All British subjects, whether in Great Britain, Ireland, or
the colonies, are equally free by the laws of nature; they
certainly are equally entitled to the same natural rights
that are essential for their own preservation, because this
privilege of "having a share in the legislation" is not
merely a British right, peculiar to this island, but it is
also a natural right, which can not without the most
flagrant and stimulating injustice be withdrawn from any
part of the British empire by any worldly authority
whatsoever. No tax can be levied without manifest robbery
and injustice where this legal and constitutional
representation is wanting, because the English law abhors
the idea of taking the least property from freemen without
their consent. It is iniquitous (_iniquum est_, says the
maxim) that freemen should not have the free disposal of
their own effects, and whatever is iniquitous can never be
made lawful by any authority on earth, not even by the
united authority of king, lords, and commons, for that
would be contrary to the eternal laws of God, which are
supreme.

In an essay upon the "first principles of government," by
Priestly, an English writer of great ability, written over a
century since, is the following definition of political liberty:

Political liberty I would say, consists in power, which the
members of the State reserve to themselves, of arriving at
the public offices, or at least of having votes in the
nomination of those who fill them. In countries where every
member of the society enjoys an equal power of arriving at
the supreme offices, and consequently of directing the
strength and sentiments of the whole community, there is a
state of the most perfect political liberty.

On the other hand, in countries where a man is excluded from
these offices, or from the power of voting for the proper
persons to fill them, that man, whatever be the form of the
government, has no share in the government and therefore has
no political liberty at all. And since every man retains and
can never be deprived of his natural right of relieving
himself from all o