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The Address of the
People of Great-Britain to the Inhabitants of America |
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No. 3
Address to the Inhabitants of America.
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The Address of the People of Great-Britain to the
Inhabitants of America.
London:
Printed for T. Cadell, in the Strand.
MDCCLXXV. |
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The Address of the People of Great-Britain to the
Inhabitants of America.
Friends and Countrymen,
We have seen the three addresses of your Congress, the
first of which is directed to us, the next to you, and the last to his
Majesty. And we wish we could add that we had not seen their Address
to the French Inhabitants of Quebec; because it flatters them, provided they
adopt the projects of the Congress, with the protection of a religion, which
the Congress in their Address to us, say, is fraught with "Impiety, Bigotry,
Persecution, Murder, and Rebellion," and therefore complain of Parliament
for protecting; and because it proposes a social compact with a people,
whose genius and government the Congress,
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in their addresses to you and us, represent as incompatible with freedom.
But the views intended to be compassed by the last of these papers we impute
to those who framed it, and not to you. For to men generous and open
as you are, the integrity of whose intentions we believe corresponds to our
own, we will not permit ourselves to impute insidious views or insidious
arts. We give you a generous credit because we expect it from you.
In our turn, we address you, not as Foes; not as Communities which would
league yourselves with Frenchmen against us; not as Individuals who would
conceal the hatred which you have, or stab under pretence of the love which
you have not; but as our Friends and our Countrymen. God forbid these
endearing appellations should ever be exchanged for those of Enemy and
Traitor: for the flame of liberty which burns in our breasts we revere
in yours: your services in the late wars, with the oblivion of which
you reproach us, we remember well: your industry, your virtue and your
piety we honour, because we believe that those who stand in awe of the
estimation of their own minds, and fear their God, will seldom go far in a
wrong path.
We wish we could forget, as easily as we
forgive, the two modes, by which your Congress proposes to disappoint the
wishes of Britain for the good of
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America; the one threatens War, the other a Suspension of Trade. We
mean not to insult you; we wish not to offend you; we know threats would be
thrown out in vain to you; they exasperate instead of intimidating the free.
But we owe to you, to ourselves, to our holy religion, and to that system of
glory and liberty, involved in the united power of the British empire, and
to be dissolved alone by the dissolution of its parts, and which we wish to
last till time shall be no more; to give you our thoughts upon those two
modes of opposition with freedom and with truth. So may Heaven deal
kindly with us and our posterity in the hour of need, as we mean kindness,
and not unkindness to you and your posterity, in what we are not to say to
you on these heads. We speak first of the first
of them, to wit, the Project of a warlike Opposition on your part against
us; because we will not conceal from you, it is the most alarming to us,
because it ought to be so to you, and yet is not. No people situated
as you are, can hope for success in war, unless they are possessed of four
things before they engage in it: fortified Towns to secure the persons
of their people, and intercept the incursions and advance of their enemies;
a disciplined Army to defend their lands; a Navy to protect their seas and
rivers; and not only a great annual Revenue, but the capacity of funding it,
so as by borrowing present capitals on the credit of future interests, to
throw
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the abilities of several years into one. And this last article is
perhaps, in modern times, of more importance than all the others put
together; because in modern times the success of war depends more on the
longest purse than on the longest sword. Now you have not a single
walled Town, nor a single disciplined Regiment, nor a single Ship of War,
nor a single Fund on which monied men would lend you a month's expence of an
armament; and your annual Revenue is so small, as hardly to deserve the name
of one. You are Englishmen. We appeal to that good sense which
distinguishes Englishmen. Lay causes and effects, circumstances and
their consequences together. Can you hope for Success in such a war?
Success do we say! Your Destruction is inevitable. No country
and people were ever so peculiarly ill-situated and circumstanced for a war
with us, as you are at this instant. You are to encounter, after the
very career of victory, that dreadful period which, inflaming military men
with the remembrance of late glories and confidence of future success,
raises the victors above themselves, a veteran Army, lately come from
carrying Conquest wherever it carried Colours, and a veteran Navy, lately
come from sweeping the seas of all enemies, in all quarters of the globe;
and to measure your trifling revenue, not more than seventy-five thousand
pounds a year, against that of a nation, which has a sinking fund of between
two and three mil-
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[mil-]lions a year, and which, in the last war, was able to expend Seventeen
Millions in one year. Your Towns are built all to the edge of deep
water, so as to be within reach not only of cannon-shot but even of
pistol-shot. Your Country-houses and Estates lie generally on the
banks of deep rivers. The most valuable part of your Fortunes in the
Southern Provinces, is composes of slaves ready to rebel against their
masters, or run away from them on the appearance of an enemy. Your
Coasts, by the large inlets of bays and rivers, are easily commanded.
To give only one example, two twenty-gun ships stationed at the Capes of
Virginia, where the sea is not more than two or three leagues over, and
another in Albemarle Sound, with two or three armed sloops to attend them,
could lock up altogether the very best part of North-Carolina, and the whole
of two of your noblest provinces, Virginia and Maryland, that is, a coast of
Six Hundred Miles in extent. A War with Britain must expose you to
calamities from which even Demons would turn their eyes. The most
singular spectacle to be found in all the records of history might, in the
space of one little summer, or half a summer, be exhibited in America.
For in that short space of time, in a country above two thousand miles in
extent, enriched with the beauties of art and of nature, and inhabited by a
virtuous, polished, and free people, every Town, without the exception of
one, might be reduced to ashes, by our ships of war; all your Country-houses
and Estates ravaged,
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not by the slow advances of armies, but by the rapid courses of the barges
of those ships; or those Towns and Estates if not destroyed, laid at least
under the most grievous contributions; your Slaves lost, or become your
masters; yourselves fled for protection from them to the woods, or to hide
you from your own shame; your Trade annihilated; and your Vessels and Seamen
captives in the ports of that enemy whose rage you had provoked. Your
Demagogues, now so bold when there is no danger, would then be the first to
fly from its approach; for the Valiant are modest, but the Restless and
Noisy are always timid. --Your Spirit alone would be left to you: that
Spirit which, judging of you by ourselves, we know we cannot Conquer but by
Friendship. Do you trust to Foreign Aids in such
a conflict? We doubt not you would get them. Your and our
felicity is the envy of all nations. Slaves always hate the Free.
Many nations will rejoice to disturb that felicity. Sad aids! where
every victory of your Allies would remind you over whom it was gained, and
remove still further and further from your eyes, that sweet equality, that
high station of English liberty, which you and we alone, of all human kind,
once possessed. Will these Auxiliaries conquer for you and not for
themselves? Will the Inquisition of Spain make a Protestant cause
independent? Will the Despotism of France establish a New Empire of
Liberty, after having been
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stopped in her career to Universal Monarchy, by an Old one? Your
Posterity will bless the memory of those Ancestors who fled from native
tyrants, but curse the memory of those who subjected them to foreign ones.
In the prospect of such a struggle, do you feel
nothing for our distress? in being obliged to punish those whom we
pity, to crush that Spirit, in which, amidst all its errors, we recognise
our own; and to counteract the ways of Providence, in rearing future Empires
of Freemen, in future ages, pleasing to itself. Unhappy we!
Ungenerous you! You abuse that tenderness which you know we cannot
throw off for you. We dwell on the repetition of the sentiment, that
we fell for you, as Nurseries of Freemen, in which God and Nature were
interested, and for which to God and Nature we are responsible. We
will not attempt to harden ourselves against a Remorse which we know would
follow our successes against you. You need not, till a cruel extremity
comes upon us, fear the sword of your Parent Country uplifted against you.
Perhaps, even then it would drop from our hands bedewed with our tears, not
with your blood. The Mean amongst you know this our weakness, and
insult; but from the Generous we will expect a more generous return.
With respect to the Commercial Project of
Opposition, which consists in the resolution not to
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export or import, proposed by your Congress, and perhaps, though not yet
spoke out by the members of it, resolutions not to pay the millions due by
America to the British merchants, which would be the consequence of the
other, if the other could take effect; you may think that by these means you
may force the Mercantile Interest to desert the Cause of their Country,
--strip us of our Trade and Manufactures, -- reduce our West India Islands
to misery from the want of Provisions, and of a market for the produce of
their estates, --and by the stoppage of the usual Public Taxes to pay the
interest of the public debts, bring a Public Bankruptcy upon Britain.
