Legislature, where there is but one, must have the right you speak of, will say that with respect to him, there are two, and that the Provincial Legislature is the supreme power as to taxation for his Colony. And so the controversy, notwithstanding your position, will remain just where it began.

But not to have done with your maxim. It says that the supreme power has a right to require such contributions as are necessary to the publick safety and publick prosperity. If these words have any meaning but to deceive, they must mean that this right of the supreme power has limits, viz: that it is only a right to impose or require such contributions as are necessary to the safety and prosperity of the publick. Suppose the supreme power to exceed those limits. It then exceeds its right; it acts without authority, and in all just reasoning becomes as impotent as an unauthorized individual. As such it may be resisted, and as such resistance to it cannot be rebellion. In your fundamental position, therefore, you establish a limit to the supreme power, and by consequence a justification for resistance, if that limit is transgressed. And yet, in every other place you assert that Government is the sole judge; that if the people can withhold obedience in any case, they are no longer subjects; that they are rebels; that they must be compelled; that Government is necessary to man, and that where obedience is not compelled, Government is at an end. You say, in a word, that the supreme power has limits, and that it has not limits an e; that Government has a duty which it may transgress with impunity, and that the people have rights which they cannot maintain without the guilt of rebellion. And all these contradictions you build upon the sorry and verbal sophism that the Legislature of every country is the supreme power, and being supreme, cannot be controlled. But the truth is, that it is no more than the chief power in ordinary course, but with ventual control. For in extreme cases there is a control in the hands of the whole people, with whom alone the supreme power unlimited of any community can reside, and with whom it always does reside, though in common course they delegate a portion of authority sufficient for legislation to others, but so as that they are not to subvert the Constitution under which they act, nor to convert Government to the misery and min of the people, for whose happiness and prosperity it was formed. This final right of the people is felt and exercised in the most arbitrary Governments, though it is not only not professed in those countries, but the doctrine of passive obedience maintained and perhaps generally believed. So strong is nature, and so weak is sophistry in extreme cases, however, that more Turkish Emperors have been slain by their subjects, than Kings in all the free Monarchies that have ever existed. But resistance in our Constitution is not a tacit reserve; it is an express doctrine of our Government in its best times. It is then absurd to say that the governing powers are unlimited here, for a right of resistance implies a limit. If there could be no transgression, there could be no right to resist, and a power that has no limits cannot transgress.

Having thus done nothing, you proceed to a premature triumph over the arguments and principles of your adversaries, through forty pages, when you come to this proposition, "that the Legislature of a Colony is only the vestry of a larger Parish." This you assert, but you do not condescend to prove or to apply it. Let us try for a moment whether there is the smallest analogy. The Legislatures of the Colonies, for so you call them, have Parish vestries under them in America, similar to ours, which bear the same relation to the Provincial Legislatures, which British vestries bear to the British Parliament. Now I do not find that our vestries have other vestries subordinate to them in like manner. Neither do I suppose that the Provincial Legislatures would have had such had they been considered as similar to British vestries. The Provincial Legislatures are convened and dissolved by the immediate act of the Crown, in the same manner as our Parliament. Are the meetings of vestries so summoned or so discharged? Writs issue in America from the Crown to the Sheriffs of die several Counties, to have a new Representative elected for every General Assembly in each Province. Is this a ceremony belonging to vestries? Their session opens and closes like ours with a speech from the Throne upon the publick business, and there is the same intercourse between them and the Executive, as between the King and the British Parliament. Can this be said of vestries? They make laws of all kinds, civil and criminal, which Jurors, Sheriffs', the King's Judges, all Officers of Judicature, and the whole Province, are obliged to acknowledge as publick law; and these laws require and receive the royal assent in like manner with British Acts of Parliament? Does this belong to vestry regulations? They vote men and money for publick service and for military expeditions—witness the late war. Can this be alleged of vestries? Or would Mr. Grenville formerly, or the British Parliament at this day, think of sending to any British vestry, or tell them that if they would tax themselves for the publick service, Parliament would not tax them? I should be ashamed to dwell longer on such a dream.

Your next proposition is, that the Americans have no reason to complain, for that they are represented in the British Parliament. And how do you prove this? In fact, though not in words, the proof you offer is this; that there are many in Great Britain who, not being electors, are not represented; that none of the Americans are electors, and that notwithstanding they are represented. To soften this absurdity you borrow an idea which this controversy has created. It is, that there are two kinds of Representatives, one actual and the other virtual; that those who have votes are actually represented; and that those who have not votes are virtually represented; and therefore, as it must be made out that the Americans are represented in some manner or other, and as it is absurd to say that they are actually represented, it is thus deduced that they are represented virtually, and that they are very unreasonable if they are not perfectly content. But I desire that the law-book may be produced in which a virtual Representative is once mentioned as a character known to our law or Constitution. There is no such notice, I am bold, to affirm, from the first Year Book down to the Commentary of Blackstone. If, therefore, this idea is allowed at all, it must be allowed, not as a maxim of British law, but of general reason. As such it will apply equally to all Governments as well as to that of Britain. Now if it be true that every man is virtually represented in the Legislature of his country, though he has no share in choosing it, then it is true that the Americans may be virtually represented in the British Parliament. But it is equally true that the same may be said of every Nation under the sun, with respect to its Legislature. The Grand Signior, for instance, has the Legislature of the Turkish Empire in his own person; he is the virtual Representative of his people therefore, and his subjects consequently have the blessing of representation equally with the Americans; and thus all the Governments of the world are happily brought to a level.

To comfort the Americans it is your constant practice to tell them that though they must have less freedom and constitutional privilege than their brethren at home, yet that the people of Great Britain have little of either Thus you exaggerate the number of non-electors in Britain, and seem to impeach the Constitution, as having been negligent of the people. In this whole business I think you mistake the drift of the Constitution, as I shall endeavour to shew. But first to touch it upon your own ground. Women and minors are a great majority of every people; yet in no Constitution have they ever been electors. So far the British Constitution has nothing particular to account for; and, as for the rest, let history answer. In our feudal origin the property of the state that fell to commoners was, for the most part, pretty equally divided into Military freeholds, to which every privilege was at that time annexed, and particularly that of constituting County Members. Moneyed property was little known or attended to at first. As it grew, however, Members for Cities, Towns, and Boroughs, were, from time to time added, that personal property might be represented in some measure, though not so accurately as freehold. The elective principle, therefore, was general and perfect as property originally stood. If the course of time has altered this state, so as that the constitutional principle has become narrow in its operation, what follows? That some change should be made, in order that the constitutional principle should be restored to its full operation: that is, that the Constitution should be revived at home, not destroyed on the other