enjoys, they have been arguing away our most essential rights. Upon reading this paragraph I could not but wonder who it was “that suffered his pen to run so freely.” Can it be an honest native of this Province, with such a stand in the community as to be able to see distinctly all its political manœuvres?

If our position be true, which I think we have abundantly confirmed, that previous to the Colonies receiving their several Charters they were in a natural state compared with Great Britain; it undeniably follows, that they possess every power of right that is not expressly given into the hands of the King by those Charters, they being the original source of power, it passing from them to the King, and vice versa.

Our first Charter enabled this Colony expressly “from time to time to make, ordain, and establish all manner of wholesome and reasonable orders, laws, statutes, ordinances, directions, and instructions necessary for the well ordering and governing the same.” This most certainly included in it the right of making laws for taxation, as well as those for any other purpose.

In order to determine whether the argument drawn from the principle of our being entitled to English liberties, destroys itself, deprives us of the Bill of Rights, and all the benefits resulting from the Revolution, the English laws, and the British Constitution, it may be necessary to call to mind their chief excellencies, and their essential and principal characteristicks.

The freedom of the English Constitution, says the great Montesquieu, which has directly for its end political liberty, consists in a certain distribution of the legislative, executive, and judiciary powers of the State, or the fundamental laws. The freedom of the subject consists in his standing in such a relation to this Constitution, and the laws originating from it, as to be secure in his person and property. In general, then, for the Americans to have British Constitutions they must have free ones: and they must stand in the same relation to them, as to their valuable and essential purposes, that the Britons form with theirs.

The King, who is the third branch in the Legislative Assembly, and the first magistrate in the Kingdom, is dependant on the people for his supplies. The Royal authority is a kind of invisible entity, a spring that ought to move, easily, without noise and attrition, giving motion to the political machine, and having the publick good for its standing regulator. It can do no wrong. And if it should happen to get impaired, or deviate from foreign attractions, the effectual and Constitutional remedy is tight purse-strings. To have then a British Constitution, is to have the third branch of our Legislative Assembly, and first officer in the Province, dependant on the people for his salary. The officers of the Crown in England must see to the legality of their conduct; if they violate the laws, even by Royal direction, they cannot take shelter behind the Throne, or plead in justification an illegal command. A Provincial Governour ought then to make the law of the land, and the fundamental principles of society, the rule of conduct, and not the mandate from a Minister of State. The House of Lords have a negative voice on all Acts of the Commons; so have our Council Board on all Bills of our Representatives. In fact they have, in substance, constitutionally, all the authority of the House of Peers.

A British Constitution knows of no laws binding upon its subjects but what were made, or consented to by themselves, or their substitutes, and what the legislators themselves are subject to, in common with every individual in the community: this is a grand security, a constitutional bulwark of liberty. “Liberty of man, in society, (says the immortal Locke,) is to be under no other legislative power but that established by consent in the commonwealth; nor under the dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what this legislative shall enact according to the trust reposed in it,” “Freedom of men in Government, (says; the same author,) is to have a standing rule to live by, common to all and every one in that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it; and not to be subject to the arbitrary will of another. This freedom from absolute arbitrary power is so necessary to, and closely joined with a man’s preservation, that he cannot part with it but by what forfeits his preservation and life together.”

Indulge me in adding a few more lines, from this consummate reasoner; lines which ought to be wrote in letters of gold, and sunk to the centre of every man’s heart. “The supreme power cannot take from any man part of his property without his own consent; for the preservation of property being the end of Government, and that for which men enter into society, it necessarily supposes and requires that the people should have property, without which they must be supposed to lose that by entering into society, which was the end for which they entered into it: too gross an absurdity for any man to own. Men therefore in society, having property, they must have such a right to the goods which by the laws of the community are theirs, that no body hath a right to take their substance, or any part of it from them without their consent. Without this they have no property at all; for I have no property in that which another can by right take from me when he pleases, against my consent. Hence it is a mistake to think, that supreme or legislative power of a community can do what it will, or dispose of the estates of the subject arbitrarily, or take any part of them at pleasure. For Government is constituted with this condition, and for this end, that men might have and secure their properties.”

A British Constitution, then; which Massachusettensis says is agreed on all hands we are entitled to, knows of no authority to make laws for more than three millions of subjects, but such as is erected among themselves, in which they are represented, to which the law makers themselves are subjected, and which is consistent with the enjoyment of private property. Compare, on the one hand, the assumed principles of Parliament and ministerial measures, with the above criterions, and on the other the natural and constitutional authority of our Assemblies, and draw your conclusions.

The fundamental laws of England, which are laws of mercy, and the precepts of reason, of improved artificial reason, are severally declarations of the rights of Englishmen. They are emanations from the Constitution, are blended with it, are a part of it. They principally and with vigilant jealousy regard and secure life, liberty, and property. Next to a man’s life, (if not before it,) the nearest and dearest enjoyment is freedom; a deprivation of this being a sort of civil death, or living misery. Anglice jura in omni casu libertati dant favorem. Magna Charta, or the great Charter of the liberties of the Kingdom, which was made in the ninth year of Henry the Third, was declaratory of the fundamental laws and ancient liberties of the subject. By the twenty-ninth chapter of this revered piece of antiquity, no man can be taken, or imprisoned, dispossessed of his freehold, of his lands, of his liberties, (not even by Parliament,) but by the verdict of his equals, or by the law of the land,* or condemned without lawful trial by a jury. A Statute of the 25 Edw. I was a confirmation of this great Charter, by the sixth chapter of which no aid or tax can be taken on any occasion whatever, but by the common consent of the Realm, and for the common benefit thereof. By another foundation-statute in the 34 Edw. I no tallage or aid can be taken or levied, but by grant and common consent of Parliament; tallage, according to Lord Coke, being a general word including all taxes, subsidies, &c, whatever; and Parliament, meaning an assembly, composed of the Representatives of the people, Within this Act are all new offices erected with new fees, or old offices with additional fees; for this is a tax upon the subject. By the famous Habeas Corpus Act, which is founded in common right, and on common law, which is the birth-right of every Englishman, no person can be sent prisoner out of England or Wales into Scotland, Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey, or to any other place beyond seas. The Bill of Rights, which passed the British Parliament, upon the accession of William the Third to the throne, after reciting the declaration of the Lords and Commons, and the endeavours of James the. Second to subvert, and extirpate the Protestant religion, and the laws and liberties of the Kingdom, declares, among a number of other articles for vindicating and asserting the ancient rights and liberties of the people:

“4thly: That levying money without consent and grant of Parliament is illegal.

* How much property is taken from the subject and given to the Crown by the operation of the unparalleled Port Bill, and that without any trial, pretensions of forfeiture, law, or justice.