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course of inconsistency. The Secretary of State for the Colonies was appointed, and at the same time the Colonies were treated by Parliament as integral parts of the Realm.

CHAPTER XIII

AMERICA'S POSITION CRITICISED, 1769

N 1769, there appeared in England an anonymous pamphlet, entitled The Controversy between Great Britain and the Colonies Reviewed, which was in fact written by William Knox, who had been attached to the Colonial Government of Georgia in the year 1760, assisted by Hon. George Grenville, who had been Prime Minister when the Stamp Act was passed. By this pamphlet the arguments in favor of the proposition that the British Empire was a Unitary State were put as strongly as they possibly could be. It was, in fact, a defence of the whole policy of the Grenville Ministry, and its purpose was to show that that Administration was right, and that its successor, the Rockingham Ministry, in procuring the repeal of the Stamp Act, had committed a constitutional error.

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The propositions advanced by the Stamp Act Congress, as modified by those advanced by Dickinson in his Farmer's Letters, were considered and answered in consecutive order. Criticising the first resolution of the Stamp Act Congress,-that "his Majesty's subjects in these Colonies owe all due subordination to that August Body, the Parliament of Great Britain," the authors of the pamphlet pointed out that in the expression "August Body," there was necessarily contained the implication that Great Britain was a foreign State, and that this proposition was contradictory of the proposition contained in the other resolutions-that the inhabitants of the Colonies were entitled to all the rights and liberties

of Englishmen-because they could only have the rights of Englishmen in case they were members of the population of the State of Great Britain, and in that case Parliament would be the "Supreme Legislature" of the Colonies and their inhabitants, to the will of which they would owe "obedience,"-not an "August Body," to which they would owe "due subordination." The argument on this subject was a follows:

The title of "August Body," which they give the Parliament, is another subterfuge for seeming to respect its authority, whilst they mean to disavow it. An "August Body" it certainly is, and foreigners frequently call it so; but the subjects of the Realm know it by another title, that of Supreme Legislature. That title would, however, have implied obedience to its laws in those who gave it; but the committees, not intending to acknowledge such obedience, avoided giving it that title which is only proper from subjects, and gave it one which implied no relation or dependence on it, and yet carried so much the appearance of respect, that it might be mistaken to mean it.

The distinction they mark in their resolutions between the people of America and the people of England, by terming the one "his Majesty's liege subjects in the Colonies," and the other" his natural-born subjects," or his " subjects born within the Realm," plainly, though indirectly, declares it to be their opinion, that the people in the Colonies are not the King's "natural-born subjects," or his "subjects born within the Realm." They cannot therefore claim the rights and privileges of Englishmen from their being British subjects in common with the people of England, or the subjects born within the Realm; and yet no other title to those rights do any of them pretend, than that such are the rights and privileges of Englishmen or British subjects. For they go on to resolve 'that it is inseparably essential to the freedom of a people, and the undoubted right of Englishmen, that no taxes be imposed on them but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives;"-"that trial by jury is the inherent

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and invaluable right of every British subject in these Colonies; -also, "that it is the right of the British subjects in these Colonies to petition the King or either House of Parliament." This is all very true and very sensible; but who those "Englishmen" or "British subjects" in the Colonies are, to whom, and to whom only, these rights belong, cannot easily be discovered. They cannot be the inhabitants of the Colonies, or those who have been born there; for the former resolutions say that the Colonies are "not within the British Realm," and that the people who are born there are not the "natural-born subjects" of the King, "born within the Realm."

Having thus seen upon what sort of foundations the different Colony Assemblies build their several titles to the rights and privileges of Englishmen, and that each superstructure, at the approach of reason, vanishes like "the baseless fabric of a vision," I will not fatigue the reader with a discussion of the arguments introduced by the Colony advocates in support of the Assemblies' resolutions. Whatever they can urge in behalf of the Colonies' claim to the rights and privileges of Englishmen, whilst they deny that they are subjects of the Realm, or natural-born British subjects, and that the Colonies are within the Realm, must be obnoxious to the same charges of inconsistency and absurdity to which the Assemblies' resolutions are so palpably liable; and the simplest of my countrymen can easily detect the most artful American sophister, by insisting upon his answering this plain question-Are the people in the Colonies British subjects, or are they aliens or foreigners?

The Assemblies and their advocates, aware of this dangerous dilemma, have never directly and explicitly declared, as the reader must have observed, that they are, or that they are not, British subjects; that is, subjects of the British State or community. They avoid that declaration by every artifice and subterfuge that words can supply them with,—they are at one time "Englishmen," at another "the children, and not the bastards of Britons," they are "free Britons," "the King of Great Britain's liege subjects," "they owe the same fealty and allegiance to his Majesty that is due to him from his subjects

in Great Britain,"-and numberless other equivocal professions, which serve to elude the main question. At the same time, as if under each character they had defined their condition to be that of British subjects, they boldly draw the consequence, that "they are entitled to all the rights and privileges of natural-born subjects in common with the people of England." That they cannot, however, maintain their title to those rights upon any other ground than that of their being British subjects, born and inhabiting within the Realm, is, I think, sufficiently evident; and therefore, that they may fail in proving that they are not British subjects, and that the Colonies lie without the Realm, is the most friendly wish I can give them.

There was no answer to this criticism, in so far as it charged that the resolutions were inconsistent with each other. The rights, privileges, and immunities of the Colonies and their inhabitants arose out of the character of the people of the Colonies and the geographical relationship of the Colonies to Great Britain, and were determined by the principles of the general public law. Because the Imperial State happened to have a constitu. tion under which the inhabitants enjoyed a high degree of political freedom, it did not necessarily follow that the American Colonies were entitled to the same freedom. The British Constitution was, of course, in force in the Colonies except in so far as it was rendered inapplicable by their local conditions and circumstances, but the inhabitants of the Colonies were entitled to the same rights, privileges, and immunities as the inhabitants of the State of Great Britain only in case their conditions and circumstances were the same as those of the people of England. The fact that the most of the original American colonists were English did not necessarily give them the rights, privileges, and immunities of Englishmen. If they had colonized a tropical instead of a temperate region, these very colonists might, after a century

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