Wesley Corpus

For who can say that there ever was an equal representation since the conquest? We know further, that we have only neighbour's fare; for we cannot find there is any nation in Europe, no, nor in the habitable world, where the Govern ment is not as complete tyranny as our own; we find none wherein there is “an equal representation of all that are governed.” But will any man affirm, in cool blood, that the English Government is “complete tyranny?” We have certainly enjoyed more complete liberty since the Revolution, than England ever enjoyed before; and the English Govern ment, unequal as the representation is, has been admired by all impartial foreigners. 40. “But the sword is now to determine our rights: Detested be the measures which have brought us to this.” (Page 33.) I once thought those measures had been originally concerted in our own kingdom; but I am now persuaded they were not. I allow that the Americans were strongly exhorted by letters from England, “never to yield or lay down their arms till they had their own terms, which the Government would be constrained to give them in a short time:” But those mea sures were concerted long before this; long before either the Tea Act or the Stamp Act existed; only they were not digested into form,-that was reserved for the good Congress. Forty years ago, when my brother was in Boston, it was the general language there, “We must shake off the yoke; we never shall be a free people till we shake off the English yoke.” These, you see, were even then for “trying the question,” just as you are now; “not by charters,” but by what you call, “the general principles of liberty.” And the late Acts of Parliament were not the cause of what they have since done, but barely the occasion they laid hold on. 41. But “a late Act declares that this kingdom has power to make statutes to bind the colonies in all cases whatever ! Dreadful power indeed! I defy any one to express slavery in stronger terms.” (Page 34.) In all cases whatever ! What is there peculiar in this? Certainly, in all cases, or in none. And has not every supreme Governor this power? This the English Parliament always had, and always exercised, from the first settlement of the American colonies.