Page:Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies, from the papers of Thomas Jefferson - Volume 1.djvu/123

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That the act passed in the fourth year of his Majesty’s reign, entitled “an act [ Act for granting certain duties.]

One other act passed in the fifth year of his reign, entitled “an act [Stamp Act.]

One other act passed in the sixth year of his reign, entitled “an act [Act declaring the right of Parliament over the colonies.]

And one other act passed in the seventh year of his reign, entitled an act [ Act for granting duties on paper, tea, &c.

Form that connected chain of parliamentary usurpation, which has already been the subject of frequent applications to his Majesty, and the Houses of Lords and Commons of Great Britain; and, no answers having yet been condescended to any of these, we shall not trouble his Majesty with a repetition of the matters they contained.

But that one other act passed in the same seventh year of his reign, having been a peculiar attempt, must ever require peculiar mention. It is entitled “an act [Act suspending Legislature of New York.]

One free and independent legislature, hereby takes upon itself, to suspend the powers of another, free and independent as itself. Thus exhibiting a phenomenon unknown in nature, the creator, and creature of its own power. Not only the principles of com- mon sense, but the common feelings of human nature must be surrendered up, before his Majesty’s subjects here, can be persua- ded to believe, that they hold their political existence at the will of a British Parliament. Shall these governments be dissolved, their property annihilated, and their people reduced to a state of nature, at the imperious breath of a body of men whom they never saw, in whom they never confided, and over whom they have no powers of punishment or removal, let their crimes against the American public be ever so great? Can any one reason be assigned, why one hundred and sixty thousand electors in the island of Great Britain, should give law to four millions in the States of America, every individual of whom, is equal to every individual of them in virtue, in understanding, and in bodily strength? Were this to be admitted, instead of being a free people, as we have hitherto supposed, and mean to continue ourselves, we should suddenly be found the slaves, not of one, but of one hundred and sixty thousand tyrants ; distinguished too, from all others, by this smgular circumstance, that they are removed from the reach of fear, the only restraming motive which may hold the hand of a tyrant.

That, by ‘an act to discontinue in such manner, and for such