Be not deceived in the first of these prospects. Amidst the Disgrace
of Civil Dissension preserve still National Honour, otherwise Vengeance,
private as well as public, will overtake you. The Merchant whom you
defraud of one part of his fortune, will not complain of being obliged to
lay out another part to recover it; and too surely in the end you will repay
his losses with usury. Instead of making him desert the Cause of his
Country, the violation of faith will only attach him the more firmly to it.
Rest not your opinions on the frivolousness of public Petitions or Addresses
presented by bodies of merchants. Richard Cromwell was pressed in
sixteen hundred addresses, to take that government upon him, which a few
months after his Addressers took from him. Innumerable Addresses were
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presented to James the Second, in favour of that dispensing power, which the
men who presented them, soon after converted into a Reason for dethroning
him. If you wish to know the sentiments of one of those mercantile
Petitioners, go to his compting-house, or dining-table: he will tell
you he signed a Petition for you, because his neighbour did it, or to hurt a
minister, or to appear of importance in his business, or to keep rioters in
America from plundering his effects, or to prevent other people from
becoming more popular in business than himself. But ask him if he is
sincere, he will laugh at your credulity; and he will have reason: for
do you think he is to prefer you to himself, or bear favour to those who
would turn the streams of Trade from his door, and disperse them among all
neighboring nations? But your deception will be
still more fatal in the second of your prospects which the resolutions
proposed by your Congress may open to you, namely the downfall of the trade
and manufactures of England. There are two essential differences
between your situation and ours in the quarrel of children, which your
Congress would draw both of us into. The first essential difference
is, that you have no market, or hardly any market for your commodities
except Britain or her dominions; but the world is our market. Whilst
our merchants have large stocks and larger credit, our people much industry
and more ingenuity, and while
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mankind have wants natural or artificial to be supplied, our merchants will
not want commissions, our ships cargoes, or our manufacturers employment.
The channels of trade will be changed, but they will not be dried up.
The other essential difference is, that every stoppage of your trade will be
a loss to you; but in many articles, and these the most material, the loss
will fall not upon us but upon others. For example, if you salt not
your usual quantity of fish and other provisions, because you will not send
them to our West Indies or to England, you will not indeed have occasion for
the quantity of salt which has been usually imported into America; but the
loss will fall on other countries; for we send you no salt. If your
southern provinces will not take Ofnaburghs from Britain for the clothing of
their slaves, nine-tenths of the lot will fall not on us, but on Germany;
for we are accustomed to send you only a trifling quantity of our own
making. We repeat it again, we wish not to offend, we mean not to
threaten; but since we have mentioned these two articles, we must let you
know that an Act of Parliament which should prohibit the importation of
them, and of one other article, to wit molasses, into America, would
desolate your provinces without the aid of armies or navies -- if you
receive no Ofnaburghs, the most valuable part of the stock on your estates
in the southern Provinces, your slaves, must waste away by diseases -- if
you receive no salt, the most valuable part of your wealth in the northern,
and even in some of your southern provinces, your herds and
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fish, will be of little more use than to cover your dunghils. Your
poor would suffer from the want of salt provisions on which they chiefly
live; and we doubt, accustomed to the use of salt as Europeans are, whether
either rich or poor could live without salt, more than without water -- If
you receive not molasses, the circulation of the greatest branch of your
internal commerce and manufactures must stop, from the North to the South
and from the South to the North; and yet the loss of the molasses trade to
you would be no loss to our West India islands, because it is well known to
yourselves, that nine-tenths of the molasses which you consume, are French
and not English. When the effects of the powers
which we have to become your executioners would be so fatal unto you, do you
imagine that we can believe you will execute yourselves? Communities,
as well as individuals, have indeed sometimes their periods of frenzy.
During such periods you may, by the stoppage of trade, do much mischief to
us, and we to you. But the mischief which you can do to us is finite,
that which we can do to you is infinite.
The third consequence of the resolutions
proposed by your Congress, namely, the miseries to be inflicted by means of
them upon our West India islands, would recoil with double force upon
yourselves. Your Congress must have got you enemies enough, do not
strive to multiply them. You depend more on those islands, than they
do upon
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you. Without them you would be without even a market for the most
lucrative part of the produce of your estates, your provisions and lumber.
Men do not break glass windows with guineas. The vast balance on your
trade to those Islands shows what you would suffer in the loss of it.
If you hope, upon the breach of trade with us
and our dominions, to get salt, ofnaburghs and molasses from other
countries, or their plantations, your hopes will be in vain. Do you
think that our planters or we would sit quietly down, and see the system of
the navigation laws violated, to injure them and defraud us? We have
hitherto connived at the pilfering smuggling of thieves, but we should then
chastise the smuggling of robbers like the other actions of robbers.
We have had indulgences for you in the hours of friendship; do you think we
should continue them in those of defiance?
If the last and greatest of all the four
calamities which your congress foresees in imagination, namely a national
bankruptcy, should fall upon us, where would be your gain? Have you or
your relations no fortunes in our funds to suffer by their ruin. If
our revenues and credit should fall to the ground, who would defend you, as
we did in the former wars, against France and Spain? Who defend you,
against the deluges perhaps of more northern nations, who might pour upon
the distant provinces of England, when she was unable to defend them,
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as their ancestors did upon those of Imperial Rome? The languishing
provinces of Rome looked up in vain for help to a languishing head; that
head could give them none: for weakened by the disobedience and disaffection
of the provinces, she stood in need of protection for herself.
Instead then of listening to projects of war, or
of suspension of commerce, assert your own reason in your own cause, and
trust it not to the passions of others. We do not wonder, that with
the vast Atlantic Ocean between you and us, to prevent a mutual
communication of sentiments, mutual misapprehensions of the sentiments of
each other should have arisen. When great interests are at
stake, and those who are engaged in them are free, and therefore
high-minded, jealousies, points of pride, misunderstandings, are inevitable
for a time. But when each party is in the right in some things, and
neither in the wrong in all, these, and the effects of them, last only for a
time; the cloud passes away, and the sun shines forth again.
Let us examine the subjects of difference
between us.
You complain of us, because in a declaratory
statute Parliament asserted a right to bind you by its regulations in
all cases whatever; and we complain of you, because you assert that
Parliament has no right to bind you in any case whatever.
But it was you who first set up the last of these pretensions, and
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you forced Parliament, in order to provide against encroachments, until
limits were constitutionally settled, to meet it with the first. But
claims so widely worded are words, and no more. In the votes of your
Assemblies, and the declaratory words of our statute, they stand only as
records that there have been unhappy differences between England and her
Colonies: for surely you mean not by your assertion to preclude
Parliament from the power of disabusing you to ruin England, nor we in ours
to give it a power of ruining America. There was a time when our
ancestors seemed to differ as much about the terms resistance and
non-resistance relatively to the rights of the subject, as their
posterity do now upon the terms supremacy and independence
relatively to the rights of Great Britain and America. Yet they in
reality could only differ about the degree of provocation which justified
resistance, and we in reality can only differ about the extent to which the
exercise of the claims of the two countries may be carried. The
Revolution, with the explanations it led to, discovered to them, that
they agreed upon the degree of the one; and the present emergency, with
the explanations to which it should lead, may perhaps discover to us, that
we agree upon the other.
If, indeed, under the objection to the
supremacy of Britain, you mean to deny to the executive part of our
constitution, to the King, the power of appointing those officers of
revenue, law, and government, whom he has accustomed to ap-
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[ap-]point, of putting a negative upon the bills of your Assemblies, of
sending forces for the protection of his subjects and dominions, with the
other usual powers of the crown; if you mean to deny to the judicial part of
our constitution, the right of a supreme court of judicature in England, to
receive appeals from your courts of justice; if you mean to deny the
legislative part of our constitution, to the Parliament, the power to
regulate your commerce for the mutual benefit of both countries; we shall
indeed stake the fate of the British Empire on the consent; not for our
interests alone, but for yours and those of human kind: for if you are
permitted to throw off these badges of supremacy, as madmen may call them,
you are that instant independent states: you will form yourselves into
independent principalities, republics, and we fear anarchies. A new
political system will arise, not in Europe alone, but in the World.
