutch and Swedish planters in, 2.104–5

governor of, 3.80–93

Native Indians in, 2.99–104

natural resources, 2.98–9

199

reluctance to support American Revolu­ tion, 8.44–5 resistance to endorsing Declaration of Independence, 8.55 taxation, 5.28

Pepys, Samuel, 1.138, 176

Perez, Anthony, 6.172

Pericles, 6.9, 255n, 7.134

Perne, Rachel, 2.214

Persian empire, 1.148, 221, 248n, 4.60, 7.33,

86

Pert, Sir Thomas, 3.101

Peru, 2.36, 60–1, 62, 3.105

Peter Martyr d’Anghiera, 3.100, 226n

Peter the Great, Tsar, 4.61

Peters, Richard, 3.80

Petition of Rights, 6.74, 78

Petrarch, 1.61, 248n

Petty, William, ‘Dominion of the Seas’,

1.177–94 Philadelphia, 2.106, 107, 3.221, 5.176, 7.54,

82, 128, 132, 8.16, 50, 53

see also Continental Congresses

Philip, Duke of Burgundy, 1.166, 225

Philip II, King of Macedon, 4.102, 235n,

7.87 Philip II, King of Spain, 1.168, 238, 5.100, 6.167, 169, 170–1, 7.74

Philip IV, King of Spain, 1.160

Philip of Burgundy, 5.99

Philip the Fair, King of France, 1.163, 236

Philippe de Commynes, 1.251n

Philippines, 2.54, 57, 58

Philippus Camerarius, 1.29, 246n

philosophy, 4.174, 175–9, 184

Phipps, Lieutenant Governor, 4.201

Phocis people, 7.87

pig-iron, 7.122

piracy, 1.81, 145, 163, 205, 219, 2.27, 3.95,

5.62, 6.126, 7.145, 146, 147–8, 151, 153,

156

Piscattaway Indians, 2.5

Pisistratos, 4.101, 235n

pitch tar, 7.122, 123

Pitt the elder, William, first Earl of

Chatham, 1.xxviii, 4.1, 54, 233n, 5.xiv,

15, 16, 6.200, 236, 238, 265n, 7.67, 120,

131, 189n, 8.42–3, 71, 148

200

The American Colonies and the British Empire, Volume 8

Pittome, John, 2.233

Pizarro González, Francisco, 2.36–9, 278n

Placcicus, Vincent, 5.72, 80, 210n

plague, 1.107

Plan of Association, 8.126–37

Plantation Duties Act (1673), 1.xxv

plantations, 5.21, 22, 41, 42, 43, 78, 130,

139, 141, 151, 162, 182–7, 7.114, 122,

125–6

regulations applying to, 3.177–80

Plater, Colonel George, 3.1

Plato, 2.25, 196–7, 199, 284n, 6.154, 174

Platt, Ebenezer Smith, 7.146, 191n

Pliny the Elder, 1.27, 246n, 2.202, 282n,

3.21, 6.160, 161

Pliny the Younger, 1.24, 246n, 6.160, 161,

262n

Plumard de Danguel, Louis-Joseph, 6.192,

263n

Plumstead, Clement, 2.90

Plutarch, 1.7, 21, 245n, 2.207, 285n

Plymouth Colony, 1.xxii–xxiii, 89, 120, 125,

127, 2.70, 71–2, 225, 226, 246, 3.200,

6.177, 7.110

pocket boroughs, 5.94

Pocock, J. G. A., 1.vii, ix

Pole, J. R., 1.viii

political philosophy, 2.172

poll tax, 4.140, 142

Pollonius, 4.188

Polybius, 6.153, 154, 262n, 7.134

Pondicherry, India, 4.227, 8.156

Pontius, Gaius, 7.48

Pope, Alexander, 4.220, 238n

Popham, George, 2.70

Popham, Sir John, 2.111

Popish Plot (1678–81), 2.175, 178, 283n

Porter, B., 1.viii

Portland, Duke of, 8.159, 160

ports, 8.168

Boston Port Act (1774), 5.xiii, 6.74, 7.144

restrictions, 3.121

Portugal, 1.159, 222, 5.65, 72–3, 119, 121,

6.97, 7.34, 36, 73, 82, 123, 125

Post Office, 7.113–14

postage of letters, 7.173

Postlethwayt, James, 7.124, 190n

Postlethwayt, Malachy, 6.42, 50, 52, 56, 58,

59, 255n

potatoes, 6.41, 42, 43, 46

Potomac Indians, 1.xxiii

Powel, Dr David, 2.26, 279n

Pownall, John, 4.227–30, 6.73

Pownall, Thomas, 4.227, 5.1, 8.149

State of the Constitution of the Colonies, 6.73–81 Poynings’ Law (1497), 1.xxv prerogative power, 4.191–226, 8.9 see also Royal Prerogative Presbyterians, 8.121 Prester John, 1.55, 247n Preston, Captain Thomas, 5.xiii, 6.101 Prestonpans, Battle of (1745), 4.75, 234n Price, Daniel, 1.2 Price, Dr Richard, 7.132, 133, 135, 190n Prichard, Abraham, 2.51 printers, 7.171, 8.11 Prior, Matthew, 6.50, 256n prisoners held by Native Indians, 2.75, 76, 113–14, 148–9 released by the Gordon rioters, 8.123 transportation of, 7.173 of war, 7.129, 153–4 privateers, 1.xxii, 2.167, 4.198–201, 210,

