Ne, pueri, ne tanta animis assuescite bella,
Neu patriae validas in viscera vertite vires
—VIRGIL

The writer asserts twenty times, “He that is taxd without his own consent, that is, without being represented, is a slave.” I answer, No; I have no representative in Parliament; but I am taxd; yet I am no slave. Yea, nine in ten throughout England have no representative, no vote; yet they are no slaves; they enjoy both civil and religious liberty to the utmost extent. He replies, “But they may have votes if they will; they may purchase freeholds.” What! Can every man in England purchase a freehold? No, not one in an hundred. But, be that as it may, they have no vote now; yet they are no slaves, they are the freest men in the whole world. “Who then is a slave?” Look into America, and you may easily see. See that Negro, fainting under the load, bleeding under the lash! He is a slave. And is there “no difference” between him and his master? Yes; the one is screaming, “Murder! Slavery!” the other silently bleeds and dies! “But wherein then consists the difference between liberty and slavery?” Herein: You and I, and the English in general, go where we will, and enjoy the fruit of our labors: This is liberty. The Negro does not: This is slavery. Is not then all this outcry about liberty and slavery mere rant, and playing upon words?

This is a specimen of this writer’s arguments. Let us just touch upon his quotations: — “All the inhabitants of England,” says the fanciful Montesquieu, as one terms him, “have a right of voting at the election of a representative, except such as are so mean, as to be deemed to have no will of their own!” Nay, if all have a right to vote that have a will of their own, certainly this right belongs to every man, woman, and child in England. One quotation more: “Judge Blackstone says, ‘In a free state, every man who is supposed to be a free agent ought to be in some measure his own governor.’ Therefore, one branch, at least, of the legislative power should reside in the whole body of the people.” But who are the whole body of the people? According to him, every free agent. Then the argument proves too much. For are not women free agents? Yea, and poor as well as rich men. According to this argument, there is no free state under the sun. The book which this writer says I so strongly recommend, I never yet saw with my eyes. And the words which he says I spoke, never came out of my lips. But I really believe, he was told so. I now speak according to the light I have. But if anyone will give me more light, I will be thankful.

BRETHREN AND COUNTRYMEN, 1. THE grand question which is now debated, (and with warmth enough on both sides,) is this, Has the English Parliament a right to tax the American colonies? In order to determine this, let us consider the nature of our colonies. An English colony is, a number of persons to whom the king grants a charter, permitting them to settle in some far country as a corporation, enjoying such powers as the charter grants, to be administered in such a manner as the charter prescribes. As a corporation they make laws for themselves; but as a corporation subsisting by a grant from higher authority, to the control of that authority they still continue subject. Considering this, nothing can be more plain, than that the supreme power in England has a legal right of laying any tax upon them for any end beneficial to the whole empire.

2. But you object, “It is the privilege of a freeman and an Englishman to be taxd only by his own consent. And this consent is given for every man by his representatives in Parliament. But we have no representatives in Parliament. Therefore we ought not to be taxd thereby.” I answer, This argument proves too much. If the Parliament cannot tax you because you have no representation therein, for the same reason it can make no laws to bind you. If a freeman cannot be taxd without his own consent, neither can he be punished without it; for whatever holds with regard to taxation, holds with regard to all other laws. Therefore he who denies the English Parliament the power of taxation, denies it the right of making any laws at all. But this power over the colonies you have never disputed; you have always admitted statutes for the punishment of offenses, and for the preventing or redressing of inconveniencies; and the reception of any law draws after it, by a chain which cannot be broken, the necessity of admitting taxation.

3. But I object to the very foundation of your plea: That “every freeman is governed by laws to which he has consented:” As confidently as it has been asserted, it is absolutely false. In wide-extended dominions, a very small part of the people are concerned in making laws. This, as all public business, must be done by delegation; the delegates are chosen by a select number. And those that are not electors, who are far the greater part, stand by, idle and helpless spectators. The case of electors is little better. When they are near equally divided, in the choice of their delegates to represent them in the Parliament or National Assembly, almost half of them must be governed, not only without, but even against, their own consent. And how has any man consented to those laws which were made before he was born? Our consent to these, nay, and to the laws now made even in England, is purely passive. And in every place, as all men are born the subjects of some state or other, so they are born, passively, as it were, consenting to the laws of that state. Any other than this kind of consent, the condition of civil life does not allow.

4. But you say, you “are entitled to life, liberty, and property by nature; and that you have never ceded to any sovereign power the right to dispose of these without your consent.” While you speak as the naked sons of nature, this is certainly true. But you presently declare, “Our ancestors, at the time they settled these colonies, were entitled to all the rights of natural-born subjects within the realm of England.” This likewise is true; but when this is granted, the boast of original rights is at an end. You are no longer in a state of nature, but sink down into colonists, governed by a charter. If your ancestors were subjects, they acknowledged a Sovereign; if they had a right to English privileges, they were accountable to English laws, and had ceded to the King and Parliament the power of disposing, without their consent, of both their lives, liberties, and properties. And did the Parliament cede to them a dispensation from the obedience which they owe as natural subjects? or any degree of independence, not enjoyed by other Englishmen?

5. “They did not” indeed, as you observe, “by emigration forfeit any of those privileges; but they were, and their descendants now are, entitled to all such as their circumstances enable them to enjoy.” That they who form a colony by a lawful charter, forfeit no privilege thereby, is certain. But what they do not forfeit by any judicial sentence, they may lose by natural effects. When a man voluntarily comes into America, he may lose what he had when in Europe. Perhaps he had a right to vote for a knight or burgess; by crossing the sea he did not forfeit this right. But it is plain, he has made the exercise of it no longer possible. He has reduced himself from a voter to one of the innumerable multitude that have no votes . . .