The Second Treatise on Civil Government (1689), John Locke
The philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), a supporter of the Glorious Revolution that deposed King James
the divine right of kings in his first treatise on civil government. In his second treatise, the one excerpted her
people have the right to challenge and change their rulers and government. The colonists readily accepted L
revolutionary concept.
Of the State of Nature
To understand political power aright, and derive it from its original, we must consider what estate all men are
their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave
A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction, is reciprocal, no one having more than anothe
promiscuously born to all the same advantages of Nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be
master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him,
.
Of Property
God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best
the support and comfort of their being. And though all the fruits it naturally produces, and beasts it feeds, be
and nobody has originally a private dominion exclusive of the rest of mankind in any of them, as they are thu
means to appropriate them some way or other before they can be of any use, or at all beneficial, to any part
enclosure, and is still a tenant in common, must be his, and so his—i.e., a part of him, that another can no lo
Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a "property" in his own
"work" of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Natur
that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state Nature p
other men. For this "labor" being the unquestionable property of the laborer, no man but he can have a right
common for others. . . .
Of the Beginning of Political Societies
Men being, as has been said, by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate
by agreeing with other men, to join and unite a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living,
against any that are not of it. This any number of men may do, because it injures not the freedom of the rest
men have so consented to make one community or government, they are thereby presently incorporated, an
For, when any number of men have, by the consent of every individual, made a community, they have there
will and determination of the majority. . . .
And thus every man, by consenting with others to make one body politic under one government, puts himse
majority, and to be concluded by it; or else this original compact, whereby he with others incorporates into o
ties than he was in before in the state of Nature. For what appearance would there be of any compact? Wha
himself thought fit and did actually consent to? This would be still as great a liberty as he himself had before
to any acts of it if he thinks fit.
For if the consent of the majority shall not in reason be received as the act of the whole, and conclude every
the whole, which, considering the infirmities of health and avocations of business, which in a number though
public assembly; and the variety of opinions and contrariety of interests which unavoidably happen in all coll
Whosoever, therefore, out of a state of Nature unite into a community, must be understood to give up all the
community, unless they expressly agreed in any number greater than the majority. And this is done by barel
between the individuals that enter into or make up a commonwealth. And thus, that which begins and actual
capable of majority, to unite and incorporate into such a society. And this is that, and that only, which did or
Of the Extent of the Legislative Power
The great end of men's entering into society being the enjoyment of their properties in peace and safety, and
first and fundamental positive law of all commonwealths is the establishing of the legislative power, as the fir
preservation of the society and (as far as will consist with the public good) of every person in it. This legislati
the hands where the community have once placed it. Nor can any edict of anybody else, in what form soeve
which has not its sanction from that legislative which the public has chosen and appointed; for without this th
the society, over whom nobody can have a power to make laws but by their own consent and by authority re
anyone can be obliged to pay, ultimately terminates in this supreme power, and is directed by those laws wh
subordinate power, discharge any member of the society from his obedience to the legislative, acting pursua
farther than they do allow, it being ridiculous to imagine one can be tied ultimately to obey any power in the
Though the legislative, whether placed in one or more, whether it be always in being or only by intervals, tho
be, absolutely arbitrary over the lives and fortunes of the people. For it being but the joint power of every me
more than those persons had in a state of Nature before they entered into society, and gave it up to the com
nobody has an absolute arbitrary power over himself, or over any other, to destroy his own life, or take away
arbitrary power of another; and having, in the state of Nature, no arbitrary power over the life, liberty, or poss
of himself and the rest of mankind, this is all he does, or can give up to the commonwealth, and by it to the le
utmost bounds of it is limited to the public good of the society. It is a power that has no other end but preserv
impoverish the subjects; the obligations of the law of Nature cease not in society, but only in many cases are
their observation. Thus the law of Nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others. T
men's actions, be comfortable to the law of Nature—i.e., to the will of God, of which that is a declaration, and
can be good or valid against it.
Secondly, the legislative or supreme authority cannot assume to itself a power to rule by extemporary arbitra
promulgated standing laws, and known authorized judges. For the law of Nature being unwritten, and so now
miscite or misapply it, cannot so easily be convinced of their mistake where there is no established judge; an
that live under it, especially where everyone is judge, interpreter, and executioner of it too, and that in his ow
hath not force enough to defend himself from injuries or punish delinquents. To avoid these inconveniences
may have the united strength of the whole society to secure and defend their properties, and may have stan
give up all their natural power to the society they enter into, and the community put the legislative power into
or else their peace, quiet, and property will still be at the same uncertainty as it was in the state of Nature.
Absolute arbitrary power, or governing without settled standing laws, can neither of them consist with the en
Nature for, and tie themselves up under, were it not to preserve their lives, liberties, and fortunes, and by sta
that they should intend, had they a power so to do, to give anyone or more an absolute arbitrary power over
unlimited will arbitrarily upon them; this were to put themselves into a worse condition than the state of Natu
upon equal terms of force to maintain it, whether invaded by a single man or many in combination. Whereas
a legislator, they have disarmed themselves, and armed him to make a prey of them when he pleases; he b
has the command of a hundred thousand than he that is exposed to the arbitrary power of a hundred thousa
than that of other men, though his force be a hundred thousand times stronger. And, therefore, whatever for
received laws, and not by extemporary dictates and undetermined resolutions, for then mankind will be in a
with the joint power of a multitude, to force them to obey at pleasure the exorbitant and unlimited decrees of
having any measures set down which may guide and justify their actions. For all the power the government
so it ought to be exercised by established and promulgated laws, that both the people may know their duty,
due bounds, and not be tempted by the power they have in their hands to employ it to purposes, and by suc
Thirdly, the supreme power cannot take from any man any part of his property without his own consent. For
into society, it necessarily supposes and requires that the people should have property, without which they m
entered into it; too gross an absurdity for any man to own. Men, therefore, in society having property, they h
has a right to take them, or any part of them, from them without their own consent; without this they have no
me when he pleases against my consent. Hence it is a mistake to think that the supreme or legislative powe
arbitrarily, or take any part of them at pleasure. This is not much to be feared in governments where the legi
the dissolution of the assembly are subjects under the common laws of their country, equally with the rest. B
one man as in absolute monarchies, there is danger still, that they will think themselves to have a distinct int
power by taking what they think fit from the people. For a man's property is not at all secure, though there be
he who commands those subjects have power to take from any private man what part he pleases of his prop
It is true governments cannot be supported without great charge, and it is fit everyone who enjoys his share
still it must be with his own consent—i.e., the consent of the majority, giving it either by themselves or their r
the people by his own authority, and without such consent of the people, he thereby invades the fundamenta
which another may by right take when he pleases to himself ?
Fourthly, the legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands, for it being but a deleg
alone can appoint the form of the commonwealth, which is by constituting the legislative, and appointing in w
governed by laws made by such men, and in such forms," nobody else can say other men shall make laws f
they have chosen and authorized to make laws for them.
These are the bounds which the trust that is put in them by the society and the law of God and Nature have
they are to govern by promulgated established laws, not to be varied in particular cases, but to have one rul
laws also ought to be designed for no other end ultimately but the good of the people. Thirdly, they must not
themselves or their deputies. And this properly concerns only such governments where the legislative is alw
deputies, to be from time to time chosen by themselves. Fourthly, legislative neither must nor can transfer th
have.
Of the Dissolution of Government
* * *
The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property; and the end while they choose a
fences to the properties of all the society, to limit the power and moderate the dominion of every part and me
the legislative should have a power to destroy that which everyone designs to secure by entering into societ
whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to
who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath
shall transgress this fundamental rule of society, and either by ambition, fear, folly, or corruption, endeavor t
liberties, and estates of the people, by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their
their original liberty, and by the establishment of a new legislative (such as they shall think fit), provide for th
What I have said here concerning the legislative in general holds true also concerning the supreme executo
supreme execution of the law, acts against both, when he goes about to set up his own arbitrary will as the l
and offices of the society to corrupt the representatives and gain them to his purposes, when he openly prethreats, promises, or otherwise, won to his designs, and employs them to bring in such who have promised
and new model the ways of election, what is it but to cut up the government by the roots, and poison the ver
their representatives as the fence to their properties, could do it for no other end but that they might always b
commonwealth and the public good should, upon examination and mature debate, be judged to require. Thi
on all sides, are not capable of doing. To prepare such an assembly as this, and endeavor to set up the dec
makers of the society, is certainly as great a breach of trust, and as perfect a declaration of a design to subv
punishments visibly employed to the same end, and all the arts of perverted law made use of to take off and
betray the liberties of their country, it will be past doubt what is doing. What power they ought to have in the
easy to determine; and one cannot but see that he who has once attempted any such thing as this cannot a
Here it is like the common question will be made: Who shall be judge whether the prince or legislative act co
people, when the prince only makes use of his due prerogative. To this I reply, The people shall be judge; fo
reposed in him, but he who deputes him and must, by having deputed him, have still a power to discard him
should it be otherwise in that of the greatest moment, where the welfare of millions is concerned and also wh
dangerous?
But, farther, this question, Who shall be judge? cannot mean that there is no judge at all. For where there is
alone, it is true, is judge of the right. But every man is judge for himself, as in all other cases so in this, . . .
If a controversy arise betwixt a prince and some of the people in a matter where the law is silent or doubtful,
should be the body of the people. For in such cases where the prince hath a trust reposed in him, and is dis
aggrieved, and think the prince acts contrary to, or beyond that trust, who so proper to judge as the body of
if the prince, or whoever they be in the administration, decline that way of determination, the appeal then lies
earth, or which permits no appeal to a judge on earth, being properly a state of war, wherein the appeal lies
think fit to make use of that appeal and put himself upon it.
To conclude. The power that every individual gave the society when he entered into it can never revert to th
because without this there can be no community—no commonwealth, which is contrary to the original agree
continue in them and their successors, with direction and authority for providing such successors, the legisla
provided a legislative with power to continue forever, they have given up their political power to the legislativ
made this supreme power in any person or assembly only temporary; or else when, by the miscarriages of t
of the time set, it reverts to the society, and the people have a right to act as supreme, and continue the legi
[From John Locke, The Second Treatise of Civil Government, ed. John W. Gough (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1
The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page -> Johnson's
Political commentary
From "The Works of Samuel Johnson," published by Pafraets &
Company, Troy, New York, 1913; volume 14, pages 93-144.
TAXATION NO TYRANNY
AN ANSWER TO THE RESOLUTIONS AND
ADDRESS OF THE AMERICAN CONGRESS.
by Samuel Johnson
In all the parts of human knowledge, whether terminating in
science merely speculative, or operating upon life, private or
civil, are admitted some fundamental principles, or common
axioms, which, being generally received, are little doubted, and,
being little doubted, have been rarely proved.
Of these gratuitous and acknowledged truths, it is often the fate
to become less evident by endeavours to explain them, however
necessary such endeavours may be made by the
misapprehensions of absurdity, or the sophistries of interest. It is
difficult to prove the principles of science; because notions
cannot always be found more intelligible than those which are
questioned. It is difficult to prove the principles of practice,
because they have, for the most part, not been discovered by
investigation, but obtruded by experience; and the demonstrator
will find, after an operose deduction, that he has been trying to
make that seen, which can be only felt.
Of this kind is the position, that "the supreme power of every
community has the right of requiring, from all its subjects, such
contributions as are necessary to the publick safety or publick
prosperity," which was considered, by all mankind, as comprising
the primary and essential condition of all political society, till it
became disputed by those zealots of anarchy, who have denied,
to the parliament of Britain the right of taxing the American
colonies.
In favour of this exemption of the Americans from the authority
of their lawful sovereign, and the dominion of their mothercountry, very loud clamours have been raised, and many wild
assertions advanced, which, by such as borrow their opinions
from the reigning fashion, have been admitted as arguments;
and, what is strange, though their tendency is to lessen English
honour and English power, have been heard by Englishmen, with
a wish to find them true. Passion has, in its first violence,
controlled interest, as the eddy for awhile runs against the
stream.
To be prejudiced is always to be weak; yet there are prejudices
so near to laudable, that they have been often praised, and are
always pardoned. To love their country has been considered as
virtue in men, whose love could not be otherwise than blind,
because their preference was made without, a comparison; but it
has never been my fortune to find, either in ancient or modern
writers, any honourable mention of those, who have, with equal
blindness, hated their country.
These antipatriotick prejudices are the abortions of folly
impregnated by faction, which, being produced against the
standing order of nature, have not strength sufficient for long
life. They are born only to scream and perish, and leave those to
contempt or detestation, whose kindness was employed to nurse
them into mischief.
To perplex the opinion of the publick many artifices have been
used, which, as usually happens, when falsehood is to be
maintained by fraud, lose their force by counteracting one
another.
The nation is, sometimes, to be mollified by a tender tale of men,
who fled from tyranny to rocks and deserts, and is persuaded to
lose all claims of justice, and all sense of dignity, in compassion
for a harmless people, who, having worked hard for bread in a
wild country, and obtained, by the slow progression of manual
industry, the accommodations of life, are now invaded by
unprecedented oppression, and plundered of their properties by
the harpies of taxation.
We are told how their industry is obstructed by unnatural
restraints, and their trade confined by rigorous prohibitions; how
they are forbidden to enjoy the products of their own soil, to
manufacture the materials which nature spreads before them, or
to carry their own goods to the nearest market; and surely the
generosity of English virtue will never heap new weight upon
those that are already overladen; will never delight in that
dominion, which cannot be exercised, but by cruelty and outrage.
But, while we are melting in silent sorrow, and, in the transports
of delirious pity, dropping both the sword and balance from our
hands, another friend of the Americans thinks it better to awaken
another passion, and tries to alarm our interest, or excite our
veneration, by accounts of their greatness and their opulence, of
the fertility of their land, and the splendour of their towns. We
then begin to consider the question with more evenness of mind,
are ready to conclude that those restrictions are not very
oppressive, which have been found consistent with this speedy
growth of prosperity; and begin to think it reasonable, that they
who thus flourish under the protection of our government, should
contribute something toward its expense.
But we are soon told, that the Americans, however wealthy,
cannot be taxed; that they are the descendants of men who left
all for liberty, and that they have constantly preserved the
principles and stubbornness of their progenitors; that they are
too obstinate for persuasion, and too powerful for constraint;
that they will laugh at argument, and defeat violence; that the
continent of North America contains three millions, not of men
merely, but of whigs, of whigs fierce for liberty, and disdainful of
dominion; that they multiply with the fecundity of their own
rattlesnakes, so that every quarter of a century doubles their
numbers.
Men accustomed to think themselves masters do not love to be
threatened. This talk is, I hope, commonly thrown away, or
raises passions different from those which it was intended to
excite. Instead of terrifying the English hearer to tame
acquiescence, it disposes him to hasten the experiment of
bending obstinacy, before it is become yet more obdurate, and
convinces him that it is necessary to attack a nation thus
prolifick, while we may yet hope to prevail. When he is told,
through what extent of territory we must travel to subdue them,
he recollects how far, a few years ago, we travelled in their
defence. When it is urged, that they will shoot up, like the hydra,
he naturally considers how the hydra was destroyed.
Nothing dejects a trader like the interruption of his profits. A
commercial people, however magnanimous, shrinks at the
thought of declining traffick and an unfavourable balance. The
effect of this terrour has been tried. We have been stunned with
the importance of our American commerce, and heard of
merchants, with warehouses that are never to be emptied, and of
manufacturers starving for want of work.
That our commerce with America is profitable, however less than
ostentatious or deceitful estimates have made it, and that it is
our interest to preserve it, has never been denied; but, surely, it
will most effectually be preserved, by being kept always in our
own power. Concessions may promote it for a moment, but
superiority only can ensure its continuance. There will always be
a part, and always a very large part of every community, that
have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves
reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and
eagerness for the nearest good. The blind are said to feel with
peculiar nicety. They who look but little into futurity, have,
perhaps, the quickest sensation of the present. A merchant's
desire is not of glory, but of gain; not of publick wealth, but of
private emolument; he is, therefore, rarely to be consulted about
war and peace, or any designs of wide extent and distant
consequence.
Yet this, like other general characters, will sometimes fail. The
traders of Birmingham have rescued themselves from all
imputation of narrow selfishness, by a manly recommendation to
parliament of the rights and dignity of their native country.
To these men I do not intend to ascribe an absurd and
enthusiastick contempt of interest, but to give them the rational
and just praise of distinguishing real from seeming good; of
being able to see through the cloud of interposing difficulties, to
the lasting and solid happiness of victory and settlement.
Lest all these topicks of persuasion should fail, the greater actor
of patriotism has tried another, in which terrour and pity are
happily combined, not without a proper superaddition of that
admiration which latter ages have brought into the drama. The
heroes of Boston, he tells us, if the stamp act had not been
repealed, would have left their town, their port, and their trade,
have resigned the splendour of opulence, and quitted the delights
of neighbourhood, to disperse themselves over the country,
where they would till the ground, and fish in the rivers, and
range the mountains, and be free.
These, surely, are brave words. If the mere sound of freedom
can operate thus powerfully, let no man, hereafter, doubt the
story of the Pied Piper. The removal of the people of Boston into
the country, seems, even to the congress, not only difficult in its
execution, but important in its consequences. The difficulty of
execution is best known to the Bostonians themselves; the
consequence alas! will only be, that they will leave good houses
to wiser men.
Yet, before they quit the comforts of a warm home, for the sound
of something which they think better, he cannot be thought their
enemy who advises them, to consider well whether they shall
find it. By turning fishermen or hunters, woodmen or shepherds,
they may become wild, but it is not so easy to conceive them
free; for who can be more a slave than he that is driven, by
force, from the comforts of life, is compelled to leave his house
to a casual comer, and, whatever he does, or where ever he
wanders, finds, every moment, some new testimony of his own
subjection? If choice of evil be freedom, the felon in the galleys
has his option of labour or of stripes. The Bostonian may quit his
house to starve in the fields; his dog may refuse to set, and
smart under the lash, and they may then congratulate each other
upon the smiles of liberty, "profuse of bliss, and pregnant with
delight."