213–14, 220, 5.166, 7.145, 8.21

Proclamation Line (1763), 4.228

Procopius of Caesarea, 1.250n

Prohibitory Act (1775), 5.xv, xvii

property rights, 7.50, 71, 78, 126–7, 166,

8.17, 18

Proposition for the Present Peace and Future Government of the British Colonies in North America, A, 7.13–37 proprietorship, 1.xxiii, xxv, 2.1, 3.2, 5.175, 7.173 Barbados, 2.265 Carolina, 2.117, 118, 121–2, 3.103 Maryland, 2.2, 5–18, 67, 5.viii, 7.181 New Jersey, 2.90 Pennsylvania, 4.54, 149, 5.viii Protest against the Bill to Repeal the American

Stamp Act, 5.135–45

Protestant Association, 2.2, 171, 8.119–25,

131, 134

Index Protestants/Protestantism, 2.5, 8, 10, 15, 16,

17, 18, 192, 221, 3.79, 4.24, 105, 107,

110, 150, 162–5, 5.101, 6.33, 34, 43,

179, 193, 248, 259n, 7.84, 87

provincial law, 7.54 see also law Public Advertiser, 7.57, 132, 166–7 letters signed ‘Britannicus’ (1775), 8.13–18, 19–24 letter signed ‘Marcellus’ (1771), 8.5–12

public boards system, 4.124, 129–30, 135

public money, 4.217

publicans, 5.127

Puerto Rico, 2.55, 59, 131

Pufendorf, Samuel von, 3.2, 11, 100, 223n,

4.69, 234n

Punic Wars (264–146 bc), 7.127, 134

Purchas, Samuel, 1.1

Puritans, 1.xxiii, xxiv, 89, 2.20, 171

Putnam, General Israel, 7.159, 192n, 8.53

‘Pygmie Rebellion’ (1660), 2.1, 2

Pym, John, 5.29, 209n

201

Rawson, Edward and Samuel Sewall, The Revolution in New England Justified, 2.213–56 Raymond, Sir Robert, 7.174, 192n Redyard, Thomas, 2.90 religion and good governance, 3.79–93

Gordon Riots, 8.121–5

Indian, 2.45, 47, 66, 68, 69, 82, 87, 102,

108, 111, 123

liberty and, 6.115–45

monarchy and, 8.9

officers and, 4.150, 161–2

The Planters Plea (White), 1.89–135

propagation of, 3.101

science and, 4.176–80

and Virginia Company, 1.1–72, 84–7

religious persecution, 4.24, 33, 7.74, 136

religious tolerance, 2.16, 18, 110, 5.147,

7.21, 22, 25, 76, 8.18, 121, 134

representation see ‘no taxation without rep­ resentation’; virtual representation

Republican Party, 7.121

republicanism, 5.148, 174

Quakers, 2.232

Restoration, 2.1, 7.112

Quartering Act (1766), 5.xii, xiii

Restraining Acts (1775), 6.220, 7.66

Quatour Maria, 1.182, 249n

Retz, Jean-François Paul de Gondi, Cardinal

Quebec, 1.xxviii, 4.227, 6.242, 244, 250,

de, 8.131, 175n

7.10, 169

Reverdy, Peter, 2.248, 285n

Quebec Act, 5.xiv

Revere, Paul, 6.101

Quibbletown, 8.46, 51

revolution, 4.38, 177, 189, 6.148

Quilter, Joseph, 2.246

see also American Revolutionary War; Quinn, David Beers, 1.2

Glorious Revolution

quit-rents, 3.220, 4.123, 139, 140, 6.43, 44

Quo Warranto, writ of, 2.178, 211, 213, 219, Rhall (Rall), Colonel Johann, 7.159, 8.51

Rhode Island, 4.137, 5.29, 6.115, 116, 241,

248, 252, 253, 3.206, 5.56

242, 8.17

racoons, 2.76–7 Albany Congress, 6.189

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 1.xxii, xxiii, 85, 222,

Gaspée incident, 5.xiii, 6.121–46

230, 231, 2.61–3, 111, 3.101, 200, 5.78,

militia, 7.10

211n, 6.148, 154, 171, 176, 262n

private charter, 5.viii, 208n, 6.121, 133,

Rambler (periodical), 7.58 134, 139, 7.57

Ramsay, Allan, Letters on the Present Distur­ taxation, 5.18

bances in Great Britain and her American Rhodian Sea Law, 1.162, 221, 236, 249n

Provinces, 8.3–26 rice, 3.122–3, 153, 5.116, 6.88, 7.6, 113, 122

Randolph, Edward, 2.189, 222, 227, 234,

Richard I, King of England, 1.161–2

245, 246, 253, 285n

Richard II, King of England, 1.169, 4.94

Rathin Island, 1.249n

Richlieu, Cardinal, 1.219, 4.207, 215, 239n

Richmond, Duke of, 8.42, 159, 160, 172n

Rawson, Edward, 2.214

202

The American Colonies and the British Empire, Volume 8

Rigg, Ambrose, 2.90 Rights of Sovereignty Asserted: An Ode, The (Warwick), 8.25–34 riots, 5.165

Gordon Riots, 8.121–7

Liberty Riot (1768), 6.1, 84, 101

Stamp Act, 5.90, 112, 115, 128

Rittenhouse, David, 4.149 rivers, 7.11, 127

Canada, 4.73–4

dominion, 6.243–4

fishing, 1.147, 244

navigable, 1.160, 163, 172–3, 175, 178,

182, 183, 185, 2.70, 90, 93, 107,

6.249–50

New York Province, 2.86, 89

Pennsylvania, 2.106

Virginia, 2.115

see also individual names Rizing, John, 2.104 Roanoke Island, 1.xxii, 2.20 Robert I of Scotland (Robert the Bruce), 7.77

