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WHEN I 'read your letter, however, with an agreeable surprize I observed, that you, at the same time you have made the attack, have laid the foundation of a defence for my countrymen. Permit me to erect the superstructure, though I had much rather see it built by more skilful hands.

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You acknowledge, the " burthen of the taxes "imposed by the Stamp Act, to be oppressive in "all its parts;" that you are thereby not only "loaded with a charge more than is proportioned "to your circumstances, but deprived also of a privilege, which renders the oppression beyond “measure grievous:" that you "see two of the "most important objects, TRADE and JUSTICE, "crouching under the load of the new duties; " and by the manner in which these duties have "been imposed, find too the most valuable of all your civil rights and liberties sinking along with "them."

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You say that if you are to be subject to the power of the parliament of Great-Britain, in your internal taxes, you must always be liable "to impositions, that have nothing but the wILL

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OF THE IMPOSERS to direct them in the mea"" sure." With what consistency you afterwards hesitate, and "cannot say," whether the privilege of taxing yourselves, exclusively belongs to you,

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 soci

ety;" of "old and valuable rights;" and even hazard the hardy appellation of "severe decrecs."

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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 66 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."

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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."

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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

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