To treat such designs as serious, would be to think too
contemptuously of Bostonian understandings. The artifice,
indeed, is not new: the blusterer, who threatened in vain to
destroy his opponent, has, sometimes, obtained his end, by
making it believed, that he would hang himself.
But terrours and pity are not the only means by which the
taxation of the Americans is opposed. There are those, who
profess to use them only as auxiliaries to reason and justice; who
tell us, that to tax the colonies is usurpation and oppression, an
invasion of natural and legal rights, and a violation of those
principles which support the constitution of English government.
This question is of great importance. That the Americans are able
to bear taxation, is indubitable; that their refusal may be
overruled, is highly probable; but power is no sufficient evidence
of truth. Let us examine our own claim, and the objections of the
recusants, with caution proportioned to the event of the decision,
which must convict one part of robbery, or the other of rebellion.
A tax is a payment, exacted by authority, from part of the
community, for the benefit of the whole. From whom, and in
what proportion such payment shall be required, and to what
uses it shall be applied, those only are to judge to whom
government is intrusted. In the British dominions taxes are
apportioned, levied, and appropriated by the states assembled in
parliament.
Of every empire all the subordinate communities are liable to
taxation, because they all share the benefits of government, and,
therefore, ought all to furnish their proportion of the expense.
This the Americans have never openly denied. That it is their
duty to pay the costs of their own safety, they seem to admit;
nor do they refuse their contribution to the exigencies, whatever
they may be, of the British empire; but they make this
participation of a publick burden a duty of very uncertain extent,
and imperfect obligation, a duty temporary, occasional, and
elective, of which they reserve to themselves the right of settling
the degree, the time, and the duration; of judging when it may
be required, and when it has been performed.
They allow to the supreme power nothing more than the liberty
of notifying to them its demands or its necessities. Of this
notification they profess to think for themselves, how far it shall
influence their counsels; and of the necessities alleged, how far
they shall endeavour to relieve them. They assume the exclusive
power of settling not only the mode, but the quantity, of this
payment. They are ready to cooperate with all the other
dominions of the king; but they will cooperate by no means
which they do not like, and at no greater charge than they are
willing to bear.
This claim, wild as it may seem; this claim, which supposes
dominion without authority, and subjects without subordination,
has found among the libertines of policy, many clamorous and
hardy vindicators. The laws of nature, the rights of humanity, the
faith of charters, the danger of liberty, the encroachments of
usurpation, have been thundered in our ears, sometimes by
interested faction, and sometimes by honest stupidity.
It is said by Fontenelle, that if twenty philosophers shall
resolutely deny that the presence of the sun makes the day, he
will not despair but whole nations may adopt the opinion. So
many political dogmatists have denied to the mother-country,
the power of taxing the colonies, and have enforced their denial
with so much violence of outcry, that their sect is already very
numerous, and the publick voice suspends its decision.
In moral and political questions, the contest between interest and
justice has been often tedious and often fierce, but, perhaps, it
never happened before, that justice found much opposition, with
interest on her side.
For the satisfaction of this inquiry, it is necessary to consider,
how a colony is constituted; what are the terms of migration, as
dictated by nature, or settled by compact; and what social or
political rights the man loses or acquires, that leaves his country
to establish himself in a distant plantation.
Of two modes of migration the history of mankind informs us,
and so far as I can yet discover, of two only.
In countries where life was yet unadjusted, and policy unformed,
it sometimes happened, that, by the dissensions of heads of
families, by the ambition of daring adventurers, by some
accidental pressure of distress, or by the mere discontent of
idleness, one part of the community broke off from the rest, and
numbers, greater or smaller, forsook their habitations, put
themselves under the command of some favourite of fortune,
and with, or without the consent of their countrymen or
governours, went out to see what better regions they could
occupy, and in what place, by conquest or by treaty, they could
gain a habitation.
Sons of enterprise, like these, who committed to their own
swords their hopes and their lives, when they left their country,
became another nation, with designs, and prospects, and
interests, of their own. They looked back no more to their former
home; they expected no help from those whom they had left
behind; if they conquered, they conquered for themselves; if
they were destroyed, they were not by any other power either
lamented or revenged.
Of this kind seem to have been all the migrations of the early
world, whether historical or fabulous, and of this kind were the
eruptions of those nations, which, from the north, invaded the
Roman empire, and filled Europe with new sovereignties.
But when, by the gradual admission of wiser laws and gentler
manners, society became more compacted and better regulated,
it was found, that the power of every people consisted in union,
produced by one common interest, and operating in joint efforts
and consistent counsels.
From this time independence perceptibly wasted away. No part of
the nation was permitted to act for itself. All now had the same
enemies and the same friends; the government protected
individuals, and individuals were required to refer their designs to
the prosperity of the government.
By this principle it is, that states are formed and consolidated.
Every man is taught to consider his own happiness, as combined
with the publick prosperity, and to think himself great and
powerful, in proportion to the greatness and power of his
governours.
Had the western continent been discovered between the fourth
and tenth century, when all the northern world was in motion;
and had navigation been, at that time, sufficiently advanced to
make so long a passage easily practicable, there is little reason
for doubting, but the intumescence of nations would have found
its vent, like all other expansive violence, where there was least
resistance; and that Huns and Vandals, instead of fighting their
way to the south of Europe, would have gone, by thousands and
by myriads, under their several chiefs, to take possession of
regions smiling with pleasure, and waving with fertility, front
which the naked inhabitants were unable to repel them.
Every expedition would, in those days of laxity, have produced a
distinct and independent state. The Scandinavian heroes might
have divided the country among them, and have spread the
feudal subdivision of regality from Hudson's bay to the Pacifick
ocean.
But Columbus came five or six hundred years too late for the
candidates of sovereignty. When he formed his project of
discovery, the fluctuations of military turbulence had subsided,
and Europe began to regain a settled form, by established
government and regular subordination. No man could any longer
erect himself into a chieftain, and lead out his fellow-subjects, by
his own authority, to plunder or to war. He that committed any
act of hostility, by land or sea, without the commission of some
acknowledged sovereign, was considered, by all mankind, as a
robber or pirate, names which were now of little credit, and of
which, therefore, no man was ambitious.
Columbus, in a remoter time, would have found his way to some
discontented lord, or some younger brother of a petty sovereign,
who would have taken fire at his proposal, and have quickly
kindled, with equal beat, a troop of followers: they would have
built ships, or have seized them, and have wandered with him, at
all adventures, as far as they could keep hope in their company.
But the age being now past of vagrant excursion and fortuitous
hostility, he was under the necessity of travelling from court to
court, scorned and repulsed as a wild projector, an idle promiser
of kingdoms in the clouds; nor has any part of the world yet had
reason to rejoice that he found, at last, reception and
employment.
In the same year, in a year hitherto disastrous to mankind, by
the Portuguese was discovered the passage of the Indies, and by
the Spaniards the coast of America. The nations of Europe were
fired with Boundless expectations, and the discoverers, pursuing
their enterprise, made conquests in both hemispheres of wide
extent. But the adventurers were not contented with plunder:
though they took gold and silver to themselves, they seized
islands and kingdoms in the name of their sovereigns. When a
new region was gained, a governour was appointed by that
power, which had given the commission to the conqueror; nor
have I met with any European, but Stukely, of London, that
formed a design of exalting himself in the newly found countries
to independent dominion.
To secure a conquest, it was always necessary to plant a colony,
and territories, thus occupied and settled, were rightly
considered, as mere extensions, or processes of empire; as
ramifications which, by the circulation of one publick interest,
communicated with the original source of dominion, and which
were kept flourishing and spreading by the radical vigour of the
mother-country.
The colonies of England differ no otherwise from those of other
nations, than as the English constitution differs from theirs. All
government is ultimately and essentially absolute, but
subordinate societies may have more immunities, or individuals
greater liberty, as the operations of government are differently
conducted. An Englishman in the common course of life and
action feels no restraint.
An English colony has very liberal powers of regulating its own
manners, and adjusting its own affairs. But an English individual
may, by the supreme authority, be deprived of liberty, and a
colony divested of its powers, for reasons of which that authority
is the only judge.
In sovereignty there are no gradations. There may be limited
royalty, there may be limited consulship; but there can be no
limited government. There must, in every society, be some
power or other, from which there is no appeal, which admits no
restrictions, which pervades the whole mass of the community,
regulates and adjusts all subordination, enacts laws or repeals
them, erects or annuls judicatures, extends or contracts
privileges, exempt itself from question or control, and bounded
only by physical necessity.
By this power, wherever it subsists, all legislation and jurisdiction
is animated and maintained. From this all legal rights are
emanations, which, whether equitably or not, may be legally
recalled. It is not infallible, for it may do wrong; but it is
irresistible, for it can be resisted only by rebellion, by an act
which makes it questionable, what shall be thenceforward the
supreme power.
An English colony is a number of persons, to whom the king
grants a charter, permitting them to settle in some distant
country, and enabling them to constitute a corporation enjoying
such powers as the charter grants, to be administered in such
forms as the charter prescribes. As a corporation, they make
laws for themselves; but as a corporation, subsisting by a grant
from higher authority, to the control of that authority they
continue subject.
As men are placed at a greater distance from the supreme
council of the kingdom, they must be intrusted with ampler
liberty of regulating their conduct by their own wisdom. As they
are more secluded from easy recourse to national judicature,
they must be more extensively commissioned to pass judgment
on each other.
For this reason our more important and opulent colonies see the
appearance, and feel the effect, of a regular legislature, which, in
some places, has acted so long with unquestioned authority, that
it has forgotten whence that authority was originally derived.
To their charters the colonies owe, like other corporations, their
political existence. The solemnities of legislation, the
administration of justice, the security of property, are all
bestowed upon them by the royal grant. Without their charter,
there would be no power among them, by which any law could
be made, or duties enjoined; any debt recovered, or criminal
punished.
A charter is a grant of certain powers or privileges, given to a
part of the community for the advantage of the whole, and is,
therefore, liable, by its nature, to change or to revocation. Every
act of government aims at publick good. A charter, which
experience has shown to be detrimental to the nation, is to be
repealed; because general prosperity must always be preferred
to particular interest. If a charter be used to evil purposes, it is
forfeited, as the weapon is taken away which is injuriously
employed.
The charter, therefore, by which provincial governments are
constituted, may be always legally, and, where it is either
inconvenient in its nature, or misapplied in its use, may be
equitably repealed; by such repeal the whole fabrick of
subordination is immediately destroyed, and the constitution
sunk at once into a chaos; the society is dissolved into a tumult
of individuals, without authority to command, or obligation to
obey, without any punishment of wrongs, but by personal
resentment, or any protection of right, but by the hand of the
possessor.
A colony is to the mother-country, as a member to the body,
deriving its action and its strength from the general principle of
vitality; receiving from the body, and communicating to it, all the
benefits and evils of health and disease; liable, in dangerous
maladies, to sharp applications, of which the body, however,
must partake the pain; and exposed, if incurably tainted, to
amputation, by which the body, likewise, will be mutilated.
The mother-country always considers the colonies, thus
connected, as parts of itself; the prosperity or unhappiness of
either, is the prosperity or unhappiness of both; not, perhaps, of
both in the same degree, for the body may subsist, though less
commodiously, without a limb, but the limb must perish, if it be
parted from the body.
Our colonies, therefore, however distant, have been, hitherto,
treated as constituent parts of the British empire. The inhabitants
incorporated by English charters are entitled to all the rights of
Englishmen. They are governed by English laws, entitled to
English dignities, regulated by English counsels, and protected by
English arms; and it seems to follow, by consequence not easily
avoided, that they are subject to English government, and
chargeable by English taxation.
To him that considers the nature, the original, the progress, and
the constitution of the colonies, who remembers that the first
discoverers had commissions from the crown, that the first
settlers owe to a charter their civil forms and regular magistracy,
and that all personal immunities and legal securities, by which
the condition of the subject has been, from time to time,
improved, have been extended to the colonists, it will not be
doubted, but the parliament of England has a right to bind them
by statutes, and to bind them in all cases whatsoever; and has,
therefore, a natural and constitutional power of laying upon them
any tax or impost, whether external or internal, upon the product
of land, or the manufactures of industry, in the exigencies of war,
or in the time of profound peace, for the defence of America, for
the purpose of raising a revenue, or for any other end beneficial
to the empire.
There are some, and those not inconsiderable for number, nor
contemptible for knowledge, who except the power of taxation
from the general dominion of parliament, and hold, that
whatever degrees of obedience may be exacted, or whatever
authority may be exercised in other acts of government, there is
still reverence to be paid to money, and that legislation passes its
limits when it violates the purse.
Of this exception, which, by a head not fully impregnated with
politicks, is not easily comprehended, it is alleged, as an
unanswerable reason, that the colonies send no representatives
to the house of commons.
It is, say the American advocates, the natural distinction of a
freeman, and the legal privilege of an Englishman, that he is able
to call his possessions his own, that he can sit secure in the
enjoyment of inheritance or acquisition, that his house is fortified
by the law, and that nothing can be taken from him but by his
own consent. This consent is given for every man by his
representative in parliament. The Americans, unrepresented,
cannot consent to English taxations, as a corporation, and they
will not consent, as individuals.
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.
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 freeman 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 publick 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 the 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 withheld. They are here upon firm ground, behind
entrenchments which can never 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 colonies,
were, at the time of their emigration from the mother-country,
entitled to all the rights, liberties, 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 exercise 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 cannot 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 a knight or burgess; by crossing the
Atlantick, 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, or intended to
choose, the greater good; he is represented, as himself desired,
in the general representation.
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 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 external 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.
Men are wrong for want of sense, but they are wrong by halves
for want of spirit. Since the Americans have discovered that they
can make a parliament, whence comes it that they do not think
themselves equally empowered to make a king? If they are
subjects, whose government is constituted by a charter, they can
form no body of independent legislature. If their rights are
inherent and underived, they may, by their own suffrages,
encircle, with a diadem, the brows of Mr. Cushing.
It is further declared, by the congress of Philadelphia, "that his
majesty's colonies are entitled to all the privileges and
immunities granted and confirmed to them by royal charters, or
secured to them by their several codes of provincial laws."
The first clause of this resolution is easily understood, and will be
readily admitted. To all the privileges which a charter can
convey, they are, by a royal charter, evidently entitled. The
second clause is of greater difficulty; for how can a provincial law
secure privileges or immunities to a province? Provincial laws
may grant, to certain individuals of the province, the enjoyment
of gainful, or an immunity from onerous offices; they may
operate upon the people to whom they relate; but no province
can confer provincial privileges on itself. They may have a right
to all which the king has given them; but it is a conceit of the
other hemisphere, that men have a right to all which they have
given to themselves.
A corporation is considered, in law, as an individual, and can no
more extend its own immunities, than a man can, by his own
choice, assume dignities or titles.
The legislature of a colony (let not the comparison be too much
disdained) is only the vestry of a larger parish, which may lay a
cess on the inhabitants, and enforce the payment; but can
extend no influence beyond its own district, must modify its
particular regulations by the general law, and, whatever may be
its internal expenses, is still liable to taxes laid by superiour
authority.
The charters given to different provinces are different, and no
general right can be extracted from them. The charter of
Pennsylvania, where this congress of anarchy has been
impudently held, contains a clause admitting, in express terms,
taxation by the parliament. If, in the other charters, no such
reserve is made, it must have been omitted, as not necessary,
because it is implied in the nature of subordinate government.
They who are subject to laws, are liable to taxes. If any such
immunity had been granted, it is still revocable by the
legislature, and ought to be revoked, as contrary to the publick
good, which is, in every charter, ultimately intended.
Suppose it true, that any such exemption is contained in the
charter of Maryland, it can be pleaded only by the Marylanders. It
is of no use for any other province; and, with regard even to
them, must have been considered as one of the grants in which
the king has been deceived; and annulled, as mischievous to the
publick, by sacrificing to one little settlement the general interest
of the empire; as infringing the system of dominion, and violating
the compact of government. But Dr. Tucker has shown, that even
this charter promises no exemption from parliamentary taxes.
In the controversy agitated about the beginning of this century,
whether the English laws could bind Ireland, Davenant, who
defended against Molyneux the claims of England, considered it
as necessary to prove nothing more, than that the present Irish
must be deemed a colony.
The necessary connexion of representatives with taxes, seems to
have sunk deep into many of those minds, that admit sounds,
without their meaning.
Our nation is represented in parliament by an assembly as
numerous as can well consist with order and despatch, chosen by
persons so differently qualified in different places, that the mode
of choice seems to be, for the most part, formed by chance, and
settled by custom. Of individuals, far the greater part have no
vote, and, of the voters, few have any personal knowledge of him
to whom they intrust their liberty and fortune.
Yet this representation has the whole effect expected or desired,
that of spreading so wide the care of general interest, and the
participation of publick counsels, that the advantage or
corruption of particular men can seldom operate with much injury
to the publick.
For this reason many populous and opulent towns neither enjoy
nor desire particular representatives: they are included in the
general scheme of publick administration, and cannot suffer but
with the rest of the empire.
It is urged, that the Americans have not the same security, and
that a British legislator may wanton with their property; yet, if it
be true, that their wealth is our wealth, and that their ruin will be
our ruin, the parliament has the same interest in attending to
them, as to any other part of the nation. The reason why we
place any confidence in our representatives is, that they must
share in the good or evil which their counsels shall produce. Their
share is, indeed, commonly consequential and remote; but it is
not often possible that any immediate advantage can be
extended to such numbers as may prevail against it. We are,
therefore, as secure against intentional depravations of
government, as human wisdom can make us, and upon this
security the Americans may venture to repose.
It is said, by the old member who has written an appeal against
the tax, that "as the produce of American labour is spent in
British manufactures, the balance of trade is greatly against
them; whatever you take directly in taxes is, in effect, taken
from your own commerce. If the minister seizes the money, with
which the American should pay his debts, and come to market,
the merchant cannot expect him as a customer, nor can the
debts, already contracted, be paid. —Suppose we obtain from
America a million, instead of one hundred thousand pounds, it
would be supplying one personal exigence by the future ruin of
our commerce."