Robertson, General James, 8.44, 45, 52, 53,

172n

Rochambeau, Jean-Baptiste Donatier de

Vimeur, comte de, 5.xviii

Rockingham, Charles Watson-Wentworth,

second Marquess of, 5.xi, 16, 6.207, 215,

7.84, 113, 121, 129, 188n, 8.48, 158, 160

Roebuck, John, An Enquiry, whether the Guilt of the Present Civil War in Ameri­ can, ought to be Imputed to Great Britain or America, 7.105–37 Rokeby, Matthew Robinson-Morris, second Baron, 6.265n Roman empire, 1.100, 101, 115–16, 121–2,

149–50, 196, 206, 233, 3.209, 4.60,

61, 63, 101, 102–3, 107, 164, 5.76, 87,

104, 107, 108, 6.9–11, 54, 148, 154–65,

180–1, 227, 7.33–4, 75, 81, 120, 131,

134, 8.56, 58, 62, 169

Roman law, 3.12, 20, 21

Romanus, 6.166

Romney (ship), 6.94

Romulus, 6.155

Royal African Company, 2.258

Royal charters see Crown charters

Royal Navy, 1.142, 157, 2.105, 3.125, 4.89,

117, 5.13, 62, 106, 167, 6.247–8, 249,

7.30, 54, 68, 72, 8.69, 168

American Revolutionary War, 5.xviii

American seamen in, 7.26, 8.110, 152

King John’s edict, 1.155–6

under North administration, 8.152

salutation of the flag and topsail, 1.143,

154–5, 156, 157–8, 249n, 8.73

seizure of vessels, 6.94–5, 7.152

see also men of war

Royal Prerogative, 3.17, 215, 4.110, 207,

5.17, 29–30, 55, 57, 74, 148, 155–6,

6.24, 8.8–9, 128, 137

see also monarchy

rum, 2.271–2, 3.29, 30, 36–44, 41–2, 49,

50, 53, 117, 118, 6.84, 88, 91, 7.122, 123,

126

consumed by Native Indians, 4.10–11,

13, 17

consumption in Great Britain and Ire­ land, 3.119, 135–7

duty payable on, 3.109, 131–4, 173–5

for fishermen of Newfoundland and New

England, 5.9, 122–3

French, 5.124

Russell, James, 2.232, 235

Russell, Lord John, 5.135 Russell, Samuel, 2.78 Russia, 8.148, 159

Rutilius Claudius Namatianus, 5.87, 212n, 6.160, 262n Rutland, statute of, 5.81, 212n Rutter, John, 2.240, 243

Sabbath Day, 7.101 Sackville, Edward, 7.19, 185n St Ambrose, 2.201, 284n St Anthony, 6.250 St Augustine, 3.96 St Christopher, island of (St Kitts), 2.157–

60, 171, 3.42, 225n, 8.150

St Domingo, 2.29, 55, 165

St Eustatius, 8.155 St Francis of Assissi, 1.25 St Helena, 2.58 St John, Oliver, 7.112–13 St John the Baptist, 4.150, 155–6

Index St John’s Island, 1.xxviii, 4.227, 6.242, 244

St Laurence, Bay of, 5.173, 6.244, 245,

249–52

St Lawrence River, 4.74 St Lucia, 3.37, 47, 8.155 St Mauritz, 2.209 St Paul, 3.12 St Salvadore, 2.28 St Vincent, 2.145–9, 3.37, 47, 4.227, 8.150 Salem, 1.89, 103, 131, 248n, 2.249–50,

4.198, 199, 210, 220

witchcraft trials, 2.214

Salisbury, Earl of, 6.176 Salmacis, 1.17, 245n Salstoristal, Nathaniel, 2.247 salt, 7.12 salus populi, 8.8 Salust, 2.194, 195, 283n, 3.21 Sancius, Michael, 2.57 Sandwich, John Montagu, fourth Earl of,

5.135, 8.143, 152, 160

Saratoga, Battle of (1777), 5.xvii Sardinia, island of, 7.127 Sardinia, King of, 8.148 Savile, Sir George, 8.122 Savoy, Duke of, 7.73 Sawbridge, John, 7.166, 8.149 Saxe, Maurice de, 7.170, 192n Saxony, Frederick, Duke of, 1.29 Schama, Simon, 1.viii Schuyler, General Philip, 5.xvii science, 4.150, 172–9 Scipio Africanus, 6.160, 8.62 Scotland, 1.174, 2.20, 42, 4.89, 5.76, 86,

212n, 6.44, 7.7, 22, 25, 27, 44, 74, 77, 97,

150, 151, 8.121, 170

Scrope Howe, Emanuel, 3.55–9 character of, 3.61–77 death and funeral of, 3.59–61 sea boundaries, Petty’s methodology to mark, 1.178, 182–90 Sea Venture, wreck of (1609), 1.73 seamen, 1.142, 187, 192, 193, 194, 240,

3.156–7

see also fishing; Royal Navy

Seawall, Stephen, 2.231, 232, 233

Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–7), 1.142,

155

203

sedition, 4.54, 149, 8.9, 10

Selden, John, 1.137, 141, 144, 147, 155, 163,

169, 233, 248n, 5.7, 8

self-government, 1.viii, x, xxiii, xxiv, xxviii

Sellers, Charles, 4.123 Seneca, 1.7, 33, 149, 245n, 2.25, 195, 284n,

3.20, 224n

Senegal, 4.227 Sergeant, Andrew, 2.246 Sergeant, Rev. John, 4.2, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18,

