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It is . . . true in fact and experience, as the
great, the incomparable Harrington has most abundantly demonstrated in
his Oceana and other divine writings, that empire follows the balance of
property. ’Tis also certain that property in fact generally
confers power, though the possessor of it may not have much more wit
than a mole or a musquash: and this is too often the cause that riches are
sought after without the least concern about the right application of them. But
is the fault in the riches, or the general law of nature, or the unworthy
possessor? It will never follow from all this that government is
rightfully founded on property alone. What shall we say then? Is not
government founded on grace? No. Nor on force? No. Nor on
compact? Nor property? Not altogether on either. Has it
any solid foundation, any chief cornerstone but what accident, chance,
or confusion may lay one moment and destroy the next? I think it has an
everlasing foundation in the unchangeable will of GOD, the author of
nature, whose laws never vary. The same omniscient, omnipotent, infinitely good
and gracious Creator of the universe who has been pleased to make it necessary
that what we call matter should gravitate for the celestial bodies to
roll round their axes, dance their orbits, and perform their various
revolutions in that beautiful order and concern which we all admire has made it
equally necessary that from Adam and Eve to these
degenerate days the different sexes should sweetly attract each other,
form societies of single families, of which larger bodies and
communities are as naturally, mechanically, and necessarily combined as the dew
of heaven and the soft distilling rain is collected by the all-enlivening heat
of the sun. Government is therefore most evidently founded on the
necessities of our nature. It is by no means an arbitrary thing
depending merely on compact or human will for its existence. . .
.
The end of government being the good of
mankind points out its great duties: it is above all things to provide for the
security, the quiet, and happy enjoyment of life, liberty, and property. There
is no one act which a government can have a right to make that does not
tend to the advancemewnt of the security, tranquillity, and prosperity of the
people. If life, liberty, and property could be enjoyned in as great perfection
in solitude as in society there would be no need of government.
But the experience of ages has proved that such is the nature of man, a weak,
imperfect being, that the valuable ends of life cannot be obtained without the
union and assistance of many. Hence ’tis clear that men cannot live apart
or independent of each other. In solitude men would perish, and yet they cannot
live together without contests. These contests require some arbitrator to
determine them. The necessity of a common, indifferent, and impartial judge
makes all men seek one, though few find him in the sovereign power of
their respective states or anywhere else in subordination to it. . . .
I know of no human law founded on the law of nature
to restrain him from separating himself from all the species if he can find it
in his heart to leave them, unless it should be said it is against the great
law of self-preservation: but of this every man will think himself
his own judge.
The few hermits and misanthropes that have
ever existed show that those states are unnatural. If we were to take
out from them those who have made great worldly gain of their
godly hermitage and those who have been under the madness of
enthusiasm or disappointed hopes in their ambitious
projects for the detriment of mankind, perhaps there might not be left ten from
Adam to this day.
The form of government is by nature and by
right so far left to the individuals of each society that they
may alter it from a simple democracy or government of all over all to any other
form they please. Such alteration may and ought to be made by express compact.
But how seldom this right has been asserted, history will abundantly show. For
once that it has been fairly settled by compact, fraud, force, or
accident have determined it an hundred times. As the people have gained
upon tyrants, these have been obliged to relax only till a fairer
opportunity has put it in their power to encroach again.
But if every prince since Nimrod had been a tyrant,
it would not prove a right to tyrannize. There can be no prescription
old enough to supersede the law of nature and the grant of GOD Almight, who has
given to all men a natural right to be free, and they have it ordinarily
in their power to make themselves so if they please. . . .
In order to form an idea of the natural rights of the
colonists, I presume it will be granted that they are men, the common children
of the same Creator with their brethren of Great Britain. Nature has placed all
such in a state of equality and perfect freedom to act within the bounds of the
laws of nature and reason without consulting the will or regarding the humor,
the passions, or whims of any other man, unless they are formed into a society
or body politic. . . .
The colonists are by the law of nature freeborn, as indeed
all men are, white or black. No better reasons can be given for enslaving those
of any color than such as Baron Montesquieu has humorously given as the
foundation of that cruel slavery exercised over the poor Ethiopians, which
threatens one day to reduce both Europe and America to the ignorance and
barbarity of the darkest ages. Does it follow that ’tis right to enslave a
man because he is black? Will short curled hair like wool instead of Christian
hair, as ’tis called by those whose hearts are as hard as the nether
millstone, help the argument? Can any logical inference in favor of slavery be
drawn from a flat nose, a long or a short face? Nothing better can be said in
favor of a trade that is the most shocking violation of the law of nature, has
a direct tendency to diminish the idea of the inestimable value of liberty, and
makes every dealer in it a tyrant, from the director of an African company to
the petty chapman in needles and pins on the unhappy coast. It is a clear truth
that those who every day barter away other men’s liberty will soon care
little for their own. . . .