Part of this is true; but the old member seems not to perceive,
that, if his brethren of the legislature know this as well as
himself, the Americans are in no danger of oppression, since by
men commonly provident they must be so taxed, as that we may
not lose one way, what we gain another.
The same old member has discovered, that the judges formerly
thought it illegal to tax Ireland, and declares that no cases can
be more alike than those of Ireland and America; yet the judges
whom he quotes have mentioned a difference. Ireland, they say,
"hath a parliament of its own." When any colony has an
independent parliament, acknowledged by the parliament of
Britain, the cases will differ less. Yet, by the sixth of George the
first, chapter fifth, the acts of the British parliament bind Ireland.
It is urged, that when Wales, Durham, and Chester were divested
of their particular privileges, or ancient government, and reduced
to the state of English counties, they had representatives
assigned them.
To those from whom something had been taken, something in
return might properly be given. To the Americans their charters
are left, as they were, nor have they lost any thing, except that
of which their sedition has deprived them. If they were to be
represented in parliament, something would be granted, though
nothing is withdrawn.
The inhabitants of Chester, Durham, and Wales were invited to
exchange their peculiar institutions for the power of voting, which
they wanted before. The Americans have voluntarily resigned the
power of voting, to live in distant and separate governments;
and what they have voluntarily quitted, they have no right to
claim.
It must always be remembered, that they are represented by the
same virtual representation as the greater part of Englishmen;
and that, if by change of place, they have less share in the
legislature than is proportionate to their opulence, they, by their
removal, gained that opulence, and had originally, and have now,
their choice of a vote at home, or riches at a distance.
We are told, what appears to the old member and to others, a
position that must drive us into inextricable absurdity: that we
have either no rights or the sole right, of taxing the colonies. The
meaning is, that if we can tax them, they cannot tax themselves;
and that if they can tax themselves, we cannot tax them. We
answer, with very little hesitation, that, for the general use of the
empire, we have the sole right of taxing them. If they have
contributed any thing in their own assemblies, what they
contributed was not paid, but given; it was not a tax or tribute,
but a present. Yet they have the natural and legal power of
levying money on themselves for provincial purposes, of
providing for their own expense at their own discretion. Let not
this be thought new or strange; it is the state of every parish in
the kingdom.
The friends of the Americans are of different opinions. Some
think, that, being unrepresented, they ought to tax themselves;
and others, that they ought to have representatives in the British
parliament.
If they are to tax themselves, what power is to remain in the
supreme legislature? That they must settle their own mode of
levying their money is supposed. May the British parliament tell
them how much they shall contribute? If the sum may be
prescribed, they will return few thanks for the power of raising it;
if they are at liberty to grant or to deny, they are no longer
subjects.
If they are to be represented, what number of these western
orators are to be admitted? This, I suppose, the parliament must
settle; yet, if men have a natural and unalienable right to be
represented, who shall determine the number of their delegates?
Let us, however, suppose them to send twenty-three, half as
many as the kingdom of Scotland, what will this representation
avail them? To pay taxes will be still a grievance. The love of
money will not be lessened, nor the power of getting it increased.
Whither will this necessity of representation drive us? Is every
petty settlement to be out of the reach of government, till it has
sent a senator to parliament; or may two of them, or a greater
number, be forced to unite in a single deputation? What, at last,
is the difference between him that is taxed, by compulsion,
without representation, and him that is represented, by
compulsion, in order to be taxed?
For many reigns the house of commons was in a state of
fluctuation: new burgesses were added, from time to time,
without any reason now to be discovered; but the number has
been fixed for more than a century and a half, and the king's
power of increasing it has been questioned. It will hardly be
thought fit to new-model the constitution in favour of the
planters, who, as they grow rich, may buy estates in England,
and, without any innovation, effectually represent their native
colonies.
The friends of the Americans, indeed, ask for them what they do
not ask for themselves. This inestimable right of representation
they have never solicited. They mean not to exchange solid
money for such airy honour. They say, and say willingly, that
they cannot conveniently be represented; because their inference
is, that they cannot be taxed. They are too remote to share the
general government, and, therefore, claim the privilege of
governing themselves.
Of the principles contained in the resolutions of the congress,
however wild, indefinite, and obscure, such has been the
influence upon American understanding, that, from New England
to South Carolina, there is formed a general combination of all
the provinces against their mother-country. The madness of
independence has spread from colony to colony, till order is lost,
and government despised; and all is filled with misrule, uproar,
violence, and confusion. To be quiet is disaffection, to be loyal is
treason.
The congress of Philadelphia, an assembly convened by its own
authority, has promulgated a declaration, in compliance with
which the communication between Britain and the greatest part
of North America, is now suspended. They ceased to admit the
importation of English goods, in December, 1774, and determine
to permit the exportation of their own no longer than to
November, 1775.
This might seem enough; but they have done more: they have
declared, that they shall treat all as enemies who do not concur
with them in disaffection and perverseness; and that they will
trade with none that shall trade with Britain.
They threaten to stigmatize, in their gazette, those who shall
consume the products or merchandise of their mother-country,
and are now searching suspected houses for prohibited goods.
These hostile declarations they profess themselves ready to
maintain by force. They have armed the militia of their provinces,
and seized the publick stores of ammunition. They are, therefore,
no longer subjects, since they refuse the laws of their sovereign,
and, in defence of that refusal, are making open preparations for
war.
Being now, in their own opinion, free states, they are not only
raising armies, but forming alliances, not only hastening to rebel
themselves, but seducing their neighbours to rebellion. They
have published an address to the inhabitants of Quebec, in which
discontent and resistance are openly incited, and with very
respectful mention of "the sagacity of Frenchmen," invite them to
send deputies to the congress of Philadelphia; to that seat of
virtue and veracity, whence the people of England are told, that
to establish popery, "a religion fraught with sanguinary and
impious tenets," even in Quebec, a country of which the
inhabitants are papists, is so contrary to the constitution, that it
cannot be lawfully done by the legislature itself; where it is made
one of the articles of their association, to deprive the conquered
French of their religious establishment; and whence the French of
Quebec are, at the same time, flattered into sedition, by
professions of expecting "from the liberality of sentiment
distinguishing their nation, that difference of religion will not
prejudice them against a hearty amity, because the transcendant
nature of freedom elevates all, who unite in the cause, above
such low-minded infirmities."
Quebec, however, is at a great distance. They have aimed a
stroke, from which they may hope for greater and more speedy
mischief. They have tried to infect the people of England with the
contagion of disloyalty. Their credit is, happily, not such as gives
them influence proportionate to their malice. When they talk of
their pretended immunities "guaranteed by the plighted faith of
government, and the most solemn compacts with English
sovereigns," we think ourselves at liberty to inquire, when the
faith was plighted, and the compact made; and, when we can
only find, that king James and king Charles the first promised the
settlers in Massachusett's bay, now famous by the appellation of
Bostonians, exemption from taxes for seven years, we infer, with
Mr. Mauduit, that, by this "solemn compact," they were, after
expiration of the stipulated term, liable to taxation.
When they apply to our compassion, by telling us, that they are
to be carried from their own country to be tried for certain
offences, we are not so ready to pity them, as to advise them not
to offend. While they are innocent they are safe.
When they tell of laws made expressly for their punishment, we
answer, that tumults and sedition were always punishable, and
that the new law prescribes only the mode of execution.
When it is said, that the whole town of Boston is distressed for a
misdemeanor of a few, we wonder at their shamelessness; for we
know that the town of Boston and all the associated provinces,
are now in rebellion to defend or justify the criminals.
If frauds in the imposts of Boston are tried by commission
without a jury, they are tried here in the same mode; and why
should the Bostonians expect from us more tenderness for them
than for ourselves?
If they are condemned unheard, it is because there is no need of
a trial. The crime is manifest and notorious. All trial is the
investigation of something doubtful. An Italian philosopher
observes, that no man desires to hear what he has already seen.
If their assemblies have been suddenly dissolved, what was the
reason? Their deliberations were indecent, and their intentions,
seditious. The power of dissolution is granted and reserved for
such times of turbulence. Their best friends have been lately
soliciting the king to dissolve his parliament; to do what they so
loudly complain of suffering.
That the same vengeance involves the innocent and guilty, is an
evil to be lamented; but human caution cannot prevent it, nor
human power always redress it. To bring misery on those who
have not deserved it, is part of the aggregated guilt of rebellion.
That governours have been sometimes given them, only that a
great man might get ease from importunity, and that they have
had judges, not always of the deepest learning, or the purest
integrity, we have no great reason to doubt, because such
misfortunes happen to ourselves. Whoever is governed, will,
sometimes, be governed ill, even when he is most "concerned in
his own government."
That improper officers or magistrates are sent, is the crime or
folly of those that sent them. When incapacity is discovered, it
ought to be removed; if corruption is detected, it ought to be
punished. No government could subsist for a day, if single
errours could justify defection.
One of their complaints is not such as can claim much
commiseration from the softest bosom. They tell us, that we
have changed our conduct, and that a tax is now laid, by
parliament, on those who were never taxed by parliament before.
To this, we think, it may be easily answered, that the longer they
have been spared, the better they can pay.
It is certainly not much their interest to represent innovation as
criminal or invidious; for they have introduced into the history of
mankind a new mode of disaffection, and have given, I believe,
the first example of a proscription published by a colony against
the mother-country.
To what is urged of new powers granted to the courts of
admiralty, or the extension of authority conferred on the judges,
it may be answered, in a few words, that they have themselves
made such regulations necessary; that they are established for
the prevention of greater evils; at the same time, it must be
observed, that these powers have not been extended since the
rebellion in America.
One mode of persuasion their ingenuity has suggested, which it
may, perhaps, be less easy to resist. That we may not look with
indifference on the American contest, or imagine that the
struggle is for a claim, which, however decided, is of small
importance and remote consequence, the Philadelphian congress
has taken care to inform us, that they are resisting the demands
of parliament, as well for our sakes as their own.
Their keenness of perspicacity has enabled them to pursue
consequences to a greater distance; to see through clouds
impervious to the dimness of European sight; and to find, I know
not how, that when they are taxed, we shall be enslaved.
That slavery is a miserable state we have been often told, and,
doubtless, many a Briton will tremble to find it so near as in
America; but bow it will be brought hither the congress must
inform us. The question might distress a common understanding;
but the statesmen of the other hemisphere can easily resolve it.
"Our ministers," they say, "are our enemies, and if they should
carry the point of taxation, may, with the same army, enslave
us. It may be said, we will not pay them; but remember," say
the western sages, "the taxes from America, and, we may add,
the men, and particularly the Roman catholicks of this vast
continent, will then be in the power of your enemies. Nor have
you any reason to expect, that, after making slaves of us, many
of us will refuse to assist in reducing you to the same abject
state."
These are dreadful menaces; but suspecting that they have not
much the sound of probability, the congress proceeds: "Do not
treat this as chimerical. Know, that in less than half a century,
the quitrents reserved to the crown, from the numberless grants
of this vast continent, will pour large streams of wealth into the
royal coffers. If to this be added the power of taxing America, at
pleasure, the crown will possess more treasure than may be
necessary to purchase the remains of liberty in your island."
All this is very dreadful; but, amidst the terrour that shakes my
frame, I cannot forbear to wish, that some sluice were opened
for these streams of treasure. I should gladly see America return
half of what England has expended in her defence; and of the
stream that will "flow so largely in less than half a century," I
hope a small rill, at least, may be found to quench the thirst of
the present generation, which seems to think itself in more
danger of wanting money, than of losing liberty.
It is difficult to judge with what intention such airy bursts of
malevolence are vented; if such writers hope to deceive, let us
rather repel them with scorn, than refute them by disputation.
In this last terrifick paragraph are two positions, that, if our fears
do not overpower our reflection, may enable us to support life a
little longer. We are told by these croakers of calamity, not only
that our present ministers design to enslave us, but that the
same malignity of purpose is to descend through all their
successors; and that the wealth to be poured into England by the
Pactolus of America, will, whenever it comes, be employed to
purchase the "remains of liberty."
Of those who now conduct the national affairs, we may, without
much arrogance, presume to know more than themselves; and of
those who shall succeed them, whether minister or king, not to
know less.
The other position is, that "the crown," if this laudable opposition
should not be successful, "will have the power of taxing America
at pleasure." Surely they think rather too meanly of our
apprehensions, when they suppose us not to know what they
well know themselves, that they are taxed, like all other British
subjects, by parliament; and that the crown has not, by the new
imposts, whether right or wrong, obtained any additional power
over their possessions.
It were a curious, but an idle speculation, to inquire, what effect
these dictators of sedition expect from the dispersion of their
letter among us. If they believe their own complaints of hardship,
and really dread the danger which they describe, they will
naturally hope to communicate the same perceptions to their
fellow-subjects. But, probably, in America, as in other places, the
chiefs are incendiaries, that hope to rob in the tumults of a
conflagration, and toss brands among a rabble passively
combustible. Those who wrote the address, though they have
shown no great extent or profundity of mind, are yet, probably,
wiser than to believe it: but they have been taught, by some
master of mischief, how to put in motion the engine of political
electricity; to attract, by the sounds of liberty and property; to
repel, by those of popery and slavery; and to give the great
stroke, by the name of Boston.
When subordinate communities oppose the decrees of the
general legislature with defiance thus audacious, and malignity
thus acrimonious, nothing remains but to conquer or to yield; to
allow their claim of independence, or to reduce them, by force, to
submission and allegiance.
It might be hoped, that no Englishman could be found, whom the
menaces of our own colonists, just rescued from the French,
would not move to indignation, like that of the Scythians, who,
returning from war, found themselves excluded from their own
houses by their slaves.
That corporations, constituted by favour, and existing by
sufferance, should dare to prohibit commerce with their native
country, and threaten individuals by infamy, and societies with,
at least, suspension of amity, for daring to be more obedient to
government than themselves, is a degree of insolence which not
only deserves to be punished, but of which the punishment is
loudly demanded by the order of life and the peace of nations.
Yet there have risen up, in the face of the publick, men who, by
whatever corruptions, or whatever infatuation, have undertaken
to defend the Americans, endeavour to shelter them from
resentment, and propose reconciliation without submission.
As political diseases are naturally contagious, let it be supposed,
for a moment, that Cornwall, seized with the Philadelphian
phrensy, may resolve to separate itself from the general system
of the English constitution, and judge of its own rights in its own
parliament. A congress might then meet at Truro, and address
the other counties in a style not unlike the language of the
American patriots:
FRIENDS AND FELLOW-SUBJECTS,—We, the delegates of the several
towns and parishes of Cornwall, assembled to deliberate upon
our own state, and that of our constituents, having, after serious
debate and calm consideration, settled the scheme of our future
conduct, hold it necessary to declare the resolutions which we
think ourselves entitled to form, by the unalienable rights of
reasonable beings, and into which we have been compelled by
grievances and oppressions, long endured by us in patient
silence, not because we did not feel, or could not remove them,
but because we were unwilling to give disturbance to a settled
government, and hoped that others would, in time, find, like
ourselves, their true interest and their original powers, and all
cooperate to universal happiness.
"But since, having long indulged the pleasing expectation, we
find general discontent not likely to increase, or not likely to end
in general defection, we resolve to erect alone the standard of
liberty.
"Know then, that you are no longer to consider Cornwall as an
English county, visited by English judges, receiving law from an
English parliament, or included in any general taxation of the
kingdom; but as a state, distinct and independent, governed by
its own institutions, administered by its own magistrates, and
exempt from any tax or tribute, but such as we shall impose
upon ourselves.
"We are the acknowledged descendants of the earliest
inhabitants of Britain, of men, who, before the time of history,
took possession of the island desolate and waste, and, therefore,
open to the first occupants. Of this descent, our language is a
sufficient proof, which, not quite a century ago, was different
from yours.
"Such are the Cornishmen; but who are you? who, but the
unauthorised and lawless children of intruders, invaders, and
oppressors? who, but the transmitters of wrong, the inheritors of
robbery? In claiming independence, we claim but little. We might
require you to depart from a land which you possess by
usurpation, and to restore all that you have taken from us.
"Independence is the gift of nature. No man is born the master of
another. Every Cornishman is a freeman; for we have never
resigned the rights of humanity; and he only can be thought free,
who is not governed but by his own consent.
"You may urge, that the present system of government has
descended through many ages, and that we have a larger part in
the representation of the kingdom than any other county.
"All this is true, but it is neither cogent nor persuasive. We look
to the original of things. Our union with the English counties was
either compelled by force, or settled by compact.
"That which was made by violence, may by violence be broken. If
we were treated as a conquered people, our rights might be
obscured, but could never be extinguished. The sword can give
nothing but power, which a sharper sword can take away.
"If our union was by compact, whom could the compact bind, but
those that concurred in the stipulations? We gave our ancestors
no commission to settle the terms of future existence. They
might be cowards that were frighted, or blockheads that were
cheated; but, whatever they were, they could contract only for
themselves. What they could establish, we can annul.
"Against our present form of government, it shall stand in the
place of all argument, that we do not like it. While we are
governed as we do not like, where is our liberty? We do not like
taxes, we will, therefore, not be taxed: we do not like your laws,
and will not obey them.
"The taxes laid by our representatives, are laid, you tell us, by
our own consent; but we will no longer consent to be
represented. Our number of legislators was originally a burden,
and ought to have been refused; it is now considered as a
disproportionate advantage; who, then, will complain if we resign
it?
"We shall form a senate of our own, under a president whom the
king shall nominate, but whose authority we will limit, by
adjusting his salary to his merit. We will not withhold a proper
share of contribution to the necessary expense of lawful
government, but we will decide for ourselves what share is
proper, what expense is necessary, and what government is
lawful.
"Till our counsel is proclaimed independent and unaccountable,
we will, after the tenth day of September, keep our tin in our
own hands: you can be supplied from no other place, and must,
therefore, comply, or be poisoned with the copper of your own
kitchens.
"If any Cornishman shall refuse his name to this just and
laudable association, he shall be tumbled from St. Michael's
mount, or buried alive in a tin-mine; and if any emissary shall be
found seducing Cornishmen to their former state, he shall be
smeared with tar, and rolled in feathers, and chased with dogs
out of our dominions.