231n

Servius Tullius, Emperor, 6.10 Seven Years War (1756–63), 1.xxvii, xxviii,

3.193, 4.1, 189, 227, 5.vii, 21, 8.21, 150

see also French and Indian War; Peace of

Paris

Severn, River, 1.182 Sewall, Joseph, The Character and Blessedness of the Upright, 3.79 Sewall, Samuel, 2.214 Seymour, Sir Edward, 6.177 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, fourth Earl of, 2.117, 3.95 Sharp, Archbishop James, 7.74, 187n Shebbeare, John, Three Letters to the People of England Letter I on the Present Situation and Conduct of National Affairs, 4.59–79 Letter II on Foreign Subsidies, Subsidiary Armies, and their Consequences to this Nation, 4.81–100 Letter III on Liberty, Taxes, and the application of Public Money, 4.101–22 Sheffield, 7.116 Shelburne, Earl of, 4.227, 5.xii, 8.61, 158,

160

Shepard, Jeremiah, 2.234 Sherlock, James, 2.222, 223, 233

Sherman, Roger, 5.xvi ship money, 1.90, 137, 7.24, 115, 116

ship owners, 3.121, 127

ship refitting, 3.156–7 shipbuilding, 1.108, 242, 3.122–6, 6.84, 89,

7.123, 8.75, 152

Shipley, Jonathan, 6.211, 265n shipping, 1.106, 2.93, 3.193, 5.78, 7.10 see also men of war

204

The American Colonies and the British Empire, Volume 8

Shirley, Sir William, 4.75, 231n, 236n, 5.1, 6.73

Shrimpton, Samuel, 2.233, 236

Sibylline Oracles, 3.210, 228n

Sidney, Algernon, 4.204, 5.7, 8, 205n, 6.211,

264n silk, 2.122, 5.116, 162

silver, 7.125 silver coins, 3.109, 139–42, 143, 149

Simeon, 4.45 Simonides, 1.7, 245n Sinking Fund, 6.37, 7.11, 73, 8.167 see also national debt Sinnoko Indians, 2.17 slave petition (1773), 6.116, 145–6 slave trade, 1.viii, xxi, xxii, 3.128–9, 151, 5.9,

111, 118, 121, 122, 124, 6.88–9, 143–6,

7.120, 8.152

slaves/slavery, 2.120, 121, 258, 4.85, 105,

118, 142, 230, 5.125, 129–30, 6.12, 101,

116, 204, 205, 7.68, 116–17, 133

American Revolutionary War and, 5.xv,

7.11, 12

Assiento contract, 3.95, 118, 227n

Barbados, 2.163, 264, 274–5

duty, 3.147–8

escaped, 2.52, 60

Jamaican Maroons, 2.166

South Carolina, 5.35

Smith, Captain, 2.68–9, 113

Smith, Sir Thomas, 1.1 Smith, William A Charge, delivered to graduates, 4.181–8 Discourses on Several Public Occasions, 4.149–65, 169–80 A Prayer, 4.167–8 Smollett, Tobias, 4.54 smuggling, 1.xxvii, 3.131–2, 5.62, 166, 168,

6.49, 234, 7.8, 9, 11, 115, 160, 8.23

snakes, 1.109 Snider, Christopher, 6.112, 258n snuff, 5.127 Society for Arts and Sciences, 5.162 Society for the Propagation of the Gospels, 4.23, 24

Socrates, 4.193, 7.78, 134

Socrates Scholasticus of Constantinople, 1.24, 246n Solomon, King, 3.85, 90, 226n Solon, 4.101, 235n Somers, Admiral Sir George, 1.73 Somers, John, first Baron, 4.144, 236n Somersett case (1772), 6.264n Sons of Liberty, 5.xi, 66, 6.115 Sophocles, 1.27, 246n, 2.195, 283n, 7.85, 188n South Carolina, 3.95, 103, 104, 107, 5.xii,

xv, xviii, 35, 36, 115, 116, 127, 209n,

6.73, 189, 241, 242, 7.110

see also Carolina; North Carolina

sovereignty, 1.146, 5.45, 66, 6.9, 14, 16, 18,

21, 22–3, 27–31, 159, 162, 186, 196, 201,

207–10, 214, 219, 230, 234, 242–5, 252

see also parliamentary sovereignty

sovereignty of the seas, 8.110, 170

John Evelyn, 1.195, 196, 203–44

Philip Meadows, 1.137–76

William Petty, 1.177–94

Sozomen, Salminius Hermias, 1.24, 246n Spain, 1.xxviii, 160, 161, 221–2, 231, 235,

