affection and interest may be restored, we pass over for the present, and proceed to state such acts and measures as have been adopted since the last war, which demonstrate a system formed to enslave America.”

Now, can a fair reasoner assert that, notwithstanding the declared illegality of the infringements alluded to in the preceding quotation, the declaration implies, that the Congress admitted the legal operation of any such act, till it should be repealed? That it is to be so understood, though the whole of the proceedings shows that it is feared there will be a civil war, unless they be repealed? Though the repeal be solicited, not to annul such acts, (they being all illegal, and every one of them, whether enumerated or not, being consequently null and void,) but “to restore harmony,” that is, to prevent that civil war which is justly feared, unless the violences which have been already committed to enforce those unlawful, illegal, and null acts, be discontinued?

If those men who, solemnly appealing to God and the equity of mankind for the justice of our cause, declared to you and the other members of the British Nation that “to keep a Standing Army in these Colonies without our consent, is against law,” had justified the least suspicion of their admitting that it was not against law to punish, without our consent, mutiny and desertion in such unlawful Standing Army: Believe me, my dear, devoted countrymen, the most iniquitous Administration that can be conceived, the present Administration itself, never would wish to obstruct their proceedings.

The Extension Act is unlawful, illegal, and null, being made to support the discipline of an unlawful Standing Army: and should a Standing Army be made lawful in any Colony, (which God avert,) the Extension Act would, nevertheless, remain unlawful, illegal, and null in that Colony, until the Legislature should have given it their local lawfulness, legality, and therefore existence. But you have no you reason to fear this; for self-preservation will effectually prevent the most abandoned traitor from making a motion of that tendency in any American legislative assembly, against the safety of a people protected by the British Constitution.

Regardless of every principle of justice and policy, the British Parliament are trying against our liberty experiments which, if hazarded against the people under their immediate legislative authority, would infallibly involve Great Britain in a civil war, and might produce another revolution there. The King is vested with the supreme command of all the forces of the Nation, wherever they may be stationed; but he has no legal coercive authority any where over the soldiers or sailors, otherwise than by local laws, made from time to time, to that effect. And, as the safety of every constitutional right depends on the limitation of that authority, the other branches of the Legislature grant him but temporary acts, for maintaining the discipline of the army and navy, by coercive laws, and for restraining or enlarging the power of Courts-Martial in both these departments, within the limits of that Legislature by which they are granted.

The limited duration of those laws being as short as it appears, from occasional circumstances, to be consistent with the publick safety, the treasonable designs of Administration may be counteracted with more facility than if such laws were perpetual. After the legal expiration of those acts, the King’s lawful authority over the national forces expiring of course, can he punish, or detain any body in that service, since Courts-Martial are abolished by law, as they now are in the British Colonies? And if the King would attempt to retain them in his own service, how could he accomplish it before he had usurped an arbitrary power over the purses of the people? Could he satisfy capricious demands, which would increase in proportion to the knowledge that every man in his army and navy would have of the embarrassments of their master? No! for those salutary limitations are solely intended to preserve inviolate our rights of opening or shutting up our purses, as we think fit. They have till now prevented such usurpations, which, to exercise with safety, is the ultimate end of every other usurpation that ever was exercised by any tyrant in the world. It was but to attain that end the selfish Parliament of Great Britain have so flagitiously exceeded the limits of lawful power.

If you admit, as lawful, the extension illegally decreed by a ministerial Parliament, and machinated but as a provisional edict to insure the success of measures resolved on, relatively to the proscription of the Bostonians, and other proscriptions in petto; if you only tolerate its illegal operation any longer, the King will not experience those difficulties which would thwart his arbitrary projects in Great Britain, were his usurpations to begin there. His Parliament might pay us the compliment of renewing the extension and other temporary acts of their own sole legislation, for the sole purpose of raising a revenue to lighten their own burdens, which luxury and corruption have already prodigiously increased, and which your tameness will increase to a degree which it is now beyond the power of calculators to ascertain. But you may rest assured that, in a very short time, Administration will sport with your liberties, and, soon after, with those of the whole British Empire. The opprobrious and degrading denomination of Province, which now is but an innocent and unmeant misapplication of a foreign word adopted in our language, will significantly describe the real state of every British Colony, and, indeed, of every Shire in Great Britain and Ireland. Never forget that about two years ago a crowned miscreant compelled the states of Sweden, the Parliament of that Country, to release him from his coronation oath! His success may tempt others to commit the same sacrilege.

Our enemies are now terrified at the superiority of strength which the justice of our cause gives us over them in the present contest. They will be amazed at the effect of their flimsy artifices, if, by tolerating the extension edict, we stupidly subject ourselves to a set of men upon whom we can have no check; who, having exempted themselves and their tools from the power of our tribunals, will drag before theirs, such of us who may indicate the least inclination to a better change. Then, our disguised friends, and our open foes, united in the British Parliament, will, with iron hands and unfeeling hearts, “bind us in all cases whatsoever.” We shall be in the condition of the Swedes, French, Spaniards, and most other Nations, where, now and then, an honest man may regret the loss of his natural rights, but where an attempt to recover them would be next to madness.

It will be a melancholy reflection to us, perhaps for many years, that no strictures have yet been tendered respecting the destructive tendency of the extension edict. It is expected that the tried patriotism of our ablest writers will inspire them to hold it up to publick view in its most minute circumstances. The silence now complained of dismays our friends, and secretly elates our enemies on the other side of the water; it may, in some measure, exculpate the Magistrates and Grand-Juries, who have not yet brought to justice any of the persons who are liable to be prosecuted in their respective districts for crimes committed there, under the unlawful sanction of Parliamentary edicts.

But, every such edict, or illegal act of Parliament, being void and null in law, respecting its operation amongst us, it clearly follows, that all the robberies and burglaries committed by Custom-House Officers and others, under colour of several edicts of a similar nullity; that all the murders and violences perpetrated under the directions of illegal Courts-Martial; that the oppression of the soldiers, who now are legally under the sole protection of the civil power of the British Colonies on this Continent, where they are unlawfully stationed by a despotick Administration; and that the enormities which Custom-House Officers, and illegal Courts of Admiralty or Vice-Admiralty, or which the deluded soldiery in the ministerial service, have already committed, or may hereafter commit, shall be wholly chargeable to the pusillanimous, or treasonable connivance of the Colonists themselves, if such crimes remain unnoticed by those whose sworn, and therefore whose indispensable duty it is, to bring them to light and trial.

O my countrymen, will you cease to incur the contempt of the world? Will you no longer continue the jest of your enemies? Listen no more to trembling delinquents, who artfully whisper to you, that your Courts of Justice would quash such indictments. For God’s sake, do justice to the understanding and integrity of your Judges, Consider, and you will clearly see, that were they as corrupt as we know them to be otherwise, they