Foreign nations will intrigue in your assemblies: you will engage in
wars with them, with us, and with your sister provinces. This is not
all. In governments formed suddenly, and which therefore must be
imperfect, you will fall into dissensions among yourselves; so that all the
miseries of foreign, of civil, and of domestic war, will be accumulated on
your heads. We wish that your Congress, which is so learned in the
principles of the great Montesquieu, were equally learned in the condition
of the Greek states, during the Pelopennesian war, a condition exactly
similar to what yours would be, as described by the great Thucydides.
The indi- viduals |
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[indi-]viduals of it would there learn, that those demagogues who, from
restlessness of temper, or ambition of making themselves conspicuous above
others, plunged their countries into disorders and calamities, were often
the first to fall by the hands of their countrymen.
But if you mean, under the objection to the supremacy of Great Britain, to
deny her the exercise of the power of imposing taxes upon you without the
consent of your Assemblies, the exemption you contend for deserves a very
different attention.---If you claim it as a matter of right derived from
authority, we must refuse you; because no charter, except one of one
province, gives it to you, and long practice and many statutes have taken it
from you; and because the position, that there can be no taxation where
there is no representation, is a jingle of words, in which, in point of
reasoning, the conclusion does not follow from the premises, and which is
disproved, in point of fact, by many instances of men who have been taxed,
though not represented, in this kingdom.---If you assert it under the claim
of equitable consideration, we must also refuse you; because you are bound
to support that state which protects you; because other nations extend their
revenues as they extend their dominions; because the taxes imposed upon you
were to have been applied within your own provinces, and for your own
safeties, and not for ours; and because your abilities even to share our
burthens are unquestionable, seeing, that when eight
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millions of us pay ten millions of taxes, which amounts to twenty-five
shillings on each person, three millions of you pay only seventy-five
thousand pounds, or sixpence on each person; and this in a country where a
labouring man gets three times the wages that he does in England, and yet
may live on half the expence. When you tell us you are unable to pay
taxes, pardon us for once in this Address, if we tell you that we do not
believe you.---But if you appeal to the rights of human nature, and the
great interests of society, we bow to those your sacred protectors. We
can find no line between the use and abuse of taxing you without the consent
of your own Assemblies. We revere the Prince on the throne, and know
our liberties to be safe in his hands; but we cannot be certain of a
succession of royal virtue in all ages to come; and we can anticipate
occasions when a Prince may, even by means of Parliament, venture to do
things which he would not have ventured upon by himself; as Tiberius by his
senates did what Nero dared not do by his guards. In such a case,
though charters, practice, statutes, and even equitable consideration,
warrant us to retain the exercise of the power of taxation over you, we
desire to throw it from us, as unworthy of you to be subject to, and of us
to possess. We will not degrade you, because in your exaltation our
own is involved; we desire only to be secured that you will yourselves make
provision for your own safety and defence. If this has not been done
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own. You connected your claim of not being taxed with so many other
claims, that it became impossible for us to make the concession which we
wished, from the danger of its being made a precedent for extorting other
concessions, to which we could not yield without doing a mischief even to
those who claimed them. It has been the fortune,
perhaps the peculiar one of Britain, that from apparent mischiefs real good
has arisen; and convulsions, terrifying at first, have only paved the way
for preventing their return. From the late difference, it is the fault
of us both if we do not derive future agreement. That agreement is
best to be insured by some great act of fate, which, on the principles of
mutual dependence, shall form a system of common interest and happiness, and
remove, as far as human wisdom can look forward, the probability of future
differences. Whether your Assemblies shall, in a constitutional way,
make the first advance to Parliament to effectuate that measure, or
Parliament shall make the first advance to you, by sending a Parliamentary
commission to America, is immaterial: the first honour will belong to
the party which shall first scorn punctilio in so noble a cause.
When the other subjects of dispute, unconnected
with that of taxation, come to be canvassed by those who shall be authorized
to give and receive suggestions for removing them, they will find, per-
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[per-]haps with surprise, of how little consequence the disputed points are,
and how easy to be adjusted. Of these there seem
to be chiefly three.
The first of them arises from the restraints
laid by the regulation of Parliament upon your trade and manufacture for the
advantage of ours. But are not we laid under similar restraints in
these respects for the advantage of yours? For you we submit to
monopolies; for you lay restraints on our trade; for you we are taxed; and
for you impose similar hardships upon other parts of our dominions. We
shall only select a few instances out of many. The landed man is
prohibited from raising Tobacco at home, and the merchant disabled to import
it with advantage from abroad, in order to give a monopoly of the commodity
to you, and at their expence; for the one could raise, and the other import
Tobacco, at a much cheaper price than they get it from you. We give
vast Bounties on the importation of your Flax, Hemp, Timber, and Naval
Stores, to the detriment of those who raise them at home, to whom we give
none. Our Merchants are restrained by prohibitions, or duties
equivalent to prohibitions, from importing Rice, Indigo, and many other
articles of the produce of your Estates, in order to give you a Monopoly of
those articles, although they could bring them much cheaper from other
nations. We give a bounty upon the
importation |
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importation of Indigo, and continue it upon exportation, by which
accumulated favour, we first give you a premium to import, and then enable
you, by the advantage of a double market, to raise the price upon us
afterwards. Our West-India Islands were restrained from taking
provisions or timber from other countries, in order to secure a Monopoly of
those articles to you, at their expence; who complained not of restraints
which they shared with their Mother Country for your good. Our own
Merchants are subject to duties on the importation of foreign commodities,
but it is you who draw them back; so that they pay a tax, and you receive a
premium in this exchange of commodities. If we lately imposed a
trifling tax upon you to be spent among yourselves, we have taxed ourselves
to an hundred times the value of it to pay Bounties to you. These
Bounties hurt our revenue not only in the loss of the money paid out, but by
stopping the importation from other nations of the articles on which they
are granted, and consequently the taxes which would have been paid on those
articles. In some instances we hurt both our revenue and our trade to
serve you. Thus 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-fishing sacrificed to that of America.
Nay, it is notorious, that Mr. Grenville intended to have taken the bounties
off the British whale-fishing al- together, |
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[al-]together, in order to secure the superiority of the whale-fishing to
you, although the British whale-fishery produces 300,000l. a year, and
maintains 3000 seamen, and a great number of shipwrights and other
artificers. 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, or
perhaps looked upon as indignities. But we yield to those monopolies,
restraints, taxes, and preferences, because we know they are necessary to
fasten the vast chain of commerce which is thrown across the Atlantic
between America and England.---Those restraints are not peculiar to you in
dealing with us, nor to us in dealing with you. We impose them on
ourselves in dealing with ourselves: for example, the whole landed
interest, and that of every inhabitant who wears a suit of clothes, is
sacrificed to the mercantile and manufacturing Interests, in the regulations
of Parliament concerning Wool; for the landlord cannot export the wool of
his sheep, nor the inhabitant import the woollen cloths of other countries,
though the one could sell his wool to foreigners much dearer than to those
who have thus got a monopoly of it, and the other buy cloth much cheaper
from them than from his countrymen.---In some of those regulations which
affect ourselves only, Parliament sometimes commits mistakes; but they are
remedied as soon as felt and pointed out. Perhaps in
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some of those regulations which affect you relatively to us, or us
relatively to you, mistakes in commercial principles have also been
committed; in some instances you are perhaps restrained too much, and in
others too little: but in the great Act of State which we allude to,
these mistakes can by commercial principles be corrected. For it is
your and our solid security, that your Assemblies and our Parliaments cannot
injure those whom they represent without hurting themselves, nor injure you
without hurting us, nor us without hurting you. It will not be
difficult for Merchants on both sides to refuse to you, and limitations
which you ought not to refuse to us. And we pray for some great and
liberal commercial arrangement, which may remain a monument to future ages,
that though there was once, there was but once, the appearance of a quarrel
between Great Britain and her colonies.
The next ground of your complaints, in point of
consequence, is, that the King and Parliament interfere in other objects of
your internal Legislation, new model your Assemblies, and alter your
Charters.
Here again it will be your own fault, if in
adjusting the terms of the Act of State we have mentioned, order shall not
arise out of disorder, and a
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| 23 |
great judicial and legislative arrangement accompany a commercial one.---In
Virginia the Justices of the Peace and your Governor and Council are your
only Judges. The former fit only once a month; from them there lies an
appeal to the Governor and Council, formed into a Court of Judicature, which
fits only in April and October, and only twenty days at each time, and which
it is not unknown to us, is at this day in arrears above six years in its
law business. It is no affront to either of these bodies of men to
say, that however upright or able they may be, they can know little of law.
