admissible, I am afraid it will go so far as to make our very Statute Books guilty of high treason; for if your readers will turn to the general index of our Statute Books, under the article “King,” they will there find the title of one of our Acts of Parliament running in the very words following: “Resistance of evil Administration, by War, justified.” The Statute to which this title refers is penned in the old French law-language, and the translator of it has mistranslated the word “War,” for an armed force, or a strong hand. I made this observation, because, by our Constitution, there is an essential distinction between an armed force and a War. The latter is applicable only where the subjects of two different Kings, or two sovereign States, are fighting against one another: by the former, we understand, here in England, that the subjects of one and the same King are fighting against each other. The word “Guerre,” or War, is twice used in this Statute, and in both places it speaks of War with foreign Kings; but whenever, in this Statute, there is any mention of the resistance which the Duke of Gloucester made to the King’s Troops, it is not called a “Guerre,” or War, but a combatement, or combat. The same nicety of expression is sedulously observed in the Runnymede Treaty; for whenever King John uses the word “Guerre,” or “Guerrina,” it is clearly expressive of a war with the King of England, and some other King or Nation: for instance, “cum scimus quomodo mercatores terræ nostræ tractantur, qui inveniuntur in terra contra nos in guerrina, si nostri salva sint ibi, alii salvi sint in terrâ nostrâ.” On the contrary, when this same King John mentions the resistance which the. Barons made against his authority, he does not call it by the odious name of “a War,” but only by that of “discord.” As for example, “a tempore discordia plene omnibus remisimus et condonavimus.” This distinction, I say, is essentially necessary; for every War, properly so called, between one King and another, hath always for its object (however that object may be modified or disguised) either the preservation or extension of their respective Dominions; but that resistance which in the Runnymede Treaty is called “discord,” and in the Statute above alluded to is called “combat,” hath no other object in view but the mere preservation of the people’s rights and liberties; besides, in the former, if the King be taken prisoner, his life is forfeited; in the latter, his life is sacred; and this accounts for the justification of resistance, for if the object itself be just, then the resistance of course is justifiable.

I have been careful to simplify this distinction, because it will explain a clause in the Twenty-fifth of our Third Edward, which hath been either grossly misunderstood, or wickedly perverted, by the King’s Judges. The clause I allude to is that by which “to levy War against our Lord the King, within his Realm,” is declared to be high treason. And doubtless it is; not because it is one of the special prerogatives of the Crown to make or denounce War, but because the King, if taken prisoner by a subject in a War levied by a subject, would certainly meet with no quarter; and where the “salva persona regis” is not observed, there it would be high treason, and constitutionally so, which is an irrefragable, indestructible, proof of the genuineness and bottomness of my definition of high treason. But treasonable levying of War by no means concludes that species of resistance against the kingly authority, in which the Americans are at this moment actually embarked; for that resistance amounts to nothing more than “a discord,” very properly so called; for the King himself may, whenever he pleases, restore it to harmony, by relaxing the over-strained, jarring, chord of Government. If, on the contrary, he attempts to strain it one note higher, the chord itself, in this over tension, may burst asunder. But even then the consequences would not be fatal to him; for should they chance to take him prisoner, he would not only be entitled to his. “salva persona,” but it would be unconstitutional in them to put him to death.

That levying of War, properly so called, does not extend to constitutional resistance, also plainly appears from a Proclamation in Parliament, issued by this Edward the Third, in whose reign this same Statute of high treason was ordained. For this blessed King, (as Sir Edward Coke, in his exposition of this Statute, gravely calls him,) having dethroned and imprisoned his own father, openly proclaims in Parliament, “that no person, great or small, who pursued and took his father in custody, and who still remains in custody, shall be any ways hindered, molested, or grieved, for or by reason of such pursuit and imprisonment of his said father.” A similar Proclamation was also made, word for word, in Parliament, by our Fourth Henry, who, while he was only a subject, had pursued and taken into safe custody, Richard the Second; so that these Proclamations being conformant to the true spirit of the Runnymede Treaty, were matters of course; and the Proclamations above mentioned only revived and enforced that clause of the treaty, but enacted no new *Law, which no Proclamation can do.

Thus, sir, I have clearly proved that the present resistance of the Americans is imperatively enjoined by our great Charter of Liberties; that it is supported and corroborated by Statutes and Proclamations, all penned in the true spirit of our great Charter; and that it does by no means come within the description of levying War against the King, nor in any manner within the purview of the Twenty-fifth of Edward the Third; and that consequently the resistance of the Americans cannot justly or constitutionally be enacted by the present or any future Parliament to be high treason.

BRECKNOCK.

CONSTITUTIONAL SOCIETY.

London, Tuesday, March 7, 1775.

The Treasurer to the Constitutional Society reported that he had received the following Letters, with the enclosed sums.

To the Constitutional Society:

GENTLEMEN: The Collector of the Land Tax received from me this week Seven Pounds Thirteen Shillings; and I know it will be employed as usual, to pay prostituted Parliament pensioners for voting away the liberty of Englishmen as well as Americans. I send you Fifteen Pounds, and for every Pound that is taken from me for the bad purposes of the present plans of Administration, I will hereafter regularly send you Two, to be applied in defence of American Liberty, and I hope others will do the same. I have no objections to pay Taxes in support of an honest Government; but will voluntarily pay double against an infamous cabal, who are openly destroying the free Constitution of this Country.

I am, gentlemen, your most obedient servant,

T. R.

To Richard Oliver, Esq.:

SIR: I saw in the Newspapers that the Constitutional Society had given a Hundred Pounds to the distressed inhabitants of Boston. If the trifle I send herewith is thought worthy of acceptance by the Society, I beg they would apply it to the same purpose; if not, I desire it may be returned to the person who will bring the corner that is torn off from this letter. Most of the gentlemen in my neighbourhood are desirous to assist them; and if know it will be acceptable, I will take care to forward their subscriptions to you. Any message given to the person who will bring the torn corner of this letter will be faithfully delivered to, sir, your humble servant,
(With Twenty Pounds.)

J. J.

To Richard Oliver, Esq.:

SIR: Enclosed I send you a Bank note, of Ten Pounds, which I desire you to pay into the. Constitutional Society. I mean it towards the relief and assistance of the distressed inhabitants of Boston, in America, and beg that it may make part of the next vote of supply from that Society, in favour of the Americans. Their cause is the cause of England.

* This Parliamentary Declaration divides treason into two distinct branches, namely, high and petit treason. But it is to be observed, the Lords and Commons most carefully and skilfully avoided to give their accord to that branch of it which respects high treason, and only gave their simple accord to that branch of it which specifies the offences of petit treason; so that this Statute is of force only so far as it declares what offences are petit treason, and abates, (as the Lawyers phrase it,) as to that part of it which declaratively specifies what particular crimes are high treason, and consequently leaves that heinous crime upon its proper constitutional basis. And to what particular crimes high treason is restricted by the Constitution, I have sufficiently explained and ascertained in my two definitions of it before mentioned.