Page:Journal of the First Congress of the American Colonies (1765).djvu/40

 and liberties; we glory in being subjects of the best of kings, having been born under the most perfect form of government But it is with, the most ineffable' and humiliating sorrow that we find ourselves of late deprived of the right of granting our own property for his majesty's service, to which our lives and fortunes are entirely devoted, and to which, on his royal requisitions, we have been ready to contribute to the utmost of our abilities.

We have also the misfortune to find that all the penalties and forfeitures mentioned in the stamp act, and divers late acts of trade extending to the plantations, are, at the election of the informers, recoverable in any court of admiralty in America. This, as the newly erected court of adrniralty has a general jurisdiction over all British America” renders his, majesty's subjects in these colonies liable to be carried, at an immense expense, from one end of the continent to the other. It always gives us great pain to see a' manifest distinction made therein between the subjects of our mother country and the colonies, in that the like penalties and forfeitures recoverable there only in his majesty's courts of record, are made cognizable here by a court of admiralty. By this means we seem to be, in effect, unhappily deprived of two privileges essential to freedom, and which all Englishmen have ever considered as their best birthrights—that of being free from all taxes but such as they have consented to in person, or by their representatives, and of trial by their peers.

Your petitioners further shew, that the remote situation and other circumstances of the colonies, render it impracticable that they should be represented but in their respective subordinate legislatures; and they humbly conceive that the parliament adhering strictly to the principles of the constitution, have never hitherto taxed any but those who were therein actually represented; for this reason, we humbly apprehend, they never have taxed