voice of the whole people at large. The Governour, Council, and House of Representatives, which compose the Assembly, are creatures of, and derive all their power from a Constitution agreed upon and previously established, which has for its primum mobile, groundwork and leading principle, Liberty, civil and religious. All transactions, therefore, growing out of such a Constitution, and founded upon it, as are the acts and doings of an Assembly, must breathe the spirit of freedom, and be governed by it, as by a pole-star in the political hemisphere. The election of Deputies, from time to time, is only a designation of persons, who are immediately vested with their authority by the foundation-principles of Government. Their power is only in a line of conduct chalked out by the Constitution. In their deviations they act in their private capacity, and not as the substitutes of the people. Acting within their delegated sphere, their constituents are, in speculation, virtually present, acting themselves by the votes and suffrages of their Representatives. This is what gives universal obligation to their proceedings. But it would be absurd to suppose a privity between principals and substitutes, respecting a matter for which the former were not represented. Hence the irresistible conclusion, that our Constitution has not been destroyed or altered by Provincial Assemblies.

This is not only a truth in politicks, but also a certainty in metaphysicks. It is the first principles of Government that give political existence to substitutes, and support them in every instance of their publick conduct; of consequence these principles must be pre-existent in point of time to every constitutional transaction of theirs. Representatives, then, to effect the ruin or subversion of the Constitution, must remain such by virtue of it, during the process, and until they complete its destruction; and so it must survive its own dissolution, acting after it ceases to be. And further, if they can act as Representatives the very instant it is destroyed, which they must, in order to complete its ruin, they can for the succeeding, and so on. The consequence of which would be obviously this, that there could be substitutes of the people to act according to a Constitution, when there was no such thing existing in nature. An absurdity of the first magnitude. The same argument holds with respect to an alteration. This reasoning may be unentertaining, and at first view will perhaps seem a little obscure to a mind not cast in a metaphysical mould, I aim at perspicuity, at the expense of elegance, in every instance of ratiocination; if in this I have failed of success, it is imputable to a misfortune in the choice of words, not to a confusion of perceptions. Sure I am, that I clearly perceive the connection, or disagreement of ideas, and that you must subscribe to my conclusions, being masters of the train of reasoning as it passed in my own mind. Our opposers must either deny our premises, or admit our inference; that is, they must deny that Representatives are constitutional officers, and, as such, bound by it; or admit that we are still independent of the Parent State, notwithstanding their supposed recognition of the authority of Parliament. I have laboured this the more, as it is a general truth so very material in politicks. It was directly in the face of this principle that the British Senate became septennial, which probably is the cause, sine qua non, of our present difficulties. However, the application of this principle, as now established, is obvious, and its use important in the present case, as it evinces, to a demonstration, that had our Assemblies (which is directly the reverse of the truth, as we have already proved) not only acquiesced in, and submitted to Statutes enacted by the British Legislature, but had also, in express terms and in a manner the most cogent, passed Acts declaring this Province annexed to the Empire of Great Britain, and, as such, subject to her laws, this would by no means have united us without the consent of the people, nor have given our Parent State any new rights over us. Such Acts must have been void in their own nature.

A fortiori the adopting of the Statute and Common Law of England in our Courts of Justice, argues no such connection, or subjection, though it has been urged with a zeal not according to knowledge by some, and an address nearly allied to chicanery by others. It is the misfortune, generally, of arguments adduced in support of errour, like Prior’s darts, to return with effect upon those who advance them. If the practising upon the Common and Statute Law of England in our judicial proceedings, implied our subjection to her authority, (and if it does not prove this it proves nothing to the purpose,) for the same reason Great Britain’s practising upon the laws of the Normans, Saxons, &c., would prove her subject to those Northern Powers; and the adopting the Civil Law of Rome, without an Act of their own Legislature, would infer the Briton’s subjection to her infallible authority; which would carry the Nation right back again into the bosom of that mother of harlots, from whose arms Henry the Eighth wrested our parent, that he might enjoy the foster indulgence of a kinder companion. From this instance, learn what motives may reach a Royal breast. As a single amour induced one King to change the National Religion from the Roman Catholick to the Protestant, so a passion not more justifiable, though perhaps less personal, may influence some future Monarch to barter away the Protestant for the religion of the Canadians. Ages may first roll away. Empires roll and roll, and will forever roll. It is said they steer a Western course. Unborn Americans may bid them welcome. Present actors speed their progress; and future patriots enjoy their blessings. But to return to the subject.

The genuine history of the matter is simply this: The Common Law of a Country is of reciprocal and personal obligation upon each of its inhabitants, independent of the law-giver. In England it is considered as the birthright of Englishmen. When individuals remove to Countries uninhabited, or to Territories already peopled, if they do not incorporate with the original inhabitants, so as to be subject to their laws, they are considered as carrying with them, and being bound by those laws which were obligatory upon them in the abandoned State, so far as is applicable, upon change of circumstances, with other necessary restrictions. And this, not because they are the Statutes of the deserted State, but as they are convenient rules of Conduct, which had induced a mutual, personal obligation, whose force was to be commensurate with the possibility and fitness of their operation. In this view our ancestors Considered themselves bringing from the land of their nativity the Common Law, together with such Statutes as were in being at the time of their emigration, disclaiming the validity of all subsequent Acts. Our Courts of Justice have always been thoroughly penetrated with a sense of the propriety of this distinction. If, in some instances, unmindful of their judicial department, in favorem, to say the least of it, they have trespassed in untrodden paths, and, by a dangerous metamorphose, become Legislators, it would be as irrational to argue our subjection from this extra-judicial courtly conduct, as from the aberration of the fixed stars. But I quit the delicate subject. A sentiment of the ingenious Blackstone is much to our purpose. “For,” says that learned Judge, “the Common Law of England, as such, has no allowance or authority in our American Plantations, they being not part of the Mother Country.”

The affair of receiving protection from Great Britain, is an argument urged, I presume, for the want of a better. On this score, it has with truth been said, we owe her nothing. Our Trade, which she monopolizes, as to its profit, is more than an equivalent. From this she realizes annual millions; by this we cheerfully pay her, like children possessing property, a large annuity, as has been clearly shown in the ingenious observations of the inimitable Novanglus, to which I beg leave to refer you. But if our arrears were great, would it give her a right to make us her slaves? In our infant state, and during the long and bloody conflicts with the savage natives, she neither gave, or offered us aid. Of later years, we have neither wanted, or received protection, except from the bare existence of her Navy, in common with Portugal, and other places, in the articles of Trade and Commerce, and this for her own emolument. The American Trade carries its own reward with it, especially to the Parent State, which names, with the strictest attention to her own interest, the ports and channels of its circulation. We are, and from the beginning have been, of sufficient ability to defend ourselves against all our own proper enemies. And what is more, we actually have done it. Mr. Hutchinson, in his History, speaking of the famous Phillipick war, says: “This is certain, as this Colony