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extensive. They can't have Right to govern the Colonies in just the same Manner
as they have Right to govern the Isle of Britain, because our Distance renders it
impossible for them to be so acquainted with our Circumstances, because we have
real/y nobody to represent us there, and because we have by royal Grant and Compact
certain Priveleges which the exercise of such a Government necessarily vacates.
If the B sh Parliament have right to impose a Stamp Act, they have a right to lay
on us a Poll Tax, a Land Tax, a Malt Tax, a Cyder Tax, a Window Tax, a Smoke
Tax, and why not tax us for the Light of the Sun, the Air we Breath, and the Ground
we are Buried in ? If they have Right to deny us the Privelege of Tryal by Juries,
they have as good a Right to deny us any Tryals at all, and to vote away our Estates
and Lives at Pleasure.
" You ought, my Friends, no doubt, and I know you are most willing, to do all
in your Power to contribute to the general Good of the British Empire, in every way
not inconsistent with the essential Priveleges of your Charters, Grants, and of
Englishmen. These you ought not, you may not, give up. If you tamely part with
them, you are accessory to your own Death, and entail Slavery on your Posterity.
" It is in your Power, Gentlemen, to chuse your Representatives at the approach-
ing and at all your Assemblies :
Let me humbly advise and entreat you for God's
Sake, for your own and for Posterity's Sake, to chuse Men of Wisdom, Courage and
Resolution, true Englishmen, who will not be bo't nor cow'd into the tame Submis-
sion of fawning Place men, nor scar'd at the Insolence of (our own) M—st—al Tools,
who (as usual) begin their Threats sooner than their Masters. . . . You have
laudable Examples of this before your Eyes. The Government of the Massachusetts
have invited all their Brethren on the Continent to join in a humble, earnest Petition
for a repeal of the Act of Slavery. ' Be
of Providence have also set a worthy Example. . . ."
not Rash nor Diffident' The brave people
The second paper, printed September 20, alludes to the possibility
of the use of military power to enforce the arbitrary measures of the
British Government, and proceeds
"to offer some tho'ts tending to evince the propriety and importance of an union
the rather as Civis
and of the American governments in a general congress. . . .
[a writer in the ' New Haven Gazette '] seems to think it sufficient for our general
assembly only to determine for themselves and their constituents. . . .
327