nt of this Colony should concur in such
measures as may, through the aid of a superintending Providence, remove
those evils under which this Continent is at present depressed.

The substance of the present contest, as far as my abilities serve me to
comprehend it, is, simply, whether the Parliament of Great Britain shall
have the liberty to take away your property without your consent. It
seems clear and obvious to me that it is wrong and dangerous they should
have such a power; and that if they are able to carry this into
execution, no man in this Country has any property which he may safely
call his own. Adding to the absurdity of a people's being taxed by a
body of men at least three thousand miles distant, we need only observe
that their views and sentiments are opposite to ours, their manners of
living so different that nothing but confusion, injustice, and
oppression could possibly attend it. If ever we are justly and
righteously taxed, it must be by a set of men who, living amongst us,
have an interest in the soil, and who are amenable to us for all their
transactions.

It was not to become slaves you forsook your native shores. Nothing
could have buoyed you up against the prepossessions of nature and of
custom, but a desire to fly from tyranny and oppression. Here you found
a Country with open arms ready to receive you; no persecuting landlord
to torment you; none of your property exacted from you to support court
favorites and dependants. Under these circumstances, your virtue and
your interest were equally securities for the uprightness of your
conduct; yet, independent of these motives, inducements are not wanting
to attach you to the cause of liberty. No people are better qualified
than you, to ascertain the value of freedom. They only can know its
intrinsick worth who have had the misery of being deprived of it.

From the clemency of the English Nation you have little to expect; from
the King and his Ministers still less. You and your forefathers have
fatally experienced the malignant barbarity of a despotick court. You
cannot have forgot the wanton acts of unparalleled cruelty committed
during the reign of Charles II. Mercy and justice were then strangers to
your land, and your countrymen found but in the dust a sanctuary from
their distresses. The cries of age, and the concessions of youth, were
uttered but to be disregarded; and equally with and without the
formalities of law, were thousands of the inn