In the instant state of your society this administration of Justice was
perhaps the best; but is not applicable to a state of society, in which the
modifications of the actions of mankind, and consequently of rights and
delinquencies founded on these, are infinite in extent. This impotent
state of law has given room not only for the present disorders in Virginia,
but for their appearing greater than they are; for the Justices dare not
officiate at all, even although they were willing; and the Mob are turned
the Governors instead of the Governed. It has been so in every country
since this world began, in which dignity, independence, power, and even
splendor has not been thrown around the seats of Justice, to strike with awe
the imaginations of the meanest, and with the necessity of obedience even
the highest. A similar imperfection in the state of Law and Police
pervades,
we |
 |
| 24 |
we are afraid, many of your other Provinces. In few of them are your
Judges for life, or supported by appointments which can give even rank to
their offices; the inevitable consequence of which cannot fail to be, that
they must be the Slaves either of those who appoint them, or of the Mob,
instead of the Masters of both. These are the very rocks on which the
Grecian Republics were shipwrecked; for the spirits of Free Men are high,
and therefore mutinous, and are to be kept from disorder only by the laws.
But where the Administration of these is weak, there is no security for the
Property, Person, or Honour of any one. In lamenting this defect in
the condition of your society we plead the cause of Human Nature, not our
own. You of inferior orders need the protection of independent and
powerful Courts of Justice to defend you against the high; and you of
superior stations need it to defend you against the low. Both of you
best know how far it is safe and honourable to depend upon Jurisconsults of
the Tar-and-Feather order. You have tried the experiment, and
smarted by it.---You will be told we mean to enslave you by law. We
scorn to answer the insinuation. It is our pride as Britons to be
slaves to the law, but free in every thing else. If you suspect us,
appoint your own Judges, pay them your own salaries, or share the
appointment, and payment with the Crown. To us these points are
immaterial, but let your Judges be for
life, |
 |
| 25 |
life, with incomes suited to their stations; and in their independence your
own will be secured.
On this head it is your interest more than ours,
to correct all errors in the Constitutions of your General Assemblies, and
of your Charters. Most of your Constitutions were formed by accident,
not by fore-thought. Some of your Charters hardly deserve the name.
If we are in the wrong in thinking so, let them stand as they are. But
if we are in the right, correct them like men. Common sense will shew
you, without our doing it, that they should be modelled by the rules of
common sense. The best of Princes will contribute his part, and
Parliament theirs, to comply with your desires for every alteration which
can lead to Justice, Order, and your own Interest; and we the people of
England will applaud them when they do.
When you shall thus have obtained a regular
Administration of Law, Police, and Government amongst you, we shall not be
afraid of your holding your Estates and Trade, and we the Debts due to us
out of both, by the uncertain tenure of Chance, or of Democratical Anarchy,
which is worse than Chance; and we shall have little occasion to interfere
in your Internal, Judicial, or Legislative Arrangements. The great
rule, which you do not dispute, that your laws are not to be incompatible
with the law of England, and that
the |
 |
| 26 |
the Crown has or ought to have a negative upon the Bills of your Assemblies,
in the same way that it has upon the Bills of our Lords and Commons, will
secure us sufficiently against Innovations. The
only remaining general subject of contest, so far as we can see, is the
power of the Crown to send troops amongst you without consent of your
Assemblies. Perhaps even this delicate point might be adjusted.
For you have as much an interest to be defended, as we have to defend you.
On your part it might be yielded, that a certain number of British forces
should be supported in America without consent of the Assemblies, and on
ours, that no more should be sent except in times of War or actual
Rebellion.
If these great commercial, judicial,
legislative, and military arrangements were agreed upon, we might leave the
provision for them to yourselves; or at least be contented with a standing
revenue to be now ascertained between your Assemblies and Parliament.
For though we give up the disgraceful and odious privilege of taxing you,
you cannot be ignorant that you must establish revenues, as all other
countries do, to support your establishments.
The deluded amongst you think that we assume
airs of superiority over you even where they are needless. Far from
it; every honour of this
Country |
 |
| 27 |
Country is open to you. We should even be happy to see you ask the
establishment of a Nobility, and of ranks amongst yourselves, that your
spirits might not only be inflamed by the love of Liberty, but exalted by
the love of Family. The whole history of mankind presents not a state
of society, notwithstanding all the imperfections it is charged with, so
fraught with liberty, safety, wealth, and honour, as that of England is.
Approach to it, fly not from it. All human kind envy it. Reject
not, you, what others pray for from Heaven.
With such sentiments of kindness in our breasts
towards you, and we hope in yours towards us, we cannot, in the reign of the
most virtuous of Princes, hear without the deepest concern, a charge made in
the Addresses of your Congress, that a system has been formed and pursued in
the reign of that Prince, to enslave you by means of Parliament; and we wish
it had not been added, as a previous step to enslave us.
To vindicate the proceedings of Parliament where
they ought not to be blamed, and to point out where perhaps they may without
difficulty be amended, is the best way to expose the fallacy of that charge,
and at the same time to shew you how easy it is to remove such remaining
subjects of difference between us, as have not yet been taken notice of in
this Address.
It |
 |
| 28 |
It is a cruel mistake for you, ninety-nine of an
hundred of whom must be unacquainted with the history of laws, to be made
believe, that there were no statutes before the reign of his present
Majesty, which imposed taxes on any part of the American dominions.
Those who tell you there were none, know full well there were many.
Your ancestors complained of some of them, as all men do of all taxes, but
they never disputed the power of Parliament to impose them*.
The last war was begun for the sake of English America. It was
terminated by a security gained for it at the Peace, which imagination
itself could not have hoped for. England was loaded with an immense
public debt, contracted in this great American cause. By the Peace a
new system was created in America; and an empire set in motion, which it was
obvious could not be supported without a regular Revenue. At this
period Mr. Grenville became the Minister of England, not so much perhaps
from the choice of Government, as from the force of Opposition, which
obliged another Minister to give way to him. Mr. Grenville's life of
labour had been spent in attention to the finances of the British Empire;
those finances, which, next to the enjoyment of liberty, do above all
*Cha. II.cap.7. 7 & S.W. & M. cap. 22.
9 Ann. cap.10. I Geo.I.cap.12. 6 Geo. II.cap.13. and others.
other |
 |
| 29 |
other things give the superiority to Britain above all other nations.
At such a period, had such a Minister proposed to make America liable for
that part of the public debt of England, which had been contracted in
defending her, it would be ungenerous to his memory, to impute his doing so,
to a design of enslaving America, in order to enslave his own Country; that
country, the care of whose rights employed even his latest hours. But
he carried not his views so far as to subject America to a share of the
burden even of that debt, and much less of the other debts of England.
He only prevailed upon Parliament, in the fourth year of the King, to impose
Taxes upon sundry foreign commodities imported into America, the produce of
which taxes was to be spent in the Colonies, and confined to the service of
the Colonies; and these taxes were external ones, that is to say,
Port-duties, which every one might avoid, by not importing the goods on
which they were laid, or not buying them when imported. No American
complained of this at the time as an imposition of slavery. You
paid the taxes as your ancestors had done other necessary ones. If in
imposing these taxes he erred in opinion concerning a matter of right, you
erred against it too; for you called it not in question. If error was
venial in you, why was it criminal in him? It is hard that you should
now convert into a scheme to enslave you, what you then deemed
consistent with your freedom. In |
 |
| 30 |
In the succeeding year, the same Minister, on the
same principles of giving security to a new and growing Empire, the machine
of which could not even stand, and much less move without revenues to
support it, prevailed upon Parliament to pass the Stamp Act. The
procedure of the duties was by the Act to be spent in the Colonies, and
applied solely to their service.
America clamoured against this last Act.
These clamours originated among the Lawyers there, whom the tax chiefly
affected; and they were taken up in England by the opposers of the Minister;
two classes of men, the first of whom, by their profession, have always the
abilities, and the other, in the pursuit of their ambition, the interest to
disseminate clamour. But in these clamours, extensive as they
afterwards became, though flowing from Nature, and kept up by Art, no
American made an objection to the right of England to impose external duties
upon America. You called for the repeal of the Stamp Act which imposed
internal duties; but you did not ask the repeal of the Port-duties which had
the year before been laid upon you.
