Letters of Delegates to Congress: Volume 1 AUGUST 1774 - AUGUST 1775
People of Great Britain and Ireland
[October 11-18? 1774] (1) To the People of Great Britain and Ireland
We The Delegates from the english Colonies of New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, lower Counties on Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina & South Carolina assembled in general Congress at Philadelphia, find with inexpressible concern that his Majesties faithful and loyal Subjects of North America are driven by the hard necessity of their Situation to adopt Measures from which injury may be derived to many of their fellow subjects in Great Britain and Ireland. When the experience of a Century and an half evinces that from the first settlement of these Colonies, their Inhabitants have been most remarkable for steady loyalty, and for an uniform zealous attachment to the interests and commercial Success of the mother Country a candid mind will find no difficulty in believing what is certainly true, that their conduct now results solely from the overuling principles of self preservation, which demands the Protection of their Liberty, the Security of their lives and property; against a lately adopted System of plantation government, repugnant to the english constitution, the faith of Charters, and constant Usage from the first settlement of englishmen in North America: Against which System the Assemblies of the different Colonies have by humble and dutiful petitions frequently but in vain supplicated for relief.
The possession of Liberty and the security of property being of such great and evident importance, so essentially necessary for human happiness, so earnestly contended for and so long enjoyed by Britain from whence we sprung; it is not to be wondered that our Ancestors before they would hazard their lives and venture their private fortunes to explore and settle this distant country, obtained royal charters, securing and confirming to them and their Posterity forever, all the Franchises privileges and immunities of the free people of England they left behind them. It is most certain that nothing but an undeviating attention to their charter rights and a firm reliance on the honor and Justice of the mother country could have sustained them unaided, unassisted as they were, in their slow and perilous advances to settlement through the savage Wilderness. But the industry of human nature being invincible when led by Liberty and a conscious Security of Property, the first Settlers having with fortitude and perseverance surmounted the greatest Difficulties, their Posterity, with the aid of emigrants, at length furnish the mother country an inexhaustible fund of materials for commerce with an almost unlimited demand for british manufactures, and consequently produced employment for several hundred sail of Ships and many thousand Seamen. It is well known how greatly the american Trade has in creased the value of lands in Britain, and what multitudes of People are entirely supported by the american Consumption of british Mer chandize. Such immense advantages being derived from the enter prizing and successful adventure of our Ancestors, how well we their descendants are entitled to a peaceable Possession of those just rights originally stipulated for by them and to them granted by former Princes, we leave to the determination of all reasonable men.
Soon after the close of the last war, all british America was stricken with amazement and concern, to find the Ministry had adopted a plan for taking the Property of the Colonists from them without the consent of their Representatives, under the Pretence of raising a revenue in America for the purposes of defending and protecting the Colonies, and for supporting the Government and Administration of Justice here, with the further plausible reason of reembursing Great Britain a part of the Expence encurred by defending the Colonies in the last war. To inforce this unconstitutional and unjust System of Taxation, every fence that the wisdom of our british Ancestors had carefully erected against Arbitrary power, has been violently thrown down in America;(2) and a variety of Acts of Parliament have been passed depriving the american Subjects of the invaluable Trial by Jury in Cases of Property, by enabling the Prosecutor to carry the defendent into far distant Courts of Admiralty. And as well by a late Statute in the [ ] (3) year of his present Majesty's reign as by an extension of an obsolete and tyrannic Act of King Henry the eighth, the same equitable method of Trial in cases that touch life is likewise taken away from the Colonists, who are to be carried in chains 3000 miles from their native country without evidence or Assistance of friends to be tried by a Jury of strangers. A standing Army with all its oppressive concomitants has been fixed without our consent.