"From the Cornish congress at Truro."
Of this memorial what could be said, but that it was written in
jest, or written by a madman? Yet I know not whether the
warmest admirers of Pennsylvania eloquence, can find any
argument in the addresses of the congress, that is not, with
greater strength, urged by the Cornishman.
The argument of the irregular troops of controversy, stripped of
its colours, and turned out naked to the view, is no more than
this. Liberty is the birthright of man, and where obedience is
compelled, there is no liberty. The answer is equally simple.
Government is necessary to man, and where obedience is not
compelled, there is no government.
If the subject refuses to obey, it is the duty of authority to use
compulsion. Society cannot subsist but by the power, first of
making laws, and then of enforcing them.
To one of the threats hissed out by the congress, I have put
nothing similar into the Cornish proclamation; because it is too
wild for folly, and too foolish for madness. If we do not withhold
our king and his parliament from taxing them, they will cross the
Atlantick and enslave us.
How they will come, they have not told us; perhaps they will take
wing, and light upon our coasts. When the cranes thus begin to
flutter, it is time for pygmies to keep their eyes about them. The
great orator observes, that they will be very fit, after they have
been taxed, to impose chains upon us. If they are so fit as their
friend describes them, and so willing as they describe
themselves, let us increase our army, and double our militia.
It has been, of late, a very general practice to talk of slavery
among those who are setting at defiance every power that keeps
the world in order. If the learned author of the Reflections on
Learning has rightly observed, that no man ever could give law
to language, it will be vain to prohibit the use of the word
slavery; but I could wish it more discreetly uttered: it is driven,
at one time, too hard into our ears by the loud hurricane of
Pennsylvanian eloquence, and, at another, glides too cold into
our hearts by the soft conveyance of a female patriot, bewailing
the miseries of her friends and fellow-citizens.
Such has been the progress of sedition, that those who, a few
years ago, disputed only our right of laying taxes, now question
the validity of every act of legislation. They consider themselves
as emancipated from obedience, and as being no longer the
subjects of the British crown. They leave us no choice, but of
yielding or conquering, of resigning our dominion or maintaining
it by force.
From force many endeavours have been used, either to dissuade,
or to deter us. Sometimes the merit of the Americans is exalted,
and sometimes their sufferings are aggravated. We are told of
their contributions to the last war; a war incited by their outcries,
and continued for their protection; a war by which none but
themselves were gainers. All that they can boast is, that they did
something for themselves, and did not wholly stand inactive,
while the sons of Britain were fighting in their cause.
If we cannot admire, we are called to pity them; to pity those
that show no regard to their mother-country; have obeyed no
law, which they could violate; have imparted no good, which they
could withhold; have entered into associations of fraud to rob
their creditors; and into combinations to distress all who
depended on their commerce. We are reproached with the
cruelty of shutting one port, where every port is shut against us.
We are censured as tyrannical, for hindering those from fishing,
who have condemned our merchants to bankruptcy, and our
manufacturers to hunger.
Others persuade us to give them more liberty, to take off
restraints, and relax authority; and tell us what happy
consequences will arise from forbearance; how their affections
will be conciliated, and into what diffusions of beneficence their
gratitude will luxuriate. They will love their friends. They will
reverence their protectors. They will throw themselves into our
arms, and lay their property at our feet; they will buy from no
other what we can sell them; they will sell to no other what we
wish to buy.
That any obligations should overpower their attention to profit,
we have known them long enough not to expect. It is not to be
expected from a more liberal people. With what kindness they
repay benefits, they are now showing us, who, as soon as we
have delivered them from France, are defying and proscribing us.
But if we will permit them to tax themselves, they will give us
more than we require. If we proclaim them independent, they
will, during pleasure, pay us a subsidy. The contest is not now for
money, but for power. The question is not, how much we shall
collect, but, by what authority the collection shall be made.
Those who find that the Americans cannot be shown, in any
form, that may raise love or pity, dress them in habiliments of
terrour, and try to make us think them formidable. The
Bostonians can call into the field ninety thousand men. While we
conquer all before us, new enemies will rise up behind, and our
work will be always to begin. If we take possession of the towns,
the colonists will retire into the inland regions, and the gain of
victory will be only empty houses, and a wide extent of waste
and desolation. If we subdue them for the present, they will
universally revolt in the next war, and resign us, without pity, to
subjection and destruction.
To all this it may be answered, that between losing America, and
resigning it, there is no great difference; that it is not very
reasonable to jump into the sea, because the ship is leaky. All
those evils may befall us, but we need not hasten them.
The dean of Gloucester has proposed, and seems to propose it
seriously, that we should, at once, release our claims, declare
them masters of themselves, and whistle them down the wind.
His opinion is, that our gain from them will be the same, and our
expense less. What they can have most cheaply from Britain,
they will still buy; what they can sell to us at the highest price,
they will still sell.
It is, however, a little hard, that, having so lately fought and
conquered for their safety, we should govern them no longer. By
letting them loose before the war, how many millions might have
been saved. One wild proposal is best answered by another. Let
us restore to the French what we have taken from them. We
shall see our colonists at our feet, when they have an enemy so
near them. Let us give the Indians arms, and teach them
discipline, and encourage them, now and then, to plunder a
plantation. Security and leisure are the parents of sedition.
While these different opinions are agitated, it seems to be
determined, by the legislature, that force shall be tried. Men of
the pen have seldom any great skill in conquering kingdoms, but
they have strong inclination to give advice. I cannot forbear to
wish, that this commotion may end without bloodshed, and that
the rebels may be subdued by terrour rather than by violence;
and, therefore, recommend such a force as may take away, not
only the power, but the hope of resistance, and, by conquering
without a battle, save many from the sword.
If their obstinacy continues, without actual hostilities, it may,
perhaps, be mollified, by turning out the soldiers to free quarters,
forbidding any personal cruelty or hurt. It has been proposed,
that the slaves should be set free, an act, which, surely, the
lovers of liberty cannot but commend. If they are furnished with
firearms for defence, and utensils for husbandry, and settled in
some simple form of government within the country, they may
be more grateful and honest than their masters.
Far be it from any Englishman, to thirst for the blood of his
fellow-subjects. Those who most deserve our resentment are,
unhappily, at less distance. The Americans, when the stamp act
was first proposed, undoubtedly disliked it, as every nation
dislikes an impost; but they had no thought of resisting it, till
they were encouraged and incited by European intelligence, from
men whom they thought their friends, but who were friends only
to themselves.
On the original contrivers of mischief let an insulted nation pour
out its vengeance. With whatever design they have inflamed this
pernicious contest, they are, themselves, equally detestable. If
they wish success to the colonies, they are traitors to this
country; if they wish their defeat, they are traitors, at once, to
America and England. To them, and them only, must be imputed
the interruption of commerce, and the miseries of war, the
sorrow of those that shall be ruined, and the blood of those that
shall fall.
Since the Americans have made it necessary to subdue them,
may they be subdued with the least injury possible to their
persons and their possessions! When they are reduced to
obedience, may that obedience be secured by stricter laws and
stronger obligations!
Nothing can be more noxious to society, than that erroneous
clemency, which, when a rebellion is suppressed, exacts no
forfeiture, and establishes no securities, but leaves the rebels in
their former state. Who would not try the experiment, which
promises advantage without expense? If rebels once obtain a
victory, their wishes are accomplished; if they are defeated, they
suffer little, perhaps less than their conquerors; however often
they play the game, the chance is always in their favour. In the
mean time, they are growing rich by victualling the troops that
we have sent against them, and, perhaps, gain more by the
residence of the army than they lose by the obstruction of their
port.
Their charters, being now, I suppose, legally forfeited, may be
modelled, as shall appear most commodious to the mothercountry. Thus the privileges which are found, by experience,
liable to misuse, will be taken away, and those who now bellow
as patriots, bluster as soldiers, and domineer as legislators, will
sink into sober merchants and silent planters, peaceably diligent,
and securely rich.
But there is one writer, and, perhaps, many who do not write, to
whom the contraction of these pernicious privileges appears very
dangerous, and who startle at the thoughts of "England free, and
America in chains." Children fly from their own shadow, and
rhetoricians are frighted by their own voices. Chains is,
undoubtedly, a dreadful word; but, perhaps, the masters of civil
wisdom may discover some gradations between chains and
anarchy. Chains need not be put upon those who will be
restrained without them. This contest may end in the softer
phrase of English superiority and American obedience.
We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the
diminution of our own liberties; an event, which none but very
perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus
fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for
liberty among the drivers of negroes?
But let us interrupt awhile this dream of conquest, settlement,
and supremacy. Let us remember, that being to contend,
according to one orator, with three millions of whigs, and,
according to another, with ninety thousand patriots of
Massachusett's bay, we may possibly be checked in our career of
reduction. We may be reduced to peace upon equal terms, or
driven from the western continent, and forbidden to violate, a
second time, the happy borders of the land of liberty. The time is
now, perhaps, at hand, which sir Thomas Browne predicted,
between jest and earnest:
"When America should no more send out her treasure,
But
spend it at home in American pleasure."
If we are allowed, upon our defeat, to stipulate conditions, I hope
the treaty of Boston will permit us to import into the
confederated cantons such products as they do not raise, and
such manufactures as they do not make, and cannot buy cheaper
from other nations, paying, like others, the appointed customs;
that, if an English ship salutes a fort with four guns, it shall be
answered, at least, with two; and that, if an Englishman be
inclined to hold a plantation, he shall only take an oath of
allegiance to the reigning powers, and be suffered, while he lives
inoffensively, to retain his own opinion of English rights,
unmolested in his conscience by an oath of abjuration.
Back to top.
Published in 1776, Common Sense challenged the authority of the British
government and the royal monarchy. The plain language that Paine used
spoke to the common people of America and was the first work to openly
ask for independence from Great Britain.
Introduction to the Third Edition
Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not YET
sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favour; a long habit of not
thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being
RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But
the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. As a
long and violent abuse of power, is generally the Means of calling the right
of it in question (and in Matters too which might never have been thought
of, had not the Sufferers been aggravated into the inquiry) and as the King
of England hath undertaken in his OWN RIGHT, to support the Parliament
in what he calls THEIRS, and as the good people of this country are
grievously oppressed by the combination, they have an undoubted
privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the
usurpation of either. In the following sheets, the author hath studiously
avoided every thing which is personal among ourselves. Compliments as
well as censure to individuals make no part thereof. The wise, and the
worthy, need not the triumph of a pamphlet; and those whose sentiments
are injudicious, or unfriendly, will cease of themselves unless too much
pains are bestowed upon their conversion. The cause of America is in a
great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances hath, and
will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the
principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected, and in the Event of which,
their Affections are interested. The laying a Country desolate with Fire and
Sword, declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and
extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the
Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling; of
which Class, regardless of Party Censure, is the AUTHOR.
P. S. The Publication of this new Edition hath been delayed, with a View of
taking notice (had it been necessary) of any Attempt to refute the Doctrine
of Independence: As no Answer hath yet appeared, it is now presumed
that none will, the Time needful for getting such a Performance ready for
the Public being considerably past. Who the Author of this Production is, is
wholly unnecessary to the Public, as the Object for Attention is the
DOCTRINE ITSELF, not the MAN. Yet it may not be unnecessary to say,
That he is unconnected with any Party, and under no sort of Influence
public or private, but the influence of reason and principle.
Philadelphia, February 14, 1776
Of the Origin and Design of Government in General, with
Concise Remarks on the English Constitution
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave
little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different,
but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and
government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness
POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by
restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates
distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state,
is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we
suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which
we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is
heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.
Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of
kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the
impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would
need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary
to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of
the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every
other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore,
security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably
follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us,
with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.
In order to gain a clear and just idea of the design and end of government,
let us suppose a small number of persons settled in some sequestered
part of the earth, unconnected with the rest; they will then represent the
first peopling of any country, or of the world. In this state of natural liberty,
society will be their first thought. A thousand motives will excite them
thereto; the strength of one man is so unequal to his wants, and his mind
so unfitted for perpetual solitude, that he is soon obliged to seek
assistance and relief of another, who in his turn requires the same. Four or
five united would be able to raise a tolerable dwelling in the midst of a
wilderness, but one man might labour out the common period of life
without accomplishing any thing; when he had felled his timber he could
not remove it, nor erect it after it was removed; hunger in the mean time
would urge him to quit his work, and every different want would call him a
different way. Disease, nay even misfortune, would be death; for, though
neither might be mortal, yet either would disable him from living, and
reduce him to a state in which he might rather be said to perish than to die.
Thus necessity, like a gravitating power, would soon form our newly
arrived emigrants into society, the reciprocal blessings of which would
supersede, and render the obligations of law and government unnecessary
while they remained perfectly just to each other; but as nothing but Heaven
is impregnable to vice, it will unavoidably happen that in proportion as they
surmount the first difficulties of emigration, which bound them together in a
common cause, they will begin to relax in their duty and attachment to
each other: and this remissness will point out the necessity of establishing
some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue.
Some convenient tree will afford them a State House, under the branches
of which the whole Colony may assemble to deliberate on public matters. It
is more than probable that their first laws will have the title only of
Regulations and be enforced by no other penalty than public disesteem. In
this first parliament every man by natural right will have a seat.
But as the Colony encreases, the public concerns will encrease likewise,
and the distance at which the members may be separated, will render it
too inconvenient for all of them to meet on every occasion as at first, when
their number was small, their habitations near, and the public concerns few
and trifling. This will point out the convenience of their consenting to leave
the legislative part to be managed by a select number chosen from the
whole body, who are supposed to have the same concerns at stake which
those have who appointed them, and who will act in the same manner as
the whole body would act were they present. If the colony continue
encreasing, it will become necessary to augment the number of
representatives, and that the interest of every part of the colony may be
attended to, it will be found best to divide the whole into convenient parts,
each part sending its proper number: and that the ELECTED might never
form to themselves an interest separate from the ELECTORS, prudence
will point out the propriety of having elections often: because as the
ELECTED might by that means return and mix again with the general body
of the ELECTORS in a few months, their fidelity to the public will be
secured by the prudent reflection of not making a rod for themselves. And
as this frequent interchange will establish a common interest with every
part of the community, they will mutually and naturally support each other,
and on this, (not on the unmeaning name of king,) depends the
STRENGTH OF GOVERNMENT, AND THE HAPPINESS OF THE
GOVERNED.
Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered
necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is
the design and end of government, viz. Freedom and security. And
however our eyes may be dazzled with show, or our ears deceived by
sound; however prejudice may warp our wills, or interest darken our
understanding, the simple voice of nature and reason will say, 'tis right.
I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature which
no art can overturn, viz. that the more simple any thing is, the less liable it
is to be disordered, and the easier repaired when disordered; and with this
maxim in view I offer a few remarks on the so much boasted constitution of
England. That it was noble for the dark and slavish times in which it was
erected, is granted. When the world was overrun with tyranny the least
remove therefrom was a glorious rescue. But that it is imperfect, subject to
convulsions, and incapable of producing what it seems to promise is easily
demonstrated.
Absolute governments, (tho' the disgrace of human nature) have this
advantage with them, they are simple; if the people suffer, they know the
head from which their suffering springs; know likewise the remedy; and are
not bewildered by a variety of causes and cures. But the constitution of
England is so exceedingly complex, that the nation may suffer for years
together without being able to discover in which part the fault lies; some
will say in one and some in another, and every political physician will
advise a different medicine.
I know it is difficult to get over local or long standing prejudices, yet if we
will suffer ourselves to examine the component parts of the English
Constitution, we shall find them to be the base remains of two ancient
tyrannies, compounded with some new Republican materials.
First. — The remains of Monarchical tyranny in the person of the King.
Secondly. — The remains of Aristocratical tyranny in the persons of the
Peers.
Thirdly. — The new Republican materials, in the persons of the Commons,
on whose virtue depends the freedom of England.
The two first, by being hereditary, are independent of the People;
wherefore in a CONSTITUTIONAL SENSE they contribute nothing towards
the freedom of the State.
To say that the constitution of England is an UNION of three powers,
reciprocally CHECKING each other, is farcical; either the words have no
meaning, or they are flat contradictions.
First. — That the King it not to be trusted without being looked after; or in
other words, that a thirst for absolute power is the natural disease of
monarchy.
Secondly. — That the Commons, by being appointed for that purpose, are
either wiser or more worthy of confidence than the Crown.
But as the same constitution which gives the Commons a power to check
the King by withholding the supplies, gives afterwards the King a power to
check the Commons, by empowering him to reject their other bills; it again
supposes that the King is wiser than those whom it has already supposed
to be wiser than him. A mere absurdity!
There is something exceedingly ridiculous in the composition of Monarchy;
it first excludes a man from the means of information, yet empowers him to
act in cases where the highest judgment is required. The state of a king
shuts him from the World, yet the business of a king requires him to know
it thoroughly; wherefore the different parts, by unnaturally opposing and
destroying each other, prove the whole character to be absurd and
useless.
Some writers have explained the English constitution thus: the King, say
they, is one, the people another; the Peers are a house in behalf of the
King, the commons in behalf of the people; but this hath all the distinctions
of a house divided against itself; and though the expressions be pleasantly
arranged, yet when examined they appear idle and ambiguous; and it will
always happen, that the nicest construction that words are capable of,
when applied to the description of something which either cannot exist, or
is too incomprehensible to be within the compass of description, will be
words of sound only, and though they may amuse the ear, they cannot
inform the mind: for this explanation includes a previous question, viz.
HOW CAME THE KING BY A POWER WHICH THE PEOPLE ARE
AFRAID TO TRUST, AND ALWAYS OBLIGED TO CHECK? Such a power
could not be the gift of a wise people, neither can any power, WHICH
NEEDS CHECKING, be from God; yet the provision which the constitution
makes supposes such a power to exist.
