inevitably led to a conditioned and limited power of Parliament over the Colonies. He said:

At this day the constitution and rights of the Colonies, in the actual exercise of them, are unsettled; the relation in which they stand connected with the Realm and with the King, is disputed; and Parliament, as well as Ministers, are balancing in opinion what is the true, legal, and constitutional mode of administration by which those Colonies are to be governed. Whether the Colonies be demesnes of the Crown, without the Realm, or parts and parcels of the Realm, whether these foreign dominions of the King be as yet annexed to the Realm of England, whether the colonists be subjects of the King in his foreign dominions, or whether they be subjects of, and owe allegiance to the Realm, has been at various times, and is at this day called into dispute. This question is now no longer of curiosity and theory; it is brought actually into issue. It is now by deeds and overt acts discussed, and must be decided.

From the uncontroverted and universal idea of the subordination of the Colonies to the Government of the Mother Country, this power, by which the Parliament makes laws that shall be binding on the Colonies, has been constantly exerted by the Government of England, (afterwards Great Britain) and submitted to by the Colonies. The fundamental maxim of the laws of those countries, is, that first, the common law of England, together with such statutes (the ecclesiastical laws and canons excepted) as were enacted before the Colonies had Legislatures of their own; secondly, the laws made by their own Legislatures; together with, thirdly, such Acts of Parliament as by a special clause are extended to America, since that time,-are the laws of each Province or Colony. The jurisdiction and power of every court established in that country, the duty of every civil officer, the process of every transaction in law and business there, is regulated on this principle. Nay further, every Act of Parliament passed since the establishment of the Colonies, which respects the general police of the Realm, or the rights and liberties of the subjects

of the Realm, although not extended by any special clause to America by Parliament, although without the intervention, or express consent of their own respective Legislatures or Representatives, has been considered, and I may venture to say, adopted as part of the law and constitution of those countries; but by what principle of our Constitution, by what maxim of law, this last practice has been established, is not so easy to ascertain, any more than it will be easy to fix any rule, when the Colonies shall adopt, or when they may refuse those kinds of laws of the Mother Country. This arises, as I have said, from some vague indecisive idea that the Colonies are of, or some parts of the Realm; but how or what parts, or whether any parts at all, has never yet been thoroughly examined.

We have seen what was, in reality, the dependence and subordination of the colonists to the King, while they were supposed to be subject to him in a Seignoral capacity. We have seen what must have been the same subordination, while they were supposed to be subject to the two Houses of Lords and Commons, as Sovereign in the same capacity.

Let us take up the next idea, that while they are not of the body of the Realm, are no parts or parcel of the same, but bodies corporate and politic, distinct from and without the Realm, "they are nevertheless, and of right ought to be subordinate unto, and dependent upon the Imperial Crown of Great Britain, (i. e. the Realm,) and that the King's Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons of Great Britain assembled in Parliament, had, hath, and of right ought to have full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the Colonies and people of America, subjects of the Crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever." In this idea we have a very different state of the relation, namely, the Imperial Crown of Great Britain, the King, Lords and Commons, collectively taken, is stated as Sovereign on the one hand, and the colonists as subjects on the other.

There is no doubt, but that in the nature, reason, justice and necessity of the thing, there must be somewhere, within. the body politic of every Government, an absolute power.

The political freedom of Great Britain consists in this power's being lodged nowhere but in King, Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled. This power is absolute throughout the Realm, and yet the rights and liberties of the subject are preserved, as the Communitas Populi is the body, of which this Imperium is the soul, reasoning, willing, and acting, in absolute and entire union with it, so as to form one political person.

There can be no doubt but that this power is absolute throughout the dominions of the Realm; yet in the exercise of this power, by the Imperial Crown of Great Britain,-that is, by the King's Majesty, with the Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled,-towards the Colonies, if they are not of this body of the Realm, but are still to be considered as distinct bodies, foreign or extraneous parts, without the Realm and the jurisdiction of this Kingdom, there is surely some attention due to the nature of this absoluteness in this case.

