he would have seen that the general resolutions then and there adopted were to be their laws, and that no laws were enacted. (See Note on pages [44-47].)
Many writers have endeavoured to point out the motive which prompted the Americans to the wish of being independent of Great Britain, who had for a century and a half nursed and protected them with parental tenderness; but they have only touched upon the reasons ostensibly held up by the Americans, but which are merely a veil to the true causes. These, therefore, I shall endeavour to set before the reader.
In the first place: England, as if afraid to venture her Constitution in America, had kept it at an awful distance, and established in many of her colonies republicanism, wherein the democratic absorbs the regal and aristocratic part of the English Constitution. The people naturally imbibed the idea that they were superior to kings and lords, because they controlled their representatives, governors, and councils. This is the infallible consequence of popular governments.
Secondly: The English had, like the Dutch, adopted the errors of ancient Rome, who judged that her colonies could be held in subjection only by natives of Rome; and therefore all emoluments were carefully withheld from all natives of the colonies.
Thirdly: The learned and opulent families in America were not honoured by their King like those born in Britain.
Fourthly: The Americans saw themselves despised by the Britons, “though bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh.” They felt and complained of, without redress, the sad effects of convicts, the curses of human society and the disgrace of England, taken from the dungeons, jails, and gibbets, and poured into America as the common sewer of England, to murder, plunder, and commit outrage upon the people “whom the King did not delight to honour.”
Hence the rebellion. Human nature is always such that men will never cease struggling for honour, wealth, and power, at the expense of gratitude, loyalty, and virtue.
Indignation and despair seized the gentlemen in America, who thought, like Haman, that their affluence and ease was nothing
worth so long as they lay under the sovereign’s contempt. They declared that the insult reached the whole continent, in which were to be found only two Baronets of Great Britain, while all the other inhabitants were held beneath the yeomanry of England. They added: “Let Cæsar tremble! Let wealth and private property depart, to deliver our country from the injuries of our elder brethren!” How easily might the rebellion have been averted by the granting of titles! With what reason faction and discontent spring up in South-America, may be learned from the dear-bought wisdom of Spain, who transported to her colonies her own Constitution in Church and State, rewarded merit in whatever part of her territories it appeared, sent bishops to govern and ordain in every church in South-America, and they, together with the native noblesse, promoted harmony, the offspring of justice and policy; while North-America abounded with discord, hatred, and rebellion, entirely from want of policy and justice in their party-coloured charters, and of the honours and privileges of natural-born subjects of Great Britain.
It appears that the British Government, in the last century, did not expect New-England to remain under their authority; nor did the New-Englanders consider themselves as subjects, but allies, of Great Britain. It seems that England’s intent was to afford an asylum to the republicans, who had been a scourge to the British Constitution; and so, to encourage that restless party to emigrate, republican charters were granted, and privileges and promises given them far beyond what any Englishman in England was entitled to. The emigrants were empowered to make laws in Church and State, agreeable to their own will and pleasure, without the King’s approbation; they were excused from all quit-rents, all Government taxes, and promised protection without paying homage to the British King, and their children entitled to the same rights and privileges as if born in England. However hard this bargain was upon the side of England, she had performed her part, except in the last respect—indeed, the most material in policy and in the minds of the principal gentlemen of New-England. The honour of nobility had not been conferred on any of them, and therefore they had never enjoyed the full