n spring in the
American machine of court politics.--We have been told, that "the word
_Rights_ is an offensive expression." That "the King, his Ministry, and
Parliament, will not endure to hear Americans talk of their _Rights_."
That "Britain is the mother and we the children, that a filial duty and
submission is due from us to her," and that "we ought to doubt our own
judgment, and presume that she is right, even when she seems to us to
shake the foundations of government." That "Britain is immensely rich,
and great, and powerful, has fleets and armies at her command, which
have been the dread and terror of the universe, and that the will force
her own judgment into execution, right or wrong." But let me intreat
you, Sir, to pause--Do you consider yourself as a missionary of loyalty
or of rebellion? Are you not representing your K--, his Ministry and
Parliament, as tyrants, imperious, unrelenting tyrants, by such
reasoning as this?--Is not this representing your most gracious
Sovereign, as endeavouring to destroy the foundations of his own
throne?--Are you not representing every Member of Parliament as
renouncing the transactions at _Runyn Mead_; [the meadow, near Windsor,
where _Magna Charta_ was signed,] and as repealing in effect the bill of
rights, when the Lords and Commons asserted and vindicated the rights of
the people and their own rights, and insisted on the King's assent to
that assertion and vindication? Do you not represent them, as forgetting
that the Prince of Orange was created King William by the People, on
purpose that their rights might be eternal and inviolable?--Is there not
something extremely fallacious, in the common place images of mother
country and children colonies? Are we the children of Great Britain, any
more than the cities of London, Exeter and Bath? Are we not brethren and
fellow-subjects, with those in Britain, only under a somewhat different
method of legislation, and a totally different method of taxation? But
admitting we are children, have not children a right to complain when
their parents are attempting to break their limbs, to administer poison,
or to sell them to enemies for slaves? Let me intreat you to consider,
will the mother be pleased, when you represent her as deaf to the cries
of her children? When you compare her to the infamous miscreant, who
lately stood on the gallows for starving her child? When you resemble
her to Lady Macbeth in Shakespear, (I cannot think of it