If the people of the Colonies are no part of the people, or of the body, of the Realm of Great Britain, and if they are to be stated in the argument, as subject to the King, not as the head of that compound political person, of which they are in part the body, sed ut caput alterius populi,-as wearing the Imperial Crown of Great Britain, as the head to which the Realm of Great Britain is the body, and of which body the Parliament is the soul, but of which the Colonies are no part, then this Imperial Supreme Magistrate, the collective power of King, Lords and Commons, may be stated as Sovereign on the one hand, while the people of the Colonies stand as subjects on the other.

Taking the relation of the Colonies to the Mother Country in this view, when the argument is stated in this manner, we surely may say with exactness and truth, that if the colonists, by birthright, by nature or by establishment, ever were entitled to all the rights, privileges, liberties and franchises of an Englishman, the absolute power of this Sovereign must have some bounds; must from its own nature, from the very nature of these rights of its subjects, be limited in its extension and exercise. Upon this state of the case, questions will necessarily arise, which I will not take upon me to decide,

whether this Sovereign can disfranchise subjects, so circumstanced, of their rights, because they are settled beyond the territorial limits of the Realm; whether these subjects, thus circumstanced, can, because they are supposed not to be of the Realm, lose that interest in the Legislative Power, which they would have had if they were of, or within the Realm; whether this natural right which they have to personal liberty and to political freedom is inherent in them "to all intents and purposes, as though they had been born within the Realm," or whether it is to be understood, with very many and very great restrictions"; whether these people, from the nature of these inherent rights and liberties, are entitled to have, and have a right to require a constitution of the same political liberty as that which they left, or whether "the whole of their constitutions are liable to be new modelled and reformed" at the will of this Sovereign; whether the legislative part of their constitution is, they being distinct, although subordinate, dominions, and no part of the Mother Country, an inherent right of a body of Englishmen, so circumstanced, or whether it can be suspended, or taken away at the will of this Sovereign. In stating these doubts, I do not here add the question, which in time past has been raised, on the right which this Sovereign has, or has not, to impose taxes on these subjects, circumstanced as above stated, without the intervention of their own free will and grant; because, let these other questions be decided howsoever they may, this stands upon quite other grounds, and depends upon quite other principles.

66

So long as the Government of the Mother Country claims a right to act under this idea of the relation between the Mother Country and the Colonies, so long as the Colonies shall be esteemed in this relation, as no part of the Mother Country," so long will the colonists think they have a right to raise these questions, and that it is their duty to struggle in the cause which is to decide them; and so long will there be faction and opposition, instead of government and obedience.

This amounted to saying that Parliament, in the Declaratory Act of 1766, had contradicted itself, in that,

after having declared that the Colonies and their inhabitants were subordinate to and dependent upon the Imperial Crown and Parliament of Great Britain,—which necessarily implied that the Colonies were dependent states, that the relationship between them and Great Britain was subject to constitutional conditions and limitations, and that the powers of Parliament over the Colonies and their inhabitants were measured by those which the Imperial State had, by the Constitution of the Empire, to legislate and to execute legislation,-it had immediately proceeded to declare that Parliament had unconditioned and unlimited power over the Colonies and their inhabitants.

He claimed that Parliament ought not to have declared that Great Britain was the Imperial State and the Colonies its dependencies, and that, therefore, it ought to withdraw that declaration and substitute for it another to the effect that Great Britain was an integral part of the Realm, and the Colonies another integral part, and that the Colonies were entitled to be represented in Parliament.

Since no Colony had ever sent representatives to Parliament, it was necessary, in order to prevent such a declaration as Pownall proposed from amounting to a charge of ignorance or wilful oppression of the Colonies by Great Britain in the past, and of ignorant or weak submission by the Colonies to wrong-doing by Great Britain, to give some reason why the Colonies had not been theretofore represented in Parliament. The reason advanced by him was, that the right of the Colonies to representation first began when Parliament considered them as objects of taxation. He said:

The Colonies, from their remote distance and local circumstances, could not have been incorporated into any county, city or borough,—at least, so it is said: and yet, at the same