was at first settled, so it was now preserved from ruin, without any charge to the Mother Country.” We have ever contributed our full proportion for the annoyance of the common adversary. In the last war, America was one of the principal seats of action. It was a National, a British, a general war, originating from National motives, and directed against Britain’s inveterate enemy. We were not involved in it as Americans, as Colonists, but as subjects of the King of England. When war is made upon a common Sovereign, it must have a local existence. It is accidental that one particular place, rather than another, is made the scene of it. Therefore it most certainly ought to be supported by the joint assistance of the whole. As subjects of an English King, we have always been lavish of men and money for military operations. In the last war we much exceeded our proportion; at the close of which a reimbursement was made us by Parliament. For the truth of this, we may appeal to the recorded acknowledgment of the House of Commons. This undisputed fact proves, also, to the satisfaction of every reasonable man, that we had not been deficient on former occasions; otherwise she would not have reimbursed to us what had been long due to herself. Since this period, it must be confessed, her exertions have been very extraordinary for the administration of justice and the support of Civil Government in America, and in this Province in particular. Within, a year, Ships have been manned, and Armies transported at a great expense, destined to our Ports and Towns, to distress, impoverish, abuse, and enslave the best of subjects. Whether we are bound to bear a part of this expense; to pay the whole; or ten thousand times as much, if the Parliament should call for it, is the question we are considering.

But we stand upon a foundation still more stable, deeper rooted, and more highly exalted, whose chief corner-stone was laid in Heaven. Nature has disjoined us by one of her insuperable barriers—an Ocean, a thousand leagues wide. And her Omnipotent Sovereign has rendered the union, and consequent subjection contended for, morally impossible, by making us moral agents, subject to the immutable and eternal laws of our being. We can challenge a freedom; challenge rights inconsistent with the claims of Parliament under the broad seal of Heaven—from the King of Kings, and Lord of all the earth; rights that were born with us; created in us by the decrees of Providence; that cannot be surrendered even by ourselves; that cannot be taken from us but by the same Almighty arm that bestowed them. So that had it been the sense of our ancestors, the sense of the King, and the sense of the Nation previous to our emigration, that we were to continue subject to the Parent State; had we declared for this subjection in the first instance; had we received a Charter in confirmation of this declaration; had our Assemblies and Courts of Justice strengthened and corroborated this relation by unnumbered acts and proceedings; had the body of the people, with full satisfaction and indescriptive avidity, sanctified the same by their express fiat; and lastly, had we been defended by the parental arm from our first settlement to the present day, and still needed the same protection; I say, had this been the state of facts, the reverse of all which we have proved to be true, it would not, it could not oblige us to submit to the supreme authority of Parliament to the degree she contends for. For this would be to relinquish our duty which we owe to that Being whose will alone gives universal obligation.

Such is the nature of man, such the constitution of things, that his duty is discoverable by reason, aided by revelation; and is discharged by conforming to the laws of eternal justice, and the practice of every social virtue. On this depends man’s truest happiness and best good. This happiness is said to be the foundation of natural law, or ethicks, it being inseparably interwoven with our frame, and forming all the principles and springs of action. This natural law is coeval with mankind, implanted by the Deity, and of the highest obligation. It is binding all over the globe, in all countries, at all times; the same at Rome, at Athens, in Britain, and America. No Senate, no Parliament, no Assembly, can dispense with it, retrench or alter it. Whoever violates it, says Cicero, renounces his own nature, divests himself of humanity, and will be rigorously chastised for his disobedience in the coming world. No law, no transaction repugnant to this law, is of any validity. It is the origin of all power, and the support of all authority.

We being then, in common with all mankind, under an indispensable obligation to pursue our own happiness in a course of religious and social duties; it will hence follow, that we cannot surrender those rights which are necessary for our happiness, or give up that liberty which is necessary for the performance of our duty: also, that we cannot divest ourselves of our natural freedom, so far as to submit to the absolute will either of an individual or a State, who might treat us according to their arbitrary whim and fancy. This is what Great Britain requires of us. This is the situation into which she has for years been plotting to force us.* A voluntary submission to her claim in its full latitude will be submitting to a necessity of doing whatever she commands, of course to the necessity of doing wrong at her sovereign nod; for I presume she does not as yet pretend to infallibility. In short, it would be in effect abandoning our lives, which we are not masters of; renouncing our duty, which we are not permitted to do; selling our Country, our wives, and our children, which are not ours so to dispose of; betraying our religion, which would be treason against Christ; and exchanging happiness for misery, which would be, as much as in us lay, reversing God’s benevolent plan of moral Government in the world.

To illustrate this by a similar instance. Suppose in some future day Great Britain, intoxicated by a lust for innovations, dazzled with the overflowings of power, unchecked by her own sentiments, or our cries and groans, which would never reach her, should pass a law tolerating the Papistical religion in all the English Colonies; suppose she should advance one step further, and establish it with disqualifications and penalties, (the transition being easy from one to the other.) To submit to such a law would be betraying our religion, to oppose treason and rebellion, the consequence of which would be loss of life, confiscation of goods, corruption of blood, and a reducing to beggary wives and children. I do not mention this as what would probably take place: it is enough that it is possible. The established religion of the Nation has been repeatedly changed. What has been may again be. The claim of Parliament is to legislate for us in all cases whatever. If she establishes this claim, we are slaves; I speak it with anguish—we are miserable!

To put ourselves then into the absolute power of another, be it State or individual, is violating a first law of nature, whose seat has been said “to be the bosom of God; her voice the harmony of the world. All things in Heaven and earth do her homage; the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power.”

The next inquiry is, whether successful opposition be possible; if possible, whether prudent and safe. If measuring upon the scale of probability, we are led to conclude in favour of both, our duty is plain.

FROM THE COUNTY OF HAMPSHIRE.

FOR THE MASSACHUSETTS GAZETTE.

Boston, March 9, 1775.

My worthy Friends and Fellow-Countrymen:

The more I reflect upon the Petition, so called, of the American Continental Congress to the King, the more I am surprised, astonished, and amazed at the unaccountable folly it discovers. One would think that an assembly, allowed on all hands to be unknown in the Constitution, would, in an undertaking of this kind, have endeavoured to obviate any objections to their authority by the moderation, truth, justice, and equity of their complaints; would have recommended themselves by that decent demeanour and dutiful behaviour which would have insured an attention to their requests from the Throne, and interested the Nation in their favour; but alas for us, we find them, contrary to their own declaration, actuated by “a restless levity of temper, unjust impulses of ambition, and artful suggestions of seditious persons,” instead of that quiet submission to lawful authority, that decent moderation, and those loyal principles which ought to have been the characteristicks of their councils.

*By Great Britain, I would be understood to mean those Ministers who have been vibrating the political pendulum.