not to live in a state of freedom. Your English subjects in the
colonies, still impressed with the ancient feelings of the people from
whom they are derived, cannot live under a government which does not
establish freedom as its basis.

This scheme, being, therefore, set up in direct opposition to the rooted
and confirmed sentiments and habits of thinking of an whole people, has
produced the effects which ever must result from such a collision of
power and opinion. For we beg leave, with all duty and humility, to
represent to your Majesty, (what we fear has been industriously
concealed from you,) that it is not merely the opinion of a very great
number, or even of the majority, but the universal sense of the whole
body of the people in those provinces, that the practice of taxing, in
the mode and on the principles which have been lately contended for and
enforced, is subversive of all their rights.

This sense has been declared, as we understand on good information, by
the unanimous voice of all their Assemblies: each Assembly also, on this
point, is perfectly unanimous within itself. It has been declared as
fully by the actual voice of the people without these Assemblies as by
the constructive voice within them, as well by those in that country who
addressed as by those who remonstrated; and it is as much the avowed
opinion of those who have hazarded their all, rather than take up arms
against your Majesty's forces, as of those who have run the same risk to
oppose them. The difference among them is not on the grievance, but on
the mode of redress; and we are sorry to say, that they who have
conceived hopes from the placability of the ministers who influence the
public councils of this kingdom disappear in the multitude of those who
conceive that passive compliance only confirms and emboldens oppression.

The sense of a whole people, most gracious sovereign, never ought to be
contemned by wise and beneficent rulers,--whatever may be the abstract
claims, or even rights, of _the supreme power_. We have been too early
instructed, and too long habituated to believe, that the only firm seat
of all authority is in the minds, affections, and interests of the
people, to change our opinions on the theoretic reasonings of
speculative men, or for the convenience of a mere temporary arrangement
of state. It is not consistent with equity or wisdom to set at defiance
the general feelings of great communities, and of all the orders