Of this argument, it has been observed by more than one, that its force extends equally to all other laws, for a freeman is not to be exposed to punishment, or be called to any onerous service but by his own consent. The congress has extracted a position from the fanciful Montesquieu, that in a free state every man being a free agent ought to be concerned in his own government. Whatever is true of taxation is true of every other law, that he who is bound by it, without his consent, is not free, for he is not concerned in his own government.

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He that denies the English parliament the right of taxation, denies it likewise the right of making any other laws civil or criminal, yet this power over the colonies was never yet disputed by themselves. They have always admitted statutes for the punishment of offences, and for the redress or prevention of inconveniencies, and the reception of any law draws after it by a chain which cannot be broken, the unwelcome necessity of submitting to taxation.

That a free man is governed by himself, or by laws to which he has consented, is a position of mighty sound: but every man that utters it, with whatever confidence, and every man that hears it, with whatever acquiescence, if consent be supposed to imply the power of refusal, feels it to be false. We virtually and implicitly allow the institutions of any government of which we enjoy the benefit, and solicit the protection. In wide-extended dominions, though power has been diffused with the most even hand, yet a very small part of the people are either primarily or secondarily consulted in legislation. The business of the public must be done by delegation. The choice of delegates is made by a select number, and those who are not electors

stand idle and helpless spectators of the commonweal, wholly unconcerned in the government of themselves.

Of electors the hap is but little better. They are often far from unanimity in their choice, and where the numbers approach to equality, almost half must be governed not only without, but against their choice.

How any man can have consented to institutions established in distant ages, it will be difficult to explain. In the most favourite residence of liberty, the consent of individuals is merely passive, a tacit admission in every community of the terms which that community grants and requires. As all are born the subjects of some state or other, we may be said to have been all born consenting to some system of government. Other consent than this, the condition of civil life does not allow. It is the unmeaning clamour of the pedants of policy, the delirious dream of republican fanaticism.

But hear, ye sons and daughters of liberty, the sounds which the winds are wafting from the western continent. The Americans are telling one another, what, if we may judge from their noisy triumph, they have but lately discovered, and what yet is a very important truth: That they are entitled to life, liberty, and property, and that they have never ceded to any sovereign power whatever a right to dispose of either without their consent.

While this resolution stands alone, the Americans are free from singularity of opinion: their wit has not yet betrayed them to heresy. While they speak as the naked sons of nature, they claim but what is claimed by other men, and have withheld nothing but what all withhold. They are here upon firm ground, behind entrenchments which never can be forced.

Humanity is very uniform. The Americans have this resemblance to Europeans, that they do not always

know when they are well. They soon quit the fortress that could neither have been mined by sophistry, nor battered by declamation. Their next resolution declares, that their ancestors, who first settled the color nies, were, at the time of their emigration from the mother-country, entitled to all the rights, tiberties, and immunities of free and natural-born subjects within the realm of England.

This likewise is true; but when this is granted, their boast of original rights is at an end; they are no longer in a state of nature. These lords of themselves, these kings of me, these demigods of independence, sink down to colonists, governed by a charter. If their ancestors were subjects, they acknowledged a sovereign: if they had a right to English privileges, they were accountable to English laws, and what must grieve the lover of liberty to discover, had ceded to the king and parliament, whether the right or not, at least the power of disposing without their consent, of their lives, liberties, and properties. It therefore is required of them to prove, that the parliament ever ceded to them a dispensation from that obedience, which they owe as natural-born subjects, or any degree of independence or immunity not enjoyed by other Englishmen.

They say, That by such emigration they by no means forfeited, surrendered, or lost any of those rights; but that they were, and their descendants now are, entitled to the exercise and enjoyment of all such of them as their local and other circumstances enable them to exereise and enjoy.

That they who form a settlement by a lawful charter, having committed no crime, forfeit no privileges, will be readily confessed: but what they do not forfeit by any judicial sentence, they may lose by natural effects. As man can be but in one place at once, he can

not have the advantages of multiplied residence. He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade. He who goes voluntarily to America, cannot complain of losing what he leaves in Europe. He perhaps had a right to vote for knight or a burgess; by crossing the Atlantic he has not nullified his right; but he has made its exertion no longer possible.* By his own choice he has left a country where he had a vote and little property, for another where he has great property, but no vote. But as this preference was deliberate and unconstrained, he is still concerned in the government of himself; he has reduced himself from a voter to one of the innumerable multitude that have no vote. He has truly ceded his right, but he still is governed by his own consent; because he has consented to throw his atom of interest into the general mass of the community. Of the consequences of his own act he has no cause to complain; he has chosen, er intended to choose, the greater good; he is represented, as himself desired, in the general representa❤ tion.

But the privileges of an American scorn the limits of place; they are part of himself, and cannot be lost by departure from his country; they float in the air, or glide under the ocean.

DORIS amara suam non intermisceat undam.

A planter, wherever he settles, is not only a freeman, but a legislator, ubi imperator, ibi Roma. As the English colonists are not represented in the British parliament, they are entitled to a free and exclusive power of legislation in their several legislatures, in all cases of

* Of this reasoning, I owe part to a conversation with sir John Hawkins.

taxation and internal polity, subject only to the negative of the sovereign, in such manner as has been heretofore used and accustomed. We cheerfully consent to the operation of such acts of the British parliament as are bona fide restrained to the regulation of our exterpal commerce-excluding every idea of taxation, internal or external, for raising a revenue on the subjects of America without their consent.

Their reason for this claim is, That the foundation of English liberty, and of all government, is a right in the people to participate in their legislative council.

They inherit, they say, from their ancestors, the right which their ancestors possessed, of enjoying all the privileges of Englishmen. That they inherit the right of their ancestors is allowed; but they can inherit no more. Their ancestors left a country where the representatives of the people were elected by men particularly qualified, and where those who wanted qualifications, or who did not use them, were bound by the decisions of men, whom they had not deputed.

The colonists are the descendants of men, who either had no vote in elections, or who voluntarily resigned them for something, in their opinion, of more estimation; they have therefore exactly what their ancestors left them, not a vote in making laws, or in constituting legislators, but the happiness of being protected by law, and the duty of obeying it.

What their ancestors did not carry with them, neither they nor their descendants have since acquired. They have not, by abandoning their part in one legislature, obtained the power of constituting another, exclusive and independent, any more than the multitudes, who are now debarred from voting, have a right to erect a separate parliament for themselves.