The colony of Massachusetts Bay has had its antient charter subverted, thirty thousand People in the Town of Boston invested by military violence, and the horid Crime of murder there encouraged by an Act authorising the removal of Offenders from the Justice of the Province and carryed to Great Britain, where distance and expence will surely prevent there being followed. Nor has the fury of ad ministration stopped here, but determined to destroy both the religion & Liberty of british America they have procured an act of the last Session for extending the Province of Canada in such manner as to border on the western frontiers of all the Northern Colonies and there established a dispotic Government and the roman catholic Religion, well knowing from the truth of history that this bloody and intollerant religion is at such fatal variance with Protestanism, that the inhabitants of that now greatly extended Country will thereby be well fitted both from civil & religious Principles to carry Slaughter and destruction into the free protestant Colonies whenever they shall be encouraged by a wicked Ministry to do so.(4)
It has been already observed that the ostensible reasons which have been assigned for this Attempt to destroy natural, constitutional, chartered, and antient rights, is for the purpose of raising a revenue to protect and defend the Colonies, to support Government and the Administration of Justice here and to reimburse Great Britain the Expence of defending the Colonies in the last war. The two former reasons are sufficiently answered by stating the notorious facts, that from the first Settlement of the Colonies until the late War they sustained these Expences themselves and during the Continuance of that war having at their own charge supported [ ] (5) men, in doing which our late & present Sovereigns were so well satisfied, that we had consulted our Zeal for the common cause more than our Ability, that declarations from the throne to this effect abound on the Journals of Parliament, recommending the Justice of reembursing us, and although Parliament did vote considerable sums for this purpose, yet it is a truth well known that these were chiefly applied to the further support of the war and in consequence did not operate to remove the Burthens created by these zealous and unrestrained Efforts against the common enemy. The royal recommendation to Parliament to reimburse The Colonies is founded upon this clear principle of substantial justice, that wealth, the sinews of war, is withheld from the Colonists by the British acts of Navigation which place them under a monopolized Trade, confining their purchase of european Commodities to the british markets and directs the Disposal of american Products through the same Channel, which in fact obliges the Colonists who consume british Merchandize to the amount of three millions annually, to pay the Taxes of all Manufacturers, Merchants and Seamen concerned in making, selling and transporting the same. In the Acts of Navigation therefore, and not by unconstitutional Taxation, a just and rational Man will search for & find the American assistance of the common cause.
Conclusive as this reasoning is yet the Colonists have given ample testimony in the two last wars of their Zeal and readiness to strain every Nerve in aid of the mother country, whenever called upon to do so in a constitutional manner by royal requisitions to their respective Colony Assemblies. When we contend against being taxed by the british parliament where we are not, and in which from our Distance we cannot be represented, we find ourselves warranted by reason, the english Constitution, by express compacts with our Princes, and by usage as old as the Settlement of these Colonies. We should certainly be Slaves if we were not exempted from such Taxation. Property must become too precarious for the Genius of a free people, which can be taken from them at the will of others who cannot know what Taxes such people can bear, or the easiest mode of raising them; and who are not under those restraints which are the greatest Security against abuse, the Danger of removal at a new election and being themselves affected by every tax imposed on the people. It cannot be necessary for us to prove to a british understanding that liberty is essential to human happiness, and that the safety of property is the security of liberty; every page of english his tory proves their generous, brave attachment to these principles, and we should be unworthy of the british Ancestry which is now our boast, if we did not esteem our constitutional liberty far above the possession of Life, disgraced with the Shackles of Slavery.
