Charta gives and grants to the people of England their rights, sua jura, and their liberties, libertatis suas, all which the people had a right to, and possessed previous to and independent of this Charter, proves that these rights and liberties were mere emanations from the royal grantor, or new blessings given to the subject as matters of bounty and grace, and not, rather, the royal assurance that those rights which adhered to them as men, and their Constitution confirmed to them as Englishmen, should not be invaded. Admitting that our Charters did suppose the right and property of the Colonies in the grantor, suppositions are only admissible where facts cannot be ascertained; they are always controlled and superseded by evidence. Massachusettensis knows, Great Britain knows, common sense teaches, history confirms, and we have already proved, that the grantor had no right, title, or possession here in America, excepting what was derived from a visit made to these shores by some British mariners, when they were the possessed and rightful property of twenty other Nations; or what is still more ridiculous, if possible, from a Popish pretended right in Christians to take away the property, the dwellings, the liberties, and the lives of heathens. So that all this famous train of reasoning, going upon a false, mistaken, and refuted supposition of an antecedent right in the King, dwindles into sound and shadow; for the foundation being removed, the superstructure, however artificial and superb, must tumble to the ground. It is peculiarly characteristical of our embarrassed writer, to beg the question. I wish for once he would come to the point. Has he proved, excepting by arguments that evince directly the contrary, that before the reception of our Charters the Colonies were a part of the British Empire, or that these Charters united them to the British Realm? Does not his confused Babel fabrick, which he has been so long building, stand entirely on this basis? I call upon him to prop it up, if he has it in his power, or frankly confess the imposition. Let him name the time when, point out the manner how, or the means by which the Colonies were united to the Realm of England; or let him be for ever silent concerning a right in Parliament to give law in all cases to more than three millions of unrepresented and misrepresented Americans. I dare say this is a task that he, nor any other man in his senses, will never seriously attempt. Every history, every record, every scrap of paper to be found upon the subject, evinces the contrary. It may not be amiss to recite a few passages from a historian of great fame and undoubted credit. “When the Europeans first visited this Country, they found it inhabited by twenty different Nations, or Tribes, independent of each other, and commanded by their respective chiefs. Of these Nations the most powerful was the Massachusetts, situate on or near the harbour of Boston. King James the First, by letters patent, dated April 10, 1606, erected two Companies, granting to them all the Northeast Coast of America, which was then called Virginia. One of the Companies was called Plymouth Company, who, for some time, traded only with the natives of North Virginia, or now New-England, for furs, and fished upon their Coast.” Did this grant to the Company suppose this Territory to be in the grantor, and presuppose it a part of the British Empire? Just as much as if a Provincial Governour should erect Companies, and grant them large tracts of the new discovered world in the South Seas belonging to the Otaheits, would suppose a right in the Governour to the land of the Natives, and presuppose it a part of the Province he governed; a species of reasoning that the veriest tyro which ever passed the hands of a common pedagogue might have confuted.

About the year 1619 the Dissenters in England, to avoid religious persecution, having purchased the Plymouth Patent of the Company, (to prevent pretensions for molestation,) and obtaining another from King James of all New-England, a hundred and fifty men embarked on board of a Ship which arrived at Cape Cod in New-England, from Plymouth, the 6th of September, 1620, where they built a Town and called it by the name of New-Plymouth, and elected John Carver their first Governour. The Indians, continues the same historian, were at this time too much engaged in wars among themselves to give these strangers any disturbance; and Massassoit, Prince of the Massachusett Nation, learning what a powerful people the English were, made Governour Carver a visit the following spring, and entered into an alliance offensive and defensive with the English. This Prince also consented to acknowledge the King of England his Sovereign, and made cession of part of his Country to the new Planters. Several other Sachems did the same, following his example, and desired the protection of the English against their enemies, professing themselves subjects to King James. Did the cession of this land to the English unite it to the British Empire? Did the Mother State enlarge and contract herself in proportion as our ancestors increased or diminished their possessions in America? Did the natives subject themselves and their lands to the operation of any law that might pass the British Parliament, by acknowledging themselves the subjects of King James? Or would a Charter from His Britannick Majesty, granting them what was their own before, have settled the matter? What nonsensical conclusions, what complicated absurdities, will toryistical reasonings run us into.

In 1664 King Charles II. granted New-York, the Jerseys, and Pennsylvania to his brother, the Duke of York; the Duke granted over Pennsylvania to Sir William Penn, who received an additional grant from the same King in l680. Penn, says the historian, notwithstanding the grants made him by the Crown and the Duke of York, did not esteem himself the real proprietor of the lands until he had given the Indians a valuable consideration for their Country. He assembled, therefore, their Sachems or Princes, and purchased countries of a very large extent of them at a moderate price, which he paid to the entire satisfaction of the natives. This flourishing Colony, whenever it wants to extend its settlements, it purchases new lands of the Sachems, and not from the Crown of England. What suppositions and presuppositions would our surreptitious land grantors raise from the above history? Does it prove the right in the Crown? Does it establish the desiderata of the Tories?

“If that authority was vested in the person of the King in a different capacity, then the British Constitution and Laws are out of the question, and the King must be absolute as to us, as his prerogatives have never been limited.” To which we answer, that our Charter, and that alone, brings the English Constitution and Laws into view, and makes them necessary questions, let the King’s authority and capacity be as they may. It refers us to those as to a standard (as it might as well have done to any other Constitution and code of laws) to reduce to a certainty the rights and privileges we were entitled to by our Charter; as also to point out and circumscribe the prerogatives of the Crown. So that these prerogatives are as much limited and confined in the Colonies as they are in England.

“Charter Governments must severally revert to absolute monarchy, as their Charters may happen to be forfeited by the grantees not fulfilling the conditions of them.” This goes entirely upon the supposition that the King was the original owner and proprietor of the premises. This is begging the question; for we have shown, over and over, that it is a baseless hypothesis, framed by court-undertakers to support their darling plan; thus obscuring truth, they attempt to clothe the minds of their readers with darkness, and feed them with errour. It is not only void of proof, but, what is worse, in direct opposition to irrefragable arguments, and the stubborn evidence of facts. If the conditions on which the Charter was made are broken by the one party or the other, (the grantees or the grantor,) the only possible conclusion from thence is, that the compact is dissolved, and both set at large.

Our heroick writer, imagining that he had not quite frightened away our senses, or reasoned us out of our rights and liberties, attempts to smile away both. “It is curious, indeed,” says he, with an air of ridicule, “to trace the denial and oppugnation to the supreme authority of the State. When the Stamp Act was made, the authority of Parliament to impose internal taxes was denied, but their right to impose external ones, or, in other words, to lay duties upon Goods and Merchandise was admitted. When the Act was made imposing duties on Tea, &c., a new distinction was set up, that the Parliament had a right to lay duties upon Merchandise for the purpose of regulating