238, 3.100, 5.90, 96, 98–101, 105, 106,

116, 173, 181, 185, 186, 6.97, 167–8,

7.12, 34, 35, 36, 73, 75, 83, 88, 125, 133,

8.13, 60, 71, 168, 170

Armada, 1.228, 8.169

Assiento contract, 3.118

Aztec empire, 2.29–35

Cuba, 2.41

dominion of lands, 3.104–5

Falklands Crisis (1770), 8.147

and Georgia, 3.95

Inca empire, 2.36–9

Jamaica, 2.165–7

land claims, 2.20

‘political errors’, 5.65, 72–3

Seven Years War, 4.197

sugar prices, 3.184

support for American Revolutionary

War, 8.43, 44, 106, 109

trade, 7.21

value of mules to, 3.47

war with England, 8.150

West Indies, 3.106–7

see also United Provinces

Index Spanish colonies, 1.xxii, 5.121, 125, 166,

168, 7.126

and Sir Thomas Cavendish, 2.56–7

Cuba, 2.41

and Earl of Cumberland, 2.59–60

and Sir Francis Drake, 2.51–5

Panama, 2.169

St Christopher Island, 2.158–9

Spanish Inquisition, 6.168

Sparta, 3.209, 4.60, 6.8, 7.33, 86

Spectator, 6.151, 261n

spirits, 7.114, 121

spruce beer, 5.122

Stafford, Lord, 6.53

Stamp Act/Stamp Duty (1765), 4.23, 124,

140–1, 190, 5.ix, 15, 16, 20, 21, 22, 32,

35, 38, 39, 45, 51, 59, 85, 89, 154, 210n,

6.16–17, 25, 46, 67, 147, 7.8, 84, 162,

165, 171, 8.24, 167

excessiveness of, 5.163–6

Protest against the Bill to Repeal the American Stamp Act, 5.135–45

protests against, 5.x–xi

repeal of, 5.xi, 7.144–6, 155, 158, 170–7

riots, 5.90, 112, 115, 128

Two Papers on the Subject of Taxing the British Colonies in America, 5.185–8 unseasonableness of, 5.163, 166–9

Stanhope, Jonathan, 2.241, 242, 243

Stanley, Thomas, 1.250n

Staple Act (1663), 1.xxv

state formation, 5.viii–ix

Staten Island, 2.86

statute law, 3.7, 8, 9, 14–19, 22, 24–7, 5.57,

6.5, 6, 74, 77–8, 204, 7.51, 64, 149–50, 172, 173, 8.133

Statute of Frauds, 6.79

Stebbins, Benjamin, 2.75, 76

Steele, Richard, 6.261n

Stennett, Joseph, 3.225n

Stockbridge, New England, 4.9, 15

stocks, 8.147, 152

Stockwell, John (of Deerfield), 2.72–9, 281n

Stormont, Lord, 8.158, 160

Stoughton, Judge William, 2.227, 228, 232,

242

Stoughton University, 4.42

Strabo, 1.212, 250n

205

Stratford, Edward, An Essay on the True Interests and Resources of the Empire, 8.161–70 Stuart dynasty, 6.14, 210, 7.62, 85, 8.127 see also Charles I; Charles II; James I; James II

Styvesant, Peter, 2.104

subsidies, 4.92, 94, 96, 97, 98, 113–15,

119–20

Suetonius, 1.150, 248n

sugar, 5.125, 163, 6.56–7, 7.122, 123, 126,

122

accounts, 5.120–1

excise duty, 3.110, 117, 118, 173–5, 5.9,

7.114–15

foreign, 5.118

Sugar Act (1764), 3.109, 4.124, 190, 5.x, 15,

112, 207n, 6.83–4, 89–90, 97, 7.113

see also Molasses Act; Stamp Act

Sugar Islands, 5.173, 7.83 see also Leeward Islands; Windward Islands sugar prices, 3.151, 155 France, 3.184 Genoa, 3.181–2 Hamburg, 3.182–3 Leghorn (Livorno), 3.181 Marseilles, 3.185 Naples, 3.182 Netherlands, 3.183 Spain, 3.184 Venice, 3.182 sugar trade, 3.121, 5.131 Barbados, 2.271, 272–4, 3.29–54, 115–19, 151–8

direct export to Hamburg, 3.161–5

exports (1715–37), 3.159

French, 3.29–54, 5.123, 125

French and English compared, 3.128–9

global, 3.123–4

interest rates, 3.145–6

laws and rules relating to, 3.177–80

licence restrictions, 3.121, 126–7

New England, 1.xxvi

port restrictions, 3.121, 127–8

ship owners, 3.121, 127

shipbuilding restrictions, 3.121–6

206

The American Colonies and the British Empire, Volume 8

Sully, Maximilien de Béthune, duc de, 1.158, 248n, 4.136, 236n, 6.71, 257n, 7.32, 186n summary justice, 7.5

Summers, Sir George, 1.83, 2.127, 128

Surinam, 3.47

Susquehanna Indians, 2.1, 5–6, 17, 4.17

Sutcliffe, Matthew, 6.177

Swan, James, 6.145, 260n

Sweden, 1.205, 2.104–5, 5.162, 6.45, 7.75,

76, 8.148 Swift, Jonathan, 3.229n Switzerland, 5.162 Sydney, Thomas Townshend, first Viscount, 6.214, 265n Symonds, William, 1.2 Tacitus, 1.150, 2.195, 198, 283n, 3.20, 4.98, 164, 235n, 237n, 5.71, 210n

Tallagio, statute of, 5.17, 207n

Tanfield, Sir Laurence, 6.177

Tanner, Captain, 2.188

Tarleton, Banastre, 5.xvii

Tarquins, 8.56

taxation, 2.186, 190, 225–6, 234, 251,

3.218, 4.54, 86, 94, 112, 113, 116, 117,

138–9, 5.ix, 1–2, 90, 95, 106, 111–12,

6.14–16, 19, 21–2, 25–9, 31, 34, 148,

7.7, 21, 25, 111–37, 8.68–9, 146, 147

William Bollan on, 5.1–13, 66

colonial, 4.140, 142, 146, 149, 211, 212,

215–16, 221–4, 228 exemption, 7.111–12 general types, 5.165, 6.43 Ireland, 6.34 Charles Jenkinson on, 5.15–20 William Knox on, 5.21–63 new proposals, 5.131–3 New York, 7.174 under North administration, 8.150–2 ‘period of quiescence’, 5.xiii, 6.115 Pitt’s doubts about American, 8.42–3 repeal of colonial, 5.xvii Roman empire, 6.10 ship-money, 7.24 William, Prince of Orange, 5.102 To the Author of a Pamphlet called Taxa­ tion No Tyranny (Baillie), 7.71–90