Lord Rockingham's Administration, which rose on
the ruin of Mr. Grenville's, repealed the Stamp Act; but did not repeal the
Act which had imposed the Port-duties. We do not pry with a jaundiced
eye into the motives of that Administra-
tion |
 |
| 31 |
[Administra-]tion for the first of those measures; we impute them to the
best motives; because we believe that there are in a party of which his
Lordship is the leader, men of Spanish honour and Roman virtue; although we
must tell you, that you deceive yourselves grossly, when you look up to
persons as the only assertors of American liberty, who took off only one of
what you call your Chains, but left the other fast on your necks. But
if you incline to pay compliments to an Administration which we do not
complain of, it is rather unfair in you to refuse them to that Prince, by
whose nod alone they were permitted to do any thing. If there has been
a system in the present reign to enslave you, the repeal even of one of
those two statutes affords an instance that it was not very systematically
pursued. Soon after this appeal, Lord
Rockingham's Administration got an Act of Parliament passed, which declared
the Supremacy of Parliament over America, in all cases whatsoever.
You cannot convert this Statute into a link of the chain which you think is
intended to enthral you, when you reflect that it was forged by those whom
your Congress and yourselves look upon as the great assertors of your
liberty.
As you had not hitherto claimed a right of
exemption from the power of Parliament to impose
external |
 |
| 32 |
external taxes upon you, Ministers could not think of rights which
yourselves had never dreamed of. In the Ministry which succeeded to,
that of Lord Rockingham, an Act of Parliament was passed in the seventh year
of the King, which laid Port-duties in America upon some other objects of
commerce than those which were contained in Mr. Grenville's first Act of the
fourth of the King. This Act was so little a link in the chain of
system against you, that all those who were then the King's Ministers have
since denied in full Parliament all concern in the fabric of it; and they
are entitled to credit, because they are now engaged in different parties,
and each would lay the blame on his neighbour, if he could with any truth.
It was at the time notorious to all, that the project of the Act was the
work of a single person, Mr. Townsend, then Chancellor of the Exchequer,
who, in matters of Trade and Finance, is well known to have consulted more
with Merchants and Financiers than with Ministers, because he thought every
man knew his own business best; and in whose great talents Parliament put
too implicit a confidence in passing the Act.
America again clamoured; and then for the first
time objected to the power of external taxation in Parliament. But she
went further, and started many new pretensions which we wish not to repeat,
and among others the extravagant doctrines
that |
 |
| 33 |
that she was not bound by the Navigation Laws, and that she was even
independent of Parliament altogether. These clamours were well-founded
in part; for all the taxes in the Statute, except that upon Tea, had been
laid upon British manufactures, which consequently had already paid many
taxes in Britain, so that the Statute loaded you both with your tax and
ours. Administration and Parliament therefore listened with sense and
justice to your complaints, and redressed them, by repealing those parts of
the Act which had imposed that double tax. But it was improper, in
point of common prudence, to repeal that part of it which imposed a trifling
tax upon Tea; because, by asking that repeal, at the very time when you were
not asking the repeal of the many Port-duties imposed by Mr. Grenville's
first Act of the fourth of the King, you shewed that you insisted on this
trifle as a matter of mere pride; as a mark of your exaltation and of our
humiliation; which it was impossible for England to submit to, while the
great questions of independence and supremacy were yet unadjusted, however
compatible they might seem when with temper and reason they should come to
be discussed. If Mr. Townsend's Act was a link in the system of this
reign to enslave you, the repeal of it affords another instance that it was
not very systematically pursued.
Your |
 |
| 34 |
Your Congress complains of a Statute which, during
the Duke of Grafton's Administration, suspended the Assembly of New York as
a continuation of the system of tyranny. We will appeal to your
candour against their want of it. Parliament had passed a Statute
which made necessary regulations for the quarters and provisions of the
King's soldiers in America; regulations to which we, who are as fond of
liberty as you are, pay obedience in Britain, because we think that men who
submit to lose part of their own freedom for a time, in order to ensure it
to their countrymen for ever, are entitled to all the sensibility which we
can shew to them. But these regulations were entirely infringed by an
Act of the Assembly of New-York. If that Assembly took upon itself to
repeal one Act of Parliament, they might have repealed many others; and the
subject who obeyed the legislature of the one country, must have been a
rebel in the eyes of the other. These consequences led directly,
unavoidably, and rapidly to a civil war between the inhabitants of New York
and and people of England. There was no way to stop the course of such
an Assembly, but to suspend its movements altogether, until it should agree
to remedy the mischiefs it had done. The effect answered the design.
The Assembly recovered the good-humour of Englishmen to Englishmen, and the
people their Assembly. Can a law which conferred the common rights of
humanity upon the companions of
your |
 |
| 35 |
your hazards and glories, who conquered with you and for you, be called a
violation of the rights of Human Nature against you? Can another which
prevented a civil war be reproached with want of mercy?
When mens minds are irritated, every thing is the source of discontent.
Many of the Traders in America had long complained of the distance of the
London Custom-house, which upon disputes with revenue officers, made
applications for redress expensive and tedious. Smuggling had gone
beyond all bounds in America, from the want of a Board of Customs to keep a
strict eye over the conduct of their officers. A Board of Customs was
upon these accounts by Act of Parliament settled at Boston in the seventh
year of the King. But that establishment, which the fair Trader had
long desired, and the Smuggler alone had reason to dread, has been
converted, in the representations of your Congress, into a badge of your
slavery. As long as we did not establish a Board of Customs in
America, we were blamed for neglecting you. When we send it, we are
charged with insulting you. If Boards of Revenue be badges of slavery,
no nation that has wealth is free. Should we recall the present Board
of Customs, your posterity might tell your posterity, that a Board of
Customs over the trade of America, at three thousand miles distance from
her, was one of the most ignominious badges
of |
 |
| 36 |
of her slavery. It is certainly for the interest of the supremacy of
England to place the residence of all the controuling powers, in England, in
order to keep her Colonies, even by the forms of office, in remembrance of
their dependence; and it is not difficult in the royal governments, to lodge
in the Governor of every Province, with a few of his council, all the powers
of a Board of Customs over the frauds of trade, and all its terrors over the
frauds of officers. And therefore pardon us if we suspect, should any
great commercial arrangement ever be the subject of amicable discussion
between you and us, that the inspection of the trade of America committed to
a Custom-house residing in England, is one of the last favours which the
fair trader in America would apply for. But in
describing the powers of this Board of Customs, your Congress ought not to
have said in their Addresses to their sovereign, and you, that "the
Commissioners of it are impowered to break open and enter houses without
the authority of any civil magistrate, founded on legal information."
We are certain that the Board of Customs in America has no such power by
law. We cannot think that their superiors here would direct them to
assume it against law. We do not believe they exercise it. But
if we are mistaken, point out the offenders. The vengeance of an
injured Public will overtake them. But till you point
out |
 |
| 37 |
out these, lay not the offense obliquely upon others who you know must be
guiltless. Your Congress complains of the
statutes passed during former administrations of the present reign, to
regulate the Admiralty and Vice-admiralty courts of America, which, they
say, extend the jurisdiction of those courts beyond their ancient limits,
deprive you of a trial by jury, authorise the judges certificate to
indemnify the prosecutor in revenue questions from damages, require
oppressive security from the claimant of a seizure before he shall be
allowed to defend his property, and provide salaries and fees for the judges
from the effects to be condemned by themselves.
This bundle is large, and must be separated.
If these be intolerable hardships, your ancestors shared in some, and we
share in more of them, without complaining.
Before the date of those statutes, each, or
almost each Province, had its own Admiralty-court: but these had so
little dignity, and from their local connexions were so much liable to be
swayed either by the officer or the smuggler, that they were the continual
subject of complaint to both. The Americans complained too of the
circumstance, that the salaries of the Judges of those Courts
arose |
 |
| 38 |
arose from the fines and forfeitures imposed by themselves. Lastly,
they complained that a Court of Appeal in England was too distant from
America. To relieve their complaints, four great Vice-admiralty Courts
were, in consequence of the statutes in question, erected in different
stations in America. Judges were appointed to them of known abilities
and character. Large salaries were settled upon the Judges to make
them independent. These salaries were paid not from the fines and
forfeitures, but in the common way; and to save the trouble and expence of
appealing to England, a power of receiving appeals was lodged in these
Courts. Those are the offenses which, in the institution of the new
courts, have been committed. Your Congress complains then of the
favours granted to the intreaties of their own countrymen. If you
think that these Courts are too distant from each other, they can, by the
erection of more, be caused to approach. The impropriety in the
original Provincial Admiralty Courts, of the Judges receiving their salaries
from the fines, can be removed.
