but what all withhold. They are here upon firm ground, behind entrenchments which never can be forced.

Humanity is very uniform. The Americans have this resemblance to Europeans, that they do not always know when they are well. They soon quit the fortress that could neither have been mined by sophistry, nor battered by declamation. Their next resolution declares, that their ancestors, who first settled the Colonies, were, at the time of their emigration from the Mother-country, entitled to all the rights, liberties, and immunities of free. and natural-born subjects within the realm of England.

This likewise is true; but when this is granted, their boast of original rights is at an end; they are no longer in a state of nature. These Lords of themselves, these kings of me, these demigods of independence, sink down to Colonists, governed by a charter. If their ancestors were subjects, they acknowledged a sovereign: if they had a right to English privileges, they were accountable to English laws, and what must grieve the lover of liberty to discover, had ceded to the king and parliament, whether the right or not, at least the power of disposing without their consent, of their lives, liberties, and properties. It therefore is required of them to prove, that the parliament ever ceded to them a dispensation from that obedience, which they owe as natural-born subjects, or any degree of independence or immunity not enjoyed by other Englishmen.

They

They say, That by such emigration they by no means forfeited, surrendered, or lost any of those rights; but that they were, and their descendants now are, entitled to the exercise and enjoyment of all such of them as their local and other circumstances enable them to exercise and enjoy.

That they who form a settlement by a lawful charter, having committed no crime, forfeit no prileges, will be readily confessed: but what they do not forfeit by any judicial sentence, they may lose by natural effects. As man can be but in one place at once, he cannot have the advantages of multiplied residence. He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade. He who goes voluntarily to America, cannot complain of losing what he leaves in Europe. He perhaps had a right to vote for a knight or burgess; by crossing the Atlantick he has not nullified his right; but he has made its exertion no longer possible*. his own choice he has left a country where he had a vote and little property, for another where he has great property, but no vote. But as this preference was deliberate and unconstrained, he is still concerned in the government of himself; he has reduced himself from a voter to one of the innumerable multitude that have no vote. He has truly ceded his right, but he still is governed by his own consent; because he has consented to throw his atom of interest into the general mass of the community. Of the consequences of his own act he has no cause to complain; he has chosen, or intended to choose, the

By

*Of this reasoning, I owe part to a conversation with Sir John Hawkins.

greater

greater good; he is represented, as himself desired, in the general representation.

But the privileges of an American scorn the limits of place; they are part of himself, and cannot be lost by departure from his country; they float in the air, or glide under the ocean.

DORIS amara suam non intermisceat undam.

A planter, wherever he settles, is not only a freeman, but a legislator, ubi imperator, ibi Roma. As the English Colonists are not represented in the British parliament, they are entitled to a free and exclusive power of legislation in their several legislatures, in all cases of taxation and internal polity, subject only to the negative of the sovereign, in such manner as has been heretofore used and accustomed. We cheerfully consent to the operation of such acts of the British parliament as are bona fide restrained to the regulation of our external commerce-excluding every idea of taxation, internal or external, for raising a revenue on the subjects of America without their consent.

Their reason for this claim is, That the foundation of English liberty, and of all government, is a right in the people to participate in their legislative council.

They inherit, they say, from their ancestors, the right which their ancestors possessed, of enjoying all the privileges of Englishmen. That they inherit the right of their ancestors is allowed; but they can inherit no more. Their ancestors left a country where the representatives of the people were elected by men particularly qualified, and where those who VOL. VIII. wanted

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wanted qualifications, or who did not use them, were bound by the decisions of men, whom they had not deputed.

The Colonists are the descendants of men, who either had no vote in elections, or who voluntarily resigned them for something, in their opinion, of more estimation; they have therefore exactly what their ancestors left them, not a vote in making laws, or in constituting legislators, but the happiness of being protected by law, and the duty of obeying it.

What their ancestors did not carry with them, neither they nor their descendants have since acquired. They have not, by abandoning their part in one legislature, obtained the power of constituting another, exclusive and independent, any more than the multitudes, who are now debarred from voting, have a right to erect a separate parliament for themselves.

Men are wrong for want of sense, but they are wrong by halves for want of spirit. Since the Americans have discovered that they can make a parliament, whence comes it that they do not think themselves equally empowered to make a king? If they are subjects, whose government is constituted by a charter, they can form no body of independent legislature. If their rights are inherent and underived, they may by their own suffrages encircle with a diadem the brows of Mr. Cushing..

It is farther declared by the Congress of Philadelphia, That his Majesty's Colonies are entitled to all the privileges and immunities granted and confirmed to them by royal charters, or secured to them by their several codes of provincial laws.

The

The first clause of this resolution is easily understood, and will be readily admitted. To all the privileges which a charter can convey, they are by a royal charter evidently entitled. The second clause is of greater difficulty; for how can a provincial law secure privileges or immunities to a province? Provincial laws may grant to certain individuals of the province the enjoyment of gainful, or an immunity from onerous offices; they may operate upon the people to whom they relate; but no province can confer provincial privileges on itself. They may have a right to all which the king has given them; but it is a conceit of the other hemisphere, that men have a right to all which they have given to themselves.

A corporation is considered in law as an individual, and can no more extend its own immunities, than a man can by his own choice assume dignities or titles.

The legislature of a Colony, let not the comparison be too much disdained, is only the vestry of a larger parish, which may lay a cess on the inhabitants, and enforce the payment; but can extend no influence beyond its own district, must modify its particular regulations by the general law, and whatever may be its internal expenses, is still liable to taxes laid by superiour authority.

The charters given to different provinces are different, and no general right can be extracted from them. The charter of Pennsylvania, where this Congress of anarchy has been impudently held, contains a clause admitting in express terms taxation by the parliament. If in the other charters no such reserve is made, it must have been omitted as not

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