Considerations on the Dependencies of Great Britain (Langrishe), 6.33–71 A Letter from a Merchant in London (Tucker), 5.147–74 A Letter to Edmund Burke (Cartwright), 6.195–254 A Letter to the Right Honourable Wills

Earl of Hillsborough, 5.189–203

Observations on Several Acts of Parlia­ ment, 6.83–99 Protest against the Bill to Repeal the American Stamp Act, 5.135–45 Taxation, Tyranny Addressed to Samuel Johnson, 7.39–68 Two Papers on the Subject of Taxing the British Colonies in America, 5.175–88 see also excise duty; Stamp Act Tea Act (1773), 5.xiii, xvii, 7.9, 178, 8.167 tea exports, 6.220 tea tax, 7.114–15, 144, 8.74, 150

see also Boston, Tea Party

Telemachus, 6.203 Tempest, The (Shakespeare), 1.73 Temple, Richard Grenville-Temple, second Earl, 8.145, 175n Temple, Sir William, 5.99, 100, 101, 102,

6.148, 168, 174, 263n, 7.35, 186n

Terence, 2.200 textile industry, 5.10, 11, 111, 116, 117

exports, 7.12

linen manufacture, 6.47–8, 58, 60, 63

woollen trade, 6.47, 56

Thales of Melitus, 1.35, 247n Thames, River, 1.150, 182, 7.127, 8.22 Themistocles, 4.60, 5.87, 212n, 7.134, 190n Theodosius the younger, 6.161, 162

Thermopylae, 7.87 Theseus, 4.101 Third Anglo-Dutch War (1672–4), 1.248n, 5.xvii Thomson, James, 3.96, 4.238n Thorn, Robert, 2.64 Thrasybulus, 4.102, 235n Thuanus, Jacques August de Thou, 1.160, 249n Thucydides, 2.284n Thule, Norway, 2.25, 279n Thurloe, John, 1.137

Index Tiberius Gracchus, 6.69, 155, 257n

Tibullus, Albius, 1.211, 250n

Tillotson, Archbishop John, 3.89, 226n

tithing men, 8.127

tobacco, 2.278n, 3.218, 4.34, 5.116, 117,

125, 129–30, 162, 6.88, 7.113, 122, 123,

126

Carolina, 2.122

consumption of, 5.127

duties, 4.34, 5.116, 127, 6.46, 7.113,

124–5 Tobago, 4.227, 8.150 Toledo, Rodrigo Jimenez, Archbishop of, 1.204, 249n

Tories, 7.121, 8.144, 155

Totila, King of the Goths, 6.165–6

Townshend, Charles, 6.201

Townshend, George, Viscount, 6.33, 8.160

Townshend Acts (1767), 5.x, xi–xii, xiii, 189,

6.1, 147, 7.144, 158, 172

trade, 1.82, 100, 104, 105, 106, 108, 110,

120, 127–30, 156, 159, 169, 3.43, 44,

199, 5.61–2, 82–4, 90, 105, 109–10,

187, 6.2, 8, 74, 190–2, 237, 246, 7.12,

26, 72, 73, 75,122–37, 160, 164, 8.68,

74, 144, 147, 168

in ancient world, 1.206–18

Barbados, 2.258, 271–3, 3.29

Blue Water policy, 5.viii

competition, 5.181–2, 8.21

disrupted by war, 8.20–2, 47, 57–8

dominion of the seas and, 1.181–94

dwindling, 7.81, 82, 84, 85, 87

French Board of Commerce, 4.131–3

history of, 5.77–8

imperial, 3.110

Ireland, 6.41–52, 56–63

A Letter from a Merchant in London (Tucker), 5.147–74 monopolies abolished, 5.126 with Native Indians, 4.2, 7, 10, 11–13, 124, 5.187

and navigation, 1.206–44

Prohibitory Act, 5.xv

re-exportation, 5.121–2

reform of, 4.227

regulation, 1.xxiv–xxv, xxvi, 162, 166,

174, 6.83–99, 203, 7.10, 82, 112, 8.23

207

restrictions, 7.173 The True Interest of Great Britain, 5.111–33 see also East India Company; free trade; Molasses Act; smuggling; Sugar Act Trajan, Emperor, 4.61, 233n, 6.148, 159–60, 161

transportation, 7.173

treason, 2.2, 9, 222, 224, 266, 7.8–9, 47, 55,

147–9, 150, 151, 153, 154, 8.9, 18, 45,

132

treaties, 1.166–8, 188, 3.99, 105–6

Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), 1.xxvii,

3.193, 4.1, 6.186 Treaty of Alliance (1778), 5.xvii, 8.54 Treaty of Amity and Commerce (1778), 5.xvii, 8.109

Treaty of Augsburg (1686), 3.29

Treaty of Breda (1667), 1.155

Treaty of Copenhagen (1660), 1.137

Treaty of Madrid (1670), 3.105, 226n

Treaty of Nijmegen (1678), 1.155, 248n

Treaty of Paris (1783), 5.x, xviii

Treaty of Peace, Good Correspondence and

Neutrality (1686), 3.37, 45–6, 225n Treaty of Peace and Commerce (1630), 1.160, 161, 249n

