Let the Bar proclaim, "the laws, the rights, the generous plan of power," delivered down from remote antiquity; inform the world of the mighty struggles, and numberless sacrifices, made by our ancestors, in the defence of freedom.—Let it be known, that British liberties are not the grants of princes or parliaments, but original rights, conditions of original contracts, co-equal with prerogative, and co-eval with government.—That many of our rights are inherent and essential, agreed on as maxims and established as preliminaries, even before a parliament existed.—Let them search for the foundation of British laws and government in the frame of human nature, in the constitution of the intellectual and moral world.—There let us see, that truth, liberty, justice, and benevolence, are its everlasting basis; and if these could be removed, the superstructure is overthrown of course.—

Let the colleges join their harmony, in the same delightful concert.—Let every declamation turn upon the beauty of liberty and virtue, and the deformity, turpitude and malignity of slavery and vice.—Let the public disputations become researches into the grounds and nature and ends of government, and the means of preserving the good and demolishing the evil.—Let the dialogues and all the exercises become the instruments of impressing on the tender mind, and of spreading and distributing, far and wide, the ideas of right and the sensations of freedom.

In a word, let every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a flowing. The encroachments upon liberty, in the reigns of the first James and the first Charles, by turning the general attention of learned men to government, are said to have produced the greatest number of consummate statesmen, which has ever been seen in any age, or nation. The Brooke's, Hamden's, Falkland's, Vane's, Milton's, Nedham's, Harrington's, Neville's, Sydney's, Locke's, are all said to have owed their eminence in political knowledge, to the tyrannies of those reigns. The prospect, now before us, in America, ought, in the same manner, to engage the attention of every man of learning to matters of power and of right, that we may be neither led nor driven blindfolded to irretrievable destruction.——Nothing less than this seems to have been meditated for us, by somebody or other in Great Britain. There seems to be a direct and formal design on foot, to enslave all America.—This however must be done by degrees.——The first step that is intended seems to be an entire subversion of the whole system of our Fathers, by the introduction of the canon and feudal law, into America.——The canon and feudal systems though greatly mutilated in England, are not yet destroyed. Like the temples and palaces, in which the great contrivers of them were once worshiped and inhabited, they exist in ruins; and much of the domineering spirit of them still remains.—The designs and labours of a certain society, to introduce the former of them into America, have been well exposed to the public by a writer of great abilities; and the further attempts to the same purpose that may be made by that society, or by the ministry or parliament, I leave to the conjectures of the thoughtful.—But it seems very manifest from the Stamp Act itself, that a design is formed to strip us in a great measure of the means of knowledge, by loading the Press, the Colleges, and even an Almanack and a News-Paper, with restraints and duties; and to introduce the inequalities and dependencies of the feudal system, by taking from the poorer sort of people all their little subsistence, and conferring it on a set of stamp officers, distributors and their deputies.—But I must proceed no farther at present.—The sequel, whenever I shall find health and leisure to pursue it, will be a "disquisition of the policy of the stamp act."——In the mean time, however, let me add, These are not the vapours of a melancholy mind, nor the effusions of envy, disappointed ambition, nor of a spirit of opposition to government: but the emanations of an heart that burns for its country's welfare. No one of any feeling, born and educated in this once happy country, can consider the numerous distresses, the gross indignities, the barbarous ignorance, the haughty usurpations, that we have reason to fear are meditating for ourselves, our children, our neighbours, in short for all our countrymen, and all their posterity, without the utmost agonies of heart, and many tears.

[ [A] Boston in America.

FINIS.

Transcriber's Notes

  1. 18th Century English typography has been modernized for ease of reading, for example: "himſelf" has been changed to "himself." Spelling conventions of the times have been maintained.
  2. Several misprints and punctuation errors corrected. Hover over underlined word in the text to see the corrections made.

Corrections