Page:A Declaration of the People's Natural Right to a Share in the Legislature (1775) (IA declarationofpeo00shar).djvu/46

 it may perhaps be allowed (in one Sense) to be a strange Principle; but then we have the greatest Reason to lament the ignorance and depravity of those Men who esteem it so in any other sense than that of being too often neglected and transgressed! for I trust that no Man, who admits or believes the divine authority of the holy Scriptures, will doubt the truth of it.

If this strange Principle had not been equally true, the English Nation (as I re-marked in my former Tract) would long ago have been enslaved: and I will now add, that even the very standing Army itself would, by this time, have been reduced to that abject State of political Slavery, which at present disgraces the standing Army of France (21); and therefore those