indeed, as a great writer observes, a smooth and subtle tyrant, who led them gently into slavery, "and on his brow o'er daring vice, deluding virtue smiled." By pretending to be the people's greatest friend, he gained the ascendence over them; by beguiling arts, hypocrisy, and flattery, which are often more fatal than the sword, he obtained that supreme power which his ambitious soul had long thirsted for. The people were finally prevailed upon to consent to their own ruin. By the force of persuasion, or rather by cajoling arts and tricks, always made use of by men who have ambitious views, they enacted their Lex Regia, whereby quod placuit principi legis habuit vigorem, that is, the will and pleasure of the prince had the force of law. His minions had taken infinite pains to paint to their imagina tions the godlike virtues of Cæsar. They first persuaded them to believe that he was a deity, and then to sacrifice to him those rights and liberties which their ancestors had so long maintained with unexampled bravery and with blood and treasure. By this act they fixed a precedent fatal to all posterity. The Roman people afterwards, influenced no doubt by this pernicious example, renewed it to his successors, not at the end of every ten years, but for life. They transferred all their right and power to Charles the Great. In eum transtulit omne sum jus et potestatem. Thus they voluntarily and ignominiously surrendered their own liberty, and exchanged a free constitution for a tyranny. It is not my design to form a comparison between the state of this country now and that of the Roman Empire in those dregs of time, or between the disposition of Cæsar and that of The comparison, I confess, would not, in all its parts, hold good. The tyrant of Rome, to do him justice, had learning, courage, and great abilities. It behooves us, however, to awake, and advert to the danger we are in. The tragedy of American freedom, it is to be feared, is nearly completed. A tyranny seems to be at the very door. It is to little purpose, then, to go about coolly to rehearse the gradual steps that have been taken, the means that have been used, and the instruments employed to compass the ruin of the public liberty. We know them and we detest them. But what will this avail, if we have not courage and resolution to prevent the completion of their system? Our enemies would fain have us lie down on the bed of sloth and security, and persuade ourselves that there is no danger. They are daily administering the opiate with multiplied arts and delusions, and I am sorry to observe that the gilded pill is so alluring to some who cal themselves the friends of liberty. But there is no danger when the very foundations of our civil constitution tremble. When an attempt was first made to disturb the corner-stone of the fabric, we were universally and justly alarmed. And can we be cool spectators, when we see it already removed from its place? With what resentment and indignation did we first receive the intelligence of a design to make us tributary, not to natural enemies, but, infinitely more humiliating to fellow-subjects! And yet, with unparalleled insolence, we are told to be quiet when we see that very money which is torn from us by law. less force made use of still further to oppose us, to feed and pamper a set of infamous wretches who swarm like the locusts of Egypt, and some of them expect to revel in wealth and riot on the spoils of our country. Is it a time for us to sleep when our free government is essentially changed, and a new one is forming upon a quite different system? A government without the least dependence on the people— a government under the absolute control of a minister of state, upon whose sovereign dictates is to depend not only the time when, and the place where, the Legislative Assembly shall sit, but whether it shall sit at all; and if it is allowed to meet, it shall be liable immediately to be thrown out of existence if in any one point it fails in obedience to his arbitrary mandates. Have we not already seen specimens of what we are to expect under such a government in the instructions which Mr. Hutchinson has received, and which he has publicly avowed and declared he is bound to obey? By one he is to refuse his assent to a tax bill unless the Commissioners of the Customs and other favorites are exempted; and if these may be freed from taxes by the order of a minister, may not all his tools and drudges, or any others who are subservient to his designs, expect the same indulgence? By another, he is to forbid to pass a grant of the Assembly to any agent but one to whose election he has given his consent, which is, in effect, to put it out of our power to take the necessary and legal steps for the redress of those grievances which we suffer by the arts and machinations of ministers and their minions here. What difference is there between the present state of this province, which in course will be the deplorable state of America and that of Rome under the law before mentioned? The difference is only this, that they gave their formal consent to the change, which we have not yet done. But let us be upon our guard against even a negative submission, for, agreeable to the sentiments of a celebrated writer, who thoroughly understood his subject, if we are voluntarily silent, as the conspirators would have us be, it will be considered as an approbation of the change. "By the fundamental laws of England the two Houses of Parliament, in concert with the King, exercise the legislative power; but if the two Houses should be so infatuated as to resolve to suppress their powers, and invest the King with the full and absolute government, certainly the nation would not suffer it!" And if a minister shall usurp the supreme and absolute government of America, and set up his instructions as laws in the colonies, and their governors shall be so weak or so wicked as, for the sake of keeping their places, to be made the instrument in putting them in execution, who will presume to say that the people have not a right, or that it is not their indispensable duty to God and their country, by all rational means in their power to resist them! "Be firm, my friends, nor let unmanly sloth Your independence; for, that once destroyed, The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger, and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men. Of the latter, we are in most danger at present. Let us therefore be aware of it. Let us contemplate our forefathers and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former for the sake of the latter. Instead of sitting down satisfied with the efforts we have already made, which is the wish of our enemies, the necessity of the times more than ever calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance. Let us remember that "if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom!" It is a very serious consideration, which should deeply impress our minds, that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers in the event! "CANDIDUS." REPORT ON THE RIGHTS OF COLONISTS. SAMUEL ADAMS. NATURAL RIGHTS OF THE COLONISTS AS MEN. Boston, November 20, 1772. Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First, a right to life. Second, to liberty. Thirdly, to property: together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of selfpreservation, commonly called the first law of nature. All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please, and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another. When men enter into society, it is by voluntary consent, and they have a right to demand and insist upon the performance of such conditions and previous limitations as form an equitable original compact. Every natural right not expressly given up, or, from the nature of a social compact necessarily ceded, remains. All positive and civil laws should conform, as far as possible, to the law of natural reason and equity. As neither reason requires nor religion permits the contrary, every man living in or out of a state of civil society has a right peaceably and quietly to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience. "Just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty," in matters spiritual and temporal is a thing that all men are clearly entitled to hy the eternal and immutable laws of God and nature, as well as by the law of nations and all well-grounded municipal laws, which must have their foundation in the former. In regard to religion, mutual toleration in the different professions thereof, is what all good and candid minds in all ages have ever practised, and both by precept and example inculcated on mankind. It is now generally agreed among Christians that this spirit of toleration in the fullest extent consistent with the being of civil society, is the chief characteristical mark of the true Church. Insomuch that Mr. Locke has asserted and proved, beyond the possibility of contradiction on any solid ground, that such toleration ought to be extended to all whose doctrines are not subversive of society. The only sects, which he thinks ought to be, and which by all wise laws are, excluded from such toleration, are those who teach doctrines subversive of the civil government under which they live. The Roman Catholics, or Papists, are excluded by reason of such doctrines as these :-That princes excommunicated may be deposed, and those that they call heretics may be destroyed without mercy; besides their recognizing the Pope in so absolute a manner, in subversion of government, by introducing, as far as possible into the states under whose protection they enjoy life, liberty and property, that solecism in politics, imperium in imperio, leading directly to the worst anarchy and confusion, civil discord, war, and bloodshed. The natural liberty of man by entering into society is abridged or restrained, so far only as is necessary for the great end of society-the best good of the whole. In the state of nature every man is, under God, judge and sole judge of his own rights and of the injuries done him. By entering into society he agrees to an arbiter or indifferent judge between him and his neighbors; but he no more renounces his original right, thereby taking a cause out of the ordinary course of law, and leaving the decision to referees or indifferent arbitrators. In the last case, he must pay the referee for time and trouble. He should also be willing to pay his just quota for the support of the government, the law and the constitution; the end of which is to furnish indifferent and impartial judges in all cases that may happen, whether civil, ecclesiastical, marine, or military. The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule. In the state of nature men may, as the patriarchs did, employ hired servants for the defence of their lives, liberties and property, and they should pay them reasonable wages. Government was instituted for the purpose of common defence, and those who hold the reins of government have an equitable, natural right to an honorable support from the same principle that "the laborer is worthy of his hire." But then the same community which they serve ought to be the assessors of their pay. Governors have a right to seek and take what they please; by this, instead of being content with the station assigned them, that of honorable servants of the society, they would soon become absolute masters, despots and tyrants. Hence, as a private man has a right to say what wages he will give in his private affairs, so has a community to determine what they will give and grant of their substance for the administration of public affairs. And in both cases more are ready to offer their service at the proposed and stipulated price than are able and willing to perform their duty. In short it is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or any number of men, at the entering into society to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights, when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defence of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are life, liberty, and property. If men through fear, fraud or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right of freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave. THE RIGHTS OF THE COLONISTS AS CHRISTIANS. These may be best understood by reading and carefully studying the institutes of the great Lawgiver and head of the Christian Church, which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament. |