olding out to the world, that there was no real cause for
the revolution, because it denied the existence of all those causes
which are supposed to be justifiable, and which the Abbe styles
energetic.

I confess myself exceedingly at a loss to find out the time to which
the Abbe alludes; because, in another part of the work, in speaking of
the stamp act, which was passed in 1764, he styles it "An _usurpation_
of the Americans' _most precious and sacred rights_." Consequently he
here admits the most energetic of all causes, that is, _an usurpation
of their most precious and sacred rights_, to have existed in America
twelve years before the declaration of independence, and ten years
before the breaking out of hostilities. The time, therefore, in which
the paragraph is true, must be antecedent to the stamp act, but as at
that time there was no revolution, nor any idea of one, it
consequently applies without a meaning; and as it cannot, on the
Abbe's own principle, be applied to any time _after_ the stamp act, it
is therefore a wandering, solitary paragraph connected with nothing,
and at variance with every thing.

The stamp act, it is true, was repealed two years after it was passed;
but it was immediately followed by one of infinitely more mischievous
magnitude, I mean the declaratory act, which asserted the right, as it
was styled, of the British Parliament, "_to bind America in all cases
whatsoever_."

If then, the stamp act was an usurpation of the Americans' most
precious and sacred rights, the declaratory Act left them no rights at
all; and contained the full grown seeds of the most despotic
government ever exercised in the world. It placed America not only in
the lowest, but in the basest state of vassalage; because it demanded
an unconditional submission in everything, or, as the act expressed
it, _in all cases whatsoever_: and what renders this act the more
offensive, is, that it appears to have been passed as an act of mercy;
truly then may it be said, that _the tender mercies of the wicked are
cruel_.

All the original charters from the Crown of England, under the faith
of which, the adventurers from the old world settled in the new, were
by this act displaced from their foundations; because, contrary to the
nature of them, which was that of a compact, they were now made
subject to repeal or alteration at the mere will of one party only.
The whole condition of America was thus put into the hands of the
Par