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than that flock of men, as they have been called, who came from the North, and poured into Europe. These emigrants renounced all laws, all protection, all connexion with their mother countries: they chose their leaders, and marched under their banners to seek their fortunes and establish new kingdoms upon the ruins of the Roman empire; whereas our colonies, on the contrary, emigrated under the sanction of the crown and parliament. They were modelled gradually into their present forms, respectively, by charters, grants, and statutes; but they were never separated from the mother country, or so emancipated as to become sui juris. There are several sorts of colonies in British America. The charter colonies, the proprietary governments, and the king's colonies. The first colonies were the charter colonies, such as the Virginia company; and these companies, had among their directors, members of the privy council and of both houses of parliament; they were under the authority of the privy council, and had agents resident here, responsible for their proceedings. So much were they considered as belonging to the crown and not to the king personally (for there is a great difference, though few people attend to it) that when the two houses, in the time of Charles the First, were going to pass a bill concerning the colonies, a message was sent to them by the king, that they were the king's colonies, and that the bill was unnecessary, for that the privy council would take order about them; and the bill never had the royal assent. The commonwealth parliament, as soon as it was settled, were very early jealous of the colonies separating themselves from them, and passed a resolution or act, and it is a question whether it is not in force now, to declare and establish the authority of England over its colonies. But if there was no express law, or reason, founded upon any necessary inference from an express law, yet the usage alone would be sufficient to support that authority: for, have not the colonies submitted ever since their first establishment to the jurisdiction of the mother country? In all questions of property

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the appeals from the colonies have been to the privy council here, and such causes have been determined, not by the law of the colonies, but by the law of England. A very little while ago there was an appeal on a question of limitation in a devise of land with remainders; and, notwithstanding the intention of the testator appeared very clear, yet the case was determined contrary to it, and that the land should pass according to the law of England. The colonies have been obliged to recur very frequently to the jurisdiction here to settle the disputes among their own governments. I well remember several references on this head, when the late lord Hardwicke was attorney general, and sir Clement Wearg solicitor general. New Hampshire and Connecticut were in blood about their differences: Virginia and Maryland were in arms against each other. This shows the necessity of one superiour decisive jurisdiction, to which all subordinate jurisdictions may recur. Nothing, my lords, could be more fatal to the peace of the colo nies at any time, than the parliament giving up its authority over them; for in such a case there must be an entire dissolution of government. Considering how the colonies are composed, it is easy to foresee there would be no end of feuds and factions among the several separate governments, when once there shall be no one government here or there of sufficient force or authority to decide their mutual differences; and, government being dissolved, nothing remains but that the colonies must either change their consti tution, and take some new form of government, or fall under some foreign power. At present the several forms of their constitution are very various, having been produced, as all governments have been originally, by accident and circumstances. The forms of government in every colony were adapted, from time to time, according to the size of the colony; and so have been extended again, from time to time, as the numbers of their inhabitants and their commercial connexions outgrew the first model. In some colonies, at first there was only a governour assisted by two or three counsel; then more were added, afterwards

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courts of justice were erected, then assemblies were created. Some things were done by instructions from the secretaries of state, other things were done by order of the king and council, and other things by commissions under the great seal. It is observable, that in consequence of these establishments from time to time, and of the dependency of these governments upon the supreme legislature at home, the lenity of each government in the colonies has been extreme towards the subject; and a very great inducement it has been to people to come and settle in them. But, if all those governments which are now independent of each other should become independent of the mother country, I am afraid that the inhabitants of the colonies are very little aware of the consequences. They would feel in that case very soon the hand of power more heavy upon them in their own governments than they have yet done, or have ever imagined.

The constitutions of the different colonies are made up of the different principles, and must remain dependent, from the necessity of things, and their relations upon the jurisdiction of the mother country; or they must be totally dismembered from it, and form a league of union among themselves against it, which could not be effected without great violences. No one ever thought the contrary, till the trumpet of sedition has been blown. Acts of parliament have been made, not only without a doubt of their legality, but with universal applause, the great object of which has been ultimately to fix the trade of the colonies, so as to center in the bosom of that country from whence they took their original. The navigation act shut up their intercourse with foreign countries. Their ports have been made subject to customs and regulations which have cramped and diminished their trade. And duties have been laid, affecting the very inmost parts of their commerce, and, among others, that of the post; yet all these have been submitted to peaceably, and no one ever thought till now of this doctrine, that the colonies are not to be taxed, regulated, or bound

by parliament. A few particular merchants were then, as now, displeased at restrictions which did not per mit them to make the greatest possible advantages of their commerce in their own private and peculiar branches; but, though these few merchants might think themselves losers in articles which they had no right to gain, as being prejudicial to the general and national system, yet I must observe, that the colonies, upon the whole, were benefited by these laws; because these restrictive laws, founded upon principles of the most solid policy, flung a great weight of naval force into the hands of the mother country, which was to protect its colonies, and without a union with which the colonies must have been entirely weak and de fenceless, but which became relatively great, subordinately, and in proportion as the mother country advanced in superiority over the rest of the maritime powers in Europe, to which both mutually contribu ted, and of which both have reaped a benefit, equal to the natural and just relation in which they both stand reciprocally, of dependency on one side, and protection on the other.

There can be no doubt, my lords, but that the inhabitants of the colonies are as much represented in parliament as the greatest part of the people of En gland are represented; among nine millions of whom there are eight which have no votes in electing mem bers of parliament. Every objection, therefore to the dependency of the colonies upon parliament, which arises to it upon the ground of representation, goes to the whole present constitution of Great Britain; and I suppose it is not meant to new model that too. Peo ple may form speculative ideas of perfection, and indulge their own fancies or those of other men. Every man in this country has his particular notion of liber ty; but perfection never did, and never can, exist in any human institution. To what purpose then are ar guments drawn from a distinction, in which there is no real difference, of a virtual and actual representation? A member of parliament, chosen for any borough, represents not only the constituents and inha

bitants of that particular place, but he represents the inhabitants of every other borough in Great Britain. He represents the city of London, and all other the commons of this land, and the inhabitants of all the colonies and dominions of Great Britain, and is, in duty and conscience, bound to take care of their interests.

I have mentioned the customs and the post tax. This leads me to answer another distinction, as false as the above; the distinction of internal and external taxes. The noble lord, who quoted so much law, and denied upon those grounds the right of the parliament of Great Britain to lay internal taxes upon the colonies, allowed at the same time that restrictions upon trade, and duties upon the ports, were legal. But I cannot see a real difference in this distinction; for I hold it to be true, that a tax laid in any place is like a pebble falling into, and making a circle in a lake, till one circle produces and gives motion to another, and the whole circumference is agitated from the centre; for, nothing can be more clear than that a tax of ten or twenty per cent. laid upon tobacco, either in the ports of Virginia or London, is a duty laid upon the inland plantations of Virginia, a hundred miles from the sea, wheresoever the tobacco grows.

I do not deny but that a tax may be laid injudiciously and injuriously, and that people in such a case may have a right to complain; but the nature of the tax is not now the question; whenever it comes to be one, I am for lenity. I would have no blood drawn. There is, I am satisfied, no occasion for any to be drawn. A little time and experience of the inconveniences and miseries of anarchy may bring people to their senses.

With respect to what has been said or written upon this subject, I differ from the noble lord, who spoke of Mr. Otis and his book with contempt, though he maintained the same doctrine in some points, although in others he carried it further than Otis himself; who allows every where the supremacy of the crown over the colonies. No man on such a subject is con

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