been a revelation from above? Look over the resolves of the colonies for the past year; you will see that one understanding governs, one heart animates the whole. "The congress at Philadelphia have assured us that, if force attempts to carry the late innovating measures against us, all America ought to support us. Maryland and Delaware have taken the powers of the militia into the hands of the people, and established it by their own authority for the defence of Massachusetts. Virginia and the Carolinas are preparing. The unanimity in congress can hardly be paralleled. The mighty questions of the Revolution of 1688 were determined in the convention of parliament by small majorities of two or three, and four or five only; the almost unanimity in your assemblies, and especially in the continental congress, are providential dispensations in our favor, the clearest demonstration of the cordial, firm, radical, and indissoluble union of the colonies. "If Great Britain were united, she could not subdue a country a thousand leagues off. How many years, how many millions, did it take to conquer the poor province of Canada, which yet would never have submitted but on a capitulation, securing religion and property? But Great Britain is not united against us. Millions in England and Scotland think it unrighteous, impolitic, and ruinous to make war upon us; and a minister, though he may have a marble heart, will proceed with a desponding spirit. London has bound her members under their hands to assist us; Bristol has chosen two known friends of America; many of the most virtuous of the nobility and gentry are for us, and among them a St. Asaph, a Camden, and a Chatham, the best bishop that adorns the bench, as great a judge as the nation can boast, and the greatest statesman it ever saw. 1775. Feb. "I would ask by what law the parliament has authority over America? By the law in the Old and New Testament it has none; by the law of nature and nations it has none; by the common law of England it has none; by statute law it has none; for no statute for this purpose was made before the settlement of the colonies, and the declaratory act of 1766 was made without our consent by a parliament which had no authority beyond the four seas. 1775. Feb. "The subordination of Ireland is founded on conquest and consent. But America never was conquered by Britain. She never consented to be a state dependent upon the British parliament. What religious, moral, or political obligations, then, are we under to submit to parliament as supreme? None at all. If Great Britain will resort to force, all Europe will pronounce her a tyrant, and America never will submit to her, be the danger of disobedience as great as it will. "If Great Britain has protected the colonies, all the profits of our trade centred in her lap. If she has been a nursing mother to us, we have, as nursed children commonly do, been very fond of her, and rewarded her all along tenfold for all her care. "We New England men do not derive our laws from parliament, nor from common law, but from the law of nature and the compact made with the king in our charters. If our charters could be forfeited, and were actually forfeited, the only consequence would be that the king would have no power over us at all. The connection would be broken between the crown and the natives of this country. The charter of London in an arbitrary reign was decreed forfeited; the charter of Massachusetts was declared forfeited also. But no American charter will ever be decreed forfeited again; or, if any should, the decree will be regarded no more than a vote of the lower house of the Robinhood society. God forbid the privileges of millions of Americans should depend upon the discretion of a lord chancellor. It may as well be pretended that the people of Great Britain can forfeit their privileges, as the people of this province. If the contract of state is broken, the people and king of England must recur to nature. It is the same in this province. We shall never more submit to decrees in chancery, or acts of parliament, annihilating charters or abridging English liberties.' "Should the nation suffer the minister to persevere in his madness and send fire and sword against us, we have men enough to defend ourselves. The colonies south of Pennsylvania have a back country, inhabited by a 1775. Feb. hardy, robust people, many of whom are emigrants from New England, and habituated, like multitudes of New England men, to carry their rifles on one shoulder to defend themselves against the savages, while they carry their axes, scythes, and hoes upon the other. We have manufacturers of fire-arms; powder has been made here; nor could the whole British navy prevent the importation of arms and ammunition. The new-fangled militia will have the discipline and subordination of regular troops. A navy might burn a seaport town, but will the minister be nearer his mark? At present we hold the power of the Canadians as nothing; their dispositions, moreover, are not unfriendly to us. The savages will be more likely to be our friends than our enemies. "The two characteristics of this people, religion and humanity, are strongly marked in all their proceedings. We are not exciting a rebellion. Resistance by arms against usurpation and lawless violence is not rebellion by the law of God or the land. Resistance to lawful authority makes rebellion. Hampden, Russell, Sydney, Holt, Somers, Tillotson, were no rebels. If an act of parliament is null and void, it is lawful to resist it. "This people, under great trials and dangers, have discovered great abilities and virtues, and that nothing is so terrible to them as the loss of their liberties. They act for America and posterity. If there is no possible medium between absolute independence and subjection to the authority of parliament, all North America are convinced of their independence, and determined to defend it at all hazards." CHAPTER XXII. HAS NEW ENGLAND A RIGHT IN THE NEWFOUNDLAND FISHERIES? 1775. Feb. FEBRUARY, 1775. On the tenth of February, after the speaker reported to the house of commons the answer to their address, Lord North presented a message from the king, asking the required "augmentation to his forces." The minister, who still clung to the hope of reducing Massachusetts by the terrors of legislation, next proposed to restrain the commerce of New England and exclude its fishermen from the Banks of Newfoundland. The best ship-builders in the world were at Boston, and their yards had been closed; the New England fishermen were now to be restrained from a toil in which they excelled all nations. Thus the joint right to the fisheries was made a part of the American struggle. "God and nature," said Johnston, "have given that fishery to New England and not to Old." Dunning defended the right of the Americans to fish on the Banks. "If rebellion is resistance to government," said Sir George Saville, "it must sometimes be justifiable. May not a people, taxed without their consent and their petitions against such taxation rejected, their charters taken away without a hearing, and an army let loose upon them without a possibility of obtaining justice, be said to be in justifiable rebellion?" But the ministerial measure, which, by keeping the New England fishermen at home, provoked discontent and provided recruits for an insurgent army, was carried through all its stages by great majorities. Bishop Newton, in the lords, reasoned "that rebellion is the sin of witchcraft, and that one so unnatural as that of New England could be ascribed to nothing less than diabolical infatuation." The minister of France took the occasion to request the most rigorous and precise orders to all British naval officers not to annoy the commerce of the French colonies. "Such orders," answered Rochford, "have been given; and we have the greatest desire to live with you on the best understanding and the most perfect friendship." A letter from Lord Stormont, the British ambassador at Paris, was also cited in the house of lords to prove that France equally wished a continuance of peace. "It signifies nothing," said Richmond; "you can put no trust in Gallic faith, except so long as it shall be their interest to keep their word." With this, Rochford, the secretary of state, readily agreed; proving, however, from Raynal's History of the Two Indies, that it was not for the interest of France that the English colonies should throw off the yoke. The next courier took to the king of France the report that neither the opposition nor the British minister put faith in his sincerity; and the inference seemed justified that they themselves were insincere. 1775. Feb. The English mind was in the process of change. The destruction of the tea at Boston had been condemned as a lawless riot, for which the pride of the nation demanded an expiation. But the proposal to enter upon a civil war with a view to enforce for parliament a power of taxation which it could never render effective, or a mutilation of a charter to which the public was indifferent, was received by merchants, tradesmen, and the majority of the people with abhorrence. Lord North himself would gladly have escaped from his embarrassments by concession. “I am a friend to holding out the olive branch," wrote the king to his pliant minister, "yet I believe that, when once vigorous measures appear to be the only means, the colonies will submit. I shall never look to the right or to the left, but steadily pursue that track which my conscience dictates to be the right one." The preparations for war were, therefore, to proceed; but he consented that the commanders of the naval and military forces might be invested with com |