With regard again to the mode of trial without a
jury in those Courts, in revenue questions, it has subsisted in America
since the statute in the 22d and 23d of Charles the Second, which
established it. Your ancestors submitted to it, because they favoured
the fair trader, and did not
desire |
 |
| 39 |
desire to see an opening given for the trial of a smuggling cargo by a jury
of smugglers. With all the strength of this mode of trial, Government
has found it weak to support the fair trader by the punishment of the
illicit one; and we cannot consent to have it abolished, till we see another
equally efficient substituted in its room. Permit us to remind you,
that the far greater part of revenue questions in this country, that is,
most of the Excise ones, are not tried by jury at all. Permit us also
to remind you, that in Ireland, offences against the Revenue of Customs are
tried by the summary Excise laws, and not by Jury; and so sensible are the
Irish of the necessity of doing so, that Parliamentary Oppositions, violent
as they are in that country, never complain of it. They know and
acknowledge, that as long as Custom-house causes were tried by Juries, the
illicit trader was continually acquitted to the ruin of the fair one.
When you wish for impartial justice, we wish for no more; and therefore, if
you desire the trial by jury in revenue questions, you must take along with
it a court of Exchequer in which that jury is to act, and by which to be
controlled, as we do in England.
When you complain of the latitude given in the
Admiralty Courts to try in one place a seizure made in another, you complain
of the Laws of England, Scotland, and Ireland, in all of which,
a seizure |
 |
| 40 |
a seizure made in one country can be tried in another, and brought from the
extremity of the kingdom to be tried in the capital. When the Judge in
America gives a certificate of the probable cause of seizure, to protect the
prosecutor from damages, he does no more than the Judge in England is, by
many Acts of Parliament, entitled to do. When the claimant of a
seizure is obliged in America to find security before he prosecutes his
claim, he does no more than the claimant in England by Act of Parliament is
obliged to do. It is unfair to impute the last of these regulations to
the present reign; for it took place by Act of Parliament in a former reign,
to wit, in that of King George the First. When your Congress attempts
to inflame you by the enumeration of such particulars, they ought to have
told you, that the freest people upon earth submit to them, because they
find them all too little to encourage those who trade fairly, at the expence
of those who do not.
Perhaps, with a greater semblance of justice,
but not with the solidity of it, your Congress complains of the resolutions
of the two houses of Parliament, which about six years ago gave force to the
old laws of Henry the VIII. by declaring that treasons and misprisions of
treason committed in America, might be tried in England. In these
resolutions, |
 |
| 41 |
resolutions, there was surely no novelty or stretch in law to reach you.
The Scotch rebels were tried for their treasons, not in the kingdom in which
their crime was committed: the Suffex smugglers were tried for their
treasons, not in the counry [sic] in which their crime was committed.
The murderers of Mr. Park, Governour of the Leeward Islands, in the
beginning of this century, were tried for their treason, not in the quarter
of the globe in which the crime was committed; for he was murdered in the
West Indies, and they were tried in London; and tried too under the
authority of that very act of Henry the Eighth, which your Congress would
make you believe had now for the first time been revived to oppress you.
A similar rule of law is universal among all modern nations which have
colonies, and was so among all ancient ones. It is founded on the
great interests of society, which make it necessary, that in crimes which
affect the existence of the state, the arm of the state should be felt to
the very extremity of her dominions. It is founded even upon a
tenderness to the criminal and to juries; for death inflicted by his friends
is the more painful to him; and the necessity upon friends to inflict it, if
they break not their oath, is the more humiliating to them. Had the
Duke of Momouth's adherents been brought to their trials in London, even
before Jesserys, the effects of them would neither have been so unpopular
nor so bloody,
as |
 |
| 42 |
as when they were permitted to rage in counties obnoxious, subdued, and
where every Juryman thought he threw guilt off himself by laying it on his
neighbour. The rule of law declared by the Houses is universal through
every other part of the British dominions, in Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Where is the Statute, the Charter, the Act of Assembly, or the Practice,
which exempted America from it? If none such is to be found, why is
England accused of making a stretch when she made none? She declared
the validity of her old laws: it would be well for her sons that
modern whimsies were not listened to in thier place.
A Court of Commission and Inquiry in
Rhode-Island was the consequence of those resolutions. This Court
wanted not objects. There are among you who know that you escaped its
justice by its mercy, while you complain of its violence. Government
often throws a veil over secrets which the indiscretion of individuals would
uncover. It holds proofs in its hands, but publishes them not.
King William was surrounded all his lifetime in Holland and in England with
treasons which he knew of. He contented himself with disappointing
them, but scarcely ever shed blood. We ask you two questions.
Have no violences against Government been seen in America since the
institution of that commission? Has any man been
imprisoned, |
 |
| 43 |
imprisoned, fined, or executed in consequence of a commission, which in the
hands of some of your former Princes would have caused all America to
tremble? That Court was the creature of policy and mercy. It was
sent to deter men from the commission of crimes by the fear of punishment,
but not to punish. It was only a Court of Inquiry, not of Trial, and
the violences which were its objects, because imputable to passion and
mistakes in opinion, have since been forgiven.
Yet even these resolutions of the Houses of
Parliament on the most important of all subjects, however supported by the
authority of other nations, and apparently necessary in our own, may be also
the subject of fortunate regulation between us. If you will bring with
you the same willingness to punish rebellion justly, which we shall bring
with us not to punish the mere picture of it unjustly, we cannot well
differ. Afraid of treason laws as we are, in a nation which admits in
some extreme cases of the lawfulness of resistance, you know us little, if
you think that we will forge chains for you, which may be transferred from
you to ourselves.
There remains yet one other Statute of former
administrations to be mentioned. Several of your Assemblies had passed
acts and votes, making the paper currency of the Province a legal tender in
payment |
 |
| 44 |
payment of debt, although that currency was in many places not one-fifth in
value of the money which the creditor had advanced: And these votes
and acts were procured by the influence of those who had an interest to gain
by a fraud which equally cheated the American inhabitants and the British
merchant. Parliament, with English honesty and English honour, passed
an act, which, by declaring such tenders of payment to be void in law,
removed disgrace from the transactions of your private business. Was
this an infringement of American liberty? It has been called so.
Let God and your own consciences determine between us if it was.
While your minds were not yet recovered from the false alarms, which had
been spread on account of those statutes and resolutions, the bankruptcy of
the East India Company happened; an event which gave room for the Minister
who succeeded to those we have mentioned, in the mutual connection of
interests on which the prosperity of the British Empire hangs, to relieve
the distresses of that Company, and at the same time to make compensation to
you for all the wrongs you imagined you had suffered; and this by an act of
indulgence to both. He embraced the occasion, and succeeded in
persuading Parliament to give a drawback of the greatest part of the British
duties upon Teas which should be imported into America.
The |
 |
| 45 |
The East Indies and America (as a Member of the House of Commons, who is no
enemy to America, once eloquently expressed himself,) are the two wings on
which the eagle of Britain commerce soars to the skies. By this
indulgence a great market was opened for the Company's Teas, with which the
Company was at that time over-stocked; a power was given to the fair trader
of America to beat the French, Dutch, and Danish smuggler out of the field;
and the inhabitant of America was furnished with Teas from England at a
cheaper rate than they were furnished to ourselves; because we paid a tax,
but he drew it back. We believe there were few persons in England, who
did not believe at the time that the expedient was wise, and would be a
fortunate one.
How that favour has been received, what passed
when the Teas were imported to Boston, we wish we could not remember.
Holland and Switzerland, as well as France and Spain, would have called it
rebellion. But we only called it tumult and insurrection. But to
prevent these from swelling into rebellion, provisionary laws were required;
and these your Congress has converted like-wise into imaginary links of an
imaginary chain to enslave you; let us see with what justice.
We begin with the regulations which affected the
town of Boston.
