To their Charters the Colonies owe, like other Corporations, their political existence. The solemnities of legislation, the administration of justice, the security of property, are all bestowed upon them by the Royal Grant. Without their Charter, there would be no power among them by which any law could be made or duties enjoined; any debt recovered, or criminal punished.

A Charter is a grant of certain powers or privileges given to a part of the community for the advantage of the whole, and is therefore liable by its nature to change or to revocation. Every act of Government aims at publick good. A Charter, which experience has shown to be detrimental to the Nation, is to be repealed, because general prosperity must always be preferred to particular interest. If a Charter be used to evil purposes it is forfeited, as the weapon is taken away which is injuriously employed.

The Charter, therefore, by which Provincial Governments are constituted, may be always legally, and where it is either inconvenient in its nature, or misapplied in its use, may be equitably repealed, and by such repeal the whole fabrick of subordination is immediately destroyed; the Constitution sunk at once into a chaos; the society is dissolved into a tumult of individuals, without authority to command, or obligation to obey; without any punishment of wrongs, but by personal resentment; or any protection of right, but by the hand of the possessor.

A Colony is to the mother country as a member to the body, deriving its action and its strength from the general principle of vitality, receiving from the body and communicating to it all the benefits and evils of health and disease, liable in dangerous maladies to sharp applications, of which the body, however, must partake the pain, and exposed, if incurably tainted, to amputation, by which the body likewise will be mutilated.

The mother country always considers the Colonies thus connected, as parts of itself; the prosperity or unhappiness of either, is the prosperity or unhappiness of both, not, perhaps, of both in the same degree, for the body may subsist, though less commodiously, without a limb, but the limb must perish, if it be parted from the body.

Our Colonies, therefore, however distant, have been hitherto treated as constituent parts of the British Empire. The inhabitants incorporated by English Charters, are entitled to all the rights of Englishmen. They are governed by English laws, entitled to English dignities, regulated by English counsels, and protected by English arms; and it seems to follow by consequence not easily avoided, that they are subject to English Government, and chargeable by English taxation.

To him that considers the nature, the original, the progress, and the Constitution of the Colonies, who remembers that the first discoverers had commissions from the Crown; that the first settlers owe to a Charter their civil forms and regular magistracy, and that all personal immunities and personal securities, by which the condition of the subject has been from time to time improved, have been extended to the Colonists, it will not be doubted but the Parliament of England has a right to bind them by Statutes, and to bind them in all cases whatsoever, and has therefore a legal and constitutional power of laying upon them any tax or impost, whether external or internal, upon the product of land, or the manufactures of industry, in the exigencies of war, or in the time of profound peace, for the defence of America, for the purpose of raising a Revenue, or for any other end beneficial to the Empire.

There are some, and those not inconsiderable for number, nor contemptible for knowledge, who except the power of taxation from the general dominion of Parliament, and hold that whatever degrees of obedience may be exacted, or whatever authority may be exercised in other acts of Government, there is still reverence to be paid to money, and that legislation passes its limits when it violates the purse.

Of this exception, which by a head not fully impregnated with politicks, is not easily comprehended, it is alleged as an unanswerable reason, that the Colonies send no Representatives to the House of Commons.

It is, say the American advocates; the natural distinction of a freeman, and the legal privilege of an Englishman, that he is able to call his possessions his own; that he can sit secure in the enjoyment of inheritance or acquisition; that his house is fortified by the law, and that nothing can be taken from him but by his own consent. This consent is given for every man by his Representative in Parliament. The Americans, unrepresented, cannot consent to English taxations as a Corporation, and they will not consent as individuals.

Of this argument, it has been observed by more than one, that its force extends equally to all other laws; that a freeman is not to be exposed to punishment, or be called to any onerous service, but by his own consent. The Congress has extracted a position from the fanciful Montesquieu, that in a free state every man being a free agent, ought to be concerned in his own government. Whatever is true of taxation, is, true of every other law, that he who is bound by it without his consent, is not free, for he is not concerned in his own government.

He that denies the English Parliament the right of taxation, denies it likewise the right of making any other laws, civil or criminal, yet this power over the Colonies was never yet disputed by themselves. They have always admitted Statutes for the punishment of offences, and for the redress or prevention of inconveniences; and the reception of any law draws after it by a chain which cannot be broken, the unwelcome necessity of submitting to taxation.

That a free man is governed by himself, or by laws to which he has consented, is a position of mighty sound; but every man that utters it, with whatever confidence, and every man that hears it, with whatever acquiescence, if consent be supposed to imply the power of refusal, feels it to be false. We virtually and implicitly allow the institutions of any Government of which we enjoy the benefit and solicit the protection. In wide extended Dominions, though power has been diffused with the most even hand, yet a very small part of the people are either primarily or secondarily consulted in legislation. The business of the publick must be done by delegation. The choice of Delegates is made by a select number; and those who are not electors stand idle and helpless spectators of the commonweal, wholly unconcerned with the government of themselves.

Of electors the hap is but little better. They are often far from unanimity in their choice, and where the numbers approach to equality, almost half must be governed not only without, but against their choice.

How any man can have consented to institutions established in distant ages, it will be difficult to explain. In the most favourite residence of liberty, the consent of individuals is merely passive, a tacit admission in every community of the terms which that community grants and requires. As all are born the subjects of some state or other, we may be said to have been all born consenting to some system of Government. Other consent than this, the condition of civil life does not allow. It is the unmeaning clamour of the pedants of policy—the delirious dream of Republican fanaticism.

But hear, ye sons and daughters of Liberty, the sounds which the winds are wafting from the Western Continent. The Americans are telling one another what, if we may judge from their noisy triumph, they have but lately discovered, and what yet is a very important truth: that they are entitled to Life, Liberty, and Property, and that they have never ceded to any sovereign power whatever a right to dispose of either without their consent.

While this Resolution stands alone, the Americans are free from singularity of opinion; their wit has not yet betrayed them to heresy. While they speak as the naked sons of nature, they claim but what is claimed by other men, and have withheld nothing but what all withhold. They are here upon firm ground, behind intrenchments which never can be forced.

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

This likewise is true; but when this is granted, their boast of original rights is at an end; they are no longer in