But the provision is unequal to the task; the means either cannot or will not
accomplish the end, and the whole affair is a Felo de se: for as the greater
weight will always carry up the less, and as all the wheels of a machine are
put in motion by one, it only remains to know which power in the
constitution has the most weight, for that will govern: and tho' the others, or
a part of them, may clog, or, as the phrase is, check the rapidity of its
motion, yet so long as they cannot stop it, their endeavours will be
ineffectual: The first moving power will at last have its way, and what it
wants in speed is supplied by time.
That the crown is this overbearing part in the English constitution needs
not be mentioned, and that it derives its whole consequence merely from
being the giver of places and pensions is self-evident; wherefore, though
we have been wise enough to shut and lock a door against absolute
Monarchy, we at the same time have been foolish enough to put the
Crown in possession of the key.
The prejudice of Englishmen, in favour of their own government, by King,
Lords and Commons, arises as much or more from national pride than
reason. Individuals are undoubtedly safer in England than in some other
countries: but the will of the king is as much the law of the land in Britain as
in France, with this difference, that instead of proceeding directly from his
mouth, it is handed to the people under the formidable shape of an act of
parliament. For the fate of Charles the First hath only made kings more
subtle — not more just.
Wherefore, laying aside all national pride and prejudice in favour of modes
and forms, the plain truth is that IT IS WHOLLY OWING TO THE
CONSTITUTION OF THE PEOPLE, AND NOT TO THE CONSTITUTION
OF THE GOVERNMENT that the crown is not as oppressive in England as
in Turkey.
An inquiry into the CONSTITUTIONAL ERRORS in the English form of
government, is at this time highly necessary; for as we are never in a
proper condition of doing justice to others, while we continue under the
influence of some leading partiality, so neither are we capable of doing it to
ourselves while we remain fettered by any obstinate prejudice. And as a
man who is attached to a prostitute is unfitted to choose or judge of a wife,
so any prepossession in favour of a rotten constitution of government will
disable us from discerning a good one.
Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession
MANKIND being originally equals in the order of creation, the equality
could only be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance: the
distinctions of rich and poor may in a great measure be accounted for, and
that without having recourse to the harsh ill-sounding names of oppression
and avarice. Oppression is often the CONSEQUENCE, but seldom or
never the MEANS of riches; and tho' avarice will preserve a man from
being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to be
wealthy.
But there is another and great distinction for which no truly natural or
religious reason can be assigned, and that is the distinction of men into
KINGS and SUBJECTS. Male and female are the distinctions of nature,
good and bad the distinctions of Heaven; but how a race of men came into
the world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished like some new
species, is worth inquiring into, and whether they are the means of
happiness or of misery to mankind.
In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology there
were no kings; the consequence of which was, there were no wars; it is the
pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion. Holland, without a king
hath enjoyed more peace for this last century than any of the monarchical
governments in Europe. Antiquity favours the same remark; for the quiet
and rural lives of the first Patriarchs have a snappy something in them,
which vanishes when we come to the history of Jewish royalty.
Government by kings was first introduced into the world by the Heathens,
from whom the children of Israel copied the custom. It was the most
prosperous invention the Devil ever set on foot for the promotion of
idolatry. The Heathens paid divine honours to their deceased kings, and
the Christian World hath improved on the plan by doing the same to their
living ones. How impious is the title of sacred Majesty applied to a worm,
who in the midst of his splendor is crumbling into dust!
As the exalting one man so greatly above the rest cannot be justified on
the equal rights of nature, so neither can it be defended on the authority of
scripture; for the will of the Almighty as declared by Gideon, and the
prophet Samuel, expressly disapproves of government by Kings.
All anti-monarchical parts of scripture have been very smoothly glossed
over in monarchical governments, but they undoubtedly merit the attention
of countries which have their governments yet to form. "Render unto Cesar
the things which are Cesar's" is the scripture doctrine of courts, yet it is no
support of monarchical government, for the Jews at that time were without
a king, and in a state of vassalage to the Romans.
Near three thousand years passed away, from the Mosaic account of the
creation, till the Jews under a national delusion requested a king. Till then
their form of government (except in extraordinary cases where the
Almighty interposed) was a kind of Republic, administered by a judge and
the elders of the tribes. Kings they had none, and it was held sinful to
acknowledge any being under that title but the Lord of Hosts. And when a
man seriously reflects on the idolatrous homage which is paid to the
persons of kings, he need not wonder that the Almighty, ever jealous of his
honour, should disapprove a form of government which so impiously
invades the prerogative of Heaven.
Monarchy is ranked in scripture as one of the sins of the Jews, for which a
curse in reserve is denounced against them. The history of that transaction
is worth attending to.
The children of Israel being oppressed by the Midianites, Gideon marched
against them with a small army, and victory thro' the divine interposition
decided in his favour. The Jews, elate with success, and attributing it to the
generalship of Gideon, proposed making him a king, saying, "Rule thou
over us, thou and thy son, and thy son's son." Here was temptation in its
fullest extent; not a kingdom only, but an hereditary one; but Gideon in the
piety of his soul replied, "I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule
over you. THE LORD SHALL RULE OVER YOU." Words need not be
more explicit: Gideon doth not decline the honour, but denieth their right to
give it; neither doth he compliment them with invented declarations of his
thanks, but in the positive style of a prophet charges them with disaffection
to their proper Sovereign, the King of Heaven.
About one hundred and thirty years after this, they fell again into the same
error. The hankering which the Jews had for the idolatrous customs of the
Heathens, is something exceedingly unaccountable; but so it was, that
laying hold of the misconduct of Samuel's two sons, who were intrusted
with some secular concerns, they came in an abrupt and clamorous
manner to Samuel, saying, "Behold thou art old, and they sons walk not in
thy ways, now make us a king to judge us like all the other nations." And
here we cannot observe but that their motives were bad, viz. that they
might be LIKE unto other nations, i. e. the Heathens, whereas their true
glory lay in being as much UNLIKE them as possible. "But the thing
displeased Samuel when they said, give us a King to judge us; and
Samuel prayed unto the Lord, and the Lord said unto Samuel, hearken
unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee, for they have not
rejected thee, but they have rejected me, THAT I SHOULD NOT REIGN
OVER THEM. According to all the works which they have done since the
day that I brought them up out of Egypt even unto this day, wherewith they
have forsaken me, and served other Gods: so do they also unto thee. Now
therefore hearken unto their voice, howbeit, protest solemnly unto them
and show them the manner of the King that shall reign over them," i.e. not
of any particular King, but the general manner of the Kings of the earth
whom Israel was so eagerly copying after. And notwithstanding the great
distance of time and difference of manners, the character is still in fashion.
"And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people, that asked of
him a King. And he said, This shall be the manner of the King that shall
reign over you. He will take your sons and appoint them for himself for his
chariots and to be his horsemen, and some shall run before his chariots"
(this description agrees with the present mode of impressing men) "and he
will appoint him captains over thousands and captains over fifties, will set
them to clear his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his
instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots, And he will take your
daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers" (this
describes the expense and luxury as well as the oppression of Kings) "and
he will take your fields and your vineyards, and your olive yards, even the
best of them, and give them to his servants. And he will take the tenth of
your seed, and of your vineyards, and give them to his officers and to his
servants" (by which we see that bribery, corruption, and favouritism, are
the standing vices of Kings) "and he will take the tenth of your men
servants, and your maid servants, and your goodliest young men, and your
asses, and put them to his work: and he will take the tenth of your sheep,
and ye shall be his servants, and ye shall cry out in that day because of
your king which ye shell have chosen, AND THE LORD WILL NOT HEAR
YOU IN THAT DAY." This accounts for the continuation of Monarchy;
neither do the characters of the few good kings which have lived since,
either sanctify the title, or blot out the sinfulness of the origin; the high
encomium of David takes no notice of him OFFICIALLY AS A KING, but
only as a MAN after God's own heart. "Nevertheless the people refused to
obey the voice of Samuel, and they said, Nay, but we will have a king over
us, that we may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us, and
go out before us and fight our battles." Samuel continued to reason with
them but to no purpose; he set before them their ingratitude, but all would
not avail; and seeing them fully bent on their folly, he cried out, "I will call
unto the Lord, and he shall send thunder and rain" (which was then a
punishment, being in the time of wheat harvest) "that ye may perceive and
see that your wickedness is great which ye have done in the sight of the
Lord, IN ASKING YOU A KING. So Samuel called unto the Lord, and the
Lord sent thunder and rain that day, and all the people greatly feared the
Lord and Samuel. And all the people said unto Samuel, Pray for thy
servants unto the Lord thy God that we die not, for WE HAVE ADDED
UNTO OUR SINS THIS EVIL, TO ASK A KING." These portions of
scripture are direct and positive. They admit of no equivocal construction.
That the Almighty hath here entered his protest against monarchical
government is true, or the scripture is false. And a man hath good reason
to believe that there is as much of kingcraft as priestcraft in withholding the
scripture from the public in popish countries. For monarchy in every
instance is the popery of government.
To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary succession; and
as the first is a degradation and lessening of ourselves, so the second,
claimed as a matter of right, is an insult and imposition on posterity. For all
men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his
own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever, and tho' himself
might deserve some decent degree of honours of his contemporaries, yet
his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them. One of the
strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in Kings, is that
nature disapproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into
ridicule, by giving mankind an ASS FOR A LION.
Secondly, as no man at first could possess any other public honors than
were bestowed upon him, so the givers of those honors could have no
power to give away the right of posterity, and though they might say "We
choose you for our head," they could not without manifest injustice to their
children say "that your children and your children's children shall reign over
ours forever." Because such an unwise, unjust, unnatural compact might
(perhaps) in the next succession put them under the government of a
rogue or a fool. Most wise men in their private sentiments have ever
treated hereditary right with contempt; yet it is one of those evils which
when once established is not easily removed: many submit from fear,
others from superstition, and the more powerful part shares with the king
the plunder of the rest.
This is supposing the present race of kings in the world to have had an
honorable origin: whereas it is more than probable, that, could we take off
the dark covering of antiquity and trace them to their first rise, we should
find the first of them nothing better than the principal ruffian of some
restless gang, whose savage manners of pre-eminence in subtilty obtained
him the title of chief among plunderers; and who by increasing in power
and extending his depredations, overawed the quiet and defenseless to
purchase their safety by frequent contributions. Yet his electors could have
no idea of giving hereditary right to his descendants, because such a
perpetual exclusion of themselves was incompatible with the free and
restrained principles they professed to live by. Wherefore, hereditary
succession in the early ages of monarchy could not take place as a matter
of claim, but as something casual or complemental; but as few or no
records were extant in those days, the traditionary history stuff'd with
fables, it was very easy, after the lapse of a few generations, to trump up
some superstitious tale conveniently timed, Mahomet-like, to cram
hereditary right down the throats of the vulgar. Perhaps the disorders
which threatened, or seemed to threaten, on the decease of a leader and
the choice of a new one (for elections among ruffians could not be very
orderly) induced many at first to favour hereditary pretensions; by which
means it happened, as it hath happened since, that what at first was
submitted to as a convenience was afterwards claimed as a right.
England since the conquest hath known some few good monarchs, but
groaned beneath a much larger number of bad ones: yet no man in his
senses can say that their claim under William the Conqueror is a very
honourable one. A French bastard landing with an armed Banditti and
establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives, is
in plain terms a very paltry rascally original. It certainly hath no divinity in it.
However it is needless to spend much time in exposing the folly of
hereditary right; if there are any so weak as to believe it, let them
promiscuously worship the Ass and the Lion, and welcome. I shall neither
copy their humility, nor disturb their devotion.
Yet I should be glad to ask how they suppose kings came at first? The
question admits but of three answers, viz. either by lot, by election, or by
usurpation. If the first king was taken by lot, it establishes a precedent for
the next, which excludes hereditary succession. Saul was by lot, yet the
succession was not hereditary, neither does it appear from that transaction
that there was any intention it ever should. If the first king of any country
was by election, that likewise establishes a precedent for the next; for to
say, that the right of all future generations is taken away, by the act of the
first electors, in their choice not only of a king but of a family of kings for
ever, hath no parallel in or out of scripture but the doctrine of original sin,
which supposes the free will of all men lost in Adam; and from such
comparison, and it will admit of no other, hereditary succession can derive
no glory. for as in Adam all sinned, and as in the first electors all men
obeyed; as in the one all mankind were subjected to Satan, and in the
other to sovereignty; as our innocence was lost in the first, and our
authority in the last; and as both disable us from re-assuming some former
state and privilege, it unanswerably follows that original sin and hereditary
succession are parallels. Dishonourable rank! inglorious connection! yet
the most subtle sophist cannot produce a juster simile.
As to usurpation, no man will be so hardy as to defend it; and that William
the Conqueror was an usurper is a fact not to be contradicted. The plain
truth is, that the antiquity of English monarchy will not bear looking into.
But it is not so much the absurdity as the evil of hereditary succession
which concerns mankind. Did it ensure a race of good and wise men it
would have the seal of divine authority, but as it opens a door to the
FOOLISH, the WICKED, and the IMPROPER, it hath in it the nature of
oppression. Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to
obey, soon grow insolent. Selected from the rest of mankind, their minds
are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so
materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of
knowing its true interests, and when they succeed in the government are
frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.
Another evil which attends hereditary succession is, that the throne is
subject to be possessed by a minor at any age; all which time the regency
acting under the cover of a king have every opportunity and inducement to
betray their trust. The same national misfortune happens when a king worn
out with age and infirmity enters the last stage of human weakness. In both
these cases the public becomes a prey to every miscreant who can tamper
successfully with the follies either of age or infancy.
The most plausible plea which hath ever been offered in favor of hereditary
succession is, that it preserves a nation from civil wars; and were this true,
it would be weighty; whereas it is the most bare-faced falsity ever imposed
upon mankind. The whole history of England disowns the fact. Thirty kings
and two minors have reigned in that distracted kingdom since the
conquest, in which time there has been (including the revolution) no less
than eight civil wars and nineteen Rebellions. Wherefore instead of making
for peace, it makes against it, and destroys the very foundation it seems to
stand upon.
The contest for monarchy and succession, between the houses of York
and Lancaster, laid England in a scene of blood for many years. Twelve
pitched battles besides skirmishes and sieges were fought between Henry
and Edward. Twice was Henry prisoner to Edward, who in his turn was
prisoner to Henry. And so uncertain is the fate of war and the temper of a
nation, when nothing but personal matters are the ground of a quarrel, that
Henry was taken in triumph from a prison to a palace, and Edward obliged
to fly from a palace to a foreign land; yet, as sudden transitions of temper
are seldom lasting, Henry in his turn was driven from the throne, and
Edward re-called to succeed him. The parliament always following the
strongest side.
This contest began in the reign of Henry the Sixth, and was not entirely
extinguished till Henry the Seventh, in whom the families were united.
Including a period of 67 years, viz. from 1422 to 1489.
In short, monarchy and succession have laid (not this or that kingdom only)
but the world in blood and ashes. 'Tis a form of government which the word
of God bears testimony against, and blood will attend it.
If we enquire into the business of a King, we shall find that in some
countries they may have none; and after sauntering away their lives
without pleasure to themselves or advantage to the nation, withdraw from
the scene, and leave their successors to tread the same idle round. In
absolute monarchies the whole weight of business civil and military lies on
the King; the children of Israel in their request for a king urged this plea,
"that he may judge us, and go out before us and fight our battles." But in
countries where he is neither a Judge nor a General, as in England, a man
would be puzzled to know what IS his business.
The nearer any government approaches to a Republic, the less business
there is for a King. It is somewhat difficult to find a proper name for the
government of England. Sir William Meredith calls it a Republic; but in its
present state it is unworthy of the name, because the corrupt influence of
the Crown, by having all the places in its disposal, hath so effectually
swallowed up the power, and eaten out the virtue of the House of
Commons (the Republican part in the constitution) that the government of
England is nearly as monarchical as that of France or Spain. Men fall out
with names without understanding them. For 'tis the Republican and not
the Monarchical part of the Constitution of England which Englishmen
glory in, viz. the liberty of choosing an House of Commons from out of their
own body — and it is easy to see that when Republican virtues fail, slavery
ensues. Why is the constitution of England sickly, but because monarchy
hath poisoned the Republic; the Crown hath engrossed the Commons.
In England a King hath little more to do than to make war and give away
places; which, in plain terms, is to empoverish the nation and set it
together by the ears. A pretty business indeed for a man to be allowed
eight hundred thousand sterling a year for, and worshipped into the
bargain! Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of
God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.
Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs
IN the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain
arguments, and common sense: and have no other preliminaries to settle
with the reader, than that he will divest himself of prejudice and
prepossession, and suffer his reason and his feelings to determine for
themselves that he will put on, or rather that he will not put off, the true
character of a man, and generously enlarge his views beyond the present
day.
Volumes have been written on the subject of the struggle between England
and America. Men of all ranks have embarked in the controversy, from
different motives, and with various designs; but all have been ineffectual,
and the period of debate is closed. Arms as the last resource decide the
contest; the appeal was the choice of the King, and the Continent has
accepted the challenge.
It hath been reported of the late Mr. Pelham (who tho' an able minister was
not without his faults) that on his being attacked in the House of Commons
on the score that his measures were only of a temporary kind, replied,
"THEY WILL LAST MY TIME." Should a thought so fatal and unmanly
possess the Colonies in the present contest, the name of ancestors will be
remembered by future generations with detestation.
The Sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. 'Tis not the affair of a
City, a County, a Province, or a Kingdom; but of a Continent — of at least
one-eighth part of the habitable Globe. 'Tis not the concern of a day, a
year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be
more or less affected even to the end of time, by the proceedings now.
Now is the seed-time of Continental union, faith and honour. The least
fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the
tender rind of a young oak; the wound would enlarge with the tree, and
posterity read in it full grown characters.
By referring the matter from argument to arms, a new era for politics is
struck — a new method of thinking hath arisen. All plans, proposals, &c.
prior to the nineteenth of April, i.e. to the commencement of hostilities, are
like the almanacks of the last year; which tho' proper then, are superseded
and useless now. Whatever was advanced by the advocates on either side
of the question then, terminated in one and the same point, viz. a union
with Great Britain; the only difference between the parties was the method
of effecting it; the one proposing force, the other friendship; but it hath so
far happened that the first hath failed, and the second hath withdrawn her
influence.