One |
 |
| 46 |
One future mark of tyranny is to drive the subjects
to despair, that, under the pretence of punishing the effects of that
despair, she may get the power of stripping them for ever of the power of
resistance. Did Parliament act in this manner to the people of Boston?
What were teh great punishments inflicted, by the atrocity of which the
people of that town were to be driven to draw down greater upon themselves?
Two. The Custom-house was removed. The Trade of the Town was
suspended. Was a Custom-house in safety in a place where the
Commissioners had been obliged to take refuge in the King's ships? Was
the Trade of England safe in a place where the property of one of her
greatest Companies was destroyed in the face of day?---Tyranny is also to be
known by the duration of the marks of her violence. For how many ages
was the punishment inflicted on Boston to last? Until those who had
committed the outrage should have the honour and honesty to repair it; that
is to say, not for an hour, if the people of Boston had reflected that true
pride consists in making reparation for injuries, not in committing and
persisting in them. That is surely an easy punishment from which the
Criminal may escape by only doing his duty. Parliament left an open
door for reconciliation. If the people of Boston would not enter, who
has been in the fault? The |
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| 47 |
The next provisionary Statute complained of, is
that which enabled those who should be engaged in the suppression of Tumults
in Massachuset's Bay, to claim a trial in England, if they were questioned
for having done their duty. Those who kill in England after the Mob
Act is read, are entitled to an acquittal: but all that the Statute in
question did, was to entitle those who were equally entitled to protection,
to a trial in their own country. This was a law not of policy but
necessity; for was it proper that those who asserted the authority of the
laws in America, should be tried by the very persons who denied the validity
of those laws and the authority of the Magistrates who supported them?
Was it just to expose the Lives and Honours of men to the mercy of Juries
who declared that they looked upon them as Enemies? The law which
knocks at every man's breast, without his going to a law-book to look for
it, cries aloud: "Let not the accused party suffer by him who has an
interest or a passion to condemn him." This law is called an
inflammatory language, an Amnesty for the murderers of America. Yet it
reached only a limited district in which there were insurrections, and was
to last only for a necessary and limited time. Was the American
prosecutor afraid that the offender might escape from the want of evidence
against him at three thousand miles distance? The Statute relieved him
of his fears: for it provided that the witnesses whom |
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| 48 |
whom he called should attend to prove his charge. Did the witness
complain of the hardship of his attendance, even in aid of the most sublime
of human virtues, Justice? The Statute provided that his charges
should be born at the public expence. In every provision of the Act,
the timorous hand of freedom is to be seen, which trembles even in saving a
community, lest it should injure an individual.
But our Ministers know that true wisdom lies not in
obstinacy, they pretend not to infallibility; if they do, they will be no
favourites of ours; and it is in your own power to prevent their asking from
Parliament the continuance of a Statute which was so necessary, but withal
so unpopular. By a great judicial and legislative arrangement let a
regular administration of Law, Police, and Government be established among
you, worthy of yourselves, and this subject of contest will die of itself;
for we shall expect the same justice in your Courts, which you well know you
are sure of in ours. We told you, we would give you a generous credit,
because we expected to receive it from you in return: as a proof of
our doing so, we are conscious of no fears, that you would abuse our
confidence, although in cases of tumults, we should, instead of bringing the
prisoners to England, leave the trial to Committees of your own Assemblies,
in which we believe, and believe firmly, that sentiments of honour would
prevail over those of party in ingenuous minds. If it
did |
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| 49 |
did not, we should not complain of acquittals, even though founded in
prejudice, and the power of the Crown to pardon would save those whom the
injustice of party had condemned. The next of the
late Statutes complained of is, that which altered the Charter of
Massachusett's Bay, so far as to give the nomination of the Council to the
King, instead of leaving it with the House of Representatives. The
great Assertor of our Liberties King William, even without Act of
Parliament, or legal process, resumed the Governments of Pennsylvania and
Maryland into his own hands, because those who possessed them had broke the
conditions on which they were granted, by violating the laws, though not in
so great a degree as the people of Massachusett's Bay have done.
George the First, in the same situation did the same thing, with regard to
the Government of South-Carolina*. Queen Anne, without Act of
Parliament or legal process, took the command of the Conecticut and
Rhode-Island militias from the Governors of those Provinces, in whom their
Charters had place it, and gave the command of the one to the Governor of
New-York, and of the other to the Governor of Massachusetts-Bay; because it
was deemed dangerous and impolitic to commit the power of the sword to the
same hand which held that of Government in a Province. The
*The evidence of these resumptions is soon to be published.
Statute |
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| 50 |
Statute you complain of did not revoke the Charter of Massachusett's Bay; it
only brought its constitution to resemble that of England more nearly than
it did. The most perfect idea of Government that ever was framed is
that of a King, a House of Lords, or Great Council, which owes its honours
to the King, and a House of Representatives, who owe their honours to the
People. But in the Constitution of Massachusett's Bay, there were only
two orders, to wit, that of Governor, and of the House of Representatives;
seeing the intermediate order, to wit, the Council, was chosen by the House
of Representatives, and was therefore no more than one of its Committees:
with this advantage on the part of the House of Representatives against the
executive power, that that Committee had all the weight and powers which
should have appertained to the intermediate order. The disordered
State of the Province called aloud for a Constitution, which in this Country
is the great security of Order. But this approach to the perfection of
Liberty your Congress calls Slavery. The alteration was indeed not
temporary but perpetual, because it was obvious that without some such
alteration, a perpetuity of tranquillity could not be insured. If you
think that the office of Counsellor should be for life, instead of depending
upon the pleasure of the Crown, perhaps we agree with you: had you
hereditary ranks, we could not differ at all. Instead of pulling down,
raise up. Sug-[gest] |
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| 51 |
[Sug-]gest what you want, to make your various Constitutions perfect.
Your wishes will not be refused you, if they are what they should be.
The dispute about the alteration of the Constitution of one Colony would be
buried in oblivion, if at your own desire, and with your own consent, all
bad things were taken from all of them, and all good things put into them.
The last provisionary law of the same Minister, which you complain of, is
that which provides for the quartering of the troops. This law, not of
policy but necessity, and without which the troops would be no better, in
times of disorder and danger, than Statues, was to last only a few months,
that is, while disorder and danger called for it. The Romans, who of
all nations watched the most to preserve the liberties of the low and the
dignities of the great, gave up often, by chusing a dictator in times of
danger, all the honours of both for a while, that they might enjoy them for
ever. Their Senates, which were rather Assemblies of Gods than of Men,
went further; for in times of civil commotion, they gave powers even to
their Consuls, Ne quid detrimenti respublica capiat. Mark these
great strokes of great policy; and then ask your own minds, whether a
permission to English troops, acting in the cause of their Country, to sleep
under cover, instead of the open air, be a violation of American liberty?
We |
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| 52 |
We wish we had no occasion to mention your
complaints of the Statute which adjusted the limits and the government of
the Province of Quebec. It affected not your boundaries, for it
contains a clause that it shall not affect the boundary of any other Colony.
It gave the enjoyment of French Laws to French Men, who declared that they
could not live without them. It gave toleration, that fairest flower
of cultivated humanity, (as a Member of the House of Commons well expressed
it,) to English subjects. It injured nobody. And we hope
it pleased our God, though it pleased not your Congress. We marvel
much, how that Congress has omitted to send one Address to the inhabitants
of Bengal, to rise in rebellion against us, because we have not conferred
upon them all the honours of English liberty, which they are not asking; and
another to their fellow-subjects in England, to reproach them for permitting
the Gentoo religion to exist in that part of their dominions.
We wish also, for the sake of private honour, which your Congress ought not
to have lost sight of, even in the cause of the Public, that they had not
deceived you, by converting a Statute past in the time of the present
Administration, for the security of your and our bulwarks, his Majesty's
ships and dock-yards, into a battery erected and levelled against American
liberties. A short time before this Statute was passed, a great
national ca-
lamity |
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| 53 |
[ca-]lamity by a fire, which was suspected to be wilful, at Portsmouth,
called for a new law with new penalties to prevent such disasters for the
future. Capital punishment was inflicted by the Statute in question,
upon those who should wilfully set on fire the King's ships or dock-yards.