Treaty of Roskilde (1657), 1.137

Treaty of Seville (1729), 3.95

Treaty of Utrecht (1713), 2.257, 3.1, 29, 46,

106, 221, 4.197, 240n, 6.182, 184, 186

Treaty of Westminster (1654), 1.155

Trenchard, John and Thomas Gordon, Cato’s

Letters, 3.1–2, 223n

Trenton, Battle of (1776), 7.159, 8.50, 51

trial by jury, 5.x, 7.65, 149–51, 8.17

Trinidad, 2.61, 62

Tromp, Admiral Maarten, 1.154, 248n

troops, 5.31, 90, 170–1, 173, 174, 6.127,

7.7, 54, 153

American Revolutionary War, 5.xiv–v,

7.168–9, 8.41, 46–7

Boston Massacre (1770), 6.101–13

British grenadiers, 8.52

for the defence of colonies, 5.vii, 187

finance for, 5.176

guarding frontiers against Indian attack,

5.141

208

The American Colonies and the British Empire, Volume 8

increase in numbers, 7.80–1

Liberty Riot, 6.1

martial law, 8.132–7

mutiny and desertion, 5.31

New York Restraining Act (1767), 5.xii

quartering, 5.xii, xiii, 106, 6.74, 7.8, 10

standing army, 7.137

Trowbridge, 7.45

True Interest of Great Britain, The, 5.111–33

Truman, General, 2.5, 6

Tucker, Captain, 2.128

Tucker, Josiah, Dean of Gloucester, 7.56,

187n Dispassionate Thoughts on the American War, 8.101–14 A Letter from a Merchant in London, 5.147–74 political writings, 5.148 Tudors, 8.127 Turel, Captain Daniel, 2.236 Turenne, viscomte de, 4.60–1, 7.170, 192n Turinus, Verconius, 1.55, 247n Turkey, 5.116, 7.82 Two Papers on the Subject of Taxing the Brit­ ish Colonies in America, 5.175–88

Tynley, Robert, Archbishop of Ely, 1.1

tyranny, 1.40, 2.7, 143, 201, 205, 236,

4.102–3, 179, 206, 5.89, 93, 6.16, 116,

121–5, 129, 138, 148, 163, 7.156, 8.23,

56, 106, 109

Tyron, William, 6.124, 258n

sugar colonies, 3.36–7, 39, 46, 47

sugar trade, 3.117, 159, 183

taxation, 6.42

Third Anglo-Dutch War (1672–4),

1.248n, 5.xvii

universities, 2.94, 4.42, 149, 169–80, 181–8

Upper Cherokee Indians, 4.135

Usher, John, 2.227

utopianism, 4.38, 5.174, 198

Valentinian, Emperor, 6.165

Valerius Maximus, 1.45, 247n

Valley Forge, Battle of (1777–8), 5.xvii

Vasquez, Don Ferdinand, 6.173–4, 263n

Vaughan, Sir John, 2.182, 283n

Venables, Robert, 2.165

Venezuela, 2.62–3

Venice, 1.142, 145, 205, 220, 7.148

Ventris, Sir Peyton, 7.149, 191n

Verelst, Harman, Some Observations on the

Right of the Crown, 3.95–107

Vespasian, Emperor, 1.32

Vespusius, Americus, 2.35–6

Vice-Admiralty Courts, 5.x, 6.84, 92, 96,

137, 139, 246, 7.65, 80, 8.18

victualling trade, 6.48, 49, 58

vineyards, 6.218

Virgil, Bishop, 2.25, 279n

Virgil, Polydore, 1.246n, 5.80, 212n

Virginia Company of London/Virginia,

1.xxii–xxiii, xxiii, xxv, 1, 73, 109, 110,

120, 196, 2.68, 115, 128, 4.71, 141, 5.32,

Union Plan (1754), 3.193, 6.189–90 36, 41, 78, 115, 116, 117, 129, 131, 175,

United Provinces (later Netherlands), 1.118,

6.148 119, 137, 138, 146, 153–4, 154, 156–8,

administration of, 2.116, 3.200 160, 161, 163, 168–9, 174, 175, 187,

Albany Congress, 6.189 190, 193, 205, 224–5, 228, 230, 231,

American Revolutionary campaign in, 239–40, 241, 2.182, 4.45, 108–10, 119,

5.xv, xviii, 7.11 5.65, 72–3, 90, 126, 173, 6.27, 96, 204,

anti-Stamp Act resolution, 5.xi 7.35, 73, 74, 75, 133, 159, 178, 8.60, 159

Bacon’s Rebellion, 2.1–18, 3.201 First Anglo-Dutch War (1652–4),

climate, 2.115 1.154–5

Council members, 1.74–5n fishing, 1.75–6, 154, 173

Crown Charter, 1.xxiv, 74n, 3.226n, New Amsterdam and, 2.85

7.56, 63–4, 110, 111

New England settlement, 4.9

discovery of, 2.111

Pennsylvania, 2.104–5

dissolution of company, 3.201

revolt in, 5.90, 98–103, 6.168–70, 174

duty on importation of slaves, 7.120

Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–7),

fishing, 1.242

1.142, 155

Index fleet scattered by storm (1609), 1.73, 83–4, 2.128

justice system, 7.5

Letters Patent, 1.81, 3.101–2

money regulation, 3.142

Native Indians, 2.6, 11, 14, 111–15,

6.176

natural resources, 2.115, 116

opposition to Long Parliament, 7.147

religious justification for, 1.1–72, 84–7

required occupations for, 1.88

A Sermon Preached at Paules Cross (1609), 1.1–72 tobacco trade, 3.218, 5.209n, 7.124–5 A True and Sincere Declaration, 1.73–88 vote for independence, 5.xvi Virginia House of Burgesses, 1.xxiii, xxiv

