he colonies, but really for the purpose of ruling them;
proposing an army of 20 regiments of 500 men each, to be raised and
officered in England, from the penniless and often worse than penniless
of the scions and relatives of Ministers and members of Parliament, and
billeted upon the colonies at the estimated expense of L100,000 sterling
a year, to be paid by the colonies out of the proceeds of the Stamp and
other Acts of Parliament passed for the purpose of raising a revenue in
the colonies for the support of its civil and military government.

No government is more odious and oppressive than that which has the
mockery of the form of free government without its powers or attributes.
An individual despot may be reached, terrified, or persuaded, but a
despotic oligarchy has no restraint of individual responsibility, and is
as intangible in its individuality as it is grasping and heartless in
its acts and policy. For governors, all executive officers, judges, and
legislative councillors appointed from England, together with military
officers, 20 regiments all raised in England, the military commanders
taking precedence of the local civil authorities, all irresponsible to
the colonists, yet paid by them out of taxes imposed upon them without
their consent, is the worst and most mercenary despotism that can be
conceived. The colonists could indeed continue to elect representatives
to one branch of their Legislatures; but the Houses of Assembly thus
elected were powerless to protect the liberties or properties of their
constituents, subject to abuse and dissolution in case of their
remonstrating against unconstitutional acts of tyranny or advocating
rights.

Such was the system passionately insisted upon by King George the Third
to establish his absolute authority over his colonial subjects in
America, and such were the methods devised by his venal Ministers and
Parliament to provide places and emoluments for their sons, relatives,
and dependents, at the expense of the colonists, to say nothing of the
consequences to the virtue of colonial families from mercenary public
officers and an immoral soldiery.

The American colonies merited other treatment than that which they
received at the hands of the King and Parliament from 1763 to 1776; and
they would have been unworthy of the name of Englishmen, and of the
respect of mankind, had they yielded an iota of the constitutional
rights of British subjects, for which they so law