will endeavor to present as
briefly as is consistent with a due consideration of this
subject.

The founders of this Republic claimed and asserted with
great emphasis, the essential equality of human rights as a
self-evident truth. They scouted the venerable old dogma of the
divine right of kings and titled aristocracies to rule the
submissive multitude. They were equally explicit in their claim
that "taxation and representation are inseparable."

The House of Representatives of Massachusetts, 1764, declared,
"That the imposition of duties and taxes, by the Parliament of
Great Britain, upon a _people not represented_ in the House of
Commons, is absolutely irreconcilable with their rights." A
pamphlet entitled "The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted,"
was sent to the agent of the Colony in England, to show him the
state of the public mind, and along with it an energetic letter.
"The silence of the province," said this letter, alluding to the
suggestion of the agent that he had taken silence for consent,
"should have been imputed to any cause--even to despair--rather
than be construed into a tacit cession of their rights, or the
acknowledgment of a right in the Parliament of Great Britain, to
impose duties and taxes on a people who are not represented In
the House of Commons." "_If we are not represented we are
slaves!_" Some of England's ablest jurists acknowledge the truth
of this doctrine. Chief Justice Pratt said: "My position is
this--taxation and representation are inseparable. The position
is founded in the law of nature. It is more; it is itself an
eternal law of nature." In defence of this doctrine they waged a
seven years' war: and yet, when they had wrung from the grasp of
Great Britain the Colonies she would not govern upon this
principle, and undertook to organize them according to their
favorite theory, most of the Colonies, by a single stroke of the
pen, cut off one-half of the people from any representation in
the government which claimed their obedience to its laws, the
right to tax them for its support, and the right to punish them
for disobedience.

This disparity between their theory and practice does not seem to
have excited much, if any notice, at the time, nor until its
bitter fruits had long been eaten in obscurity and sorrow by
thousands who suffered, but did not complain. Indeed, so
apathetic has been the public mind upon this subject, that no one
is surprised to see such a remark as