Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/373

] with a considerable naval armament, has been employed to enforce the collection of taxes.

The authority of the commander-in-chief, and under him the brigadier-general, has in time of peace been rendered supreme in all the civil governments in America.

The commander-in-chief of all your majesty's forces in North America, has, in time of peace been appointed governor of a colony.

The charges of usual officers have been greatly increased, and new, expensive, and oppressive offices have been multiplied.

The judges of admiralty and vice-admiralty courts are empowered to receive their salaries and fees from the effects condemned by themselves.

The officers of the customs are empowered to break open and enter houses without the authority of any civil magistrate, founded on legal information.

The judges of courts of common law have been made entirely dependent on one part of the legislature for their salaries, as well as for the duration of their commissions.

Counsellors, holding their commissions during pleasure, exercise legislative authority.

Humble and reasonable petitions, from the representatives of the people, have been fruitless.

The agents of the people have been discountenanced, and governors have been instructed to prevent the payment of the salaries.

Assemblies have been repeatedly and injuriously dissolved.

Commerce has been burdened with many useless and oppressive restrictions.

By several Acts of Parliament made in the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth years of your majesty's reign, duties are imposed on us for the purpose of raising a revenue; and the powers of admiralty and vice-admiralty courts are extended beyond their ancient limits, whereby our property is taken from us without our consent, the trial by jury in many civil cases is abolished, enormous forfeitures are incurred for slight offences, vexatious informers are exempted from paying damages to which they are justly liable, and oppressive security is required from owners before they are allowed to defend their right.

Both Houses of Parliament have resolved that colonists may be tried in England for offences alleged to have been committed in America, by virtue of a statute passed in the thirty-fifth year of Henry the Eighth, and in consequence thereof, attempts have been made to enforce that statute.

A statute was passed in the twelfth year of your majesty's reign, directing that persons charged with committing any offence therein described in any place out of the realm, may be indicted and tried for the same in any shire or county within the realm, whereby inhabitants of these colonies may, in sundry cases, by that statute made capital, be deprived of a trial by their peers of the vicinage.

In the last session of Parliament an act was passed for blocking up the harbor of Boston; another, empowering the governor of the Massachusetts Bay, to send persons indicted for murder in that province to another colony, or even to Great Britain, for trial, whereby such offenders may escape legal punishment; a third, for altering the chartered constitution of government in that province; and a fourth, for altering the limits of Quebec, abolishing the English and restoring the French laws, whereby great numbers of British Frenchmen are subjected to the latter, and establishing an absolute government and the Roman Catholic religion throughout those vast regions that border on the westerly and northerly boundaries of the free, Protestant, English settlements; and a fifth, for the better providing suitable quarters for officers and soldiers, in his majesty's service, in North America.

To a sovereign, who glories in the name of Britain, the bare recital of these acts must, we presume, justify the loyal subjects, who fly to the foot of his throne, and implore his clemency for protection against them.

From this destructive system of colony administration, adopted since the conclusion of the last war, have flowed those distresses, dangers, fears, and jealousies, that overwhelm your majesty's dutiful colonists with affliction; and we defy our most subtile and inveterate enemies to trace the unhappy differences between Great Britain and these colonies from an earlier period, or from other causes, than we have assigned.

Had they proceeded on our part from a restless levity of temper, unjust impulses of ambition, or artful suggestions of seditious persons, we should merit the opprobrious terms frequently bestowed upon us by those we revere. But so far from promoting innovations, we have only opposed them, and can be charged with no offence, unless