every individual of the realm, either in person or by his representatives, was supposed to be present in this great council of the nation. And the right of participation, when considered with regard to the imposition of internal taxes, became sacred and inviolable. For, in this act of legislation, the king and lords were but consentient authorities. It was confined to the agency of the commons as the immediate deputies of the people, who knowing more intimately the condition and interests of the cities and counties they were chosen to represent, were the natural protectors of the possessions and industry of the kingdom.

On the power of refusing or granting money, the dignity, preeminence, even the existence of the house of commons reposed. It was on this solid basis that the people had raised, by the labour of many centuries, and the expense of much blood, an inexpugnable barrier against the domineering ambition of their kings. But they who with so much spirit and intripidity had vindicated their own liberty, were willing to encroach upon that of others. Over their kinsmen of America, they usurped a jurisdiction which they had themselves disclaimed by rebellion, and attempted to appropriate those privileges which they had proclaimed as the birthright of Englishmen, and which they had consecrated by the death or expulsion of their sovereigns and by the blood of a civil war.

In the exercise of this supreme jurisdiction of parliament in the administration of the provinces, there do not occur, unless we may except some transient ordinance to gratify local or religious partialities, any acts tending to confer on them dignity or honour, or to promote their prosperity. It is the infamous and distinguishing characteristic of this authority to have been exerted only in measures of severity and oppression, in odious and impotent attempts to repress industry, extinguish liberty, and extort obedience to usurped and despotic power. However conspicuous in the eyes of mankind may appear this august council of the British nation, for wisdom, eloquence, and devotion to freedom, however magnanimous in their transactions with the rest of the world, the records of their colonial administration will present to the eyes of future generations, but the gloomy naratives of iniquity and folly, of contemptuous insolence or obdurate insensibility. Like the gods of Epicurus they seem, in their ambrosial felicity, to have been regardless of their children, unless, to inspire them with humility and awe, they sometimes bombarded them with thunder-bolts, or terrified them with storms.

During the tender years of their infancy, exposed in a wild, perilous and solitary region, where their condition required the consoling cares of maternity, they were then too distant and too inconsiderable to

arrest observation amidst the magnificent politics of Europe. When they had smoothed the desert, and by the hard hand of indefatigable toil, had drawn from its bosom abundant nourishment, when commerce and arts had lent their aid to the labours of the husbandman, they became then the objects of regard, and their rights and privileges a subject of discussion.

The first impressions received by the British parliament in weighing the destinies of these colonies was gloomy and inauspicious. Violent fears were manifested by their most eminent politicians, that the prosperity of the new world and the temptations to emigrate to it, would exhaust the vigour of the mother country. Measures were therefore devised, by public writings, by restraints on emigration, by ordinances and acts of parliament to counteract an evil so portentous.

Apprehensions of a rivalry in trade afforded a second cause of alarm much less visionary and phantastic; and against the natural rights of free commerce, which the colonies possessed with all parts of the world, the parliament commenced, by the most flagrant acts of injustice, the career of her ungenerous and illiberal hostility. From the insular situation of Great Britain, the genius and disposition of her inhabitants, it is upon her trade and maritime strength

that depend the security and preeminence of her empire; and to monopolize the commerce of the world, has employed all the nerves of her warriors and engrossed all the speculations of her statesmen. The maintenance of her commercial superiority, she regards as a law of self preservation, in which it is permitted not only to violate, without criminality, the equal rights of foreign nations, but without injury or compunction the personal liberty of her own subjects. The sensibility of her legislators is, therefore, on this subject, more than all others, prompt and exquisite, and their sagacity acute and providential.

As early as 1650, under the commonwealth, all foreign nations were forbidden, by act of parliament, to trade with the English plantations of America, which were now to be excluded from the commerce of the whole world, except of the island of Great Britain. This arbitrary law was, indeed, soon afterwards revoked in favour of the petitions and importunities of the colonists; but on the accession of Charles the second to the throne, the same tyrannical limitations, with a more gradual and unrelenting severity, were imposed upon them. Among the earliest transactions of his reign, a duty was laid upon all merchandize exported from or imported into the English colonial dominions. This regulation was soon followed by a series of similar restrictions,

and at last by the famous navigation act, by which the whole commerce of the colonies, with the exception of some enumerated commodities that could not be furnished or received by the mother country, was restricted to English vessels, to be navigated by Englishmen, and transported to those countries only belonging to the English crown. By this exclusive privilege of American commerce, the British merchants were enabled to raise the price of their commodities and diminish that of the colonial produce according to the dictates of their avarice. And they indulged in this licence with no ordinary rapacity. Even the "enumerated articles," it was not permitted to carry to any port to the northward of Cape Finisterre; and the surplus produce, which remained from the consumption of the English market, was nevertheless made subservient to the interest of the British traders. It was transported, according to the injunctions of the law, to their ports; it was estimated at their discretion, and being shipped from thence to foreign countries, was sold for their exclusive profit, at its full value.

When the parliament, by these arbitrary measures, had regulated, as it was called, the commerce of the American states; proceeding one step further, she interposed her sovereignty in limiting their internal rights, in modifying their civil and municipal institu