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commerce with an allied state, who in confidence that their exclusive trade with America will be continued, while the principles and power of the British Parliament be the same, have indulged themselves in every exorbitance, which their avarice could dictate, or our necessities extort; have raised their commodities called for in America to the double and treble of what they sold for before such exclusive privileges were given them, and of what better commodities of the same kind would cost us elsewhere, and at the same lime give us much less for what we carry thither, than might be had at more convenient ports. That these Acts prohibit us from carrying, in quest of other purchasers, the surplus of our tobaccoes remaining after the consumption of Great Britain is supplied; so that we must leave them with the British merchant for whatever he will please to allow us, to be by him re-shipped to foreign markets, where he will reap the benefits of making sales of them for full value. That to heighten still the idea of Parliamentary justice, and to show with what moderation they are like to exercise power, where themselves are to feel no part of its weight, we take leave to mention to his Majesty certain other Acts of Parliament, by which they would prohibit us from manufacturing for our own use the articles we raise on our own lands, with our own labour.
By an Act* passed in the fifth year of the reign of his late Majesty King George the Second, an American subject is forbidden to make a hat for himself of the fur which he has taken perhaps on his own soil; an instance of despotism to which no parallel can be produced in the most arbitrary ages of British history. By one other Act† passed in the twenty-third year of the same reign, the iron which we make we are forbidden to manufacture, and heavy as that article is, and necessary in every branch of husbandry, besides commission and insurance, we are to pay freight for it to Great Britain, and freight for it back again, for the purpose of supporting not men, but machines, in the Island of Great Britain. In the same spirit of equal and impartial legislation is to be viewed the Act of Parliament,‡ passed in the fifth year of the same reign, by which American lands are made subject to the demands of British creditors, while their own lands were still continued un answerable for their debts; from which one of these conclusions must necessarily follow, either that justice is not the same in America as in Britain, or else that the British Parliament pay less regard to it here than there. But that we do not point out to his Majesty the injustice of these Acts, with intent to rest on that principle the cause of that nullity; but to show that experience confirms the propriety of those political principles which exempt us from the jurisdiction of the British Parliament. The true ground on which we declare these Acts void is, that the British Parliament has no right to exercise authority over us.
That these exercises of usurped power have not been confined to instances alone in which themselves were interested, but they have also intermeddled with the regulation of the internal affairs of the Colonies. The Act of the ninth of Anne, for establishing a Post Office in America, seems to have had little connection with British convenience, except that of accommodating his Majesty's Ministers and favourites with the sale of lucrative and easy offices.
That thus we have hastened through the reigns which preceded his Majesty's, during which the violations of our right were less alarming, because repeated at more distant intervals than that rapid and bold succession of injuries which is likely to distinguish the present from all other periods of American story. Scarcely have our minds been able to emerge from the astonishment into which one stroke of Parliamentary thunder has involved us, before another more heavy and more alarming is fallen on us. Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of Ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate and systematical plan of reducing us to slavery.
That the Act|| passed in the fourth year of his Majesty's reign, entitled, "An Act for granting certain duties in the British Colonies and Plantations in America, &c." One other Act§ passed in the fifth year of his reign, entitled, "An Act for granting and applying certain stamp duties and other duties in the British Colonies and Plantations in America, &c." One other Act* passed in the sixth year of his reign, entitled, "An Act for the better securing the dependency of his Majesty's Dominions in America upon the Crown and Parliament of Great Britain;" and one other Act† passed in the seventh year of his reign, entitled, "An Act for granting duties on paper, tea, &c.," form that connected chain of Parliamentary usurpation, which has already been the subject of frequent applications to his Majesty, and the Houses of Lords and Commons of Great Britain; and no answers having been yet condescended to any of these, we shall not trouble his Majesty with a repetition of the matters they contained.
But that one other Act‡, passed in the same seventh year of his reign, having been a peculiar attempt, must ever require peculiar mention; it is entitled, "An Act for suspending the Legislature of New-York." One free and independent Legislature hereby takes upon itself to suspend the powers of another, free and independent as itself; thus exhibiting a phenomenon unknown in nature, the creator and creature of its own power. Not only the principles of common sense, but the common feelings of human nature, must be surrendered up before his Majesty's subjects here can be persuaded to believe that they hold their political existence at the will of a British Parliament. Shall these Governments be dissolved, their property annihilated, and their people reduced to a state of nature, at the imperious breath of a body of men, whom they never saw, in whom they never confided, and over whom they have no powers of punishment or removal, let their crimes against the American publick be ever so great? Can any one reason be assigned why one hundred and sixty thou sand electors in the Island of Great Britain shall give law to four millions in the States of America, every individual of whom is equal to every individual of them in virtue, in understanding, and in bodily strength? Were this to be admitted, instead of being a free people, as we have hitherto supposed, and mean to continue ourselves, we should suddenly be found the slaves, not of one, but of one hundred and sixty thousand tyrants, distinguished too, from all others, by this singular circumstance, that they are removed from the reach of fear, the only restraining motive which may hold the hand of a tyrant.
That by "An Act|| to discontinue in such manner and for such time as are therein mentioned, the landing and discharging, lading or shipping of goods, wares, and merchandise, at the town and within the harbour of Boston, in the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, in North America," which was passed at the last session of the British Parliament, a large and populous town, whose trade was their sole subsistence, was deprived of that trade, and involved in utter ruin. Let us for a while suppose the question of right suspended, in order to examine this Act on principles of justice. An Act of Parliament had been passed, imposing duties on teas, to be paid in America, against which Act the Americans had protested as in authoritative. The East India Company, who till that time had never sent a pound of tea to America on their own account step forth on that occasion, the assertors of Parliamentary right, and send hither many ship loads of that obnoxious commodity. The masters of their several vessels, how ever, on their arrival in America, wisely attended to admonition and returned with their cargoes. In the Province of New England alone, the remonstrances of the people were disregarded, and a compliance, after being many days waited for, was flatly refused. Whether in this the master of the vessel was governed by his obstinacy, or his instructions, let those who know, say. There are extraordinary situations which require extraordinary interpositions. An exasperated people who feel that they possess power, are not easily restrained within limits strictly regular. A number of them assembled in the town of Boston, threw the tea into the ocean, and dispersed, without doing any other act of violence. If in this they did wrong, they were known, and amenable to the laws of the land, against which it could not be objected that they ever had, in any instance been obstructed or diverted from their regular.
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