The people are then told that "they have been insidiously taught to believe that Great Britain is rapacious, cruel and vindictive, and envies us the inheritance purchased by the sweat and blood of our ancestors." The people do not believe this—they will not believe it. On the contrary, they believe, if it was not for scandals constantly transmitted from this province by the tories, the nation would redress our grievances. Nay as little as they reverence the ministry, they even believe that the lords North, Mansfield and Bute would relieve them, and would have done it long ago, if they had known the truth. The moment this is done "long live our gracious king and happiness to Britain," will resound from one end of the province to the other; but it requires a very little foresight to determine, that no other plan of governing the province and the colonies will ever restore a harmony between the two countries, but desisting from the plan of taxing them and interfering with their internal concerns, and returning to that system of colony administration, which nature dictated, and experience for one hundred and fifty years found useful.
NOVANGLUS.
ADDRESSED
To the Inhabitants of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay,
March 6, 1775.
MY FRIENDS,
OUR rhetorical magician, in his paper of January the 9th continues to wheedle. "You want nothing but to know the true state of facts, to rectify whatever is amiss." He becomes an advocate for the poor of Boston! Is for making great allowance for the whigs. "The whigs are too valuable a part of the community to lose. He would not draw down the vengeance of Great Britain. He shall become an advocate for the leading whigs." &c. It is in vain for us to enquire after the sincerity or consistency of all this. It is agreeable to the precept of Horace. Irritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet, ut magus. And that is all he desires.
After a long discourse, which has nothing in it, but what has been answered already, he comes to a great subject indeed, the British constitution; and undertakes to prove that "the authority of parliament extends to the colonies."
Why will not this writer state the question fairly? The whigs allow that from the necessity of a case not provided for by common law, and to supply a defect in the British dominions, which there undoubtedly is, if they are to be governed only by that law, America has all along consented, still consents, and ever will consent, that parliament being the most powerful legislature in the dominions, should regulate the trade of the dominions. This is founding the authority of parliament to regulate our trade, upon compact and consent of the colonies, not upon any principle of common or statute law, not upon any original principle of the English constitution, not upon the principle that parliament is the supreme and sovereign legislature over them in all cases whatsoever.
The question is not therefore, whether the authority of parliament extends to the colonies in any case; for it is admitted by the whigs that it does in that of commerce: but whether it extends in all cases.
We are then detained with a long account of the three simple forms of government; and are told that "the British constitution consisting of king, lords and commons, is formed upon the principles of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, in due proportion; that it includes the principal excellencies, and excludes the principal defects of the other kinds of government—the most perfect system that the wisdom of ages has produced, and Englishmen glory in being subject to and protected by it."