It grieves us to find that some malignant Spirits in Great Britain charge us with designing independency and wanting to dissolve all connection with the parent State. To such incendiaries, foes to the happiness of both countries, we reply that our whole history from the beginning, our uniform tenor of conduct is directly in the teeth of their assertion. And altho' we cannot help being misrepresented by the Agents of dispotism & avarice, we absolutely and solemnly disavow all thoughts of Disunion from Great Britain and we do profess and declare our steady loyalty to our sovereign Lord king George the third, and our ardent wish to promote the glory happiness and commercial interest of the Mother Country, which would be in emminent danger indeed, if three millions of people already in these Colonies by submitting to Slavery should render themselves fit Instruments to enslave the rest of their fellow subjects; a plan it would seem, in great favor with administration, who design the ruin of American Liberty by establishing Popery and Despotism in Canada, that thereby the people and property of all North America being at Ministerial devotion, may with great effect be applied to subdue that stubborn English Virtue, which heretofore contending for its darling Liberty, has proved the ruin of many wicked Ministers and evil Counsellors, too many of whom have of late years unhappily sur rounded the Throne and vitiated the British councils, to the infinite distress and confusion of the whole Empire. Whenever Parliament is pleased to restore us to the state we were in at the conclusion of the last war, by repealing the Acts claiming a right to and establishing the means of raising a revenue in America: and those most oppressive Statutes against the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, because they have bravely contended for their own and American freedom; when the law shall be declared against endangering the life of every American by making him liable to transportation to England for Trial; when the dangerous Quebec Act is no more; these oppressive grievances being removed, we shall think no longer of restraining our Exports and Imports, but intent on promoting the common interest and happiness of the united Empire will be industrious to improve the vast uncultivated territory of North America, and being chiefly engaged in Agriculture, the commodities for exportation, and the consumption of British Manufactures will be continually increasing. But this most desirable connection between Great Britain and the Colonies supported by such a happy intercourse of reciprocal benefits must be interrupted, if the people of America are distressed and ruined by unconstitutional Taxes. Their Liberty and antient rights being taken away, no encouragement to industry will remain, but ig- norance and idleness the constant Attendants on Slavery will overrun this great Continent, hitherto the seat of freedom, virtue, and growing Science.
MS (MH) . In the hand of Richard Henry Lee.
1 On October 11, Richard Henry Lee, William Livingston, and John Jay were appointed a committee to prepare a draft of both "a memorial to the people of British America" and "an address to the people of Great Britain." JCC, 1:62. The committee reported a draft address to the people of Great Britain on October 18, "which was read, and ordered to lie on the table, for the perusal of the members," and on the 19th it was debated by paragraphs, amended, and recommitted "in order that the amendments may be taken in." The amendments having been made as directed, the address was brought in and approved on October 21. JCC, 1:75, 81.
Although no draft of the address finally approved by Congress or other contemporary evidence bearing upon the authorship of this document has been found, John Jay was undoubtedly its author. Years later, in response to questions about the work of the committee, Jay unequivocally affirmed his authorship of the address, and no known accounts of the work of Congress have questioned that claim. For a discussion of inquiries directed to Jay and other contemporaries about the work of individual members of the committee, see John Dickinson's Draft Memorial to the Inhabitants of the Colonies, October 19 21? 1774. For an imaginative reconstruction of events that may have led up to adoption of the final version, see Frank Monaghan, John Jag . . . (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1935), p. 61.
The document printed here, although not technically an early version of Congress' address to the people of Great Britain, reflects the thinking of one member of the committee and was undoubtedly perused by the others. It does not appear to have had much influence on Jay's work, although one elaborate passage from Lee's draft, noted below, appears verbatim in the final address. Lee's eight-page draft actually appears to be a fair copy of an expanded version of an earlier five-page draft "Memorial from the Deputies of the several Colonies," bearing the heading "To the Gentlemen Merchants, and Manufacturers of G. Britain Trading with North America." ViU. The latter memorial is printed in the Southern Literary Messenger 30 (March 1860): 173-75; and nearly 80 percent of it appears in the address printed here, including major portions that are repeated verbatim.
2 This passage appears verbatim in the final version. JCC, 1:85.
3 MS blank.
4 This lengthy sentence, containing strong objections to the Quebec Act, represents the only substantive addition to Lee's earlier draft memorial "To the Gentlemen Merchants, and Manufacturers of G. Britain Trading with North America ."
5 MS blank.
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