As much hath been said of the advantages of reconciliation, which, like an
agreeable dream, hath passed away and left us as we were, it is but right
that we should examine the contrary side of the argument, and enquire into
some of the many material injuries which these Colonies sustain, and
always will sustain, by being connected with and dependent on Great
Britain. To examine that connection and dependence, on the principles of
nature and common sense, to see what we have to trust to, if separated,
and what we are to expect, if dependent.
I have heard it asserted by some, that as America has flourished under her
former connection with Great Britain, the same connection is necessary
towards her future happiness, and will always have the same effect.
Nothing can be more fallacious than this kind of argument. We may as well
assert that because a child has thrived upon milk, that it is never to have
meat, or that the first twenty years of our lives is to become a precedent for
the next twenty. But even this is admitting more than is true; for I answer
roundly that America would have flourished as much, and probably much
more, had no European power taken any notice of her. The commerce by
which she hath enriched herself are the necessaries of life, and will always
have a market while eating is the custom of Europe.
But she has protected us, say some. That she hath engrossed us is true,
and defended the Continent at our expense as well as her own, is
admitted; and she would have defended Turkey from the same motive, viz.
— for the sake of trade and dominion.
Alas! we have been long led away by ancient prejudices and made large
sacrifices to superstition. We have boasted the protection of Great Britain,
without considering, that her motive was INTEREST not ATTACHMENT;
and that she did not protect us from OUR ENEMIES on OUR ACCOUNT;
but from HER ENEMIES on HER OWN ACCOUNT, from those who had
no quarrel with us on any OTHER ACCOUNT, and who will always be our
enemies on the SAME ACCOUNT. Let Britain waive her pretensions to the
Continent, or the Continent throw off the dependence, and we should be at
peace with France and Spain, were they at war with Britain. The miseries
of Hanover last war ought to warn us against connections.
It hath lately been asserted in parliament, that the Colonies have no
relation to each other but through the Parent Country, i.e. that
Pennsylvania and the Jerseys and so on for the rest, are sister Colonies by
the way of England; this is certainly a very roundabout way of proving
relationship, but it is the nearest and only true way of proving enmity (or
enemyship, if I may so call it.) France and Spain never were, nor perhaps
ever will be, our enemies as AMERICANS, but as our being the
SUBJECTS OF GREAT BRITAIN.
But Britain is the parent country, say some. Then the more shame upon
her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young, nor savages make
war upon their families. Wherefore, the assertion, if true, turns to her
reproach; but it happens not to be true, or only partly so, and the phrase
PARENT OR MOTHER COUNTRY hath been jesuitically adopted by the
King and his parasites, with a low papistical design of gaining an unfair
bias on the credulous weakness of our minds. Europe, and not England, is
the parent country of America. This new World hath been the asylum for
the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from EVERY PART of
Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother,
but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the
same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home, pursues their
descendants still.
In this extensive quarter of the globe, we forget the narrow limits of three
hundred and sixty miles (the extent of England) and carry our friendship on
a larger scale; we claim brotherhood with every European Christian, and
triumph in the generosity of the sentiment.
It is pleasant to observe by what regular gradations we surmount the force
of local prejudices, as we enlarge our acquaintance with the World. A man
born in any town in England divided into parishes, will naturally associate
most with his fellow parishioners (because their interests in many cases
will be common) and distinguish him by the name of NEIGHBOR; if he
meet him but a few miles from home, he drops the narrow idea of a street,
and salutes him by the name of TOWNSMAN; if he travel out of the county
and meet him in any other, he forgets the minor divisions of street and
town, and calls him COUNTRYMAN, i.e. COUNTYMAN; but if in their
foreign excursions they should associate in France, or any other part of
EUROPE, their local remembrance would be enlarged into that of
ENGLISHMEN. And by a just parity of reasoning, all Europeans meeting in
America, or any other quarter of the globe, are COUNTRYMEN; for
England, Holland, Germany, or Sweden, when compared with the whole,
stand in the same places on the larger scale, which the divisions of street,
town, and county do on the smaller ones; Distinctions too limited for
Continental minds. Not one third of the inhabitants, even of this province,
[Pennsylvania], are of English descent. Wherefore, I reprobate the phrase
of Parent or Mother Country applied to England only, as being false,
selfish, narrow and ungenerous.
But, admitting that we were all of English descent, what does it amount to?
Nothing. Britain, being now an open enemy, extinguishes every other
name and title: and to say that reconciliation is our duty, is truly farcical.
The first king of England, of the present line (William the Conqueror) was a
Frenchman, and half the peers of England are descendants from the same
country; wherefore, by the same method of reasoning, England ought to be
governed by France.
Much hath been said of the united strength of Britain and the Colonies, that
in conjunction they might bid defiance to the world. But this is mere
presumption; the fate of war is uncertain, neither do the expressions mean
anything; for this continent would never suffer itself to be drained of
inhabitants, to support the British arms in either Asia, Africa, or Europe.
Besides, what have we to do with setting the world at defiance? Our plan is
commerce, and that, well attended to, will secure us the peace and
friendship of all Europe; because it is the interest of all Europe to have
America a free port. Her trade will always be a protection, and her
barrenness of gold and silver secure her from invaders.
I challenge the warmest advocate for reconciliation to show a single
advantage that this continent can reap by being connected with Great
Britain. I repeat the challenge; not a single advantage is derived. Our corn
will fetch its price in any market in Europe, and our imported goods must
be paid for buy them where we will.
But the injuries and disadvantages which we sustain by that connection,
are without number; and our duty to mankind at large, as well as to
ourselves, instruct us to renounce the alliance: because, any submission
to, or dependence on, Great Britain, tends directly to involve this Continent
in European wars and quarrels, and set us at variance with nations who
would otherwise seek our friendship, and against whom we have neither
anger nor complaint. As Europe is our market for trade, we ought to form
no partial connection with any part of it. It is the true interest of America to
steer clear of European contentions, which she never can do, while, by her
dependence on Britain, she is made the makeweight in the scale of British
politics.
Europe is too thickly planted with Kingdoms to be long at peace, and
whenever a war breaks out between England and any foreign power, the
trade of America goes to ruin, BECAUSE OF HER CONNECTION WITH
BRITAIN. The next war may not turn out like the last, and should it not, the
advocates for reconciliation now will be wishing for separation then,
because neutrality in that case would be a safer convoy than a man of war.
Every thing that is right or reasonable pleads for separation. The blood of
the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, 'TIS TIME TO PART. Even the
distance at which the Almighty hath placed England and America is a
strong and natural proof that the authority of the one over the other, was
never the design of Heaven. The time likewise at which the Continent was
discovered, adds weight to the argument, and the manner in which it was
peopled, encreases the force of it. The Reformation was preceded by the
discovery of America: As if the Almighty graciously meant to open a
sanctuary to the persecuted in future years, when home should afford
neither friendship nor safety.
The authority of Great Britain over this continent, is a form of government,
which sooner or later must have an end: And a serious mind can draw no
true pleasure by looking forward, under the painful and positive conviction
that what he calls "the present constitution" is merely temporary. As
parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not
sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity:
And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation
into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and
pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our
children in our hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life; that
eminence will present a prospect which a few present fears and prejudices
conceal from our sight.
Though I would carefully avoid giving unnecessary offence, yet I am
inclined to believe, that all those who espouse the doctrine of
reconciliation, may be included within the following descriptions. Interested
men, who are not to be trusted, weak men who CANNOT see, prejudiced
men who will not see, and a certain set of moderate men who think better
of the European world than it deserves; and this last class, by an ill-judged
deliberation, will be the cause of more calamities to this Continent than all
the other three.
It is the good fortune of many to live distant from the scene of present
sorrow; the evil is not sufficiently brought to their doors to make them feel
the precariousness with which all American property is possessed. But let
our imaginations transport us a few moments to Boston; that seat of
wretchedness will teach us wisdom, and instruct us for ever to renounce a
power in whom we can have no trust. The inhabitants of that unfortunate
city who but a few months ago were in ease and affluence, have now no
other alternative than to stay and starve, or turn out to beg. Endangered by
the fire of their friends if they continue within the city and plundered by the
soldiery if they leave it, in their present situation they are prisoners without
the hope of redemption, and in a general attack for their relief they would
be exposed to the fury of both armies.
Men of passive tempers look somewhat lightly over the offences of Great
Britain, and, still hoping for the best, are apt to call out, "Come, come, we
shall be friends again for all this." But examine the passions and feelings of
mankind: bring the doctrine of reconciliation to the touchstone of nature,
and then tell me whether you can hereafter love, honour, and faithfully
serve the power that hath carried fire and sword into your land? If you
cannot do all these, then are you only deceiving yourselves, and by your
delay bringing ruin upon posterity. Your future connection with Britain,
whom you can neither love nor honour, will be forced and unnatural, and
being formed only on the plan of present convenience, will in a little time
fall into a relapse more wretched than the first. But if you say, you can still
pass the violations over, then I ask, hath your house been burnt? Hath
your property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children
destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a
child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you
have not, then are you not a judge of those who have. But if you have, and
can still shake hands with the murderers, then are you unworthy the name
of husband, father, friend or lover, and whatever may be your rank or title
in life, you have the heart of a coward, and the spirit of a sycophant.
This is not inflaming or exaggerating matters, but trying them by those
feelings and affections which nature justifies, and without which, we should
be incapable of discharging the social duties of life, or enjoying the
felicities of it. I mean not to exhibit horror for the purpose of provoking
revenge, but to awaken us from fatal and unmanly slumbers, that we may
pursue determinately some fixed object. It is not in the power of Britain or
of Europe to conquer America, if she do not conquer herself by delay and
timidity. The present winter is worth an age if rightly employed, but if lost or
neglected, the whole continent will partake of the misfortune; and there is
no punishment which that man will not deserve, be he who, or what, or
where he will, that may be the means of sacrificing a season so precious
and useful.
It is repugnant to reason, to the universal order of things to all examples
from former ages, to suppose, that this continent can longer remain subject
to any external power. The most sanguine in Britain does not think so. The
utmost stretch of human wisdom cannot, at this time, compass a plan short
of separation, which can promise the continent even a year's security.
Reconciliation is now a falacious dream. Nature hath deserted the
connexion, and Art cannot supply her place. For, as Milton wisely
expresses, "never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly
hate have pierced so deep."
Every quiet method for peace hath been ineffectual. Our prayers have
been rejected with disdain; and only tended to convince us, that nothing
flatters vanity, or confirms obstinacy in Kings more than repeated
petitioning — and nothing hath contributed more than that very measure to
make the Kings of Europe absolute: Witness Denmark and Sweden.
Wherefore, since nothing but blows will do, for God's sake, let us come to
a final separation, and not leave the next generation to be cutting throats,
under the violated unmeaning names of parent and child.
To say, they will never attempt it again is idle and visionary, we thought so
at the repeal of the stamp act, yet a year or two undeceived us; as well
may we suppose that nations, which have been once defeated, will never
renew the quarrel.
As to government matters, it is not in the power of Britain to do this
continent justice: The business of it will soon be too weighty, and intricate,
to be managed with any tolerable degree of convenience, by a power, so
distant from us, and so very ignorant of us; for if they cannot conquer us,
they cannot govern us. To be always running three or four thousand miles
with a tale or a petition, waiting four or five months for an answer, which
when obtained requires five or six more to explain it in, will in a few years
be looked upon as folly and childishness — There was a time when it was
proper, and there is a proper time for it to cease.
Small islands not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects
for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd,
in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island. In no
instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet, and
as England and America, with respect to each other, reverses the common
order of nature, it is evident they belong to different systems: England to
Europe, America to itself.
I am not induced by motives of pride, party, or resentment to espouse the
doctrine of separation and independence; I am clearly, positively, and
conscientiously persuaded that it is the true interest of this continent to be
so; that every thing short of that is mere patchwork, that it can afford no
lasting felicity, — that it is leaving the sword to our children, and shrinking
back at a time, when, a little more, a little farther, would have rendered this
continent the glory of the earth.
As Britain hath not manifested the least inclination towards a compromise,
we may be assured that no terms can be obtained worthy the acceptance
of the continent, or any ways equal to the expense of blood and treasure
we have been already put to.
The object, contended for, ought always to bear some just proportion to
the expense. The removal of North, or the whole detestable junto, is a
matter unworthy the millions we have expended. A temporary stoppage of
trade, was an inconvenience, which would have sufficiently balanced the
repeal of all the acts complained of, had such repeals been obtained; but if
the whole continent must take up arms, if every man must be a soldier, it is
scarcely worth our while to fight against a contemptible ministry only.
Dearly, dearly, do we pay for the repeal of the acts, if that is all we fight for;
for in a just estimation, it is as great a folly to pay a Bunker-hill price for
law, as for land. As I have always considered the independency of this
continent, as an event, which sooner or later must arrive, so from the late
rapid progress of the continent to maturity, the event could not be far off.
Wherefore, on the breaking out of hostilities, it was not worth the while to
have disputed a matter, which time would have finally redressed, unless
we meant to be in earnest; otherwise, it is like wasting an estate on a suit
at law, to regulate the trespasses of a tenant, whose lease is just expiring.
No man was a warmer wisher for reconciliation than myself, before the
fatal nineteenth of April 1775, but the moment the event of that day was
made known, I rejected the hardened, sullen tempered Pharaoh of
England for ever; and disdain the wretch, that with the pretended title of
FATHER OF HIS PEOPLE, can unfeelingly hear of their slaughter, and
composedly sleep with their blood upon his soul.
But admitting that matters were now made up, what would be the event? I
answer, the ruin of the continent. And that for several reasons.
First. The powers of governing still remaining in the hands of the king, he
will have a negative over the whole legislation of this continent. And as he
hath shewn himself such an inveterate enemy to liberty, and discovered
such a thirst for arbitrary power; is he, or is he not, a proper man to say to
these colonies, "You shall make no laws but what I please." And is there
any inhabitant in America so ignorant, as not to know, that according to
what is called the present constitution, that this continent can make no
laws but what the king gives it leave to; and is there any man so unwise,
as not to see, that (considering what has happened) he will suffer no law to
be made here, but such as suit his purpose. We may be as effectually
enslaved by the want of laws in America, as by submitting to laws made for
us in England. After matters are made up (as it is called) can there be any
doubt, but the whole power of the crown will be exerted, to keep this
continent as low and humble as possible? Instead of going forward we
shall go backward, or be perpetually quarrelling or ridiculously petitioning.
— We are already greater than the king wishes us to be, and will he not
hereafter endeavour to make us less? To bring the matter to one point. Is
the power who is jealous of our prosperity, a proper power to govern us?
Whoever says No to this question is an independent, for independency
means no more, than, whether we shall make our own laws, or, whether
the king, the greatest enemy this continent hath, or can have, shall tell us,
"there shall be no laws but such as I like."
But the king you will say has a negative in England; the people there can
make no laws without his consent. In point of right and good order, there is
something very ridiculous, that a youth of twenty-one (which hath often
happened) shall say to several millions of people, older and wiser than
himself, I forbid this or that act of yours to be law. But in this place I decline
this sort of reply, though I will never cease to expose the absurdity of it,
and only answer, that England being the King's residence, and America
not so, make quite another case. The king's negative here is ten times
more dangerous and fatal than it can be in England, for there he will
scarcely refuse his consent to a bill for putting England into as strong a
state of defence as possible, and in America he would never suffer such a
bill to be passed.
America is only a secondary object in the system of British politics,
England consults the good of this country, no farther than it answers her
own purpose. Wherefore, her own interest leads her to suppress the
growth of ours in every case which doth not promote her advantage, or in
the least interferes with it. A pretty state we should soon be in under such
a second-hand government, considering what has happened! Men do not
change from enemies to friends by the alteration of a name: And in order
to shew that reconciliation now is a dangerous doctrine, I affirm, that it
would be policy in the king at this time, to repeal the acts for the sake of
reinstating himself in the government of the provinces; in order that HE
MAY ACCOMPLISH BY CRAFT AND SUBTILITY, IN THE LONG RUN,
WHAT HE CANNOT DO BY FORCE AND VIOLENCE IN THE SHORT
ONE. Reconciliation and ruin are nearly related.
Secondly. That as even the best terms, which we can expect to obtain, can
amount to no more than a temporary expedient, or a kind of government
by guardianship, which can last no longer than till the colonies come of
age, so the general face and state of things, in the interim, will be unsettled
and unpromising. Emigrants of property will not choose to come to a
country whose form of government hangs but by a thread, and who is
every day tottering on the brink of commotion and disturbance; and
numbers of the present inhabitants would lay hold of the interval, to
dispose of their effects, and quit the continent.
But the most powerful of all arguments, is, that nothing but independence,
i. e. a continental form of government, can keep the peace of the continent
and preserve it inviolate from civil wars. I dread the event of a
reconciliation with Britain now, as it is more than probable, that it will
followed by a revolt somewhere or other, the consequences of which may
be far more fatal than all the malice of Britain.
Thousands are already ruined by British barbarity; (thousands more will
probably suffer the same fate.) Those men have other feelings than us
who have nothing suffered. All they now possess is liberty, what they
before enjoyed is sacrificed to its service, and having nothing more to lose,
they disdain submission. Besides, the general temper of the colonies,
towards a British government, will be like that of a youth, who is nearly out
of his time; they will care very little about her. And a government which
cannot preserve the peace, is no government at all, and in that case we
pay our money for nothing; and pray what is it that Britain can do, whose
power will be wholly on paper, should a civil tumult break out the very day
after reconciliation? I have heard some men say, many of whom I believe
spoke without thinking, that they dreaded an independence, fearing that it
would produce civil wars. It is but seldom that our first thoughts are truly
correct, and that is the case here; for there are ten times more to dread
from a patched up connexion than from independence. I make the
sufferers case my own, and I protest, that were I driven from house and
home, my property destroyed, and my circumstances ruined, that as a
man, sensible of injuries, I could never relish the doctrine of reconciliation,
or consider myself bound thereby.
