be deprived of a trial by their peers of the vicinage.” After premising that this statute is intended principally to prevent setting fire to His Majesty’s Dock-Yards, Ships, and Naval Stores, I would beg leave to observe, that by Commerce and Trade alone Great Britain has arrived to such a pitch of opulence and splendour, as has scarce been equalled, never surpassed, by any Nation on the globe. By the undisputed sovereignty of the Sea, which she has ever maintained, she has been able to hold the first rank, and preserve the balance of power among all the Kingdoms, States, and Empires in the world. Should her naval power be considerably lessened or destroyed, it would be productive of the most ruinous consequences, and must finally terminate in the destruction of the British Nation. The principal States in Europe envy, and are striving to outrival her in this boasted superiority; and should they ever be able to effect this point, Britain would soon become a tributary State to some potent victor. It is by her powerful fleet, that this renowned Island, comparatively small, has arisen to be the first Kingdom on earth for wealth and power; inexhaustible sources of opulence and riches have been discovered and improved by her commercial intercourse with the different Nations and Countries in the world; and this Trade is continued, secured, and protected merely by her much-envied but hitherto unrivalled Navy. Of how much importance it is, then, that the most effectual precautions should be used to support this valuable, useful, and necessary pillar of her greatness! To injure or impair this, is to strike at the very foundation of the Kingdom and vitals of the State. To attempt to destroy this bulwark of her power, would indicate an inclination to reduce Great Britain to a state of poverty and slavery. Who, then, can complain that the laws made to punish so heinous an offence should be severe, and attended with penalties proportionate to the greatness of the crime? Who would not be willing to submit to a provision in this instance, which in most others might be reasonably complained of? Sensible of the necessity and justice of it, the inhabitants of the other parts of the Dominions, who are equally affected by it with us, willingly and cheerfully acquiesce in their submission to this statute; and why we alone should complain, when every part of the Dominion is in the same predicament, is a little unaccountable. By this statute it is enacted, that whoever shall offend against it out of the Realm, may be indicted and tried in any County within the Realm that His Majesty shall appoint. Thus our fellow-subjects in Ireland, the West-Indies, and wherever else dispersed, are equally comprehended in this Act; so that we have no reason to suppose, as is suggested by the Congress, that it was passed in consequence of a plan adopted by the Ministry to enslave the Colonies. But the intention is best collected, from the Act itself, which informs us that it was made because the safety of the Dock-Yards, Ships, &c., is of great importance to the welfare and security of the Kingdom; and he who can basely attempt to infringe these, amply deserves to be tried under the disadvantages, if they can be called such, prescribed by this Act.

PHILEIHENE.

TO THE INHABITANTS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS-BAY.
NO. VIII.

Boston, April 6, 1775.

My Friends and Fellow-Countrymen:

We are now verging towards a close of our lucubrations upon the right of Parliament. I blush upon asking your further attention to this matter, having already trespassed long on your patience. The importance of the subject, and a show of argument in the two papers succeeding the one considered in our last, must be my apology. Having examined this question to its foundation, in a course of papers that have been laid before the publick; having compared it with every principle of law, of justice, and of social connexions, which would not disgrace the understanding of a Hottentot; having traced its decision in our favour, up to a connexion with our most important duty, and the precepts of Heaven; it remains only that we obviate the residue of our writer’s half-made arguments upon this subject, by showing their inconclusiveness or remoteness from the point. Such matters as fall within the principles and reasonings established and applied on former occasions, we may pass by, as having been fairly and fully answered. It is unnecessary in this stage of the controversy to offer any thing in affirmance of our claim, however the observations and assertions of our antagonist may provoke us to it; for this, I must refer you to our past Numbers. Many other things might be added, so fertile and clear is the subject, the which, if they should all be written, I suppose the world itself would not contain the books that would be written.

The Paper of January 16th, begins with the most flagrant misrepresentation of facts, from which we may form some shrewd conjectures of its progress and end. “Had a person, 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. Had any person denied it, he would have been called a fool or a madman.” If this be true, James the First, Charles the First, and Charles the Second were mad Kings, as we have shown from good authority; our famed progenitors madmen; our Charters the offspring of madness; the English Laws and the British Constitution the essence of madness; and this ridiculous madness has been handed down, by some mysterious fatality, from generation to generation to the present day, excepting, in a few instances, where persons basking in the sunshine of Court favours, have had their brains so heated and volatilized by the piercing rays of honour and profit, as to enable them to evaporate the general contagion. Our sane disputant may stand high in this catalogue. By what specificks such cures are effected is no longer matter of curious speculation. This brings to my mind the story of a prodigal froward child, who, madly attempting to hang himself in his father’s presence, was cured of his lunacy by a sum of money, which disease would never return but with an empty purse.

At this wise period individuals and bodies of men deny it, notwithstanding in doing it they subvert the fundamentals of Government, deprive us of British liberties, and build up absolute monarchy in the Colonies. We proved in our last that the admission of this authority is, in every point of view, absolutely inconsistent with the fundamentals of Government, British rights, English liberties, or the security of life, liberty, and property, which we are entitled to as men. And thus it erects an absolute Government in the Colonies as repugnant to every idea of freedom as life and death, blessing and cursing, are opposite to each other.

“Our Charters,” says our hypothetical reasoner, “suppose legal authority in the grantor; if that authority be derived from the British Crown, it presupposes this Territory to have been a part of the British Dominions, and as such subject to the imperial Sovereign.” If he means any thing to the purpose by these (perhaps designedly) inaccurate expressions and obscure reasoning, it must be this, viz: Our Charters suppose the right and property of the Colonies, or the American Territory, to be in the King, as grantor; and if this right and property be derived to him from the English Crown, or British, if he pleases, it presupposes the Colonies to have been a part of the British Dominions. To take him upon his own argument: Our Charters suppose nothing in the grantor, but what he has absolutely granted away, (excepting the reservations to himself,) which the Charters suppose he had good right to do. And his deriving this right or property from the English Crown, presupposes nothing to have belonged to the English Dominions, and subject to the imperial Sovereign, but what, being taken away and vested in the King, was conveyed over to the grantees, which proves, even upon his own principles, that we are not now a part of the British State, nor subject to its supreme authority. This is argumentum ad hominem.

Let us examine it upon its true principles. The Charters, as we have elsewhere observed, from their subject matter and the reality of things, can only operate as the evidence of a compact between an English King and the American subjects; their running in the style of a grant is mere matter of form, and not of substance. Nor do they suppose the Territory granted to be the right and property of the King as grantor, any more than where Magna