like one just awoke from a long dream, or, as I
cannot help thinking there are good grounds to suspect, with a
design to "mislead his unwary readers (and unwary they must needs
be, if they are thus misled,) to believe that all our liberties are
perfectly secure, he calls upon us to show "which of our liberties
we are deprived of;" and in the face of a whole continent, as well
as of the best men in Europe, he has the effrontery to assert,
without the least shadow of argument, that "no one has attempted to
infringe them." One cannot after all this, be at a loss to conceive,
what judgment to form of his modesty, his understanding or
sincerity.
It might be easy to show that there are other instances in which we
are deprived of our liberties. - I should think, a people would
hardly be perswaded to believe that they were in the full enjoyment of
their liberties, while their capital fortress is garrison'd by troops
over which they have no controul, and under the direction of an
administration in whom, to say the least, they have no reason to place
the smallest confidence that they shall be employ'd for their
protection, and not as they have been for their destruction - While
they have a governor absolutely independent of them for his support,
which support as well as his political being - depends upon that same
administration, tho' at the expence of their own money taken from them
against their consent - While their governor acts not according to the
dictates of his own judgment, assisted by the constitutional advice of
his council, if he thinks it necessary to call for it, but according
to the edicts of such an administration - Will it mend the matter that
this governor, thus dependent upon the crown, is to be the judge of
the legality of instructions and their consistency with the Charter,
which is the constitution? Or if their present governor should be
possess'd of as many angelic properties as we have heard of in the
late addresses, can they enjoy that tranquility of mind arising from
their sense of safety, which Montesquieu defines to be civil
liberty, when they consider how precarious a person a provincial
governor is, especially a good one? And how likely a thing it is, if
he is a good one, that another may soon be placed in his stead,
possessed of the principles of the Devil, who for the sake of
holding his commission which is even now pleaded as a weighty motive,
will execute to the full the orders of an abandon'd minister, to the
ruin of those liberties which we are told are now so secure - Will a
people be perswaded that their liberties are safe, while their
representatives in general assembly, if they are ever to meet
again, will be deprived of the most essential privilege of giving
and granting what part of their own money they are yet allowed to
give and grant, unless, in conformity to a ministerial instruction
to the governor, solemnly read to them for their direction, they
exempt the commissioners of the customs, or any other favorites or
tools of the ministry, from their equitable share in the tax? All
these and many others that might be mention'd, are the natural
effects of that capital cause of complaint of all North-America,
which, to use the language of those "intemperate patriots ", the
majority of the present assembly, is " a subjugation to as
arbitrary a TRIBUTE as ever the Romans laid upon the Jews, or
their other colonies" - What now is the advice of Chronus? Why,
"much may be done, says he, by humble petitions and
representations of the hardships of certain measures" - Ask him
whether the colonies have not already done it? Whether the
assembly of this province, the convention, the town of Boston,
have not petitioned and humbly represented the hardship of certain
measures, and all to no purpose, and he tells you either that he
is "a stranger to those petitions", or "that they were not duly
timed, or properly urged," or "that the true reason why ALL our
petitions and representations met with no better success was,
because they were accompanied with a conduct quite the reverse of
that submission and duty which they seem'd to express" - that "to
present a petition with one hand, while the other is held up in a
threatning posture to enforce it, is not the way to succeed" -
Search for his meaning, and enquire when the threatning hand was
held up, and you'll find him encountering the Resolves of the Town
of Boston to maintain their Rights, (in which they copied after
the patriotic Assemblies of the several Colonies) and their
Instructions to their Representatives.
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