Nobody was thinking of America at the time. England, or rather
Portsmouth and the other naval arsenals, engaged alone the attention of the
Public. But the Statute in common form and common policy was made to
extend over all the dominions of Britain; and the crime, like all other
great crimes, was made punishable in Britain, although not committed within
it. We ask you, If you can in your consciences believe, that this
Statute was a contrivance framed on purpose to oppress you? And if you
cannot, we ask you, What you must think of those men who would make you
believe that it was? From this review of the
proceedings of Parliament relative to America, since the fourth of the King
down to this day, we submit to the candour of American breasts, whether your
Congress were in the right, in common charity, to convey an idea from the
Gulph of St. Lawrence to the Mouth of the Mississippi, that there had been a
system formed and pursued in the present reign, to rob all America of all
her liberties. Our own defence from so foul an aspersion we have not
mingled, in reviewing these proceedings, with the interests of this or
that |
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| 54 |
that party, of this or that minister; interests, with all the little
politics and little posts depending on them, which we hold mighty cheap in
comparison of our own great interests in the question that subsists between
you and us, and not as they fancy, triflers as they are, between them and
each other. We wish your Congress had observed the same conduct, and
not disgraced, with the stale party strokes of this country, the great
interests of their own. They would not in that case have paid
compliments to a Minister, who once said in full Parliament, that he would
not permit even the hob-nail of a horse's shoe to be made in America, at the
expence of another Minister, who never had it in his power to do you either
good or evil, except by a peace, which might have raised America to the
skies, had not too many of her own sons pulled her down again.
Perhaps your Congress may think it wise to mingle the interests of America
with those of party in this country, from a notion that you will be made
sharers in the rewards of party victories, to which you contributed.
But they are mistaken. Those who raise the whirlwind may not direct
the storm. There are only three ways in this country by which any
party can obtain that power at which every party aims; the favour of the
Crown, the favour of Parliament, or the favour of the People. Do you
think those men have a
claim |
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| 55 |
claim to the favour of the Crown, who, in the disputes between you and us,
have endeavoured to pay compliments to the King's personal power at the
expense of his authority, and to mark his reign with the loss of dominions,
which with so much glory he extended? Can they expect the esteem and
confidence of Parliament who have called in question its rights, denied its
powers over its own Provinces, and who assert, that a House of
Representatives in America, in concurrence with the King, can do what the
Houses of Lords and Commons in concurrence with him cannot do? Can
they hope to please the People of England, who are pursuing measures which
may lead to a civil war between England and her colonies?
But even in their victory, where would be your gain? Whoever trusts to
the gratitude of party, trusts to a support which, like a reed, has failed
under all who ever rested upon it. Many of those who now make use of
you as a weapon of party, to force themselves into power, would, as soon as
they were in it, let you fall to the ground. We have a right to warn
you of these things, because we have seen oppositions in this reign animate
one part of the United Kingdom against another; the People of England, the
ancient supporters of Parliament, against Parliament; and the City of
London, the ancient supporters of the House of Commons, against the House of
Commons.
It |
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| 56 |
It is your own fault, if, with such examples before your eyes, you permit
America to be tilted against England, to gratify the ambition, or even the
virtue, of any set of men upon earth. In the successes which you wish
for, others will gain; but it is you who will be the losers: for the
whole history of English party shews, that the men who trampled most on the
Crown in the service of the People, trampled most on the People when in the
service of the Crown; it being natural for them, in present obsequiousness,
to hope for the oblivion of past provocations, and to go further than their
neighbours in one way, because they had gone too far in the other. We
need not call the example of Lord Strafford to your remembrance. There
are men now living, who raised themselves to power by inveighing against
continental connexions, and then half ruined their country to support them.
-- Trust not then to the slender and broken reed of party; trust to your
country; that country which has too often been deceived, but never deceives.
Instead of being the tools of particular members of party, show them
that they have been no more than your tools. Take the good which they
have helped to procure for you, but avoid the mischiefs into which they
would bring you.
While this Address was printing, an event has
happened, which may convince you who are your real friends or foes in this
country. A fortnight
ago, |
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| 57 |
ago, the Houses of Lords and Commons in Addresses to the Throne, expressed
their sentiments of the rebellious state of too many of your Provinces, but
withal their wishes, to receive advances on your part to pacification,
whenever they should be made in a constitutional manner. Those who
call themselves your friends in Parliament opposed even the last part of the
Address, because they said it was deluding you with the idea of an
accommodation which was not intended to be granted. But in order to
carry that part of the Address into execution, and to convert the words of
it into the measures which had been the objects of those words, a resolution
was within these few days proposed in the House of Commons, and adopted,
which should express the intention of the House to levy no past, and impose
no future duties as long as you should yourselves contribute to the expence
to be incurred for your own public service. By this resolution, the
danger so long dreaded by you, that Taxes in America would be converted into
a revenue for Britain, is removed. The resolution, indeed, reserves a
power in Parliament of imposing duties for the regulation of trade; a power
which is absolutely necessary to be exerted, for the interests of trade
itself; but then, to prevent the abuse of this power, the produce of these
duties is to go, not to the account of Great Britain, but to the exoneration
of the provision made by the Colony for its own service. It is in your
own |
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| 58 |
own power to make the security of America complete in all its parts; for if
you desire that the quota to be furnished by you, for your service, shall
not be arbitrary, but rise and fall with the quantum of the land-tax,
or of some of the great known taxes of England taken in cumulo;
we do not think that your desire in that respect would be refused; and then
it would be impossible for us to tax you without taxing ourselves at the
same time, and in the same proportion. We will give praise where
praise is due. The Minister who proposed this Resolution could not
fail to see two dangers to himself in the measure. The first was, to
differ from such friends as might think that higher measures ought to be
pursued; and the next was, to be exposed to the charge of having varied his
measures; a charge to which every man who accommodates his conduct to
circumstances, instead of pretending to infallibility, must be exposed to,
yet still an humiliating one even to the best man adopting even the best
measure. But in the cause of his country he regarded nothing but his
country. Some part of the line of accommodation proposed in the
Resolution was first traced by yourselves, and often repeated. It had
been adopted, and often pressed for by those who call themselves your
friends in Parliament. The Minister who moved for it had therefore
reason to hope, that when he met them on their own ground, and granted their
own desires, they
would |
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| 59 |
would in your and their Country's cause, have forgot their animosity to him,
and all those little objects of Party, the pursuit of which is falsely
called Ambition. Did they upon this occasion meet that Minister
half-way in the generous struggle who should do you most good, or avert from
you most evil? No! they threw behind them all your interests.
They attended to those of their own Party alone, which they think are more
concerned in defeating a Minister, than saving a Nation. They refused
for you that favour which yourselves had solicited; opposed that measure
which themselves had adopted; and did what they could to perpetuate
dissentions in which themselves might be gainers. They were so blinded
by the habit of opposition, and the triumph of spying even imaginary
inconsistency in the Minister whom they opposed, that they did not perceive
how miserably they must sink in your esteem for sacrificing your advantages
to their own weaknesses. --Are these your friends? --Were
those your enemies? If the contrast between the conduct of the
one and of the other does not open your eyes, you must be blind as moles, or
with your own wills shut them against the sun.
But there are men among yourselves against whom you ought to be equally on
your guard. It is hard, that the charge of our intending to
enslave |
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| 60 |
enslave you, should come oftenest from the mouths of those Lawyers who, in
your Southern Provinces at least, have long made you slaves to themselves.
There is scarce one of us acquainted with an American, who has not been told
by him, that there is no region on earth in which the people are so much
oppressed by the extortions of Lawyers, as in many parts of America; a
circumstance as unfortunate for us as for you in the present disputes,
because we are to expect, that men who gain by uncertainty and disorder,
will for ever oppose every attempt to a regular administration of law,
police, and government, which must diminish their own importance; and it is
not to be hoped that they should spare either the Mother-Country or her
Colonies as communities, who never shewed mercy to the Individuals of
either.
Having shewn you in this Address, that the
projects of your Congress for war or suspension of trade would recoil on
yourselves; that all the subjects of difference between you and us are
easily reconcileable; that His Majesty's reign has been falsely accused of a
system to enslave you; and that many of your pretended friends may prove
your worst enemies; we pray that you may trust to your own reason on the
topics of this Address; and if you do, we shall hope, before a very few
months run round, to hear that Peace is restored to your Minds, and Order to
your Provinces.
F I N I S. |
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