ty,
contrary to Confederate loyalty, love and friendship, and contrary to
all natural law and equity, have we been violently deprived and
dispossessed of our just rights in the government of St. Gall and the
bailiwick in the Rheinthal, not by you and your adherents only, but by
our own people also, whom in defiance of God, honor and law, you have
seduced from their allegiance. Not satisfied with the attempt to create
disunion amongst us by cunning and intrigue, to drive us from our old,
true Christian faith, you pretend that we are not willing to hear the
Word of God, nor to suffer the Old and New Testaments to be read, and
therefore call us ungodly, malicious sellers-of-flesh and perfidious
reprobates; and because we do not attach ourselves to your newly
invented religion, you refuse to sell us provisions, and undertake to
crush us by hunger, and not us alone, but to destroy the very child in
its mother's womb. You grudge us this, though God gives it, and it has
not grown up as yours, nor upon your soil; for what good, honest people
would gladly send us, you will not suffer to pass through your
territories, which is an open and wanton violation of the federal
compact and the _Landfriede_. And though we have made every reasonable
offer for the sake of peace, quiet, and the perpetuation of our common
Confederacy, and for this end appealed for aid to the other cantons,
yet neither have you acknowledged our rights, nor has any one shown a
disposition to help us, and for a long time now we have been obliged to
suffer and endure this oppression and injustice; and since there
appears to be no end to overbearing and violence, and we can look for
neither right nor fairness, we are driven to complain to God's worthy
Mother, to all the heavenly host, and to all good men, who love justice
and equity. If we and ours were to suffer such scandal, shame,
contempt, blasphemy and arrogance any longer, we would stand recreant
before God and the world. Wherefore, for the honor of religion and
truth and the glory of God's Holy Name, we are forced, by the aid of
Heaven, to put down such crime and tyranny, compelled to take
vengeance; and so much and so far as God gives us power, grace and
strength, will we chastise you by the edge of the sword and no longer
abide such haughty oppression and constraint; and we hereby boldly
proclaim, that, against you and your abettors, we will uphold our own
honor and that of our allies."

This decided mov