should be regulated, and that the law of Quo Warranto should be amended.

recapitulated the

The declaration of right offences and illegal conduct of the King.

It

stated that he had invaded the province of the Legislature; had treated modest petitioning as a crime; had oppressed the Church by means of an illegal tribunal; had, without the consent of Parliament, levied taxes, and maintained a standing army in time of peace; had violated the freedom of election, and perverted the course of justice. Proceedings which could be questioned only in Parliament had been made the subject of prosecution in the King's Bench; partial and corrupt juries had been returned; excessive bail had been required from prisoners, and disproportioned fines imposed; barbarous and unusual punishments had been inflicted, and the estates of accused persons had been granted away before conviction. Finally, it assumed that he had abdicated the government. It went on to declare that the dispensing power, lately assumed and exercised, had no legal existence; that without grant of Parliament, no money could be exacted by the Sovereign from the subject, and that without the consent of the Legislature, no standing army could be kept up in time of peace. The right of subjects to petitionof electors to choose representatives freely-of

Parliament to freedom of debate-of the nation to a pure and merciful administration of justice, according to the spirit of its own mild laws, was solemnly affirmed. All these things the Convention claimed in the name of the whole nation as its undoubted inheritance.

This declaration did not so much make new laws as clear the old from obscurity. It rendered that certain which illegal practice had involved in doubt. The fundamental principle asserted for the last time, and now for ever established by the Revolution, viz., that no taxes could be levied on the people but by their own consent or that of their representatives, while it secured the liberties of Englishmen, paralyzed the hold of tyranny in the provinces. Truth is eternal and immutable. That which is founded on reason, and the rights of freemen in Britain, cannot be otherwise in America. The doctrine that representation was necessary to legalize taxation had always been held in Massachusetts, and in almost every other colony, from their earliest settlement. Their first resolve and their last declaration were assertions of this natural right, which, though not so boldly maintained, so far as the regulations of the commerce of the empire extended (although this was protested against), was claimed in the fullest and most unlimited manner in their internal affairs.

VOL. I.

N

There was a latent element, however, in this revolution, doomed to exercise in after times a powerful and baneful influence in America. The commercial interest of the kingdom, by its enormous and increasing wealth, emerged from the humble condition it had hitherto occupied, and soon made itself felt and considered, if not respected. An incipient national debt, occasioned by an expenditure that exceeded income, required a loan, and the coffers of the tradesmen were opened to the needy Government, until the creditor was enabled to make his debtor sensible of his dependence. The sea-ports and the manufacturing towns rapidly encroached on the influence of the landed aristocracy, and boldly demanded a portion of power. This new class of aspirants for political influence, with the usual selfishness of trade, nurtured a jealousy of colonial commerce, and subsequently manifested a zeal in restricting it in a manner most beneficial to itself. It affected to see nothing in the transatlantic possessions but a market for English goods. Restriction and monopoly soon engendered a desire for taxation, and that, contrary to their narrow-minded calculations, not only failed in producing a revenue, but, by its ruinous expenses, nearly caused a national bankruptcy. True to their cold and selfish maxims, they regarded their balance-sheet as their only sure guide, which, however accurate it may

be in a counting-house, is worse than useless to a statesman, who knows that it can never represent any theory more than the account of one branch of a vast, complicated, and dependent system, of which figures can convey no adequate idea whatever.

In their policy towards the old provinces, the commercial classes imagined they saw prodigious gain in perspective, and flattered themselves that compression alone was necessary to cause a constant stream of wealth to flow into England. In grasping at the shadow they lost the substance. The same sort of "ready-made" politicians now despondingly announce that they have discovered in their tabular accounts, that the cost of protection exceeds the value of the return, and propose to abandon colonies altogether.

The

These results of the great Revolution of 1688, were not only not dreaded, but not even suspected at the time on either side of the water. Provincials, engrossed by its more immediate operation, saw their own emancipation from uncertain authority, and nothing more. The limitation of the prerogative, was held by them as equally applicable to the regal power in America. Its exercise had been made even more perplexing and oppressive towards them than towards the English. Theory and practice had hitherto been so much at variance, that they scarcely knew

where it would reach, or what it would subvert. What opinions eminent lawyers held on on the subject was of little consequence to them, the practice had ever continued the same; and although Parliament, to make these new restrictions less obnoxious to royalty, asserted that they only declared what the law always had been, it was manifest that if it had been so plain it did not require repetition, and that Westminster Hall was not so unanimous as had been represented. The very word "prerogative" was one of terror, for it was synonymous with a despotic power above the law, making or dispensing with laws at pleasure. Whichever way a colonist turned, he was met by it. It was invisible and intangible, but nevertheless it was omnipotent. It claimed the whole country, the right of taxation, of government, of regulating commerce, controlling the militia, of pressing sailors and billeting troops, of making war and peace, of constituting courts, and administering justice in matters civil, military, or ecclesiastical, of monopolies, of coinage, and in fact, in and over all things. It had a jargon of its own, not very intelligible to the hardy but unlettered fishermen of the sea-coast, or the inhabitants of wigwams made of the bark of trees. When they heard of floatsam, jetsam and ligan, treasure-trove, deodands and waifs, bonavacantia, ne-exeats and monobstantes, and asked what these