virtual representation, 5.2, 15, 22, 66, 79, 90,

94–5, 148, 176, 186, 190, 194, 197, 199,

201, 6.196, 231–2, 7.56

Vladislaus, King of Naples, 1.145

Voltaire, 4.24, 5.100, 101, 102

Vopiscus, Flavius, 5.212n

wages, 3.156–7, 4.160, 6.25, 41, 42, 101,

7.130

Wait, Benjamin, 2.75, 77, 79

Wales, 2.26, 5.81, 8.170

Waller, Edmund, 3.24, 225n

Walpole, Horatio, 4.123, 5.209n

Walpole, Sir Robert, 1.xxvi, 3.95, 193,

4.233n, 240n, 5.40, 7.74, 187n, 8.9 walruses, 2.66–7 Walsingham, Sir Francis, 2.46 Wanton, Joseph, 6.258n War of Austrian Succession (1739–48), 1.xxvii, 3.29, 95, 193, 5.viii, 8.21

see also King George’s War; Treaty of

Utrecht War of Jenkins’s Ear (1739), 1.xxvii, 3.95 War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14), 4.112, 236n Warden, Mr, Deputy Governor, 2.11 Warner, Thomas, 2.158 Wars of the Roses, 8.127 Warwick, Earl of, 1.xxiv Warwick, Thomas, The Rights of Sovereignty Asserted: An Ode, 8.25–34

209

Washington, George, 1.xxvii, 4.1, 5.xv, xvii,

7.159, 8.50

Watts, Samuel, 4.200 Watts, William, 5.16 Wearg, Sir Clement, 7.174, 193n Weld, John, 6.177 Welwood, William, 1.137, 174

Wendell, Jacob, 4.200 West, Benjamin, 4.149 West, John, 2.222, 223, 230, 232, 235, 245

West, Robert, 2.90 West Florida, 4.227, 6.242 West Indies, 1.xxiii, xxviii, 101, 102, 106,

2.20, 28, 59–60, 131–69, 191, 3.37,

106–7, 5.9, 125, 181, 6.83–4, 88, 89,

172, 178, 7.6, 9, 20, 82, 109, 145, 156,

8.68, 74, 109, 110, 152, 155, 170

West Jersey, 2.90, 281n Weymouth, Captain George, 2.46 Weymouth, Thomas Thynne, third Viscount, 6.127, 259n whale-fin, 7.122 whale fishing, 2.48–9, 7.6 Whately, Thomas, 5.xi Wheatley, Phillis, 6.143, 260n Wheeler, Rev. Dr, 8.30 Whigs, 3.194, 4.107, 109, 7.44, 121, 174,

8.129, 144, 154, 157

Whipple, Abraham, 6.115 White, Captain, 6.176 White, John, 1.xxii The Planters Plea, 1.89–135, 2.112 White Plains, Battle of (1776), 8.46 Whitefield, George, 3.80, 222, 229n, 7.93 Whitman, Elnathan, The Character of a Good Ruler, 3.79 Wilcox, Thomas, 2.90 Wild, Sir Humphrey, 6.176 Wildboar, Shadrach, 2.226 wilderness, 4.7–8, 6.25 Wilkes, John, 5.xii, 6.259n Willard, Samuel, The Character of a Good Ruler, 3.79 Willet, Andrew, 1.17, 245n William III, King of England, 1.xxix, 2.171,

172, 192, 220, 223, 224, 4.54, 95, 105,

106, 108–10, 113, 115, 162, 221, 5.20,

210

The American Colonies and the British Empire, Volume 8

101, 102, 7.9, 29, 57, 62, 75, 81, 88, 136,

150, 154, 8.159

Williams, David, A Plan of Association on

Constitutional Principles, 8.115–37

Williamsburgh, Virginia, 4.141

Willis, Edward, 2.236

window tax, 6.43, 46

Windsor, Sir William, 6.53

Windward Islands, 5.131, 209n

Dominica, 2.141–4, 4.227, 8.150

Grenada, 4.227, 8.150

Martinique, 3.37, 47, 6.186, 7.109

St Lucia, 3.37, 47

St Vincent, 2.145–9, 3.37, 47, 4.227,

8.150 wine, 1.108, 7.123 Wingate, Edmund, 3.23, 224n Winslow, John, 2.223–4 Winthrop, John, 1.xxiv, 89, 248n, 2.20, 3.202, 228n Wisbury, Laws of, 1.162, 249n

Wise, John, 2.226, 227, 228, 229

Wolfenbuttle, Duke of, 4.113

Wood, Gabriel, 2.238

wool trade, 5.117, 6.47, 56–63

woollen manufacture, 5.183

Wooster, General David, 7.159, 192n

Wotton, Sir Henry, 1.251n

Wray, Sir Cecil, 8.146

Wurtemburgers, 7.159

Wyatt, Francis, 1.xxiv

Xenophon, 1.250n, 2.284n, 4.60, 233n, 6.134 Yamasee Indians, 3.104 Yeamans, Sir John, 3.103 York, Richard, Duke of, 2.85, 6.52 York, Sir Philip, 7.174 Zachaus, Pope, 2.25, 279n Zell, Duke of, 4.113