The colonists, being men, have a right to be considered as
equally entitled to all the rights of nature with the Europeans, and they are
not to be restrained in the exercise of any of these rights but for the evident
good of the whole community.
By being or becoming members of society they have not
renounced their natural liberty in any greater degree than other good citizens,
and if ’tis taken from them without their consent they are so far
enslaved.
I also lay it down as one of the first principles from
whence I intend to deduce the civil rights of the British colonies, that all of
them are subject to and dependent on Great Britain, and that therefore as over
subordinate governments the Parliament of Great Britain has an undoubted power
and lawful authority to make acts for the general good that, by naming them,
shall and ought to be equally binding as upon the subjects of Great Britain
within the realm. This principle, I presume, will be readily granted on the
other side the Atlantic. It has been practised upon for twenty years to my
knowledge, in the province of the Massachusetts Bay; and I have ever
received it that it has been so from the beginning in this and the sister
provinces through the continent. . . .
That the colonists, black and white, born here are
freeborn British subjects, and entitled to all the essential civil rights of
such is a truth not only manifest from the provincial charters, from the
principles of the common law, and acts of Parliament, but from the British
constitution, which was re-established at the Revolution with a professed
design to secure the liberties of all the subjects to all generations. . . .
The liberties of the subject are spoken of as their best
birthrights. No one ever dreamed, surely, that these liberties were confined to
the realm. At that rate no British subjects in the dominions could, without a
manifest contradiction, be declared entitled to all the privileges of subjects
born within the realm to all intents and purposes which are rightly given
foreigners by Parliament after residing seven years. These expressions of
Parliament as well as of the charters must be vain and empty sounds unless we
are allowed the essential rights of our fellow subjects in Great Britain.
Now can there be any liberty where property is taken away
without consent? Can it with any color of truth, justice, or equity be affirmed
that the northern colonies are represented in Parliament? Has this whole
continent of near three thousand miles in length, and in which and his other
American dominions His Majesty has or very soon will have some millions of as
good, loyal, and useful subjects, white and black, as any in the three
king-doms, the election of one member of the House of Commons?
Is there the least difference as to the consent of the
colonists whether taxes and impositions are laid on their trade and other
property by the crown alone or by the Parliament? As it is agreed on all hands
the crown alone cannot impose them, we should be justifiable in refusing to pay
them, but must and ought to yield obedience to an act of Parliament, though
erroneous, till repealed. I can see no reason to doubt but the imposition of
taxes, whether on trade, or on land, or houses, or ships, on real or personal,
fixed ort floating property, in the colonies is absolutely irreconcilable with
the rights of the colonists as British subjects and as men. I say men, for in a
state of nature no man can take my property from me without my consent: if he
does, he deprives me of my liberty and makes me a slave. If such a proceeding
is a breach of the law of nature, no law of society can make it just. The very
act of taxing exercised over those who are not represented appears to me to be
depriving them of one of their most essential rights as freemen, and if
continued seems to be in effect an entire disfranchisement of every civil
right. . . .
We all think ourselves happy under Great Britain. We love,
esteem, and reverence our mother country, and adore our King. And could the
choice of independency be offered the colonies or subjection to Great Britain
upon any terms above absolute slavery, I am convinced they would accept the
latter. The ministry in all future generations may rely on it that British
America will never prove undutiful till driven to it as the last fatal resort
against ministerial oppression, which will make the wisest mad, and the weakest
strong. . . .
The sum of my argument is: that civil government is of
God; that the administrators of it were originally the whole people; that they
might have devolved it on whom they pleased; that this devolution is fiduciary,
for the good of the whole; that by the British constitution this devolution is
on the King, Lords and Commons, the supreme, sacred and uncontrollable
legislative power not only in the realm but through the dominions; that by the
abdication, the original compact was broken to pieces; that by the Revolution
it was renewed and more firmly established, and the rights and liberties of the
subject in all parts of the dominions more fully explained and confirmed; that
in consequence of this establishment and the acts of succession and union, His
Majesty GEORGE III is rightful King and sovereign, and, with his Parliament,
the supreme legislative of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, and the
dominions thereto belonging; that this constitution is the most free one and by
far the best now existing on earth; that by this constitution every man in the
dominions is a free man; that no parts of His Majesty’s dominions can be
taxed without their consent; that every part has a right to be represented in
the supreme or some subordinate legislature; that the refusal of this would
seem to be a contradiction in practice to the theory of the constritution; that
the colonies are subordinate dominions and are now in such a state as to make
it best for the good of the whole that they should not only be continued in the
enjoyment of subordinate legislation but be also represented in some proportion
to their number and estates in the grand legislature of the nation; that this
would firmly unite all parts of the British empire in the greater peace and
prosperity, and render it invulnerable and perpetual.
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