Page:Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry.djvu/454

 u APPENDIX.

The author cannot learn who drew the following memorial ; but from the style of the composition, compared with the members of the committee and the distribution of its other labours, he thinks it probable that it was Mr. Pen- dleton ; possibly, Mr. Bland.

" To the Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, in Parliament

assembled : <* Th£ Memorial of tlie Council and Burgesses of Virginia, notv met in General

��** etJMBLY REPRESENTS,

" That your memorialists hope an application to your lordships, the fixed and hereditary guardians of J?n7?sA liberty, will not be thought improper at this time, when measures are proposed, subversive as they conceive, of that freedom, which all men, especially those who derive their constitution from Britain, have a right to enjoy ; and they flatter themselves that your lord- ships will not look upon them as objects so unworthy your attention, as to re- gard any impropriety in the form or manner of their application, for your lordships' protection, of their just and undoubted rights as Britons.

" It cannot be presumption in your memorialists to call themselves by this distinguished name, since they are descended from Britons, who left their na- tive country to extend its territory and dominion, and who, happily for Britain^ and as your memorialists once thought, for themselves too, eflfected this pur- pose. As our ancestors brought with them every right and privilege they could with justice claim in their mother kingdom, their descendants may con- clude, they cannot be deprived of those rights without injustice.

"Your memoriahsts conceive it to be a fundamental principle of the British constitution, without which freedom can no where exist, that the people are not subject to any taxes but such as are laid on them by their own consent, or by those who are legally appointed to represent them : property must be- come too precarious for the genius of a free people, which can be taken from them at the will of others, who cannot know what taxes such people can bear, or the easiest mode of raising them ; and who are not under that restraint, which is the greatest security against a burthensome taxation, when the re- presentatives themselves must be affected by every tax imposed on the people.

" Your memorialists are therefore led into an humble confidence, that your lordships will not think any reason sufficient to support such a power, in the British parhament, where the colonies cannot be represented : a power ne- ver before constitutionally assumed, and which if they have a right to exer- cise on any occasion, must necessarily estabhsh this melancholy truth, that the inhabitants of the colonies are the slaves of Brito7is from whom they are descended; and from whom they might expect every indulgence that the ob- ligations of interest and affection can entitle them to.

•' Your memoriahsts have been invested with the right of taxing their own people from the first estabhshment of a regular government in the colony, and requisitions have been constantly made to them by their sovereigns, on all occasions when the assistance of the colony was thought necessaiy to pre-

�� �