new kind were appointed to collect these duties. The petitions of our Assemblies, previous to its passing, on notice received of the design, asserting our rights, and supplicating a respect for them, were treated with contempt. You remember the time and its distress. You behaved as you Ought.*

Convinced that a people who wish to be free, must resolve to be free, you abolished the "abominable thing," and proceeded in your usual business, without any regard to the illegal edict obtruded upon you.

Permit me to add two observations relating to remarkable attendants on the taxation comprised in that Act, the memory of which is perhaps grown faint, from length of time, in some minds.

By the statutes granting Stamp Duties in England or Great Britain, especial caution has been taken that nothing more should be levied upon the subject under any pretence whatsoever, than the duties themselves. These words run through those Acts, "That the officers shall receive the several duties, and stamp and mark the vellum, parchment, and paper, &c, without any other fee or reward; which stamp or mark shall be a sufficient discharge for the respective duties," &c. And "the Commissioners shall take care that the several parts of the Kingdom shall, from time to time, be sufficiently furnished with vellum, parchment, and paper, stamped and marked as is directed, TO THE END that the subjects, &c, MAY HAVE IT IN THEIR ELECTION, either to buy the same of the officers and persons to be employed, &c, at the usual and most common rates above the said duties, or to bring THEIR OWN vellum, parchment, or paper, to be stamped or marked as aforesaid,"†

Was the Stamp Act for America like other statutes? Judge. By this it is enacted, "That the High Treasurer, or any three or more of the Commissioners of the Treasury, shall once in every year SET THE PRICES, at which all sorts of stamped vellum, parchment, and paper, shall be sold," &c.

The Stamps were kept in England. Ship loads of "all sorts of stamped vellum, parchment, and papers" were sent over to us. We had no choice, either to take these or to carry other vellum, parchment, or paper; to be stamped. We must not only have paid the certain duties imposed, but the uncertain "prices" which the Commissioners should please to "set" for the value of their "vellum, parchment, and paper;" and penalties and forfeitures fell upon us every step we took, without paying these impositions. This surely was not only to be taxed by the Parliament, but over again for the same articles by the Commissioners.

Here some men, whose minds are strongly impressed with ideas of equity, may ask, if it is possible that even a British Parliament should so wantonly degrade us? It is as true as that the port of Boston is THIS DAY shut up.

The "forfeitures and penalties thereby imposed were to be sued for and recovered in any Court of Record, OR IN ANY COURT OF ADMIRALTY OR VICE ADMIRALTY, appointed, or to be appointed, and having jurisdiction in the respective Colony where the offence should be committed," &c.

THIS was no regulation of trade. The facts, to be tried in any dispute, must have arisen on land—within the body of a county—as remote from Admiralty jurisdiction on every constitutional principle, as a suit on a bond, or an ejectment for a freehold. Yet thus, by a few lines, was the inestimable privilege of trial by jury to be torn from you and your posterity. Thus the decision of the rights of property, not in controversies between man and man, on the question of "meum vel tuam," where, though rung by oppression, the wretched loser might draw a degree of consolation, by reflecting that he had received some consideration for the substance taken away; or, at least, that a countryman gained his spoils—but in litigations founded on rigid forfeitures and arbitrary penalties—was to be referred to the corrupt tribunals of single Judges—appointed from another country—filled with its prejudices—holding their commissions during pleasure—totally independent of you— claiming fees and salaries to be paid out of your money— condemned by themselves.*

If this be "wisdom," it is not of that kind, the "ways whereof are past finding out."

The Act, thus revoked by you, received soon after a formal repeal in Parliament. This was done by the sixth

* "I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people, so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to consent to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest".—MR. PITT'S Speech.

† Fifth and sixth William and Mary, chapter 31; thirtieth George Second, chapter 19, and other statutes.

* "When the Jury have delivered in their verdict, and it is recorded in Court, they are then discharged. And so ends a trial by jury. A trial which, besides the other vast advantages which we have occasionally observed in its progress, is also as expeditious and cheap as it is convenient, equitable, and certain; for a commission out of Chancery, or the civil law courts, for examining witnesses in one cause, will frequently last as long, and of course be full as expensive, as the trial of a hundred issues at nisi prius; and yet the fact cannot be determined by such Commissioners at all; no, not till the depositions are published and read at the hearing of the cause in Court.