The colonies have manifested such a spirit of good order and obedience to
continental government, as is sufficient to make every reasonable person
easy and happy on that head. No man can assign the least pretence for
his fears, on any other grounds, that such as are truly childish and
ridiculous, viz. that one colony will be striving for superiority over another.
Where there are no distinctions there can be no superiority, perfect
equality affords no temptation. The republics of Europe are all (and we
may say always) in peace. Holland and Swisserland are without wars,
foreign or domestic: Monarchical governments, it is true, are never long at
rest; the crown itself is a temptation to enterprizing ruffians at home; and
that degree of pride and insolence ever attendant on regal authority, swells
into a rupture with foreign powers, in instances, where a republican
government, by being formed on more natural principles, would negotiate
the mistake.
If there is any true cause of fear respecting independence, it is because no
plan is yet laid down. Men do not see their way out — Wherefore, as an
opening into that business, I offer the following hints; at the same time
modestly affirming, that I have no other opinion of them myself, than that
they may be the means of giving rise to something better. Could the
straggling thoughts of individuals be collected, they would frequently form
materials for wise and able men to improve into useful matter.
Let the assemblies be annual, with a President only. The representation
more equal. Their business wholly domestic, and subject to the authority of
a Continental Congress.
Let each colony be divided into six, eight, or ten, convenient districts, each
district to send a proper number of delegates to Congress, so that each
colony send at least thirty. The whole number in Congress will be least
390. Each Congress to sit and to choose a president by the following
method. When the delegates are met, let a colony be taken from the whole
thirteen colonies by lot, after which, let the whole Congress choose (by
ballot) a president from out of the delegates of that province. In the next
Congress, let a colony be taken by lot from twelve only, omitting that
colony from which the president was taken in the former Congress, and so
proceeding on till the whole thirteen shall have had their proper rotation.
And in order that nothing may pass into a law but what is satisfactorily just,
not less than three fifths of the Congress to be called a majority. — He that
will promote discord, under a government so equally formed as this, would
have joined Lucifer in his revolt.
But as there is a peculiar delicacy, from whom, or in what manner, this
business must first arise, and as it seems most agreeable and consistent
that it should come from some intermediate body between the governed
and the governors, that is, between the Congress and the people, let a
CONTINENTAL CONFERENCE be held, in the following manner, and for
the following purpose.
A committee of twenty-six members of Congress, viz. two for each colony.
Two members for each House of Assembly, or Provincial Convention; and
five representatives of the people at large, to be chosen in the capital city
or town of each province, for, and in behalf of the whole province, by as
many qualified voters as shall think proper to attend from all parts of the
province for that purpose; or, if more convenient, the representatives may
be chosen in two or three of the most populous parts thereof. In this
conference, thus assembled, will be united, the two grand principles of
business, knowledge and power. The members of Congress, Assemblies,
or Conventions, by having had experience in national concerns, will be
able and useful counsellors, and the whole, being impowered by the
people, will have a truly legal authority.
The conferring members being met, let their business be to frame a
CONTINENTAL CHARTER, or Charter of the United Colonies; (answering
to what is called the Magna Charta of England) fixing the number and
manner of choosing members of Congress, members of Assembly, with
their date of sitting, and drawing the line of business and jurisdiction
between them: (Always remembering, that our strength is continental, not
provincial:) Securing freedom and property to all men, and above all
things, the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of
conscience; with such other matter as is necessary for a charter to contain.
Immediately after which, the said Conference to dissolve, and the bodies
which shall be chosen comformable to the said charter, to be the
legislators and governors of this continent for the time being: Whose peace
and happiness, may God preserve, Amen.
Should any body of men be hereafter delegated for this or some similar
purpose, I offer them the following extracts from that wise observer on
governments Dragonetti. "The science" says he "of the politician consists
in fixing the true point of happiness and freedom. Those men would
deserve the gratitude of ages, who should discover a mode of government
that contained the greatest sum of individual happiness, with the least
national expense."
"Dragonetti on virtue and rewards."
But where says some is the King of America? I'll tell you Friend, he reigns
above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain.
Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a
day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth
placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon,
by which the world may know, that so far as we approve as monarchy, that
in America THE LAW IS KING. For as in absolute governments the King is
law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no
other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the
conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the
people whose right it is.
A government of our own is our natural right: And when a man seriously
reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will become convinced,
that it is infinitely wiser and safer, to form a constitution of our own in a cool
deliberate manner, while we have it in our power, than to trust such an
interesting event to time and chance. If we omit it now, some, Massanello
may hereafter arise, who laying hold of popular disquietudes, may collect
together the desperate and discontented, and by assuming to themselves
the powers of government, may sweep away the liberties of the continent
like a deluge. Should the government of America return again into the
hands of Britain, the tottering situation of things, will be a temptation for
some desperate adventurer to try his fortune; and in such a case, what
relief can Britain give? Ere she could hear the news, the fatal business
might be done; and ourselves suffering like the wretched Britons under the
oppression of the Conqueror. Ye that oppose independence now, ye know
not what ye do; ye are opening a door to eternal tyranny, by keeping
vacant the seat of government. There are thousands, and tens of
thousands, who would think it glorious to expel from the continent, that
barbarous and hellish power, which hath stirred up the Indians and
Negroes to destroy us, the cruelty hath a double guilt, it is dealing brutally
by us, and treacherously by them.
To talk of friendship with those in whom our reason forbids us to have faith,
and our affections wounded through a thousand pores instruct us to detest,
is madness and folly. Every day wears out the little remains of kindred
between us and them, and can there be any reason to hope, that as the
relationship expires, the affection will increase, or that we shall agree
better, when we have ten times more and greater concerns to quarrel over
than ever?
Ye that tell us of harmony and reconciliation, can ye restore to us the time
that is past? Can ye give to prostitution its former innocence? Neither can
ye reconcile Britain and America. The last cord now is broken, the people
of England are presenting addresses against us. There are injuries which
nature cannot forgive; she would cease to be nature if she did. As well can
the lover forgive the ravisher of his mistress, as the continent forgive the
murders of Britain. The Almighty hath implanted in us these
unextinguishable feelings for good and wise purposes. They are the
guardians of his image in our hearts. They distinguish us from the herd of
common animals. The social compact would dissolve, and justice be
extirpated from the earth, or have only a casual existence were we callous
to the touches of affection. The robber, and the murderer, would often
escape unpunished, did not the injuries which our tempers sustain,
provoke us into justice.
O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the
tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression.
Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long
expelled her. — Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath
given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an
asylum for mankind.
Of the Present Ability of America: with some
Miscellaneous Reflections
I HAVE never met with a man, either in England or America, who hath not
confessed his opinion, that a separation between the countries would take
place one time or other: And there is no instance in which we have shown
less judgment, than in endeavoring to describe, what we call, the ripeness
or fitness of the continent for independence.
As all men allow the measure, and vary only in their opinion of the time, let
us, in order to remove mistakes, take a general survey of things, and
endeavor if possible to find out the VERY time. But I need not go far, the
inquiry ceases at once, for the TIME HATH FOUND US. The general
concurrence, the glorious union of all things, proves the fact.
'Tis not in numbers but in unity that our great strength lies: yet our present
numbers are sufficient to repel the force of all the world. The Continent
hath at this time the largest body of armed and disciplined men of any
power under Heaven: and is just arrived at that pitch of strength, in which
no single colony is able to support itself, and the whole, when united, is
able to do any thing. Our land force is more than sufficient, and as to Naval
affairs, we cannot be insensible that Britain would never suffer an
American man of war to be built, while the Continent remained in her
hands. Wherefore, we should be no forwarder an hundred years hence in
that branch than we are now; but the truth is, we should be less so,
because the timber of the Country is every day diminishing, and that which
will remain at last, will be far off or difficult to procure.
Were the Continent crowded with inhabitants, her sufferings under the
present circumstances would be intolerable. The more seaport-towns we
had, the more should we have both to defend and to lose. Our present
numbers are so happily proportioned to our wants, that no man need be
idle. The diminution of trade affords an army, and the necessities of an
army create a new trade.
Debts we have none: and whatever we may contract on this account will
serve as a glorious memento of our virtue. Can we but leave posterity with
a settled form of government, an independent constitution of its own, the
purchase at any price will be cheap. But to expend millions for the sake of
getting a few vile acts repealed, and routing the present ministry only, is
unworthy the charge, and is using posterity with the utmost cruelty;
because it is leaving them the great work to do, and a debt upon their
backs from which they derive no advantage. Such a thought's unworthy a
man of honour, and is the true characteristic of a narrow heart and a
piddling politician.
The debt we may contract doth not deserve our regard if the work be but
accomplished. No nation ought to be without a debt. A national debt is a
national bond; and when it bears no interest, is in no case a grievance.
Britain is oppressed with a debt of upwards of one hundred and forty
millions sterling, for which she pays upwards of four millions interest. And
as a compensation for her debt, she has a large navy; America is without a
debt, and without a navy; yet for the twentieth part of the English national
debt, could have a navy as large again. The navy of England is not worth
at this time more than three millions and a half sterling.
The first and second editions of this pamphlet were published without the
following calculations, which are now given as a proof that the above
estimation of the navy is a just one. See Entic's "Naval History," Intro., p.
56.
The charge of building a ship of each rate, and furnishing her with masts,
yards, sails, and rigging, together with a proportion of eight months
boatswain's and carpenter's sea-stores, as calculated by Mr. Burchett,
Secretary to the navy.
For a ship of 100 guns, ...... 35,553 £
90 "
.......... 29,886
80 "
.......... 23,638
70 "
.......... 17,785
60 "
.......... 14,197
50 "
.......... 10,606
40 "
.......... 7,558
30 "
.......... 5,846
20 "
.......... 3,710
And hence it is easy to sum up the value, or cost, rather, of the whole
British navy, which, in the year 1757, when it was at its greatest glory,
consisted of the following ships and guns.
Ships
6 ...
12 ...
12 ...
43 ...
35 ...
40 ...
45 ...
58 ...
Guns
Cost of One
Cost of All
100 .... 35,553 £ .... 213,318 £
90 ..... 29,886 ...... 358,632
80 ..... 23,638 ...... 283,656
70 ..... 17,785 ...... 764,755
60 ..... 14,197 ...... 496,895
50 ..... 10,605 ...... 424,240
40 ...... 7,558 ...... 340,110
20 ...... 3,710 ...... 215,180
85 sloops, bombs, and fireships,
one with another at 2,000 ...
170,000
Cost, ..... 3,266,786 £
Remains for guns, .......
233,214
Total, ..... 3,500,000 £
No country on the globe is so happily situated, or so internally capable of
raising a fleet as America. Tar, timber, iron, and cordage are her natural
produce. We need go abroad for nothing. Whereas the Dutch, who make
large profits by hiring out their ships of war to the Spaniards and
Portuguese, are obliged to import most of the materials they use. We
ought to view the building a fleet as an article of commerce, it being the
natural manufactory of this country. 'Tis the best money we can lay out. A
navy when finished is worth more than it cost: And is that nice point in
national policy, in which commerce and protection are united. Let us build;
if we want them not, we can sell; and by that means replace our paper
currency with ready gold and silver.
In point of manning a fleet, people in general run into great errors; it is not
necessary that one-fourth part should be sailors. The Terrible privateer,
captain Death, stood the hottest engagement of any ship last war, yet had
not twenty sailors on board, though her complement of men was upwards
of two hundred. A few able and social sailors will soon instruct a sufficient
number of active landsmen in the common work of a ship. Wherefore we
never can be more capable of beginning on maritime matters than now,
while our timber is standing, our fisheries blocked up, and our sailors and
shipwrights out of employ. Men of war, of seventy and eighty guns, were
built forty years ago in New England, and why not the same now? Ship
building is America's greatest pride, and in which she will, in time, excel the
whole world. The great empires of the east are mainly inland, and
consequently excluded from the possibility of rivalling her. Africa is in a
state of barbarism; and no power in Europe hath either such an extent of
coast, or such an internal supply of materials. Where nature hath given the
one, she hath withheld the other; to America only hath she been liberal to
both. The vast empire of Russia is almost shut out from the sea; wherefore
her boundless forests, her tar, iron and cordage are only articles of
commerce.
In point of safety, ought we to be without a fleet? We are not the little
people now which we were sixty years ago; at that time we might have
trusted our property in the streets, or fields rather, and slept securely
without locks or bolts to our doors and windows. The case is now altered,
and our methods of defence ought to improve with our increase of
property. A common pirate, twelve months ago, might have come up the
Delaware, and laid the city of Philadelphia under contribution for what sum
he pleased; and the same might have happened to other places. Nay, any
daring fellow, in a brig of fourteen or sixteen guns, might have robbed the
whole Continent, and carried off half a million of money. These are
circumstances which demand our attention, and point out the necessity of
naval protection.
Some perhaps will say, that after we have made it up with Britain, she will
protect us. Can they be so unwise as to mean that she will keep a navy in
our harbors for that purpose? Common sense will tell us that the power
which hath endeavoured to subdue us, is of all others the most improper to
defend us. Conquest may be effected under the pretence of friendship;
and ourselves, after a long and brave resistance, be at last cheated into
slavery. And if her ships are not to be admitted into our harbours, I would
ask, how is she going to protect us? A navy three or four thousand miles
off can be of little use, and on sudden emergencies, none at all. Wherefore
if we must hereafter protect ourselves, why not do it for ourselves? Why do
it for another?
The English list of ships of war is long and formidable, but not a tenth part
of them are at any time fit for service, numbers of them are not in being;
yet their names are pompously continued in the list; if only a plank be left
of the ship; and not a fifth part of such as are fit for service can be spared
on any one station at one time. The East and West Indies, Mediterranean,
Africa, and other parts, over which Britain extends her claim, make large
demands upon her navy. From a mixture of prejudice and inattention we
have contracted a false notion respecting the navy of England, and have
talked as if we should have the whole of it to encounter at once, and for
that reason supposed that we must have one as large; which not being
instantly practicable, has been made use of by a set of disguised Tories to
discourage our beginning thereon. Nothing can be further from truth than
this; for if America had only a twentieth part of the naval force of Britain,
she would be by far an over-match for her; because, as we neither have,
nor claim any foreign dominion, our whole force would be employed on our
own coast, where we should, in the long run, have two to one the
advantage of those who had three or four thousand miles to sail over
before they could attack us, and the same distance to return in order to
refit and recruit. And although Britain, by her fleet, hath a check over our
trade to Europe, we have as large a one over her trade to the West Indies,
which, by laying in the neighborhood of the Continent, lies entirely at its
mercy.
Some method might be fallen on to keep up a naval force in time of peace,
if we should judge it necessary to support a constant navy. If premiums
were to be given to merchants to build and employ in their service ships
mounted with twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty guns (the premiums to be in
proportion to the loss of bulk to the merchant), fifty or sixty of those ships,
with a few guardships on constant duty, would keep up a sufficient navy,
and that without burdening ourselves with the evil so loudly complained of
in England, of suffering their fleet in time of peace to lie rotting in the
docks. To unite the sinews of commerce and defence is sound policy; for
when our strength and our riches play into each other's hand, we need fear
no external enemy.
In almost every article of defence we abound. Hemp flourishes even to
rankness so that we need not want cordage. Our iron is superior to that of
other countries. Our small arms equal to any in the world. Cannon we can
cast at pleasure. Saltpetre and gunpowder we are every day producing.
Our knowledge is hourly improving. Resolution is our inherent character,
and courage hath never yet forsaken us. Wherefore, what is it that we
want? Why is it that we hesitate? From Britain we can expect nothing but
ruin. If she is once admitted to the government of America again, this
Continent will not be worth living in. Jealousies will be always arising;
insurrections will be constantly happening; and who will go forth to quell
them? Who will venture his life to reduce his own countrymen to a foreign
obedience? The difference between Pennsylvania and Connecticut,
respecting some unlocated lands, shows the insignificance of a British
government, and fully proves that nothing but Continental authority can
regulate Continental matters.
Another reason why the present time is preferable to all others is, that the
fewer our numbers are, the more land there is yet unoccupied, which,
instead of being lavished by the king on his worthless dependents, may be
hereafter applied, not only to the discharge of the present debt, but to the
constant support of government. No nation under Heaven hath such an
advantage as this.
The infant state of the Colonies, as it is called, so far from being against, is
an argument in favour of independence. We are sufficiently numerous, and
were we more so we might be less united. 'Tis a matter worthy of
observation that the more a country is peopled, the smaller their armies
are. In military numbers, the ancients far exceeded the moderns; and the
reason is evident, for trade being the consequence of population, men
became too much absorbed thereby to attend to anything else. Commerce
diminishes the spirit both of patriotism and military defence. And history
sufficiently informs us that the bravest achievements were always
accomplished in the non-age of a nation. With the increase of commerce
England hath lost its spirit. The city of London, notwithstanding its
numbers, submits to continued insults with the patience of a coward. The
more men have to lose, the less willing are they to venture. The rich are in
general slaves to fear, and submit to courtly power with the trembling
duplicity of a spaniel.
Youth is the seed-time of good habits as well in nations as in individuals. It
might be difficult, if not impossible, to form the Continent into one
government half a century hence. The vast variety of interests, occasioned
by an increase of trade and population, would create confusion. Colony
would be against colony. Each being able would scorn each other's
assistance; and while the proud and foolish gloried in their little distinctions
the wise would lament that the union had not been formed before.
Wherefore the present time is the true time for establishing it. The intimacy
which is contracted in infancy, and the friendship which is formed in
misfortune, are of all others the most lasting and unalterable. Our present
union is marked with both these characters; we are young, and we have
been distressed; but our concord hath withstood our troubles, and fixes a
memorable era for posterity to glory in.
The present time, likewise, is that peculiar time which never happens to a
nation but once, viz., the time of forming itself into a government. Most
nations have let slip the opportunity, and by that means have been
compelled to receive laws from their conquerors, instead of making laws
for themselves. First, they had a king, and then a form of government;
whereas the articles or charter of government should be formed first, and
men delegated to execute them afterwards; but from the errors of other
nations let us learn wisdom, and lay hold of the present opportunity — TO
BEGIN GOVERNMENT AT THE RIGHT END.
