or talk of a "SEEMING birth-right," I will leave to be determined by yourselves, or the agent to whose "good judgment and discretion," you with such strange, I had almost said "humble submiss. ion," "refer" your most important affairs, However your sentiments soon veer about again, and you speak of "an inestimable blessing of society" of "old and valuable rights;" and even hazard the hardy appellation of

severe decrees."

WHEN it is so evident that all these assertions are equally true with regard to yourselves, and "your fellow-subjects on the northern continent," it affords no slight cause of amazement, to see in the same letter that contains these assertions, the opposition to those confessedly destructive measures, branded as REBELLIOUS," Wherefore this needless stroke against your "fellow-sub"jects?" Could not your "principle of loyalty" sink you to a satisfactory depth of humiliation, unless you flung yourselves down with such a rage of prostration, as to spatter all around you? Was not your surrender of " the most valuable of all rights "and liberties," sufficiently completed by your declaration, that you COULD NOT POSITIVELY "SAY you were intitled to them," without reproaching those who have the misfortune of differing so widely from you in their sentiments, that they had rather die than make such a declaration?

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To talk of your “charter," gentlemen, on this occasion, is but weakening the cause, by relying on false aids. Your opinion on this head seems to be borrowed from the doctrine of the unhappy Stuarts. They thought, or pretended to think, all the liberties of the subject were mere favours granted by charters from the crown. Of consequence, all claims of liberties not expressly mentioned in those charters, were regarded as invasions of the prerogative, which according to them, was a power vested in the prince, they could not tell how, for no better purpose, than to do as he pleased. But what said the nation? They asserted, that the royal charters were declarations but not gifts of liberties, made as occasions required, on those points in which they were most necessary, without enumerating the rest; and that the prerogative was a power vested in one for the benefit of all.

KINGS or parliaments could not give the rights essential to happiness, as you confess those invaded by the Stamp Act to be. We claim them from a higher source-- -from the King of kings, and Lord of all the earth. They are not annexed to us by parchments and seals. They are created in us by the decrees of Providence, which establish the laws of our nature. They are born with us; exist with us; and cannot be taken from us by any human power, without taking our lives. In short,

they are founded on the immutable maxims of rea son and justice. It would be an insult on the divine Majesty to say, that he has given or allowed any man or body of men a right to make me miserable. If no man or body of men has such a right, I have a right to be happy. If there can be no happiness without freedom, I have a right to be free. If I cannot enjoy freedom without security of property, I have a right to be thus secured. If my property cannot be secure, in case others over whom I have no kind of influence, may take it from me by taxes, under pretence of the public good, and for enforcing their demands, may subject me to arbitrary, expensive, and remote jurisdictions, I have an exclusive right to lay taxes on my own property either by myself or those I can trust; of necessity to judge in such instances of the public good; and to be exempt from such jurisdictions.-But no man

can be secure in his property, who is "liable to "impositions, that have NOTHING BUT THE WILL

OF THE IMPOSERS to direct them in the mea

sure ;" and that make "justice to crouch under "their load."

THUS you prove, gentlemen, that the fatal act you allude to in these expressions, is destructive of our property, our freedom, our happiness: that it is inconsistent with reason and justice; and subversive of those sacred rights which God himself

from the infinity of his benevolence has bestowed upon mankind.

YET after these expressed or implied concessions, you term the opposition made by my countrymen to the execution of this-imagination cannot supply me with an epithet equal to my meaning -act," REBELLIOUS."

PRAY, gentlemen, let me not mistake your no- v tion of "humble submission to authority." Do you maintain, that because the parliament may legally make some laws to bind us, it therefore may legally make any laws to bind us? Do you assert, that where power is constitutionally vested in particular persons for certain purposes, the same obedience is due to the commands of those persons, when they exceed the limits of that power, as when they are restrained within them? Do you say, that all acts of authority are sanctified by the mere pleasure of their authors, and that "humble submission" is due to them, however injurious they may be to those over whom they are exercised-or that the oppressed ought to content themselves with " giving the COMPLEXION of your CONDUCT" to PALE petitions-and that all other opposition is

GREATLY I am afraid, that you have published to the world too convincing proofs, that you hold these sentiments; sentiments, which I solemnly profess are so horrible to me, that I cannot wish the infection of them even to the bitterest enemies of my country.

HAVE you considered, gentlemen, the importance of the points to which your political creed may be applied? What is your opinion of the revolution, that made the British liberty and British glory blaze out with their brightest lustre? Had you lived in those days of ignorance, with what lucky assistance might you have propped up the tottering tyrant, by maxims of law to prove, that kings can do no wrong; and texts of scripture to shew, that submission is due to the powers that be!

Ir is as manifest, that the great and good men who then placed the throne in the temple of liberty, disdained your sentiments, as it is, that if they had approved them, you would not at present enjoy the satisfaction of being ruled by a prince whose virtues do honour to his rank. All the happiness you possess, you owe to the force of the principle, which you now reproach; and your professing your resolution to persist in an "humble submission" to acts that you expressly say, "make your oppress❝ion beyond measure grievous," and destroy "the