Wesley Corpus

The case of electors is little better. When they are near equally divided, in the choice of their delegates to represent them in the Parliament or National Assembly, almost half of them must be governed, not only without, but even against, their own consent. And how has any man consented to those laws which were made before he was born? Our consent to these, may, and to the laws now made even in England, is purely passive. And in every place, as all men are born the subjects of some state or other, so they are born, passively, as it were, consenting to the laws of that state. Any other than this kind of consent, the condition of civil life does not allow. 4. But you say, you “are entitled to life, liberty, and property by nature; and that you have never ceded to any sovereign power the right to dispose of these without your consent.” While you speak as the naked sons of nature, this is certainly true. But you presently declare, “Our ancestors, at the time they settled these colonies, were entitled to all the rights of natural-born subjects within the realm of England.” This likewise is true; but when this is granted, the boast of original rights is at an end. You are no longer in a state of nature, but sink down into colonists, governed by a charter. Tf your ancestors were subjects, they acknowledged a Sovereign; if they had a right to English privileges, they were accountable to English laws, and had ceded to the King and Parliament the power of disposing, without their consent, of both their lives, liberties, and properties. And did the Parliament cede to them a dispensation from the obedience which they owe as natural subjects? or any degree of inde Pendence, not enjoyed by other Englishmen? 5. “They did not” indeed, as you observe, “by emigra tion forfeit any of those privileges; but they were, and their descendants now are, entitled to all such as their circum stances enable them to enjoy.” That they who form a colony by a lawful charter, forfeit no privilege thereby, is certain. But what they do not forfeit by any judicial sentence, they may lose by natural effects. When a man voluntarily comes into America, he may lose what he had when in Europe.