with that tremendous regard to truth and rigid impartiality which he every where superabundantly professes, with serious solemnity declare, that “the denial of our being subject to the authority of the British Parliament is new. And that it is beyond a doubt, that it was the sense, both of the Parent State and our ancestors, that they were to remain subject to Parliament?”—And, “that if a person had, some fifteen years ago, undertaken to prove that the Colonies were annexed to the Realm, were a part of the British Empire or Dominion, and, as such, subject to the authority of the British Parliament, he would have acted as ridiculous a part as to have undertaken to prove a self-evident proposition.—And had any person denied it, he would have been called a fool, or madman.” Pause, my friends.

You may learn from this instance, the great facility of bare assertions without proof, as well as the persuasive air and graceful talent at making them—if misrepresentations can be graceful.

If the apprehension of the King, who was the other party to our Charter, and the sense of the Nation, at the time it was granted, coincided with the sentiments of our predecessors, it must exclude all doubt respecting our subjection; every quibbling mouth must be stopped from the irresistible conviction of the heart—and every honest man become an advocate for our exemption from the supreme authority of the British Parliament. To this, my countrymen, permit me to ask your close and candid attention.

The Colonies in general are in the same predicament. The independence of one will prove the independence of all.*  It may not be altogether impertinent to take a general survey of the doctrines and principles that formed the temper of the times in the reign of Charles the First. The ideas of British Government were founded upon the feudal system of policy, introduced by our Saxon auxiliaries, who, after subduing the Kingdom, divided the land among individuals in proportion to their rank and degree; and every man who by this division became a Freeholder, was then a Member of their Witten Gemote, or Parliament. This feudal polity was universally received, improved, and established in England, by the arbitrary will of the Norman Conqueror and his powerful Barons. In consequence of which it became a fundamental maxim and necessary principle in the English Constitution, “that the King was the universal Lord and original proprietor of all the lands in his Kingdom; and that no man doth, or can possess any part of it, but what was mediately or immediately derived as a gift from him, to be held upon feudal services.” This scheme of policy, as it respected the King’s prerogatives, continued down until the Statutes of the 12th Charles II., Cap. 24, by which all its branches were lopped off at one blow, and in the reign of William the Third, of glorious memory, by the Revolution principles, was torn up root and trunk, and the whole tables of power and property reversed. The policy and principles of their Witten Gemote, or Parliament, which contained the life and soul of the English Constitution, survived unimpaired this general wreck of preposterous prerogatives. The Nation viewed the power of Parliament as only extending to those assembled therein personally or by Representatives, and assenting to Laws so made. They must have considered, to be consistent with themselves, an extension of the authority of this Assembly to those who have no voice, connection, or influence therein, as unnatural, unjust, and repugnant to the first principles and policy of their Constitution. Charles the First, taught by the examples of his predecessors, and confirmed in his errour by his Court sycophants, attempted to govern the Nation by the terrors of Royalty, and the absurd doctrine of a Divine, indefeasible right. In the reign of his father, James the First, the Judges of England determined that the King had a right to levy taxes, called tonnage and poundage, without the consent of Parliament. Charles, like an absolute monarch, governed the Nation eleven years without his Commons. For a long time he had exacted tonnage, poundage, ship-money impositions, with other arbitrary taxes, and exercised the right of selling monopolies, requiring benevolences, loans, &c., against the repeated remonstrances of the Nation. The claiming of these rights, and contending for these prerogatives, was what finally cost him his Crown, and that head which was unworthy to wear it. Ship-money was the tax unauthorized by Parliament, in which the famous Hampden stood forth as a champion for the people. The cause was argued in the Court of Exchequer, before all the Judges of England. Hampden was cast—the Nation roused—and the struggle for Liberty soon began.

Can any one suppose, without doing violence to common sense, that a King, contending for such a plenitude of power, in which he was supported by the examples of his predecessors, and the solemn adjudication of his Judges; possessing such principles, of which he was so tenacious as to seal them with his own blood and the blood of his favourites, meant to imply, in a Charter given to our ancestors, where he grants and yields to them and their successors, that they and every one of them shall be free and quit from all taxes, subsidies, and customs in New-England, for the space of seven years, and from all taxes and impositions for the space of twenty-one years, upon all Goods and Merchandise, at any time or times hereafter, either upon importation thither, or exportation from thence, &c.—I say meant to imply that after the expiration of those terms, they should be liable to impositions and taxes from parliament, and not from himself, (as he considered in some cases his subjects in England,) independent of Parliament, or rather, that during these terms he would not himself require us to grant him any subsidies, aids, &c. Can any person imagine this? Was Massachusettensis serious when he said it? Thus we have an argument, a priori, the granting of our first Charter, of the sense of the grantor, as we had with respect to our ancestors.

I am not yet done with this clause, which, we are told with an air of merriment, is rather an unfavourable circumstance for those who call the three-penny duty on Tea unconstitutional. If the King has considered this Colony as a part of the British Empire, and subject to the authority of Parliament, would he, could he by his own authority, have exempted it from taxes for seven or twenty years? If he could grant to one part of the British Empire to be free and quit from taxes, for the same reason he might to any and every part, and so lay the whole expense of Government upon a few individuals. If he could do this for seven or twenty years, for the same reason he might for seventy or seventy times seventy. This proves to demonstration, either that Charles the First apprehended, however the fact might be, that this Colony was not a part of the British Empire, or if it was, that it was not within the jurisdiction of parliaments. He undoubtedly viewed us as holding our lands of him as Lord paramount, according to the fictitious doctrine of the feudal system, and the Parliament strangers to the transaction.

If it should be said, although this clause does not imply the right in Parliament, yet it proves a right in the King to tax us, and we had as good be under the arbitrary power of the former, as subject to the will or caprice of the latter; we answer, that the present question is not what is best, but what is in reality the fact—not concerning the power of the King, but the right of Parliament. However, it is infinitely better to have but one tyrant than a million. We should have no objection to the King’s taxing us by our own Assemblies. But these matters we will consider when we come to them; at present they are nothing to the purpose.

“In 1621, when the Commons proposed a bill to James the First, for the free liberty of fishing and fishing voyages, to be made and performed on the sea-coasts and places of Newfoundland, Virginia, and New-England, and other Countries, and parts of America,” the Secretary of State was sent by His Majesty with the following declaration to the House of Commons, viz: “America is not annexed to the Realm, nor within the jurisdiction of Parliament; you have, therefore, no right to interfere:” and for this reason the bill was crushed. In like manner, when a bill respecting America was offered by the two Houses of Parliament to King Charles the First, (the very Prince who granted our Charter,) for his Royal assent, he refused it, giving as a reason, “that the Colonies were without the Realm and jurisdiction of Parliament.” This needs no comment.

* By independence is not meant any thing inconsistent with the strictest allegiance or subjection to our gracious Sovereign, who glories in being born a Briton—the brightest gem in whose crown is to rule in the hearts, and reign over Freemen; or inconsistent with that authority of Parliament necessary for the regulation of Trade, the rectitude and fitness of which we cheerfully acknowledge.