ple, when addressing ourselves to this most illustrious body.

8. We therefore beg leave, on this occasion, to declare, that we conceive the people of the Colonies entitled to EQUAL RIGHTS and PRIVILEGES with their fellow-subjects in Great Britain.

9. That upon these principles, it is a grievance of a most alarming nature, that the Parliament of Great Britain should claim a right to enact laws binding the Colonies in all cases whatsoever.

10. Incompatible as this claim is with the very idea of freedom, your Lordships cannot wonder that the Colonies should express an invincible repugnance to it. Absolute and uncontrollable power in any man or body of men, necessarily implies absolute slavery in those who are subject to it, even should such a power not be carried into execution; yet, let it be remembered, that the liberties of an Englishman are his rights, and that freedom consists not in a mere exemption from oppression, but in a right to such exemption, founded on law and principles of the Constitution.

11. But your Lordships cannot be ignorant that this claim has been exercised in such a manner as to give the Colonists the utmost uneasiness, and the most unexceptionable grounds of complaint.

12. Duties, for the express purpose of raising a Revenue in America, have been imposed upon several articles imported directly from Great Britain, or the British Colonies, and on foreign Wines, an article which does not in the least interfere with the products of Great Britain, or any of its Colonies.

13. The jurisdiction of the Admiralty Courts has been extended beyond its ancient limits; the Judges of those Courts invested with new and unconstitutional powers; the subjects of America, in many cases, divested of that invaluable privilege, a TRIAL BY JURY, and a discrimination highly injurious, held up between us and our fellow-subjects in Great Britain.

14. Acts have been passed for the purpose of suspending the Legislature of this Colony from the exercise of its constitutional powers, till it should comply with requisitions which it had before judged improper; and laying an unreasonable restraint upon us, with respect to the emission of a Paper Currency to be a legal tender within the Colony.

15. Officers employed in the administration of justice, have been rendered independent of the people, with respect both to their salaries and the tenure of their commissions, whereby they are freed from those checks to which, as servants of the publick, they ought to be subject, although the Representatives of the people have ever been ready, and now declare their willingness to make suitable provision for their support.

16. New and unconstitutional Acts have been passed, and constructions made of an old one, by which the American subject is directed to be tried for offences, either real or supposed, not in the place where the fact was committed, where his witnesses reside and their characters are known, but in a strange country, where his witnesses may not attend, and where their credibility cannot be ascertained.

17. We are extremely unhappy that occasion has been given us to add to the catalogue of our grievances, the laws enacted in the last session of the late Parliament, for shutting up the Port of Boston; for altering the Government of the Massachusetts Bay, and for the impartial administration of justice in certain cases in that Province.

18. Although it is not our intention to enter into a justification of the measures which occasioned those Acts, or to intimate an approbation of the mode pursued for redressing the grievances of which they have been productive, yet we cannot help viewing them as forming precedents of so dangerous a nature, as must render the privileges, the property, and even the lives of all his Majesty's American subjects precarious and insecure.

19. By other Acts of the same session, the bounds of the Province of Quebec are considerably extended; the Roman Catholick religion may be construed to be established throughout that Provinces; and such regulations are enacted respecting its trade, as not only hold up a discrimination between the Continental and other Colonies, injurious to the former; but in the establishment of the Port of Entry, cannot fail totally to deprive this Colony of an extensive and important commerce, which it formerly carried on with the native Indian inhabitants of that vast tract of country, now included within the bounds of that Government.

20. These are the principal grievances under which our constituents at present labour; but though we conceive it our duty thus fully to lay them before your Lordships, we beg leave to assure you that we shall always cheerfully submit to the CONSTITUTIONAL exercise of the supreme regulating power lodged in the KING, Lords, and Commons of Great Britain, and to all Acts calculated for the general weal of the Empire, and the due regulation of the Trade and Commerce thereof.

21. We conceive this power includes a right to lay Duties upon all articles imported directly into the Colonies from any foreign country or plantation, which may interfere with products or manufactures of Great Britain, or any other part of his Majesty's Dominions; but that it is essential to freedom, and the undoubted rights of our constituents, that NO TAXES be imposed on them, but with their consent given personally, or by their lawful Representatives.

22. Whilst, therefore, we entertain such dispositions of obedience to the lawful powers of Government, of allegiance to our most gracious Sovereign, and attachment to the parent country, we humbly hope that your Lordships will aid and concur in redressing our grievances, removing all causes of dissension with Great Britain, and establishing our RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES UPON A SOLID AND LASTING FOUNDATION. And your Memorialists shall ever pray.

By order of the General Assembly,

JOHN CRUGER, Speaker.

Assembly Chamber, City of New-York, March 25, 1775.

And then the House adjourned till four o'clock this afternoon.

Four ho., P. M.

The engrossed Representation and Remonstrance to the Commons of Great Britain, in Parliament assembled, was read. On the question, whether the House agree to the same? It passed in the affirmative.

Ordered, That the Speaker sign the said Representation and Memorial in behalf of this House.

To the Honourable the Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses, of GREAT BRITAIN, in Parliament assembled.

The Representation and Remonstrance of the General Assembly of the Colony of NEW-YORK.

1. Impressed with the warmest sentiments of loyalty and affection to our most gracious Sovereign, and zealously attached to his person, family, and Government, we his Majesty's faithful subjects, the Representatives of his ancient and loyal Colony of New-York, behold with the deepest concern the unhappy disputes subsisting between the mother country and her Colonies. Convinced that the grandeur and strength of the British Empire, the protection and opulence of his Majesty's American Dominions, and the happiness and welfare of both depend essentially on a restoration of harmony and affection between them, we feel the most ardent desire to promote a cordial reconciliation with the parent state, which can be rendered permanent and solid only by ascertaining the line of Parliamentary authority and American freedom, on just, equitable, and constitutional grounds. To effect these salutary purposes, and to represent the grievances under which we labour, by the innovations which have been made in the constitutional mode of Colonial Government, since the close of the late war, we shall proceed with that firmness which becomes the descendants of Englishmen, and a people accustomed to the blessings of liberty, and at the same time with the deference and respect which is due to this august Assembly, to shew.

2. That from the year 1683, till the above mentioned period, this Colony has enjoyed a Legislature consisting of three distinct branches—a Governour, Council, and General Assembly, under which political frame the Representatives of the people have uniformly exercised the right of granting aids to the Crown, and providing for the support of their own Civil Government, and the administration of justice in the Colony.