our legal assemblies utterly useless; to prevent this, the necessity of our situation has obliged us to depart from the common forms, and to adopt measures which would be otherwise unjustifiable; but, in this departure, we have been influenced by an ardent desire to repel innovations destructive to all good government among us, and fatal to the foundations of law, liberty, and justice; we have declared, in the most explicit terms, that we wish for nothing more than a restoration to our ancient condition; and, in different modes, have employed all the eloquence of earnest remonstrances, and fervent supplications, to detach our oppressors from their malignant designs. Inhuman and impolitick, they have still continued impregnable to our arguments and entreaties; and, mad with the intoxication of power, obstinately prosecute their intrigues and violences against us, to the manifest detriment of the Empire, and, perhaps, in the end, to their own confusion, infamy, and downfall. They have first taken up arms to overthrow our charters, the Governments erected upon them, and the immunities regularly transmitted to us by our provident fore-fathers; we have taken up arms in order to defend these from their inroads and invasions, desirous of laying them down whenever they will permit us, by desisting from schemes so irreconcileable to our safety and welfare.

If the Constitution is to be the touchstone of treason and rebellion, and the violators of it are the traitors and rebels, then will those appellations belong more properly to the Ministry and their instruments, who are labouring to overturn it, than to us, who are making every possible exertion in support of its purest principles.* It is the primary duty of a subject to preserve the Constitution; all other civil duties are secondary and subordinate to this. Even the allegiance due to the Sovereign is derived from that fountain, and must be regulated and limited by it. The King has no authority beyond the boundaries prescribed therein; nor has he the least right to expect, much less to enforce obedience to any anti-constitutional mandate or measure: and where he has no right to exact obedience he may be justly resisted. Those who should engage him in any such proceeding would be his greatest enemies; because every deliberate infringement of the Constitution must tend more or less, in proportion to its magnitude, to a dissolution of society, and to a forfeiture of his crown and regal dignity. Who can therefore sufficiently detest the unpardonable conduct of those men who abuse the confidence of His Majesty, by either seducing or encouraging him to enterprises which are not only likely to involve the Nation in unspeakable calamities, but are so dangerous in their consequences, to his prerogative and honour, and so contrary to the terms on which his family were called to sway the imperial sceptre?

It ought to be our best consolation and firmest support, that the resistance we are making cannot be deemed rebellion, without implying the same stigma on the Revolution; an event that forms the most illustrious epoch on the whole circle of English affairs. If we are rebels, all those who were concerned in inviting the Prince of Orange over to England, who were instrumental in the expulsion of the tyrant James, and who afterwards concurred in placing the crown on the head of William, were rebels of the blackest dye; William himself was a detestable usurper, and all his successors have been very little better. These consequences, in spite of cobweb casuistry, and all the subtilizing arts of political chemists, are absolutely unavoidable.

In pleading the example of the Revolution to justify the principles upon which our present opposition is founded, and to remove the imputation of treason and rebellion, we should reserve a material distinction in our favour. In that instance, (owing indeed to the necessity of the case,) the opposition was levelled against the entire authority of King James; a breach was made in the established order of succession, and the hereditary monarch himself was expelled, and constrained to pass through various scenes of personal danger and distress. In our contest we do not even question the royal prerogative; we meditate nothing hostile to the person or authority of His Majesty; we aim not at revolutions or changes, but rather at the prevention of them. In short, we confine ourselves simply to the retaining what we have always had, without intending to dispossess others of any part of the power they ever were entitled to; we only blame His Majesty, or rather his Ministers, contrary to the uniform practice of their predecessors, for combining with the other branches of the Legislature of Britain to exercise powers, new and unprecedented, as well as derogatory to the authority of our Assemblies, and fatal to our rights as a free people. And this we are determined to resist so long as we have any resources or means of resistance left. It is, however, hard to tell what expedients we may hereafter be driven to, for our own preservation and security, if a reconciliation should unfortunately be too long protracted, and the war should proceed with that rage and animosity which are the usual concomitants of civil broils.

It will no doubt have appeared, from the beginning, that the intention of this paper is to refute the fallacies advanced in a Proclamation lately issued under His Majesty’s name, for suppressing rebellion and sedition, the preamble of which sets forth, “that many of his subjects, in divers parts of his Colonies and Plantations in North-America, forgetting the allegiance which they owe to the power which has protected and sustained them, after various disorderly acts, have at length proceeded to an open and avowed rebellion, by arraying themselves in a hostile manner, to withstand the execution of the law, and traitorously preparing, ordering, and levying war against him.”

When did we forget or refuse to perform the duties or allegiance which we owe to the power that has protected and sustained us? To the King, as the supreme executive magistrate, the dispenser of justice, and the representative of the Nation, in all foreign transactions, we have ever shown the most unreserved obedience. So long as he continued to rule us by the laws of the land, agreeable to the rights of our Provincial Legislatures, and to the most simple ideas of liberty and equity, we gave the strongest proofs of the most devoted attachment; so long as the Parliament was contented with that share of authority over us which seems properly to arise from the nature of our connection, and requisite towards promoting the interests of the whole, we cheerfully acquiesced in its decisions. In the emergencies of the Empire, our contributions were proportionate to our abilities; we were commended for our liberality, and even repaid a part of our disbursements. “If this Nation (says Montesquieu, speaking of the English) sends colonies abroad, it must rather be to extend its commerce than its dominion.” Accordingly we have allowed it, and are still willing to allow it, the monopoly of our trade, as a recompense for the benefit of its protection.

If our present conduct has not the aspect of the same loyalty and affection by which our former was distinguished, and if we have lately withheld the emoluments of our commerce from Britain, the reasons of this change are solid and indispensable. It did not take place before a change, the most important imaginable, had been introduced into the treatment we had ever been accustomed to receive from the Parent State. Protection includes the internal security of our privileges, as well as preservation from external or foreign attacks. But instead of protecting us in the peaceable fruition of our ancient rights, a criminal resolution was embraced to bereave us of them, and reduce us to the wretched condition of slaves. Where protection ceases, there obedience ceases also; and where injury begins, resistance commences with it. We are not unmindful of the power that has protected and sustained us; but we are opposing the unlicensed irruptions of a power that would enslave and ruin us. Our gratitude to the former we have displayed on many occasions, and long for nothing more than a fair opportunity of giving fresh testimonies, and of burying recent deviations in perpetual oblivion; our invincible enmity to the latter, I hope, we shall never be afraid to demonstrate by every symptom in our power.

It is false that we have at length proceeded to open and avowed rebellion, have withstood the execution of the law,

* “The first and highest treason is that which is committed against the Constitution,” Again: “They neither are, nor can be traitors, who endeavour to preserve and maintain the Constitution; but they are the traitors who design and pursue the subversion of it; they are the rebels who go about to overthrow the Government of their Country; whereas such as seek to support and defend it are the truly loyal persons, and do act conformable to the ties and obligations of fealty.”— SOMERS’S Judgment of whole Kingdoms, &c. Similar to these are the sentiments of Mr. Locke, Bishop Hoadley, and most of the best writers on Government.