Wesley Corpus

43. “The fundamental principle of our Government is, the right of the people to grant their own money.” No.; if you understand the word people, according to your own definition, for all the individuals that compose the state, this is not the fundamental principle of our Government, nor any principle of it at all. It is not the principle even of the Government of Holland, nor of any Government in Europe. “It was an attempt to encroach upon this right in a trifling instance, that produced the civil war in the reign of King Charles the First.” Ono' it was the actual encroaching, not on this right only, but on the feligious as well as civil rights of the subject; and that, not in one trifling instance only, but in a thousand instances of the highest importance. “Therefore, this is a war undertaken, not only against our own constitution, but on purpose to destroy other similar constitutions in America, and to substitute in their room a military force.” (Page 50.) Is it possible that a man of sense should believe this? Did the King and Parliament undertake this war, on purpose to overturn a castle in the air, to destroy a constitution that never existed ? Or is this said purely ad movendam invidiam, “to inflame the minds of the people?” I would rather impute it to the power of preju dice; as also the following wonderful sentence: “How horrid, to sheathe our swords in the bowels of our brethren, for no other end than to make them acknowledge our supremacy l’” Yes, for this end,--to make them lay down their arms, which they have taken up against their lawful Sovereign; to make them restore what they have illegally and violently taken from their fellow-subjects; to make them repair the cruel wrongs they have done them, as far as the nature of the thing will aduit, and to make them allow to all that civil and religious liberty whereof they have at present deprived them. These are the ends for which our Government has very unwillingly undertaken this war, after having tried all the rmethods they could devise to secure them without violence. 44. Having considered the justice, you come now to consider the policy, of this war.