When William the Conqueror subdued England, he gave them law at the
point of the sword; and, until we consent that the seat of government in
America be legally and authoritatively occupied, we shall be in danger of
having it filled by some fortunate ruffian, who may treat us in the same
manner, and then, where will be our freedom? Where our property?
As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of government to
protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other
business which government hath to do therewith. Let a man throw aside
that narrowness of soul, that selfishness of principle, which the niggards of
all professions are so unwilling to part with, and he will be at once
delivered of his fears on that head. Suspicion is the companion of mean
souls, and the bane of all good society. For myself, I fully and
conscientiously believe that it is the will of the Almighty that there should
be a diversity of religious opinions among us. It affords a larger field for our
Christian kindness; were we all of one way of thinking, our religious
dispositions would want matter for probation; and on this liberal principle I
look on the various denominations among us to be like children of the
same family, differing only in what is called their Christian names.
In page [97] I threw out a few thoughts on the propriety of a Continental
Charter (for I only presume to offer hints, not plans) and in this place I take
the liberty of re-mentioning the subject, by observing that a charter is to be
understood as a bond of solemn obligation, which the whole enters into, to
support the right of every separate part, whether of religion, professional
freedom, or property. A firm bargain and a right reckoning make long
friends.
I have heretofore likewise mentioned the necessity of a large and equal
representation; and there is no political matter which more deserves our
attention. A small number of electors, or a small number of
representatives, are equally dangerous. But if the number of the
representatives be not only small, but unequal, the danger is increased. As
an instance of this, I mention the following: when the petition of the
associators was before the House of Assembly of Pennsylvania, twentyeight members only were present; all the Bucks county members, being
eight, voted against it, and had seven of the Chester members done the
same, this whole province had been governed by two counties only; and
this danger it is always exposed to. The unwarrantable stretch likewise,
which that house made in their last sitting, to gain an undue authority over
the delegates of that province, ought to warn the people at large how they
trust power out of their own hands. A set of instructions for their delegates
were put together, which in point of sense and business would have
dishonoured a school-boy, and after being approved by a few, a very few,
without doors, were carried into the house, and there passed IN BEHALF
OF THE WHOLE COLONY; whereas, did the whole colony know with what
ill will that house had entered on some necessary public measures, they
would not hesitate a moment to think them unworthy of such a trust.
Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued
would grow into oppressions. Expedience and right are different things.
When the calamities of America required a consultation, there was no
method so ready, or at that time so proper, as to appoint persons from the
several houses of assembly for that purpose; and the wisdom with which
they have proceeded hath preserved this Continent from ruin. But as it is
more than probable that we shall never be without a CONGRESS, every
well wisher to good order must own that the mode for choosing members
of that body deserves consideration. And I put it as a question to those
who make a study of mankind, whether representation and election is not
too great a power for one and the same body of men to possess? When
we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not
hereditary.
It is from our enemies that we often gain excellent maxims, and are
frequently surprised into reason by their mistakes. Mr. Cornwall (one of the
Lords of the Treasury) treated the petition of the New York Assembly with
contempt, because THAT house, he said, consisted but of twenty-six
members, which trifling number, he argued, could not with decency be put
for the whole. We thank him for his involuntary honesty.
To CONCLUDE, however strange it may appear to some, or however
unwilling they may be to think so, matters not, but many strong and striking
reasons may be given to show that nothing can settle our affairs so
expeditiously as an open and determined declaration for independence.
Some of which are,
First. — It is the custom of Nations, when any two are at war, for some
other powers, not engaged in the quarrel, to step in as mediators, and
bring about the preliminaries of a peace; But while America calls herself
the subject of Great Britain, no power, however well disposed she may be,
can offer her mediation. Wherefore, in our present state we may quarrel on
for ever.
Secondly. — It is unreasonable to suppose that France or Spain will give
us any kind of assistance, if we mean only to make use of that assistance
for the purpose of repairing the breach, and strengthening the connection
between Britain and America; because, those powers would be sufferers
by the consequences.
Thirdly. — While we profess ourselves the subjects of Britain, we must, in
the eyes of foreign nations, be considered as Rebels. The precedent is
somewhat dangerous to their peace, for men to be in arms under the name
of subjects; we, on the spot, can solve the paradox; but to unite resistance
and subjection requires an idea much too refined for common
understanding.
Fourthly. — Were a manifesto to be published, and despatched to foreign
Courts, setting forth the miseries we have endured, and the peaceful
methods which we have ineffectually used for redress; declaring at the
same time that not being able longer to live happily or safely under the
cruel disposition of the British Court, we had been driven to the necessity
of breaking off all connections with her; at the same time, assuring all such
Courts of our peaceable disposition towards them, and of our desire of
entering into trade with them; such a memorial would produce more good
effects to this Continent than if a ship were freighted with petitions to
Britain.
Under our present denomination of British subjects, we can neither be
received nor heard abroad; the custom of all Courts is against us, and will
be so, until by an independence we take rank with other nations.
These proceedings may at first seem strange and difficult, but like all other
steps which we have already passed over, will in a little time become
familiar and agreeable; and until an independence is declared, the
Continent will feel itself like a man who continues putting off some
unpleasant business from day to day, yet knows it must be done, hates to
set about it, wishes it over, and is continually haunted with the thoughts of
its necessity.
Appendix to the Third Edition
SINCE the publication of the first edition of this pamphlet, or rather, on the
same day on which it came out, the king's speech made its appearance in
this city. Had the spirit of prophecy directed the birth of this production, it
could not have brought it forth at a more seasonable juncture, or at a more
necessary time. The bloody-mindedness of the one, shows the necessity
of pursuing the doctrine of the other. Men read by way of revenge. And the
speech, instead of terrifying, prepared a way for the manly principles of
independence.
Ceremony, and even silence, from whatever motives they may arise, have
a hurtful tendency when they give the least degree of countenance to base
and wicked performances, wherefore, if this maxim be admitted, it naturally
follows, that the king's speech, IS being a piece of finished villany,
deserved and still deserves, a general execration, both by the Congress
and the people.
Yet, as the domestic tranquillity of a nation, depends greatly on the chastity
of what might properly be called NATIONAL MANNERS, it is often better to
pass some things over in silent disdain, than to make use of such new
methods of dislike, as might introduce the least innovation on that guardian
of our peace and safety. And, perhaps, it is chiefly owing to this prudent
delicacy, that the king's speech hath not before now suffered a public
execution. The speech, if it may be called one, is nothing better than a
wilful audacious libel against the truth, the common good, and the
existence of mankind; and is a formal and pompous method of offering up
human sacrifices to the pride of tyrants.
But this general massacre of mankind, is one of the privileges and the
certain consequences of kings, for as nature knows them not, they know
not her, and although they are beings of our own creating, they know not
us, and are become the gods of their creators. The speech hath one good
quality, which is, that it is not calculated to deceive, neither can we, even if
we would, be deceived by it. Brutality and tyranny appear on the face of it.
It leaves us at no loss: And every line convinces, even in the moment of
reading, that he who hunts the woods for prey, the naked and untutored
Indian, is less savage than the king of Britain. Sir John Dalrymple, the
putative father of a whining jesuitical piece, fallaciously called, "The
address of the people of England to the inhabitants of America," hath
perhaps from a vain supposition that the people here were to be frightened
at the pomp and description of a king, given (though very unwisely on his
part) the real character of the present one: "But," says this writer, "if you
are inclined to pay compliments to an administration, which we do not
complain of (meaning the Marquis of Rockingham's at the repeal of the
Stamp Act) it is very unfair in you to withhold them from that prince, by
whose NOD ALONE they were permitted to do any thing." This is toryism
with a witness! Here is idolatry even without a mask: And he who can
calmly hear and digest such doctrine, hath forfeited his claim to rationality
an apostate from the order of manhood and ought to be considered as one
who hath not only given up the proper dignity of man, but sunk himself
beneath the rank of animals, and contemptibly crawls through the world
like a worm.
However, it matters very little now what the king of England either says or
does; he hath wickedly broken through every moral and human obligation,
trampled nature and conscience beneath his feet, and by a steady and
constitutional spirit of insolence and cruelty procured for himself an
universal hatred. It is now the interest of America to provide for herself.
She hath already a large and young family, whom it is more her duty to
take care of, than to be granting away her property to support a power who
is become a reproach to the names of men and christians, whose office it
is to watch the morals of a nation, of whatsoever sect or denomination ye
are of, as well as ye who are more immediately the guardians of the public
liberty, if ye wish to preserve your native country uncontaminated by
European corruption, ye must in secret wish a separation. But leaving the
moral part to private reflection, I shall chiefly confine my further remarks to
the following heads:
First, That it is the interest of America to be separated from Britain.
Secondly, Which is the easiest and most practicable plan,
RECONCILIATION or INDEPENDENCE? with some occasional remarks.
In support of the first, I could, if I judged it proper, produce the opinion of
some of the ablest and most experienced men on this continent: and
whose sentiments on that head, are not yet publicly known. It is in reality a
self-evident position: for no nation in a state of foreign dependence, limited
in its commerce, and cramped and fettered in its legislative powers, can
ever arrive at any material eminence. America doth not yet know what
opulence is; and although the progress which she hath made stands
unparalleled in the history of other nations, it is but childhood compared
with what she would be capable of arriving at, had she, as she ought to
have, the legislative powers in her own hands. England is at this time
proudly coveting what would do her no good were she to accomplish it;
and the continent hesitating on a matter which will be her final ruin if
neglected. It is the commerce and not the conquest of America by which
England is to be benefited, and that would in a great measure continue,
were the countries as independent of each other as France and Spain;
because the specious errors of those who speak without reflecting. And
among the many which I have heard, the following seems the most
general, viz. that had this rupture happened forty or fifty years hence,
instead of now, the continent would have been more able to have shaken
off the dependence. To which I reply, that our military ability, at this time,
arises from the experience gained in the last war, and which in forty or fifty
years' time, would be totally extinct. The continent would not, by that time,
have a quitrent reserved thereon will always lessen, and in time will wholly
support, the yearly expense of government. It matters not how long the
debt is in paying, so that the lands when sold be applied to the discharge
of it, and for the execution of which the Congress for the time being will be
the continental trustees.
I proceed now to the second head, viz. Which is the easiest and most
practicable plan, reconciliation or independence; with some occasional
remarks.
He who takes nature for his guide, is not easily beaten out of his argument,
and on that ground, I answer generally that independence being a single
simple line, contained within ourselves; and reconciliation, a matter
exceedingly perplexed and complicated, and in which a treacherous
capricious court is to interfere, gives the answer without a doubt.
The present state of America is truly alarming to every man who is capable
of reflection. Without law, without government, without any other mode of
power than what is founded on, and granted by, courtesy. Held together by
an unexampled occurrence of sentiment, which is nevertheless subject to
change, and which every secret enemy is endeavoring to dissolve. Our
present condition is, Legislation without law; wisdom without a plan; a
constitution without a name; and, what is strangely astonishing, perfect
independence contending for dependence. The instance is without a
precedent, the case never existed before, and who can tell what may be
the event? The property of no man is secure in the present un-braced
system of things. The mind of the multitude is left at random, and seeing
no fixed object before them, they pursue such as fancy or opinion
presents. Nothing is criminal; there is no such thing as treason, wherefore,
every one thinks himself at liberty to act as he pleases. The Tories would
not have dared to assemble offensively, had they known that their lives, by
that act, were forfeited to the laws of the state. A line of distinction should
be drawn between English soldiers taken in battle, and inhabitants of
America taken in arms. The first are prisoners, but the latter traitors. The
one forfeits his liberty, the other his head.
Notwithstanding our wisdom, there is a visible feebleness in some of our
proceedings which gives encouragement to dissensions. The continental
belt is too loosely buckled: And if something is not done in time, it will be
too late to do any thing, and we shall fall into a state, in which neither
reconciliation nor independence will be practicable. The king and his
worthless adherents are got at their old game of dividing the continent, and
there are not wanting among us printers who will be busy in spreading
specious falsehoods. The artful and hypocritical letter which appeared a
few months ago in two of the New York papers, and likewise in two others,
is an evidence that there are men who want both judgment and honesty.
It is easy getting into holes and corners, and talking of reconciliation: But
do such men seriously consider how difficult the task is, and how
dangerous it may prove, should the continent divide thereon? Do they take
within their view all the various orders of men whose situation and
circumstances, as well as their own, are to be considered therein? Do they
put themselves in the place of the sufferer whose all is already gone, and
of the soldier, who hath quitted all for the defence of his country? If their illjudged moderation be suited to their own private situations only, regardless
of others, the event will convince them that "they are reckoning without
their host."
Put us, say some, on the footing we were in the year 1763: To which I
answer, the request is not now in the power of Britain to comply with,
neither will she propose it; but if it were, and even should be granted, I ask,
as a reasonable question, By what means is such a corrupt and faithless
court to be kept to its engagements? Another parliament, nay, even the
present, may hereafter repeal the obligation, on the pretence of its being
violently obtained, or not wisely granted; and, in that case, Where is our
redress? No going to law with nations; cannon are the barristers of crowns;
and the sword, not of justice, but of war, decides the suit. To be on the
footing of 1763, it is not sufficient, that the laws only be put in the same
state, but, that our circumstances likewise be put in the same state; our
burnt and destroyed towns repaired or built up, our private losses made
good, our public debts (contracted for defence) discharged; otherwise we
shall be millions worse than we were at that enviable period. Such a
request, had it been complied with a year ago, would have won the heart
and soul of the continent, but now it is too late. "The Rubicon is passed."
Besides, the taking up arms, merely to enforce the repeal of a pecuniary
law, seems as unwarrantable by the divine law, and as repugnant to
human feelings, as the taking up arms to enforce obedience thereto. The
object, on either side, doth not justify the means; for the lives of men are
too valuable to be cast away on such trifles. It is the violence which is done
and threatened to our persons; the destruction of our property by an armed
force; the invasion of our country by fire and sword, which conscientiously
qualifies the use of arms: and the instant in which such mode of defence
became necessary, all subjection to Britain ought to have ceased; and the
independence of America should have been considered as dating its era
from, and published by, the first musket that was fired against her. This line
is a line of consistency; neither drawn by caprice, nor extended by
ambition; but produced by a chain of events, of which the colonies were
not the authors.
I shall conclude these remarks, with the following timely and well-intended
hints. We ought to reflect, that there are three different ways by which an
independency may hereafter be effected, and that one of those three, will,
one day or other, be the fate of America, viz. By the legal voice of the
people in Congress; by a military power, or by a mob: It may not always
happen that our soldiers are citizens, and the multitude a body of
reasonable men; virtue, as I have already remarked, is not hereditary,
neither is it perpetual. Should an independency be brought about by the
first of those means, we have every opportunity and every encouragement
before us, to form the noblest, purest constitution on the face of the earth.
We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar
to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now.
The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as
numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom
from the events of a few months. The reflection is awful, and in this point of
view, how trifling, how ridiculous, do the little paltry cavilings of a few weak
or interested men appear, when weighed against the business of a world.
Should we neglect the present favorable and inviting period, and
independence be hereafter effected by any other means, we must charge
the consequence to ourselves, or to those rather whose narrow and
prejudiced souls are habitually opposing the measure, without either
inquiring or reflecting. There are reasons to be given in support of
independence which men should rather privately think of, than be publicly
told of. We ought not now to be debating whether we shall be independent
or not, but anxious to accomplish it on a firm, secure, and honorable basis,
and uneasy rather that it is not yet began upon. Every day convinces us of
its necessity. Even the Tories (if such beings yet remain among us) should,
of all men, be the most solicitous to promote it; for as the appointment of
committees at first protected them from popular rage, so, a wise and well
established form of government will be the only certain means of
continuing it securely to them. Wherefore, if they have not virtue enough to
be WHIGS, they ought to have prudence enough to wish for
independence.
In short, independence is the only bond that tie and keep us together. We
shall then see our object, and our ears will be legally shut against the
schemes of an intriguing, as well as cruel, enemy. We shall then, too, be
on a proper footing to treat with Britain; for there is reason to conclude, that
the pride of that court will be less hurt by treating with the American States
for terms of peace, than with those, whom she denominates "rebellious
subjects," for terms of accommodation. It is our delaying in that,
encourages her to hope for conquest, and our backwardness tends only to
prolong the war. As we have, without any good effect therefrom, withheld
our trade to obtain a redress of our grievances, let us now try the
alternative, by independently redressing them ourselves, and then offering
to open the trade. The mercantile and reasonable part of England, will be
still with us; because, peace, with trade, is preferable to war without it. And
if this offer be not accepted, other courts may be applied to.
On these grounds I rest the matter. And as no offer hath yet been made to
refute the doctrine contained in the former editions of this pamphlet, it is a
negative proof, that either the doctrine cannot be refuted, or, that the party
in favor of it are too numerous to be opposed. WHEREFORE, instead of
gazing at each other with suspicious or doubtful curiosity, let each of us
hold out to his neighbor the hearty hand of friendship, and unite in drawing
a line, which, like an act of oblivion, shall bury in forgetfulness every former
dissension. Let the names of Whig and Tory be extinct; and let none other
be heard among us, than those of a good citizen, an open and resolute
friend, and a virtuous supporter of the RIGHTS of MANKIND, and of the
FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES OF AMERICA.
ushistory.org homepage
Interested in using a picture? Some text? click here.
To contact the webmaster, click
here
Copyright ©1999-2009 by the Independence Hall Association, electronically
publishing as ushistory.org.
The IHA is a nonprofit organization in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, founded in 1942.
On the Internet since July 4, 1995.
Useful links
http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/revolution/revwar-75.htm
http://www.thedeclarationofindependence.org/
http://www.si.umich.edu/spies/stories-women-1.html
http://www.slavenorth.com/newyork.htm
Recommended Books
Gordon Wood, The American Revolution
Barnet Schechter, the Battle for New York
Also, please feel free to find additional sources that will be helpful to you in winning the
game.