"Upon these accounts the trial by jury over has been, and I trust ever will be, looked upon as the glory of the English law. And, if it has so great an advantage over others in regulating civil property, how much must that advantage be heightened when it is applied to criminal cases! But this we must refer to the ensuing book of these commentaries: only observing for the present, that it is the most transcendent privilege which any subject can enjoy, or wish for, that he cannot be affected either in his property, his liberty, or his person, but by the unanimous consent of twelve of his neighbours and equals. A Constitution, that I may venture to affirm has, under Providence, secured the just liberties of this nation for a long succession of ages. And, therefore, a celebrated French writer (a) who concludes, that because Rome, Sparta, and Carthage have lost their liberties, therefore those of England in time must perish, should have recollected that Rome, Sparta, and Carthage, at the time when their liberties were, lost, were strangers to the trial by jury.

"Great as this eulogium may seem, it is no more than this admirable Constitution, when traced to its principles, will be found in sober reason to deserve. The impartial administration of justice, which secures both our persons and our properties, is the great end of civil society. But if that be entirely entrusted to the Magistracy, a select body of men, and those generally selected by the Prince, or such as enjoy the highest offices in the State, their decisions, in spite of their own natural integrity, will have frequently an involuntary bias towards those of their own rank and dignity. It is not to be expected from human nature, that the few should be always attentive to the interests and good of the many. On the other hand if the power of judicature were placed at random in the hands of the multitude, their decisions would be wild and capricious, and a new rule of action would be every day established in our Courts. It is wisely, therefore, ordered, that the principles and axioms of law, which are general propositions, flowing from abstracted reason, and not accommodated to times or to men, should be deposited in the breasts of the Judges, to be occasionally applied to such facts as come properly ascertained before them. For here partiality can have little scope; the law is well known, and is the same for all ranks and degrees: it follows as a regular conclusion from the premises of fact pre-established. But in settling and adjusting a question of fact, when intrusted to any single Magistrate, partiality and injustice have an ample field to range in; either by boldly asserting that to be approved which is not so, or, more artfully, by suppressing some circumstances, stretching and warping others, and distinguishing away the remainder. Here, therefore, a competent number of sensible and upright jurymen, chosen by lot, from among those of the middle rank, will be found the best investigators of truth, and the surest guardians of public justice. For the most powerful individual in the State will be cautious of committing any flagrant invasion of another's right, when he knows that the fact of his oppression must be examined and decided by twelve indifferent men; and that, when once the fact is ascertained the law must of course redress it. This, therefore, preserves, in the hands of the people that share which they ought to have in the administration of public justice, and prevents the encroachments of the more powerful and wealthy citizens. Every new tribunal, erected for the decision of facts, without the intervention of a jury, (whether composed of Justices of the Peace, Commissioners of the Revenue, Judges of a court of conscience, or any other standing Magistrates,) is a step towards establishing aristocracy, the most oppressive of absolute Governments. The feodal system which, for the sake of military sub-ordination, pursued an aristocratical plan in all its arrangements of property; had been intolerable in times of peace, had it not been wisely counterpoised by that privilege so universally diffused, through every part of it, the trial by the feodal Peers. And in every country on the Continent, as the trial by the Peers has been gradually disused, so the nobles have increased in power, till the State has been torn in pieces by rival factions, and oligarchy in effect has been established, though under the shadow of regal Government, unless where the miserable commons have taken shelter under an absolute monarchy, the lighter evil of the two. And particularly it is a circumstance well worthy an Englishman's observation, that in Sweden the trial by jury, that bulwark of Northern liberty, which continued in its full vigour, so lately as the middle of the last century, (b) is now fallen into disuse; (c) and that there, though the regal power is in no country so closely limited, yet the liberties of the commons are extinguished, and the Government is degenerated into a mere aristocracy.(d) It is, therefore, upon the whole, a duty which every man owes to his country, his friends, his posterity, and himself, to maintain to tile utmost of his power, this valuable Constitution of all his rights, to restore it to its ancient dignity, if at all impaired by the different value of property, or otherwise deviated from, its first institution; to amend it wherever it is defective; and, above all, to guard with the most jealous circumspection against the introduction of new and arbitrary methods of trial, which, under a variety of plausible pretences, may in time imperceptibly undermine this best preservative of English liberty."—BLACKSTONE'S Com, 3d vol. p. 378, 381.

(a) Montesq, Sp. L.xi, 6. (b) Whitelorke of Parl. 427. (c) Mod. Un. Hut. xxiii, 22. (d) Mod. Un. Hist, xxxiii, 17.